?-■■ ^>~vi OF prnwcf^ •^I^osiai sc«^ T HE LIFE ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, D.U., F.R.S.," FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL SOCIETIES, ETC. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. VOL. L NEW YORK: A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, Jul W VJ. A TO THE PEOPLES OP INDIA IS INSCEIBED THIS LIFE OF THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY WHOSE L.VTEST PUBLISHED WORDS WERE THESE: "WHEREVER I WANDER, WHEREVER I STAY, Mr HEART IS IN INDIA, IN DEEP SYMPATHY WITH ITS MULTITUDINOUS INHABITANTS, AND IN EARNEST LONGINGS FOR THEIR HIGHEST WELFARE IN TIME AND IN ETERNITY." PEIITCETON iiiiG. NOV 18&C THSOLOGIG This invaluable portraiture of the character and life of one of the most remarkable men of our modern missionary times, has been published on this side of the Atlantic, by A. C. Armstrong & Son, in two handsome volumes, and has met with high appreciation. The price, however, necessarily limited its circulation, and the present edition is designed to bring so choice a work within the reach of a large number of appreciative readers in America, many of whom remem- ber still his burning love for Christ's cause and his almost inspired eloquence. CONTENTS. CHAPTER L 1 806-1 829. The Boy and the Sti'dent . PAGES 1-32 CHAPTER II. 1829. The Fikst Missionary of the Church op Scoiland 83 -Gi CHAPTER III. 1830. The Two Shipwrecks 65-85 CHAPTER IV. 1830. Calcutta as it was 86-103 CHAPTER V 1830-1831. The Mine Prepared CHAPTER VL 1831-1833. The First Explosion and the Four Converts CHAPTER VII. 1833-1835. The Renaissance in India — The English Language AND THE Church 104-13G 137-177 178-205 CHAPTER VIII. 1833-1835. The Renaissance in India — Science and Letters 206-232 Vm CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. 1 832-1 835. PAGES Work foe Edropeans, Eurasians akd Native Christians 233-270 CHAPTER X. 1835. Thb Invalid and the Ouatot. 271-304 CHAPTER XL 1835-1836. Dr. Duff Organizing 305-339 CHAPTER XII. 1 83 7- 1 839. Fishers op Men . 340-387 CHAPTER XIII. 1 839- 1 840. Egypt — Sinai — Bombay — Madras 388-424 CHAPTER XIY. 1841. Fighting the Governor-Gteneral ..... 425-441 CHAPTER XV. 1841-1843. The College and its Spiritual Fruit .... 442-478 ^. J.- ........ . ^Tm ^ .HiC, NOV 1"^0 Vthso INTEODUCTIOK Alexais^dek Duff, as tlie perusal of tliis admirable luemoii" ^vill make apparent, was one of tlie most emi- nent of modern missionaries. His name will go down to posterity witli those of William Burns and David Livingstone, as together constituting "the three migh^ ties " of the noble band of Scottish worthies whose la- bors in the fields of heathenism have given lustre to the annals of our century. Others might be ranked among the thirty ; but they were " the first three," each of whom was distinguished by making a new departure in the great entei"prise to wliicli they had all devoted themselves. Livingstone saw that if anything was to be really done for Africa, the slave-trade — that open sore of the world — must be got rid of, and in order to secure that, as well as other things of importance, he entered upon these exploring expeditions which have made his name imperishable. Burns, upon perceiving the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners of eveiy sort, and finding his European dress a hindrance in the prosecution of his work, deliberately adopted the costume of the peo]de among whom he labored, became as a Chinaman to the Chinese, and left a name at the mention of which the heai'ts of multitudes, both in Scotland and in China, are ix X I^'T^vODucTIo^^ quickened as by some potent spell, for they knew liim as tkeir spiritual fatlier. Duff, seeing that tke false science of tke so-called sacred books of India was in- separably connected with their religious teaching, came to the conclusion that the thorough education of the Hindoos would be subversive of the native superstitions. He, therefore, not without the risk of being misunder- stood by the committee at home, deliberately adopted what may be called the educational plan. How that was carried out by him, and the influence which he ex- erted on education in India through Lord William Bentinck, Sir Charles Trevellyan, and the young com- missioner who was afterwards to become better known as Lord Macaulay, is set forth with sufficient distinct- ness in these pages. He was an uncompromising ad- vocate of that which he believed to be right, and his eloquence, alike in Calcutta and in Scotland, often car- ried all before it. On his first return to his native land he was virtually put, by the objections of many, upon his own defence, and the speech which he delivered on that occasion, in the General Assembly, has always been referred to as one of the grandest specimens of sacred eloquence. The ten years' conflict was then at its height, but Moderates and Evangelicals alike laid down their arms to listen, even as the hostile hosts at Tala- vera forgot their enmity as together they drank from the brook that flowed between their lines. Thus the work of Duff was as important among the churches of his native land as it was in India. His zeal and oratory kindled an amazing enthusiasm for the INTRODUCTION. il missionary cause, and his simple, fervent piety ahvays preached a silent sermon of great power. His visit to tlie manse of Ellon wrought such a change on the E-ev. James Robertson — the leader of the Moderate party in the church — that Robertson's biographer does not hesi- tate to speak of it as a conversion ; and wherever he went he Avas recognized as being in very deed " a man of God." His labors in America are yet remembered Avitli gratitude and admiration by multitudes among us, who Avill be glad to have former impressions recalled by the account which is here given of his visit to our laud. And students of Scottish ecclesiastical history will find in this biography, which spans the fifty years between Chalmers's professorship of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, and the breaking up of the union negotia- tions between the disestablished Presbyterian churches, rich material for their purpose. We need not do more than refer to the labors of Duff in later years as the Convener of the Foreign Mis- sion Committee of the Free Church, and the first Profes- sor of Evangelistic Theology in its college. To the last he was a man of power, tall and stalwart in form, easily distinguishable, in later years, by his flowing beard of silvery whiteness, he was always an object of interest to the visitor to the Free Assembly, and though the volcanic fire of his old eloquence had largely burnt itself out, it occasionally flamed forth even then in such a way as to give one some idea of its fonuer brightness. It is always difficult to convey an adequate impression 2 LIFE or DR. DuTF. 1806. Duff liimself, when, in tlie fulness of bis fame, lie solemnly congratulated a young friend on a firstborn son, that in nothing is the sovereignty of God so clearly seen as in the birth of a child ; the fact, the sex, the circumstances, the bent. To be at all, is much ; to be this rather than that is, to the individual, more : but to be the subject and the channel of a divine force such as has made the men who have reformed the world, in the days from the apostles to the greatest modern missionaries, is so very much more, that we may well look in every case for the signs which lie about their ir.fanc}'-. In this case these signs are near the sur- face. It was through the prince of the Evangelicals of the Church of England that, unconsciously to both, grace flowed, at one remove, to the distant Highland boy of the Presbyterian kirk, who became the prince of Evangelical missionaries. And the grace was the same in both for it was marked by the catholicity of true Evangelicalism, which is not always found in the sectarian divisions and strifes of the Eeformed Churches. It was just after that conversation of his which proved to be the foundation of the Church Missionary Society that, in 1796, the accomplished Eiigiish clergy- man who filled the pulpit of Trinity Church, Cambridge, was induced to make his first tour through Scotland. At Dunkeld, Simeon tells us, his horses were at the door to take him on to the Pass of Killiecrankie, with the intention of at once turning back to that gate of the Highlands in order to hurry on to Glasgow. But *' I felt myself poorly, I ordered them back and pro- ceeded to Killiecrankie the next day. At Moulin, a villao-e four miles from K., I called to see a Mr. Stew- art." In that visit was the seed of Alexander Duff's higher life. Having seen the pass, Simeon returned to assist Mr. Stewart, who was the parish minister, at ^.t. I. CUAIILES SIMEON AND ALEXANDER DUTF. 3 tlio Lord's supper. Their intercourse rcsiilfced in an immediate change in the preaching of a man of hi'Hi repute for amiabihtj and learning, but, like the young Chalmers afterwards, " yevy defective in his view of the gospel and in his experience of its power." From that moment Stewart " changed the strain of his preaching, determining to know nothing among his people but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Years afterwards, as Simeon looked back on that visit to Scotland, and saw how in Moulin, at Dingwall, and then in the Canongate of Edinburgh, Dr. Stewart was made a living power to the souls of men and women, he blessed God for the indisposition whicli had kept him back at Diuikeld, and so had sent him to MouHn. This, and the results of his preaching for Dr. Colquhoun in Leith, led the Evangelical whom the University then despised and his own brethren condemned for preaching in non-Anglican churches, to write, " amongst the many blessings which God vouch- safed to me in those journeys, there were two in par- ticular for which I have reason to adore His name." After this, Simeon sent out to India tlie men, like David Brown and Henry Martyn, who, as chaplains and missionaries, formed the salt of the infant empire. He soon saw, also, one of the noblest of evano-elizinof agencies established, the Church Missionary Society; and he had helped the London Missionary Society, fruit- ful parent of similar organizations in Great Britaiii, America and Germany. But the far-reaching conse- quences of that day's work in Moulin he had not dared to dream of. Among Stewart's parishioners, of whom he had told Simeon there are " few real Christians whom I can number in my parish," were two young people, who were not long in experiencing the new electric thrill which showed itself in more than one revival such as a 4 LIFE OF DK. DUFF, 1806. few of the most aged villagers recall with fond memory at the present day. James Duff and Jean Rattray were under seventeen when Simeon preached what he at the time bewailed as his barren and dull sermon. Gaelic was the prevailing language of the district ; few knew English. But what the English of Simeon beo-an, the Gaelic of Stewart continued, and James Duff was equally master of both languages. In due time he married Jean Rattray and took her to the farm of Auchnahyle. There Alexander Duff was born to them, on the 25th April, 1806. Removing thence soon after somewhat nearer Moulin, the boy's child- hood and early youth was spent in and around a picturesque cottage on the estate of Balnakeilly. No trace remains of the old house of Auchnahyle, a new one having been built on its site. All the missionary's early reminiscences were identified with the cottage at Balnakeilly, still standing and but little changed, among the woods that slope up from the old north road before it enters Moulin from Dunkeld. And here, as he himself once wrote, " amid scenery of unsurpassed beauty and grandeur, I acquired early tastes and impulses which have animated and in- fluenced me through life." To its natural beauty of hill, wood and water, on which the artist's eye loves to rest, there is now added the memory of him whose whole genius was coloured by the surroundings, and who, when the shadow of death was darkening over him, delighted to recall the dear father-house. It is the centre of Scotland. Rising gently some two miles to the north-east, Ben-i-vrackie reaches a height of 2,800 feet. Thence the young eye can descry Arthur's Seat which guards Edinburgh, and, in the far north of Aberdeenshire, the mightier Bens of Nevis and Macdhui. The house is beautifully placed in an open glade, with a brattling mountain stream /Et. r. DUFF S DF.Sf'niF'iION OF HIS DIRTHFLAOE. 5 on oillier side, and a wealth of weeping birch, ash, larch, and young oak trees, which, in the slanting autumn sun, seem to surround the cottage with a setting of gold. Twice in after years, with a loving and eloquent fondness, was he led to describe the place and the father who trained him there. When in Calcutta, in ISGO, he observed in the Witness news- paper an advertisement soliciting subscriptions for a new Free Church for the parish, which the altered times made it desirable to erect in the neiorhbourins: railway town of Pitlochrie, he thus wrote in a public appeal : — " The parish of Moulin, fairly within the Grampians, embraces the central portion of the great and noble valley of Athole, watered by the Tummel and the Garry, with several glens and straths stretching con- siderably to the north. The great north road from Dunkeld to Inverness passes through the southerly section of the parish, along the banks of the fore- named rivers. About a mile to the north of this road, and wholly concealed from it by intervening knolls and ridges, lies the village of Moulin, in a hollow or basin, once partly the bed of a lake, but now drained and turned into fertile corn-fields, with the ruins of an old castle in the middle of them. Formerly the half, probably the greater half of the population lay to the north, north-west, and north-east of the village. But things are very much altered now. From the enlarge- ment of farms entire hamlets have been removed, and the cottars in most villages in these directions greatly reduced in number ; while one glen has been wholly, and more than one to a considerable extent depopu- lated, to make way for sheep-walks." The Pitlochrie portion of his native parish he de- scribed as " slightly elevated on rolling ridges above the Tummel, which, after its junction with the Garry 6 LIFE OF DR. DUFP. l8o6. a little above, flows on to join the Taj a few miles farther down; with the country all around richly wooded, while free from all marshy ground and cultivated like a garden; encompassed on all sides, and at no great distance, with swelling hills and craggy precipices, and the sharp pointed peaks of the lofty Ben-i-vrackie towering up almost immediately behind it ; placed, also, within a mile or two of the celebrated Pass of Killiecrankie, which is bounded on the east by Fascally, with its enchanting scenery including the Falls of Tummel, and on the west by the battle-field on which Lord Dundee, ' the Bloody Clavers,' the relentless scourge of Scotland's true patriot worthies, the heroes of the Covenant, and the last hope of the Stewart dynasty, fell mortally wounded in the hour of victory ; and which itself furnishes to the true lover of nature's works a variety of views altogether un- surpassed in their combination of the beautiful, the picturesque, the romantic, and the sublime." The Duff Church now stands in Pitlochrie as the solitary memorial there of the man who has given a new and higher interest to that portion of the Gram- pian range than any of its sons. No ; not the only memorial. There is another, a tombstone in the Moulin kirk-yard, " erected as a grateful tribute to the memory of his pious parents ... by their af- fectionate son, Alexander Duff." When, early in 1848, he heard in Calcutta of his father's death, he sent to Dr. Tweedie a prose elegy on that cottage patriarch, which, undesignedly, enables us to trace the spiritual influence as it had flowed through Simeon, Stewart, and the good old Highlander to the sun, who had been then for nearly twenty years the fore- most missionary in India. "If ever son had reason to thank God for the prayers, the instructions, the counsels, and the con- ^t. I. DUFF S DESCRIPTION OP fllS FATHER. 7 sistent examples of a devoutly pious father, I am tliat son. Though sent from home for my education at the early age of eight, and though very little at home ever after, the sacred and awakening lessons of in- fancy were never wholly forgotten ; and, in the absence of moulding influences of regenerating grace, the fear of offending a man who inspired me in earliest boyhood with sentiments of profoundest reverence and love towards himself, as a man of God, was for many a year the overmastering principle which restrained my erring footsteps and saved me from many of the overt follies and sins of youth. Originally aroused to a sense of sin and the necessity of salvation, when a young man, under the remarkable ministry of the late Dr. Stewart of Moulin, and afterwards of Dingwall, and the Canougate, my father was led to flee for refuge to the hope set before him in the gospel. And the spark of light and life then enkindled in his soul, far from becoming dim amid the still surviving corruptions of the * old man ' within, and the thick fogs of a carnal earthly atmosphere without, continued ever since to shine more and more with increasing intensity and vividness. In the days of his health and strength, and subsequently as often as health and sti'ength permitted, he was wont to labour much for the spiritual improve- ment of his neighbourhood, by the keeping or super- intending of Sabbath schools, and the holding of weekly meetings, at his own house or elsewhere, for prayer and scriptural exposition. In prayer he was indeed mighty — appearing at times as if in a rapture, caught up to the third heavens and in full view of the beatific vision. In the practical exposition and home-thrusting enforcement of Scripture truth he was endowed with an uncommon gift. In appealing to the conscience, and in expatiating on the bleeding, dying love of the Saviour he displayed a power before which many have 6 LIFE OP DB. DUFF. 1806. been melted and subdued — finding immediate relief only in sobs and tears — and being equally fluent in the Gaelic and English languages, he could readily adapt himself to the requirements of such mixed audiences as the Highlands usually furnish. " In addressing the young he was wont to manifest a winning and affectionate tenderness, which soon riveted the attention and captivated the feelings. His very heart seemed to yearn through his eyes as he implorefl them to beware of the enticement of sinners, and pointed to the outstretched arms of the Redeemer. Seizing on some Bible narrative or incident or miracle or parable, or proverb or emblem, he would ' picture out ' one or other of these so as to leave a clear and definite image on the youthful mind. And when he fairly entered on the full spirit of some stirring theme, such as Abraham's offering of his son Isaac, or Jesus weeping over infatuated Jerusalem ; or when, piercing through the outer folds, he laid bare the latent significance of some rich and beautiful emblem, such as the ' Hose of Sharon,' the ' Lily of the Valley,' or the great * Sun of Eighteousness,' his diction would swell into somewhat of dramatic energy, and his illustrations into somewhat of the vividness and sensible reality ; while his voice, respondent to the thrilling within, would rise into something like the undulations of a lofty but irregular chant, and so vibrate athwart the mental imagery of the heart, and leave an indelible impression there. " Next to the Bible my father's chief delight was in studying the works of our old divines, of which, in time-worn editions, he had succeeded in accumulat- ing a goodly number. These, he was wont to say, contained more of the * sap and marrow of the gospel ' and had about them more of the * fragrance and fla- vour of Paradise,* than aught more recently produced. ^t. I. A COTTAGE PyVTRIARCH. 9 Haljburton's * Memoirs * was a prime favourite ; but of all merely human productions, no one seemed to sfeir and animate his whole soul like the * Cloud of Witnesses.' And he took a special pains to saturate the minds of his children with its contents. His habit was orally to tell us of the manner in which the Papacy corrupted God's word and persecuted God's people. He would show us pictures of the enginery and processes of cruel torture. He then would give some short biographical notice of one or other of the suffering worthies ; and last of all conclude with reading some of the more striking passages in their * Last Words and Dying Testimonies.' Te this early training do I mainly owe my ' heart-hatred ' of popery, with any spiritual insight which I possess into its subtle and malignant genius, its unchanged and unchangeable anti-christian virulence. " During his latter days, his answer to every personal inquiry was, ' I am waiting till my blessed Master call me to Himself.' His unsparing exposure and denun- ciation of the follies, levities and vanities of a giddy and sinful world subjected him, in an uncommon degree, to the sneers, the ridicule, the contempt and the calumny of the ungodly. But like his Divine Master, when reviled he strove not to suffer himself to revile again. His wonted utterance under such trials was, * Poor creatures, they are to be pitied, for they know not what spirit they are of ;' or, ' Ah ! well, it is only another reason why I should remember them more earnestly in prayer. The day of judgment will set all right.' In the sharpness and clearness with which he drew the line between the merely expedient and the absolutely right and true ; in his stern adhesion to principle at all hazards ; in his ineffable loathing for temporizing and compromise, in any shape or form where the interests of ' Zion's King and Zion's cause ' 10 UVV. OV DR. BUFF, 1S14. wore concerned ; in Lis energy of spirit, promptness of decision, and unbending sturdihood of character; in tlie Abraham-like cast of his faith, which manifested itself in its directness, simplicity, and strength — in all these and other respects he always appeared to me to realize fully as much of my 'own beau-ideal of the ancient martyr or hero of the Covenant as any other man I ever knew. Indeed, had he lived in the early ages of persecution, or in Covenanting times, my per- suasion is that he would have been among the fore- most in fearlessly facing the tyrant and the torture, the scaffold and the stake. Oh that a double portion of his spirit were mine, and that the mantle of his graces would fall upon me ! " This history will show how richly the prayer was answered; this letter itself does so. But the pictures of the " Cloud of Witnesses " were not all that fired the imagination of the Highland boy. Like Carey with Ids maps of the heathen world, the father spoke to his children from such representations of Jugganath and the gods of India as were rarely met with at that time. On another occasion the son thus traced the specially missionary influences which surrounded him as a child : " Into a general knowledge of the objects and progress of modern missions I was initiated from my earliest youth by my revered father, whose catholic spirit rejoiced in tracing the triumph of the gospel in different lands, and in connection with the different branches of the Christian Church. Pictures of Jugganath and other heathen idols he was wont to exhibit, accompanying the exhibition with copious explanations, well fitted to create a feeling of horror towards idolatry and of compassion towards the poor blinded idolaters, and intermixing the wliole with statements of the love of Jesus." Another of Alexander Duff's early and constant ^.t. S. CELTIC INFLUENCES. II schoolmasters out of school was the Gaelic poet, Dugald Buchanan, catechist in the neighbouring Rannoch a century before, who has been well de- scribed as a sort of Highland repetition of John Bunyan * in his spiritual experiences. The fire, the glow, of the missionary's genius was Celtic by nature and by training. The fuel that kept the fire from smouldering away in a passive pensiveness was the prophetic denunciation, varied only by the subtle irony, of poems like " Latha Bhreitheanais " — The Day of Judgment^ and " An Claigeann " — The ShuU. Tlie boy's great and fearful delight was to hear the Gaelic lamentations and paeans of Buchanan, which have at- tained a popularity second only to the misty visions of Ossian, read or rehearsed by his father and others who had committed them to memory, Buchanan is the man who, when challenged by David Hume to quote language equal in sublimity to Shakespeare's well-known lines beginning " The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces," gravely recited the Revelation which opens, " I saw a Great White Throne," when the sceptic, admitting its superiority, eagerly inquired as to its author ! The bard of Rannoch moralizes in lines some of which, as translated by Professor Blackie, we quote, from their applicability to him whom they so influenced : — " I sat all alone, By a cold grey stone, And behold a skull lay on the ground ! I took in my hand, and pitiful scanned Its ruin all round and round. ***** * Professor J. S. Blackie on The Language and Literature of the. Scottish Highlands. 1876. 12 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1814. " Or wert tliou a teaclier Of truth and a preacher, With message of mercy to tell; With an arm swift and strong To pull back tlie throng That headlong were plunging to hell ? * * * * V " Or wert thou a wight That strove for the right. With God for thy guide in thy doing ? Though now thou lie there All bleached and bare, In the blast a desolate ruin, " From the tomb thou shalt rise And mount to the skies, Vv^heu the trump of the judgment shall bray j Thy body of sin Thou shalfc slip like a skin. And cast all corruption away. '' When in glory divine The Redeemer shall shine. The hosts of His people to gather. When the trumpet hath blared. Like an eagle repaired Thou shalt rise to the home of thy Father." The more weird and alarming strains of The Day \ of Judgment so filled the boy's fancy that, when he first left home for the Lowlands, he one night dreamed ' he saw the signs of the approaching doom. In vision he beheld numbers without number summoned where the J udge was seated on the Great White Throne. He saw the human race advance in suc- cession to the tribunal, he heard sentence pro- nounced upon men — some condemned to everlasting punishment, others ordained to everlasting life. He ^t. 8. HIS VISIONS AND HIS CALL. I3 was seized witli an indescribable terror, uncertain what his own fate would be. The doubt became so terrible as to convulse his very frame. When his turn for sentence drew near, tlie dreamer awoke shivering very violently. The experience left an indelible im- pression on his mind. It threw him into earnest prayer for pardon, and was followed by what he long after described as somethins: like the assurance of acceptance through the atoning blood of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The next harvest vacation was marked by another experience of a similar kind, in which those who keep the ear of the soul open for every whisper of the divine, will read a prophetic call in the light of the boy's future. He had not long before narrowly escaped drowning in the more easterly of the two streams around the cottage, having been drawn into it as he was lifting out water from the swollen torrent, and swirled under the rustic bridge. The more peaceful westerly burn was the scene of his second vision. He dreamed, as he lay on its banks among the blae-berries musing alone, that there shone in the distance a brightness surpassing that of the sun. By-and-bye from the great light there seemed to approach him a magnificent chariot of gold studded with gems, drawn by fiery horses. The glory overawed him. At last the heavenly chariot reached his side, and from its open window the Almighty God looked out and addressed to him, in the mildest tones, the words, " Come up hither ; I have work for thee to do." In the effort to rise he awoke with astonishment, and told the dream in all its details to his parents. Not long before his death, he repeated it in this form to his grandson, so deep and lasting had been the impression. Such a call, be it the prevision of fancy or the revelation of a gracious 14 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. rSi;. clostin}^, was a fitting commencement of Alexander Duff's career, and a very real preparation of him for the work he had to do. The parish " dominie " of Moulin was an exception- ally useless teacher, even in those days and under an *' indifferent " Presbytery. Amiable, ingenious, and even learned, he divided his time between the repair of watches and violins during: school hours when the elder children heard the lessons of the younger, and fishing in the Tummel when his wife heard all read the Bible in the kitchen. A father of James Duff's intellig^cuce and earnestness was sorely perplexed when, in 1814, a friend invited him to send Alexander to a school between Dunkeld and Perth, which the neighbouring farmers, engaged in reclaiming some wastes of the Duke of Atliole, had established for their children. After three years of rapid progress, the boy of eleven was placed in the Kirkmichael school, twelve miles from Moulin, though not till his father had visited the teacher with whom Alexander was to board, and had satisfied himself that there was good ground for his great reputation all over the country-side. In time the sluggish Presbytery of Dunkeld awoke to the new educational light, and a deputation of their number found Alexander Duff, as the head of the school, put forward to read the Odes of Horace. Mr. A. MacdouQfall was master of Kirkmichael school. In his family and under his teaching Alex- ander Duff laid the foundation of a well-disciplined culture, for which, so long as his teacher lived, he did not cease to express to him the warmest affection. Among his fellows were Dr. Duncan Forbes, who afterwards became Professor of Oriental Languages in King's College, London; Dr. Tweedie, associated with the future missionary as convener of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Free Church of Scotland ; ^t. II. LOST IN THE SNOW. 1 5 the E,ev. Donald Fcrgnsson, still Free Gluircli minister of Levon ; and the Rev. Mr. Campbell, the present parish minister of Moulin. Such was the teacher's ability, and such his well-deserved popularity, that the thinly peopled parish at one time sent eleven students to St. Andrews. " I have not forgotten the days I passed under your roof," wrote Duff when he had become famous, to his old master, " nor the manifold advantages derived from your tuition, and, I trust, never will. And when the time comes that in the good providence of God I shall visit Kirkmichael, I know that to me at least it will be matter of heartfelt gratification." " What would I have been this day," he wrote again, "had not an overruling Providence directed me to Kirkmichael school?" Of every book and pamphlet which he wrote he sent a copy to his first benefactor. Before he left Kirkmichael to pass through the then famous grammar school of Perth to St. Andrews University, he was to carry with him from his home another experience never to be forgotten. The winter at the end of 1819 was severe, and the snow lay deep in the G-rampians. The Saturday had come round for young Duff''s weekly visit to his parents. Taking the shorter track for ten miles across the low hill by Glen Briarchan and Strathire, from Kirkmichael to Moulin, he and a companion waded for hours through the snowy heather. The sun set as they got out of the glen, no stars came out, all landmarks were obliterated, and they knew only that they had to pass between deep morasses and a considerable tarn. To return was as impossible as it was dangerous to advance, for already they felt the ice of the moss-covered pools and then of the lake cracking under their feet in the thick darkness. Still going forward, they came to what they took to be 1 6 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1820. a precipice hidden by tlie snow-driffc down wbicli tliey slid. Then they heard the purling of the burn which, they well knew, would bring them down the valley of Athole if they had only light to follow it. The night went on, and the words with which they tried to cheer themselves and each other grew fainter, when exhaustion compelled them to sit down. Then they cried to God for deliverance. With their heads resting on a snow-wreath they were vainly trying to keep their eyes open, when a bright light flashed upon them and then disappeared. E-oused as if by an electric shock, they ran forward and stumbled against a garden wall. The light, which proved to be the flare of a torch used by salmon poachers in the Tum- mel, was too distant to guide them to safety, but it had been the means of leading^ them to a cottas^e three miles from their home. The occupants, roused from bed in the early morning, warmed and fed the wan- derers. To Alexander Duff's parents the deliverance looked almost miraculous. Often in after years, when he was in peril or difficulty, did the memory of that sudden flash call forth new thankfulness and cheerful hope. Trust in the overruling providence of a gra- cious God so filled his heart that the deliverance never failed to stimulate him to a fresh effort in a righteous cause when all seemed lost. The boy spent his fourteenth year at Perth Grammar ^f School, of which Mr. Moncur, the ablest of the students of John Hunter of St. Andrews, and a born teacher, had just been made Rector. The first act of the new master was, in presence of the whole school, to summon the janitor to sink in the Tay the many specimens of leathern " tawse " of various degrees of torturing power, which had made his predecessor feared by generations of boys. With consummate acting, he asked why the generous youths entrusted JEt. 14. INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSICS AND MILTON. 1 7 to him should be treated as savages. He at least had confidence in thern to this extent, that each would do his duty ; and, being the perfect teacher he was, his confidence was justified. The scene was never forgot- ten, and it went far to develop in Duff the power which fascinated and awed his Bengalee students for many a year, and made his school and college the first in all Asia. Under Moncur his Latin and Greek scholarship had their foundation broadened as well as deepened. In the favourite optional exercise, now too much neglected, of committing to memory the master-pieces of both, he generally came off" first, and thus was trained a faculty to which much of his oratorical success afterwards was due. He left Perth at fifteen, the dux of the school. Yet we question if he carried away from it anything better than Johnson's "Ram- bler," which the Rector lent to him for the vacation before the University term, and especially Milton's " Paradise Lost." Often in after years did he refer to the latter as having, unconsciously at the time, exercised a great influence over his mental habitudes. He carried the book constantly in his pocket, and read portions of it every day. Thus the " Paradise Lost " moulded his feelings and shaped his thoughts into forms pecu- liarly his own. The Gaelic Buchanan and the English Milton, the Celtic fire and the Puritan imagination, feeding on Scripture story and classic culture, coloured by such dreams and experiences, and directed by such a father and a teacher — these were used to send forth to the world from the bosom of the Grampians a tall eagle-eyed and impulsive boy of fifteen. Presented with twenty pounds by his father, from that day he was at his own charges. X- It was a fortunate circumstance that he went to St. Andrews. Of the four Scottish universities at that time the most venerable was still the most 0 l8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1821. attractive, from the renown of some of its professors. Little, of course, could be said for tlie schools of divinity anywhere till Thomas Chalmers went to Edin- burgh, although Priucipal Haldane was not without routine ability and goodness, as head of St. Mary's, tlie theolocrical colles^e which Cardinal Beaton had founded. But the other two, known as the United Colleges of St. Salvator and St, Leonard, enjoyed the services of the ripest Latinist at that time in the United Kingdom, Dr. John Hunter, and of Dr. Jackson whose lectures on natural philosophy were reckoned the most scientific of the day. The reputa- tion and the influence of even these, however, were con- fined to their generation compared with that intellec- tual and spiritual ferment caused by the new professor of moral philosophy, which is still working in the lives of men and the institutions of his country. When Dr. Chalmers almost suddenly disappeared from the pulpit and platform, the wynds and the hovels of Glasgow, and beofan the winter session of 1823-24 at St. Andrews with one lecture, Alexander Duff, having carried off the highest honours in Grreek, Latin, logic, and natural philosophy, was one of the crowd who sat at the great professor's feet. His Latin had procured for him the most valuable of those rewards which Scotland, with its peculiar mixture of Latin and French theological and law terms, calls " bursaries," without sufficiently distinguishing between the prizes of genuine scholar- ship gained by hard competition, like Duff's, and the doles restricted to poor students, often because they bear tlie same name or have been born in the same district as the thoughtless or vain donor. Especially had he carried off the essay prize offered for the best translation into Latin of Plato's "Apology of Socrates," and the Senatus spontaneously dubbed him Master of Arts. iEt. 15. ST. ANDIii;\\\S AS IT WAS. 1 9 The impetuous spirit of Duff received imprcssious of tlie theological deadtiess of St, Audrews, and of the new life brought to it by Chalmers, which found this ex- pression, when recalled in the distant scenes of India: " Poor St. Andrews lay far away, isolated and apart, in a region so cold that the thaw and the breeze, so relaxing and vivifying elsewhere, scarcely touched its hardened soil. The great stream of national progress flowed past, leaving it undisturbed in its sluggishness. The breezes of healthful change blew over it, as over the unruffled surface of a land-locked bay. From all external influences, even of an ordinary kind, it seemed entirely shut out. No steamer ever entered its deserted harbour, with its influx of strangers carry- ing along with, them new tastes, new habits and new* thoughts. No mail-coacli or even common stage- coach ever disturbed the silence of its ffrass-<2rrown streets. Its magistracy was virtually self-elected, enjoying in perpetuity a quiet monopoly of power. The Rector, the very guardian and controller of its University, must be himself one of the existing prin- cipals or professors of divinity; and not, as in the case of other Scottish universities, a man beyond the collegiate pale — a man of name, of independency and power, whose occasional visitation might tend to shake the dry bones of dull, deadening, monotonous routine. Dissent, so rife and flourishing elsewhere, could barely show itself in the nerveless impotence of creeping infancy. And even the rising spirit of the missionary enterprise could only faintly struggle, and that too in the bosoms of but a few, not for life but for a sickly weary existence, just as the palm or other rich pro- duct of tropical climes might for a time be seen pain- fully struggling for existence on a bleak Grampian heath. '* Such was the condition of St. Andrews, — a con- 20 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1823. dition in which the gaunt spirit of the eighteenth century, mantled all over with the deadly night-shade, was felt still shootino^ his baleful breath far into the nineteenth, — a condition in which the policy and the power of * moderate' ascendancy were comparatively unmodified and unchanged, when, in the spring of 1823, it was suddenly announced that Dr. Chalmers was unanimously elected by the Senatus Academicus to the vacant chair of Moral Philosophy. And when it is remembered that at that time not one member of the Senatus belonged to the evangelical party in the Church, that all were moderate and some of them intensely so, and that Principal Nicoll was even the acknowledged leader of the moderate party in the General Assembly ; it may well be imagined how the unexpected announcement was received with mingled feelings of surprise and delight — surprise at the choice of such a man by such an elective body, delight that the choice should have fallen on one so transcendently worthy. Indeed, ' delight ' is far too feeble and in- adequate a term to express the full gust of pleasurable emotion which instantaneously followed the announce- ment, and speedily diffused itself through the whole community. It was rather a burst of high-wrought enthusiasm. Of some it might truly be said that they believed not for very joy. *' Doubtless the sources of this joy were of an ex- ceedingly varied and mingled description. Visions of temporal aggrandizement already floated before the minds of the townspeople, then sadly steeped in secu- larity and religious indifierence. Without commerce, without manufacture or any leading branch of indus- trial occupation, their very existence might be said to depend on the University. And in the presence of such a ' celebrity ' as Dr. Chalmers, they were sharp enough to behold such a nucleus of attraction for iEt. 17, TUE COMING OF CHALMERS TO ST. ANDREWS. 21 students and strangers generally, that liis residence amongst them might fairly be regarded as equivalent to an increase of thousands of pounds to their scanty annual income. Again, many of the inhabitants, alike of town and country, had numberless traditionary local anecdotes and recollections of him as a boy, a student, a lecturer on mathematics and chemistry, and lastly, as the eccentric minister of the neighbouring parish of Kilmany. And to receive him back again amongst them, in the full blaze of an unparalleled popularity, they felt to be like the shedding of some undefinable radiance on themselves. The few, the very few, scattered and almost hidden ones of piety and prayer, hailed the event with feelings somewhat akin to those of him who beheld the cloud laden with its watery treasure rise and swell from the west, after a long and dreary season of parching drought. As for the students, however careless or unconcerned as to purely spiritual interests, they were, without any known exception and with all the honest fervour of youth, enraptured at the thought of having for a professor a man of genius, and the greatest pulpit orator of his age. The dull dead sea of former apathy and inertness was suddenly stirred up from the depths by the rush and impulse of new and unwonted excite- ment. For many days they could think of nothing else, and speak of nothing. The third volume of * Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' with its portrait and graphic delineation of Dr. Chalmers, obtained from the college library, was well-nigh torn and shattered from the avidity for its perusal. Already did every one picture to himself the form of the man with his pale countenance and drooping eyelids ; his mathe- matical breadth of forehead with its * arch of imagina- tion,' surmounted by a grand apex of high and solemn veneration and love. Already, with anticipated breath- 22 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1823. lessness, did each one seem, in fancy, as if he felfc his nerves creeping and vibrating, and his blood freez- ing and boiling, when the eloquence of the mighty enchanter, bursting through all conventional trammels, shone forth in all the splendour of its overpowering glories. "At length the time of his installation came round. In November, 1823, he delivered his inaugural lecture in the lower hall of the public library, still called the ' Parliament Hall,* as there, in 164'5, the Covenanting Parliament assembled which tried and condemned Sir Robert Spottiswood and other royalists for their share in the battle of Philiphaugb." Dr. Hanna has told the rest in the memoirs of his great father-in- law. Such were the professors. And what the students ? There had followed Duff to St. Andrews an old school- fellow from Perth, John Urquhart, with whom he shared the same lodgings, and, morning and evening, engaged in the same worship. Urquhart was a Con- gregationalist, as were also John Adam and "W. Lind- say Alexander, who is still spared to the Church, and has written this bright sketch of Duff in their student N days : " When I first became acquainted with him he was in all the vigour and freshness of early youth, stalwart in frame, buoyant of spirit, full of energy and enthusiasm, impulsive but not rash, a diligent and earnest student, and already crowned with academic distinctions earned by success in different depart- ments of learned and scientifio study. His reputation stood high as a classical scholar, and he had gained several prizes for essays in literature and philosophy. Subsequently to the time of which I am speaking, he gained equal distinction as a Hebrew scholar, and his essays in theology commanded the strongest approba- tion from his professors. Already also as a speaker, ALL 17. AS A STUDKNT IN ST. ANDUEV.'S. 23 he had in debating societies, and subsequently hy his discourses in the Theological Hall, displayed that intellectual power and that rare gift of eloquence which enabled him in after-j^ears so mightily to sway the emotions, guide the opinions, and influence the decisions of others, in deliberative councils no less than in popular assemblies." One of his juniors, the son of Professor Ferrie, and 1 now the Rev. William Ferrie, in the State of New York, gives us this other and very human glimpse of the impetuous student : — " lie was passing the win- dows of my father's house in St. Andrews with others going to some great students' meeting, and I remember Nairne, who was then my tutor, called out as they passed, * There is Duff.' I looked, and he had on a cloak, and was going with a good thick stick in his hand, as though he expected that there might be a row." The Rev. J. W. Taylor, of Flisk, whose first year at college was Duff's last, writes : " Though out- rageously thoughtless I was much impressed by Duff. There was a weight and a downrii^ht earnestness about him which everybody felt. He was the boast of the college, and was greatly regarded by the towns- folk of St. Andrews. His appearance as he passed with hurried step is indelibly photographed on my mind, and is thus put in my ' Historical Antiquities ' of the city. ' That tall figure, crossing the street and looking thoughtfully to the ground, stooped somewhat in the shoulders and his hand awkwardly grasping the lappet of his coat, is Alexander Duff, the pride of the college, whose mind has received the impress of Chalmers's big thoughts and the form of his phrase- ology. Under Chalmers, he was, in St. Andrews, the institutor of Sabbath schools and the orio-inator of O the Students' Missionary Society.' " Another surviving fellow-student, Dr. A. M'Laren, the minister of Kem- 24 LIFE OF Dli. DUFF. 1824. back, near Cupar, describes him thus: — " As a friend he was alwaj^'S singularly obliging, warm-hearted and con- stant; as a companion he was uniformly agreeable and cheerful, and not unfrequently impressive in his appeals to the better susceptibilities of our nature; though generally in high spirits and mirthful, he never allowed his mirth to degenerate into boisterous vulgarity." AYliat the lad was at St. Andrews, the man proved to be all through his life. He was high-minded, generous and chivalrous with the bearing of the old school, and that not less after his hours of controversy than in his happiest times. The first session was not over when the great Christian economist, the expounder of Malthus and Ricardo, who had transformed the worst wynds of Glasgow, began the humblest mission work in the more ancient city, and threw himself into the then despised cause of foreign missions. Duff's young spiritual life, which had been slumbering into formalism, he tells us, was quickened with that burning enthusiasm which glowed the brighter to his dying day. His friends, Urquhart and Adam, took steps to offer themselves to the London ^Missionary Society for China and Calcutta ; and Robert Nesbit went to his friend John Wilson, of Lauder, begging him to break the news to his mother that he was to be sent by the Scottish Missionary Society to Bombay. It is .not surprising that these, and such companions as the late Henry Craik, of Bristol, Mr. Mliller's colleague ; William Tait, son of the godly Edinburgh minister who was deposed in the Row heresy case ; and Mr, Scott Moncrieff, late of Penicuik, met with Duff in the session of 1824-5, and founded the Students' Missionary Society. Duff was its librarian, Nesbit its secretary, and R. Trail its president, as having originated an earlier society of divinity students only. Their object was to study ^t. i8. THE STUDENTS MISSIONAliY SOCIETY. 25 foreign missions, so as to satisfy tliemsclves of tho necessities of tlio world outside of Christendom. Not a room for their meetings would the authorities of either college, or tho magistrates who had charge of the city school, allow them, until, some time after, the principal and professors were enlightened so far as to subscribe an occasional guinea. And that in spite of all the influence of Chalmers, who fed the spirit of the students and interested the townsfolk in tho cause by lecturing on some portion of the field of heathenism once a month in the town-hall. This society, note- worthy in the history of Scottish Missions as tho fruitful parent of the most apostolic missionaries of the country, met first in an adventure school in a dingy lane of St. Andrews. The Memoir of Urquhart, who passed away all too early from the work for which he was preparing, reveals at once the depth of Duff's friendship, in the letters and in the preface to the third edition of 1860, and the very practical forms of mission study and prayer followed by the members. WIi3n Urquhart, in his concluding address, solemnly announced for the first time his personal dedication to missionary work, and charged every one of his fellows to take this matter into most serious consideration, his friend Duff re- ceived a deep and solemn impression. But books, essays, and even the lectures of Chalmers, were not all. In those days the giants of the early societies occasionally came home Avith news of victory in the high places of the field, with plans of further cam- paigns, with appeals for recruits. When Urquhart startled his companions by that announcement into following his example, he had just returned from a visit to the great missionary. Dr. Morrison, then in London, from whom he had been taking lessons in Chinese. Dr. Chalmers kept open house for all such in St. 26 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1S28. Andrews, to wliich his sympathy with them as well as his fame attracted them. Thus the students saw Dr. Marshman, who was full of the enterprise of 1818, when he and Carey had opened, in Serampore, the first English and Sanscrit college for native missionaries and educated Hindoos. Dr. Morrison in due time came north, to plead for Hong-Kong and Canton, to which his labours were then confined ; to tell of his triumphs in Bible translating and dictionary making, and to give some account of the ten thousand Chinese books which he had brought home. And from Calcutta there might be seen, at the lively break- fast table of the renowned professor of moral philo- sophy, the spare form of that Sanscrit and Bengalee pundit. Dr. Yates, alternating between attacks on Church establishments and expositions of Brahmanical subtleties, or listening to the professor's emphatically expressed opinion that religious societies should be managed by laymen, while ministers confine themselves to the more spiritual duties of their ofiice.* John Hrqiihart was right when he wrote that the colleges of St. Andrews, under all these influences, had become like those of Oxford in the days of Hervey and AVesley. ReckoniDg up the fruits of the influence of Chalmers for five years on the three hundred students who passed through his classes, his accomplished biographer exclaims : — " More than one missionary for each col- lege session — two out of every hundred students — what other University record can present a parallel ! " The six were Nesbit, Adam, Duff and Urquhart, and Mackay and Ewart who followed them. Dr. Hanna remarks of Duff, that the life and labours of this prince of missionaries proved how truly and how intensely he * Dr. Hanna's Memoirs of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., vol. iii., p. 154, note. ^t. 22. LllTTKK TO DR. CHALMERS. 2/ was impelled to tread in the footsteps and to imitato the noble pattern of his great teacher. It was on the 19th October, 1828, that Dr. Chalmers made this entry in his journal : — " Enjoyed my last Sunday at the beautiful garden of St. Leonard's : a sad sinking of heart." Duff returned to his last ses- sion at St. Andrews to find the light of the University leaving for the wider and more purely professional sphere of Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh. But the disappointed student found some recompense in being asked by Chalmers to w^rite freely to him. The first fruit of a correspondence and a personal friend- ship which ceased, twenty years after, only with the death of the greatest Scotsman since Knox, was the following. Dr. Chalmers seems to have carefully pre- served the original, having that sympathy with students which more than doubles the preacher's and the pro- fessor's power : — " St. Andrews, 20//^ Jan., 1829. "Rev. and Dear Sir, — When leaving St. Andrews, 3^ou were so good as to request me to write to you during the session, and I promised to do so. I assure you that neither the request nor the promise was for one moment forgotten. I reckoned the request an honour, and you know it is not human nature to neijlect what is viewed in this li"ht. " The sum total of students attending the Old Col- lege is 191 ; St. Mary's, nearly 40. The session has as yet passed by very quietly. There are no gentleman outlaivs or privileged desperadoes to gain an infamous notoriety by dist\irbing the general peace, and setting laws and discipline at open defiance. Billiards and nocturnal riots and other irregularities are therefore unheard of; and if there be an indulgence in any ex- cesses, it is still shrouded under the veil of secresy. 28 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1829. The vigorous measures taken by tlie professors on a former session operate as a very salutary if not an effectual check ; and the rigid upholding of these mea- sures will no doubt render the check permanent. " Dr. Cook's arrival in St. Andrews caused little inquiry, and created little or no excitement. His in- troductory lecture was delivered in the Latin class- room to an audience almost solely composed of students, and not very numerous. Its brilliance may be esti- mated from the fact that most of the students appeared very restless and fidgety ; Mr. Lothian sat yawning in one of the back seats. Dr. Cook has proclaimed himself the champion of the ancient system. He seemed to exult in having the high honour of restoring the poor houseless fugitive to its former domains, and investing it with its former dignity. His was a most perfect science : it was independent of revelation ; it could exalt man to a state of dignity allied to the Fountain of being, and could achieve wonders in refining the moral constitution of the lord of nature. Moral philosophy could not be understood without a previous view of the mental faculties. This was proved and illustrated by a lengthened analogy, of which this is the substance : It is as impossible to investigate the principles of morals without a previous knowledge of the faculties of the mind — which is the instrument em- ployed— as it is for the astronomer to have a know- ledge of his science without a previous acquaintance with the facts of astronomy. The depth of this rea- soning no one could fathom, and it was unanimously enrolled among the list of paralogisms. He then gave a sketch of his course, of which I have endeavoured to send you a faithful outline. From it you will at once perceive how rigidly he intends to follow the traces of the olden time, and how St. Andrews is likely to retain its character of the ' Old Maiden ' sti'ictly inviolate. ^t. 23. ST. A.NDEEWS UNIVERSITY AFTER CHALMERS. 29 He concluded by a long panegyric on liis father, wlio was one of the most distinguished of moral philoso- phers ; and another upon Dr. Crawford, adding, ' Nei- ther can I be supposed to bo altogether unaffected by the brilliant talents and the splendid eloquence of my immediate predecessor/ Almost in the next breath he proceeded, ' Entering the chair which I now occupy, after iliree such distinguished men, it may be thought that I labour under many disadvantages,' etc., and concluded by stating that he had thought long and much upon the subject, and therefore felt himself by no means unprepared to deliver a course of lectures upon moral philosophy. Upon this a certain gentle- man facetiously remarked : ' No wonder, for he has been preaching upon morals all his lifetime.* My own feelings, and the feelings of all those whose memories fondly dwelt upon better days and enabled them to draw a sorrowful contrast, would heartily incline me to inscribe above the door of entrance, in legible characters, ' Ichabod, the glory is gone.' The number of students attending this class has actually dwindled to 28 — not half the number for the last five years. This some of the professors account for by paying that last session some of the second-year students attended moral philosophy instead of logic, and this season they attend logic instead of moral philosophy. But the truth is, there are only four or five students of whom this can be said, leaving still the deficiency un- accounted for on any such principle. He was prepared to lecture on political economy, and every exertion was made to muster a class ; but the thing would not succeed. Two students were at last induced to enrol ; but such an attendance was too meagre to escape the imputation of being a farce, and accordingly the scheme was abandoned as hopeless. " The other classes are conducted in the usual way, 30 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1829. except tliat Mr. Duncan and Dr. Jackson Lave estab- lished a regular system of weekly competitions, which promise to do much good in stimulating and rewarding the really deserving. *' About ten days ago old Dr. Hunter was found in his study asleep and almost stiff with cold, his fire having gone out. For some days he was confined to bed, very unwell, but is now rapidly recovering. "The building of a new college is still the subject of conversation. Reports have flourished without num- ber, and repeatedly died ; but the happy consummation of their dying into a reality seems yet to be somewliat distant. True, the professors talk confidently of £23,000 being granted through the intercession of Lord Melville, of the money being already in the Ex- chequer in Edinburgh, of the king's architect being expected everyday; the foundation stone is to be laid in March, and your class-rooms are to be finislied during the ensuing summer, etc., etc. These things may be true, but past disappointments suggest the propriety of not being very sanguine till actual opera- tions are commenced. " The Students' Missionary Society is succeeding as well as ever, its numbers in no degree diminished. Even those who were at first disposed to view it with a jealous eye and shrink from any contact with it, as being an institution quite unacademical, begin to regard it more auspiciously and countenance it with their support. Our meetings are well attended, our books much read ; so that I trust the spirit which was sud- denly kindled five years ago may long survive in this quarter at least, and demonstrate that it was not an ephemeral effervescence, founded on no principle and supported by no truth. I would rejoice to be en- abled to assert the same of the Town Missionary Society. All were prepared for a great change, so that ^t. 23. CITY MISSION WOKK. 3! its decrease was not unexpected. Its montlily meet- ings are truly the wreck of what they were. The animating spirit is g'ono, and gone with it have most of tlie attendants. I fear they will find the greatest difficulty in keeping up these interesting meetings, and that the Society will relapse into its original state of inefficiency. Mr. Cain reads the greatest part of the evening, and Mr. Lothian takes also a share. But there is the absence of those connecting remarks, and those appeals and addresses which, to most of the auditors, constituted the charm of the eveniuof's busi- ness in past years. Mr. Bain is well-meaning and very anxious for its prosperity, but he wants life, energy and activity. If the new burgher-minister now to be elected, Mr. Aiken, be a popular man, he may lend efTective aid and in some measure cause a revival. " Sabbath schools have now overtaken almost the whole population. I have personally visited all the lower classes in the town, and did not find twenty children who were not attending some school or other. A very great, if not the greatest proportion appears to be taught by Dissenters — a circumstance which of course grieves Dr. Haldane very much. He is so much annoyed by it, that he spends no inconsiderable portion of his time in visiting the parents for the ex- press purpose of requesting them to beware of the arts and beguiling insinuations of the Dissenters, and to remove their children from their schools ere they be tinctured with their pestiferous principles. At all events every Christian must rejoice that ' by all means ' the doctrine of the Cross is now regularly and systematically taught to nearly all the children of St. Andrews. "Dr. Haldane has contrived to muster a class of mechanics, or rather apprentice-lads, to whom I ex- 32 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1829. plain an appointed passage of Scripture every Sunday morning between ten and eleven o'clock. I have the conducting of a girls' school between four and six ; and later in the evening I spend an hour and a half or two hours with Messrs. Smyth, Fortune, Watson and an- other fellow-boarder, Robb, from Stirling. I prescribe a chapter to be read and studied for the following Sabbath, examine upon it, make remarks and explana- tions. Messrs. Watson and Fortune, in whose welfare you expressed yourself as interested, are conducting themselves with great propriety, and I feel very much delighted with the intelligent answers which they give to most of the questions put to them on the Sabbath evening. Mr. Craik expresses himself satis- fied with the manner in which they prepare their regular class-lessons. " I have been proposed for trials before the Presby- tery of St. Andrews, and my first examination takes place on the 11th of February. I almost begin to fear when I think of the awful responsibility of the Chris- tian ministry, and this fear sometimes makes me shrink from the office, as if it were to be tarnished by my pre- sence. Again I reflect, that if my motives are well founded the Lord will sustain me ; and if not, it were far better that I desisted in time." In the spring of 1829, and in this spirit, Alexander Duff, M.A., was licensed by the Presbytery of St. Andrews " to preach the gospel of Christ and to exer- cise his gifts as a probationer of the holy ministry." The man was ready ; the work had been long waiting for him. CHAPTER 11. 1829. THE FIRST MISSIONARY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Early Missionary Confession of the Kirk. — The Apathy of Two Cen- turies.— Preparations by the Scottish Layman, Charles Grant. — The Foundation of the Missionary Societies after the French Revolution. — The First Presbyterian Chaplain and English Bishop of Calcutta. — Dr. Inglis, Founder of the Mission. — Lord Binning's Help. — General Assembly's Letter to the People of Scotland. — Alexander Duff's Answer. — Announcement to his Father and Mother. — Accepted by the Foreign Mission Com- mittee on his own Conditions. — His First Missionary Sermons. — Bagster's Bible Presented to Him. — Pathetic Counsels and Fare- wells.— David Ewart. — Patrick Lawson's Advice. — Marriage and Ordination. — Mr. and Mrs. Duff leave Leith for London. — Dr. Inglis to Dr. Bryce. — Letter to Dr. Chalmers. Tbe work liad been waiting for two hundred and seventy years. Alone of all the Reformed Churches the Kirk of Scotland had placed in the very front of its Confession the fact that it was a missionary church. The foresight of John Knox, the statesmanship of the Scotsmen who gave civil as well as religious freedom to the kingdom, have been extolled by secular historians so opposite as Mr. Froude and Mr. Hill Burton. But that foresight saw farther than even they acknowledge, when the Scottish Parliament of 1560 passed an Act embodying the first Confession, which has this for its motto, " And this glaid tydingis of rhe kyngdome sail be precheit through the liaill warld for a witues unto all natiouns, and then sail the end cum." That con- fession was the four days' work of John Winram, John D 34 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1S29. Spotswoocl, Jolin "VYillock, Jolin Douglas, Jolm Row and Jolin Knox. First self-preservation, then the attempt to throw their own ecclesiastical organization nniformlj over England also by political means, and finally the re- action and the indifference which mere policy brings about, succeeded in reducing the Kirk of the eighteenth century to lifelessness. What had, for all Christendom, been a series of crusades against the Turks ; and for the Spanish and Portuguese discoverers in the Indies, West and East, a series of raids by the Latin Church on the native inhabitants, became in the Reformed Churches at home a defence of the orthodox faith against popery. But the General Assembly of 1647 had expressed a wish for *' a more firm consocia- tion for propagating it to those who are without, especially the Jews. For the unanimity of all the Churches, as in evil 'tis of all things most hurtful, so, on the contrary side, in good it is most pleasant, most profitable, and most effectual." Again do wo catch a glimpse of the missionary spirit when, in sending forth ministers with the unfortunate Darien expedition, the Assembly of 1699 enjoined them particularly to labour among the natives ; while its successor added, " The Lord, we hope, will yet honour you and this Church from which you are sent to carry His name among the heathen." In 1743 the Kirk indirectly supported Brainerd, and in 1774 tried to raise up native teachers in Africa. Yet so far did it decline from the ideal of Knox, th'at when the French Revolution and the progress of commercial discovery had roused England, America and Germany, as little Denmark had long before been stimulated, the General Assembly selected as its Moderator the minister who in 1796 carried this opinion by a majority — " To spread abroad the knowledge of the gospel among barbarous JEt 23. TIIK EAST INDIA COMPANY S CUARTERS. 35 and heatlien nations seems to be highly preposterous, in so far as it anticipates, nay, it even reverses the order of nature." What the Kirk of Scotland refused to do till 1829, one of the greatest of its sons was for half a century carefully preparing. Charles Grant, an Inverness- shire boy, was a civil servant of the East India Com- pany during the famine which swept oif a third of the population of a large portion of Bengal in 1770. From that time, as an evangelical Christian first and a Presbyterian, Baptist and Episcopalian afterwards, as his position led him, Charles Grant in India, in the Court of Directors, in the House of Commons, in society and in the press, never ceased till he induced Parliament to send out chaplains and schoolmasters, and the Churches to supply missionaries. Before Carey had landed at Calcutta and become his friend, Charles Grant had implored Simeon to send out eight missionaries, offering to receive all and him- self to bear permanently the cost of two. That was before Simeon's pregnant visit to Moulin. To Charles Grant and the friends whom he stirred up, like Wilber- force and the elder Macaulay, we owe first the Charter Act of 1793 which conceived, that of 1813 which brought to the birth, and that of 1833 which completed, what we may fairly describe as the christianization of the East India Company, opening its settlements in India and China to toleration in the widest sense alike of truth and of trade. The nearly successful attempt of Wilberforce to got " the pious clauses " of Charles Grant into the charter of 1793, though foiled by the time-serving Dundas, then dictator of Scotland, led Christian men through- out England and Scotland to do what the Churches in their corporate character were still unwilling to organ- ize. The Baptists had shown the way under Carey, in 36 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1829. 1792. Presbyterians, Independents and some Anglican Evangelicals united to found the London Missionary Society in 1795. The year after saw the more local Scottish and Glasgow Missionary Societies. And to the partly colonial, partly foreign agency of the Propa- gation Society, the Evangelicals of the Church of England added the Church Missionary Society, which, in 1804, sent forth to West Africa its first represent- atives, who were German. By its establishment of one bishop, three archdeacons, several Episcopalian and three Presbyterian chaplains in India, the charter of 1813 compelled the directors of the East India Company " to show our desire to encourage, by every prudent means in our power, the extension of the principle of the Christian religion in India." That language is sufficiently cautious, and the concession marks no advance on the orders of William III., in the charter of 1698. But it was accompanied by the very practical resolution of Parliament, without which much of Duff's career would have been very different, that " a sum of not less than one lakh of rupees (£10,000, at par) in each year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and improvement of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories of India." The chaplain was thus legalized, the schoolmaster was thus made possible. But it was not till 1833 that the missionary, the merchant, the capitalist, the Christian settler in any form was recog- nised or tolerated save as an "interloper" — that was the official term — admitted under passports, watched by the police, sometimes deported and ruiued, always socially despised. The first Scottish chaplain duly balloted for by tlje Court of Directors, and sent out to Calcutta, was the /i:t. 23. DR. JOHN INGLIS. 37 Kev. James Brycc, of Straclian, in the Presbytery of Kincardine-O'Neil. He sailed in the same East India- man with the first bishop selected by the President of the Board of Control, Dr. Middleton, who liked neither his Presbyterian brother nor the missionaries sent out by the Church Missionary Society under protection of the same charter. So little of a mission- ary spirit had the first representative of the Church of Scotland in India, that " he has no hesitation in con- fessing that he went to the scene of his labours strongly impressed with a belief, should he step beyond the pale of his own countrymen he would find every attempt to shake the Hindoo in the faith of his fathers to be futile and unavaiUng." So he and Bishop Middleton fell to squabbling about sects and churches, about the height of a steeple and the name of a church building, till the Governor-Generals, Cabinet Ministers and the directors were dragged into the fray, and that in a city of which the wise Claudius Buchanan had written ten years before, that a name or a sect was never men- tioned from the pulpit now filled by the Bishop, '' and thus the "Word preached becomes profitable to all." Of a very different type was the Rev. John Inglis,D.D. The minister of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, was the one man of the Moderate party in the Church worthy, as an ecclesiastic at least, to rank with his great evangelical contemporaries, Chalmers, Andrew Thom- son and Sir Harry MoncreifF. His worthiness lay in the fact that, as Lord Cockburn puts it, he was the only leader of that party whose opinions advanced with the progress of the times. Ecclesiastically, in matters of Kirk diplomacy, he was a moderate, so that the same authority has described his powerful qualities as thrown away on the ignoble task of attempting to repress the popular spirit of the Kirk, althougli tliese would have raised him high in any department of 38 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1829. public life. Spiritually, as a preaclier, lie was an evangelical, although before his death, in 1834, he had preached his church nearly empty. As an ecclesiastical lawyer, his clear thinking, lucid exposition and innate eloquence, were such as to make his hearers forget his tall, ungainly figure and raucous voice. His fruitless intolerance in the Leslie case was due to his party in 1805, and he grew out of that in the subsequent thirty years of his career, to nobler work and a finer spirit. That and smaller follies were amply atoned for by his foundation of the India Mission and his selection of the first three missionaries. So early, comparatively for Scotland, as 1818, Dr. ^ Inglis preached a sermon in which we find the seed of the foreign mission system -of the Church of Scotland, and of the call of Alexander Duff. The one glimmer- ing missionary taper of the Kirk since the beginning of the eighteenth century had been the " Society in Scotland, Incorporated by Royal Charter, for Propa- gating Christian Knowledge." Although benefiting chiefly the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, it did spend a few small sums on an occasional missionary at Astrakhan in the East, and among the Indians of the West, while it gave grants to the Serarapore and other labourers. To preach the annual missionary sermon of the society was an honour reserved for the ablest ministers, who generally talked platitudes on education or kept themselves to formal theology. But when on Friday, the 5th June, 1818, Dr. Inglis announced his text, the spirit of unconscious prediction moved him. " Is it a light thing," were the words which he read from Isaiah, " that Thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the pre- served of Israel ? I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth." With triumphant faith in the JEt 23. TDE GEHM OF THE SCOTTISH MISSION SYSTEM. 39 "ultimate universal prcval-^nco of Christianity, lie saw in the prophet's message " the most exalted idea both of Divine love and human felicity." In terms only less enthusiastic than those which ever afterAvards marked the first missionary whom his Churcli was to send forth, and far removed from the " modcratism " of the ecclesiastical party who claimed him. Dr. Inglis showed how the nature and the divine agencies of Christianity secured its future universal dominion, in spite of its very limited success at that time. Among these agencies he placed education foremost, not because he made the mistake attributed to him of requiring civiUzation to precede Christianity, but because out of converted savage races he might thus raise indigenous preachers, and by means of natives endowed with intellectual vigour, and with a capacity of estimating what is just and true, he might secure more abiding and ultimately rapid progress. Pointing to the conquest of the Roman Empire by the Church, he asked why our connection with our commercial dependencies should be less favourable; upon what principle we who raised factories for trade concluded that " estal)lishments for the instruction and civiliza- tion of our beniofhted brethren mig^lit not be rendered signally effectual." The three chaplains sent to India he accepted as only an instalment of the Church's and the nation's duty. The translation of the Scriptures without comment he urged as of equal importance with schools. And this was written just before the Serampore missionaries had opened the first Chris- tian college, while the sceptical English and educated Hindoos of Calcutta were striving to establish their Anglo-Indian college on non-moral principles, from which even tlie theist, Rammohun Roy, dissented as fatal to the true well-being of a people. It was Rammohun Roy, too, who was the instrument 40 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1S29. of the conversion of the first chaplain, Dr. Bryce, from the opinion of the Abbe Dubois that no Hindoo could be made a true Christian, to the conviction that the past want of success was largely owing to the inaptitude of the means employed. Some nine years after the confession which we have already quoted, we find Dr. Bryce writing : " Encouraged by the ap- probation of Rammohun," I " presented to the General Assembly of 1824 the petition and memorial which first directed the attention of the Church of Scotland to British India as a field for missionary exertions, on the -plan that is now so successfully following out, and to which this eminently gifted scholar, himself a Brahman of high caste, had specially annexed his sanc- tion. . . E-ammohun E;Oy was himself a hearer in the Scotch Church of Calcutta." To the minute of St. Andrew's kirk-session on the subject Rammohun Roy appended this singular testimony on the 8th December, 1823 : " As I have the honour of being a member of the congregation meeting in St. Andrew's Church (although not fully concurring in every article of the "Westminster Confession of Faith), I feel happy to have an opportunity of expressing my opinion that, if the prayer of the memorial is complied with, there is a fair and reasonable prospect of this measure proving conducive to the diffusion of relio-ious and moral know- O ledge in India." But, in reality, Dr. Bryce's scheme was one for almost everything that Duff's was not. His plan of a "Scottish College" was dictated by sectarian hostility to the Bishop's College of his rival. Dr. Middleton.* His proposal condemned schools for *' the lower and illiterate classes of the Hindoos " as strongly as the Abbe himself had done, and urged * See Memorial and Petition, at page 284 of his Sketch of Native Education in India, ^t. 23. MISSIONARY LETTER TO THE PEOPLLl OF SCOTLAND. 4 1 *' addressing the better informed natives at this capital in their own language, and from under the roof of an established Christian temple, and under the sanction and countenance of an established ecclesiastical au- thority." The secular ecclesiastic desired, in fact, to create such a college for himself " by the maintenance of two or more probationers or clergymen of our Church, under the ecclesiastical superintendence of the kirk-session of St. Andrew's Church, to be edu- cated under their eye in the native languages of the country, " and employed under their authority, when duly qualified, to preach, from the pulpit of St. An- drew's Church, to such native congregation as might attend their ministry." Dr. Inglis and the General Assembly of 1825 were less informed as to the actual state of society in Ben- gal and Calcutta than their chaplain on the spot, but, being free from his ecclesiastical vanities and enmities, they drew up a much wiser plan, though one still far from adequate to the needs and opportunities of India at the time. They pronounced it desirable to establish, in the first instance, one central seminary of education, with branch schools in the surrounding country, for behoof of the children of the native population, under one who ought to be an ordained minister of the national Church, and not less than two assistant teachers from this country. That General Assembly re-appointed the committee of Dr. Inglis upon the propagation of the gospel abroad as a permanent body, with power to raise funds and select masters. It ordered an extra- ordinary collection in all churches and chapels for the purpose, thus adding to the " great schemes " of the Kirk, or the Highlands, the Home and the Colonial, the fourth and greatest of Foreign Missions. And on April 26tli Dr. Inglis, as convener of the new com- mittee, issued a letter " to the People of Scotland," 42 LIFE OF DK. DUFF. 1829. apologising for " our forefathers," since perchance their utmost exertions were not more tlian sufficient for establishing themselves and their posterity in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free ; pointing to the recent missionary efforts of other religious com- munities, and summoning the nation in the name of the General Assembly to do its duty. Appealing to the facts stated in the fifth report of the Calcutta School Book Society, founded in 1817, and in the "History of Calcutta Institutions," by Mr. Charles Lushington, one of the secretaries to Government, the national letter mentioned schools for the educa- tion in English of natives of both sexes, and colleges to train a more select number to be the teachers and preachers, as the best means for sowing a great spiritual harvest which may " be reaped by the estab- lishment of the Redeemer's kingdom over the exten- sive regions of Asia. Yet let it not be inferred from our having said so much about schools and other seminaries of education, that we for a moment lose sight of the more direct means of accomplishing our object, by the preaching of the gospel to the heathen world. . . It is in subserviency to the success of preaching that we would, in this case, devote our labour to the education of the young." The whole letter, and especially the evangelic note of the predicted triumph with which it closes, show the same spirit which eight years before had preached, but with necessarily less information, of the ultimate and universal pre- valence of the Redeemer's kingdom. But though the aims and the proposals of Dr. Inglis were very dif- ferent from those of Dr. Bryce, we shall see how far both fell short of the genius of the first missionary, who refused to be fettered by any conditions. "With the exception of the Campbells of Argyll, and, for a time; those of Breadalbane and the Stuarts of ^t. 23. HIS ANSWER TO THE LETTER TO Till'; PEOrLE. 43 Moray, the peers of Scotland liave been so seldom iu their proper places as the natural leaders of the people, that it is pleasant to be able to record the part taken in the foundation of its India Mission by the Haddington branch of the ducal house of Hamilton. The ninth earl, when still Lord Binning and one of the commissioners of the old Board of Control, used all his official influence to encourasfe Dr. Ino-lis in his efforts for the Christian education of the natives of Bengal. The harmony of the Church and the Board in measures for the good of India, was not disturbed, as was too often the case in other reforms, by the Court of Directors, for Charles Grant was then supreme in influence with the " chairs." Lord Bin- ning had at this time made the acquaintance in Rome of the young Bunsen, " for whom he has a great liking and value," says the Baroness of her husband, and he was afterwards Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Alexander Duff's answer to this letter to the people of Scotland was to give himself — not, indeed, to the\J new committee for a time, but to the Master, to be l used as His minister wherever amono^ the Gentiles He might send him. But all his sympathies were with the natives of India. " It was," he long afterwards told his converts when bidding them a life-long fare- well, " when a student at college, in perusing the article on India* in Sir David Brewster's " Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," that my soul was first drawn out as by * The article is a "wonderfully elaborate and intelligent perform- ance for that time. In a hundred double-column quarto pages the writer, Mr. Stevenson, librarian of the Treasury, writes the his- tory, describes the rise and progress of the European establishments, states the geographical and statistical facts, pictures the Hindoo religion, social institutions and language.-^, and closes with details of the popuhition of Bengal and Calcutta. The whole article is wortliy of the workin which Thomas Carlyle began his literary career 44 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1829. a spell-like fascination towards India. And when, at a later period, I was led to respond to the call to proceed to India as the first missionary ever sent forth by the Established National Church of Scotland, my resolution was, if the Lord so willed it, never, never to return again." Session after session, as he had returned from the winter's study at St. Andrews to the quiet of his Grampian home, the student had delighted his parents with details of his doings. John Urquhart had always been first in his talk. Especially had his father been struck with admiration at that student's determination to be a missionary to the Hindoos. In 1827 the usual budget of intelligence was produced, but as the parents hung on their son's revelations, now with tears, now with smiles, and ever with thankfulness and pride, the loved name of his Jonathan was not once mentioned. " But what of your friend Urqu- hart?" at last exclaimed the father. " Urquhart is no more," said Duff with the almost stern abruptness of self-restraint, and then slowly, wistfully added, " What if your son should take up his cloak ? You approved the motive that directed the choice of Urquhart; you commended his high purpose The cloak is taken up." Mother and father were awed into silence at this, the first breaking to them, or to man, of the vow that had already been made to God.* So the missionary mantle fell in circumstances very unlike Elijah's and Elisha's. He knew that they had * Our authority for this most significant anecdote is the Rev. and now venerable Andrew Wallace, long minister of Oldham- stocks, who has extracted the facts from a diary written while Duff's parents were still alive. In prse-railway days, on a journey from Hawick to Edinburgh, his companion on the top of the coach proved to be a Highlander from Moulin, who, having lived in the house next to Duflfs, and loving him much, told Mr, Wallace the story. ^t. 23. DECLARES HIS DETERMINATION TO BE A MISSIONARY. 45 set their heart upon his being a minister in the High- lands, and that he had a prospect of not being long without a parish. He had therefore considered, before God, what his course of duty should be towards them, and had come to the conclusion that he ought to have no dealings in such a matter with flesh and blood. Moved chiefly by what he afterwards termed the grand utterance of Christ, " If any man love father or mother more than Me he is not worthy of Me," Dufl" thus anticipated all remonstrance. At first they were overwhelmed, in spite of all the father's early teaching on the various mission fields, and especially that of India ; for they were parents wisely proud of their student son's reputation, and fondly indulging in the prospect of his settlement near themselves. But calm reflection brought them to acquiesce in the deliberate choice and solemn announcement of the young evange- list as the will of God, and they lived to rejoice in the surrender of themselves and their boy. The case of India came very close to him when, during the subsequent session of 1827-28, Principal Haldane laid before him a letter from Dr. Inglis, who had, thus far, been unsuccessful in inducing any minister or preacher of the Church of Scotland to offer himself for Calcutta, although students like Nesbit and Wilson were preparing to be sent out to Bombay by the Scottish, and others by the London Missionary Society. Dr. Haldane pronounced the third year's student of theology precisely the man that the Church's committee wanted. But Duff" declined, from his youth and inexperience, to commit himself to any definite station until his studies were completed. A year after, in the spring of 1829, the proposal was again made to him ; this time by Dr. Ferrie, Professor of Civil History, and minister of Kilconquhar. He thus turned for counsel to Dr. Chalmers ; — 46 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1829. « St. Andrews, 12th March, 1829. " Rev. and Dear Sir, — In redemption of a pledge formerly given, and encouraged by your kind reply, I should now endeavour to communicate whatever local intelligence can be collected since the writing of my last letter. But I trust that, though such communi- cation be deferred for the present, I will be exonerated from the charge of neglect, by a desire to make known without delay the following particulars. Unexpected as they are in their nature, and deciding, as they ap- pear to do, my future destiny in life, I trust you will excuse their exclusive egotism. " About three weeks ago I was sent for by Dr. Ferric, who stated that he had received a letter from a cousin of his, asking his advice as to the propriety of going out to superintend the Assembly's scheme for propagating the gospel in India, and that he dissuaded him from going, for, although he was satisfied as to his piety and zeal, yet he knew he wanted several other qualifications that were indispensably necessary. Im- mediately, he said, I occurred to him as a person well fitted for such a sacred and important station, and accordingly he made the proposal to me of going to India to take charge of the new establishment. A proposal so weighty was neither to be precipitately rejected, nor inconsiderately acceded to. I therefore assured him I would solemnly deliberate on the measure, would wait for more definite information re- garding its precise nature, and in the meantime would make it the subject of prayer. On the subject of missions in general, I have read much and thought much, and in regard both to the sacredness of the cause and the propriety of personal engagement, my mind has long been entirely satisfied ; nay more, on often revolving the matter, a kind of ominous fore- boding mingled so constantly with my thoughts, that /iit 23. INFOluMS CHALMERS TUAT HE WILL GO TO INDIA. 4/ it became an almost settled impression tliat tlio day was not far distant when I would feel it to be my duty to adopt the decisive step of devoting my life to the sacred cause. In these circumstances and with these feelings nought remained in the present instance but to inquire, seriously and prayerfully to inquire, * whether do I consciously feel myself possessed of the qualifications necessary to constitute the true mis- sionary character?' and 'whether can I accept of the offered appointment, unactuated by any but the proper motives, a desire to promote God's glory and the welfare of immortal souls ?' Now, were this a matter which required merely human consultation or advice, you, my dear sir, are the tried friend on whose readi- ness in giving advice, as well as its soundness v/hen given, I could most confidently rely. But I hope that I acted in accordance with your views, when I con- cluded that the present inquiry rested almost solely between myself and my Maker. With this view of the case and in this spirit the inquiry was certainly con- ducted. And the result was, that, weak as is my faith and secularized as, I must confess, are all my desires, I yet felt I could find it in my heart to devote myself to the service of the Lord, undivided by any worldly tie and uninfluenced by any mercenary motive. " The inquiry as to the motives being brought to this conclusion, at which may the Lord grant that I have not arrived through any self-deception, the other inquiry, respecting the requisite qualifications, was by no means concluded so much to my own satisfaction. But on further reflection on the subject, the exceeding precious promises of God appeared to rebuke my dis- trustful vacillating spirit ; and I seemed to have the faith — I trust it was not the presumption — to conclude that, if I engaged in the work with full sincerity of soul, by faith accompanied with prayer, God's grace 4-8 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1829. might be sufficient for me, and His strength might be made perfect in my weakness. In this frame of mind, therefore, I resolved, if offered the appointment, to ac- cept of it. This offer was not long in being virtually made. On Wednesday, last week, Dr. Ferrie received a letter from Dr. Muir (Dr. Inglis, the convener of the committee, being unwell), which among other things contained the following clauses : ' Dr. Inglis intimated his earnest desire to know from you as soon as pos- sible what maybe the determination of Mr. Duff. The Doctor is satisfied by all you have said that he is the very person fitted for the important purpose, and he is therefore extremely anxious to receive Mr. Duff's decision on the side of the offer; as he is not able to occupy himself with the routine of ordinary duty, his mind is exercised with almost a keen feeling of anxiety on the Indian scheme. If you can write to me soon, and especially if you can send me any encouraging in- telligence from Mr. D., your letter on the subject will be very acceptable to him.* From this you perceive that the offer was fairly laid at my door, and that a definite answer was required as soon as possible. And having already made up my own mind on the subject, I lost no time in visiting my friends, in order to justify to them a conduct to which I knew they would feel a strong aversion. I have now returned, after having succeeded in securing their concurrence, and have thus endeavoured to present you with a brief statement of all that has transpired. "I am now prepared to reply to the committee in the words of the prophet, 'Here am I, send me.' The work is most arduous, but is of God and must prosper ; many sacrifices painful to 'flesh and blood' must be made, but not any correspondent to the glory of winning souls to Christ. With the thought of this glory I feel myself almost transported with joy; everything else appears to ^t. 23. SELF-DEVOTION. 49 fall out of view as vain and insisrnificant. The klnofs and great men of the earth have reared tlie sculptured monument and the lofty pyramid with the vain hope of transmitting: their names with reverence to succeed- ing generations; and yet the sculptured monument and the lofty pyramid do crumble into decay, and must finally be burnt up in the general wreck of dissolving nature; but he who has been the means of subduing one soul to the Cross of Christ, hath reared a far more enduring monument — a monument that will outlast all time, and survive the widespread ruins of ten thousand worlds ; a trophy which is destined to bloom and flourish in immortal youth in the land of immortality, and which will perpetuate the remembrance of him who raised it throughout the boundless duration of eternal ages. " But I am wandering, and have almost forgotten that I am writing a letter and not a discourse. I trust, however, that you, who know human nature so well, will grant me every indulgence when you take into ac- count the present freshness and excitation of my feel- ings. My heart is full ; would to God that it continued so, as out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketli ! As the active members of committee seem to have formed a favourable opinion of me, anything which you may feel yourself entitled to say calculated to confirm that opinion, or any opportunity which you may have it in your power to take of making known my sentiments on the present important subject, will be viewed as a token of kindness, surpassed only by the many already experienced at your hands, most unde- served on my part. But I am almost disgusted with this continued tissue of selfishness, and must endeavour to atone for it in my next communication. Please pre- sent my kindest regards to Mrs. Chalmers and family, and Miss Edie, and I remain, rev. and dear sir, yours with deep feelings of gratitude, Alexander Duff.'* E 50 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1829. But he was not the man to yield himself blindly to conditions which might fetter his action in a new. field, and neutralize all that was original or strong in his nature. He required to be assured, first, that he should be wholly unshackled in the modes of meeting and operating on the natives ; and secondly, in particular that he should be entirely independent of the chaplains and kirk-session of Calcutta. His foresight in these most wise provisions proved equal to his self-devotion, and enabled that devotion to accomplish all that his genius was peculiarly fitted to attempt. Alexander Duff in trammels would have meant shipwreck of the mission. To these terms Dr. Inglis consented, and with such utter trust that the difficulty afterwards was to receive instructions of any kind from the Church. Referred in vain to Dr. David Dickson as likely, from his experience of the Scottish Society, to enter into useful details, the first missionary of the Church of Scotland went out to Calcutta with only one injunction laid upon him, which it became his duty to violate the moment he saw the country and the people for him- self. That order was, not to settle in the metropolis itself but in a rural district of Bengal. The committee had a rule, that they must formally hear a man preach before ordaining him as a mis- sionary. Accordingly, at a week-day evening service then conducted in one of the churches into which a barbarous ecclesiasticism has divided the once beau- tiful Presbyterian cathedral of St. Griles, the E,ev. Alexander Dufi", M.A., licentiate of the Kirk, preached his first sermon, before Dr. Inglis and Dr. Andrew Thomson, representatives of the two great parties in the Church, and the only members of committee present. The text was that word of St. Paul, in which he and all his true successors have planted the mis- sionary standard, from Corinth west to Columba on /Et. 23. DANIEL WILSON. DR. CUNNINGHAM. EDWARD lUVING. 5 I lona, and east to Duff in Calcutta: "I cletermined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Mr. Duff breakfasted with Dr. Chalmers on the morning after the great orator had made that emancipation speech which carried not only Edinburgh but the whole country by storm. Of this speech the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, caused 105,000 copies to be printed and calculated throughout the country. At that time also the reprint of Baxter's " Eofornied Pastor" had appeared, forming one of the series of Collius's Select Christian Authors, with the introductory essay by Bishop Wilson of Calcutta, then Daniel Wilson, vicar of Islington. Dr. Chalmers had just finished the perusal of it, and said in his own blunt way, " In this essay Daniel Wilson has risen far above himself." On the same occasion there was a meeting of students held in one of the class- rooms of the University, which Duff had the curiosity to attend. There for the first time he saw and heard Principal Cunningham, then a student of theology, speak. He was so struck with the close, compact, argu- mentative power of the address, that he remarked, "that man, if spared, will be sure to shine forth as a great ecclesiastical debater." Then, too, he received his first impressions of Edward Irving, being more than once one of the crowd who got up on a winter's morn- ing at four o'clock to besiege the gates of St, Cuth- bert's, for a place to hear Thomas Carlyle's inspired friend, whom he pronounced worthy of his marvellous reputation. The report read by Dr. Inglis to the Assembly of 1829, buried in old records and magazines from which we have exhumed it, declared that what the committee had wanted in its first missionary was " nothing less than a combination of the distinguished talents requi- site for that office (head of a college), with such dis- 52 LIFi! OF DR. DUFF. 1829. interested zeal for tlie propagation of tlie gospel as could induce a highly gifted individual to forego tlie prospect of a settlement at home corresponding to his merits, for the purpose of devoting himself to labour in a distant land, without any prospect of earthly reward beyond what should be indispensably necessary to his outward respectability in the society with which he was to mingle." This subsistence allowance was fixed at £300 a year and a free house, " as the least that could be reasonably proffered," in the year 1829. The committee then described " Mr. Alexander Duff, preacher of the gospel," whom they had found "after long-continued inquiry and much patient waiting," as " a person possessed of such talents and acquire- ments, literary, scientific and theological, as would do honour to any station in the Church ; who also com- bines with these the prudence and discretion which are so peculiarly requisite in the discharge of the duties which will devolve upon him ; and is, at the same time, animated with such zeal in the cause to which he devotes himself, as to make him think lightly of all the advantages which he foregoes in leaving his native land." The self -dedication of the young preacher was made a reason for a renewed appeal to the congrega- tions of the Kirk to do their duty. Not half of them — only 400 — had subscribed, and that but £5,000 in three years. " The natives of India," they were told, " are our fellow subjects, members of the same great com- monwealth to which we belong, dependent upon the fostering care of the same government under which we live. Shall not this consideration find its way to the heart of a Briton ? . . Our exertions for this be- nevolent purpose may even have the effect to sanctify, in the sight of Heaven, the government . . and to prolong, for the benefit of many generations, the interesting relation in which we stand to so large a .^t. 23. OEDINATION BY DR. CHALMEliS. 53 portion of the human race. What would the fathers of our Church have said if, looking forward to a period of such internal peace and prosperity as it now enjoys, they could have supposed that the men who now fill their places in the world, would not even aim at participating in the high honour of being instrumental in the hand of God for promoting the enlargement of the Redeemer's kingdom on earth?" Who shall say that the convenor who wrote, and the Assembly who heartily adopted such language as that, had not a truly imperial spirit in the highest sense. Christian as well as political ? The response had waited only for the man. Mr. Dufi's ordination resulted in the offer, by not a few parishes, of that annual collection which, in the three temporarily severed but heartily co-operating branches of the Kirk of Scotland, has risen to a gross revenue for foreign missions of nearly £100,000 a year. The General Assembly of May, 1829, cordially and unanimously appointed Mr. Duff their first mission- ary, and his ordination in St. George's followed on the 12th of August, Dr. Chalmers officiating on the historic occasion. Dr. Harper, the venerable Principal of the United Presbyterian College, still recalls the marvellous speech delivered by the new missionary, then a young man of twenty-three, on his formal designation to the East. With such force and fire, such energy and action, did the rapt enthusiast picture the work to which he was giving his life, that Dr. Harper feared he would too soon waste himself away in the heat of the tropics. From not a few pulpits and platforms before his departure for India he delivered missionary discourses and appeals, which roused a new spirit in the country, and have left behind them, in the long half-century since they were uttered, the echo of such a burst of self-dedication as this in the fine old kirk of Leuchars, ^ 54 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1829. where, preaching from Romans i. 14, " I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians," he exclaimed — *' There was a time when I had no care or concern for the heathen : that was a time when I had no care or concern for my own souL When by the grace of God I was led to care for my own soul, then it was I began to care for the heathen abroad. In my closet, on my bended knees, I then said to God, ' 0 Lord, Thou knowest that silver and gold to give to this cause I have none ; what I have I give unto Thee, — I offer Thee myself, wilt Thou accept the gift ? ' " The hearer who recalls this, adds, " I think I see him, with tears trickling down his cheeks as he uttered these words. Afterwards I walked from Dundee to St. Andrews, and went to his Sabbath school, when he gave a very affecting address to his class of young people, urging them to remember him in their prayers as he would them in his, and the same God who heard them would hear him in India." To Mrs. Briggs and other friends who presented him with that Bas^ster's Bible which had afterwards so event- ful a history, he wrote : — " I surely can never forget St. Andrews. Endeared by many interesting associations, and linked to my soul by the fondest recollections of kindness and friendship and Christian fellowship, it would argue a destitution of all principle and of all feeling did I ever wholly forget it. And if, amid the cares and the employments of an arduous but glorious undertaking in a foreign land, the freshness of feeling be apt to become languid, and the vividness of memory to fade, the daily obtrusion on the eye of sense of a memorial like the present cannot fail to quicken the languishing feelings, and revive the fading impres- sions on the memory. What is more : the daily perusal of that blessed book, which, in its present adventitious connection, must serve as the reviver of ^.t. 23. TO FATUER AND MOTHER. 55 what had a tendency to decay, and the remembrancer of friends that are far distant, will invest these im- pressions with a sacredness, and those feelings with a hallovveduess, to the possession of which they could not otherwise have any claim." The decision of the General Assembly, and the arrangements which followed it, led him thus to address his father, who had watched with a grateful pride the consecration of the son to a higher than an ecclesiastical bishopric of souls : — " Pray with redoubled earnestness that I may be strengthened with all might in the inner man, and with all grace and all divine knowledge, that I may be enabled to approve myself a good and a valiant soldier of the Cross, and not merelyji^-eojaaiMon soldier but a champion. Oh ! that I breathed a nobler spirit, and were filled with a more fervent and devoted zeal, and were more humbled on account of my vileness and unworthiness, and were clinging more closely to my Saviour." The natural affection of his mother he thus reasoned with : '* Beware of making an idol of me. While you feel all the tenderness of parental love which the faith of the gospel, far from extirpating, strengthens, sanctifies, and refines, be earnest in_graygr to God that Satan may not tempt you to raise me to an undue place in your affections, lest God, in His holy displeasure, see fit to remove me not only to India, but to the land of skulls and sepulchres. Think then, ponder, pray over these things, and may God Himself guide and direct you into the ways of peace and heavenly resignation. Your account of the people about Moulin has driven me to pray, and humbled me in the dust. Lord, what am I that I should be so highly honoured as to be made the in- strument of conveying such truths as were calculated to arouse, to awaken, to edify ? Merit, is it said ? No, no, had I any more than the koDowed channel 56 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1S29. of the river along which are made to flow those streams that enrich and fertihze the neighbouring lands ? " Again when leaving Scotland he thus poured out all the sacred confidences and trust of his heart ; — " Edinbuegh, 2bth August, 1829. " My Dear Father, — I received your gratifying letter in time to prevent uneasiness. It was truly a gratifying letter, vividly displaying the workings and resolutions of a Christian mind, as well as the feelings of a tender parent. Who sent us all our blessings ? God. And shall we return His kindness with base ingratitude ? shall we become more obdurate the more He showers upon us of His loving-kindness ? Yes, we may, but woe unto us if we shall; we may, but heaven will frown upon us if we do, and hell will exult with joy. Come, then, let us acknowledge the goodness of God. Let us pour out our souls in praise and thanks- giving at a throne of grace. Is He not a kind God, and shall we be unmindful ? Is He not a gracious forgiving God, and shall we be rebellious ? Is He not a God of love, and shall we therefore hate Him and His children ? Ah ! What do I say ? Forget, rebel against, and hate the great Creator, Preserver, Re- deemer, and Judge ! Oh, my soul, shrink from the impious thought; and praise God that thou art not at this moment an outcast in the place of perdition. " This, my dear father, I believe to be the language o£ your heart, when you have finally resolved to deliver me up a free-will offering to the Lord. In so delivering me do reckon it to be a duty and a privilege. Instead of my being willing in this service, and preserved from the evil that is in the world, might I not, at this moment, be a rake, and given up to all manner of vice, and doomed to expiate my crime against an outraged ^t. 23. TENDElt FAREWELLS. 57 community on the scaffold ? And would not your heart be broken and your grey hairs brought down with sorrow to the grave, if this were my unhappy destiny ? Yes, my dear father, sure I am that, in this case, anguish inexpressible would be your anguish, such as alone a parent can feel. Who then has so highly favoured you and me as to save us the anguish and shame of such a death ? God alone, in the riches of His restraining grace and boundless compassion. And if, on the other hand, God, with a love that is unfathomable as the abyss of His own infinity, has blessed me undeservedly, blessed me with the comforts of this life, infused into my soul a portion of His grace, taught me to look forward to a glorious heaven as my home ; nay more, made my venerable parent the Church of Scotland call me, one of the unworthiest of her sons, to fight the battles of the Lord in the land of the enemy, and exhibit feats of divine heroism, and live the life and die the death of a special ambassador of the Lord to the heathen, oh I should not I rejoice, should not you rejoice and fall down on your knees, and bless and praise and magnify the holy name of God, for having so richly favoured, so highly honoured a feeble, undeserving son of yours ? Or will you be a loser by so giving me up to the Lord, and so praising Him for His goodness in having called me to so mighty a work? No, God will bless you with the blessing of Abraham, will enrich you with His faith and reward, and will reward you a thousand- fold for your willing resignation and cheerful readiness in obeying God's command. The Lord bless j^ou, and my dear mother, and all the people of God at Moulin. Adieu 1 Your dear and affectionate son, "Alexander Duff." The student who seems to have taken the place of 58 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1829. Urquliart in his affections was one of liis own age, but several years junior to him in college. To David Ewart, also a Perthshire man but born at Alyth, he thus describes his preparation in Edinburgh for the work which he had undertaken. The glowing lan- guage and utter self-surrender doubtless influenced his friend to follow him after some years to Calcutta : — " Edinburgh, 8th July, 1829. " My Deae Me. Ewaet, — In redemption of a pledge given at our last parting I now write to you. At present my time is chiefly occupied in inspecting the best conducted schools in this city, in writing dis- courses for my ordination-trials, etc., and in studying the religion and character of the Hindoos, so far as a knowledge of these can be acquired from books and the information of gentlemen who have been in India ; my object being, under the divine blessing, to employ every means that may conduce to render myself more fully qualified for satisfactorily fulfilling the arduous duties which I have undertaken to discharge. To imbue these dead exercises with the living energy of heaven, and convert them into usefulness in the service of heaven, I endeavour feebly and imperfectly, yet, I trust, earnestly and incessantly, to pour out my soul in prayer and supplication to the Father of spirits, that He may cause His richest blessings to descend upon my feeble efforts. I have endeavoured to exam- ine into the state of my soul, to prove the sincerity of my motives in my self-dedication to the cause of Christ. I have endeavoured not only to subdue, but absolutely to crucify and annihilate, that fair and plausible and insinuating but withal hell-enkindled and soul-destroy- ing thing, self : 1 have endeavoured to count the cost and view it in its most fearful map:nitude : I have A\.t. 23. rinST LETTER TO DAVID EWAllT. 59 endeavoured to ascend tlie mountain of tlie Lord, to enter His holy temple and presence, to lay liold of the balances of the sanctuary. In the one eide I have placed the clinging ties and lingering claims of the land of my fathers, the fond caresses of friends and acquaintances dear as life, the refined enjoyments of civilized society, the delights arising from favourite studies, and the exhilarating benefits of a kindly cli- mate : in the other, the unredeemed cheerlessness of a foreign land, the scorn and contempt and ridicule of the strangers for whose welfare I labour, the grating inconveniences of a rude untutored community, the engagements in studies and pursuits inherently unwel- come to the mind, and the enervating, destructive influences of an unwholesome atmosphere; dangers, difficulties, disappointments, yea, the great probability of a sudden, premature death : — these have I, in depen- dence upon divine grace, endeavoured to weigh in the balances. The former side, notwithstanding its appa- rent weight, has been found wanting ; the latter God has been graciously pleased to cause uniformly to pre- ponderate. And in the glow of a feeling which is not natural to flesh and blood, and which, from its per- manence, cannot be the offspring of a heated imagina- tion, I have been enabled to exclaim : ' May the former considerations not only be weakened, but be utterly swept out of existence. 0 Lord, I feel their littleness, their total insignificancy, and, for the sake of promoting Thy glory among the heathen, I cordially, cheerfully embrace the latter : yea, if such were Thy will, I am ready to go to the parched desert or the howling wilderness, to live on its bitter herbs and at the mercy of its savage inhabitants. Lord, strengthen the weak, ness of my faith that I may be powerful in accom- plishing Thy will.' . . Your affectionate friend, "Alexander Dufe." 60 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1829. Next to his own people, none took so keen an in- terest in tlie whole career of the young missionary as a patriarchal *couple at Blairgowrie, who, being childless, had long devoted themselves exclusively to work for Christ. Patrick Lawson and his wife became young again when they had students around them ; and few were so welcome as Alexander Duff, who had been in the habit of visiting them annually, on the rising of the college, attracted chiefly by their rich and racy biblical talk. In his last interview, after his appointment by the General Assembly, he was asked abruptly whether he intended to marry. He replied that he had been too close a student to think of such matters, and had not, up to that time, met one whom he could conscien- tiously regard as a suitable helpmeet in so arduous an enterprise. *' "Well," said the old gentleman, stead- fastly regarding him, " I do not approve of young men fresh from college taking wives to themselves when newly married to their church, before they can pos- sibly know the requirements of their work. But your case is wholly different. You go to a distant region of heathenism, where you will find little sympathy among your countrymen, and will need the com- panionship of one like-minded to whom you may un- bosom yourself. My advice to you is, be quietly on /the look-out ; and if, in God's providence, you make ithe acquaintance of one of the daughters of Zion, / traversing, like yourself, the wilderness of this world, her face set thitherward, get into friendly converse / with her. If you find that in mind, in heart, in tem- 1 per and disposition you congenialize, and if God puts it into her heart to be willing to fijrsake father and mother and cast in her lot with you, regard it as a token from the God of providence that you should use the proper means to secure her Christian society." l^Thus he went on, in the allegorical style of Bunyan, ^t. 23. MAKIMAGE. 6 1 and with a deep feeling which speedily won Mr. Duff's assent. Just before Dr. Chalmers ordained the missionary, Dr. Inglis married him to Anne Scott Drysdale, of Edinburgh. It was, and was more than once pronounced by him, when left the survivor but not solitary, a happy consummation. Never had even missionary a more devoted wife. Sinkino: herself in her husband from the very first, she gave him a new strength, and left the whole fulness of his nature and his time free for the one work of his life. She worthily takes her place among those noble women, in many lands of the East, who have supplied the domestic order, the family joy, the wedded strength needed to nerve the pioneers of missions for the unceasing conflict that ends in victory . ,-. It was on the 19th September, 1829, that the mis- ^ sionary and his wife left Leith for London, where they became the guests of Alderman and Mrs. Pirie, and where Mr., afterwards Sir John Pirie, secured a passage and fitted up a cabin for them in the Lady Holland East Indiaman. Dr. Inglis had formally applied to the Court of Directors for that permission for Mr. Duff and his wife to sail to India as " inter- lopers," not in the covenanted civil, military and naval service of the East India Company, which passport Parliament was soon to declare unnecessary by the liberal charter of 1833. He was, Dr. Inglis reported to the Assembly of 1830, " supplied with letters of introduction and recommendation to the Governor- General, to our countryman the Earl of Dalhousie, to other men of influence at the seat of Government at Calcutta, and to some of our private friends." The Earl, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Indian armies, was the father of the great Marquis, and the Governor-General was Lord William Bentiuck. Thia ^ 62 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1S29. was the letter to the Calcutta chaplain. Dr. Bryce and his wife in due time welcomed ]\Ir. and Mrs. DufE with the proverbial kindliness of Anglo-Indians. '^ EDl^-BUEGH, \6th September, 1829. ** My Dzab Sib, — This letter will be delivered to you by Mr. Alexander Doff, who is, at length, sent out as Head Master of tke General Assembly's proposed Institution in India. I need not say much for explaining to you the causes of delay in the accomplishment of an. object which I have had much at heart. TTant of money will readily occur to you; and it was in fact the only impediment. But we no\v hope tbat we may venture to send out one assistant to Mr. Duff, who may reach him pretty nearly as soon as he shall have made all the requisite preparations for the work assigned to him. " I have great confidence in Mr. Duff for an able and faith- ful and prudent discharge of all the duty which he has under- taken. At the College of St. Andrews, where he was bred, he stood very high in respect of attainments — literary and scientific as well as theological; he carried off many of the first prizes in every department. At the same time his whole heart seems to be committed in the work which he has under- taken ; and we have had the strongest attestations of the pru- dence and discretion of his general conduct. " As to his side in the Church I have made no inqtury. It was obvious from the beginning that this was not a point to be insisted on. But he has been recommended to me by men of both sides of the Church in langaage equally strong. I have no doubt of his experiencing from you all the kindness which my heart can desire ; and I am confident that my friend Mrs. Bryce vrill have an equal disposition to show kindness to Mrs. Duff. \Yith her I am little acquainted; but it would give me much pleasure to learn that she proves an agreeable accompaniment of oiu* mission to India. " Many thanks to you for what you did in procuring contri- butions to our fund. I received notice from Dr. Meiklejohn and Mr. Peterkin that they amount to about £1,000, lying in a bank at Calcutta, and bearing interest at the order of the General Assembly. I received a similar intimation that 3,3o0 rupees were lying for ns at Bombay. An order Avill be sent J£l 23. DR. IXGLIS TO DB. BBYCE. 6^ through the house of Coutts & Co., in London, for the pay- ment of both the Calcutta and the Bombay money to their coirespondeat in Calcutta, who will be empowered to dispose of it, for behoof of the Assembiy^s Committee, in the payment of salaries, etc., a3 circamstances shall require. " I must refer you to Mr. Duff for an explanation of all our plan, which has been arranged in the course of consultation with your excellent friend. Dr. Macwhirter. In truth, the want of money seems to be the only thing that stands in the way of a fair prospect of great success. This want I shall do everything in my power to supply ; and I am very hopeful that yoc will now find it in your power to assist me farther with your friends in India. In this case we should be able very soon to co replete what has been proposed by having, be- sides the head-master, two assistant- teachers firom Europe, and as many native teachers as they can conveniently superin- tend. I shall now be very anxious to hear from you about what is doing after ^ix. Duff's arrival. The precise site of our Institution will be an important object to fix. All that we have determined here is that it shoidd be in the neighbourhood of Calcutta," The missionary's last letter from L:i.:i:n vras addressed to Dr. Chalmers : " &{h October, 1829. ** Dbab Doctoe, — I cannot make a sufficient acknow- ledgment to YOU for your kindness in forwarding to me a copy of your charge. Xo boon could be to me so invaluable, no address equally pregnant with sound advice and eloquent admonition. Major Camac, to whom you so kindly introduced me, I found truly agreeable and ready to promote my views. By Mr. Orme I was last week introduced to a full meeting of the directors of the London Missionary Society, who received me with the most marked attention ; and in private I have reaped much benefit from the conversa- tions of Mr. Townly, Dr. Henderson, and Mr. Hands. 64 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1829. I have attended Mr. Forbes for tlie acquisition of oriental languages. My kindest respects to Mrs. Chalmers and family, and Miss Edie. This evening we set off for Portsmouth." CHAPTER IIL 1830. THE TWO SHIPWRECKS. "In Perils of Waters." — The Lady Holland and her Passengers — Lieutenant H. M. Durand. — Madeira. — The Unfortunate Ball. — Captain Marryat. — George Canning's Eldest Son. — Pirates. — Cape Verd Islands. — Off Dassen Island. — The First Shipwreck. — Anticipations of the Day of Judgment. — Resignation and Prayer. — Saved at Last. — The Bible and Psalter cast up by the Sea. — Fervent Thanksgiving of All. — Lesson from the Lost Library. — Cape Town. — Letter to Dx'. Chalmers. — Mr. and Mrs. Duff sail in the Moira for Calcutta. — Opposing Gales. — At the Sandheads. — Cyclone off Saugar Island. — The Second Shipwreck. — A Night and Day of Storm.— The Missionary and- his Wife thrown on the Shore of India. — A Day and Night in a Temple. — Welcomed at Calcutta. — Adam and Lacroix. — Lord and Lady William Bentinck. — Superstition of the Natives forecasts Duff's Future. The vision of judgment seen by the child who had been feeding his fancy on the Gaelic rhapsodies of Dugald Buchanan; the divine call to the boy as he lay dreaming among the blae-berries on the stream- let's bank ; the deliverance of the youth by the flare of a torch when he and his companion were falling into the sleep of death, lost amid the snowdrifts of the Grampians — these foreshadowings were not to cease until the missionary's preparation for his work was completed. He had followed the monition of all three, not blindly, but as explained by John Urquhart's death-consecrated appeal, by Dr. Haldane's apparently premature invitation, by Dr. Ferrie's ap- propriate demand that he should offer himself for 66 LIFK OP DR. DUFF. 1829. Ocilcufcta, by Dr. Inglis's approval, by tlie General Assembly's appointment ; and, finally, by ordination at the hands of the Presbytery, amid the crowd that filled St. George's, Edinburgh, and after the inspirit- ing eloquence of Dr. Chalmers. Alexander Duff and his wife were still to undergo the experience of the greatest of all missionaries who wrote, " Thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep, in journey ings often, in perils of waters." The East India Company's ship Lady Holland, having filled up in the Thames with a cargo valued at £48,000, entered the Channel, shipped her passen- gers at Portsmouth, became windbound for a week at Spithead, and finally set sail from Ryde on the 14th October, 1829. Plunging heavily into the storm out- side the Isle of Wight, the ship made for Falmouth, When the gale had abated she passed close to a derelict vessel carrying wood and swept desolate by the wavfes. Not a trace of the crew could be found. The sight affected the Lady Holland's passengers and crew, filling not a few with ominous apprehen- sions as to the issues of a voyage thus begun. But the dreaded Bay of Biscay proved to be unusually friendly, although contrary winds did not allow the ship to reach the roads of Eunchal till the 7th of November. By that time the twenty-two passengers had taken stock of each other. The great man on board was no higher than a judge in the Madras civil service ; but it was a fortunate circumstance that Mr. Lascelles and his party of seven proved to be " decidedly pious,'* as described by Mr. Dufi^ in a letter to Principal Haldane. An eighth, and next to Duff himself the most remarkable man on board, was Henry Marion Durand, the young lieutenant of Engineers who was to come second only to Sir Henry Lawrence on the brilliant roll of the Company's soldier-statesmen. He ^t. 23. LIEUTENANT DUEAND. CAriAIN JIAHILYAT. 6/ made up a gatliering of at least ten who attended daily worship.* The captain, as usual, had intended to remain a week at ]\Iadoira, to take in a cargo of wine that it might make the voyage to India to bo mellowed for the English market. Anticipating this Alderman Pirio had provided for the hospitable reception of Mr. and Mrs. Duff by his agent, Mr. Stoddart, who was one of the principal merchants and afterwards British Consul. As there were at the time three British frigates in the roads, they found their fellow-guest to be the famous novelist, Captain Marryat, who was in command of one. The week had nearly passed ; the agent of the ship gave the usual ball to the captain and passengers on the night before her announced departure, and all were present at the dance save the Duffs and Lieutenant Durand. After midnight westerly gales set in with violence and drove the ships in the Bay out to sea. Three of them missed stays, were driven ashore and dashed to pieces, and not a life was saved. The captains of the frigates and other vessels, being on shore at the ball, were in a very sorry plight. Day after day there was a suc- cession of gales, so that nothing was heard of any one of the vessels for upwards of three weeks. We may imagine the position of those passengers who had gone ashore in their ball-dress with no change of garments. Despairing of the vessel some of them began to negotiate with a Portuguese ship about to proceed to Lisbon, that they might thence go to London and take out a new passage. Being thus unexpectedly detained upwards of three * TliG life of Sir Hciny Durani], the noblest member of the ducal house of Northamborlaud, is bciug wriltcn bj his second son, who is of the Bengal civil service. 68 LIFE OF DE. DDIT. 1829. weeks beyond the allotted time, the passengers in the different parties visited the most interesting sights of the island, amongst others the Curral, in the centre, which is in reality the gigantic crater of a volcano rising to the height of six thousand feet. Approached by a difficult zigzag path along many precipices which look down upon a tremendous chasm, the Curral was not seen till they actually reached it. At the first sight of its vast dimensions, in breadth as well as height and depth, all were struck dumb by a sensation of the sublime. The appearance of the place suggested to Mr. Duff the well-known lines of Cowper, — " Higher than the heights above. Deeper than the depths beneath, Free and faithful, strong as deaths" which he could not help repeating aloud. During his stay he also inspected some conventual and mon- astic institutions, making inquiries into the practical working of both. At that time Don Miguel had usurped the throne of Portugal, and had seized the Portuguese fleet, which he sent to Madeira to capture the island, to expel the Constitutionalists, and to pro- claim his own sovereignty over it. Such was the ignorance of the inhabitants, that the priests succeeded in making them believe that Miguel was the incarna- tion of the archangel Michael; and their professed belief or non-belief in this impudent dogma was con- stituted into a test to distinguish between the Miguel- ites and the Constitutionalists. A little before this time the eldest surviving son of the great George Canning had been there in com- mand of an English frigate. Animated by the liberal principles of his father, he made it to be understood that, though he could not officially interfere, if any of the persecuted Constitutionalists chose to seek refuge ^t. 23. DROWNING OP LORD CANNING's BROTHER. 69 on board his sliip he would receive them. In time it was known to the Portuguese authorities that he had upwards of three hundred of these on board, and the Governor of the island and the Admiral of the Portu- guese sent him a message to the effect that if he did not deliver up the refugees, whom they reckoned traitors, they would blow his frigate in pieces. This they could have done, but young Canning, with the spirit of the British seaman, always replied, " No, never ; I will deliver up not one of them, and you may blow my ship in pieces if you like, but that will only precipitate your own doom, as it would send forth the English Navy to put an end to you utterly." In point of fact they did not meddle with him. A good way up the hill a retired merchant of the name of Gordon resided in a house beautifully situated. He was a very humane man. He had got himself appointed conservator of animals, so that he was constantly on the look-out for cases of cruelty to be punished. It was a real instance of benevolence of natural instinct. He was also very hospitable. One day Captain Canning went up the hill to the house, in front of which was a tank of fresh water. Being greatly heated he threw off his clothes, plunged into the tank, was seized with cramp, and never came out alive. Thus perished one whose younger brother be- came the first Viceroy of India.* Among the Consti- tutionalists there was throughout the island universal lamentation. Mr. Duff held Sabbath services in the hall of one the boarding-houses, which were attended by most * Shall we never see a memoir of Charles John Earl Canning, K.G., and his more noble wife r Their name seeras likely to perish mosb undeservedly, absorbed in that of the De-Burghs or Burkes, of whom is their nephew, the Marquis of Clauricarde. ^0 LIFE OV DR. DUFF. 1830. of tbe English people in FuncLal ; and there was no hearer more attentive than Captain Marry at, who used to boast that one of his ancestors was a martyr to the Christian faith. After three weeks one and another of the missing ships began to return, and on the 3rd December the Lady Holland set sail in company with one of the British frigates which had been ordered to the equatorial regions to look after pirates. This necessitated a detour to the port of the principal of the Cape Yerd islands, where the captain of the frigate had to consult the British Consul, and learn from him all that was known about the proceedings of the pirates. There the ship was again detained a week. At that time the islands, instead of realizing what their name implies, were suffering from long- continued drought, so that everything on the surface was literally burned up. One morning, within a few hundred yards of the vessel there passed, scudding before the wind, one of the famous pirate ships with at least fifty men on deck, and the British frigate in full pursuit. The Lady Holland^ thus saved from what otherwise would have been destruction to passengers and ves- sel, rapidly proceeded on her voyage, leaving the frigate to deal with the pirate. After having been driven by the south-east trade-wind very near to the coast of Buenos Ayres, she at last, early in February, approached the coast of South Africa, for the captain intended to call at the Cape of Good Hope. For a whole week the weather had been cloudy and bois- terous, so that no accurate observation could be ob- tained as to the position of the ship ; still, the captain knew that he was within no great distance of the coast. Three times, by contrary winds, he was driven considerably to the south of Table Bay, and returned with the view of going into it. iEt. 24. THE FIRST SllirWRECK. 7 1 From the Cape coast there shoots out into the sea, for forty or fifty miles, a sandbank on which soundings may be had, but along which a tremendous current sweeps round from the Cape. By soundings, on Saturday evening, 13th February, the captain knew that he had entered on tliis bank. His intention, therefore, was to avoid risks by turning his vessel back to sea about eight o'clock. But having then sounded, his conclu- sion was that he might safely go on for other two hours, and his fixed determination was by ten o'clock to turn back or heave to and stay till morning. But as four bells announced ten o'clock, and he rose to give the order to turn the vessel back, she bumped with, alarming violence upon rocks. The concussion was tremendous, and from the first moment her case seemed hopeless. It was not upon a precipice, but on reefs of rock over which the waves and billows dashed furiously, so that at once her back was broken and the fore part sank down between the reefs. As in all East Indiamen in those days lights were put out at ten, almost all the passengers had retired to their berths. The violent collision, as it seemed, at once roused them up, and they rushed to the cuddy, wrapped up in blankets, sheets, or whatever they could lay hold of. Occupying one of the back- most poop cabins, Mr. DufF was half undressed when the shock took place. He ran out into the cuddy, crossed the cabin, met the captain on the deck, and heard him exclaim in agony, *' Oh, she's gone, she's gone ! " Seeing that the condition of the vessel was hopeless, the command was promptlj^ given to cut down the masts in order to relieve the pressure of the wind on the sails, and then, in case there might be a way of escape, to caulk the seams of the lonof-boat, which was in the centre of the vessel, and in which were forty sheep when it loft Eng- 72 LIFE OP Dlt. DUFF. 1830. land. Meanwhile almost all the passengers assembled in the cuddy, but, from the violence of the motion, they could neither sit nor stand without clinging to some ob- ject. At first consternation was depicted in every coun- tenance at the suddenness of so terrible a catastrophe, for all had joyfully made their arrangements to go on shore at Cape Town next forenoon. In one of the cabins adjoining the cuddy there was a captain who was heard crying out in bitter agony, " What shall become of me, I have been such a hypocrite!" The explan- ation of this was, that he had been married to a godly lady, and while she lived he tried to pay at least outward homage to the observances of religion, but, after her death, he relapsed into the follies of the world. Mr. Duff was wont to hold a religious service every Lord's-day, which all the passengers attended except this officer, who, to show his con- tempt used to pace the poop deck over their heads. One of the ladies, who was a Christian, happened to notice that another of the passengers, a colonel who occupied one of the poop cabins, was not among the number present, and her remark was, " Let us not allow him to go down without at least his knowing it." Two or three entered his cabin and found him profoundly asleep. Waking him up, they dragged him into the cuddy. Astonished he began to cry out, " Are you all crazed ? " and then he suddenly broke out into a bacchanalian song. This surprised every one, because it was not known that he could sing at all. He was naturally a most affable and courteous man, who was a general favourite with the passengers. But it turned out that he had a habit, unknown to most of them, of nightly taking a very copious draught of brandy, and then retiring to his berth. Having slept it off, the next morning he would appear cheerful as usual. The disaster having taken ^t. 24. THE FIRST SHIPWRECK. 73 place about ten o'clock, there liad not been time for him to recover from the eflfects of tlio draught. A few of the passengers were God-fearing people, and thej were calmly resigned to what seemed to be their inevitable fate. As was often the case in these long voyages, several of them were not even on speak- ing terms. To introduce a mollifying element, Mr. Duff was accustomed daily to have a number of them in his cabin, to whom he read portions of the history of India and other works. Now all, oppressed with the conviction that they might immediately appear before the judgment seat of God, became suddenly reconciled, shaking each other by the hand and imploring forgive- ness. Others thought of the friends whom they had left at home, and gave varied utterance to their feel- ings. The whole scene, Mr. DufF used to say after- wards, tended to suggest the marvellous revelations which shall take place at the Day of Judgment. In about half an hour, when the first convulsive agonies of feeling began to abate, he suggested that, as all might suddenly be called together to give their final account, they should join as best they could in prayer to God for their deliv^erance, if it were His holy will, and if otherwise that they might be prepared to meet Him. All responded, clustering around him and hold- ing by what objects they could, while the missionary poured out his soul in fervent supplications. While such was the scene below, the captain and the sailors were eagerly doing their part on the deck. All around the wreck there was one mass of white foam, except immediately behind. The captain had, at the very outset, ordered one of the gig boats hanging over the side of the vessel to be launched. He put three seamen into her, with the order to follow this darker part, and, if possible, get round the mass of white foam to ascertain whether there was 74 UIB COf DB. DUFF. iSja anj landing place available. For, at the time, it was not known whether the vessel had struck on a sunken reef, on an island, or on the mainland. It was a desperate endeavour. The sea was running mountains high, and it seemed impossible that a small boat could live in it. Three hours had passed and the boat was given up as lost, when it appeared and the seamen announced that, round the mass of white foam, they had found a small sandy bay, on which, if it could be reached, a landing would be practicable. This inten- sified the desire to launch the long-boat, but, sur- rounded as the wreck was by masts, spars and broken bulwarks, it seemed more than doubtful whether this could be done. Every wave was now rolling over the main deck. At last, watching their opporttmity, the sailors got the boat afioat by the help of one of the waves. When they saw it fairly off at a short distance from the wreck, they raised the shout, " There goes our last hope," meaning, there it is safe among the floating fragments of the wreck. But scarcely had the cry been uttered when the rope snapped, and the boat was seen like a dark speck moving away into the mass of white foam. By this time the moon gave a dim flickering light. Though the last hope of dehver- ance thus seemed gone, not a word was uttered by any one of the passengers, who had become so ex- hausted that their only desire was for a speedy end. To their surprise, however, the dark speck in the foam, which had disappeared, began to approach, and a human voice was heard from it calling for a rope. It turned out that a wretched sailor, who had seemed to be the worst man on board, confessed that he had resolved, if any one were to be saved he would. Amid the uproar and darkness he had concealed himself lengthways in the bottom of the boat. When .€t- 24. THE GREAT DKLIYEBA5CK. 75 it approached the dark line of rock- he saw it migh^ be dashed in pieces, and so he seized an oar and held it ap against the rock, thas turning the boat round into a small cove. There the next ware threatened to dash him to pieces, so with the energy of despair he grasped a second oar, and snceeeded in rowing back to the wreck. The long-boat could not contain above a third part of those on board ; the question therefore was, who should go first. Had it been at the outset there might have been a rush for the boat, but by this lime all tumultnous feelings were assuaged. The prevalent feeling was, that all the lady passengers should if possible ger on board. Then a very strik- ing scene occurred : some of these were married, some unmarried. The unmarried ones went to the married men, saying, " You go with your wives, — joa are two, we are only one," — because the wives had said that they would not leave without their husbands. Event- ually all the ladies and married m^i got on board. Manned by a few strong sailors, with the gig leading the way, the long-boat at length reached the shallow sandy beach- The wind after midnight had begnz considerably to abate, and all were landed. Soon after the last boat arrived daylight began to appear. Before this there was no means of knowing whether the place was inhabited ; bat sounds in end- less variety were heard, amongst which all agreed that they could distinguish the braying of asses. Ii was found that the shipwrecked party had reached an island, of which the only tenantfj were myriads of pen- guins who had given forth these discordant noises. The penguin is a bird in size intermediate between a duck and a goose, with short flappers which assist it in swimming and in running quickly along the shore. Soon also it was found that, since at that season the 76 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. penguins laid tbeir eggs in holes burrowed in the sandy surface of the island, there were two Dutchmen on the spot sent from Cape Town to collect the spoil. The passengers bargained with these men for the use of their cooking-pot, and then divided themselves into companies — one, to collect eggs ; another, to gather withered grass and sea- weed for the fire ; and a third, to remain by the pot and constantly boil the eggs as their only food. Soon after this a sailor, walking along the beach, noticed an object cast ashore. Going up to it, he found it was a quarto copy of Bagster's Bible and a Scotch Psalm-book, somewhat shattered but with Mr. Duff's name written distinctly on both. The precious volumes had not been used on the voyage out. Wrapped in chamois leather they had been put with other books in a box, which must have been broken to pieces. The sailor who found the volumes high and dry on the beach had been the most attentive at the service which the missionary had held with the crew every Sabbath. Taking Bible and Psalter to the hovel where the pas- sengers sought shelter, with a glowing face he pre- sented them to their owner. All were deeply affected by what they regarded as a message from Grod. Led by Mr. Duff they kneeled down, and there he spread out the precious books on the white bleached sand. What a meaning to each had the travellers' Psalm, the 107th which he read, as to all exiles, captives and stormtossed wanderers since the days when its first singers were gathered from all lands to rebuild Jeru- salem ! What fervent prayer and thanksgiving followed its words, as the band of shipwrecked but delivered men and women lifted their wearied faces to the heavens : " Whoso is wise and will observe these things. Even they shall understand the loviugkinduess of the Lord.^' JEt. 24. THE LOSS OF HIS LIBRARY. yj For the missionary himself the apparent miracle had a very special meaning, which influenced his after- life. His letters, so far as we have given extracts from them, have shown that when in all the flush of his college successes he anew devoted himself to God, for what was then dreaded as a missionary career, he counted learning as nothing in comparison of winning Christ for himself and for others. As to some of the greatest of the Fathers on their turn- ing from Paganism, Homer, Virgil and Horace had been dear companions, whose lines lingered on the tongue and rang in the ear when their books were not in the hands, so was it to Alexander Duff". He loved these less only because he cared for the old and never to be dethroned queen of the sciences more. He had but half parted with their companionship, and he could never lose the culture they gave him — the sym- pathy with all literature by which he was marked till his last days when he read to his grand-children the " Paradise Lost," which classical associations made more dear to him. So when going forth to found a col- lege, a Christian Institute, like Bishop Berkeley at the Bermudas, he had taken with him a library of more than eight hundred volumes, representing "every department of knowledge." All were swallowed up in the shipwreck save forty. And of these forty the only books not reduced nearly to pulp were the Bible, in the best edition of those days, solemnly presented to him by friends in St. Andrews on his ordination ; and the Psalter with which Moses and David, Asaph and the other authors of the five books of the original Hebrew lays, have ever since fed the Church of God and com- forted sinning, penitent humanity. With the books had gone all his journals, notes, memoranda and essays, dear to an honest student as his own flesh. The instinct which had led all the passengers, even the 78 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1830. least devout of the twenty-two, to recognise in tlie preservation of the Bible and Psalter a message from God, became in his case a conviction that henceforth human learning must bo to him a means only, not in itself an end. That the word of God abideth for ever, was afresh written upon his soul. The man to whom purely secular scholars in the next generation bore this testimony as the highest they could give, that he was afraid of no truth but sanctified all truth, did not cease, even then, his allegiance to learning in every form when of his boohs and journals he wrote to Dr. Tnglis : '* " They are gone, and, blessed be God, I can say, gone without a murmur. So perish all earthly things : the treasure that is laid up in heaven alone is unassailable. God has been to me a God full of mercy, and not the least of His mercies do I find in cheerful resignation." The land proved to be Dassen Island, in the Atlantic, forty miles N.N.W. of Cape Town and ten miles from the mainland of Africa. From afar they saw the white mist which forms the ' table-cloth ' of Table Mountain. The shipwrecked people planned to cross the strait and find their way on foot to the town, but the Dutchmen's skiff was too small to do the work of ferrying in less than a mouth. So the Irish surgeon of the ship set out alone, and in four days a brig of war rescued them, sent by the humane Governor, Sir Lowrie Cole, although it was just weighing anchor for other duty at Port Elizabeth. The surgeon had sought an immediate interview with his Excellency, who had just finished his despatches. The gallant soldier, who had been one of Wellington's generals in the Peninsular * Extract of a Letter respecting the WrecJc of the " Lady Holland," East Indiaman, from the Rev. Alexaudcr Duff. Edin- burgh, 1830. ^t. 24. AT OAPE TOWN. 79 war, declared, " humanity has the first claim." Tlio weather-beaten party landed in the midst of the British and Dutch inhabitants, who crowded to express their sympathy. Mr. and Mrs. Duff were received by the Rev. Dr. Adamson, son of that minister at Cupar Fife who had been colleague of Dr. Campbell, father of tlie Lord Chancellor. For weeks the passengers were de- tained. The next East Indiaman was so full that three of them paid a hundred guineas each to be allowed to swing their cots in the steerage. Furlough rules make no allowance for even shipwreck, and high salaries draw belated officials. Mr. and Mrs. Duff could get a passage in the last ship of the season, the Moira, and that only on payment of 3,000 rupees ! This sum was equal to £262 IO5. in gold, such was the rate of exchange then as now. From Cape Town he thus addressed Dr. Chalmers : — " Cape Town, March 6th, 1830. " Mt Dear Doctoe, — I know your time is precious and I shall not detain you, as my tale may be briefly told : On Saturday night, February 13th, the Ladij Holland was wrecked off Dassen Island, forty miles north from Cape Town, but not a life was lost, not even a personal injury sustained by any one of the passengers or crew. This is the fact : for a detail of the fact and its consequences I refer you to a com- munication of this date, addressed to Dr. Inglis as the official organ of the Assembly's committee. You will there have an account of the nature of our danger and deliverance, our severe loss and future prospects. And the object of my writing to you separately, is — that a circumstance so calamitous in its aspect may not be permitted to cool zeal or damp exertion, but may be improved, to kindle a new flame throughout So LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830 the Churcli and cause it to burn inextinguishably. As remarked in the communication referred to, ' though part of the first-fruits of the Church of Scotland in the great cause of Christian philanthropy has perished in the total wreck of the Lady Holland, the cause of Christ has not perished. The former, like the leaves of autumn, may be tossed about by every tempest ; the latter, more stable than nature, ever reviving with the bloom of youth, will flourish when nature herself is no more. " The cause of Christ is a heavenly and divine thing, and shriuks from the touch of earth. Often has its high origin been gloriously vindicated. Often has it cast a mockery on the mightiest efforts of human power. Often has it gathered strength amid weakness, become rich amid losses, rejoiced amid dangers, and triumphed amid the fires and tortures of hell-enkindled men. And shall the Church of Scotland dishonour such a cause, by exhibiting any symptoms of coldness or despondency in consequence of the recent catastrophe ! God forbid. Let her rather arouse herself into new energy; let her shake off every earthly alliance with the cause of Christ, as a retarding, polluting alliance ; let her confide less in her own resources and more in the arm of Him who saith, ' Not by power, nor by might, but by My Spirit.' From her faithful appeals let the flame of devotedness circulate through every parish, and prayers ascend to * the Lord of the harvest, ' from every family ; and then may we expect her fountains to overflow, for the watering and fertilizing of many a dry and parched heathen land. " This is the improvement suggested ; and of all men living you, my dear Doctor, are, with God's blessing, the individual most capable of making it. Let the committee be awakened, and, from the awaken- Mt. 24. SAILS FROM CAPE TOWN. 8 1 ing appeals of the committee, let the Church be aroused. Who, that has heard it, can ever forget your own vivid description and eloquent improvement of the magnificent preparation and total failure of the first great missionary enterprise ? From it ours stands at an immeasurable distance ; but the principle is the same. I fear that much of calculating worldliness is apt to enter into the schemes and preparations of the Assembly. And now Heaven frowns in mercy, and buries a portion of its fruits in the depths of ocean, to excite, if possible, to the cherishing of a holier spirit, and a more prayerful waiting on the Lord for the outpouring of His grace. " Mrs. Duff desires her kindest remembrance to you, and with kindest regards to Mrs. Chalmers and family, I remain, my dear Doctor, yours most sin- ^^® ^' "Alexander Duff." " Sunday sail, never fail," was the chant to which the sailors lifted the anchor for Calcutta. But the day proved to be no better omen than the derelict timber-ship which had crossed the bows of the Lady Holland in the English Channel. Contrary winds drove the Moira to fifty degrees of south latitude, and then for weeks she was beaten out of her course by westerly gales, culminating off Mauritius in a hur- ricane which threatened the foundering of the ship. Although the year 1830 was well advanced, and Lord William Bentinck had not been satisfied with the first attempt to send a steamer from Bombay to Suez, all the rewards offered had failed to discover the course and the tacking which have since reduced the Cape voyage from an uncertainty that might spread beyond half the year, to an average of a hundred days. Not till near the end of May did the Moira sight the hardy little pilot brig which, far out in the Bay of Bengal o 82 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. but still in tlie muddy waters of the united Ganges and Brahmapootra rivers, is the advanced post of British India proper. The hot sun was blazing with intensest power as the belated East Indiaman was carefully navi- gated into the estuary of the Hooghly, the most westerly of the so-called mouths of the Ganges. Hardly had she been moored in the rapid stream off the long, low muddy flat of Saugar Island, when the south-west monsoon was upon her in all that splendid fury which the Hiadoo epics describe with almost Homeric realism. The clouds hid the sun, and sfave birth to a storm which soon chanored into the dreaded cyclone. It seemed a portentous welcome at the very threshold of India, after the previous wreck at its then outmost gate. In spite of three anchors thrown out the Moira was dragged, tossed and — as we have twice since seen in similar cases — lifted by the wind and the storm- wave on to the muddy shore of the Saugar, the sagara or Coblentz or confluence of Gunga with the ocean. The river was of unusually vast volume, the low delta land was flooded. Poised on the very edge of Saugar bank, with some ten feet of water on the shore and sixty or seventy on the river-side, and wedged in this position by the force of the hurricane, the Moira worked for herself a bed in the clay. There is no time for calculation when the genius of the cyclone rides the rotary storm so that no living thing can stand upright. But instinct takes the place of thought, and the love of life develops daring which, in calmer hours, were madness. The vessel was soon found to be very slowly heeling over into the deep water. But nothing could be done, for the great wind of heaven was still loose, and the mid- night darkness that might be felt was broken only by the flash of the forked lightning. The captain managed .-Et. 24. THE CYCLONE AND TQE SECOND SHIPWRECK. 8 o to secure the ship's papers on his person, and waited for the dawn, which revealed the vessel leaning over at a sharp angle, but still kept from disappearing by the wedge-like compression of the silt of the bank. Often afterwards did Alexander Duff describe the scene on which that May morning broke, and the deliverance. The appearance of the river from the cuddy por- tion of the hull was very awful. The wind, in mighty whirling eddies, raised up columns of water which came down like so many cataracts. From the extremely perilous position of the ship it was necessary that all should be put on shore, but that meant deep water. One large tree, however, was espied, and to that the pilot and the natives succeeded in making a hawser fast, by swimming to its branches. Along this a boat was moored to the tree, and there, on somewhat higher ground, the passengers were " landed " up to the waist in water, at the time rolling in billows. The wind drove all, passengers and crew, inland to a village where caste forbade the natives to give them shelter. The island stretches for ten miles in length and five in breadth, and at that time had a population of some ten thousand persons, who lived by the manu- facture of salt, and on the offerings of the pilgrims at the annual bathing festival of the wir^ter solstice, which used to attract a quarter of a million of devotees from all parts of India. Denied access to the few huts that were not flooded, the shipwrecked party took possession of the village temple. Whether it was that of the sage Kapilmoonnee, whose curse had destroyed the eponymous Sagar, king of Oudh, with its great banyan tree in front, or the tiger-haunted pagoda which forms the centre of the fair, we know not. But it was thus that the first missionary of the Church of Scotland was, with his wife and fellows, literally thrown on the mud-formed strand of Bengal, where 84 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1830. the last land of the holy goddess, Gunga, receives her embrace, and many a mother was then wont to commit her living child to the pitiless waters. When the tidings reached the capital, a hundred miles up the Hooghly, numerous small boats of the covered "dinghy" class began to appear. In one of these Mr. and Mrs. Duff arrived at the City of Palaces, drenched with mud, and terribly exhausted after twenty -four hours in the temple following such a day and night of storm. Young Durand, too, found his way to the city, to the palace of the Bishop, where the tall lieutenant for some days excited amusement by appearing in the epicene dress of his kind host. The Duffs were hospitably entertained by Dr. Brown, the junior Scottish chaplain. In due time three steamers dragged the Moira oflP Saugar shore, sorely shattered, but thus the baggage was saved. It was on the 27th May, 1830, that they reached the scene of the next third of a century's triumphs, having left Edinburgh on the 19th September, 1829, more than eight months before. The first to visit Mr. Duff the evening on which he landed were his old St. Andrews companion, the Rev. J. Adam, and his afterwards life-long friend and greatly beloved brother, the Eev. A. F. Lacroix, both of the London Missionary Society. Next day came the venerable Archdeacon Corrie, fruit of Simeon's work ; also Dr. Bryce, the senior chaplain ; General Beatson, and other Christian strangers, who, with the more than freemasonry that has not yet died out of Anglo-India, desired to welcome Duff to Bengal. His own letters of introduction, preserved on his person in the two shipwrecks, he duly presented. With his wife he lost no time in calling at Government House on Lady William Bentinck, who received them not merely with courtesy but with genial Christian ^t. 24. LANDS AT CALCUTTA. 85 sympathy. Tho Governor-General himself did nob need the letter from a personal friend at home, to give the young missionary a warm reception. His Excellency sent for him, spoke encouragingly to him, and at a private dinner fully entered into his plans. AYas Lord William not tho greatest of the Bentincks, tlie best of all the Governor-Generals ? Alexander Duff was little more than twenty-four years of age when, a tall and handsome man, with flashing eye, quivering voice, and restless gesticulation, he first told the ruler of India what he had given his life to do for its people. Heir of Knox and Chalmers, he had to begin in the heart of Hindooism what they had carried out in the medisevalism of Rome and the moderatism of the Kirk of the eighteenth century. He had also to make it a missionary Kirk. His work was to be twofold — in East and West. Need we wonder that, when the Calcutta news- papers told the story of the repeated shipwrecks, the very natives remarked — " Surely this man is a favourite of the gods, who must have some notable work for him to do in India ?" CHAPTER ly. 1830. CALCUTTA AS IT WAS. Duff dlsolieys tlie only Order of his Churcli. — Calcutta a fourth of Loudon. — Bengal. — Job Charnock selects Kalkatta. — The First European Settlers. — Growth of the City. — Natives beginning to learn English. — Founders of the great Bengalee Families. — The leading Natives on Duff's Arrival. — The washerman who first taught English.' — Adventure Schools. — Matrimonial Value of Penmanship then and of the M.A. Degree now. — The Oriental Colleges and Orientalists. — Despatches Written by James Mill. — Duff's Account of the Origin of the First English College in India. — Tentative Efforts of the Early Missionaries. — The Work of Destruction Begun, who shall Construct ? Having secured full power to carry out his own plans unfettered by conditions in Scotland or on the spot, and having failed to obtain from his Church any in- structions for his guidance save one, Mr. Duff's first duty was to refuse to give effect to that one. He had been forbidden to open his mission in Calcutta. Why, it is difficult to understand, in the absence of all reasons assigned for such a prohibition. So the agents of the Scottish Missionary Society before Dr. Wilson had neglected Bombay city, while shut out from the Maratha capital of Poona, and had wasted years in the obscure villages of the Konkan. The example of the Apostles, beginning at Jerusalem, might have sufficed. The first of all Protestant missions and colleges in Bengal had, indeed, been established out- side of the capital, but that was because the East India Company's early intolerance had driven Carey JEt 24. THE MODlilvN CALCUTTA. 87 and Marshraan to the protection of the little Danish Government at Serampore. Bishop Middleton had followed, spontaneously, the unfortunate precedent, by building his Gothic pile so far down the right bank of the Hooghly that his college has proved useless for its great object ever since. This only had been determined on by Dr. Inglis and Mr. Dujff, that the first missionary was to open a school or college, just because that line of proselytising work had been neglected by the few other missionaries then in Calcutta. When Duff had seen these at work, in the city and all round it to Carey at Serampore, and twcut3'^-five miles up the river to Chinsurah and the old factory of Hooghly, he resolved to begin his career by disobeying the one order he had received. It was the resolve of genius, the beginning of an ever-growing success, without which failure, comparatively, was inevitable. The young Scot had vowed to kill Hiudooism, and this he could best do by striking at its brain. Benares, Pooree, Bombay more lately, might have been its heart ; but Calcutta was its brain. Let others pursue their own methods in their own places, he would plant his foot down here, among the then half-million eager, fermenting Bengalees, feeling after God if haply they might find Him with "Western help, and about to be used by the English Government as instruments for carrying its civilization all over Eastern, Central and North-western India. Calcutta, the metropolis of the British Empire in the southern half of Asia, now covers an area of thirty-one square miles, and has a fixed population of 900,000, exclusive of the hundreds of thousands who daily visit the port, the markets, the offices, the ware- houses, the domestic homes and the schools for trade, service and education. That is, the greatest city of the English in the East is just one fourth the size, in area and inhabitants, of London itself within the 88' LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Board of Works or the district of the School Board. London had the same population at the beginning of this century as Calcutta now has. To what point Calcutta will reach in the next century, under the same wise and peaceful administration which has made it what it is, he may conjecture who best realizes its unparalleled position. It is at once the centre of the most densely packed and fast-breeding rural population in the world, and of a network of rivers, canals and railways compared with which those that have created Holland are micro- scopic. It is the focus of our whole political system in Asia. Itself impregnable by nature and the entrepot of the wealth of Bengal, Calcutta has sent forth triumphant expeditions to Burma, to Java, to Canton and to Peking in the far East. It has been prepared to civilize the Maories of Australasia, as it had previously pushed the edge of the sword that separates evil from good into the heart of the Pathans of the Suleiman range and the Western Himalayas. From Calcutta, Mauri- tius and even the Cape have been started on a new career. Embassies from the palace of its Governor- General, still known simply as Government House, seventy years ago dictated terms of peace and pro- gress, against the barbarous aggression of Russian and French absolutism, to the Shah of Persia, the Ameer of Cabul, and the Maharaja of the Sikhs, when the Sutlej was our only frontier besides the sea. Were we basely to retire from the responsibilities of empire, and confine our administrative system to the one Lieutenant-Governorship of Bengal, its swarming sixty millions would enable Calcutta to send to the mother country a clear annual surplus of from four to six millions sterling. For it is with the twelve mil- lions of revenue yielded every year by Bengal, that ^t. 24. JOB CHAENOCK TOUNDS CALCUTTA. 89 Calcutta has spread the British Empire all over Southern Asia. In the Old World there is no example of the growth of a capital so rapid. In 1596 this mighty metro- polis figures on the rent-roll of the Emperor Akbar as Kalkatta, one of three villages in the district of Hooghly which together paid an annual tax of £2,841. The great temple, still in its suburbs, is that of the black destroying goddess of Kaleeghat. Driven from the factory at Hooghly by the Mussulman officer of Aurungzeb, the East India Company's agent, the notorious Mr. Job Charnock, with his council, sailed down the river in search of another site. Oolabaria, on the same rio-ht bank and somewhat below the O present Botanical Garden, was tried. But, though the ferry town on the high road to the shrine of Jugganath, in Orissa, that place had the two disad- vantages of bad anchorage and exposure to the raids of the Marathas. Not so the high ground immedi- ately to the north of Kalkatta. There the river was deep ; its expanse, a mile broad at high water, protected the place from the western devastators ; and the sur- rounding inhabitants were a prosperous brotherhood of weavers for the Company's trade. Under " a large shady tree," somewhere between the present Mint and the most orthodox quarter of Sobha Bazaar, Job Charnock set up the Company's flag and his own zanana. For he had taken to himself the beautiful Suttee or Hindoo widow whom he rescued from cremation only to be himself Hindooized, and on whose tomb he used afterwards to sacrifice a cock, according to that contemporary gossip, Captain Alexander Hamilton. It is significant that the second college which Duff built as the Free Church Institution stands in the great thoroughfare leading down to the oldest burniDg ghaut, Neemtolla, tho 90 LIFE OP DR. CtJFI)'. 1830. place of the neem-tree, which name probably em- balms the tradition of that " large shady tree." Many a suttee must have taken place within ear-shot of the founder of Calcutta, who used to have his sentences of whipping executed on native offenders " when he was at dinner, so near his dining-room that the groans and cries of the poor delinquent served him for music." The days of the glorious Revolution had come ; the new East India Company got a new and most Chris- tian charter ; the old church of St. John was raised with a proud steeple only to be cast down by the next cyclone ; and the Fort, of Black Hole memory, was built in Kalkatta village under William the Third's name. The Court of Directors, too, under revolu- tion influences, became Christian once more, and directed their agent at Calcutta to use this mis- sionary form of prayer : " That these Indian nations among whom we dwell, seeing our sober and righteous conversation, may be induced to have a just esteem for our most holy profession of the gospel." Char- nock's rough and, towards the natives, revengeful administration ceased five or six years after his first settlement at Kalkatta. Sir John Goldsborough was sent by the older and then superior Government of Madras to reform the little colony, which he began to do by sending the Roman Catholic priests off to Bandel, because they encouraged the civilians to form connections with the half-breed Portuguese under their influence. " In Calcutta a»ll religions are tolerated but the Presbyterians, and they are browbeat," wrote Hamilton. By 1706 there were 1200 Enghsh in the infant capital ; but such were the excesses of many of them, and such the absence of sanitary arrange- ments adapted to the climate, that 460 burials were registered in that year. Hamilton blames the site of JEt. 24. THE BLACK HOLE AND I'LASSKY. 9 1 the factory, and especially tlie neighbouring saltwater lakes or swamps. But time and science have proved that Job Charnock selected a position on which nearly a million of human beings, many of them foreigners from the cold north, live and labour with a rate of mortality little higher than that of London. The water, the drainage, the gas, the conservancy arrange- ments of the modern Calcutta may compare favour- ably with those of the other capitals of the world. By 1752 the population had grown, according to Holwell, to 400,000, when the irate Governor of Bengal, Sooraj-ood-Dowla, made a swoop upon them from his capital of Moorshedabad. Of the English who did not flee to the ships one hundred and twenty- three perished within twenty feet square of the guard- room called, by the soldiers usually confined there, the Black Hole. Instead of the Hindoo Ghaut of Kalee, the city was re-named the Muhammadan place of Alee, Aleenuggur. But the sack and the burning proved only new sources of wealth, when Clive and Watson had chased the tyrant back to his capital, and had defeated him at Plassey. In 1758 a long pro- cession of a hundred boats, laden with seven hundred chests, and then a second despatch, brought to Cal- cutta the largest prize that the British people had ever taken, or £1,110,000 in silver rupees. From much of that, sent as compensation, the citizens, English, Armenian, Portuguese and Bengalee, built the present city of Calcutta and Fort William. The reign of extravagance began ; but also that of health, be- nevolence, education and, gradually, outward respect for religion. There were two thousand Europeans in the new city, many of whom had spent twenty or thirty years in India without once attending public worship. For them a new St. John's arose in the old cemetery. Friends of Cecil, Simeon, and the 92 LIFE OF DFv. DUFF. 1830. Clapham men were sent out as chaplains, after Clive had purged the services. He himself invited the missionary Kiernander, when Lally had broken up the Lutheran settlement at Cuddalore, to instruct the natives and bury the Europeans in Calcutta, after the only chaplain there had perished in the Black Hole. The Company's ships carried his annual sup- plies free, and he raised the building which still flourishes, under the Church Missionary Society, as the old mission church, thanks to Charles Grant's foresight. The jungle, termed forest, around the new Fort William was cleared away, and Calcutta obtained that magnificent plain called by the Persian name Maidan, around which are its great public buildings and its Chowringhee palaces. By the close of last century, when the Marquis Wellesley planted down on its edge the fine reproduction of Keddlestone Hall in Derbyshire, designed by the brothers Adams, which is still called Government House, defying the Court of Directors, Calcutta was worthy of the position given it in the days of Warren Hastings as the seat of the central government. By that time it had become the outlet and the inlet for the trade of all Eastern and Northern India up to the Sutlej, so far as the Company's monopolies allowed trade to follow a natural course. The necessities of intercourse with the natives, diplomatically with the court at Dacca and Moor- shedabad and commercially with the capitalists and manufacturers, had early created a class of interme- diaries and assistants between the English and the people of the country. Of the former was the Punjabee Omichund, the wealthy intriguer who tried to cheat both Clive and the Muhammadan ruler, whom he had instigated to the destruction of the English, and was defeated by his own weapons. Of .Et. 24. CALCUTTA UNDEll CLIVE AND HASTINGS. 93 the latter were nearly all the great Hindoo families which are still the heads of native society. Lord Olive's moonshee was, to his countrymen, more power- ful than the great Governor liimself. Raja Nobokissen founded a house like the Barings of England. More famous at the time, though now forgotten, was dive's dewan, E-amchaud. In the year of the victory of Plassey each of these men had a salary of £72 pounds; yet on his death, in 1767, ten years after, the latter left a fortune of a million and a quarter sterling. Nobokissen spent ninety thousand pounds on his mother's obsequies. The various ghauts, or bathing places, on both banks of the Ilooghly, from Calcutta to Serampore, commemorate at once the wealth and the superstition of the men who, in those days, lived on the ignorant foreigners whom they assisted, and on their own less educated country- men whom they oppressed. Many a Bengalee proverb has come down from the times of Clive, Verelst and Hastings, such as the triplet which Mr. J. 0. Marshman used thus to render — " Who does not know Govindram^s club. Or the house of Bonmalee Sirkar, Or the beard of Omichund?^'' Govindram Mitter was the "black zemindar" who for thirty years was the nominal subordinate of the English collector of the taxes of Calcutta on from £S6 to £60 a year, and whom only the brave Hoi well, hero of the Black Hole time, finally deprived of the power to oppress like a Turkish pasha. The cruel exactions of Raja Daby Sing under Warren Hastings have been handed down to everlasting shame by the eloquence of Sheridan. The advance merchants known as " Daduny," through whom the Company made its contracts with 94 MFB OF DR. DUFF. 1830. tlie native weavers for ttieir calicoes and muslins, wliicli Lancasliire soon learned to manufacture from Indian cotton for export, were tlie first to learn as much English as was necessary for their intercourse with the masters they defrauded. A lower class were the panders and agents whom ship captains were forced to use, and who still, as from the seventeenth century, mislead our sailors to their too frequent destruc- tion. These were termed " dobhasias " or two- language natives, a word used in the earlier commercial transactions at the Portugruese Calicut and the Eno^lish Madras. Ram Komul Sen, the author of the first English and Bengalee dictionary, tells in his preface how the first English captain who sailed to the infant Calcutta sent ashore asking for a dhobasia. The Setts, the Bengalee middlemen who helped Job Charnock to buy the Company's piece goods, in isfnorance of the word sent a " dhobee " or washerman on board, with propitiatory gifts of plantains and sugar-candy. To that washerman, who made good use of the monopoly of English which he acquired, the native lexicographer ascribes " the honour of having been the first English scholar, if scholar he could be called, amongst the people of Bengal." The mere vocabulary of nouns, adverbs, and interjections, which, for nearly a century, constituted the English of the Bengalees, as it still forms that of the domestic servants of Madras, became improved when Sir Elijah Impey went out to establish the Supreme Court in 1774. Cases like the trial and hanging of Nuncomar for forgery, and the growing business of the Court which included all the citizens of Calcutta in its jurisdiction, while the judges strove to extend their power far into the interior, made the next generation of middle-class Bengalees a little more familiar with English. Interpreters, clerks, copyists, and agents of ^t. 24. TUE GREAT BENGALEE FAMILIES. 95 a respectable class were in demand, alike by the Government and the great mercantile houses. For a time Lord Cornwallis pursued the illiberal and, as it proved, impossible policy of employing only Europeans. Hence the greatest native of the time, whom we shall learn to admire hereafter, Raja Rammohun Roy, did not begin to learn English till he was twenty-two, nor did he master it till he was thirty. He stood at the head of the leading Hindoo families of Calcutta at the time of Duff's appearance there. After winning the gratitude of the Government as " dewan " or principal native assistant to the Collector of Rungpore, he had settled in the city in 1814. Others worthy of note were Dwarkanath Tagore, of the mer- cantile firm of Carr, Tagore & Co., and his cousin, Pro- sunno Coomar Tagore, great landholder and lawyer. Ram Komul Sen, already alluded to, was "dewan" of the Bank of Bengal. Russomoy Dutt was at that time " banian " or broker to Messrs. Cruttenden, Mackillop & Co., and afterwards honoured judge of the Small Cause Court. Raja Radhakant Deb was head of the orthodox party. Ram Gopal Ghose was a member of the firm of Messrs. Kelsall, Ghose & Co. These were the principal English-speaking native gentlemen, the most active in the education of their countrymen, the reformers before that reformation of which the young Scottish missionary became the apostle. We shall see how the Christianity that he brought and applied, in a form adapted to the wants of the time, tested them and sifted their families, and still tries their descendants as a divine touchstone. How did these men and the other respectable Ben- galee families get their English, such as it was, before the educational as well as spiritual revolution begun by Duff? First, a keen self-interest drove them to find it at the hands of Eurasians, Armenians, and 96 LIFJ^ OF DC. DUFF. 1830. English adventurers. Then Government, which had ignored and even opposed the EngUsh education of the natives, was forced by Parliament to patronise it. Then a very few of the missionaries at that time in Bengal lent their aid. But all proceeded on the same mechanical, utilitarian, and routine system which marked English schools till the days of Lancaster and Bell. Sherborne, a Eurasian, kept a school in the Jo- rasanko quarter, where Dwarkanath Tagore learned the English alphabet. Martin Bowl, in Araratolla, taught the founder of the wealthy Seal family. Ara- toon Petroos was another who kept a school of fifty or sixty Bengalee lads. The best of the pupils be- came teachers in their turn like the blind Nittyanund Sen in Colootolla, and the lame Udytchurn Sen, who was the tutor of the millionnaire Mulliks. Their text- books were such pitiful productions as those of Dytche and Enfield, Cooke's letters and Greenwood's gram- mar. To write a good hand was far more important than to understand what was read, for to be a copyist or book-keeper was the destiny of the majority. One of the Mullik family, when in 1869 reviewing that period of dim twilight, stated in his own English, *' that the betrothment of a maid to a youth fit to wear the laurel of Hymen, was chiefly influenced by the oapability of the latter in point of his English penmanship, a specimen of which was invariably called for by the parent of the girl." Now the possession of the degree of Master of Arts is the test, a fact that gauges the whole intellectual and social progress which Duff had come to set in motion for far higher religious ends. As the vernaculars of the country were neglected by the British Government for the Persian of its Muhammadan predecessor, so English had to give way to a vicious orientalism. In 1780 Warren Hastings ^t. 24. THE ORIENTAL COLLEGES. 97 had founded the Madrissa or Muhammadan college iu Calcutta, to conciliate the Moulvies by teaching the whole range of the religion of Islam, and preparing their sons as officials of the law courts. In 1791 Jonathan Duncan, of philanthropic memory, did the same for the Hindoos, by establishing the Benares Sanscrit College avowedly to cultivate their " laws, literature and religion." From Plassey to the char- ter of 1813 was the most evil time of the East India Company's intolerance of light in every form, so much did it dread the overturning of a political fabric which had sprung up in spite of it. But then the Court of Directors was compelled by Parliament, expressing weakly the voice of the Christian public, to write the despatch of the 6th September, 1813, which com- municated the order that " a sum of not less than one lakh of rupees (£10,000) in each year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and improvement of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and pro- motion of a knowledge of the sciences among the in- habitants of the British territories of India." Weakly, we say, for Charles Grant had, in 1792, sketched in detail, and had continued all these years to press on the court and in Parliament, a scheme of tolerant English and vernacular education, of such far-sighted ability and benevolence that all subsequent progress to the present hour is only a commentary upon his su Of Questions.* In spite of the charter of 1813, that order was not, in its spirit and intention, carried out till Duff landed * Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals, and on the Means of Improving it. Written cbiefly in the yoar 1792. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, l-5th June, 1813. H 98 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 830. in Calcutta. First, Colebrooke — tlie greatest orien- talist who has yet lived — when a member of Lord Minto's Council, and then Dr. H. H. "Wilson — who, in England, comes only second to him — directed the Parliamentary instructions to tlie establishment of another Sanscrit college, this time in Calcutta. The directors' despatch of 3rd June, 1814, was all in favour of such orientalism, but, though ignoring English, it deserves the credit of having urged the establishment of a system of vernacular schools, on Bell's principles, from a cess on the land. Had that been attended to as each province was added to the empire or settled in its land revenue and tenures, the whole work of national education for which Duff laboured side by side with his Englisli system, as we shall see, might have been done. Instead of either, the public money was so misapplied as to call forth a despatch on the 18th February, 1824, in which James Mill, in the name of the directors, reviewed the fruitless and wasteful past, usinof this lansruaffe : — " The great end should not Lave been to teach Hindoo learn- ing, but useful learning. No doubt in teaching useful learning to the Hindoos or Muhammadans, Hindoo 'media or Muham- madan media, so far as they were found the most effectual, would have been proper to be employed, and Hindoo and Muhammadan prejudices would have needed to be consulted, while everything which was useful in Hindoo or Muhammadan literature it would have been proper to retain ; nor would there have been any insuperable difficulty in introducing, under these reservations, a system of instruction from which great advantage might have been derived. In professing, on the other hand, to establish seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindoo or mere Muhammadan literature, you bound yourselves to teach a great deal of what was frivolous, not a little of what was purely mischievous, and a small re- mainder indeed in which utility was in any way concerned. In the new college which is to be instituted, and which we ^t. 24. THE DIRECTORS CONDEMN THE ORIENTAL COLLEGES. 99 think you have acted judiciously in placing at Calcutta instead of Nuddca and Tirhoot as originally sanctioned, it will be much farther in your power, becanso not fettered by any pre- ceding practice, to consult the principle of utility in the course of study which you may prescribe." Three years Later, on the 5th September, 1827, the directors took a stronger position, wlien pointing out that the course of education must not merely " pro- duce a higher degree of intellectual fitness, but that it will contribute to raise the moral character of those who partake of its advantages." The writer, charac- teristically, could not find " the best security against deorradino: vices" elsewhere than in "that rational self-esteem " of which his greater son's autobiography gives us such sad glimpses. But that despatch had hardly been discussed and angrily answered by the orientalists around the Grovernor-General, when Duff gave himself to the life task of supplying the only motive power which would secure " the last and highest object of education " to the natives of India. Fortunately we have his own account of the estab- lishment of the first English college in India, the Vidyalaya, or Anglo-Indian, or Hindoo College, as given in his evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons previous to the Company's last charter of 1853. The immediate precursor of that movement was the minute of 2nd October, 1815, in which Lord Hastings, declaring his solicitude for the moral and intellectual condition of the natives, pro- jected a system of public instruction, and thereafter visited Serampore to inspect its schools and encour- age its missionaries. The David Hare mentioned was the son of a watchmaker in London, who and whose brothers made a modest fortune in India. " The system of English education commenced in the follow-^r^-^ lOO LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1830. ing very simple way in Bengal. There were two persons who had to do with it, — one was Mr. David Hare, and the other was a native, Rammohun Roy. In the year 1815 they were in consultation one evening with a few friends as to what should be done with a view to the elevation of the native mind and character. Rammohun Roy^s proposition was that they should establish an assembly or convocation, in which what are called the higher or purer dogmas of Vedantism or ancient Hindooism might be taught; in short the Pantheism of the Yedas and their Upanishads, but what Rammohun Roy delighted to call by the more genial title of Monotheism. Mr. David Hare was a watchmaker in Calcutta, an ordinary illiterate man himself ; but being a man of great energy and strong practical sense, he said the plan should be to institute an English school or college for the instruction of native youths. Accordingly he soon drew up and issued a circular on the subject, which gradually attracted the attention of the leading Europeans, and, among others, of the Chief Justice Sir Hyde East. Being led to consider the proposed measure, he entered heartily into it, and got a meeting of European gentlemen assembled in May, 1816. He invited also some of the influential natives to attend. Then it was unanimously agreed that they should commence an institution for the teaching of English to the children of the higher classes, to be designated ' The Hindoo College of Calcutta/ A large joint committee of Europeans and natives was appointed to carry the design into effect. In the beginning of 1817 the college, or rather school, was opened, and it was the very first English seminary in Bengal, or even in India, as far as I know. In the joint committee there was a preponderance of natives, and partly from their inexperience and inaptitude, and partly from their absurd prejudices and jealousies, it was not very well managed nor very successful. Indeed, had it not been for the untiring perseverance of Mr. Hare, it would have soon come to an end. The number of pupils enrolled at its first opening was but small — not exceeding twenty — and even all along, for the subsequent five or six years, the number did not rise above sixty or seventy. Then it was, when they were well-nigh in a state of total wreck, and most of the "Europeans had retired from the management in disgust, that Mr, Hai-e and a few others resolved to apply to the Government for help as the only JEt 24. THE FIEST ENGLISH SCHOOL IN INDIA. lOI means of saving the sinking institution from irretrievable ruin. The Government, when thus appealed to, did come forward and proffer its aid upon certain reasonable terms and conditions ; and it was in this way that the British Government was first brought into an active participation in the cause of English education. "The Government then came forward and said in substance, — ' If you will allow us to appoint a duly qualified visitor, so as to give us some control over the course of instruction, we will help you with a considerable pecuniary grant/ But, however equitable the proposal that they, as large subscribers to the funds, should have an influential voice in the manage- ment, such was the blindfold bigotry of the larger moiety of the native committee, that the interposition of the Govern- ment, even in the mild form proposed, was at first very stoutly resisted. At length the sober sense of the smaller moiety prevailed. The first visitor happened to be Mr. Horace Hayman Wilson, the famous Sanscrit scholar. It was not, perhaps, an appointment altogether congenial to his other pursuits, he being thoroughly wrapped up in Sanscrit and Sanscrit lore of every sort. But still, as his influence with the natives was deservedly great, he was appointed to the office ; and, as an honourable man, he rigorously resolved to do his duty. He very soon threw new life into the system, and got it very much improved ; the number of pupils soon also greatly increased, so that altogether there was a great deal of zeal manifested, and a considerable degree of success attained. At the same time, so far as the Government were concerned, their views at the outset, with regard to the best mode of communi- cating European literature and science, were somewhat peculiar and contracted ; in other words, their views seemed to be that whatever of European literature and science might be con- veyed to the native mind should be conveyed chiefly through native media, that is to say, the learned languages of India — for the Muhammadans, Ai'abic and Persian ; and for the Hindoos, Sanscrit. This was the predominant spirit and intent of the British Government." The college, which had upwards of a hundred students and an endowment of £15,000 on Duff's arrival, lost all its capital in the commercial collapse I02 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. * 1830 wbicli occurred soon after. Then, too, perished the Calcutta School Society, established about the same time and on the same principles intolerant of Chris- tianity. Its committee had, in 1823, opened an English school as a feeder to the college, in which it maintained thirty free students out of one hundred and twenty in attendance in 1829. The object was the then far-sighted one of encouraging the purely vernacular schools, in which the public subscriptions were more beneficially used, to train their pupils well in Bengalee before drafting them into English classes. But the fifth report of that society, and the official investiga- tions of Mr. Adam soon after, show that there were not more than five thousand native children at school in the whole city of Calcutta when Duff landed. Not more than five hundred of these learned English, and that after the straitest sect of secularists of the Tom Paine stamp. Such was the educational destitution of Cal- cutta, low and high, seventeen years after the Clapham philanthropists had, through Parliament, forced the Court of Directors to promise to educate the natives. Outside of Calcutta the few missionaries had made somewhat fitful attempts to use English as the best medium for the conveyance of truth. A Hindoo who was *' almost a Christian," Jeynarain Ghosal, in 1814 left 20,000 rupees to found that college in Benares which the Church Missionary Society still conducts so well. In the same year, at Chinsurah, the London Missionary Society's agent, Mr. May, opened a high school, which received the first grant-in-aid. Helped by Rammohun Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore, Dr. Marshman estab- lished many native schools in 1816 ; but it was in 1818 that the great college of the Serampore missionaries was projected to do on the Christian side what the Calcutta Hindoos were attempting on the purely secular. Unhappily, that was not in Calcutta. There ^t. 24. THE WORK OF DESTRUCTION BEGUN. I03 suttee, infanticide, and the choking of the dying with Ganges mud were as common as in the time of its apostate founder, Job Charnock. Mr. G. Pearce, who landed there three years before Duff, as a mis- sionary of the Baptist society, was even then required to report himself to the police and to make oath that he would behave himself peaceably. Sunday was blot- ted out of the calendar. Caste and idolatry revelled under the protection of the Company. Human sacri- fices and Thug murder by strangling were common. Only four societies, represented by a dozen foreign missionaries, were at work in Calcutta and all Bengal : — the Baptist, the London, the Church, and the Orissa General Baptist. In 1827 there were only nine Baptist and half a dozen Anglican converts in all Calcutta, and of these but a portion were Hindoos, and one had been a Muhammadan. This was the fruit of ten years' labour. Thus far the work of destruction had begun, and Hindoo hands had been the first to try to pull down their Dagon of falsehood, while Government officials had been active, more or less unconsciously, in prop- ping it up. The Bengalees, beginning to leave even the glimmering and reflected light of natural religion as embodied in the varied concrete of their own system, were groping in the still darker region where all was doubt, wdiere the old was gone and nothing had taken its place. Who was to arrest the demoral- ization ? Who could so guide the fermenting process as to work into the mass the leaven which is slowly leavening the whole lump ? Who should begin the work of construction side by side with that of a dis- integration such as even the nihilists of the Hindoo College had not dared to dream of? CHAPTER V. 1830-1831. THE MINE PBEPABED. Preliminary Researches. — Duff's first Interview ■wltli Carey. — They Agree as to the best System of Aggression on Hindooism. — That System confirmed by Experience. — Preparing the Mine and Setting the Train. — The Bible the Base and Crown of the System. — Why Previous Attempts Failed. — Buchanan's Christian In- stitution in the East. — Serampore College. — Bishop's College and Dr. Mill's Sanscrit Christiad. — All Providential Advantages centred in Daff". — His Bengalee Ally, the Raja Rammohun Roy, the Erasmus of Hindooism. — The Brumho Sobha and Dhai'ma Sobha. — Duff's Treatment of Rammohun different from that by Dr. Marshman. — The Theist finds for the Christian a School and five Pupils. — The first Day. — The Lord's Prayer and the Gospels in Bengalee. — Opposition of the other Missionaries. — Duff teach- ing the English Alphabet. — Contemporaneous teaching of Bengalee and English. — Removes to College Square. — First Public Examination of the School converts all Opponents. — Branch Institution at Takee. — A new Educational Era in India. — Rev. W. S. Mackay joins Duff. — Letter introducing Rammohun Roy to Dr. Chalmers. — Story of an English Adventurer. — Duff the first to teach Political Economy in India. — The Home Com- mittee remonstrate, confounding it with Politics. With tlie exhaustless energy which marked his whole life, Alexander Duff spent the hottest and wettest period of the Bengal year, the six weeks from the end of May to the middle of July, in preliminary in- quiries. From early morning till latest eve he visited every missionary and mission station in and around Calcutta, from the southern villages on the skirts of the malarious Soonderbun forests to the older settle- ments of the Dutch at Ohinsurah and the Danes at ^t. 24. duff's fibst meetlng with cakey. 105 Seramppre, There was not a school which he did not inspect ; not one of those thatched bamboo and wicker- work chapels, in whicli apostolic men like Lacroix preached night and morning in Bengalee to the passers- by in the crowded thorouglifares of the capital,' in which he did not spend hours noting the people and the preaching alike. For he had at once begun that study of the vernacular without which half his knowledge of and sympathy with the natives must have been lost. He was especially careful to visit in detail represen- tative rural villages, that he might satisfy himself and the committee. From such minute investigations, and from frequent conferences with the more experienced men already in the field, he arrived at two conclu- sions. These were, that Calcutta itself must be the scene of his earliest and principal efforts, from which he could best operate on the interior ; and that the method of his operations must be different from that of all his predecessors in India. With one exception the other missionaries discour- aged these two conclusions. He had left to the last the aged Carey, then within three years of the close of the brightest of missionary careers up to that time, in order that he might lay his whole case before the man whose apostolic successor he was to be, even as Carey had carried on the continuity from Schwartz and the baptism of the first Protestant convert in 1707. Landing at the college ghaut one sweltering July day, the still ruddy Highlander strode up to the flight of steps that leads to the finest modern building in Asia. Turning to the left, he sought the study of Carey in the house — " built for angels " said one, so simple is it — where the greatest of missionary scholars was still workiuQf for India. There he beheld what seemed to be a little yellow old man in a white jacket, "who tottered up to the visitor of whom he had already I06 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830 often heard, and witli outstretclied hands solemnly blessed him. A contemporary soon after wrote thus of the childlike saint — " Thoii'rt in our hearts — with tresses thin and grey, And eye that knew the Book of Life so well. And brow serene, as thou wert wont to stray Amidst thy flowers, like Adam ere he fell." The result of the conference was a double blessing, for Carey could speak with the influence at once of a scholar who had created the best college at that time in the country, and of a vernacularist who had preached to the people for half a century. The young Scots- man left his presence with the approval of the one authority whose opinion was best worth having. The meeting, as Dufi" himself once described it to us, was the beginning of an era in the history of the Church of India which the poet and the painter might well symbolize. Though for two years the Kirk's committee han- kered after a station in the interior, we may at once dismiss the decision to begin first at Calcutta. But the determination, confirmed by all he had seen and heard, to open an English school, in time to be developed into a college different from any then in existence, and yet only the nucleus of a great spiritual campaign against Hindooism, proved too fruitful in its consequences to be merely stated. Duff's object was, in the strength 'of Grod and the intensity of a faith that burned even more brightly to his dying hour, nothing less than the destruction of a system of beliefs, life, and ancient civilization of the highest type, based on a great literature expressed in the most elaborate language the world has seen. Up to that time, missionaries in the less Hindooized south of India had been at work for more than a century, and ^t. 24. HIS MISSIONAEY POLICY. IO7 liad been driven to evangelize the non-Brahmanical tribes. The system remained untouched — nay, re- mains so to the present day, according to the most scholarly authority, Mr. Burnell.* In the coast settle- ments of Eastern and Western India, after some twenty years' labour a few missionaries had detached a few units from the mass by ill-taught vernacular schools generally under heathen masters, and by addressing fluctuating and promiscuous groups in the streets and villages amid the contempt of the learned and the scorn of the respectable classes. Up to that time the converts had not only been few, but their new faith had not been self-propagating. It had died out with them. Of the hundreds of Kiernander's converts during his long work in Calcutta Simeon's chaplains found hardly a trace, so that the biographer of Thomas, f the surgeon who brought Carey to Bengal, doubts their existence. Of the tens brought over by the evangelical clergy of whom Martyn was the type the earlier missionaries found none. The first fact forced on Duff was, that, as against the Brahmanized Hindoos, the prevailing mis- sionary method had failed both in immediate results and in self-developing power. The logical, if also anti- spiritual conclusion, was undoubtedly that of the Abbe Dubois, who knew no other method — that it was impos- sible to convert the Hindoos, and needless to try. Long after that time we have heard the greatest vernacular preacher Bengal has seen. Duff's dear friend, Lacroix, confess that during fifty years he did not know that he had been the means of making one convert from Hindooism. And so recently as this year an equally typical missionary to Islam, the Rev. T. P. Hughes, warns us that there is very little, if any, * See Academy for Dec. 28th, 1878, page G04. t The Life of John Thomas, First Baptist Missionary to Bengal, by C. B. Lewis. London. 1873. Io8 • LIFi'] OF DR. DUFF. 1830. analogy between street preacliing in England and in an Indian city. " There the evangelist stands up not as a recognised religious teacher, and the doctrinal terms he uses will either seem strange to the ears of his listeners, or will convey a meaning totally at variance to the one he wishes to impart. But in private interviews the evangelist stands face to face, eye to eye, and heart to heart with the opponent or the inquirer, and can speak as one fallen sinner should speak to another. There is a chord of sympathy in such meetings which is not to be found in the public market-place, and it needs but the touch of love and the power of Grod's Spirit to awaken its emotions ! "* Still stronger and yet more sensitive and true is that chord when it is in the heart of ingenuous and grateful youth, and day after day in the class-room, and night after night in the enthusiasm of the lecture-room or in the heavenly contagion of the secret conversation, the missionary plays upon it with the art of the Master in the synagogue or by the well, and in the oft-frequented places by the sea-shore or on the hill-side. We have Duff's own statement of his divine strategy when, ten years afterwards, he told the people of Scotland, " In this way we thought not of individuals merely ; we looked to the masses. Spurning the no- tion of a present day's success, and a present year's wonder, we directed our view not merely to the pre- sent but to future generations." Admitting the pro- priety of the direct policy adopted by his fellow- labourers of every sect in other circumstances, he thus "joyfully hailed" them : "While you engage in directly separating as many precious atoms from the mass as the stubborn resistance to ordinary appliances can admit, we shall, ivith the blessing of God, devote our • The Church Missionary Intelligencer for January, 1879. JEt 24- THE BIBLE THE CENTRE OP EDUCATIONAL MISSIONS. IO9 timo and ytreii'jfh to the jjreparing of a mine, and ilw setting of a train which shall one day explode and tear up the ivhole from its lowest depths.''* So John Wilson reasoned on independent grounds, and acted on de- tailed plans adapted to AYestern India. So, as against the Brahmanical and Muhammadan systems, all the Protestant — now the only aggressive — missions in Northern India, have gradually come to do. In this sense, education, saturated with the Bible, became the most evangelical and evangelistic agency ever adopted against the ancient Aryan faiths. When reviewing this period in the last weeks of his life, Du:ff declared that he was resolutely determined on this one thing : Whatever scheme of instruction he might adopt must involve the necessity of read ing some portion of the Bible daily by every class that could read it, and of expounding it to such as could not, with a view to enlightening the understand- ing, spiritually impressing the heart and quickening the conscience, while the teacher prayed, at the same time, that the truth might be brought home, by the grace of the Spirit, for the real conversion to God of at least some of them. As he read Scripture and the history of the Church, he did not expect that all or the majority of these Bengalee youths would certainly be thus turned, for in nominal Christendom he felfc that few have been, or are, so changed under the most favourable circumstances. That " many are called but few chosen," however, only quickened his zeal. But he did expect that, if the Bible were thus faithfully taught or preached, some at least would be turned from their idols to serve the living God. While religion was thus to be in the forefront, his resolution was, from the first, to teach every variety of useful knowledge, first in elementary forms, and, as the pupils advanced, in the higher branches, which might i t 1 TO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. ultimately embrace the most advanced and improved studies in history, civil and sacred, sourd litera- ture, logic, mental and moral philosophy after the Baconian method, mathematics in all departments, with natural history, natural philosophy and other sciences. In short, the design of the first of Scot- tish missionaries was to lay the foundation of a system of education which might ultimately embrace all the branches ordinarily taught in the higher schools and colleges of Christian Europe, but in inseparable com- bination with the Christian faith and its doctrines, precepts and evidences, with a view to the practical regulation of life and conduct. Eeligion was thus intended to be, not merely the foundation upon which the superstructure of all useful knowledge was to be reared, but the animating spirit which was to pervade and hallow all, and thus conduce to the highest welfare of man in time and for eternity, as well as to the glory of Cod. These sentiments he was wont to inculcate in the case of all whom he consulted on the subject at that time. All truth, directed by the two-edged sword of the very word of Cod, was that which was to pierce to the vitals of Brahman- ism, save the Hindoo people, and make them in- struments of truth to the rest of Asia, even more widely than their Buddhist fathers had sought to be. Wherein did this differ from previous attempts? When, on the 24th June, 1806, Dr. Claudius Buchanan, fruit of the Cambuslang revival, looked back on the horrors of Jugganath worship from an eminence on the pleasant banks of the Chilka Lake, he projected "The Christian Institution in the East," which, " being fostered by Britain, my Christian country, might grad- ually undermine this baleful idolatry, and put out the memory of it for ever." This was to be a catholic col- lege for translating the Bible into the oriental tongues JEt 24. FAILURE OF PREVIOUS COLLEGES. Ill by planting a professor in every province witli a lan- guage and literature of its own, to report on botli and to teach the natives printing. So far as that was not premature, it was being done by the immortal tliree of Serampore, who refused to impede their own organ- ization by this untried project. Buchanan thereupon turned himself to the creation of tlie ecclesiastical estab- lishment of a bishop, three archdeacons, and more numerous chaplains. Just as Buchanan had looked to Jews and Armenians as his best missionaries, the men who made the great stride of establishing the Seram- pore College depended on Eurasians or Christians born in the country. Nobly did their agents work, from Ava to Peshawur ; but here, too, there was no self-development in the system. The distance of the college from Calcutta shut it out from taking its place as the counteractive of the false philosophy and im- pure literature taught by the Hindoo College. When ecclesiastical rivalry stirred up Bishop Middle- ton to erect of his college, he made the same mistake. He pictured a second grove of Academe, in which — that is, in the neighbouring avenues of the Botanic Gar- den— the professors and students would walk, but he left the sweltering class-rooms and debating societies of the Chitpore quarter of Calcutta to atheism and Voltaire. Hence, the only good fruit of the vast ex- pense lavished to this day on Bishop's College has been the Christ a Sangita, the Christian epic in Sans- crit of the learned Dr. Mill, its first principal. What one of the early missionaries, who shared the dream, wrote in 1844 is still true : " Sure I am, that if sainted spirits can weep. Bishop Middleton is now weeping in heaven over the idol of his heart."* Men make sy^s- • Sketches of Christianity in North India, by the Rev. M. Wilkin- son. London, 1844. 112 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. terns, and some men can work In spite of systems doomed to failure. Duff might have in time trans- formed even Bishop's College, for its two fundamental objects were to raise native preachers and teachers, and to teach " the elements of useful knowledge and the English language to Muhammadans and Hindoos." But it was more than a fortunate, it was a directly providential combination of circumstances, which cul- minated in the Scottish evangelization of the Hindoos by education. These were, the sermon of Dr. Inglis in 1818; the call of Alexander Duff in 1828; his wise independence and his wiser disobedience of the only command laid upon him ; his unrivalled educational experience as well as spiritual energy ; the revolution in belief and opinion begun by the Hindoo College ; the official toleration and personal friendship shown by the Governor- Greneral ; and, lastly, that to which we now come, the help of the one Hindoo whom English teaching had led to find the living Grod. In a pleasant garden house in the leafy suburbs of Calcutta, the Raja Rammohun Roy, then fifty-six years of age, was spending his declining days in earnest meditation on divine truth, broken only by works of practical benevolence among his countrymen, and soon by preparations for that visit to England, where, in 1834, he yielded to the uncongenial climate. " You must at once visit the Raja," said General Beatson, when Mr. Duff presented his letter of introduction, "and I will drive you out on an early evening.'* Save by Duff" himself afterwards, justice has never been done to this Hindoo reformer, this Erasmus of India. He was early misunderstood by the Serampore missionaries in his own country, and he was thus driven into the arms of the Unitarians when he was lionized in Great Britain. Had the truth-seeking Bengalee and the Scottish apostle met when the JEt. 24. THE YOUNG RAMMOHUN ROY. II3 former was yet young, Eastern and Northern India might have been brought to Christ by a Bengalee Luther, greater than their own Chaitunya, instead of their more earnest youth being kept from Him by the Vedic dreams of the Brumho Sobha, and now by the vague ethical naturalism of its successor, the Brumho Somaj. At the close of the administration of Warren Hastings, when the bleached bones of the victims of the great famine were beginning to disappear, in 1774, a Brahman landholder and his most orthodox wife had a son born to them on the ancestral estate in the county of Burdwan, some fifty miles from the English capital of Calcutta. Rammohun Roy's father had retired in disgust from the service of the tyrant, Sooraj-ood-Dowla; his predecessors had been holy ascetics or sacerdotal lords, till the intolerant Aurungzeb forced one of them to take office at court. Their spirit, withdrawing from worldly wealth and distinction, came out in the young Rammohun, who, though trained in all the asceticism of his mother's breviary, the "Ahnika Tattina," renounced idolatry at the age of sixteen, when he wrote but did not pub- lish an attack on " the idolatrous system of the Hin- doos." That is, he gave up his father's love, his mother's care and his rights of inheritance, and he braved the loss of caste and the persecution of his friends. To this he had been led by too intimate a knowledofe of the Benoralee and Sanscrit literature, in his own home, followed by a course of Arabic and Per- sian at Patna, and by the study of Muhammadanism. From Patna the young and truth-loving tlieist went to Benares, where he learned that the Brahmanism of his day was a corruption of what seemed to him the monotheism which underlay the nature-worship of the Vedas. Captivated for a time by philosophic 114. ^IFE OF DR. DUrP. 1830. Buddhism, he visited Tibet, where its practical Lamaic form disgusted him. Recalled by his father, he tried to influence the old man who died in 1803, and he so succeeded in convincing his mother of the folly of her life-lonof austerities that she confessed her disbelief in Hindooism before her death. But he had no Divine Saviour to reveal to her. The widow died in the service of the idol Jugganath at Pooree, having declared before she set out on the hideous pilgrimage : " Rammohun, you are right, but I am a weak woman, and am grown too old to give up rites which are a comfort to me." In a brief autobiography which he wrote in England, he states that he was about twenty when he began to associate with Europeans. " Finding them generally more intelligent, more steady and moderate in their conduct, I gave up my prejudice against them and became inclined in their favour, feeling persuaded that their rule, though a foreign yoke, would lead more speedily and surely to the amelioration of the native inhabitants." Seeking a liveHhood in the service of the English, as his fathers had done in that of the Delhi emperors and their Bengal lieutenant-governors, Rammohun Roy became an. example of rectitude to the corrupt native officials who made our name detested, and he won the friendship of his British superiors. At fifty he retired to philosophic ease and spiritual meditation, and became the centre of the Calcutta reformers. But he was far ahead of his timid contemporaries, who while approving the better followed the worse. The English language had introduced him to the English Bible, and the necessity of mastering that led him to the original Hebrew and Greek. It was all eclecticism at first, for he admired in the law of the Old and the gospel of the New Testament only the same doctrine of the Adwaita or unity of God, which he had held ^t. 24. THE EAliLlEli VEDANTIC AVOnSIIIP. II5 up to liis Hindoo aud Muliammadan countrymen as the teaching of the TJpanishads and the Mesnavi, till they denounced him as nastlh or atheist. Of this time he afterwards wrote : — " This roused such a feeliuo* against me, that I was at last deserted by every person except two or three Scotch friends, to whom and the nation to which they belong I always feel grateful." In the very year, 1814, in which he took up his residence in Calcutta, he opened the Brnmlio Sobha, in order to teach and to practise the worship of one supreme undivided and eternal God. At first in his own house, aud then in the thoroughfare of Chitpore road, he and his pundits expounded in the vernacular the purer teaching of the Vedas, once a week, but on each day of the week in rotation in seven years. They sang hymns to the sound of drum (tohlah) and cym- bals, {'inondeere), guitar (tomburu) and violoncello (bea- lah), such as this: "All is vain without the blessing of God. Remember Him Who can deprive you of wife, children, friends, relatives and wealth. He is the Supreme, separate from the triune deity (Brumha, Vishnoo and Siva) ; to Him belong no titles or dis- tinctions. It is written : ' Blessed is he whose soul dwelleth on Him.' " Again : " Thine own soul is thine only refuge ; seek to cherish it in its proper abode composed of five elements, and guided by six passions. Why dost thou distrust thine own soul? God dwelleth even in thine own heart." Christ was shut out from Rammohun Roy by inability or un- willinorness to believe His own revelation of the Father and promise of the Spirit. But he set Him, as a practical teacher, far above all others, when, in 1820, he published anonymously that chrestomathy of the synoptic Gospels which he termed, " The Precepts of Jesus the Guide to Peace and Happiness." His attitude to Brahmanism was still that of Erasmus Il6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. towards Romanism. He believed he could purify the popular religion of its " perversion " while falling back on its early purity. His attacks on idolatry, his decla- ration of the equality of all living creatures, without distinction of caste, rank, or wealth, under the moral government of God, and of their duty to worship Him according to the most sacred mysteries of the Veds, roused at once the superstitious fear and the aristo- cratic selfishness of the orthodox famiUes. They met the Brumho Sobha by instituting the Dharma Sobha, to uphold Brahmanism and all its consequences, such as suttee and the denial of civil and religious liberty, of property and marriage to dissidents from idolatry. Thus Hindoo society became divided into opposing camps, while the Hindoo College youths formed a third entrenchment in support of pure atheism and libertin- ism. These were the three powers at work, unconnected by any agency save the slow and indirect influence of English literature in the hands of vicious teachers, un- opposed by Christianity in any form, denounced at a distance, and not once fairly grappled with by any Christian man, from the Bishop to the Baptist mission- aries, who had been telegraphed from the Sandheads as "papists" requiring the special attention of the police. The Serampore missionaries, indeed, had taken a part in the conflict, and their quarterly Friend of India had given voice to Christ's teaching on all subjects, human and divine. But they were not on the spot ; and, as we shall see, they made the mistake of fighting Rammohun Roy instead of first using him as an ally against the common foe, and then educating him up to the revealed standard. If Rammohun Roy had found Christ, what a revolution there would have been in Bengal ! But God works by His own method, and He sent Alexander Duff to its people and its government, when He had thus prepared the Hindoo to help him. ^t. 24. RAMMOHUN ROYS SUPPORT. 11/ Having listened to the young Scotsman's statement of his objects and plans, Rammohun Roy expressed general approval. All true education, the reformer emphatically declared, ought to be religious, since the object was not merely to give information, but to develop and regulate all the powers of the mind, the emotions of the heart, and the workings of the con- science. Though himself not a Christian by profession he had road and studied the Bible, and declared that, as a book of religious and moral instruction it was unequalled. As a believer in God he also felt that everything should be begun by imploring His blessing. He therefore approved of the opening of the proposed school with prayer to God. Then, of his own accord, he added that, having studied the Vedas, the Koran and the Tripitakas of the Buddhists, he nowhere found any prayer so brief and all-comprehensive as that which Christians called the Lord's Prayer. Till, there- fore, Mr. Duff had sufficiently mastered the Bengalee and his pupils the English, he recommended him to study and daily use the Lord's Prayer in the Ben- galee or English, according to circumstances. But he entirely approved of using the English language, and not the Bengalee, Persian, Arabic or Sanscrit, for con- veying sound European knowledge. This led him also to remark that he entirely disapproved of Government having established a new Sanscrit college in Calcutta, against which, at the time of its establishment, he solemnly protested, on the ground that instead of thereby enlightening the native mind according to the intention of the British Parliament, the authorities were confirming it in error and prejudice, and rivet- ing upon it the chains of darkness. He declared of the Indian Government that it had acted just as if the English Government, professing to enlighten the natives of the British Isles, instead of setting up a Il8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. school or college for improved literature, science, and philosophy, had established a great seminary for the teaching of all the scholastic, legendary, and other absurdities of the middle ages. " As a youth," he said to Mr. Duff, " I acquired some knowledge of the English language. Having read about the rise and progress of Christianity in apostolic times, and its corruptions in the succeeding ages, and then of the Christian Reformation which shook off these corruptions and restored it to its primitive purity, I began to think that something similar might havo taken place in India, and similar results might follow here from a reformation of the popular idolatry.'* Till his study of the Gospels, Rammohun Roy had not distinguished between the one universal entity of Pan- theism and the personal and supreme God of Theism. When he engaged the Baptist missionary, Mr. Adam, to teach him Greek and Hebrew, he so shook his tutor's faith in the revealed Trinity of Scripture that the Christian relinquished his oflBce, became Editor of tho India Gazette, and was generally known in Calcutta as " the second fallen Adam." Then came the contro- versy with Serampore. Christ had drawn Rammohun so far as to a personal God in the Christian sense. Had he, at this stage, fallen into the hands of a theo- logian of comprehensive views and wide sympathies with inquirers struggling to ascertain truth, especially religious truth, in its highest forms, he might have been led to realize, not merely the perfect humanity but the Divinity of Christ as set forth in the Scrip- tures, and on their divine authority. Though the nature of the incarnation and of the Trinity was incom- prehensible to finite and spiritually blinded reason, the facts might have been believed on suflBcient authority. It so happened that one of the Serampore mission- aries took him up rather sharply from the title of his ALi. 24- RAJA RAilMOHUN ROYS CHRISTIANITY. II9 pamphlet, " The Precepts of Jesus the Guide to Hap- piness," which seemed to imply that moral precepts alone are sufficient to attain to supreme felicity. This was exposed as a system of mere legalism. Had Rammohun Roy been an orthodox Christian, and, re- linquishing orthodoxy, he had come to profess theism and published such a treatise with such a title, it would indubitably have been a sign of his falling from the truth. But it was overlooked that he had been born and brought up an idolater, so that to renounce polytheism in all its forms, and attain to a clear belief in the existence of one God, Creator of all things, was an evidence of his having made considerable strides upwards towards the attainment of truth. This provoked him to publish an elaborate reply, which again called forth a rejoinder, and that another from him, so that the controversy became bitter, and he was kept back from the higher doctrines of the Christian^ faith. Such was his attitude towards Christianity when Mr. Duff first made his acquaintance ; but he never lost his extreme veneration for the character of Jesus Christ, and his admiration of the supreme purity and subli- mity of His moral teachings. Subsequently Mr. Duff and he had many earnest and solemn discussions on the subject. The testimony of John Foster shows that this remarkable Hindoo died believing in the divinity of the mission of Jesus Christ, including His miracles, but had not attained to an assurance of the deity of His person. Greatly cheered by the emphatic concurrence of Rammohun Roy, Mr. Duff said the real difficulty now was, where, or how, to get a hall in the native city in which to commence operations ; for the natives, owing to caste prejudices, were absolutely averse to letting any of their houses to a European for European purposes. Then, if a suitable place could be got, how I20 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1830. could youths of the respectable classes be induced to attend, since he was resolved to teach the Bible in every class, and he was told that this would constitute an insuperable objection. For, at that early period, the ignorant Hindoos regarded the Bible with something like loathing and hatred, as the great antagonist of their Sh asters ; they were also actuated by the super- stitious belief that to take the Bible into their hands, and read any portion of it, would operate upon them, like a magical spell, forcing them to become Christians. Raramohun Roy at once offered the small hall of the Brumho Sobha, in the Chitpore road, for which he had been paying to the five Brahman owners five pounds a month of rental. The few worshippers were about to use a new building which he had himself erected before leaving for England, with the honour of Raja, on a mission from the titular Emperor of Delhi to represent certain complaints against the East India Company. As to pupils, his personal friends were sufiiciently free from prejudice to send their sons at his request. Driving at once to the spot, the gener- ous Hindoo reformer secured the hall for the Christian missionary from Scotland at four pounds a month ; the liberal Dwarkanath Tagore, who also afterwards died in England, being one of the five proprietors. Point- ing to a punkah suspended from the roof, Rammohun said with a smile, " I leave you that as my legacy." After a few days five bright-eyed youths of the }f^ higher class, mostly Brahmanical, called upon Mr. Duff, at Dr. Brown's where he still resided, with a note of introduction from Rammohun Roy stating that these five, with the full consent of their friends, were ready to attend him whenever he might open the school. One of these, a Koolin named Khettur Mohun Chatterjee, turned out a first-rate scholar, entered the Govern- ment service, and attained to one of the highest ^t. 24. THE FIRST DAY OF DUFFS COLLEGE. 121 offices which a native could then hold. Pie was long: greatly respected and trusted for his intelligence and integrity. Having met in the hall with the five on a day appointed, by the aid of an interpreter Mr. Duff explained to them, in a general way, his in- tentions and plans. They seemed highly delighted, and went away resolved to explain the matter to their friends. In a day or two several new youths appeared along with them, requesting admission. On every successive morning there was a fresh suc- cession of applicants, till classification and weeding out became necessary. When that had been done, a day was fixed for the public opening of the school, at ten a.m., when Rammohun Roy was present to ex- plain difficulties, and especially to remove the prejudice against reading the Bible. The eventful day was the 13th of July, 1830. Having been meanwhile busy with Bengalee, having obtained from the Bible Society's depository copies of the four Gospels in Bengalee and English, and having borrowed some English primers from the Eurasian teacher of an adventure school, Mr. Duff was ready. Standing up with Rammohun Roy, while all the lads showed the same respect as their own Raja, the Christian missionary prayed the Lord's Prayer slowly in Bengalee. A sight, an hour, ever to be remem- bered ! Then came the more critical act. Himself putting a copy of the Gospels into their hands, the missionary requested some of the older pupils to read. There was murmuring among the Brah- mans among them, and this found voice in the Bengalee protest of a leader — " This is the Christian Shaster. We are not Christians ; how then can we read it ? It may make us Christians, and our friends will drive us out of caste." Now was the time for Ram- mohun Roy, who explained to his young countrymen 122 LIFE OF DE. DUPP. 1830. that they were mistaken. *' Christians, like Dr. Horace Hay man Wilson, have studied the Hindoo Shasters, and you know that he has not become a Hindoo. I myself have read all the Koran again and again, and has that made me a Mussulman ? Nay, I have studied the whole Bible, and you know I am not a Christian. Why, then, do you fear to read it ? Eead and judge for yourself. Not compulsion, but enlight- ened persuasion which you may resist if you choose, constitutes you yourselves judges of the contents of the book." Most of the remonstrants seemed satisfied. Daily for the next month did the Hindoo reformer visit the school at ten for the Bible lesson, and fre- quently thereafter till he left for England, when his eldest son continued to encourage the boys by his presence and their teacher by his kindly counsel. But all the Christian missionaries kept aloof when they did not expostulate with the young teacher, whose weapon of English seemed to them as unbiblical as his aUiance with the author of " The Precepts of Jesus " was unholy. In vain did Duff reiterate to them his leading object, which was, by proper culture, to awaken, develop, stimulate and direct the various powers and susceptibilities of the human mind, and for this end to employ the English language as the most effective instrument ; to imbue the whole know- ledge thus imparted with the spirit of true religion ; and at the same time to devote daily a portion of time in every class to the systematic study of the Bible itself — not in the way of formal scholastic exercise, but of devotional and instructive study, not merely with a view to intellectual illumination but with a view also, by the advocacy of the grace of God's Spirit, to the conversion of the soul to God. It was vain for him thus to show that if what is ordinarily called secular useful knowledge should be largely communi- ^t. 24. OPPOSITION OF THE EARLY MISSIONARIES. 1 23 cated, that •would be in inseparable alliance with divine truth. It was vain for hira to state that lie not only did not disapprove, but on the contrary wholly approved of tlieir modes of operation, as probably the only means which at an early stage could be practised. In the then backward state of things these, he said, were carried on under great disadvantages and consequently compara- tive inefficiency ; still, as progress advanced, the time might come when they could be worked more effec- tively, therefore his own intention was to master the vernacular langruao-e with a view to usefulness in vari- ous forms through that medium. It was vain for him to explain that while the English language would thus be used as the channel of conveying all higher and im- proved knowledge, he was determined that the vernac- ular should be thoroughly taught to the pupils at the same time, as a channel of distribution for the masses. The other missionaries constantly harped on this fact, that many of the low natives in Calcutta sought a smat- tering of English only to carry on dealings with the sailors, whom they allured to low taverns, there to revel in all manner of wickedness, contriving at the same time to rob them of what money they possessed, and often even stripping them of their clothes, and throwing them into the street to be taken up by the police. English had thus come to be in bad odour with the early missionaries, as regarded these low caste natives on the one hand, and its apparent effect in leading the children of the better class natives into the wildest infidelity. With regard to the natives who wished to learn English for such purposes, Mr. Duff's reply was that, even on the low ground of the principles of political economy, he would soon by the multiplication of these overstock the market, and make it necessary for those who wished to obtain better positions to remain longer 124 I'^FE OP DR. DUFF. 1830. at school, SO as to gain a higher degree of knowledge, which might not only enlarge the intellect but regu- late the morals and manners. With regard to the children of the higher classes, his trust was that the thorough inculcation of God's word, with prayer, would have the effect of preventing them from becom- ing utter unbelievers or atheists, and in all respects make them better men and members of society, even if they did not outwardly and formally embrace the Christian faith. On the evening before the day of opening the school, one of the missionaries, who had become his dearest friend, came to his house vehe- mently to expostulate with him at the eleventh hour. When his friend saw that he could make no impression on the far-seeing Scotsman, he rose, and, shaking him by the hand, looked imploringly in his face, saying that he was sorely grieved that his coming to India might, by the course he intended to pursue, prove a curse rather than a blessing. The simple remonstrant exclaimed, as a parting shot, "You will deluge Cal- cutta with rogfues and villains." The school thus fairly started, let us look at its founder at work. The student who had passed out of St. Andrews University its first scholar, its most brilHant essayist, its most eloquent debater; the preacher whose fervent utterances had thrilled the coldest assemblies by addresses which promised a rival to Chalmers himself, and were afterwards hardly ex- celled by Edward Irving's ; the man who had been the stay and the counsellor of all on board the two wrecked vessels, is doing — what ? Destitute of assis- tants, save an untrained Eurasian lad, and despised by his brother missionaries, he is spending six hours a day in teaching some three hundred Bengalee youths the English alphabet, and many an hour at night in preparing a series of graduated school-books, named JEt 24. WRITING TRIMERS AND TEACHING THE ALPHABET. I 25 " Instructors," which held their place in every Chris- tian English school in Bengal for the third of a century. Men, wise in their own narrow sphere and unable to comprehend, because unwilling to study, circumstances so different as those of the educated Hindoos, ask if the powers of a minister of the gospel are to be degraded by such work ? Yet without that sowing of seed the great tree would still have to be planted. Without that humility Duff would have been like the average of his fellows, whose incon- derate short-sightedness was soon turned into admir- ation and then imitation. It was the genius of Duff, sanctified by the purest self-sacrifice, that led him to begin thus, as his Master taught, in the spirit of a little child. His school-books were constructed on a system. The first contained lessons on interesting common subjects, in which the pupils might be drilled not only in reading but in grammatical and other exer- cises. The second consisted of religious lessons, taken for the most part from the Bible itself, — especially the historical portions, and put into forms adapted to the opening intelligence of the youth. These were carefully read, expounded and enforced on the understanding, heart and conscience, as purely religious exercises, without reference to construing which would only desecrate the subject matter. As to the English alphabet, which most of the pupils had to begin for the first time. Duff devised a plan for teaching a large number simultaneously. He got a board supported by an upright frame, and along the board a series of parallel grooves. He then got the letters of the English alphabet painted on separate slips of wood. Around this upright frame a large class was arranged in a semi-circle. The first letter with which he uniformly began was the letter " 0,'* 126 IIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1830. because of tlie simplicity of its form and sound, and because tlie sound and tlie name are the same, as is the case in Sanscrit and Sanscrit-derived vernaculars. When this letter was thoroughly mastered, which was soon done, the next letter which he usually put into one of the grooves was " X." He would then bring the two letters together, and pronouncing them would say, " 0, X, Ox." He then would tell the pupils that this was the name in English for an animal with which they were all well acquainted, and would give them the corresponding word in Bengalee. This always delighted them, as they said they nob only knew two letters of the English alphabet, but had already got hold of an English word. So over- joyed they were at this, that when they went out into the street, and met an ox pulling a native cart (which they were sure soon to do), they went along gleefully shouting at the top of their voice, " Ox, Ox." But the new missionary was not satisfied with giving the Bengalee or the English word. He began to question the boys as to the properties and the uses of the objects, or different parts of the objects, which the word represented. This exercise always delighted them, for it was fitted to draw out what information they already possessed, and to stimulate the powers of observation. In this way the intellect was fairly awakened, and the boys de- lighted in thinking that they had acquired something like a new power or faculty. In a word, they had become thinking beings. The same process of minute interrogation was carried on in all the classes. The boys, in their exuberance of delight, would be con- stantly speaking of it to their friends at home, to the pupils of other schools, and to acquaintances whom they might meet in the street. In this way, as well as for other reasons, the school soon acquired an ex- ^t. 24. THE INTELLECTUAL METHOD OF TEACHING. 12/ tensive popularity among the native community, and the pressure for admission increased far beyond what the little hall could accommodate. In the face of the old mechanical and monotonous style of teaching then universally prevalent, this method was felt to be a real novelty. In the course of time it led others, so far as they could, to imitation, so that ere long the new system was fairly initiated in most of the Calcutta and in many of the Bengal schools.* We have Duflf's own account of the genesis of his educational system, given to the students who had been made by it all they became the third of a century afterwards, when he was bidding them farewell. His method was the same to which John Wilson was led in Bombay. " A passage in the introduction to the cele- brated Lectures on Mental Philosophy by the late Dr. Thomas Brown, the successor of the famous Dugald Stewart, relative to Education being, when properly conducted, the grandest practical application of mental science, first drew my attention, theoretically, while yet a student, to the real philosophical basis of a sound and enlightened education. A personal inspection, at a much later period, of the Edinburgh Sessional School, then, in the absence of Normal schools, the most re- nowned in the kingdom, showed me what the intel- lectual and interrogatory system of education might and ought to be in practice. With adaptations and modifications specially suited to the peculiar circum- stances of India as it then was, this was essentially the system introduced and wrought out, from the very first day on which our school was opened." • A similar process was going on in Scotland where Dr. Andrew Thomson condescended to the same humble but then necessary tusk of primer-writing, alphabet-teaching and map- illustration, and trained Mr. Thomas Oliphant to make English education what it has since become in Edinburgh and in Glasgow. t 128 LIFE OF DE. DUPP. 183a Increased accommodation was secured, and the next step was taken. The decree went forth that none would be allowed to begin English who could not read with ease their own vernacular. The purely Bengalee department was then created, in a bamboo shed with tiled roof erected in the back court. Under pundits carefully supervised by the missionaries, that has ever since formed an essential part of the organization. But, for the first time in Bengal, the English-learning classes also were required to attend it for an hour daily. This contemporaneous study had two results of vast national importance, — it tended to the enriching of the vernacular language with words, and the then barren literature with pure and often spiritual ideas. This system developed into that study of Sanscrit which, in due time, the University was enabled to in- sist on in even its undergraduate examinations, with the happiest effects on both the language and the litera- ture. Thus, too, Mr. Duff carried on his own Bengalee studies, the rivalry between teacher and taught, and the marvellous aptitude of the taught, adding to his one over-mastering motive a keen intellectual stimulus. That could not be drudgery which was thus conducted, and was in reality the laying of the foundations of the Church of India broad and deep in the very mind and conscience of each new generation. Thus the first twelve months passed. The school became famous in the native city ; the missionary had come to be loved with that mixture of affection and awe which his lofty enthusiasm and scorn of ineffi- ciency ever excited in the Oriental ; and the opposition of his own still ignorant brethren was not abated. For this was no gourd to grow in a night and perish in a night; and till vulgar success comes commonplace people do not perceive the gifts of others, as Pascal remarks. Duff now resolved that he must live as well ^t. 24. IN COLLEGE SQUARE. I2g as work m the very midst of the natives, and bo in hourly contact with them in the street as well as in his own house. No European had ever before resided there, nor was any Hindoo prepared to let a house to ( one who would pollute it by the consumption of beef, and cast an evil spell on the neighbourhood. Many a week passed in fruitless endeavours to find an abode, when a two-storied tenement, uninhabited for twelve years because of the belief that it was haunted, was with much entreaty obtained in College Square. The locality, fronting the Hindoo and Sanscrit Colleges, was so central, that it was long afterwards secured by Mr. Barton for the Cathedral Mission College, and the Medical College and University have been built on the third side of the square. Up to this time he had lived to the south, on the same line of road, in Wellesley Square, fronting the Muhammadan College and close to the site of the future Free Church building. Ho thus fairly planted himself in the citadel of the enemy, and he was driven from it to another quarter only by the unhealthiness of the house. He subsequently built his first college, still known as the General Assembly's Institution of the Established Church of Scotland, and his own dwellyug-place — succeeded, after 18i3, by another close "by — in Cornwallis Square, to the north. Despairing of inducing the European community to follow him, in order to test the results of his first year's labour he announced the examination of his pupils in the Freemasons' Hall. To remove the pre- judice that his work was low and fanatical, he secured Archdeacon Corrie as president on the occasion. It was an experiment, but Mr. Dufi'felt confident that the pupils would so acquit themselves as to recommend the school and its system. In this he was not disap- pointed. The reading of the boys ; their acquaintance K 130 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 183a witli tlie elements of EnglisTi grammar, geograpTiy and arithmetic ; the manner in which they explained words and sentences, and illustrated their meaning by ap- posite examples ; the promptitude and accuracy with which they answered the questions put to them — all took the auditors by surprise and filled them with admiration, seeing that the school had been only a twelvemonth in operation. But what astonished them most of all in those early days was the ease and freedom with which the Hindoos read such portions of the Bible as were named to them, as well as the readiness and accuracy with which they answered all questions, not merely on the historical parts but on the doctrines and principles of the Christian faith and morals, to which their attention had been directed in the daily lessons. Altogether the effect produced by that examination was very striking. By those present it was pronounced absolutely marvellous. The three daily English news- papers of Calcutta had their reporters present, who gave such accounts of the examination and the new and felicitous modes of instruction pursued in the school, that European Calcutta talked of nothing else. The opinions of the English residents, official and independent, reacted on the leaders of the native community, till in the second year hundreds were refused admittance to the school from want of ac- commodation, and the number of European visitors interfered so seriously with the regular discipline of the classes that Saturday was set apart for such in- spection. The elder pupils now consented to act as monitors, native assistants pressed their services upon the missionary, and the elementary teaching fell to these as the English classes passed on to collegiate studies in sacred and secular truth. There was another immediate result. Dr. Inglia Mi. 24. THE TAKEI^ DRAXCU MISSION. I3I and the Edinburgh committee liad their desire as to a school in the interior. While visitors from all parts of India, including far Bombay as we shall see, carried away with them the principles of the system to establish schools elsewhere, Mr. Duff was implored to open a similar school at the purely Bengalee town of Takee, forty miles off. There was the ancestral seat of Kaleeuath Roy Chowdery, one of the principal followers of Rammohun Roy. He and his brothers offered all the buildings and appliances for an English, Bengalee and Persian school, to be supervised by Mr. Duff, and taught by men of his own selection and on his own Christian system, whom in the Bengalee and Persian departments the brothers would pay. The triumph was complete. There a vigorous mission school arose, long conducted by the Rev. W. C. Fyfe, now head of the Calcutta Mission, and aided by Dr. Temple, whose widow (now Mrs. W. S. Mackay) and family have ever since been most closely identified with spiritual and mission work. The examination of the school and the example of the Chowdery family led not a few of their wealthy co-religionists in Calcutta to open new schools or improve the old mechanical establishments. At this time Mr. Duff supplied the Hindoo reformer with the following: letter of introduction to Dr. Chal- mers. Had they met during the brief remainder of Raja Rammohun Roy's life, which was spent almost exclusively in the society of English Unitarians, the sympathetic Christian divine, who had himself passed through the last spiritual conflict left for the truth- seeking Hindoo, might have led him to the only wise God, the Saviour. As it was, the Raja died in 1833, declaring that he was neither Christian, Muhammadan, nor Hindoo. To the last he preser\ted his caste, that be might secure his civil rights of property and in- 132 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1830. heritance and retain his nationality. His best bio- grapher pronounces him " a religious Benthamite." •* Calcutta, College Square, 18th Nov., 1830. ** My Dear Sir, — This may probably be delivered to you by the celebrated E-ammohun Roy. His general character and acquirements are too well known to re- quire any description on my part. And when I say that he has rendered to me the most valuable and efficient assistance in prosecuting some of the objects of the General Assembly's Mission, I feel confident I have said enough to secure from you towards him every possible attention in your power. Any further parti- culars illustrative of the accompanying document, which is a copy of what I originally inserted in a religious periodical published in Calcutta, you, as a member of the Assembly's committee, may learn from Dr. Inglis. I would write to you more frequently and more fully, were it not that I ever cherish the impression that whatever is addressed to Dr. Inglis, as chairman of the Assembly committee, is equally addressed to every individual member of it. Remember me kindly to Mrs. Chalmers and family. Yours most sincerely and grate- fully, " Alexander Duff." Dr. Inglis and the Church of Scotland, sorely tried by the disasters which befell the first missionary, and even before they could learn his safe arrival at Cal- cutta, determined to pursue their original plan of sending out two colleagues to assist him whom they had appointed " the head master of a seminary of education with branch schools." One was most happily found in a tall, slightly bent and pale youth from Thurso, who, having studied at Aberdeen Univer- sity, completed his course at St. Andrews a year after Duff, but in time to know well the man whom he ever ^t. 24. HIS FIEST ENGLISH ASSISTANT. 1 33 afterwards worked along with in loving harmony. The Rev. VV. S. Mackay, who joined the infant mission in the autumn of 1831, was so accomplished and elegant a scholar that it is difficult to say whether he became more remarkable as a learned theologian, as a master of English literature and style, or as an astronomer. A lofty and intense spirituality marked all his work, and only a robust physique was wanting to him. But even his assistance was not enoufrh, as the school developed into a college, and branch schools like Takee demanded organization and supervision, while other duties than that of daily teaching denied the missionary a moment's leisure. Competent lay teaching of secular subjects was required, and for this the acute but imitative Bengalee intellect had not yet been sufficiently trained. Mr. Duff thus found his first English assistant. \ Among the passengers of the ilfoiVa"^ily' a Mr. CliU, T the son of an English squire, who was going out to one of the great mercantile houses of Calcutta. Beinsf of a combative disposition he was placed by the captain next to the missionary, who soon discovered that he was highly educated and well read, especially in the then little studied science of political economy. On the failure of the firm in which the youth became an assistant, he sought the advice of Mr. Duff, who at once offered him the position of assistant master on sixty pounds a year — the highest salary he was em- powered to give, but invited him to his house as a guest. Mr. Clift did his work in the higher classes well. In the house his conduct was upright, and at least respectful in reference to religion, on which, how- ever, he maintained a studied silence. He was sent to the Takee branch school as its first master. Thence he returned, stricken with jungle fever, to the tender ministrations of Mrs. Duff. In the delirium of tlio 134 I^IFE OF DR. DUFF. 1831. disease lie was licard repeating Cowper*s hymn, " There is a fountain filled with blood." As he recovered he confessed that he had been trained by pious parents, and that he had led a careless life. He became a changed man on his return to Takee, from which Government took him subsequently to make him prin- cipal of an English college. The incident powerfully confirmed the young missionary in his conviction of what was then little recognised in educational systems, the importance of saturating the young mind with divine truth. But the episode has a twofold interest apart from that. This youth was only one of many of that class of adventurers who, like Meadows Taylor in Western India, and hundreds of well-educated lads who enlisted in the East India Company's Artillery es- pecially, sought in service in the East, mercantile, military and uncovenanted, the career denied to their roving and romantic spirits elsewhere. Sir Henry Lawrence, after he published his marvellous sketch of the lives of such military adventurers in the Punjab,* more than once promised us to write a book on the prominent English, Scotch and Irish adventurers in India, for none knew them so well seeing that none assisted them so generously. But Mr. Clif t had even a closer interest for Alexander Duff, introduced as the missionary had been into the practical and theoretical teaching of political science by Dr. Chalmers, who had in Glasgow just before given a new illustration of the meaning and the working of economics in the highest sense. In his determination to use all truth for the good of the people of India, and through it to * Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Eunjeet Singh, by Major H. M. L. Lawrence, Bengal Artillery : 1846, The book is now as rare as it is valuable. JEt. 25. TOE FIRST TEACHER OP POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 35 educate tliem to recognise and love the highest truth, DuflP projected a manual of political economy more elementary than the writings of Adam Smith and J. R. McCulloch. Even at the outset he began to suspect, what every year and many a woful blunder like the mortality of the Orissa famine have since proved, that without the data supplied by the old civiliza- tions, the so-called 'pre-historic ' customs and the social systems of the East, political economy must be partial in its generalizations and one-sided in its principles. Still, even as it was in 1831, the science might be a powerful armoury against the caste, the social exclusiveness, the commercial apathy, the in- dustrial antipathy, which marked the Hindoos. Recalling his talk at the cuddy table of the Moira, Duff proposed to Mr. Clift the drafting of such a manual. The manuscript he expanded with new illus- trations and vivid contrasts, all leading up to Christian teaching. The book became most popular, as taught in the spirit in which it was written. Thus Mr. Duff's school was the first in which political economy was expounded in a country where, indeed, the Permanent Settlement of Cornwallis and the famous ' Fifth Re- port ' had groped in the dark after a just and self- developing system of land revenue and treatment of land tenures ; but where Holt Mackenzie and Mertins Bird, Thomason and John Lawrence were yet bene- volently to dogmatize in favour of thirty years' leases, which each changing Government uses to screw more and more out of the peasantry, and thus chiefly makes them unable to withstand famine when it comes. But the story is not complete. So little had political economy been mastered in the land of Adam Smith and in the kirk of Thomas Chalmers, that the com- mittee condemned the enthusiastic missionary, when he joyfully reported his success, for teaching a subject 136 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1831. wMcli tlie monopolist Government of tlie East India Company might confound with, politics ! Alexander Dafif was not only in the citadel of Hindoo- ism ; he had already dug his mine and laid the powder. The fire from heaven was about to fall, as he invoked it in the prayer of Lord Bacon*: — " To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour most humble and hearty supplications ; that He, remembering the calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open unto us new refreshments out of the fountains of His goodness for the alleviation of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine ; neither that, from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather that, — by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, — there may be given up unto faith the things which are faith's. — Amen." • Quoted in India and India Missions as tlie " appropriate con- clusion " of the book. CHAPTER VI. 1831—1833. THE FIRST EXPLOSION AND THE FOUR CONVERTS. Eagerness of the Bengalee Yonth to learn English. — Self-evidenc- ing Power of Christ's Teaching. — The Pharisees of Brahmanism. — The Disintegrating Effect of true Science. — The Cry raised of " Hiudooism in Danger." — Projected Course of Lectures. — Derozio and the Atheists of the Hindoo College. — Tom Paine the favourite Author. — The first and only Lecture. — The City in an Uproar. — The Governor-General privately Encourages the Missionary. — Duff studying Bengalee. — First propounds national system of Female Education. — The Debating Societies. — Robert Burns on the banks of the Ganges.— The Native Press, English and Vernacular. — Krishna Mohun Banerjea — Second Course of Lectures. — Mohesh Chunder Ghose, the First Convert, brings his Brother to Christ. — Confessions of Krishna Mohun and his Baptism. — The Third or Martyr Convert. — The Fourth Convert at last Surrendered by his Father to Duff.— Origin of the Calcutta Missionary Conference. — Duff's great scheme of a United Chris- tian College foiled by sectarian controversy in England. — A Bombay Civilian's Picture of the Revolution in Bengalee society. — Duff's private estimate of his Success and faith in his Policy. — The English Language and British Administration required to do their part. " Throughout the whole progress of these preparatory arrangemeDts," Mr. Duff afterwards wrote, " the ex- citement among the natives continued unabated. They pursued us along the streets. They threw open the very doors of our palankeen, and poured in their supplications with a pitiful earnestness of counte- nance that misrht have softened a heart of stone. In the most plaintive and pathetic strains they deplored their ignorance. They craved for ' English reading ' — * English knowledge.' They constantly appealed to 138 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1831. the compassion of an ' Ingraji ' or Englishman, ad- dressing us in the style of Oriental hyperbole, as ' the great and fathomless ocean of all imaginable excellences,' for having come so far to teach poor ignorant Beno^alees. And then, in broken Ena^lish, some would say, ' Me good boy, oh take me ;' others, * Me poor boy, oh take me;' — some, * Me want read your good books, oh take me ;' others, ' Me know your commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me, — oh take me ;' — and many, by way of final appeal, ' Oh take me, and I pray for you.' And even after the final choice was made, such was the continued press of new candidates that it was found absolutely necessary to issue small written tickets for those who had succeeded ; and to station two men at the outer door to admit only those who were of the selected number." Payment for class-books, and the formal signature by parents and guardians of an agreement to secure punctual and regular attendance, struck at the root of two evils which marked all the other schools and colleges in Calcutta. The more severe test of steady attention to the Bible studies was no less cheerfully submitted to, parents also being invited to listen to the hour's preaching to the young every day, and to satisfy themselves that Christianity did not act as a spell, although it might in time persuade as a divine force co-operating with the truth- seeking soul ; and was in any case a perfect system of moral principles and practice. The Lord's Prayer was succeeded by the master parable of the Prodigal Son, and then came the apostolic teaching to the Corinthians on. what our fathers called charity. " Throughout, all were attentive ; and the minds of a few became intensely riveted, which the glistening eye and changeful countenance, reflecting as in a ^t. 25. SEfiF-EVIDENClNG LIGHT OF TilE SGUiriUUIiS. 1 39 mirror the inward thouglifc and varying emotion, most clearly indicated. At last, when to the picture of charity the concluding stroke was given by the pencil of inspiration in the emphatic words ' endureth all things,' one of the young men, the very Brahman who but a few days before had risen up to oppose the reading of the Bible, now started from his seat ex- claiming aloud, ' Oh, sir, that is too good for us. Who can act up to that? who can act up to that?' A finer exemplification, taking into view all the cir- cumstances of the case, could not well be imagined of the self-evidencing light of God's holy word. It was an almost unconscious testimony to the superior ex- cellence of Christianity, extorted from the lips of an idolatrous Brahman by the simple manifestation of its own divine spirit. It was a sudden burst of spontane- ous homage to the beauty and power and holiness of the truth, in its own naked and unadorned simplicity, at a moment when the mind was wholly untrammelled and unbiassed by prejudice, or party interest, or sect." Then followed the Sermon on the Mount, which drove home to a people more enslaved by the letter that killeth than even those to whoin it was originally addressed, the lesson of the Spirit. " AVhen, on one occasion, the question was put, * What do you mean by Pharisee ?' a boy of inferior caste, looking signifi- 'y/ cantly at a young Braliman in the same class and then ' pointing to him, arclily replied, * He is one of our Pharisees ! ' — while the Brahman simply retorted in great good humour, ' True, my caste is like that of the Pharisees, or worse ; but you know / am not to bo like my caste.' " Nor was this all. From the simple reading of the words that promise blessedness to him who loves and prays for his enem}^ one youth was turned to the feet of the Divine Speaker and became the fourth convert 140 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1831, of the mission. For days and weeks the young Hindoo could not help crying out, " ' Love your enemies ! bless them that curse you ! ' How beautiful ! how divine! surely this is the truth!" And in the more directly secular lessons science came to carry on what grace had begun in the morning and was yet to com- plete. The explanation of the word " rain " on the Scoto-Socratic method in a junior class, led to the discovery by the lads of its true nature, as neither Indra-born nor from a celestial elephant, according to the Shasters, but the result of natural laws. " Then what becomes of our Shaster, if your account is true," remarked a young Brahman. " The Shaster is true, Brahma is true, and your Gooroo's account must be false — and yet it looks so like the truth." This was but a slight shock compared with that given on the next eclipse. Mr. Duff was himself as much surprised by the effect of his teaching as his pupils. He wrote of this time : — " Though we were previously acquainted in a general way with the fact, that modern literature and science were as much opposed as Christianity itself to certaiu fundamen- tal tenets of Hindooism, our own conception on the subject was vague and indeterminate. It floated in the horizon as an intangible abstraction. Now this incident, by reducing the abstract into the concrete, by giving the vague generality a substantial form, by converting the loosely theoretical into the practically experimental, — at once arrested, fixed and defined it. A vivid glimpse was opened, not only of the effect of true knowledge when brought in contact with Hindooism, but of the modus operandi, the precise mode in which it operated in producing the eflect." The effect of the first year's teaching, Biblical, scientific, and literary, through English and through Bengalee, on even the young Hindoos, was to lead uEt. 2 5- THE CRY OF ' IIINDOOISM IN DANGER.* 141 them into licence before they could reach true self- regulating liberty ; for the Bengalee boy just before or / at the age of puberty is the most earnest, acute and 1 loveable of all students. The older lads, " impetuous with youthful ardour and fearless of consequences, carried the new light which had arisen on their own minds to the bosom of their families, proclaimed its excellences on the house-tops, and extolled its praises in the street-assemblies. With the zeal of proselytes they did not always observe circumspection in their demeanour and style of address, or manifest due con- sideration for the feelings of those who still sat in darkness. Even for the infallible Gooroos and other holy Brahmans, before whom they were wont to bow in prostrate submission, their reverence was greatly diminished. They would not conceal their gradual change of sentiment on many vital points. At length their undaunted bearing and freedom of speech began to create a general ferment among the staunch ad- herents of the old faith. The cry of ' Hindooism in danger' was fairly raised." The result was seen one forenoon, when only half a dozen of the three hundred youths appeared in the class-room. To the question of the puzzled missionary the only reply was a copy of that morning's Ghundrika. This Bengalee paper had been established to fight for ■ the sacred right of burning living widows with their/ dead husbands. Now, as the organ of the orthodox' Dharma Soblia, of which its editor was secretary, it had become the champion of the whole Brahmanical system against an aggressive evangelical Christianity of a very different type from the secularism of the Hindoo College with which it had of late been allied. The decree went forth that all who attended the General Assembly's Institution were to be excluded from caste, and it was urged that a yellow flag or 142 LIPE OF DR. DUFF. 1031. other unmistakable symbol should be planted in front of the building to warn the unwary against the moral and religious pestilence. But the Hindoo society of the capital had already become too rationalistic in its mode of viewing the national faith, and too selfish in its desire to secure the best education which would lead to official and mercantile appointments. The panic did not last a week. The Holy Assembly had no greater power than public opinion chose to give it. Further diatribes against the missionary and his work revealed only the essential weakness of a body which the earlier reforms of Rammohun Roy had provoked into existence. Mr. Duff went calmly on till the classes became more crowded than ever. The quiet- ness and confidence of an assured faith and an in- tellectual conviction were seen in his drawing up, after the experience of the first six months, " the scheme of a complete educational course which might reqiiire nine or ten years for its development, with grounds, reasons and illustrations " occupying in all about a hundred closely written folio pages. This he sent off to Dr. Inglis as the mechanism of the Christian Institute to regenerate Bengal and light a fire in British India, from which ever since many a torch has been kindled to help in the destined de- struction of every form of error. The college thus securely established in native so- ciety, triumphing over the ignorance of his own countrymen and already famous throughout India, Mr. Duff proceeded to use at the same time the two other more immediately powerful weapons of lectures and the press. The minds of not a few leading Hindoos had been emptied of their ancestral idols spiritual and ecclesiastical, and were swept and garnished. Into some, thus deprived of even the support which the ethi- cal elements of their old orthodoxy supplied, the new ^t. 25. TUE FERMENT IN THE HINDOO COLLEGE. I43 demons of lawless lust and Western vice bad entered with the secularism and anti-theism of the Hindoo College, so that their last state was worse than the first. Others, saved for the hour from this, were in the temporary attitude of candid inquirers, bold to violence in their denunciation of the follies of which they and their fathers had long been the victims, but timid towards the new faith, with its tremendous claims on their conscience and irresistible appeals to their intellect. In May, 1829, the teaching of a Eurasian of some genius and much conceit, named Derozio, had begun to undermine the faith of the students of the Hindoo College in " all religious prin- ciples whatever," as even its secularist managers ex- pressed it. Hence they formally resolved that Mr. D'Anselme, the head-master, *' in communication with the teachers, check as far as possible all disquisitions tending to unsettle the belief of the boys in the great principles of natural religion." This interference only fanned the smouldering fires. Discussion blazed out into ridicule. Young Brahmans refused to be guilty of the hypocrisy of submitting to investment with the poita, or sevenfold Brahmanical cord ; many sub- stituted favourite lines of Pope's *' Iliad " for their daily and festival prayers. In February, 1830, seeing that the Hindoo College was thus threatened with ex- tinction, although all that was going on was only the logical outcome of their principles and their adminis- tration, the managers threatened with immediate dis- missal teachers who did not " abstain from any com- munications on the subject of the Hindoo religion with the boys," or who suffered " any practices incon- sistent wdtli the Hindoo notions of propriety, such as eating or drinking in the school or class-rooms." By April, 1831, the ferment had so increased that Mr. Derozio was discharged as " the root of all evils and 144 LIFE OF BR. DUFF. 1 83 1. cause of public alarm." Students of ^HJie dining party" who had broken caste by eating animal food, or food with Hindoos of other castes than their own, were removed ; and it was determined that " such books as may injure their morals should not be allowed to be brought, taught, or read in the college." This was what fifteen years' teaching of English and Sanscrit, by the East India Company and orthodox Bengalees combined, at the bidding of Parliament which sought the moral and spiritual elevation of our native sub- jects, had resulted in. The unhappy Derozio, whose end was even sadder than his life which might have reflected lustre on the valuable but then uncared for community of Eurasians, was charged with incul- cating " the non-existence of God, the lawfulness of disrespect towards parents, the lawfulness of marriage with sisters." He admitted the first, but pleaded that his chief object had been to enable the boys " to ex- amine both sides of the question." Mr. Hare still was of opinion that he was a highly competent teacher; and Dr. H. H. Wilson, the official visitor on the part of Government, which spent the public funds on the place, declared he had never observed any ill effects from Derozio' s instructions. But the atheistic and immoral poet was dismissed in deference to the clam- ours of the orthodox idolaters, although the principal English text-books, taught by men in quite as full accord with them as he, were the more licentious plays of the Restoration and David Hume's Essays ! Outside of the classes, but constantly referred to by the teachers, the favourite book was Paine' s coarse "Age of Reason," which a respectable deist would not now mention save as a warning. That book, his better reply to Burke, his "Rights of Man," and his minor pieces born of the filth of the worst period of the French Revo- lution, an American publisher issued in a cheap octavo ^t. 25. SOEPl'IOAL INQUIRY. 1 45 edition of a thousand copies, and shipped the whole to the Calcutta market; such was the notoriety of the anti-christian success of the college which Rammohun Roy was ashamed to patronise. These were all bought at once at two shillings a copy, and such was the continued demand for the worst of the treatises that eight rupees (sixteen shillings) was vaiuly offered for it.* Thus, from the opposite poles of truth, were the two English colleges — the old secularists' and the new evangelical missionary's — brought into collision, as the former retired foiled in its assault on Hindooism, and the latter advanced with renewed trust in the God of truth to fire the train. Unlike the horror-stricken but passive Christian preachers in the vernacular chapels and schools of Calcutta at that time, the young Scotsman threw himself into the breach made in the at last crumblino; walls of Hindooism. "We rejoiced," he wrote, "in June, 1830, when, in the metropolis of British India, we fairly came in contact with a rising body of natives, who had learnt to think and to discuss all subjects with un- shackled freedom, though that freedom was ever apt to degenerate into licence in attempting to demolish the claims and pretensions of the Christian as well as every other professedly revealed faith. We hailed the circumstance, as indicating the approach of a period for which we had waited and longed and prayed. We hailed it as heralding the dawn of an auspicious era, — an era that introduced something neiv into the hitherto undisturbed reign of a hoary and tyrannous antiquity." Having by his first year's work of teaching and \ personal influence carried on this work of preparation for calm inquiry, he took three men of like spirit with * Calcutta Christian Observer for Angnst, 1832. L 146 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1831, himself into his counsels. Dr. Dealtry, who succeeded Corrie first as Archdeacon of Calcutta and then as Bishop of Madras, was at that time chaplain of the Old Church, and was worthy of such predecessors as Martjn and Claudius Buchanan. John Adam had been his own fellow-student at St. Andrews, and was then of the London Missionary Society. Mr. James Hill, also a Congregationalist, was the popular and able pastor of that Union Chapel in which Christians of all sects still gather on the first day of every year for catholic communion, after a fashion too rare in divided Christendom. All were eager observers of native progress, and agreed to co-operate in delivering the first course of lectures to educated Bengalees. The subject was Natural and Revealed Religion. The first lecture, on the External and Internal Evidences, fell to Mr. DufF; Mr. Adam undertook the second, on the testimony of History and Fulfilled Prophecy ; Mr. Hill was to prepare the third, on Christ in the Four Gospels, and the Genius and Temper of His Religion. Dr. Dealtry was to close the course with a statement of the doctrines of Christianity. But to prepare the native mind for unprejudiced inquiry, Mr. Hill delivered an introductory lecture on the moral qualifications necessary for investigating truth. Mr. Duff fitted up a lecture room in his house, which, being still in College Square, was most central for the class invited. To some that room became the place of a new birth, and its memories still hallow the similar work, on the same site, of the Church Missionary Society. It was a sultry night in the first week of August when twenty of the foremost students of his own and of the Hindoo College took their places in expectation of a novel exposition. With the chastened eloquence which used to attract the Governor-General and his JEt 25. THE NATIVE CITY IN AN urPvOAR. 1 47 wife to the dissenting chapel, Mr. Hill treated a sub- ject that called forth no controversy, and appealed to admitted but too often neglected principles. In silence the young men separated, looking forward to the real tug of war a week after in Duff's lecture on God and His Rovcaling. That never took place. Next morning the news flew like wildfire over Cal- cutta. Students of the Hindoo College had actually attended, in the house of a missionary, a lecture on Christianity ! Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The college that day was almost deserted. Continu- ing to rage for days the orthodox leaders accused the Government itself of breach of faith. Had it not promised to abstain from interference with their re- ligion, and now insidiously it had brought out a wild Padre, and planted him just opposite the college, like a battery, to break down the bulwarks of the Hindoo faith and put Christianity in its place ! In all haste, Dr. H. H. Wilson, Mr. Hare, Captain Price and the native m.anagers put up a notice threatening with expulsion students who should attend " political and religious discussions." That was the degree of their love of truth. The students themselves remonstrated. Mr. Hill published an indignant exposure of the mis- representation and cowardice of the college authori- ties ; and Mr. Duff at greater length assailed the wisdom, justice and goodness of their tyrannical decree. But he was not the man to rashly imperil the cause in which, like the first missionary, it be- hoved him to be all things to all men if thereby he might win some. That was still the time of the East India Company's absolutism, when the Governor- General had the right of deporting non-ofiicial settlers without assigning reason. Not so very long before, the able civilian John Adam had gagged the press and ruined, by deporting, Mr. J. Silk Buckingham, to 148 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1831. appease Dr. Bryce and the John Bull newspaper. The very existence of the mission might be at stake, and prudence at least demanded that all the facts should be known to the Government, if only that the mis- sionary might be assured that it shared none of the Company's ignorant fears. Mr. Duff, therefore, thought it right to solicit a private interview with the Grovernor-Greneral. Lord William Bentinck listened with the utmost attention and patience. At the close of the statement he said in substance : Assuming the accuracy of the facts which he could not possibly doubt, he felt that Mr. Duff had done nothing to contravene the law, nothing that ought to disturb the public peace. At the same time he added, from his knowledge of the Hindoo charac- ter, that it would be well to allow the present tumult quietly to subside. After a time it might be in Mr. Duff's power more successfully to renew the attempt. So far as he himself was concerned, he could not, as Governor- Greneral, in any way mix himself up with missionary affairs, or even officially express sympathy and approval. But he declared that privately, as an individual Christian man, he felt deep sympathy with the avowed object of the missionaries, and ap- proved of the operations of all who carried them on in the genuine spirit of the gospel. He who had been Governor of Madras during the Yellore mutiny, re- peated the advice patiently to wait for a seasonable opportunity to recommence what, if Mr. Duff -went about it calmly yet firmly, he himself would advance by his private sympathy and support. This for the moment answered the purpose ; fear and alarm were abated. The most advanced students, however, though having no good-will to Christianity, but the contrary, felt that this was a violent inter- ference with their freedom and independence. They ^t. 25. FIRST BENGALEE SERMON. FEMALE EDUCATION. 1 49 winced under tlie order, and boldly declaimed against the bigotry and tyranny of the college and the Govern- ment authorities. They seemed to champ like horses prepared for battle when forcibly kept back by bit and bridle. Still from policy or necessity they deemed it expedient to submit to what they reckoned a despotic exercise of authority. Being thus for a time freed from the task of prepar- ing lectures in addition to his heavy school work, Mr. Duff energetically set about mastering the Bengalee language by the help of a learned Brahman pundit. By the end of a twelvemonth he succeeded so as to speak it with tolerable fluency. He wrote out for the sake of accuracy and committed to memory his first sermon in Bengalee. But regular preaching in the ver- nacular he did well to leave to others, who gave their whole strength to a work specially adapted to meet a very different class from those who held the inner fort of Brahmanism. Denied lectures, the young men met in debating societies of their own. These, often nightly and in various quarters of the city, he asked permission to attend, and soon an address from him was welcomed as an attractive part of the proceedings. There it was that he first formulated his far-seeing policy on the subject of female education, from which Grovernment still directly keeps back its hand, though aiding the tentative efforts of missionaries. At that time Miss Cooke, who became the wife of the Church missionary, Mr. Wilson, had been teaching the first female school in Bengal for eight years. She had been led to form it by a visit paid to one of the boys' schools of the Calcutta School Society, in order to ob- serve their pronunciation of the vernacular, which she was learning. Seeing the pundit drive away a wistful- eyed little girl from the door, she was told that the child had troubled him for the past three months with 150 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1831. entreaties to be allowed to read with tlie boys. Next day, on the 28th January, 1822, she opened her first school with seven pupils, and in a year, with the help of the noble Countess of Hastings, the Governor- General's wife, she had two hundred in two schools. The Serampore three had, as usual, anticipated even Mrs. Wilson by their Female Juvenile Society. But at that early period and long after, the few hundred girls under the only partial and brief instruction allowed them before very early marriage, formed but units, and were of a class similar to those reached by the street and village preacher. Many were bribed by money to attend. The middle and higher classes, whose sons Mr. Duff had attracted to his own school and was daily influencing by personal intercourse, were shocked at the idea of educating their wives and daughters ; and even if they had consented, as many now do, would not let them out of the home-prison of the zanana. But these youths thought differently, and Mr. Duff encouraged them. One evening he found the subject of debate by some fifty Hindoo College students to be, " whether females ought to be educated." As to the theory of the thing they ended in being unanimous ; one married youth exclaiming, " Is it alleged that female education is prohibited, if not by the letter, at least by the spirit of some of our Shasters ? If any of the Shasters be found to advance what is so contrary to reason, I, for one, will trample them under my feet." The brave words won raptur- ous plaudits for the speaker. As these youths became fathers and grandfathers, female education would spread of itself, if the Christian Church supplied the vernacular and English lady teachers. Hence Mr. Duff''s conclusion, as he listened to the vaporous but not insincere talk of these fledglings : " Over the pre- JEt 25. BENGALEE DEBATING SOCIETIES. I5I sent (1830-40) generation little or no control can be exercised by these youths. But as time rolls on tliey become the heads of families themselves, and then will they be prepared, in many instances at least, to give practical effect to their better judgment." He dreamed, he talked, he almost lived to be witness of " the hal- cyon period when universal theory shall run parallel with universal practice," in instructing the women of the great educational centres of India. And we shall see how ready he was to play his part in the practice when he had done the preparatory work of educating the husbands and the fathers. It was of societies where such questions were dis- cussed that a vernacular newspaper exclaimed, " The nif]:ht of desolation and is^norance is beo^innins: to change its black aspect, and the sky, big with fate, is about to bring forth a storm of knowledge which will sweep those airy battlements away that have so long imprisoned the tide of thought." But social ques- tions were not all. These were the days when the first echoes of the Eng^lish Reform Bill as^itation besfan to reach Anglo-Indian newspapers. In the native mind the constitutional progress of the English Whigs came to be mixed up with the frothy Republicanism of their familiar Tom Paine, and the sensus communis of Reid and the Scottish school of philosophy with that blasphemer's favourite name of " common sense." An education which, in the Grovernment colleges, long after continued to fill the memories of the students with the best — sometimes with the worst — passages of the English poets, had made quotation the mark of culture and elegance in a young debater. They had Qot mastered Shakespeare or Shelley as now, but Sir Walter Scott, Byron and even Robert Burns were their favourites. "More than once," writes Duff of that time, " were my ears greeted with the sound of 152 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 183 1. Scotch rhymes from the poems of Robert Burns. It would not be possible to portray the effect produced on the mind of a Scotsman, when, on the banks of the Ganges, one of the sons of Brahma, — in reviewing the unnatural institution of caste in alienating man from man, and in looking forward to the period in which knowledge, by its transforming power, would make the lowest type of man feel itself to be of the same species as the highest, — suddenly gave utterance, in an apparent ecstasy of delight, to these characteristic lines : — ' For a,* that, and a' that, Its comin' yet, for a' that. That man to man, the world o'er. Shall brothers be, for a' that.' How was the prayerful aspiration raised, that such a consummation might be realized in a higher and nobler sense than the poet or his Hindoo admirer was privi- leged to conceive ! " But it was time, after all this experience of the variously mixed material on which he was to work, to come to close quarters with Young Bengal ; to build a spiritual temple on the foundation thus cleared and almost crying out, as in a very similar transition state the young and erring Augustine cried, "0 Truth, Truth ! how eagerly even then did the marrow of my soul pant after thee ! " The. traditional idolaters and the liberal inquirers had become separated farther and farther from each other, by that gulf which even here marks off the love of the true from the tendency to the false. The liberals established their own English journal, well naming it the Enquirer. Long before, E-ammohun Roy had set the English Reformer on foot ; but it had committed itself to reproducing the antichristian attacks of Paine ^t. 25. A TIME OF TRANSITION. 1 53 after its founder had left for England, and it was assisted in this by Englishmen who called them- selves Christians. The English of the Enqairer, and the Bengalee of the Gyananeshun^ week after week attacked Hindooism and its leaders with a courage and skill that called down on the editors the execrations of their countrymen. But all besides was negative. The Reform Bill was eagerly turned to in July, 1831, for a positive something to rejoice in as the germ of a new reformation which would sweep away tyrants and priests. The Holy Congregation's threat of excommu- nication was met with this welcome : " Be some hun- dreds cast out of society, they will form a party, an object devoutly to be wished by us ! " The man who proved a more than worthy successor of Rammohun Roy and sounded those trumpet notes in the Enquirer was he who is now and has lono: been the staid scholar and the grave minister of the Church of England, the Rev. Krishna Mohun Banerjea, LL.D. Then he was a Brahman of the highest or Koolin class, legally entitled to marry all the women who might take hold of him to be called by his name, and with the cer- tainty of becoming, in Hindooism, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Duff has himself told the story of that act by which the truth-seeking Koolin formed the party of pro- gress which he desired. Krishna Mohun happened to be absent from a meeting of the liberal party held in his family house on the 23rd of August, 1831. " If there be anything on which a genuine Hindoo is taught, from earliest infancy, to look with absolute abhorrence, it is the flesh of the bovine species. If there be anything which, of itself singly, must at once degrade a man from his caste, it is the known partici- pation of that kind of food. Authentic instances are on record, wherein a Brahman, violently seized by a 154 I'^^'E OF DR. DUFF. 1 831. Moslem, has had such meat forced into his mouth ; and though deprived of voluntary agency as much as the veriest automaton, the contamination of the touch was held to be so incapable of ablution, that the hap- less, helpless, unwilling victim of intolerance, has been actually sunk along with his posterity for ever into the wretched condition of outcast. Well, in order to furnish the most emphatic proof to each other of their mastery over prejudice and their contempt of the ordi- nances of Hindooism, these friends of liberty had some pieces of roasted meat, believed to be beef, brought from the bazaar into the private chamber of the Enquirer. Having freely gratified their curiosity and taste with the unlawful and unhallowed food, some portion still remained, which, after the return of the Enquirer, was thrown, though not with his approba- tion, in heedless and reckless levity into the com- pound or inner court of the adjoining house, occupied by a holy Brahman, amid shouts of — ' There is beef ! there is beef !' The sacerdotal master of the dwelling, aroused by the ominous sound and exasper- ated at the unpardonable outrage which he soon found had been perpetrated upon his feelings and his faith, instantly rushed with his domestics to the quarter whence it proceeded, and under the influence of rage and horror, taking the law into his own hands, he violently assaulted the Enquirer and his friends. " Knowing that they had been guilty of an action which admitted of no defence the latter confessed their criminality, uniting in apologies for the past and promises of amendment for the future. But neither confession nor apology nor promise of amend- ment would suflBce. The openly avowed opinions and conduct of the Enquirer and his friends had long been a public scandal and offence in the eyes of their bigoted countrymen; and, short of formal excommunication, ^t. 25. CASTE HEOKEN BY THE ABOMINATION OF BEEF. 1 55 thej were in consequence subjected to all manner of persecution. But tlie crisis — the hour of unmitigated retribution — had now arrived. Hundreds speedily rallied around the Brahman, the sanctuary of whose home had been so grossly violated by the presence of the abomination of abominations. Inflamed with un- controllable indignation, they peremptorily demanded of the family of the Enquirer to disown him in the presence of competent witnesses, under pain of expul- sion from, caste themselves. Having no alternative, his family then called upon him formally to recant his errors, and proclaim his belief in the Hindoo faith, or instantly to leave the home of his youth, and be for ever denuded of all the privileges and immunities of caste. He chose the latter extremity. Accordingly, towards midnight, without being able to take formal leave of any of his friends, he was obliged to take his departure he knew not whither, because he could not be prevailed upon to utter what he knew to be false. * "We left,' wrote he, ' the home where we passed our infant days ; we left our mother that nourished us in our childhood ; we left our brothers with whom we associated in our earliest days ; we left our sisters with whom we sympathized since they were born.' As he and his friends were retiring, the infuriated populace broke loose upon them, and it was with some difficulty they effected their escape and found shelter in the house of an acquaintance." Recovering from the fever that followed, young Banerjea returned to the assault, but still had no posi- tive truth to lean upon. " I was perfectly regardless of God," he wrote in the confessions of a later time ; *' yet, as a merciful Father, He forgot not me. Though I neglected Him, yet He had compassion on me, and without my knowledge or inclination created, so to speak, a circumstance that impelled me to seek after 156 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1831. Him." It was tliis. Unwilling to compromise tlie out- cast further, Mr, Duff sent a native friend to invite him to his house. The confessions continue: "Mr. Duff received me with Christian kindness, and in- quired of the state in which we all were. He openly expressed his sentiments on what we were about ; and while he approved of one half of our exertions he lamented the other. He was glad of our proceedings against error but sincerely sorry at our neglecting the truth. I told him it was not our fault that we were not Christians ; we did not believe in Christianity, and could not therefore consistently profess it. The reverend gentleman, with great calmness and compo- sure, said it was true that I could .not be blamed for my not believing in Christianity so long as I was ignorant of it, but that I was certainly guilty of serious neglect for not inquiring into its evidences and doc- trines. This word ' inquiring ' was so uttered as to produce an impression upon me which I cannot suffi- ciently well describe. I considered upon my lonely condition — cut off from men to whom I was bound by natural ties, and thought that nothing but a determi- nation on the subject of religion could give me peace and comfort. And I was so struck with Mr. Duff's words, that we instantly resolved to hold weekly me-et- ings at his house for religious instruction and discus- sion." In the Enqmrer he continued with growing boldness : — " Does not history testify that Luther, alone and unsupported, blew a blast which shook the man- sions of error and prejudice ? Did not Knox, opposed as he was by bigots and fanatics, carry the cause of reformation into Scotland ? Blessed are we that we are to reform the Hindoo nation. "We have blown the trumpet, and we must continue to blow on. "We have attacked Hindooism, and will persevere in attacking it until we finally seal our triumph." ^t. 25. SEEKING AFTER GOD. 1 57 Persecution drove tlie reformer to a European lodg- ing-house, for not a native dared to shelter him. There, after narrowly escaping death by poison at the hands of their outraged families, his associates found him. And there DufF held earnest conference with them, as they debated the establishment of a Reformation Society, and the only one among them who had large property of his own offered it for the common cause. But convinced that, without some nobler truths to substitute for the system they destroyed, this would prove only an eradication society, the hot conspira- tors in the cause ol religious freedom agreed to meet in the missionary's house every Tuesday, to study the claims of Christianity to be such a positive and life- giving system as they now desiderated. Hence the second course of lectures and discussions was carried on with ripe experience on the part of Mr. Duff, who now preferred to keep it in his own hands ; and was delivered to really earnest truth-seekers, many of whom had fairly separated from the idolatrous and caste system of their fathers. But still, at first, the Enquirer declared it had no religious doctrines to pro- mulgate, only " let us have all a fair field, and adopt what reason and judgment may dictate." In a month the weekly discussions had brought its editor to the admission that theological truth is the most important of all, because of its practical influence on life, and that Christianity deserves special inquiry as having civil- ized a whole continent. " A reverend gentleman of the Presbyterian sect has undertaken the task of un- folding to us the nature of this set of doctrines." Prom forty to sixty seekers after God listened to each lecture, sat far into the night canvassing its statements, and either returned night after night for further inquiry or wrote out their difiiculties for solution. The novelty of the weekly meeting drew many spectators, and some 158 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 183 1. of tliese professedly calm inquirers proved to be ** proud, forward, rude, boisterous and often grossly insulting.'* But these were the exceptions, and they only stimu- lated the ardour without ruffling the perfect courtesy of the apostolic teacher, who had a yearning sympathy with every soul feeling after God, and knew that it is through much tribulation such must enter the kingdom. The record of these agonizings, intellectual and spirit- ual, forms a unique chapter in the history of the apolo- getics of those days.* As the demonstration of the existence and personality of the great First Cause called back the subtle spirit of the Bengalee, steeped in pantheistic polytheism, from its initial rebound into nihilism, the closing exhortations, delivered with all that tearful fervour which was soon to summon the Churches of the West to a new crusade, led them up to the great love of Christ and the influence of the Spirit. Thus passed the cold season of 1831-32 in Cal- cutta. The work of John the son of Zacharias, was done. As his "Behold the Lamb of G-od!" sent Andrew to Christ, and Andrew " first findeth his own brother Simon . . and he brought him to Jesus," so was it now. At the conclusion of the discussions, Mohesh Chunder Ghose, a student of the Hindoo College, sent his own brother to Mr. Duff, with this note : — " If you can make a Christian of him you will have a valuable one ; and you may rest assui'ed that you have my hearty consent to it. Convince him, and make him a Christian, and I will give no secret opposition. Scepticism has made me too miserable to wish my dear brother the same. A doubtful- ness of the existence of another world, and of the benevolence of God, made me too unhappy and spread a gloom all over my ♦ Appendix to India and India Missions. ^t. 25. THE FIRST CONVERT. 1 59 mind ; but I thank God that I have no doubts at present. I am travelling from step to stop ; and Christianity, I think, will be the last place where I shall rest ; for every time I think, its evidence becomes too overpowering." On the 28th August, 1832, the Enquirer announced the baptism into Christ of Mohesh himself, in an article which thus closed : " Well may Mr. Duff be happy, upon the reflection that his labours have, through the grace of the Almighty, been instrumental in convincing some of the truth of Christianity, and others of the importance of an inquiry into it. We hope ere long to be able to witness more and more such happy results in this country." For some unexplained reason this first convert of the General Assembly's Bengal Mission chose to receive baptism at the hands of an English chaplain whpmJie/ did not know. It is no cause for regret that the broad ' seal of catholicity was thus stamped on Mr. Duff's work, when his first son in the faith publicly declared his belief — " in spite of myself," as he said — in the triune God, in that old mission church which Kieruander had built and Brown and Martyn, Corrie and Dealtry had consecrated by their ministrations. It was thus that this first-fruit of his toil, in Mr. Duff's house and before many witnesses, after deep silence burst forth : — «^ " A twelvemonth ago I was an atheist, a materialist, a physical necessitai'ian ; and what am I now? A baptized Christian ! A twelvemonth ago I was the most miserable of the miserable ; and what am I now ? In my own mind, the happiest of the happy. What a change ! How has it been brought about ? The recollection of the past fills me with wonder. When I first came to your lectures, it was not in- struction I wanted. Instruction was the pretext, a secret desire to expose what I reckoned your irrational and super- stitious follies the reality. At last, against my inclinations. l6o LIF£ OF DK. DUFF. 1831. against my feelings, I was obliged to admit the truth of Christianity. Its evidence was so strong that I could not resist it. But I still /e/f contrary to what T thouohf. On hear- ing your account of the nature of sin, and especially sins of the heart, my conscience burst upon me like a volcano. My soul was pierced through with horrible reflections and terrible alarms ; it seemed as if racked and rent in pieces. I was in a hell of torment. On hearing and examining further, I began, I know not how or why, to find relief from the words of the Bible. What I once thought most irrational I soon found to be very wisdom ; what I once hated most I soon began to love most ; and now I love it altogether. What a change ! How can I account for it ? On any natural principle I cannot, for every step that I was made to take was contrary to my previous natural wish and will. My progress was not that of earnest inquiry, but of earnest opposition. And to the last, my heart was opposed. In spite of mi/S'lf I became a Christian. Surely some unseen power must have been guiding me. Surely this must have been what the Bible calls ' grace,' free grace, sovereign grace, and if ever there was an election of grace surely I am one.'' Krishna Mohun Banerjea himself was the next. He desired that the lecture room in the missionary's house, which had been " the scene of all my public opposi- tion to the true religion, should also be the scene of mv public confession of it." He sought that there his still Hindoo friends, who had been strengthened in theii* unbelief by his arguments, might witness his " public recantation of all error and public embracing of the truth, the whole truth, as revealed in the Bible." The Rev. Mr. Mackay opened that service with prayer. Mr. Duff addressed and thus interrogated the catechu- men : — " ' Do you renounce all idolatry, superstition, and all the frivolous rites and practices of the Hindoo religion ? ' To this the Koolin Brahman replied : ' I do, and I pray God that He may incline my countrymen to do so likewise.' The second question was : ' Do you believe in God the Father and Creator of all, in Jesus ^t. 25. THE CONFESSIONS OF THE SECOND CONVELiT. 161 Christ as your Redeemer, and in His sacrifice as the only means whereby man may be saved, and in the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit ? * To this, with emotion, he replied, ' I do, and I pray God to give me His grace to do His will.' These and other questions being answered, Mr. Duff administered the ordinance in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost ; and then engaged in prayer, the whole com- pany kneeling." Such was the description, in the daily newspaper of Calcutta, of the putting on of the yoke of Christ by the Koolin Brahman who, like another Saul of Tarsus, had made his name known and dreaded among thousands of his countrymen. By a different path from that of Mohesh Chunder, but along the in- tellectually thorny way of the Trinity from which many of his countrymen fall aside into their old poly- theism, Krishna Moliun stumbled on to Him who is the \Yay, the Truth and the Life. His confessions have a typical interest for more than his own people and the students of ecclesiastical annals : — " My attention having been particularly directed to the So- cinian and Trinitarian systems, I at once felt more favourable to the former than the latter ; but not seeing anything in it so great that it might reasonably call for the adoption of such extraordinary measures as those which Jesus employed for its propagation, I could not yield my conviction to it. On the other hand, I understood not aright the doctrine of the atonement; and on grounds of mere natural reason could never believe it to be possibly true. And as the Bible pointed unequivocally to it, I strove to persuade myself, in spite of the most overpowering external evidence, not to believe in the sacred volume. Neither could I be satisfied with the forced interpretation of the Socinians. Sociuianism, which seemed little better than Deism, I thought could not be so far above human comprehension that God should think of working such extraordinary miracles for its establishment. Accordingly, though the external evidences of the truth of the Bible wera M l62 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1832. overwhelming, yet, because I could not, on principles of reason, be satisfied with either of the two interpretations given of it, I could not persuade my heart to believe. The doctrines of Trinitarian Christians, which I thought were really accord- ing to the plain import of Scripture language, were all against my feelings and inclinations, Socinianism, though consonant with my natural pride, seemed yet so insignificant, as a pi*o- fessed revelation, that I could not conceive how, with pro- priety, an all-wise God should work miracles for its sake. So that I remained in a state of doubt and perplexity for a long time ; till God, by the influence of His Holy Spirit, was gra- ciously pleased to open my soul to discern its sinfulness and guilt, and the suitableness of the great salvation which centred in the atoning death of a Divine Redeemer. And the same doctrine of the atonement which, when not properly under- stood, was my last great argument against the divine origin of the Bible, is now, when rightly apprehended, a principal reason for my belief and vindication of the Bible as the pro- duction of infinite wisdom and love." That baptism took place on the 17th October, 1832. In the same class-room, on a Tuesday evening, the 14th December, a third catechumen put on Christ. Gopeenath Nundi had sought a morning interview with Mr. Duff in his study, and there burst forth in tears with the cry, " Can I be saved ?*' He told how the last of the lectures had driven him to take counsel with Krishna Mohun Banerjea who prayed with him and sent him next morning to the missionary. At first imprisoned by his family, they cast him off for ever by advertisement in the newspaper; but nothing could shake his faith. Still, before the irrevocable step was taken, his brothers and caste-fellows implored him to desist, then foully abused him, and then offered him all that wealth and pleasure could give, including even the retaining of a belief in Christianity if only he would not publicly profess it. The last appeal was in the name of his venerable mother, whose piercing shriek ^t. 26. THE THIRD AND FOUItTfl CONVERTS. 163 none who bave seen a Bengalee woman in sorrow can forget. The scene has often since been repeated, must yet be again and again witnessed before India is Christ's. Nature could not remain unmoved. Go- peenath wept, but throwing up his arms and turning hastily away he decided, " No, I cannot stay ! " We shall meet the same true martyr's courage in him again, amid the captivity and the bloodshed of the Mutiny of 1857. He proved faithful unto death. Nor was Anundo Chund Mozoomdar long left be- hind— the youth who in the school had been drawn by the divine power of the Sermon on the Mount. He had been the first to seek more detailed instruction in the missionary's house. He had given up the family and caste and festival idol worship till a Cashmere Brahman, who had in vain remonstrated with him, naively complained to Mr. Duff himself that the gods had been blasphemed by the atheist Anundo. Of a wealthy family, he had declined to be married rather than submit to the ritual of Hindooism. Put out of caste, he only rejoiced in the new-found liberty, when his father, an official in Jessore, visited the capital. His uncle had written a vigorous protest against idolatry, and the father, though an orthodox Hindoo of what had now begun to be called the old school, liberally accepted the position, and wrote to Mr. Duff to receive the persistent Anundo as his son : " Convert him in your own way, and make him your follower." So, in St. Andrew's Kirk by the junior chaplain. Dr. Charles, Anundo was baptized, on Sun- day, the 21st April, 1833, before the Scottish con- gregation and many awe-stricken spectators. "Whether from the Hindoo College or from his own, it was by "the self-evidencing power of the word of God" that the joyful missionary saw these, his four spiritual sons, brought to the faith. 164 L1F£ OP DR. DUFF. 1832. AVith new confidence in his own fearless attitude towards truth in every form, and with assured trust in his system which used all forms of truth as avenues by which the Spirit of God might be let in on the hoary superstitions of India, he set himself to perfect his organization. For the native church which he had thus founded on the one corner stone, and for cate- chumens, he opened a private week-day class to study systematically the doctrines of Christ in the minutest detail, and a Sunday class to read the Scriptures and hold communion with the Father in prayer. Having erected a bamboo and wicker-work chapel for ver- nacular preaching, he added to that an English ser- vice every Sunday evening. For inquirers outside Christianity, who had yet been won from atheism, he conducted successive courses of public lectures on the Bible, on the Sociuian controversy, and on mental philosophy, followed by open discussions. Foiled at these, many changed the arena to the Bengalee news- paper. But pursuing them there, Mr. Duff adver- tised that he would answer each hostile article in good faith on the next lecture night, a procedure which gave a keen interest to the controversy in native society. Thus within and without the work went on, while the school was every year developing into the famous collesfe which it became with the aid of a colleas^ue so able as Mr. Mackay, and of Eurasian assistants so faithful and earnest as Messrs. Sunder and Pereira. The administrative, the statesmanlike genius of Mr. Duff, had after its first examination seized the advan- tage of making it a still more catholic, central and efiicient institute, by uniting in its support and man- agement all the Christian sects then represented in Calcutta. For on the practical ground of economy of energy and strength of aggressivv»ness., t»^ well as on the JEt. 26. HIS PROJECT OP A UNITED MISSION COLLEGE. 1 65 highest of all, lie ever desired unity. He found an agency in the well-known Calcutta Missionary Oon- f(n^ouce. Mr. William Pearce, the generous and catholic-minded son of the Rev. Samuel Pearce of Birmingham, had, as the head of the extensive Baptist Misdon press, been in the habit of inviting the few Protestant missionaries to breakfast on the first Monday of every montli. The meeting was found so pleasant and profitable that it grew into a more formal conference after breakfast, with devotional exercises before that meal, according to the early hours and pleasant hospitality of Indian life. The nomination of a secretary, to take notes of the papers and conversations, further gave the gathering that permanence and utility which it has enjoyed now for half a century. To this body Mr. Daff submitted his plan of a united college, such as has recently been carried out in Madras for all Southern India and is still under discussion for Bombay. For a fee of ten shillino^s a month Mr. Duff declared his willing-ness to receive the best vernacular pupils of the various mis- sions and give them the highest Christian education. All approved, and the Conference appointed a committee to work out the plan in detail. But, as has often happened since, the divisions of the^^West^njOhyj^lfiJ^ were fatal to the growtH of that of India. Mr. Duff" prepared the ' plans'^oF" a Duilding which would ac- commodate the students below, and at least two other colleagues, lay or clerical, above. This scheme showed a mastery of detail and a foresight such as would have anticipated the various colleges, comparatively weaker, which the missionary societies were afterwards com- pelled to erect and which they still conduct. We survey with pain the outlines of so stately, so Christlike a prospect for the Christianizing and civiliz- ing of the millions of our subjects in Bengal, when we 1 66 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1832. reflect that what was easy in 1832 has still to be at- tempted ; and why ? Because the outburst of what is in itself a miserable church and state controversy, however important to the actual combatants, made it impossible for the Nonconformist Churches to work along with the two Established Churches of Scotland and England in carrying out the last command of their common Lord, although their missionaries in the front of the battle were unanimous in the desire for such co-operatiDg unity. As Charles Grant's far- seeing proposals of 1792 fell to be made facts un- consciously by Duff in 1830-33, so Duff's have yet to be realized, in Northern and Eastern India, by the divided Churches of the West. Rarely if ever in the history of any portion of the Church at any time since apostolic work ceased with John the Divine, has one man been enabled to effect such a revolution in opinion and to sow the seeds of such a reformation in faith and life, as was effected by the first missionary of the Scottish Church in Bengal in the three years ending July, 1833. In the form of an experiment as to the subordination of educa- tion to evangelical religion, Duff's work was watched, criticised and narrowly weighed, not only by be- nevolent men but by officials of all kinds throughout India. Towards the end of 1831, from the then very distant Bombay there came to Calcutta, to study and report upon it, Mr. Henry Young, of the civil service of Western India. He was a friendly supporter of the Rev. John Wilson there, who gave him a letter of introduction to Mr. Duff. Let us obtain a few glimpses of the state of native society in Calcutta in the sixteenth month after the opening of the General Assembly's school, as given by a broad-minded layman of great administrative experience as well as Christian benevolence. JEt. 26. MK. II. YOUNG ON THE REVOLUTION IN CALCUrrA. 167 ''November lbth,lSo]. " Dear Mr. Wilson, — , . I availed myself on landing of your letter to Mr. Duff, and lived with him during the lime I spent in Calcutta. I have never regretted doing so, as it has afforded mo an opportunity of seeing much and learning more regarding a class of young men who, of all others, engaged my attention in that place ; and I am sure you would not fail to share in the common interest felt, were you to witness the pleasing progress they are making under Mr. Duff. The num- ber of young men who, having received a college education, have really thrown off idolatry, is very great ; but there are not above eight or nine who come boldly forward, and brave every effect of the pride and bigotry of their countrymen. Of these Krishna Mohun Banerjea, the editor of the Enquirer, is the most conspicuous. He certainly leads the rest, and, by the admission of all, is the most sober and well conducted of the whole. In a conversation I had with him the day before I left, he told me there were not more than four upon whom he could depend for decided support, and who go the full length of his own principles ; but he thinks the rest are coming round, and upon them he hopes principally to exert an in- fluence by means of his paper. It must be remembered that they were formerly bold, impetuous characters, puffed up with conceit of their supposed attainments, and forward in pro- claiming their atheistical sentiments. Now they profess a belief in the Supreme Being, and speak in the very best tone, and maintain their desire to judge nothing rashly. They will not, they say, hesitate to condemn and to expose idolatry and the Brahmanical impostures, because they are convinced of the folly and absurdity of their former belief ; bub of Chris- tianity they will examine and inquire, and are ready to embrace the truth wherever and whenever they see it. " There can bo no doubt that, under God, they are indebted for this favourable change to Mr. Duff's lectures, and to the knowledge they have acquired of English. All the direct effects of their education at the Hindoo College have been, with this exception, decidedly evil ; and though it has been overruled in this instance, as far as we can see, to the furtherance of good, yet it is only the direct effects of that system to which its directors can lay claim. Mr. Duff has a school of about lo(i 1 63 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1 831. boys, in whicli there are some of the higher class that can now read and write with some fluency in English. When they are a little farther advanced Mr. Dufi" will gradually instruct them in the higher branches of science and literature, and ground them thoroughly in the evidences of religion, and go over every objection that the infidel has made to them, with a view of preparing them for a successful resistance to those young men whom the college is daily sending forth with heads filled with the subtleties of Hume, etc. So that his two objects at present are (and between these he divides his time) : to put himself at the head of the movement ali-eady taken place amongst the students, and gradually reclaim them from the wrong paths they have taken ; and to train up another set of young men who have not been subject to the disadvantages these have felt, who have not lost the docility and teachable- ness so necessary in receiving the truth, and who, if God vouchsafe His blessing, may furnish a body of well educated young men of a far superior order to any that we have yet seen in India. This was the proper object of Bishop's College, and it has failed from causes which are well known, and which are fatal to the success of every human scheme. Mr. Duff is, in fact, about to establish an Institute himself, the plan of which has been fully arranged, and has met with the concurrence of all here, and which only wants the sanction of the home authorities to be at once set on foot. In the meantime this school forms a nucleus, and has arisen unostentatiously with- out exciting any great notice, and will ultimately fui'nish him with a set of students to commence with who have been brought up under his own eye and under his own system, which, I might say, is a most efiicient one. I questioned him a good deal about the prospect he had of securing their atten- dance for the period that it would require to go through his course. He said he felt, as all others feel, how difiicult it was, but that such was the eagerness of the boys to remain, that if they could only obtain a sum sufficient for their support, they would resist every inducement held out by their families to leave him ; and that, in fact, he had resolved in all cases of difficulty to supply them with funds himself, and he accord- ingly does so support one or two of them already. He said six or eight rupees a month was ample, and that he himself only gave them four. The same practice was found necessary /Et. 25. ENGLISH THE MOST EFFICIENT INSTRUMENT. 1 69 at the Hindoo College, and some "boys in tlae first class now receive from Government fifteen rupees a month ; and after all that can be said against the measure, I am fully persuaded of its propriety, and hope that every one will support the system. " I very soon, of course, came to ask his opiuion upon the subject of education genei'ally, and stated our circumstances to him. He attributed the ill success of scriptui-al education to the imperfect and elementary nature of the education given and the neglect of the English language, and seemed to have the fullest conviction of the success of the system he is about to pursue ; for to every suggestion about the inutility and ill success of schools, he always replied that he thought the failure was owing to the not commvinicatinga medium through which sound and enlarged ideas respecting God and our relations to Him might be conveyed, and through which the efi"ects of what education they did receive might be kept alive and strengthened. After what I witnessed of the facility of Eng- lish instruction, I could not urge as an objection the difficulty of imparting it, and, in short, I came away from Calcutta fully convinced that in neglecting English we have neglected the most efficient instrument we could have used. With all the young men I have spoken to you about, any person may have the most free and unreserved communication in our own language ; and it quite astonished me to find how closely and attentively they followed Mr. Duff in the most abstract and metaphysical discussions, taking up the weaker parts of an argument with a readiness which showed how fully they had comprehended, what was addressed to them. I do not mean that their objections were always the happiest, but they showed they had, in the main, comprehended his arguments. Ho fully concurred in all we proposed to do, though I cannot say he went the length which I have hitherto been disposed to go, in asserting unreservedly that knowledge without religion is positively evil. " Mr. Duff's school has not been in operation sixteen months, and yet an advance has been made sufficient to extort the praise of Mr. Hare, who told me, as he was showing me the college the other day, that Mr. Duff deserved credit for it. Let us hear no more, therefore, of the difficulty of teaching them J'^nglish. I have seen it here in various instances effectually surmounted. The Hindoo College is a fine quadrangular build- 170 LIFE OP DE. DUFP. 1831. ing, the inner area being very small, so as to give tlie house the shape of a native building j I do not say appearance, for it is built after a regular Grecian order, and, like most houses in Calcutta, is very handsome and elegant. The ground-floor students are exclusively engaged in the study of Sanscrit, which occupies them seven or eight years, and one cannot help grieving at the sad and cruel waste of precious time and talent at this unprofitable study. English has been inti'oduced recently, that is to say, since the last two or three years ; and I observed one class going over a proposition of Euclid, which they seemed to enter into con amove. The first class had just returned from a lecture on some branch of natural philosophy, and seeing some essays of their composing I asked for one or two, which with some hesitation they granted. I was sur- prised to find on my return that one went directly to refute Paley, and establish the mortality of the soul and the futility of any hopes as to futurity. The subject was: 'Is Paley's definition of virtue, viz., that it is doing good to mankind for the sake of everlasting happiness, coi'rect ? ' and the writer contended that after death the soul vanished into thin air, etc. "I was fortunate enough to witness, on the Tuesday before I sailed, a missionaiy prayer meeting. There were present (at Mr. Duff's in rotation), Mr. Duff, W. H. Pearce, Yates, Sandys, Percival, Mackay, Christie, G. Pearce, T. Robertson (chaplain), Reichardt, Lacroix, Gogerly, and two or three others whom I cannot recollect. At seven we met upstairs and engaged in prayer until breakfast-time, when about twenty sat down. After breakfast subjects that had been proposed at the last meeting: for discussion were announced, and the sentiments of each person present were called for. The question under dis- cussion was, as' far as 1 recollect it, ' the relative importance of itinerant preaching as compared with education, as a means of spreading the gospel,' and the sense of the meeting was ex- pressed in the three resolutions I alluded to in my letter to Robert Money. The subject was very well, as I thought, dis- cussed, but not exhausted ; and I should like to have proposed for inquiry next month, ' The origin and recorded success of juvenile education as a means of spreading the gospel in heathen countries.' The question, however, proposed by Mr. Mackay will perhaps embrace this. There was at least a pro- portion of two-thirds of the meeting present who were engaged JEt 2^. niS OWN ESTIMATE OP PAST AND FUTURE. 171 directly in itinerant preachiug in, around, or away from Cal- cutta. Mr. Lacroix is said to be by far the most ready aud effective preacher, and to draw crowded audiences. "The infant school, under Mr. Macpherson's superinten- dence, founded by the Bishop aud conducted by a Mrs. Wilson, flourishes ; so, I believe, does the High School, under the Rev. Mr. Macqueen, who is rector; but the Free School of St. James's parish is wretchedly organized, and the children are almost parrots. I wonder any person neglects to introduce the interrogatory system of instruction ; no other deserves, I think, support. I must not omit to say that the day before I left, Tarachund Chukurbutee, the leader of the Moderates (as they are called who, renouncing idolatry, yet fall short of the decision and uncompromising spirit of Banerjea and others), called upon Mr. Duff and promised to attend with several of his friends at Mr. Duff's lectures. This was a subject of great delight to us all, as they had hitherto declined to mix with the Ultras (as they are styled), and feared to compromise their worldly interests.^' Three months after Mr. Youno^'s visit we find Mr. Duff's own humble estimate of the results, but far- reaching statement of an unconquerable faith, in two letters to the Rev. Professor Ferrie, of Kilconquliar : — " Calcutta, 9th January, 1832. " Here there is little change : much work of preparation silently carried on, little of the pi'actical work of conversion from dumb idols to serve the living God. We cannot over- estimate the worth of an immortal soul, and should one be found cleaving to the Saviour steadfastly and immov- ably we cannot rejoice too much or ascribe too much glory to God. But methinks that, considering the millions still unreclaimed, our joy should be tempered and our glorying moderated, lest the one should be found to be mere self- gratulation and the other a vain boastful ness. How I lear that much, far too much, has been made of partial success in the work of conversion, and that many good people at home are under serious delusion as to its extent. Every- thing around me proves the necessity of more earnest prayer 172 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1832. and redoubled exertion. I see nothing to satisfy me that any- decisive victory has been won on the grand scale of national emancipation. The few converts that have been made can never be the seed of the Church : they resemble rather those somewhat unseasonable, somewhat short-lived germs which start up under the influence of a few peculiarly genial days in winter — an indication of the seminal power of mother earth, and a token of what may be expected in spring. Let us not then confine our views to the few shrivelled sprouts of a mild winter ; — for these let us be thankful, as they tend to revive our hopes and reanimate our sinking spirits. But let ns reach forward with restless longing and unceasing effort to the full glow and life and verdure of spring, when the whole earth shall be loosened from its cold torpor and the heavens pour down refreshing floods. It is not easy in Calcutta to congre- gate a decent audience to listen to Bengalee preaching. The people are naturally apathetic, and here there is superadded such pervading avarice, such money-making selfishness, that it is difficult to secure any degree of attention, or even to excite any alarm for the safety of their own religion. Thousands there are, in fact, who cannot be said to have any religion at all. Preaching generally becomes either a conversation, or a discussion in which the most aiTant frivolities in argument are reiterated with an obstinacy that wastes precious time, and wholly impedes the free deliverance of truths that might quicken the conscience and save the soul alive. More, gener- ally speaking, can be done by way of direct preaching in Bengalee in the neighbourhood than in the town of Calcutta, though I think that missionai'ies have often too readily given way to the accumulation of acknowledged difficulties to be encountered in town. To desert it is like abandoning one of the enemy's strongest holds and allowing him to occupy it undisturbed. " My labours in Bengalee preaching have hitherto been ne- cessarily very limited. But there is a sphere now partially occupied, formerly almost unattempted : there is the instituting of English schools under a decidedly Christian management, and insisting on the inculcation of Christian truths. The field may become one of the richest in bearing luxuriant fruits. We only want the necessary funds and qualified agents. The success that has attended the large school first established has ^t. 26, THE VARIED WORK IN CALCUTTA, 1 73 infused a kind of new stimulus into the minds of those most interested in the Christian education of the natives^ and in that alone much real good has been achieved. The work is excessively laborious and not a little expensive, but time will show its vast importance. I trust that you are acquainted with the various proposals already forwarded to the Assembly's committee. I crave your special attention to the last, as being perhaps one of the most momentous that has ever been for- warded from a heathen land, referring chiefly to a union of all denominations in the support of a Central Institution for the more advanced literary and religious education of pi'omising native youth ; and to be under the exclusive control of the Assembly's committee. I refer you again to the printed pro- posals sent homo, and expect your powerful advocacy of the measure. " Thousands can now talk English tolerably well. Amongst these I labour a good deal, as this class, being of the better sort, has generally been neglected. For the last two or three months I have been delivering a course of lectures on the evidences of natural and revealed religion, to about fifty of the more advanced young men who have been educated at the Hindoo College, as well as of the class of East Indians who have received a competent education. On the whole the effect is pleasing. Much discussion takes place at times, but in the end objections have hitherto been withdrawn. '* Onr church still droops. Were an acceptable preacher to officiate regularly it might yet be in some degree recovered from its degradation. I preach occasionally, and perceive clearly that many are willing to attend, and under a different state of things would, but refuse at present on the presentation of a plea which they hold to be sufficient. Consequently many have joined other commuuions permanently, many temporarily, and many live without the stated administration of ordinances. In this way that which once was a united community is now severed into fragments ; and that aid which would once have been and now might be afforded can no longer be expected. Oh let us have a pious and talented successor to Dr. Brown, and much may yet be done. Another of the same stamp when the present incumbent retires, and a vast deal may be done towards re- storing our Zion. Such appointments would immensely profit the Assembly's Mission. Mr, Mackay, if he enjoy good health, 174 I^IFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. will do well. But he does not appear to be strong, nor capable of undergoing mucli bodily fatigue,, nor exertion in speech, all of which is so essential to the active discharge of a missionary's duties. I wish the committee would bear in mind that a constitutional vigour of body is just as requisite as a vigorous activity of mind, and piety and leai-ning. Indeed it is not studying men that we want, but hard-working men who have been and still are students.'' " Feb., 1834. — Awakened by the pleasing success which has attended our humble efforts in Calcutta, some zealous friends at home, as I hear, are beginning to think that a new station might be opened. Now, let me say at once that nothing would prove more disastrous. Of all stations in India Cal- cutta is by far the most important. Its population is a vast motley assemblage or congregation of persons from all parts of Eastern Asia. Of course the natives of Bengal greatly predom- inate, and next to these, immigrants from all the provinces of Gangetic India. A revolution of opinion here would be felt more or less throughout the Eastern world, and particularly among the millions that are the victims of idolatrous delusion and Brahmanical tyranny. It is of no ordinary importance, therefore, to make Calcutta the grand central station for con- ducting missionary operations on an extended scale. But we require a score more labourers, and if we had two score Calcutta alone and its neighbourhood would afford abundant scope for their best efforts for at least several years to come. It has hitherto been a radical error in the organization of missions, to scatter the pioneers and so dilute and fritter away their strength, instead of concentrating their efforts on some well-chosen field. I sincerely trust that this is an error which the committee of Assembly will endeavour to avoid, and that all their aim will be for years directed towards the strengthen- ing of the Calcutta station. " I perceive it was stated in the last Assembly by Mr. Thomson, of Perth, that the Assembly's Institution should always remain a mere school. No remark has astounded me more for many a year — the utter ignorance which it betrays of the wants of this people and the most probable means of supplying these with success ! If it is to continue a mere school, then I say that all the time, money and labour hitherto expended on it have been thrown away for nought. Instead ^t. 28. AN EFFICIENT COLLEGE AND NOT A MERE SCHOOL. 1 75 of being an apparatus which God might bless as the means of leading heathens to the way ot salvation through Christ, it would be much more likely to become a machine for trans- forming superstitious idolaters into rogues and infidels. It has been entirely overlooked that in this country there is a gigantic system of error to be rejected ere a system of truth can be embraced ; and the few years which a boy can spend at a mere school can barely suffice to open his mind to the absurdity and irrationality of the religion of his ancestors, a religion that closely intertwines itself with every feeling and faculty of the soul, with every habit and every action of life. But supposing that in a mere school you could succeed in overthrowing Hindooism and in inculcating much of the knowledge of Christianity, still if the boy be not confirmed in any belief, and you turn him adrift amid a multitude of heathens the most licentious and depraved under the sun, what must be the consequence ? I can only say from ex- perience, that his latter end must be in all respects worse than the first. '' Our only encouragement is the hope of being able to in- duce a certain proportion of those who enter as boys to remain with us till they reach the age of puberty, and consequently, attain that maturity of judgment which may render know- ledge, through God's blessing, operative and impressions lasting. And were there no reasonable hope of securing this end, I would without hesitation say, ' the sooner you abandon the school, the better.' I, for one, could not lend myself as an instrument in wasting the funds of the benevolent in Scotland in teaching young men a mere smattering of knowledge, to enable them to become more mischievous pests to society than they would have been in a state of absolute heathenism. On the other hand, if out of every ten that enter the school even one were to advance to the higher branches of secular and Christian education ; were he to become in head and in heart a disciple of the Lord Jesus ; and were a number with minds thus disciplined, enlarged, and sanctified, to go forth from the Institution, what a leaven would be infused through the dense mass of the votaries of Hindooism ! And what a rich and ample reward for all one's labours, what a glorious return for all the money expended ! I look to you, my dear sir, as one whose superior discernment can penetrate 170 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1833. this subject^ and expose the erroneous views of sucli zealous butj in this instance, mistaken men as Mr. Thomson of Perth. ''^The school continues greatly to flourish. You may form some notion of what has been done, when I state that the highest class read and understand any English book with the greatest ease ; write and speak English with tolerable fluency ; have finished a course of geography and ancient history; have studied the greater part of the New Testament and portions of the Old ; have mastered the evidence from prophecy and miracles ; have, in addition, gone through the common rules of algebra, three books of Euclid, plane trigonometry and logarithms. And I venture to say that, on all these subjects, the youths that com- pose the first class would stand no unequal comparison with youths of the same standing in any seminary in Scotland. Other labours progress apace. My Tuesday evening lectures on the evidences and doctrines of Christianity are still con- tinued. God has been pleased to bless them for the conver- sion of a few, and the obstinacy of many minds has been shaken. On Sunday evening I preach also in English to considerable numbers in a small native chapel. There is cercainly much to encourage, while there is much also to damp one's zeal. Believe me, the people at home have far too exalted an idea of what has been done in India. Still, much has been done ; and that draws out the hope of soon doing still more. Let us not rest till the whole of India be the Lord's.*' In all this warfare of the young apostle against the hoary citadel of Brahmanism, and in the retreat of the foremost of its men into the slough of theoretical atheism and practical immorality, or of vague theism and a dead ethics, we have seen the divine influence at work. To Calcutta and Bengal, as once to Je- rusalem and Syria, Christ was being manifested to destroy the works of the devil. We must now look more closely at the human instrument He had chosen through which to pronounce the wonder-working spell, not only in the native city and for that generation, but over all India and Southern Asia and for the ages to come. It was the Greek tongue and the /Et. 27. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1 77 Roman order in that which was to all the race tho fulness of the aores. In India the set time came with the English language, with the legislation and the administration, the commerce and the civilization of the British people. The Missionary had, thus far, done his work. The Governor- General in Council must now do his. CHAPTER yiL 1833-1835. THE BENAISSANGE IN INDIA. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND THE CHURCH. Lord William Bentinck ready. — The Charter of 1833. — Macaulay'a share in that aud in the Eeform Act. — His Contrast of Calcutta and Edinburgh. — Sir Charles Trevelyan becomes his Brother-in- Law. — Trevelyan's Alliance with DufF. — Tlie Growth of a Vicious Orientalism after Lord Wellesley. — Lord Minto. — Bishop Heber. — The Prinseps and W. H. Macnaghten. — The Anglicists. — Mr. B. H. Hodgson and the Vernacularists. — Duff's Experience as a Celtic Highlander. — James Mill. — Macaulay's Famous Minute. — The Missionary's Greatest Ally. — Decree of Lord William Ben- tinck's Government. — Sir C. Trevelyan's Account of Duff's Triumph. — Duff's Modest Narrative. — His Regard for True Oriental Scholarship. — Vindicates the Government Decree. — Shows where, from political expediency, it failed. — Eloquent Application to the Church of Canning's Peroration on the New World. — Macaulay's Revival of Letters and Duff's Indian Refor- mation begun. Lord William Bentinck was ready. He had enjoyed wliat some call the drawbacks, but all true men pro- nounce to be the real advantage, of being a younger son. The second son of the third Duke of Portland, Lord WilHam Cavendish Bentinck was thrust out into positions where he developed for the good of human- ity all those virtues and that ability which had made Hans William, the founder of the house, second only to his friend William III. as a benefactor of Great Britain. Because, while still under thirty, he hap- pened to be Governor of Madras when the family of Tippoo provoked the mutiny of Vellore, Lord William ^t. 27. LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK. 1 79 Bentinck was recalled by the Court of Directors for cxacly the same avowed reason which caused their own extinction after the Mutiny of 1857. In the interval before his return to India as Governor-General the young administrator secured a constitution for Sicily, and, in 1814, he w'ould have restored the old republic of Genoa but for Lord Castlercagh's stupidity. It was one of the many merits of George Canning that, during his too brief terra as Prime Minister, he sent Lord William Bentinck to govern all India. Already, when Duff landed, had the new Governor-General spent two of the seven years which have marked the page of British India with triumphs hardly less brilliant than those of the Marquis AVellesley, and paralleled only by the later achievements of the Marquis of Dalliousie. Had he, as he wished, been appointed the immediate successor of Lord Hastings, instead of the weak Amherst, it is difficult to decide whether he would have prepared the way for Duff's mission of positive Christian truth and educational progress, or whether his lofty benevolence would not have failed, like other premature ideals, for want of the concurring aids of a ready man and a ripe time. As it was, it was well that the purely educational, literary, and scien- tific reforms of his G-overnment fell at the end of his s-even years' career in the highest office which any man can fill next to that of Premier of the United Kingdom. It was well also that to the work of Daff and the legislative and administrative measures of Bentinck, applying the principles and results of that work to all India and for all time, there were added the indispens- able co-operation and the supreme sanction of the British people through Parliament. For the first fruit of the Reform Act of 1832 was the East India Company's charter of 1833. That charter withdrew l8o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1833. the last obstructions to the work of Duff and of every settler in India, missionary or journalist, merchant or planter, teacher or captain of labour in any form. It converted the Company into a purely governing body, under a despotic but most benevolent constitution so well fitted for the freedom and the elevation of long- oppressed races that the most democratic of English thinkers, Mr. John Stuart Mill, has declared the sys- tem to be the best ever devised. That charter has the additional merit of giving men, as well as rendering possible a constitutional system, to India. It added a law member to the Governor-General's council or cabinet, then of five, and created a commission to prepare codes of law and procedure such as have come next only to Christianity itself, from which they spring, in their humanising and elevating influence. To mention no others, these four men, Lord Macaulay, Sir Barnes Peacock, Sir Henry S. Maine and Sir James F. Stephen have together done more for the varied races and the corrupting civilizations of the peoples of India than the jurists of Theodosius and Justinian effected for Europe, or the Code Napoleon for modern France. The eloquence of the young Macaulay in carrying the Reform Act resulted in his appointment as one of the commissioners, and then as the secretary, under Lord Glenelg and along with Sir Robert Grant, of the Board of Control. He was the master of the Court of Directors for eighteen months, and they for some time opposed his nomination as the new law member. Was not the charter of 1833 his doing, and was he not, at thirty-three, in their eyes an intolerably conceited person ? Six years older than his country- man and fellow Highlander, of whose doings he could not help being officially cognisant, little did he think that without himself the revival of letters and of faith, ^t. 27. MACAULAY GOES TO CALCUTTA. 181 brought to tlie birth by the young missionary, could not be perfected. So it is that Grod works by many and apparently incompatible instruments. For Ma- caulay was ever the apostle of the old Whig neutrality in religion, whether in India or in Ireland, although his whole boyhood had been steeped in the discussions of his father, of the Clapham men and Hannah More on the evangelization of the Hindoo and the Negro alike. It was not till June, 1834, that Macaulay reached Madras to join the Governor-General, then at the Neelgherry hills, while he sent his sister on to Cal- cutta, there to be the guest of Lady William i3entinck. Duff had just left India stricken down by almost deadly disease as we shall see, when in sultry September the Honourable the Law Member of Council took up his abode, under a salute of fifteen guns, in what is still the best of the Chowringhee palaces, the Bengal Club. But none the less, Macaulay's greatest work — greater than even his penal code and his Warren Hastings and Clive essays — was to be the legislative comple- tion of the young Scottish missionary's policy. Yet Macaulay was never happy during his brief Indian resi- dence of three and half years. He did not know the magnitude, he had not his father's faith to realize tho consequences, of the educational work between which and a re-reading of nearly all the best Greek and Latin authors he divided his leisure. In 1854, when Sir Barnes Peacock completed his penal code, Macaulay wrote to his sister, " Had this justice been done sixteen years ago I should probably have given much more at- tention to legislation and much less to literature than I have done. I do not know that I should have been either happier or more useful than I have been." And in the glorious cold season of Bengal, so early as December, 1834, he had thus sighed out his "heim- weh" to Mr. Macvey Napier, of Edinburgh : "Calcutta l8:2 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1834, is called, and not without some reason, * tlie city of palaces ; ' but I have seen nothing in the East like the view from the Castle Rock, nor expect to see anything like it till we stand there together again." There was a third official, the warm personal zeal of whose co-operation drew him closer to Duff than the two rulers, without whom his energizings could not have been either so abiding or so imperial in their consequences — Charles Trevelyan. Like Sir Henry Durand at a later date, he had been compelled by public duty to report to Government the malversa- tion of a high civilian, an offence happily rare since Clive's reforms. But Macaulay himself tells the story : — " Trevelyan is almost eight-and-twenty. He was educated at the Charterhouse, and then went to Haileybury, and came out hither. In this country he has distinguished himself beyond any man of his standing, by his great talent for business; by his liberal and enlarged views of policy; and by literary merit, which, for his opportunities, is considerable. He was at first placed at Delhi under , a very powerful and a very popular man, but extremely corrupt. This man tried to initiate Trevelyan in his own infamous practices. But the young fellow's spirit was too noble for such things. When only twenty-one years of age he publicly accused , then almost at the head of the service, of receiving bribes from the natives. A perfect storm was raised against the accuser. He was almost everywhere abused and very generally cut. But, with a firmness and ability scarcely ever seen in any man so young, he brought his proofs forward, and after an inquii'y of some weeks fully made out his case. was dismissed in disgrace, and is now living obscurely in England. The Government here and the directors at home applauded Trevelyan -in the highest terms, and from that time he has been considered as a man likely to rise to the veiy top of the service. " Trevelyan is a most stormy reformer. Lord William said to me, before any one had observed his attentions to Nancy : ' That ^t. 28. SIR CHARLES TREVELYAN. 1 83 man is almost always on the rig-ht side in every question; and it is well that it is so, for he gives a most confounded deal of trouble when he happens to take the wrong one.' He is quite at the head of that active party, among tho younger servants of the Company, wha take the side of improvement. In par- ticular, he is the soul of every scheme for diffusing education among the natives of this country. His reading has been very confined; but to the little that he has read he has brought a mind as active and restless as Lord Brougham^'s, and much more judicious and honest. . . He has no small talk. His mind is full of schemes of moral and political im- provement, and his zeal boils over in his talk. His topics, even in courtship, are steam navigation, the education of the natives, the equalization of the sugar duties, the substitution of tho Eoman for the Arabic alphabet in the oriental languages."* Trevelyan had not been a week in Calcutta when, in 1831, lie threw himself into the different movements originated by DufF. In their first interview the two young men soon found themselves absorbed in this question of all others — the advantage, the positive necessity of using the English language as the medium of all Cbristianizing and civilizing, all high educational and administrative efforts by its rulers to reach the natural aristocracy and leaders of the people, and through them to feed the vernaculars and raise the masses. Duff's plans, his experience, his success, were not only accomplished facts, but had been then for twelve months the talk and the imitation of every thouschtful and benevolent Bng-lishman in the far East. Trevelyan told how he himself, at Delhi, had been for four years speculating on the advantages of thus using the English language. From that hour he clang to the missionary, and became the principal link between his far-seeing practical principles on the one hand and * The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulaij, by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan, M.P. Second Edition, vol. i., p. 387. 184 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1834. the coming action of Government in the same direc- tion. It fell to Macaulay to advise and to the Gover- nor-General to act under the following circumstances. When the British succeeded to the Muhammadan civil government of Bengal and Hindostan, on the Emperor Shah Alum's grants to Clive at Benares in 1765, Warren Hastings made the first and most en- lightened attempt to popularise the sacred books of Islam and Brahmanism by Halhed's translations. It was in vain. When Lord Cornwallis was forced to put the judicial as well as revenue courts under British officers, he still made a barbarous Persian, as technical as the language of the Scottish courts, the only lingual medium between the people and their new rulers. The earliest colleges, as we have seen, Muham- madan at Calcutta and Sanscrit at Benares, were created . . . ' to prepare the few natives required as intermediaries between the Company's civilians and their subjects. Thus an orientalism unworthy of the name of scholar- ship sprang up, grew by tradition in spite of English scholars like Sir William Jones, and widened the gulf between the foreign ruler and the ignorant, oppressed and suspicious ruled. Lord Wellesley was the first who had the genius to seek to correct the evil. In spite of the parsimonious Court of Directors, he established the College of Fort William. He put Carey and Buchanan practically at its head, to teach the vernacular as well as classical languages of the East, and to train the young " writers " with a view, as Duff described it, to " the formation of sound moral and religious habits, as much as for the cultivation of all branches of professional or useful knowledge." That college, like " the glorious little man " its founder, sent forth a body of scholars and administrators to whom we owe the conquest and good government of India up to the next generation of their pupils, headed ^t 28. THE GROWTH OF A VICIOUS OKIENTALISM. 1 85 by the Lawrences and Durand, Thomason and the Muirs. Some, like Lord Metcalfe, early corrected the orientalizing tendency of their studies by executive work on the widest scale. Others, like Sir W. Mac- naghten, intensified its evils by the narrowing work of a mere secretary to Government. Lord Minto's ad- ministration, more brilHant in some respects than has yet been allowed, identified the growing orientalism, not with the toleration in which it was born, but with antichristian anti-popular timidity. Lord Hastings, though personally friendly to the religious instruction of the natives, found the oriental mania in this form too strong for him to let it grow. Sydney Smith's brother, who had made a fortune as Advocate-General in Calcutta, proposed the educational clause in the charter of 1813, doubtless in the interest of the Brahmanizing orientalists, who had almost unchecked influence with the Governor-General when it came to be applied. But whatever the intention, Parliament, led by the Grants and Wilberforce and deluged with petitions from the whole country, had so worded the clause as to secure the education of the whole people of India in positive truth of every kind, the revealed truth of Christianity being no doubt as much in their mind as the superstitions of Brahmanism and the Koran were in that of the minority. Like much else in human compromises, confessions and con- tracts, the language fortunately allowed of honest development according to the growing needs of the country and the time. Still the orientalists, being in power on the spot, had the unchecked administration of the money al- lowed for public instruction. In spite of Rammohun Roy, notwithstanding the expressed desire of the natives themselves for English, although the vernacu- lars were barren and the classical books printed and 1 86 LIFE OP DE. DUrf. 1834. taught were not touched by one native who was not highly paid for submitting to learn them, the British Government persisted in its folly. When the ex- pediency of spending a little of the grant ordered by Parliament on the Hindoo College established by the natives themselves was forced on the authorities, the agent whom they selected to represent them was the most intense and least Christian of all the oriental party — the assistant-surgeon, Horace Hayman Wilson. Even in 1833, when the Company had to render the next account of its stewardship, the Government Committee of Public Instruction was equally divided between Oriento-maniacs and Anglo-maniacs, as they called each other. What the teaching was in the partially English Hindoo College we have seen. It remained in the Benares Sanscrit College exactly what Bishop Heber described it to have been during his tour in Upper India. Under a grant ordered by Parliament on the pressure of the Christian public, and ad- ministered by a Christian Government, a professor lecturing on a terrestrial globe identified Mount Meroo with the North Pole, declared that the tortoise of the Hindoo cosmogony supported the earth from under the South Pole, pointed to Padalon in the centre of the globe, and demonstrated how the sun went round the earth every day and visited the signs of the Zodiac! Well might the teaching of such "rubbish" in a state college excite the wonder of the Bishop. But that was harmless compared with what was taught elsewhere, and even with the obscenely idolatrous teaching which lingered in Government school-books till Lord North- o brook purged them three years ago, if indeed they be yet purged. When Trevelyan came to the support of Duff, and adopted his plans as well as his principles as the only policy for Government, the Brahmanizing five in the ^t. 28. THE TEACniNQ OF THE OEIEXTA LISTS. 1 87 Grovernment committee were these : The Honble. H. Shakespear was a colleague of tlie Governor-General, and only as such was dangerous. Mr. H. Tlioby Prin- sep and Mr. James Prinsep were brothers. The latter, an uncovenanted officer of the Mint, was the greatly lamented scholar who fell an early victim to his too eager researches into the inscriptions on coins and rocks which he deciphered. The former was one of the under-secretaries to Government at that time, was a greater scholar in Arabic and Persian than his brother, was afterwards director, member of Parliament, and member of the Secretary of State's council, and died at eighty-six, the day before Duff. William Hay Mac- naghten was a Charterhouse boy, who from the day he lauded in India, first as a cadet and then as a civilian, mastered the several languages of south and north, proved the most extraordinary scholar in the classical tongues ever turned out by Fort AYilliam College, and was trusted by Lord William Bentinck beyond any other secretary. His evil policy and sad fate in Cabul make his career most tragic. These, with the zealous secretary of the committee, Mr. T. C. C. Sutherland, made the orientalists very formidable antagonists. The Anglicists were no less strong, however. Fore- most among them was the greatest land-revenue au- thority, Robert Mertins Bird, who corrected and com- pleted the work of Holt Mackenzie, author of the first official minute on education, and at whose feet Lord Lawrence sat as a revering pupil. Mr. J. B. Colvin was he who died in Agra Fort during the mutiny, Lieutenant-Governor. Sir Charles Trevelyan atoned for the probably routine efficiency of Messrs. Saunders and Bushby, who always voted straight. We must in justice to these two main parties add a third, whom we may describe as Vernacularists. Allying himself with the Serampore men then left, with Dr. Marsh man and l88 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1834. his son in the Friend of India ^ Mr. Brian H. Hodgson, long the first authority on Tibetan Buddhism, advo- cated the foundation of a normal vernacular institution to manufacture good teachers, reliable translators and pure books. English, he urged, would be as bad as Persian, Arabic and Sanscrit, which had " proved tlie curse " of India, " not so much by reason of the false doctrines they have inculcated as by reason of the administrative mystery they have created and upheld." All that was good, or possible at the time, in Mr. Hodgson's then really remarkable proposal Mr. Duff had already advocated or actually carried into effect. His school and college long proved to be the first of normal training institutions in India, which, indeed, has had no others worthy of the name save those established by the Christian Vernacular Education Society since the mutiny. The vernacular department of his school, fitting into the English and ultimately the Sanscrit classes, secured all that the great orien- talist of Nipal wanted. But Hodgson, in common with his less enlightened fellows on the committee, could not see that while the natives themselves desired English, while it was administratively necessary as well as politi- cally desirable to give them facilities for mastering the English literature as well as language, no body of truth, scientific, historical or ethical, not to say Christian, could be conveyed to the natives through their then barren vernaculars or sealed classical tongues. The Govern- ment, like the missionaries, must begin at both ends : at the vernacular that the people might at least read and write their own language intelligently, and at the higher or English end that thence their own teachers might convey the material and even the terms of truth to them through the vernacular ; and in time to the learned through the Sanscrit, Arabic and Persian. Writing of this period Duff declared : — " I saw clearly and ex- Mi. 28. ME. B. HODGSON AND THE VERNACULAKISTS. 1 89 pressed myself strongly to the effect that ultimately, in a generation or two, the Bengalee, by improvement, might become the fitting medium of European know- ledge. But at that time it was but a poor language, like English before Chaucer, and had in it, neither by translation nor original composition, no works era- bodying any subjects of study beyond the merest elements. As a native of the Highlands I vividly realized the fact that the Gaelic language, though power- ful for lyric and other poetry and also for popular address, contained no works that could possibly meet the objects of a higher and comprehensive education. Hence those who sought that found it in English col- leges, and returned as teachers and preachers to dis- tribute the treasures of knowledge acquired through English among the Gaelic people." Just when, in 1834, Duffs success, Trevelyan's earnestness, and the increasing urgency of the de- spatches from the Court of Directors drafted by his friend Mr. James Mill* had produced a dead-lock in the Committee of Public Instruction, Macaulay was ap- pointed its president. But he declined to act until the Government, of which he was a member, should have decided the question of policy in its executive capacity. And to him, as law member, the preliminary duty was assiofned of declaring: whether the Governor-General in Council could legally apply to English education the grant ordered by the Parliament of 1813, and hitherto reserved for a so-called orientalism. On the 2nd Feb- ruary, 1835, he submitted to Lord William Bentinck • In 1836 Macaulay wrote to his fatlier : — " I have been a sin- cere mouruer for Mill. He and I were on the best terms, and his services at the India House were never so much needed as at this time. I had a most kind letter from him a few weeks before I heard of his death. He has a son just come out, to whom 1 have shown such little attentions as are in my power." IQO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. that minute which, while as striking a specimen of his written style as even the passage on Burke in his " Warren Hastings " pronounced by his biographer " unsurpassed," proved to be the first charter of in- tellectual liberty for the people of India, the educa- tional despatch of 1854 based on Duff's evidence before a Parliamentary committee being the second. In that minute Macaulay began by showing that the lakh of rupees set apart by order of Parliament was not only for " reviving literature in India," but also for " the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British terri- tories." These words, he said, are " alone sufficient to authorize all the changes for which I contend." But so terribly was he in earnest that he proposed, if his colleagues in council differed from him, to do what would now be impossible, — to pass a short Act rescind- ing that former clause of the charter of 1813 on which the orientalists based their oppositioii. He was him- self indeed the author of the charter of 1833 more than any other man, even Lord Glenelg, and he was the most constitutional of Whigs. But, nevertheless, to propose that a local legislature, and such a legis- lature as that of India was till Lord Dalhousie's time, should quietly abolish an Act of Parliament, was daring even then. The proposal was unnecessary, for his opinion as the responsible legal adviser of the Governor- General was sufficient. In twelve pages like this he then proceeded to prove that, being " free to employ our funds as we choose, we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowiug ; that English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit or Arabic ; that the natives are desirous to be taught English and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic ; that neither as the languages of law nor as the lan- guages of religion have the Sanscrit and Arabic any ^t. 29. macaulay's famous minute. 191 peculiar claim to our encouragement ; that it is possi. ble to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed." Mr. Thoby Prinsep replied after the Anglo-Indian fashion, which conducts all deliberate dis- cussion by then written and now printed minutes, often of value second only to Macaulay's, and too seldom ordered by Parliament to be published. Able as that councillor was, even in his blindness and to the last hour of his duties in the India Office, his vain repre- sentations called forth only this rejoinder, scratched in pencil, from the law member : " I remain not only unshaken but confirmed in all my opinions on the general question. I may have committed a slight mis- take or two as to details, and I may have occasionally used an epithet which might with advantage be soft- ened down. But I do not retract the substance of a single proposition I have advanced." Never did what his enemies called his "conceit," and hostile critics afterwards used to denounce as his " obstinacy," stand the world in better stead. He fought for the enlightenment of the millions of our Indian Empire as it then was, and of millions yet unborn. While in the same breath he officially and personally advocated religious neutrality, it was a true neutrality, intended to prevent the hostility of Hindooizing foreigners to Christian liberty and prin- ciples, and he stood forth the greatest ally the Indian missionary has ever had. It was not only English that Macaulay persuaded the Government to teach, it was the recognition of the equality of children of all castes in the public schools, from which the Brahmanizing orientalists had weakly excluded all but the Brahmans. When he fairly joined the committee he penned such ink-blotted sentences as these in the minute-book which circulated from member to mem- 192 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. ber : "No sucli distinction ouglit to be tolerated in any school supported by us." " The general rule clearly ought to be that all classes should be treated alike, and should be suffered to intermingle freely." It was only Duff and the Christian missionaries who had up to this time disregarded caste and idolatrous festi- vals alike in their schools, and who had begun not only to ask but to receive fees for the secular instruc- tion, such as the respectable poor could pay and as would make them value aright the instruction they received. But it was much that the Government should at that time follow the same just and tolerant course. Nor was it in this only that ]\Iacaulay, as an educationist, followed Duff, through Trevelyan as the intermediary. In public instruction, as in everything else, principles are little without the men to give them effect. Even after tempting the missionary's assist- ants, like Mr. Clift, to leave him, Government could not get teachers worth the name. In the days before normal schools Macaulay wrote in the old minute book, " Teaching is an art to be learned by practice. I am satisfied that it will soon be found necessary to import from England, or rather from Scotland, a re- gular supply of masters for the Government schools." And from the first, again following Duff more or less consciously, Macaulay looked on English as the indis- pensable preliminary to the true education of the people in their own vernaculars. He thus supported a proposal to teach Hindee at Ajmer : — " An order to give instruction in the English language is, by necessary implication, an order to give instruction, where that instruction is required, in the vernacu' lar language. For what is meant by teaching a boy a foreign language ? Surely this, the teaching him what words in the foreign language correspond to ^t. 28. MACAULAY ON TEACHING ENGLISH. 1 93 certain words in his own vernacular language, the enabling him to translate from the foreign language into his own vernacular lauQ-uag^e, and vice versa. We learn one language, our mother tongue, by noticing the correspondence between words and things. But all the languages which, we afterwards study we learn by noticing the correspondence between the words in those languages and the words in our own mother tongue. The teaching the boys at Ajmer, therefore, to read and write Hindee seems to me to be bond fide a part of an English education. To teach them Per- sian would be to set up a rival, and, as I apprehend, a very unworthy rival to the English language." So, just seven years before. Duff had not only written but acted in the case of Bengalee, and for the first time in the East. Before he left India Macaulay was able, sympathetically with the objects of the mis- sionaries, to write to his father in language that reads like an extract from Duff's earlier oflficial reports to Dr. Inglis : — " Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. We find it difficult, indeed in some places impossible, to provide instruction for all who want it. At the single town of Hooghly fourteen hundred boys are learning English. The effect of this education on the Hindoos is prodigious. No Hindoo who has received an English education ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to confess it as matter of policy; but many profess themselves pure deists, and some embrace Christianity. It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence." Having, as a colleague of Macaulay's, endorsed his opinions in a minute, as Governor-General in Council Lord AVilliam Bentinck thus issued the decree of the 194 I-IFE OP DE. Durp. 1835. 7tli Marcli, 1835, whicli fitly closed the long list of services to the people of India and his own country such as the former have immortalized by the statue with its inscription fronting the Town-hall of Calcutta, and as the latter has expressed through the eulogium penned by Macaulay : — *' 1st. His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India, and that all the funds appropriated for the purposes of educa- tion would be best employed on English education alone. " 2nd. But it is not the intention of his Lordship in Council to abolish any college or school of native learning, while the native population shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves tf the advantages which it affords ; and his Lordship in Council directs that all the existing professors and students at all the institutions under the superint endence of the committee shall continue to receive their stipends. But his Lordship in Coun- cil decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto prevailed of suppoi'ting the students during the period of their education. He conceives that the only effects of such a system can be to give artificial encouragement to branches of learning which, in the natural coui'se of things, would be superseded by more useful studies ; and he directs that no stipend shall be given to any student that may hereafter enter at any of these institu- tions, and that when any professor of oriental learning shall vacate his situation the committee shall report to the Govern- ment the number and state of the class, in order that the Government may be able to decide upon the expediency of appointing a successor. "3rd. It has come to the knowledge of the Governor- Genei-al in Council, that a large sum bas been expended by the committee on the printing of oriental works ; his Lordship in Council directs that no portion of the funds shall hereafter be so employed. "4th. His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds which these reforms will leave at the disposal of the committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the native population a knov/ledge of English literature and science through the JEt. 29. GOVEKNAIENT DECREE IN FAVOUR OF ENGLISH. 1 95 medium of the English language ; and his Lordship in Council requests the committee to submit to Governmout, with all expedition, a plan for the accomplishment of this purpose/^ — ■ (Signed,) " H. T. Puinsep, Secretary to Government.'* Rhadakant Deb and Russomoy Dutt, the native leaders of the orthodox and the liberal Bengalees, were at once added to the committee ; for even the orthodox had never approved of the fanatical and, in relation to them, false orientalism of Dr. H. H. Wilson and his associates. The Prinseps, one of whom had officially signed the decree, led the Bengal Asiatic Society in an attack upon " the destructive, unjust, unpopular and impolitic resolution, not far outdone by the destruction of the Alexandrine library itself," and memorialised the Court of Directors against it. What Sir Charles Trevelyan, after all the experience of the past half-century, still thinks of Duff and his share in the triumph, that veteran reformer has enabled us thus to learn : — " Our concern," he writes to us, "is with the part performed by Dr. Duff at this crisis of Indian history. When he arrived in India the first marvellous results of the education given at the Hindoo College had begun to appear. Newly acquired freedom had led to a state of intellectual exaltation, and, seeing that the religious system they had been taught to venerate had no foun- dation, the young men jumped to the conclusion that all religion was priestcraft. Dr. Duff then came for- ward as a defender of the truth of Christianity, and in several public disputations he converted some and enforced respect upon all. But he did a great deal more than this. He clearly appreciated the new intel- lectual and moral pov.^er which had appeared on the field, and had the sagacity to distinguish between its , present abuse and the important use to which, under/ proper direction, it might be applied in aid of the 196 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835. Christian cause. There was a general demand for education, and he proposed to meet it by giving reli- gious education. Up to that time preaching had been considered the orthodox regular mode of missionary action, but Dr. Duff held that the receptive plastic minds of children might be moulded from the first according to the Christian system, to the exclusion of all heathen teaching, and that the best preaching to the risiug generation which soon becomes the entire people, is the ' line upon line, precept upon precept ; here a little, and there a little,' of the schoolroom. Reconstruction upon a sound basis would then be linked with the destruction of ancient error. What- ever difficulties the Government might have, the mis- sionary societies were free to offer religious education to all who were willing to accept it. *' The remarkable success of the school which Dr. Duff opened at Calcutta on these principles, and the influence it had in promoting the establishment of similar institutions in other parts of India, are well known, but account should also be taken of the direct access thus gained to the future leaders of the people, and of the new respect paid to missionaries as tutors of young native chiefs and other highly considered persons. These were great and pregnant reforms, which must always give Dr. Duff" a high place among the benefactors of mankind. The indirect influence of his exertions upon the action of the Government was at least equally important. The example of his suc- cess, and the stimulus given by him to the popular demand for English education, entered largely into the causes which brought about the Resolution of Govern- ment of the seventh of March, 1835." Duff's own attitude and criticism of the last act of Lord William Bentinck will be found in that which is, historically, the most important of his many pamphlets, JEt, 29. TREVELYAN ON HIS SERVICES TO MANKIND. 1 97 his ** New Era of the English Language and English Literature in India." AVith the culture that had marked his whole school and university studies, he recognised the attractions of a genuine oriental scholar- ship, and reproached his countrymen for their indif- ference to it, for " persevering in a truly barbarous ignorance of one of the most remarkable nations and countries on the face of the globe." Following that remark of a contemporary historian, Duff con- tinued : — " If poetry and romance and chivalry be an object of pursuit, are there not ample stores of poetic effusion and romantic legend that might not be disclaimed as unworthy by any of the older nations of Europe ? and are the records of any state more crowded with the recital of daring adventures and deeds of heroism than the annals of Rajasthan ? If philology, where can we find the match of the Sanscrit, perhaps the most copious and certainly the most elaborately refined of all lan- guages, living or dead ? If antiquities, are there not monu- mental remains and cavern temples scarcely less stupendous than those of Egypt ? and ancient sculptures, which, if inferior in ' majesty and expression,' in richness and variety of orna- mental tracery, almost rival those of Greece ? If natural history, where is the mineral kingdom more exuberantly rich, the vegetable or animal more variegated, gorgeous, or gigantic ? If the intellectual and moral history of man, are there not masses of subtile speculation and fantastic philosophies, and infinitely varied and unparalleled developments of every prin- ciple of action that has charactei'ized fallen degraded humanity ? If an outlet for the exercise of philanthropy, what field on the surface of the globe can be compared to Hindostan, stretching from the Indus to the Ganges, and from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, in point of magnitude and accessibility combined, and peculiarity of claims on British Christians, the claims of not less than a hundred and thirty millions of fellow-subjects, sunk beneath a load of the most debasing superstitions, and the cruelest idolatries that ever polluted the surface of the earth, or brutalized the nature of man ? " 1 98 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. ' 1835. Having used official documents to show the people of Great Britain and Ireland wherein the follies of the Calcutta orientalists' abuse of the public money differed from the pursuit of an enlightened scholarship, the missionary vindicated the propriety and excellence of the decree which restored the G-overnment position of strict neutrality by allowing English to take its place beside the classical and vernacular languages of the people of India, according to their own demand, and with a view to purify the former while enriching the latter : — "As coBcerns the interests and glory of the Government itself, its dissemination of its own language and literature, far from being impolitic, seems the only wise and magnanimous policy. The vast influence of language in moulding national feelings and habits, more especially if fraught with superior stores of knowledge, is too little attended to and too inade- quately understood. In this respect we are in the rear of nations some of which we are apt to despise as semi-barbarous. When the Romans conquered a province they forthwith set themselves to the task of ' Romanizing'' it; that is, they strove to create a taste for their own more refined language and liter- ature, and thereby aimed at turning the song and the romance and the history — the thought and the feeling and fancy, of the subjugated people, into Roman channels, which fed and aug- mented Romish interests. And has Rome not succeeded ? Has she not saturated every vernacular dialect with which she came in contact with terms copiously drawn from her own ? Has she not thus perpetuated for ages after her sceptre moul- ders in the dust the magic influence of her character and name ? Has she not stamped the impress of her own genius on the literature and the laws of almost every European king- dom, with a fixedness that has remained unchanged up to the present hour ? *' And who can tell to what extent the strength and perpe- tuity of the Arabic domination is indebted to the Caliph Walid, who issued the celebrated decree that the language of the Koran should be ' the universal language of the Muhammadan ^t. 29. ANALOGY OF ROME, THE OALIPHS AND AKBAR. 1 99 world, so that, from the Indian Archipelago to Portugal, ifc actually became the language of religion, of literature, of gov- ernment and generally of common life ? ' " And who can estimate the extent of influence exerted in India by the famous edict of Akbar, the greatest and the wisest far of the sovereigns of the House of Timur ? Of this edict an authority already quoted thus wrote, about six years ago : ' The great Akbar established the Persian language as the language of business and of polite literature throughout his extensive dominions, and the popular tongue naturally became deeply impregnated with it. The literature and the language of the country thus became identified with the genius of his dynasty ; and this has tended more than anything else to produce a kind of intuitive veneration for the family, which has long survived even the destruction of their power ; and this feeling will continue to exist until we substitute the English language for the Persian, which will dissolve the sjdcII, and direct the ideas and the sympathies of the natives towards their present rulers/ The ^ until,' which only six years ago pointed so doubtfully to the future, has, sooner than could have been anticipated, been converted into an event of past history. And to Lord W. Bentiuck belongs the honour of this noble achievement. He it was who first resolved to supersede the Persian, in the political department of the public service, by the substitution of the English, and laid the foundation for the same in every department, financial and judicial, as well as political. And having thus by one act created a necessity, and consequently an increased and yearly increasing demand for English, he next consummated the great design by super- adding the enactment under review, which provides the re- quisite means for supplying the demand that had been pre- viously created. And this united Act now bids fair to out- rival in importance the edicts of the Roman, the Arabic and the Mogul emperors, inasmuch as the English language is in- finitely more fi'aught with the seeds of truth in every province of literature, science and religion than the languages of Italy, Arabia or Persia ever were. Hence it is that I venture to hazard the opinion, that Lord W. Bentinck's double act for the encouragement and difi'usion of the English language and English literature in the East will, long after contemporaneous party interests and individual jealousies and ephemeral rival- 200 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 183 5. ries have sunk into oblivion, be hailed by a grateful and bene- fited posterity as the greatest master-stroke of sound policy that has yet characterized the administration of the British Government in India." Let the Government, lie urged, use the Asiatic Society of Sir William Jones and James Prinsep as the official organ for dispensing its patronage of stand- ard oriental writers and their translations. But for the true education of the learned themselves, as well as for the elevation of the illiterate millions, the vast ocean of oriental literature deserves Firdousi's satire on Ghuzni in all its glory: " The magnificent court of Ghuzni is a sea, but a sea without bottom and without shore. I have fished in it long, but have not found any pearl." "Is it not one thing," asked Duff, "to re- gard a literature as an inexhaustible field for literary, scientific and theological research, and quite another to cherish it as the sole nursery of intellect, morals and religion ?" Nor was one who knew the relation of the English to his own Gaelic vernacular so enthusiastic for English as to dream that it could ever supersede the mother tongues of millions, or do more than give them a new wealth and power. He thus concluded his vindication of the enactment, and proceeded to show where it fell short of his own ideal : — " Who, then, will hesitate in affirming that, in the meantime, the Government has acted wisely in appointing the English language as the medium of communicating English literature and science to the select youth of India? And who will ven- ture to say that the wisdom of the act would be diminished if it guaranteed the continuance of English as the medium until the living spoken dialects of India became ripened, by the copious infusion of expressive terms, for the formation of a new and improved national literature ? . . "What will be the ultimate effect of these yearly augmenting educationary forces ? We say ultimate with emphasis, because Mt 29. DEFECT OF THE DECREE OF 1835. 20I we are no visionaries. We do not expect miracles. We do not anticipate sudden and instantaneous changes. But we do look foi'ward with confidence to a great idtimate revolution. We do regard Lord W. Bentinck's Act as laying the foundation of a train of causes which may for a while operate so insensibly as to pass unnoticed by careless or casual observers, but not the less surely as concerns the great and momentous issue. Like the laws which silently, but with resistless power, regu- late the movements of the material universe, these education- ary operations, which arc of the nature and force of moral laws, will proceed onwards till they terminate in effecting a universal change in the national mind of India. The. sluices of a superior and quickening knowledge have already been thrown open ; and who shall dare to shut them up ? The streams of enlivening information have begun to flow in upon the dry and parched land, and who will venture to arrest their progress ? As well might we ask with the poet : — " ' Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires, Forget her thunders and recall her fires ? When the loose mountain trembles from on high, Shall gravitation cease, while you go by ? ' " But highly as we approve of Lord W. Bentinck's enactment so far as it goes, we must, ere we conclude, in justice to our own views and to the highest and noblest cause on earth, take the liberty of strongly expressing our own honest conviction that it does not go far enough. Truth is better than error in any department of knowledge, the humblest as well as the most exalted. Hence it is that we admire the moral intrepid- ity of the man who decreed that, in the Government institu- tions of India, true literature and true science should hence- forth be substituted in place of false literature, false science and false religion. But while we rejoice that true literature and science is to be substituted in place of what is demon- strably false, we cannot but lament that no provision whatever has been made for substituting the only true religion — Chris- tianity— in place of the false religion which our literature and science will inevitably demolish. " Our maxim has been, is now, and ever will be this : — • Wherever, whenever, and by whomsoever Christianity is sacri- ficed on tlie altar of worldly expediency, there and then must the 202 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1835. supreme good of man lie bleeding at its base. But because a Christian government has chosen to neglect its duty towards the religion which it is sacredly bound to uphold,, is that any reason why the Churches of Britain should neglect their duty too ? Let us be aroused^ then, from our lethargy, and strive to accomplish our part. If we are wise in time, we may con- vert the act of the Indian Government into an ally and a friend. The extensive erection of a machinery for the destruc- tion of ancient superstition we may regard as opening up new facilities, in the good providence of God, for the spread of the everlasting gospel, as serving the part of a humble pioneer in clearing away a huge mass of rubbish that would otherwise have tended to impede the free dissemination of divine truth. Wherever a Government seminary is founded, which shall have the effect of battering down idolatry and superstition, there lefc us be prepared to plant a Christian in- stitution that shall, through the blessing of Heaven, be the instrument of rearing the beauteous superstructure of Chris- tianity on the ruins of both. "Already has the Church of Scotland nobly entered upon the great field; but let her remember that she has only crossed the border. Already has she taken up a bold and command- ing position in front of the enemy ; but let her not forget that the warfare is only begun. Let her arise, and in the name of the Lord march forward to take possession of the land. Already has she given evidence of the possibility, and an example of the mode of turning the Government schemes of education to profitable account. Whei'e the Government had established its first English college there did she station her first missionaries and plant her first Christian institution. And some of the most talented of the young men reared in the Government college became, through the grace of the Divine Spirit, her first converts, the first-fruits of her missionary labours in Hindostan. ''We have often wondered at the boldness of the conception of a celebrated statesman, who, when taunted on the occasion of the last invasion of Spain by France, as to the diminution of British influence and the declension of British interests in the councils of Europe, which that event seemed to indicate, rose up in the British senate, and in substance made the magnificent re- ply : ' While others were torturing their minds on account of the ^t. 29. CANNING S PERORATION APPLIED TO MISSIONS. 203 supposed disturbance of the equilibriuin of power among the European states, I looked at the possessions of Spain on the other side of the Atlantic : I looked at the Indies, and I called in the new world to redress the balance of the old/ What is there to prevent the Church of Scotland* from attempting to emulate, in a much higher and holier sense, the magnanimous spirit of this reply ? If she awake and arise, and put forth all her latent energies in behalf of the perishing heathen, ma}' she not, in reference to the glowing prospects of Clu'istianity in the East, be yet privileged to show that, at a time when many upbraided her with the diminution of influence at home, and others wei'e racking their ingenuity in adjusting the dis- turbed equilibrium of her power, she looked at the dominions of idolatry across the great ocean ; she looked at the Indies and, through the blessing of God, called in a new Church to redress the balance of the old ? " With the sensitive modesty which ever marked him, the eloquent adapter of Canning's saying made no allu- sion to his own part in this result, of which Trevelyan writes that it " entered largely " into the official side of the revival, and how much more largely into the spiritual ! In the next year's report which he drafted, Trevelyan, remembering John Knox though writing of purely secular schools, declared it to be the Govern- ment committee's aim to establish a vernacular school in every village of India, and to endow a college for Western learning ultimately in every zillah or county town. In that one year the Government English schools were doubled in number, in Bengal and Northern India alone rising to twenty-seven. Accepting that so far, * The reason why the Church of Scotland is here singled out for special notice is, that the whole of the preceding article happened to be originally inserted in the Church of Scotland Magazine. The author, however, equally I'ejoices in all the real success that has attended the missionary labours of other Churches and societies, and unites with all that sincerely love the Lord Jesus in earnest prayer and supplication for their increasing prosperity. — A. D. 204 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. the new demand of its first missionary was, that the Scottish and other Churches should plant an insti- tution beside such secular schools, to supply the people with the lacking elements of positive moral and spiritual truth. That, too, he of all men brought about, alike by the stimulus he gave to the other Churches to follow his example, and by the tolerant, catholic grant-in-aid system, which he did not succeed in securing till Parliament again interfered in 1853. The conflict which resulted in the decree of 1835, and the discussion to which that ordinance in its turn gave rise, left a curious trace on the writings of Mr. Gladstone and Macaulay three years after. Mr. DuiTs complaint that the Government of India had made no provision for putting Christianity in the place of the false faiths which a true science and literature were destroying, rests on precisely the same principle to advocate which Mr. Gladstone, in 1838, published his first book on " The State in its Relations with the Church." When, on his return from India, Macaulay wrote his well-known essay on that most earnest volume, he met the proposition that the propagation of religious truth is one of the principal ends of Government, as Government, by considerations drawn from his Indian experience. From the other extreme of political expediency he assumed that the Govern- ment of India, while it " ought indeed to desire to propagate Christianity," should not attempt such substitution of the true for the false, because it would inevitably destroy our empire. Thus was begun, first practically and then legis- latively, that revival of letters in India, of which, referring to the Renaissance of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries, Macaulay had written in his famous minute : " What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to yEt. 29. THE EEVIVAL OF LETTERS. 205 the people of India." Similarly Duff had reasoned years before that was written : What the Christian Reformation did for Europe through the Greek tongue, the Roman law and the Bible in the vernaculars, it will similarly do for India and further Asia through the English language and the British administration. It is difficult to say whether he showed more genius in instinctively seizing the position in 1830, in working out the parallel down to 1835, or in influencing the Indian Government and the British public by his heaven-born enthusiasm and fiery eloquence. CHAPTER 7IIT. 1833-1836. THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA.— SGIENGE AND LETTERS. The Duff-Ben tinck Period! — The Aryan Witness to Christian Doc- trine.— Medical Science and Practice in Yedic times. — Charaka and Susruta. — First Attempt of an Indian Government at Medical Teaching in 1822. — Duff Protests against the Unscientific Folly of the Orientalists. — Lord William Bentinck's Committee. — Sir C. Trevelyan's Narrative. — Duff's Brahmanical Students offer to Dissect the Human Subject. — The Bengal Medical College created. — Braraley, Henry Goodeve and the First Professors. — Modosoo- dun Goopta and the First Dissection. — Subsequent Success of College and Native Christian Physicians. — The Controversy about Romanizing the Oriental Alphabets. — The 539 Languages and Dialects of Further Asia. — Sir C. Trevelyan's Account of Duff's Assistance. — Duff's Work for Vernacular Education, — Adam's Reports on the Indigenous Schools. — Duff uses the Press. — Es- tablishes the Calcutta Christian Observer. — Opinions on Biblical Criticism. — Freedom of the Press permitted by Lord W. Bentinck, and legally secured by Metcalfe. — In what sense a Renaissance is true of India. During what may appropriately be marked out as this Duff-Bentinck period, the Hindoo mind began to awake from its long sleep under the dominance, first of its own Brahmanism broken only for a time by the Buddhist revolt, and then of the Arab-Muhammadan tyranny, to which it had early lent the culture of the caliphs of Bagdad down to that of Akbar at Agra. The nineteenth century in India is the beginning of a renaissance in a sense which promises to be as real for Southern and Eastern Asia as that of the fifteenth was for Europe. In philology and philosophy, in astronomy and medicine, the Vedic Hindoos were the JEt 28. EARLY FAITir AND SCIENCE OP TUE HINDOOS. 207 teachers of Pytliagoras and Plato, of Aristotle and Hippocrates, as well as of the Arabs who, like Ibn Sina, called Avicenna in the dark ages of Europe, preserved the teaching of both Hindoos and Greeks for the coming revival of letters in the West. What was the relation of the Hindoo Aryans to the Accadian or Chaldean and the first Semitic or Egyptian civili- zations, is still a problem for the solution of which scholars are painfully collecting the materials. Even in faith, just as Rammohun Roy went back on the Vedas and Keshub Chunder Sen, his present represen- tative at the head of the Brumho Somaj, professes still to find there the body of natural religion, so the Rev. Dr. K. M. Banerjea, the first convert baptized by Duff, appeals to his countrymen to give up their idolatry and caste, by " The Aryan WitnesSy or the Testimony of Aryan Scriptures in corroboration of Biblical History and the Rudiments of Christian Doctrine." He beseeches them to turn — to return — • to Christianity as to the fuller, because anew revealed embodiment of what the Yedas mysteriously pro- claimed, that " the Lord of the creation offered him- self a sacrifice for the benefit of gods," that is, of the mortals he redeemed for heaven ; and that the same Lord, " the giver of self," initiated the rites of sacrifice which is a " reflection " of himself. This renaissance, this bringing to the birth again in faith, in philosophy, in philology, was no less re- markable in science. The Yedic system, which had given the West the knowledge of numbers and of the stars, down even to the nine numerals which we incor- rectly ascribe to the Arab middlemen who only revived their use, was the first to teach the healing art, accord- ing to the greatest hving authority, Weber *. The •See his History of Indian Literature (1878), pp. 30 and 265, 208 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1834. regulation of the sacrifices required alike astronomical observations and anatomical practice. The victim was carefully dissected that its different parts might be assigned to the proper deities. Each part had its distinctive name. In the Atharvan, one of the four great Vedas, we find songs addressed to diseases and to the herbs which heal them. Even in Alexander's time his companions praised the Hindoo physicians, and ascribed to them that specific for snake-bite which has so perished, that all the researches and the science of Sir Joseph Fayrer and the old medical service of India have failed to re-discover it. To medicine the Hindoos assigned a secondary scripture, the Ayur Yeda, or " science of life," and derived it, like tbe four Yedas, directly from the gods. Their first histori- cal writers were Charaka, at the head of all surgery, and his disciple once removed, Susruta, chief of all physicians before Galen. The number of their medical works and authors Weber pronounces *' ex- traordinarily large," and the sum of their knowledge he declares to have been " most respectable." In surgery European savants have borrowed from them the operation of rhinoplasty. Even so late as 1460, Colot, the famous surgeon of Louis XI., begged a man's life from the gallows in order to prove that the operation of lithotomy was not necessarily fatal, and the man lived. But the common Bhoidos of India had successfully practised the operation since Charaka's time. So with the process for cataract, to perform which the princes of Europe used to send into Asia for oculists. Dr. Allan Webb, when professor of de- scriptive and surgical anatomy in the Bengal Medical College, in 1850, told his Hindoo students: "It is very true that the itinerant Bhoidos do occasionally poke out eyes, but it is equally true that I have seen in various parts of India many eyes to which they had JEt. 28. DECADENCE OE HINDOO MEDICINE. 209 restored sigbt." Embryotomy and mesmerism, not to mention more, have been successfully practised in India for ages. But the oppressive and corrupting influences of the sacerdotal Brahmans soon extino^uished the dim lisfht of scientific observation and practice in Southern and Eastern Asia. Gifts to themselves took the place of natural remedies. All knowledge, every form of truth they laid upon their own bed, which was narrower than a man could stretch himself on. Happily for the mil- lions whom they have thus deluded for centuries, from Cape Comorin to Java and Lhasa to Peking, the scien- tific falsehood became easily manifest at the first touch of the sense's honestly applied. Disintegration began when Duff demonstrated the cause of the first eclipse which took place after he opened his school. Every day's teaching, even apart from revealed truth which shows the divinity of its origin by concerning itself only with man's spiritual nature, hastened the process, which is as rapid in the secular as in the Christian college. In spite of itself the East India Company, which ignorantly desired to maintain Hindooism for political ends, made its secular teachers missionaries of destruction at least, when for the " rubbish " which astounded Bishop Heber at Benares they used Eng- lish to give full play to the evidence of the senses. The elemental theory of medicine which Plato and Hippocrates had learned from Charaka and Susruta fell with the cosmogony of the tortoise. Of science as of faith it became true for a time, that the edu- cated Bengalee mind was empty, swept and gar- nished. Moved by the purely utilitarian consideration of providing native doctors or dressers for the army hospitals, Government established the native Medical Institution in Calcutta in 1822, under an English 2IO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. doctor and native assistants. Hindostanee, the lingua franca of all India, was the language of instruction, and the scientific nomenclature of the West was ren- dered into Arabic. Four years after, medical classes were opened at the Sanscrit College to read Charaka and Susruta, and at the Madrissa to study Avicenna and the other Arabic writers. Thus the orientalists dreamed they could give the people of India the bless- ings of the healing art as developed in the West, just as they persisted in spending that people's money on the printing of books which their scholars scorned, and in the payment of youths to learn what was despised because of its methods and what was pernicious because of its falsity. Dr. Tytler, the head of the new institution, was one of the most fanatic of the orien- talists. His translations, afterwards condemned by his own medical brethren, proved to be among the most costly of the wasteful publications. The only anatomical instruction which he dared or desired to give, was from sundry artificial preparations or models, from the lower animals, and occasional post mortem examinations of persons dying in the general hospital. For a Hindoo of caste to touch a dead body, even that of his father, was pollution to be atoned for by days of purification and much alms. To break through that iron prejudice Dr. Tytler and the orientalists declared to be impossible, and they did not try. Yet their own little scholarship, or unscholarly preposses- sions, did not carry them so far as to translate Susruta. They would have learned that the literature classified under the term *' Ayur Yeda " carefully provides for dissection of the human subject, and that after a fashion so disgusting as almost to justify the later superstition. It was to be made a putrid carcase by lying for seven days in still water, and then to be rubbed 80 that each integument and part might be studied. ^t.28. THE COMMITTEE ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. 211 But, adds the Galen of India, wlio was no materialist, " the life of the body is too ethereal to be distinguished by this process." Duff was roused, by his own principles and his daily experience in the school, to protest against Dr. Tytler's folly. If his teaching were of force that all truth is a unity, and that for the Hindoos of that generation truth could be got only through the language of their rulers, of Shakespeare and Bacon, and the Bible of James, it was of force in every branch of learning, scientific and practical as well as other. " Only use English as the medium," he declared, " and you will break the backbone of caste, you will open up the way for teaching anatomy and all other branches fearlessly, for the enlightened native mind will take its own course in spite of all the threats of the Brahmanical traditionists." In 1833 Lord William Bentinck, not less attracted by the controversy than compelled by the deplorable state of medical education, appointed a committee to report on the whole subject. The mem- bers were : Surgeon J. Grant, the Apothecary General ; Assistant-surgeons Bramley and Spens, Baboo Ram Komul Sen, T. C. C. Sutherland, the secretary to the Committee of Public Instruction, and Sir C. Trevelyan. For twelve months did these authorities, professional and educational, take evidence and deliberate, having submitted to the combatants on both sides from forty to fifty detailed questions. What was the effect of Duff's answers to these, following his experience, we are enabled by Sir Charles himself to show in this ac- count of the conflict : — " It was now proposed to raise up a class of native medical practitioners, educated on sound European principles, to supersede the native quacks, who, unac- quainted with anatomy or the simplest principle 3 of chemical action, preyed on the people, and hesitated 212 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. not to use tlie most dangerous drugs and poisons. The battle whicli had been so well contested in the Education Committee was fought over again in this new field. The superintendent of the Medical Institu- tion, a learned and enthusiastic orientalist, set in array the arguments of his party, and confidently predicted the failure of the attempt, while Dr. Dufi" took the opposite side. The following extracts from the report of the special committee show how largely we are indebted to him for this great reform : — " The Eev. Mr. Duff, on the other hand, although acknow- ledging that the native languages, by which we understand the Bengalee in the lower provinces and the Urdu in the higher, alone are available for imparting an elementary education to the mass of the people, aflEirms that the popular language does not afford an adequate medium for communicating a knowledge of the higher departments of literature and science. ' No original works of the description wanted,' he observes, ' have yet ap- peared in the native languages ; and though much of a highly nseful nature has been provided through European talent and perseverance, no translations have been made in any degree sufficient to supply materials for the prosecution of the higher object contemplated; neither is it likely in the nature of things that, either by original publications or translations of standard works, the deficiency can be fully or adequately remedied for such a number of years to come as may leave the whole of the present generation sleeping with their fathers.' "We beg now to call your Lordship's attention to the opinions of the Rev. Mr. Duff". To the question whether, in order to teach the principles of any science to native boys, he considered it necessary that they should know Sanscrit, Arabic and Persian, the reverend gentleman replies that, 'In reference to the acquisition of European science, the study of the languages mentioned would be a sheer waste of labour and time; since, viewed as media for receiving and treasuring the stores of modern science, there is at present no possible connection between them.' On the other hand, in reply to the question whether he thought it possible to teach native boys the principles of any science ^t.28. SCIENCE TAUGHT THROUGH ENGLISH. 213 through the medium of the English lauguagOj he replied that *the experience of the Inst three years has, if possible, con- firmed the conviction he previously entertained, not merely that it is possible to teach native boys the principles of any science through the medium of the English language, but that, in the present incipient state of native improvement, it is next to impossible to teach them successfully the principles of any science through any other medium than the English.' He further records his opinion, that the study of the English language might be rendered very popular among the natives. *The sole reason,^ he justly observes, ^why the English is not now more a general and anxious object of acquisition among the natives, is the degree of uncertainty under which they (the natives) still labour as to the ultimate intentions of Govern- ment, and whether it will ever lead them into paths of useful- ness, profit, or honour ; only let the intentions of Grovernment be officially announced, and there will be a geueral movement among all the more respectable classes.' But the teaching of English acquires much importance when we consider it, with Mr. Duff, as the grand remedy for obviating the prejudices of the natives against practical anatomy. ' The English lan- guage,' he urges, ' opens up a whole world of new ideas', and examples of success in every department of science ; and the ideas so true, and the examples so striking, work mightily on the susceptible minds of native youth ; so that by the time they have acquii'ed a mastery over the English language, under judicious and enlightened instructors, their minds are almost metamorphosed into the texture and cast of European youth, and they cannot help expressing their utter contempt for Hindoo superstition and prejudices.' " There is an argument of fact put in by Mr. Duff, which is admirably to the point. We allude to the iutroduction of the English language and of English science among the Scottish Highlanders, whose native language, to this day, is the Gaelic. The parallel is a very fair one ; for no people were more super- stitious, more wedded to their own customs, and more averse to leaving their native country, than the Highlanders : but since the introduction of the English language among them, the state of things is much changed. The same observation applies to Ireland and Wales, where, as in the Highlands of Scotland, the English is a foreign language ; and yet its 214 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. acquisition is eagerly souglit after by the natives of all these countries as an almost certain passport to employment. There are medical men, natives of these countries, scattered all over the world, whose mother tongue is Welsh, Irish, or Gaelic, which, as children, they spoke for years — ^just as the children of European parents in India speak Hindostanee and Bengalee ; with this difference, however, that the latter soon forget the Oriental tongues; while the youth who acquire the indigenous language of Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, and Wales, never lose the language of those countries, because they do not quit them till a more advanced period of life. For the first years of youth the Highlanders at school, even of all ranks, think in the Gaelic ; but this does not prevent their acquiring such a fluent and business-like knowledge of English as to enable them to pass through life with credit and not unfrequently with distinction. What is there in the condition, physical or moral, of the natives of this country that should render them incapable of acquiring English as easily as the Irish, the High- landers, and Welsh ? " " The expectations with wliicli this change was made have been completely realized. The most intractable of the national prejudices has given way before the exigencies of the dissecting room, and European medical science has taken root in India, whereby one of the greatest boons ever conferred on suffering humanity has been extended to that country." This was not all. Duff supplied the old solution — solvitur amhulando. The commission visited his school, in common with all in which English was taught, but he did not forewarn the youths of their coming. Taking the senior class, which had been nearly four years under English instruction, into a small room by themselves, he invited the visitors to make any inquiries in any way they chose. Timidly and after a roundabout fashion did the Apothecary General approach the dreaded subject of dissection, for the first thing he learned and indeed saw was that the lads /Et. 28. THE ANATOMISTS IN THE MISSIONARY SCHOOL. 21$ were cliiefly Brahmans. He thus began : " You have got many sacred books, have you not ? " " Oh yes," was the reply, " we have many Shasters boHeved to bo of divine authority. Some are very old, and others have been written by Rishis (holy sages) inspired by the gods. They are upon all subjects, literature, science such as it is, chronology, geography and genealogies of the gods." " Have you not also medical Shasters, which profess to teach everything connected with the heal- ing art ? " " Oh yes," they said, " but these are in the keeping of the Bhoido or physician caste ; none of us belong to that caste, so that we do not know much about them." " Do your doctors learn or practise what we call anatomy, or the examination of the human body with a view to ascertain its real structure in order skilfully to treat wounds, bruises, fractures, etc.?" " We have heard them say that anatomy is taught in the Shasters, but it cannot be like your anatomy." "Why not?" "Because respectable Hindoos are forbidden by imperative rules of caste to touch a dead body for any purpose whatever ; so that from examina- tion of the dead body our doctors can learn nothing about the real structure of the human body." "Whence then have they got the anatomy which, you say, is taught in the Shasters ? " " They have got it out of their own brains, though the belief is that this strange Shaster anatomy must be true or correct, it being revealed by the gods ; but we now look upon this as nonsense." " What then," said the commissioner, " if the Government should propose to establish a medical college for Hindoos under European doctors like the medical colleges in Europe ? Would you approve or disapprove of such a measure, or how would it be viewed by the natives generally?" "We certainly who have been taught European knowledge through the medium of English would cordially approre, but 2l6 LIFE OP DE. DJJFF. 1834. our ignorant orthodox countrymen would as certainly disapprove." " Well then, were a college of this kind established, would any of you be disposed to attend it ; or would there be insuperable objections in your minds against your doing so ? " " ISTot at all," they said. " If we were not already otherwise com- mitted to some course of life which would prevent us, we would be very glad to attend." "What!" said the commissioner, " would you actually be prepared to touch a dead body for the study of ana- tomy ? " " Most certainly," said the head youth of the class, who was a Brahman ; " I, for one, would have no scruples in the matter. It is all prejudice, old stupid prejudice of caste, of which I at least have got rid." The others heartily chimed in with this utterance. The commissioners were highly gratified. The result of their inquiry exceeded their most sanguine expectations. They thanked the young men for the promptness of their response, and promised to report their liberal disregard of hereditary prejudice to the Governor G-eneral. His Excellency's surprise did not prevent him from completing the case by con- sulting the orthodox pundits. These reported that the prohibition against touching a dead body was most stern, but they did not find it anywhere expressed in the Shasters that Hindoos are forbidden to touch the human subject for anatomical purposes. Yet both these and the Muhammadan Moulvies stirred up the com- munity to petition the Government to remain satisfied with the study of the Sanscrit and Arabic treatises. Nor was Duff alone in this. David Hare, of the Hindoo College, seems to have been equally zealous, although we have no record of his action beyond the fact. The Governor-General in Council embodied the unanimous conclusions of the special committee in an order dated 28fch January, 1835, abolishing the ^t. 28. THE FIEST DISSECTION BY A HINDOO. 2\J Medical Institution and classes, and creating a new college under the Committee of Education for " tbe instruction of a certain number of native youths in the various branches of medical science." The new college was declared open to all classes of natives, without exception as to creed or caste, who could read and write EngUsli and Bengalee, or English and Hindostanee. Eurasians and Europeans were after- wards included. The English language and the West- ern scientific standards were declared the medium and the test of instruction. On the 1st June, 1835, the classes were opened in an old house in the rear ot the Hindoo College, only to be removed by Lord Auckland to a building then pronounced " magnifi- cent," but long since too small for the thousands who form what has proved to be the largest medical school in the world. Dr. Bramley, the first principal, died soon after, and the early success of the great experi- ment is associated with the name of Dr. Henry Goodeve, who still survives. With him were associated the Danish botanist of Serampore, Dr. Wallich ; the Irish professor of chemistry. Dr. O'Shaughnessy, who gave India the electric telegraph, and two others. David Hare was secretary. N^obly, not less efiectually than Duff's ardent enthusiasm predicted, has the Bengal Medical College, with its hospitals, under the ablest members of the Company's medical service and Ben- galee professors who have risen from the students' benches, realized what Lord W. Bentinck's committee aimed at when it laid down for it a curriculum " ample, comprehensive and worthy of a great Government, not intended merely to supply the wants of the State but of the people, and to become a moral engine of great utility and power." How did Duff's Brahman students and those of the Hindoo Colleo^e stand the test when the hour came for 2l8 LIFE or DB. DUFF. 1834. the first dissection ? That hour came after the first six months' study. The time was then recalled when the medical class in the Hindoo College met for the first cutting up of a kid, and the college gates were closed to prevent popular interruption of the awful act ! Following his professor, Modosoodun Goopta, of the Bhoido or physician caste, was the first native to handle and plunge his knife into the subject provided for the purpose. E-ajendranath Mitter fol- lowed, and their fellow-students quickly imitated this act of moral courage. Thus, nearly three thousand years after Susruta and his loathsome instructions, the study of practical anatomy by the natives of India was established. So fast did it spread, that a purely Hindostanee class and then a Bengalee class were opened, to meet the need of subordinate assistants in the military and civil hospitals, and of the cities and villages of the country. From sixty in 1837 the number of subjects for the dissecting room rose to above five hundred in 1844, and now must be three times greater. Dwarkanath Tagore and Dr. H. G-oodeve soon took four students to England to seek a British diploma; of these two were Christians and one was a convert of the General Assembly's Institution. Ever since, Duff's colleofe has sent some of its ablest converts as well as Hindoo students to take the highest honours in the medical faculty of the Calcutta University. One of them is now a professor in the Medical College, and several have entered the covenanted service by competi- tion with Scottish, English and Irish graduates. The tale of what the medical colleges of India — for others sprang up in imitation of Bengal, at Bombay, Madras, Lahore and Agra — have done for humanity, for the sciences allied with medicine, and for enlightenment throughout the peninsula, in the half-century since Duff began his apostleship, would form one of the most ^t. 28. TBE THUiD BATTLE WITH THE ORIENTALISTS. 219 brilliant chapters in the history of progress, but it is / not for us to tell it here. In yet a third field did Duff and Treveljan, aided by that accomplished scholar of the Baptist Mission press, Dr. Yates, meet the orientalist party. The committee of the Calcutta Scliool Book Society was the scene of the conflict. That body had succeeded in supplying pure English literature to the natives on mercantile principles, while the Government Oriental colleges had their shelves groaning under expensive works which no native would take as a gift, unless also paid to read tliem, and at which true scholars laughed. In 1833 Mr. Thompson, a Govern- ment teacher at Delhi, sought the patronage of the society for an English and Hindostanee dictionary in the Roman character only, designed to assist natives of the upper provinces in the acquisition of English and Europeans in the study of Hindostanee. Dr. Yates, as secretary, recommended the purchase of two hundred copies. Mr. James Prinsep condemned the use of the Roman alphabet by any but Europeans as " ultra-radicalism." Dr. Tytler, whose foible was a desire to stand well with the few Oriental scholars in Europe, protested that such a book would " com- promise our character very much, particularly with European scholars, in whose eyes the Oriental litera- ture of Calcutta does not stand very high at present." Sir Charles Trevelyan d'^molished both in a long minute, in which he exposed the unscholarly character and expense of Dr. Tytler's translations, showing that Rs. 105,426 (£10,543) of public money had thus been wasted in the ten years since 1824. On this James Prinsep cast the broad shield of his genuine learning over the wounded Tytler, in a minute which con- cluded with this retort on the alleged superiority of English to Sanscrit or Perso- Arabic orthography : — " I 220 LIFE OP DR. BaFP. 1834. never heard of a mother who did not complain of the difficulty of teaching a child the diflference between C and S, and I will ask whether a native child would as readily recognise the ' City of God ' (Allah- abad) in the ' isle of bats ' and the ' palace at Ghazeepore ' in ' Chelsea tune ' (chuhul sitoon).^' Dr. Tytler felt as grateful to James Prinsep as Homer's hero when, worsted in battle, he was hid under the apron of his celestial mother, Aphrodite. After Trevelyan had slain Prinsep, Duff entered the field through the press and anonymously, while Mr. H. Thoby Prinsep in turn brought the heavy artillery of the Asiatic Society to bear upon him. The merits of the controversy are these : In the East Indies, as influenced from their metropolis Cal- cutta— including in that term Dutch Java and now French Anam — there are eight distinct ethnological families, containing 243 spoken and written languages and 296 dialects of these languages, or 539 in all. These have to be mastered — having been reduced to writing in many cases by missionaries and officials — before the half of the human race who use them can be influenced for good. They present two sets of difficulties, arising from their varying written charac- ters and very diff'erent grammatical structure. Can the former class of difficulties not be removed or modified ? If the English language and literature are to be used as the medium and the instrument of civil- ization in the effete East, why not the one Roman alphabet in which they are expressed ? — such was the very natural reasoning of the Anglicists of 1833. That this is no dream may be accepted from the fact that the great scholar Lepsius has prepared a " standard alphabet," and that the Boden Sanscrit professor at Oxford is an earnest advocate of Eomanising, while Professor Max Midler has a similar plan of his own. ^t. 28. THE LANGUAGES AND ALPHABETS OP INDIA. 221 One character is necessary, and that has, of course, been the Roman thus far for tongues reduced to writing for the first time by missionaries, who desire to tell and write for these simple people " the won- derful works of God " in Christ. But more than this, Mr. Oust is within the truth, as every scholar will admit, when he declares, " It may be accepted as a scientific fact that all the characters used in the East Indies can sooner or later be traced back to the Asoka inscriptions, and through them to the Phoenician alphabet, and thence backwards to the hieratic ideo- graphs of the old kingdom of Egypt, and thence to the venerable hieroglyphics of the fourth dynasty." The solitary exception is the Chinese character used in Anam.* More than three rivals compete to represent the 639 languages and dialects, for the Indian, Arabic and Roman are complicated by additions or adapta- tions to represent all the sounds of each, till religion is invoked to consecrate some, so that the orthodox Hindoo will not use the Perso-Arabic, nor the strict Muhammadan the sacred Nagree. If one alphabet in the good Asoka' s days, not long after Alexander the Great, why not one again — why not one at any rate, and that the Roman, for all the peoples who learn writing, and even reading, for the first time from the Christian missionary and the British and other Euro- pean Governments in Asia ? Though deprecating as injudicious and impracticable any attempt to supersede the established characters of cultivated languages by the introduction of the alien Roman character, Mr. Cust urges the use of the standard of Lepsius in the case of languages hitherto unwritten. In 1878 he used this language, which is the echo of Duff's half a century • A Sketch of the Modern Languages of the East Indies. 1878. 2 22 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1834. ago : — " It is a remarkable phenomenon that the foun- tains of so many languages and dialects should have been unsealed just at the moment when the intellectual, mechanical and religious powers of England and Holland were at their height, ready to undertake the task of translating the Bible into scores of languages, for which task, even if the opportunity had offered itself, English scholars were, last century, as unfitted as the Spanish and Portuguese are even now unfitted, and as im willing to lend themselves to the task as the Italians, French and Russians are even now unwilling." We have received this narrative of Duff's advocacy of the Romanising system from Sir Charles Trevelyan, who sought officially to carry it out when Governor of Madras. He has recently published as an illustration of it " Rabinsan Kriiso," being a translation, through the Hindostanee, of Defoe's immortal work into Persian in the Roman character. To that Mr. Tolbort, of the Bengal civil service, as editor, has prefixed an exposition and defence of the application of the Roman alphabet to the languages of the East, declaring that that alpha- bet "will be to the education of Asia what Greorge Stephenson's rails were and are to the locomotive steam engine." The system of transliteration was that of Sir William Jones, who followed the Italian or continental European sound of the vowels, while Dr. Gilchrist afterwards sought to fix them to the more familiar of their various sounds in English. Thus the well- known "Ameer" of the latter is the "Amir " of the for- mer, and the "Punjab " is "Panjab." The advantage of the Gilchrist transliteration of proper names for purely English readers is evident ; that of the Jones system for Romanising and strictly scholarly purposes is not less so. The German orientalists have recently pub- lished a whole series of the Oriental classics in Roman type. In the twenty years ending 1857 the Bible, ^t. 28. ROMANISING THE OUIENTAL ALl'll ABETS. 223 the Pilgrim's Progress, the Koran, and forty-three other religious or educational works had appeared in Romanised Hindostanee. Sir C. Trevelyan writes : — " It was proposed to extend to India the advantage which Europe enjoys of making one character serve for many different languages and dialects, whereby it might be at once seen how far they agreed or differed, and a tendency might be created towards a common Indian language and literature, of which English would be the connecting link, and the Christian re- ligion the principal source of inspiration. Eastern writing is thoroughly phonetic; that is, the due relation of sign and sound is consistently maintained throughout, so that a simple transliteration into the Roman character gives a correct representation of the sounds in all the native languages ; and during the long period which has elapsed since the invention of printing, the typography of these letters, with all its accessories of punctuation, capital letters, italics, and other mechanical helps, has been so improved that they have become a much more efficient and economical medium for expressing the languages of the East than the various alphabetical systems in actual use there. This would also be the salvation of the native lan- guages, which have a hard struggle in their com- petition with the all-powerful English, freighted with so many substantial advantages, and it would have a highly salutary political effect by intimately associat- ing our nation with the growth of the new Indian literature, and by removing a serious practical obstacle to satisfactory mutual intercourse. " This system has made steady progress, notwith- standing every discouragement, and its advantages have become so generally recognised that effectuaJ arrangements are likely soon to be made for its gradual adoption ; but the undertaking might have been 2 24 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. strangled in its birth if Dr. Duff had not given it his strenuous support. The turning point of the contro- versy was marked by the pubhcation of three papers by Dr. Duff, in the first of which the ' possibihty/ ' practicabihty,' and ' expediency ' of substituting the Roman for the Indian alphabets was discussed, and in the last two a practical scheme for that purpose was worked out in detail, and objections were answered. These papers give a high idea of the logical powers and critical acumen of Dr. Duff. They settled the system on its present basis, and may be read to this day with interest and advantage. " It was impossible to wo-rk, as I did, with Dr. Duff, without having his character clearly unfolded before me, and I must be allowed to indulge my feelings by briefly saying what I think of it. He combined child- like simplicity and sincerity with intellectual powers of no mean order, and his fervid Celtic nature imparted warmth' and energy to everything he undertook. His disinterestedness, and freedom from selfish motives of all kinds, appeared to me to be perfect. His whole being seemed to be engrossed in the one great object of his life, compared with which all m.erely personal motives were of secondary consideration. He was a truly loveable character. My feeling towards him is compounded of affection and respect, and I should find it difficult to say which of these predominates." Thus far the battle begun and carried on by Duff had been for the people. English he fought for, as the weapon of truth's warfare at that stage not only against the intolerance of the quasi-orientalists who squandered the people's money on a few scornful Brahmans and Moulvies, but against the equal intoler- ance of their own leaders in the Hindoo College, who excluded the lower castes even from secular instruc- tion. Through the natural heads and respectable ALL 28. HIS WORK FOE VERNACULAR EDUCATION. 225 castes of the Hindoos he determined that Western truth and Enghsh benevolence should reach the masses and fertilise the literature of their mother tongue. Hence his own early devotion to Bengalee at a time when his busy nights were no more his own than his exhausting days, and the instinct of genius drove him to take the tide of English in native society near the flood that he might guide it to faith and all that a reasonable faith here involves, in social purity, in public enlightenment, in national revival. Hence the Bengalee department in his school, and the simulta- neous teaching and reaction on each other of English and the vernacular. Without that the taunt of the barren orientalists might have had some justification, English might have become only another official jar- gon like court Persian, to be used by the initiated few for the oppression of the many, and the widening of the gulf between alien rulers and ignorant ruled. From that memorable Monday, 2nd of August, 1830, "when the Highland lad opened his school with our Lord's Prayer in Bengalee, to the day just after the Mutiny, when he introduced the Christian Vernacular Education Society into Calcutta, and down to his last effort for India, having put English in its right place chronologically and educationally, he sought to have India covered with primary schools worthy of the name. Here, also, the Government of Lord William Ben- tinck came to his help and did its duty. The same ever to be remembered months at the opening of 1835, which legislatively brought to the birth the Renais- sance in science and letters, by the medical college and English language decrees, saw the first official step taken in the application of both to the varied vernaculars of India. On the 20th January " W. Bentinck," with whom his colleaofues, the Honbles. 2 26 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834. H. Blunt, A. Ross and W. Morison " concurred en- tirely," wrote the minute whicli sent Mr. Adam, for seventeen years a missionary and then editor of the India Gazette, to visit and report on all the existing vernacular schools in Bengal. The minute began with the " universally admitted axiom that education and the knowledge to be imparted by it can alone effect the moral regeneration of India." At a time " when the establishment of education upon the largest and most useful basis is become the object of universal solicitude," the minute wisely declared it essential to ascertain the actual state of education as carried on for centuries entirely under native management. It deprecated interference with these before Government knew the facts, and direct inquiry by officials as certain to excite distrust. Hence the appointment of Adam, whose three reports, the more that they prove his intelligent philanthropy and administrative wisdom, reject severely on the stupid apathy of the Committee of Education, which shelved them and drove him to resign in disgust. He showed that, as Duff put it, 92^- out of every hundred children of school-going age in Bengal were destitute of all kinds and degrees of instruction. That is, on the basis of the under-esti- mated population of that time, six millions of such children were wholly uneducated. Yet not for twenty- two years thereafter would Government do anything for Benafal. Not till Dalhousie was Governor-General was anything done for Upper India save by the missionaries. So the evil round goes on under the system which breaks the contirftiity of progress in India — the five years term of high office. A Bentinck takes his seven years' ripe experience with him, to be followed by a reactionary Auckland. We shall not bring the illustration down to our own day. Mission- aries like Duff in Eastern, Wilson in Western, and .•Kt. 28. HIS USE UF THE PRESS. 22 7 Caldwell in Southern India alone remain immortal till their work is done ! In all his work and at every stage of it Duff felt that he had a more powerful ally and instrument than even Lord William Bentinck as Governor-General, — and that was the Press. From the outset of his career writing went hand-in-hand with teaching and public speaking. The relation of his new ideas to the few native papers, English and vernacular, accord- ing as they opposed, misrepresented or advocated them, and his plan of replying by public discussion to the attacks of their correspondents, we have seen. The Serampore missionaries had, before him, filled the breach, alike by their quarterly Friend of India and by Mr. Marshman's estabhshment of the first Beno:alee newspaper. So that, whereas in 1814 there was only one English periodical and not one native in all Ben- gal, and in 1820 five English papers and still not one Bengalee print, in 1830 there were eight native papers. But Duff had not been twelve mouths in Calcutta before he saw the necessity of establishing a Magazine to represent missionary and philanthropic operations of all kinds, and to bring Christian opinion to bear upon Government on the one hand and the educated natives on the other. Hence in June, 1832, appeared the first number of the Calcutta Christian ObserveVj " edited by Christian ministers of various denomina- tions." The signature " D " marks the authorship of the introductory programme. Besides the sectarian periodicals then in Calcutta, he sought " something unconfined by any trammels of party or of sect — something that will embrace with impartial and com- prehensive view the wide domain of Catholic Chris- tianity." He desired to produce a periodical which should do for religion in the East what James Prinsep's Journal of the Asiatic Society accomplished for science 228 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1832 and the Calcutta Magazine laboured to effect for litera- ture. The six divisions of the Magazine he mapped out as theoretical and practical theology, Biblical criti- cism and translation, missionary operations, European and native institutions and events, reviews of books, intelligence of progress of all kinds, amid contro- versy and resistance, for only eventually may " the great Christian temple, like its material prototype of old, be raised with noiseless harmony of design and execution." The passage relating to the second division has a peculiar interest : — " It is not necessary that the majority, or any very considerable portion of the Christian public should be Biblical critics or translators. . . But, however true that the great doctrines of revelation are so potent as to have produced but one persuasion in the minds of the immense majority of devout believers in every age, it is not less true that even these have been repeatedly and variously impugned. And as the Scriptures were written in ancient and dead languages, none who were ignorant of these could venture to elicit and set in array the genuine force of scriptural evidence. Hence arises one of the most important oflBces that devolves upon the Biblical critic. Again, the Bible containing, as it does, an historical and prophetical account of the most interesting events that transpired on the stage of this world for 4000 years, as well as of the extraor- dinary dispensations of the Almighty, must naturally and unavoidably include in its contents many ' things hard to be understood.' Now these are the things which, surrounded as they are by many luminous points, cost the pious believer least trouble. But these are the very things upon which the unbeliever is ready to pounce with more than the ravenous speed of an eagle upon its prey. In the reasonableness of this conduct he resembles the m%n who, withdrawing his view from ^t. 26. ON BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 229 the gorgeous productions of tlie animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, and the combined glory of the summer's landscape, would point in a tone of triumph to the meanest reptile or weed, or to the dampest and most dingy cavern, in proof of the worse than gratui- tous assertion that the external world contained nougfht that was fair, beauteous, or lovely. Every person of common sense and common honesty would regard such a procedure with merited contempt and indignation ; while the zoologist, the botanist and the mineralogist would follow him still further, and by evolving the hidden beauties and harmonies of what has 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 is the Biblical critic expected to render 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." The Observer became, under Duff's influence and that of his colleagues during his absence from India, all that he thus desired ; while from 1835 to 1875 the Friend of India, changed by Mr. J. C. Marshman into the powerful weekly newspaper which it long con- tinued to be, applied the same Christian principles in a more purely political and broadly imperial way to the elevation of the whole empire. At the same time we shall see him using, for the highest ends, the English daily journals of Calcutta as he used the Anglo-Bengalee newspapers, and in his second term of service in Bens^al editing the Calcutta Bevietv. The coarse licence of Hichifs Gazette, the first Eng- lish newspaper published in India, in 1780, followed by that of the Bengal Journal, led the Company's 230 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. autliorities, in 1794, to deport the editor of the latter, Mr. William Duane, because of an inflammatory ad- dress to the army. During the war with Tippoo Lord Wellesley established a formal censorship of the press, which, made still more severe in 1813, continued till 1818, when Lord Hastings practically abolished it. George Canning, when President of the Board of Control, suppressed a severe condemnation of this act by the Court of Directors. But when Mr. John Adam became interim Governor-General, he gratified the bureaucratic instinct against criticism by reviving the censorship and deporting Mr. James Silk Buckingham, to please his rival, Dr. Bryce, who was at once senior Scottish chaplain, editor of the John Bull, and clerk of stationery ! The weak Lord Amherst put Adam's most severe restrictions in force against Mr. Arnot of the Calcutta Journal, and warned the Bengal HurlcTiru. ' When Lord William Bentinck's financial reforms reduced the military allowances known as batta, he was covered with abuse which might have tempted other men to crush the self-seeking critics. But he knew and he loved the principles of freedom -which his great- grandfather, Hans Bentinck, had helped William III. to consolidate in England. He went further, declar- ing that the liberty of the press was necessary to the good government of the country, as supplying " that lamentable imperfection of control which, from local position, extensive territory and other causes the su- preme council cannot adequately exercise." In 1831 he invited criticism and suggestions, with results seen in such works as the Honble. P. J. Shore's " Notes on Indian Affairs," and in the destruction of many an abuse. Most happily, however, it was left to a Bengal civilian and pupil of Wellesley to atone for the high- handed folly of an otherwise estimable administrator like John Adam. Charles Theophilus, first and last ^t. 20. BEdliNNlNG OF THE llENAISSANOi: COMl'LETED. 23 1 Lord Metcalfe, when acting as Governor-General, deliberately risked the permanent appointment, by the Act XI. of 1835, which Macanlay wrote, repealing all restrictions on the press tliroughout India, and leaving it, like all other institutions and persons, to the ordi- nary law of sedition and libel. Vernacular as well as English literature in India took a new start, hardly checked by the bureaucratic timidity of Lord Canning's advisers in 1857, and certain to be again freed from the less excusable action of Lord Lytton's councillors in 1877. Thus the birth of the Renaissance was completed. TIjus the name of Metcalfe is linked with those of Macaulay, Trevelyan, Bentinck and Alexander Duff. No one who knows history and is accustomed to weigh in its balances, sacred and secular, the causes and the tendencies of human progress, will be surprised that we have thus broadly applied the term Renaissance to the intellectual and spiritual movement started by Great Britain in Southern Asia in 1813, vitalised by Duff in 1830-35, and still in its vigorous infancy. That this movement is not a birth only, but a re-birth, those will most readily confess who know far better than the Brahmanizing orientalists of the East India Company the real splendour of the early Aryan civilization ; the comparatively pure traditions which were the salt of Vedic nature-worship ; the wealth of the Aryan lan- guages which Hellas itself never matched, while it borrowed from them ; and the influence of all three, through Greek, Latin and Arabic, on Europe in the dark ages. That the waking up of the Hindoo mind is certain to prove a Renaissance not only in the Italian sense, but in the English — a reformation in the spiritual region, and a silent constitutional revolution in the political condition, is due to Alexander Duff. We have seen it in the Christian college which is the 232 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835. nursery and in the first converts who proved the seed of the Church. We have seen it in the English lan- guage, in Western science, in the liberty of printing, in the education of the people in their mother tongue, in the growth of a pure vernacular literature. We have yet to watch the development in church and university, in literature and science, in social freedom and even in the political elevation that springs from the concession, without a struggle, of all the constitutional liberties which it took the ruling power centuries to consolidate for itself. But above and under all we shall continue to find this, as Europe and Scotland before all countries found, that the motive power and the principle of growth consist in the putting every Asiatic spiritually in that relation to God which the Divine Christ has alone revealed and guarantees. The missionary is thus before all others. Savonarola has survived the Medici, and Luther lives. CHAPTER IX. ] 832-1835. WOBK FOB EUROPEANS, EURASIANS AND NATIVE CHRISTIANS. St. Andrew's Kirk. — Anglican and Presbyterian Sectarianism. — The Steeple Controversy. — The Battle of the Gilded Cock. — Fight for a Second Sunday Service. — A Boileau Wanted. — Sunday Ob- servance in India. — A Boston Socinian and the Lord's Supper. — Duff longs for Friendly Sympathy. — The Senior Chaplain of Madras. — Daniel Wilson and Lord William Bentinck. — Rise of the Eurasian Community. — First Charity Schools. — Origin of the Doveton Colleges. — The Civil and Religious Rights of Converts from Hindooism and Muhammadanism. — The first Writ of Habeas Corpus in India. — Dr. H. H. Wilson Apologises to the Missionaries. — Case of Bi'ijonath Ghose. — DufF does the Bishop of Calcutta's work. — Castigates Mr. Longueville Clark. — His Power of Moral Suasion. — Bengal Asiatic and Agricnltural Socie- ties.— Mr. and Mrs. Duff decline to attend the Governor-General's Ball.— Lord William Bentinck's Public Eulogy of Duff.— The School becomes an Arts and Divinity College. — Reminiscences of Duff in 1834 by a Bengalee Schoolboy. — The Bible and Tract Societies. — The Great Cyclone of May, 1833. — The panic-stricken Tiger.— Fever after Flood.— Duff's First Attack.— Visit of A. N. Groves from Baghdad. — A Day in the College. — Duff again stricken down by Dysentery. — Carried on board the John M'Lellan bound for Greenock. — The Precious Seed Germinating. So early as the beginning of the year 1832, while Mr. Duff was steering his apparently frail boat in the very trough of the sea of Hindoo society, with no assistance and little sympathy from his own countrymen, he was called to minister in St. Andrew's kirk to the Scottish residents, and to help the Eurasians and the native Christians in their earnest struofo-les after toleration for themselves in the eye of the law and a good edu- cation for their children. Thus early he began the afterwards lifelong labours which ended in the estab- 234 I-tl^E OF DR. DUFF. 1832. lisliment of the Anglo-Indian Christian Union, and in the creation of the Doveton Colleges of Calcutta and Madras. St. Andrew's kirk — in 1813 the fruit, like its fellows in Bombay and Madras, of much talking in obscure Scottish presbyteries, and much petitioning of Par- liament by synods and general assemblies since 1793 — had never justified its existence. How Dr. Bryce, its first chaplain, went out to Calcutta in the same ship with Bishop Middleton we have told. A bishop must have his cathedral ; so St. John's church, consecrated by the ministrations of Claudius Buchanan and Henry Martyn, to which "Warren Hastings, his council and all the " factors " in the settlement used to walk to morning service, was enlarged and dubbed by the necessary name, until Bishop Wilson built St. Paul's Cathedral. It was still more requisite that the Scot- tish chaplain should have a church, and the Govern- ment selected as its site the spot on which Lord Clive's old court-house had stood, whence the name still given to the finest street in all the East. The Presbyterian had won the first move in the evil game of sectarian- ism which he and the Anglican bishop introduced into India. But, viewing the national Church of Scotland as a dissenting body, the bishop would not allow Government to give it a church with a steeple. The Scottish blood of more than half Calcutta was roused at this, for as to origin the Scotsmen were in the majority. They had the secret sympathy of the evan- gelical missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, whom Dr. Middleton liked no more than the episcopal and youthful representative of the same views in the see of Colombo now does. Long and loud raged the battle of the steeple. It occupied secretaries and honourable members of Council and the Governor- General week after week, till the literature of the JEt 26. ANGLICAN AND PRr,SBYTEKIAN SIXTACIAMSM. 235 subject plunged the predecessors of future Dalhousies, Cannings and Lawrences in despair. The men who were equal to successful expeditions to Java, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope ; who had conducted to a happy issue Burman and Goorkha wars, Maratha and Piudaree campaigns, confessed themselves beaten by the steeple controversy. Lord Hastings, himself a Scots- man, directed all the papers to be hurled at the heads of the directors who had sent out the ecclesiastical combatants. Equally baffled, the directors appealed to the Crown and its law officers, not sorry that the authority which Imd forced the Church establishment upon them should have a little more trouble. The decision was that, as equal in their own sphere to the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians should have their steeple, although the Government were paying a thou- sand pounds as ground rent for the site. Years had passed in the fight, but the national zeal had not waxed cold. There are steeples and steeples. Of what height was St. Andrew's to be ? The kirk itself was a noble structure, and the steeple must correspond with it architecturally. To close the matter, the Scottish residents, in public meeting assembled, sub- scribed eighty thousand rupees (£8,000) to add to the spire allowed by Government, so as to raise it to a point twenty feet higher than that of the cathedral, and they surmounted the whole by a cock to symbolise their crowing over the bishop. Against this Dr. Middleton renewed the fight, and the cock, like the steeple, occupied the discussions of the Governor- General in Council and then of the Court of Directors. The decision was worthy of the most subtle of the ecclesiastical schoolmen, and of the satire of Boileau's " Lutrin." It must have been meant, by the James Mills, Charles Lambs or Thomas Love Peacocks who in those days draughted the despatches, as fine irony. 236 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1832. "Wlien, it was ruled, tlie quinquennial repairs of tlie building come round, the public works authorities are not to gild the cock anew ! The judgment was a new triumph, for tlie patriotic Scotsmen of Calcutta, for long thereafter, used to raise some five hundred rupees privately to regild the boastful symbol. But it was one thing to revel in such warfare, and quite another to fill the kirk inside, with its spacious aisles and vast galleries, seated with eight hundred chairs, over which swung cooling punkahs for as many occupants. Dr. Bryce was more at home as editor of the John Bull and clerk in the stationery office. In due time he received as colleague a man of a very different stamp, the Dr. Brown whose guest Duff became on first landing in India. But this gave rise to a new squabble. Scandalised that there should be only one service on Sunday, Dr. Brown proposed to hold public worship in the evening also. Again the dispute travelled up through the usual machinery of secretaries, council and directors, when the decision came that all chaplains were military servants, but the Government would not concern itself with their inter- nal ecclesiastical arrangements. Dr. Brown might act as he pleased. But he met with an unexpected obstacle at the first evening service. The precentor was engaged to raise the tune at only one weekly service, and did not appear. The good minister had a voice fortunately quite equal to the occasion, and Dr. Bryce surrendered. But in the spring of 1830 Dr. Brown had a fall from his horse, which sent him on sick leave to the Straits of Malacca, where he died, and the old state of things was re-established. The three acts in the ecclesiastical drama of steeple, cock, and second service, recall the mock-heroics on the fight of the treasurer-bishop and the chanter con- cerning the reading-desk of Notre Dame : — ^t 26. RES01,T OF THE EOOLESIASTICAL SQUABBLES. 237 " Je clianto les combats^ et ce Prelat terrible. Qui par ses longs travaux, et sa force inviucible, Dans une illustre Eglise exer^ant son grand coeur Fit placer h la fin un Lutrin dans lo cliocur. ^ 3jC 2fl vv «|« Quelle fureur, dit-il, quel aveugle caprice ! Quand le diner est pret, vous appelle a I'office ? De votre dignite souteuez mieux I'eclat, Est-ce pour travailler que vous etes prelat ? " As Boileau closes the strife by bringing in Piety, Faith and Grace, who awaken Aristus to restore peace, so the missionary brings life back to St. Andrew's. This was the kirk and the kirk-session under which Duff might have been bound to work, had not the young evangelist been given the foresight and the grace to stipulate that he should go out to found the mission in India fettered by no man there. The Government was distracted and disgusted, the educated natives were scandalised by this continued exhibition of Christianity, and the Scots, who had been so proud of their national kirk, ceased to enter it. Some per- manently joined the Church of England, especially when the loving and cultured Reginald Heber became the second Metropolitan of India, and others found what they desired among the Congregationalists or Baptists. The majority of the residents, Scottish and English, made the Sabbath a time of pleasuring, when they could absent themselves fi'om their offices, which were open and busy every day. Boating excursions, picnic parties to Barrackpore and the French and Dutch settlements up the river, and pig-sticking on the edge of the Soonderbun jungles to the south of the city, were the result of the spiritual energies of Middleton and Bryce. In this state of things Dr. Bryce resolved to take furlough home. Believing that he could help the new 23.8 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1832. mission by reporting its success, in which, he had always sympathised, he quietly proposed to throw on the missionary the whole duty of preaching in St. Andrew's pulpit and taking pastoral oversight of the large Scottish community Thus modestly and in this brotherly spirit did Duff reply to the first sug- gestion on the 30th November, 1831: — "I should have rejoiced to have been able to have rendered more frequent assistance on Sunday ; but I really find every moment so engrossed, and the personal fatigue often so harassing from the miscellaneous calls on my daily avocations, that I have little time and generally still less strength to spare for pulpit duties. In the event, however, of your twelvemonth's trip being resolved upon, I would be ready to do my best, or to enter into the adoption of any measure which might secure regular service for the good folks of St. Andrew's. This, however, is a subject for further consideration." The next information which Duff received was in the form of a letter, sent back by the pilot from the Sandheads, as the mouth of the Hooghly is called, in which Dr. Bryce announced his sudden departure with his invalid wife. With no stock of prepared sermons (for all his manuscripts had gone down at Dassen Island), with his daily college duties, and his weekly evening lectures, the sudden call made even Alexander Duff hesitate. But having reason to believe that if the kirk were once shut Government would put difiiculties in the way of opening it again, bewailing the condition of his own countrymen as sheep without a shepherd, and meeting at every turn the evil effect of their lives on the observant natives, he threw himself into the breach. Never before — not when Kiernander was in the full flush of that activity which attracted Olive, and ^:t. 26. PREAGUER AND PASTOR. 239 his own Cambuslang compatriot, Claudius Buclianau, was reproving even a good Governor-General liko Cornwallis — had Calcutta seen such a preacher and pastor. He went into the pulpit the first Sunday to find a score of worshippers lost amid the eight hun- dred chairs. The sight he described as that of " a void and huge wilderness." The session registers gave him the names of not a few who had continued to preserve their latent rights by paying seat-rents, and with these he determined to begin. The easy theory had been that the Scotsman in India is so different a being from what he is at home, that he regarded his minister's visit as intrusive. The new pastor soon put that to the tei?t. He found his purely pastoral calls welcomed. The Sunday solitude of the kirk gradually became a respectable crowd. The ministra- tions during nearly all 1832 resulted in the creation of the good congregation which Dr. Charles, the new chaplain, found on his arrival. The results on the morals and the higher life of European society became marked. Bishop Turner, who followed Dr. James, the short-lived successor of Heber, had been grievously vexed by the utter absence of all signs of a day of rest, Christian or national, when he landed. Govern- ment as well mercantile offices were open daily with- out intermission, as they had been smce the first settlement of the British in India. The bishop's attempt to reform society by privately asking the less godless to sign a voluntary pledge to abstain from business and from compelling the natives to attend office on the Lord's- day, brought down on him the fiercest bigotry and intolerance. Duff, a little later, found his opportunity just before Daniel Wilson landed as the next bishop. A prosperous young Scottish merchant asked the officiating minister of St. Andrew's to baptize his first- 240 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1832. born. The father was met by a kindly exposition of Presbyterian disciphne, and was recommended to delay until he himself should, by attending church at least, and then by observing family worship, show some honest regard for the Christianity he professed in name only. Resentment, under Duff's persuasive kindliness, soon gave way to the confession that he was junior partner of a firm which employed five hundred natives, that his senior was in England, that he had to supervise the men on Sunday as on other days and could not possibly attend church. The minister's further intercourse with him and his wife led him to try the experiment of shutting the oflBce for one day in seven. Summoning his operatives on the Saturday, he explained that for the next month he would not require their attendance on Sunday, but would not on that account lower their wages. If he found that the four or five holidays led them to work more zealously, he would be able to make the arrange- ment permanent. They could not believe the state- ment at first, and it soon formed the talk of the neighbourhood and of the surrounding villages to which they belonged. It was found that not one was absent on Monday morning, and that that month's tale of work exceeded the out-turn of each of its pre- decessors, while a new feeling of cheerful loyalty and confidence had been born between the employed and their employer. The change, and the baptism which followed, became the beginning of a new life to more than to this family. It was long till society became outwardly transformed. But that was the dawn of the social as well as spiritual improvement which has made the Christian day of rest, observed by Government order and European opinion, a boon and a teacher to the thousands of toiling Hindoos and others who rejoice in its physical advantages, and are JEt 26. WORK AMONG AMERICANS. 24 1 sometimes led by it to liiglier thouglits, though, un- doubtedly, the viciously inclined abuse the rest as all good gifts may be abused. The English Sab- bath is not the least of the blessings conferred by the British Government on India, and, as usual, the missionaries pointed the way. Not till he had been for six months thus building up the congregation did Mr. Duff announce the in- tended communion of the Lord's Supper. A young American waited upon him next day to declare that, being from Boston, he had been brought up a Uni- tarian, but had failed to find any real comfort in his religion. Expecting an impulse to a higher emotional life at least from the celebration of the sacrament after the simple Scottish form, he sought permission to sit down at the table with friends who were already members of the Kirk. Having expounded the true nature of the divinity of Jesus Christ, very much as he had done to inquirers like Krishna Mohun Banerjea, and pointed to the only source of all the privilege of His memorial sacrifice, Mr. Duff recommended further study of Scripture. The youth consented, and at the same time courteously offered his counsellor the books of Dr. Channing, which were at that time new to England and India. As the American, with the assistance of no little intercourse with Duff, was gradually being led upwards from Jesus of Nazareth to the Immanuel Who was wounded for our transsrres- sions, a wasting sickness seized him, and he was sent to sea to the health-giving breezes at the Sandheads. In the pilot-brig he died, but not before the full glory of the Incarnation entered his soul, and he charged the captain, as he died, to tell Mr. Duff that he had found Jesus to be his all-sufficient because Divine Saviour. Such cases may be taken as typical of the work done among his own people in that year E t 242 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1830. memorable to many. Thus, as ever after, there worked side by side in Duff's career the evangelising of the Hindoo and the recalling by the evangel of many who had forgotten their baptismal, their national, their personal birthright in Christ. In all this the impulsive but ever loving heart of Alexander Duff had continued to pant for the sym- pathy of such a friend as Urquhart, whom he had lost all too soon in his student days. Dr. Brown had been taken away, and in the great-hearted Swiss Lacroix, over whose grave he long after poured out a eulogy worthy of David and Jonathan, he found some of the affection that strong men cherish. Many, who knew little of the far higher work he was doing for all time, had desired to see him Dr. Brown's successor, and to this he alludes in these letters to the Rev. Dr. Laurie, the Madras chaplain, by whom he had been hospitably received on his way to Calcutta. The fervour of his friendly longing bursts forth, as it ever did to those he valued. Here, too, we see his interest in the soldiers, for whom few then cared : — " College Square, Calcutta, Is^ Nov., 1830. " My Dear Friend, — Bold indeed must that heart be, and cheerless that soul, that would- not experience, I will not say pleasure simply, but strong emotions of holy love and ardour on the perusal of your truly apostolic letter. I have not for a long time received anything so refreshing and to myself so humbling. With the sincerity of conviction I felt that you treated me and mine with more than a brother's kindness, and manifested towards me more than the natural tokens of a brother's love, and I appeared to feel that it was not possible to regard any other brother in Christ with a more tender affection. But since the receipt of your last letter you seem as if more endeared than v£t. 24. WOKK AMONG SOLDIERS. 243 ever to my soul. Such warmth, sucli earnest anxietj^ such bowels of compassion, such yearnings of a father for the souls of his people ! Truly was I cheered and aroused, as with a message from heaven, and humbled to the very dust. Oh, that I had one half the zeal and anxious longing for the redemption of lost souls and the continued welfare of such as appear to be within the fold of Christ ! Oh pray with me, and for me, that all the cold and frozen apathy of nature may disappear before the genial influences of a heavenly fire ! "It need scarcely be added, that immediately after receiving your letter the necessary inquiries were made respecting the regiment in behalf of which you expressed such deep and unfeigned interest. The information obtained was that one half of the regi- ment had reached Calcutta, and proceeded straight on to Chinsurah, thirty miles to the north ; that Chinsurah itself was only to be a temporary station, as the inten- tion was that they should proceed without delay to the upper provinces. By this arrangement I am not only deprived of the opportunity of being useful to them, but also precluded from the possibility of seeing them at all. I trust, however, that they will not be for- saken, that He who hath begun a good work will accomplish it unto the end. While at Chinsurah they may derive benefit from the instructions of Mr. Pear- son, missionary of the London Society. On Monday last week he came down to Calcutta on business : to him I represented the case as strongly as possible. He felt for them, and stated that on Sunday, 24tli October, about forty assembled and listened atten- tively to his address ; and that his efforts should not be spared so far as his other duties would admit of it. Hence you perceive that the Lord has dealt very graciously with them ; and our prayers should be that 244 TilFB OF DR. DUFF. 1830. at every station some man of God may be raised up to comfort and cheer this little baud in the perilous voyage to eternity, warn them of danger, strengthen them for the toil of a busy warfare, and direct them in safety to the blissful haven of eternal rest. " It is interesting to think that after reaching Cal- cutta the idea suggested in your letter, of employing pious and respectably educated soldiers as teachers, occurred so forcibly to my mind that the first attempt to secure teachers was directed to that quarter ; and it was only after the attempt proved fruitless that my attention was particularly directed towards 'the country-born,' as they are commonly called. Among these, after much trouble, anxiety and waste of time, I succeeded in securing two or three young men of apparent piety and steady consistency of conduct. For this I feel thankful to God, and trust that in future, with God's blessing, the requisite supply of subordinate teachers may be had from this class. " I would now be inclined to give you some account of all my proceedings for the last five husy busy months, but know not where to begin or how to end, so multifarious and closely crowded are the materials accumulated. A volume, not a few sheets, would be required. This note, however, is but the preliminary notice, as it were, of what I trust will be a frequent and delightful correspondence. In order to meet your wishes, when you write be so kind as to state, in the form of question, those subjects on which you would desire to be informed, and I in return will take the same liberty witli you. I have now traversed every part of Calcutta and its vicinity ; have resolved, after much anxious inquiry, to make Calcutta my head- quarters ; have found the impossibility of instituting, in the first instance, a central seminary of the de- ^t. 24. HE DESCEIBES HIS WOKK. 245 scription proposed by the Assembly's committee ; have found, after much investigation, that, in the present state of things in Calcutta, it is more advisable for the Assembly's ultimate purpose to maintain English in preference to Bengalee schools ; have proved, by a most successful experiment on a large scale, that, with proper management, elementary English education, including the reading of the Scriptures by the most advanced classes, may be carried on to almost any extent ; and that, in the course of a very few years indeed, a central institution for a higher education will be absolutely demanded. I cannot enter into detail. In the school now formed in the building formerly occupied as a Hindoo college, on the Chitpore road, there are present every day, after making the neces- sary allowance for temporary engagements and sick- ness, not less than 250 from the age of six to twenty- four, and of all classes from the Brahman downwards. The labours of every day are commenced with prayer — generally the Lord's Prayer, as that has been fully explained; about ninety read a portion of the New Testament in English, and listen to any explanations or remarks. So far well. The Lord alone can give the effectual blessing. I have been and still am in a whirling vortex of employment. Excuse therefore my haste. Pray write me without delay. Remember me in kindness to those dear friends who share in our Christian affection — Messrs. Dalmahoy, Bannister, Mr. and Mrs. Wardrope, Mr. and Mrs. Webster, Mr. Smith and Mr. Ridsdale. I have no recollection of one of the name of Rodgers at St. Andrews. I pray fervently with my whole heart that he may prove a faithful, zealous and devoted fellow-worker with you in the ministry. Oh, who can estimate the blessing of a messenger of God, having the same mind and bearing the shame with and for Christ ! Who can 246 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 183 1. estimate the curse of an emissary of Satan, wearing the outward garb and glorying only in the riches of Christ's visible Church ! The last accounts from Dr. Brown are cheerless ; I fear he is no more ; if so, happy, happy, happy he !" "29th December, 1831. " Things here are in a very complicated state, and very difficult to unravel in all that concerns the vitals of religion, whether among Europeans or natives. I think it not unlikely that when a decided movement shall take place it will be simultaneous among all classes, and probably sudden in its appearance. Be this as it may, the elements of change are at present accumulating rather than any great or deci- sive change developed. Much is visible to call forth gratitude to God, but nothing, nothing to equal the expectations raised at home or justify the gloryings of many. " I am still little else than an explorer of the field, though the success of the large English school estab- lished is pleasing, and with the Divine blessing it may become one of the nurseries of a higher and better institution. Since the departure and death of our mutually much esteemed friend, Dr. Brown, I am left absolutely alone. Many, many are exceedingly kind and friendly, but there is not one who can feel and co-operate with me as a brother. Often I think of Madras and of the kind friends there, and especially of you, my brother. More I cannot say — I always fear giving vent to my feelings, lest there might escape a word that indicated repining or dissatisfaction with the allotments of the Almighty. "My spare time — and it has hitherto been very limited — is devoted to the languages. Here, with God's blessing, I experience little difficulty — the want ^t. 25. ARRIVAL OF DANIEL WILSON. 247 of time is my grand enemy. I have had no tidings from home of late, though I daily expect to hear some- thing about fellow-labourers on their way or arriving. Education can be pursued to almost any extent in Calcutta, with proper agents and adequate funds. I intend very soon to transmit home a report or memorial on the practicability and necessity of found- ing an institution for the more advanced branches of a literary, scientific and Christian course of instruction, to which the labours of European teachers shall be chiefly confined, while the branch schools may always be conducted by less qualified individuals to be found already in the country, and the direct preaching of the gospel shall be carried on to the utmost practicable extent. " Has your colleague arrived ? and does he profess a kindred spirit ? Many here have wished to per- suade me to apply, or allow application to be made, that I might succeed Dr. Brown, but I have per- emptorily declined, on the ground that my motives might be misrepresented and misconstrued — that the act might be viewed as an inglorious abandonment of the cause which I have engaged to promote, and that in this way the cause itself, so far as its present connection with the Church of Scotland is concerned, might languish and suffer. But from my soul I pray, and I am sure you will join me in this prayer, that a man of Grod may appear to heal the breaches that have been opened in our Zion. " Have you written Dr. Inglis ? or found it prudent to attempt making any collection for the General Assembly's fund ? Yours very truly, "Alexander Duff." Daniel Wilson's arrival in 1832, as fifth Bishop of Calcutta, brought together two men of the same 248 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1832. evangelical spirit though separated Dy ecclesiastical forms. " A visit to Dr. Carey at Serampore," writes the bishop's biographer, " elicited many in- teresting reminiscences of the early Christianity of India. A friendly conversation with Dr. Duff fur- nished important information on the subject of native education." Daniel Wilson's episcopate was to last nearly as long as Duff's apostleship in India. Al- though the most " churchy " of evangelicals the bishop wrote of Lord W. Bentinck, as he might have done of Duff, " Lord William is rather more of a Whig and less of a churchman than I could desire, but incom- parably better than the highest churchman if without piety, vigour and activity. Lord William reverences religion and its sincere professors and ministers, but he has prejudices against bishops." Like Duff, the Governor- Greneral had told the new bishop, who applied to him in vain to have his sacerdotal claims over the chaplains legally acknowledged, " Christianity is my object." The bishop rejoined with characteristic prejudice : " With a feeble people like the Hindoos there must be creeds, a liturgy and an established ministry." Yet Duff had won his first four converts there, and the revolution he had begun was so fer- menting that the bishop wrote in March, 1833 : " A most interesting moment is dawning on India. The native mind is at work. A beginning of things is already made." Europeans and Americans constituted only one-half of the professing Christian or born Christian commu- nity in India. Before the influence of missionaries and chaplains, the overland route and liberal furlough rules combined to make the married life of white settlers in India all that the wife of Sir Henry Lawrence longed for it to be, in the Calcutta Review, the Eura- sians (Europe-Asia) or East Indians had become ^t. 26. THE EURASIANS AND THE DOVETON COLLEGES. 249 strong in numbers, the offspring of English fathers and native mothers. In 1833 Duflf developed into a system his labours for them. Leaving out the half-caste children of the earlier Portuguese, who had been allowed to fall near the level of the lower castes by the Romish Church which should have cared for its sons, the mixed offspring of their officers and writers early forced the Company to attend to them. So far as these children had sprung from soldiers, the Military Orphan School, for which David Brown first went to India, was established in 1783, and the Female Orphan Asylum in 1815' — noble charities still. In 1789 the charity school for others was developed into the Free School, originally endowed with part of the compensation paid by the Moorsheda- bad Government for its sack of old Calcutta. The immortal three of Serampore established the Benevolent Institution in Calcutta to meet the increasing need, while Dr. and Mrs. Marshman conducted high-class schools at Serampore for the benefit of the mission. More recently the third of a million sterling, left by the Frenchman, Claude Martin, who " came to India a private soldier and died a major-general," as his tomb records, was spent in Martiuieres or boarding schools for poor Christians in Calcutta, Lucknow, and his native city of Lyons. Finally, the great and good Henry Lawrence endowed the hill Asylums which bear his name, for the children of our Christian soldiers not otherwise provided for. It is a bright roll of Christlike love covering a multitude of sins, not judging, but healing and atoning for an evil and, to its victims, inevitable past. Now in all this there is no independent self-effort. The Eurasian community has given India and Eng- land some of its best men and women, whose virtues were nursed on self-reliance and the fear of God. In 250 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1832. 1823 the Eurasians of Calcutta united to found a joint proprietary scliool, catholic within the limits of Protestantism, for the higher education of their chil- dren. Their fine ideal they somewhat stiffly ex- pressed in the name they gave to what became the germ of the Doveton Colleges, the Parental Aca- demic Institution. In this they followed the Baptist founders of the Benevolent Institution and the Ar- menian conductors of the Philanthropic Institution, under that good man and scholar, Johannes Avdall. Their leader was the son of an English ensign who fell at the siege of Seringapatam, John William Ricketts. He rose from the Military Orphan School, through the East India Company's establishment at Bencoolen, to be the first of his class in India. This college was the boon he left them, as well as the right of sitting on juries side by side with their fellow Christians. But he did more. He deserves to be remembered as the one citizen of Calcutta who, when a public meeting was about unanimously to vote a complimentary address to the Honble. Mr. Adam, protested against so honouring the man who had stripped the press in India of liberty. We have seen how Duff had been led, in his early despair of finding assistants, to think of soldiers, and how he had secured the young adventurer, Clift. His experience of the two lads Sunder and Pereira, who were his first pupil-teachers, and the zeal which led him to examine and advise all the schools in and around Calcutta of every kind, brought him into close relations with the collegiate school of the Eurasians. His great services to it led the managers to nominate him visitor, side by side with the patron. Lord Met- calfe, of whose merits as a Christian statesman this is not the least, that he was the first official to help the Eurasians to help themselves, as Lord Northbrook's .-F,t. 2 6. lk;ilT lOU THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE. 25 I Government did long after, when alarmed at the increase of Christian poverty in India caused by the thoughtless neglect of all the intervening administra- tions. " Much as has been gained," he told the com- mittee, teachers and youth of the school after the tenth successful examination in 1833 : " much yet remains to be won. Let this community rise by its own endea- vours ; unless men act as men, what can Governments do ? Moral and intellectual knowledge are not sepa- rated, and we gain the highest dignity of our nature when we cultivate both." For the Eurasians as for the Native Christians and all who were not either Hindoos, Muhammadans or European British-born subjects, Duff was in the front of those who fousrht the battle for the risi'hts of con- science, which Lord William Bentinck partially and Lord Dalhousie and Lord Lawrence long after completely secured to all classes. With a true toler- ance, but in ignorance of what it involved, Warren Hastings in his code of 1772 guaranteed to Hindoos and Muhammadans their own laws of inheritance. But these laws exclude dissidents from their respective religions from all civil right to ancestral property. Conversion meant disinheritance, and Parliament, with ignorance equal to that of Hastings, wrote such a law on the English statute-book. As if this were not enough, the East India Company had by legislation excluded all converts from public office of any kind. Duff had not been long in Calcutta when he awoke to the enormity of enactments which Muhammadans themselves would never have passed or enforced, and which fossilized Hindooism for ever. From 1830 the missionaries all over India agitated the question, the Court of Directors was stirred up by memorial, and the Eurasians sent home Mr. Ricketts to petition Par- Uament, which examined him. The result was the 252 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1832. Regulation of 1822, which provides that no one shall lose any rights or property, or deprive any other of rights or property by changing his religion. Lord William Bentinck had previously thrown open the public service to all the natives of India, including the outlawed Native Christians, enacting that there should be no exclusion from of&ce on account of caste, creed or nation. The development of an enlightened legislation under Macaulay, Peacock, Maine and Stephen, has now given the varied creeds and races of India better codes than any country possesses, and, save as to the rights of minors and age of majority — not yet settled in England — nothing more is needed. But how desirable that is still may appear from the first colhsion with the law, or rather the lawyers, in defence of the rights of conscience. The missionaries were those of the Church of England, their natural defender was the newly arrived Bishop Wilson, but their actual leader was the young Highlander, whose zeal for fair-play and civil and religious liberty led him alone into the breach and to victory. The case occurred just after the whole Mission- ary Conference had publicly answered a thoughtless attack upon them by the then rising orientalist, H. H. Wilson, and had forced that keen Hindooizer to apologise to them. From the day when, in 1808, Wilson reported his arrival at Calcutta a young assistant surgeon, he became popular as an amateur actor and musician in the local theatre, and as a most versatile and accomplished member of society. But he worked hard at Sanscrit in the midst of all his amusements, so that in five years he published his first translation, that of Kalidasa's Meghaduta or " Cloud Messenger," and in six more his great Sanscrit-English dictionary appeared. He gradually established his reputation as, next to Colebrooke, the Ait. .'6. II. II. WILSON APOLOGISES TO Tlin MISSIONARIES. 253 greatest of English orientalists. Just before lie went home, in 1832, to be the first Boden professor of Sanscrit in Oxford, an appointment which he gained by the narrow majority of seven over the learned and devout Dr. Mill, he wrote a letter on the study of Sanscrit literature in England, at the request of Bishop Turner. In that letter this passage occurred : " In Beno^al the better order of Hindoos resfard the missionaries with feelings of inveterate animosity, whilst they invariably express a high respect for clergymen of the Established Church. They cannot avoid seeing that the latter are held in higher estima- tion by the European society, and that they cannot be reproached with practices which not unfrequently degrade the missionary character in the eyes of the natives." Called to account for this "snobbish" as well as libellous statement by " the missionaries of all denominations in Calcutta," Dr. H. H. Wilson ex- plained that the letter was private and had not been published by him, and that he was exceedingly sorry to learn it " should have given pain to the missionaries of Calcutta, for whom generally I have a high respect, and with several of whom I have long been and hope long to be on terms of kind and friendly intercourse." His defence on the merits was, that he merely re- ported the opinions of high caste Bengalee society, which he did not share. This made it the more im- portant that the missionaries should meet the reflec- tions upon them, which they did in a letter signed by the Rev. C. G-ogerly, the Conference secretary, and full of historical interest to all who would trace the development of Christianity in India.* The truth is, that Dr. H. H. Wilson only too ac- curately, because undesignedly and without malice, • Calcutta Ghristian Observer for Oct., 1832, vol. i., p. 233, \ 254 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1832. expressed the contempt with which missionaries had been regarded by men and ministers of the world, in the days of the vile treatment of Carey and his colleagues by their home committee, which tempted the sneers of Sydney Smith in the Edinhurgh Bevieio. For men to live in poverty, and die unknown by their contemporaries, for the sake of oppressed or savage or superstition-ridden races, while really the pioneers of the Government which proscribed them and the founders of civihzation and scholarship, was to be pro- nounced mean, weak, illiterate creatures. Alexander Duff in Eastern, as John Wilson in "Western India, was the first to change all that, even before the gentle Carey's death, alike by his work and by such an exposure of the calumny that the boldest scofier dared not repeat the lie. It happened thus. Dufi''s success had led the Church Missionary Society to open an English school in its Amherst-street mission-house. Of that Duff's second convert, Krishna Mohun Banerjea, had been ap- pointed master. There Brijonath Ghose, after several months' instruction, sought baptism, and took refuge with his own countryman, the master, to escape the persecution of his family. He was above fourteen years of age, then believed to be the Hindoo age of discretion, as it is more than that of puberty and marriage. Blackstone lays it down that a boy " at fourteen is at years of discretion, and therefore may consent or disagree to marriage." The father had taken the youth from the Hindoo College, lest the purely secular education there should make him a " nastik " or atheist, and had placed him under so well-known a Christian convert as Krishna Mohun, after hearing the bishop declare that instruction in Christianity was the grand object of the school. Yet, under a writ of habeas corjpus, to which Krishna Mohun /Et. 24. THE FIRST HABEAS CORPUS CASE. 255 replied that the boy was not in his custody, Brijonath himself appeared at the bar of the Supreme Court. After pleadings on both sides, it was decided that he must be delivered up to his father as not of age, being only " fourteen years or thereabouts." Documentary evidence of age, from the horoscope, is fabricated in India with an ease which has led the civil service commissioners in England to reject it altogether, while oral witnesses can be purchased at sixpence a head. The test of discretion, of intelligence, of sincer- ity, seems to have been rejected, as it never was in England in cases which were then frequent in Chancery as to Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish minors. The daily papers, by no means prejudiced in favour of men at whose puritanism they were too ready to laugh, described the scene at this the first attempt to vindicate for the natives themselves, who will one day be grateful for the act, the rights of conscience. " The poor fellow," reported the Bengal Hurharn, " was then seized hold of by the father, who could not get him out of the court without considerable exertion. The little fellow cried most bitterly, repeated his appeals to the judges, seized hold of the barristers' table, and was dragged inch by inch out of the court, amidst the sympathy of some and the triumph of others." Bishop Wilson, who was to have baptized him, felt " lively grief ; " but he contented himself with this remark, " A free agent I really believe that boy was ; and the law of deliverance has been to him and still is an imprisonment." In three years thereafter, when the most intolerant could no longer doubt his age, the youth, earnest and consistent amid all the persecution, was with three others baptized. The father's counsel was Mr. Lougueville Clark, who had then been ten years at the Calcutta bar, and continued there for nearly forty more, with the repu- 256 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1832. bation of being one of tlie best cbess-players m the world. To the legitimate arts by which he served his client, he added in open court the statement which, under other circumstances and as afterwards intensi- fied, might have been libellous, that " this was a case of great importance, as the rights of Hindoo parents were too often invaded by the missionaries in Cal- cutta!" Brijonath's was the first case of the kind; it involved great legal as well as moral principles, certain to be again questioned ; and the charge was repeated against the whole body of missionaries not many months after they had received a courteous apology from Dr. H. H. Wilson, After in vain appealing to the most experienced agents of the missionary societies to vindicate the common purity of motive, rectitude of action and inevitable sense of duty, Mr. Duff, the youngest among them, entered the lists. Having failed to obtain from Mr. Clark the most microscopic evidence of his statement beyond general assertions, which added to the injury the insult that the conduct of the missionaries was " flagitious and dangerous," Mr. Duff resolved to publish the corre- spondence. But where ? The three daily papers he believed to be hostile to him at that time. Fortunately, Mr. Stoc- queler, also of the Sans Souci theatre set of amateurs, had come round from Bombay to Calcutta, and had bought the Tory newspaper of Dr. Bryce, the John Bull. Securing as his staff of heavy writers Sir John Peter Grant, who had resigned the Bombay bench after his squabbles with Sir John Malcolm, Mr. John Farley Leith, now M.P. for Aberdeen, and Mr. Charles Thack- eray, uncle of the great prose satirist, the new editor converted the almost defunct daily into the liberal Englishman. At that press Macaulay used soon after to print the rough proofs of those essays which ho ^t. 26. OASTIGATES MR. LONGUEVILLE CLARK. 257 sent from India to ISTapier, while IIol well's monument to the memory of those who died in the Black Hole still perpetuated the humiliation, and Plassey looked as it had done on that morning of sunshine breaking through the rain-clouds when Clive gave the order to cross the river. Mr. Duff found the new editor will- ing to look at the correspondence, though alarmed by its bulk, and was surprised to find the whole in next morning's paper, introduced by fair and even bold editorial remarks. The case is only another illustra- tion of that marvellous power of persuasion which, resting always on a good cause, made Duff irresistible, even by experts like himself, in private discussion still more than in his most skilful and eloquent orations. We remember a later case, in which, in the more judicial Friend of India, one who has since proved the most brilliant of English journalists, having advo- cated one side of a question, was led by the moral suasion and logical power of Duff, directed by a spirit of purest philanthropy, to confess that he was wrong, frankly stated the other side, convinced the Govern- ment, and altered the proposed action. Never, in all the controversies which we have read or heard, have first thoughtless misrepresentation and then deliberate malice received such a castiofation. There are passages in the twenty octavo pages of Duff's alternate scorn and ridicule, reasoned demon- stration and rhetorical appeal, of which Junius would have been worthy if that pitiless foe had fought with sacred weapons and for other than self-seeking ends. The Christian is never forgotten, for it is the rights of conscience and the supremacy of truth for which he fights. Nor is the man, the Celt, the indignant de- fender of the honour of his colleagues, of the glory of his Master in them, and of the grandeur of their one mission, wanting. The reply of the barrister was the s 258 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1832. mocking laugh of Mepliistoplieles, the expression of a desire to secure the missionary " for our Calcutta Drury." The press and all society were disgusted or indignant at the lawyer assailant, to whom was applied the couplet from Young's Epistle to Pope : — '* He rams his quill with scandal and with scoff, But 'tis so very foul it won't go off." The episode closed, for ever, the period of super- cilious contempt and intolerant misrepresentation of men and of a cause soon found to be identified with the best interests of the Hindoos themselves as well as of the British Government. The defeated barrister expressed the desire of seeking the satisfaction appro- priate to himself, in a challenge to fight a duel, which only the black coat of the defender of the faith pre- vented him from sending. But he went so far as to consult a friend on the subject. All the local honours and attentions which Calcutta society could at that time off'er had been pressed upon Mr. Duff ever since the first examination of his school. Especially did the leading men urge him to join the Bengal Asiatic Society, although with most of them he was conducting the Oriental controversy. But duty to his daily work prevailed over his natural tastes, and the memory of Dassen Island was never absent from him in the face of what he regarded as temptations to literary self-indulgence. Of the publications, library, and other aids of the Society he made full use in the war of languages, alphabets and systems. Much more evident to him was the duty of using the Agri- cultural Society of India, founded by Carey for the improvement of the peasantry and the enlightenment of the great zemindars whom the permanent settlement of Lord Cornwallis had recognised as copyhold land- lords on a vast scale. Of this body he was long a ^t. 26. DECLINES TO ATTEND AN OFFICIAL BALL. 259 member, alike in its executive and in its publications committee, and thus he found outlets for many of the educated natives, non-Christian as well as Chris- tian. Of the social life of Mr. and Mrs. Duff at this period \i we have one significant glimpse. The accession of William IV. to the throne was marked by an official ball at Government 'House, to which they were duly invited by Lord and Lady William Bentinck. Per- plexed, the Scottish missionary took counsel of a chap- lain, who assured him that, viewing the invitation as a command, he was in the habit of going to Govern- ment House on such occasions, of making his bow to the Governor-General and his wife and at once retiring. This compromise did not commend itself to Mr. Duff, even although he had not remembered the memorable experience of the first Bishop of Calcutta. On the occasion of the trial of Queen Caroline, a witness for the defence attempted to justify her presence at an indecent dance by the assurance that he had seen Bishop Middleton and his family at a nautch in Government House. A reference made to Calcutta elicited the fact that Dr. Middleton's family were present but not himself ; and the Marquis of Hastings sent the explanation to the Lord Chancellor that the movement of a woman's feet while she sings cannot be called dancing. This, however, was not a nautch, but an official ball for Europeans only, such as that from which, at a later period. Lord Elgin carefully excluded native nobles, who were liable to misunderstand the motives of Ensrlish ladies on these occasions. Mr. o Duff frankly stated, in a letter to the private secretary, the reasons why he could not conscientiously obey the most kind and courteous command of the ruler of India. After long delay he received the Governor- General's cordial approval of his spirit and action. 26o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1834 Soon after liis Excellency begged the missionary and his wife to meet him at dinner in one of those frequent gatherings where the two men discussed, in a like spirit, the highest good of the people and the govern- ment of India. Lord William Bentinck left India after sickness had driven Duff home for a time. He was a statesman and a philanthropist worthy to 'be associated in the spiritual as well as intellectual reformation of India with the man to whom, in his absence and when bidding all the missionaries good-bye, he made this reference, after answering those who would use the force of the conqueror and the influence of the state-paid bishop to induce the profession of Chris- tianity : " Being as anxious as any of these excellent persons for the diffusion of Christianity through all countries, but knowing better than they do the ground we stand upon, my humble advice to them is. Rely exclusively upon the humble, pious and learned mis- sionary. His labours, divested of all human power, create no distrust. Encourage education with all your means. The offer of religious truth in the school of the missionary is without objection. It is or is not accepted. If it is not, the other seeds of instruction may take root and yield a rich and abundant harvest of improvement and future benefit. I would give them as an example in support of this advice, the school founded exactly upon those principles, lately superintended by the estimable Mr. Duff, that has been attended with such unparalleled success. I would say to them finally, that they could not send to India too many labourers in the vineyard like those whom I have now the gratification of addressing. Farewell. May Grod Almighty give you health and strength to prose- cute your endeavours, and may He bless them with success." The deputation to whom the great pro- ^t 28. THE SCHOOL BECOMES A COLLEGE. 26 1 consul addressed words such as had never before been heard from a Governor-General's lips — nor since — ■ consisted of the venerable Dr. Marshman, the saintly Lacroix and Mackay, Messrs. Sandys, Yates and W. I\rorton. Lord William Bentinck left the land for which he had done so much, in March, 1835, eight months after Duff, whose work he legislatively completed in the last wrecks of his seven years' administration. But Duff was not driven from his position, even by almost deadly disease, until he had developed his school, with Mackay at his side, into '* a complete Arts College including the thorough study of the Bible as well as the evi- dences and doctrines of natural and revealed re- lisrion." The annual examination of the classes in the town-hall became one of the notable events of the year, when there assembled the best representatives of all society, European and native, from the Governor- General and his wife, and the learned son of the founder of the orthodox Dharma Sobha, the Raja Rhadakant Deb, to the humblest Baboo or middle- class Bengalee. Reporters, througli all the newspapers, spread the facts of the six hours' testing of Hindoos in Biblical as well as secular knowledge, over Southern and Eastern Asia. Mr. Mack, the able graduate of the University of Edinburgh, whom the Serampore three had associated with them in their educational and literary labours, used to publish a critical estimate of the whole, which guided the many imitators of Duff, Christian and non- Christian, to higher efforts. We may leave with him for a time the famous General Assembly's Institution, with this description of its founder as he first appeared to a little trembling eager- eyed boy brought in from the jungles of Bengal to learn English by an orthodox father, who ran the risk of afterwards seeing his son a Christian and in time 262 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1834. a missionary. The Rev. Lai Behari Day writes of this time : — * " It was some day in the year 1834 that I accompanied my father to the General Assembly's Institution. It was about a month after I had been admitted into the institution that I caught a near view of the illustrious missionary. He came into the class-room while we were engaged in reading the first page of the * First Instructor ' — the first of a series of class- books compiled by himself ; and though forty-four years Lave elapsed since the occurrence of the incident my recollection of it is as vivid as if it had happened only yesterday. I cannot say he walked into the class-room — he rushed into it, his move- ments in those days being exceedingly rapid. He was dressed all in black, and wore a beard. He scarcely stood still for a single second, but kept his feet and his hands moving inces- santly, like a horse of high mettle. He seemed to have more life in him than most men. He had his white pocket-hand- kerchief in his hand, which he was every now and then tying round his arm and twisting into a thousand shapes. He seemed to be a living personation of perpetual motion. But what attracted my notice most was the constant shrugging ot his shoulders, a habit which he afterwards left off but which he had at that time in full perfection. In our lesson there occurred the word ' ox ' : he took hold of that word and catechised us on it for about half an hour. He asked us (the master interpreting his English to us in Bengalee) whether we had seen an ox, how many legs it had, whether it had any hands, whether it had any tails, to the infinite entertainment of us all. From the ox he passed on to the cow, and asked us of what use the animal was. The reader may rest assured that he did not speak before Hindoo boys of the use made of the flesh of the cow, but dwelt chiefly on milk, cream and curds. He ended, however, with a moral lesson. He knew that the word for a cow in Bengalee was goroo, and he asked us whether we knew another Bengalee word which was very like it in sound. A shai-p class-fellow quickly said that he knew its paronym and that it was gooroo, which in Bengalee means the * Recollections of Alexander Duff, I).D., LL.D., and of the Mission College which he founded in Calcutta. 1879. ALL 28. HE WEARS HliMSELP OUT. 26 o Brahman spiritual guide. He was quite deliglited at the boy's discovery, and asked us of what use the gooroo was, and whether, on the whole, the goroo was not more useful than the gooroo. He thea left our class and went into another, leaving in our minds seeds of future thought and reflection.'' To his own college teaching and such school super- vision Mr. DufF added a constant attention to the aggressive work of the Bengal auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society and of the Religious Tract and Book Society. His Sunday evenings were given up in 1833-34 to a new course of lectures and discus- sions, contrasting Christianity with Hindooism and Muhammadanism. For these public controversies he purchased an excellent bungalow in the native city, at a point where four main thoroughfares met. Night after night for a long time eager inquirers, earnest disputants and curious spectators crowded the place almost to suffocation. Every year was adding to the intelligence of the native public, the purely spiritual and moral suasion of Christianity was coming to be understood, and this last course proved the most popular of all. Even Muhammadans attended and took part in the grave quest after divine truth, and the crowds spread the story not only over the city but into many a rural village where the Christian mis- sionary had not been seen. But what of the man himself who, for four years, did not cease to burn thus lavishly and incessantly the physical energy he had brought from the Scottish Grampians, the exhaustless enthusiasm he ever fed at its heavenly source ? He had received his first warn- ing in the great cyclone of May, 1833, but heeded it not. Prematurely came the rain that year, marshalled by the rgtary hurricane which, revolving within itself, as if the destroying counterpart of the harmony of the spheres, moved rapidly over the land. From the Bay 264 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1833. of Bengal, the mighty waters of which it dragged in its devastating train, over island and mainland, forest .and field, village and town, the wild fury of the cyclone rolled itself north and west. Here the storm-wave and the wind bore inland for miles to some rising ground a full freighted Indiaman of 1500 tons, among the hamlets of the peasantry, where for months after it lay a marvel to all. There it swept into sometimes instant but more frequently lingering death hundreds of thousands of human beings and their cattle, whose vain strusrsfles to clin": to roofs and trees and the floating wreck of their desolated homes suggested thoughts of a greater flood and prayers for the bow of mercy. Most graphic of all was this incident, which we tell as Duff himself told it to the writer. His authority was the Argyllshire fellow-countryman who, on that dreadful day, was superintending the clearing of the jungle on Saugar Island. For several weeks before his party had been an- noyed by the night attacks of a tiger of unusual size and ferocity. It carried away some of their animals employed in agricultural operations, as well as two or three human beings. When the cyclone prevailed and the water continued to rise over the island, as many natives as could swim went to the Scots- man's bungalow for shelter, until it was greatly over- crowded. At last, while watching the flood rapidly rising to a level with the floor, at a distance, driven before the tempest along the mighty torrent of waters, he noticed the famous tiger evidently aiming at reach- ing the house. Happily he had a double-barrelled gun loaded and ready. The tiger reached the bun- galow, laid hold of it, leaped into it, worked a way trembling through the dense mass of human baings, and did not stop till he got head and nose into the remotest corner, where he continued to lie still quiver- ^t. 27. THE OYOLONE AND THE TIGER. 265- ing like an aspen leaf. The Scotsman concluded that though, under the influence of terror produced by the violence of the tempest, he was then quite tame, if the bungalow escaped and the storm abated the genuine nature of the savage brute would return, and all the more speedily from the exhaus- tion it must have undero^one swimrains: and struo^- gling to reach the bungalow. So he very coolly took the gun and pointed the barrel to the hearb, rest- ing it on the skin, which he afterwards showed to all Calcutta as a trophy of that cyclone. Thus mingled Avere the terrors of the tempest, which has often since recurred, and on the last occasion, in !I876, even more horribly. The effect on the survivors was for a time quite as deadly. Many who escaped the flood fell by the pesti- lence which it brousrht when the waters subsided and the cold season of 1883-34 came round. Malarious fever, bred by the rotting carcases and vegetation, spread a blight over the fairest portions of the rice land. Inexperienced in tropical sanitation, and bound to discharge the duty of inspecting the prosperous branch school at Takee, Mr. Duff, his family with him, set off" by native boat for the place, which is seventy miles due east of Calcutta. It was November, and the country was only beginning to dry up. Scarcely had they left the city when they came upon a mass of putrid bodies, human and animal, through which they had to work their way. All was beautiful to look at in the green jungle forests of the Soonder- buns, but the abundant fruit from which the Bengalees take their proverbial word for " hypocrite " symbol- ised the reality. Mr. Duff plucked the tempting rakJuilee only to find it filled with nauseous slime. Mr. Barlow, son of Sir George Barlow who had been interim Governor-General, was in charge of the Com- 266 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1834. panj^'s salt station of Takee on £8,000 a year. Dr. and Mrs. Temple received the missionary and his party with their usual hospitality. The return journey, by palankeen, was even worse, and the missionary was laid low by his first illness, jungle fever in its deadliest form. His fine constitution showed that robust elas- ticity which often afterwards resulted in rapid recovery, and after tossing amid the sea breezes of the Sand- heads for two or three weeks he was once more in the midst of his loved work. But with the heat of April, 1834, a remittent fever came on which his vigour of will resisted so far as to take him, again and in that weather, to Takee. Dr. Temple, alarmed at his appearance, at once sent him back, warning him against the scourge which, even more than cholera still, was then the opprohrium medicorum — dysentery. On his return at the height of the hot season he found as his guest the good Anthony Groves, surgeon-dentist of Exeter, who gave wp all he had for a mission to Baghdad, and was the first and best of the Plymouth Brethren. The romantic and very pathetic story of that mission to Muhammadans under a Government which punished apostasy with death, the experience of Francis W. Newman and Mr. Parnell and the young Kitto — this is not the place to tell, as Groves told it in the sympathising and sometimes amused ear of Alexander Duff in 4, Wellington Square, Calcutta. For when the two widowers. Groves and Parnell, and the young bachelor, Newman, left Bagh- dad, they could not leave behind them their one con- vert, the lovely Armenian widow of Shiraz, Khatoon, nor could she travel with them save as the wife of one of them. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on John Vesey Parnell, graduate of Edinburgh University ; and when he succeeded his father, the first Baron, in 1842 she became Lady Congleton. So we have seen more ^t. 28. VISIT OF ME. ANTHONY GUOVES. 267 recently, but according to their regular custom, the lot fall on the Moravian who, having descended from the snowy solitudes of Himalayan Lahoul to receive the brides sent out by the followers of Zinzendorf, married one and conducted the others to his expectant brethren. Duff must have smiled when his guest, of high, even childlike spirituality, gravely told him how when Parnell had invited the British Resident at Baghdad and the European assistants to dinner, he applied Luke xiv. 13 literally by calling in some fifty of the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind to share the feast. Having come round by Bombay and Tinnevelly, where he renewed an old friendship with Mr. E,heuius, and was charmed by the primitive simplicity of the native church there, as Bishop Cotton was thirty years after, Mr. Groves found himself in a new world when among the young Brahmans who were searching the Scriptures diligently. After a general survey of the whole school and college he was closeted with the highest class, and left to examine them on the Bible, on theology, and in detail on the evidences of Chris- tianity. Himself an excellent scholar, Mr. Groves was astonished at the intelligence and promptitude of the replies. But the whole force of his loving nature was drawn out when he came to examine these Hindoos on the design and effect of the sacrifice of the Son of God on the Cross of Calvary. His questioning burst forth into an appeal which pressed home on their conscience the knowledge they had shown, while he wept in his fervour, and the eyes of the young men glowed with reflected inspiration. Then turning suddenly to Mr. Duff he exclaimed, " This is what I have been in quest of ever since I left old England. At Baghdad I almost daily exhorted the adidt natives, but in the case of even the most attentive I always painfully felt there was a crust between their mind and mine. Here 268 LIFE OF DR. DDFF. 1834. I feel that every word is finding its way within. I CO aid empty the whole of my own soul into theirs. How is this?" Duff's answer was to open the door into the large hall and point to the busy scene, to the children in the infant gallery lisping the English alphabet. "There," he said, "is the explanation. Well do I remember how I would have loathed such employment, not only as insufferably dull, but as beneath the dignity of the clerical oflB.ce. But on coming here I soon found that this, with a specific view to the systematic attainment of higher ends, was imperatively demanded as auxiliary to the ultimate renovation of India. On the principle of becoming all things to all men and new things in new circum- stances, there four years ago did I teach ABC. Pilloried though I was at the time, in the scorn of some, the pity of others, and the wonder of all, the work was persevered in. And you have seen some of the fruits. The processes that followed the alphabet- ical training tended in a gradual and piecemeal way to break up and remove that very crust which interposed an impassable barrier between your instruction and the minds of your auditors. Was it not worth while to begin so low in order to end so high ? " " Indeed," replied Groves, " this throws new light on the whole subject. I frankly confess I left England an avowed enemy to education in connection with missions ; but I now tell you as frankly that henceforth, from what I have seen to-day, I am its friend and advocate." That was Duff's last day, for a long time, in his loved Institution. Even then the agony of dysentery had begun, and its prostration, more terrible mentally than physically, soon followed. A generation was to pass before the specific of ipecacuanha was to be used to charm away the bloody flux which used to sweep off thousands of our white soldiers. Four physicians ^t. 28. ORDERED HOME. 2C9 failed to heal the visibly dying missionary. The good Simon Nicolson, the Abercrombie of Bengal, had just been succeeded by Dr. now Sir Ranald Martin, him* self now followed by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Ranald Martin was called in, pronounced the case desperate, but asked permission to try an experimental remedy which had saved one or two of his patients. The result was that, after a long and profound trance as it seemed to the sufferer, he woke up to consciousness, to revival, to such a point of convalescence that he could fy be carried on board the first Cape ship for home. The devoted Groves had slept beside him day and night, nursing him with a brother's tenderness. For he was not the only invalid. On the day that the stricken family were laid in their berths in the John M'LellaUy bound for Greenock, with Groves as their fellow-passenger, a son was born, to whom the name of Groves, as well as his father's name was given. From Mrs. Duff's letter communicating the departure to Dr. Chalmers we learn that, even when thus rescued from the very gates of death, the ardent missionary im- plored the doctors to send hi:n on a brief voyage short of Great Britain. " I devoted myself to the Lord," he pleaded, *' to spend and be spent in His service in this land." Ranald Martin's stern reply was : " In the last nine months you have suffered more from tropical disease than many who have passed their lives in India. Let not a day be lost." As the Greenock Indiaman dropped down the Hooghly his boy was taken to comfort him. But he would have been still more cheered had he known that at that very time, in July, 1834, his old friend, David Ewart, was being ordained as the third missionary of the Church of Scotland and would soon after arrive to help Mr. W. S. Mackay. Thus closed the first five years since Duff had been sent forth from St. George's, with the charge of 270 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1834, Thomas Chalmers ringing in his ears, ordained to preach the gospel in India. Thus ended the first period of his Indian service since he opened his famous Institution in the great Bengalee thoroughfare of Chitpore road, Calcutta. Even the half-century which has passed since Inglis planned and Chalmers preached and Duff responded, " Here am I, send me," enables us to say that that lustrum is entitled to rank with the most memorable eras when human progress has taken a new start to the enlightening and the blessing of a whole continent. As the mis- sionary is borne to the life-giving breezes of ocean from the sweltering pestilence of a Bengal July, the precious seed he has been sent to sow is germinating and growing up night and day, he knoweth not how. CHAPTER X. 1835. THE INVALID AND TEE ORATOR. Unwillingness to leave India. — The Yoyage Home. — The Reform Election and Sir Robert Peel. — Welcome from Dr. Chalmers. — Ignorance of the Committee after death of Dr. Inglis. — First Addresses. — Comes to an understanding with the Committee. — Contidential Notes on the Four Converts. — Letter from Go- peenath Nundi to his spiritual Father. — First Campaign in London. — Rev. John Macdonald. — Seized with his old fever at Mr. Joseph Gurney's. — Letter to Ewart. — Expect great things. — General Assembly of 1835, in the Tron Kirk. — DufF rises from bed to make his first speech. — The Oration described. — Extracts. — The tremendous effect. — Contemporary Accounts. — Oppof^i- tion and Discu-^sion. — The Orator contrasted with the models whom he studied. — India and India for Christ as the theme of eloquence. Having successfully founded and to some extent built up the mission in Calcutta and Bengal, Mr. Duff is summoned, though he knows it not, to do tht equally necessary work of creating a living missionary spirit in the Cliurch at home. The apparently dying\ apostle is really being sent on that parallel or alter- nating service which divided his whole career into two indispensable and co-operating sets of activities ill East and West. Having set the battle in array in ' front, and fought for years at the head of his scanty forces, he had then to leave the post of danger to colleagues of his own spirit, for the less honourable but not less necessary duty of looking to his reserves and sending forward his ammunition. Thus it was that he became at once the missionary worker, the 2/2 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1834. unresting civilizing force in India, and the missionary organizer, tlie unmatclied Christian orator and preacher at home. He led two lives, and in each his splendid physique, his burning enthusiasm, his divine call and support, enabled him to do more than the work of many men together. Yet, as consciousness returned and strength began to come back, it was natural that the young missionary should long to be left at his post, should even some- what murmuringly marvel why he had been taken away in the hour of victory. The very elements seemed to conspire to keep him in Bengal. The John M'LeUan could not breast the fury of the south-west monsoon in a Bengal July, her decks were swept again and again of the live stock laid in for the long voyage, and after six weeks' tossing she had to put into Madras for stores. By the time that she sighted South Africa Mr. Duff had become so far reconciled to the chano;e as to be able to write thus to Dr. Bryce : — " The very thought of returning home at the commencement of my labours and infancy of the Assembly's mission would have, I verily believe, broken my heart, were it not that God, by successive afflic- tions, which thrice brought me to the verge of the grave, disciplined me into the belief and conviction that a change so decided was absolutely indispensable, and that to resist the proposal to leave Calcutta would be tantamount to a resistance of the will of Providence. I shall not revert to the pain and mental distress at first experienced. God has, I trust, over- ruled all for my spiritual improvement; and I trust, moreover, that by my return for a season to Scotland the great cause may be effectually furthered." It was during this otherwise tedious time of slow convalescence that he seems to have read the Bible straight through three times. Beginning with the enthusiastic convic- Alt 28. TUE FIRST REFORM ACT. 2/3 tion, born of his own success, that the Church in the world would gradually glide into a millennium of godliness, this comparative and repeated study brought him to the conclusion that the missionary work is merely preparatory to the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In history, as in the prophets, he ever found righteousness and peace preceded by judg- ments. The invalid was just able to land at Cape Town, and with the assistance of a friendly arm walk to church, where Dr. Adamson, his host five years be- fore, baptized the child born on the day they had left Calcutta. AVhen the ship entered the Firth of Clyde it was Christmas-day. The sea breezes had done their best for five months, and the apparently restored mis- sionary rejoiced in the strong frost which greeted him as from his own Grampians. When he landed at Greenock he found the whole country in the exuberant excitement of the general election under the first Reform Act, which had extended the franchise from two thou- sand electors who returned all the Scottish members of Parliament to something like a fairer proportion. The time of freedom in Church as well as State had begun — the conflicts which ended in the disruption of the Kirk and the abolition of the Corn Laws ten or twelve years after. The sight of election hustings was as new to Scotland as it was to Mr. Duff. Every- where he heard only abuse of the Duke of Wellington. In Edinburgh Lord Campbell talked of impeaching " the multifarious minister " who for the hour held eight cabinet offices, till it was said, " the cabinet council sits in his head and the ministers are all of one mind." It was seen in time that the Duke was only doing his duty till Sir Robert Peel should return from Italy and form the new ministry which first put Mr. Gladstone in office. In such circumstances who, T 2 74 I-IFE OP DR. DUFF. 1835 in kirk or public meeting, would listen to the tale of a triumph so remote and so obscure as that which Mr. Duff had modestly to tell. Yet the tale was really one of a spiritual revolution affecting millions, compared with which the Reform Act, the policy of Sir Robert Peel, and the training of Mr. Gladstone were but single events in a constitutional series ! After a few days spent in Greenock with the Rev. Mr. Menzies, formerly librarian of St. Andrews University, and in Glasgow with his old fellow-student. Dr. Lorimer, for both of whom he preached, Mr. Duff turned his face towards the committee in Edinburgh. He reached the capital by what was then the easiest and quickest means, the canal track-boat. Finding that Mrs. Duff's mother had been removed by death, he and his family settled down in the sea-bathing suburb of Portobello, in a house in Pitt Street lent |,to them by the trustees of her father's estate. [ The first member of committee and personal friend 'on whom Mr. Duff called was Dr. Chalmers, then \redeeming the fame of the University of Edinburgh in its theological faculty. Most courteous and even enthusiastic was the greeting of the greatest Scotsman of his day, who added to all his other gifts that large- hearted friendliness which is the rule of his countrymen scattered abroad. The hour sped rapidly in a fire of question and answer about the progress of the mission and the state of things in India. On accompanyiug his visitor to the door Dr. Chalmers demanded of him, " Where is your cloak ? " "I have not had time to get any," was the reply. " That will never do in this climate ; it is now very frosty, and you are as thinly clad as if you were in India : let me not see your face again till you have been at the tailor's." The young missionary was already an old Indian in this, that the fire of the tropics had made him indifferent ^t. 29. IGNORANCE OF THE COMMITTEE. 275 to his first winter in Scotland, after which comes the reaction that often drives the sufferer to the sun of the south. But where was there another Chalmers or one worthy of him at that time in Scotland ? Dr. Inglis, the founder of the mission, was gone. Dr. Brunton had not then been appointed his permanent successor. He and the other members received the ardent ad- vances of the astonished Duff with a polite indifference, or replied with congratulations on the fact that so good a conservative statesman as Sir Robert Peel had been placed at the head of affairs, as if to save and even to extend the Kirk which had been for years furiously assailed by the Voluntaries. More than once was the young Highlander stung into the warning that for the Kirk to trust any secular statesman, however respectable, was to lean on a broken reed. The tran- scendent interests of a great spiritual institution like the Church of Scotland, he said, must be placed only on Christ Himself, its living Head. There was one minister, besides Chalmers, who had watched the work done in Bengal and had genius enough to appre- ciate it. He at once invited Mr. Duff to begin his crusade in Falkirk. That was John Brown Patterson, the marvel of the High School of Edinburgh, whom Pillans took with him to the University ; the student who had there gained the hundred pound prize proposed by the Government commissioners on the universities of Scotland for the best essay on the character of the Athenians — an essay which, when published, was pronounced unsurpassed in English literature at the time, for its learning and style. The result of Duff's preaching in Falkirk, and of a public meeting with formal resolutions to advance the Bengal mission, was not only a collection of money which surprised all in that day, but the lighting of a flame 276 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. which, in coming days and years, Duff was to fan and spread till it covered the land, and fired America and many other parts of Christendom. The glad report of this, made formally to the committee, was received with respectful silence. Nor was the bitterness of Mr. Duff's heart assuaged till, about the same time, two theological students called upon him for information regarding his mission. The interview gave him a new confidence for the future, for he reasoned that if any number of the divinity students were like these, the India mission would never lack men worthy of it. His young visitors were the saintly Murray M'Cbeyne and he who is still Dr. A. N. Somerville of Glassrow. Somewhat dubious now as to the attitude of the committee, Mr. Duff received, with hesitation, the next invitation to tell the public of his work. Dr. A. Paterson, who had been driven out of Russia by the intolerance of the Czar Nicholas, asked him to address half a dozen godly folks who met once a month in the Edinburgh house of Mr. Campbell, of Carbrook, for prayer for foreign missions. On finding the drawing- room crowded by a large audience he remonstrated, and refused to remain. But explanation showed that no endeavour had been made to summon the audience, whom he therefore consented to address. The result was, such an impression in many circles outside as well as in the Kirk, that an English visitor who had been present rode down to Portobello next morning to make a large donation to the mission, and Mr. Dufi" was formally summoned, for the first time, to meet the committee in the rooms in the University which Dr. Brunton occupied as librarian. Marvelling what the sudden cause could be, but delighted that at last he would have an opportunity of giving an account of his stewardship, Mr. Duff hurried to the spot with ^t. 29. FFGHTING THE COMMITTRK. 2/7 that punctuality for which, like all successfully busy meu, he was ever remarkable. It was thus he used to tell the story : — Enterincr the room he found that nearly all the members of committee were present. After prayer the acting convener rose, and standing in the middle of the floor, in substance spoke as follows : — He had thought it rio'ht to summon a meetino^ to settle and determine the case of Mr. DufF, who, in these days of agitation, turmoil, and revolutionary tendencies and irregulari- ties of every description, had taken it upon him to hold not exactly a public, but at the same time a very large meeting in the house of Mr. Campbell, of Carbrook, with the view of addressing it on the sub- ject of missions. Now he regarded this as a very un- warrantable and irregular proceeding. Mr. Duff had given him no intimation of his intention to hold such a meeting, nor had he any means of knowing what might be the leading subject of the address. He thought it therefore right to consult his colleagues, to induce them to lay down rules to regulate Mr. Duff's proceedings on such matters in future, as it would never do, in unsettled times like these, to allow the agent of a responsible committee to adopt what measures he chose. Immediately Mr. Duff stood up, and taking pos- session of the middle of the floor, respectfully ad- mitted that he was the agent of the committee, but of a committee guided by moral and spiritual influences and considerations. While in one respect therefore he was their agent, in another respect he must be considered on a footing of religious co-equality, co-responsibility with themselves ; but not to insist further on this, he would soon bring the matter to a decisive issue. When he went to India originally he declared that he would not go if hampered by any conditions which his own 2yS LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. conscience did not approve; that, entering upon an entirely new field, full discretion must be allowed him within the limits of reason and sobriety to follow what courses he might deem most effective for the ends which the committee and himself had alike in common. This reasonable concession was at once cheerfully yielded by Dr. Inglis and his committee; and now when he, Mr. Duff, had returned, after several years of multiplied experiences, he thought that full discretion should be allowed him to adopt what course might seem best for awakening an interest in the Church's mission, so long as he was ready to take any coun- sel or advice which the home experiences of members of committee friendly to missions might suggest. He then explained how the recent meeting had not originated with him; though when he came to understand it he fully approved of it, and thought that the successful result sufficiently proved its provi- dential legitimacy. Of course, if the committee had any work for him to do of any kind anywhere, he would at once relinquish all other duty for the sake of taking up that; but beyond this he could not possibly go. He was an ordained minister of the gospel, and therefore supposed to be endowed with ordinary ministerial gifts, graces and attainments. He was in all respects therefore the free-man of the Lord ; free to carry out whatever his blessed Master might indicate as His most gracious will. That liberty he would not and could not for ten thousand worlds relinquish. The decisive issue, therefore, came to be this : if the committee resolved, as they had a perfect right to do, to draw up some peremptory instructions to regulate Mr. Duff's proceedings in purely spiritual, ministerial, and missionary matters, he must at once write out his resignation as their agent. If on reconsideration they came to the con- ^t. 29. CONQUERING THE COMMITTEE. 279 elusion tliat it was better to allow tilings to remain as they were, and grant him full liberty of action within the reasonable limits stated by himself, he would rejoice in continuing as their agent, and do what he possibly could to create a deeper interest in the mission throughout the bounds of the Church, and thereby help to increase the funds and the number of agents to be sent abroad. For the people being profoundly ignorant of the whole subject, their being wakened to take a deeper interest in so spiritual a work as the evangelisation of the world would not only be carrj'ing out more fully the last great com- mission of our blessed Saviour, but also tend in many remarkable ways spiritually to benefit their own souls. Having so spoken he sat down. Instantly, all present, without any one of them uttering a single word, went out precipitately, leaving Mr. Duff and the convener alone in the middle of the floor to look at each other in a sort of dumb amazement. " Probably," said the former with great calmness, " we have had enough of the subject for this day." So, on that memorable occasion, the uncompromis- ing devotion to duty of the young missionary proved to be more powerful than all tact or ecclesiastical finesse, as it had done in more difficult circumstances among the Bengalees. Dr. Inglis was gone. The country and the Church knew nothing of the Bengal mission save from the meagre report printed once a year for a General Assembly which had not then become a popular parliament. The unhappy commit- tee wanted only a head to lead them. Dr. Brunton woke up to the new duties which his rare courtesy always afterwards sought to discharge with kind- liness. Had he referred to the scanty records of which he took charge on appointment to his 28o LIFE OF Dr. DUFF. 1835. office, he would liave found an official communica- tion, written bj Mr. Duff as lie sailed up the Clyde, and thus concluding : — " Why is it that the Lord was pleased so to reduce me to the verge of exist- ence that I left the field of labour in that all but desperate condition of a dying man, and has since been pleased so wonderfully to bless the voyage to me that by the time I have reached my native shores I feel enabled to encounter any reasonable share of bodily exertion ? Surely it may be, or rather must be, that the Father of spirits has something or other to do with me, in promoting in this land the glorious cause — even the glorious cause of the Redeemer to which my heart and soul and life are exclusively devoted. Oh, may God grant that wise thoughts may be put into our minds, so that when we meet, measures may be devised for the occupa- tion of my time while I remain in Scotland which He Himself will abundantly bless for the promotion of His own glory in connection with the Assembly's mission to the perishing heathen." After Falkirk the next call came from Dr. Wilson of Irvine. Dundee followed, led thereto by a visit which Mr. Duff had paid to all its ministers on his way north to Moulin to visit his father and mother. Meanwhile his official and private correspondence shows how necessarily active he was in educating the new con- vener and committee in the progress of the mission, much of the history of which had passed away with Dr. Inglis. A letter from the Rev. W. S. Mackay on the work in Bengal called forth these "running notes " on the converts : — "March 20th, 1835. "If these had not been so specially referred to by Mr. Mackay I should be silent. Many in Calcutta know, and none more than my dear colleague, how much I was called on to ^t. 29. WUY TWO CONVERTS JOINED THE ENGLISH CHUUCH. 28 I do for tliese, and how much to bear from them during tho time of their infidehty and the progress of their inquiries after truth ; God only is witness of all I had to do and endure, how I had to toil and struggle and travail in soul for them. It may easily be imagined then how peculiar must my feelings towards them be. When the two first joined the English Church I was not much surprised, owing to the very satis- factory reasons stated by Mr. Mackay. And if the ground of their reasons had not been removed (as it happily now is), I should not have expected any talented young man who burned with zeal to be employed in ai'ousing his countrymen, to re- main with us — indeed I could not ask any. If the Church of England offered to ordain and support them as missionaries, and we could not, then for the good of India would I say, ' rather than remain unemployed, or betake yourselves exclu- sively to secular professions, by all means join the Church of England or any other Church of Christ that will engage to send you forth as effective labourers into the missionary field.^ " While therefore I did not feel surprised at the two first converts separating themselves from me, I do confess that there was an apparent want of consideration to my feelings in the mode of the separation. But while others blamed them for the act as well as tho mode, and charged them with in- gratitude, I really could not blame them so much as their instigators and advisers. They did not consult me, as I think they were in gratitude bound to do. The former were young and inexperienced ; the latter, I fear, were actuated more by the spirit of proselyting to a party than by the love of Christ and the love of the brethren : the latter therefore, in my estimation, must bear the main burden of the blame, if blame there be. My mind is satisfied, aye my very, soul kindles into joy at the thought that these my spiritual children continue steadfast in the faith, full of zeal for their Master, and con- scientiously endeavour to serve Him. This noble testimony from ray dear colleague is to me glad tidings indeed, for though in a measure separated in time, we may yet rejoice together, and rejoice over the fruits of our separate labours, in the realms of bliss. " The obvious remedy for such defections from our Church, though not from the Church of Christ, is (1) the power of ordaiu- 282 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1835. ing and supporting qualified labourers : (2) The supporting promising young men, when cast off by their friends on account of their specially devoting themselves to the work of preparation for the Christian ministry : (3) The erection of a higher institution for the communication of the more advanced branches of knowledge, literary, scientific and theological. The first of these is now granted ; the two last are yet want- ing, and till these be granted too it is utterly impossible for the Assembly's missionaries in India to be responsible for the continued adherence of well-educated pious young men to the communion of the Church of Scotland. '^ Nothing would pain me more than that I should be thought to have formed too high an estimate of the character of these young men, and have led others to do so. I conscientiously believe that I have understated rather than overrated that character as a whole, and that many Christians in Calcutta would give a far more flaming account than I have ever done or ever will do. I simply stated a few clear and notorious facts ; I might have stated more, and drawn more glowing inferences, but purposely refrained from doing so. God knows that under the most powerful temptations to write strongly I have often written in modified terms, and often not at all. I always shrink instinctively Irom raising expectations that could not be realized, and if I do not greatly mistake, I think the whole tenor of my communications with the committee for the last five years bears me out in this assertion. " In the case of the first two that were baptized, if they did not consult me, as they should have done, it was a matter altogether personal to myself, and no one perhaps could feel for them as I did, or make for them, in the peculiar circum- stances of their situation, the same allowances. And seeing that the matter was personal to myself, and that I had long forgiven them before God, and that in all other respects, so far as I could observe, they continued to walk worthy of their high calling, yea, to labour without ceasing in their Master's service, I could not feel myself for a moment justified in the attempt to lower their general high character or impede their usefulness by dwelling on circumstances to me of so personal a nature. And as the matter is so very liable to misconstruc- tion on the part of those who must ever be more or less un- acquainted with the peculiarities of the position of these young ^t. 29. WHY TWO CONVERTS JOINED OTLIEil MISSIONS. 283 man, and so apt therefore to do injury to our cause, I would beg the committee never to refer to the topic of ' ingratitude * towards me. Let the causes of separation from us be freely and fully stated, if any questions be put, and stated too in order to rouse our brethren to put us speedily in possession of the remedy against future defections. "When Gopeenath Nundi was appointed at my own recom- mendation to the school at Futtehpore, it was not in connection with any society. The surgeon of the station, in his applica- tion to me, expressly stated that the school was founded and would be supported by the British residents of the place. Its being taken under the patronage of the Church of England Missionary Society w-as altogether a subsequent event. We could not obviate this, as we had no disposable funds to offer which might secure the permanency of the institution. "In June or July, 183o, Archdeacon Corrie was about to proceed to the upper provinces on his ministerial visitation. This was thought a favourable opportunity for Gopee, as the Archdeacon kindly offered to take him along with himself. On his return to Calcutta the Archdeacon spoke of Gopee in the very highest terms, and so also did Messrs. Hill and Paterson, missionaries of the London Missionary Society at Bcrhampore, and others whom Gopee had visited in his passage up the river. From himself I have never had the slightest intimation of an intention to join the English Church, though for my own part I scarcely see how he can avoid it. Ho is, I presume, supported to a certain extent (though I never heard any par- ticulars) by the Church of England Missionary Society. Out of Calcutta (thanks to the supineness of our Church and her friends) he cannot enjoy the benefit of Christian ordinances but in connection with the Church of England. How in these circumstances Gopee can avoid joining the Church of England I cannot well see. Mr. Mackay states that he still retains his affection for me ; I am rejoiced to hear it, for it did appear to me strong as death. " Anundo^s case is of course under consideration." Gopeenath was afterwards ordained by the Ameri- can Presbyterian Church. Anundo had been induced by Mr. Groves to accompany him to England, in the 284 LIFE OF Dli. DUFF. 1835. same ship witli Mr. Duff. On his return to India lie became a catecliist of the London Missionary Society, and died in 1841. Whatever may have been the motives which actuated those who induced Duff's first two converts to leave their spiritual father, all must re- joice in the fine catholicity, in the rare self-abnegation which marked his own action and have ever since made his college the nursery of evangelists for all the Protestant agencies of Northern and Eastern India. He at least never grudged the Church of God what his own committee were unwilling or unable to utilize. And in letters such as this from Gopeenath Nundi, as well as in the continued reports of Mr. Mackay and Mr. Ewart regarding others, he found a solace and a joy of the rarest kind. Two years after his baptism Gopeenath thus concluded a long letter to Mr. Duff, from Futtehpore, beyond Allahabad, where in the Mutiny of 1857 he was to witness a good con- fession, haviugbeen, as he here desired, " kept faithful unto death ": — "After I was separated from you in July, 1833, I was almost thrown alone into the world. Often I was tempted to be hopeless, and felt the need of your society. When I feel my lonesomeness, or want of a friend to open my heart to, I go to Him who is ever kind to me, and disclose my secrets. He is the only searcher of all those that are lost. He is the only friend of all the broken-hearted. He is the true leader, who leads out of the world and temptation, particularly to the new and inexperienced. Jesus is sweet unto all those that call upon Him in faith. Did He not promise that He shall he with me even unto the end of the world — then what fear ? ' Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning !' Such are my expressions in the hour of temptation. Oh what a comfort to have Christ always^ and have fellowship with Him I Is it not a great blessing to have Christ, a friend, a companion, and a conductor in all things? Then let these lines be my con- tinual expression : — ^t. 29. TUE BUOTUERHOOD IN CHRIST. 285 * If on my face, for Thy dear Name, Shame and reproaches be ; All hail reproach, and welcome shame, If Thou remember me/ "Oh what a great mistake of them that are still wanderino", not knowing where to harbour at ! Did not our Lord pro- nounce peace on all that are His ? ' Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you : let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' Is this peace pronounced not for all ? I say it is for all, whoever he may be, whatever nation or country he belongeth to ; so I am sure His peace resteth on me so long as I have sufficient faith, even unto the end of my life. "Although we are separated by sight, still our hearts are combined in the Lord. As for my part, I find that the hearts which are once in the fellowship of Jesus cannot on any account be separated, neither by time nor by distance. We are merely separated by earthly boundaries ; but our Christian love grows stronger and stronger as the day of salvation ap- proaches. Only a few thousand miles are between you and me; but I have you always in my heart, and make mention of you in my prayers : you are scarcely gone out of my sight. But oh, remember rae sometimes in your prayers. Pray not only for my sinful soul, that I may be kept faithful unto death, but also, and especially, for the souls of the poor heathens around me, that they may soon be freed from the chains of Satan and be blessed in the name of Jesus. Whether I live or die, let Christ be glorified by the ingathering of sinners to Him. I have many more trials and temptations yet to meet ; but oh, may I cut short all of them through Him who is ever gracious to me. Those days are gone by when we used to converse on religious topics ; more especially on Christ's con- descension to save poor sinners. But we have a sure hope, that they will be renewed in a better place, and at a better time, when we come to dwell in the mansions of our heavenly Father. Oh may we soon come to that place, and greet each other with a brotherly embrace, — singing praises to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen. Yours alFectionately, " Gopeenath Nundi." " These lines," wrote Duff wlien publishing them 286 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835, long after, "in their touching simplicity require no comment. It surely is not possible for any experienced Christian to peruse them without being sensible that he is holding converse with a mind not only generi- cally but specifically the same as his own ; that he is in union and communion with a perfectly congenial spirit — a spirit new-moulded and fashioned after the similitude of Christ — a spirit whose heavenward breathings would, with talismanic effect, mark out its possessor from amidst the countless throng of his turbaned countrymen as belonging to the spiritual confederacy and brotherhood of the faithful." In April, 1835, after making the amende honorable, the convener submitted to Mr. Duff a letter from the clerk of the Presbytery of London, expressing pro- found interest in the India mission of the established Church of Scotland, and inviting the missionary to preach to and address each of the congregations, which were ready to begin a system of contributions for the good cause. There was only one dissentient in the Presbytery, as it proved, and that solely from ignorance. He was the Rev. John Macdonald, who, when he heard the good news of God from Bengal and understood how an educational agency like Duff's was the most evangelistic of all as directed to cultured Hindoos, gave himself to the same service, resigning his London charge for the Calcutta mission. HaviDg accomplished his congenial task, Mr. Duff happened to be breakfasting with Mr. Joseph Gurney, the Christian philanthropist who superintended the system of short- hand reporting in the House of Lords. The mis- sionary was about to set out for the final meeting of representatives of all the congregations, when, as he lifted a cup of coffee to his lips, he was seized with the violent shivering which marked the return of his old fever. He was nursed in Alderman Pirie's house ALL 29. LEITER TO DAVID EWART. 287 for three weeks, and insisted on returning to Edin- burgh for the General Assembly, which he reached by steamer apparently a wasted skeleton. "London, Camberwell, 20th May, 1835. " My Dear Ewart, — I need not say how rejoiced I was when I heard of the step you had taken. May the God of grace strengthen and uphold you : may He pour upon you of the richest effusions of His grace : and may He render your labour effectual in advancing the Redeemer's kingdom in the benighted land of your adoption. By this time you will have become acquainted with the state of things in Calcutta. It is needless therefore for me to refer to it. The pushing on of the advantages already gained in our Institution is a matter of paramount importance. The raising up of a class of native teachers and preachers from our Institution is the only thing that will meet the de- mands of India, the only thing that will reconcile the people at home to our proceedings. Therefore every nerve should be strained towards the accomplishment of this end. The day that the presbyterial board of Calcutta shall ordain one of our young men for the work of the ministry will be a glorious day for India and for our cause. Such an event would do more than anything else in the way of arousing our countrymen at home. When ordained, of course the young mis- sionary should be employed in or near Calcutta, within reach of superintendence and direction. " I came to Loudon about a month ago, and have preached or delivered addresses in all our Scotch churches here. All of them have now formed, or are about to form, congregational associations in support of our cause. I was to have spoken at some of the great anniversary meetings held here in May ; but on 2S8 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835; Saturday, the 2nd of May, I was seized with a severe attack of my old friend, or enemy, the Bengal inter- mittent fever, which has up to this date conj&ned me to the house. I am now through God's blessing nearly recovered ; but the consequence has been that for the present the finest opportunities for making our cause extensively known in this great metropolis have been lost. It does look mysterious, but no doubt we shall yet find that God has ordered it for the best. " While I have been advocating the claims of our mission generally, and the necessity of increasing prayerfulness and increasing contributions, I have not forgotten the special calls for more suitable accommodation for our Institution, for an extensive library, apparatus, etc. Things are progressing to- wards something eff"ectual being done in these respects. I have now just attended a general meeting of the Religious Tract and Book Society, and pled in behalf of our Institution. The committee have accordingly unanimously voted a grant of all their publications, amounting in value to about £30. My affectionate regards to Mr. and Mrs. Mackay, Dr. Bryce, Mr. and Mrs. Charles, the members of session, brother missionaries, etc. Yours affectionately, ** Alexander Duff." Duff" had now a work to do, and to do at once, com- pared with which his crusade in Bengal had been pleasant. The opposition there was what he had counted on ; it had inspirited him with eagerness for the battle, and he had been successful. In his own land he had had just experience enough to sound the depth of ignorance, and consequent indifference to India and the state of its people. The few who were of the spirit of Dr. Inglis, removed by death; Simeon, JEt. 2g. "expect GREAT THINGS." 289 near liis end; Dr. Love, removed to Glasgow after founding the Loudon Missionary Society ; John Foster, Charles Grant and Wilberforce, gathered round the societies, leaving Churches, as such, colder than before. Irvine and Falkirk were exceptions in the presbyteries of his own Kirk ; even the Lon- don Scotsmen were represented as more desirous to wipe off the reproach of Unitarianism by inviting him to their midst than to advance foreign missions. We have seen what his own committee, on the removal of Dr. Inglis, knew of his doings, and how little they understood the magnitude of his aims. Just ten years had passed since the General Assembly had been induced with difficulty to invite a general collection for the pro- posed Indian Mission, by the assurance, prominently published, that it was " not to be repeated," yet not. fifty out of its thousand churches made any response. / Dr. Inglis was so delighted by the consent of the Presbytery of Edinburgh to make an annual collection, even in 1831, that he announced it to Duff as a tri- umph, and declared he would now fix the maximum revenue for the mission at £1,200 a year. From the front of the battle, in all its heat and vastness, the mis- sionary had replied, " Not £1,200 but £12,000, and doj not stop at that." How had that reply been received ? ^ "When, before the Assembly of 1835, Duff was reading up the meagre records of the committee, he found that a leading member had written on the margin of that reply, " Is the man mad ? Has the Indian sun turned his head ? " When he pointed out the query, its writer, now himself convener, tore it off and threw it into the fire, exclaiming, " No more will be heard on that sub- ject." But, in high and low, this was the want of know- ledge and of faith which the first Scottish missionary who had returned from India was called to meet. And the return of the old fever of the rice swamps of u 290 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835. Bengal, following his London campaign, had mado him once more a gaunt invalid. Physicians and friends tried to dissuade him, and the list of business that year, which followed the ecclesiastical reforms of 1834, was so large that it was doubtful if time would be found for even the India Mission. What was all the administration of Lord William Bentinck, or all the codes and the essays of Macaulay, to a general election ? what the evangeliza- tion of Bengal to the presbyters of Auchterarder ? But Duff knew that this was his time ; that if he died he must yet deliver his soul and tell his tale. He could have no prosperous mission in India without Scotland, "^and' every Scottish man, woman and child could be reached best through the reports of the General Assem- bly, which the reforms of 1834 had made the most popular of parliaments. Casting himself on the promise to Paul, the first and greatest of missionaries, that the grace of God would be sufficient for him, yea, would be perfected even by his weakness, Mr. Duff resigned himself passively into the Divine hands. In those days he did not commit a speech or address to writing, but thoroughly conned over the materials of it, leaving the expression to the time when he should stand eye to eye with the crowd. The reforming party in the Kirk had established the Scottish Guardian as their weekly newspaper, in Glasgow, and the editor, the Bev. George Lewis, had formed a volunteer staff of reporters of the Assembly's proceedings. Brother of one who was a warm friend of Mr. Duff — Dr. James Lewis — and himself one of the few interested in the subject, he instructed his staff to take down as full a report of the missionary's speech as possible. Monday, the 25th May, 1835, had been assigned for what had hitherto been the purely formal duty of presenting ^t. 29. IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1835. 29 1 the annual report of the India Mission. Tlio Assem- bly met in that most uuecclesiastical large box called the Tron kirk of Edinburgh. Though in the m:'^*]ian- ical sense unprepared, and just risen from a sick bed, Mr. Duff testified often after, that never during his whole life did he more thoroughly experience the might of the Divine saying, " As thy day so shall thy strenQ:th be." At first it seemed as if he could not go on beyond a few sentences, and he was conscious that many were gazing at him, apprehensive, as they afterwards said, that he would soon drop on the floor. But, leaping by one effort into the very heart of his subject, he became unconscious of the presence of his audience save as of a mass which was gradually warming to his heat. Advancing from stage to stage of what was, for him, " a brief exposition," he whispered out his at that time unmatched peroration with an almost supernatural effect, and subsided drenched with perspiration as if he had been dragged through the Atlantic, to use his own expression. Then for the first time he marked the emotion of his hearers, many of them callous laAvyers and lords of session, cool men of the world or antipathetic " moderates." Down the cheeks of even these the tears were trickling. With the unconsciousness of the highest art their first Indian missionary at once planted the General Assembly beside him in Bengal, as he set himself to " the conversion of a hundred and thirty millions of idolaters." Step by step he hurried them on from the first attempt, on the old system, to influence the edu- cated Hindoos, through the statement of the evidences of Christianity, of miracles, prophecy and the demand for the proof of the missionary's authority, till this conclusion was reached : " The power of conveying the necessary knowledge seems to me to be the only 292 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835. substitute we possess instead of the power of working miracles. But it is surely one thing to say, that a sound liberal education is greatly advantageous towards the establishment of the evidence and authority of the Christian revelation, and, consequently, towards securing a candid and attentive hearing, and quite another to say, that it is indispensably and universally necessary to the heart reception of the gospel remedy. The former position we do most firmly maintain, but in the solemnity of apostolic language, we exclaim, God forbid that we should ever maintain the latter ! Instead of demanding your authority for the truth of Christianity, the Brahman may challenge you to invalidate, if you can, the claims of his system. You soon find that there is no common ground in logic, and you turn to the experimental principles of physical science to find the cataclysms of the Hindoo cosmo- gony exalted against the petty, the recent learning of the West. You turn to theology proper, only to find that the Yedic Shasters sanctify and render infallible all Brahmanism, secular as well as sacred. Do then," exclaimed Duff, after pleading for the supply of mis- sionaries "qualified to silence the intellectually proud as well as to edify the spiritually humble," " Do tlieu let me again crave the attention of this venerable court to the grand 'peculiarity , that if in India you only impart ordinary useful knowledge, you thereby demolish ivhat by its people is regarded as sacred. A course of instruction that pro- fosses to convey trutJb of any land thus becomes a species of religious education in such a land — all education being there regarded as religious or theological. Every branch of sound general knowledge which you inculcate becomes the destroyer of some corresponding part in the Hindoo system. It is this that gives to the dissemination of mere human knowledge, in the present state of India, such awful importance : it is this that exalts and magnifies it into the rank of a prwiiarz/ instrument in epreading the seeds of reformation throughout the land. I ask ^t. 29. HIS FIRST ORATION. 293 not, whether sound useful kuowleclge be universally necessary, either as the precursor or friendly ally of tliat wliich is divine. Such is ticither my own impression nor belief. But, seeing that the communication of useful knowledge becomes, in the circumstances described, such a tremendous engine for breaking down the accumulated superstitions and idolatries of ages, I do ask, in opposition to those who decry and denounce useful knowledge, not in the abstract but as totally inapplicable to missionary purposes, — I do ask, witli humble but confident boldness, as in the sight of Heaven, ' Who is it that will hence- forward have the hardihood to assert that the impartation of such knowledge has nothing to do with the christianizatiou of India?'" But the European, the foreign missionary to the educated Hindoos soon comes to discover further, that if the gospel is to be extensively preached with power it must be by natives themselves, whom it is his task to duly qualify. Appealing to the Highland ministers among his audience, the speaker used the same old analogy of the Gaelic and English which he employed with such eflfect against the one-sided orientalists of Calcutta : — " Oh, there is that in the tones of a foreigner's voice which X falls cold and heavy on the ear of a native, and seldom reaches the heart ! — whereas, there is something in the genuine tones of a countryman's voice, which, operating as a charm, falls pleasantly on the ear, and comes home to the feelings, and touches the heart, and causes its tenderest cords to vibrate. Doubtless there have been, and there may be now, individual cases of foreigners having in some degree, or even altogether, surmounted this grand practical difficulty. But these rare cases form such palpable exceptions from the general rule, that they can scarcely be counted on, in providing a naf/onaZ supply of preachers of the everlasting gospel. Thus, again, is the comparative inefficiency of European agency, when put forth directly in proclaiming the gospel, forced upon the mind ; and the necessity of having recourse to native agents in the work is once more suggested with a potency that is resistless. They 294 ^^^^ OF DE. DUFF. 1835. can withstand that blazing sun, they can bear exposure to that unkindly atmosphere, they can locate themselves amid the hamlets and the villages, they can hold intercourse with their countrymen in ways and modes that we never can. And having the thousand advantages, besides, of knowing the feelings, the sentiments, the traditions, the associations, the habits, the manners, the customs, the trains of thought and principles of reasoning among the people, they can strike in with arguments, and objections, and illustrations, and imagery which we could never, never have conceived. How glorious then must be the day for India when such qualified native agents are prepared to go forth among the people, and shake and agitate, and rouse them from the lethargy and the slumber of ages ! " It is for reasons like the preceding, that a man of fervent piety, going forth with the fullest intention of doing nothing but directly and exclusively preaching the gospel in the native tongues, often finds himself, in such a country as India, con- strained to think of other and more effectual means of ulti- mately accomplishing the same work, and hastening the same consummation.^' Then followed a graphic description of tlie speaker's own mode of overcoming such difficulties ; a patbetic picture of the separation of his third convert from father and mother, from brothers and friends, for ever; and a contrast, which time has unhappily only proved at once a prediction and a justification, in the political results of the system which the Grovernment of India alone of all ruling powers, civilized or barbarous, pur- sues— public instruction carefully divorced from all religion : — " If in that land you do give the people Icnowledge without religion, rest assured that it is the greatest blunder, politically speaking, that ever was committed. Having free unrestricted access to the whole range of our English literature and science they will despise and reject their own absurd systems of learning. Once driven out of their own systems, they will in- evitably become infidels in religion. And shaken out of the ^t. 29. HIS riRST ORATION. 295 mechanical routiue of their own religious observances, without moral principle to balance their thoughts or guide their move- ments, they will as certainly become discontented, restless agitators, — ambitious of power and official distinction, and possessed of the most disloyal sentiments towards that Govern- ment which, in their eye, has usurped all tho authority that rightfully belonged to themselves. This is not theory, it is a statement of fact. I myself can testify in this place, as I have already done on the spot, that expressions and opinions of a most rebellious nature have been known to drop from some of the very proteges of that Government which, for its own sake, is so infatuated as to insist on giving knowledge apart from religion. But as soon as some of these became converts to Chi'istianity, through the agency already described, how totally dittei'ent their tone of feeling towards the existing Government ? Their bowels yearned over the miseries of their countrymen. T/ieif now knew the only effectual cure. And their spontaneous feeling was, ' Ah ! woe be unto us, if the British Government were destroyed and the Hindoo dynasties restored ! The first thing would be to cut us off, and what would then become of our poor degraded country ? We pray for the permanence of the British Government, that, under the shadow of its pro- tection, we may disseminate the healing knowledge of Chris- tianity among our brethren, — that knowledge which alone can secure their present welfare and immortal happiness.' In like manner, and for the same reason, there are not more loyal or patriotic subjects of the British crown than the young men that compose the more advanced classes in our Institution. So clearly and strongly did this appear to many members of the present Government in India, that instead of regarding us with jealousy and suspicion as enemies, they looked upon us as the truest friends of the British Government, the staunchest sup- porters of the British power." The adoption of English as the language of the higher education, the abolition of foreign Persian as the official medium, the use of the vernaculars for giving knowledge to the millions, the spread of the higher education from Calcutta to the great cities and jfeudatory states of Upper and Central India, and the 296 LIFE OF' DE. DUFF. 1835, ' duty of Scotland through its Kirk, all the more since the death of Inglis, carried the orator to his climax, which became a model of rhetoric for many a year after in the schools and manuals of elocution : — *' Whenever we make an appeal in behalf of the heathen, it is constantly urged that there are enough of heathen at home, — that there is enough of work to be done at home, and why roam for more in distant lands ? I strongly suspect that those who are most clamorous in advancing this plea are just the very men who do little, and care less, either for heathen at home or heathen at a distance. At all events, it is a plea far more worthy of a heathen than of a Christian. It was not thus that the apostles argued. If it Avere, they never would have crossed the walls of Jerusalem. There they would have remained contending with unbelieving Jews, till caught by the flames that reduced to ashes the city of their fathers. And if we act on such a plea, we may be charged with de- spising the example of the apostles, and found loitering at home till overtaken by the flames of the final conflagration. But shall it be brooked that those who in this Assembly have so far succeeded to their oSice, should act so contrary a part ? Let us pronounce this impossible. I for one can see no con- ti'ariety between home and foreign labour. I am glad that so much is doing for home : but ten times more may yet be done both for home and for abroad too. It is cheering to think of the overmastering energy that is now put forth in the cause of church extension in this land, as well as in refer- ence to improved systems of education, and model-schools, . and more especially the enlightenment of the long-neglected and destitute Highlands. I know the Highlands; they are dear to me. They form the cradle and the grave of my fathers ; they are the nursery of my youthful imaginings ; and there is not a lake, or barren heath, or naked granite peak that is not dear to me. How much more dear the precious souls of those who tenant these romantic regions ! Still, though a son of the Highlands, I must, in my higher capacity as a disciple of Jesus, be permitted to put the question. Has not Inspiration declared, that ' the field is the world ' ? And would you keep your spiritual sympathies pent up withia yEt. 29. THE PEROKATION. 297 tlie craggy ramparts of tlio Grampians ? Would you havo them enchained within the wild and rocky shores of this dis- tant isle ? ' The field is the world/ And the more we are like God, — the more we reflect His image, — the more our nature is assimilated to the Divine, — the more nearly will we view the world as God has done. ' True friendship/ it has been said, ' has no localities/ And so it is with the love of God in Christ. The sacrifice on Calvary was designed to embrace the globe in its amplitude. Let us view the subject as God views it — let us view it as denizens of the universe — and we shall not be bounded in our efforts of philanthi'opy, short of the north or south pole. Wherever there is a human being there must our sympathies extend. " And since you, here assembled, are the representatives of that National Church that has put forth an emphatic expres- sion of faith in the Redeemer's promises; an emphatic ex- pression of expectation that all these promises shall one day be gloriously realized — and in these troublous times this is a precious testimony — I call upon you to follow it up with deeds proportionate. ' Faith without works is dead.' Let you, the representative body of this Church, commence, and show that the pulse of benevolence has begun to beat higher here, and if so, it will circulate through all the veins of the great system. Let the impulsive influence begin here, and it will flow throughout the land. Let us awake, arise, and rescue unhappy India from its present and impending horrors. Ah ! lonfj, too lonjjT has India been made a theme for the visions of poetry and the dreams of romance. Too long has it been enshrined in the sparkling bubbles of a vapoury seutimentalism. One's heart is indeed sickened with the eternal song of its balmy skies and voluptuous gales — its golden dews and pageantry of blossoms — its 'fields of paradise and bowers, Eutwiiiing amarauthiue flowers,' — its blaze of suns, and torrents of eternal light : — one's heart is sickened with this eternal song, when above, we behold nought but the spiritual gloom of a gathering tempest, re- lieved only by the lightning glance of the Almighty's indigna- tion— around, a waste moral wilderness, where 'all life dies, and death lives ' — and underneath, one vast catacomb of 298 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. immortal souls pei'isliing for lack of knowledge. Let us arise, and resolve that heuceforward these 'climes of tlie sun' shall not be viewed merely as a storehouse of flowers for poetry, and fij?ures for rhetoric, and bold strokes for oratory ; but shall become the climes of a better sun — even ' the Sun of right- eousness ; ' the nursery of ' plants of renown ' that shall bloom and blossom in the regions of immortality. Let us arise and revive the genius of the olden time : let us revive the spirit of our forefathers. Like them, let us unsheathe the sword of the Spirit, unfurl the banners of the Cross, sound the gospel-trump of jubilee. Like them, let us enter into a Solemn League and Covenant before our God, in behalf of that benighted land, that we will not rest, till the voice of praise and thanksgiving arise, in daily orisons, from its coral strands, roll over its fertile plains, resound from its smiling valleys, and re-echo from its everlasting hills. Thus shall it be proved, that the Church of Scotland, though ' poor, can make many rich,' being herself replenished from the ' fulness of the Godhead : ' — that the Church of Scotland, though powerless, as regards carnal designs and worldly policies, has yet the divine power of bringing many sons to glory j of calling a spiritual progeny from afar, numerous as the drops of dew in the morning, and resplendent with the shining of the Sun of righteousness — a noble company of ransomed multitudes, that shall hail you in the realms of day, and crown you with the spoils of victory, and sit on thrones, and live and reign with you, amid the splendours of an unclouded universe. " May God hasten the day, and put it into the heart of every one present to engage in the glorious work of realizing it ! " The long-drawn sigh of the profoundly moved hearers relieved the suppressed emotion which lighted up or bedimmed every face. The presence of God alone was the fitting place at such a time, and Dr. Grordon was unanimously called on to lead the devotions of the Assembly in praise and thanksgiving to God. When the tumult of emotion was thus chastened, one after another of the leaders of the house, on both sides, rose to give expression to his feelings. Among these was the venerable Dr. Stewart, ^t. 29. IMMEDIATE EFFECT OF THE SPEECH. 299 of Erskine, wlio thus spoke : — " Moderator, it has been my privilege to hear Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt speak in the Plouse of Commons, that grand focus of British eloquence, when in the very zenith of their glory as statesmen and orators. I now solemnly declare that I never heard from either of them a speech similar, or second to that to which we have now listened, alike for its lofty tone, thought and sentiment, its close argumentative force, its transcendent eloquence and overpowering impressiveness." The Rev. J. W. Taylor, of Flisk, still lives to give us this reminiscence of that day : — " Before Alexander Duff left St. Andrews for India there was a meeting of the Students' Missionary Society ia St. Mary's College. I stumbled up the dark stairs, and when I got into the I'oom, I found Duff addressing a small meeting, and lamenting in his own pathetic way the little interest which the cause of Christ and of missions was awakeningr in the student mind. The next time I heard Duff was in the General Assembly of 1835. I was there as a volunteer reporter to the Scottish Guardian. It was fortunate that the reporting of Duff's speech was entrusted to the cool head and steady hand of Professor Chalmers of London. All the rest of us reporters sat spell-bound. There stood Duff in front of the square box-like enclosure which contained the moderator, the procurator, the clerks, and the more distinguished leaders of the Assembly. The look of modesty, of dignity, of anxiety, as if conscious that the futui'e of his plan of Indian missions was suspended under God upon the impression which would be made that day upon that Assembly, won the interest of every one in the crowded house. And as the great missionary went on expounding in his own deep heart-moving tones his great method of overthrowing Hindooism by the combined agencies of a sacred education and of the Bible, for betwixt two and thi-ee hours he held the vast audience under the sway of his commanding eloquence, and when he finished one conviction possessed every heart — this is the key-note for India's evangelization. Many old ministers who had been cold in the cause of missions, and many moderate ministers 300 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1835. who had been opposed to missions, dated the rise of missionary zeal in their hearts from the speech of that day. Even Dr. George Oook, who in his lectures to his students was accus- tomed to argue against foreign missions, under the stirring impulse of Dr. Duff^s address rose and vied with the evan- gelical brethren in expressing his admiration of the zeal, the skilfulness, the devotedness and big-heartedness of the great missionary. " The first India mission speech of Duff was sufficient of itself to signalise any Assembly. But the Assembly of 1835 was rendered further illustrious by the famous speech of Rev. Andrew Gray, demanding for chapels of ease the status of Presbyterian Churches, and the constitutional provision of kirk-sessions and representation in the Presbytery." The Scottish Guardian of next day wrote thus : — *' Mr. Duff's speech will be found at full length in our columns, occupying the most prominent place in the proceedings of the Assembly of yesterday. It has thrown a flood of light upon the christianization of India, and furnished principles and information for ffuiding: our Church which will lead to an entire new model of missions, and give, we trust, a new direction to all the efforts of the Christians of Britain in behalf of India. It would be vain for us to attempt to describe the impression which the lofty, intelligent Christian enthusiasm and fervid eloquence of Mr. Duff produced upon the Assembly. Every heart felt his appeal, and every understanding approved the wisdom and sagacity of the means which he proposed for giving success to the missionary enterprise and achieving the christianization of India. It will be long ere the Assembly will forget his pleading. His appearance has thrown a sacredness around its meet- ing, and will give a Christian elevation and dignity to the whole of its procedure. His speech will yet tell in its moral influence, not only in the cottages of India, but in the cottages of our own laud, and will send ALt. 29. THE FIRST BATTLE OF THE HOME CAMPAIGN. 3OI back our clerg^y to tlieir homes smitten with the missionary and apostolic spirit that burns with sweet fervour in the breast of our devoted missionary. Who would not pray God that he might have the same wisdom and Christian zeal, and might bring these to bear upon the christianizatioQ of his own allotted vinej^ard in the Church, with the same success as Mr. Duff promises to concentrate them upon his Indian enterprise ? " The Presbijtenan Beview of the following July described the whole house as " absorbed in one feeling, exquisite even to pain ; tears ran down almost every cheek " during^ the address. The historian of " the ten years' conflict," declaring that it is difficult to refer, at this distance of time, to the impression which it produced without using what may seem like the lano^uan:e of exaoi'Sferation, records : — " It was indeed a token that better days had come for the Church of Scotland, when Chalmers and Duff were contempor- aneously making the whole country resound with their noble pleadings — the one for the heathen at home, the other for the heathen abroad." The General Assembly ordered the publication of the address, and two editions of twenty thousand copies, following the newspaper, spread it abroad, not only over Great Britain, but in America and many parts of the continent of Europe. In Scotland, as in India, the first battle of the campaign had been won. But only the first. For it was natural and advan- tageous that this, the earliest adequate statement in the West of what has since been called the educational system of missions, should excite discussion and bring down on its advocate the charges, now of overlooking other agencies and then of being an innovator, now of departing from apostolic precedents and again of not sufficiently recognising the difference between the 302 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1835. state of the British and of that of the Roman empire. Dr. Wilson also had protested against, and had de- parted from the stereotyped and fruitless policy of the missionaries whom he had found in Western India, but that was in India itself, and the Scottish Mission- ary Society had reproved him instead of publishing his communications. Both the Bengal and the Bombay apostles taught and practised the system which Scrip- ture, their Church and experience alike led them to elaborate independently of each other — that, of chris- tianizing the Hindoos, Parsees and Muhammadans, who are each the inheritor of a complex body of religion, philosophy and literature, by public and private discussion, and by continuous instruction in Western truth through the English language. In their hands, and that of all their worthy successors in every Church and society, colleges, lectures, frank discussion, daily tuition become, for these classes^ as truly evangelistic and converting as village preaching and purely vernacular teaching for the simple non- Aryan peoples. Never did public speaker in any assembly think less of himself or of the form of his oratory, and more of the message which he believed he was charged by his Master to deliver to the Church and the country, than did Duff. Hence the immediate in- fluence on those who heard him, and the abiding power of the printed report of what he said, although that fell far below the reality in days when verbatim reporting was unknown. He spake as a prophet, not as a carefully prepared rhetorician. This redeemed 'his orations from the dangers of the florid style which was the fashion of that period of literature, while it gave him the power of the more recent school of eloquence, of which Mr. Bright is the master. More nearly than any of the speakers of the first ^t. 29. THE STYLE OF HIS ORATORY. 303 half of tlie nineteenth century, Duff thus reahzod that which Mr. Gladstone has pronounced the supreme in- fluence of the speaker, the power of " receivinof from his audience in a vapour what he pours back on them in a nood.'* JiJut, while eschewing tiie "meclianical or formally rhetorical preparation which would have cramped while it polished his utterance. Duff did not neglect the careful and admiring study of the masters of English eloquence, from Chatham and Burke to Erskine ^nd Canning. A little collection of their master-pieces published in 1827 seems to have been, at one time, his constant companion. It is carefully marked at such speeches as these — Mr. Pitt, in vindi- cation of his father. Lord Chatham ; Mr. Fox, in respect to the Grovernment of India ; Mr. Grattan, on moving for a committee on the claims of the Roman Catholics ; and Mr. Brougham on the slave trade. From these was the form of his oratory unconsciously derived ; but not more from these than from Chalmers — his St. Andrews lectures on moral philosophy, eman- cipation speech and sermons, such as Mr. Gladstone to this day pronounces equalled only by the very different "reasoned homilies" of John Henry Newman. Duff, too, was at once as fortunate and unfortunate in his principal theme as his greatest models. For if the India of popular fancy casts a glamour over the imagination, the novelty of its names, customs, and beliefs repels the mind which desires the passive en- joj^ment of eloquence in proportion to the earnestness, the fulness and the accuracy of the speaker. On India showy platitudes tell where authoritative know- ledge, even when expressed in the chastest rhetoric, fails to attract. Witness the contrast, at the present day, between the popularity of Macaulay and — in this sense — his successor, Sir Henry Maine. Duff's first Assembly address was precisely what Sheridan's 304 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. celebrated Begum of Oudli speech had been — unex- pectedly magical in its effect on the hearers, but lost to a great extent in the report. It was India that revealed Burke as the orator he became. The know- ledge which he gained in the select committee of 1780 fed his imagination with events even more distant and new than the Terror of the French Revolution. Into that imagination the malicious Francis dropped the spark which caused it to explode into the five great speeches on the impeachment of Warren Hast- ings. After Sheridan had failed in that year, so that, like a living statesman of the same type, he exclaimed to Woodfall, " It is in me, and it shall come out," India enabled him to make the speech which led the House to adjourn, from the impossibility of debat- ing judicially after it. Burke, Fox and Pitt united in declaring it the most extraordinary effort of human eloquence, ancient or modern, just as the venerable Stewart of Erskine said of Duff's that it surpassed the finest efforts of Fox and Pitt, yet these speakers were second only to Burke in the higher flights of the imagination, in the abandon which resulted from absorption in their subject. The impartial and ex- perienced Wilberforce did not mean to praise Canning when he said that that speaker never drew you to him in spite of yourself, as Pitt and Fox used to do, yet he was a more finished orator than either. Canning had wit and humour inconsistent with abandon, but as precious in themselves as they are rare. Duff manifested powers of sarcasm and scathing indignation when he rose to the heights of his prophetic message and was called to demolish opposition or expose hypocrisy in the name of his Master. For it was not India only, but India for Christ, that was the source of his inspiration. CHAPTER XI. 1836-1836. BE. DUFF ORGANIZING. Degree of Doctor of Divinity. — Dr. Duff called to fill the place of Dr. Inglis in Old Greyfriars. — Offered South Church, Aberdeen, and recommends Dr. Tweedie. — The Higher Calling of the Mis- sionary.— The IMarnoch Case. — Pressed by the Earl of Fife to prevent Schism by accepting the Living. — Plan of Rousing every Presbytery formed on the Voyage Home. — Foreign Missions out- side of Church Parties. — The First Campaign of 1835. — Ex- periences in the Far North. — Enthusiastic Reception. — Return of Fever. — The Second Campaign, of 1836, opened in Perth. — Description by Eye-witnesses. — Dr. WiUiam Thomson. — Dr. Guthrie and the Opponent of the Law of Cravitation. — Invita- tions from England. — Speech for the Church Missionary Society. — The Guest of Cai'us in Trinity College, Cambridge. — Sacred Interview with the aged Simeon. — Memories of the Moulin Re- vival.— Whewell. — Original MS. of the " Paradise Lost," as a Drama. — Milton and the Cam. — Dr. Duff addresses Public Meet- ing called by the Mayor. — At Leamington with Dr. Jephson. — News from Calcutta. — Intercourse with Lord William Bentinck. Fae more effectually than even the speaker had dared \ to dream, the first Assembly oration of the first mis- j"^ sionary of its Church set Scotland on fire. The excitement of the general election, which for the hour made Dr. Chalmers so much of a Tory as to call forth the remark in his broadest Fifeshire accent, " I have a moral loathing of these Whugs," had spent itself. The new spiritual life which was to work itself out in the disruption of 1843 had asserted its power in the General Assemblies of 1834 and 1835. Even Dr. Inglis had declared just before his death, " The 306 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. kingdom of Christ is not only spiritual but inde- pendent. No earthly government has a right to overrule or control it." Chalmers, with such disci- ples as the young Thomas Gruthrie, had begun to go forth on his evangelical mission of church extension throuo^hout the lenofth and breadth of Scotland. Side by side and in loving co-operation with that, as Chalmers had always taught and he himself had again enforced. Duff proclaimed and established the claims of foreign missions. The whole people were ready to receive the missionary ; almost every parish, competed for a visit from him. Zealously anticipating St. Andrews and the other universities, Marischal College, Aberdeen, had hardly met for the autumn session of 1835 when it honoured itself and surprised the young divine, still under thirty, by presenting him with the diploma of Doctor of Divinity. The most embarrassing and even annoying form taken by the popularity thus suddenly acquired and steadily increased for many a year, was that of the patrons of church livings, and the then few congre- gations who had the right to call their own minister, persecuting Dr. Duff to settle amongst them. He must effectually clear this obstacle out of his path before entering on his first home crusade. What to some would have seemed a flattering recognition of their merits was to him at once humiliating and irritating. That it should be supposed he would even consider proposals to retreat from the front of the battle into the easy and yet respectable.-, comfort of the baggage, was an evidence"^ of the dense ignorance winch long prevailed regarding the missionary duty of the Church, and a reflection on his own sacrifice to that duty. Dr. Inglis was gone. Dr. Anderson, who had been appointed his successor, soon followed him, and the otherwise attractive city charge of Old yEt. 29. OFFERED THE LIVING OF OLD ORflYFIMAnS. 307 Greyfriars was pressed upon Dr. Duff. The patrons were the Lord Provost, then the Ilonble. Mr. Trotter, and the town council of Edinburgh, but they had pro- mised to leave the election in the hands of the congre- gation if it were unanimous. On the very morning when Dr. Duff was to open his crusade in the country, just half an hour before he was to leave his house for the Perth stage-coach, which then started from the Black Bull Inn, at the head of Leith Walk, he was stopped by a deputation from the kirk-session and people offering him the living. When he showed some impatience under the long catalogue of weighty reasons which they advanced for his closing with their urgent request, they thought that they would secure him by the temptation of preaching for the rest of his days amid the grandest ecclesiastical and historical associa- tions, and in the pulpit of his old friend Dr. Inglis. Hardly had he escaped from a position which Pro- fessor Wilson's cousin, John Sym, was to fill side by side with Dr. Gutlnne, and reached the Highlands, when the South Church of Aberdeen laid hold of him. Determined not to lose the advantage of his services altogether, the disappointed people besought him to name a candidate most like to himself. The delicacy of this duty troubled him ; but he met the repeated invitation to assist the congregation by directing their attention to Dr. Tweedie, his old fellow-student, whose ability he had again personally recognised in London AVall Presbyterian church. The Aberdeen people had plied him with the argument that, by meeting their request, he would be able to advocate the claims of India at home. In the appendix to the published sermon on the mutual duties and responsi- bilities of pastor and people, which he preached on introducing the new minister to the church, he thus dealt with that consideration : — 308 LIPE OP DR. DUFF. 1835. " Were I to remain in my native land, it would doubtless be still in my power to do something by way of advocating tbe claims of poor benighted India. In that case, however, me- thinks my tongue would not only falter, but often ' cleave to the roof of my mouth/ Fearlessly and unsparingly have I reprobated the indolence and cowardice of those who kept lingering, lounging and loitering at home, in lazy expectation of some snug peaceful settlement, instead of nobly marching forward into the wide field of the world, to earn new trophies for their Redeemer, by planting His standard in hitherto unconquered realms. Neither have I suppressed my honest indignation at the no less criminal supineness of others, who, having once obtained such settlements, ingeniously devise a thousand petty frivolous pretexts for continuing to wrap them- selves up in the congenialities and luxurious indulgences of home, instead of boldly daring, though at an immeasurable distance, to tread in the footsteps of apostles and prophets and martyrs. Not that I would have such loiterers to join our storming ranks. Far otherwise. I, for one, would wash my hands of the guilt of appending such drags to the chariot wheels of the conquering Messiah. The grand evil is that such persons should exist at all, arrayed externally in the garb of the heralds of salvation. How often have our ears been regaled with the music of eloquence, echoing the songs of divine chivalry and the battles of the faith ? But all the while have we not been left in sorrow to exclaim, — Where the rushing crowd of champions, clad in armour of light ? Where the continued toiling, and struggling, and fighting which form the certain prelude to decisive victory ? Alas ! alas ! if without an efibrt, without a struggle and without a sacrifice, imagina- tion alone could conquer all difficulties, then, with the ease of some potent spell, and the rapidity of some inexplicable en- chantment, might we behold every howling waste converted into gardens of delight, and golden palaces starting from every barren shore ! Such sentiments and expressions may be deemed by many over-severe and not a little uncharitable. If so, I cannot help it. What I feel strongly I express strongly. How then could I in consistency, after such decisive expression of my own feelings, reconcile myself to the resolution of throwing aside my weapons of aggressive warfare, and timidly shrinking down into the shrivelled form of a comfort -seeking ^t. 29. THE HIGHER CALLING OF A MISSIONARY. 3O9 time-server at home ? What a plausible corroboration might thereby be given to the base calumny, that few or none go forth to heathen climes but such as have been unsuccessful and disappointed candidates for office in their native land, — the only merit allowed them being the ignoble one of making a virtue of necessity ? What a triumph might be furnished to the thousands who stoutly call in question the sincerity of those who profess their willingness to submit to sacrifices for the sake of Christ ? And with what shouts of derision might any appeals of mine, on the subject of personally engaging in the toils of missionary labour, be responded to ? " The third among many other temptations put before Dr. DufF was of a different and, in an ecclesiastical sense, still higher kind. It was nothing less than this, that he might save the Church of Scotland from being rent in two by the conflict for spiritual independence which had now entered on its life and death stage. The famous Marnoch case, with all the Strathbogie scan- dals, was in its early stage, having succeeded the first assault of the civil courts, made in the Auchterarder case, on the spiritual independence in purely spiritual things guaranteed to the Kirk by Scottish Acts of Par- liament, the Treaty of Union and the Revolution Settle- ment. Marnoch is a small parish on the Deveron, nine miles south-west of Banff. The Earl of Fife was patron of the living, which fell vacant after the Act of the General Assembly restoring to communicants their spiritual and historical right to veto the patron's appointment of a minister of whom they disapproved. The earl, who had settled down in Duff House, was indifferent to the Veto Act, but he did not wish the annoyance of fighting his own tenantry on such a question. In the days of his dissipation as boon com- panion of George IV., he had allowed his brother. General Duff, to promise the living, when it should be vacant, to one Edwards, long a tutor in the family. 3IO ' LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835, But the old minister would not die, wliile the Yeto Act represented an earnest change of popular opinion on the traffic in livings which had once already rent the Kirk, having degraded the nation ever since Queen Anne's days. The earl, having sobered down, at first tried to induce his brother to release him from the promise to Edwards. Failing in this, the puzzled and somewhat penitent patron put in Edwards as the old minister's assistant, half hoping that the now sapless " Dominie Sampson " might be accepted by the people for pity's sake. Alas ! for the earl, the tutor proved so prodigious a failure that the little parish came to hate him, and the kirk became emptier than ever. Again the earl appealed to his ruthless brother: "John Edwards had been fairly tried and found wanting ; would he accept this fact as sufficiently redeeming his promise to the un- happy tutor, which should never have been made, and agree to another plan?" This was, to ask their clans- man, Dr. Duff, to accept the nomination to Marnoch, which had now become vacant, in the certainty that he would be unanimously called by the people under the Veto Act. General Duff heartily consented, and, let us hope, was inclined to provide for the old tutor at his own expense instead of at the spiritual cost of the parish. On this the earl asked his own minister, Mr. Grant, of Banff, to plead with Dr. Duff, to whom the nomination was offered as a mark of the earl's good will, as some recognition of his high deserts, as the only means of delivering the patron from a terrible dilemma and of preventing a local scandal ; but, above all, as a sure bulwark against the tide of schism and anarchy which might sweep away the Kirk itself and destroy even its Bengal Mission. Dr. Duff was implored to be the Cur tins who would thus close up the gulf for ever. It was all in vain. JE\.. 29. THE MARNOCH CASE AND THE EARL OF FIFE. 31I Poor Edwards was forced on the three Imndred heads of famiUes and thirteen heritors aorainst their solemn dissent, against the law of the Kirk and of the land till Parliament altered it, and against the rising clamour of the whole country. He was invited by only one heritor besides the earl and his brother, and one parishioner, " Peter Taylor, the keeper of the public- house at which the presbytery were wont to dine." No man knew and no minister proved better than Dr. Duff that Marnoch, like Auchterarder and Le- thendy, was but a symptom of a disease to be cured only by the vis medicatrix naturcB of the case — by leaving the Church to the laws of Christ in word and conscience, a loyal ally of the state but independent in the purely spiritual sphere. Dr. Duff respectfully declined what was undoubtedly intended to be a liberal and generous offer. The earl replied in a letter ex- pressing admiration of the consistency and self-sacrifice of the missionary. But the old companion of the worst sovereign England has seen, turned to the law courts, where a majority of the judges, to the grief of men like Jeffrey and Cockburn, helped him and his reverend presentee to drive every member from the kirk to worship God, like their forefathers in persecuting times, in' a hollow in the winter's snow. With these three typical instances we dismiss such calls to home work. How was not only the Church but all Scotland to be organized for the permanent and progressive support, by prayer and by knowledge, by men and by money, of missionary work in India ? That was the problem which had occupied the thoughts of Duff on his home- ward voyage, " when rocked amid the billows of a tempest off the Cape of Good Hope," and again as he paced the deck on the return of health. His resolution was formed before he landed, only to be intensified by the early indifference of the committee which his first 312 LIFE or DB. DVFF. 1835. speecli had dissipated, and by the return of the fever which had fired his spirit anew. It was "the favourite plan of visiting and addressing all the presbyteries of the Church in detail " which had thus forcibly seized his mind, and had been elaborated and prepared for during the first six months of his recovery. Such a proposition, he told the friends of the India Mission in 1844, when its success had been established and the organization had to be renewed on a greater scale owing to the disruption, " was received in those days, even by the most sanguine, with grave doubts and fears as to its practicability, and by others with an (expression of stark amazement. ' What ! ' was the ordinary exclamation, ' expect presbyteries of the Church, in their oflScial presbyterial capacity, to assemble on a week-day for the express and sole end of listening to an exposition of the motives, obliga- tions and objects of the missionary enterprise, and that too, with the ulterior view of organizing themselves into missionary associations ! ' — certain well-known presbyteries, both in the north and in the south, being usually named, in regard to which the realization of such a plan was felt to be the very climax of improba- bility." From his own mind the experience of Irvine, and from the Church his Assembly speech, removed every doubt. Generally preceding Chalmers in the church extension movement at home, with a thoroughness and over an extent of country possible only in the case of one who devoted to it his whole strength and unique experience, Dr. Duff went far to anticipate the greatest triumph in Christian economics, the Sustentation Fund for the ministers. The parallel, the necessary balance and support of that fund, is the system of congregational associations under similar presbyterial supervision for the missionaries abroad. At. 2g. FOREIGN MISSIONS AEE OF NO PARTY. 313 But llie essential prelimiuary to all success had to bo made known — foreign missions are of no party. They are the care and the corrective, the test and the stimulus of all parties in the Church. The missionary who, as such, takes a side in ecclesiastical warfare, may gratify his own personal bias, but ho imperils the cause in which he ought to be absorbed. The missions of the Scottish Church, above all, originated in pure catholicity, and have, even through the disruption, been directed by Christlike charity. Dr. Inglis, their founder, was a moderate by association and an evan- gelical in spirit, as we have seen. When he sought and found the first missionary he wrote to the most pronounced of the moderate party — "As to his side in the Church I have made no inquiry." And it will be well at this stage to ponder the fact, as the key to much of his future action, that that missionary thus early, alike in his friendly intercourse with and help to Dr. Bryce, in his loyalty to Dr. Inglis and Dr. Brunton, and in this statement of his ecclesiastical policy, declared the superiority of himself, because of his work, to all party. Thus he became the peace- maker, in one sense of the beatitude, at home, as in the higher sense his work in India of reconciling men to God won him abundantly the peacemaker's blessed- ness. He thus described the success of his first campaign of 1835-7, and the cause of that success. As a question of mere statistics he raised the annual income of the foreign missions scheme from £1,200 to £7,689 in 1838. "My journeyings among the towns and presbyteries of Scotland were soon commenced, amid various interruptions, of longer or shorter continuance, ai'ising from ill health and other causes, till almost every town and district from the Solway Firth to the mainland of Orkney had been visited, and many of them more than once, — and almost every presbytery of the 314 •• LIFE OF BR. DUFF. 1835. Cliurcli addressed and organized into a missionary association. Throughout these extensive and diversified visitations, I was received with equal kindness and attention by all classes and ranks in society — in the baronial residence of the nobility, and the cottages of the poor, by ministers and members of the moderate and evangelical divisions of the Church, as well as by leading ministers and members of the different dissenting communions. And why ? For this chief reason, I have no doubt, among others, that no one kneiv me as a party man — no one being able to point his finger to a single overt act of mine which could fairly stamp me as such. Meetings of every description, public and private. Church and anti- Church, In- trusion and non-Intrusion, were held in all directions around me, with the frequency and the fulness of the showers of an Indian rainy season ; and yet, up to the hour of my departure from Scotland, I never once was so much as present at any one of them. Everywhere, accordingly, was I received in my simple and single character as a missionary to the heathen, pursuing, with undeviating fixity of purpose, my own chosen and peculiar vocation. In this way regions and habitations were visited that had never been invaded by the sound of a "missionary's voice before. The result was, that a great deal of new information was communicated, much sympathy and interest in behalf of India excited, and not a little of hitherto unbroken soil reclaimed for missionary purposes. Everywhere were large and liberal collections made, prospective obliga- tions voluntarily undertaken, and permanent associations, presbyterial and congregational, special and general, duly foi-med. Ministers and other office-bearers, on both sides of the Church, were brought into immediate friendly and co-oper- ative contact, on a theme wholly exempt from the intrusion of party jealousies, rivalries, and antagonisms, — a theme which savoured pre-eminently of the Cross, appealed to the most generous motives, and aimed at the promotion of the noblest ends. Already it was evident that a better understanding and better feeling was beginning to spring up between various parties, previously marshalled in mutual opposition; that these parties frequently greeted and recognised each other on more cordial terms, frequently visited each other on a more friendly footing, and frequently assisted each other, on sacramental and other occasions, in ways that promised to ^t. 29. ACT CREATING FOREIGN MISSION ASSOCIATIONS. 315 exert a mellowing and hallowing influence, alike on pastors and people. Amid scenes and experiences like these how could my heart bo otherwise than glad? How could I help rejoicing in a growing process of couvergency and assimilation ? IIow could I but long, with prayerful earnestness, for the time, when ' Ephraim should not envy Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim ; ' but when all, merging the heats and tempers of partizanship in the divine amplitude of the Christian spirit, should unite, on the broad basis of a common faith and a common charity, in extending the empire of the Redeemer over the remotest wilds of heathenism.'' Having settled his family in the old mansion-house of Edradoiir, within a mile of Pitlochrie, he recruited his energies there during June, 1835. Meanv^hile the Rev. Dr. Gordon, as secretary of the committee, was putting in force the short Act passed by the General Assembly recommending all presbyteries to give Dr. Dui£. £L -respectful hearing at meetings called for the purpose, and to form a presbyterial association to create in each congregation an agency for prayer and the propagation of intelligence regarding the evangel- ization of the world. This Act had been drawn up by Mr. Makgill Crichton, of Rankeillour, in the back-room of the publishing house of Waugh and Innes, next the Tron kirk, to give practical effect to the enthusiasm created in the Assembly by the great speech, and had been unanimously passed. Beginning with the presbytery of Meigle, the first in Strathmore to the east of Perth, Dr. Duff proceeded during the rest of the year in regular order to the north, zigzagging over Forfar, Arbroath, Brechin, Montrose, Aberdeen, the valleys of the Dee and the Don, Old Deer, Peterhead, and Fraserburgh ; then west through Strathbogie, along the Spey, and through Banff, Elgin, and Forres to Inverness. At the last he spent a week, but he generally addressed three presby- 3l6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1835. fceries, including the large congregations, every week. He then went northwards to the presbyteries of Cha- nonry, Dingwall and Tain, still in addition to these addressing large congregations. In the morning of the day on which he was to leave Tain for Dornoch, he was suddenly, while at breakfast in the manse of ■ Dr. Macintosh (whose mother showed him all manner of motherly attentions, as he had known her brother, Mr. Calder, and others in Calcutta), seized with a fit of fever and ague. He was thus obliged to betake him- self to bed, which he was unable to leave for three weeks. All the arrangements for meeting the eastern presbyteries of Sutherland and Caithness were over- turned, and the only one that could be overtaken ac- cording to the old arrangement was that of Tongue in the Reay country. He resolved to proceed thither di- rect across Sutherland. A friend conveyed him to the manse of Mr. MacGrillivray, at the lake Lairg, where he remained one night, and met there young Mr. MacGiilivray, minister of Strathy, half-way between Thurso and Tongue, who had come a distance of nearly a hundred miles to convey him to Tongue. There they arrived in the midst of a snowstorm. But the hearts of the people were warm. Nowhere did he meet with a more hearty reception. From Tongue he pro- ceeded eastward along the coast of Thurso, stopping one night with Mr. MacGrillivray to address his people. On that occasion one of the old peculiar race called " the Men " spoke a few words at the close, and as he was speaking down came a heavy pour of rain which pattered very strongly against the windows. For a moment the speaker paused, and looking gravely at the people said to them with much earnestness in Gaelic: "My brethren, they are the heavens that are weeping over the sins of the people," but in G-aelic the phrase was much more expressive than any trans- ^t. 29. EESULTS OF HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN. 317 Latiou of it into English can be. After addressing the presbyteries of Thurso, AYick, and Dornoch, as well as large congregations connected with these places, Dr. Duff returned to his temporary home in the vale of Athole in order to recruit from the exhaustion of six months incessant itinerating and public speaking. How thoroughly even the most " moderate " presbyteries did their work on this oc- casion is seen in the " Brief Exposition of the Church of Scotland's India Mission," a well-written and eloquent appeal of thirty-five pages by the presbytery of Ellon, for the formation of a Foreign Mission Association in every parish as giving to the interest taken in the diffusion of the gospel a fixed and per- manent character. If Dr. Duff was surprised by the enthusiasm which he called forth in his first tour, the result of the second exceeded even that. For, to the fame of his Assembly speech there was now added the bruit of his eastern and northern triumphs. And he opened the campaign of 1836 in his own county of Perthshire. Repeated attacks of his old fever, in spite of the occasional retreat to Edradour, forbade the physicians to allow him to think of returning to India. But, as may be seen from this extract from an official narrative of his proceedings sent to the committee at the close of 1835, his heart was ever in India : — " As nearly a twelvemonth has passed by since I reached my native land, I naturally begin to look with a longing eye towards the East. Summer is the best season for leaving this country. But if it be resolved that I set off" next summer, medical opinion conspires with dire experience in enforcing on me the conviction that the intervening period spent in almost absolute repose would be little enough so to recruit my frame as to entitle me, with any reasonable prospect, to brave 3l8 LIFE OP r>R. DUFF. 1836. anew tlie influence of a tropical climate. On the other hand much, very much, might yet be done in this our native land in behalf of the mission. Unless it be vigorously supported at home little can be done abroad. But there is a disposition to support it at home wherever its claims are freely and intelligibly made known. The experience of the last few months, I think, has amply confirmed this assertion. Of course the grand advantage (and the only one to which I lay claim) that I possess in advocating the claims of the mission at home, is one that cannot be communicated to others, even that of having been on the field of labour, and having been an eye and ear witness of all that I happen to describe. It is this circumstance mainly, I must presume (for nothing else of an advan- tageous nature am I conscious of possessing beyond my fellows), that has made our brethren and the mem- bers of our Church generally muster everywhere in such numbers and listen with such marked attention and resolve with such admirable unanimity. It was my own impression, months ere I landed on these shores, that good might result from visiting the pres- byteries of our Church. But that impression has been deepened in a tenfold degree by the experience of the last four months, i.e. if professions without number do not turn out (which God forbid) like Dr. Chalmers's exuberant shower of promises. About a third part of the presbyteries have now been visited, and clearly the other two-thirds could not be visited before next summer, or if so such visitation would leave me in a condition the most unfit for resuming my labours in the East, but it seems most desirable that all the pres- byteries should be visited. What then is to be done ? As for myself I am in a strait between two. But after having thus stated the case I leave the matter entirely in the hands of the committee." Dr. Macwhirter ^t. 30. BEGINS HIS SECOND CAAfPAIGN. 319 settled tlie matter for both by peremptorily deciding, on medical grounds, in favour of a less active and exciting visitation of the presbyteries. Very vividly are the impressions of the first visit of Dr. Duff to Perth pictured by two of his audience at the time, Mrs. Barbour, then a child, and her mother, Mrs. Stewart Sandeman, of Bonskeid, in the neigh- bourhood of Moulin. These are some of the lines written by Mrs. Sandeman in 1836 upon Dr. Duff : — " He crossed o'er our path like an angel of light, The sword of the truth in his gvasj) gleaming bright; O'er mountain and valley unweai-ied he flew Imploring our aid for the poor lost Hindoo. " The rich gorgeous East with its dark Indian grove Was the land that he pled fox' — all pity and love ; But we caught the swift glance and the dear mountain tone^ And claimed him with reverence and pride for our own. " Yes 1 dark Ben-i-vi'ackie, all rugged and wild, And fair vale of Athole, ye welcome your child, For oft have his thoughts turned in fondness to you. While he toiled for the soul of the darkened Hindoo. " And shall we not aid him with heart and with hand To ope fountains of truth in that desolate land ? Nor break the witched charm that he over us threw While in anguish he pled for the erring Hindoo." " The arrival of Dr. Duff in the county town of his native Perthshire was a memorable event to most of the dwellers in it. It was doubly memorable to the children who got a holiday to go and hear him in the East Church on a week-day. Some days before, the carriage had been watched as it conveyed the invalid missionary to the crescent facing the North Inch, and stopped at the house of the Rev. William Thom- son, for whom he was to preach in the Middle Church. Reports of his suffering state had come before him. 320 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1 836. Mrs. Stuart, of Annat, then residing in Edinburgh, had been at the communion in Lady Grienorchy's church. She came home enraptured with the table- service, at which a stranger had presided. His voice had seemed hke one from heaven, and he looked so ill, as if he might have passed away while he broke the bread. It was Dr. Duff who had arrived from India. " It was no wonder that the deep galleries of the old Middle Church of St. John's, Perth, always full, were on that morning crowded. Even the -seats behind the huge pillars were eagerly seized. The text was, ' Be not conformed to this world.' "While the preacher cut right and left, root and branch at the worldliness in the Church of Christ, he described how men and women carried it into Grod's house, and could be seen stepping down the aisle with a look so proud as might make an archangel blush. Next came the week-day address on the claims of India. Mr. Esdaile, the scholarly minister of the East Church, followed by the presbytery and other ministers, accompanied Dr. Duff to the pulpit steps. Some had made a tedious journey to be there. Even the children in the multitude that day assembled were breathless listeners. The gaunt figure in the pulpit, soon rid of the gown, was seen beneath the coloured window which was wont to come between little people and weariness when Mr. Es- daile's erudite and polished discourses went beyond them. And now the eloquent descriptions of the far- off land began. Snow-peaks, dense forests, aromatic gardens and Ganges waters were the background. The hideous image of idolatry arose before the mind's eye like the monster of Nebuchadnezzar's vision, Brahmans, fakeers and soodras in thousands swarming at the base. Each arrowlike sentence of appeal for help was barbed with reproach to the selfish Britons who had come home rich without doing anything to enlighten JEt. so. AN OPPONENT TO THE LAW OF GRAVITATION. 32 1 the natives of * poor, pillaged, ravaged, unliappy India.' When all was over the missionary sank back exhausted, and had to rest half-way down the pulpit stairs. One at least of the young who had heard him had to seek shelter in bed on returning home, to hide the marks of weeping, ready to join on the morrow in the project of a school companion whose emotions had taken the practical shape of a penny a week subscrip- tion." Dr. Duff's host, on this occasion, was the Rev. Dr. William Thomson, whose portly figure and exalted character used to strike him with awe when he was a boy at Perth Academy. In his own field of genial scholarship and active philanthropy he was worthy of his more famous brother, Andrew Thomson of St. George's. The tremendous strides of the missionary, as he walked with her father to the top of Kinnoul hill, so alarmed the youngest daughter, now Mrs. Omond of Monzie, that she was glad when he stopped at the Tay bridge to take a long fond look of the hills among which his father's cottage lay. When, in 1863, the old man passed away at the age of ninety. Dr. Duff, then still in India, recalled in a public letter the long career of Dr. William Thomson, and declared that his had been " one of the happiest, most genial, and alike to head and heart most exhilarating domes- tic circles in Christendom." It was during this Perthshire tour that Dr. Guthrie, following hard on Dr. Duffs track in the cause of church extension, found this trace of him at Abernyte. Mr. Wilson, the minister of the parish, had as his as- sistant that James Hamilton who became an accom- plished naturalist and Edward Irving's successor in London. But Wilson himself was an opponent of Sir Isaac Newton in the law of gravitation. It grieved him that his Church's first missionary should dream of y 32 2 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1836 subverfcing Hindooism by a science quite as false as the cosmogony of the Yeds. Dr. Guthrie attempted to reason with the animated fossil, and then pretended to be so far convinced as to ask most meekly how it is that the people of the antipodes do not drop off into boundless space. "Well sir," said the simple oppo- nent of Sir Isaac Newton, " they keep on just as the flies do which you see there walking along the ceil- ing." Some of the a 'priori objections to Dr. Duff's evangelistic system of education were quite as well founded. In two instances only did the Indian missionary meet with rudeness. One occurred under circum- stances which have caused the event to be traditional in the place. Appealed to long after for the facts, he thus told the story. The presbytery of Dunbar had been summoned to meet in the parish kirk of the town. Dr. Duff was received the evening before the meeting under the hospitable roof of Mr, Sawers. On setting out to visit the minister of the kirk, as was his first duty, he was gently warned that his reception might not be very cordial. The Rev. Mr. Jaffray, he was told, was notoriously hostile to foreign missions generally, and was by no means reconciled to those of his own Church. This did not deter Dr. Duff, whose duty it plainly was to show courtesy to the man in whose kirk he was to address the presbytery and the people. After some hesitation the servant admitted him, and he followed her to the study so closely that further denial was impossible. Mr. Jaffray stood up, and glaring at the intruder with fury, shouted out in tones heard by the passers-by in the street out- side, " Are you the fanatic Duff who has been going about the country beguiling and deceiving people by what they choose to call missions to the heathen ? I don't want to see you, or any of your descrip- JEl 30. THE BRAHMAN OF DUNDAR. 323 tioii. I want no Indian snake brought in among my people to poison their minds on such subjects ; so as I don't want to see you the sooner you make off the better." Dr. Duff stood calm and impertur- bable for a little, and then, breaking the silence, said that he had come merely to show him courtesy as the minister of the parish and an ordained minister of the Established Church, as both of them were. As he must be aware to-morrow the meeting of presbytery was to be held in his church, he, Dr. Duff, thought it only due to him to show this tribute of respect and courtesy. With permission therefore Dr. Duff very briefly would tell him the nature and object of his visit to Dunbar under the sanction and recommen- dation of the Greneral Assembly. He did so very briefly because he saw in Mr. Jaffray's countenance that the churl was all the while in wrathful agony. When Dr. Duff ended, he said he had nothing more to explain and would now retire. " By all means," the reply was, in a surly tone, " the sooner the better. I never want to see your face again on earth. I was no party to the meeting to-morrow. The presbytery had a perfect right to fix on my church; but as for me, I had nothing to do with it ; I shall not go near the meeting, for T hate the subject, and might almost say the same thing of him who has been the means of calling such a meeting to disturb the feelings of my people and in- troduce what may be new strifes and divisions among us." Dr. Duff, in a single sentence, said ho hoped and trusted it would turn out otherwise, since the blessed Saviour's command was, " Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," and the present was but a humble attempt on the part of the Established Church of Scotland to obey this parting and imperative commission. All this time both were standing in the middle of the floor; so Dr. Duff, respect- 324 LIFE OF Dli. DUFF. 1836. fully bowing, bade liim good-night, and retired to his congenial quarters. That evening Dr. Duff said no- thing, except, in answer to a question, stating in general terms that the warning Mr. Sawers had given had not been in vain. Next day, however, he was everywhere met by parties personally unknown to him, who condoled with him on the strange recep- tion given to him by their minister. " The truth is," they said, *' we expected nothing cordial, but we never dreamed that he would stoop to such rudeness." After this Mr. Jaffray very generally throughout the bounds of the Church, when this remarkable incident became known, went under the name of the Brahman of Dunbar. The intention was to indicate his barbarous rudeness, but the greatest injustice was thus in ignor- ance done to the Brahmans of India, more particularly the learned and studious class, who are among the most courteous and gentlemanly persons to be met with. By this time the effect of Dr. Duff's work in Scot- land had spread across the border, influencing churches and societies in England. When in the midst of his organization of associations in Perthshire, he was pressed by many and repeated invitations from the great missionary and religious societies in London to address them in the coming month of May. Even those who had most ignorantly objected to his Assembly oration of 1835, that it did not re- present the operations of other Christians in India, had by this time discovered, alike from his provincial addresses and the representations of their agents in Bengal, the catholicity of his spirit and the extent of his zealous co-operation with all the Protestant mis- sionaries in Calcutta and the neighbourhood. Espe- cially was this the case with the Church Missionary Society, the noble evangelical organization of the Ai.t 30. HIS rn;,sT exeteu hall oration. 325 Gluu'cli of England, whose representatives in Bengal, Dealtry, Corrie and Sandys had been his most inti- mate fellow-workers. His response to that society's earnest appeal to address its anunal meeting in May was the beginning of a relation which, as we shall see, became closer and more loving on both sides till the end. Never before had the directors deemed it expe- dient to go out of their own episcopal circle to find, speakers, till Dr. Duff was thus enabled to return, on a wider scale, the kindness of Dealtry and Corrie to himself when he first landed in Bengal. When the meeting was held in London he found himself on the platform seated between the Bishops of Chester and. Winchester. When the latter had spoken the young Presbyterian apostle rose, and so addressed them that the interest and emotion of the vast audience continued to increase till he sat down amid a tempest of enthu- siastic applause. We have no report of this effort beyond its effect, which the Bishop of Chester indicated when, following Dr. Duff after a long pause, he declared with characteristic gravity that he had waited until the gush of emotion excited by the preceding speaker had been somewhat assuaged. When all was over, among others the godly Mr. Caras, one of the deans of Trinity College, Cambridge, introdaced himself to Dr. Duff, and at once exacted the promise that the missionary would accompany himself in a day or two on a visit to the University. Other circumstances apart, the peculiar interest of this visit to Cambrido^e lies in the meeting: for the first and last time of the aged Simeon and the young Duff. Simeon was within a few months of his death, but even after half a century's labours for the Master, in England and Scotland and for India, he was appa- rently in health and vigour. He and Dr. Duff had what the latter afterwards described as " a very prolonged 326 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1836. sederunt.'* He was full of questions regarding India and its missions, for wliicli lie had done so much all that time. And we may be sure that, among the other topics which occupied that memorable conversa- tion, the Moulin revival was not forgotten. We have already traced the spiritual ancestry of Duff to Simeon, from the journal of the latter, written in 1796, when the events occurred. The record of them, or the talk about them forty years after by the venerable saint and his own son in the faith, the evangelical Anglican and the evangelical Presbyterian, it is now possible for us to recall from Duff's talk afterwards. What during the conversation gave Simeon such profound interest in the Moulin revival of 1796 was the remembrance of his own share in the quickening. His host, Mr. Stewart, the parish minister, was then a comparatively young man, an excellent and accom- plished scholar, but without any evidence of true piety. He was of a frank and cheerful disposition, and was a great favourite with the people, for whom he had always a kind word. His life, as written by Dr. Sieveright, of Markinch, shows how by degrees he became unhappy, from the conviction that there was something real in Christianity which he did not possess and had not discovered. The exceeding honesty of his intellectual nature showed itself thus, as one present told Dr. Duff. Mr. Stewart had read the preliminary psalm at public worship in the church on the Lord's-day, and was about to give out his text, when he leaned over the book board, and looking round with a saddened, piercing eye on his congregation, he said to them in substance : " My brethren, I am bound in truth and faithfulness to tell you that I feel myself to be in great ignorance and much blindness on the subject of vital religion. I feel like one groping in the dark for light, and as yet I have found none. But I think it right to tell you, ^.t. 30. Ills ACCOUNT OP SIMEON S VISIT TO MOULIN. 327 that if God in mercy will give me any measure of tlie true liyht, joyfully shall I impart the same to you. Do you therefore, all of you, pray God fervently that He may be pleased to bestow upon me the true light, or such portions of it as lie may deem fit for me." An announcement of so novel and startling a kind, indicating such simplicity and godly sincerity, could not but produce a profound sensation. The news rapidly spread, not only through the parish but through the surrounding country. One of the con- sequences was that many even of the most careless and ungodly were wont to go every Lord's-day to church in the expectation of hearing that the minister had found what he called the true liy^ht. Still weeks and months passed without any discovery being made to him. At last it so happened that Mr. Simeon, of Cambridge, and the Rev. James Haldane, of the Tabernacle, Edinburgh, had arranged to make an extensive tour through tbe north of Scotland, preach- ing the gospel as they might find opportunity. On a Thursday they had arranged from Dunkeld to visit Blair- Athole, about twenty miles distant. They had to stop at Pitlochrie, which is about half-way. At that time there was a small country inn there. On arrival they told the innkeeper that as early as he could manage it they wanted a couple of horses to take them to Blair- Athole. " Na, na," said the inn- keeper, " this is our fast day, as the sacrament is to be held next Sabbath, and we regard the fast day like another Sabbath, and we do not hire horses or vehicles on the Lord's-day." " Well," said Simeon, " I suppose there is worship in the parish church to-day ? " " Oh, yes," said the innkeeper, naming the hour. " Well," said Simeon, "thougli this in one respect is a disap- pointment to us, it may be that in some other respects, as yet unknown to us, God may have some gracious 328 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1836. design in it, so let us go at once to the English wovsliip at Moulin." Towards the evening of the daj, after all the services, English and Gaelic, were ended, Simeon and Haldane resolved to call at the manse and see the minister, who received them with great heartiness. After some converse Mr. Simeon, from his sage, spiritual experience, could not but notice there were internal workings in the soul of Stewart which to him looked like the incipient influence of divine grace. Mr. Stewart was greatly refreshed by Mr. Simeon's con- verse, and in parting with both in the evening he said to them, "You can see everything that is worth seeing in and about Blair- Athole by Saturday afternoon; " so he implored them both to come to the manse on Saturday evening, attend the church on Sabbath, and partake or not partake, as they thought proper, of the sacrament. Mr. Stewart said that as minister of the parish he would be expected to preach what the Scotch were in the habit of calling the "action sermon" — sermon before the ad- ministration of the sacrament — but that on sacrament Sunday they had always public service in the church in the evening, as the people's hearts were then surcharged with feelings of love and pious emotion. That sermon Mr. Stewart asked Mr. Simeon to preach. Simeon agreed, and it is very remarkable how that sermon was blessed of God as the signal instrument of opening Mr. Stewart's eyes to discern the true light of the everlasting gospel. His own declaration was, that about the middle of the sermon Mr. Simeon, who had evidently studied his case and endeavoured to adapt as much of the discourse as was practicable to it, uttered a few sentences which to Mr. Stewart looked like a revelation from heaven. His own significant expression was, that it seemed as if the dense cloud canopy which had hitherto inter- posed between his soul and the vision of God in Chrisfe ^t. 30. HIS ACCOUNT OF THE MOULIN REVIVAL. 329 reconciling a guilty world to Himself, had suddenly burst asunder, and through the chink a stream of light had come down direct from heaven into his soul, dis- placing the darkness which had hitherto brooded over it, filling it with light, and enabling him to rejoice with exceeding great joy. He was wont, also, to add, that in spite of partial obscurations afterwards, this light never wholly left him, but continued to animate, cheer and guide him through all his ministerial and other labours. On the following Lord's-day Mr. Stewart was enabled joyfully to announce publicly from the pulpit,, that the light which he sought for and waited for from heaven had at last dawned upon him and filled his soul with gladness ; he would therefore proceed Sabbath after Sabbath to give out as much of it as he could to his own people and others who might choose to be present. He then commenced a series of discourses on the ord chapter of St. John's Gospel, which awakened, aroused and enlightened numbers of the people. Parties were wont to come every Sabbath from all the surrounding parishes, so that the work became very extensive, and proved a mighty revival, in which scores of the previously care- less, indifferent and godless became genuine converts to the truth as it is in Jesus, and continued so all their days. Yea, instead of diminishing, their light went on increasing and abounding. However humble in their circumstances, however illiterate, their souls be- came replenished with the truths of the Bible, so as to become burning and shining lights to all around them. All this will account for the deep interest felt by Mr. Simeon when Dr. Duff called upon him, as the father and mother of the missionary when young and unmarried came more or less under the arous- ing influences of the great revival. About three or four months after this Mr. Simeon was called to his 330 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1836. eternal reward, but though he rests from his labours, his works, in many of their blessed and fruitful spiritual consequences, do still follow him. Such is substantial! J?" Dr. Duff's account of what he had heard of the Moulin revival, and of what Simeon and he had talked over in Cambridge. The Baptist Carey, the Anglican Simeon, the Moderate Inglis, and the Evangelical Chalmers, united with such Congrega- tionalist contemporaries as Urquhart and Lacroix to link Duff into a truly apostolical succession, divided by no party and confined to no sect. As the guest of Carus at Cambridge, Dr. Duff occu- pied the rooms in which Sir Isaac Newton made many of his most remarkable discoveries in optics. The old St. Andrews student revelled in associations in which no college in the world is more rich. For Trinity, which Henry VIII. founded and his daughters en- riched, had been the nursery not only of the Church's most learned prelates and theologians, but of Bacon as well as Newton, of Cowley and Dryden and Andrew Marvell. When dining daily in the common hall with the professors and students, he had much converse with Whewell, who was master from 1841, when he suc- ceeded Christopher Wordsworth, to 1866 when he was followed by " Jupiter " Thompson, the present master. But what interested him most of all, after the living Simeon, was the collection of the Milton MSS. in the museum of the college. There he saw the list, in Mil- ton's own hand, of the hundred titles, or more, which the poet had jotted down on returning from Italy, in his thirty-first year, as possible subjects of a great English poem. There " Paradise Lost " appears at the head of them all, and also four drafts of it for dramatic treatment,* the drama to open, as the poet's nephew * Sec Professor Masson's perfect Globe Edition of The Poetical WorJcs of John Milton 0877), page 11. iEt. 3°- CAMBRIDGE ASSOCIATIONS OF MILTON. 33 1 Phillips tells us, with Satan's speech on j5rst beholding the glories of the new world and the sun, as now given near the beginning of the fourth book of the epic. Ever in the midst of his absorbing talks with Simeon and Carus about missions. Dr. Duff was constrained by the genius loci to think of Milton. When walking by tho Cam, on one occasion, he expressed surprise that no re- gular Cambridge student had then offered his services as a missionary. Carus, in reply, drew his attention to the exceeding beauty of the spot; to the loveliness of the grounds and their adornments ; to the banks of the Cam with their grotesque variety of flowers, the willow trees overhanging the stream, the umbrageous shade cast by other trees on the footpaths along the lawns, seats to invite the student to enjoy his favourite books ; to the exquisite order in which all things were kept. All this, said Carus, tended insensibly to act on human nature, and produce an intensely'- re- fined and luxurious state of mind, with corresponding tastes and predilections from which it would be diffi- cult to wean the student so as to induce him to become a voluntary exile to distant shores teeming with the abominations of heathenism. The remark, Dr. Duff replied, had some force in it, in the case of the old nature. But this ought not to present difficulties to the child of God, who professed to act by faith and not by sight. Whoever was resolute of purpose as a son of God, would find divine grace more than sufficient to wean him not only from the academic illusions of Cambridge, but from all the world besides. But then, turning to the river at their side, he exclaimed in the lines of the exquisite Lycidas, the memorial poem which Milton wrote on the death of Edward King, his fellow-student at Christ's Col- lege ;— 332 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1836. "Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow. His mantle hairy and Lis bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figui-es dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. * Ah ! who hath reft,' quoth he, * my dearest pledge ? * " At that time Mr. Carus could not venture to call a public missionary meeting in the college, but the Mayor presided over a great gathering of students and citizens in the town-hall, whom Dr. Duff addressed at length on India and its missions. From Cambridge he went to Leamington, where he gained some advan- tasre from the treatment of the then celebrated Dr. Jephson. Having avoided the excitement of the General Assembly of 1836, he thus spent the summer in England. But on his return to Scotland in autumn, to complete his organization of the presbyteries and congregations, he was sternly ordered by the physicians to rest at Edradour. Rest for him was impossible. Pie induced them to wink at occasional raids, made for three or four weeks at a time, in different directions from that centre. Thus the months passed till the General Assembly of 1837. During all his wanderings north and south. Dr. Duff kept up a close correspondence with his colleagues, Messrs. Mackay and Ewart, in Calcutta, and with other friends of the mission there. He was a keen observer of public affairs in the closing days of Lord William Bentinck's administration, and the opening promise of that of Lord Metcalfe, whom the jealous Court of Directors refused to appoint permanent Governor- General. Of how much that was most bril- liant and abiding in these times could we not say that he had been a part? How he explained to the English public the exact meaning of Lord William's educational minutes of 1835, in his " New Era of the English Language," we have told. The following extract ^t. 30. NATIVE CHRISTIANS AS PHYSICIANS. 333 from an ofiicial letter to the committee, gives us his impressions of the other great triumph in the estab- lishment of the Bengal Medical College : — " Edradour, ISth July, 1835. "I have just received a letter from an intimate friend in Calcutta, Mr. J. Nelson, attorney of the Supreme Court, and now a member of our correspond- ing board. He writes : — "'You will fi-equently have heard that the school is doing welh Within the last few days a prospect has been opened up likely to be very beneficial to it. I allude to an entirely new construction of the medical school with which Dr. Tytler was connected, which has been placed under Dr. Bramley, who is to receive boys from the various seminaries, qualified by their knowledge of English to become pupils for education in medicine. He states that in the formation of his plan, he particularly looked forward to our seminary for a supply, and at a visit he made to it the other day he found a number of boys most willing to go to him. I think there can be no differences of opinion as to the advantages likely to accrue by this opening for the young men. It is true that the primary object we have in view is the endowing them with a know- ledge of Christianity, and sending them forth as teachers and preachers amongst their benighted countrymen ; but it is easy to perceive that for many years persons so sent forth would requii'e to be supported by our funds, and wq have not the means of doing so except to a limited few. Besides, it appears to me to be highly valuable to have a portion of native Chris- tians as laymen, interspersed among the brethren, particularly iu such a respectable character as that of a doctor; for it is not intended that they shall, when qualified, be drafted out to the army. On the contrary, they are to receive the education and thereafter to have a free control in the exercise of their knowledge and talents, in such way and manner as they may respectively think proper. The jail of the Court having been vacated, Dr. Bramley has applied for it, and I believe I may say that Government have agreed to give it for a small rent, one portion to be occupied by our school, and the other by his 334 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1836. medical semiaaiy, wliereby such of our pupils as fancy medi- cine will be completing themselves in the higher branches of education, at the same time that they are receiving medical instruction/ " Of the intention of G-overnment to remodel the old native medical institution in Calcutta I was fully •aware upwards of two years ago. Dr. Tytler, at the head of it, and his coadjutors were of the old school of orientalists, who strenuously upheld the necessity of communicating all European science to the natives through the medium of the learned languages of the East. The decisive experiments of the last few years in Calcutta have tended entirely to explode this opinion, and leave it a refuge only in the minds of a few of the old orientalists. In remodelling the medical school, the grand controverted question was, whether, as heretofore, the knowledge should be conveyed to Mussulmans in Arabic and Hindoos in Sanscrit, or whether it should not be conveyed to both through the medium of English. A Government committee was appointed to receive and examine evidence from all quarters, and then submit a formal report to the supreme Government. The three most active men in this committee were Mr. Trevelyan, the deputy political secretary; Dr. J. Grant, the writer of the account of the last examination of our Institution, and Dr. Bramley. Being all intimate friends of my own, I was from time to time apprised of the progress and results of their inquiries ; to about fifty questions relative to the state and prospects of English educa- tion in Bengal, I gave a lengthened reply in writing. Before I left India this report was finally completed, and being favoured with a perusal of that part which related to the question of general education, I had the satisfaction to perceive that the new views on this subject were recommended in such a way as to insure iEt. 30. LETTER TO DR. EWART. 335 tbeir adoption on the part of Government. And glad I am, for the sake of our Institution and for the real welfare of India, that this has been the consummation. The superintendence of the medical school being taken from Dr. Tytler, the champion of antiquated opinions, and given to Dr. Bramley, the enlightened supporter of sounder views, furnishes a guarantee of indefinite future good to India, as it is the test of the triumph of enlightened principles and measures among the powers that be . . Two Calcutta letters have just reached me by the morning post, the one from Mr. Trevelyan detailing the steps relative to the medical institution, the other, consisting of not less than four sheets, from Dr. Bryce. The doctor seems really to be most enthusiastic in our cause." " London, 22nd June, 1836. "My Dear Ewart, — I cannot possibly describe to you the intenseness of interest which our mission now excites in our native land. The eyes of all Scot- land are now upon you. Oh, that God in His mercy would pour out His Spirit and seal home the truth to the hearts of numbers, yea, thousands of the perishing heathen ! I had once cherished fondly the hope that this summer I would be retracing my steps to India. This, however, I find to be an impossibility ; the truth is, that the labours at home, into which I was im- pelled for the sake of arousing the Christian public, have retarded the progress of my recovery, and reduced me to the lowest state of exhaustion. From this it will require some time to recover, and yet my work at home is not ended. The only thing that reconciles me to the detention in my native land, is the assured fact that God has been pleased to employ me as an humble instrument in stirring up the slumbering zeal of our Church, and that the instrumentality has S2,^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1836. been crowned with a success which I never, never, never anticipated ! Thanks be to God for all His un- deserved mercies. " I now understand the mystery of Providence in sending me from India. What between vile politics and fierce voluntaryism our cause was well nigh being entirely engulfed in oblivion. At first I could scarcely get from any one or in any place a patient hearing. N'ow, if I had a thousand tongues, they might simul- taneously be raised in a thousand pulpits. ' The spirit is willing,' but, alas, ' the flesh is weak.' Pray for me — that after having left a flame burning behind me, I may be speedily restored to you. Yours aff'ection- ^^^^^* "Alexander Duff." Dr. Duff did not leave London, on this occasion, without spending a forenoon with Lord William Ben- tinck. After breakfast the two philanthropists enjoyed the fullest and freest converse regarding the conduct and policy of the Government in India, past ^nd present. Relieved of the responsibilities of Governor- G-eneral Lord William was able to criticise most frankly the anomalous constitution of the East India Company, of the Board of Control created to enable the Crown to check and overrule the Court of Directors, and of the administration in India itself in all its branches. The critic commended some institutions and persons, but exposed the faults and weaknesses of many more. Of that priceless experience, as of the still riper knowledge which Dalhousie and Lord Can- ning took with them to a premature grave, there is no detailed record. Rulers stumble on to-day repeating the mistakes of their greater predecessors and dream- ing that their statesmanship is new because they are blind to the past. Whilst the conversation was still fresh in his mind, ^t. 30. LORD W. BENTINCK ON GOVERNING INDIA. 2>Z7 Dr. Duff wrote down a very full and minute state- ment of the whole, which, as a curiosity, he sent to the Foreign Missions Committee.* One tiling, how- ever, was never effaced from his memory : Lord W. Bentinck with great emphasis said that some believed the Government in India was an absolute irresponsible despotism. Others were equally strong in the belief that the Court of Directors was the orig^inatino: and directing power. Others again were as strongly con- vinced that the real power lay with the President of the Board of Control, with the British Parliament at his back. But, he added, one thing that struck him, and of the truth of which he had the amplest ex- perience, was this, that in the office of the President of the Board of Control the chief secretary, through whose hands all official documents were sent out and sent home, for a long period — between forty and fifty years— exercised a power to which no President of the Board of Control, no Director, no Governor- General or any other responsible official could pretend. Lord William Bentinck soon after addressed this letter to Dr. Duff :— " Feankfort, August 27th, 1835. " Dear Sir, — I am confident you will excuse my seeming uncourteous return for your very kind letter, when I assure you that the weakness that I brought with me from India, and greatly increased by all the excitement, fatigue and bustle consequent upon my return, completely incapacitated me for all business and exertion, and it is only here and at Bruxelles that a day of leisure and quiet has given me an opportunity of offering this explanation to many friends whose * This letter is not among those most kindly copied for us from the records of the Esf-aMislierl Church of Scotland. Z 338 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1S36. letters I Lave been equally compelled to neglect. Lady William begs that I will express also her acknowledg- ments for your obliging inquiries. She is, I am sorry to say, a greater invalid than myself. We have been both advised to take the mineral waters of Germany — she, those of Schwalbach in Nassau, and I, those of Carlsbad in Bohemia. My health has much improved since I left London. " I am much gratified to hear of your successful operations in Scotland. It must be the result of great personal exertion alone, for though I have had ample reason to know the indifference and apathy that generally prevail respecting all matters connected with India, yet even with all this experience I was not pre- pared for the feeling of dislike almost with which any mention of India is received. But this conviction of a sad truth, this disgraceful proof of British selfishness ought only to have the effect of exciting those deeply interested in the moral and religious welfare of the people of India to renewed efforts in their behalf. " I have always considered the Hindoo College as one of the greatest engines of useful purpose that had been erected since our establishment in India; but that institution, in point of usefulness, can bear no com- parison with yours, in which improved education of every kind is combined with religious instruction. I will not prolong this letter further than to say that I cannot be more gratified with any man's good opinion than by yours, and wishing you health and happi- ness, I remain, dear sir, your friend and well-wisher, " W. Bentinck." This, the greatest of the Bentincks, who thus ex- presses something like shame at a degree of English apathy to India still prevailing in spite of warnings like the first Afghan war and the Mutiny for which Ait. 30. MACAULAY ON LORD W. BENTINCK. 339 that iniquity was the preparation, died four years after, having represented Glasgow in the House of Commons. Born in 1774, lie was sixty-five years of ago when his ripe experience was lost to a country and a ministry which preferred to the wise Metcalfe a place-hunter like Lord Auckland. But Heaven takes vengeance on a land for preferring the political par- tisans of the hour to its truly good and great states- men. The equally noble Lady William, renowned in the East for her Christian charities, was the second daughter of the first Earl of Gosford, and survived her husband till May, 1843. This great Governor General's epitaph was written by Macaulay, in the inscription which covers the pedestal of the statue erected oppo- site the town-hall of Calcutta by grateful natives and Europeans alike : — " To William Cavendish Bentinck, who during seven years ruled India with eminent prudence, integrity and benevolence ; who, placed at the head of a great empire, never laid aside the sim- plicity and moderation of a private citizen ; who in- fused into Oriental despotism the spirit of British freedom; who never forgot that the end of government is the welfare of the governed ; who abolished cruel rites, who effaced humiliating distinctions, who allowed liberty to the expression of public opinion, whose con- stant study it was to elevate the moral and intellectual character of the Government committed to his charge, this Monument was erected by men who, differing from each other in race, in manners, in language and in religion, cherish with equal veneration and grati- tude the memory of his wise, upright and paternal administration.** CHAPTER Xn. 1837-1839. FISEIJR8 OF MEN. Effect of First Assembly Speech in Drawing Men. — Rev. Jolin Mac- donald gives Himself. — M'Cheyne almost Drawn. — Glasgow supplies James Halley. — The Letters of Principal Macfarlan and Dr. Duff. — Dr. Coldstream and Medical Missions. — John Ander- son gives himself to Madras. — Followed by Johnston and Braid- wood. — Drs. Murray Mitchell and T. Smith. — Stephen Hislop. — Duff's Great Speech in Exeter Hall. — Spiritual Destitution of India. — Indignant Satire on the Church's Apathy. — The Calculus of Eternity, and the Arithmetic of Time. — Missionary sacrifice in the Light of Christ Himself. — General Assembly of 1837. — Duff's Vindication of the Mission. — The two bigotries, of Infidelity and an unwise Pietism. — Native Apostles. — Duff appeals to Posterity. — Mistake of the Indian Pre.sbyteries in the Training of Native Missionaries. — Dr. Macwhirter's Command. — Prize Essays on Foreign Missions. — Dr. Chalmers and the position of the Kirk in 1839.— Letter to Dr. Ewarfc.— Ordination of Dr. T. Smith.— Epistle to all Young Theologians. — Speech on Female Education. • — Lectures and Book on India and India Missions. — Farewell to the General Assembly of 1839. — The Press. — Personal References. — Gifts for the College Building, Librai-y and Scholarships. — Duff pleads with Thomas Guthrie to go to India. — Dr. Chal- mers endorses Duff's System, and acknowledges his Christian Economics. — The Farewell to Moulin and to the Children. In tlie two and a half years after his return home at the beginning of 1835, convalescent from the dj- ' sentery of Bengal but subject to the recurrence of its jungle fever, Dr. Duff had nearly completed his work of organization. Only the fervour of his zeal, and the power of recovery from exhaustion due to a splendid physique which marked his whole life, had enabled him to visit and address seventy-one presby- teries and synods and hundreds of congregations all over Scotland. This he had done duriuo- the rie^ours ^t. 31. DRAWING MEN TO INDIA. 34 1 of winter and tlie heats of summer, when as yet the canal boat, the stage-coach, and the post-carriage were the most rapid means of conveyance. Twice he had visited Loudon and some of the principal cities in England on the same mission. But that mission was not merely or ultimately the establishment of associa- tions to collect money, nor even the diffusion through the Churches of a missionary spirit. These were but means to the great end of discovering and sending out men of the highest faith and scholarship to carry on the work he had begun in Bengal, to extend it to Madras, and to strengthen Bombay. For, with his delighted concurrence, the General Assembly of 1835 had received under its superintendence the Scottish Missionary Society's stations in Bombay and Poona, then under the care of Dr. Wilson, Mr. Nesbit and Mr. J. Mitchell. The Kirk's Bengal Mission, with its one missionary of 1829-31, must, according to Dr. Duff, grow into the India Mission, to christianize the progress which was radiating out from all the great English centres in the East. Hence the most real and fruitful result of his first Assembly speech and of those which followed it, in Scotland and in England, was in drawing men to give themselves to India. The whole religious biography of the former country relating to that period is coloured by his influence or bears traces of his per- suasive power. We have already told how his early visit to the London presbytery had converted the Rev. John Macdonald from an opponent of his system into such an advocate of it that the minister of Chadwell Street, Pentonville, threw up his home charge and took his place beside ^lackay and Ewart in Calcutta. Son of that Dr. Macdonald of Ferintosh, who was worthy of the name he bore, of *' apostle of the Highlands," John Macdonald published a " Statement of Reasons 342 LIFE OF DK. DUFF. 1S37. for AcceptiDg a Call to go to India as a Missionary," wliicli, as followed by bis self-sacrificing life thereafter, was the most powerful testimony to the cause Dr. Dujff had yet called forth. No one can give more than himself; no gift to any cause can be more precious than that of the whole spiritualised nature of a man who is in earnest to the death, as John Macdonald proved to be. In Macdouald Dr. Duff early saw, and found for the ten years of the new missionary's Indian experience, an intense spiritual force to give increased evangelistic efiiciency to the Calcutta college. " Your special and peculiar vocation," he wrote to his new colleague before sending him forth, " would bo to impart, through the blessing of God's Spirit, a spiritual impression to the minds of scores that have already become dispossessed of Hindooism, as well as to preach whenever an open- ing presented itself, to adult idolaters. Our plan is now so extended as to admit of a division of labour." "We have seen how young M'Cheyne and Somer- ville were moved by the interview which they sought with the returned missionary. Duff never lost his hold on M'Cheyne, who soon after formed one of the Church's mission of inquiry into the condition of the Jews in Palestine and Eastern Europe. In April, 1836, the saintly young preacher wrote in his jour- nal : — " Went to Stirling to hear Dr. Duff once more upon his system. AVith greater warmth and energy than ever. He kindles as he goes. Felt almost con- strained to go the whole length of his system with him. If it were only to raise up an audience it would be defensible, but when it is to raise up teachers it is more than defensible. I am now made willing, if God shall open the way, to go to India. ' Here am I ; send me r " His biographer. Dr. A. Bonar, remarks that " the missionary feeling in M'Cheyne's soul continued ^t. 31. THE MAN WHO BEAT TAIT. 343 all his life. Must there not be somewhat of this missionary tendency in all true ministers ? " Yet the only one of the M'Cheyne band who practically answered this question, besides William Burns, of China, was John Milne, of Perth, who was afterwards for a few years Free Church minister in Calcutta. Macdonald's resio^nation of a home charg:e for a mis- o o sionary's apostolate caused so much excitement as to irritate him into putting the question to the degenerate Church — " Why is not such an event commonplace ? " Edinburgh and St. Andrews had sent their best students to the field; it was now the turn of Glasgow, which had been doing much for Kaffraria, to inquire. The ripest scholar in its university proved to be the most devoted student of theology. James Halley, A.B., was the favourite disciple of Sir Daniel K. Sandford, who, having imbued him with the very spirit of a reverent Hellenism, introduced him to the Edinburgh Professor of Greek as " the man who beat Tait," the present Archbishop of Canterbury. He promised to be the ornament of his university and of the Church, when death prematurely closed his bright career. What he was, the Rev. William Arnot's little memoir tells us. He hurried through from Glasgow, with James Hamilton, afterwards of Regent Square, to hear Duffs speech in the Assembly of 1835, and ar- rived only in time to witness its effect. He describes it as "a noble burst of enthusiastic appeal which made grey-headed pastors weep like children, and dissolved half the Assembly in tears." The im- mediate effect on him was seen in the College Mis- sionary Society, of which he was president. Address- ing Dr. Macfarlan, the principal of the University, and Dr. Duff afterwards, Mr. Halley sought their encouragement of the students' missionary aims. The former replied, dechning to contribute even the usual 344 ^IF^ OF DE. DUFF. 1837. guinea, warning them that " such exertions on the part of the students are premature and injudicious," and thus concluding : " I trust you will receive this explanation as a proof at once of my deep interest in the real welfare and improvement of the students attending this university, and of the personal regard for yourself." We are not parodying the words, nor misrepresenting the acts of the head of the University of Glasgow in the year 1835. Early in 1837 Mr. Halley received from Dr. Duff this reply : — " PiTLOCHRiE, 7^/t March, 1837. " I had once expected to have been able to meet your association in person, in which case much could be advanced that cannot well be committed to writing. But it was a constitution shattered beyond hope of recovery in a tropical clime that drove me from the field of labour ; and ever since my arrival in my native land I have been buffeting with the dregs of tropical disease. In this way, rocked by discipline and cradled by disappointment, I have been unable to overtake a tithe of what I had originally proposed to myself. But as it is the ordination of Heaven, I trust I have learned to submit in patient resignation, ever ready to adopt the language of my Saviour and Redeemer — ' Even so. Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.' " In the midst of the thunder of clashing interests and the lightning of angry controversy in this dis- tracted land, how sweet, how refreshing to the soul to enter the quiet haven of devotion, and there hold communion with the great I Am, and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and the Holy Spirit that enkindles with the fervour of divine love. It is tliis feature in the organization of your society — effective as it is in other respects also — that inspires me with the purest joy. An alternate meeting is ^t. 31. GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 345 devoted, you saj, to Christian fellowship, j^rayer and the reading of missionary intelligence. God be praised who has put it into your hearts to unite in such hallowing exercises. If such meetings were more general they would be the rallying centres of hope to a divided Church and a bleeding world. " You advert to tlie chilling influence of academic pursuits on the growth of piety in the soul. Most keenly have I felt it myself. How is it to be obvi- ated ? By constantly falling back on the touching and searching simplicity of God's own word, and constantly besieging a throne of grace with the honest effusions of a heart panting and thirsting after the love of God. Without the unceasing recurrence of such soul-reviving exercises I have learned, from sad experience too, that even religious pursuits — whether these consist in replenishing the intellect with divine knowledge or in the multiplied duties of the ministerial office— that even such pursuits may drain up the fountain-head of spiritual vitality and cause the plant of renown in the soul, for a season at least, to droop and wither and decay. " You complain of indifference to religion in general and missions in particular. Oh, it is this indifference which I fear may eventually prove the ruin of our land, if God in mercy do not send some trumpet-peal to rouse us from our lethargy I The work of missions is so peculiarly a Christian work that neither its principles nor its objects can be rendered perfectly intelligible to any but God's own children. Indiffer- ence to religion in general must, therefore, produce indifference to the missionary cause. These are re- lated as an antecedent and consequent, as cause and effect. If the souls of men have not yet been awakened to a sense of sin and danger — if they have not yet been sanctified, they cannot be su.-:ceptible of 346 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1837. any spiritual impression from any quarter whatever. To arrest the attention of such persons in a vital manner, and secure their sympathies and their exertions in behalf of the perishing heathen, we must first arouse them to a lively personal concern for the salvation of their own souls." Another who was then a youth of promise, and be- came the founder of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, if not of Medical Missions, was profoundly impressed. We find Dr. Coldstream, who had just settled in Leith as a physician, thus writing in 1837 : " The missionary sermon and lesson of yesterday, by Dr. Duff, were most impressive. I have no words to express their thrilling effect. . . I think I never felt so strongly the delightful influence of the bond of Christian love. The very spirit of love seemed to move with electric fire through the great assembly, knitting heart to heart, and kindling sparks of holy zeal. It is a day much to be remembered." When, thirteen years afterwards, Dr. Duff publicly referred to a series of lectures on Medical Missions published by that most successful society, and asked " when will some of these lecturers set the example of devoting themselves to the missionary service and come out to India?" as has since been done, Dr. Coldstream re- plied, " I feel as if you had put the question to me individually." The report of the speech of 1835 found its way to the retreat, near Dumfries, of a young licentiate of the Kirk whom sickness had laid aside. John Anderson had passed through the eight years' studies of the University of Edinburgh the first man of his set. Like John Wilson at an earlier time, he had come under the influence of Dr. Gordon, who to his labours in pulpit and parish added the duties of secretary of the Foreign Missions Committee. Having refused the office of JEt. 31. JOHN ANDERSON OF MADRAS. 347 assistant to a minister, John Anderson was altogether despairing of health, and was already thirty-two, when that happened which he himself shall describe — " We well remember the time when, on his return from India, the Rev. Dr. Duff, emaciated by disease and worn out with the strenuous exertions of the first five years of his missionary life, delivered his first speech on India Missions. . . Its statements flew like lio^htnino: through the length and breadth of Scotland, vibrated through and warmed many hearts hitherto cold to missions, and tended to produce unity among brethren standing aloof from each other. Never will we forget the day when a few of its living fragments caught our eye in a newspaper in our quiet retreat on the banks of the Nith, near Dumfries, when suffering from great bodily weakness. It kindled a spirit within us that raised us up from our bed, and pointed as if with the finger to India as the fold of our future labours." Already had Anderson, as a tutor, been able to train men like John Cowan, Esq., of Beeslack, But his indomitable will and untiring energy were now called to found and build up in Madras the General Assem- bly's Institution, which has since expanded into the great catholic Christian College of Southern India — • the first to realize Dr. Duff's ideal of a united coUeo^e representing all the evangelical churches. Ordained in St. George's, Edinburgh, by Dr. Gordon, Mr. Ander- son visited the Calcutta Mission before setting up his own on its model, and was soon after joined by such colleagues, also the fruit of Duff's appeals, as Messrs. Johnston and Braidwood from the same university. Aberdeen at the same time joined her sister colleges in the high enterprise, by sending Dr. Murray Mitchell to Bombay. The harvest, for that season, was finished by another missionary from Edinburgh, the Rev. Tbomas Smith, to whose ordination we shall again 348 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1 83 7. refer. The opening of tlie Central India Mission in Nagpore, a few years after, by Stephen Hislop, com- pleted the Indian organization of the missions of the Church of Scotland, established and free. All, directly or indirectly, are to be traced to the living seed sown amid so much weakness but yet with such power in 1835-36. After a rest at Edradour, all too short. Dr. Dufl' ■went up to London at the beginning of May, 1837, to take part in the anniversary of the Church of Scot- land's Foreign Missions, held by the London Pres- bytery in Exeter Hall. After much searching we have been able to discover in an old volume of pamphlets of the period a copy of what his English critics have always pronounced by far the most eloquent of Dr. Duff's speeches. Though weak, he was no longer the* fever-wasted man who had excited the alarm of the Assembly of 1835. By unrivalled experience in both England and Scotland he had learned the defects of the home Churches and of the best stay-at-home Chris- tians in relation to the missionary command of Christ. And so, as he mused on the contrast between the pro- fession and the reality, as he listened to the rhetorical periods of bishops and clergymen, of ministers and professors who talked but did nothing more, the fire of indignation burned forth into glowing sarcasm. Nothing short of a reprint of the twenty-five pages of that rare address could do justice to this vein of the impassioned orator. Severed from the context, without the flashing eye, the quivering voice, the rapid gesticu- lation, the overwhelming climax, the few passages we may now reproduce seem cold and formal indeed. But we must premise the orator's own explanation of the satire — " These expressions are in allusion to certain tropes and figures that have actually flourished amid the exuberant rhetoric of Exeter Hall." ^t. 31. THE RHETORIC OP EXETER IfALL. 349 Beginning, in tlie highest style of his art, as Demos- thenes and Cicero and Paul before Agrippa had done, this modern prophet, sent from the millions of Hin- dooism to the very centre of Christian profession, congratulated London, and especially its Scottish resi- dents, on the reception of the appeal lately sounded in their ears "in behalf of our suffering countrymen in the Highlands and islands of Scotland. Nobly and righteously, and in a way worthy of the wealthiest metropolis in the world, has the appeal been responded to. But why is it that we should be affected even unto horror at the melancholy recital of mere temporal destitution, while we are apt to remain so cold, callous and indifferent to the call of spiritual necessities that is rung in our ears, loud as the ciy of perishing multi- tudes which no man can number?" Then after skil- fully picturing the horrors of famine and pestilence among our own countrymen and within the narrow limits of our island, and asking if imagination could conceive aught more harrowing, he replied : " No ! not to the natural feeling, even although such a death is by the hands of a mysterious Providence. To the higher order of spiritual sensibility, however, some- thing may be presented more harrowing still. I know a land where earth, sea and air conspire in favour of its inhabitants — a land so gorgeously clad that it has been emphatically styled ' the climes of the sun.' And truly they are ' the climes of the sun ; ' for there he seems to smile with exuberant bounty, and causes all nature to luxuriate in her rich magnificence. There the glowing imagery of the prophet seems almost literally to be realized. The trees of the forest seem to clap their hands, and the valleys seem to rejoice on every side. All bespeak the glories of a presiding Deity and recall to remembrance the bowers of Paradise. But oh ! in this highly favoured land — S50 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1 83 7. need I say I refer to India ? — which for beauty might be the garden of the whole earth, and for plenteousness the granary of the nations, — in this highly favoured land children are doomed to see their parents and parents their children perish — perish, not because there is no meat in the field, no flocks in the fold, no cattle in the stall, but because they are goaded on by the stimulants of a diabolical superstition to perish miserably by each other's hands." Then followed word-pictures of that which may still be seen along the Hooghly — " sons and daughters piously consigning a sickly parent, for the benefit of his soul, to the depths of a watery grave ; " of " the putrid corpse of the father and the living body of the mother" burning together, in every feudatory state at that time, and only in 1828 prohibited in the Bast India Company's territory ; of the sacrifice of children by their mothers to the waters of Gunga and the jaws of the alligator ; and of the systematic murder of female infants by the Rajpoot castes from Benares to Baroda. Rising from one scene of pitiful horror to another, every one of which an audience even of 1837 knew to be living fact and not old history as we now happily do, thanks to Missions and Christian appeals, the rapt speaker reached the highest of all in the spiritual destitution and debasement which had made such crimes inevitable; and in the means which he had taken, through sacred and secular truth harmo- niously united, to give India a new future. A far- seeing demand for pure English and vernacular liter- ature, beginning with " the Bible, the whole Bible, the unmutilated Bible, and nothing but the Bible," for those whom both state and church were educating, brought Dr. Duff to the practical object of his address — the duty of every Christian man, woman and child in Great Britain. ^t. 31. INDIGNANT SATIRE ON THE CHURCH S APATHY. 35 I " Look at men's acts and not at tlicir words, for I am wearied and disgusted with very loathing at ' great swelling words ' that boil and bubble into foam and froth on tho bosom of an impetuous torrent of oratory and then burst into airy nothing- ness. Look at men^s acts, and tell me what language do they speak ? Is it in very deed a thing so mighty for one of your nobles or merchant princes to rise up on this platform and pro- claim his intense anxiety that contributions should be liberal, and then stimulate those around him by the noble, or rather ignoble, example of embodying his irrepressible anxiety in the magnificent donation of £10, £20, or £50 ! when, at the very moment, without curtailing any of the real necessaries of life, without even abridging any one of its fictitious comforts or luxuries, he might readily consecrate his hundreds or thou- sands to be restored more than a hundred-fold on the great day of final recompense ? And call you this an act of such prodigious munificence that it must elicit the shouts and the paeans of an entranced multitude ? Call you this an act of such thrilling disinterestedness that it must pierce into hearts other- wise hermetically sealed against the imploring cries of suffering humanity ? Call you this an act of such self-sacrificing gene- rosity that it must be registered for a memorial in the book of God's remembrance, with the same stamp of Divine appi'obation as that bestowed on the poor widow in the gospel, who, though she gave but little, gave her all ? "And is it in very deed a thing so mighty for a Christian pastor, whether bishop, priest or deacon, or any member of a Church, to abandon for a season his routine of duty, and once in the year to come iip, either to regale, or be regaled, with the incense of human applause in this great metropolis, the em- porium of the world's commerce, the seat of the world's mightiest empire, and the general rendezvous of men and things unparalleled in all the world besides ? Is it a thing so mighty for any one of these to stand up on this platform, and call on assembled thousands to rise to their true elevation, and acquit themselves like men in the cause of Him who rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm ? And, dismissing all ordinary forms and figures of speech as tame and inadequate, is it an act so heroic to stand on this platform, and break forth into apostrophes, that ring with the din of arms and the shout of battle f Is it an act so heroic, at the safe distance of ten 352 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1837. tliousand miles, courageously to summon the gates of Peking to lift up their heads, and its barricades and ramparts to rencl asunder at the presence of the heralds of salvation ? and, impersonifying the celestial empire herself, boldly invoke her to send up without delay her hundreds of millions to the house of the Lord, exalted above the hills, and place her imperial crown on the head of Him on Whose head shall be all the crowns of the earth, and the diadem of the universe ? " Or, is it an act of spiritual prowess so mighty, for one who never joined in the conflict, to stand up on this platform, and I'ehearse the battles that have been fought in the missionary field, the victories that have been obtained, and the trophies that have been won ? Is it an achievement of never-dying fame to burst into rapture at the unrivalled honour of those brave veterans that have already laid down their lives in storm- ing the citadels of heathenism ? Hark ! here are a few blasts from a trumpet that has often pealed, and pealed with effect, at our great anniversaries. The missionary's life ? Ah ! ' an archangel would come down from the throne, if he might, and feel himself honoured to give up the felicities of heaven for a season for the toils of a missionary's life.' The missionary's work ? Ah ! ^ the work of a minister at home, as compared with that of a missionary, is but the lighting of a parish lamp, to the causing the sun to rise upon an empire that is yet in darkness.' The missionary's grave ? Ah ! ' the missionary's grave is far more honourable than the minister's pulpit.' ''After such outpourings of fervent zeal and burning admir- ation of valour, would ye not expect that the limits of a kingdom were too circumscribed for the range of spirits so chivalrous ? Would ye not expect that intervening oceans and continents could oppose no barrier to their resistless career ? Would ye not expect that, as chieftains at the head of a noble army, numerous as the phalanxes that erewhile flew from tilt and tournament to glitter in the sunshine of the Holy Land, they should no more be heard of till they make known their presence, by the terror of their power, in shattering to atoms the towering walls of China, and hoisting in triumph the banners of the Cross over the captured mosques of Araby and prostrate pagodas of India ? Alas, alas ! what shall we say, when the thunder of heroism that reverberates so sublimely over our heads from year to year in Exeter Hall, is found, in JEt SI. AN APPEAL. 353 changeless succession, to die away in fainter and yet fainter echoes among the hixurions mansions, the snug dwellings, and goodly parsonages of Old England ! ''Listen to the high-sounding words of the mightiest of our anniversary than derers on this platform, and would ye not vow that they were heroes, with whom the post of honour was the post of danger ? Look at the astounding contrast of their practice, and will not your cheeks redden with the crimson Hush of shame, to find that they are cowards, with whom the post of honour is, after all, the post of safety ? Ye venerated Withers and brethren ill the ministry, whom I now see around me, of every denomination — to you I appeal. I appeal in the spirit of faithfulness, and yet in the spirit of love, and ask : — Is this the way to awake the long-slumbering spirit of devoted- ness throughout the land ? Is this the kind of call that will arouse the dormant energies of a sluggish Church ? Is this the kind of summons that will cause a rush of champions into the field of danger and of death ? Is this the kind of example that will stimulate a thousand Gutzlaffs to brave the horrors of a barbarous shore ? — that will incite thousands of Martyns, and of Careys, and of Morrisons, to arm themselves on the consecrated spots where these foremost warriors fell ? I know not what the sentiments of this great audience may be on a subject so momentous ; but as for myself, I cannot, at whatever risk of offence to friends, and of ribaldry from enemies, — I can- not, without treason to my God and Saviour, — I cannot but give vent to the overpowering emotions of my own heart, when, in the face of England, Scotland and Ireland I exclaim, ' Oh that my head were waters, that mine eyes were a fountain of tears, that I could weep over the fatal, the disastrous incon- sistencies of many of the most renowned of the leaders of our people ! ' " What, then, is to be done ? How are the gigantic evils complained of to be efficiently remedied ? Never, never, till the leading members of our Churches be shamed out of their lavish extravagance in conforming to the fashion of a world that is so soon to pass away, and out of their close-fisted penu- riousness as regards all claims that concern the eternal destinies of their fellows. Never, never, till the angels of our Churches, whether ordinary pastors or superintending bishops, be shamed out of their sloth, their treachery and their cowardice For, A A 354 ^^^^ OF DR. DUFF. 1837. rest assured, tliat people would get weary of the sound of the demand ' Give, give/ that is eternally reiterated in their ears, when those who make it so seldom give, or, what is the same thincy, give in such scanty driblets that it seems a mockery of their own expostulations, — and of the sound of the command ' Go, go,' when those who make it, are themselves so seldom found willing to go ! " How, theuj is the remedy to be effected ? Not, believe me, by periodical showers of words, however copious, which fall 'like snow-flakes in the river, — a moment white, then gone for ever.' No ; but by thousands of deeds that shall cause the very scoffer to wonder, even if he should wonder and perish — deeds that shall enkindle into a blaze the smouldering embers of Christian love — deeds that shall revive the days of primitive devotedness, when men, valiant for the truth, de- spised earthly riches, and conquered through sufferings, not counting their lives dear unto the death." " Archangels," he said, " cannot leave their thrones ; but where are the learned and the eloquent, the statesmen and the nobles, — where is one of our loud- talking professors ready to do more than shrivel their little services into the wretched inanity of an occasional sermon, or a speech, easily pronounced and calling for no sacrifice ? . . What ! expect one and all of these to descend from their eminences of honour and go forth themselves content with the humble fare and arrayed in the humble attire of self-denying missionaries ? Is not this the very climax of religious raving ? Gracious God ! and is it really so ? . . Are we in sober seriousness determined to contract the calculus of eternity within the narrow dimensions of the arithmetic of time ? Do I now stand in an assembly of professing Christians ?" Then the sacred orator, turning from sarcasm and irony, from reproach and prophetic ridicule, thus closed with his entranced audience in the presence of Him who gave Himself: — " With deep solemnity of feeling let me ask : — ' Who is ^t. 31. MISSIONS IN THE LIGHT OF CIIlilST. 355 this that Cometh, fi'om Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? ' It is the Man who is Jehovah's fellow. It is Immanuel, God with us. But who can portray the underived, the incomparable excellencies of Him, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ? In this contemplation we are at once lost in an immeasurable ocean of overpowering glory. Imagination is bewildered ; language fails. Go take a survey of the earth wo dwell upon. Collect every object and every quality that has been pronounced fair, sweet, or lovely. Com- bine these into one resplendent orb of beauty. Then leave the bounds of earth. Wing your flight through the fields of immensity. In your progress collect what is fair and lovely in every world, what is bright and dazzling in every sun. Combine these into other orbs of surpassing brightness, and thus continue to swell the number of magnificent aggregates, till the whole immense extent of creation is exhausted. And after having united these myriads of bright orbs into one glorious constellation, combining in itself the concentrated beauty and loveliness of the whole created universe, go and compare an atom to a world, a drop to the ocean, the twink- ling of a taper to the full blaze of the noon-tide sun ; — then may you compare even this all-comprehending constellation of beauty and loveliness with the boundless, the ineffable beauty and excellence of Ilim who is ' the brightness of the Father's glory,' who is ' God over all, blessed for ever ! ' " And yet wondei*, 0 heavens, and rejoice, O earth ; this great, and mighty, and glorious Being did for our sakes con- descend to veil His glory, and appear on earth as a Man of sorrows, whose visage was so marred more than any man's, and His form more than the sons of men. Oh, is not this love ! — self-sacrificing love ! — ^love that is ' higher than the heights above, deeper than the depths beneath' ? Oh, is not this condescension ! — self-sacrificing condescension ! — conde- scension without a parallel and without a name ? God manifest in the flesh ! God manifest in the flesh for the redemption of a rebel race ! Oh, is not this the wonder of a world ? Is not this the astonishment of a universe ? " And, in the view of love so ineffable and condescension so unfathomable, tell me, oh tell me, if it would seem aught BO strange — I will not say in the eye of poor, dim, beclouded humanity — but in the eye of that celestial hierarchy that 35^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1837. caused heaven's arclies to ring with anthems of adoring wonder when they beheld the brightness of the Father's glory go forth eclipsed, mysteriously to sojourn on earth and tread the winepress alone, red in His apparel and His garments dyed in blood ? Tell me, ob, tell me, if in their cloudless vision it would seem aught so marvellous, so passing strange, did they behold the greatest and the mightiest of a guilty race, redeemed themselves at so vast a price, cheerfully prepared to relinquish their highest honours and fairest possessions^ their loveliest academic bowers and stateliest palaces ; yea, did they behold Royalty itself retire and cast aside its robes of purple, its sceptre and its diadem, and issue forth in the footsteps of the Divine Redeemer into the waste howling wilderness of sin, to seek and to save them that are lost ? " Ye grovelling sons of earth, call this fanaticism if you will; brand it as wild enthusiasm ; — I care not for the verdict. From you I appeal to the glorious sons of light, and ask, Was not this, in principle, the very enthusiasm of patriarchs, who rejoiced to see the day of Christ afar off, and were glad ? Was not this the enthusiasm of prophets, whose harps, in- spired by the mighty theme, were raised into strains of more than earthly grandeur? Was not this the enthusiasm of angels that made the plains of Bethlehem ring with the jubilee of peace on earth and goodwill to the children of men ? Was not this the enthusiasm (with reverence be it spoken) of the eternal Son of God Himself, when He came forth travailing in the greatness of His strength, to endure the agony and bloody sweat ? And if this be enthusiasm that is kindled by no earthly fire, and which, when once kindled, burns without being consumed, how must the hopes of the Church lie sleep- ing in the tomb, where it does not exist ? Oh ! until a larger measure of this divine enthusiasm be diffused through the Churches of Christendom, never, never need we expect to realize the reign of millennial glory — when all nature shall once more be seen glowiug in the first bloom of Eden ; when one bond shall unite and one feeling animate all nations ; when all kindreds and tribes and tongues and people shall combine in one song, one universal shout of grateful ' Hallelujah unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever ! ' " ^t 31. VINDICATION OF HIS SYSTEM. 357 We have not met with a record of the effect of tliis denunciation and appeal, any more than with a report of that which Dr. Duff had uttered in the same hall in the previous year at the anniversary of the Church Missionary Society. But we know that the Rev. John Macdonald had ejiven himself to the mission as the result of Dr. Duff's earliest visit of all, in 1835 ; and money at least was not stinted, for it was announced to the Assembly hold a few weeks after that £700 had been sent as the result of that meeting. The General Assembly of 1837 is memorable in ecclesiastical annals for the happily rare event of a contest regarding the moderatorship. It is of interest here because of Dr. Duff's " Vindication of the Church of Scotland's India Missions," in reply to the mis- understandings and misrepresentations which had arisen out of his speech of 1835, to which, as an oratorical effort, it coraes only second. The local reporters wrote : " This eloquent address produced, amidst the profound silence with which it was listened to, occasional bursts of enthusiasm which were irre- pressible ; and the peroration at its close called forth an expression of emotion in the Assembly such as we have rarely witnessed." The Assembly ordered its publication. Led by Dr. Muir, of Glasgow, in united prayer the members returned thanks to God for pre- serving the health and life of their dear brother, Dr. Duff. The " Vindication " has a value which is more than historical, from the demand that the Church should send out its most highly educated ministers and ablest preachers as missionaries to races like the Hindoos, and from this still necessary answer to the ignorant and the malevolent : — *' Let it never be forgotten that, as the Government schemes of education uniformly exclude religious instruction^ this may onlj be a chauge from a stagnant superstition to a rampant 358 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1837. infidelity. Wliat then is to be done ? Are tlie Cliristians of Great Britain to stand idly aloof and view tte onward march of the spirit of innovation in the East as unconcerned and indifferent spectators ? Forbid it, gracious Heaven ! What then is to be done ? Why, if we are faithful to our trust, and wise in time, we may, through the blessing of God, be honoured iu converting the education plans of the Indian Goverument into auxiliaries, that may lend their aid in pre- paring the way for the spread of the everlasting gospel ! Wherever a Government seminary is founded, which shall have the effect of demolishing idolatry and superstition, and thereby clearing away a huge mass of rubbish; there let U3 be prepared to plant a Christian institution, that shall, through the blessing of Heaven, be the instrument of rearing the beauteous superstructure of Christianity on the ruins of all false philosophy and false religion. Wherever a Government library is established, that shall have the effect of creating an insatiable thirst for knowledge; tliere let us be forward in establishing our depositories of Bibles and other religious publications, that may saturate the expanding minds of Indian youth with the life-giving principles of eternal truth. And who can tell whether, in this way, by * redeeming the time ' — by seizing the present golden opportunity — we may not be privileged to behold all the Government schemes of educa- tional improvement in India overruled by a gracious superin- tending Providence for the ultimate introduction of Messiah's reign ? " From having formerly said so much on the power of useful knowledge in destroying the systems of Hindooism, it has been strangely concluded by some that our object has been to reform the natives of India by means of ' knowledge without religion.'' Need I say that no conclusion could possibly bo more unfounded ? It is, indeed, most true that, for reasons which have more than satisfied many of the wisest and most devoted Christians in this land, I have, with uniform and persevering earnestness, advocated the universal diffusion of sound knowledge in India. Not contented with seeing such knowledge ooze out in scanty drippings, I have toiled and laboured, in conjunction with others, to pour it out in copious streams that may, one day, cover the whole land with the swelling tide of reason aud intelligence. This, however, ^t. 31. ins ALI.IAXCE OF RELIGION WITH KNOWLEDGE. 359 happens to be only one-half oi any statement that I have ever, anywhere, made on the subject. And what right has any one, in reason or in justice, to fasten on one-half of a statement, and deal with that half as if it were the whole ? Strongly and sincerely as I have pled for the diffusion of sound general knowledge in India, have I not, on every occasion, insisted as strongly on the contemporaneous dilFusion of religious truth ? Have I not even laboured to demonstrate that, for the best interests of man in time and eternity, the former should ever be based on the latter — pervaded with the spirit of it throughout and made to terminate in its exaltation and supremacy ? Have I not ever contended for the holy and inseparable alliance of both ? — for the reciprocal inter-blending of their different, though not uncongenial, iufluences ? And if one or other must have the precedency, either as respects priority of time or dignity of position, in the mighty work of regenerating a corrupt world ; in the name of all that is reverend and just, let that be selected for the honour which, by inherent superiority and excellence of nature, is pre- eminently entitled to it. " Without ' useful knowledge ' man might not live so com- fortably in time : without ' divine knowledge ' eternity must be lost. How then could the missionaries of the Church of Scotland — the missionaries of a Church first loosened from Popery by the Wisharts and Hamiltons, subsequently estab- lished by the Knoxes and INIelvilles, and onwards perpetuated by the Rutherfords and Halyburtons — how could we dare to sacrifice, at the shrine of a spurious liberality, that highest and sublimest knowledge, whose ennobling truths many of these worthies so heroically died to testify ? Or, if we dared thus to act the part of degenerate children, how could we abide the piercing glance of rebuke which they would cast upon us, if recalled from the realms of day to witness our treacherous cowardice ? And how might we not feel, even now, as if their very ashes would speak out of the tomb, and their blood from under the altar cry out against us ! Such, indeed, and so strong, are my own convictions of the vast importance of useful knowledge in the great work of reforming India, thab wei'B this venerable house to forbid the diffusion of it in connection with its own mission, I, for one, would feel myself, however reluctantly, constrained at once to relinquish the o 60 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1837. honourable position whicb it has been pleased to assign to me. But such, and so overwhelming, are my convictions of the immeasurably superior importance of that higher knowledge, which unseals the fountain of Iramanuel's love, that — sooner than consent wilfully to withhold it for an hour from the famishing millions of India, or of any other land, in deference to the noxious theories of certain propagandists of the present day — I would lay down my head upon the block, or commit this body to the flames ! " I feel assured, however, that, so far as this house is con- cerned, it will never fall into either of these extremes. Not- withstanding the charges of religious bigotry that have been so profusely heaped upon it, this house, like its noble reform- ing ancestry, has been, is now, and, I trust, ever will be, the consistent, the enlightened advocate of all really useful know- ledge throughout the wide domain of families, schools and colleges, whether in this or in other lands. And, notwith- standing the charges of secular convergency that have been as abundantly levelled at it, this house, like its noble reforming ancestry, has been, is now, and, I trust, ever will be, the intrepid, the unbending advocate of a thorough Bible instruc- tion, as an essential ingredient in all sound education, whether on the banks of the Forth or on the banks of the Ganges. Yea, may I not be permitted with emphasis to add, that, sooner than consent to surrender this vital principle, which is one of the main pillars in the palladium of the Protestantism of these realms, this house is pi'epared, as in times of old, to submit to dissolution by the strong arm of violence ? — and its members, like their fathers of the Covenant, prepared once more to betake theinselves to the dens and caves of the earth — to wander by the lonely shore or over the desert heath, to climb the mountain-steep for refuge, or secretly assemble to worship in ' some deep dell by rocks o'ercanopied ' ? "Let it, then, ever be our distinguishing glory to arbitrate between the advocates of untenable extremes. Let us, on the one hand, disown the bigotry of an unwise pietism, by re- solving to patronise to the utmost, as in times past, the cause of sound literature and science — lest, by our negligence, in this respect we help to revive the fatal dogma of J;he dark ages, that what is philosophically true may yet be allowed to be theologically false. And let us^ on the other hand, de- ^t. 31. EXTREMES OF INFIDELITY AND UNWISE PIETISM. 36 1 nounce the bigotry of infidelity, or religious indifference, by resolving to uphold the paramount importance of the sacred oracles, in the great work of christianizing and civilizing a guilty world. Let us thus hail true literature and true science as our very best auxiliaries — whether in Scotland, or in India, or in any other quarter of the habitable globe. But, in receiving these as friendly allies into our sacred territory, let us resolutely determine that they shall never, never, be allowed to usurp the thi-one, and wield a tyrant's sceptre over it.'* The foresight and the faith, the culture and the self-sacrifice of that passage, reveal the height and the breadth of the speaker's Christian statesmanship. Every year since he spoke it has only given new force to its truth, new reason for regret that the Church and the Government alike were not wise in time to seize the golden opportunity. Even Lord William Bentinck's Government had refused the Mission College a grant-in-aid in recognition of the secular instruction it gave, lest the Company, which was a partner with the priests of Jugganath in their gains from the deluded pilgrims, and which ordered its Christian officers and Muhammadan sepoys to salute the ele- phant-headed, pot-bellied idol Gunputty, should hurt the religious feelings of the natives. The Mutiny came, and brought the catholic universities with it. The Mutiny passed — but at what a price ? In vain, to this hour, by gagging the press and imprisoning libellous or treasonable editors, does the Government try to undo the evil effects of the undiluted and rigid secularism of its schools and colleges. It goes on sowing the wind as no other Government on earth does or in history has ever done. Woe to India and to the Church — to the three Churches of Scotland especially which, in Duff and Wilson, and now in Dr. Shoolbred, have been honoured to lead the way — if this warning is forgotten ! 362 LIFE OF DR. DUir. 1837. Dr. Daff went further. The spiritual reformation of the varied peoples of India he saw must be effected by themselves when foreigners had thus handed on the divine torch to " the Luthers and the Calvins and the Knoxes of Hindostan " : — ^'Our objectj therefore, is not local or partial^ individual op temporary. It is vast and all-comprehensive. It is nothing less than intellectually and spiritually to reform the universal mind of India ; and not merely so, but to embody the essential spirit of the reformation in improved institutions, that shall perpetuate its blessings to latest ages. But, has it ever been heard of, that a great and permanent reformation, in any land, has been the work of a day, or a year, or even a single age ? Never, never. A great reformation is not merely the pregnant cause of innumerable happy effects : — It is Itself but the aggregate effect of innumerable predisposing causes, that may have been accumulating for centui'Ies, ere they became ripe for explosion. Viewed in this respect, the Re- formation of Luther has been well compared to the rapids of a river, in its precipitous passage from some mountain range to the level plains below. Now, for India we not only con- template a religious reformation, as effective as that of Luther in Europe, but a reformation still more pervasive, and more thoroughly national. ''As yet, however, we are only defiling among the wild, upland, and mountain ranges of Hindooism, with its bleak wastes of fable, its arid knolls of prejudice, its frowning crags of superstition, its towering eminences of idolatry. But already, blessed be God, after the long dark night of forty centuries, has the Sun of righteousness begun to gild the Eastern horizon. Already are His earliest beams seen reflected from the frozen summits. Already are there drop- pings of truth on many a rocky heart. Already are there under- currents of inquiry, that shall one day emerge from the hidden recesses of individual minds. Already are there evan- gelical founts that send forth their little rills of saving know- ledge. Already are the clouds fast gathering, surcharged with the waters of salvation, and ready to pour down their copious showers. And soon may the swollen bi'ooks unite ^t. 31. HE CONFIDE^NTLY APPEALS TO POSTERITY. 363 into rivers, and rivers into a mighty stream of quickeniug influences. For some years more, the mrghty stream itself may continue to flow on through comparatively barren and unanimated solitudes. At length, impatient of restraint, it must burst its accustomed boundaries, and, dashing headlong, in the foam and thunder of a cataract of reformation, it will gently glide into the peaceful under-vale of time. There it shall roll on in its majestic course, overspreading its banks with the verdure of righteousness, and pouring the fertility of paradise into its pastures of gospel grace, till it finally disa])pear and is lost in the shoreless ocean of eternity ! " Persuaded, as I feel, that such is our present position among the incipient processes that shall, in due time, unite and issue in so glorious a consummation, I, for one, am cheer- fully willing to toil on, for years, in feeding, if it be but one of the little rills of awakening influence, — though I should never live to behold their confluence into the mighty stream of sequences, with its rushing cataract, and waving harvest gladdening its after-course. And, as regards the ultimate realization of the magnificent prospect, I would, even on a dying pillow, from a whole generation of doubters confidently appeal to posterity." We have seen liow of bis first four converts three Lad become teachers, and were soon to become preachers of the gospel, but under the Church of England, the London and the American Missionary- Societies, because the Church of Scotland was not prepared to send forth the young evangelists in her own name. Dr. Bryce, who had retired from the ecclesiastical service in Bengal, rose in the General Assembly " after the heart-stirring and transcendently eloquent speech " o£ Dr. Duff, to tell its members how something at least was to be done to remedy this for the future. The Assembly of 1834 had created three presbyterial bodies at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, which united in sending representatives to the central and highest court. These bodies drew up a course of study to be followed by converts who sought to be 364 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1838. licensed preachers and ultimately ordained missionaries to their countrymen. In attempting to fix this course, said Dr. Bryce, " the presbytery felt that a very great latitude must be held as allowed to them, alone acquainted as they could be with local circumstances. But of this latitude they felt disinclined to avail themselves beyond the necessity of the case, and after the most mature deliberation given to the sub- ject, they determined to follow generally as a model, and as far as practicable, the course pursued at our Divinity halls at home." We do not know how far this decision would have been modified had Dr. Duff been in Calcutta, although his letter at page 281 seems to imply that he would have followed the Scottish model less slavishly. While we admire the determi- nation to secure a learned as well as godly native ministry, shown in the rule which compels Bengalee, Marathee, Goojaratee, Tamul, and even simple Son- thalee converts to pass a satisfactory examination in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and to sign the historical documents of the Scottish Churches before being licensed to preach, we are compelled by hard facts as well as common sense to ask if it is thus we shall raise or equip native Luthers. Is it a Christian Nanuk or a Hindoo Calvin that India needs ? As the story of the mission goes on we shall meet with able Bengalee converts, made preachers and missionaries because they have satisfied the presbytery according to Dr. Bryce's still enforced " course of study." But financially as well as ecclesiastically and even spirit- ually, this parody of Western theological training has worked so badly that the three Scottish Churches have been asked by their missionaries to sanction an evangelical course and creed more like those of the Apostles and the Church at Antioch, and not less thorough and pure than those of covenanting, ^i:t. 32. BEST AT EDRADODE. 365 rauch-sufferiug, often testifying and still sorely divided Scotland. The Churcli of India has grown so far out of infancy that it asks to be freed from the controver- sial swaddling-bands of the West. After again visiting some of the presbyteries in the south of Scotland, Dr. Duff began his preparations for returning to India. But he was premature. His general health was suffering so greatly that he was detained, and was even forbidden to attend the Assem- bly of 1838, by his medical adviser, Dr. Macwhirter, who had been for years physician to the Countess of \ Loudoun, wife of the Marquis of Hastings, Governor- 1 General of India. Dr. Macwhirter when in Calcutta had the reputation of being an exceedingly skilful physician, while he was one of the most gentle and amiable of men. After full personal inspection and all manner of inquiries, the physician lifted up his hands in astonishment, expressing the utmost surprise that, wath a body so weakened by general as well as special disease, and so exhausted by the prodigious labours undergone. Dr. Duff had been able to perse- vere, though at the same time he had done so, un- consciously to himself, not only at the risk of perma- nent injury but of premature death. " You are not at all in a fit state to return to India," said Dr. Mac- whirter. " You must have months of perfect quiet under proper medical treatment with a view to re- cruiting. If you can really submit to this, since you are still but young in years and evidently have a singularly wiry and iron constitution, my medical judgment is that, after a reasonable time you will be so far recruited as to warrant you to return. My earnest advice to you, therefore, is at once to return to your quiet Highland home, where by correspondence T~can perfectly regulate, from day to day if need be, your regimen and medical treatment; there you 366 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1838. will have the tender, nursing care of the members of your own family about you." Thus most of the autumn, and a considerable part of the winter of 1838-39, was spent at Edradour. In that quiet and beautiful retreat Dr. Duff only exchanged the voice for the pen. From all parts of the kingdom and from other lands he was applied to for counsel or information or help on the most catholic grounds. Among others whom his earliest addresses had roused were " a few friends of the missionary enterprise in Scotland,"* as they described themselves, who offered two prizes, of two hundred and fifty guineas in all, for the best essays on " The Duty, Privilege, ajid Encouragement of Christians to send the Gospel of Salvation to the Unenlightened Nations of the Earth." Dr. Duff, with whom Dr. Chalmers and Professor M'Gill, of Glasgow, were associated as promoters of the philanthropic enterprise, conducted a remarkable correspondence on the subject, declaring that if he had the means he would himself supply the money. This is the first illustration in Scotland of what we- have seen in Bengal — his conviction that for foreign missions, as for all good objects, the press is an agency, not so powerful as the pulpit in the spiritual region, but more extensive and effective in its influence on the mass of mankind. To the last he complained that it was far too much neglected by the Church as a weapon of good. The adjudicators, who were Professor Welsh, Dr. Wardlaw, the Kev. Henry Melvill, Dr. Jabez Bunting, and the Rev. T. S. Crisp, representing all the evangelical Churches, * Mr. R. A. Macfie, of Dregliorn, who subsequently organized the Liverpool Conference of Missionaries, informs us that these friends were his father; Mr. John Wright, Jan., father-in-law of the Rev. Charles Brown, D.D. ; and the late Thomas Fairnie, of Greenock, etc. ^t. 32. DR. CHALMERS. 367 awarded the prizes to Dr. Harris, the president of Cheshunt College, and to Dr. R. Winter Hamilton, of Leeds. The essays were published, but not in a cheap form which would have sent them into every house ; several thousands of both were sold. A catholic narrative and exposition of the foreign mis- sionary movement from the beginning of the eigh- teenth century to the present day, popular, accurate, condensed, and including Romish missions, is still a desideratum. When fairly restored to health, towards the summer of 1839, Dr. Duff prepared himself for the consolida- tion of all the work he had been doing during the previous four years towards making the Kirk of Scot- land permanently for the future a Missionary Church. He sent out a third missionary in addition to Mr. John Macdonald and Dr. Murray Mitchell ; he broadened the movement for female education in the East; he spoke his ftirewell counsels to the country through the General Assembly ; he left his lectures on " India and India Missions," to quicken the missionary spirit in his absence ; and he made^the final arrangements for giving Bengal a central college worthy of the higher Christian education. In all he had the constant sup- port of Dr. Chalmers, and the friendly hospitality of Dr. Brunton alike in the university and at Bilstane Brae. Of the former we find him thus writing to Sir Andrew Agnew, on the 17th September, 1838 : " What triumph attends Dr. Chalmers's career ! How ought we to bless and praise our Heavenly Father for having raised up so mighty a champion of truth in troublous times ! Truly it is the duty of every one that fears the Lord to lift up his arms as for battle, when the enemy is coming in on every side like a flood. What iueflable consolation in the assurance, ' the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ! ' " By this time it had o 68 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1839. become evident that the spiritual rights of the Kirk, guaranteed by Scottish Parliament, Union Treaty and Revolution Settlement, were in danger. In May, 1839, Lords Brougham and Cottenham gave the sanction of the highest appellate court to the aggres- sion of a majority of the Scottish judges on these rights. Dr. Duff began to see the purely spiritual work for which a Church exists, which he had done side by side with Chalmers and Guthrie in kirk ex- tension, threatened. In 1839 the revenue of the Church of Scotland for missionary purposes of all kinds was fourteen times greater than it had been in 1834, so tliat Chalmers exclaimed : " We are planting schools, we are multiplying chapels, we are sending forth missionaries to distant parts of the world, we have purified the discipline, we are extending the Church and rallying our population around its vener- able standard."* All this foreign colonial, and home missionary work was to be extended far more largely than fourteen times, by the very ecclesiastical cata- clysm which in 1843 seemed certain to extinguish it. So greatly had the Bengal Mission been extended under Mackay and Ewart, working out Dr. DuflTs system with his careful and constant support from home, that they were not satisfied with the addition of a third colleague in the person of Mr. Macdonald. The three clamoured for a fourth to help them to over- take the special field in which no other mission had then followed them. To their demands Dr. Duff sent this among other replies : — " Edinburgh College, January Ibth, 1839. "My Dear Ewart, — To your last letter I purposely delayed replying till I might have it in my power to • Memoirs of Thomas Chalmers, D,D., LL.D. By Dr. Haima, Vol. ii. chap. 27. ^t. 33. NO EXCLUSIVELY SECULAR WOUK IN COLLEGE. 369 communicate something: of a definite nature on the main practical point therein referred to. The instant it was received I wrote most urgently to Dr. Brunton, pressing the necessity of immediately appointing a new labourer to support you. Something was spoken on tlie subject. But lets and hindrances seemed to threaten to retard indefinitely. In December, my own health having much improved, I resolved to visit Edin- burgh— fu'st, to consult in person with my medical advisers as to my fitness for immediately returning to Calcutta ; and second, in the event of that not being allowed, to enforce the appointment of another. As to the first point, — though satisfied with the progress made on the whole, it was deemed utterly inadvisable to attempt to return till next summer. But, if the Lord will, I have now the certain prospect of turning my face eastward in June or July next. Meanwhile, I have laboured incessantly in pressing the second point, the immediate appointment of another. And I am sure you will rejoice to learn that yesterday, at a meeting of the general committee, not only was it re- solved to appoint one, but the individual was actually nominated — and he will lose no time in setting sail to join you. The new colleague is Mr. Thomas Smith, lately licensed to preach the gospel — one who has long pondered the subject of personal engagement in the missionary cause, though young in years. He has a fine missionary spirit, and in mathematics and natural philosophy was one of the most distinguished students of the session in Edinburgh. Ho will at once, there- fore, be able to lend you efi'ective aid, by taking up any of your own or Mr. Mackay's departments in the scientific part of the course. He will thus relieve you of some of those most onerous duties that have devolved on you iu consequence of Mr. Mackay's lamented illness. We have given Mr. Smith to under- B B 370 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1839. stand tliat lie may be called on by you to take up the very subjects whicli constituted Mr. Mackay's share of instruction in the Institution. And I am happy to say that he will be prepared, if deemed proper by you, to do so cheerfully. " It will not do for a single moment to abate one iota of the educational course. The committee, the General Assembly, the entire Church of Scotland is publicly committed to it. If the Institution at Cal- cutta be allowed to drop, the sinews of war at home will be cut off, and all the missionaries must either return, or support themselves the best way they can on the voluntary system. At this moment nothing would reconcile the people of Scotland to any measure that would weaken the strength of the Institution. And henceforward, such is the public feeling of intelligent thoughtful people on the subject, that the committee dare not send a missionary who will not pledge him- self to join in conducting any department of the edu- cational course which may devolve upon him, either by the judgment of his brethren or the exigency of un- forseen contingencies. This does not infringe on the grand design of effecting a thorough division of labour when the number of labourers is complete — each having that department allotted to him in which he is known and acknowledged most to excel — or that which may be his forte. But this is not to be under- stood as limiting one so exclusively to one particular department as to exonerate him from taking some share in conducting any other when a vacancy may temporarily occur. " I do not altogether relish the idea of a total se- paration or chasm being effected between the strictly spiritual and what is called the secular department. Hather, I should say, there ought to be no exclusively secular department. In other words, in teaching any ^t. 33. EPISTLE TO THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS. 37 1 branch of literature and science, a spiritually-minded man must see it so taught as not only to prove sub- servient to a general design, but be more or less saturated with religious sentiment, or reflection, or deduction, or application. In this way, incidentally and indirectly it may be, yet most effectually, may religious impression be conveyed even when engaged in teaching literature and science. But besides this incorporation of what is religious with what is secular or scientific, there ought no doubt always to be regular systematic instruction in what is biblical and religious. And if in this department any one should be allowed to excel, it would, on the principle of division of labour, be well to allot it to him, but not in such sense as that any other was precluded from teaching religion, or that he was exempted from taking a share in the literary and scientific departments, in case of necessity arising from temporary illness or absence. "Now, my dear Ewart, there is at my disposal something above £1,000 in all. Do then send me by the first steamer a complete list of all your desiderata as to books, philosophical apparatus, etc., and I shall endeavour to have all supplied. Do not miss a steamer in sending me as complete a list as you can furnish, that it may reach in time to enable me to avail myself of it before returning to join you. My affectionate regards to Mr. and Mrs. Macdonald, Mr. Charles, Mr. Meiklejohn, etc. I hope to reply to the old pundit ere long. In haste, affectionately yours, *' Alexander Dufe." In St. Andrew's Church, Edinburgh, on the 7th March, 1839, Dr. Duff himself presided at the ordin- ation of his young colleague, now the Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., and the only survivor of the praa-Mutiny band. Dedicated to all students of divinity in Scot- 372 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1839. land, " with many of whom the author has enjoyed much general converse," the discourse and the charge to the youthful missionary still form not only the most remarkable as it has been the most popular of Dr. Duff's writings, but a model to be studied by all candidates of theology of whatever Church. The mis- sionary apostle himself described it as " a plain letter of instructions which might prove really useful to a young and inexperienced but beloved brother." The epistle has just enough of an autobiographic element to give it a fascination which every year will increase as the events of the decade ending 1839 are thrown farther back in the history of India and of its Church. *' Missions the Chief End of the Christian Church ; also the Qualifications, Duties and Trials of an Indian Missionary," as the publication of 1839 was entitled, should be edited for republication in its completeness. The latest reprint is sorely mutilated. Many a mis- sionary has that little epistle and charge sent to India, China and Africa from other Churches. The education of the women of India was begun by young ladies of Eurasian extraction, in Calcutta, under the Baptist missionaries so early as April, 1819. Mrs. Wilson followed, in the same city, in 1822. But Bombay, if later, soon distanced the rest of India, be- cause of the absence of caste among the Parsees, the greater freedom of the social life of the Marathas than that of the Bengalees, and the readiness of Mrs. Mar- garet Wilson to take advantage of both. Hence, in 1837, a Bombay oflBcer, Major Jameson, began in Scot- land the formation of the Ladies' Society for Female Education in the East. Still it was long till, in any part of India, it was possible to bring girls of respect- able and caste-bound families under Christian or even secular instruction, with the exception of Parsee ladies. On his first visit to England Dr. Duff was asked to ^t. 33. FEMALE EDUCATION IN INDIA. 373 supply the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel with infor- mation, which the preacher published as an appendix to his sermon preached for the Society in London for promoting female education in China, India and the East. He heartily supported Major Jameson's move- ment in Scotland. On a recent visit to Penicuik we found in a state of active prosperity the first Ladies' Society seen in Scotland for combined prayer and work for female education in India. That society is the result of an address by Dr. Duff, of which there is no other trace. In the forty years since, it has kept up an intelligent interest in, and has called forth annually increasing work and subscriptions for the evangelization of the women of India, from some of the best families of Midlothian and not a few of the cottages and farms of Penicuik. Dr. Duff's address at the first annual meeting of the Scottish Ladies' Society, now more vigorous than ever in two bands, not only sketched the position of women in the East under Hindoo and Muhammadan law and practice, but outlined a policy, applicable to Calcutta and Bengal, which he lived long enough to see in full fruition. That has before been sketched in the account of the discussion in Bengalee debating societies, and as an integral part of his missionary educational system. It is most tersely put in these sentences of his appendix to Baptist Noel's sermon. " From the unnatural constitution of Hindoo so- ciety, the education of females, in a national point of view, cannot possibly precede, cannot even be con- temporaneous with the education of males. The education of the former, on any great national scale, must, from the very nature of their position which those only who have been in India can at all ade- quately comprehend, follow in the wake of the en- lightened education of the latter. In a word, a 374 ^^^^ OF DR. DUFF. 1839, generation of educated males, i.e. educated after the European model, must be the precursor of a genera- tion of educated females." Should nothing, then, be done ? On the contrary, elementary education among the few who may be induced to attend a public school, and during the brief time before marriage and re-absorption into their own idolatrous system, should be zealously prose- cuted. Christian philanthropy will care especially for the outcast and the orphan, and the growing class of native Christians must be provided for. " But there is another and far more rapidly increasing one, that must annually swell the aggregate of those friendly to female improvement; the multiform class that aims at the acquisition of European literature and science, throuofh the medium of the En owlish lano^uao^e. From various concurrent causes thousands of native youth have now begun to flock to Government and Mis- sionary Institutions, there to enter on the career of English education ; and, if the future keep pace pro- portionately with the past, these thousands will ere long be multiplied tenfold, and ultimately a hundred- fold. Now, it may safely be laid down as an un- doubted axiom, that every individual who receives a thorough English education, whether he become a convert to Christianity or not, will, with it, imbibe much of the English spirit, i.e. become intellectually Anglicised; and hence, will inevitably enrol himself in the catalogue of those who assert the right of females to be emancipated from the bondage of ignorance. This is not a legitimate inference only, it is a statement of the results of past experience." The elementary or direct method has not only rescued thousands of girls from destruction, aiding Government in famines and providing wives for Christian homes ; but it has, on the normal school yEt. 3Z- HfS boot:, " INDIA AND INDIA MISSIONS. 375 method, trained devoted vernacular teachers who were ready to enter the zananas, and to teach the select caste schools, the moment that tlio indirect influence had prepared the next generation of women to be taught. AVhat Dr. Duff predicted in 1829-1839 came to pass twenty years afterwards. We shall see how this policy has led to the caste school and the zanana instruction till at least one Bengalee lady has passed the matriculation examination of the University of Calcutta. When residing with Dr. Gordon, on the occasion of Mr. T. Smith's ordination, that zealous secretary of the committee suo:g:ested to him the deliverinsr of a series of popular lectures in so central a place as St. Andrew's church. Having devoted two or three weeks to the arrangement of his materials, Dr. Duff attracted overflowing crowds in the four weeks of April to hear those gorgeous descriptions, novel ex- positions, and thrilling narratives which he published for the benefit of the funds of the committee, to whom the book was dedicated, under the title of " India and India Missions : including Sketches of the Gigantic System of Hindooism both in Theory and Practice." The work soon reached a second edition, and has still a historical value, although it may be said that oriental scholarship has come to exist only since the translations of Sir William Jones and the essays of Colebrooke were followed, chiefly after 1839, by the publication of the researches of Burnouf and Lassen, Prinsep and John Wilson, H. H. Wilson and Weber, Max Muller and the brothers Muir. Nor were Duff's lectures confined to Edinburgh. We have traces of him in Liverpool, both in the Philanthropic Hall and in the Collegiate Institution, where Dean, then Principal, Howson induced him to deliver one described by a critic as " of remai'kable brilliance and power." 37^ I'IFE OF DE. DUFF. 1839. The General Assembly of 1839 brouglit with it, for Dr. Duff, the solemn but not sad duty of saying fare- well to the country and the Church. As a member for his native presbytery of Dunkeld he spoke again, but with fresh power and new facts, " on the subject of your great missionary enterprise." The contrast between the past and the present in the highest court of the Kirk was so striking that he recalled the time when the venerable Erskine cried out, " Eax me the Bible," that he might prove to his brethren in the ministry the duty of preaching the gospel to the heathen. Against that memorable incident, only a generation past, he set the record of converts and Hindoos about to become themselves missionaries, as given in the latest report of the India mission. Sad- dened for the moment that he was leaving no eye- witness behind him to feed with facts and appeals the home machinery he had organized, he said, " Public meetings alone will never answer our end. We must descend to the mass and permeate with vitality its humblest and most distant atoms. Without this all our missionary, educational, and church extension schemes must flag and fail. You must get the young on your side," he said ; " give me the school books and the schoolmasters of a country, and I will let any one else make not only its songs and its laws, but its literature, sciences and philosophy too ! What has made Brahmanism the hoary power it is but its Shasters ? What has sustained the force and passion of Islam for centuries but the Koran" read in every school and college from Gibraltar to the Straits of Malacca ? So must Christians use the Press, after his outburst on which he referred to his own departure : — • " Already is it the boast of our country, tliat it has replen- ished the service of our sovereign with warriors and states- men ; supplied every civilized nation with men accomplished JEt 33. FAEEWELL ADDRESS TO GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 377 in learned professions; filled the exchanges of every metro- polis in the globe with enterprising capitalists; sent intrepid adventurers to explore the most barbarous and inhospitable climes. But let us, through the medium of works for the young, and especially of school books universally adopted, only saturate the juvenile mind of the nation with evangelistic principles, duties, and motives, and our country may be destined to earn yet greater and more lasting fame. Our parochial schools may become the rudimental nurseries, and our colleges, and especially our divinity halls, the finishing gymnasia of a race of men who shall aim at earning higher trophies than flags and standards rolled in blood — nobler badges than mimic stars of glittering dust; — a race of men, on whom shall fall the mantle of the Eliots and the Brainerds of the West, and the Martyns and Careys of the East. " . . . Often, when wearied and exhausted under the debilitating influences of a vertical sun and a burning atmosphere : often, when depressed and drooping in spirit, amid the never-ending ebullitions of a rampant heathenism : often, when thus made, in some measure, to realize the feelings of the exiles of old, who by the streams of Babel did hang their harps upon the willows, and wept' when they remembered Zion — often, often I have retired to the chamber of medita- tion, on a table of which constantly lay a copy of ' the Cloud of Witnesses ; ' and after perusing some of the seraphic utterances of our Renwicks and Guthries, from the dungeons and the scafi*olds of martyrdom, often have I fallen down before the divine footstool, ashamed and confounded on ac- count of my faint-heartedness and cowardice ; and rising up, new -braced and invigorated in the faith, as often have I been made to resolve, through grace, to be so faint-hearted and cowardly no more. But little did I then think of the fresh impulse and enjoyment that awaited me, when subsequently privileged to visit those regions of our native land, that may well be termed the Judsea and Jerusalem of persecuting times. T have been in temples of the most gorgeous magnificence ; I have been in palaces decorated with the glittei'ing splendours of art; I have been in bowers gladdened with perpetual summer, and clothed with never-dying verdui'e ; — but never, never among'St them all have I experienced the same pure and elevated and ecstatic emotion as within the last two years. 378 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1839; when traversing those bleak and dreary upland moors, and barren mountain solitudes^ that often constituted the only home of those devoted men of vs^hom the world was not worthy — that have been consecrated in the eyes of posterity as their birthplace and their graves ; and over every moss, and rock, and dell of wliich once waved the banner em- blazoned, as if in rebuke of the treason and blasphemy of latter days, with the glorious inscription, — " • For Eef oi-mation In Church and State, Accoi-ding to the Woi'd of God, And our sworn Covenants.' " Now, these are the men whose example we are ever and anon called upon to imitate. But surely, if there be any one point more than another in which they have set us the most emphatic example, it is in their cheerful determination to deny themselves and submit to all manner of sacrifices. Can we, except in derision, be said to emulate their conduct, if not prepared and resolved to submit to like sacrifices with them ? If all were here pi'esent this day, whether clergy or laity, who glory in being the members of a Church that has been watered and cemented by the blood of martyrs, might we not demand, * What substantial proof or pledge have ye ever yet given that ye are really prepared and resolved to tread in their footsteps ? You profess to imitate their example ! Well, in order to this, you are called upon, like them, to deny yourselves, in order the more effectually to advance the cause of the Redeemer/ " In the spirit of this resolution I originally went forth to heathen lands. And though suddenly removed by an aflflictive visitation of Providence, over which I had no control, the spirit of that resolution still abideth the same. If the Lord will, therefore, my unaltered and unalterable purpose is, to return to the scene of my former labours. In adhering so determinedly to this purpose, I am not unaware of the mis- construction and uncharitable insinuations to which, in certain quarters, my conduct has been subjected. Now, though in myself I feel and confess that I am nothing, yea, 'less than nothing, and vanity ,■* I must, for the sake of ' magnifying my office,' be permitted to assert and vindicate the integrity of my actuating motives. I would return to the land of my adoption. ^t. 33. FAREWELL ADDRESS TO GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 379 not because, in the gross and carnalising judgment of some worldlings, I could not do better at home. No ; if the earnest and reiterated entreaties of friends ; if the most alluring offers, on the part of some of * the mighty and the noble / if the most tempting invitations to spheres of honour and responsi- bility, from not a few of the Christian people of this laud, — could have availed aught, I might, in the low, vulgar and drivelling sense of the expression, have done better at home. I would go, not from the restless spirit of wild, roving ad- venture. If the animating principle had flowed from that source, sure enough it ought by this time to have been cured, in the case of one who twice suffered shipwreck, barely escaping with life; who, more than once, was well-nigh foundered amid the gales and hurricanes of the deep ; and who was thrice brought to the very brink of the grave by the noxious influences of an unfriendly clime. I would go, not from any exaggerated estimate or ambitious longings after the pomp and luxuries of the East. No. Dire experience con- strains me to say, that, for the enjoyment of real personal comfort, I would rather, infinitely rather, be the occupant of the poorest hut, with its homeliest fare, in the coldest and bleakest cleft tLat flanks the sides of the Schehallion or Ben Nevis, than be the possessor of the stateliest palace, with its royal appurtenances, in the plains of Bengal. I would go, not from any freaks of fancy respecting the strangeness of foreign lands, and the exciting novelty of labour among the dwellers there. There I have been already; and can only testify that the state of the heathen is far too sad and awful a reality to be a fitting theme for story or for song, — unless it be one over which hell would rejoice, and heaven weep. I would go, not from any unpatriotic dislike of my native land, or misanthropic aversion from its people, or its institutions. No : for its very ruggedness, as the land of ' the mountain and the flood,' I cherish more than ordinary fondness. How could it be otherwise ? Nestled and nursed, as it were, from earliest infancy, among its wildest and sublimest scenes : — no pastime half so exhilarating as the attempt to outrival the wild goat in clambering from crag to crag, or to outstrip the eagle in soaring to their loftiest summits ; no music half so sweet as the roar of the cataract among the beetling px'ecipices of some dark frowning ravine or solitary dell ; no chariot and equipage 380 LIFE OP DK. DUFF. 1839. half so much coveted as the buoyant wreaths of mist that scoured athwart the scalped brows, or curled their strange and fantastic shapes around the ragged peaks of the neighbouring hills. Hence a fondness for the characteristic scenery of my native land, amounting almost to a passion — a passion which, like every other, it requires divine grace to modify and subdue. For oft as I have strayed among gardens and groves, be- studded with the richest products of tropical climes, the in- voluntary ejaculation has ever been, ' Give me thy woods, thy barren woods, poor Scotland ! ' Towards its people I have always cherished the fondest attachment — an attachment vastly augmented by the circumstance, that from Pomona, the mainland of Orkney, to the Solway Firth, there is scarcely a city or district in which I could not point out one or more personal friends, in whose Christian society I have found re- freshment and delight. Of all its institutions, sacred and civil, I have ever entertained an unbounded admiration — an admira- tion that has been immeasurably enhanced by the contrast which the want of them exhibits in other lands. I would therefore go, not because I love Scotland less, but because I humbly and devoutly trast that, through the aid of divine grace, I have been led to love my God and Saviour, and the universal extension of His blessed cause on earth, still more. I would go because, with the Bible in my hands, I cannot see what special claim Scotland has upon me, as a minister of Christ, any more than any other land embraced within the folds of the evei'lasting covenant ; because, with the Bible in my hands, I cannot see how a soul in Scotland can be intrin- sically more precious than a soul in Greenland, or Kaffirland, or Hindostan, or any other region on earth ; because, with the Bible in my hands, I cannot see that the bounds of the Church of Scotland are identical with the bounds of the Eedeemer^a kingdom ; or that the Lord Jesus, who is no respecter of persons, is the Redeemer of Scotland rather than of any other realm included in the emphatic and catholic designations of ' all the world,^ and ' all nations.' " While thus entitled to be exacting, in his Master's interest and their own, towards others because he was not sparing of himself, the missionary was no less ^t. S3. FAREWELL HONOURS DECLINED, 38 1 generoas in his acknowledgment of those who did their duty. Mr. Baptist Noel had shown that in the year 1834, when the whole income of the United King- dom was estimated at about 514 millions sterling, the proportion assigned to missions and Bible societies of all kinds was only one seventeen-hundredth part, or £300,000. Dr. Duff told of individuals, and especially Christian ladies, who had become his fellow-helpers in the gospel. One lady in London raised £500 ; her example led two at Inverness* to collect £1,000 in pennies, every one of which meant so much intelligence, prayer and faith ; and another aided the new colonial scheme by supplying with four ministers the thirty thousand Scotsmen then in the island of Cape Breton. Still another sent him £500 in an anonymous note, as " from one who, having felt the consolations of the gospel, is most anxious these should be imparted to the perishing heathen." Thus was the Government price of the site (£1,600) for the new college in Cornwallis Square contributed ; thus was the building raised ; and thus, as we have seen from the letter to Dr. Ewart, were a library and philosophical apparatus supplied for the use of its students. Into this college building and equipment fund, destined to an unexpected fate — the disruption of 1843 — Dr. Duff poured a sum which many to whom he had been blessed offered him in vain as a personal gift for his family. All that he would • Thus described by Dr. Daff : " One of the most peculiar at- tempts was that which originated with the Misses Macintosh, of Raigmore House, Inverness. Their father had been the founder of one of the six great commercial and banking-houses in Calcutta. The scheme was to interest parties in every parish in Scotland so as to realize by pennies the sum of £1,000. Through indefatigable exertions, at length the object was really accomplished, and in carrying it out no doubt a vast deal of fresh interest in the mission was diffused throughout the membership of the Church." 382 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1839. consent to, of a personal nature, was the publication of liis portrait, painted by William Cowen, and en- graved, in mezzotint, by S. W. Reynolds. The original is now in Calcutta. He who had stood alone in Calcutta in 1830 now saw eight other missionaries from the Church of Scot- land in India all working on his system with an enthu- siasm fired by his own. And he did not stop there. Dr. Guthrie had been called to the church of Old Greyfriars in Edinburgh which he himself had refused, and had been there only two years when he wrote : " I had Duff and some others dining with me the other day. Duff was keen for me to go out to India. Dunlop de- clared that Lord Medwyn would take out a prize war- rant, seeing that he is risking some five or six hundred pounds in the new church (St. John's), on the under- standing that I was to be minister thereof." Ten years after, when Guthrie broke down from overwork. Duff thus wrote to him from Calcutta : " The whole of your remarkable career during the last few years I have been following with intense delight ; your Manse scheme and Ragged School have been bulking before my mind's eye in a way to fill me with wonder, aye and devout gratitude to the God of heaven for having so extraordinarily blessed your efforts. From my own experience I find that a season of affliction and inward humiliation usually precedes some development of spiritual energy in advancing the cause of the Lord." Puzzled by his refusal of any personal recognition of his services at home, friends on both sides of church politics begged that Dr. Duff would at least meet them at a public dinner or banquet. "With his answer many who have been victims on such occasions, alike in giving and receiving honour, will sympathise : " Fare- well dinners," he said, " were never to my taste. I have always shunned them in the case of others, and JEt S3- THK SECOND CHARGE OF BR. CUALMERS. 383 I will not myself be the object of honour. They are generally attended by a mass of stereotyped phrases intended to be flatteries but without honest meaning. But hold a religious service, and ask Dr. Chalmers to give me his fatherly counsel and admonition." And so it came about that, though the great preacher's ordination charge to Duff has not seen the light, we have his matured opinion on the Scottish missionary system, from the economics of which he received many a hint for his own Free Church creation three years after. Dr. Hanna has reprinted the farewell charge of 1839 in the " Sermons illustrative of different stashes in his ministry," by the man whom Mr. Gladstone has pronounced the grandest of all preachers he has heard, in spite of a distasteful accent, although John Henry Newman was one of those preachers. " Ten years ago," said the divinity professor of sixty to the already experienced missionary of thirty- three who stood before him above a vast crowd in St. Greorge's, Edinburgh, " in the work of setting you apart to your office I expatiated on the nature and evidence of conversion to God. * As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God : God will establish it for ever.* Christianity is the manifestation of truth by the Spirit to the conscience. It is on some such moral evidence that the philosophy of missions is based. As we have heard, so have we seen : then may it be understood how, without a sensible miracle, there may arise in the mind a well-founded belief in the truth of Chris- tianity." Thus had the first missionary of the Church of Scotland devised his plan and carried out the divine policy — " faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." " By a device of admirable skilfulness and correspondent success, you have brought many of the most influential families 384 LIFE OP DR. DUFF- 1 839. of Hindostan within reach of the hearing of the word of God. You have instituted a school mainly of scriptural lessons and scriptural exercises. You have practised no deceit upon the natives, for all is above board, and it is universally known that the volume which forms the great text and substratum of your scholarship is the book of the religion of Christians. But you, at the same time, have studied to multiply the at- tractions of this school ; you have not only instituted a lecture- ship on the evidences of Clu'istianity, but, for the purpose of engaging the attendance chiefly of the higher classes, you have pressed into the service both the physical and the mathematical sciences, and, what might startle some, have superadded the doctrines of political economy, and all that the votaries of science might be lured within the precincts of sacredness. It is thus that many of India of all ranks, and especially of the upper orders of society, have passed through your seminary in successive hundreds, familiarized with the language and seasoned with the subject matter of inspiration. It is thus that many have heard with the hearing of the ear, and at least been disarmed of all hostility to the gospel, and some of these, many, have been made to see, and been con- verted, and become the declared friends and champions of our faith. It delights me, sir, to know, as the fruit of my in- timate converse and of my acquaintance with your principles and your thoughts, that while you have done so much to obtain an extensive hearing for the gospel of Jesus Christ in the most likely and promising quarters of human society, you are at the same time fully and feelingly aware what that high and external quarter is whence alone the seeing comes, and that unless a blessing, to be evoked only by prayer, shall descend from the sanctuary above upon your enterprise, all the labour you have bestowed upon it will prove but a vain and empty parade. Let me earnestly recommend the con- tinuance of this sacred and fruitful union, a union between the diligence of ever-working hands and the devotion of ever- praying hearts. Men of various moods and temperaments, and different tastes of spirituality and intellect, will be variously affected by the spectacle. Those of shrewd, but withal of secular intelligence, will think lightly of your supplications, perhaps even speak contemptuously of those outpourings of the Spirit on which, I trust, you will ever wait and ever watch ^t. 33. DR. CHALMRRS ECLOGISES HIS SYSTEM. 385 ■with humble expectancy. Those of serious, but withal of weak and drivelling piety, will think lightly of your science, and perhaps even speak with rebuke of your geometry, and your economics, and your other themes of strange and philo- sophic nomenclature, as things that have in them a certain cast of heathenish innovation, prejudicial to the success, be- cause incongruous with the simplicity of the gospel. But amid these reproaches on the right hand and on the left, persevere as you have begun ; and whether, on the one hand, they be the cold rationalists who assail you with their con- tempt, or, on the other hand, they be the fanatical religionists Avho look on you with intolerance, continue to do what all men of sense and of sacredness have done before, and jou will at length reap the fulfilment of the saying, that wisdom is justified of her children." Having thus put liis imprimatur on the system in language as strong as even Dr. Duff's when the mis- sionary vindicated his evangelism alike against " the bigotry of an unwise pietism " and " the bigotry of infidelity," Dr. Chalmers spoke with an almost pre- dictive reference to his own coming scheme of Free Church economics, when he said, " You were the first, I believe, to set the example of passing from parish to parish, and from presbytery to presbytery in behalf of your own cause, and it only needs to be so carried forward in behalf of other causes as to fill the whole length and breadth of the land, in order to reap a tenfold more abundant harvest from the liberalities of the people than has ever yet been realized." Re- ferring to his special work of home missions as not a competing but a co-operating cause, he uttered a truth which his successors have generally though not always remembered : " Our two causes, our two com- mittees, might work into each other's hands. Should the first take the precedency and traverse for collec- tions the whole of Scotland, the second would only find the ground more softened and prepared for an c c 386 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1839. abundant produce to itself. It acts not by exhaustion — ^it acts by fermentation." And with this glimmer- ing of the certain glory, he a second time sent forth his favourite disciple and now beloved brother ; refer- ring to " the singularly prophetic aspect, not merely of the days in which we live, but both of Christendom, tliat region you are about to leave, and of Eastern Asia, that region of ancient idolatry whither you are going ; for we can notice on that distant horizon the faint breakings of evangelical light which, like the dawn of early morn, may perhaps increase more and more till the drying up of the Euphrates that the way of the kings of the East may be prepared." We find this note written to Dr. Chalmers before the address : — " BiLSTANE BY LoANHEAD, Tuesday, 8th. " Mt Deae Sir, — I thank you with all my heart for your very kind note of this morning. To receive from you anew in any form the address of ten years ago — the material of which became food for the white ants of Bengal, but the moral of which had been previously incorporated into my mental constitution — will be to me an invaluable boon. " I am grieved to say that I had a pre-engage- ment for breakfast on Thursday morning, of such a nature that I cannot suspend it. But, if possible, I shall endeavour to call on you between ten and eleven o'clock, a.m. I cannot express the gratification, the comfort, the invigoration of spirit which I have ex- perienced in the very prospect of your giving me a parting address on Thursday, for to you I feel more indebted, as an instrument in the hands of God, for the impulse that carried me to heathen lands, than to any other in the form of mere man. "With grateful, aff'ectionate regards, " Alexandee Duff." ^t. 33. ANGLO-INDIAN PARTINGS. 2>^^7 Dr. Duff preached his farewell sermon to his own people, in the Moulin parish kirk of his childhood, from the text, " Finally, brethren, farewell." The services, Gaelic and English, lasted for five hours, and the crowded audience were in tears. On the subse- quent Monday evening he met with them again, and, after a short address, shook hands with the minister in the name of all the country people, who had flocked in from the vale and the hillsides of Athole. Then followed the living martyrdom of Indian exile, tlie parting of father and mother from their four children. The birth of the youngest, a boy, only a few months before, had b^en to Dr. Duff a source of new joy and strength at a time of depression. Parents and children were not to meet again for eleven long years. CHAPTER XIIX 1839-1840. EOYPT.SINAL—BOMBAY.—MABBAS. "Wagliom and the Overland Route. — Dr. Duff as a Traveller. — Har- ■wicli to Civita Veccliia with Cardinal Wiseman. — The Light Wines of France. — Syra. — Alexandria. — Muhammad Ali and the Church of St. Mark. — The Pyramids and Memphis. — Dr. Duff on the Pasha's Misgovernment of Egypt. — Interviewwith the Coptic Patriarch. — Caravan to Suez and an Indian of the old School. — Dr. Duff goes alone to Sinai. — Justinian's Convent of St. Catha- rine.— Greek and Hindostanee. — A Christian Sabbath on the Mount of Moses. — Letter to his Daughter. — Suez. — Bombay. — Meeting vrith Wilson and I^esbit. — The Differing Conditions of Western and Eastern India as Missionary Fields. — Comparative Backwardness of English Education in Bombay. — The Scottish Missions and Missionaries there. — Round Cape Comorin to Madras — A Night with Samuel Hebich at Manga;lore. — The Scottish Mission iu Madras. — A Cyclone at the mouth of the Hooghly. — Calcutta again. The Overland Route, a ptrase which has ceased to have any but a historical meaning since the opening of the Suez Canal, had just been made a fact when, in the autumn of 1839, Dr. and Mrs. Duff went forth to India for the second time. On the ordinary roll of the English martyrs of science the name of Thomas Waghorn is not to be found. It has been left to the French to do justice to the memory of the man who, amid obstruction, obloquy and injustice ending in a pauper's death, first opened the British overland route to India in 1830. When M. Ferdinand de Lesseps created the consequent of that by cutting the canal ^t. iZ. LIEUTENANT WAGHORN AND THE SUEZ CANAL. 3S9 between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean in 1870,* his first act was to erect, at the Ked Sea entrance, a co- lossal bust of Waghorn on a marble pedestal, with bas- relief of the explorer on a camel surveying the desert, and this inscription : " La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez au Lieutenant Waghorn." We have never passed that statue without a sense of shame — and of gratitude to the genius of the catholic Frenchman. In 1830, the quondam midshipman of the Qavy, who had become a Bengal pilot, sailed down the Red Sea in an open boat with despatches from Lord EUenborough to Sir John Malcolm. He took four months and twenty-one days to make the journey from London to Bombay, because all the authorities except Lord William Bentinck scouted him as a mono- maniac ; yet he beat the Cape ships of the time, and his voyage was pronounced *' extraordinarily rapid." For ten years thereafter he wasted his life and his means of living in attempting to convince the Company, which snubbed the Governor-General for sending the Hugh Lindsay steamer to Suez in a month ; and to conciliate the king's Government, which sent Colonel Chesney to discover a short way by the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. The bluff English sailor triumphed, but only to see all the fruits of his victory snatched by the Government which had scorned him, and for very shame at last threw him a miserable pension which was at once seized by his creditors. Thomas Wag- * In the eight years endiug 1878, the number of vessels which have passed through the Suez Canal has been 10,988, yielding eight millions sterling in dues. Of these vessels 8,007 were British, which paid six millions sterling out of the eight. In the last year, 1878, of 96,303 passengers who passed through the Canal in 1,593 ships with a measurement of 3,209,178 tons, besides the many who crossed the isthmus by railway, 28,339 were British soldiers and 14,775 Anglo-Indians, or 43,114 in all. 390 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1839. horn died in the misery of debt, while the Peninsular and Oriental Company sent its first steamers, in 1843, along the path he had persistently tracked out. To complete the scandal, not seven years have passed since his aged sisters were driven to ask the public for support, while the Government which had so ruined their brother raised a revenue of fifty millions sterling a year from India and paid nearly half a million in subsidies for the postal traffic on his overland route. So it is that the Latin poet's experience is still true — "Sic vos non vobis." The bees of humanity make honey, but not for themselves. When Dr. Duff resolved to return to India by what was, in 1839, still Waghorn's overland route, he knew the story of the heroic pioneer so far, and he resolved to run the risk. "A man above the common for activity, energy and enterprise ! " was his admiring exclamation then, before the eager life had been-made a miserable tragedy by an ignorant country and an ungrateful Government. Hotels in Egypt, swift horse vans instead of camels in the desert, and a steamer with cabin accommodation for twelve passengers, were the marvellous facilities supplied by this national benefactor in such circumstances. Thus he had con- verted the nearly five months of 1830 into the month and a half of 1839 between London and Bombay, just as he pointed the road to the present reduction of the time to sixteen days. Dr. Duff had to find his way first to Bombay, at the request both of Dr. Wilson and the Kirk's committee, that he might comfort and counsel his colleagues there after the keen excitement caused by the baptism of the first two converts from Parseeism. His most rapid course thus lay from Harwich to Antwerp and Brussels, south by Paris to Marseilles, and thence by steamer to Syra, there to join the mail steamer from Constantinople to Alexandria. ^t. S3- WITH CARDINAL WISEMAN. 391 As a traveller Dr. Duff always showed more tlian the apparent restlessness of the Anglo-Indian. By reading and conversation with those who had gone over his route, he prepared himself for the intelligent enjoy- ment of new lands and peoples. To the ardour of the boy he added the endurance of manhood and the broad culture of the genial student. Nothing sacred or secular escaped his observation, but his letters, while they delighted those who were less travelled, fell far short of his conversation, under the occasional stimulus of cross-examination. Then his talk was at its best, whether he told of the political condition of a country like Italy, of the benevolent enterprises of the Protes- tants of France and Switzerland, or of the numerous mishaps of a tour in the wilds of Scandinavia. We may pass rapidly over the European portion of his outward journey. At dinner in the Harwich steamer he was attracted by the remarkable intelli- gence of an English gentleman, on his left-hand, who showed unusual familiarity with the literary and scientific questions of the day. They parted on land- ing at Antwerp, when, on visiting the great cathedral to see the master-pieces of Rubens, he observed his new acquaintance bent almost prostrate before an image of the Virgin. He then discovered that the attractive talker was Dr. Wiseman, already known as a Syriac scholar and fresh from his controversy with Dr. Turton in that eucharistic branch of the Tractarian movement from which he expected even greater fruit than Rome has gathered. Dr. Wiseman was on his way to Rome, where he had been rector of the English College, and was about, as bishop, to take the first step to the coveted position of the seventh cardinal whom England had seen since the Reformation. At Antwerp Dr. Duff observed the traces of the wealth created by the flow of the trade from India along the 392 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1839. earliest overland route — by Solomon's cities in the desert, tlie Danube and the Rhine to the Dutch East India Company's docks. In Brussels, " so strangely mixed up with the intricate web of British history," and still more in Paris, he marked " the combined idolatry of sense and intellect " which more than ever attracts worshippers from every land. As he went on to Chalons-sur-Saone, Melun recalled Abelard to him. The wealth of the wine country through which he was slowly driven suggested such reflections as these, of even more significance to our own time than they were forty years ago : — " In these countries, mantled with vineyards, one cannot help learning the true intent and use of the vine in the scheme of Providence. In our own land wine has become so exclusively a mere luxury, or, what is worse, by a species of manufacture, an intoxi- cating beverage, that many have wondered how the Bible so often speaks of wine in conjunction with corn and other such staple supports of animal life ! Now, in passing through the vineyards in the east of France, one must at once perceive that the vine greatly flourishes on slopes and heights where the soil is too poor and gravelly to maintain either corn for food or pasturage for cattle. But what is the providential design in rendering this soil — favoured by a genial atmosphere — so productive of the vine, if its fruit become solely either an article of luxury or an instru- ment of vice ? The answer is, that Providence had no such design. Look at the peasant at his meals in vine-bearing districts ! Instead of milk he has before him a basin of the pure unadulterated ' blood of the grape.' In this, its native and original state, it is a plain, simple and wholesome liquid, which at every repast becomes to the husbandman what milk is to the shepherd, — not a luxury but a necessary, not an ^t. 33. WINES OP FRANCE. URNS OF KTUUUIA. 393 intoxicating but a nutritive beverage. Hence, to the vine-dressing peasant of Auxorro, for example, an abundant vintage, as connected with his own immedi- ate sustenance, is as important as an overflowing dairy to the pastoral peasant of Ayrshire. And hence, by such a view of the subject, are the language and the sense of Scripture vindicated from the very appearance of favouring what is merely luxurious or positively noxious, when it so constantly magnifies a well- replenished wine-press, in a rocky, mountainous country like that of Palestine, as one of the richest bounties of a gracious Providence — not to the rich or the mighty of the earth, but to man, as man, with his manifold physical wants and infirmities." The sail from Chalons down the Saone took the travellers into the heart of scenery like their own Scotland, but with a climate more congenial to the Anglo-Indian than the gloom and the grey of the cold North. Past Roman ruins and fairy-like villas, Rous- seau's valley of Rochecardon and Lyons of martyr memories, — w^here a day of refreshing intercourse was spent with the evangelical pastor, M. Cordes, — they were swept on by the rapid Rhone two hundred miles in twelve hours to papal Avignon ; thence Marseilles and its steamer were reached. On the calm bosom of the Mediterranean, the Presbyterian and very catholic missionary and the Roman Catholic Dr. "Wiseman were glad to renew their talk. The magnificence of Genoa — the first "* city of palaces ' — from the sea, with the setting sun bathing it in gold, gave place to the gentler beauty of Leghorn, framed as it were in the Western Apennines, and that to the low land and fever-stricken sw^amps of the neighbourhood of Civita Vecchia. As they coasted along the ancient Etruria, their talk was of the discovery of ancient urns in its hills. Here Dr. Wiseman was a master, and he courteously guided 394 i-i^E OP DR. DurF. 1839. his travelling companion to the nearest eminence where the treasures of ancient art had been found. At the then papal port they parted never to meet again, the English priest to his episcopal consecration and cardinal's hat in due time, the Scottish missionary to his turning upside down of the idolatries of the far East. The Marseilles steamer then called at Malta, passed within a hundred yards of the precipitous headland of Cape Matapan, and dropped anchor at Syra, the port of Europe which is nearest to India. The filth and the vice of a Levantine albeit G-reek centre contrasted painfully with the glories of Homeric and even later days. The steamer from Constantinople had Colonel Hodges, the new British Consul-General for Egypt, on board, and also the Rev. Mr. Grimshaw, rector of Bedford, and known in his day as the author of a life of Cowper the poet. On reaching Alexandria they found that the last act of the departing Consul- General, Colonel Campbell, would be to lay the founda- tion stone of the first English church, of St. Mark, which now adorns one corner of the great square. Dr. Dufi" learned that the ceremony was to be of a purely civil character, in this Muhammadan city, with its memories of Pant^enus and Clement, of Origen and Athanasius, and sought an explanation of the anomaly. Colonel Campbell was a great favourite with the enlightened Muhammad Ali, the irresponsible ruler of Egypt. Being religiously disposed, the Consul- General had felt the need of a Protestant place of worship in a city like that of Alexandria, which was daily becoming a greater thoroughfare between the West and East than it had been since the time of its founder. Though himself a Presbyterian, he did not want it to be exclusively Presbyterian : he knew that members of all Protestant Churches would often be JEt. 33. MUHAMMAD ALI AND ST. MAKK 8, ALEXiVNDiilA. 395 passing through and there be often detained for days. What ho wanted was a Protestant Church on a purely cathoHc basis, so that he might freely invite any minis- ter of any Church to conduct divine service there. He had repeatedly therefore asked his friend the Pasha for a piece of ground, outside the walls of Alexandria, on which such a church might be erected. Muhammad Ali frankly declared that personally he had no prejudice on the subject, but the religious heads of Islam at Constantinople would resist the attempt. At his farewell interview with the Consul- General, however, he said, with a smiling countenance : *' Colonel Campbell, you and I have always been fast friends. You have often greatly helped me with your counsel, and in other respects have done me good service. You know that in the East the custom is for a ruler to make his friend a present of a piece of land, commonly called 'jagheer,' to be in perpetuity his own property. I want to give you a small portion of the space occupied by the great square in Alexandria, very near its centre. It is my parting gift to you, only you must ask me no question as to what use you may make of it, as that may involve me in official trouble. But I tell you plainly, you may use it for whatever purpose you think proper." Colonel Campbell thoroughly understood the Pasha, thanked him with all his heart, and soon made over the land to a committee of the English residents as the site of the first English church. Muhammad Ali went further. He could not himself be present, but he sent his chief officers of state and his body-guard to honour his friend on the occasion of laying the foundation stone. All the consuls, all Alexandria, were to be present. How could a religious service be attempted in such circumstances ? Colonel Campbell came to see that, even in Oriental 39^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1839. eyes, the dedication of a site for the worship of God Avithout the recognition of the presence of Grod would be a scandal, or a cause of suspicion. Accordingly on the 14th December, Dr. Duff — described in the Globe newspaper of the time as " a missionary of some cele- brity in India, who happened to be present in Alexan- dria— perfo: ned the religious part of the ceremony, in which he was followed by the Rev. Mr. Grimshaw." Since that occasion Dr. Yule has raised a Scottish church near the square, and M. de Lesseps has had his canal cutting blessed by prelates of all the Eastern Churches side by side with Muhammadan Moulvies. But never before or since has the Egypt of Fatimite caliphs and Turkish pashas heard publicly read in its greatest place Solomon's dedication of the first Temple and the prayers of Protestant ministers from West and East. " It was quite remarkable to note," wrote Dr. DuflP, "the stillness, respectfulness, and earnestness with which the whole mass of surrounding Mussul- mans, only a few of whom could understand English, listened to the prayers, the reading, and addresses, and then quietly dispersed. Such was the noble catholicity of the Protestant church, as projected and practically established by Colonel Campbell." In two interviews with Muhammad Ali thereafter, Dr. Dufi* pressed upon the Pasha the importance, for industrial as well as other reasons, of attracting the Jews back to Palestine, for the Pasha was at the time master of that part of Syria. By dahahieh up the Mahmoodieh canal, excavated in 1820 by cruelly forced labour, and slowly up the Hooghly-like Nile of the Delta, Cairo was reached, only to find that there were sixty passengers to fill the twelve berths of the small steamer to Bombay. This gave Dr. Duff a whole month, in which he not only visited the pyramids of Geezeh and Sakkara, and explored yKt. S3- MUIIA.MMADAX MISlJULK IX KOYPT. 397. Mempliis from the ancient cemetery, of winch Sit* G. Wilkinson's Arabs were busily laying bare the mummy pits, but carefully studied the condition of the unhappy fellaheen of Egypt, and afterwards went to Mount Sinai. Familiar with Bengal and with the British financial and administrative systems, the far- seeing missionary formed impressions regarding the rule of Muhammad Ali very different from those which were popular at the time, but too sadly confirmed by the subsequent history of Egypt to the present hour. Indeed, having many times passed through the land, from the days of the vans in the desert to those of the canal steamer and the new railway, we can find no more correct description of Egypt as it was than that of the Bengal missionary in 1839, and no more faithful account of Egypt as it is than that of the Bengal Lieutenant-Governor, Sir George Campbell. The one unconsciously confirms the other. Both independently show the hopelessness of Mussulman rule under the very best conditions. After an eloquent description of Cairo, full of the life and colour of the confused oriental scene which Parisian taste has now covered but not cleansed, and the exposure of a great magician whose spiritist arts made him the talk of the East, Dr. Duff wrote in the Calcutta Christian Observer of 1840, that the hope of a revival of Egypt under the new Pasha was a delusion. " That the Pasha is one of the most extraordinary men of his age — a man of uncommon talent and energy of character ; a man, too, capable of being- courteous and affable in the extreme — is universally conceded. But that he is, in any sense, the real friend or regenerator of Egypt, is belied by every one of his actions. Self, self, self, is with him the all in all. Personal fame, personal power, and personal aggran- 39^ LIFE OP DK, DUFF. 1840. dizement, circumscribe the entire horizon of his policy. On the details of his well-known history it is needless to dwell. Born of a humble parentage at Cavallo in Albania, in 1769, he for some time acted as an assistant collector of taxes, and afterwards as a to- bacco merchant. Having been twice admitted to his immediate presence, it wonderfully struck us that his whole appearance still pointed very significantly to the lowliness of his origin. Of middle stature, inclined to corpulency rather than corpulent, he exhibited in his countenance nought of real greatness, dignity, or command. Indeed, the entire expression of it was decidedly of a sharp, harsh, and vulgar cast ; its chief redeeming quality being its venerable beard. But those eyes — were they not striking ? Yea, verily ; such a pair of flashing eyes we never saw. It seemed as if their possessor could penetrate through one's bodily frame, and at a single glance read the most secret thoug^hts and intents of the heart. Still it was not the piercing glance of a profound intelligence which mainly lightened through these eyes : it was rather the vivid flash of a tiger-like ferocity. Hence, doubtless, his favourite oath, when bent on some deed of more than ordinary horror, ' By my eyes ! ' When he spoke, his voice had a peculiar shrillness which made one feel uneasy ; and when he smiled, his very smile had somewhat in it of a savage grin." Dr. Duff showed in detail, in agriculture, in manu- factures, in public works, in commerce, in military discipline, and in the aggravated horrors of the slave- trade, that all the changes amounted to neither a reform nor a regeneration, but to the oriental art of squeezing the peasantry that the ruler might have a full treasury and a ruthless army. The solitary printing-press and polytechnic school were " in point of fact, as much the mere instrument of an all-absorb- ^t. 34. DEGENERACY OF TnE COPTIC CHURCH. 399 iug despotism as the drill ground, the cannon foundry or the powder mill." Then, as all through the debasing history of his house, while it is true that Muhammad Ali and his successors have been capable of occasional acts of generosity, the remark of their French panegyrist sums up the truth : — " The traveller sees with astonishment the richness of the harvests contrasted with the wretched state of the villajres. If there is no country more abundant in its territorial productions, there is none, perhaps, whose inhabitants on the whole are more miserable." Forty years of that misery have slowly passed, handing it on in an intensified form to a new generation, from whom Christian bond-holders still demand the pound of flesh, while the Western Powers are foiled in the attempt to keep the fellaheen quiet, only, let us hope, to hasten the day of their deliverance. Dr. Duff could not be in Egypt without studying the most degraded of all Christian churches except its Abyssinian offshoot, the Coptic. Yery tender is the sympathy, very eager the hope, which he expresses in its case. Then the only missionaries in all Egypt were Messrs. Lieder andKruse, the former and his wife long the benefactors of its people, and the friends of all Christian travellers who sought them out. Now American Presbyterians like Dr. Lansing, as well as others, have done in Cairo, and from Ramleh to the equator, the same work among Copts and Arabs that Dr. DujBf had been doing among Hindoos and Muliam- madans. " Roused by recollections of faded glory, we felt moved with a burning desire to know how life could be rebreathed into the shrivelled skeleton of so fruitful and so noble a mother of churches," wrote Dr. Duff. The Patriarch, professing to be the apostolic successor of St. Mark, had been conveyed from his convent to the chair of the Evangelist by 400 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. . 1840. the soldiery of the Pasha for consecration ! Dr. Duff sought an interview with him, that he might urge the gradual establishment of a college like that in Calcutta — a scheme since most successfully carried out by the Americans. He and Mr. Grimshaw were conducted to the audience chamber by the Bishop of Jerusalem. " There the Patriarch, a dark-complexioned, venerable old man clad in his pontificals, was seated in oriental style to receive us. Having explained the anti-popish character of the doctrines of the Churches of England and of Scotland as well as of other Protestant denomi- nations, and having referred at some length to the original prosperity and subsequent decline and per- secution of the Church of Egypt, we expressed , our deep regret at the obscuration of their light, our sympathy for their past and present sufferings, and our earnest concern for their restoration to more than primitive excellence. The Patriarch admitted that many grievous errors had formerly crept in ; that much deadnoss still continued to benumb, and much darkness to overshadow them ; and that there was need for the infusion of new life and new light. When, in making this admission, he pointedly referred to the sufferings of their martyred fathers, he seemed greatly moved, and melted into tears. What then was to be done towards a revival and a re-illumination? Might not, it was asked, might not the Bible be freely circulated, not in the Coptic, which was a dead lan- guage studied by few, but in the Arabic, which, read by numbers, was understood and spoken by all ? Without qualification or reserve the Patriarch de- clared that it might; adding, with emphasis, that whatever else might be alleged against his Church, this at least had never ceased to be one of its distin- guishing characteristics, viz., that the Bible should ba ^t. 34. HIS SCHEME FOR REVIVING THE COPTIC CHURCH. 4OI held as the ultimate standard of appeal in articles of faith ; and that to it, through any intelligible medium, the laity and the priest should, all alike, have the right of unrestricted access. Again, it was asked whether, in order to aid in reviving and diffusing a knowledge of Christian doctrine, tracts or small books in the form of extracts or selections from the. most celebrated fathers of the Alexandrian school, who are still regarded with profoundest veneration by the Copts themselves, might not be compiled, trans- hited, and distributed among the people, or introduced into seminaries of education ? Without hesitation the Patriarch — smiling with evident delight at our respect- ful recognition of names which have reflected honour on the Christian Church — replied, that there could be no possible objection to such a measure, yea, that he would consider such tracts and books an invaluable boon. The subject of raising or rather new-creating a standard of instruction for the clergy next occupied the main part of conversation. Not to arouse the fears and suspicions of an ignorance so profound, not to tear up by the roots a plant so sapless and feeble by sudden stretches of innovation, it was asked in the first instance, whether a seminary might not be established in which candidates for the ministry could pass through a systematic course of theological tuition, making the Bible itself the great text-book, and selections from the most venerated of the fathers important auxiliaries, superadding, with a view to the expansion of the mind by an enlargement of the range of ideas, a course of instruction in geography and general history, ancient and modern, placing the whole system under the patronage and supervision of a committee composed of the Patriarch himself and other leading members of the Coptic community, to- gether with the English missionaries, and entrusting D D 402 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1840. the latter with the entire practical and professorial duties of the proposed institution ? After much initial explanation, the Patriarch eventually signified his own acquiescence in some such scheme. He accordingly announced his consent and sanction that Mr. Lieder should forthwith prepare in writing a well digested syllabus of the projected plan, to be submitted form- ally to himself and his council of bishops and presby- ters for their united approval and ratification; and that, when approved of and ratified, an authenticated copy thereof, signed by the Patriarch and sealed with the patriarchal signet, should be furnished to the missionaries, to be by them forwarded for the satis- faction of the British Churches, with a view to secure and guarantee their countenance and support. After replying to many other questions relative to the present doctrines, discipline and ceremonial of his Church ; and after thanking us for the interest which had been manifested in its re-invigoration and pros- perity, the Patriarch rose up and solemnly pronounced his benediction, subjoining, with tearful eyes and quivering lips which betrayed deep emotion, the simple but devout aspiration : ' If we should never meet again in time, my prayer is, tharfc we may meet in heaven, before the throne of our common Lord and Saviour.' " For the expedition from Cairo to the peninsula of Sinai a party of five Enghsli gentlemen offered to join Dr. Duff. At Alexandria he had engaged an assistant at the British Consulate, who was master of the popular Arabic. The sheikh of the tribes of the Sinai range, happening to be in Cairo, was secured as guide of the caravan, Mr. Lieder making the necessary con- tract. Bach of the six travellers had three camels, for himself, for the tent and for the provisions. One was a Madras civilian, whose ideas of comfort in ^t. 34. AN OLD INDIAN IN THE DESERT. 403 the desert proved to be those of the most luxurious nawab tliat Theodore Hook or Thackeray ever satir- ised. The route was the most southerly, from old Memphis to Jebol Attaka, believed by the scholars of that day to have been the line of the Exodus, just as the latest scholar, Brugsch Bey,* would now send tlio Israelites north through the Serbonian bog. Before sunrise on the morniug after the first encampment in the desert, when all were up for a frugal breakfast and early start, the nawab was heard shouting for his gridiron, and then for chops. He was pacified with difficulty, but only to call an early halt for * tiffin,' or luncheon, in the blazing sun. Next day a sandstorm threatened to engulf the whole party, and the unhappy gourmand demanded to be led back to the joys of the Waghorn hotel in Cairo. He was forced to proceed, but his troubles were not yet at an end. On the following morniug, after the misery of the sand, he called for water. Dr. Duff's description of the scene used to be most amusinsf. " For what purpose?" ** Why," said the nawab, "to have a bath, for this state of things is simply intolerable." His associates tried to persuade him that it was vain to expect water for such a purpose. Then it was that he coolly asked for one or more of the hogskins in which water for culinary purposes was carried, though, as the skins had not been sufficiently tanned, the water by that time had got the colour of London porter ! Yet being the only water available for necessary uses, no part of it could be given up for the luxury of a bath. The civilian was still unsatisfied, and could not be quieted. At last it occurred to some one to call the sheikh. The look of the Arab was one of perfect * A History of Egypt tinder the Pharaohs derived enlirclij from the Momiments. By Henry Brugsch Bey. 1879. 404 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1840. astonislimeub. He ejed the Sybarite from liead to foot as if liis eyes would penetrate his very body. At last when the explanation was fully given, the sheikh, instead of a formal reply, looked somewhat con- temptuously at the gentleman, put both his hands down into the deep sand, took up a handful, rubbed his fingers with it, and looking steadfastly at the Englishman, said with great emphasis : *' That, sir, is the water of the desert!" The result was that, from Suez, Dr. Duff alone went on to Sinai, while his companions returned to Cairo, not however without having exacted from the sheikh a new pledge, drawn up by the English vice-consul then just established at Suez, to bring back in safety the foolhardy missionary ! The silence of the desert of Sinai for the next fort- night proved a time of refreshing to the spirit of the solitary traveller, as he passed from the toils of the West to the labours about to be renewed in India. Bible in hand, he rode day by day along the track of the children of Israel, as they had marched, noting the wells, the palm-trees, the acacias, the camel tracks, and the desert landscape. As he left the Eed Sea for the great plain at the foot of the Mount of the Law, he followed the eastern central route and returned by the south-western, that he might cover as much ground as possible. It was evening when he came to the outer border of the great platform of the wilderness of sandy rock. The rays of the setting sun fell slantingly on the stupendous masses of grey granite which form the Sinai range, as it stretches for forty or fifty miles along the sea and rises to a height of between 8,000 and 9,000 feet. To his imagination the sight was that of a mighty fortress on fire, of blazing battlements and flashing towers. On the morrow at sunrise, while the ground w^s still bound by frost, the disintegrated granite seemed a mass of orient pearl and gold, and Mt. 34. APPROACni-NG THE MOUNT OF MOSES. 405 the plain looked as if strewed with the manna from heaven, which melted away as the sun rose in the sky. k:5iiice that time many a scientific explorer and, finally, the Ordnance Survey have revealed the physical appearances of the wilderness of the wander- ings, only to leave the question of the actual peak from which God talked with Moses as unsettled as ever. Dr. Duff's experiences, as often told to his chiklren and grandcliildren down to his last years, have an interest of their own. The broad valley running along the north side, opposite the eastern portion of the Sinai range, is the Wady es-Sheikh. The wady runs eastward for some distance, then turning to the south it enters the centre of the great range, and proceeds westward to the foot of Jebel Musa, the traditional Mount Sinai.* This undoubtedly. Dr. Duff used to say, is the route that would be pursued by any great caravan or large company of travellers, and more particularly by such a host as that of Israel. From the central point in the Wady es-Sheikh there is a pass which rises on the riofht to a considerable elevation, and runs strai<2:ht to Jebel Musa. Following this, Dr. Duff was struck by the appearance of the precipitous mountains on both sides. It really looked as if the mount some time or other had been cleft asunder. As he as- cended, the mountain air became exhilarating in a way scarcely to be conceived. When the summit of the pass was reached, a lofty, perpendicular conical- looking mountain suddenly rose up some miles in front. Immediately the whole of the Arabs dis- mounted and began to shout out, " Jebel Musa," * Dean Stanley's map of the traditional Sinai, in his Sinai and Palestine (1860), best illustrates Di\ Dufi's experience in 1840, and Dr. Wilson's in 1843. 406 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1840. " Jebel Miisa," " Jebel Musa," showing tlie veneration they had for the mountain. Then the traveller entered on a very remarkable gently sloping plain, the slope being downwards to the foot of the mountain, but the surface as smooth as if it had been artificially pre- pared. Here was a plain quite capable of holding the entire encampment of the Israelites, for it should never be forgotten that their ordinary tentage must have occupied very little space, somewhat like that of the Arabs now. This plain seemed a gigantic nest in the centre of the mountains, for all round on every side it was bordered by craggy precipices. The soli- tude was profound, reminding him of the perfect stillness of a well-kept Scottish Sabbath. Proceed- ing onwards he reached the base of a high peak. Here the first thing which astonished him was the literal truth of the Scripture passage which speaks of the mountain that might be touched, and, when the law was given with such awful solemnity from its summit, declares how means were used to prevent the people from touching it. As a native of the Gram- pians, he had been wont from infancy to gaze at and climb mountains. Then when he read this in the Bible about Mount Sinai, he wondered what it meant ; for if any one had told him, as a youth, of any Scottish or Grampian mountain that it might be touched, or that means might be taken to prevent its being touched, he would at once have inquired — for instance of Schehallion, Ben Lawers, or Ben-y-gloe — "Where is the beginning of the mountain?" Now when he saw Mount Sinai itself, the literal truth of the whole description flashed upon him. A mile or two up the wady, on the east side of the mountain, is the celebrated convent, Justinian's St. Catharine. He had left Suez on Monday morning, and it was Saturday forenoon when he reached the Mi. 34. IN ST. CATHARINE S CONVENT. 407 convent. The stately building is an irregular fortress, with apparently no entrance into it. For the sake of protection from the Arabs it is surrounded by a massive wall, forty feet high. In the centre of the eastern wall was a cupola, with a windlass inside ; the ordinary rule was, when strangers appeared there, to let down a bag to receive any communication, from parties known to the superior, who might accredit their character and position. When Dr. Duff loft Cairo there were six who intended to visit the convent, and they got from the Greek Patriarch the requisite order. But here was only one traveller. The superior demanded an explanation from the sheikh. On that Dr. DufF was hoisted up into the convent, and was fairly installed as a guest in all that is left of what was once the great episcopal city of Paran, and a mountain of Greek hermitages to which pilgrims flocked from all parts of the Christian East. How to communicate intelligibly witli the superior and the monks was the Indian missionary's first diffi- culty. They were ignorant of Latin, but their first evening service, followed by a reading of the Gospels, suggested to Dr. DufF that he should try Greek. After he had been taken round the traditional siofhts of the convent, including the legendary site of the burning bush, he visited the superior, who was walking on the terrace. Having heard of the convent garden, every inch of the soil of which had been carried from Egypt on camel-back. Dr. Duff said to him, " You have a garden," using the word paradeisos. To him, examining the little spot, the superior said, " You are going to India," as the Patriarch's certificate stated. " Yes," said Dr. Duff, " I am returning to it." " Do you speak the Indian language, then?" " In India," Dr. Duff replied, " there are many languages." On this the superior sent for a monk who had spent 408 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1840. several years in India, and tlie man came into his presence exclaiming, "Baliout, baliont salaam, Sabeb," The familiar Hindostanee thenceforth became his medium of communication. The old monk was a Russian by birth. As a pedlar he had worked his way through the great Khanates of Central Asia and Afghanistan to the Punjab, and thence had gone as far as Calcutta, where he had resided for some time. Such wanderings are still not unusual on the part of semi-Eastern races at a low stage of civilization like the Russians, and of our own hardy Muhammadan and Sikh merchants. Sikhs and Hindoos of Western India have been settled in St. Petersburg ; there are traces of them in the marts along the Danube, and we have met them in recent years at the Nijni Novgorod fair on the Volga. Not long ago the Government of India was sorely puzzled to find heirs in the Punjab for the enormous fortune left by a villager who had thus found his way to wealth in the Nevski Prospekt. Having set his heart on climbing to the top of the Mount of Moses before the sun rose on the coming Sabbath, Dr. Duff persuaded his new friend, in spite of all dissuasions, to call him in time and give him a younger guide with food that he might there spend the day of rest and worship. Excited by the prospect he could not sleep, any more than Tischendorf when, four years after this, that scholar spent Whitsun morn on the peak of Jebel Musa, during the memorable visit when his casual discovery of forty-three leaves of the Septuagint among the waste paper intended for the oven of the convent, led to his discovery of the only complete Uncial MS. of the Bible. Descend- ing from St. Catharine, which the Ordnance Survey places at an elevation of 5,020 feet, while Jebel Musa rises to 7,359, the impetuous missionary mounted up- wards with a speed that alarmed his guide. The .^t. 34. ON THE TOP OF MOUNT SINAI. 409 summit was reached just before the sun's first rays heralded his approach, always rapid in the south, and the sky was clear without a cloud. Dr. Duff's heart was filled with gratitude to God for the favour with which He had thus visited him. While the monk vainly displayed the contents of his wallet, the travel- ler was gazing at the first red ray of light which shot and then streamed over the whole range, turning its peaks for the moment into a succession of glowing furnaces. Then rose the glorious luminary of day in all the fulness of its majesty, calling out from the dark waste of mountains the infinite variety of tints and colours. There he penned this letter to his daughter, one of twelve which he wrote to dear friends in Scotland from the same spot : — " Top of Mount Sinai, *' Sabbath Morning, 12th January, 1840. " My Deaeest R , — Did you ever expect to get a letter from papa dated ^ Mount Sinai^ ? — a letter written on the very top of that extraordinary moun- tain on which Jehovah once came down, amid thun- derings and lightnings, so that the thousands of Israel were affrighted, and Moses himself exceedingly quaked ! And yet so it is. Here I am on a Sabbath morning, on the 12th January, about sunrise — when perhaps you and your sister and brothers are scarcely out of bed. And amid all the wonders of that most indescribable scene around me I have not forgotten my dear children, or the guardian friends that surround them. Yes, this very moment I have finished reading aloud the 19th and 20th chapters of Exodus, — but oh in what a different voice from that in which they were uttered upwards of three thousand years ago ; and have just now risen from the naked granite peak, on which I knelt to implore the Lord for a blessing — to 4IO LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1840. pray that the law miglit be my schoolmaster to brmg me to Christ ; and iu my prayer, rest assured that you and sister, brothers and other friends, were not forgotten. No ; the remembrance of you all has been sweet to me. May the Lord lead and guide you, in grace and in truth, to know and to do His holy will! " I left Cairo in company with some gentlemen for Sinai. We followed the route of the children of Israel as recorded in Exodus, through Succoth, Etham, Pihahiroth to the Red Sea — to the memorable spot where Jehovah divided the waters of the great deep to afford a safe passage to His chosen people. We could not cross on dry ground, so we travelled north- ward to Suez, where my companions, from fatigue or faint-heartedness in traversing the desert, resolved to proceed no farther. So, in the society of an Arab sheikh, or chief of a tribe, and a few Arabs, with camels, etc., I advanced alone along the eastern border of the Red Sea into the 'great and terrible wilderness ;* passed the bitter fountain of Marah — whose waters I tasted and found as bitter and un drinkable as ever ; passed Elim, where there are still wells and palm- trees ; came to the spot where the Israelites next encamped by the sea shore, and so on to the base and top of Sinai, where I now am. " But you may say, ' What, papa, climb a mountain on Sabbath !' Yes, my dear; think for a moment. In Edinburgh, where there is a church, it would be wrong not to go there to worship with the rest of God's people. But here there is no church — no church within hundreds of miles, in which I could worship. Now you know that God is 'not confined to temples made with hands.' He is a Spirit, and is to be wor- shipped in spirit and in truth. He is everywhere to be found, and may everywhere be worshipped. Our Mt. 34. SlNAI AND CALVARY. 4 I I Saviour often went apart to a mountain to pray; so this morning I retired to tlie summit of Sinai to hold communion with my Grod, and to remember in prayer those that are dear to me. I never had such a church before; for this is the church wliere Jehovah Himself proclaimed the law to the thousands of Israel. And the very rocks now surround me that quaked and shook at that mighty voice. Oh may we all find refuge from the thunders of Sinai beneath the shadow of the Cross of Calvary ! " This is a solemn spot ! This is a solemn day ! And never in my life did I before read the fourth commandment with such peculiar emotion ! ' Re- member the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.' I hope, my dear children, that you strive to obey this and other commands of the Lord. Attend submissively to the instructions of those who are over you; pray that God Himself, by His Spirit, may make you more able to obey. . . Your affectionate papa, "Alexander Duff." Several times during that memorable day did Dr. Duff read aloud, amid the awful silence of the mount, the Ten Commandments. To him the desolation and the barrenness around marked the blighting influences of sin, the hopeless state of man under the law which condemns. In desire he turned to the mount in Jeru- salem where the great Sacrifice for sin was offered, and heaven was opened for the Pentecostal effusion which is yet to bless the whole earth. " The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," the words he had first joined the monks of St. Catharine in reading, rang in his ears as his guide took him to the legendary spots where since Justinian's days it had been taught that Jehovah passed by re- vealing the skirts of His glory, while farther on the 412 LIFE OP DJa. DUFF. 1 840. Arabs stow the footprint of MuTiammad's dromedary on the night-journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. Like every traveller before and since, down to the purely scientific members of the Ordnance Survey, Dr. Duff returned from his fortnight's study of the natural features of the peninsula of Sinai strengthened in his conviction of the truth of Holy Scripture. He was invigorated by the air of the desert at that season. His only mishap was his being thrown from a camel and stunned for a time. The little Bombay steamer arrived at Suez the morning after his return, with the news, then as now eagerly looked for, of the progress of an evil policy in Afghanistan. Sir John Keane had marched up the Bolan Pass to the capture of Kandahar and Ghuznee, where the young lieutenant of Engineers who had forced the gate was his old companion, Durand. But till he learned this Dr. Duff had doubted whether there might be a British India to go to, so fatal did the policy which sacrificed Dost Muhammad seem to all, save to the council of Lord Auckland, and the Cabinet in which Lord Palmerston was the foreign secretary and Sir J. C. Hobhouse president of the Board of Control. But there was a practical question of more importance for the moment — how to secure a passage. Dr. Duff happened to be the first to meet the purser, who advised him to go to the ofiice at once and pay his money. This the missionary refused to do because the day was the Sabbath. Had not the purser re- spected his conscientiousness, and himself secretly become responsible for the passage-money. Dr. and Mrs. Dufi" would have been left in Egypt for another month. " I have secured for you the best cabin," said the purser, " next to that occupied by the Commander- in-Chief." When early in February, 1840, the Suez steamer ^t. 34. WITH DR. WILSON IN BOMBAY. 413 entered the harbour of Bombay, Dr. Wilson was wait- ing to receive Dr. and Mrs. DiifF, wliom he at once installed in what was then the centre of all his operations, the mission-house of Ambrolie. The two missionaries to Western and Eastern India, from the Scottish border and the Grampian highlands, from the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews respec- tively, met for the first time. Robert Nesbit, too, was there, and Dr. Murray Mitchell who had not long be- fore arrived from Aberdeen. All were still young men : Wilson was just thirty-six, and Duff was nearly thirty- four years of age. Their experience of India had not been the same, for they had been separated by distance, by race, by language, and even by social differences more widely than France from Russia. Like a bracing wind from the north. Dr. Duff brought with him all the news of national and ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland, — of the widening gap in the Kirk, of the work of Chalmers and the toil of Welsh, of the devotion of Gordon and, on the other side, of the kindly zeal of Brunton ; of the coming men like Guthrie and Candlish, some of whom he had vainly summoned to higher work in the East ; of the missionary spirit of presby- teries and congregations all over Scotland, soon to be checked for a time by internal disruption, but only to burst forth in home and colonial and educational movements as well as foreign missions, along the lines first marked out, as Dr. Chalmers had said, by Duff" himself. Nor was the talk only of Scotland, for the Calcutta missionary had visited Bombay to consult about that new mission from the Presbyterian Church of Ireland to which he had given a mighty impetus after Wilson had invited it to the Krishna-desolated lands of Kathiawar. Dr. Duff embodied his month's experience of Bom- bay and Poona in a long letter which his Church 414 I'l^E OF DR. DUFF. * 1840. published as a complete narrative of travel. The pamphlet of thirty-six pages forms an artistic picture of Western India, its physical aspects, its varied races, its different civilizations existing harmoniously side by side under the shadow of the Christian Government, its proselytising and other benevolent agencies, and especially its Scottish mission and missionaries. The report, written as he doubled Cape Comorin on the way to Madras and Calcutta, has a peculiar value from the contrast which it suggests rather than works out between the conditions of Western and Eastern India as fields for the agencies of Christian philanthropy. The reproach is often too well founded that, amid the vastness and variety of India and its peoples, the foreign resident becomes so enamoured of his own presidency or province as to do injustice to the others of which he is more ignorant. Hence the conflicting statements and opposing evidence of officials and settlers who have been twenty years in India and speak " the language." Like even the greatest philo- sophers, they are wrong only in what they deny, while more or less right in what they assert. Of this weak- ness there is little trace in Dr. Duff's report. He was too well travelled, too scrupulously fair for that. A quarter of a century after his visit we found his representations proportionately true as between the natives of the more imperial and superstitious Bengal and those of the less caste-bound and more commercial Bombay. In Western India the small community of Parsees, free from caste and aggressive in their progress as having been long oppressed, formed a more remarkable element of the population in 1840 than, since the commercial development caused by the United States civil war, has since been, relatively, the case. The settlement of the land revenue in leases directly be- JEt 34- BOMBAY CONTKASTED WITH BENGAL. 415 tv/een the Bombay Government and the cultivator, and the lapse of rent-free tenures, did not foster the creation of such a body of zemindars, or great and generally absentee landed proprietors, as those who crowd native Calcutta. The temporary nature of the Bombay tenure has further proved fatal to the growth of prosperity and of thrift, and has developed the shocking agrarian demoralisation revealed by the Deccan Riots Commission. Had the land revenue settlement of Bombay only been made permanent with the cultivators, it would have created prosperous and loyal millions of peasant proprietors, able to withstand famine, free to attend to and value education and Christianity, and enabled in time to yield in indirect taxation far more than the periodically increased land- tax which now keeps them on the margin of starvation. On the other hand, the mistake was made in Lower Bengal of applying the financially sound and equitable principle of permanence of tenure not to the cultivators but to their lords, some hereditary and some mere tax- collectors, from whose exactions moreover they were not protected till 1859, when it was too late to alter society. The knowledge of the revenue officials of India has never been equal to their benevolence. Hence, for want of a Von Stein, the British Govern- ment, with the best intentions, has created and is periodically intensifying the only serious danger to the stability of its rule and to the self-developing growth of civilization. This did not escape Dr. Duff's eye when he wrote of the main bulk of the inhabitants of Bombay, the Hindoos : — "As the ryotwaree system pre- vails— that which regards the ryot, the actual cultivator of the soil, as having a possessory right therein, and as directly amenable to all the fiscal and other regulations of Government — there is no large and powerful body of landed proprietors, corresponding to the zemindars 41 6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1840. oE Bengal. From these and other causes united, there is a very marked difference indeed in the outward temporal circumstances of Hindoo society in Bombay and in Calcutta. Most of the avenues to worldly eminence being blocked up or preoccupied by enter- prising strangers, and most of the impellant motives to great secular exertion being cut off, the Hindoo community of Bombay seems stricken with a languor and apathy, a poverty and mediocrity, a diminutive weight and injfluence, a want of general activity or zeal for improvement, which form a perfect contrast to the wealth, and power, and splendour, the liveliness, and energy, and restless spirit of temporal ameliora- tion, which characterize the great Hindoo merchants, bankers, zemindars, and rajas of Calcutta." Since that was written, trade and cotton manufacture have attracted the acute intellect of the Maratha Brahmans and the keen capital-hunting scent of the Groojarat Jains. But this is still true, to some extent, of the effect produced on public instruction by such con- ditions. Dr, Duff is describing his visit to the Govern- ment Elphinstone College and schools : — "In the schools there are at present about 500 pupils ; in the college about a dozen. In passing through the different classes it was impossible not to be struck with the sparkling intelli- gence in the countenances of the youth. Yet none of the more advanced have begun to exhibit that freedom from prejudice, and that fearlessness of inquiry, which ^ ten years ago, youth of somewhat the same standing largely manifested in Calcutta. What are the causes of the difference ? Some of these may be latent ; others are obvious enough. First, the desire for a superior English education is of later growth at Bombay than at Calcutta; and even now it is not so ardent and widely diffused in the former as in the latter. The local government has not done nearly so much to create and encourage the desire as that of Bengal. Besides, one gi'and stimulus was wanting in the west, which operated with great potency in JEt 34. r.OilBAY AND CALCUTTA. 4 I 7 the east. In tlie west, Persian, tlie language of tliplomacy, waa not, as in the east, also the language of the civil and criminal courts — the vernacular tongue being fi'om the first adopted. In the east it gradually became obvious to all thinking minds that an anomaly so preposterous as the administration of justice through a medium alike foreign to rulers and ruled could not, in the nature of things, bo long perpetuated. It seemed the demand of reason that the language of one or other of the parties concerned should be substituted. In either case — Persian ceasing to be the language of polite literature and of converse in cultivated society — English must take its place. Hence it was that a strong sense of self-interest, operating on shrewd forecasting minds, gave an early impulse to the study of English in Calcutta, which, in like intensity, could not bo experienced at Bombay. Accordingly, while in the latter place the aggregate number, in seminaries of every description, receiving anything really entitled to the name of a good English education, scarcely amounts to a thousand; in Cal- cutta it exceeds five or six times that sum, though the popula- tion at the utmost is not more than double. But at Bombay, as elsewhere, the English tide has now fairly set in; and nought can arrest its progress till it overflow the land. Secondly, from the more recent and limited character of evangelistic, educational, and other operations at Bombay, it is at least ten years behind Calcutta as regards the general relaxation of unthinking bigotry, the general tendency of indurated hereditary prejudices towards a state of fusion and incandescence, and the consequent general preparedness for change. Nursed and nurtured in a state of society so uncon- genial to mental freedom of inquiry, the young men naturally present a more hostile front of resistance to the direct influences of the new truths offered for their acceptance. This, however, is a cause the force of which will be yearly diminishing. Thirdly, in the Bombay Government seminaries, a prepon- derant share of attention has hitherto been bestowed on the polite, the mathematical, and the physical sciences, to the com- parative disparagement and neglect of the mental, moral, and economic. Now, the former, addi-essing, as they chiefly do, the imagination, the memory, the understanding or ' faculty judging by sense,' and the speculative reason, are not calcu- lated to produce the same varied influential practical convic^ JB E 41 8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1840. tions, or to awaken the same bold and stirring activities of inquiry, as the latter ; whose very objects are the powers and capacities of the immaterial soul, as well as the duties, rights, privileges and relationships of man, viewed as a member of human society and a denizen of the moral universe. A more vigorous graft J therefore, of the latter on the Bombay Govern- meut institutions, would be a decided improvement. Still, as it is in the hundred metropolitan institutions, the noblest, most fruitful, and most enduring of all sciences would be wanting — ■ and that is ^knowledge of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' Until it be admitted, for the sanctifier and regulator of all other knowledge, man's life is, after all, treated practically as nothing better than a meaningless riddle ; and his destiny as nothing higher than that of the ' brutes that perish.' " The Church of Scotland's Mission, in both Bombay and Poona, was suffering under the combined triumph and alarm caused by the conversion of the first two Parsees who had accepted Christianity. " The Parsee convulsion, like the shock of a moral volcano, has more or less affected every province of missionary labour. It has laid an arrest on the friendly inter- course which began to subsist between the members of the mission and many of the more influential of the native community. It drove into alienation and desertion the young men educated in Government seminaries, who had been induced to attend Dr. Wilson's former weekly lecture, and Messrs. Nesbit and Mitchell's private evening classes. It greatly affected the attendance on the services in the ver- nacular languages. It broke up certain departments in connection with female education. It almost anni- hilated, for a time, the English Institution — reducing at once the number of pupils from two hundred and sixty to fifty — and removing the whole of the Parsee youth, by far the most advanced and promising of the number. Yet, in the midst of all these depressing and disheartening calamities, did our brethren betray yEt. 34. NESBIT AND WILSON. 419 either faint-lieartedness or despondency ? No ! * Strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might,' they still prayed, and laboured, and persevered." Yery precious were the sympathy and the counsel of Dr. Duff at this time. Of Nesbit, his old St. Andrews companion, he wrote, " With commanding talents of an intensive rather than discursive character, there is no subject on which he is led to concentrate his powers which he is not sure to master in a style of surpassing superiority. Hence, as a philosophical linguist and practical Marathee scholar, he is generally allowed to be unrivalled." After descriptions of Dr. Wilson's scholarship, the fruits of which he enjoyed in the study of the Cave Temples, and of his influence in society, native and European, Dr. Duff thus testified to his wisdom in the battle for toleration : " Dr. Wil- son, who took the lead in the whole proceedings, conducted himself throughout with a manliness of Christian energy which must for ever endear him to all sincere friends of the missionary enterprise." How the great Bombay missionary valued this visit he has told in a remarkable letter of the 28th February, 1840.* Of Panwel, where they parted in apostolic fashion, after reading the 20th chapter of the Book of the Acts and prayer, he wrote : " My memory will often visit the hallowed spot whence we moved asunder." These were the closing words of Dr. Duff's report on Bombay and Poona : — " Intensely occupied were the days which I spent at both — in visiting educational and other institutions ; in witnessing miscellaneous missionary operations ; in eliciting all manner of information which might present to my own mind somctliing like a topographical chart of the existing state of things ; in addressing, lectur- * The Life of John Wilson, D.D., F.B.S. (1878), p. 283. 420 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1840. ing, and preaching; in holding converse witli my brethren, individually and collectively ; in freely can- vassing, reviewing, and comparing all past proceedings connected with the Mission, at home and abroad ; in frankly soliciting and communicating suggestions as to the future. Sweet and pleasant was the personal intercourse with my respected brethren ; very sweet and very pleasant is the remembrance of it now. Dearly beloved before for their works' sake, they are now dearer than ever, from the felt experience of their worth. We met and we parted of one spirit and of one mind ; not merely as children of the same Father, redeemed through the same blood, and partakers of the same inheritance of grace ; but of one spirit and of one. mind as regards the essential principles, modes, and prospects of missionary operation in India." The only communication between the western capital and the metropolis of India then was by teak-built sailing vessels round the peninsula. Dr. and Mrs. Duff were the only passengers. Now, Mr. W. Mac- kinnon has called into existence the second largest fleet of steamers, which carry the traveller rapidly and touch at every port on the wide-stretching coasts of Southern Asia and Eastern Africa, from Singapore and the Java islands reaching to Australasia, along the shores of India, Persia and Arabia to Zanzibar. Hugging the picturesque coast of Malabar, the ship passed native town and feudal castle, pirate stronghold and busy harbour, till, leaving Goa to the north, it dropped anchor for a day and night at Mangalore in the Canara county of Madras. This once dreaded roadstead of Hyder Ali, scene of alternate Portuguese intolerance and Mussulman ferocity, of General Matthews' s victory and of the East India Company's treaty with Tippoo, had been occupied by the self- denying Basel missionaries in 1834. It has been ever ^t. 34. SAMUEL HERinn AND THE BASEL MISSION. 42 1 ■ since their greatest as it was tlieir earliest Cliristian settlement, having now some 1,200 church members out of the more than 6,000 gathered in at other stations. In Hebich, the afterwards famous and somewhat eccentric German then stationed there, Dr. Duff found a friend of kindred spirituality and earnestness. With him and his colleagues the Scottish missionary spent the night in delightful con- verse* till within an hour of the dawn. Frequently afterwards did Samuel Hebich recall the talk of that night,t especially to the many sepoy officers and civilians of the East India Company, whom his fear- less appeals and holy self-denial led to Christ. Mr. Finlay Anderson, the assistant collector who received the Basel brethren in 1834, still survives to help in every good work for the people of India. This was Hebich's last year in Man galore, where he had laid the spiritual foundation of the Tooloo church, and left among others Dr. Moegling, to civilize not only the Canarese but the recently annexed Coorgs from Mercara as a centre. Cape Comorin — too low to be seen save where the Western Ghauts abruptly end some miles inland — and Ceylon were then successively rounded, when the ship came to anchor in the swell of the Madras Roads for five days. These days were busily spent in an inspection of the Mission, and in stirring addresses to both natives and Europeans. Mr. Anderson and Mr. Johnston, fruit of the General Assembly address of * So, long after, Dr. ITorman Maoleod inspected the allied Ger- man Mission at Calicut, and recorded the " very encouraging re- sults" of which he wrote : " These, being connected with education as well as preaching, are the more likely to be permanent! " t The Germau Memoir of Hebich, of which an English transla- lation appeared in 1876, contains no reference to this meeting with Dr. Duff. 422 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1840. 1835, had organized out of tlie St. Andrew's school, opened by the Scotch chaplains in Madras in that year, the nucleus of what has since become the great Christian College of South India, representing all the evangelical missions there. Just three years before, on the 3rd April, 1837, Mr. Anderson had begun the new Institution in a hired house in Armenian street, with fifty-nine Hindoo youths. His early success, in the baptism of highly educated Hindoos who became missionaries to their countrymen, had, as at Calcutta in 1830, and Bombay in 1839, so alarmed the native community as to produce this remark, " Some of our best youths have been forcibly carried off or withdrawn against their will." Yet, when on Monday, the 20th April, Dr. Duff visited the infant college, this was his impression: — "It was wise on the part of Mr. Ander- son and his coadjutor to make the Bible itself — as in Bombay and Calcutta — not only the principal book of the Institution, but to bestow upon the teaching of it the largest measure of their time and attention, so lonof as this could be done without occasioning that desertion of pupils which the more successful prose- cution of general literature and science in other native seminaries must inevitably insure, if there be not a correspondent progress in such studies in the Mission seminaries. And certainly in the Bible department, which has been chiefly cultivated, there is much, very much, to excite admiration, delight and thanksgiving to God. Nowhere have I met with young men of the same age and standing who evinced a more intelligent grasp, a more feeling comprehension, of the divine truths which they had learned from God's holy oracles. In some cases, there is every reason to believe that vital and saving impressions have begun to be made. And even should all be renounced in a day, what has been done will not, cannot be lost. Talk and dream ^Et. 34. 'I'lii: snoTTisir mission system in madras. 423 who will of not being able, directly and formally, and in the homo sense, to preach the gospel in our Indian mission seminaries, I do most solemnly aver for myself, that never, never, when addressing an audience of fellow-Christians in my native land, had I a more sensible consciousness of reaching the understanding and the heart than I experienced when pouring out my soul on the theme of man's lost and ruined state by sin, and of man's redemption through a crucified but Divine Redeemer, in presence of the assembled youth of the General Assembly's Institution, Madras." On the other side, we have this official record by Mr. Anderson of the visit of the founder of the Scottish missionary system in the East : " He left an impression behind him on the minds of our youths which nothing will ever efface. It was quite thrilling to see how he set them on fire by the truths which he exhibited to them in touching and graphic figures, with an energy of manner altogether his own. Their bright eyes seemed to say, as they sparkled with delight, ' This man loves the natives, especially native boys.' " Dr. Duff had been delayed on his outward tour too long for himself, if not for the work he had to do. He reached the pilot ground at the mouth of the Hooghly at very nearly the same advanced season as on the occasion of his first arrival in Bengal. Again did the rotary storm seem to defy his advance. The sus- picious calm of a hot May evening, following a lurid sunset, warned the captain to be ready. Before mid- night the cyclone burst upon the ship with savage fury. Lashing themselves to the cuddy hatch, the captain and his officers sat ready to cut down the mast should the vessel drift to the shore. For twelve hours the whirlwind raged, with a violence which was set off by a hideous and sometimes ludicrous contrast. An officer who had joined the ship at Madras, whither he 424 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1840. had returned from leave in tlie colonies, and who soon after fell one of the thirteen thousand butchered amid the snows of the Khoord Kabul pass, had an Australian parrot which he had diligently taught. Ever and anon in the pauses of the blast, and continuously as if con- tending with it, the bird was heard to shriek, now de- fiantly, now pathetically, " There's nae luck aboot the house whan our gudeman's awa' ! " The Malabar teak of the Bombay-built vessel withstood tbe wind and the waves, and the course of the cyclone finally drove it out to comparative safety in the open sea. After a voyage from Bombay of nearly seven weeks, Dr. and Mrs. Duff were received under the hospitable roof of the nephew of Dr. Patrick Macfarlan, of Greenock, who was chief magistrate of Calcutta, CHAPTER XIV. 1841. FIGHTING THE GOVEBNOB-GENEBAL. India Sacrificed to Party Politics. — Malcolm, M. Elphinstone and Lord Heytesbury. — The First and the Second Lord Auckland. — The Misses Eden.— Controversy between Orientalists and Angli- cists Renewed. — Lord Auckland's Minute. — Mr. Marshman's Com- ment.^— Dr. Daff's three Letters to the Governor- General. — The Irony of Truth. — Lord W. Bentinck and Lord Auckland Com- pared.— The Missionary and the Govern or- General Contrasted — Vernacular Education by a School Cess urged. — Lord Auckland Arraigned at the Bar of Universal Reason. — The Dangers of purely Secular Education denounced by a Government Secretary. — The Educational Reaction temporarily forgotten in the Cabul Disasters. LoED Auckland had been Governor-General for four years wlien, for the second time, Dr. Duff landed at Calcutta. Apart from contemporary history, his ap- pointment to the most responsible office under the British Crown forms the most scandalous instance of the sacrifice of the good of the people of India and of the peace of the Empire to the intrigues and the self- seeking of political parties. India is so far outside of, so high above, the level of purely party politics, that it used to be true that its governing and commercial classes left Whig and Tory prejudices behind them. Even the purely British officials who, as Governor- General, governors, and law member of council, owed their appointments to partisan considerations among others, were generally raised by the very elevation of 426 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1841. their duties to tlie disinterested and pliilosopliic level which looked only at the good of India. From the high vantage ground of a Governor-General's seat, the purely domestic questions which cause the rise and fall of ministers in England often look petty in- deed. It may be accepted as an absolute test which marks off the really able statesmen among the nine- teen Governor-Generals from the few whom history despises, that the former in every case acknowledged first their duty to India; the latter, their selfish gra- titude to the party which sent them out. Against rulers like Warren Hastings, Lords "Wellesley and Hastings, "W. Bentinck and Dalhousie, Canning and Mayo, we have to set Cornwallis (the second time), Amherst and Auckland, not to mention the living. William Eden, a younger son of a Durham baronet, and a barrister who entered political life, was created Baron Auckland for negotiating a treaty of commerce with France. His successor rendered services to the Whig party of a less evident kind, and in 1830 Lord Grey gave him a seat in the Cabinet. When sick- ness sent Lord W. Bentinck home after an adminis- tration of nearly eight years, the Court of Directors would not allow the most brilliant servant they had had since Warren Hastings, to fill the seat which he occupied provisionally, because his honesty had been equal to his ability. They were willing to see the Honble. Mountstuart Elphinstone appointed, but he had had enough of office as Governor of Bombay and he declined the high honour. On this the Tory ministry selected Lord Heytesbury, who drew the usual allowance for outfit, made the indispensable speech about peace at the Albion, and had taken his passage to Calcutta. But just as, under somewhat similar circumstances, George Canning gave place to Lord Amherst, and died Premier of England, so Lord Mt.. 35. LOKD AUCKLAND AND SIR J. C. HOBIIOUSE. 427 Aiicldand was sent out instead of Lord Heytesbury. The Melbourne ministry took office in April, 1835, with Byron's friend, Sir John Cam Hobhouse as Pre- sident of the Board of Control. Refusing their con- fidence to the Tory Governor-General designate, the \yhig ministry, which was to hold office for six years and a half, sent out Lord Auckland to the seat which Bentinck had made more illustrious than ever, and for which Metcalfe and Elpliinstone were better fitted than even he. In a word, the British Government had once again jobbed the appointment, and the whole empire was to suffer the consequence in the military disasters, the financial losses, and — greater than both — the political consequences in 1857 of the first Afghan war. Sir John Cam Hobhouse, made Lord Broughton for the iniquity, found in Lord Auckland the tool and in Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, the confederate who enabled that reckless, blinded official to boast of the deepest stain on the page of English history, " It was I that did it." The best thing that George, the second Lord Auckland, did was to take to Calcutta and Simla with him his two clever sisters, one of whom, Emily, in her journals, not to mention her novels, has left us unconsciously the most vivid picture of the Governor- General's weakness of character. If to her " Up The Country," and the book which more recently followed it, we add Sir John Kaye's picture of the unhappy faineant pacing the verandas of Government House at night as he brooded over the horrors of the Ghilzai massacre which made him sleepless, we may form some idea of the man who, between Hobhouse at home and ]\lacnaghten by his side, blindly let the empire drift down the dark current of a policy of which he never approved, but which party prevented him from fairly considering and resolutely refusing to carry out. Any- 428 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1841. thing would have been better than this drifting, but on him was the curse against which the prophet cried in vain. It was the Govern or-Greneral's vacillation — ending, as is generally the case, in weakly following the evil — which brought Dr. Duff into conflict with Lord Auck- land. The missionary had set out to return to Bengal, grateful to his Excellency for the interest which he and the Honble. Misses Eden had shown in the Institution during his absence, by frequent visits and occasional prizes. As a rule the English settlers, and above all the Christian ministers in India, are loyally on the side of the Grovernment there. They are roused to demon- strations against it only by some such departure from principle as Lord EUenborough's, or evidence of incapacity to understand the gravity of the crisis as Lord Canning's advisers showed in 1857, Up to the disasters of 1842 Lord Auckland — who had been made an earl in reply to the opposition of the Court of Directors and to the universal public opinion which, then as since, condemned his policy— was personally respected for his amiability. His advisers liked a Governor-G-eneral whom they could lead ; the public appreciated the social attractions of his court. Those who estimated an administration by a higher standard even praised him for legally completing what his pre- decessor had begun in the Act of November, 1837, which abolished Persian as the language of the courts. But another question of still greater importance to the people had come down to him. Lord W. Bentinck's Government had, in 1835, decreed that English should be the language of the higher public instruction — finally, as it seemed. Still the formal approval of the Court of Directors had not been communicated. Not only was Lord W. Bentinck out of office, but Dr. Duff was far away, and of their coadjutors, Metcalfe was in ^t. 35. LOKD AUCKLAND'S DELHI MINUTE. 429 Agra, while ]\racaula7 and Troveljan were soon to go. The defeated orientalists saw their opportunity with the new and weak Governor-General. They resolved to get rid of the reform of March, 1835, by a side-blow. Mr. Thoby Prinsep and the Bengal Asiatic Society led the assault. Mr. Colvin, the private secretary, was neutralised or so far talked over as to seem to con- sent to the undoing of that which he had formerly urged. From 183G to 1839, the renewed controversy between the Orientalists and Anglicists went on in the form of a dispute as to the proportion of public funds to be assigned to each. On the 24th November, 1839, Lord Auckland signed, at Delhi, a minute whicli is remark- able among Indian state papers for its bad style and worse reasoning. The contrast to Macaulay's and Duff's was painful. The minute professed to be a compromise of a dispute in which there could be no concessions by what was true to what the Govern- ment had officially allowed to be false and therefore unworthy of being propagated by the public funds. But the defeated Anglicists were not to be found, save one. Mr. Marshman, though rather a veruacularist, raised his solitary voice against the reaction in the weekly press. The minute itself no sooner appeared in an official blue-book, fifteen months after it had been written, than Dr. Duff criticised it in a series of letters to Lord Auckland which appeared in the Christian Observer. Mr. Marshman, tliough grateful to the Governor-General for his personal support of vernacular schools, did not spare the weak amiability which had led his Excellency to apply " the spirit of compromise amongst varying opinions " to a contro- versy over vital principles. The orientalists he described, in 18-41, as "a few elderly gentlemen of the ancient regime, who rather dislike the spread of 430 WFE OF DR. DUFF. l34l. knowledge as a dangerous innovation than hail it with generous confidence as the means of national regener- ation ; who, if compelled by the spirit of the age to sanction education at all, must use every endeavour to restrain it to the absurdities and logomachies of the dark ages. . . AYhen a retrograde movement is made merely to quiet a few superannuated European gentlemen, and extinguish their already expiring mur- murs, we confess it passes our comprehension. . . What will be gained by their reconciliation, or to what will they be reconciled ? " The evil which the minute had secretly attempted to do was twofold. It reversed the decree of Lord W. Bentiuck by restoring the stipends paid to natives to learn Sanscrit and Arabic books which their own learned men neglected where they did not teach them far more effectually in the indigenous ' Toles ' or colleges. Thus error was again endowed, while true oriental research was hindered. And the minute finally shelved the plan for the improvement of ver- nacular schools and teachers which Lord W. Bentinck had appointed Adam to submit. Lord Auckland be- came the victim of what was afterwards scouted by his successors as the filtration theory — the belief that if only the higher classes are educated with the public money, the millions of the people who contribute that money may be left in their ignorance till the know- ledge given to their oppressors filters down to them. Seriously that continued to be the fact, if not the theory of the Government in Bengal, at least, for the thirty years from Lord Auckland's minute to the time when Sir George Campbell was made Lieutenant- Governor of the province. Dr. Duff did well to be angry, for his experience and his foresight anticipated the mistake. Lord Auckland thus became, not only the foe of a righteous JEi. 35- LETTERS TO LOED AUCKLAND. 43 1 policy boyoiid tlie frontier but the reactionary enemy of the people of India. But for him the vernacular side of the reforms of Duff and Bentinck would have become a reality long before the present Earl of Derby's despatch of 1859 on the subject issued in the Duke of Argyll's action, through Sir George Campbell in 1870. Happily Lord Auckland was too feeble even to stunt the already vigorous growth of the English side of these reforms. So, taking Wordsworth's lines as his introduction, Dr. Duff thus began the corres- pondence. The language now reads as fine irony, since a few brief months were to reveal the incapacity of Lord Auckland and his Government, at home and on the spot, with its miserable results. But, early in 1841, Dr. Duff used such language, as the whole press of the time did, in all good faith and loyalty. Had not Baron Auckland just been made an earl for his apparent success? " Oh ! for the coming of that glorious time When, prizing knowledge as her noblest Avealtli And best protection, this imperial I'ealm, While she exacts allegiance, shall admit An obligation on her part to teach Them who are born to serve her and obey; Binding herself by statute to secure For all the children whom her soil maintains. The rudiments of letters ; and to inform The mind with moral and religious truth." "My Lord, — When the Governor-General of India has recorded his sentiments on a great national question, and when these have been rapturously responded to by so many of the councillors, the judges, the secretaries, and the leaders of public opinion, it may be deemed presumptuous in a Christian missionary to lift up his voice at all; more especially should that voice, however feeble, seem to mingle as a note of discord amid the fresh full gale of popular applause. And so it would bo, were the question exclusively one of mere worldly policy. But when it is found to be one which, in its essential bearings, concerns the souls fully as much as the bodies of men, affect- 432 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1841. ing the interests of eternity not less than those of time, the Christian missionary must not, dares not be silent, even if his voice should be uplifted against kings and governors and all earthly potentates. When the honour and glory of his Divine Master and the imperishable destinies of man are in- volved, the ambassador of Jesus can brook no dalliance with mere human greatness, or rank, or power. In the spirit of St. Basil, in the presence of the Roman prefect, he is ever ready to exclaim : — ' In all other things you will find us the most mild, the most accommodating among men ; we carefully guaixl against the least appearance of haughtiness, even towards the obscurest citizen, still more so with respect to those who are invested with sovereign authority ; but the moment that the cause of God is concerned we despise everything.^ " In the influence of policy and arms, you are, my lord, at this moment, the first man in Asia. Speak but the word for peace or for wai', and that word will speedily cause itself to be felt from Ceylon to Bokhara, from the Euphrates to the Kianko. Thus planted on an eminence which would make most men giddy, it is no small achievement to have so maintained the equilibrium and balance of the mental powei's, that, amid the blaze of conquest and the echoes of victory, you could have paused to indite a calm dispassionate dissertation on edu- cational economics. But does it follow that the first man in Asia, in policy and arms, must also be the first in the depart- ment of intellectual and moral husbandry ? This may be ; but all the probabilities are against it. " That the author of the immortal work on ' The Conduct of the Human Understanding ' should be the author of the equally immortal ' Thoughts on Education,' is nothing strange. The intellectual habit from which the former pro- ceeded formed the best possible discipline and preparation for the production of the latter. But that the intellectual habit from which resulted the celebrated Simla ukase on British policy in Central Asia should prove the best discipline and preparation for inditing a Delhi minute on national education, would be passing strange. Who that has studied the human mind, or attended to the lessons of past experience, could reasonably expect Lord Auckland to be equally at home — equally great — in both ? When the first statesman in Asia steps aside from his own towering eminence to grapple with a ^t. 35. LORD AUCKLAND CONTRASTED WITH BENTINCK. 433 theme that is wholly foreif^n to, and incompatible with, his general habits, he must reckon it no disparagement if of him it be recorded, as of Newton and of Brown in similar circum- stances, that he has gone out as another man ! Still, as the Commentary on Daniel will be perused because it is the pro- duct of the author of the ' Priucipia,^ and the poem of the * Paradise of Coquettes ' will be road because it claims the same paternity as the lectures on ' The Philosophy of the Human Mind,' so will the Delhi minute on native education obtain currency and favour because it is the offspring of a politician and statesman who is at the head of the most power- ful empire in Asia. And as, in the cases of Newton and of Brown, the splendour of their great, their immortal works, is apt, from the blending of association, to shed and diffuse a portion of their own lustre over the kindred but inferior progeny of the same minds ; so will the dazzliug renown of the present Govei-nor- General of India, as a statesman, be sure illusively to communicate a share of its own brilliancy to a production which otherwise might soon have sunk into obli- vion ; — a production which is remarkable chiefly for ita omissions and commissions — remarkable for its concessions and its compromises — remarkable, above all, for its education without religion, its plans without a providence, its ethics without a God ! " Having reviewed the whole controversy in Lord W. Bentinck's time, very much in the tone of his "New Era of the English Language," Dr. Duff comes to this conclusion in his first letter : — " Here are two systems of education, directly opposed to each other, and absolutely contradictory in their entire sub- stance, scope and ends. Reviewing these two systems. Lord W. Bentinck, with the straightforward bearing of British manliness and British courage in the spirit which fired the old barons oj. Runuymede, and with the decisive energy of uncom- promising principle, thus pronounced his decision : ' Regard- less of the idle clamours of interested partisanship, and fearless of all consequences, let us resolve at once to repudiate altogether what is demonstrably injurious, because demonstrably false, and let us cleave to and exclusively promote that which is F P 434 I^IPE 0^ DR. DUFF. 1841. demonstrably beneficial^ because demonstrably true,' Review- ing the very same system, my Lord Auckland, witli what looks very like tbe tortuous bearing of Machiavellian policy, in the spirit of shrinking timidity which heretofore hath compro- mised the success of the best laid schemes, and with the Proteus-like facility of temporizing expediency, thus enun- ciates his contrary verdict : ' Fearful of offending any party, wishing to please all, and anxious to purchase peace at any ■Drice, let us, — dropping all minor distinctions between old and new, good and bad, right and wrong, — let us at once resolve to embrace and patronize both, and both alike : — ' Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimiue Labetur.' " In a word, ' Let us,' says Lord W. Bentiuck, ' disendow error and endow only truth/ 'Let us,' replies Lord Auckland, ' i-e-endow error, and continue the endowment of truth too.' A decision so wholly at variance with every maxim of truth and righteousness, a decision so utterly repugnant to the pro- gressive spirit of the age, what valid plea, what plausible grounds can be adduced to justify ? Justify ! It surely must scorn all justification as impossible, and any attempt at justification as the most ludicrous farce. But seeing that vindication is im- practicable, does it not admit of some palliatives ? If palliatives there be, they may be summed up in a single sentence ; viz., that it was most kind and amiable to soothe the expiring sorrows of the superannuated remnant of the race of orien- talists, who, like the owls and the bats, have such a special affection for the dingy and the dismal edifices of hoar antiquity, and who, like these lovers of darkness, are ever ready to break forth into strains as doleful as the notes of a funeral dirge, when the crazy crevices in which they have so long nestled are threatened with extermination ! Most kind and amiable we admit all this to be ! But, beyond this admission, where are we to look for grounds of palliation ? " These words are penned in the full assurance that with your lordship and councillors they will not have the weight o£ a feather. So let it be. Here, your lordship is everything. Here, politically and civilly speaking, your voice is all but omnipotent. Speak but the word, and thousands are ready to shout, ' It is the voice of a god ! ' Speak but the word, and thousands more are ready to fall down and worship whatever ^t. 35. TilE MISSIONARY AND THE GOVERNOR-GENHRAL. 435 idol or image you may be pleased to set up. Here^ on the other hand, the humble missionai'y, in a woi-ldly sense, neither is, nor desires to be, anything. Let him but speak the word, and lo, it is the voice of a fanatic ! Let him but give forth his warniugs, and lo, they are treated with supercilious scorn or branded as a grand importiueuce. But, my lord, I must remind you that the greater the power, the more tremendous the responsibility ! I must also remind you that — apart from the solemnities of the great assize to which the noble and tho mighty will be summoned, without respect of persons, along with the poorest and the meanest of tho land — there is, even here below, another tribunal, of a different frame and texture from that of an Asiatic time-serving, favour-seeking com- munity, at whose bar the appeal of a gospel minister will bo heard as promptly as that of the noblest lord. There is a British public, and above all, a religious public in Great Britain, which heretofore hath been moved, and may readily be moved again, by the addresses and expostulations of a Christian missionary. It was the righteous agitation of this public which wrenched asunder the bars of prohibition to the free ingress of Bibles and heralds of salvation into India. It was tho righteous agitation of this public which accelerated and insured the abolition of the murderous rite of suttee. It was the righteous agitation of this public which foredoomed the ultimate severance of official British connection with the mosques -and temples and idolatrous observances of this be- nighted people. And rest assured, my lord, that as certainly as the rising sun chases away the darkness of night, so certainly will the righteous agitation of this same British public even- tually wipe away, as a blot and disgrace, from our national statute book, that fatal act, by which your lordship has restored the Government patronage and support to the shrines and sanctuaries of Hindoo and Muhammadan learning with all their idolatrous, pantheistic and antichristian errors ! A surer prospect of earning the garland of victory no Christian missionary could possibly desire, than the opportunity of boldly confronting, on a theme like this, the mightiest of our state functionaries, in the presence of a promiscuous audience of British-born free-men, in any city or district, from Cornwall to Shetland. His march would be that of one continued con- quest. The might and the majesty of a great people, awakened 43 6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1841. to discern the trutli and impoi't of things as they are, would increasingly swell his train. And, from the triumph of in- domitable principle in Britain would emanate, as in times past, an influence which would soon cause itself to be felt in the supreme councils of India, and thence extend, with renovating efficacy, through all its anti-religious schools and colleges." In the second letter, with consummate art as well as fairness Dr. Duff takes out of the minute -and holds up to eulogy all of it that he can justly praise. Especially does hie thank the Grovernor-General for at last carry- ing out his own recommendation of 1834, to promote true oriental scholarship by " a separate grant for the publication of works of interest in the ancient literature of the country, to be disbursed through the appro- priate channel of the Asiatic Society." He corrects the mistake which would build the pyramid of national education on its apex, beginning with the college, going on afterwards to the secondary school, and leaving the millions without primary schools. He tells what John Knox and his associates did for Scot- land in 1560. He urges that the same means which the Scottish Parliament then decreed be adopted by the Indian G-overnment, in levying a school cess on the land-tax, as a road cess had even then begun to be raised. " So might a permanent education fund be established, proportionate to the wealth and population of each, province, by * the surrender in return of one per cent, of the revenue on the part of the revenue receivers for educational purposes.' Well might such a sum, or one hundredth part of their immense revenue, be pronounced the very minimum amount that India — - sunk, depressed, benighted India — has a right to ex- pect or demand from her rulers for securing one main iuo-redient of the panacea of her intellectual, moral and social maladies." Such a cess was raised first in Bom- bay, and then by tlie late Earl of Kellie in a district JEt. 35. APPEAL TO THE STATESMEN OP ALL COUNTRIES. 437 of Central India, till now it is exacted all over India. But it is not the revenue receivers who pay it. Rather have cesses of all kinds, of which that for schools is the least, been added to the periodically increased land-tax,* till the burden of the long-suffering culti- vators is greater than they can bear. The third letter arraigned Lord Auckland and his advisers at the bar of universal reason, as spiritually guilty in their education schemes " of what looks like treason against the majesty and sovereignty of the God of providence ; of the crudest wrong to the souls and immortal destinies of thousands " of their Indian fellow-subjects. After a very practical exposi- tion of the fact, ever since pressed upon the G-overn- ment of India in vain, that it stands alone of all the world in the suicidal attempt to support by public taxation an official system of education which jealously excludes religion of every kind and the sanctions of morality. Dr. Duff thus closed: "For the substantial justice of the charge I appeal — not to the religious public of Great Britain alone — but to the recorded verdicts of the Russells of England, the Cousins of France, the Falcks of Holland, the Altensteins of Ger- many and all the greatest and most celebrated states- men of ancient and modern times !" The appeal remained unheeded by the Government till 1854. The concession then solemnly made by the present Lord Halifax and by Lord Dalhousie, to the • In theory, half the net produce of the land is left, on the system of thirty years leases, to the cultivators. Year by year cesses have been imposed, till the State takes sixty per cent, and the peasant receives only forty. The latest impost is that of a cess to bo "solemnly," " religiously," set apart as a reserve for the famines which the periodical increase of the land-tax provokes. This new burden has no sooner been paid for the first time than it has been used to carry on the second Afghan war. 43^ LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1841. effect that the State would adopt the English position of giving grants for secular education and retiring from its functions as a direct schoolmaster whenever the public would take its place, has never been carried out. As a commentary on Dr. Duff's appeal in 1841, on the broken pledge which he secured in 1854 from Parliament, on the alarm of Lord Northbrook in 1875, on the censorship of the native press in 1877, and on the annually increasing political as well as moral and spiritual danger of the system, we may cite this ex- tract, made confidentially to one of Lord Auckland's successors in 1872 by the Home Department which is charged with the imperial direction of public instruc- tion in India : — " That most remarkable feature in Indian education, the religious neutrality of the Government, is no doubt a relic of the extreme apprehension which prevailed in 1793, and whether its original declaration was a wise one or not is far too deep and many-sided a question to be discussed here. We must accept the fact as we find it. But it is, I believe, absolutely without precedent or parallel elsewhere, besides being entirely opposed to the traditional idea of education current in the East. In Europe, it is almost an axiom that the connection of any State system of education with religion is not the mere result of tradition ;* ' it is an indissoluble union, the bonds of which are principles inseparable from the nature of education.' This is admitted almost universally. Even the French system is religious, not in the sense in which all European systems profess to be more or less so, in inculcating the precepts of a certain universal and indisputable morality, but in inculcating morality in the only way in which the masses of mankind will ever admit it, in its connection with the doctrines of religion. In Holland, primary instruction was decided in a much debated law to be designed to train ' to the exercise of all Christian and social virtues,' while respecting the convictions of dis- senters. In Switzerland, religion stands on the same footing * Fthblic Education, by Sir J. K, Shuttleworth, p. 290. ^t. 35. DANGKRS OF A NATIONAL SECULARISM. 439 as reading, writing-, grammnr and aritlimetic, as a fundamontal part of the scheme. In Germany, generally, religion still forms, as it lias always done, the first and staple subject of the elementary school, and the religion of the master must be in conformity with that of the majority of his pupils. The American system, while repudiating all doctrinal or dogmatic teaching, provides everywhere for the regular daily reading of the Bible and for prayer. And, lastly, the framers of the English Education Act, 1870, have been able to assume as a matter of course that every elementary school would be con- nected with a recognised religious denomination, and that Government aid might, therefore, be ollored to all alike for secular education only. * " In India, not only is there no religious teaching of any kind in Government schools, but even the aided schools under native managers are generally adopting the same principle. I believe this result was never anticipated, and I am sure it requires attention. Looking to the rapid growth of our educa- tional system, and to the enormous influence for good or evil that a single able and well educated man may exercise in this country; and looking to the dense but inflammable ignorance of the millions around us, it seems a tremendous experiment for the State to undertake, and in some provinces almost monopolise, the direct training of whole generations above their own creed, and above that sense of relation to another world upon which they base all their moral obligations ; and the possible evil is obviously growing with the system. It is true that things go smoothly and quietly, but this is attained by ignoring not only the inevitable results of early training on the character and the great needs of human nature, especially in the East, but by also ignoring the responsibility which devolves on the Government that assumes the entire control of direct education at all. If, therefore, while fanaticism is raging around, there is a calm in our schools and colleges, it is an ominous and unnatural calm, of impossible continuance, the-calm of the centre of the cyclone. " The subject is one of extreme difficulty, that grows with the consideration devoted to it. Of course it is out of the question to recede in any degree from the pledges of the past. Mr. Gladstone's speech, Hansard, vol. CCIL, p. 267. 440 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1 8 41. And it is probable tbat the evil is less serious in primary Bchools wliere tbe instruction given does not necessarily de- stroy religious belief, ■whereas our higher instruction does. Therefore, although the State may establish and maintain primary schools where no local effort is forthcoming, it would still seem very desirable that it should retire as rapidly and as completely as practicable from the entire control of all direct instruction, and especially higher instruction, and leave it to local management to be encouraged by the State, and aided in conformity with the English principle which, without any interference in the religious instruction imparted, practically insures by the constitution of the local boards that some religious instruction is regularly given/' We shall see this vital question coming up again and again to the very close of Dr. Duff's life, when, as he lay a-dying, his memory went back to this conflict with Lord Auckland, and he longed that his life might be spared, if only to fight till he won the battle against a neutrality which is not neutral to but carefully fosters the worst error ; against a secularism which is fast robbing the Hindoos even of the natural religion and traditional truth of their own system, till they them- selves cry out. The Christian college stands alone in the breach which the rising flood-tide is threatening, while Church and State look on apathetically. Even the daily newspapers of Calcutta republished Dr. Duff's letters, and made them the subject of edi- torial comment. " As no press ever struggled more manfully for its own liberty," he wrote in a note to his reprint of the correspondence, " so none has on the whole ever less abused that liberty when conceded. In this respect the sentence of Sir J. C. Hobhouse must be regarded as downright, though perhaps, in his happy ignorance of Indian affairs, unintentional calumny." But the subject was, in a few months, swallowed up in the snows of Afghanistan, with our ^-t 35- 'fHE FIRST AND SECOND AFGHAN WAllS. 44 1 thirteen thousand troops and their officers. Lord Auckland began his evilpolicjMu July, 1837, with Lord W. Bentinck's hard-earned surplus of a million and a half sterling. He was created an earl in 1840, for that march to Ghuznee which made Sir John Keane a baron though he forgot his battery-train. The more denounced an evil policy is the more fruitful of hon- ours is it expedient for the responsible ministry of the day to make it. Sir J. C. Hobhouse himself became Lord Broughton ! In January, 1842, when he had packed his baggage to return home triumphant. Lord Auckland received intelligence of the bloody collapse for which he had converted his great predecessor's surplus into a deficit of two millions, had added enor- mously to the debt of India, had shaken the English power in the East till it nearly fell in pieces in 1857, had allied his country with iniquity — and yet, had not succeeded in warning his successors forty years after against following in his blood-stuined feeble footsteps. It fell to Henry Lawrence and George Clerk, to Colin Mackenzie and George Broadfoot, to save the residue of the troops and to rescue the captives alike from the imbecility of the "Whig Governor- General and from the madness of his Tory supplanter. CHAPTER XV. 1841-1843. TSE COLLEGE AND ITS SPIRITUAL FBUIT. Outward Signs of the Progress of a Decade. — The Second Convert a Christian Minister. — The College Buildings. — The Staff of Five Missionaries. — Their Unity in Variety.- — The College Re- organized.— A jSTormal Training Class. — Dr. Duff's Educational System then contrasted with the St^ate Colleges now. — The Spiritual Machinery. — The Female Orphanage. — Legal Disabili- ties and Social Oppression of Hindoo Widows. — The Native Christian Family. — The Death, of Dr. Duff's Child in Scotland. — Dx'. Inglis and his Son, the Lord President. — Sympathy with Mrs Briggs, of St. Andrews. — The Movement in Krishnaghur. — A New Vaishnava Sect. — Dr. Duff visits the District twice. — Inter- view with the Gooroo of the Worshippers of the Creator. — New Stations at Culna and Ghospara. — The Eight New Convei'ts from the College. — Mahendra's First Sermon. — -Review of the Twelve. — Proclamation of Peace in Afghanistan and China. — Lord Ellenborough. — Dr. Duff's Anticipations. When Dr. Duff landed at Calcutta to begin the second period of liis work in India, even lie was astonished at the outward signs of progress which ten years of English education under really enlightened British administration had brought about. No one could doubt that, in the great cities and intellectual centres at least, as in Italy of the first three centuries, and again of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the E/cnaissance was a fact. Even on his way from the ship to his own college-building and principal's or senior missionary's residence, which he had yet to see, he passed through a succession of such outward evi- dences, which he reported in his own graphic style to Dr. Brunton. >Et. 35. OUTWAHD SIGNS OF THE liKNAISSANCE. 443 The first object that liad caught his eye on landing was a signboard on which were marked in large char- acters the words, " Ram Lochun Sen & Co., Surgeons and Druggists." Not six years had passed since the pseudo-orientalists had declared that no Hindoo would be found to study even the rudiments of the healing art through anatomy. But here, scattered over the native town, were the shops of the earlier sets of duly educated practitioners and apothecaries who had begun to find in medicine a fortune long before the chicane of law attracted them to our courts. "When I gazed at the humble, yet significant, type and visible symbol before me of so triumphant a conquest over one of the most inveterate of Hindoo prejudices — a conquest issuing in such beneficial prac- tical results — how could I help rejoicing in spirit at the reflection that, under Divine providence, the singular success of your Institution was overruled as one of the main instruments in achieving it ? Oh ! that a like energy were put forth — an energy like to that which characterized the Divine Physician — for the healing of the spiritual maladies of the millions around us ! Holy Spirit ! do Thou descend with a Pentecostal effusion of Thy grace. Come from the four winds, 0 breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. Blessed be God that the better cause is neither wholly neglected, nor without promise. "After passing the Medical College itself, the next novel object which in point of fact happened to attract my attention as I approached Cornwallis Square, was a handsome Christian church, with its gothic tower and buttresses, and contiguous manse or parsonage. And who was the first ordained pastor thereof ? The Rev. Krishna Mohun Bauerjea, once a Koolin Brah- man of the highest caste; then, through the scheme of Government education, an educated atheist and 444 I'^^E OF DR. DUFF. 1841. editor of the Enquirer newspaper ; next brought to a saving knowledge of tlie truth as it is in Jesus, and admitted into the Christian Church by baptism, through the unworthy instrumentahty of him who now addresses you; and, last of all, ordained as a minister of the everlasting gospel by the Bishop of Calcutta, and now appointed to discharge the evan- gelical and pastoral duties of the new Christian temple which was erected for himself ! What a train of pleasing reflection was the first view of this edifice calculated to awaken ! Men there are who, practically ignorant of the real nature of the gospel and of the power of God's grace themselves, still choose to deny the possibility of converting Hindoos of good caste. To repudiate with holy indignation the downright atheism of such denial, it is enough for the believer to know that with God all things are possible. But here was, in addition, a sensible refutation of the atheistic dogma. Here is not a low caste, but a high caste Hindoo, yea, one of the highest order of the Brah- manical caste in India ; not an ignorant man, but one who, having gone through an ample course of European literature and science, explored the labyrinth of Hindooism with the torch of modern illumination, and deliberately rejected his ancestral faith as a tissue of absurdity, superstition and cruelty; not a rash enthusiast, but one who, in his ignorance of a better faith, having been led to deny the very being of a God, was persuaded, on the ground of reason and consistency, to examine the claims of natural and revealed religion; one who, having had his under- standing opened to discern the resistless force of evidence, and his heart deeply affected by a sense of the suitableness and adaptation of the gospel remedy to his felt condition as a guilty and helpless sinner in the sight of God, publicly and solemnly embraced the /Et. 35. THE FFRST EENCAr.EE MINISTER. 445 Christian faith, through the sacred ordinanQe of bap- tism. Such has been the steadfastness of his Christian walk and conversation for the last eiglit years, that even the bitterest enemies among his own countrymen now, with one accord, acknowledge his sincerity. Nor has he been innctive in his Master's service. Naturally endowed with no ordinary degree of energy and force of character, he has laboured assiduously and successfully as a teacher, a catechist, and nov/ an ordained minister of the gospel of salvation. He preaches regularly both on Sundays and week-days, in Bengalee and in English, to suit the wants of this country, to men who have, or have not, acquired a European education. Nor has he laboured in vain. Throug^h his faithful ministrations not a few have been shaken out of their idolatries. Several educated natives of high promise have professed Christianity ; and some already act as his fellow-helpers in advanc- ino" the cause of the Redeemer in this benio-hted land. Who can dare to gainsay facts so notorious and de- cisive? And do they not amount to a visible demon- stration of the wretched fallacy of the atheistic dogma, of the alleged impossibility of converting higli caste Hindoos ? Shall we glory in being able to a})peal to such emphatic demonstration ? Never, never ! so far as man's instrumentality is concerned. But we glory in the Lord. His is the kingdom, and His the power, and His too — and His alone — must be all the glory ! ' It is the doing of the Lord, and marvellous in our eyes.' " Of the Bengalee sermons preached in this new church the author has published a small volume. They are designed specially for Brahmans and other high caste Hindoos. Both from their style and sub- stance they are admirably calculated for the object designed. Of this work, remarkable as being the first volume of regular sermons ever published in the 44^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1841. Bengalee language by a Brahman convert and ordained preacher of the gospel, and peculiarly enhanced in our estimation from the circumstance of its author being- one of the first-fruits of the Church of Scotland's Mission to India, I shall endeavour, by the first oppor- tunity, to send you a copy. Nor is the illustration hereby afforded of another process of paramount importance to be overlooked. What is wanted to insure, under God, the rapid and extensive spiritual regeneration of India, is not an exotic artificially sustained life, but an indigenous, self-sustaining, self- propagating life. Here, then, is the process com- menced in this great heathen metropolis. One has been called of God, endowed with such gifts of nature and endowments of grace, as to have not only life in himself, and for himself, but life so abundantly as to be enabled, through the Divine blessing, to communi- cate a portion to others around him. These already, in the good providence of God, have been blessed in imparting a share of their own vitality to others ; who must be destined to impart the same to others still, in an onward progression, through an ever widening circle. The rate of augmentation, at first gradual and almost imperceptible, may at length advance with a rapidity which might well make the present pioneering generation incredulous. Here there is one case where Christianity may be said to have fairly taken root in the Indian soil, where the process of indigenous self- propagation may be said to have fairly begun. The poor earthen vessel which had originally been employed, under Providence, in conveying the seed of life to this portion of the Indian soil, after depositing the seed in the spot pre-ordained and chosen of God, became shattered and useless. To prove that it had nought to do with the giving of the increase, the human instrument was wholly withdrawn from the field. By ^t. 35- THE MAIN DESIGN OF THE MISSIONARY COLLEGE. 447 his withelrawal was tho process of itidependent self- diffusion arrested ? On the contrary, in the particular instance under review, it progressed more rapidly than ever. And thougli the original conveyer of the seed had died, or had never returned, the process would have still gone on, to the praise of God's glorious grace. Surely a statement of fact like this might well dart a ray of new light into the darkest caverns of prejudice and unthinking bigotry. Surely it might open up a glimpse of the holy and noble extent and purpose of the most frequently misunderstood part of our labours. For what is the main and leading: desi^rn of all our Christian schools and missionary colleges ? Is it not, in liumble dependence on the blessing and fruitful increase of God's Holy Spirit, to raise, and rear up, and multiply a superior race of natives who, like the Rev. Krishna ]\Ioliun Banerjea, shall be privileged to originate and perpetuate the mighty process of gospel propagation through all the cities and provinces of India? " After passing the new church, which stands out to the eye so pleasing a monument of the incipient pro- gress of Christian influence in this heathen metropolis, I came full in view of the Assembly's new Institution and Mission-house, on the opposite side of Cornwallis Square. Gratifying as some of the preceding spec- tacles were, this to me was the most gratifying of all. What a change since May, 1830, and how different the thoughts and feelings of the spectator ! Then, almost the only thing determined on was, that Calcutta should not be my head-quarters and fixed abode ; — now, I saw before me my head-quarters and permanent residence. Then, the precise line of operations to be adopted was not only unknown, but seemed for a while incapable of being discovered, as it stretched away amid the thickening conflict of contending dif- 44^ I'lI'B OF DR. DUFF. 1841. ficulties ; — now, there stood before me a visible pledge and token that one grand line of operation had long been ascertained, and cleared of innumerable obstacles, and persevered in with a steadfastness of march which looked most promisingly towards the destined goal. Then, I had no commission, but either to hire a room for educational purposes at a low rent, or to erect a bun2:alow at a cost not exceeding^ £30 or £40 ; — now, there stood before me a plain and sub- stantial, yet elegant structure, which cost £5,000 or £6,000. Then, it was matter of delicate and painful uncertainty whether any respectable natives would attend for the sake of being initiated into a compound course of literary, scientific and Christian instruction; — now, 600 or 700, pursuing such a coui'se, were ready to hail me with welcome gratulation. Then, the most advanced pupils could only manage to spell English words of two syllables, without comprehending their meaning;- — now, the surviving remnant of that class were prepared to stand an examination in general English literature, science and Christian theology, which might reflect credit on many who have studied seven or eight years at one of our Scottish colleges. Then, the whole scheme was not merely ridiculed as chimerical by the worldly-minded ; but as unmissionary if not unchristian, in its principles and tendencies, by the pious conductors of other evangelizing measures ; — now, the missionaries of all denominations resident in Calcutta, not only approve of the scope, design and texture of the scheme, but have for many years been strenuously and not unsuccessfully attempting to imitate it to the utmost extent of the means at their disposal. Yea, so strong has the conviction of some of them become on the subject, that in some instances, they have laboured to promote the object not only without the sanction, but almost in spite of the declared JEt. 35. THE PROGRESS OF A DECADE. 449 sentiments of the home committees of the parent socie- ties; and, as one of the number (who has devoted the last fifteen years exclusively to Bengalee preaching, but who has gradually become an enthusiastic admirer and advocate of our scheme, as one of the mightiest engines for the dissemination of the gospel in India) again and again declared to me, in the presence of other missionary brethren, the main argument employed by them in writing to, and expostulating with their home committees, has been an appeal to the model, example, and palpable success of our Institution. Then — not to multiply more contrasting parallelisms, — it was my lot to stand alone, without any actual assistance or practical co-operation whatever, — alone, yet not alone, for I was driven the more urgently to look to God as my helper and my counsellor, my fortress and my tower ; — now, I was to join four beloved brethren, one in spirit, one in mind, one in purpose, one in resolution, able, willing, ready mutually to assist, mutually to co-operate in carrying out the great generic principles of the Mission into their full and legitimate development. In the midst of such a crowding profusion of past remembrances, and present realities, and future prospects, I trust that the presiding feeling after all was gratitude to the Father of mercies, and joy in the God of our salvation. Who am I — did the soul instinctively cry out — who am I, that the Lord should condescend so graciously to visit me ? After being in deaths oft, after so many perils by land and water, after so much unprofitable- ness and unworthiness, who am I, that I should have so much given me of my heart's desire ? that I should be spared to witness so much of what, ten years ago, had been pronounced to be the wild dreams of a visionary, actually realized ? Almost instinctively was I led to appropriate and apply, in a very humble and G G 450 LIFE OP DK. DUFF. 1841. subordinate sense, the words of aged Simeon : — * Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace ; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which was prepared before the face of all people, — a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.' " If the college building and the mission-house, with their spacious grounds, in a fine open square and yet close to the busiest part of the native city, formed the fruit of his home labours on which he could look with legitimate satisfaction, much more had he reason to rejoice in the colleagues who had followed him, and had so well carried out his plans during his absence. The whole staff, with Dr. Duff again at its head, formed a remarkable group of five pioneers, such as no other mission has probably ever enjoyed at one time. Dr. W. S. Mackay, whom we have previously described, had bravely brought a spirit of intense devotion and unusually high intellectual grace to bear up his frail body, until the arrival of Dr. Ewart soon after Dr. Duff's first departure set him free to obey the physician's order. He had restricted his energy, but in 1838 had been forced to visit Tasmania in search of health. In the Australian colonies he had pled for the Mission with a quiet power which led many of the churches to try to detain him. But de- claring that even at the risk of chronic sickness there was no career like that of an Indian missionary, he had returned to his post, shipwrecked like Duff in the Bay of Bengal. Dr. Ewart seemed a man whose physique the tropics could not touch, even when he lectured and taught for six hours a day and rested only to give up his evenings to the increasing inquirers and converts. Mr. Macdonald had found a place peculiarly his own in the purely theological work of evangelizing all the classes, and specially of training the catechumens who sought to be first catechists Ait. 35. THE FIVE MISSIONARIES. 45 I and then ordained missionaries to their country- men. Youngest of all, and now the only survivor, Dr. T. Smith after a visit to the Cape of Good Hope to throw oflf the then too fatal dysentery of Bengal, had amply redeemed the promise which Dr. Duflf saw in him when presiding at his ordination in St. George's, as a spiritually aggressive missionary to the educated Hindoos and as the first mathematician then in the East. St. Andrew's kirk, too, was a help to the Mission rather than a drag on its energies, as in former days, under the two chaplains, Dr. Charles and Mr. Meiklejohn. Thus generously, but truthfully, did Dr. DufF write home of the colleagues who only needed him among them to consolidate and carry out to still wider results their varied labours. '* Our missionary brethren, Messrs. Mackay, Ewart, Macdonald and Smith, have, in different ways, been labouring up to the full measure of their strength, and some, it is to be feared, beyond their strength. Of the rich and varied endowments and graces which all of these have been privileged to bring to bear upon this great missionary field it is impossible to think, without admiration of the disinterested devotedness wherewith all have been consecrated to the advance- ment of God's glory ; or, rather, without adoring grati- tude towards Him who bestowed the willing: heart to regard such self-consecration as one of the chiefest of the privileges of the heirs of glory. How admirable the ordinance of Heaven! Diversities of gifts — yet one spirit ! Here there are five of us, born, brought up, educated in different parts of our fatherland, in diverse circumstances and amid indefinitely varying associations. Still, when thrown together, in the inscrutable counsels of Divine providence, in a strange and foreign land, without losing any one of our pecu- liar idiosyncrasies, we find that we are one in spirit, 452 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1841, one in tlie prime actuating motives, one in tlie grand clesio-n and end of our beino^ ! Blessed be God for the realization of such oneness and harmony, as the product of a genuine Christian love. With one accord, for reasons a hundred times reiterated, we regard our Mission Institution as the central point of our opera- tions. In the present exigencies of India, it cannot be otherwise in the eye of any largely observant and contemplative mind. From an intelligent conviction of the peculiar character of the present wants of India, as well as from voluntary obligation, we all feel our- selves pledged, systematically, to devote a due propor- tion of our time to the advancement of the interests of an Institution which has already infused so much of the leaven of divine truth into the vast mass of native society ; and which promises, with the Divine blessing, to infuse still more. The remainder of our time is daily devoted to prayer-meetings, conversations, dis- cussions, preaching, translation, preparation of tracts, or any other miscellaneous objects of a missionary character which may present themselves in the course of providence, or which may best comport with the ability or predilection of the individual labourers." By 1841, too. Dr. Duff's return enabled him to reorganize the Institution in all its departments, rudimentary school and college, English and Oriental. While the ecclesiastical doctrine and practice of Presbyterian parity, of the equality of ordained elders lay and clerical, governed the presbytery and the kirk in all purely spiritual things, organization required something more for the efficient working of a great college and a growing mission. All the gifts and varied energies of the five men must be utilized and directed to the one spiritual end of the immediate conversion of the students, as the test of a system which aimed at far more, even the ultimate subver- ^t. 35. THE COLLEGE KEORGANIZED. 453 sion of ilic wliole Brabmanical system and tlio substi- tutioQ of an indif>-enous Christian Church. Dr. Duff's earliest act was to propose the formation of a mis- sionary council to meet regularly for consultation and prayer under the senior, or whomsoever the Churcli at home might recognise as the senior, on account of peculiar fitness for tho presidency of a Christian colleoce. The machinow thus established within the Presbyterian ecclesiastical system, has ever since worked as well as in any divinity or uni\'ersity Senatus in Scotland. Men who are not only gentlemen, but gentlemen of the highest type — the Christian, will find no difficulty in such cases save when a mistake is made in addinof to their number. The odium ecclesu asticum is a sure gauge of the diminution of the love of Christ, not a proof of intelligent earnestness for the truth. For one Athanasias there are a thousand like Paul of Samosata. Certainly, with the exception of the two sacerdotal parties of the Church of Rome and in the Church of England, foreign missions or mission- aries have ever testified to the Churches which sent them forth, that in Jesus Christ there is neither party nor sect, that the devil is a common enemy strong enough to require all the unitj^ of the evangelical forces. How Dr. Duff's reorganization of the Mission was received by his colleagues, Dr. Mackay thus officially i-eported to the committee : '* Dr. Duff will tell you of our meeting together regularly for consultation, and of what we have agreed on ; but I cannot refrain from saying, that in all our new and complicated arrange- ments, arising out of our increased number and ef- ficiency, there has been no difference of opinion ; and we are all agreed as one man. Each is satisfied with liis own peculiar work, and all are satisfied that every- thing has been done for the best. In Christ we feel that we have one Head, one end, and one mind ; and 454 I'll'E OF DE. DUFF. 1841. believing, we pray that we may always labour together ill peace, and unity, and love." To no subject, when in Scotland, had Dr. Duff devoted more of his little leisure than to the careful inspection of all educational improvements in school and college made during his absence in India. These he now proceeded to adapt to his Bengalee circumstances. He had the buildings, the library, the philosophical apparatus for scientific and teclmical training — every- thing but the assistant native teachers. In all India there was not a normal school at that time. The Mission had raised its own subordinate masters, but on no regular system. He saw that his first duty was to devote part of the strength of his increased staff to the systematic training of native schoolmasters. He had introduced the gallery system, as it was called, into India for the first time. Every Saturday the Institu- tion was crowded by visitors to see the novel sight of some three hundred boys from six to twelve exercised after the most approved fashion of David Stow, begin- ning with gymnastics and closing with an examination on the Bible. Here was his practising department. Daily, since he lived in the grounds, did Dr. Duff him- self induce all the native teachers to remain for an hour, when he taught them " Paideutik," with results which soon showed themselves in the increased efficiency of the school. Not only so, but he was continually called on to surrender his best teachers to other Missions and to Government, while he was consoled by the consciousness that he was thus extending a Chris- tian, as well as educational influence, far and wide. To utmost Siudh, as it then was, as well as far eastern Burma the college sent forth teachers of other schools, as well as officials for the many subordinate and some- times higher appointments of the State, so that the little leaven was gradually leavening the whole lump. JEt 35. THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM AND METHODS. 455 The General Assembly's Institution at that time was strongest in the two allied, though too often divorced subjects, of physical and mental science. The mission- aries themselves were fresh from the highest honours in the classes of Chalmers and Jackson, LesUo and J. Forbes, Brown and Wilson. Of the five, four were masters in the field of mathematics, pure and applied. Dr. Duff himself lectured on chemistry, but his special delight lay in the exposition of psychology and ethics, leading up through natural religion to the queenly theology of revelation. A native student of that time,* who has now been for years a professor in a Govern- ment college, bears this testimony to the intellectual and scientific training of a period when " cram " was unknown, when competition had not learned at once to stimulate and to poison the higher education, and when physical science was taught as the handmaid of faith. Dr. Duff lectured on the methods of teaching pursued in Scotland, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Prussia; and expounded the systems of Stow, of Fellenberg, and of Pestalozzi. Two things were greatly insisted on throughout the classes — a clear conception of an idea in the mind, and the expression of that conception in words. " Duff did not think that a boy had thoroughly caught hold of an idea unless he could express it in his own words, however * Rev. Lai Beliari Day, professor of Englisli Literature in the Goverument College, Hooglily. Tliese -were the studies of the highest college class, in 1843 : — In Theology : the Bible, Scriptural doctrines with textual proofs, Greek Testament, Taylor's " Trans- mission of Ancient Books," Paley's '" Horoe Paulinje." In English : Milton's "Paradise Lost," Tourg, Bacon's Essays and "Novum Organum," Foster's Essays. In Psychology : Brown's Lectures, Whately's Logic and Rlietoric. In Mathematics : analytical geometry, spherical trigonometry, conic sections, the dillerential calculus, optics. In Physics : geology, magnetism, steam navigation. In Sanscrit: the Mugdhaboda. In Persian : the Gulistan and Bostan. /]56 LirE OF DR. DUFF. 1841. inelegantly. Wo therefore took no notes of explana- tions given by the professors ; indeed, no notes were given in the class, under the apprehension that they might contribute to cramming. How just that fear was must appear evident to every one who observes the mischievous consequences arising from the practice of giving notes now adopted in all the Indian colleges. The students of the present day never open then* mouths in the class-room — unless, indeed, it is to make a noise. They take down the professor's words, commit them to memory — often without understand- ing them — and reproduce them in the examination hall. A copying-machine would do the same. An- other feature in the educational system pursued in the G-eneral Assembly's Institution was the judicious mixture of science with literature. At the present day the cry in India, as in Europe, is — physical science. And many people think it is a new cry. But thirty- five years ago Daff took his pupils through a course of pliysical science, in addition to a high literary course. Mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, optics, astronomy, the principles of the steam-engine — the text-books generally being of the science series of Lardner — were tauofht in the colleo^e classes. A course of lectures on chemistry was also delivered, accompanied Avith ex- periments; the youthful and fascinating science of geology was studied on account of its bearing on theology ; while we were so familiar with the use of the sextant, with Norie's ' Navigation, and with the * Nautical Almanac,' that some captains of ships, after examining us, declared that some of my class-fellows could guide a ship safely from the Sandheads to Ports- mouth. The Bengal colleges of the present day have not yet advanced so far as the Greneral Assembly's Institution did, under the guidance of Duff, thirty-five years ago." JEt. 35. SPIRITUAL AGENCIES OF THE COLLEGE. 457 In all this, however, again as in the solitary time of his founding the Mission, the intellectual was di- rected above all things, and excluding all other imme- diate ends, to the spiritual. A new creation in Christ Jesus was what the founder and the four colleagues of like spirit with himself sought to make every student, while they were sustained by the divinely given con- sciousness that they were working for ages yet to come, under the only Leader with Whom a thousand years are as one day, against a system which would not fall, as it had not risen, in a night. So when the reorganization of the college was com- plete, several directly and exclusively spiritual agencies were called into play. First, the public offices being now shut on the Sabbath-day, Dr. DufF opened a class for the systematic study of the Bible by thoughtful and religiously disposed Bengalees, who had never studied in a Christian college, and were occupied as clerks all the week. Many of that large class were in the habit of visiting him and the otiier missionaries, as inquirers, in the evening. Every Sunday morning, at seven o'clock, saw a goodly number of young and niiddle- aged Hindoos, of the higher class, gathered in the mission-house during the three years which ended with the disruption of the Kirk. Dr. Wilson was doing- similar work in Western India. Never, probably, since Pantsenus, the first Christian missionary to India, and his successors in the great School of the Catechumens, evangelized the lands of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean from Alexandria, had there been such searching of the Scriptures. The result of that three years' Avork was that the majority of the Hindoo in- quirers expressed an intellectual conviction of the truth of Christianity. Only the Spirit of God, in direct, irresistible and expanding influence, was wanting so to touch their hearts as to make them dare the renun- 458 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1841. ciation of father and mother, caste and kinship, for Christ. " God is a sovereign God," Dr. Duff once said of these busy years, " and at that time, so far as I could judge, the grace of God's Spirit operated effect- ually on only one soul, to whom it brought home with power the whole truth of gospel salvation through Jesus Christ." "We shall come to him and to others, and we shall see in the coming years how the seed bore fruit of different kinds secretly and openly. For another class, students who had left college for the world but still desired at once the elevating influ- ence of companionship wdth the missionaries and the continuance of their studies, Dr. Duff" opened a week- day evening lecture in his house. There they read, in a critical spirit, those master-pieces of literature in which were most apparent suggestions of good thoughts and spiritual ideas drawing the reader to the higher life. Such were Guizot's History of Civilization,* a history of the Renaissance and Reformation which had gained the prize offered by the French Academy, and John Foster's Essays. This, too, proved most popular. The older men had yet to be cared for, Hindoos who had left college just before or at Dr. Duff's arrival, who remembered the lectures of 1831-4, and desired to renew their investigations. For such he delivered a weekly lecture in a side-room of the Insti- tution, on the leading points of a complete system of mental and moral philosophy, leading up to religion, natural and revealed. Here his remembrance of the famous series of Chalmers at St. Andrews, in which he had been the foremost man, stimulated the missionary. * The Protestant missionaries in China have just issued the pro- spectus of fifty-one treatises to be wi'itten for the people of China and Japan, by the ablest Sinologues. Dr. Williamson is engaged on a History of Civilization for this Chinese encyclopsedia of pure and Christian literature. JEt. 35. FEMALE EDUCATION AND HINDOO WIDOWS. 459 He brouoht liis larsfo audience of tliouo'Iitful hearers to the utmost confines of psychological observation and the ethical reason, aiid then pointed them to " the higher calculus of revealed truth." At this time, too, he saw the first streaks of the dawn of that day which he had anticipated ten years before, when the educated Bengalees would demand educated wives, and the increasing community of native Christians w^ould seek the means of instruction for their children. The orphan refuge for girls, begun by Mrs. Charles, was developed into an efficient Ben- galee school under the Ladies' Society, and from that in later days, in its two branches, many young women have gone forth to be zanana teachers, and the happy wives and mothers of a prosperous Christian commu- nity. The time for more public and direct aggression on the ignorance and social oppression of the women of Bengal, at least, was not yet. In a noble building planted just opposite Dr. Duff's first college, and beside the church of his second convert, the Honble. Drink- water Bethune, a member of the Government, founded a female school, which, though no longer premature, pure secularism has ever since blighted. Yet the two enlightened Brahman landholders of Ooterapara, near Calcutta, had in vain besought the State to join them in opening a school for Bengalee young ladies there. But while Duff sought, in the new orphanage, to prepare Christian teachers, wives and mothers for the future, as it developed before his own eyes, he was no less active in procuring the removal of legislative ob- structions to the freedom of women within legitimate limits. In an official letter of 16th September, 1842, he expounded in detail the two evils of infant betrothal and early marriage — before puberty, often — and of the prohibition of widow marriage. The characteristic dis- belief of Hindooism, in common with all systems except 460 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1841. Christianity, in the continence of man and the purity of woman, makes widows for life of the infant girls whose betrothed have died. These, growing up de- spised, ill-treated and overworked, become the centre of the household and village intrigues which fill the re- cords of the criminal courts of India, and the mainstay of the thousand great shrines to which pilgrimages are made from vast distances and amid incredible hardships all over the peninsula. Weary of life and dissatisfied with herself, allowed a freedom unknown to the wife and frequently never herself a wife, the Hindoo widow vainly seeks peace at the hands of the touting priest, who strips her of her all — even of what honour she may have left — in the name of the Vaishnava deity. Or she courts rest at the bottom of the village well. Add to this the state of wives who are no wives, of the Koolin Brahman's hundreds of wives, some of them whole families of mother and daughters, and we have an idea of the moral and spiritual problems which Christian education faced in even orthodox Hindoos. With satisfaction did Dr. Duff observe the ■discussion of these in the vernacular newspapers, and the formation, so early as 1842, of " a secret society among the educated Hindoos for privately instructing their young daughters and other female relatives." On the other side he had, before this, described his administration of the ordinance of Christian baptism. to the first boy of his third convert, Gopeenath Nundi : "The Christian Hindoo father stood forth, in the presence of his countrymen, some of whom had formerly been either his pupils or companions, holding in his arms the infant whom he desired solemnly to consecrate to his God and Saviour. Be- side him stood the Christian Hindoo mother, holding by the right hand her firstborn, a little girl of three ^t. 33. THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 46 1 years. And there, in the presence of God and man, did both parents unite in taking upon themselves the most sacred vows and obhgations to bring up their little one in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Thus, in the heart of the Brahmanism of Bengal, there was growing up the sweet plant of the Christian family. And the agitation against the legal prohibi- tion of widow marriage, begun in these years, bore its fruit iu the Act of Lord Dalhousie and Sir Barnes Peacock, which, just before the Mutiny, removed all legal obstructions to the marriage of Hindoo widows. While thus sowing joy for generations to come. Dr. and Mrs. Duff were called to bear the bitterness worse than death — the sudden blow of the removal of one of their own children far away from themselves. Long separation and frequent death form the oft-repeated tragedy of Anglo-Indian life. That is none the less bitter that it occurs so often, and seems all the more cruel that the dearest friends who have never left home can only half sympathise with the sufferers. Duff's im- pulsive, continuously imi^etuous affection rushed forth to all his friends and converts, but it flowed in a rapid and deep stream towards his family. In Dr. Brunton he had made a friend to whom he poured forth all the fulness of his heart in private letters, often side by side with his official correspondence. Thus did they write each other, and thus did Dr. Duff, in his own sorrow, comfort the venerable and still surviving lady, Mrs. Briggs, of St. Andrews, whose gift he employed in the mission work : — "Edinburgh College, 2nd June, 1841. "My Dear Dr. Doff, — I had counted upon commencing my letter by this mail with an appeal which would, I well know, be readily responded to, for your sympathy and condolence under our sore bereavement. But, in the unsearchable counsels of God, I am called, on the other hand, to offer ours to you. 462 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1841. Our heavenly Father has called little Anne to Himself. I need not detail the circumstances. I know that more than one affectionate friend intends to transmit them to you. Nor do I need to remind you what are the duties to which^ after the first sore burst of anguish^ j^ou will feel yourself called. I write merely to assure you that the little sufferer had every human resource which you yourself could have desired. Mrs. Campbell watched her with maternal care. The best medical skill of Edinburgh was promptly and affectionately bestowed on her. We have laid her in Dr. Inglis^s burial place^ close to the spot of his own hallowed rest. "I will mix up no other theme with this. The little which I had to say on business I address to Mr. Ewart. I am sure you will not misunderstand me, as if I imagined that, even under this sore trial, you would cease for a day to labour in your Master^s work. On the contrary, I know by experience that such labour is most wholesome medicine in human sorrow. But you are well entitled to judge for yourself at what precise time and in what proportion you are best able to bear the medicine. Mr. Webster happened to be here from Aberdeen on Assembly duty ; and nothing could exceed his devotedness in doing all that was kind and useful. He has written to you, I believe ; as has also Dr. Abercrombie. Miss Stevenson (the writer's niece) communicates with Mrs. Duff by this despatch. My dear friend, my prayers and my best wishes are with you. May God Himself sustain and cheer you ! Yours affection- ately, " Alexander Beunton." "Calcutta, Coenwallis Square, 17th August, 1841. " My Dear Dr. Brunton, — How strikingly did the mournful intelligence by the last overland make me realize the force of the humble but expressive adage, ' a friend in need is a friend indeed.^ Often, often, have I in retrospect watched with wonder and delight the manifold acts of personal kindness shown to me by yourself and Miss Stevenson. And I assure you that, unable, in the deep sincerity of my heart, to find anything in mvself worthy of such kindnesses, I have been ever led to ascribe it all to the special grace and favour of God my heavenly Father, who hath been pleased in His sovereign mercy to raise up unto me friends in so peculiar a sense. But oh, me- thinks your last attentions to our darling and beloved child Mt 35. ON THE DEATH OF HIS CHLLD. 463 were, if possible, tlie kindest acts of all, attentions paid too amid your own sore, sore domestic bereavements. It were to affect a stoicism alien to my nature wore I to pretend that the affliction has been to us a light one. Oh no, it was one of the heaviest that could possibly have befallen. Even now, after the interval of nearly a month, the vivid realization of it brought about by my writiug this note scarcely allows me to proceed. The tears flow now as copiously as on the day of the unexpected intelligence. But do not, my dear father and friend in the Lord, do not conclude that these are tears of murmuring or complaint against the will and act of my heavenly Father. Oh no, they are the meltings of the poor weak human heart of a fond parent, still smarting under the rod of my heavenly Father's chastisement. I can truly say that if these past weeks have been fertile in natural sorrow, they have also been still more fertile in spiritual joy. Every thought of my departed darling child is associated with the thought of heaven — the home of the weary pilgrim of Zion, and the re- membrance of Him who hath gone before to prepare mansions of glory for all His faithful followers. I have felt more in the communion of the Divine lledeemer and its fellowship with the redeemed in glory, than I have experienced for some time past. Still may I say, it was good for me to have been thus afflicted. " It was a kind thought of yours, and in beautiful harmony with all your other refined and delicate consideration for human feelings, to have our little one laid beside the man for whose memory beyond all others I cherish the deepest veneration. Kindest and best thanks to dear Mrs. Inglis and family for their ready consent. Also my warmest thanks to the com- mittee for their tribute of respect. I think far more of their act of favour in behalf of the departed than if they had be- stowed thousands on the living. May the Lord reward you all. "The enclosed business note for Dr. Gordon I leave open, that you may peruse its contents, and lend your aid in accelerating the object solicited. Before this risach you, the Madras events will have cheered you. We have reason to bless God and take courage. It is not to be expected that Satan will sur- render this long-possessed realm without a deadly sti-uggle. Your report to the Assembly has been very soothing and cheering : may the Lord bless its difi'usion. The enclosed you will kindly hand over to Mr. Inglis ; it also contains one 464 LIEB OF BR. BUFF. 1 841. for his motlier, Mrs. Dr. Inglis. Tliis reminds me of what I often intended to ask; could you not manage to procure for us a bust (or even a print, if that cannot be had) of Dr. luglis, to be set up in the library of our Institution ? Surely nothing could be more appropriate. With heartfelt thanks and re- membrances to Miss Stevenson, Mrs. Stevenson, and love to my dear young friends the Borrowmans, I am ever gratefully and affectionately, " Alexandbe Ddpf." ''16th November, 1841. " My Dear Mrs. Brigqs, — It was indeed kind of you — more than kind — amid your own affliction and sore bereavement, to remember one so distant and so unworthy. The announce- ment of the death of your dear husband I had noticed, and longed to learn some particulars relative to his latter end. This I was disposed to ask for as a favour at your own hands. But you more than anticipated me. And your doing so, un- solicited and unprompted, enhances the favour a hundred-fold. That you had ' much comfort in his death, which was that of the Christian enjoying peace in believing ; ' — ah, my friend, these simple but touching and thrilling words in your letter did cause tears of joy to flow from eyes which, in these heathen climes, seldom find matter but for tears of sorrow, and a song of grateful thanks to ascend to the Father of spirits from a heart which, though vexed daily and almost hardened by the freezing obduracy of the votaries of idolatry, has not yet (blessed be God) wholly lost its sensibilities or its sympathies with the great Christian brotherhood. To sleep in Jesus, to die in the Lord, oh, is not this the top and flower of all other blessings here below ? What more could the expanded souls of the ransomed in glory, what more could the burning desires of a seraph long for on behalf of sinful mortal man, than that he should fall asleep in Jesus ? This being the case with your departed husband, while, if I met you, I could not help weeping along with you, could not help the outgush of nature^s tenderness and nature's regrets, I should also soon be constrained to mingle joy with my weeping on account of the ascended and ransomed spirit. And in order to die the death of the righteous, oh, may it be ours to live the life of the righteous, to be united to Christ by a living faith, to be grafted on Him as a liviiiy branch, to be built up in Him as a Mi, 35. LETTER TO A LADY. 465 living stone, to be replenished, through the energy and in- working of His Almighty Spirit, with that grace now which shall ripen into glory hereafter. These, my dearly beloved friend, these are amongst the blessings which constitute the heritage and possession of God^s own children. "As to your remembering me by the large munificence of a Christian heart, as well as the kindness of a Christian's holiest wishes, I know not what to say. Coming from one whose noble and (considering the arduous circumstances of the case), I will add, heroic example of piety I was wont to admire and gather strength from when yet a feeble neophyte myself, I cannot doubt the heartfelt kindliness of the motive, and dare not therefore refuse. In the spirit of Chi-istian love that prompted the token of remembrance, I cannot but accept it as sent to me by the Lord, through the instrumentality of one of His own chosen ones. And I pray God that I may be privileged to employ it in such way as may best promote His own glor}'- and honour. Recompense yon on earth I cannot; I can only pray that the God of all grace may continue to shower upon you still richer effusions of His fatherly loving-kindness, and in the world to come reward you a hundred-fold. And to all your other kindnesses, oh, deny me not the .crowning one, to remember me in your daily petitions at a throne of grace, that the Lord may uphold me in His strength, and cause His pleasure more abundantly to prosper in my unworthy hands. " Amid much to humble we have much to cheer us here. The other day we joyously admitted a young Brahman, of whose faith in the atoning sacrifice of the Divine Redeemer we had ample evidence, into the communion of Christ's visible Church. But as Dr. Brunton will probably publish some portion of the account I sent him, I need say no more here. Is Miss Grace still with you ? Often, often, do I blend my being with ten thou- sand recollections of St. Andrews. There I passed some of my earlier days of sin and folly, and shameful neglect of God and salvation. There, too, the Lord ..was pleased to rescue me as a brand fi*om the burning. Oh, praised be His Holy Name. Were I to name the many men in whom I feel the deepest in- terest, and to whom I would beg to be remembered, my whole paper would be filled. The Lord bless you, and enrich you, and ennoble you more and more by the shining of His grace. Yours gratefully and affectionately, "Alexander Duff." H H 466 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 841. In tlie year 1838, wlien Dr. Dufi was in the press of his home operations, the news came from Nuddea, a county fifty miles to the north of Calcutta, of large additions of Hindoo and Muhammadan peasants to the Church. In 1830 he had visited the spot, among other parts of rural Bengal, only to decide that he must begin the Scottish Mission in Calcutta, and from that as a base extend his influence. In 1832 the Church Missionary Society opened a school in Krishnaghur, the county town, and baptized five students in the first twelve months. By 1838, whole villages with their head men had sought instruction, and hundreds of earnest men and women, under purely spiritual in- fluences, were baptized, and proved their sincerity by suffering persecution unmoved. Then there came into operation motives of a more mixed character. The river Jellinghi, one of three streams into which the mighty Gauges spills over so as to form the united Hooghly on which Calcutta stands, inundated the dis- trict and swept off" the rice harvest. The result was a local famine, from too much water, such as we have twice witnessed since that year. There was no rail- way to pour in food as now, no machinery to link the million of sufferers with the charity of Great Britain, no prudent anticipation on the part of the authorities. The work of relief fell, as usual, on the few mis- sionaries, English and German, who sailed over the inundated plains of an area as large as Lincolnshire, distributing rice to the dying and lending small sums to those who could thus struggle through the crisis. The result was precisely what Madras and Mysore have recently displayed on a greater scale. The evangeliza- tion of the previous six years,* acted on by gratitude * The Tfident, the Crescent, and the Cross (1876), by the Rev. James Yaughan, who is now again building up the Church at Krishnaghur amid many difficulties. /Et. 35. THE NEW SECT, "WORSHIPPERS OF THE CEEATOr.." 467 for the liumniiity and sjmj.athy shown, bore both natural and spiritual fruit in the profession of Chris- tianity by thousands. On one occasion Bishop Wilson presided at the baptism of nine hundred Hindoos and Muhamniadaus. Dr. Duff drew up a document explaining the movement to the churches at home. Judging from analogy there can be little doubt that Krishnaghur and the rich sngar, indigo, oilseed and jute districts of the Hooghly Delta would by this time have been what the Tinnevelly Church has become, in similar circumstances, had the missionaries not com- paratively deserted it before the infant church had been consolidated and had produced its own tried and trained pastors. As it is, the large nominal Christian descendants of the first converts, among whom caste has crept and the sacerdotalism of Jesuit priests recognising caste, is being again evangelized, like the lapsed sections of our own cities and mining and manufacturino: districts. But there was another providential preparation for the rapid creation of the Krishnaghur Church. When Rammohun Roy was feeling after God, as we have already told, among the learned of Burdwan and Cal- cutta who knew Sanscrit and English, there was a villager of the cowherd caste in Ghospara, near Krish- naghur, who in the Bengalee vernacular admitted neophytes to a new sect on the pa^^ment of a rupee and the recitation of this Muntra, or combined creed and charm — "0 sinless Lord. 0 great Lord, at thy pleasure I go and return; not a moment am I without thee; I am ever with thee. Save, 0 great Lord." Ram churn Pal was really a follower of the great reformer Chaitunya, but he set up a new sect which recognised him as the incarnation of Krislma rather than the character which he professed. The Gooroo, or teacher, was the sinless lord, entitled to all the 4^8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1842. spiritual power and ouerings. This new sect of Vaishnavas called themselves Kharta-bhajas, or wor- sliippers of the Creator. They ate together twice a year ignoring caste, and gained over many women and infirm persons by the belief that the Muntra removed barrenness and disease. Such is the account of the Gooroo's contemporary, Mr. "Ward, of Serampore.* In this its first stage, before the denunciation of caste had given place to free love, as in many such sects, and the cessation of idol-worship had been followed by the substitution of one god for another, the new teaching sent many to swell the ranks of true but uninstructed Christians. To a careful study of the Kharta-bhajas, with the view of founding a mission among them, Dr. Duff devoted the college vacation of 1840-41, and again of 1841-42. As the guest of the Church missionary, Mr. Alexander, he was at the head-quarters both of the sect and of Christian operations. In discussing vernacular education, helping to spread village schools and frequent meetings with both the Christians and the Kharta-bhajas, two months passed away. He signalized his farewell by a simple feast to the Chris- tians of one station, at which five hundred squatted, oriental fashion, before piles of curry and rice and the fruits of the cold season, spread out on the soft green leaves of the plantain-tree, and deftly conveyed to the mouth with two forefingers and thumb. So the Rishis ate on the ancestral Aryan tableland. But here were also women and children, and glad sounds of praise arose to the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour, * Vol. ii., page 175, of A Vieiv of the History, Literature, and. My- thology of the Hindoos (1818, second edition), by W. Ward. A work now of some rarity, and drawn upon by not a few writers without due acknowledgment. ALt 36. THE NEW STATIONS AT CULNA AND GIIOSPAIIA. 469 Jesus Christ. Dr. Duff was intensely human, rejoicing as much in the social feast of the lately christianized families, in its way, as in their solemn acts of pure worship. Desirous to concentrate his mission on the left bank of the river, Mr. Alexander urged his Pres- byterian guest to take possession of Culna, opposite, once the great port of fertile Burdwan, and still a pilgrim town of 50,000 inhabitants, where the per- petual lease of a piece of ground had been secured. After inspecting the place, Dr. DufF dropped down the Hooghly to Grhospara, now three miles from the railway station of Kanchrapara. There, in a mango tope or grove, he visited the Gooroo of the Kharta- bhajas. Surrounded by his disciples, the son of Ramchurn made a statement of his faith to the mis- sionary sitting upon the simple " charpoy " or low couch-bed of the East, and willingly granted him, in perpetuity, a lease of land for a Christian school and church. From the fifty thousand pilgrims who twice a year crowd to the " cold sea" or pool whose waters had healed the wife of their Gooroo, and to the sacred pomegranate-tree under which she was buried,* he thought to gather many to Christ. But where were the missionaries for the rural stations, thus increased to three — Takee, Culna and Ghospara ? In the first, Mr. Clift had been succeeded by Mr. W. C. Fyfe, sent out from Scotland as an educationist and subsequently ordained, so that he is now the senior missionary in Bengal. Happily the college in Calcutta, which, in 1830, had begun with the Lord's Prayer in Bengalee, the English alphabet, and the slow spelling out of the Sermon on the Mount, and had given its first four converts to the Angli- can, American Presbyterian and Congregationalist • A Statistical Account of Bengal (1875), vol. ii., p. 53- 470 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1842. Churclies, because the Kirk was not prepared to utilize them, was producing the ripest spiritual fruit. Established to sway towards Christ, and by Christ, the whole revolution of thought and feeling which the English language and the British administration had set in motion and were hurrying away from all faith and morals, Dr. Duff felt that his college would be an immediate failure if it did not bring in individual souls and raise an indigenous missionary ministry. Before all other agencies for educated Hindoos, his system had, in 1830-1834, accomplished both results. Nor had it ceased to do so in his absence, while his return gave it a new impetus. Whether we look at the spiritual or the intellectual character of the young men; whether we consider what they sacrificed for Christ, or what He enabled them to become in His work, we may assert that no Christian mission can show such a roll of converts from the subtlest system of a mighty faith and an ancient civilization as Dr. Duff's college in the first thirteen years of its history. We begin with the one failure — let the truth be told, but tenderly. In 1837, Dwarkanath Bhose, at the age of seventeen, was baptized. No convert witnessed so good a confession as he, if persecution be the test. He was the Peter of the band. Thrice carried ofi" by his bigoted family, chained and imprisoned till Mr. Leith's services in the Supreme Court were necessary to en- force toleration, he clung to his convictions. So bright a student did he become that he was one of the four Bengalees selected by Government to complete their medical studies in London. Was it there that, like not a few of his countrymen since, he found the temptations of a great city, in which he was alone, overpowering ? With the highest professional honours he returned to practice in Calcutta, where he fell a victim to the vice which our excise system has taught the educated ^.t. 36. THE NEW CONVERTS. 47I natives of India, when it plants the licensed wine-shop beside the Christian school. "Wo visited him in his fatal sickness. Who shall say that, like Peter also, he did not rise, ever so little, from his fall ? It is not English Christians, at least, who can judge him. Rather let us judge our own want of faith and cliarity towards India ; our own administration which, now purged of most other debasing tendencies and immoral monopolies, still uses the whole power of the State to secularise public instruction, and to raise an annually increasing revenue by spreading drink and drug licences far and wide over India and even China. The missionaries were used to make Dwarkanath Bhose the noble con- vert and accomplished student ho was when he landed on our shores — who is responsible for tlie rest ? A fellow-student of Dwarkanath's would have stood by his side in baptism. Laid low by fever he sent for his companions, declared to them that he believed in Christ, au'l died before he could be baptized. He was one of a large class of secret Christians, who have been known to baptize each other in the last hour. The bloom of the Mission, intellectually and spiritually, was also cut off by an early death — two converts who lived and worked lono^ enousrh to become the Davdd and the Jonathan of the Church of India, Mahendra Lai Basak and Kailas Chunder Mookerjea. Mahendra had entered Dr. Duff's school in 1831, at the age of nine, but was removed to the Hindoo College be- cause of the direct Christian teaching of the former. Returning lie became so thoughtful as to alarm his Hindoo friends, who tried to seduce him to sins which, they thought, would make even the missionaries slum him. It was in vain. He rose to be the gold medalist of the college, and his demonstrations of some of Euclid's problems were so ingenious as to call forth the eulogy of Profesj=or Wall ace, of the University of 472 LIFE OP DR. DL'FF. 1S42, Edinburgli. But liis intellectual power was dedicated to the office of the Christian ministry. Baptized in 1839, after renewed opposition from his father, he be- came the first divinity student of the college. The same year saw him joined by a Koolin Brahman, Kailas, who had gone through the six years' course of the college. When on the way with his family to an idolatrous service, his conscience so pricked him that lie fled to the mission-house. Gentle and confiding, he was deluded by solemn pledges into leaving its pro- tection, when he was kept in durance for three months. On escaping he was publicly baptized in the college hall. After systematic theological training, the two friends were appointed catechists. Part of their prac- tical training had been to accompany the missionaries on itineracies through the rural districts in the cold season. Dr. Duff thus described his experience of Mahendra, as a preacher, at the beginning of 1841 : — " In these rural itineracies I had much reason to be satisfied with the docility, humble demeanour, and moral earnestness of my young friend, Mahendra. His tact, too, and management in meeting the objec- tions, and in presenting divine truth in an intelligible form to the minds of his countrymen, were such as to encourage no ordinary expectations as to the future. On one occasion he displayed much eloquence and power. Standing on the steps in front of a temple of Shiva, in the large town of Culna, we got into a long and varied di«:cussion with the Brahmans. Soon an immense crowd was assembled. They professed their readiness to listen to what the Saheb had to say; but when, at my suggestion, Mahendra began to ask certain questions, he was at first received with a shout of derisive scorn. ' What ! ' exclaimed they, ' shall we give ear to the words of a poor ignorant boy ? ' With the greatest calmness and self-posses- Alt. 36. THE NOBLEST OP ALL THE CONVERTS. 473 sion Mahcndra replied, * Well, friends, if I am a poor ignorant boy, is that not a stronger reason why you, ■who are so learned, should take pity upon me, and give me the knowledge which you believe would re- move my ignorance. I began to ask the questions, not with a view to abuse you, or your faith, or to dis- play my own learning, which is very little; but simply to know what your creed really is, and thus enable mo to compare it with my own.' This ' soft answer ' had the desired effect. After answering some questions, they began to interrogate in return. In reply to the query respecting his faith, Mahendra began by giving a brief sketch of what he was by birth and education, and how he came to renounce Hindooism and embrace Christianity. His exordium at once caught the ear and riveted the attention of every one; and not a whisper was heard from the previously unruly and uproarious audience, when he commenced his narrative by saying, ' Countrymen and friends, I am a Hindoo ; I was born and brouglit up a Hindoo ; yen, I belonged to the Boistobs, one of the strictest sects, as you know, among the Hindoos. My father was and is a Boistob; my mother was and is a Boistob; they were both very careful in training me up in the knowledge of their peculiar creed ; they made me attend upon Radhanath, one of the great pundits of the Boistob sect ; at his feet I was brought up ; he laboured to imprint upon my mind the doctrines of Atma, Onama, and other Shasters.* How forcibly the preliminary part of this address made me realize the exceeding naturalness and adaptation of the Apostle's appeal, in somewhat similar circumstances, and with a view to somewhat similar ends ! ' Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews ; as touching the law, a Pharisee ! ' How forcibly, too, did it make me feel the superiority of the 474 I'lFl^ OF DB. DUFF. 1S43. vantage-ground on wliicli a qualified native must ever stand, when addressing his own countrj^'men — his own kinsmen according to the flesh ! Oh that we had hundreds of Mahendras ! — hundreds exhibiting simihxr qualifications of head and heart; then mig]it we begin to lift up our drooping heads, in the full assurance that the day of India's salvation was nigh at hand. At the conclusion of Maliendra's long address we dis- tributed all the tracts in our possession. We had reached the temple about five p.m. ; it was now eight o'clock; and the full moon, shining from the deep blue vault of an almost starless though cloudless sky, lighted us back to our small boat on the river. On our way, we overheard many remarks respecting what had been said ; amongst others, the following : ' Truly, he looked a poor, ignorant boy ; but his words showed him to be a great pundit.' " These were the men, Mahendra and Kailas, who were placed in Grhospara as missionaries to their country- men. Within a few weeks of each other, in the year 1845 they passed away, after services which Dr. Ewart and Mr. Macdonald recorded in Memoirs of them. So, also, the amiable Madub Chunder Basak died ripe for heaven. Dr. Duff longed for hundreds like them, and he did not pray in vain. Passing over the baptism of another Brahman, of Kalichurn Dutt, and of Dr. Duff's converts baptized by other Churches, we come in 1841-3 to the conversion of the four remarkable Hindoos who lived to be ordained ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, and at Culna and other rural stations, as well as Calcutta itself, proved successful missionaries. The Rev. Jugadishwar Bhattacharjya, a Brahman of the Brahmans, above eighteen, whom a mob attempted to tear from the mission-house, has since won the gratitude of his peasant countrymen, alike by his spiritual and his temporal services to .^,t. 37. THE TWELVE PRINCIPAL CONVEliTS. 4/5 them, having saved many in the time of famine. Sucli are liis knowledge and influence, that he was selected by Lord Nortlibrook to give evidence before a Com- mons committee. The Rev. Prosuuno Koomar Chat- terjea, once of the same highest caste, has long presided over another of the rural missions in Bengal. The Rev. Lai Behari Day, a successful English author and Government professor, who preaches regularly to the Scotsmen sent out to superintend the jute mills on the Hooghly, has lately told the world his " Recollections " of the missionary who was one of his spiritual fathers. Last of all, but now no more, do we linger over the name of the Rev. Behari Lai Singh, the Rajpoot who died the only missionary in India of the Presbyterian Church of Eng^land. The teaching^ which led him to sacrifice all for Christ he and his brother received in the college ; the example which afterwards proved to him that Christianity was a living power was that of his official superior, Sir Donald M'Leod. From the converts made up to 1843 we have named these twelve — four in the first period, eight in the second — as the typical fruit of the system directed by the first missionary of the Church of Scotland to the destruction of Brahmanism and the building up of the Church of India by educated Hindoos. The first, Brijonath ; the sixth, seventh, and tenth, Mahendra, Kailas, and Madhub, became early fruit of the native Church in heaven, but not before Mahendra and Kailas had done true service for their Master. With a joyful catholicity Dr. Duff had given Krishna Mohun to the Church of England, Gopeenath to the American Pres- byterian Church, Anundo to the London Mission, and Behari Lai to the English Presbyterians. Of the twelve not the least brilliant fell ; while we shall see Gopeenath witnessing a good confession in his hour of trial in the Mutiny. 47^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1843. While the college, in spiritual influence and intellec- tual force, with its 900 students and three branch stations, was thus advancing to the state of efficiency in which it closed for the last time in 1843, all around there were then, as now, disaster and confusion in public affairs. Thus longingly did Dr. Duff dwell on the triumphs of peace, and on the way which it opened for the Prince of peace, into the lands beyond our frontiers, then on the Sutlej and the Yoma mountains of Arakan. How hopefully, in the Punjab, the Karen country and China, have his anticipations been realized. What he wrote of Lord Ellenborough even may stand, for he wrote it on the 17th October, 1842, before the Somnath Gates proclamation and the Sindh war. Captain Durand being that Governor-General's private secretary : — " For the last three years all India has been in a state of suppressed ferment and smothered excitement, by the desolating warfare in Afghanistan and China. A permanent peace with Afghanistan may prepare a way of access to the vast nomadic hordes of Central Asia, who, from time immemorial, have been the conquerors and desolators of its fairest and richest provinces. The last few years have served to prove that, though the sword of war may destroy, it cannot tame or subdue any portion of these wild and lawless races. What fresh glory will this shed on the triumphs of the gospel, when, by the peaceful * sword of the Spirit,' these very tribes are brought into willing sub- jection, and endowed with meek and lamblike disposi- tions ! A permanent peace with China may open up an effectual door of ingress to more than 300,000,000 of human beings — one-third of the entire race of man- kind ! — hitherto shut up, and, as it were, hermetically sealed against the invasion of gospel truth. How mysterious, and yet how wisely beneficent the ways of .'i<:t. 37. ri:AOK the orpoiiTUJ^iTY of the missionary. 477 Divine Providence ! China being sealed against tlie direct intrusion of Bible heralds, the last thirty years have been chiefly devoted by the lamented Morrison and others to the study of that unique and solitary lingual genus, the Chinese tongue — to the investigation of Chinese antiquities, literature, mythology, and other such like subjects as tend to throw light on the genius, the character, the mental and religious habitudes of so singular and multitudinous a people — to the prepara- tion of grammars, and dictionaries, and tracts, and, above all, to the translation of the Word of life, that Book of books, the Bible. And when the requisite apparatus for an effectual spiritual warfare has been fully prepared, suddenly and unexpectedly the immense field for their practical application has been thrown open, by the instrumentality of one who * meant not so, neither did his heart think so.' (Isa. x. 7.) What a striking coincidence ! Who dare say that it is for- tuitous ? Oh no ! It is altogether the ordination of Him who ' knoweth the end from the besrinnino:.' It is one of those marvellous points of confluence among the manifold streams and currents of Providence, which may flow, for years or even ages, unseen be- neath the surface, till the * set time ' hath come for their springing forth visibly, to bespeak the presiding presence of Him, who ' doeth according to His will among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth.' " If anything could enhance the joy which we have all experienced from the simple announcement ' Peace,* it is the language in which the present Governor- General has couched his solicitation for the offerinof of public prayers and thanksgivings to Almighty God throughout all the Indian Churches. From the State circular, penned by Lord Ellenborough himself, I ex- tract the following passage : — ' The seasonable supply 478 LIFE OF DR. DOFF. 1843. of rain, following our prayers recently offered to God for that blessing, whereby the people of the North- Western Provinces have been relieved from the fear of impending famine; and the great successes recently obtained by the British arms in Afghanistan, whereby the hope of honourable and secure peace is held out to India, impose upon us all the duty of humble thanks- giving to Almighty Grod, through whose paternal goodness alone these events have been brought to pass. Nor have we less incurred the duty of earnest supplication, that we may not be led to abuse these last gifts of God's bounty, or to attribute to ourselves that which is due to Him alone ; but that He may have granted to us grace so to improve these gifts to us, to show ourselves worthy of His love, and fit instru- ments, in His hand, for the government of the great nation which His wisdom has placed under British rule.' These, surely, are sentiments worthy of a British statesman, and honourable to the Christian head of the most powerful empire in Asia ! — sentiments, embodying so solemn a recognition of Jehovah's su- premacy and man's responsibility ; — sentiments which are sure to be translated into all the languages, and circulated among all the nations of the Eastern world ! Oh, let all the British Churches respond, with heart and soul, to the voice of thanksgiving and supplica- tion which is about to be lifted up by all the Churches in India ! and pray that the time may come, and that right speedily, when the outpourings of God's Spirit shall descend on this dry and parched land.'* END OF VOL. I. TH E LIFE OF ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D. VOL. II. IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIII. 1 85 6- 1 85 8. PAGES The Mutiny and the Native Church op India . . 307-354 CHAPTER XXIV. 1 858-1863. Last Yeaks in India 355-395 CHAPTER XXV. 1 864- 1 867. In South-East Afkica.— The Missionaut Propaganda . 396-423 CHAPTER XXVI. I 867-1 878. New Missions and the Results of Half a Century's Work «... 424-464 CHAPTER XXVII. 1865-1878. Dr. Duff at Home .-».... 465-494 CHAPTER XXVIII. 1 877-1 878. PEACEMAKINfl 495-518 CHAPTER XXIX. 1877-1878. Dying 519-542 Index •••••••••• 548-553 LIFE OP ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D. CHAPTER XVL 1843-1844. MISS ION AEY OF THE FREE CHUECE OF SCOTLAND. The Power of Youth. — Spiritual Independence and the People of Scotland. — Torpor of the Ministers for a century and a quarter, — Anecdotes from Dr. Duff's experience. — On Robert Burns. — Reproving an Officer for Profanity. — Sir Charles Napier. — Sir Rotjert Peel rebuked. — Duff's public silence on the Disruption Controversy. — Appeals from Dr. Brunton and Dr. Charles J. Bi'own. — All the Missionaries adhere to the Church of Scotland Free. — Dr. Duff's " Explanatory Statement." — A critical time. — The Disruption in Calcutta. — Dr. Simon Nicolson. — Messrs. Hawkins, M. Wylie and A. B. Mackintosh. — The Free Church in Calcutta. — Dr. Duff's four Lectures. — Lord Brougham and Gibbon. — Duff describes the Disruption. — Free Church resolves to extend Foreign Missions. — The Property Wrong. — Sympathy of all Evangelical Churches. — Duff's disinterestedness. — Opening of the General Assembly's Institution of the Free Church of Scotland. — A Professorship of Missions urged. NOT only is the world the heritage of the young, as has been said. The young mak« the world what it is. Dr. Duff had really done his work in India when he was twenty-eight; he had, apparently, completed its parallel side in Great Britain when he was thirty-three ; he had consolidated the whole sys- VOL. II. B 2 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843, tern, and he saw it bearing rare spiritual as well as moral and intellectual fruit before lie was thirty-seven. So, in the same field of reformation, Luther and Melanchthon in Grermany, Pascal and Calvin in France, Wesley and Simeon in England, and Chalmers in Scotland had sowed the seed and reaped the early harvests while still within the age which Augustine pronounces the " culmen " and Dante the *' key of the arch" of life. Dr. Duff might have spent the rest of his career in quietly developing the principles and extending the machinery of his system on its India and Scottish sides, but for two forces, in Church and State, which the shrewdest took long to foresee. His Kirk had to work its way back to the purity and spiritual independence of covenanting times — a pro- cess in which all the Churches of Europe are following it, from Italy and Germany to France and Ireland — and in so working it became broken into two. And the Afghan War was to prove only the first act in the prelude to the history of British India. That prelude closed in the Sepoy Mutiny. That history fairly began with the too rapid obliteration of the military and political system by which the old East India Company had brought the empire to the birth and had reared it into a vigorous childhood. Foreign Missions being of no ecclesiastical party but the privilege of all, we have seen how Dr. Duff", during his first visit to Scotland, had kept aloof from even the most vital controversies. To him, as charged with the conversion of a hundred and thirty millions of human beings. Whig or Tory, Voluntary or State Churchman, even " Intrusionist " or " Non- Intrusionist " were of little account save in so far as they could promote or hinder his one object. Even in India, on his return in 1840, he was so silent regarding his relation to parties and the course he ^t. 37. PKEPARED FOR THE DISRUPTION. 3 would follow if a rupture took place, that somo doubted how he would act. In truth, the approaching cataclysm so weighed him down, in reference to its effects on his own mission, that he refrained from speech, in public, till the issue should be fairly put before him and his colleagues for decisive settlement. But not one of the clerical combatants in the thick of the fight knew its meaning, historical and spiritual, better than the missionary. His youth had been over- shadowed by the " cloud of witnesses." His heroes had ever been the men of the Covenant. His hatred was that of the patriot rather than of the priest, to the Stewarts who, down to the last act in Queen Anne's time, had robbed the Kirk and its people of spiritual freedom. He waited only for the right time, the time of duty to the Mission as well as to his principles, to declare himself with an energy and an uncompromising thoroughness, hardly equalled by the ecclesiastical leaders who headed the host of disrup- tion heroes on the memorable eighteenth day of May, 1843. But not only had the education of the Highland boy, under such a father and teacher as his, early fed his young life with the history of his Kirk, which is that of his country. In his three years' wanderings over every presbytery and almost every parish of Scotland, from the Shetland Isles to the Solway, he had become acquainted with the actual state of religious and social life in a way unknown to Chalmers or the young Guthrie, or the most experienced Lowlander of the time. To the highest test which can try a Christian or a Church, the Christ-like philanthropy of missions, he had jealously brought the Church of Scotland from 183-i to 1840, its ministers and people, its parties and their professions, its policy and aims. He thus learned, as no one else could, the wrong, religious 4 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. and political, done to the country by the dishonest legislation of Queen Anne's advisers all through the eighteenth century, even to the Reform Act in the State and the Yeto Law in the Kirk. And a happy experience taught him, and Chalmers through him, that the heart of the people was sound in spite of the torpor and retrogression of a century and a quarter, that the Scotsmen of 1834-43 were the true spiritual descendants of their fathers of the first and the second Reformation. This had been his experience of the ministers of the " moderate party," who had formed the majority in the Kirk down to the year 1834 and who called in the civil courts to drive out the evangelical majority ten years after. Dr. Duff was wont to declare that, personally, he had received everywhere at their hands the most courteous and friendly treatment, with the two excep- tions of Peebles and Dunbar. Seeing that he kept his cause and himself aloof from parties, Moderates as well as Evangelicals invited him to their manses, placed their conveyances at his disposal, passed him on from presbytery to presbytery, and loyally obeyed the Assembly of 1835 in promoting meetings and subscriptions. The majority of the moderate minis- ters he found to be farmers and politicians, whose conversation was divided between agricultural talk and political criticism. " But," he once said, " I do not remember their volunteering any remarks on the vastly higher subject of the spiritual culture of the human mind, or the Georgics of the soul, as it might be called." In one case the moderator of the presbytery, having duly summoned a meeting on the market day, could not himself be found to preside until it was reported that he had been seen among the crowd gazing at the tricks of a vagrant mountebank. The one evangelical member of that body charged /Et. 37. REMINISCENCES OF THE KIUK. 5 him with tho shameful forgetfulness, but the majority hushed up the proceedings at a time when the daily newspaper was unknown. In another case Dr. Duff happened to succeed, in the guest chamber of the manse, a minister who was notorious for Unitarian views. Tlie parish was ringing with the story, how he had surprised all by first delivering a communion address surcharged with the evangelicalism of the Puritans, and then, when suddenly called to fill a vacant place in the long services, had preached a dis- course of the most repulsively cold heresy. On inquiry it was discovered that he had compiled from the " Marrowmen," whom he despised, an address suited to evangelical congregations, and which alone he was wont to speak on such occasions. But for reminiscences such as those of Dr. Duff it would be incredible to what extent not only hetero- doxy but profanity, intemperance, and other immo- rality found a place among the moderate ministers in rural districts, especially in the Highlands and islands to which public opinion never penetrated. Many of them, among themselves, avowed theological opinions contrary to the Confession of Faith, the contract on which they claimed to hold their livings. At the upper end of a long strath in the Highlands lived a parish minister who was scarcely ever known to be sober. Business took him frequently to the other end of the valley, where he had to pass a distillery. It was the frequent sport of the owner to tempt the poor wretch, and then, placing him on his pony with his head to the tail, send him back amid the derision ; of the whole people, a man supporting him on either side. Another parish was a preserve of smugglers, whose rendezvous was the kirk, where the little barrels of Highland whisky were concentrated before despatch to the south. The isolated spot was the terror of the 6 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1843. gaugers, for whom the hardy inhabitants, banded to- gether, were long more than a match. A new minister was presented to the parish, a man of great promise and considerable scholarship. His one weakness was a passion for the violin. Through that he fell so low, that when his parishioners assembled at the inn they sent for the minister to play to them, and even carried him off when well drunk to a house of doubtful repute where the revelry was continued. On one occasion he fell into the peat fire, where his limbs became so roasted that for six months he was laid aside and he was lamed for life. His brethren resented the scandal only by refusing to allow him to attend the presbytery dinner, and by denying him all help at communion seasons. Brooding over these insults, he resolved to adopt that form of retaliation which would be most disagreeable to colleagues some of whom differed from himself only by being greater hypocrites. He sent to the neighbouring cities for the most evangelical Gaelic ministers to assist him on fast and sacrament days. The result was that the smuggling parish became not only a new place, such as all the success of the excise could never have made it, but the centre of light to the whole presbytery. The people flocked from a great distance to hear the grand preaching in their own tongue. The drunkard's successor, appointed under the Veto Act, was a godly man, and when the disruption came the whole parish left the Established Church. "When farther north still, Dr. Duff found himself the inhabitant of a room in the manse which was curiously stained. On asking an explanation he was told that, as the most secure place, the attics had long been the storehouse of the smugglers of Hollands and small sacks of salt. So soon as the brig appeared in the harbour of Stromness, with flying colours, the minister at the beginning of the century promptly went on Alt. 37. RODERT BURNS AND HIS CENSORS. 7 board. Even if the day were Sunday he would go in the face of all the people, before or after doing pulpit duty ! The manse had been built for the pur- pose of receiving the contraband articles, which were hoisted up by a pulley swung to a hook projecting from a window in the high-pointed gable. The plaster of the roof below was saturated with salt, which ap- peared in moist weather. Dr. Duff's investigations in Ayrshire found results hardly more satisfactory than in the Highlands and the Scandinavian islands. His famiharity with the poems of Eobert Burns, and knowledge of the use which had been made of their finer strains by the young Hindoo reformers of Bengal, led him to make very minute in- quiries of some of the older men who had had personal intercourse with the poet. They assured him that Burns was often blamed for caricaturino: sacred thinofs when, in truth, he was giving a most vivid description of sad reality. A man of Burns's pious training, knowledixe of the Bible and excecdino^ acuteness, could not fail to be struck with the marked contrast between Christianity as expressed in the creed and in the life of a great body of the ministers and people. "Having thrown ofi*the fear of man, and alas ! to some extent the fear of God," remarked Dr. Dufi', " Robert Burns satirised this state of things in their gross literality with all faithfulness. Hence not a few who were godly men declared to me their conviction that the description given in * The Holy Fair ' of scenes at the administration of the Lord's Supper was not exagger- ated ; and the same was asserted of some of what were reckoned his more objectionable minor poems. Oh ! what these ministers have to answer for at the Day of Judgment. The mischief they did by lapsing into gross errors in doctrine, and more than loose practices in life, is incredible." To the end of his life 8 LIFE OP DR. DUrP. 1843. Dr. Duff held this to be the true explanation, founding alike on his own recollections in the present cen- tury, and on those of older men as to that which preceded it. The mass of the common people, who did not turn for spiritual life to the seceding churclies which now form the vigorous United Presbjterian Church, found it in tlie study of the Bible and of writers like Ruther- ford and Boston, Bunyan and Doddridge. But this degeneracy of the Kirk had affected the upper classes of society in a wa-y incredible in these days of a healthy public opinion. The literature of the time, scanty though it be, reveals not a little of the truth. Dr. Duff met with this typical illustration of one form of the evil on a journey from Perth to Pit- lochrie by the Inverness coach. In the darkness he could not see them, but he could not help hearing the conversation of the three occupants whom he joined. The talk was of the Peninsular War, led by a Highland officer who had passed through its campaigns. The interest of the really striking infor- mation given by him was, however, marred by his habit of adding an oatli to every two or three words, and not unfrequently by expressions of licentiousness as well as profanity. Should he interpose ? was a question long debated by Dr. Duff. Ignorant who his companions might be, and whether in a stage coacli the end might not be worse than the beginning, he resolved to wait till daylight and the first stoppage. On arriving at Pitlochrie the young missionary asked the officer to speak to him privately for a moment on the road. Dr. Duff began by saying that he had been profoundly interested by many of the remarkable state- ments respecting the Peninsular War, a confession which seemed to gratify his companion. He could not, moreover, from the tone and tenor of their con- ^t. 37. RKPUOVES AND CUBES PROFANE SWEARING. 9 versatiou all the niglit, but come to the conclusion that the person who had given so much novel in- formation was, beyond question, a born gentleman. As a gentleman he must know that it was contrary to the ordinary rules of courtesy to say anything which, even unintentionally, might be very offensive to another. He, the officer, might have formed, in his youth, habits which were now contrary to the usages of poUte society. One of these was what is ordinarily called profane swearing, which was at one time considered to give zest to earnest conversation. Dr. Duff, being an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland, was sure that the officer would excuse him for remarking that many of the words interspersed in the narratives of the war grated with something more than harshness on his ear, and for thus unburJcning his own mind and conscience privately to him who had thoughtlessly used them. On this the officer took him by the hand, warmly thanked him for his delicacy and faithfulness, admitted that he had never looked on swearing in that light, and regretted that no one had before spoken to him in that way. Without commit- ting himself to a pledge on the subject he promised to ponder the gentle reproof. When, some time after- wards. Dr. Duff was at Kingussie manse on the way south from Inverness, he learned that his companion of that nio-ht was a well-known landholder of the neighbourhood, and that a somewhat sudden change in his habits of speech and church-going had attracted attention. We may add to this another illustration, of even greater boldness, on the part of the young assis- tant surgeon from Aberdeen, who was on Sir Charles Napier's staff in Sindh. His at first timid remonstrance with the Commander-in-Chief, whose constant com- panion he was officially forced to be for many weeks, led the veteran to overwhelm him with a torrent of lO LIPK OP DR. DUFF. 1 843. renewed oaths, followed by a most touching apology, though not, we fear, by any permanent reform. Nor were the southern visitors to the Highlands in these early days any better than the moderate minis- ters whose kirks they rarely entered. Sir Robert Peel and a party of his friends had leased the shootings around Kingussie. To most of them all days were alike for sport. The peasantry, finding themselves in a sore strait between their duty to their conscience and the temptations held out by the Sunday sportsmen, waited on their minister with entreaties for advice. He at once wrote to Sir Robert Peel a letter, read by Dr. Duff, which acknowledged all the kindness of the great statesman to the people, and asked him to respect their conscientious convictions. A week passed and no reply came. But on the next Sabbath the practical answer was given when, somewhat late, Sir Robert and his whole party took possession of the great pew belonging to the estate they had leased. On the next day the minister received a long and kindly letter from the Premier, declaring that it was he who should apologise for not ascertaining his duty to the people, and expressing a wish that all clergymen would act with similar faithfulness. Such reminiscences of his study of the inner life of the Church of Scotland, bad and good, lighting up his intimate knowledge of its history and his sympathy with the spiritual and civil patriotism of its people, made the disruption when it came a very real and joyous event to Dr. Duff, though far away from all its controversies and its triumphs. His enthusiasm burst forth the more impetuously that, for three years in India as during the five which he had spent in Europe, he had maintained an unbroken silence on the great spiritual-independence controversy. The chivalrous honour of the man prevented him from making any ^t. 37- THE SHADOW OF TlIK DISiilTPTlON. II allusion to it in his official correspondence. Nor was Dr. Brunton, on the other side, less thoughtful. Neither could arrest the issue ; so long as that was doubtful or had not been precipitated by Providence, it might have been perilous for either to link to a temporary struggle, however great, the abiding principles of catholic missions to the non-Christian world. They would have been less than men if, in the intimacy of private correspondence, such sentences as the following had not occurred. But from first to last, and in every detail save the very serious questions of rights of property, legal and equitable as between Christian brethren, no controversy in all church history has ever been conducted so free from the spirit condemned by Christ and His Apostles, as the missionary side of the Disruption of 1843. After Dr. Duff's return to Cal- cutta in 1840 Dr. Brunton thus confidentially wrote to him on the 2nd April : " Your clerical friends are well ; as well, at least, as Non-Intrusion fever will allow. The excitation and the embitterment are by no means abating. Government declines to attempt any legisla- tive measure. Lord Aberdeen has given notice of one without saying what it is to be. Matters are getting more and more embroiled. Oh that peace were breathed into the troubled elements by Him who * still- eth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves and the tumult of the people.' Amidst the other lament- able consequences of this turmoil it swallows up every other interest in some of our fairest and purest minds, and the sweet call to missionary enterprise is too passionless to gain a hearing, where once it was plea- sant music. Send us better tidings from the lands of the South than we can transmit to you from this dwelling of storms." By 28th January, 1843, Dr. Brunton wrote of " the really appalling schism in the Church which seems now inevitable, and which may 12 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1 843. most lamentably affect all her great and glorious ' schemes.' May God avert it ! In man there is now no help or hope." So rigorously did Dr. Duff carry out his official duty to the committee and his sense of what was best for the Mission, that when his most intimate friends pri- vately pressed him to say how he would act in the event of an actual disruption, he told them why he could not reply to such a question. What Lord Cock- burn calls " the heroism " of the 18th May, which made Francis Jeffrey declare that he was " proud of his country," was not officially intimated to the fourteen Indian missionaries till October. Not till the end of July had the preliminary letters from Dr. Brunton, and from Dr. Charles J. Brown representing the Free Church, reached them, declaring that each Church was determined to carry on the Foreign and Jewish Missions. Dr. Brunton wrote : " We are most anxious to retain the co-operation of those whom we have found experi- mentally so thoroughly qualified for their work and so devoted to its prosecution. We earnestly hope, there- fore, that you will see it to be consistent with your sense of duty to remain in that connection with us, which to us, in the past, has been a source of so much satisfaction and thankfulness. I write to you collec- tively, not individually, because we have no wish that personal considerations should influence your deci- sion." Dr. Chalmers was not present at the meeting of the provisional committee of the Free Church, for which Dr. C. J. Brown wrote the letter, which thus delicately concluded : " The committee do not of course presume to enter into discussion with you on the subject, or to say one word as to the course which you may feel it right to follow." To that Chalmers added this postscript, " 1 state my confident belief that, notwithstanding the engrossment of our affairs at ^t. 37. ALL THK MISSIONARIES JOIN THE FREE CHURCH. 1 3 home, the cansc of all our missions will prove as dear, and be as liberally supported as ever by the people of Scotland." "With such faith, in such a spirit, did the second Knox and his band of 470, soon increased to 730 and now to some 1,100 ministers, commit their Church to extension abroad no less than at home. In this respect the third Reformation was more truly Christ's than the second or the first. The joyful adherence of all the Eastern and Jewish missionaries and their converts, in contrast to the East India Company's Presbyterian chaplains, — the eager response of every one of the fourteen sent to the peoples of India, from Dr. Wilson then in Jerusalem, to Mr. Anderson in Madras, and Dr. Duff in Bengal, was added to complete the spiritual sacrifice, as well as the moral heroism, and to give a new stim- ulus to what Lord Cockburn called " the mao-nificent sacrifices which, year after year, showed the strong sincerity and genuine Scotticism of the principles on which the movement had depended." The words, in 1834, of Dr. Inglis, the founder of the Kirk's India Mission, were lighted up with a new and universal meaning, in the far East as in little Scotland. " The kingdom of Christ is not only spiritual but indepen- dent ; no earthly government has a right to overrule or control it." For himself alone. Dr. Daff published an " Explan- atory Statement, addressed to the friends of the India Mission of the Church of Scotland, as it existed pre- vious to the Disruption in May, 1843." This passage takes up the narrative at the reception of the official appeals from Dr. Brunton and Dr. Charles^ Brown. " We were now laid under a double necessity openly to avow our sentiments. Was there any hesitation when the hour of trial came ? J^one whatsoever. So far as concerned my own mind, the simple truth is, 14 LIFE OF DH. DUFF. 1843 tliat as regards the great principles contended for by the friends and champions of the Free Church, I never was troubled with the crossing of a doubt or the shadow of a suspicion. In earliest youth these principles were imbibed from the ' Cloud of Witnesses,' and other kindred works. And time and mature reflection, wholly undisturbed by the heats and col- lisions of party warfare, only tended to strengthen my conviction of their scriptural character, and to rivet the persuasion of their paramount importance to the spiritual interests of man. But though there was not a moment's hesitation as to tlie rectitude of the prin- ciples, and consequent obligation in determining the path of duty, there was a sore conflict of natural feeling, — a desperate struggle of opposing natural interests. Many of my dearest and most devoted personal friends still adhered to the Establishment ; and I could not but foresee how ecclesiastical separation might lead to coolness, coolness to indifference, and indifference to eventual alienation ; and that heart must be colder and deader than mine, that could, without a thought and without an emotion, contem- plate such an issue. All the most vivid associations connected with my original appointment, — the ardours and imaginings of inexj)erienced youth, — the exciting hopes and fears inseparable from an untried and hazardous enterprise, — anxieties felt and removed, — trials encountered, difficulties overcome, and success attained, — were all indissolubly linked with the Estab- lished Church of Scotland. The revered projector of the Mission, Dr. Inglis, and his respected successor, Dr. Brunton^ had, each in his turn, throughout the long period of fourteen years, treated me rather with the consideration, the tenderness, and the confidence of a father towards his son, than with the formal but polite courtesies of a mere ofiicial relationship. When JEt. 37. UIS " EXPLAiNATOEY STATEMENT." 1 5 I looked at the noble fabric of tlie General Assembly's Institution, so very spacious and commodious, and so richly provided with library, apparatus, and all other needful furniture ; and recalled to remembrance the former days, when we had to toil and labour in close, confined, and unhealthy localities, without the aid of library or apparatus, and with but a scanty and ill-favoured assortment even of the necessary class- books, and thought of the reiterated statements and explanations, appeals and pleadings, disappointments and long delays, ere such a fabric had reared its head as an additional architectural ornament to the metro- polis of British India ; and when, along with all this, I reflected on the high probability, or rather moral certainty, that separation from the Establishment must be followed by an evacuation of the present Mission premises, I could not help feeling a pang somewhat akin to that of parting with a favourite child. Again, when I looked at the still nobler fabric within, — a fabric, of which the other was but the material tene- ment,— the living fabric, consisting of so many hun- dreds of the finest and most promising of India's sons, beaming with the smiles of awakening intelli- gence, and sparkling with the buoyancy of virgin hopes ; when I considered this fabric, so closely com- pacted through the varied gradations of an all-compre- hending system, that embraced the extremes of the lowest rudimental elements and the highest collegiate erudition, — a system so intricate, and yet so orderly, — so multifarious in its details, and yet so harmonious in its workings, scope, and ends, — a system, whose organization, discipline, and progressive development, it had required thirteen years of combined and inces- sant labour to bring to the present point of maturity and perfectness ; and when I thought how, in the present cri;iis of things, separation from the Establish- 1 6 LIFli OP DR. DUFF. 1843. ment miglit prove the dissolution and breaking up of the whole into scattered fragments ; I could not help experiencing a sensation somewhat equivalent to that of beholding a numerous and beloved family engulphed in the deep, or swallowed up by an earthquake. Once more, when I thought of the doubtful and inadequate prospect of our support in the new relationship of a Free Church Mission, the anxious doubts and fears expressed on that head in private communications from home, owing to the tremendous pressure on the liberalities of the Christian people, for the urgencies of their own immediate wants, — the loss and alienation of many of the great and the mighty, who hitherto had smiled propitious on our labours, — the disadvan- tage and disparagement to our credit, cause, and good name, which might accrue from our abandonment of premises with which had been associated so much of what was reputable and successful in our past pro- ceediDgs, — the certainty that, by numbers of the more bigoted natives, such forced abandonment would be construed as a retributive visitation from the gods, on account of our persevering attacks on their faith and worship, — the confusion and disgrace which might thus, in their estimation, redound to Christianity itself, and the corresponding triumph to an exulting heathen- ism,— the dread of anticipated rivalries and collisions between the agents of Churches so violently wrenched asunder, and the scandal and stumbling-block which these might occasion or throw in the way of the struggling cause of a yet infantile evangelization; — when I thought of all this, and much more of a similar character, it seemed as if a thousand voices kept ringing in my ears, saying, ' Pause, pause ; cling to the Establishment, and if you do so, you will advance, without interruption, in the gorgeous vessel of Church and State, which so majestically ploughs ^t. 37. CONSCIENCE HIS GUIDE. 1 7 the waves over a sea of troubles.' In opposition to such a muster and array of antagonist influences, what had I to confront? Nought but the blazing appre- hension of the truth and reality of the principles at issue, — their truth and reality in Jehovah's infallible oracles, — their truth and reality in the standards, constitution, and history of the Church of Scotland, — nought but the burning monitions of conscience, rela- tive to the morally compulsive obligation of walking in the path of apprehended duty. It seemed as if a thousand counter-voices kept pealing in my ears, loud as the sound of great thunders, or the noise of many waters, saying, ' Let pride or prejudice, self- interest or natural feeling, be allowed to obscure the apprehension of truth, or stifle the directive energy of conscience ; and then, though your dwelling be in the palaces of state, and your refuge the munition of rocks, there will be inward misgivings, that ever and anon shall cause the heart to melt, the hands to be feeble, the spirit to faint, and the knees to be weak as water. But, be fully persuaded in your own mind. Let no sinister influences be suffered to interfere. Let the apprehension of truth, derived from the Fount of Kevelation, be steadfast and unclouded, and the beckon - ings of conscience, illumined by the Word, meditation, and prayer be unreluctantly recognised and implicitly followed; and then may you stand erect in your integrity, undaunted and unmoved, though the earth should rend underneath your feet, and the rolling heavens overhead should rush into annihilation.' "With views and sentiments like these, however power- ful might be the counter-inducements, how could I decide otherwise than I have done ? though, certainly, the existence of such powerful counter-inducements ought to stamp the decision with the unmistakeable cliaractcr of honesty and conscientiousness. VOL. n. c l8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. " Doubtless, Lad I yielded to those alluring worldly temptations, which were chiefly on one side ; or had I allowed carnal considerations of any kind to prevail against the sense of duty and the clear dictates of conscience, there were many plausible ready-made pretexts on which I might fall back, — many open- gated refuges into which I might retire, in order to palliate my tergiversation, screen my inconsistency from public view, conceal from others, and perhaps from myself, the secret actuating motives, and operate as a soporific on the troublesome mementoes of the inward monitor. But however convenient such a course might be for a season, — however soothing and flattering to the cravings of the natural man, how could it elude the piercing scrutiny of the all-seeing eye, or stand in arrest of judgment at the bar of the Great Assize ? " On the 10th August, the five Bengal missionaries of the Church of Scotland united in a despatch to both Dr. Brunton and Dr. Gordon, forwarding eight reso- lutions in which they declared their reasons for adher- ing to " the Free Protesting Presbyterian Church of Scotland," as Christian men and ministers. The reso- lutions were drawn up, we believe, by the youngest of their number, Dr. T. Smith. They issued to the public of India a joint " explanatory statement," clear, judicial and full of Christian charity without com- promise. Denied by Dr. Charles their right, before disruption, to meet in kirk-session of which three missionaries were members and were the majority, they formed a provisional church committee, which held the first public service of the Free Church in Cal- cutta, in Freemasons' Hall, on the 13th August. Dr. Duff preached the sermon, afterwards published, and announced that the Rev. Jolm Macdonald would, in addition to his daily missionary duties, act as minister JEl 37. Oil. SIMON NIGOLSON AND ME. HAWKINS. 1 9 till the congregation could call a pastor from Scotland. A missionary cliaracter was given to the congregation from the first by the baptism of the convert Behari Lai Singh. Up to this day the five missionaries stood alone. But the Christian society of the metropolis and of many an isolated station in the interior was being profoundly moved. The earliest sign of the movement — which only repeated that in Scotland on a proportionate scale but in a far more catholic manner than was possible there — was a letter to Dr. Duff from the first physician in India. Who that knew him — what young official or merchant who was friendless and tempted, especially, did not love Simon Nicolson ? "I have been silent about your Ciiurch disruption till now, but I have watched it and you, and, with my wife and daughter, I cast in my lot with you. Your ordinary supplies will be stopped, but you must not let one of your operations collapse. Here is a cheque for Rs. 5,000, and more will follow when you give me a hint." Such was the sub- stance of the first communication, and from a country- man. The next came from Mr. Justice Hawkins, of the supreme court of appeal, then known as the Sudder Dewanny Adawlut, but since amalgamated with the High Court of Judicature. He offered not only other aid but himself. The ten years' conflict had led him to see the necessity of spiritual independence and equality in the priesthood of all believing members of Christ's Church, lay and teaching, and so he left the Church of England. Another English judge, Mr. Macleod Wylie, not only accompanied him but pub- lished a treatise to justify his action, under the title, "Can I Continue a Member of the Church of England?" which was answered by a scholarly chaplain, Mr. Quartley, to whose pamphlet Dr. T. Smith published a rejoinder. When, on Thursday, the 2-ith August, a 20 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1843. public meeting of the adherents of the Free Church was called, it was found that nearly the whole of the elders and a majority of the members of St. Andrew's Kirk, representing all classes in the English and Eurasian communities, had thrown in their lot with the houseless missionaries. To them and the physician and judges already mentioned there were added as the executive or financial committee, Mr. A. B. Mackin- tosh, who still plans generous things for the Free Church ; Messrs. James Calder Stewart, Robert Rose, D. Maccallum, W. Nichol, and M. Macleod. But where was a church to be found ? Dr. Duff went so far as to apply to Lord Bllenborough's government for the temporary use of a hall belonging to it, and used very frequently for dancing assemblies, but the authorities evaded the request by professing inability to understand the nature of the case. Then it was that the Eurasian committee offered the hall of their Doveton College to a man who had done so much for them. vSix lay elders and six deacons were duly elected by the congregation, who at once prepared for the erection of a proper ecclesiastical building. After some five thousand pounds had been spent in rearing that designed by Captain Goodwyn, of the Engineers, it fell down the night before it was to be entered for worship. Undismayed the members erected, at a total cost of some twelve thousand pounds, the present church, which so good an authority as the late Bishop Cotton pronounced the prettiest in Calcutta. Closely allied with the Mission, feeding it with money and fed by it with men, the Calcutta Free Church has in the past thirty-five years enjoyed the ministratioon of the Revs. Mr. Mackail, Mr. J. Milne (of Perth), Mr. Pourie, Mr. Don (now of King AVilliamstown), and Mr. W. Milne (of Auchterarder). The members, averaging a hundred in number, have raised, in that .^t- 37- ^ VOICE I'UOM THK GANGES. 21 period £106,500, an example of the Christian power of a practical voluntaryism in its way even more remark- able than that of Free St. George's, Edinburgh, with its ten thousand a year. This church laid on Dr. Duff, as senior missionary, the congenial duty of giving " some public exposition of the principles and grounds of separation from the Established Church of Scotland and of adherence to the Free Church of Scotland." To hear his four lectures on the sole and supreme headship of the Lord Jesus Christ over His own Church, the town-hall w^as filled. Under the title of "A Voice from the Ganges," the published lectures attracted great attention, and the volume has recently been cited, on both sides of the patronage controversy, by Sir Henry Moncreiff and others. In the light of the legislation of 1874, the latest of the blind steps of a party majority in Parlia- ment towards a reconstructed Kirk of Scotland, these introductory words of Dr. Duff read like prediction : "The * powers that be,^ quitting their own proper functions and province, have, with what looks like the infatuation of judicial blindness^ confederated against 'the Lord and His anointed.^ They have gained a temporary triumph. They have filled the land with their paeans and their songs. They securely calculated on a permanent ascendency. Though there be signs enough in the heaven above and on the earth below to rebuke their temerity, they still dream of empty visions. . De- spite all reminiscences of the past, all monitions of the present, all ominous presages of the future, they still cling with doating fondness to the delusive hope that they have set and fastened the very key-stone of conservative policy, while they have only effectually sapped and undermined one of the main pillars on which it ought to rest. They meant, honestly perhaps, to up- hold, whereas they have only successfully destroyed ; — and not only destroyed, but succeeded in laying a combustible train which shall issue in results as much above their power to arrest as it was beyond their forecasting sagacity to foresee. Already has the influence of their great exploit extended to 2 2 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. other and far distant lands. Already lias it begun to be felt on tbe banks of tbe Ganges. Nor is it likely to pause in its onward career till, with the prints and footsteps of its presence, it has permeated the globe. " Such being the momentous nature of the recent struggle between Church and State in Scotland, and such the magnitude of its present and prospective consequences, is it not incum- bent on every reflecting mind to inquire more minutely into the nature and character of the 'principles on account of which the unequal contest has so long been maintained ? These prin- ciples, it will be found, ai*e not of mushroom growth, neither are they of yesterday. They are not of local, provincial, or national import merely ; neither are they of fleeting, ephemeral, perishable concern. No : they have been of old from the beginning ; the range of their op(;ration is coextensive with the globe; and the period of their duration runs parallel with eternity. Neither let it be supposed that the intrinsic value or grandeur of the principles is to be estimated by the appa- rent insignificance of the chosen battle-field. It is not the remoteness, the narrowness, or the barrenness of local territory that constitutes the criterion of greatness in respect to high- toned principle, or moral force, or spiritual truth. On the arid plain of Marathon, and beneath the rugged cliffs of Ther- mopylge, the heroic patriotism of one or two petty principalities of Greece earned for itself laurels, which have since inflamed the hearts of thousands, wherever the march of civilization has reached. On the isolated and bleak shores of lona, was achieved a conquest over ignorance and barbarism, which diffused its quickening influence over neighbouring states and far distant realms. In the obscure village of Wittemberg was fought 'the good fight,^ which silenced the thunders of the Vatican, shook the sceptre from the right arm of civil and religious tyranny, liberated the human mind from the prison-house of ages, and lighted a flame in the citadel and temple of truth which shall yet illumine the world. And has not this earth — the globe itself which we inhabit — whose comparative unim- portance in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship is such that, by its annihilation, ' the universe at large would suffer as little, in its splendour and variety, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf' — has not this little speck, amid the statelier worlds iEt 37. Scotland's fight for spiritual independrnce. 23 that bestrew the fields of immensity, been selected as the scene of the most stu[)endous of all connicts — the conflict be- tween the Prince of Light and the potentates of darkness — the conflict in whose miglity issues the flag of mercy was hung from the cross of satisfied justice, and the horrors of perdition exchanged for the hallelujahs of eternal joy ? " Nor has Scotland been heretofore unhonoured as the field for determining the strength of antagonist principles fraught with the weal or the woe of nations. There, the ambition of all- graspiogRome first fairly grappled with the passion of patriot- ism ; and there was she first most efl'ectually taught that the ' love of hearth and home ' could inspire the poorest pos- sessors of the sternest and wildest of lands, with a spirit and energy that were more than a match for her invincible legions. There was her lordly aristocratic neighbour of the South at length constrained to learn, that the genuine spirit of liberty and independence could outlive the wear and tear of whole cen- turies of oppression ; and, ever and anon, rallying into fresh vigour, could humble in the dust the pride and flower of all her chivalry. Thus roughly cradled amid the storms, and nurtured amid the tempests of troubled life, the character of the Scottish people grew up into a robustness and hardihood, and their principles of action into a tenacity of sinewy strength, that could not brook the touch of foreign tyranny." From the spiritual kingsliip of Christ over the soul of every individual believer, tlirougli Bible revelatiou, Church annals and Scottish history, Dr. Duff traced the conflict between Erastian Cgesarism and the inde- pendence of the spiritual man or church in purely spiri- tual things. He did not spare either the learning or the law of Lord Brougham, whose antecedents he thus showed to have coloured the decision which he gave against the liberties of the people, in the highest appeal court : — " Truth requires that it should be told, that it is to the bitter, rancorous, and inveterate hostility of the eccentric and not very consistent ex-Chancellor Brougliam, that the new, unheard of and adverse decisions of the House of Lords aijainst 24 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. the claims of the Church of Scotland are mainly to be attributed. With him aversion and opposition to the Evangelical party in the Church and their Non-intru- sion principles would appear to be natural and heredi- tary. His own grandfather, by the mother's side, (a Mr. Sym) was a minister of the Church of Scotland, forcibly intruded on a reluctant people by the bayonets of the soldiery, amid confusion, riot and bloodshed. The entire population of the parish deserted the church in a body. Poor Mr. Sym became merely the ' stipend-lifter ' of the parish, having secured the fleece but scarcely one of the flock. Officiating, as he was legally obliged to do, every Sabbath, but finding nothing except bare walls and empty benches, and being apparently after all a man of some sensibility, he died, after a year or two, of a broken heart. At the time of his forcible ordination by a few wild men, imported for that worthy purpose, as a special commission, from the ' holy land ' of Moderatism, Aberdeenshire, there was only one friend present to countenance the lawless scene — designated in the record of the day's proceedings ' a Mr. William Robertson, minister of Gladsmuir.' This was the gentleman who afterwards became Principal Robert- son, the celebrated historian and leader of the Modei'ate party. Mr. Sym, soon after his forced settlement, married Mr. Robertson's sister. When he, shortly after, died, he left a widow and infant daughter. This only child and niece of Principal Robertson subsequently married Mr. Brougham, and thus became the mother of Lord Brougham. No wonder thousfh he should be so enamoured of a cause so dear to his grand-uncle and grandfather ! No wonder though he should manifest such repugnance to a cause which so preyed on the spii'its of the latter as to cost him his life ! " ^t. 37. BROUGUAM, U0EERT30N AND GIBDON. 25 The radical Westminster Review, of all periodicals, when vindicating the Free Church in those contro- versial days, thus completes the story : — " The morn- ing of the 30tli of ]\Iay, 1751, saw the churchyard of the parish of Torphichcn thronged witli rustics in their Sabbath clothes. With sorrow and indisfnation they were to witness the settlement of a pastor over them in the teeth of their continued and universal opposition. A cavalcade of merry clergymen came riding up headed by Mr. William Robertson, the minister of Gladsmuir. He was a man about thirty, with a countenance which he has transmitted to his descendant Lord Brouo-ham — altoo^ether an active, keen, bright look. The cavalcade of clergymen were flanked and surrounded by a troop of dragoons. As the troopers and parsons dashed among the people, tradition says, Captain Hamilton, of Westport, drew his sword, and shouted, ' What ! won't ye receive the gospel ? I'll swap off the head o' ony man that '11 no (receive the gospel).' Thus did WiUiam Robertson proceed to bestow the spiritual office. Many years elapse. He is the chief of the Kirk. He has won the crown of history. Writing to Gibbon in his days of celebrity, he gives the clue to liis conduct when the dragoon-heading intruder at Torphichen. We find Principal Robertson the chief of the Kirk, congratu- lating the historian of the ' Decline and Fall ' on his skilful management of superstition and bigotry in his chapters on Christianity. He thus gives us a glimpse of the moral theory of which the Torphichen intrusion was the application. The congratulation to Gibbon, and the dragoon ordination, were only the abstract and the concrete of the same thing." There have been more descriptions than one of the great day in the history of Scotkmd, by eyewitnesses, from opposite points of view, like Dr. Norman Macleod, 26 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. Dr. Buchanan and Lord Jeffrey. Tliis is Dr. Duff's, in tlie town-hall of Calcutta : "At length, the memorable day — the ISth of May, 1843, — a day mucli to be remembered in the annals of Scotland, arrived. For days before, tliere was a mustering and a gathering of forces to the metropolis. The general outward aspect of things is changed. A strange and ominous foreboding seizes and occupies tlie minds of men. All look grave, solemn, austerely meditative. Eiot is banished fi'om the streets; mirtb is silent at the festive board; tbe voice of music and of song is touched with an air of plaintive melody. Everything betokens the ap- proach of some mighty movement, the awful hour of some grand catastrophe. The church of St. Andrews — the national saint of Scotland in days of popish idolatry — is specially fitted up for the occasion. Thither the marshalled forces resort. There they assemble in battle array. The antagonist principles, which con- vulsed the nation, and were now to rend the Church asunder, were there, embodied in the appropriate forms of the servants of Christ and the servants of Cassar. The house is divided into two. Look first at the side of worldly dignity and honour. Behold that brilliant spectacle with its dazzling throng. A visible throne is there, with its purple canopy. The Royal Commissioner is there — the visible representative of British majesty. The nobles of the land, the proud wearers of stars, swords, and coronets, ai*e there, with their faithful satellites, joyously basking in borrowed radiance, and eager to do homage to the rising star and sensible symbol of earthly royalty. All things are there, fitted to allure the carnal eye, and fill and satisfy the carnal heart. Then turn to the other side. No visible throne is there ; no marks or signs of earthly royalty are there; no gorgeous drapery is there; no obtrusive display of armorial devices is there ; no shining emblems of the ancient lineage and feudal pedigree are there ; — nought is there, fitted to attract the carnal eye or fill and satisfy the carnal heart. But, to the eye of faith, before which the in- visible is revealed and the distant realized as present, there are transcendent glories manifested there. There, is He Who holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, and Who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. Faith at once "■^cognises Him, Who is fairer than the sons of men — the chief ^t. 37. DESCRIBES TUE DISRUPTION. 27 among teu thousand and altogether lovely. Faith at once hails and proclaims Him King of Zion, King of glory, King of saints. His servants are there, His chosen servants who fought the good fight, and, in many a battle-field, were ready to die rather than suffer the lustre of His crown to be tar- nished or the glory of His sovereignty to be eclipsed. And all the faithful of the land are there, — in winged prayers that have sped to heaven and returned, swifter than the sunbeam, laden with blessing. And holy angels are there, as minister- ing spirits, hovering over the scene with outstretched wings, in admiring complacency. All things are ready. The time, the hour, the decisive moment is come. To the National Established Church of Scotland, in the persons of her chosen delegates, the final question is substantially put — pat, in the face of the nation, in the face of Christendom, in the face of the world ; — Which of the two great antagonist principles is to prevail ? — the power of faith, or the power of sense — the love of heaven, or the love of earth — fealty to Christ, or fealty to Caesar — the honour and prerogative of Zion's King, or the exaltation of Zion's sacrilegious spoilei' — the freedom and inde- pendence of the Church, the Redeemer's immaculate spouse, or its unconditional surrender and submission, at the lordly dictation of a usurping foreign power ? " A deep and thrilling pause ensues. At length, the repre- sentative voice of the faithful, through their appointed organ, is heard in accents that bespeak the majesty of principle and of truth : — Faith hath triumphed over sense ; heaven over earth ; Christ over Caesar. From this hour we sever our con- nection with the State, as that connection can no longer be maintained without a sui'render of the prerogatives of our Great Head, and all the blood-bought rights and liberties of His ministers and people. But these we cannot, we dare not surrender. They are not ours to give ; but His, whose they are by inalienable right of eternal covenant. In order to maintain these sacredly inviolate, we hereby renounce our status, our honours, and other civil advantages — our homes, and incomes, and earthly all. In order to maintain these inviolate, we now separate oui'selves, — not from the Church of Scotland as a true Church of Christ, — for her sound scriptural standards we still revere, and her simple and noble scriptural constitution we still admire, — but from the Ecclesiastical Establishment of Scotlaudj 28 LIFE OF DR. DCFF. 1843. as now degraded and enslaved by the State. And from this house, in which the prerogatives of our Great Head, and the rights and privileges of His membei-s have been ignominiously trodden in the dustj we go forth as freemen of the Lord — free citizens of the freest Commonwealth on earth — joyfully to do homage to our glorious King, seated, in unrivalled supremacy, on the ancient throne of His own kingdom and free dominion. So saying, forth proceeded, amid the solemn silence and un- broken stillness, that indicate the mighty throb and swell of inward emotion, too big for utterance ; — forth proceeded, from the desecrated and desolated sanctuary of an Establishment, once the nation's chiefest glory and renown ; — forth proceeded, the representatives of Scotland's piety and Scotland's patriot- ism— the representatives of Scotland's covenanted faith and Scotland's moral worth — the representatives of Scotland's unshaken loyalty to Zion's King, and Scotland's undying attachment to Zion's cause ; — forth they proceeded, amid the brightest gleams and sunshine of heavenly favour and the richest showers of heavenly blessing ; — forth they proceeded, to lay the foundation — firm and indestructible as the Rock of Ages on which it is based — the foundation of one of the noblest edifices of any age or nation — the foundation of the Free Peotesting Church of Scotland." The effect of the Disruption on the India Mission was, from the very first, to more than double its effi- ciency, and the reaction of the Mission on the Church of Scotland Free was most blessed. As the first con- vener, Dr. Gordon, reported, the new yet old Mission started with only £327 in its treasury, but full of faith and power. Dr. Candlish, in May, 1843, declared, when moving the appointment of the new committee, " I trust that the foreign scheme of our protesting Church will be upheld and maintained with even increased efficiency notwithstanding the demand for funds for our home operations, and that we will give proof to the Christian world, and even to the ungodly world, of the soundness of that maxim referred to by our Moderator, that home and foreign missionary associa- ^t. 37. THE FREE CHUliCH A MISSIONARY CHUliCH. 29 tions mutually act and react on one another ; and that the very increase of the sum received for our home operations will be the pledge of a large increase in the fund available for foreign missions. It would ill be- come me to bestow any panegyric on the godly men whom the Lord has shut up in that field of foreign missions. I believe that I may very safely concur in the expressions of confidence which fell from my friend and brother Mr. Guthrie, that we may reckon on having all the missionaries adhering to our pro- testing Church. At all events, it will be our duty to record, in reference to the missionaries in India, substantially what we have recorded in reference to the missionaries to the Jews, that the Assembly con- tinue to keep in their present offices all the mission- aries who shall adhere to the protesting Church of Scotland. . . We shall thus, I trust, if we cannot serve ourselves heirs to the accumulated wealth of the committee of the old Establishment, serve our- selves heirs to what is far more valuable than their wealth, — to the men whom God has raised up for this holy work, to the means of prosecuting that work, so far as these depend on the liberality which God puts into the heart of His people, and to the instrumentality by which the zeal of our people has mainly kept up the regular periodical issue of information on this subject." Dr. P. Macfarlan, seconding Dr. Candlish, stated that " there was not one of the schemes of the Church which had awakened more interest than this, an interest which had been to a great extent produced by the ardour and devotedness of Dr. Duff. Indeed it was singular, in the course of the doings of Divine providence, that the circumstance which rendered Dr. Duff's presence neces- sary in this country, viz., the efi'ects of the hot climate upon his constitution, should have been the means of producing such an incalculable amount of good." 30 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1 843. Not only did tlie fourteen missionaries announce their personal devotion to tlie Free Church, but, knowing the demands on the home resources, they de- clared their conviction that funds might be raised in India for the three new colleges. This led the Church at home to announce, in the first annual appeal for congregational collections : " We concur with them in thinking that much will probably be done, by generous officers and civilians, whose Christian zeal and devoted- ness will only lead them to feel a deeper interest in the cause when its former supports may seem to be weakened; for, thank God ! there has been a revival of pure religion among not a few of the European resi- dents, and we should have little fear of the result, were the care of our present institutions devolved on the army alone. But when we consider that these Insti- tutions require to be indefinitely extended, if they are to exert any influence on the general mind of India, and that probably the buildings, which have hitherto afforded at once a suitable residence and a commodious scene of labour to our missionaries, may be alienated to other parties, we feel that redoubled energy is necessary at home, in addition to all the aid which can reasonably be expected from abroad, if we would main- tain and carry on the great work which has been so auspiciously begun." The result was a sum of £6,402 that year, which steadily rose to £32,000 in Scotland alone thirty years after, and, on Dr. Duff's death, reached the total sum of £535,000, or about three quarters of a million sterling, if the revenue abroad, in India, Africa, and the South Pacific, be added. The Free Church of Scotland would have been unworthy of her principles and of the men who, in the far East, loyally sacrificed themselves for her, if she had not started and ad- vanced as a Missionary Church, however far short of /Et. 37- THE PBOPEUTy WllONG. 3I a high ideal she may be conscious that she still falls. For, after all, it is rather a humiliatiog fact that the whole sum of £560,000 given bj her for foreign missions in thirty-six years does not equal that raised by her for all purposes every year. With the consent of both parties the Calcutta mis- sionaries continued their work in the Institution and mission-house built and furnished by themselves, to the close of the session of 1843. But what then? There were two easy solutions of the difficulty. Morally, equitably, the whole belonged to Dr. Duff and his colleagues, who had called it into existence. The college, its library and scientific apparatus, were the fruit of personal legacies and gifts made to Dr. Duff himself chiefly, and on the express under- standing that he was to use the funds as he pleased. His letters to Dr. Ewart and Mrs. Briggs, and the account of the funds raised by himself or pressed on his acceptance at home, illustrate this.* The Christian, the honourable, the gentlemanly solution was that first proposed by Dr. Duff, Dr. Wilson and the Free Church committee, that the old missionaries should continue their work, purchasing back from the Established Church the premises which were morally their own, if required; and that that Church, desiring to begin a new mission, should break fresh ground in the neglected cities of Upper India, whence it would have been ready to take possession for Christ of Sindh, the Punjab, and Central Asia. In his first official com- munication to Dr. Brunton, Dr. Gordon thus wrote of the buildings in Bengal ; the same was true of Bom- bay. In Madras there was no difficulty, for the mis- sionaries there only rented college rooms : — " Those at Calcutta we believe to be legally at the • Vol. i., pp. 371, 381,465. 32 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1843. disposal of tlie General Assembly of tlieEstablisliment, but equity and a general regard to the interests of Christianity require that tliey should not be wrested from their present possessors. Should it be found that any of the contributors to their erection object to this arrangement, a pecuniary compensation could be made to the Establishment for the amount of their con- tributions. Any difficulty of this kind would be re- moved by the mode of settlement proposed by Dr. Duff, who thus writes to our committee on the subject : — * Every consideration leads us strongly to urge, through you, the propriety of purchasing, at a fair equivalent, the whole of the present premises. The Foreign Mis- sion committee of the Establishment would find ample unoccupied territory elsewhere. The once imperial cities of Agra and Delhi have for years been pleading for an extended branch of our Mission. Wliat a grand field would these present for missionary operations ! For new men coming out, it must be all one whether they proceed to one place or another. They have languages, etc., to learn; and the acquisition of these, whether in Calcutta, or Agra, or elsewhere, must be attended with the same difficulty. It is altogether different with those who have a local experience, and an acquaintance with local dialects, etc. Besides, it would wear the aspect of magnanimity were those who may plead legal rights to this property to dispose of it on friendly and equitable terms, for the sake of more widely diffusing the treasures of knowledge and the glad tidings of salvation over this vast and super- stition-ridden land.' " Time, which has brought not only the forgetfulness, by a new generation, of the animosities inseparable from the events of' 1843, but the public and legislative confession by the Established Church in 1874 that it was wrong in upholding the proximate cause of the ^•Et. 37. EQUITY versus LEGALITY. 33 Disruption, has developed such co-operation by the two Churches in India and Africa at least, tliat we may be sure the men of this day would have gladly conceded the equitable settlement, the denial of which created a painful scandal then. For were not these the days of church-site refusals, of congregations forced to worship below high-water mark and under winter snows, of social and personal persecution, of lawsuits and dissensions, which would be incredible now were they not the too well attested evidence of the fact that of all hatreds the odium ecclesiasticum is the worst ? The Established Church committee, in an evil mo- ment for themselves and the cause of truth and charity, put forward a " Mr. Thomas Scott, auditor of ac- eouilts, etc.," to answer Dr. Duff's statement as to the funds given to the missionary personally and used by him, at his own discretion, for site, buildings, library, and apparatus. On the lowest ground the case was one in which no one could know so much as Dr. Duff himself. All the figures were on record, and the re- sult was seen in the whole Mission property ; but Mr. Thomas Scott had not even been the treasurer who worked with Dr. Duff in the financial statement. Yet from sheer weakness and ignorance the Established committee allowed Mr. Thomas Scott, in their name, to attack the first missionary of the Church of Scot- land, in the September number (1844) of its official Record. The refusal of the committee to act equit- ably had, in truth, raised such an outcry of remon- strance from all the Evangelical Churches that it felt bound to make some defence. Save for the miserable controversy thus forced on the Church, which had at once retired from even the ground of Christian equity when it saw insult added to injur}'-, we do not regret a circumstance which called forth Dr. Duff's reply. In eighty octp/. 0 pages, " put in type in order to facilitate VOL. II. D 34 lilFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. the transmissiou of copies by post, but not published," he disposed of Mr. Thomas Scott and his ignorances or misrepresentations, in a style which makes the pamphlet a rare contribution to cryptic literature. Rare, not merely for the moral and logical extinc- tion of the official assailant, nor even for the gleams of autobiographic fact and humour in the history of the different funds, but for the magnanimous charity which robbed the whole of every sting, while a righteous re- sentment and holy indignation for his cause burned high. Apart from legacies and sums pressed on Dr. Duff for his private or family use, all of which he had poured into the Mission treasury, we may give this one case as an illustration of the nature of the funds in dispute: — " With Colonel Wilson and his excellent sisters I happened to be on terms of intimate friendship. Individuals of more kindly disposition and more benevolent hearts it has seldom been my lot to meet with. The Colonel had much to keep him in vivid remembrance of India. He was one of the British officers, who, under the mandate of the celebrated Hyder Ali, for upwards of two years lay in chains in the dungeons of Seringapatam. There were, moreover, other ties which still continued strongly to bind him to that distant land. He had repeatedly spoken to me about a special private commission, which he had set his heart on my executing for him on my return thither. As the period of my departure approached, he forwarded to me the requisite materials for its execution ; and, at or about the same time, he sent me the larger of the two donations — giving me to understand that his placing such a sum entirely at my disposal was intended not merely as a mark of personal respect and esteem, but also as a slight token of gratitude for what I had so cheerfully undertaken (and what in point of fact I was subsequently enabled) to accomplish on his account. •5{- * * * * * "Again, as to the argument for retaining certain funds on the ground that they had been ' gi-anted by the people of Scotland to the earnest personal pleadings ' of the justly vene- rated Dr. Inglis, — if it be at all valid on the one side, it must A-A. 38. CHlllSTIAN CHAKITY. 35 be equally vulid nn tlio other. If it be really valid for retainiiif^ funds granted to the personal pleadings of one individual, repre- senting one class of sentiments, it must be equally valid for re- storing funds that wei'e granted to the personal pleadings of other individuals, representing another and totally different class of sentiments. On a matter of this kind delicacy forbids one to speak out; otherwise, how easy would it be to show that the funds granted, directly or indirectly, by the people of Scotland, to the earnest personal pleadings of the writer of these remarks, were, to say the least, not inferior in amount to those granted to the earnest personal pleadings of his revered father and friend. " But I am done with the painful subject, I hope for ever What I have written has been extorted from me in self -vindi- cation and self-defence. My sole object has been to set myself right with the Church of Christ, and even with the reasonable portion of the world at large, respecting matters of fact that affect character and integrity. Rather than provoke a quari-el or prolong a controversy on the subject, I at once, freely and for ever, relinquish all claim to any portion of the library and apparatus attached to the General Assembly's Institution, — however strong in moral equity I may still feel, and continue to feel, that claim to be. Indeed, could I have anticipated the manner in which the claim has been met, it never would have been advanced at all. But such was my estimate of the char- acter of the managing body at home, that I fondly hoped that a gentle hint as tq the nature of the claim would have sufEced to have led to a reasonable and voluntary concession on their part — founded on a broad catholic, generous and magnani- mous view of the entire circumstances of the case. That the result has proved so contrary deeply grieves me — not so much on account of the loss which we incur, as on account of the loss which the cause of Christ is apt to sustain by the exhibi- tion of such a controversy in the sight of the heathen. May the Lord in His great mercy overrule the entire occurrence for good ! As to our immediate loss, I am much mistaken if there is not a spirit of life and liberality abroad among the Christian people of India, Scotland, England, and Ireland that shall very soon repair it — yea, perhaps, repair it so thoroughly, that our latter end, like that of the patient sufferer in the laud of Uz, shall be better than the bcgiuuiug. Time will show. •j* ^ 5jC S|C ^ ^t 36 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. "In many things, heretofoi'O, I may have erred and come short. I may have ei-red in feeling; I may have erred in motive; I may have erred in judgment ; I may have erred in over-zeal, not in regard to the great cause itself for which I pled — for who could be over-zealous in pleading for the tem- poral and eternal interests of a hundred and thirty millions of perishing idolaters ? — but I may have erred in over-zeal for particular modes and methods of promoting the cause, or for the independent possession of particular means and instrumen- talities towards its more effective and successful promotion. And if in these, or such-like, or in any other respects I may have erred, either through ignorance or otherwise, I again cast myself, without qualification or reserve, on the sovereign mercy of my God, in the atoning sacrifice and justifying righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sanctifying influences of the almighty Spirit of all grace ; — praying the Lord most fervently to forgive me freely these and all other sins and shortcomings whatsoever, — yea, and, in the plenitude of His ' unsearchable riches of grace,' so to illume the understanding, renew the heart, and strengthen every power and faculty of the regene- rated soul, that I may so err, so sin and so come short no more ! "I do feel humbled and confounded to think that I should have been necessitated to devote so much of all valuable time to the elucidation of a theme so sterile and so profitless. Sur- rounded as I am by millions of poor blinded idolaters, to whom, as to all others, life is so short and uncertain and the redemp- tion of the soul so inestimably precious, it is with shame and unfeigned sorrow that, for a cause so intrinsically worthless, I have found myself called on, more especially by the agent of a missionary committee, to divert so much of time and thought and exertion from any of my evangelistic labours amongst them. Were any one at this moment to offer me, in free gift, a library and appai-atus, of ten times or tenfold ten times the extent of those now in debate, under the contingent condition of its possibly entailing, some years hence, half the loss of time and vexation of spirit which, from first to last, has been incurred by the present wretched and unedifying discussion, I would fling the offer with loathing indignation away from me. Perish, would I say, perish for ever your librai'y and apparatus, rutlier than that the Arch-enemy of souls should again have it m bis power to convert them into an enginery for wasting the ^t. 38. MAGNANIMITY FOR CHRIST S SAKE. 37 season of a cloonied sinner's probation, fomenting the spirit of acrimony and unkinJness, and kindling the flames of unhal- lowed controversy and strife — and that, too, in the very sight of the heathen whom we profess to pity and long to save. If, unrestrained by the miracles of grace and unawed by the grandeur of eternity, we desist not speedily — with what con- temptuous scorn may these hurl back upon us our arguments against the hatreds, the antipathies, and the discords which constitute the very soil of an ever-divided and ever-diverging heathenism ? With what ineffable disdain may they resent our most pathetical exhortations to mutual forbearance and heavenly charity ? And, oh, what a cutting, harrowing re- flection is this — that, under the influence of a blindfold zeal for the possession of a few paltry instrumentalities, which, if accumulated to infinity, could never of themselves save a single soul, any of us should be tempted to enact a part calculated to repel numbers of the dying multitude around us from the tree of life, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations, and fitted only to impel them to rush with more frantic speed into the embrace of an ever-yawning perdition ! May the Lord have mercy on any who, without being overborne by an imperative overmastering necessity, may directly or indi- rectly contribute towards such a fatal consummation ; and may we be endowed with the spirit that would prompt us to ex- claim, in words of tenderness more touching than ever dropped from merely Imman lips : ' Father forgive them, for they know not what they do/ " The other easy solution of the question, where shall the five missionaries, their staff, and their converts and students obtain a building large enough in all native Calcutta ? was this. Colonel Dundas and some Indian friends, in Scotland, had presented Dr. Duff with about four hundred pounds as " a mark of respect " and for personal uses. This too he devoted to the Mis- sion. Adjoining the Institution in Cornwallis Square were three acres of unoccupied ground belonging to Government, but not enclosed and therefore the noi- some abode of all foulness. In vain b.ad he asked the 38 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. local financial board to purchase it in order to meet the wants of the increasing number of students and converts. The price was £3,500. On receiving a legacy of £1,000 he added this to the Dundas gift, and solicited the consent of Lord Auckland himself to the sale of the land for that sum, but the proposal had first to be sanctioned by the Court of Directors. By the time that the deed of conveyance was ready, the Disruption controversy was approaching a close. Mr. Macleod Wylie, the barrister, who wrote a pam- phlet on " The Scotch Law of Patronage and the recent Secession," proving the Free Church right in law as in Scripture, advised Dr. Duff to keep the deed in his own name, the property being his own, until the issue of the conflict became clear. This he had done, and on this spacious open ground he might, naturally and most conveniently, have erected the new college. But he was too much of a Christian and a gentleman to do what might even seem, to Hindoo and Christian, a violation of that law of love which the ' residuary ' committee, as it was called, had scorned. In the very reply to Mr. Thomas Scott he heaped coals of fire on its head by volunteering the explanation — " It is not intended to have any portion of this ground occupied for carrying on the missionary operations of the Free Church. Sufficiently ample it is, and most healthfully and favourably situated for the erection of a new Institution and Mission-house. But its proxi- mity to the old Mission premises has determined us not so to appropriate it ; that we may thereby prove to the world that, on our part at least, we are not actuated by vindictive or retaliatory motives, or ani- mated by a spirit of hostile rivalry. It will either be let or resold, and the proceeds, either way, will be wholly and exclusively applied to missionary purposes." The new Mission-house was erected there long after, ^t. 38. SYMPATUY OF EVANGELICAL CHURCHES. 39 and its very proximity to the old house enabled Dr. Duff to hold most friendly intercourse with so gentle and earnest a missionary as Dr. Ogilvie, whom the Church of Scotland sent up from Madras there to represent it. Thus was the controversial bitterness of the Western Kirk deprived of its evil results in the eyes of the young converts and the watchful heathen. The whole college vacation of 1843-44, extended to two months, was spent by the missionaries in exploring every nook and corner of the native city for a site and a temporary home. The renown of the Disruption sacrifice, which had gone out through all lands, had in India been increased by the decision to evict the missionaries from their college, even though they offered to purchase their own, very much as Carey and the Serampore brethren had been compelled to do in similarly indefensible circumstances. From all sides, Hindoo as well ^as Christian, Anglican and Congrega- tionalist as well as Presbyterian, in America no less than in Asia and Europe, came expressions and proofs of indignant sympatliy. This refers to the assistance of " W. Muir, Esq., Futtehpore," now Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I. : " Calcutta, 4^/^ October, 184S. " My Dear Sik, — I beg most gratefully to acknow- ledge your very handsome boon to our Free Church. Your note accompanying it, though short, was sweet and refreshing. One pregnant expression dropped from the lips of one of God's own children, has in it a consolation beyond all gold and silver. I know that your heart is with every good cause ; and I really believe that, however unworthy we may be, ours is one of the best of causes. It is the cause of Christ — the sole and supreme head of His Church — redeemed and ransomed by His precious blood. In case you might desire further information as to our movement, I 40 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. send you two or tliree pamplilets. We have many difficulties to contend with, but many friends to lend a helpiiio' hand; and, above all, many comforts of God's Holy S[)irit to animate and sustain us. Our duty is to persevere in the work of the Lord, and leave all results with Him. The day of India's illumi- nation lulll yet dawn, and the light shall be glorious. That is enough for ns, whether we are privileged to see it or not. — Yours very gratefully, Alexander Dqfp." •The year 1844 opened with spontaneous gifts amounting to £3,400. The Protestant missionaries of Calcutta united in this catholic address. "To the Rev. A. Duff, D.D., W. S. Mackay, D. Ewarfc, J. Macdonald and T. Smith, Missionaries of the Scottish Mis- sion in Calcutta. "Deak Bkethren, — We, the undersigned members of the missionary body in Calcutta, owing to events which have oc- curred in Scotland, and the decision at which you have felt it your duty to ari'ive on the matters in debate, are apprehensive that your connection with missionary operations in Calcutta generally, and especially your connection with the Institution founded by one of your number, and matured and presided over by you all, may be matei'ially affected, — and desire to ex- press our sympathy with you under the peculiar circumstances in which you are placed, and our hope that your labours may be still continued in a sphere in which they have been so emi- nently useful. " While, as a missionary body, attached to different sections of the Church, and conscientiously differing as to the principles which have led to those events, we refrain from offering any opinion upon them, we yet can and do reiterate the expression of our conviction as to the expediency and desirableness of the continuance of your labours in Calcutta and in the sphere which you have hitherto occupied. *' We feel that it is both natural and equitable, that the harvest should be reaped and enjoyed by those who have broken up the fallow ground, and according to their views of Chris- ^t. 38. ADDKE,SS FROM THE CALCDTTA MISSION VUIES. 4 1 tiau duty have diligently and faithfully sowed the seed of the kingdom of God for so many years. Nor are we unapprehensive that, should others, however well qualified, enter into your labours, the harvest, owing to their lack of experience and their necessary want of acquaintance with the language and habits of the people, would be considerably diminished, and the affections of many whoso minds have by you been made familiar with the nature, doctrines, and precepts of Christi- anity, materially alienated from Christian influence, — a con- summation which we are confident no Christian, whatever might be his views on other subjects, can contemplate with indifference. " Irrespective of your labours in connection with the Insti- tution and other direct operations of the Scottish Mission, we should exceedingly regret anything that might remove you from a sphere in which your influence and co-operation with others, under the blessing of Christ, have so eminently sub- served the catholic purposes of our holy faith, both in Calcutta and India generally. '' With regard to the momentous subject which has occa- sioned this communication, our prayer is, that all parties may be led to adopt the measures most conducive to the glory of our blessed Lord, and the extension of His kingdom. — We ax-e, dear brethren, yours in the bond of the Gospel, "(Signed) W. Yates, Baptist Missionary. A. Leslie, Do. J. Thomas, Do. J. Brooks, General Baptist Missionary. Wm. Morton, London Missionary Society. G. Pearce, Baptist Missionary Society. James Paterson, London Missionary Society. W. W. Evans, Baptist Missionary Society. G. Small, Do. James Innes, Church Missionary Society. James Long, Do. J. F. OsBORN, Do. Jno. Campbell, London Missionary Society. Tnos. Boaz, Do. R. De Rodt, Do. J. "Wk.ngek, Baptist Missionary Society. C. C. Aratoon, Do." 42 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1844. Arclideacon Dealtrj, about to become the second Bishop of Madras, though a dignitary of the other Established Church, was even more emphatic, on the higher ground of a wrong done to the whole Catholic Church. The hunt for a college building, aided and sym- pathised in by good men of all creeds, concentrated itself on one place. In obtainiug that Dr. Duff was helped by an orthodox Hindoo, the father of the most distinguished medical Bengalee, Rai Kanye Lai Dey Bahadoor, who has given us this account of it : " There was one house in ISTeemtollah street which was sufficiently commodious for the accommodation of an institution like the Free Church Institution, but it was in an untenantable condition, the joint owners thereof were not agreed among themselves and they had no mind to let the house for the use of a college. He knew a native gentleman, Rai Radhanath Dey Bahadoor, a man of note in his time as a deputy col- lector. Dr. Duff, if he liked, could have sent for him in order to confer with him on the subject of the house with the owners of which he was in relationship. But no ; he personally waited upon the Baboo from day to day in order to prevail upon him to use his interest with the proprietors to let the house on a long lease. The gentleman in question was himself a public-spirited man, and though an orthodox Hindoo he felt that in employing his humble services in this case he would be serving his country. He therefore heartily responded to the great missionary's desire, and succeeded in his intercession with the proprietors. Baboo Pran Kissen Sen and Brothers, to let the house, well known as that of the late Baboo Mothur Mohun Sen, to the Free Church missionaries. The terms offered were rather favourable to both the parties, which were the payment of a rent of Rs. 200 per month, and the defrayal of ^t. 38, LIGHT ARISING IN DARKNESS. 43 the whole expense of a thorough repair at a heavy outlay involving additions and alterations.'* Here on the 4th March, 1844, the General Assembly's Institution of the Free Cliurch of Scotland met for the first time, and here it grew till on an adjoining site the present fine college was reared. There were the same missionaries, the same staff of teachers and monitors, the same converts to begin with, and more than a thousand students and pupils. The spacious hall, erst devoted to idol revelries, became the common place of worship of the living God in Christ. The shrine of the family image received the gallery class of children, who there learned to spell out the words of the Divine Teacher. From all parts of Eastern India and Scotland friends sent supplies of books for the new librar3^ Dr. Mackay, who had built his usual observatory on the roof, was gladdened by the dona- tion of a Herschel ten-foot telescope from the son of Dr. Stewart, of Moulin memory. Dr. Duff's letters to Dr. Gordon, after reporting the tedious search and protracted negotiations which ended in success, thus broke forth on the 17th Feb- ruary, 1844, as he, doubtless, remembered the flash of the torch in the Tummel: "Never was there a happier or truer key-note struck than that with which Dr. Chalmers ushered in the ever memorable convocation, when he started with the text, * Unto the upright there ariseth light in darkness.'" Even when in the depths of the darkness, he had faith and genius to form the scheme of a new chair of missions and education in the Free Church, of which he lived to procure the endowment and to be himself the first Professor : " Calcutta, January 20th, 1844. "My Dear Dr. Gordon, — Your truly welcome letter of October last was received in time last mouth to 44 Lli'i!^ OF DU. DUFF. 1844. acknowledge its receipt by the Government express. As I expected, it diffused great joy and gladness among all our friends. The promptitude, hearty goodwill and animating cheerfulness, — the unwavering faith in a covenant-keeping God, and the humble reliance on a gracious Providence indicated by its contents, tended mightily to invigorate our own spirits, and strengthen our hands, amid the changes, the discomforts and the inconveniences to which the recent disruption neces- sarily subjected us. We do render praise and thanks unto the Lord, for having put it into the hearts of our brethren and fathers at home to take up our cause, — the cause of poor, degraded, heathen India, — the cause of a hundred and thirty millions of perishing idolaters, ■ — the cause of the Redeemer Himself, Who yet ' shall see of the travail of His soul ' among these benighted millions, and be satisfied, — to take up this great and glorious cause, with such warmth and energy and holy zeal. It is a refreshing token for good ; yea, it is a pledge and earnest of prosperity and ultimate suc- cess. When, during the spring of last year, I received many letters from friends on both sides of the Church, all to the effect that, in the event of a disruption, those who seceded would have so much to do in making provision for their own spiritual wants that it would no( be possible for them to take up the cause of foreign missions, I could not but feel alarmed at the bare possibility of such an issue. That it would be so I could not bring myself to believe. Still, the declara- tions made to me on this head were very strong and very baffling. In spite of the most positive assurances to the contrary, I had a secret, instinctive, irresistible persuasion that the thing was morally impossible. Thanks be to God that the event has so triumphantly proved it to be so ! The prominence given to the missionary cause at home and abroad, and the bold ^t. 38. PLANS A rilOFESSORSHIP OF MISSIONS. 45 trumpet note with "which its claims have been sounded forth, prochiim that the Free Church of Scotland has started for the right goal, and in the right direction; and that having done so, she is destined to advance, with accelcrativo force, in the vigorous discharge of all the functions and duties of a true Church of Christ. May the Lord Hmiself watch over and guide her onward career ! " Connected with this subject, allow mo to hint that a new professorship in the Free Church College, of missions and education, would tend mightily to im- part life, energy, wisdom and consistency to all her missionary and educational schemes, domestic and foreign. So far as I know, it would be the first pro- fessorship of the kind that has ever been established, and would tend more than anything else to stamp the Free Church as the introducer of a new era in the history of this world's christianization. I have pur- posely conjoined * missions and education,' as both united would comprehend a discussion of the best modes of imparting all useful knowledge, human and divine, to old and young, of all classes and of all climes, founded on the constitution of the human mind, history and experience, and, above all, the Word of God. " We also desire to acknowledge the overruling providence of God, in the circumstance that our dear friend and brother, and fellow-labourer in the Lord, Dr. Wilson of Bombay, was enabled to be present to address the second General Assembly of the Free Church. And we desire to bless God for the strength vouchsafed to him on that occasion.'* CHAPTER XYII. 1844-1848. CONTINUITY OF THE WOBK. The Rural Stations. — The Story of Bansberia. — Missionary Brother- hood.— Sir James Outram and the Sindh Prize-money. — Sir Henry Lawrence. — Reorganization of the Mission Completed. — • Conversions and their Relative Value in Christianizing different Classes. — The Seven Baptisms. — The Native City again moved. Rival Hindoo College taught by Jesuits. — The True Zanana Teaching. — The " Pilgrim's Progress" in Bengalee. — Successful Vindication of the Rights of Conscience. — The Cry of " Hindooism in Danger " Renewed.— The Government Propagating Secularism. — Intolerance of the Hindoo Priestly and Wealthy Families. — More Baptisms. — Dr. Duff's Life Threatened. — His Intrepid Re- ply "to the ]S"ative Gentlemen of Calcutta." — Necessity for a Home, Church, and Manse for the Converts. — Life in Dr. Dufi"s Family. — Charge to the Four Free Church Catechists. — Mrs. Colin Mackenzie and the Rev. Golulc Nath. — Mercantile Failures in Calcutta. — Epistle from the General Assembly to the Converts. — Dr. Duff's Share in the First Jubilee of the Chui'ch Missionary Society. Having thus founded and organized lais second college, the Free Church General Assembly's Institution, Dr. Duff's next care was for the branch schools by which the educated catechists and converts were evangelizing the rural districts. Takee, the first, was the property of the Chowdery clan of Hindoo landholders. They too remained faithful to their alliance with Dr. Duff. To secure a healthier position in which European mis- sionaries like Mr. Fyfe could live without serious risk, they removed the school from the somewhat inaccessible rice swamps to their town residence in Baranuggur, a northern suburb of Calcutta, now known for its jnte factories and industrial prosperity. The Establi.'^hed ^t. 38. THE STOEY OF BANSBERIA. 47 Church claimed the new station of Ghospara for the congregation of St. Stephen's, Edinburgh, who had supported Mahendra and Kailas, the native missionaries there. But Culna, being in a different position, was retained by Dr. DufF and his colleagues as their second rural station. In succession, as the Mission grew in resources and ordained converts, Bansberia, Chinsurah, and Mahanad were added in Tvower Bengal, while, long after, the south-eastern districts of the Sautal country were taken possession of as a base from which to evangelize the non-Aryan and aboriginal tribes. The story of Bansberia illustrates the enthusiasm with which, not only in Calcutta, but to the farthest confines of India, good men, in the army and the civil service, sought to mark their sympathy with the Free Church Mission. On being driven from Ghospara, where the two ablest converts had begun a mission among the new sect of the Kharta-bhajas, or worship- pers of the Creator, with such promise. Dr. Dulf* re- solved to seek for a settlement in another county. Not even the natural irritation caused by the discussion of questions of property, in which equity was set at defiance, tempted him for one moment to dream of rivalry in a field so vast as that covered by the sixty millions of rural Bengal. He crossed the river Hooghly to its right bank, leaving the whole country on the left to the Established Church. A few miles to the north of the county town of Hooghly district, between that and Culna, he discovered the school-house of the Brumho Somaj, of Calcutta, closed and for sale. Dwarkanath Tagore, the successor of Rammohun Roy, had died in England, and his son was unable to maintain the educational work of the sect. The perpetual lease of the grounds as well as the large bungalow was pur- chased by Dr. Duff, whose first object it was to erect sub- stantial buildings for a Christian high school. For this 48 LIFE OP BR. DUFF. 1 844. there were no funds since the expenditure at Ghospara. Attracted by the self-sacrifice of the missionaries on the Disruption, Mr. Lennox, of New York, and his two sisters, had sent £500 to Dr. Duff, who at once distributed it proportionately among Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. Mr. Anderson and his colleagues re- fused the share allotted to them, on the ground of " the peculiar exigency and the local circumstances of the Calcutta Mission. Give us your prayers and keep the money; we have enough, my brother, — what is that between thee and us ? " Such loving renunciation called forth this remark from Dr. Duff in a letter to Dr. Gordon : "A finer exemplification of the genuiue spirit that constitutes the bond of Christian brotherhood cannot well be conceived. How true it is that, in the spiritual body of Christ, if one of the members sufi"er all the other members suffer or sympathize with it. Distance of 'Space and diversities of local interests are annihil- ated. The losses and difficulties of the Calcutta mis- sionaries touched a chord in the hearts of three noble- minded Christians in the city of New York — in ' the far west.' Now, across the Atlantic and the interven- ing continents of Europe, Africa, and part of Asia, their seasonable bounty reached us. We at once resolved to share it in equal proportion with our brethren in Madras and Bombay. The former having not suffered in temporalities as we had, return their share, with their blessings and their prayers. Blessed reciprocation and interchange of Christian good offices, and Christian love ! Shall we not magnify the name of the Lord, and pray more earnestly than ever for the spread and superabounding of a spirit such as this — not between members of the Free Churcli only, but between the true children of the living God in all Churches." ^t. 38. SIR JAMES OUTRAM AND THE SINDH BLOOD-MONEY. 49 Soon the present fine college building of their own was to take the place of the hired house in Calcutta, and that would exhaust this and many other re- sources. There could be nothing for a new rural station like Bansberia till the central Institution was efficient. It was Sir James, then Major, Outram who came to the rescue. The first Afghan war had been succeeded by the even greater mistake of the policy of Sir Charles Napier in Sindh. The man who had written, " We have no right to seize Sindh, yet we shall do so, and a very advantageous, useful and humane piece of rascality it will be," received six thousand pounds as the General's portion of the prize-money. The Bom- bay officer who had protested against the ' rascality,' whose splendid administration of Sindh would have prevented war and secured a reformed country, had assigned to him three thousand pounds as his share. What was he to do with it? Though a Derbyshire man, three years older than Duff, as a great-grandson of Lord Pitmcdden and a successful student of Marischal College, Aberdeen, Outram had watched the Scottish missionary's career with admiration. The puzzled officer turned to him for counsel as to the disposal of the money ; begging him in particular to ascertain privately if the Calcutta authorities would keep the three thousand pounds for the benefit of the injured Ameers. We may imagine the amazement, and indig- nation, of Lord Ellenborough at a proposal so simple, but so worthy of " the Bayard of India " and of the single-eyed missionary whom he had selected as his agent in so unique a transaction. The reply was, of course, a refusal, on the ground that the Ameers had been well provided for, and that the offer, if it becan;e public, would have the worst political effect. The fact, accordingly, we learn now for the first time from Dr. VOL. II. E 50 LIFE OF DR. DUiT. 1845. Duff's papers.* When he communicated the refusal, Outram replied: "Very well, it cannot be helped; I regard this prize simply as blood-money, and will not touch a farthing of it for my own personal use, but will distribute it among the philanthropic and religious charities of Bombay." Soon after this Sir James wrote to Dr. Duff saying that, after a wide distribution of what he called blood-money, there still remained Rs. 6,000, and he asked, " Have you any object on the banks of the Ganges to which this can profitably be applied?" Instantly Dr. Duff replied, "Oh, yes! I want an educational institution in a populous locality on the banks of the river in an excellent situation, and have been waiting a considerable time to secure the means of erecting a suitable building. Now singularly enough the minimum sum fixed on in my own mind was exactly Rs. 6,000, and if you approve the idea you may send that sum to me, and we shall commence at once the erection of the building." The Mission-house was erected, and has been a source of numberless bless- ings to the neighbourhood; from its pupils a goodly number of conversions have sprung with a wide dif- fusion of Christian knowledge. The building still per- petuates the political purity and English uprightness of Outram, who replied, " What a pity I did not know about this earlier, otherwise for such objects, of which I highly approve, you might have got the whole of the money." When next he visited Calcutta, where Lord Dalhousie saw in him a kindred spirit, he spent a Saturday in the Institution. The man whose courage as a soldier and a statesman rose almost to madness, stipulated that he should not be asked to make a speech. The resting-place in Westminster * Sir Francis Outram lias arranged for the preparation of a Memoir of his great I'atliei', bj Sir Frederic Goldsmid. ^t. 39. SIB HENRY LAWEENOE. 5 1 Abbey, and the equestrian statues by Foley on the Thames Embankment and fronting the Calcutta Clubs, commemorate his victories in Persia and the relief of Lucknow. But let not the Sindh blood-money and Duff's Bansberia school be forgotten, though recorded not on living marble or enduring brass. A greater man than even Outram, however, vp'as from the first a generous ally of Dr. Duflf. Sir Henry Lawrence, who had found Christ when a young lieu- tenant of artillery at Dum Dam, and who had established at Ferozepore the American Presbyterian Mission from which the invitation to united prayer first sounded forth in 1860 among all English-speaking races, used to spend his whole income, beyond a bare sustenance, on Christian philanthropy in India. Every year from 1844 till he concentrated his energies on the Hill Asylums for soldiers' children, he sent four hun- dred pounds to Mr. Marshman for distribution among Dr. Duff's, the Serampore, the Church Missionary and other societies. At the same time others, such as Dr. T. Smith and the writer, were his frequent almoners down to the day of his heroic death. On his way home, in 1847, he took part in the public examination of the Institution, a fact to which we find Dr. Duff thus refer- ring at the time: " The Colonel Lawrence who assisted at the public examination is the same gentleman whose measures have been so wonderfully successful in pacifying the Punjab. He is to accompany Lord Hardinge to England. For years past he has taken a warm interest in our Institution and its success, and has been a liberal contributor to its funds. In this and in other ways God is raising us up friends, even in high places ; and to Him we desire to ascribe all the praise and the glory." On his final return to India the year after, he and Outram, then seeking rest, hurriedly met in the dim- 52 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1845. ness of night in tlie desert of Suez, with impressions which Lady Lawrence thus recorded for her eldest son: "Our vans stopped; papa got out, and in the twihsfht had ten minutes' talk with Colonel Outram. There is much alike in their characters, but Colonel Outram has had peculiar opportunities of protesting against tyranny, and he has refused to enrich himself by ill-gotten gains. You cannot, my boy, understand the question about the conquest of Sindh by Sir Charles Napier ; but I wish you to know that your parents consider it most unjust. Prize-money has been distributed to those concerned in the war. Colonel Outram, though a very poor man, would not take money which he did not think rightfully his, and distributed all his share in charity, giving £800 to the Hill Asylum at Kussowlie. I was glad, even in the dark, to shake hands with one whom I esteemed so highly." Thus Dr. Duff and his colleao-ues oro^anized the second Mission in and around Calcutta, and among the most densely peopled portions of rural Asia — the counties of Hooghly and Burdwan to the north-west. " Oh," he wrote to Dr. Gordon, " that Ave had the resources, in qualified agents and pecuniary means, with large, prayerful, faithful hearts, to wait on the Lord for His blessing, and then under the present impulse might we, in every considerable village and district of Bengal, establish vernacular and English seminaries, that might sow the seeds of divine truth in myriads of minds, and thus preoccupy them with principles hostile to ruinous error and favourable for the reception of saving knowledge. But to this end we would require not five hundred but fifty thousand for this Presidency alone. It looks like something utterly unattainable, yet the cost of one British vice for a single year — the annual sum expended on ^t. 39. CONVERSIONS AND TUKIR EELATIVK IMPORTANCE. 53 ardent spirits, which destroy the bodies and the souls of thousands — would secure to us over fifty thousand schools!" Nearly thirty years were to pass before, in Bengal proper, the Government did its duty on the secular side, and the Mutiny cailed the Vernacular Christian Education Society into existence to supply Bible schools, trained teachers and a pure literature, all on too small a scale. And now, as ever. Dr. Duff and all the Free Church of Scotland's missionaries in its three colleges and many schools, laboured and prayed for immediate conversions as the sign and the fruit of the Spirit's blessing on their patient sapping of the whole spiritual and social system of Brahmanism. Eeferring to the baptism of a student, which had temporarily emptied the college in Madras, Dr. Duff wrote : " It must never be forgotten, that, while the salvation of one soul may not in itself be more precious than that of another, there is a prodigious difference in the relative amount of practical value possessed by the conversion of individuals of different classes, as regards its effect on societij at large. It is this consideration, duly weighed, which explains the immense relative import- ance of the conversions that have taken place in connection with our several Institutions at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The number has been compa- ratively small. But tlie amount of general influence excited thereby must not be estimated according to the number. The individuals converted have be- longed to such classes and castes that the positive influence of their conversion in shaking: Hindooism and convulsing Hindoo society has been vastly greater than it might have been if hundreds or even thousands of a different class or caste had been added to the Church of Christ. While therefore it is our duty to pray for immediate results, if the Lord will — to ' attempt and 54 LIL^E OF DR. DUFF. 1845. expect great things ' at His hands, — let us beware of being impatient. The Lord is working silently in the midst of us ; and when His time cometh He will make bare His holy arm for the salvation of multitudes. Meanwhile those occasional upheavings and convul- sions which apparently retard the progress of His cause He sovereignly overrules for its ultimate further- ance." That was written in April, 1844. In July there came to Dr. Duff's house one Gobindo Chunder Das, who had been removed from the old Institution during a panic caused by the baptisms of 1839. For six years the truth wrestled with the lad, overthrew now his timidity and now his pride, and sent him to Dr. Duff under strong convictions of sin and a firm resolution to sacrifice all for Christ. After the usual persecution by his family and clan he was received into the church and became a useful teacher in the college. He was the first-fruit of the Free Church Mis- sion as to his baptism, yet the change had been really originated in the old General Assembly's Institution. Every convert as well as every missionary thus main- tained the continuity of the work which had begun in July, 1830, in the Chitpore road. The conversion and baptism of young men of marked ability and high social or caste position now followed so fast on Gobindo' s that, once again, the Brahmanical community of Calcutta was moved to its depths. The year 1845 opened with the public confession and admission of Gooroo Das Maitra, whom Dr. Duff gladly made over to the American Presbyterian Mis- sion at Lahore, when the Punjab became a British province soon after. There the Bengalee was ordained as a missionary minister. Thence he was long after " called," after the simple custom and ecclesiastical law of the spiritually independent Free Church, by the Bengalee Presbyterian Church in Calcutta, to be ^t. 39. BUNYAN S DREAM IN THE INDIAN VEKNACULARS. 55 their minister. To them, largely supporting him, he still devotes his life as preacher and pastor. At the same time Umesh Chunder Sirkar sought baptism. For two years the Bible teaching in the college had disturbed him, and had so drawn him towards Christ that his alarmed friends urged him to study Paine's writings. These completed his conviction of the divine truth of Christianity, and of his duty to profess that conviction openly by obeying Christ's command. But he was young, only sixteen. He longed to instruct and take over with him his child- wife of ten, and his father was a stern bigot, of great authority and influence as treasurer to the millionnaive Mullik family. For two years, therefore, the boy- husband and his wife searched the Scriptures dili- gently in the midnight hours snatched from sleep, when alone, in the crowd of a great Bengalee house- hold, they could count on secrecy, though ever sus- pected. After much reading of the Bengalee Bible, Umesh Chunder tauQ-ht her the Beng:alee translation of the " Pilo-rim's Proo-ress." * Here was the true zanana teaching, the best form of female education, that which has rendered all subsequent progress under Euglish-speaking ladies possible. When the wife of twelve read the opening description of Christian's flight from the City of Destruction, she exclaimed, " Is * The greatest of human allegories has been translated into everj princip;il Indian Vernacular. It has, in the East as in the West, proved to be tbe most popular Christian book next to the Bible. Mrs. Sherwood, -wife of an Indian officer, and the weil-known story- writer of the last generation, wrote, in English, a curious adaptation of it for the use of the natives, called "The Indian Pihjrim; or, the Progress of the Pilgrim Niizareenee from the City of the Wrath of God to the City of Mount Zion." But tbat tin.- genius of Bunyan has made his Dream as suitable to the Oriental as to the Western, without such tampering with it, is shown by the popularity of the " Piltriiin's Progress " even with nou-Christian Asiatics. 56 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. not tliis exactly our coDdition ? Are not we now lingering in tlie City of Destruction ? Is it not our duty to act like Christian — to arise, forsake all, and flee for our lives ?" On the next idol festival, when even Hindoo married women are allowed liberty enough to visit their female caste friends in neigh- bouring houses in closed palankeens, Umesh conducted his true-hearted little wife to Dr. Duff's house. The then deceased Mahendra had supplied the copy of Bunyan's "Pilgrim" which had thus been blessed, and the more recent convert, Jugadishwar, had assisted Umesh in the flight. They came to the missionary's house on the Sabbath afternoon, on the close of a prayer meeting which one of the elders of the Free Church congregation, Mr. J. C. Stewart, son of Dr. Stewart of Moulin, used to hold with the converts. " While meditating in my own closet on the ways of God," Dr. Duff wrote afterwards, " and wondering whether and in what way He might graciously inter- pose to deliver us from our distresses, suddenly Umesh, his wife and Jugadishwar appeared before me. It looked like the realization of a remarkable dream. ' The Lord be praised,' said I. What could I say less ? His mercy endureth for ever. He had visited and holpen His servants." Now began a tumult such as no previous case, not even Gopeenath's, had excited. Dr. Duff's house was literally besieged. The MuUiks as well as the Sirkars, both families or clans, and their Brahmans, beset the young man. They attempted violence, so that the gate was shut next day to all but the father, the brother, and the wealthy chief of the Mulliks. For days this went on, for the missionary would not deny to the new convert's family that which was the only weapon he claimed for Christ — persuasion. At last the scene changed to the Supreme Court. Choosing his time .^t. 39. SHi L.WVllENCE PKKL VINDICATES TOLERATION. 57 when tlie court was rising for the day, the father's counsel moved for a writ of habeas corpus to be directed to Dr. Duff to produce Umesh Chunder, on the affidavit that the youth was only a little more than fourteen 3^ears of age, and was kept in illegal restraint. The Chief Justice himself was on the bench, and Mr. Macleod Wylie happened not to have left the court. Sir Lawrence Peel, worthy to be the cousin of a states- man like Sir Robert, knew that Dr. Duff would not exercise restraint of any kind. Suspecting the truth of the affidavit, he investigated the case at once, and the writ was refused. The youth was really above eighteen years of age. There was no question raised as to his wife. Both were baptized, while a crowd of the Mulliks' followers raged outside, and their chief and the convert's father declined to be witnesses of the solemn service. In Beno^al at least this was " the first instance of a respectable Hindoo and his wife being both admitted at the same time, on a profession of their own faith, into the Church of Christ by bap- tism." And the husband had brought the wife into the one fold. So, after the presentation by Gopeenath and his wife of their boy for baptism, the creation of the Christian family in the very heart of Brah- manism became complete. Silently is the little leaven leavening the whole lump. A week after, the tumult was repeated in the case of one who had been a student for eight years, and is now the Rev. Baikunta Nath Day, of Culna. He found refuge with Dr. Thomas Smith, then residing in the suburbs of Calcutta. Thence, in the missionary's absence, he was forcibly abducted, and was imprisoned, in chains, in a distant relative's house. Mr. Wylie obtained a writ of habeas coipus, but it was found im- possible to execute that, as happened about the same time in Dr. Wilson's case in Bombay. Meanwhila 58 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845 against Christ and the chains Baikiinta's family set all the sensual pleasures in which idolatry is so fertile. As Dr. Duff reported the case, " every attempt was made not only to pervert the mind, but corrupt the very morals of the young man — in order, if possible, to unfit him for becoming a member of the visible Church of Christ. What a testimony to the purity of Christianity ! — the very heathen practically confess- ing that impurity and uncleanness are incompatible with an honest or consistent profession ! and that one of the surest ways of preventing a person from becom- ing a Christian, is to debase his moral feeling, and brinof the stain of vice on his character ! What a testimony, on the other hand, against heathenism ! It can tolerate any enormity — theft, drunkenness, hypo- crisy, debauchery — these, and such like violations of the moral law, it can wink at, palliate, or even vindi- cate ; but to seek for the pardon of sin, and the sanctification of a polluted heart, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the open profession of His name — • this, this it cannot and will not endure, but must visit with reproach, ignominy, and persecution even unto death ! Happily, however, the young man was en- abled to resist all temptations and allurements ; and happily, too, he was not overcome, so as to deny or be ashamed of the name of Jesus." The place of his captivity was discovered, the writ compelled his sur- render, and he has since been an earnest teacher and accredited preacher of the truth of which he thus witnessed a good confession. The record, in their own language, of the doubts and fears, the aspirations and convictions, the turning and the triumph of the converts from Brahmanism and Muhammadanism, in India, influenced by all the Churches but especially by the Scottish system of evaugeliziug, would form a volume precious to the ALt 39. THE SEVEN FAITHFUL ONES. 59 history oi Christiariity, early and later. The Clemen- tines and the Confessions of Augustine would have many a parallel. We do not doubt that coming generations of the Churcli of India will, in their own tongue, thus tell the wonderful works of God. But it would be well if the detailed experiences of the first converts in Calcutta and Bombay, in Madras and Nagpore, in Allahabad and Agra, in Lahore and Peshawur, were collected before it is too late. We need do no more tlian mention the names of the ^hree other converts who made up the seven faithful ones whom Dr. Duff's Free Church College at the opening of the second year of its existence sent to the baptismal font. These were Banka Beliari Bose, Harish Chunder Mitter, and Beni Madhub Kur. Nor were Hindoos the only converts. Five Jews, headed by Rabbi Isaac, and forming an almost patriarchal household, were led by an English officer, whom the Disruption had attracted to the Free Church, to seek instruction from Dr. Duff and baptism into the name of Jesus the Messiah. Again was there raised the cry of " Hindooism in danger." The Institution, which in its college and school departments had risen to above a thousand in daily attendance, and thirteen hundred on tlie roll, lost three hundred youths in one week. In his first cam- paign of 1830-34, Dr. Duff had found himself fronted by the orthodox Brahmanical families only. But now these were reinforced by the wealthy clans of MuUiks and Seels, by men of low but respectable castes who, under the previous half-century of British rule, had risen from the bu3ang and selling of empty beer bottles and other European refuse, to become landholders with a capital reckoned literally by crores of rupees or mil- lions sterliag. The poverty and greed of the Brahman- ical priesthood, allied with the wealth of the socially ambitious nouveaux riches^ on whom it conferred a 6o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. sanctified respectability, became apparently a far more formidable opposition than any which the Scottish Missions had yet been called to encounter. Nor was this all. Jesuits had invaded the diocese of the Irish Roman Catholic bishop, and he was long in getting them driven out, only, however, to see them return in that greater force which has of late injured the true interests of the Papacy in the East. While the Brahmans cursed Dr. Duff, their low caste allies, the Seels and Mulliks, resolved to establish a rival college. They turned to the Jesuits, and to an Irish adventurer named Tuite, as the only so-called Christians who would consent to teach English and "Western science on purely secular lines. Thus was established Seel's Free College, of which a Mullik is still the secretary, and is now so fair as to write in the last report we have seen : " I must acknowledge the great benefit which has been derived by our children from the efforts of Christian missionaries." Similarly one Gourmohun Addy estab- lished the Oriental Seminary as an adventure school. Apart from the intolerance and bigotry of the move- ment it is deeply to be regretted, and most of all by the missionaries, that the natives of India, of all creeds, have not thus independently sought to supply educa- tion to their children after their own fashion. They began to do this in 1818 in the Hindoo College. But they always childishly fell back on Government for public instruction as for political and administrative development. As between them and the missionaries a fair grant-in-aid system would have brought out the self-reliant natives, and men of Dr. Duff's stamp at least had no fear of the issue in so fair a field. But as between Government and the missionaries — a Government necessarily neutral in principles and secular or antichristian in practice — the Churches and the Parliament of the governing country see all tliat is ^Et. 39. HINDOO] SM FIGHTING CHEISTIANITY. 6i good in Tlindooisra destroyed, ■while that alone which can fill the moral void and supply the spiritual motive power is officially discouraged. It is orthodox Hin- doos, in each generation, who are the present victims, as they bitterly complain. But it is the public security and contentment, the national progress and peace, which are threatened, as Lord Northbrook and even Lord Lytton have lately confessed. The Churches and their agents are meanwhile injuriously checked by the unparalleled patronage, by the Indian Government, of a system of purely secular public instruction, in de- fiance of the Despatch of 1854, which Dr. Duff, as we shall see, devised as a remedy fair to all. He himself must now picture the scene : — "Calcutta, July 2, 1845. "My Dear Dr. Gordon, — Our Institution is still standing — standing out bravely auhd the incessant peltings of a storm which has continued to rage for two months with scarcely a single lull. Thanks be to God for the i-esult ! Shaken it has been — severely shaken ; how could it be otherwise ? But the real wonder is, that it has not been toi'n up, root and branch. The combination against it has been all but universal, includ- ing nearly the whole rank, wealth and power of the native community, of all classes, sects and castes. " Were it not for the adhesive force of the attachment of our pupils to ourselves and our system, the Institution, as a living one, would undoubtedly have been clean swept away. Whence, then, this attachment? Solely from the considerate kindness with which love to their souls ever prompts us to treat them ; and from the nature of the instruction received, both as regards its substance and the mode of its conveyance. Only let us become cold, lukewarm, or inattentive in our personal exertions and intercourse with the pupils; and let the fulness and efificiency of our course of instruction suffer any material diminution or abatement; and then, however the Institution may rear up its head amid the sunshine and the calm, the very first gust of a tempest, like that which has recently swept over it, would blow it all away. There is no medium between 62 LIFE OF DR. DUIT. 1845. doing our work thoroughly and not doing it at all. No exer- tioUj therefore^ and no reasonable expense, should ever be spared in maintaining unimpaired the vigour and effectiveness of the entire machinery — physical, intellectual, moral and religious. On this, humanly speaking, depends the whole dynamic force of our well-doing in connection with its vital bearings on the mightiest interest of time and eternity. *' Recent events have also tended strikingly to exhibit the weakness and helplessness of Hindooism. Its whole strength, in the metropolis of India, has been mustered in hostile array against Christianity and its missionaries. Rajas and Zemin- dars, Baboos and Bralimans, have all combined, counselled, and plotted together. An eye-witness, at one of the great Sabbath meetings at which not fewer than two thousand were present, assured me that several hundreds consisted of Bralimans, who, at times, literally wept and sobbed, and audibly cried out, saying ' that the religion of Brahma was threatened with de- struction, and that, unless energetic measures were instantly adopted, their vocation would soon be at an end ! ' In such a desperate crisis of affairs, what plans might naturally suggest themselves to men upborne by a penetrating consciousness of the rectitude of their own cause ? Would it not be the insti- tuting of a public lectui-eship, or some other engine for ex- posing the claims and pretensions of the so much dreaded Christianity? — the contemporaneous establishing of lecture- ships, professorships, or other appropriate means for expound- ing, inculcating, and upholding the tenets and peculiarities of the Hindoo religion and ritual ? But no; the pt^e vailing taste is not found, after all, to lie in this way; a new current is dis- covered setting in a contrary direction. The grand object is to crush Christianity and perpetuate Hindooism. And how is this end to be compassed by the united wisdom of Hindoo princes, nobles, and sages ? By founding an English college for the teaching of European literature and science ! They have done the worst which they could against us ; and this is the worst ! In other words, the most effective measure which, in the present state of things in the metropolis of British India, the confederated votaries of Hindooism have been able to con- trive against Christianity — its encroachments and threatened successes — has been to originate a new scheme of English education ! — a scheme which, from its exclusion of Christianity JEt. 39. LEAGUE AGAINST DR. DUFF's COLLKGE. 6^ may, in the first instance, be, or appear to be, hostile to it ; but which, in the long run, will by no means be found neces- sarily hostile, and often positively friendly ; while, in the end, it is sure to prove absolutely ruinous and suicidal as regards Hindooism ! In briefer and plainer words still — the only way at present in Calcutta for upholding Hindooism, is to establish a system which must eventually prove fatal to it ! What a singular commentary does this one fact furnish on the extra- ordinary peculiarity of the presence, position, and destiny of the British power in India ! Surely there are mystei-ies of Pro- vidence here to call for the gravest reflection, while they baffle all our efforts adequately to comprehend or conceive them ! " Recent events have also supplied fresh evidence of the importance of Calcutta as a centre of operations — a focus of emanative influences. To it, as the emporium of commerce, and the seat of the supreme government as well as of the supreme courts of review, natives resort from all parts of Eastern India. These keep up a regular and extensive corre- spondence with their respective homes. In this way intelli- gence of all movements and occurrences here is rapidly con- veyed to all parts of the country. A few days sufficed to make the principal stations, and many of the obscurest villages in Bengal, acquainted with the general drift and character of recent measures, and their originating causes. Not later than yesterday, I happened to receive a letter from a gentleman at a remote station, considerably beyond Allahabad, in the upper provinces. He states that the great anti- missionary movement, or rather Anti-Free-Church-Institution movement in Calcutta, almost immediately affected the missionary schools there. Some natives of that place, presently resident in Calcutta, had written to their friends, apprizing them of all that had happened, and urging them to sound the alarm far and wide, with the view of withdrawing all children from the missionary schools. Many took the alarm, and acted on the advice; so that for a few weeks the schools were seriously affected. The panic, however, was gradually abating ; and it was expected that ere long all would return. Who may not perceive in these suc- cessive waves of alarm rolling over the great Gangetic valley, containing more than half the population of all India — stirring up the dormant myriads into something like wakefulness, originating new and unwonted inquiries, suggesting now 64 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1S45. thotiglits, introducing new ideas, and leading to new and strano-e forebodings of future change — who may not perceive in all this one of the many providential preparations for the ultimate and more effective propagation of the Gospel itself? And what is true of Calcutta is, in a corresponding measure, true of Madras and Bombay. " How often does the Word of God assure us that, sooner or later, tlie wicked shall be taken in their own craftiness, and fall into the pit which, they have dug for others ! An instruc- tive example of this has occurred in connection with the recent antichristian movement. The united meeting of Hindoos had resolved to draw up a written form of agreement, which, under the threat of excommunication, or loss of caste, was to be forced on the parents and guardians of pupils attending our Institution. In compulsorily signing this agreement, they were to bind themselves to remove the pupils from ours, and send them to the new college. This agreement was regarded as the grand bond of union and strength to the confederacy, and the surest guarantee of the success of its leading scheme. Well, the agreement was formally drawn up. Its principal concocter happened to be a leader of the Brahma Sobha, or Yedant school of Hiudooism, which professes to worship one supreme something, called Brahma. Now, from unchanging hereditary usage, every written document among the natives, however commonplace, must be headed by the name or designation of one or other of the popular deities. In this part of India it is usually that of Ganesha, the god of wisdom, or one or other of the names of the favourite Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnoo. Consistently with their own professions, the members of the Brahma Sobha could not employ any of these. Brahma, or any one of his peculiar designations, is their symbol. On the present occasion, however, no peculiar symbol of the Brahma Sobha could be introduced, as that would offend and irritate the members of the Dharma Sobha, the devoted up- holders of polytheism in its grossest forms. It would also be objected to by the colluvies of individuals who belong to neither of these Sobhas. Accordingly, the author of the written agreement and his coadjutors thought they had solved the difficulty by proposing to insert, at the head of the document, the simple term for ' God,' viz., Ishwar. This, they con- cluded, would suit all parties, and each might then put what ^t. 39. THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN LEAGUE. 65 interpretation on the word ho pleased. An adherent of the Brahma Sobha might suppose it meant Brahma, the supremo god ; an adherent of the Dharma Sobha might suppose ib meant any ono of the gods in the Hindoo Pantheon ; an ad- herent of neither might suppose it meant the god of his system, whether that were Nature, Necessity, Chance, or any other equally preposterous phantom. With the capacious latitu- dinarian superscription of Ishwar, or ' God,' therefore, the agreement was put in circulation. Reaching the gooroo, or Brahmanical spiritual guide of the Raja Rhadakant Deb — a genuine representative of the uncompromising orthodoxy of the ago of the Rishis, or divine sages, and Manu — he at once snuffed heresy in the document. ' What innovation is this ? ' exclaimed he, in conservative ire; *what strange innovation is this ? Who ever heard of the simple term Islnuar being at tho head of an orthodox document ? No, no ; this must be some new symbol of the Brahma Sobha; and by inserting it here, they wish to entrap us and commit us to their newfangled fancies. No, no ; this will not do at all.' So saying, in sub- stance, he seized his genuine calam or reed-pen, blotted out the term Ishwar, and substituted, Sri Sri Hari, one of tho appellations of Krishna. The document then proceeded on its travels. It soon fell into the hands of a member of the Brahma Sobha. ' What ! ' exclaimed he in his turn, ' What ! sign a document with Sri Sri Hari at the head of it ?' — Hari, whose most notable exploits were the running away with the clothes of a poor washerman, and the playing all sorts of fantastic pranks with sixteen thousand milkmaids! 'No, no; this will never do. To sign a document so headed, would be to re-coramit me to a formal sanctioning of all the gods and goddesses whose woi'ship, as a member of the Brahma Sobha, I profess to slight or despise.' So saying, he must needs scratch out tho obnoxious Sri Sri Hari, and re-introduce Ishwar instead. At length matters threatened to come to an open rupture. The subject was fully debated at a public meeting. It was there so far compromised. The wound, however, was only patched up — not healed. And though, from fear of failure, policy and other causes, an outward truce has apparently been the result, it has left a fatal sore, that keeps rankling within, and may some day unpleasantly show. Thus ic has happened that the agreement which was expected VOL. I[. F 66 LIFE or DR. DUIT. 1847. to form the very bond of union and strength, has been so overruled as to prove a source of jealousy, rivalry and weak- ness ! " After a lull for two years, the opposition was again fanned, by further baptisms, into a flame which threat- ened the destruction of Dr. Duff himself. Uma Churn Ghose, baptized by the Rev. Mr. Macdonald just before death removed that saintly man, was made over to the Church Missionary Society, for service at Jubbul- pore. Then followed, in 1847, four baptisms, by Dr. Duff, of Koolin Brahmans — Pran Kissen Gangooly, since employed at Arrah ; Kalee Das Chukurbutfcy, sent to Hyderabad as a teacher ; Judoo Nath Ban- erjea, who became treasurer of the Small Cause Court at Kooshtea ; and Shib Chunder Banerjea. The last has ever since been one of the most faithful catechists and preachers yet given to the Church of India. Labouring with his hands like Paul, that he may be at no man's charges, and trusted by the Government he serves in its treasury, alike at Calcutta and Simla, the zealous, eloquent Rev. Shib Chunder Banerjea gives all his leisure to evangelizing his countrymen. With his name we may here associate that of a convert of 1850, who was baptized after Soorjya Koomar Haldar, head-master of a school, and Deena Nath Adhya, a Government deputy magistrate. Shyama Churn Mookerjea showed all the manly as well as Christian virtues which Macaulay failed to find in the Bengalee. Having embraced Christ with the whole strength of his nature, and being denied his wife in the absence of the Christian marriage and divorce law passed too late for his case, he visited this country to study as an engineer, shouldered his rifle as a volunteer in Agra Fort during the Mutiny, and has since been the generous friend of his poorer Christian countrymen. He started a native mission of his own in East Bengal, JEt. 41. THE TUIRD COVENANT AGAINST CIIKISTIANITY. 67 and be is now the popular hymn- writer for and man- ager of those 'keertuns' or services of sacred song by which, every Sabbath evening, hundreds of Hindoos are attracted to hear the gospel in the Institution where he himself found Christ. To all the new con- versions of 18-17 was added the first in Dr. Duff's old Institution since it had been opened by the Established Church — the baptism of one of his old students. That resulted in the defeat of the Hindoo application for a writ of habeas corpus, the youth having reached the years of discretion. The old animosity, fed by terror, burst out, and all native Calcutta held what the English daily papers called " an antichristian meeting," a " Hindoo demonstration against the Mis- sionaries and Christianity." The Hiirlcaru thus re- ported the scene on Sunday the 19th September, 1848 : " The meeting was crowded to excess by a curious and motley group of natives, of every caste and creed. There was the Gosain, with his head full of Jaydeva, and the amorous feats of his sylvan deity ; the Tan- trist, still heated with the hhacJcra or Bacchanalian carousal of the preceding night; the educated Free- thinker, as ignorant of God as he was of the world when at college; the Yedantist, combining, in himself, the unitarianism of the Vedist with the liberalism of the Freethinker — all assembled under the general appellation of Hindoo, to adopt proposals of the best means for the oppression of the common enemy. The proceedings began with Raja Rhadakant Deb taking the chair. It was resolved that a society be formed, named the Hindoo Society, and that, in the first in- stance, each of the heads of castes, sects, and parties at Calcutta, orthodojx as well as heterodox, should, as members of the said society, sign a certain covenant, binding him to take strenuous measures to prevent any person belonging to his caste, sect, or party, from 68 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1848. educating his son or ward at any of the missionary institutions at Calcutta, on pain of excommunication from the said caste, or sect, or party. Many of such heads present signed the covenant. It was presumed that the example will be soon followed by the inhabi- tants of the Mofussil. One of the orthodox party present at the meeting said, after its dissolution, addressing himself to the boys present — ' Babas, be followers of one Grod; that is, Yedantists. Eat whatever you like, do whatever you like, but be not a Christian." Such of the British residents in Calcutta thirty years ago as still survive, have a lively recollection of the ter- rorism of that time in the native quarter. The favour- ite and the familiar mode of attacking private enemies and redressing private wrongs, in defiance of the law, was by hiring latteeals, or club-men. The courts in the interior were then few, and comparatively powerless. Native landholders and British indigo-planterc thus, too often, settled their differences about lands and crops, for the East India Company was too conserva- tive to keep pace with administrative and legislative necessities. But in Calcutta the Supreme Court had administered English criminal and sectarian civil law, ever since the dread days of Sir Elijah Impey, with stern impartiality. There, at least, there was quiet. Nevertheless, so determined were the orthodox and the vicious Hindoo majority to stop these conversions, that some of them plotted to get rid of the great cause of them all, as they supposed. Dr. Duff. Mr. Seton-Karr, then a young civilian, still recalls to us *' the great stir made by some conversions, and the threats of a physical attack by latteeals to be made on Dr. Duff, to which he replied with his characteristic intrepidity." Having previously discussed " the new anti-missionary movement " in letters to the HurJiarUy ^t. 42. UIS TEUI^ON TEEEATENED. bg signed " Iiulopliilus," under the same name Dr. Daff addressed this " statement and appeal," this " word of faithful and firm, yet kindly admonition, to some of the Calcutta Baboos." " TO THE NATIVE GENTLEMEN OF CALCUTTA. "Dbar Sirs, — For some days past, sundry disagreeable rumours have been afloat among the native community of this city. At first I treated them with perfect indifference ; but they have been reiterated so often, and have reached me from so many quarters, alike native and European, that I now deem it most just towards all parties thus publicly to notice them. The nature of these rumours may best appear from the follow- ing extracts from certain communications, which have been addressed to me by gentlemen of character and respectability, " One writes thus : — 'There is, I hear, a conspiracy among the wealtliy Baboos to hire some ruffians to maltreat you. If you treat it (the report) with contempt, you will go on as usual. On the contrary, if you think the report to be true, you will avoid going out at night, or rather never go the same road twice together.' Another writes thus : — ' 1 am no alarmist; but, whether with reference to the late baptisms, or other gouLTal causes, I have been credibly and seriously informed this day that there is, or is to be, a plot, by which some ruffians of the baser sort are hired to assault you — when, or where, could not of course be stated. Weighing the matter well, I thought it right to communicate this in common pru- dence. Pray, do not at least go out at night, nor retuim by the same road,' etc, " These extracts, from some of the communications addressed to me by respectable gentlemen, are enough, in the way of sample or specimen, to indicate the general character of the rumours which have been currently prevalent and extensively believed for some days past. And it is the strength of their prevalency, in connection with the ci'edence which they have so largely gained, which makes me feel that it is more kind, more friendly, and more just towards those at whom tho rumours point, thus openly and frankly to appeal to you. "1. If that part of the rumours be true which alleges that you are at length to submit to sacrifices and self-denial fur 70 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1848. the sake of being profusely liberal in tlie cause of native en- lightenment, no one can rejoice more in the fact than I do. The inculcation of the duty of liberality in a worthy cause has been one of the great objects of my life and labours since I came to India. And were but a tithe of what is now so lavishly expended on riotous and idolatrous feasts and festivals, and nautches, and marriages, and endless superstitious ceremonies, devoted to the cause of English education, it would undoubtedly tend to accelerate the progress of events towards a new and better era for this long benighted land. The religious societies in Great Britain raise anvnaUy, by voluntary conti'ibutions, at least half a million sterling, or fifty lalchs of rupees, for the enlightenment not of their own countrymen, but of races of men scattered throughout the world whom they have never seen. And this they do because Christianity, Avhich they be- lieve to be the only true and worthy revelation from God, enjoins thera to love all men, and to do good to all, as they have opportunity. Now, if you begin to set a similar example of liberality in well-doing to the people of Asia, and primarily for the benefit of your own countrymen, or if you outrival your fellow-subjects in Great Britain, and thus be the means of stirring them up to still greater munificence, I shall hail the achievement as one that shall gain you immortal renown, and for your country, under the overruling providence of God, an accession of blessings that shall enrich and ennoble the latest posterity. '^2. As to the threats of violence, which, according to many- tongued rumour, are said to be loweringly suspended over the heads of parents who, in the free exercise of their own parental rights as free-boi'n citizens of a free state, have been pleased, or may yet be pleased, to send their childi'en to the Free Church Institution with which, for the last seventeen years, I have been connected, I must, in the absence of all positive proof, and in the exercise of ordinaiy charity, believe either that the report is unfounded or grossly exaggerated. That such rumours, even if wholly unfounded, should so readily gain credence with so many of our fellow- citizens, is melancholy enough, as indicative of some lingering remnants amongst us of the persecuting spirit and practice of a bygone age. But that any such threats as busy rumour insists on proclaiming, should really have been held out by a self-constituted body of private individuals, and ^t. 42. HIS APPEAL TO TUE EDUCATED NATIVES. 7 1 hung, in terrorem, over the heads of free-born Britislx subjects, their owu fellow-citizens, would bo vastly more melancholy still. Such a portentous- phenomenon would prove, beyond all debate, that the Calcutta J3aboos were not what their best friends sincerely wish them to be. Such a flagrant outrage on the principles of toleration, equity, and civil order, would serve mournfully to convince the sincerest advocates of Indian amelioration, that despite the multifarious processes of thirty or forty years' education, the Calcutta Baboos were still the representatives of antiquated intolerance, and openly repudiated any genial alliance with the fraternity of modern civilization. It would servo to transport us in vision to the days of Manu, or, rather, painfully to revive amongst us practices which, however conformable to the genius of the Institutes, would soon tend to plunge us into the very depths of a revolting barbarism. Again, then, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the credit of our native gentry, I must suppose that the rumours are either wholly unfounded or grossly exaggerated. Of one thing I am sure, and to their honour I must proclaim it, that, amongst the Calcutta Baboos there are those whose kind-heartedness, good sense, and enlightened principles, would lead them to shun and even denounce any violent and illegal measures to coerce their poorer fellow-citizens in the exercise of their undoubted rights and privileges, as men and as British subjects. " 'd. As to the rumour of threats respecting myself, I shall continue to treat it as an 'idle tale.' Among the Calcutta Baboos there are those whom I respect and esteem, and to whose keeping I would at any time entrust my life, in the most perfect confidence of friendship and protection. If others, who do not know me personally, should, in ignorance of my principles and motives, entertain unkindly or hostile feelings towards me, the fact would be in no way surprising. Even if the alleged threats were real, and not the progeny of lying fiction, I should not be in the least degree moved by them. My trust is in God; and to me that trust is a guarantee of secui'ity far more sure than a lodgment within the citadel of Fort-William, with its bristling array of artillery. To this country I originally came, not of necessity, but by free choice, for the express purpose of doing what I could in diffusing sound knovvledge of every kind, and especially the knowledge of *]2 LIPE OF DR. DUFF. 1848. that great salvation whicli is freely offered in tlie gospel to all the kindreds and tribes of the fallen family of man. The only means employed are patient instruction, oral and written, in every variety of form, accompanied and enforced by the appli- ances of moral suasion. Old and young are uniformly dealt with, as endowed with rational and moral faculties, and, therefore, accountable for the proper use of them. They are exhorted to awake, and arise from the slumbers of inveterate apathy, incon- sideration, and indifference. They are called upon to acquit themselves like men, in thinking, judging and acting for themselves, under a solemn sense of their responsibility to God, the alone Lord of conscience. Of course, it follows, that should any respond to the call that is thus addressed to them they must, in varying degrees, have eyes open to discern the error and the evil of many ancient hereditary beliefs, habits, and practices. And should they be endowed from on high with the necessary fortitude to give effect to their new convictions, the result is inevitable; they must, to a great extent, separate themselves, in the present unpropitious and transitionary state of things, from the surrounding mass. That, instead of admir- ing the decision, and applauding the consistency of such a course of conduct, the great inert mass of conservatism should resent the separation as an insult, an indignity, an injury offered to itself, need occasion little wonder, however much the intel- lectual and moral blindness of such procedure may awaken serious regret. And that the human agents or instruments employed in effecting such changes, however pure in their motives, benevolent in their intentions, or disinterested in their ends and aims, should share in the resentment of the thoughtless, the unreasonable, the carnally-minded, the selfish, or the profane, follows as by a law of fatal necessity. "But we live by faith, and not by sight. Our principles are not of human, but of divine origination. They are not of mushroom growth, springing up to serve an ephemeral purpose to-day, and vanishing to-morrow. They are not like the ever-shifting sands of worldly expediency, glancing in the sunshine of popular applause before us at one time, and behind us at another; now obedient to the breeze oa the right hand, and then on the left. No ; our principles are, in their fountain- head, old as eternity; and as they come streaming forth athwart the course oi: time, they bear upon their front the ^Et. 42. CHIHSTIANlTy AND LIBEIiTY. 73 impress of iminntabilifcy. Vaia tlien^ preposterously vain, must be any attempt to drive us from the promulgation of these ennobling principles by threats of terror or of violence. For, not only are they in their own nature unchangeable, but, in their main scope, purpose and end, they exhibit an aspect of inexpressible kindness towards man ; so much so, that were man not his own gi'eatest enemy in rejecting them, were he only his own best friend in cordially embracing them, his whole nature would be renovated, and the earth itself, now filled with envies, jealousies, rivalries and violence, would be transformed into a universal Eden of blessedness. Here is a specimen of the system of principles or truths which we teach i — "' In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.'' 'So God created man in His own image' (or moral likeness). 'And God saw every thing He had made, and behold it was very good.' 'God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions.'* 'By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.' But, 'the Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.' He is 'of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity.' ' The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unirodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.* At the same time, the Lord hath proclaimed His name, saying, 'The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, longs uffering, and abundant in goodness and truth ; keeping mercy for thou- sands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and siti, and that will by no means clear the guilty.' As for the race of man, 'There is none righteous, no not one : there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God : they are all gone out of the way, they are together become uuprolitablo ; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.' But, ' God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have evorListing life.' ' God is love.' ' Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' 'Jf any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.' * If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us : if we confess our sins, He is faithful antl just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighLuousucbS.' 'Lot every one that nameth the 74 LIFE OF BR. DDF P. 1848. name of Christ depart from all iniquity/ * Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God/ 'Love your enemies; bless them that curse you ; do good to them that hate you ; and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you/ 'Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good/ " Such are somo of the heavenly principles, which, in obedi- ence to a divine command, we feel ourselves imperatively called on to publish and inculcate, for the temporal and spiritual improvement of our fellow-creatures. And though numbers of the present genei-ation, in their ignorance and infatuated blindness to their own best interests, should rise up to curse and otherwise maltreat us, through the appropriate agency of hired ruffians — nevertheless, so far from being deterrbd from prosecuting our chosen walk of truest benevolence, we shall only be impelled the more, by the pity and compassion which such suicidal opposition naust ever inspire, to persevere with augmenting diligence and energy in the attempt to confer the greatest of benefits on those who thus blindly resist us ; — in the full assurance, that, however they may misconstrue our motives, or vilify our good name, or thwart our measures, their more enlightened descendants shall yet arise to bless us for our labours of love, and enshrine our names in perpetual re- membrance. But if it were otherwise; if we knew for certain, that from our fellow-men we could expect nothing but hatred and contempt duriug life, and the brand of iufamy attached to our names after death, we should still work on, sustained by the testimony of our own consciences and a full sense of the approbation of the great God. In this world we never expected any adequate return for our self-denying labours; it is to heaven we have always looked, in assured faith, for the eternal recom- pense of reward. Come then what may — come favour or dis- favour, come weal or woe, come life or death — it is our resolute purpose, by the blessing of God, to persevere. It is our heart's desire to see the soul of every son and daughter of India truly regenerated by the quickening word of the living God, accom- panied by the efficacy of His almighty Spirit ; and thus to see India itself at length arise from the dust, and, through the influence of her regenerated children, become a pi"aise and a glory in the whole earth. And the realization of a consum- mation so glorious, so far from beiug retarJeJ, can only be hastened by the vigorous execution of such intolerant and JEt 42. Ills IM'liEl'lDITY AND FAITH. 75 violent measures as rumour now so stoutly attributes to the short-sightedness of the Calcutta Baboos. Truly may the Christian, with reference to the projectors of such measures, take up the sublimely benevolent prayer of his cruelly perse- cuted and crucified Lord, in behalf of the savage murderers, and say, * Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do/ Let the Calcutta Baboos, whom rumour represents as assembling, on Sundays, in secret conclave to brood over dark plots and hatch schemes of violence against their unoffending fellow-citizens, remember that the actual execution of such schemes would inOict deadly injury on no one but themselves, and irretrievably damnge no cause but their own; — while the cause of those whom they now mistakenly regard as adversaries, when they are in reality their best earthly benefactors, would thence receive an accelerative impetus, which the united friendly patronage of all the men of rank and wealth in India could not impart. In the eai-ly ages of relentless persecution by the emissaries of Pagan Rome, it passed into a proverb, that ' the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church/ And let the Calcutta Baboos rest assured, that the vital prin- ciple involved in this proverb has lost nothing of its intrinsic efficacy or subduing power. The first drop of missionary blood that is violently shed in the peaceful cause of Indian evangeli- zation, will pi'ove a prolific seed in the outspreading garden of the ludo-Christiau Church. And the first actual missionary martyrdom that shall be encountered in this heavenly cause, may do more, under the overruling providence of God, to pi-e- cipitate the inevitable doom of Hindooism, and speed on the chariot of gospel triumph, than would the establishment of a thousand additional Christian schools, or the delivery of ten thousand additional Christian addresses, throughout the towns and villages of this mighty empire. " With sincerest wishes for your temporal and everlasting welfare, I remain, dear sirs, yours very truly, " Indophilus.^' ''Calcutta, September \ltli, 1817." The increase of converts, some of them with families, and the formation of classes of theology for the train- ing of several of them as catcchists, then preachers. 76 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1848, and finally ordained missionaries and pastors, embar- rassed Dr. Duff and liis colleagues, but in a way which rejoiced their hearts. At first, in Calcutta as in Bombay, the catechumens, whom the caste and intoler- ance of Hindooism excluded from their families and society, became inmates of the missionary's home and frequent guests at his table. To be thus associated with men of God and gentlemen of the highest Chris- tian culture, like the founders of the Bengal and Bombay Missions, was a privilege which the most scientific training in Divinity could not supply, and without which such training must have been one-sided or spiritually barren. What the intercourse with Dr. and Mrs. Duff was, and how they valued it, one of the ordained ministers, the Rev. Lai Behari Day, has thus recently told. The two Brahmans, Bhattacharjya and Chatterjea, still working as ordained missionaries, were his companions : "We three messed together by ourselves; but we joined Dr. Duff and Mrs. Duff (their children being away in Scotland) at family worshij) both morning and evening. Duff was punctual as clockwork ; ex- actly at eight o'clock in the morning — not one minute before or after — the prayer-bell rang, and we all were in the breakfast-room, where the morning worship used to be held. Duff was always observant of the forms of politeness, and never forgot to shake hands with us, asking us the usual question, * How do you do ? ' By the way, Duff's shake of the hand was different from that of other people. It was not a mere formal, stiff, languid shake ; but like everything else of him, it was warm and earnest. He would go on shaking, catching fast hold of your hand in his, and would not let it go for some seconds. The salutations over, we took our seat. We always began with sing- ing one of the grand old Psalms of David, in Rous's JEt. 42. AT HOME WITH THE CONVERTS. 77 Doric versification, Mrs. Duff leading the singing. Dr. Duff, tliougli I believe he bad a delicate ear for music, never led tbe singing; be, hoMrever, joined in it. He generally read tbe Old Testament in tbe morn- inof, and tbe New Testament in tbe evenino;. When I joined tbe little circle — and tbere were only five of us, Dufi^, Mrs. Duff, Jugadisbwar, Prosunno and I — be was reading tbrougb tbe Psalms. He did not read long portions — seldom a wliole psalm, but only a few verses. He seldom made remarks of bis own, but read to us tbe reflections of some pious divine on tbose verses. Wben going tbrougb tbe Psalms be used to read tbe exposition of Dr. Dickson ; and in tbe evening, wben going tbrougb tbe New Testament, be made use of tbe commentary, if my memory does not fail me, of Girdlestone. Tbe reading over, we all knelt down. Ob, bow sball I describe tbe prayers wbicb Duff offered up botb morning and evening ! They were such exquisitely simple and beautiful prayers. Much as I admired Duff in bis public appearances — in tbe pulpit and on tbe platform — I admired and loved bira infinitely more at tbe family altar, wbere, in a simple and cbildlike manner, be devoutly and earnestly poured out bis soul before our common Father in heaven. Most men in their family prayers repeat, for the most part, tbe same things both morning and evening. Duff's prayers were fresh and new every morning and evening, naturally arising out of the verses read and carefully meditated over. And oh, the animation, tbe earnestness, the fervour, the deep sincerity, the cbild- like simplicity of those prayers ! They were fragrant with the aroma of heaven. Tliey were prayers wbicb Gabriel or Michael, bad they been on earth and had they been human beings, would have offered up. I, at that time a young convert, experienced sensations which it is impossible to describe. I felt as I had 78 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 184b". never before felt, I seemed to breathe the atmosphere of heaven. I seemed to be transported into the thh'd heaven, standing in the Holy of Holies in the presence of the Triune Jehovah. Duff's sympathies in prayer were wide and catholic. He prayed for every section of the Church of Christ, and pleaded, morning and evening, most fervently on behalf of the heathen perishing for lack of knowledge. In the mornings, we came away immediately after prayers to our breakfast, as we were required to be ready for the Institution by ten o'clock ; but in the eveniugs, when the family worship began at nine o'clock, Duff would often ask us to stay after prayers, and engage in conversation with us, not on any trifling, every-day, ephemeral thing, but on subjects of grave import; and sometimes we sat with him for more than an hour. How thankful do I feel for those quiet evening conversations, in which Duff impressed on our youthful minds the highest truths and the holiest principles. Those were, indeed, happy days; if they could be called back, I would, if I could, prolong them indefinitely." This was in 1843, but by 1845 the resident converts had increased to thirteen, and four of them were mar- ried. " We have been literally driven to our wits' end in making even a temporary provision for them," wrote Dr. Duff in 1845. No sooner was the necessity known than twelve merchants and officials, nine of them of the Church of England, presented him with a thousand pounds to build a home for the Christian students, in the grounds beside his own residence, which, with wise foresight, he had long ago secured. To this, as the Ben- galee congregation developed, and, according to Pres- byterian privilege, "called" its own native minister, he added a church and manse with funds entrusted to him for his absolute disposal by the late Countess of Effingham. The community has many years since JFA. 42. • CHARGE TO THE FOUR CATECHISTS. 79 become indepcudent enough to dispense with the con- verts' rooms. In the same year, Mr. Thomson, of Banchory, and other friends in Aberdeen, unsolicited by him, sent Dr. Duff ahbrary and scientific apparatus for the college, which completed its machinery. And then, just sixteen years after the young missionary had opened his school for teaching the English alpha- bet and the Bengalee Bible side by side, he saw the ripe fruit in the formal licensing by the Presbytery of the first four catechists, after strict examination, to preach to their countrymen the unsearchable riches of the Christ to Whom they had themselves been led by Western influences and along a difficult path. Long before indeed, under the more flexible system of epis- copal absolutism, Krishna Mohun Banerjea had become a minister, as Dr. Duff himself described with joy ; * and the two ripest of all the converts, Kailas and Maheudra, had been removed from earthly ministra- tion to the higher service. But when, with the double experience of nigh twenty years since he himself had been set apart " by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," the fervid missionary delivered the charge of the Church to the two Brahmans, the Rajpoot and the middle-class Bengalee whom he had taught with Paul-like yearning, he felt that he too had seen the Timothy and the Titus, the John Mark and the Tychicus of the infant Church of Iiulia. And so he spake to each, from the words of Paul, a torrent of spiritual eloquence which the journals of the day lamented their inability to report: "Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine." Nor did these four stand alone. Another • Vol. i. p. 444. 8o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1848. of his conyerfc-students lie had given to the American Presbyterian missionaries in the Punjab, and of him he sent this report to Dr. Tweedie, who had just become convener of the home committee : Calcutta, 1th April, 1848. " A few days ago an excellent Christian lady, wife of Captain Mackenzie, who so greatly distinguished himself at Cabul, writing to ray daughter from Loodiana, near the Sutlej, enclosed the printed prospectus of a mission about to be established in the now British province of the Jullunder Doab. It is under the charge of the Rev. Goluk Nath, whom the writer of the letter is pleased to describe in these terms : — ' The minister of Julhmder, an old pupil of Dr. Duff ^s, of whom he speaks with the greatest affection,^ etc. And again : * I had nearly forgotten to beg Dr. Duff to show the circular of the Jullunder Mission to any one likely to feel interested in it. Tell him that it is a kind of grandchild of his own, as Goluk Nath is the father of it,* etc. This young man was brought up in our Institution; but having gone to the northern provinces, he was led, in providence, to unite himself with our brethren of the American Presbyterian Mission, so that through him our Institution is, at this moment, diffusing the light of the gospel among the warlike Sikhs who so lately contested the sovereignty of India with Britain. The Lord be praised; His holy name be magnified ! " The four native young men who were sent, about three years ago, from this city to London, to complete their medical education, and graduate there, were specially selected from the students of our Medical College, and sent, partly at the expense of the Indian Government and partly at that of private individuals, under the charge of a medical officer in the Com- pany's service. In University College, London, they greatly distinguished themselves — all carrying off prizes, and some of them the very highest in different branches. Last year one of them returned with the diploma of surgeon from the Royal College of Surgeons; and lately other two have returned with the degree of M.D. conferred on them. '^I'lie fourth, and most distinguished of them all, is still in London. Now, it can scarcely fail to interest you to learn, that of these four young ALt. 42. MEUCANTILE CRISIS IN CALCUTTA. 8 1 men one had received his preparatory education wholly, and other two chiefly, in our Institution. But what will intei-est you most of all will be, that of the two latter, the one who is still in London has lately made an open profession of the Christian faith, and been admitted by baptism into the Church of Christ. By last mail I received from himself a letter, which details some of the leading steps by which he was ultimately induced to devote his soul to the Lord Jesus Christ as his only Saviour; with various interesting reflections naturally called forth by the occasion. Thus, on all hands are we, from time to time, cheered with tokens of the Lord's loving-kindnesses towards us. " You will have heard of the fearful state of things among the mercantile community of this place. Their failures have also deeply affected and involved others who ai'e not merchants. As agents or bankers, a large proportion of those in the civil, military, and other services of the Government had pecuniary dealings with them. So that, altogether, Calcutta never was in so calamitous a state as now. It really looks to a bystander as if overtaken by a universal bankruptcy, or by difficulties which border so closely on bankruptcy as not to be easily dis- tinguished from it. But why do I refer to this state of things at all? I am necessitated to do so. Till towards the end of last year we found no difficulty in realizing the sum of about £1,200 annually, by local contribution — a sum which enabled us to pay the heavy rent for the Institution, with the salaries of all the native teachers and monitors, and sundry con- tingencies, and thereby relieved the home fund of that largo amount annually. But since the latter part of last year we have been labouring under exti-cme difficulties, from the causes now stated. Still our trust is in the Lord Who has hitherto prospered us." The General Assembly of that year, responding to the joy which Dr. Duff, Dr. Wilson, Mr. Anderson, and Mr. Hislop, at Ntigpore, felt in the converts thus gathered out of the ancient faiths of Brahraanism, Parseeism, even Muhammadanism and Judaism, and the rude demon-worship of the jungle tribes, addressed an apostolic letter to them all. The epistle reached VOL. TI. G 82 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1848. Calcutta in the midst of the great car-festival of Jugganath. While excited devotees were hymning the praises of the hideous " lord of the world," and dragging his still obscene and cruel chariot, the heathen students were dismissed and the Christian Hindoos met in an upper room of the college to receive the epistle which was to be read in all the native churches. Dr. Duff thus described the scene : " After prayer and sundry introductory remarks, the letter was read and listened to with the pro- foundcst attention. Some practical exhortations fol- lowed, and the meeting closed with prayer. It was altogether a season of refreshment to our spirits ; and in this dry and parched desert land we do stand in need of such occasional cordials. It brought to our remembrance the great-hearted world-embracing spirit of the Apostle to the Gentiles, who could address the mightiest of his epistles to the body of true believers at Rome, whose faces he had not seen in the flesh. It made us vividly realize the unity of the Christian brotherhood, which, overleaping all interposing ob- stacles, would assimilate and incorporate into one all the scattered members of Christ's mystical body. It left a savoury impression of the vitalities of the Chris- tian faith on our souls, and made us feel that, thougli cut off" from the bodily presence of our brethren in the far west, we were not severed from their sympathies or their prayers." The immediate result was the formal organizing, on the 1st October, 1848, of the Bengalee Church, the members of which, from their familiarity with Eng- lish, had hitherto worshipped along with the ordinary congregation of the Free Church in Wellcsley Square. Dr. Ewart was made the first pastor until the Rev. Lai Behari Day, and then the Rev. Gooroo Das Maitra were called. The Bengalee girls of the Or- All 42. CUUltCH MISSIONARY SOClKrv's JUUiLEE. 8 o pbanage also, then under Miss Laing, worshipped in the new chapel in their own vernacular, and Mrs. Ewart established, for the girls of the prosperous Armenian and Jewish communities in the city, a school which long continued to supply them also with a pure Christian as well as English education. The year 1848 closed, after a truly catholic fashion, with Dr. Duff side by side with Bishop Wilson in keeping the jubilee of the evangelical Church Missionary Society. " I came away," he wrote officially to his committee, " much refreshed and exhilarated, feeling intensely that, after all, when the peculiarities of form and ceremony were dropped, and earnest souls under the influence of grace came to humble themselves before the Lord, and to praise Him for His rich and undeserved mercies, and to give free and unfettered utterance to the swelling emotions of their hearts, there was not, in reality, a hair's -breadth between us." CHAPTER XVin. 1844-1849. LOBD HABDINGE'S ADMINISTRATION.— THE CALCUTTA REVIEW. The year 1844 opens a New Period. — Lord Hardinge. — Public Ser- vice opened to Educated Natives. — Dr. Duff's Anticipations not realized till 1854. — The New Period one of Public Discussion. — John Kaye and John Marshman. — Sir Henry Lawrence and Cap- tain ]\farsh. — Establishment of the Calcutta Review.: — Dr. Duff's Recollections of the Event. — His Early Articles. — The Editorship forced on him. — Encourages Bengalee Essayists. — Sir John Kaye'a Gratitude. — The Fever Epidemic of 1844. — Calcutta nowa Healthy City. — Dr. Duff's Appeal for the Medical College Hospital. — De- scription of the Dying and the Dead. — The Ten Hospitals of Calcutta now. — Dr. Abercrombie and his Daughter. — Project of a Monument to John Knox. — Relief of the Highland Famine. — Mrs. Ellerton. — Duel of Warren Hastings and Philip Francis. — Letter to Mrs. Duff. — Bishop Wilson. — Letter to Principal Cunningham. — Andrew Morgan and the Doveton Colleges of Calcutta and Madras. The successive administrations of Lord Auckland and Lord Ellenborougli, by the violent contrasts which they presented, and the vital questions which they raised, summoned all Anglo-Indians, official and non-official, to discussion. The civil and the military services were placed, temporarily, in a heated antagonism. The dis- asters in Afghanistan, followed by the evacuation of the country after a proposal to sacrifice the English ladies and officers in captivity, and by the follies of a public triumph and the Somnath proclamation, had roused Great Britain as well as India. The annexation of Sindh and the war with Gwalior further stirred the public conscience in a way not again seen till the Mutiny, of which the Auckland-Ellen- Ait. 38. LOKl) JIAUDINGE AS GOVERNOR-GENERAL. 85 borougli madness was tlie prelude. And tlie whole was overshadowed by a new cloud in the north-west, far more real, at that time at least, than the shadow cast bj the advance of Russia from the north. The death of Runject Singh, who from the Sikh Khalsa, or brotherhood, had raised himself to be Maharaja of the Punjab, from the Sutlej to the Khyber and the glaciers of the Indus, had given the most warlike province of India six years of anarchy. It was time, if India was not to be lost, that one who was at once a soldier and a statesman should sit in the seat of Wellesley and Hastings. The new Governor-General was found in the younger son of a rector of the Church of England ; in the Peninsular hero who, at twenty-five, had won Albuera, had bled at Waterloo, had left his hand on the field of Ligny, and had become a Cabinet minister as Secretary-at-War. Sir Henry Hardinge went out to Government House, Calcutta, at sixty, and he returne(5 in four years as Viscount Hardinge of Lahore. Before he left England he took the advice of Mountstuart Elphin stone, never to interfere in civil details. All through his administration he consulted Henry Law- rence, and saw himself four times victor in fifty-four days, at Moodkee and Ferozeshuhur, at Aliwal and Sobraon. Like his still greater successor, his victories were those of peace as well as war. He opened the public service to educated natives. He put down suttee and other crimes in the feudatory states. He stopped the working of all Government establishments on the Christian Sabbath, a prohibition requiring renewal, in the Public Works department at least, since his time. He fostered the early railway pro- jects, and carried out the great Ganges Canal. For the first time since, ten years before. Lord William Bentinck resigned the cares of office, our Eastern Empire felt that it was being wisely governed. 85 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. Almost the first act of the new Grovernor-General, in October, 1844, was to publish a resolution which delighted the heart of Dr. DufF, because it at once recognised officially the success of his persistent policy, and Government for the first time acknowledged the value of colleges and schools, Christian and indepen- dent, other than its own. Because English education had made such progress in Bengal since the decree of 1835, the Government directed that the public service be thrown open to natives thus educated, and that even for the lowest offices " in every instance a man who can read and write be preferred to one who cannot." Not only was the official department of public instruc- tion to submit, every New Year's Day, the names of students educated in the state colleges and fit for appointments, but " all scholastic establishments other than those supported out of the public funds " were invited to furnish similar returns of meritorious stu- dents for the same reward. The order was received with such enthusiasm by both natives and Europeans, that even the bureaucratic Council of Education, which had adopted all Dr. Duff's educational plans while keeping him and his Christianity at arm's length, burst into the unwonted generosity of notifying that the measure was applicable " to all students in the lower provinces without reference to creed or colour." True this was only interpreting the Hardiuge enactment ac- cording to the Bentinck decree, which had in principle declared all offices, save the covenanted, open to natives, and the department still refused to spend the public money on any but its own secular schools. But the Council's notification, no less than the order of the Government of India, marked a decided advance to- wards that measure of toleration and justice to native and missionary alike, which Dr. Duff fought for till Parliament conceded it in 1853. .^t. 38. POBLIG SERVICE OPENED TO NATIVE STUDENTS. 87 Unfortunately the laissez-faire instincts of the Eng- lish, and the nepotism of the vernacular Bengalee officials, co-operated to neutralise the reform for a time. The Council fixed the tests of fitness strictly to suit its own colleges, practically excluding the " private individuals and societies " that, in truth, had made Government education what it had become. The Court of Directors objected to such a test as the English language and literature. In five years only nine stu- dents, all from Government colleges, were appointed to the public service. But when the leading Hindoos of Calcutta presented an address of gratitude to the Governor-General, and when Dr. Duff wrote to his committee in the following terms, both were right notwithstanding. For this order of Lord Hardinge was the second step, after Lord W. Bentinck's, towards that catholic system of public instruction which cul- minated in the establishment of the three Universities in 1857. " Henceforward those who possess the best qualifi- cations, intellectual and moral, are invariably and sys- tematically to be preferred. And this order extends from the highest situations of trust down to the lowest menial offices. In the latter departments alone it is calculated that there are at least ten thousand persons in Government service in the Bengal Presidency alone, employed in serving summonses, etc., who can neither read nor write. In the higher departments of the ser- vice not above a dozen of superiorly qualified persons have hitherto succeeded in forcing their way into hon- ourable employment. Of what mighty and indefinite changes, prospectively, does this order, then, contain the seeds ? And what pre-eminently distinguishes it is this, that it is so catholic. Government institutions, and all other institutions, public or private, missionary and non-mis>ionary, are placed on an equal footing. 88 LIFIO OP DK. DUFF. 1844. No partialities, no preferences in favour of young men trained in Government schools and colleges ! This is a remarkable feature. It is the first public recognition of missionary and other similar institutions, in imme- diate connection with the service of the State. What fresh motives for evangelizing labours in this vast realm ! I feel appalled and well-nigh overwhelmed at the new load of responsibility thus thrown upon us. Oh that the Christian people of Scotland would arise in behalf of the millions of India, as they have nobly arisen in behalf of their own thousands and tens of thousands at home ! That this Government notification will be followed by a sudden influx, an instantaneous rush of young aspirants into existing institutions, I do not mean to imply. But that it will furnish the strongest incentive to self -improvement, and impart the most powerful impulse to the general cause of education which has ever yet been supplied under British sway, is clear beyond all debate. . . Oh that we had the resources in qualified agents and pecuniary means, with large, prayerful, faithful hearts, to wait on the Lord for His blessing, and then, under the present impulse, might we, in every considerable village and district of Bengal, establish vernacular and English seminaries that miglit sow the seeds of divine truth in myriads of minds, and thus preoccupy them with principles hostile to ruinous error, and favourable to the reception of saving knowledge." The predicted rush of native students took place. An impetus was given to the study of English, though not from the highest, yet from a motive quite as high as that which feeds the competitive examinations annually held by the commissioners since the public service, civil and military, was opened to the whole nation. Had Lord Hardinge's order been carried out according to its spirit, or even letter, the natives of India must have AX 38. SIE JOHN KAYE AND JOHN MARSUMAN. 89 found themselves now much nearer, because better prepared for, that share in their own government the demand for which may create a political danger. For the Christian colleges would have supplied those ele- ments of moral character based on conscience and faith, which the cold secularism of the powerful state system steadily destroys without supplying the true substitute. Apart from this solution Lord Lytton is, to-day, as vainly attempting to meet the difficulty as all his predecessors. Ever since Lord William Bentinck had supplied the stimulus to the discussion of public reforms in the press, and Duff and Trevelyan, Macaulay and Met- calfe, had led the way, the more thoughtful Anglo- Indians had felt the want of a literary medium. The editors of newspapers themselves, like Captain Kaye of the daily HarJcaru and Mr. Marshman of the weekly Friend of India, were the first to urge the importance of establishino; a mas^azine or review to which men of all shades of religious and political opinion could con- tribute. The former, afterwards Sir John Kaye, had been led, by ill health, to abandon a promising career in the Bengal Artillery for the sedentary pursuits of a literary life. His professional experience gained for him the confidence of the many officers who, in India, are always ready to feed journalists with valuable materials, and fitted him to become the historian of such contemporary events as the first Afghan war. Mr. Marshman had come out to India with his father at the close of the previous century ; he had received there an intellectual and spiritual training of un- usual excellence ; he had made the grand tour in Europe; he had discharged professional duties in the Serampore College with great ability, and he had become the first Bengalee scholar, had established the first newspaper in that language, and had succeeded go LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844 Carey as Government translator. When tlie grand old Serampore brotherhood passed away, he became heir to the debt which their benevolent enthusiasm — • supporting at one time twenty-seven separate mission stations out of their own pocket — had incurred. With marvellous energy, by the first steam paper-mill in the Bast, by preparing excellent law and school books for all Bengal, and by establishing the famous weekly journal, he wiped out the debt. From first to last ho contributed sixty thousand pounds for the enlighten- ment and christianization of India. To these two, with Dr. Dnff, we owe the Calcutta Review. To them we must add Sir Henry Lawrence and Captain H. Marsh of the old Bengal Cavalry. Marsh was a nephew of Mrs. George Grote, whose husband was a contributor to the Westminster Review. That became the model of the new undertaking in a mechanical sense alone. In all other respects the founders of the Calcutta Quarterly were out of sympathy with Bentham, Mill, and their school. The first number appeared in May, 1844. A few weeks after Sir Henry Hardinge landed at Calcutta. Before, in 1874, writing the history of its first twenty years, we consulted the survivors of the band who had created its reputation — Duff, Kaye and Marsh' mail, who have since passed away ; and we are happy in being able to add to the narrative the later state- ment of Dr. Duff, taken down from his own lips in those conversations with which, to himself and his friends, he lightened the pain of his last illness. The first number at once leaped into popularity. A second edition was called for, and then a third was published in England. " In a very short time," Sir John Kaye wrote to us. Dr. Duff " had written his article on ' Our Earliest Protestant Mission to ludia,' and from that time he became a contributor equally indefatigable Mt. 38. (»RIGIN OF TilE "CALCUTTA itEVlEW. 9 1 and able." Captain Marsh proved too trenchant a critic for the sensitive officials of those days, but his article on " The Rural Population of Bengal " would not now be pronounced so extravagant as Henry Lawrence then considered it. Of that he had written to the editor : " I have evolved myself of some form and embodiment akin to an article. Great fact if true ■ — if confirmed by wortliy John Kaye, good John Kaye, true John Kaye, and running in the same coach with earnest, solemn Duft— the silent, the unre plying, the uncorresponding Duff. Oh ! brave, brave I Is it so ? Yes or no? Utrum horum — odd or even?" He had great admiration (never better bestowed) of Dr. Duff, wrote Sir John Kaye, and was pining under an un- answered letter. These are Dr. Duff's recollections of his early con- nection with the Calcutta Quarterly : " I am not one who cared much for what people said or thought, but there was one thing I felt keenly — the way my connection with the Calcutta Beoiew was represented. Some high and mighty ones probably did not like the idea of a missionary having the control over it. If I make up my mind for a great principle based on the Bible, I don't care for all the emperors of the world. About the beginning of 1844 Kaye was under the necessity of leaving India for his health. I had no bitterer enemy at the time than he. One day I had an invitation from him, most unexpectedly, to spend the evening with himself and family. Nothing passed about the controversy, but he spoke on all subjects on which he knew I was interested, and spoke so agreeably no mortal would dream that anything un- pleasant had existed between us. Thank God, I never cherished the spirit of resentment. It was ray daily prayer to be preserved from the spirit of envy, jealousy, malice, uncharitablenc^s, resentment, or viu- 92 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1844. dictiveness in any shape or form; the feeling being intense that if Grod for Christ's sake forgave me ten thousand times ten thousand transgressions, it was my duty as well as privilege to forgive all who had offended or wronged me in any way whatever, whether they reciprocated the feeling or not. In the course of my long life nothing tended to give me greater peace of mind and conscience than the strenuous endeavour invariably to carry out this principle into living practice. To cherish hatred or the spirit of unfor- givingness punishes himself vastly more than the person hated or unforgiven. I went to Kaye simply as a human being to a human being. What surprised me most of all was that before parting he asked me, in a very respectful way, whether I would not favour them by concluding the evening so pleasantly spent by engaging in family worship, which I was delighted to respond to. " Shortly after spending the evening at his house I received a long letter from him, in which he stated his views about the desirableness of having a first-rate quarterly Review for India ; that the only parties whom he had consulted in the matter were Sir Henry Lawrence, Mr. John Marshman, and Captain Marsh ; and that now, having ascertained they were favourable to the project, he wished to learn whether I would join with them and become a regular contributor. I had long felt very strongly the need of a powerful periodi- cal to do justice to the mighty affairs of our Indian Empire. I therefore had no hesitation in replying at once, expressing a sense of the extreme desirableness of such a periodical. Only, I added, all will depend on the principles on which it is conducted. If these be sound in all departments — political, civil, social, theological, religious and moral, the good accruing therefrom may be pre-emiDeut. On the contrary, if -^t. 38. BECOMES EDITOR OE THE " CALCUTTA REVIEW." 93 the principles be unsound on tLose and other Icadinpr subjects, the evil will be proportionately great. I promised I would gladly join them in a close co- partnership to carry on the new Review, if he would pledge himself in the first place that nothing would appear in it hostile to Christianity or Christian sub- jects generally ; and secondly, that whenever proper occasion naturally arose, clear and distinct enuncia- tions should be made as to sound Christianity and its propagation by missionaries in India. Mr. Kaye promptly assured me that these substantially expressed his own views, and if I would write an article for the first number he would leave me entirely free to choose the subject. Having a number of old documents in my possession relative to the first Indian, or Danish mission in Tranquebar, I wrote a very elaborate article on the whole subject of Missions, in which no important depart- ment was omitted. This article Mr. Kaye cheerfully inserted. It has since been reprinted at home. Dr. Andrew Thomson, of Edinburgh, making special allu- sion to it in his work on the Lives of Missionaries. " In the second number of the Review I chose the subject of ' Female Infanticide among the Rajpoots and other Native Tribes of India,' and the extra- ordinary variety of operations carried on by our •Government to extinguish it. I secured from the public library all the blue-books which had been published in all the Presidencies for fifty years past, in which many of the ablest and most enlightened servants of Government had taken an active share. I took special pains with it. Then there was in the fourth number ' The State of Indisfenous Education in Bengal;' next came 'The Early or Exclusively Oriental Period of Government Education in Bensfal.' I was preparing other articles of a similar kind, when the editorship came upon me. Mr. Kaye sent me a 94 LI]?E OP DR. DUiT. 1845. polite message to come to liis house to consult on a very vital and important matter. He said that al- ready the Review had proved an unexpected success. It would be very sad to let it go down just when entering on such an extensive work of great and obvious usefulness. The state of his health was such that he must almost immediately leave India under peremptory medical instructions. What was to be done with the Heview ? No one could properly edit such a work aright except in India itself. ' Now I've applied to every man in the service, and out of it, whom I thought at all likely to be able and willing to undertake it, at least for a time, but every one posi- tively shrinks from the task.' To maintain it on the footing on which it started in a country like India, where, at that time, none attempted to make a liveli- hood from their own literary exertions, except editors of newspapers, whose hands were already too full, was desirable. Therefore in the most earnest way he appealed to me to assume the editorship, for a time at least, and be the sole responsible head of it. The magnitude of the task at first appalled me. But writers of ability gave me articles, and occasionally supplied facts on subjects they were acquainted with, which, with their consent, I dressed up into articles. It came to be understood, when an article or materials for an article were sent, if the departures on any point did not diverge too far from the principles originally agreed on, that slight alterations might be made to adapt it to these principles without interfering with its leading objects. Mr. Kaye himself saw the fourth number in the press. Then it was that I took up the editorship, and I continued to hold it till obliged to return from India in 1849, when I gave up the management to my friend, the late Rev. Dr. Maclvay, who was a man of exquisite taste and many literary yEt. 39. HISTORY OF THE " CALCUTTA REVIEW.** 95 accomplishments. It is but fair to Mr. Kaye to say that he insisted upon my taking some adequate re- muneration. I peremptorily declined. I looked upon the work as one calculated in many important ways to promote the vital interests of India, and in endeavour- ing to promote these I felt there was no incon- sistency between devoting a portion of my time to it besides the more direct mission work ; in fact, that the two duties worked into each other's hands and pro- moted the interests of each other. The grand object was to raise up the tvhole of India from its sunk and degraded position of ages, in every aspect of improve- ment, political, social, civil, intellectual, moral and religious. I felt, however, that the Institution I had founded ouo^ht to derive some direct benefit from the Review. Accordingly I took five hundred rupees a year for scholarships and prizes." This arrangement lasted till 1856, when the perio- dical passed into other hands. Nothwithstanding varying fortunes since, it is still true that no single literary authority supplies such valuable information regarding India as the seventy volumes of the Review. Dr. Duff contributed, from first to last, sixteen articles, some of which were republished in England. Up till the time of his final departure from India his principles continued to influence its management. Not the least valuable of the services it has rendered to India has been the enlisting of Bengalee essayists on its staff. Dr. Duff's students — men like Dr. K. M. Banerjea, the Rev. Lai Behari Day and Baboo B. B. Shome, besides the Dutt and Mitter families — have contributed arti- cles of peculiar value for the information they give, and occasionally of such purity of style that the native authorship was not at the time suspected. To the last Sir John Kaye, in his numerous writ- ing?, did not cease to express his affection for Dr. 96 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1845. Duff. It miglit seem merely appropriate that he should dedicate to the missionary a volume on such a subject as " Christianity in India : a Historical Narra- tive," in words which express not only the author's gratitude for his kindness but " admiration of his character." In the history of Indian progress, how- ever, which Sir John wrote as a plea for continuing " The Administration of the East India Company " during the charter discussions of 1853, the secular historian of a corporation that had generally dis- couraged Christian Missions, and so has since passed away, did not hesitate to record " the great and successful exertions of private bodies to diffuse, principally through missionary agency, the light of knowledge among the people." The foremost place amongst these benefactors, he declares, all admit to be " due to Alexander Duff and his associates — to that little party of Presbyterian ministers who now for more than twenty years have been toiling for the people of India with such unwearying zeal and with such wonderful success." And, after telHng the story, in its outlines, the historian concludes : " There are missionary schools scattered over all parts of India, and freely the children come to be taught ; but there is not one which, either for the magnitude or for the success of the experiment, can be compared with those presided over by Duif and his associates. Bombay and Madras share worthily in these honours ; and the educational achievements of their Scotch divines deserve to be held in lasting remembrance." Again, as ten years before, was Dr. Duff led to ally with his higher spiritual calHng not only the press but science, directed towards purely philanthropic as well as educational ends. A succession of sickly seasons, followed by an epidemic of fever during the latter rains of 1844, had filled Calcutta and its neighbour- yEt. 39. EPIDEMICS IN THE GANGETIC VALLEY. 97 hood with thousands of sick, diseased and destitute natives, Hindoo and Muhammadau. The city had grown to vast dimensions without those sanitary and municipal institutions which the self-governing com- munities of the West provide for themselves. The Government, which had all India to care for as well as the dense rabbit-warren of Bengal proper, left the capital to itself, so that there was the blackest dark- ness under the lamp. The heat, the moisture, the rapid vegetable growth of the tropical swamps of the great rice land of Eastern India, have ever formed the nursery of fever and cholera. Carried by river and monsoon, by armies of soldiers and bands of pilgrims, by traders and travellers, by the half-charred remains of the poor and the floating carcases of man and beast, the causes of zymotic disease — germs or gases, the ablest observers cannot tell — after slaying their tens of thousands on the spot, are borne to the colder and by no means cleaner lands of the West and the North, to sweep off thousands. So, since the march of Lord Hastings at least up the Gaugetic valley against the Pindaree hordes, cholera and fever have periodically laid low black and white, British soldier and sepoy, Asiatic and European alike. Hygiene and quinine have now anticipated the latter, but the dread secret of the cholera fiend has yet to be wrested from nature in its most maleficent mood. Twenty years after 1844, when Lord Lawrence became Viceroy, he gave an impetus to sanitary science in India which it has never lost. To him the salvation of the lives of hundreds of our soldiers and thousands of our native subjects, every year, is due. And Calcutta has been made as healthy as many a capital in Europe, by drainage and waterworks, by conservancy and lighting arrange- ments, by public dispensaries, hospitals and asylums, not surpassed in Christendom. VOL. II. H gS LIFE OP Dli. DUFF. 1844. It was not so, however, wlien fhe kirk-session of tlie Free Chiircli of Scotland in Calcutta asked Dr. Duff, at the close of the deadly season in October, to preach to the city of Him Who, as St. Matthew (viii. 16, 17) describes, "healed all that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying. Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The missionaries and the mem- bers of the Bengal Medical Service united with some of the wealthy Bengalees in the plan of buildiug the great Medical College Hospital for the poor of all creeds and classes. A member of the same Seel family who were starting a Hindoo college to destroy Dr. Duff's, presented the ground. Other natives gave large sums, the British residents showed their usual liberality, and the medical professors offered their services gratuitously. Funds were still wanted " to provide a Native General Hospital worthy of the city and commensurate with its wants, when a design which has been contemplated for some time past, by some of the most enlightened philanthropists of India, will be carried into effect without farther delay." Hence Dr. Duff's sermon, which is in some respects the most characteristic he ever preached, as showing the breadth of his charity, the comprehensiveness of the Christi- anity which he came to plant and to water iu Bengal till it should become there also the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. As in his college he welcomed all truth that his Master might sanctify it, so in the pulpit he pled in that Master's name for all men, for humanity in all its forms and needs, for the body as well as the soul. From the curse of sin he pointed to the sympathy of the one Saviour — " not a mere sympathy of mercy and compassion, but a sym- patliy of power." By that Divine Example he pled for every Christian's synjpathy. Turning to the three ^t. 38. PICTUEE or TUE EEVER-STRICKEN POOR. 99 ponderous folios in which a public committee had recorded the appalling facts, he thus pictured the Buffering and the sorrow, as we have since seen both in the fever-desolated tracts on either side of the Hooghly, from Krishnaghur to Serampore : "What, if there be a total absence of all palliatives and allevia- tions ? Or what, still more, if there be the positive presence of all manner of provocatives to envenom and exulcerate the original malady ? Now this is precisely the fell and fatal predicament of numbers of the suffering poor around us. They come to this city from all parts of the country in quest of employment, or to beg for charity. They take up their abode with individuals nearly as destitute as themselves ; or they hire a wretched hut, or as wretched an apartment in some old building, for a few annas per month. They are attacked and laid prostrate by disease. Who can depict, who can adequately conceive the loneliness, the desertedness, the imploring help* lessness of their forlorn condition ? Think of them, in hun- dreds and thousands, with scarcely any clothing to cover their nakedness by night or by day — unprovided with any sort of couch, on which to repose their aching limbs, — lying down on bare mats, or coarse grass spread on the damp ground in their narrow cheerless cells. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, exposed at different seasons to pinching cold or scorching heat, or drenching rain, or stifling dust, or steamy vapour, or suffocating smoke. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, panting for breath — immured in closely-built ill- ventilated dens — begirt with masses of old walls and tumbling ruins, with belts of juugle and patches of underwood and rank vegetation, that pi-eveut all free exposure to the sun, which might rarefy or elevate the noisome vapours, and debarred all access to the winds of heaven that might dikite or dissipate them. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, surrounded by accumulated deposits of filth and rubbish, intermingled with heaps of decomposed animal and vegetable matters, which, simultaneously with the tainted pools and the putrid drains, constantly evolve and disengage all manner of noxious exhala- tions— sulphuretted hydrogen and other poisonous gases — • together with the whole nameless and countless brood of lOO LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1 844.. miasmata and malaria and other concentrated sources of ger- minating essences of plague and pestilence. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, not merely without the means of personal or domestic cleanliness, but often parched with thirst, without a drop of water to cool their burning tongues; — or, if some portion of that needful element be scantily, and at wide intervals, supplied by some casual hand, it is supplied, either directly fi*om the river, which, at one season, is unwhole- some from the qviantity of its un filtered mud, and at another, equally so, from a copious infusion of ingredients that render it brackish and saline ; or from stagnant tanks, whose waters are impure and deleterious from the annual vegetable growth going on from beneath and all around — rendering them pro- gressively more and more shallow, and eventually converting them into green and slimy nuisances that contaminate the surrounding atmosphere. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, craving for some cordial to soothe, or assuage, or mitigate inward agonizing pain, and if aught be granted to the petition of the rueful piteous look, that little is sure to consist of some raw, crude, indigestible substances that cannot fail to aggravate the fatal symptoms of the disease. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, with cries and tears implor- ing the kindly offices of medical aid ; and if a farthing's worth of the commonest and cheapest native remedy be grudgingly doled out, it is only to accelerate their fate, — since the rude compound or preparation thus furnished is ' efficacious to enkindle the feeble flames of constitutional power, only to sinlc the more rapidly in death.' Tliink of them, in hundreds an-i thousands, when, however prematurely, all hope of recovery- has been abandoned, and the dread of the disgrace, the re- proach, the infamy, the pollution to be incurred or contracted by the presence of a dead body in their vicinity, has aroused and alarmed the hitherto unconcerned and apathetic neigh- boui's, — think of them, unceremoniously handed over to the heartless officers of death, who convey them roughly, without one look of sympathy or tear of commiseration, to the ghauts and banks of the river, where, pitilessly exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, they expire in a few hours, or, before they cease to breathe, are ferociously attacked by horrid vultures and beasts of prey. Ay, and what is most affecting of all, — think of them, in hundreds and thousands, enduriu^ Mi. 38. THE DYING AND THE DEAD. lOI these countless and untold sufferings in the present life, with- out any support or consolation drawn from the anticipated glories of the future. The humble disciples of Jesus, however poor or despised, neglected or scorned here below, can well afford to endure groans and griefs and agonies and tears ; be- cause the hope, full of immortality, renders the light affliction which is but for a moment, not worthy to be compared with the eternal weight of glory that is to follow. But these un- happy victims of a degrading superstition have to bear the unmitigated burden of all their sorrows, not only unvisited by earthly joy or uncheered by heavenly hope, but scared and haunted by ghastly spectres and images of terror that flit por- tentously around the portals of death and the grave. "Who, after such a statement — and it is but a faint and feeble delineation of the terrible reality — who need wonder at the reiterated solemn averments of the sagest witnesses — that, so far as man can judge, 'a vast majority of those attacked do perish for want of prompt attention, from exposure, and destitution of the comforts, and in many cases, the necessaries of life ^ — that thousands of the poorer natives in and about Calcutta are continually exposed to the ravages of the more prevalent diseases of the country, and in a very large propor- tion, without a chance of being relieved ; that they die in thousands, not from the origiual force of disease, but from the want of an asylum,' or well regulated receptacle where pro- per medical treatment and care could be bestowed on them ? "And if the constant state of disease, suffering and death, even in ordinary years, points to the necessity of establishing such a sanctuary of health, what shall we think of that necessity as enhanced by those extraordinary seasons of raging epi- demic which, as in the months of March and April last, occa- sionally visit and scourge this devoted city and neighbourhood? — when almost every dwelling is tuimed into a sepulchre, where the dead and the dying are stretched side by side ; — when the thoroughfares to the tomb and the funeral pile seem more crowded than the highways to the marts of business ; — when the head of a family goes to the field, or the office, or the market place, and, returning, finds a wife, or darling child, or beloved friend already numbered with the dead; — when the prattling babe, that had been hushed to slumber by the caresses and lullabies of a fond mother, awakes, and, all unconscious of 102 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1844. the change, wonders why its natural fount of life refuses its wonted nourishment, and smiling as it gazes at the counte- nance now clenched in the gripe of death, wonders still more that it is not as before responsive to the playful smile; — when the halls that lately rung with the music and the songs of hilarity and joy, are suddenly turned into sick chambers or charnel houses that resound with the voices of grief, lamenta- tion and woe ; — when the vigorous youth and the blooming maiden, who to-night so surely calculated on treading life's flowery dale and luxuriating on the banquet of hitherto untasted joys, are literally reduced to ashes before the rising of to-morrow's sun ; — when the lordly oppressor drops his rod into the cold bosom of the oppressed, and both are consigned together to the common place of oblivion, where they shall dwell in peace till the last trumpet sounds ; — when the grasp- ing miser sinks down amid his accumulated hordes in the very act of repulsing a humble suppliant, covered with rags, con- sumed with hunger, and fainting with inanition ; — when the paleness of every countenance, and the cai-eworn solicitude engraved on every brow, and the inquiring wistf ulness of every eye, and the abrupt, hurried and measured utterances of every lip involuntarily betray the strange anxieties and forebodings of beings who know not but the stoutest, and the healthiest, and the busiest now, may, in a few hours, be stretched as a lifeless ghastly corpse ; when hundreds, flying the city in de- spair, never reach their country or their homes, but, meeting death by the way, perish miserably there — infecting the air with contagious influences, which thus ripen a fresh harvest of mortality all around the fallen fugitives ; — in a word, when, alike in town and country, the king of terrors — holding high carnival and fitting jubilee — not only lives but reigns, and not reigns merely, but riots and revels in all the wantonness of a victor amid the indiscriminate carnage of a battle-field — sitting aloft upon piles of untimely slain as on a throne of triumph, and wielding his merciless sceptre over the living, as over myriads speedily destined to become the victims that shall glut but not satisfy his ravenous maw ! But enough:— Surely, surely, if the suffering and mortality of ordinary years plead so impressively and resistlessly for the necessity of pro- viding an asylum for the thousands of haj)less suSerers, that necessity is augmented and enchauced a hundred, yea, a JEt 38. THE TEN HOSPITALS OP CALCUTTA. I03 thousand-fold, by the I'eturn, in almost periodic cycle, of an extraordinary season of smiting, all-dovoiiriug pestilence. " May I not then, dear friends and brethren, confidently call upon you, as professing disciples of the Lord Jesus to come forward now, and vigorously support this great and philan- thropic undertaking ? " Soon there rose, by the side of tlie Medical College, the largest siugle hospital in the world, where, ever since, the poor Hindoo, the outcast devil-worshipper, the proud Muhammadau, the careless sailor, and the ad- venturous tramp have found at once the skill of the Christian physician, the ministrations of the Christian nurse, and not unfrequontly the heart-healing of Him who crloried in that He came not to call the rio^hteous but sinners to repentance. The opening of the hos- pital marked a new development of medical education in the East, for the course of the Medical College was reorganized in 1845 so as to qualify its students for the diplomas of the British licensing bodies. And ever since, in Calcutta and its suburbs alone, the number of persons treated in this institution, now become ten hospitals and dispensaries, has risen to the third of a million of human beings a year. In 1877 there were 25,358 in-door and 300,204 out-door free patients. Philanthropy presents no grander triumph of the kind. In the close of his appeal Dr. Duff made this refer- ence to the benevolent physician, John Abercrombie, M.D., who, since the beginning of the century, had been the foremost practitioner and philanthropist in Edinburgh : " What the Saviour did miraculously and instantaneousl}^, may now, with His blessing, be grad- ually accomplished by mediate processes of an ordinary kind. And it were well if all Christian physicians kept more habitually in remembrance the great but too much neglected truth, that, while the application I04 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1845. of the means is theirs, the entire fruit and success of their endeavours must belong to the Author of life. In our own native land, there is at the very head of the medical profession at least one saintly man, — a father in our Israel and a prince in the realms of cultured intellect and high philosophy, — of whom it is verit- ably related, that he never proceeds to visit a patient without first committing the case, in prayer, to a gracious and merciful and covenant-keeping God. And sure we are that, were his noble and Christ-like example more extensively imitated, the blissful issue would soon become visible in the augmented number of happy sick-beds, ay, and it may be, in the greater frequency of effective recoveries ; — for it is recorded by the pen of inspiration, and engraven as with a rod of iron on the rock for ever, ' that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.' " The preacher did not know, as he spoke these words, that half Scotland was mourning the death of one whose spirit descended on a daughter ever since full of good works for the natives of the Highlands and of India alike. Personal and professional reasons apart, Dr. Duff had a special ground of gratitude to Dr. Abercrombie and his family. In his " Inquiries Cou- cerning the Intellectual Powers," and his " Philosophy of the Moral Feelings," the busy and thoughtful phy- sician had produced two elementary works, still of interest to the general reader, but then of value to the young student as a harmony of revelation and science. These were precisely the manuals which the Christian colleges of India desired for their first year's students, as introductory to Bacon and Berkeley, Hamilton and Whewell. On the request of Dr. Duff, the publisher, Mr. Murray, and Dr. Abercrombie at once consented to sanction the appearance, in India, of a succession of cheap editions. The works long continued to be ^t. 39. DEATH OF Dll. ABERCROMBIE. i05 used, even by the Universities, for their " little go " examinations, nor have they yet disappeared from missionary schools. Hence the allusions in a conso- latory letter to Miss Abercrombie, written on the 7th February, 1845 : " It is many a day since I have received such a shock. For some time I felt as if literally stunned — so sudden, so utterly unexpected was the stroke. It seemed as if a veil of darkness overspread my eyes, which was only removed in a suffusion of tears. Many, many circumstances conspired to make me feel in a way altogether peculiar. His manifold acts of personal kindness and attention to myself when at home ; his more than paternal kindness to any of our dear chil- dren when labouring under disease ; his recent inde- fatigable attentions to our little boy, so vividly fresh in the mind; the earnest and truly disinterested manner in which he secured for us a cheap Calcutta edition of his two principal works for the use of native institu- tions; his last undertaking in the way of preparing a series of works for the young, from which I looked for the richest accompanying blessings, to myriads at home and abroad ; all these, and many things else besides, camerusliing into the mind like the sweep of a tropical torrent, and for a little quite overwhelmed it, under the announcement that such a father, such a friend, such a Christian author was now no more. " To him beyond all question the change has been a blessed one. But He who wept at the grave of Lazarus proved that the tear of natural sorrow, dropping from the fount of natural sensibility, is not, within due limits, an unlawful tear. And then, it is the inestim- able privilege of the Christian, in the case of those who fall asleep in Jesus, to mingle joy with his sorrow — the joy of a hope full of immortality beaming through the thickest shadows of deatl] and the grave. IC'6 LIFE OF DB. PUFF. X845. Weep he may, but his weeping is like the genial summer shower, pervaded and brightened by the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Above all, it becomes the Christian, in resignedly submitting to the dispensations of his Heavenly Father, however dark or mysterious, to derive therefrom such sanctifying lessons as they may be designed to impart. Hence my delight at the weighty sentiment expressed by yourself, when you say, ' I trust it is our desire rather to be sanctified than merely to be comforted.' And my earnest prayer is, that you, my dear Christian friend, and all your sisters may be sustained, upheld, and truly sanctified under this sore bereavement — the sorest which could have overtaken you on this side of time. May He who is pre-eminently the Father of the fatherless be your refuge and your stay — your present and everlasting portion and reward ! May the great Angel of the Covenant embrace you in the arms of His love, hide you in His own pavilion, and shelter you under the outstretched wings of His mercy and grace ! " In the midst of such a trial it was indeed more than kind of you to remember us and our Hindoo flock here. I assure you the value of the original gift (an electric machine, sent for the Institution) is vastly en- hanced by this singular token of the deep interest and concern taken by yourself and dear departed father and other members of the family in our labours. I doubt not when the box is landed that it will prove a peculiarly valuable accession to our instrumentality of usefulness."* * The Rev. G. D. CuUen has supplied these new facts : " In June, 1841, Dr. Abercrombie invited a few of us to meet him in the Waterloo Hotel, and his guest, Dr. Peter Parker, returning from China to the United States. After hearing his interesting account of the woi'k in Canton, Dr. Abercrombie asked — could nothing be done in Edinburgh to promote Medical Missions ? On our encouraging the proposal, ic was asked who should be ALt. 39. TliK ilKillliAND FAMKXli. JOHN KNOX. IO7 IltirJly had the Medical College Hospital been com- pleted when the generous Scotsmen of Calcutta turned to Dr. Duff to represent them in national movements of their own. One was, in 184G, the prospect of raising a monument to John Knox, which resulted in the purchase of his house at the Netherbow corner of the High Street of Edinburgh, and in the erection of the Church which bears his name. In this the missionary was their spokesman. But even more enthusiastically did he represent them when famine burst forth on his native Highlands, and the flower of the Celtic population began to wither and die, in the silence not of an Asiatic fatalism but of resin^na- tion to the will of God like his who said, " Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him." Dr. Duff's Calcutta speech, in 1847, for their relief was a trumpet- blast, which produced such fruits that, up till a few years ago, money was sent from Bengal to the more destitute districts north of the Grampians. Among those who enjoyed an early and lasting friendship with Dr. and Mrs. Duff was Mrs. Ellerton. The name has no associations for the general reader, but it is that of one who, for nearl;y eighty years, was a famous historical character in Bengal. Mrs. Ellerton was a girl when, in 1780, she saw the notorious Philip Francis fall, shot through the body by Warren Hastings in the duel which was the procuring cause of the malicious impeachment and prolonged trial of the first Governor-General. It was a hot Thursday morning, of the 17th of August, when, close to the public road which still passes the residence of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, known as Belvedere, the two enemies met with their seconds. After secretary, and I named Dr. Coldstream. Dr. Abercrombie approved of the young naturalist, and I think I negotiated with my iHen'i. But Dr. Abercrombie was the founder and the first president," I08 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 844. months of obstructiveness in Council, detrimental to all good government, Francis had promised to remain quiet in consideration of certain concessions made by the Governor-General. Francis broke his pledge, and Hastings openly wrote in reply to a minute of his enemy : " I judge of his public conduct by his private, which I have found to be void of truth and honour." The result was the duel, by high officials who had never before fired a pistol, under the two trees known as " the trees of destruction," from the deeds of which they were occasionally the scene. Mrs. Ellerton saw Francis fall, saw Hastings and his second bind a sheet round the body of the bleeding man and place him in the cot in which he was carried to Belvedere. Of every public event in India there- after till the Mutiny, of every change in Calcutta, she knew the personal history, and much of her knowledge she communicated to the Rev. J. Long, for the Cal- cutta Review, when she accompanied him to all the historical landmarks in the city and its neighbourhood. She had been early married to John Ellerton, the indigo planter of Malda who opened the first Ben- galee schools, and made the first translation of the New Testament into that language, till the version of Carey — whom he helped — and Yates superseded his own published in 1820. "A widow indeed," this godly lady saw her daughter married to Bishop Corrie. In the evangelical circles of Calcutta and the interior she was ever welcome. We gladly rescue this letter from her to Mrs. Duff : " Bhaugulfore, 20th Oct., 1844. " My dear kind Friend, — The warmest thanks from a grate- ful heart attend you, for the kind interest you have manifested in my outward comforts. It has pleased the Lord to lay His hand upon me again, and I am confined to a sick room, but all ALL 38. MliS. ELLEkTON TO MliS. DUFF. IO9 must be well which He ordains, I am much better, though not yet able to join the domestic circle, and the doctor thinks the river air will complete my recovery. I believe my cabin is engaged in the Sour ma, which will call here about the 27th, five days hence. The accommodations of Mrs. Ord's house in Wellington Square would suit me very nicely, but I am engaged to go to my nephew's, Dr. Jackson, at the General Hospital, who is to me as a second sou, and as he has been obliged to send his wife and children in haste away, on account of their health, their apartments will be mine for a season. Nothing could be more acceptable and in unison with my feelings than the acceptance of your kind hospitality, for which [ can never thank you sufficiently. May the Lord repay you; He is my banker, for I am bankrupt in myself. With thanks I return Mrs. Davies' interesting letter. Give me a place in your prayers, dear Christian friends, and believe me yours afi"ectionately in our dear Lord Jesus, " Hannah Ellerton." When Dr. Jackson left India, eight years after, Mrs. Ellerton became an inmate of the palace of the Bishop of Calcutta, whom she survived by three months, dying in 1858, at the age of eighty-seven. We read in Daniel W^ilson's Journal — ** ' Would I take her in r ' * Yes : and rejoice to do it,' was my reply. It will be like the ark at Obed-edom's, a blessing to my house and family, my guests and clergy." Again, writing in 1855 : " She is very chatty and pleasant and punctual in coming to meals. Many useful remarks fall from her in conversation. She has a turn for humour, and tells anecdotes of former times. There is a savour of downright piety and simplicity of heart in all she says. Her faculties are perfect. She loves authority and obedience. She jokes with me and calls me ' twice seven' (77). I keep four bearers for her exclusive use." It is a quaint picture of pree-Mutiny days in Calcutta. Dr. Duffs letters to tlie venerable lady have disappeared. She spanned the three-quarters of a I lO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. century from the first Governor-General of the East India Company to the first Viceroy of the Crown — from "Warren Hastings to Lord Canning. In the closing years of his second term of work in Calcutta, nothing out of his own special mission inter- ested him so deeply as the struggle of the Eurasian community to improve the academy which developed into the Doveton College. From 1846 to 1849 he maintained a close correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Cunningham, whom, at the request of the directors, he asked to select a Rector. The Jesuits on the one side, and the more sectarian Anglicans on the other, had opened rival schools, which threatened at once the Protestant teaching and the truly catholic basis of that of which Dr. Duff was visitor. In 1843 the short- lived league of the Brahmans with the Jesuits had led him to expose the immorality of the Order, which Dr. Mackay soon after traced historically in his Calcutta Review article on their China and India Missions. In 1848, Dr. Duff was compelled to re- turn to the charge in an elaborate treatise which became popular in this country under the title of " The Jesuits, their Origin and Order, Morality and Practices, Suppression and Restoration." He lent the Doveton Institution the services of Mr. Fyfe for a little, but still no Rector appeared. The times were not propitious, for the Disruption had absorbed into the pulpits, the colleges and the schools of the Free Church every available man of culture and piety. On the 7th August, 1846, we find these allusions to ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland, and to that chair of Foreign Missions, which he had first proposed in the letter on page 43 : " Your last General Assembly was an extraordinary one. What an ingenious device of Satan has that American slavery agitation been ! It is, perhaps, the only subject on which the world has JEl 43. ANDUEW MOEGAN AND THE DOVLTON COLLECJE. I I I heart interest enough to unite in a plausible charge against our Church. Out here we have felt at one with you from the first — I mean, our Free Church members. When your article appeared in the North British, some of our ultra-liberals here at once took it up, and turned it into an argument against our Church, and it may amuse you to learn that I felt myself obliged, even here, on the banks of the Ganges, to vindicate our Free Church cause from public asper- sion by vindicating Dr. Cunningham and his article in the North British Bevieiv, yet so it was. As a curiosity I thought of sending you some of the papers; but remembering how full your hands were, I refrained. How strangely tangled and ramifjdng has the web of human affairs become. " Some time ago I hinted at a professorship of Missions and Education in your new college, but have not seen any symptom of a movement towards it. I have been surprised that an object so glorious should not have been contemplated in such a college. A missionary and educational professorship would indeed be a crown of glory to it." At last the man was found in the Rev. Andrew Morgan, who had made Auchterarder almost as famous by his school as the Disruption controversy had done. From February 1849 to December 1854 he gave his life for the elevation of the Eurasians and resident Europeans of India, in Bengal and Madras, till he died of overwork. Dr. Duff rejoiced in his success. Mr. Morgan stamped his manly God-fearing nature on a generation of youths who still, many of them high in the Indian services, call him blessed. Dr. Duff thus concluded one of his importunate letters to Dr. Cunningham about the Rector : " Oh what a loss has been sustained in the death of Dr. Chalmers ! It is too great for utterance." CHAPTER XIX. 1849-1850. BEATS OF DB. CHALMERS.— TOUR THROUGH 80UT3 INDIA.— HOME BY THE GANGES AND INDUS. The Death of Dr. Chalmers. — Dr. DuflP on his Career. — A Mission- ary to the Heathen rather than a Divinity Professor. — Addresses from all classes of the Indian Commuuity. — The Brahman Pan- dits.— Mr. Lacroix and a Professorship of Missions. — Dr. DaflE Summoned Home to Organize the Free Church Mission Scheme. — Tour in South India. — His Journal. — The People and the Land- Tax. — French and British. — Fort St. David and the East India Company. — Tranquebar. — Ziegeiibalg, his Church and House. — Caste Christians and German Rationalism. — Jesuit Missions. — The Land of the Great Pagodas. — In the Seringham Temple. — Schwartz and his Work. — Heber. — Robert de Nobrli's Tomb. — Bishops Sargent and Caldwell.— Nagercoil and Lace-making. — Ceylon. — Up the Ganges to Simla.' — Futtehpore Sikri. — Lahore and Sir Henry Lawrence. — Brigadier Colin Mackenzie. — Meeting on the Indus with Dr. Wilson. — Bombay. — Edinburgh. It was early on a Friday morning in July, 1847, while Dr. and Mrs. Duff were enjoying on the house-top, as was their wont, the too brief hours of coolness before the tropical sun should rise high in the heavens, that an Episcopalian friend communicated to them the fact of the death of Dr. Chalmers, " the venerated father of your Church." The news seemed incredible. By the previous mail Dr. Duff had heard of his evidence, before the House of Commons' committee, on the re- fusal of sites for the erection of Free churches, and of the gathering of statesmen like Lord John Russell and of the London crowd to hear his ripened eloquence. ^t. 41. THE DEATH OF DR. CHALMERS. II3 But the Government express mail liad brought the intelligence, which moved even educated Hindoo society, familiar with his writings and taught by his greatest students. To Dr. Duff the loss, suddenly announced, was not that of a father and a friend alone. Nor was his sorrow the offspring of gratitude merely to the memory of one whose lectures and training and personal influence for five years had done more to make the Highland student what he had become than any other single influence. Nor did he think chiefly, moreover, of the solemn hour of his ordination in St. George's, and the second charge given to him in the same place by the great departed as by Paul to Timothy. Dr. Duff in the fulness of his own experi- ence on the wide arena of India and the East, and of his knowledge of the men who make the history alike of the Church and the world, thought of Thomas Chalmers as the earliest Scottish apostle of evangelical missions, as the preacher who, before even Dr. Inglis, had in 1812, and again in 1814, dared to tell his countrymen that they stood alone of all English- speaking peoples in their contempt for the mission- ary cause, and that the time was at hand when they must become the foremost of missionary nations. It was thus he wrote of Chalmers to Dr. James Buchanan, on the 7th August, 1847 : "Apart altogether from considerations of a more private or more general character, I feel that I could not, in my speciGo capacity as a missionary, keep silence. It is impossible for me to forget that one of the first steps in his splendid career as a Christian philanthropist, was his unanswered and unanswerable defence of Bible and Missionary societies. It was, indeed, a defence which swept away the wretched sophisms of the in- difiFerent and ungodly, like chaff before the whirlwind. It demonstrated to the world, that if such societies threatened to become popular, it was not from poverty of intellect on tha VOL. 11. I 114 ^^^^ 0^ I>1^' DUFF. 1847. part of their friends, or from a drivelling irrational pietism on the part of their champions. From Bibles the transition was easy to the translators and distributors of Bibles and the promulgators of Bible truth. Accordingly, at a time when missions were most despised, and missionaries held most despicable by the great and the wise and the mighty of this world, he stood forth the intrepid and triumphant vindicator of both. In his two discourses, entitled ' The Two Great Instruments appointed for the Propagation of the Gospel,' and, 'The Utility of Missions Ascertained by Experience,' preached and published upwards of thirty years ago, there are bursts of eloquence which he himself never subsequently sur- passed; downright genuine eloquence, which does not lead us to the goal by slow marches of argument, or parade of verbal logic, or ingenious devices of subtlety, but flashes upon the subject with the revealing power of heaven's lightning, and at once makes every understanding to perceive, and every heart to feel. In the whole range of missionary literature it would perhaps be difiicult to meet with any treatises which, within a shorter compass than that occupied by the discourses now named, portray more strikingly the unrivalled claims of the Bible, exhibit a finer delineation of the missionary character, or embody a more powerful exposition and defence of the great object of the missionary enterprise. " But it has at times, and by interested parties, been more than insinuated, that the noble author's own example in some respects belied the glowing portraiture of his pen. Of this, no one that knew him well could ever be persuaded. As one of the few that have been raised up in any country or age, gifted from on high with a sight of mind that was telescopic, among the millions endowed with ordinary vision he was con- stantly liable to be misunderstood in his plans and doings. The schemes of such a man, rightly interpreted, would be found to affect, not Scotland or England alone — not the present age only, but the world and all posterity. And centuries hence, the truth not less than the magnificence of his concep- tions, may be appreciated and admired by the grateful descen- dants of those who have often joined the vulgar throng in vilifying the man, and in ridiculing or condemning his measures. " Mighty, however, though he was in performance, his mind ^t 41. CHALMERS AND EVANGELICAL MISSIONS. II5 was as much, if not more, of the legislative caste than the executive. Using ' speculation ' in its highest, noblest sense, he may truly be said to have been at once the most speculative and the most pi-actical of living men. In religion and morals, as well>as general philosophy, he was a theorist and experi- mentalist on the largest, surest scale. He first began, or rather, God, in mercy to his country and mankind, enabled him by His good Spirit to begin, with himself. His own personal experience he generalized and instantly rendered available in his management of human nature in a rural parish. His rural experience he generalized and applied to the unravelling of the more arduous complexities of an urban and suburban population. His rural and civic experience he next generalized, and transferred with giant power to the scaling of almost insurmountable difficulties, in the erection of new churches, and the establishment of a vigorous parochial economy, with a view to effectuate and complete the christian- ization of a kingdom. But would he have stopped here ? The wishes and the hopes of many earnestly suggested. No. When, through the blessing of Heaven, he should have succeeded in rearing a monument of his later labours in the land of hia fathers, mightier and more enduring far than that of the monarch whose boast it was that he found the capital of his empire of brick and left it of marble; when he should have established the means of everywhere converting that 'bulky sediment,' which now putrefies in all the loathsomeness of moral corruption at the base of society, into materials more precious than the gold of Ophir — materials enstamped with the name and superscription of the King of Zion; then, if spared by the kindness of a gracious God, then it was that the Church, the world, expected that he would generalize his national experience, and bring it to bear, in the full breeze of triumph, on the countless outcast population of a globe. And, if privileged by Providence so to do, with a field so vast for the range of his excursive powers, and an object so transcen- dent for the sympathies of his benevolent heart, was it too much to hope that he would have been empowered from on high to speak in such a voice of thunder, and lighten in such Hashes of love, as to arouse all Christendom from its guilty slumbers, and to awaken nations to seek their God ? But all fond hopes of such a glorious ctilmiaati ug crown to his mani- Il6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1848, fold labours are now at an end. That 'grim tyrant/ whoso fell triumphs he was wont to portray with such thrilling power, has interposed his mighty fiat. And now if, by general consent, he who has been so suddenly laid low was long acknowledged, in point of real intellectual and moral greatness combined, to be the master mind of his own country, if not of his own age, it only remains to be added, in justice to the character of the departed, that, though not a missionary himself, in the ordinary technical use of that term, or even no very active member of any missionary board or committee, yet, in all that constitutes the real grandeur of wide, all-com- prehending, God-like philanthropy, he has been, for years, the leading missionary spirit of Christendom. " Standing, as we do, in this great metropolis of Asiatic heathenism, surrounded by myriads that are perishing for lack of knowledge — myriads amounting, in the aggregate, to more than half of the race of man — it need not be wondered at that the mind should rapidly pass over all other features, however brilliant, and instinctively fasten on the missionary element in the character of our late revered father and friend." All that Thomas Chalmers had been, Dr. Duff one Sabbath evening told the Hindoo students of the Calcutta colleges who filled the Free Church Institu- tion. The secular newspapers of the time bewailed that they had not caught " the leading features in the life, labours and principles of that illustrious divine," as represented by the hands of such a master. Dr. Hanna has embodied a part of the sketch in the Memoirs of his father-in-law. But yesterday Scots- men, at home and abroad, united to place in their widest street, fronting Edinburgh Castle, Sir John Steell's statue of the true successor of John Knox. To-day the nation is preparing to commemorate the centenary of his birth on the 17th of March, 1780. Who could succeed him ? not indeed as national leader of the third E/eformation, but as a theological teacher and as a missionary influence at the head of A^t. 42. A MISSIONARY ADOVE ALL THINGS. II7 the New College, which he had founded for the Free Church in Edinburgh. Many a heart turned instinc- tively to his greatest student, who had created two colleges of his own in Calcutta, and not a few else- where in imitation of these. While, after their or- derly fashion, presbyteries and synods, unanimously or by large majorities, and then the General Assembly itself, in commission, called on Dr. Duff to come home as the successor of Chalmers, every mail deluged him with private appeals to sacrifice his own " predilec- tion." It was the old story of 1886, when every vacant charge with a large stipend thought to tempt him. Remembering that time, and with a conviction of the paramount claims of India more like that of Dr. Duff himself, two leaders of the Free Church only were found to plead publicly that he be let alone. Dr. Gor- don, secretary of the Foreign Missions Committee, and Thomas Guthrie. It was necessary for the missionary to act before the meeting of the General Assembly of 1849. He accordingly wrote a letter which Dr. Tweedie pub- lished on his own authority. Tracing all the way by which the Lord had led him, from his father's teaching to Chalmers's death, hie declared that he must remain — must die as he had lived — the mis- sionary. " I trust, therefore, that Dr. Candlish, Dr. Begg, Dr. R. Buchanan, and other revered and be- loved men will readily excuse me for not entering more minutely into the ' merits ' of the question. They meant to honour me, and truly did honour me far more than I am conscious of deserving." The men of the world, too, he wrote, " whenever I met with such, as well as their organs of the public press, uniformly congratulated me on what they are pleased to designate as m}^ contemplated ' elevation ' or ' pro- motion ' to the Edinburgh theological chair. I deem Il8 LlJb'E OF DR. DUFF. 1849. it, tlierefore, an unspeakable privilege to have it in my power to do anything, however humble, towards magnifying my much despised office. The conclusion of the whole matter is this, that in some form or other, at home or abroad or partly both, the Church of my fathers must see it to be right and meet to allow me to retain, in the view of all men, the clearly marked and distinguishing character of a missionary to the heathen abroad, labouring directly amongst them ; at home, pleading their cause among the churches of Christendom. . . For the sake of the heathen, and especially the people of India, let me cling all my days to the missionary cause." And the people of India, so far as its dumb millions could speak by representatives. Christian and non-Christian, reciprocated the sacrifice. His own converts, led by the sixteen foremost of their number, implored their " much-loved spiritual father in the Lord," in an address of pathetic urgency, not to leave them. The native Christians of other churches, to which he had given not a few of his brightest sons in the faith, added their protestations. Hundreds of the Eurasians joined in the cry. Still more of his own Hindoo students and ex-students, to whom he had given Christ's view of truth and life and the world to come, though the Spirit had not brought them to the new birth, declared for educated native society, " If at this juncture you leave our country, everything will probably be undone. The incredible labours of your past years will likely either go in vain, or, at least, will not yield a very rich harvest." They thought, they spoke of " education," of " civilization " only, not consciously at least of the spiritual force which makes a new creation. But rarest of all the addresses, which must have barred the way of the man most eager for the rest and the ^t. 43. REMONSTRANCE OF BRAHMAN PUNDITS. I 1 9 culture of academic ease, was a Sanskrit remonstrance from eleven learned Bralimans " desirous of the Chief Good," " to the most intelligent, virtuous, impartial glorious, and philanthropic people of Scotland." The orientalism which sounds like a poBan in the tongues of the East, may appear hyperbole in the prosaic com- monplaces of Teutonic speech. But, after making the largest allowance for the contrast, all our experience of Indian life, of Hindoo gratitude, of Bengalee lov- ableness, warrants us in quoting this translation as a dim reflection of the impression produced by the fervid personality of Alexander Duff on the people of India, seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, and yet He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live and are moved and are : ''The all-merciful, omnipotent, just, and impartial God, compassionating the wretched people of India, first sent the eminently holy Dr. Carey and others as missionaries. But, in the vast firmament of this country, they appeared as little stars and fireflies, and were consequently unable to dissipate the encompassing gloom. Then came Reichardt, and Wilson, and Piffard, and Ray, who have returned home, and a multitude of others, all of whom have done much for the real welfare of the truly wretched people of this country. But these have not done what they desired. They have not been very famous. Not only are their names unknown to most of the people of India^ but even in the city of their habitation a few persons only know the names of some of them. After making these prefatory remarks, we, the undersigned Sanskrit Pundits, sub- mit as follows : " We have spoken of the success of some missionaries, and presently we shall speak of the eminently pious and learned Dr. Duff. The Rev. Doctor has been greatly blessed by Almighty God. His name is in the mouth of every Hindoo becnuse of his ti'anscendent eloquence, learning, and philan- thropy. As to his eloquence ; from his mouth, which re- sembles a thick dark rain-cloud, there do issue forth bursts of incessant and unmeasured oratory ; so that he fills his audience I20 LIFE OP DE. DUrF. 1849. with rills of persuasive eloquence, just as the rain of heaven fills rivers, streams, brooks, valleys, canals, tanks, and pools, and, dissipating the dai'k delusions of false religion, he makes rise on their souls the light of true religion. This illustrious person, in order to the accomplishment of his object, has devoted his head and heart, and spent large sums of money. If some husbandmen, after ploughing, sowing, and watering a field, which held out to them the near prospect of a golden harvest, were to be stopped in their agricultural pursuits by one who, without considering either the labour bestowed upon the field, or the certainty of speedy gain, were to say to them, ' you must engage in something else,' how, we would take the liberty of asking you, would the husbandmen feel, and how would the corn flourish ? We leave it to your cultivated understandings to apply this example to the case in hand. " Such a man as the Rev. Doctor was never seen in this country before. Now, alas ! the object of our devout wishes is far fi'om being realized. That which never came to our minds even in the visions of the night is suddenly about to happen. Oh ! what must be the magnitude of the sin of this people to merit such a catastrophe ! Consider how difficult it is to reform the ignorant ; to remove mountains is, we think, a far easier matter. Consider, again, how almost impossible it is to break down the barriers of caste, and open up social in- tercourse between the highest and lowest classes of the Hindoo community; to make sun and moon rise in the west is more practicable. " With the illustrious Duff India weighs heavy, but the mere report of his recall has made her light. With his recall the grand net that has been spread in this land for the establish- ment of the true religion would seem to be taken away. Good men have become sad, and bad men are rejoicing. The friends of true religion are praying that God would change the minds of the people of Scotland, and prevent Dr. Duff's recall. li you are determined to blast the fruits of all missionary efforts that have been and are being made in this country, then our solicitations are like shedding tears in a forest, where there is none to sympathise with us. But, should you fulfil the object of our desires, we would then be extremely glad. What need is there to write more to such wise and considerate men as you are ? Be pleased to excuse the length of this letter, and over- ^t. 43. SUMMONED HOME. I 2 I look all mistakes either in the matter or manner. Praying that we may be enabled to avoid the path of gross delusions, \valk in the way of true religion that confers histing benefits on all, and meditate on God with soul earnestness, we, with much humility, subscribe our names. (Signed) " Raghu Nath Shiromani, Radha Krishna Tarka- BAGisiiA, Shyama Charan Shiromani, Godadhar Tarkaba- GisEiA, Kali das Kabibhushana, Ram Kamul Ciiuromani, Thakur das Nayapacchanana, Thakue DA8 Churomani, Hari Prasad Bidyalanker, Gour Chandra Bidyalanker, Chandra Shakhar Bidyabachaspati." The other Free Church missionaries and friends, Drs. Wilson, Mackay and Ewarfc, Messrs. Anderson, Hislop, and MacKail, and Mr. Justice Hawkins, united in the same request. But they agreed with Drs. Gor- don and Guthrie at home, that it was desirable for Dr. Duff to return to Scotland for a time, to consolidate, in the Free Church, that work of missionary organ- ization to which he had given the years of his visit previous to the Disruption. When it became known that he would not sink the missionary in the divinity professor, the General Assembly urged his temporary return. The Swiss Rev. A. F. Lacroix, of the London Missionary Society, indeed went so far as to urge that the Free Church should found a chair in its new col- lege, " to be called the * missionary or evangelistic ' chair, having for its object to impart information and instruction regarding that most interesting and impor- tant portion of the Christian system — the universal spread of our Lord's kingdom over the earth. To such a professorship, if ever it be established, I should hail to see you appointed, but to no other. May the day soon come when the Free Church of Scotland will deem it its duty, in this manner^ to complete the good work it has begun, and which has already produced such beneficial effects in various parts of the pagan world I " 122 LIFE OJF DR. J)[]EE. ,1849. Five years before Dr. Duff had proposed sucli a foun- dation ; twenty years after he caused it to be laid. Dr. Nicholson pronounced it most desirable, on medical grounds, that Dr. Duff should return to Eu- rope after ten years' labours, which had " evidently shattered his constitution." He even agreed to allow the missionary to make a long land tour up the Ganges and Jumna valleys, and down the Indus to Bombay, in 1850, *' provided you take the common precautions necessary in travelling in this country, and avoid all needless fatigue and exposure." But before this and &o far from this, the ardent evangelist resolved to make a survey of South India and Ceylon in the in- tervening hot and rainy seasons of 1849. Conviaced that *' India is at this moment of all countries in the world the great missionary field,'* he determined that he would visit all its Evangelical and many of its Romanist missions, south and north and west, before he took his new message from the front of the battle to those who abode at home by the stuff. From April to August he suffered fatigues and ex- posure, he underwent risks and toil, such as no motive lower than the missionary's could justify, and few others could have borne after a decade of exhausting duties in Beugal. Fortunately he himself has pre- served for us a record of the tour in a MS. volume. The same steamer which took him from Calcutta to Madras carried off Mr. Anderson and his first ordaiued convert, Rajabgopal, to Scotland. After preaching a sermon for the Mission, and with Mr. Johnston visiting the branch station of Conjeveram — Nellore being too dis- tant to the north, — and after taking part in the usual prayer meeting, in which he set forth the Saviour's in- finite and inconceivable love, he left Madras by palan- keen. ChiDgleput, thirty-six miles off, the third branch station of the Mission, was the first stage on his /Et. 43. DIARY OF HIS TOUE. 1 23 southward journey. The native converts presented him with the carefully bound black morocco note-book in which he wrote his diary during the enforced leisure of the long journeys and often weary waiting of prse- railway days. The volume, having his name engraved on its flap, is doubly hallowed by the signatures of the twenty-four men and women who put it in his hands. The name of the late Rev. Venkatararaiah heads the list. The diary was intended strictly for his own use, and no eye saw it till his death removed the restriction which we find in the midst of its entries. The whole, covering 960 closely written pages, which we trust will yet see the light in their completeness, forms a record of the social and religious condition of the people of the Carnatic and Ceylon, and of the missionary and ad- ministrative organizations for their elevation, from the days of Ziegenbalg and Schwartz, near the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the middle of the nine- teenth. Not unfrequently, in the solitary rest of the Sabbath and on the receipt of letters from his wife and daughter, does he break forth into passages of devout meditation and joyful thanksgiving. The time was the very hottest of a hot year, in the sandy tracts of the palmyra-palm country to the north of Cape Como- rin, when for weeks the heavens were as brass and the earth as iron, and when, away from the coast, not a breath broke the tropical calm of the sultry day and the stifling night. The palankeen tour began at Madras on the 11th May, 1849 ; but we may best in- troduce the extracts from the Journal by this passage, written near Cape Comorin on the receipt of a letter from his daughter regarding his wife's health : " Why should 1 be over-anxious ? Has not the Lord iiitherto wonderfully preserved ? Oh why should T, who have 124 ^^'^^ 0^'' ^^' DUFF. 1849. been tlie child of so many mercies, be faithless or doubting ? If any man living should trust in the Lord absolutely, and cast upon Him the burden of all his cares, personal, social, oflBcial, and domestic, surely I am that man. All my days I have been a child of Providence, the Lord leading me and guiding me in ways unknown to me — in ways of His own, and for the accomplishment of His own heavenly ends. Oh, that I were more worthy! But, somehow, I feel as if the more marvellous the Lord^s dealings with me, the more cold, heartless and indifferent I become. Is not this sad — is it not terrible ? All the finer ores are melted by the fire — the earthy clay is hardened. Oh gracious God, forbid that this should continue to be my doleful case ! May I not resemble the clay any more ! May I be like the gold and silver ore : when warmed and heated by the fire of Thy loving-kindnesses, may I be melted, fused, purified, refined, assimilated to Thy own holy nature. O Lord, soften, break, melt, this hard heart of mine ! " This note-book is not intended as a recoi'd of my inner feelings, but I have been led unconsciously to write thus. May the Lord hear my prayer ! These jottings are not a complete record of what I have seen or thought upon. No; only a few brief notes, hastily and crudely committed to writ- ing, to refi'esh my own memory, and to suggest trains of in- ference and reflection which I have no time to record now. I specially note this in case, through any unforeseen con- tingency, this should fall into other hands than my own. There is not a syllable in this MS. in such a form as I should stamp with ray imprimatur as fit to be given to the public. It is not so designed — how could it ? I am literally galloping over the country. Travelling by night — and almost every night — with only broken and unrefreshing snatches of sleep in the palkee ; and during the day either grilled in a solitary bungalow, or incessantly occupied, at a mission station, in talk- ing to friends, inspecting schools, or addressing adults or child- ren, how could I pretend to collect my thoughts or put them connectedly together ? But I note the fragments of a few scattered gleanings, merely to aid my own mind in afterwards reviewing the whole field, and gradually and deliberately forming my own conclusions, "May lli/i, 1849. This evening, about eight o'clock, left our kind friends of the Mission, Madras, after addressing JEt 43- BEGINS HIS TOUE IN SOUTH INDIA. 12$ shortly the girls and young men and praying with all. Spokci about tho necessity of self-denial and self-consecration: devoted lives are a more powerful preaciiing than burning words. Friends loaded me with kindness. " Heard the gun at eight o'clock on the Mount Road. A pleasantly cool nighty but could sleep little, and that little broken and unrefreshiug. On Mount Road the coolies com- plained that the tin cases were too heavy. What was to be done ? A respectably dressed native came up who spoke English ; he stopped and assisted in explaining everything. I thanked him foi' his politeness, and said he had shown one feature of goodness, which consisted in showing kindness to the stranger. I gave him a few of the apples that a kind friend had put into one of the tin cases. He thanked me, and said he was one of Rhcnius's Christians. ' Ah,' said I, ' that explains your kindness, so unlike the hard indifference of tbe heathen. I am a Christian, and welcome you as a brother in the Lord.' Verily, Christ is the Inspirer of love and good will. " Towards midnight the moon rose brightly. The road excellent, but few villages to be seen, and little real cultivation. Jungle everywhere instead of corn-fields. What is the cause ? It must be investigated. Land-tax partly, no doubt ; but the villainous exactions of underlings also. The system of in- terminable subdivision of land among children allows of no accumulation of capital. Hence no means of improvement; poverty everywhere increasing. The Gospel the only effectual remedy. '^ At daybreak found myself within five miles of Chingleput. Feverish from want of proper sleep, and the disturbance of the system by the shaking and jolting of the palkee. Stepped out to take a walk. The basin where I stood was flat. One or two large tanks or reservoirs of water — fresh, clear water — were in view. These, natural and assisted partly by art, are used for purposes of irrigation. They looked like small Scotch lakes at the foot of hills. Close to one of these I passed ; from it issued a small, clear, purling brook. It was the first of the kind I had seen for years ; for in Bengal proper, clear, crystalline streams or brooks are nowhere to be found. All there is stagnant pond, or marsh, or muddy water. But here was a little rivulet of pure, fresh water. My emotions and fancy wei'e vividly 126 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. excited. I felt as if transported to tiie Grampians. I thought of tlie water of life, pure as crystal. I stepped from the roadside, and with the palms of the hand refreshed my dust- covered face and parched lips from the sparkling, gently mur- muring brook, lifted up my soul to God, and took courage. " The irrigated fields had on them rich green crops of rice. To see the naked granite masses rising here and there several feet above the surface from the very midst of luxuriant rice crops, was indeed a novel spectacle. Granite, the primordial rock, the backbone of the earth, associated often with nothing but the sterile peaks of Grampian and other lofty mountain ranges, in immediate and actual contact with thick green stalks of rice, was indeed a novel and surprising spectacle. The truth is, that nothing is wanting but capital, skill, industry, security and remunerativeness to turn the whole of this region into a paradise. By enlarging the present tanks and lakes, and excavating new ones, abundance of water might be collected for irrigation, and thus a perpetual summer and harvest might be the result. The hills might be clothed with wood of a useful description. All this would besides improve the climate, mitigate the scorching heat, and almost annihilate the hot winds. These hills, moreover, abound with minerals, of essential utility in the arts of life, which have never yet been turned to any good account, but which, in time, might be made to add indefinitely to the resources, the comforts and necessaries of the greatly multiplied people,'^ So much for the Middlesex of South India, the first " jaghire " or principality acquired by the East India Company, which the devastations of Hyder All and the worse ravages of famine have thus marred, and the old ryotwaree system of land tenure and tax has prevented from recovering. The fort was taken by Clive from the French in 1752. Dr. Duff here showed a keen interest in the pottery experiments of the Scottish doctor, for which the Government had made a grant. Of the Sabbath when he preached to the residents he writes : " Had a quiet afternoon to medi- tate and to pray, the first I have enjoyed for many ^t. 43- SJ^VEN HUNDRED MILES IN A PALANKEEN. 1 27 weeks. Felt tliankful and refreslied." At midniglit Le set out for Sadras, and continued to take the coast road by French Pondicheri, Cuddalore, Chillumbrum, Mayaveram, Danish Tranquebar, Combaconum, and Negapatam. After an unsuccessful attempt to cross by boat from Point Calimere to Jaffna in Ceylon, he struck inland to Trichinopoly and Madura, by weary, dustladen roads where now there is a busy railway. From Madura he made a second vain attempt, by Ramnad, to reach Ceylon, and therefore again struck inland to Palamcotta, just north of Cape Comorin. From that centre he went round the chief Christian stations of Tinnevelli. Thence he went to Trevandrum, on the west coast, by Nagercoil. Having studied the flourishing mission settlements in the intensely Brah- manical state of Ti'avancore, and its northern neigh- bour of Cochin, he went up the Malabar coast, by its picturesque back-waters, crossed the Western Ghauts by the xVrungole pass to Palamcotta and Tutticorin, from which he sailed to Colombo, the capital of Ceylon. At Point de Galle he took the mail steamer to Calcutta, where he delivered two lectures and a powerful ser- mon on his remarkable tour. The first described the missions in Tanjore and Tranquebar, the root of all Protestant evangelising in South India. The second discussed the condition of the Romanist and Syrian Churches, and of the black and white Jews in Cochin. The sermon was followed by the first account given up to that time by a competent outsider of the growth and "territorial" development of the Tinnevelli Church. Sadras, Noon, May 14f/i. — "Reached weary, as usual, from the little sleep, and that little so broken, the occasional closeness, the flood of perspiration. No rest, till plunged in water — how reviving ! The air too is loaded with invisible, impalpable dust, which fills up the pores of the skin and produces a sad irritation there. But the cleansing officacy of water ! To 128 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. know the significancy of it, as the chosen type of the cleans- ing influence of the Holy Spirit, symbolized in baptism, one ought to be steeped in the dry, heated, dust-laden air of the Oarnatic for a day and night ; and after emerging from the water bath ! — ah, this is cleansing, with a keen sensation of deliverance from the cause of physical unrest and dis- quietude ! AuLA-MPAENA, 15^^. — " The sepoy at the Bungalow very atten- tive. When he was getting water for a bath, read a portion of the precious Bible on the verandah, and lifted up my soul to God, not forgetting my dear wife and daughter and the boys in Edinburgh — nor the friends left behind in Calcutta and Madras, nor their great work. Oh it is pleasing to have the heart touched and melting by soothing remembrance of those that are dear to us, and linked by ties and relationships at once temporal and spiritual ! In my loneliness here, I feel as if more intimately and endearingly present than ever with distant beloved friends ! " Noon. — The cattle have been gathered in to escape the in- creasing heat, which goes on accumulating till four. They are taken into the palmyra grove, where there is almost a perfect shade. Looking at the intense luxuriance of this tropical herbage of every kind, herbage which in Europe we ever associate with the expensive luxury of greenhouses, the mansions and palaces of the titled gentry and nobility of the laud, and contrasting the same with the half-naked, filthy, rudely clownish, woe-be- gone, care-toiled, miserable creatures that nestle in the midst of it all, calling it all their own, I am constantly struck with a resistless feeling of incongruity. The gorgeousness of this vegetable creation is not suited to the lank leanness and poverty- stricken tameuess and wretchedness of the human. They are unsuited, unmatched. There is a painful sense of unadapted- ness in this respect. Such seeming natural riches in such close juxtaposition with such unnatural poverty. There is a sense of the incongruous produced by it which is positively painful. I feel somewhat, in gazing at it, as I would if gazing at a giant wedded to a dwarf, decrepit old age to youthful vigour, shocking deformity to exquisite beauty, or any other unre- sembling union. It is like a piece of untempered mortar im- bedded or embosomed in a casket of pure gold, or splinters of trap or whinstone locked up and cabineted in a network of JEt 43- ECONOMIC STATE OF MADRAS. I 29 diamond, ruby and otlicr gems. I have no words wherewith to portray tho strength or the painfiilness of this sensation of incongruity. Surely it was not so always. Oh no. No incon- gruity between the first man and the first paradise. Intellec- tual beauty, heart holiness and physical loveliness adorned the first happy pair; and a paradise bestud and garnished with all the exuberant excellences of a world that had received the Almighty's blessing was their fitting habitation. Such an abode was worthy of such an inhabitant ; and such an in- habitant of such an abode ! But the harmony, the congrnity, the pai'allelism, no longer exists. Prospects the most pleasing are now tenanted by men the most vile. Gracious God ! is one apt to exclaim, are these poor, ignorant, superstitious, savage-looking people the descendants of him made in the image of God, and the noble occupant of the bowers of para- dise ? It is even so. Alas, alas! How has the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed ! But blessed be God, there is yet hope. Through the second Adam, even these forlorn specimens of human degeneracy may be reclaimed. This is the great design of the gospel. It is to regenerate, i*enovate, beautify and ennoble the nature of man, to make him worthy of an earthly paradise, and, by removing the curse, reconstitute the earth into a paradise fit for his recep- tion ! PoNDiCHERi, I6th. — "This French town is admirably laid out, and quite a model for a tropical city. Saw the Governor's house in passing ; and the vast and splendid church edifice ei'ected by the Jesuits, when their Mission was in the climax of its prosperity. Great numbers of the natives are still nominally Christian, that is, popish idolaters usurping the Christian name. Pondicheri (Pudu, or Puthu, Cheri, literally New Town) was once the most splendid European establishment in India. It was first given to a French merchant named Martin in 1672. To it resorted a number of colonists expelled by the Dutch from St. Thome, and the remains of an un- successful expedition against Triuomalee, possessed also by the Dutch. The system of French policy did open and un- necessary violence to the prejudices and customs of the natives. Lally forced them to work in the trenches and do other military duties which rudely interfered with the law and usages of caste. Dupleix actually destroyed their temples. VOL. II. K I JO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 849. At one time tlie Frencli Government forbade any natives to reside witliin its boundaries who did not embrace the Romish- Christian faith. To this extreme persecuting, intolerant^ inter- fering spirit^ in part, may be attributed the bad odour of the French with the native powers, and their rapid decline. The British, again, went to the other extreme — not of mere toler- ance, but of direct, active support of native prejudices and superstitions. This was very revolting. " The French persecuted the Hindoo faith and upheld the Romish by unlawful means ; the English persecuted the Christian faith and upheld the Hindoo by unlawful means. The French admitted Native Christians into their service, in every department ; and so far well. But such admission was effected in a way not only to encourage proselytism, but to necessitate a vast amount of hypocrisy. The English, again, with the perfection of unreasonableness, prohibited Native Christians from entering their service in any department, and thus obtrusively and unwari-antably discouraged all con- version from Hindooism — in other words, the progress of the blessed gospel among this benighted people. This, probably, is one of the causes of the slow progress of Christianity in the land. As the French Popish Church has done so much for this part of India, why should not the French Protestant Church awake to its duty, and send its missionaries here, as it has done to South Africa ? Already are there German and American missionaries in the Indian field ; why not add the French ? CuDDALOEE, \*lth. — "I am now in the heart of the collec- torate or county of South Arcot, a name of frequent recur- rence in the eventful story of British India. What has the Christian Church done for this large district ? Almost nothing. A few itineracies, ephemeral and unimpressive, while the Jesuits have founded mighty establishments. Only one Pro- testant missionary stationed in the whole district ! That is a Propagation Society one, at Cuddalore ; while it contains some of the strongest holds of idolatry — Chillumbrum and Trino- malee, described by Mr. Smith, now alas ! no more, and whose was the first missionary house I ever entered in India, i.e., at Madras, May, 1830. '' To-day despatched a letter to Calcutta, to my deai partner, enclosing a familiar epistle to the dear boys in Edin- Ait 43. FORT ST. DAVID AND THE E. I. COMPANY. I3I burgh — giving an account of my journey, fitted, I hope, to interest thoiu. They are much in my thoughts and in my prayers. I feel as if I had not prayed enough for them. May the Lord forgive me for such shortcomings ! Indeed, I may here record the fact, that, though given much to inward de- votional meditation, I feel a difficulty in committing these more private thoughts and feelings to writing. If this be wrong, may the Lord forgive me and teach me better in the time to come ! To-day has been the hottest I have yet felt. At noon not a breath of air. The sultriness and the scorchiug heat dreadful. All around is still as death, as if all nature were paralysed. No animal, no bird, to be seen or heard, no human creature ; all are laid flat, glad to exist, to survive with a bare consciousness of being without the ability or the wish to exhibit any signs of active life. About two a slight breeze sprang up from the sea ; and though it never increased much, it was like the letting in of water from heaven's reser- voirs on a languid drooping vegetation. "Fort St. David, the first occupied by the British in India, lies to the north-west. As I passed out of Cuddalore, I could not but think of it in ruins, while the oi'iginally small and obscure company of British merchants, — by whom the fort was intended to afi'ord a precarious existence in a foreign land, then ruled over by the mightiest of Asiatic potentates, — has since risen to the rank of sovereigns of the most powerful empire in the East, an empire that has swallowed up all others from the happy vale of Kashmir to Cape Comorin ! The Company once depended on Fort St. David for its existence; the same Company now, installed into the office and throne of the Great Moghul, has so many mighty fortresses on which waves the flag of its uncontrolled sovereignty, that it can afi'ord to allow the ruins of Fort St. David to be converted into materials for road-making and bridge-building and other works of utility and peace. " While reminded of Edinburgh, by the local nomenclature of 'old' and 'new town,' it was not a topographical association alone that brought it vividly to my remembrance last evening. Six o'clock here would be almost noon in Edinburgh. Yes- terday, Thursday, May the 17th, was the day on which the great and solemn General Assembly of our Church would con- vene in Edinburgh. And I could not but feel exhilarated at 132 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. the thouglit tliat, about the time when I was emerging from Cuddalore, the first possession of the British in India, the members of Assembly would be meeting in Edinburgh for the worship of the great God previous to enteriug on their deliberations, on whose result so much of the spiritual peace and prosperity of Scotland and the world may depend. The temporal sword of the Company, which first sought for itself only a quiet mercantile settlement at Cuddalore, has beaten down every bam-ier to the residence and labours of British Christians in this land. Will not the Church now arise, and, wielding the spiritual sword as vigorously, beat down every barrier to the reign of the Prince of light and peace, in this dark and long distracted realm ! If the congregated members of Assembly could only witness with their own eyes what I beheld this morning, methinks, like St. Paul of old when entering the city of Athens, their hearts would be exceedingly stirred up within them. Chillumbkum, 18th, two o'clock, p.m. — '^ When I left Madras, this day week, the thermometer in one of the coolest houses stood at 97° in the shade. The heat has been increasing ever since. Yesterday, the heat was terrific during the lull between the land wind and the sea breeze. To-day, being farther inland, I found it still worse. This is a wonderful climate. Surely it may be ranked as one of the chief natural impediments to the spread of the gospel. Here I am all alone, seated in this bungalow ; for I have resolved not to lie down in the day, if the Lord will give me strength at all to sit up. The tendency is to languor and drowsiness and vegetativeness. At this hour the natives all around in every direction are asleep ; and there is a stillness like that of the Scottish Sabbath. But, oh, it is a suspension here — and a temporary suspension too — of the laborious activities of heathenism ! I keep myself awake by keeping the mind in constant employment. I wi'ite, I read, I meditate alternately. I cannot note the ten thousand thoughts that flit like the rapidly evanishing clouds on a gay day in summer or harvest at home, leaving, I fear, just as little of the profitable and the permanent. I toucli the table, I draw back my hand, it is so hot. I take a sip of water, it is more than tepid, more than lukewarm — it is positively hot. Books — everything I touch is hot. When I write, no matter however heavily, the ink is not out of the ^t. 43. THE EEAT OF MAY. 1 33 pen when it is dry on the paper. No need of blotting paper, or sand, or any other artificial contrivance here. Tlie hot air answers the purpose quite, and at no expense. Tlie ppi-spir- ation is oozing out in globules at every pore; and looking at it, I could say, almost visibly evaporating. This, however, is a refrigerant in its way. If the perspiration were checked, how torturing and feverish ! After a dead lull, the hot wind comes in in gusts ; they are literally like hot blasts from the mouth of the furnace. Having once visited the bottle-works at Leith, I never can forget the sensation when standing near the man who opened the mouth of the furnace, to rake the liquid materials within. The heat beat upon me like a hot arrow ; I thought I was felled or suffocated. Precisely simi- lar is the sensation which I have repeatedly had this day. And if it be such inside a well-sheltering bungalow, what must it be outside, under the direct influence of this terrible sun ? What an impediment to all locomotion and active personal exertion ! At home one rejoices in a dry warm summer day, as favourable to intended visitation and usefulness. But here, this dry warm summer day, the 18th May, is so dry and warm, that it compels a man to remain as quiet as he can in the house, in order to have some chance of barely existing or passively vegetating. What a terrible obstacle is this to active, all-pervading missionary exertion ! Tranquebar, 2l6'^. — "This is the classic land of modern Pro- testant Missions, the region so often trodden by Ziegenbalg and Schwartz and their associates. To the north of the Coleroon scarcely a ray of light has penetrated the heathen gloom. Yesterday attended the Tamul service in the small native chapel at Mayaveram. The ritual was Lutheran. A native catechist acted as clerk. There is an altar, from which part of the service was read and part chauuted very beauti- fully; the singing was also very good. There were about thirty-six present — some of the elderly persons very devout, some of the young not so. After service I spoke words of exhortation to the natives, through Mr. Ockes as interpreter.^' Afterwards, '^ ho spoke much of the Christian poet of Taniore, a remarkable old man, who has written from twenty to thirty volumes of poetry of different kinds, chiefly connected with Christianity, and exposures of heathenism. He showed the .MS. of one, in which the daily, hourly, and momently super- 134 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. stitions of the heathen were depicted at length and indicated with much power of sarcasm. He promised me a translation of it. It seems that the poetry is set to such tunes as are highly popular among the Tamulians, and that the heathen will often listen to a rehearsal of these poemSj though severely condemnatory of idolatry, when they would turn aside from a sermon altogether. But Mr. Ockes directed my attention to another person, if possible still more remarkable ; that is a daughter of the poet, between thirty and forty years of age. Her husband, being a caste Christian, has employment in tlie Collector's. She knows a little of Sanskrit, speaks and writes Tamul with great effect, and speaks and writes English with equal fluency. Not for pay, but as a gratuity of kindness to- wards her neighbours, alike Christian and heathen, she teaches a number of their boys, varying from six to ten, the English language. I asked her what books she made them read. She said, 'such as she could obtain.' ' After the spelling books,^ she ' taught English grammar, with the irregular verbs and other parts ; the English Bible, the Universal Letter Writer, with cutchery (judicial) papers and accounts!' She asked me all manner of questions about my family, about Calcutta and mission work there, about Scotland, not forgetting ' Shet- land,' to show her knowledge of geography. I never met such a Hindoo female, one exhibiting such versatile talents and varied acquirements of a kind so utterly foreign to her class. On our way to the house of this remarkable woman, I exhorted her to steadfastness and perseverance in her Chris- tian course. *• In Tranquebar to-day I entered, opposite the Mission-house, the church erected with so much trouble by the holy and per- severing Ziegenbalg. It has on its front a crown in large bas-relief; and beneath it the date, 1718. Its erection was one of Ziegenbalg's last works. It is called New Jerusalem, as the old or first church, reared by Ziegenbalg after his arrival in 1 706, and called Jerusalem, has since been swept into the sea, which has been palpably encroaching on this coast. The church is built in the form of a cross, each wing being of equal size. If the centre had a dome, instead of an ordinary roof, it might seem after the model of St. Paul's, London, on a small scale. The pulpit is at one of the centre corners, so as to be seen from every part of the building. I mounted the pulpit; and JEt 43- RELICS OF ZIEGENBALG. 1 35 with no ordinary emotion gazed around from the position from which Ziegcnbalg, and Grundler, and Schwartz, etc.j so often proclaimed a free salvation to thousands in Tamul, German^ Danish, and Portuguese. At the end of one of the wings, on either side of a plain altar, lie the mortal remains of Ziegenbalg and Grundler. I stood with not easily expressed feelings over the remains of two such men, of brief but brilliant and immortal career in the mighty work of Indian evangelization. Theirs was a lofty and indomitable spirit, breathing the most fervid piety. " Afterwards went to the house in which Ziegenbalg lived, having been planned and erected by himself. Entering a gateway, with shi-ubs on either side, the space widened. On the left was the dwelling of the devoted and untiring man ; in front, a small chapel ; on either side of it, at the farther end, other buildings appeared, in which were assembled the children of his celebrated boarding-schools, but divided from each other, so that there was no access from the one to the other ; but an open door from each into the chapel, for Divine service. The dwelling-house is still entii-e, very neatly and commodiously planned. In it are the remains of the famous old library of the German Mission in a state of sad dilapidation — splendid old tomes of massive divinity in German and Latin, folios and quartos and octavos, almost all without their boards, and tied up with strings to prevent the leaves from falling away or being blown about by the winds ; many of them in an utterly unreadable state. Bishop Middleton offered four thousand pagodas for the library in his day; since then it has been miserably neglected. No one was authorized to accept the bishop's offer, hence the library is lost. But what I felt most for was the pile of MSS., partly in German and partly in Latin, in the handwriting of the old missionaries. Some of these MSS. have disappeared — how or whither nobody can tell ; only the dregs now remain, in a wretched condition. Why does not some one rummage among them, pick out the best, and have them published to the world ? Some time ago, the pre- sent keeper of the library told me a mass of books and papers were in so decayed and useless a state that he got them all sold as waste paper, for three rupees ! The report is cur- rently credited that many of them were used as wadding for the guns of the Fort. Ziegenbalg's domestic chapel is now 136 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1849. in a filtliy state, filled with the mouldering records of the Danish Government. The schools are partly in existence and partly dilapidated. *' Copied the insci'iption in the church over Ziegenbalg's tomb. Certaiuly he was a great missionary, considering that he was the first; inferior to none, scarcely second to any that fol- lowed him. Less shining than Schwartz, he had probably more of spiritual unction and power, and simple-minded zeal, and devotedness, and practical wisdom. How affecting to think of the wonderful labours of such men nearly a century and half ago; and those of their successors, continued in some shape up to this hour; and yet to look at the town of Tranquebar, and ask for the results ! A few Danes and Dutch are there still; though the place, a few years ago, was transferred, by purchase, to the British Government. There is a Collector there, and some other officials. The Portuguese, once so renowned, are now almost gone. There are not above fifty or sixty in the whole town. The Portu- guese services, to which Ziegenbalg paid so much attention, are nearly, therefore, at an end; the large church being used almost exclusively for Tamuls from the neighbourhood. As for Native Christians, where are they ? In the town of Tran- quebar, with its four thousand inhabitants, there are not now twenty Native Christians ! There are a considerable number of Popish Native Christians, the Goa sect combining with the French Jesuits. Perhaps a thousand Romanists ! "Why is the Protestant Mission, on which such time and strength and labour have been lavished, so languid ? It is most melancholy. One of the missionaries, in trying to account for it, attributed it very much to the fact that the men who succeeded the early fathers of the Mission, were not of like spirit with them. Schwartz, it is known, joined the Propagation Society. Since 1760, the Mission languished, from want of men of spiritual power, faith and love. The rationalism of Germany infected even the missionaries. Towards the close of last cen- tury the Mission became as dead as the Protestant Churches in Germany; and continued so well up through the present century. During the early part of this century, when the Ger- man missionaries died out, their place was supplied by Danish. They too were lifeless, and the work retrograded. Then, about eight or nine years ago, after the Protestantism of JEt. 43. THE FIRST LUTHERAN MISSION. I37 Germany was fairly roused, a National Lutheran Missionary Society was formed, meant to embrace all the Luthei*an Churches in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, etc. This society took up the Tranquebar Mission, about to be wholly abandoned by Denmark. When the colony was transferred to the British, the Mission property was reserved ; it was meant to be trans- ferred to the German Mission, but the official legal documents have not yet reached, so that it is in abeyance. The church, however, is given for use to the missionaries ; but Zicgon- balg's house, chapel, and schools, are kept by the British Government till the official orders, as to the disposal of them, are i*eceived from home. " Throughout all the neighbouring villages there are sup- posed to be about two thousand native Chi-istians, men, women and children. One-third of them are caste Christians, two-thirds Pariahs. Little is done in the way of Christian education, and that little shallow and imperfect. There is a school in the adjoining village of Puriar, where some English is taught. The caste Christians are Soodras, of the right hand and left. They will not eat or intermarry with Pariahs, nor sit promiscuously even in the house of God. The Soodra Christians sit apart, and the Pariahs by themselves. Argued the subject of caste at great length with Mylius, who thoroughly took up the caste side. 1 did not know before that the Ger- mans made the matter one of religious creed and ecclesiastical order.* Negapatam, 2Zrd. — " Waited on Mr. Strickland, of the Jesuit Mission, by appointment. He received me in his own room, poor-looking indeed. A bedstead, chair and table, two tin boxes raised on wood, with travelling bag, constituted the whole furniture. The floor, beaten mud. Strickland is an Englishman, young, about thirty apparently. He has been here only two or three years. He is a relative of Miss Strickland, the authoress of the ' Lives of the Queens of Eng- land.' But her branch of the family, a century ago, became • For all tlie facts, see History of the Tranquebar Mission, by the Danish Fenj:,'er, translated into German and English by Dr. Emil Francko. Tranquebar, 18G3. For the caste qut-stion, see Bishop Wilson's Life, by Batcman, and the Proceeding's and Resolutions of the Conference of 120 Missionaries at Bangalore, in Juno, 1879. 138 LirB OP DK. DUFF. 1 849, Protestant. And Sir Geoi'ge W. Strickland, M.P., is of that branch, the Jesuit having it that he obtained his baronetcy as a bribe for changing his faith. He asked if I had seen the * Lives/ I said I had. Had I seen her Elizabeth and Mary ? Yes. Does she not make out a very difterent character for them than that usually given ? I admitted the fact, and lamented her subtle insinuating leanings tovsrards Popery. He said he had heard that Miss Strickland had become Catholic, but was not sure. " Xavier originated the Mission. Thousands were converted along the coast, but the people of the interior were obstinate and prejudiced. Robert de Nobili came, assumed the garb of a Brahman in order to win natives to Christ, as also many of the forms and manners of Brahmanism, such as were not sup- posed to interfere with the doctrines of Catholicism. But dis- putes arose. Eobert might be so far wrong, but his errors were exaggerated. At length the pope forbade certain practices ; but the Brahman converts, rather than leave these, renounced their Christianity. Various success till about the end of last century, when, by the labours and intrigues of the French philosophers, the order of Jesuits was unhappily abolished by the pope. Then the pope requested the Archbishop of Goa to send what priests he could to the different stations, to keep Catho- licism in existence. The Portuguese once in the ascendant, Goa became supreme. But since the Portuguese were banished, and Goa reduced to a corner, it was unreasonable that it should be sovereign over India, under the change of dynasty. So the pope at last settled that Bombay, Madras and Calcutta be seats of sees ; in 1865, it was resolved that the Jesuits should proceed to India (the order being revived) and reassume their own. They come everywhere, with the pope's commission, and order the Goa priests to decamp. The latter refuse ; hence the schism and quarrel about property. The latter the Jesuits claim as all their own ; the Goanists resist. The latter in state of eccle- siastical rebellion. Being priests, their admin is ti-ation of ordi- nances were valid, though not legal, being in an attitude ot' defiance to the pope. " The large buildings here were set on fire by the Goa priests and their party. Hence necessity for new edifice. Strickland travelled everywhere, and obtained by address and importunity large sums of money. The plan of a really magnificent JFA. 43- XAVIER S MISSION AND TUB JESUITS. 1 39 structure has been approved. It is of three storeys; has ample accommodation for professors and students, European and native. The first storey of the front range or elevation already completed. It is said that fifty or sixty thousand rupees have been obtained by Strickland for it, from natives, Europeans, Christians, Protestants and heathen. At present twelve fathers are hei'e — six new, learning the language, six stationary. There are twenty-five native youths, most of them, gratuitously taught, some of them to be agents. Half a dozen are sons of Europeans. The most complete classical education is given, as the accompanying pi'ospectus will show. These pay board, some twenty-five, some fifteen rupees per month. The fathers have no personal property, but a common fund or stock. Strickland came out at his own expense, took money and other property with him ; when he reached Tanjore ib all went to the common fund. In the great fire his library of books, worth eighty pounds, was burnt ; a friend in England sent him out a hundred pounds to replace it, the money went into the common stock. He knows not what has been made of it. He receives a salary for acting as chaplain to the Popish soldiers in Trichinopoly ; he never sees it, it goes into the common stock. Food and raiment are provided them out of this stock, which in the aggregate amounts only to an ordinary average of twenty-five rupees per month ! Besides this they get no salary. When any- thing exti'a is required for travelling, etc., the want is stated to the superior, and supplied b}'^ him if the fund admits of it. The former Jesuits tried to live out-and-out like natives, on rice and water. This did well for a year or so, while European strength lasted. But, by-and-bye, they got weak, their system relaxed, they took ill of cholera or other disease, and died like rotten sheep. In this way, in eight years, sixteen were cut ofi". This mortality was wondered at, till a brother of Lord Clifford came out as missionary. He with his English habits and strong practical sense, soon found out the cause, wrote home to the General in Rome for an order, which enjoined the lathers to live better, in order to save their lives. This they have done, though simply. That is, they take daily a little fresh meat, such as mutton, fowls, etc., but no beef, out of respect to prejudices of natives. As to drink, if one is unwell or weakly a hi lie wine is allowed ; but 140 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. tte ordinary fare is, to take a bottle of brandyj make it iuto four by mixing it with water, and allow one wine-glass of this grog daily at dinner for each father. This is little; but it helps digestion. It is only as an extreme measure, in curing drunken soldiers, that total abstinence literally is to be insisted on. They wear a sort of white or yellow gown and red cap. This reconciles the natives to them. They also keep no Pariah servants, except horse grooms — all caste men. "He allowed caste to be of superstitious origin, and evil in some of its workings ; but good when worked properly for right ends. I asked him to explain. For instance, if a man begin to disobey — live immorally or such like — he may despise the priest and his ecclesiastical censures ; and these censures cannot be executed {at least at present, added the Jesuit with emphasis) ; but if the head man of the caste threatens the offender with loss of caste if he do not mend his ways, he instantly attends to this ; since to lose caste would be to lose kith and kin, and be hurried adrift from house and home and everything valued here below. This was one example of the right use of caste. The number of native Romish proselytes south of the Cauvery to Comorin he reckoned at between 125^000 and 150,000. Unless Goa priests, most of these ho admitted to be extremely ignorant, but now they are all to be taught. " The adults to be taught ? Yes ! not indeed to write or read, for he and his order saw no necessity for the mass to learn so. But orally they were to be taught creed, command- ments, and prayers, so that they should not be ignorant of the doctrines of their Church. Thus little knowledge is necessary to salvation. If they get a few elementai-y fragments and the water of regeneration, so as to give them a chance of getting to heaven, this is all that would be attempted in their case. But the children of Native Christians, what of them ? Those of the great mass not to be taught reading, but to be instructed orally like the parents. He was an enemy to the forcing of education, in the ordinary sense, upon all ; and to force a high education on the majority he did not approve. But the door would be opened to the capable. They would have schools for the able and the willing ; and a college (at Negapatam) for the best scholars to obtain a high education ; especially such as wei"e destined to be agents for propagating ^t. 43. ROMAN CATUOLIC MISSIONS. I4I the gospel. They had one native now who had passed the first part of his novitiate towards bciug a full priest, and five or six raore preparing. But he did not expect many fit to be guides and leaders to supply place of Europeans, for two or three centuries to come. At present all the leaders must come from Europe; but in eight or ten years he expected all their missions to be self-supporting, as to temporal means. There were now between thirty and forty Jesuits in the southern districts ; fifteen or sixteen had arrived within the last two years. While theoretically they did not soon expect a native ministry, they were doing more to secure it than most of those who are always crying out about the necessity of raising it. " I asked whether they did not owe much of their success to the use of pictures, forms, and ceremonies — more fitted to tickle and captivate the senses, than to enlighten the under- standing, or affect the heart with spiritual impressions. He acknowledged that they made lai-ge use of visible representa- tions, signs, pictures, etc. Many of these were disagreeable to themselves; they would rather not have them. But the people were children led by the senses. And if they gave them only dry sermons, they never would get on. The people must have something to fascinate the senses ; but through these they aimed at the awakening of more spiritual sensibilities. And as the people were rude and gross, the pictures, etc., were often so too. This arose from necessity, not design. Such was ' the state of the arts* amongst them, that any- thing more refined was beyond their taste or power of compre- hension. But, I said, was not the tendency of dealing so much in the sensuous, only to keep the people sensuous still — in a state of pupillage and perpetual imbecility ? Was it not to rivet the chains of sense upon tlietn ? Was it not to externalize the mind, instead of subduing the dominion of external objects, and leading the soul to high and heavenly contemplations ? He did not think so. Their wish and hope were that the people might be gradually led along the ladder of the senses to better things. The ears must be stunned with sounds, the eyes glared with visible portraitures, and the other senses regaled with objects connected with sacrcdness, so as ulti- mately the inner man might be reached. I asked, if such a method of procedure was not fitted to prevent the soul 142 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1849. from ever attaining to the spiritual meditative mood of Tlaomas a Kempisj Fenelon and Pascal ? He allowed it was so, in the first instance, but it could not be helped, the people were so gross. " He then asked what I thought of the condition of tLe Israelites, intellectually and morally, when they came out of Egypt, as compared with the Hindoos. I perceived his design. It was no doubt this, that if I said they were highly refined and civilized, he would argue that if God gave such a people such a multitude of ceremonies, why should not they to the Hindoos ? But not believing the Israelites to be so refined, I answered that, after the bondage and oppression of two hundred years, they were slaves, and had all the lowness, grossness, and carnality of slavish heads and hearts, and so required a very severe discipline of forty years in the wilderness partially to cure them, and even then they continued a stiffnecked, backsliding, idolatrously inclined people. Why, then, did God give them such ceremonies, etc. ? Because theirs was a preparatory ceremonial of types and shadows, to serve the purpose of schooling and discipline until the substance came. When the substance came, in the one great propitiatory all-sufficient sacrifice of Chi-ist, then the types and shadows were done away. The system developed itself, unfolded itself, unshelled or unkernelled, or unlocked, or uncabineted itself, into the purely spiritual, the unchanging, the eternal. And ultroneously to impose forms and ceremonies now, when the spiritual economy was introduced, was worse than to impose the toys and rattles and garb of childhood on the man. It vas to perpetuate the childhood, and render the mani- festation of the manhood impossible. He of course differed from this view of the case ; but seemed to feel a little awkward in opposing it. '^ I then asked whether it was true, that, not satisfied with mere pictures and sounds, they resorted to still more imposing representations, even such as were of a downright theatrical character : whether, for example, at Easter, the whole scene of the trial of our Saviour before Pilate, and the crucifixion itself, was not exhibited by living personages on a stage? He admitted it was, but not wholly by living persons : that the difi"erent characters were usually represented by wooden figures as large as life : that these were fastened on ^t. 43. TWO IDOLATEIES. 1 43 poles wliicli pierced into them from beneatli : that they were carried by men in such a way that only the moving figures were visible to the audience — a screen interposing between the carriers and the audience : that he knew only of Pilate being acted by a living man : that the service was read giving an account of the whole as narrated in the Gospels, and that the different figures were introduced and acted their part as speakers, through the men that carried them, in succession, after the manner of a sacred drama : and that he regarded ' CD all this as only a more living, graphic, affecting picture to aid the conception and quicken the sensibilities — exciting towards the different objects the feelings respectively due. He also allowed, that at the hour which the Catholic Church has fixed on as that on which the Saviour rose, the Resurrection, repre- sented by wooden figures and living persons, is carried about in procession, round the church or through the town ! To- wards the saints they wished to excite reverence, not worship. " He asked whether I did not consider the recent rise and growing ascendancy of the Romish Church as remarkable ? I did so. He considered this as a sign of the Church being the true one, while Protestantism was at a discount all over the world. Tho latter proposition I denied; as respected the former I stated that, far from regarding the present revival of the Church of Rome as a proof of its being the true one, in common with other Protestants I noted it as an infallible sign of its being the false and counterfeit one ! He looked aston- ished, and asked how I could think so ? I told him, from our interpretation of prophecy we expected, and Protestant inter- preters centuries ago expected, that the Romish Church, after having sunk and decayed through the great Reformation, would again revive, and obtain a short-lived ascendancy — pre- paratory, however, only to its speedy, final and irretrievable destruction. He marvelled still moi-e j and asked what pro- phecies I referred to. I told him among others, to the latter Dortion of Revelation. 'Ah,' said he, 'you thiak Rome to be Babylon ? ' ' Yes, I do — the Babylon, the mother of harlots, red and drunk with the blood of saints, destined ultimately to be utterly annihilated.' He said, I would not long think this if 1 was acquainted with Catholic writers. I asked him if he considered Bossuet's Treatise, the articles of the Council of Trent, the creed of Pope Pius IV., and such like, to be fair 144 I-I^^ OF ^^- DUFF. 1849. exposes of tlie Romish system ? He said he did. 'Then/ said I, 'in these and such like Popish documents I have studied the system ; and having done so, my opinion of it is what I have stated/ He asked what docti'ines in particular I objected to. I stated a few, but said their name was Legion, and it would require a pretty long catalogue only to enumerate them. " I asked what he considered the chief impediments to the spread of Christianity in South India ? He said the character of the natives — especially caste — their apathy, their weakness of mind, etc, Second, the conduct of the British Grovernment in not encouraging Christians in its service, but rather the contrary. The natives ivill not become Protestants, it is too tame, bare, naked for them ; become Catholics they dare not, as they would then have little chance of promotion in good offices. If not for this hindrance, thousands more would at once become Catholics. In passing through the hall where native pupils assembled saw several pictures, as usual. Among others the Virgin treading on the head of the ser- pent ; because, said he, ' we interpret the passage about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the sei'pent, of the woman, the virgin mother, bruising the head.' " He attributed the failure, as he called it, of Protestant missions to the fact of their being upheld by Churches that be- longed not to the true one. I attributed the apparent success of the Popish missions to the use of means which could be employed only by the false Church. Moreover, I insisted on it, that genuine success was not to be reckoned by numbers or quantity, but by quality. Estimated by this test, I showed that Protestant missions, as a whole, are no failure, gave some particulars respecting the results of our own Missions at Madras and Calcutta, and solemnly averred my belief that we had converts, whom, in point of intellectual culture, and heart purity, and graciousness of disposition, and self-denial and proofs of integrity, the Popish missions could not parallel. He allowed that if, as he fancied, Protestant missions had failed, it was not for want of zeal or ability or devotedness. In par- ticular, he said this was the opinion of the fathers respecting myself. I took the compliment at what it was worth.'' * * See CathoUc Missions in Sotithern India, to 1865. By Rev. W. Stricklaud, S.J., and T. W. M. Marshall, Esq. (Loi.gmajler with a sword, killmijj the child also. Ecv. John M'CiilIuin, Olliciating Chaplain of Shahjchanpore. Rusliing from the church, where the residents had assem- bled for Divine worship, on its being surrounded by the nuitin- ous sepoys, he escaped with the loss of one of hiss hands ; but iu the evening of the same day, he was attacked by labourers in a jBeid, and wustinally decapilated by a Pathan. Rev. J. E. Freeman and Mrs. Freeman; Rev. D. E. Ciimpbell, Mrs. Campbell, and their two children; Rev. A. O. Johnson, and Mrs. Johnson; Rev. R. M'Muilen and Mrs. M'Mullen, of the American Presbyterian Board of Missions, Futtehghur. All killed by the Nana at Bithoor. Rev. F. Fisher, Chaplain of Fut- tehghur, Mrs. Fisher and their infant child. Escaping from Futtehghur in boats, they were attacked by sepoys, and on jumping into the river, Mr. Fisher swam wiili his wile and child towards the bank, but; they were both drowned iu Ids arms on the way. Mr. Fisher was afterwards captured by the Nana's party, and slain at or near Cawnpore. Rev. E. T. R. Moncrieff, Chaplain of Cawnpore, Mrs. Moncrielf, and their child. Mr. Moncrieff was killed in the intrenchnients on tlie ninth dav of the siege. Rev. W. H. Haycock, of the Pro- pagation Society, Cawnpore, and Mrs. Haycock, his mother. Both killed at Cawnpore. Ltr. Haycock was shot just as he was entering the iutrenchmenta. Rev. H. E. Cockey, of the Pro- pagation Society, Cawnpore. Wounded in the thigli by a musket-ball, and afterwards shot ou the parade-ground at Cuwn- Solomon, Catechisb of the Propa- gation Society's Mission, Cawn- pore. Cruelly put to death by the Hindoos during the occupa- tion of Cawnpore by the Gwalior Contingent. Ram Chandra Mitter, Head-master of the American Presbyterian Mission-school, Futtehpore. Supposed to have been mui'dcrcd at or near Futtehpore. Jiwan Masih, Catechist. Supposed to have been killed near Dela- mow Sri Nath Bhose, formerly Catechisti and Teacher, his wife and chil- dren. All supposed to have been murdered in Oudh. Raphael, Catechist of the Church Mission, Goruckpoi-e. Died from wounds inflicted by the rebels, and from anxiety and sickness, during the troubles in Goruckpore. There is a name left, which should live in the memories of God's people. Chaman Lai, Sub-As- sistant-Surgeon of Delhi ; was massacred by the mutineers in his own house in Delhi. He was a man of exemplary piety, and was thoroughly iu earnest in hia 342 LIFE OF DLL DUFF. 1857. Christian life and piofession. The Native Church lias lost in him one of its brightest orna- ments. To these must be added the namep, as confessors, of others such as the Rev. Gopeenath Nundi, his wife and children, at Allahabad. pore, together with other Euro- peans, in the presence of the Nana. Rev. G. W. Coopland, Chaplain of Gwalior. Killed on occasion of the mutiny of the Gwalior Con- tingent. Rev. H. I. Polehampfcon, Chaplain of Lucknow. Shot by a mus- ket-ball, while attending on the sick in one of the hospitals in the Residency ; but partially re- covering from his wound, eventu- ally sank from an attack of cholera. R;ev. W. Glen, Agra, son of the late Dr. Glen, of Persia, and formerly Missionary of the London Missionary Society, Mirzapore, and his infant child. Both died in the fort of Agra from privations. Mrs. Buyers, wife of the Rev. W. Buyers, Missionary of the Lon- don Missionary Society, Benares. Died from dysentery, brought on chiefly by anxiety of mind induced by the disturbances in Benares. The names in these two lists of very special interest to Dr. Duff were those of Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, of the Established Church of Scotland ; and of his own third convert, Gopeenath Nundi. The former, apart from their worth and their work in founding a Mission which he had urged on the Church at the Disruption, had been inspired by Dr. Duff when at Aberdeen, and the Rev. R. Hunter, of the Free Church Mission at Nagpore, was their elder brother. Eam Chandra Mitter, who perished at Futtehpore, was described by Gopeenath as "a zealous Christian, educated in the General Assembly's Institution, Calcutta." Fortun- ately we have the personal narrative of Gopeenath, confirmed by that of the late Dr. Owen, and forming not the least pathetic and instructive of the Indian Acta Martyrum Sincera. Soon after his baptism at the end of 1832, which ^t. 51. THE MASSACRE AT FUTTHlll'ORE. 343 was preceded by imprison raeiit and persecution on tlie parfc of his caste-fellows, Gopeenatli Nuudi was sent by Dr. Duff to open a mission school established by the surt»;oon and other Britisli residents in Futtehpore. After founding and working that under the Church Missionary Society, he was ordained by the American Presbyterians to open a mission in Futtehghur. Hav- ing for sixteen years built up the native church there, he returned in 1853 to take charge of the Presby- terian mission in his old station of Futtehpore. There he preached to Europeans and natives alike, in the absence of a chaplain, and there he was assisted by Mr. Robert Tucker, the judge of the county. In no part of India, where all Christians are catholic, did those who named the name of Christ, of every sect and colour, meet and work together with greater har- mony and zeal, and the Bengalee convert of Dr. Duff was their minister. This roused the hate of the Muhammadan community, at whose head was the deputy, Hikmut Oollah Khan. He found his oppor- tunity when the news reached the town that, on tlie 7th June, the sepoys had risen in Allahabad, seventy- eight miles nearer Calcutta, and had massacred their officers, wounding the few who, like Ensign Cheke, managed to escape. The Christian residents of Fut- tehpore were driven to flight, by the rise of the rabble and the burning of their houses. Tucker alone would not move. He believed in tlie police, of whom he said, " I am going to put myself at the head of my brave legionaries" and he sent for Hikmut Oollah Khan to concert measures for the preservation of the Govern- ment property. " Tell the Saheb," was the response, " to make himself happy, and when I come in the evening I will give him eternal rest." The godly judge, the brave official, had his eyes opened, but he would not leave the post of duty. Having read the 344 ^^^^ 0^ ^^' DUFF. 1857. comfortable words of Scripture and commended him- self to God, he brought out all the arms he had and prepared to defend his life. Sunset saw the "brave legionaries" under Hikmut Oollah Khan, with the green flag of Islam, enter his park. Summoned to abjure Christ and accept Muhammad, he resolutely refused. As the police guard advanced he shot fourteen or sixteen of them — the accounts vary — before he fell confessing Christ. Robert Tucker is the glory of the Bengal civil service, and he was not alone in his heroism or in his confession. By the magistrate's orders the Rev. Gopeenath Niindi had left for Allahabad, a few days earlier, in charge of all the Christian women of the station, only to find that they had run into greater danger. The Avomen returned to their husbands, while he, his wife and children set off to the missionary station of Mirza- pore. After the first day's march of fourteen miles in the heat of June, they found shelter in the village of a Brahman, who sought only to kill them for what they possessed. The scenes of horror witnessed there — for the armed villagers butchered all travellers whom they could not easily rob — may be imagiafd from this instance. A Hindoo leather-worker, of low caste, returning from Cawnpore, saw his wife stripped of every rag and their infant swung by the feet till its brains were dashed out upon a stone, wLile he himself was driven off naked. Determined to return to Alla- habad, Gopeenath gave up all he possessed ; " they did not leave us the single Bible we had; our shoes also were taken." While the Brahmans quarrelled over the booty the Christian family fled. " We went up to a well, and the people gave us water to ilrink. We then came to a potter's house, ai^d begged him to give us a ghurra (pot), which he did. I filled it with water, /Pa. 51. GOPEENATH NUNDIS NARRATIVE. 345 that we miglit have a supply; for water in that part of the country, especially in tho months of May and June, is veiy scarce and only found in deep wells. We travelled till nine a.m. J when both ourselves and our dear children (two of them six years and the baby one year old) felt fatigued and tired, and sat down under tho shade of a tree. The poor children cried most bitterly from hunger, but we had nothing to give them. We laid our petition before that God who fed Hia people, the Jews, with manna in the wilderness; and indeed He heard our prayer. Wo saw from a distance a marriage proces- sion coming towards us j I went up to them, and they gave us five pice, which enabled me to buy suttoo (flour of gi-ain) and goor (coarse sugar). With this we fed the children, and resumed our journey. We travelled till eleven a.m., when we found that our three children, having been struck by the sun, were on the point of death; for the sun was very powerful, and the hot wind blew most fearfully. Seeing no village near (and indeed, if there had been any, we should not have gone to it, for fear of losing our lives), we took shelter under a bridge, and having gathered some sand, made our poor children lio down. But they seemed dying, and we had no medicine to give them. We raised our hearts in prayer to our great Physician, who is always more ready to hear than we are to apply to Ilim. He heard our supplications. We saw a small green mango hanging on a tree, though the season was nearly over. I brought it down, and having procured a little fire from^T gang of robbers who were proceeding to Allahabad to plunder, I roasted it and made some sherbet, and gave it to the children to drink. People of the poorer classes, when struck by the sun, always administer this as a medicine. It acted hke a charm, and revived the children. From inability to proceed any farther, we made up our minds to remain there till next morning; but towards sunset the zemindar of the nearest village, a Hindoo by caste, came with the assurance that no injury should be done us, took us to his house, and comfortably kept us through the. night, supplying all our urgent wants. We partook of his hospitality, and slept very soundly, as we had been deprived of rest for three days and three nights. " Early on the following morning we left our kind host's house, and started for Allahabad, which was only iliree miles 34<^ LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. off. We arrived at the gLaut about nine a.m. ; and, while crossing the river Jumna, we saw, with heartfelt sorrow, that the mission bungalow was burnt to ashes, and the beautiful church totally disfigured. On our arrival swarms of Muham- madans fell upon us ; but our gracious Father again saved us, by raising up a friend from amongst the foes. This was a goldsmith, a Hindoo by caste, who took us into his house, and kept us safe through the day. At sunset, when we left his protection, we fell into the Lands of some other Muham- madans, who were roaming about like ferocious animals, thirst- ing after blood. When we saw there was no way to escape, and the villains ready to kill us, we begged them hard to take us to their head, the Moulvie, who for some days usurped the supreme authority there. With great difficulty we induced them to comply with our wishes. When we were brought before him, we found him seated on a chair, surrounded by men with drawn swords. We made our salaams ; upon which he ordered us to sit down, and put to us the following ques- tions : ' Who are you t' ' Christians.' ' What place do you come from?' * Futtehpore.' 'What was your occupation?' ' Preaching and teaching the Christian religion.' ' Are you a padre ?' ' Yes, sir.' ' Was it not you who used to go about reading and distributing tracts in the streets and villages ? ' * Yes, sir ; it was I and my catechists.' ' How many Christians have you made ?' 'I did not make any Christians, for no human being can change the heart of another ; but God, through my instrumentality, brought to the belief of His true religion about a couple of dozens.' On this the man exclaimed, in a great rage, and said, ' Tauba ! tauba ! (repent). What downright blasphemy ! God never makes any one a Chris- tian ; but you Kaffirs pervert the people. He always makes people Mussulmans ; for the religion which we follow is the only true one. How many Muhammadans have you perverted to your religion ?' 'I have not perverted any one, but, by the grace of God, ten were turned from darkness to the glorious light of the gospel.' Hearing this, the man's countenance became as red as fire ; and he exclaimed, ' You are a great " hararazadah " (traitor to your salt) ! you have renounced your forefathers' faith, and become a child of Satan, and now use your every effort to bring others into the same road of de- struction. You deserve a cruel death. Your nose, ears and .^■t. 51. WITNESSING A GOOD CONFESSION. 347 liands should be cut off at clifTerent times, so as to make yonr fiufterings continue for some time; and your children ought to be taken into slavery.' Upon this, Mrs. Nundi, folding lier hands, said to the Moulvie, ' You will confer a very great favour by ordering us all to be killed at once, and not to bo tortured by a lingering death.' After keeping silent for a while, he exclaimed, ' Subhan Allah, you appear to be a re- spectable man. I pity you and your family; and, as a friend, I advise you to become Muhammadans : by doing so, you will not only save your lives, but will be raised to a high rank.* My answer was, ' We prefer death to any inducement you can hold out.' The man then appealed to my wife, and asked her what she would do ? Her answer was, thank God, as firm as mine. She said, she was ready to submit to any punishment he could inflict, but she would not renounce her faith. The Moulvie then asked if I had read the Koran. My answer was, * Yes, sir.' He then said, ' You could not have read it with a view to be profited, but simply to pick out passages in order to argue with Muhammadans.' Moreover he said, ' I will allow you three days to consider, and then I will send for you and read a portion of the Koran to you. If you believe, and become Muhammadans, well and good; but if not, your noses shall be cut off,' We again begged and said to him, that what he intended to do had better be done at once, for as long as God continued His grace we would never change our faith. He then ordered his men to take us into custody. While on the way to the prison, I raised my heart in praise and adora- tion to the Lord Jesus, for giving us grace to stand firm, and to acknowledge Him before the world. When we reached the place of our imprisonment, which was a part of the Serai, where travellers put up for the night, and where his soldiers were quartei'ed, we found there a European family and some native Christiiins. We felt extremely sorry at seeing them in the same difficulty with ourselves. After conversing together, and relating each other's distress, I asked them to join us in prayer, to which they readily consented. While we knelt down and prayed, one of the guai'ds came, and, giving me a kick on the back, ordered me either to pray after the Muhammadan forno, or to hold my tongue. " The next day. Ensign Cheke, an officer of the late Gth N. I., was brought in as a prisoner. He was so severely wounded. 348 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. that lie was scarcely able to stand on his legs^ but was on the point of fainting. I made some gruel of the suttoo and goor which we brought with us, and some of which was still left, and gave him to drink ; also a pot full of water. Drinking this, he felt refreshed, and opened his eyes. Seeing me, a fellow-prisoner and minister of the gospel, he related the history of his sufferings, and asked me, if I escaped in safety, to write to his mother in England, and to his aunt at Ban- coorah; which I have since done. As the poor man was unable to lie down on the bare hard ground, for that was all that was allotted to us, I begged the darogah to give him a charpoy. AVith great difficulty he consented to supply one; and that was a broken one. Finding me so kindly disposed to poor Choke, the darogah fastened my feet in the stocks, and thus caused a separation, not only from him, but also from my poor family. While this was going on, a large body of armed men fell upon me, holding forth the promise of immediate release if I became a Muharamadan. At that time Ensign Cheke cried with a loud voice, and said, ' Padre, padre, be firm ; do not give way.' My poor wife, not willing to be separated, was dragged away by her hair, and received a severe wound in her forehead. The third day, the day ap- pointed for our final execution, now came, and we expected every moment to be sent for to finish our earthly course ; but the Moulvie did not do so. Every ten or fifteen minutes, some one of his people would come and try to convert us, threaten- ing, in case of refusal, to cut off our noses. It appeared that the cutting off of noses was a favourite pastime with them. " On the sixth day the Moulvie himself came over into the prison, and inquired where the padre prisoner was. When I was pointed out, he asked me if I was comfortable. My answer was, ' How can I be comfortable, whilst my feet are fastened in the stocks ? howevei', I am not sorry, because such has been the will of my heavenly Father.' I then asked him, * How he could be so cruel as not to allow a drop of milk to a poor innocent baby?' for our little one lived principally upon water those six days. The same day, the European and Sikh soldiers came out under Lieutenant Brasyer, and after a desperate fight, completely I'outed the enemy. Several dead and wounded were brought where we were, as that was hia head-quarters. The sight of these convinced us that the /Et. SI. BENGALEE CHRISTIAN CONFESSOES. 349 enemies would take to their liecls. They gradually began to disperse, and by the following morning not one remained. We then broke the stocks, liberated ourselves, and came into the fort to our friends, who were rejoiced to see us once more in the land of the living. Ensign Cheke died the same day, after reaching the fort. His wounds were so severe and so numerous, that it was a wonder how he lived so many days, without any food or even a sufficient quantity of water to quench his burning thirst. It must be a great consolation to his friends to hear that he died in the fort and received Christian burial. I had not sufficient conversation with him to know the real state of his mind ; but the few words he ex- pressed, at the time when the villains fastened my feet in the stocks, led me to believe that he died a Christian, and is now in the enjoyment of everlasting rest in heaven. " Other dear English and native Christians were in similar dangers and trials, but many if not all were massacred ; yet we are still in the land of the living. The manifestation of God's grace to us at the time we needed it most, was infinite. It was nothing but His grace alone that kept us firm. The enemy tried liis utmost to throw us down. He put forth, on the one hand, all the worldly inducements a person can conceive, if we renounced our faith ; on the other hand, he brought before us a sure death, with all the cruelties a barbarous man could think of, if we did not become Muhammadans. But, thank God, we chose the latter. The sweet words of our blessed Saviour, which are recorded in the 18th, 19th, and 20th verses of the 10th chapter of St. Matthew, were strikingly fulfilled in our case : ' And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak : for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.'' When the Moulvie failed by arguments, threats, etc., in bringing me to renounce my faith, he appealed to my wife; but she too, thank God, was ready to give up her life rather than become a follower of the false prophet. When she saw the Moulvie was in a great rage, and was ready to order us to be tortured, by taking off our noses or ears, she began to instruct the twin ■boys — 'You, my children, will be taken and kept as slaves, 350 Ll™ OF DR. DUFF. 1857. while we shall be killed ; but remember my last words, do not forget to say your prayers both morning and evening, and as Boon as you see the English power re-established, which will be before long, fly over to them, and relate to them everything that has befallen us.* ' For He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not lie : so He was their Saviour. In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them : in His love and in His pity He redeemed them' (Isa. Ixiii. 8, 9).'' Gopeenatli Nundi and his wife lived, after tlius wit- nessing a good confession, to reorganize the Church of Futtehpore, but they soon after entered into the blessedness promised by the King : " Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven." Thus did Dr. Duff see his Mission at once tried and consecrated anew. The Church of India undoubtedly had a few cases corresponding to the libellatici of that of the Roman Empire. Did not Europeans and Eurasians also in some instances fail in the hour of fiery temp- tation ? Repeat the Kalima, or creed of Islam, was the ordinary test, but in the native Christian woman's case tlie threat of the loss of honour was added to that of death ; yet the apostates were generally the ignorant drummer-boys, the only Christians admitted by a short- sighted Government into the Bengal army, from which every baptized sepoy was expelled. While the missionaries themselves were surprised by the steadfastness and the faith of converts whose physique was generally weak and their prag- Christian associations demoralizing, the Government, led by the great Punjabee heroes, began to see that Christianity meant active loyalty. Native Christians, among them Mr. S. C. Mookerjea, of Dr. Duff's College, manned the guns in Agra Fort. Within a fortnight of the receipt of the Meerut massacre the Krishnaghur Christians — weak Bengalees — vainly offered " to aid the Govern- ALt 51. ACTIVE LOYALTY OF NATIVE CURISTLVNS. 35 1 mcnt to tlie utmost of our power, both by bullock- gharries and men, or in any other way in which our services may be required, and that cheerfully without wajres or remuneration." Those of Benares under Mr. Leupolt, formed a band which defended the mis- sion till Neil arrived, and they joined the new military police till the Calcutta authorities forbade them. Not a few, even then, served as men and officers with the police levy which saved Mirzapore, and in Mr. Hodg- son Pratt's corps which gave peace to Hooghly. The German missionaries in Chota Nagpore offered the blinded Government of Bengal a force of ten thousand Christian Kols ; and the American Dr. Mason volun- teered to send a battalion of Christian Karens from Burma. Even the Christians of South India pressed their services on the Madras Governor. But in every case the fear of an " invidious distinction " was assigned by the Bengal authorities, to the scorn of Dr. Duff, as a reason for refusing such aid. Yet there had always been Christians and even Jews in the Madras and Bombay armies, and there were not a few, Protes- tant and Romanist in the 17th M. N. I., which was fighting in Hindostan against the rebels. When it ■was too late; and all Behar was threatened, the Bengal Government eagerly sent to the missionaries, who had been by that time forced to flee for their lives, accepting the magnanimous offer. Dr. Duff did not confine his sympathies and aid to native Clu'istians only. He wrote thus on the 6th October, 1857 : " To prevent all misconception with reference to missionaries, it ought to be emphatically noted, that nowhere has any special enmity or hostility boon mani- fested towards them by the mutineers. Far from it. Buch of them as fell in the way of the rebels were simply dealt with precisely in the same way as all 352 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. otlier Europeans were dealt with. They belonged to the governing class, and, as such, must be destroyed, to make way for the re-establishment of the old native Muhammadan dynasty. The same actuating motive led to the destruction of native Christians, and all others who were friendly, or supposed to be friendly, to the British Government. In this way it is known that many of the natives of Bengal, who, from their superior English education, were employed in Govern- ment offices in the North- West, and were believed to be favourable to the continuance of our rule, were made to suffer severely both in life and property. Some of them were sadly mutilated after the approved Muham- madan fashion, by having their noses slit up and ears cut off ; while others, amid exposures and sufferings, had to eifect the same hair-breadth escapes as the Europeans. In short, I feel more than ever persuaded of the reality of the conviction which I entertained from the very first, that this monster rebellion has beeii mainly of a political, and but very subordinately of a religious character ; and that the grand proximate agency in exciting it was a treasonable Muhammadan influence brought skilfully to bear on a soil prepared for its action by many concurring antecedent causes of disaffection and discontent. Brahmanical and other influences had doubtless their share in it; but the preponderant central element has been of Muham- madan origin, directed to the realization of the long- cherished dynastic designs of Muhammadan ambition. " By the natives generally no special animosity has been exhibited towards the missionaries or their doings. The very contrary is the fact. On this sub- ject the editor of the Calcutta Christian Intelligencer, a clergyman of the Church of England, has been en- abled to bear emphatic testimony. *If any European,' says he, ' is respected and trusted by the natives at Alt. 51. THE MISSIONAETES AND THE MUTINY. 353 present, it is the missionary. All the influence of public officers and their agents at Benares could not succeed in procuring supplies for the troops and others from the country round ; but a missionary well known to the people is now going round the villages and getting in supplies for the public service. The mis- sionaries and their families are living, at that and some other stations, at some distance from the other residents and from the means of defence, and are sur- rounded by the people on every side. How remarkable is this state of things ! The Government, who have always fondled and favoured superstition and idolatry, are accused of an underhand design to cheat the peo- ple into Christianity; and the missionaries, who have always openly and boldly, but still kindly and affec- tionately, denounced all idolatrous abominations, and invited their deluded votaries to embrace the gospel of Christ for their salvation — they are understood by the people; and, if any Europeans are trusted, the mis- sionaries are at present.' " One of Dr. Duff's inquirers of 1830-1834 was Duk- shina Runjun Mookerjea, a Koolin Brahman who edited the Bengalee newspaper Gyananesliiui, or " Inquirer," which was of such service to the good cause. He had not joined the Christian Church, but had always dis- tinguished himself by promoting reforms among his countrymen, notably that of female education, in which he was the Honourable Drinkwator Bcthune's friend. When the time came to reward actively loyal natives. Dr. Duff submitted his claims to Lord Canning. The result of his services in the Mutiny was that the Bengalee Baboo found himself a Raja, and Talookdar of Oudh, having a confiscated estate conferred on him. When in Lucknow he did much to found the Canning College, on the educational basis of the familiar General Assembly's Institution. There he enjoyed the fre- VOL. II. A. A 354 1^1^'^ Of ^^- DUJP^. 1858. quent counsels of Dr. DufP, as to his duties as the feudal lord of thousands of ignorant tenants. And there his earliest act was to create a model village bearing for ever the name of his honoured counsellor and benefactor, the Christian missionary, who thus acknowledged the beautifully oriental compliment : " A village reclaimed from the jungle of a rebel is a singularly happy type of the building of living souls, whom I would fain reclaim from the jungle of ignorance and error. And if through your gen- erous impulse the village of Duffpore is destined to become a reality, how would my heart swell with grati- tude to God of heaven, were I privileged to see with my own eyes its instructed, happy and prosperous occupants." CHAPTER XXIV. 1858-1863. LAST YEARS IN INDIA. Some Fi'uits of Duff's Earlier Labours. — Arlminisfcrative Progress. — Giowth of the Berii^al Mission. — Siiviia, Dirikm* Rao and Major S. C. Macphep.soM. — Native Female Education. — Dr. T. Smith, Rev. J. Fonlyce, and Mis. Mullens. — Zanana Instruc- tion.— Duff's Caste Girls' Day School. — Death of Lacroix. — Missionary Methods and Christian Unity. — Deaths of Dr. Ewart and Gopeenath Nundi. — Revival Meetings and Ardent Lnnginjjs. — Conference in Edinburgh on Free Church Missions. — Mr. Bhattacharjya and the Mahanad Rural ]\Ii,ssiou. — A Competi- tion-Wall;i's Picture of Duff's Spiritual Work. — The Condition of the Peasantry of Bengal. — Fluctuating Tenure, Rising Laud- Tax and Rack-Renting. — The Indigo Riots in Nuddea. — Dr. Duff's Letter to the Commission of Inquiry. — Rev. J. Long and the " Neel Durpun." — The Educational DL-stitution of Bengal. — Mr. Drinkwater Bethune and the Bc-tliune Society. — The Mis- sionary-President and his Woik. — A Founder of the Univer- sity of Calcutta. — Departure from the Principles of the Charter of Education since Duff's time.' — Trevelyan's Proposal that he bo Vice-Chancellor. — Repeated Illness ends in Dysentery again. — Voyage to China. — Sliut up to accept the General Assembly's Invitation to become Foreign Missions Superintendent. — All Classes and Creeds unite to Honour the departing Missionary. — Reply to the Educated Hindoos and Muhammadans of Benc^al. — Estimates of his Indian Career. — Sir Henry S. Maine and Bishop Cotton. In the eiglit years ending 1863, which formed the third and last of Dr. Duff's periods of personal service in India, he enjoyed a foretaste, at least, of that which is generally denied to the pioneers of phil- anthropy in its highest forms. *' One soweth and another reapeth," is the law of the divine kingdom. The five years from 1830 to 1835 had been a time 35^ LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1858. empliaticallj of sowing the seeds of a new system, but that had borne early and yet ripe fruit in the first four converts. The eleven years which closed in 1850 had been a time of laying the foundation of a second organization and of consolidating the infant Church. But, thereafter, educated and representative converts, Hindoo and also Muhammadan, flowed into it. One year saw so many as twenty, while catechumens became catechists, these were licensed as preachers, and these ordained as missionaries, themselves privileged to at- tract and baptize converts from among all castes and classes of their countrymen. At one time Dr. Duff found himself alone in the Bengal Mission, with his earlier converts become his colleagues and only Mr. Fyfe at his side. At another he rejoiced in reinforcements of young missionaries from Scotland. All around he saw the indirect results of his whole work since 1830, in native opinion, British administration, and Anglo- Indian society, the progress of which, having reached an almost brilliant position under Lord Dalhousie, was not only not checked, but received a new impetus in the Mutiny under Lord Canning. He saw the beneficial results of the Charter of 1853, he dehghted in the perhaps too radical and rapid changes introduced by the Crown in 1858. For no one then realized that every reform in India, and even every material im- provement to be carried out by the Public Works Department means money at last, increased taxation of the poor, diminished power on the part of the people to withstand natural calamities, increasing debt and the risk of dangerous political discontent. Up to 1863, at least, not only was nothing of this apparent, in spite of the cost of trampling out the Mutiny, but the opposite seemed likely to be the case. For Lord Canning, led by Colonel Baird Smith's report, on the famine of 1860-61, had given a political bottom to JEt 52. ADi[INISTRATIVE CHANGES. 357 financial reorganization, in his adoption of the prin- ciple of tixity in the land-tax and permanence of tonuro, as sanctioned by the Crown under Lord Halifax and the Duke of Argyll subsequently, but rashly upset by their successors. And Mr. James Wilson, followed by Mr. S. Laing, had established the corresponding prin- ciple of direct taxation of the trading, manufacturing, capitalist, and official classes, at once as the comple- ment of such fixity and the corrective of tlie unequal incidence of the public burdens on the land and its poor cultivators. Tliis too was departed from, after 1863, by their doctrinaire successors, with conse- quences which every year shows to be more alarming and incurable save by a return to the Canning-Wilson policy. Dr. Duff's Bengal Mission went on growing. It had never been so prosperous, spiritually and educa- tionally, as in the Mutiny year. Then it entered on the new college buildings in Neemtolla Street, for which he had raised £15,000 in Scotland, England and the United States. The first visitor was Sindia, the Maharaja of Gwalior, descendant of the Maratha who fought Arthur Wellesley at Assye. At that time the chief was only twenty-seven years of age, but he had given promise of the same vigour of character as well as loyalty to the paramount power, which were to save him in the Mutiny and advance him to ever greater honour under almost every Viceroy to the present day. He was especially fortunate in the guidance, as political agent, of Major S. Charters Macpherson, and, as prime minister, of tlie Raja Dinkur Rao. The former was well-known to Dr. Duff, who had written at length, in the Calcutta Review, on his remarkable success in suppressing human sacrifices among the indigenous tribes of Orissa. The latter was after- wards selected by Lord Canning himself as the native 35^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1858. statesman most competent to sit in tlie imperial legis- lature in Calcutta, and his memorandum on tlie govern- ment of Asiatics is still of curious authority. The two " politicals," the Scottish son of the manse and the Maratha Brahman, had combined to make the Maharaja a sovereign wise for the good of the people and of himself. His Highness had come to Calcutta to be further influenced by the Governor-General. He inspected Dr. Duff's college and school, from the lowest to the highest class, as models to be reproduced in Gwalior. "The. number of boys — about twelve hundred — appeared greatly to surprise him ; and he was still more surprised when informed that they all came to us voluntarily, and that, with very few exceptions, we did not know their parents or guardians. They came spontaneously, and received freely at our hands combined instruction in literature, science and the Christian rehgion. And when he realized the fact that ours was not a Government institution, but one sup- ported wholly by private Christian benevolence, he seemed lost in wonder. One inference which his wise Dewan very adroitly drew was this, — that if private beneficence could erect such an edifice, and sustain its living educational machinery, it would never do for the Maharaja of Gwalior to aim at the ultimate realiza- tion of anything inferior in the capital of his dominions. That the impressions produced on the whole party were not transient merely, will appear from this note which reached me from Major Macpherson: * The Dewan (prime minister) is exceedingly anxious to have an interview with you, to consult you about his measures of education. You cannot think how highly delighted His Highness's ministers, and all the rest are with your Institution. Nothing could exceed their admiration; and the Dewan thinks it the great work of ALt. 52. THE MAHARAJAS SINDIA AND HOLKAE. 359 Calcutta. He would go to you at any hour and any place.' This morning the Dewan called at my house, and is to come again on Monday. The euliglitened intelli- gence of this man is truly surprising. His measures of education for the Gwalior state will doubtless, according to our estimate, be defective in some vital points. But they will be instrumental in awakening multitudes, in a certain way, from the sleep and slumber of ages ; and, under a gracious Providence, may be overruled as preparing the way for more decidedly evangelizing measures hereafter. A visit like that now intimated seems also to prove how important it is to maintain an Institution such as ours, in the metropolis of India, in a state of efficiency, and of a scale of magnitude fitted to attract strangers to it. The sight of it in active operation has heretofore stimulated not a few to go away resolved to attempt something of the kind in their own neie^hbourhoods. To others it has suoforested improvements in the routine of existing seminaries. And now it bids fair to exert an important influence on the education of myriads in Central India. It is a city set on a hill ; and any abatement in its efficiency would be regarded not merely as a loss to the many hundreds taught in it, but as, in some sort, a national calamity." Thus was reproduced on a larger scale the experience of a quarter of a century before. Then Bengal zemin- dars, other missionaries, and the Government of India itself, had copied the model. Now it was studied by tributary sovereigns for reproduction in distant native states. But, up to this year, no Christian mission has been established in Gwalior, though the way has ever since been open. Under the less tolerant Maharaja Holkar, the other Maratha capital of Indore has for some time been evangelized ; while in Jeypore and other Rajpoot states the United Presbyterian Church 3^0 LIFE OF DE. LUFF. 1858. of Scotland has proclaimed the glad tidings ever since the Mutiny and massacres pricked the national con- science. In the instruction and Christian education of Hin- doo ladies this period witnessed a movement which is working a silent revolution in native society. We have seen the wisdom with which, for Calcutta and Bengal at least, Dr. Duff had determined to confine himself, at the outset of his career, to the education of boys and young men, not only for their own sake, but at once to create a demand for instruction in, and to ob- tain an entrance into, the jealously guarded zanana, or female apartments. Up to 1854 nothing had been done in this direction which had not failed as prema- ture. Poor girls under the marriageable age of puberty at ten or eleven, had been attracted to day-schools. There aged pundits taught elementary Bengalee to a few dozen children, conducted to and from the place by old widows, and paid a farthing each for daily at- tendance. This was all that was possible in the con- dition of Hindoo society at that time ; and the Chris- tian ladies are to be honoured who toiled on amid such discouragements. Even 1850 was the day of small things in girls' as 1830 had been in boys' education in Bengal. But the fathers of 1850 had been the boys of 1830, and the time was ripe for advance. When still a youthful colleague of Dr. Duff, in 1840, Dr. Thomas Smith had published an article urging an attempt to send Christian ladies into the zananas. In 1854 the attempt succeeded. The Rev. John Fordyce, whom, with his wife. Dr. Duff had with true foresight sent out to the Bengalee orphanage, grasped the oppor- tunity. Aided by Dr. T. Smith, he established the Zanana Mission, which the genius of Lacroix's daugh- ter, Mrs. Mullens, so developed, and Government has so encouraofed, that it has become the most eff-ictual yEt. 52. THE ZANANA SCTTOOL SYSTEM. 56 1, means for educating the women of India. Mr. For- dyce secured the promise of two or three Hindoo gen- tlemen to open their houses to, and to pay for, the instructions of his ablest teacher, a European gover- ness who knew Bengalee perfectly. All that was wanted was a modest carriage, a vernacular primer, and the Bengalee Bible. In the quarter of a century since that day, zanana instruction has become a part of the work of almost every mission station, and Government has appointed lady inspectors to test the results for grants-in-aid. Many a despised widow, yet never a wife, seeking peace at distant idol shrines has thus found Him Who is our Peace. Not a few wives have thus come to Christ with their husbands, or have brouirht their husbands with them. Even the aged head of the household, the grandmother or great- grandmother, next to the Brahman the stronghold of India's superstition, may be seen sitting at the feet of Jesus with the little children. The process is slow; but, as it co-operates with that begun in 1830, and propagates itself, fed ever more largely by the love and the truth of English and American ladies, it will change the family life and all society. Is it not thus that nations are born ? But zanana instruction is only half the machinery. It supplies a training as expensive and necessarily partial as education by governesses alone in English homes. As notldng can satisfactorily take the place of family influence on the whole character of the young, so there is no good substitute for the well- conducted school in their daily education. Mr. Drink- water Bethune had prematurely built his school for high-caste girls, who were conveyed to and from the place in covered carriages, and were there carefully submitted to zanana precautions, those against Chris- tianity included. Even under Christian ladies, and 362 LIFE OP DR. DDFP. 1858. when personally supported by Lord Dalhousie, the school has dragged on a sickly existence, because this sort of neutrality is fatal to life of any kind. By 1857 Dr. Duff saw that some of the families of his old and present students were ready to send their ladies to a day-school where Christianity should no more be the only form of truth " tabooed " than it was in the col- lege. One Brahman, whose house adjoined the college, was found courageous enough to supply the rooms for the school. Mr. Fordyce's zanana governess, having successfully established that system, now took charge of this new experiment, along with a venerable but efficient pundit. Carriages were supplied for the girls at a distance, as the popularity of the school filled its benches, but fees were paid. Under the widow of one of the native missionaries. Dr. Duff's female school has gone on prospering. Five years ago we witnessed, in all India, no more suggestive sight than that school presented in its daily routine. Its founder's account of the first year's experiment was this : " Calcutta, 1 7th May, 1858. "My Dear Dr. TweediEj — It is now a twelvemonth since, amid endless uncertainties, I was led to commence the experi- ment of a native feniale daj'-school from among the better castes and classes of native society. Beginning with a mei'e handful, the number gradually increased in spite of much open and secret insidious opposition. Miss Toogood has been indefa- tigable in her exertions ; and so has the learned pundit, who is one of the masters in our Institution. Other native gentlemen have, in many ways, quietly lent their aid and valuable encour- agement. The girls have been remarkably steady in their attendance, through the varied good influences brought to bear upon them. The intelligence which many of them exhibit, as well as capacity for learning, must be regarded as remarkable. Their liveliness and docility make it a perl'ect pleasure to be engaged in instructing them. I have made a rule of visiting them almost regularly once a day on my way home from oar ^t. 52. HIS HIGH-CLASS GIRLs' SCHOOL. 363 TnstitntioTij so that, in my own mind, I have a perfect map of the progress of tho whole of them in their varied studies from the beginning. " At the end of our first year it was thought desirable to hold a public examination, to which a select number of native gentlemen, as well as European gentlemen and ladies might be invited. When this intention became known, the youthful heirs of the late millionnaire, Ashutosh De — a name univer- sally known in European and native society — sent to inform me that they and the female members of their family would bo delighted if we held the intended examination in their house, one of the largest and most striking edifices in the native city. I thought this too good an oiler to hesitate for a moment in accepting it. Other native gentlemen also testified their ap- probation, not in words only, but by more substantial signs. A Koolin Brahman, who had from the first sent his grand- daughter to the school, came to me with seventy-two rupees, suggesting that, as a means of raising the moral tone of native female society, a few scholarships, varying from one to two rupees a month, might be awarded to the best of the senior pupils, and thus encourage the girls themselves, as well as their parents, to prolong their attendance; wliilo the small sum thus bestowed would no longer be regarded as of an elee- mosynary description, and therefore degrading to the feelings, but as the properly earned reward of superior diligence, atten- tion and merit. I thought the idea a good one, and resolved to appropriate the donation to a new experiment in this untried direction. With the same object in view another native gentle- man from the North- West, who lately called on me, a nepliew of the great government contractor Lalla Persad, sent me seventy-five rupees. Another native gentleman sent a nice clock for the benefit of the school, when it re-opened. The native ladies of the family of Ashutosh De sent two handsome silver medals. Several other native parties sent ten rupees and five rupees, for prizes or presents, expressive of approba- tion. All of this was indicative of an interest in the very quarter whence it was most desirable that interest should be awakened, so that I felt more than rewarded for all the trials and troubles of the past — thanked God and took courage. "Here, at eleven, there were actually assembled of the native girls the following: — 1st class, 7; 2ud class, 11 j 3rd class. 364 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1859. 15; 4tli clasSj 12; 5tli class, 17, — in all, 62; and this for many inontlis past has been the average daily attendance. As the whole examination was in BeDgalee, I need say no more than that all the native gentlemen present, who understood it, expressed themselves more than satisfied. Indeed, that within a twelvemonth, the elder girls who have been there all along, should have made such marked progress, can only be attributed to their own natural quickness, and the excellence of the tuition under Miss Toogood and the pundit Their sewing is very neat ; with the elements of arithmetic, the general map of the world and of India, they are already familiar ; while many things connected with remarkable places are told to them orally. They read very distinctly, and write their own lan- guage with great accuracy in the formation of the letters and in spelling. For months past they have been reading Genesis with explanations by Miss Toogood, who orally conveys to them religious knowledge suited to their capacity. Whatever, therefore, may be the fate of the school in future, it has as- suredly started more auspiciously than the most sanguine would have anticipated. The first remark to me to-day of the junior magistrate of Calcutta — the first native gentleman who ever attained to that high office, a very liberal and enlight- ened Hindoo — was, ' Well, when you came to India, such a spectacle as this was an impossibility.^ The saying is true. That it has become a possibility now, is surely a proof how true it is that some progress has been made." The year 1859-60 was a time of trial for tbe Missiou staff. " Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel ? " were the words from which Dr. Duff, on the 24th July, 1859, preached a discourse on the life and the death of the great- hearted Swiss missionary Lacroix. The acquaintance begun on the first night of Duff's arrival in Calcutta, the 27th May, 1830, had ripened into what the sermon described as "a close and endearing friendship, severed only by death." The two men, both Presbyterians though of different churches and missionary methods, had much in common. Both were highlanders. ^t. 53. THE SWISS MISSIONARY, LACROIX. 365 "Young Lacroix was unconsciously trained on the mountains of Switzerland to become one of the most effective of missionaries on the plains of Bengal. How did that iron frame, the product of mountain nurture, fit him to endure the fatigues and rough exposure of constant itineracies in this exhausting tropical atmo- sphere ! How did the endlessly varied and striking imagery with which his mind was so amply stored amid Alpine scenery, fib him for conveying Divine truth under the apposite and impressive forms of figure, trope, and graphic picturing, to the metaphor- loving people of these orient climes ! How did the enthusiastic love of civil and religious liberty, infused by the heart-thrilling tales of his country's double thraldom and double deliverance, fit him to sympathise with the millions of our practically enslaved rural population — groaning, as tbey have been for ages, and still are, under the ghostly domination of a Brahraan- ical priesthood, the galling exactions of lordly zemin- dars, and the unendurable tyrannies of the myrmidons of ill-administered law and justice." To that passage Dr. Duff appended this note in the published sermon : " As a native of the Scottish Grampians and a de- voted admirer of the heroic struggles of Wallace and Bruce, Knox and Melville, in achieving the civil and religious liberties of Scotland, he felt himself possessed of a key to the interpretation of much in the character of his lamented friend that appeared singular or unin- telligible to others. Indeed, in congenial themes such as those above alluded to, both were led to discover a mutual chord of sympathy that vibrated responsively in each other's breast, and served to knit them more closely together in the bonds of a sacred brotherhood.'* In another note the apostle of the teaching thus wrote of the apostle of the purely preaching method 366 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1-59. of Cliri.jtian Missions : " Thou2:li he laboured far more and far longer than any other man in the direct preaching of the gospel to myriads in their own ver- nacular tongue, and though no foreigner, in this part of India, ever equalled him in his power of arresting and commanding the attention of a Bengalee-speaking audience, yet the success vouchsafed to his faithful, acceptable and untiring labours in the way of the conversion of souls to God, for which he intensely longed and prayed, was comparatively very small ! But notwithstanding this comparative want of success, over which at times he mourned, he never once lost heart. On the contrary, with unabated cheerfulness and elasticity of spirit, he perseveringly continued to labour on to the very end, in the assured confidence that not one of the ' exceeding great and precious promises ' would fail; and that, sooner or later, India, yea, and all the world, would be the Lord's. He con- stantly delighted in saying, that the Christian's busi- ness was to labour, and labour on — to plant and water, and water and plant, without wearying and without fainting — leaving all results to God ! From love to Christ, and in obedience to His command, he intensely felt it was his duty to work, and work on, in faith, whether privileged to witness any success or not. The work of sowing was his; the blessing of 'increase' was God's. And thus, with the exception of two years' absence in Europe, did he labour on for thirty- eight years, seeing little fruit of his labours, and yet labouring to the very end as cheerfully and ener- getically as if he were reaping a glorious harvest. ' It will come, it will come, after I am dead and gone,' was his prevailing thought, ' for the good Lord hath said it ; and it is not for me to scan His ways, or to know the times and the seasons which He hath appointed.' Thus, like the ancient patriarchs, did he ^t. 53. DEATH OF MISSIONARIES. 367 live, and labour, and die in faith, not having received the fulfihiient of the promises, but assured that the fulfilment would come, when they that have sown in tears and they that reap in joy shall both exult over the product of their united labours, safely gathered into the garner of immortality." In his daughter Mrs. Mullens, and his son-in-law Dr. Mullens, now a missionary martyr in Central Africa, Lacroix gave to the Church successors of his own spirit. DufTs funeral eloge is redolent of the spirit of David's over Jonathan. Death did not stop there. In a few months, and in one afternoon, fell cholera carried off Dr. Ewart, emphatically " a pillar " of the Mission and Duff's student friend. And when, in March 1861, he was rejoicing over the induction of the Hev. Lai Behari Day, called by the Bengalee congregation to be their minister, there passed away to the confessor's reward the spirit of the Rev. Gopeenath Nundi at Futtehpore. " Little did I dream when parting with him then, that it was the last time I was to gaze on that mild but earnest countenance ! Little did I dream when we knelt down together, hand-in-hand, in my study, to commend each other to the Father of spirits, it was the last time we should meet till we hail each other before the throne on high, as redeemed by the blood of the Lamb ! But so it has proved ! I mourn over him as I would over an only son, till, at times, my eyes are sore with weeping. It is not the sorrow of repining at the dispensation of a gracious God and loving Father 1 Oh no ; but the outburst and overflow of affectionate grief for one whom I loved as my own soul. But he has gone to his rest ; ay, and to his glorious reward ! His works do follow him. There are spiritual children in Northern India, not a few, to mourn over his loss. The American Presbyterian o 68 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1861. Mission, which lie so faitlifallj served, will sorely feel his loss. Oh, when shall we have scores and hundreds clothed with his mantle and imbued with his spirit? Will any of our young ministers, animated by like faith and hope, at once come out and fill up the gap— or, if they will not, will they at least pray that native men may be raised up here in greater numbers, both able and willing to mount the breach ? Some day the Lord will take the work into His own hands, and then rebuke the laggard zeal of those who will not come forward now to His help against the mighty. * This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fast- ing,' What a volume of significancy have we in these words ! Long have all churches and societies laboured by all manner of imaginable plans, methods, and enginery to drive out the monster demon of Hin- dooism; and hitherto but with very partial success. Perhaps it may be to teach us all, that * this kind will not go out but by prayer and fasting,' by real self- emptying, self-denial, and humiliation before God, ac- companied by fervent, importunate, persevering prayer. Instead, therefore, of acting any longer as ingenious schemers of new plans, or as critics, judges, and fault- finders with old ones ; were all of us, at home and abroad, to betake ourselves more to self-humiliation and prayer, perhaps even ' this kind ' of demoniacal possession would soon be seen * going out ' from the souls of myriads, to the praise and glory of Jehovah's omnipotent grace." Mr. Pourie had transferred his fine missionary spirit to the Free Church congregation, which he was too soon to leave to find in Sydney a grave instead of the health he vainly sought. Dr. Mack ay, long an in- valid, was compelled at last to leave the work he loved, and died in Edinburgh. In time the Mission was reinforced by younger men. But all this added JEt. 55. A MISSIONARY REVIVAL. 309 to the burden laid on Dr. Duff, himself fast aging from thirty years' toil. Every rainy season laid him low, to recover only temporarily during the brief vacation of the cold weather. And there came upon him the questioning of a new generation of ministers in his own Church, as to the nature and the wisdom of the missionary method which Dr. Inglis had suggested in 182^ he himself had established in 1830 and woi'ked with such immediate spiritual results ever since, Dr. Chalmers had approved and eulogized time after time, and the other evangelical churches had carefully followed after first ignorautly opposing it. Such questioning called forth the closing passage of his letter on Gopeenath's death, and these ardent longings, at a time when he had bes^un, with other evanofclical Christians in Calcutta, a series of revival meetings such as had turned many to righteousness in America and Ireland just before. " My own firm persuasion is, that whether we, the weary, toiling pioneers, ploughers, and sowers shall be privileged to reap or not, the reaping of a great har- vest will yet be realized. Perhaps when the bones of those who are now sowing in tears shall be rotting in the dust, something like justice may be done to their principles and motives, their faith and perseverance, by those who shall then be reaping with joy, and gathering in the great world-harvest of redeemed souls. In the face of myriads daily perishing, and in the face of myriads instantaneously saved under the mighty outpourings of the Spirit of grace, I feel no disposition to enter into argument, discussion, or con- troversy with any one. Still my impulses and tenden- cies are to labour on amid sunshine and storm, to leave all to God, to pray without ceasing that the Spirit may be poured out on Scotland, England, India, and all lands, in the full assurance that such outpourings VOL. II. B B 370 LIFE OF DH. DUFF. 1 86 1 would soon settle all controversies, put an end to all tlieorisings about modes and methods and other im- material details, and give us all so much to do with alarmed, convicted, and converted souls, as to leave no head, no heart, no spirit, no life for anything else. Yes; I do devoutly declare that a great, widespread, universal revival would be the instantaneous and all- satisfying solution of all our difficulties, at home and abroad ! Oh, then, for such a revival ! How long, Lord, how long ? When wilt Thou rend Thy heavens and come down ? When will the stream descend ? These, and such like, are our daily aspirations. We are like the hart, thirsting, panting, braying for tlie water-brooks. We feel intensely that it is not argu- ment, or discussion, or controversy that will ever win or convert a single soul to God ; that it is the Spirit's grace which alone can effectuate this ; and it is in answer to believing, persevering, importunate prayer, that the Spirit usually descends with His awakening, convicting and converting influences. Our weapon, therefore, is more than ever the Word of God, and the arm that wields it, prayer. Surrounded as we are by the bristling fences and the frowning bulwarks of a three thousand years' old heathenism, we crave the sympathies^ and the prayers of our brethren in more highly favoured lands. Painfully familiar as we are with the 'hope deferred' which maketh the 'heartsick,' we often feel faint, very faint ; yet, through God's grace, however faint, we have ever found ourselves still ' pursuing,' still holding on, with our face reso- lutely towards the enemy, whether confronting us in open battle, or merely evading the sharp edge of the sword of the Spirit by timely flight. Our motto has ever been, ' Onward ! onward ! ' no matter what might be the Red Sea of difficulties ahead of us. But, oh, as men — men of like feeli nfr- n^id infirmities as others ^t. 55- RUKAL MISSION AKOUND MAHANAD. 37 I — it would tend to clicer and hearten ns did we find ourselves encompassed with the sympathies and the prayers of brethren at a distance. Not that God has ever left us witliout some witness or manifestation of His favour. We have had our own share of spiritual success ; a goodly number of souls, from first to last, have been converted to God. For this we feel deeply grateful. But we long for thousands, yea, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, and millions ! Will the Church at home, if wearied of giving its moneys, assist us by a united, mighty host and army of prayers ? " His own Church held a conference of two days on the whole history and methods of its missions, in November, 1861. Their founders. Duff and Wilson, were absent, but the former sent home to Dr. Cand- lish, who presided, sixty printed octavo pages of what he termed " rough notes." These were meant to do what in 1835 he had accomplished by the living voice. The discussion resulted in only good. It dispelled ignorance, quickened the zeal of the Church, and called forth volunteers for the mission field. And it greatly helped Dr. Duff in a new extension of his rural mis- sion among the swarming peasantry of the county of Hooghly. From Mahanad as a centre, under the Hev. J. Bliattacharjya, he mapped out the district into circle schools where, with the assistance of the Vernacular Education Society afterwards, Bengalee preaching and teaching went hand in hand. There, ever since, that Brahman missionary has lived as the pastor of many native Christians, as the superintendent and in- spector of schools, as the adviser of the local author- ities in public questions affecting the peasantry so that Lord Northbrook selected him to give evidence on the subject before Parliament, as the referee of the magistrate in questions of taxation and education, and 372 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1862. as the guide, pliilosopher, and friend of Hs Hindoo neiglibours. We cannot better part from Dr. Duff's purely missionary work at this time than by looking at this picture of it, drawn by a competition-walla in all the frankness of a home letter. Dr. Duff had just returned from a long inspection of the remarkable results of the Lutheran Mission to the aboriginal Kols, on the uplands of Ohota Nagpore. " Calcutta, '[6th Feb., 1862. " Last Sunday was the communion in Mr. Pourie'a church. I drove down with Aitcluson (now Chief Commissioner of British Burma, then in the Foreign Office) and as we entered he was called into the vestry. What they wanted with him was soon apparent, for the Raja of Kuppurtulla, preceded by Dr. Duff, walked up the aisle in full oriental costume. That was a stirring sight, and has, as yet, had few parallels. He listened most attentively to the sermon. When I called yesterday he was full of it. The Raja had expressed himself much interested in the sermon, * especially,' said he, ' in that part of it where the clergyman showed how it is that Christ's death is efficacious.' Kuppurtulla is a Sikh Raja of some con- sideration, who has his head-qnarters at the town from which he takes his title, in Colonel Lake's commissionership. He is almost a Christian, and but for strong political reasons would probably come forward for baptism. From his estates in the Punjab and Oudh he has a revenue of £50,000. He has proved himself a firm friend of the American Missions. He entirely supports one missionary, and has written for anotlier. In Kuppurtulla he has built a school, a church, and mission premises. "On Wednesday night Dr. Duff, who has lately returned from a two months' tour in Chota Nagpore, gave an account of a visit to that province. . . The Kols are by no means so rude and barbarous a race as they have often been represented to be. They are a mild and intelligent people, but addicted to demon-worship. The accounts we have been getting at home of the spread of religion among that people yEt. 56. AT WORK IN THE COLLEGE. 373 have been enormously exaijgerated. Dr. DufF involgliod against such misrepresentations, as calculated to dishearten people here and at home wlien the real state of the case is known. But ho showed what a good work it was, deep-laid and progressive. He travelled over the district with the Commissioner (Colonel Dalton), wlio is a sincere friend to the cause. Very striking and affecting it was to hear him contrast the spread of Christianity there with what it has taken thirty years of labour to effect among the casto-bonnd races of Bengal, and then to listen to the triumphant anticipa- tion of the fall of Brahmanism. . , I have seldom felt such a profound respect and admiration for a man as I did for that veteran missionary, as he spoke to me with the tear in his eye of the cause to which he has given his life, at what cost his attenuated and enfeebled frame too well shows. " On the morning of Satui-day Dr. Duff took us to hi.^ college. As he drove in at the gates of the handsome edifice the thousand scholars were fast gathering, and we were loudly saluted by cries of ' Good morning, sir.* . . The upper, or English division, is opened by a prayer from Dr. Duff. Ho stood in the verandah, or gallery, from which open off the various classrooms. He prayed, amid the deepest silence and apparent reverence, for the overthrow of idolatrous superstition and the spread of the knowledge of the true God in India. . . The highest classes, where the students averaged in age at least twenty-one, wore engaged in reading Abercrombie's 'Moral Powers,' and underwent an examination in the text and cognate matters that testified unmistakably to their aptitude for philosophical acquirements. Dr. Duff has an admirable way of speaking to the lads. In every class we entered ho took up the subject in hand in an easy and familiar way. With great tact he took the opportunity of illustrating by it some great practical, scientific, or moral truth, in a style that delighted the students, even when it led them to laugh at tho religious prejudices in which they had been brought up.*' In these later years the successive presidents at the annual examination of the college were Sir Bartle Frere, when in Lord Canning's Council ; Sir Henry Durand, and Lord Napier. Lady Elgin inspected the 374 ^^^^ OF DR. DUFF. 1859, classes, but Lord Lawronce was the first Governor- General, soon after that, to make a state visit such as his predecessors had confined to the secular Govern- ment colleges. In the many questions of administration which the events of 1857-9 forced upon the Government and the country Dr. Duff took a keen interest. But, as a missionary, he was called upon to express his views publicly only when the good of the whole people was at stake. Two social and economic difficulties in Bengal demanded the interference of Lord Canning's later government — the rack-renting of the peasantry by their own zemindars, and the use of their feudal powers by English landlords or lessees to secure the profitable cultivation of the indigo plant. None knew the oppression of the uneducated millions so well as the missionaries in the interior, who lived among and for the people, spoke their language and sought their highest good. Again and again the united Missionary Conference had petitioned the Governor-General for inquiry, and the result was the Charter granted by Parliament in 1853. But nothing came of that, at first, for the people, and again the Conference asked for a commission of inquiry, with the result thus described by Dr. DuS" : " All being then apparently smooth and calm on the surface to the distant official eye, the necessity for inquiry was almost contemp- tuously scouted." But, as soon as the crisis of the Mutiny would allow. Lord Canning's legislature passed the famous Act X. of 1859 to regulate the relations of landlord and tenant. Competition then invaded pre- scription, but the Act was as fair an attempt to pre- serve tenant-right while securing to the landlord the benefit of prices and improvements, as Mr. Gladstone's, which was influenced by it, was in Ireland long after. That was the first of a succession of measures, down to JEt. 53. AGRARIAN DISCONTENT IN BENGAL. 375 the last year of Lord Lawrence's viceroyalty, passed to secure the old cultivators all over India in their bene- ficial right of occupancy and improvements, while regu- lating the conditions on which their rent could be enhanced. Unhappily, outside of the permanent tenure districts of Bengal and Oudh, our own thirty years leases and land-tax, often raised, tempted the landlord to squeeze his tenantry, and both frequently fell into the hands of the usurers and the underlings of our courts. But in 1859 neither zemindar nor ryot, neither Bengalee nor English landlord, knew his rights. Early in 18G0 the peasantry of the rich county of Nuddea began to refuse to cultivate indigo, and to mark their refusal by " riots, plunderings, and burnings." The system was bad, but it was old, it was of the East India Company's doing, and its evils were as novel to the Government of the day as tho difficulty of devising a remedy was great. Sir J. P. Grant, the second Lieutenant-Governor, was able and well-inclined to the people ; but at the other end of the official chain and in direct contact with the culti- vators, there were young civilian bureaucrats who made impossible such kindly compromise and reforms as have since preserved a similar industry in Tirhoot. In the absence of anything like statesmanship any- where, and amid the animosities of the vested interests, the whole of Bengal became divided into two parties, for and against the indigo-planters. The result was the destruction of an industry which was worth a million sterling annually to the country. Authorities who, like Dr. Daff and the Friend of India, dared to seek the good of the people while striving to preserve the industry, were scouted, were denounced in the daily press, and their very lives were threatened. An Act was hastily passed to enforce the peace and appoint- ing a commission of inquiry on which the missionaries 37^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1859. and all classes were represented. To tliat Dr. Duff submitted a letter, which was published because of "the character and position of the writer," with the acknow- ledgment that it dealt " in a very broad and compre- hensive spirit with the subject of popular education as the chief remedy for the evils disclosed." " With the bearings of the indigo system in a merely political or commercial point of view," he wrote, " I never felt it to be any concern of mine in any way to intermeddle. But to its bearings on the moral and social welfare of the people, to the task of whose elevation from the depths of a debasing ignorance my whole life has been consecrated, I have always felt it incumbent to give due heed. . , In common with my missionary brethren of all churches and denominations, I repudiate with all my whole heart and soul anything like ill-will to indigo planters or hostility to indigo planting as such." The truth is, that the planters were the victims who suffered most from the Company's trade system and from the failure of the Queen's Government to give Bengal the legislative courts and police which it needed — till too late. A personal case occurred to add new bitterness to the conflict which swept away the planters altogether. The Rev. James Long, a patriotic Irish agent of the Church Missionary Society, who worked for and sym- pathised with the people, made special researches into their vernacular literature, at the instance of Govern- ment. ' He caused a Bengalee play, termed Neel Dur- pwij or the Indigo Mirror, to be translated into Eng- lish, and a valuable contribution to our knowledge of native opinion it was. But it libelled both planters and their wives, as a class. And the translation was officially circulated by the Bengal Office, which thus became a partisan. Still not one of these offences, whether in the original, the translation, or the circu- /Et. 53. UNJUST IMPRISONMENT OP MR. LONG. 377 lation, exceeded the extreme violence of the planters in the daily newspapers. In an evil moment the planters forfeited all the sympathy duo to the sufferers by other men's misdeeds, by proceeding against Mr. Long .for libel, not civilly, but by the unusual and persecut- ing course of criminal procedure, and that before the least judicial of the judges of the old Supreme Court. The missionary, whom at other times the planters re- joiced in, was sentenced, to the horror of the majority of them, to a fine of a hundred pounds — immediately paid by a Bengalee — and imprisonment for one month at the hottest season of the year. The jail authorities did their best to make him comfortable, and he held daily levees of the best men and women of Calcutta, including planters. Dr. Duff was doubtless one of the visitors ; what he felt, for his friend and for the cause of righteousness, this letter shows : "Saturday. "My Dear Mrs. Long, — Accept my best thanks for the note from your beloved husband. It was very kind of him to remember me, and of you to send rao the note so promptly. I am glad that he is out of Madras. His stay there could only have prolonged excitement; and what he needs above all things now is rest, rest, rest, to mind and body. He should go up to the hills at once, and all day wander over the breezy heights, communing with dumb but grand nature, in her most glorious manifestations, — or rather, with the great God whose handi- work is so glorious. " This mail brings London papers. I am glad to see the Daily Neius, next in influence to The Times itself, take Mr. Long's pai't in the Neel Durpun case, and condemn the planters, jury and judge. — Yours very sincerely, Alexander Duff." The catastrophe of the imprisonment sobered all parties, and Dr. Duff's fervid fearlessness only made the best of the planters his warm friends. But it re- quired nearly ten years of public discussion, even till 378 LIFJ3 OF DR. DUFF. 1859. Sir GreorgG Campbell became Lieutenant-Governor, to secure tliat primary education for which Lord William Bentinck had appointed Mr. W. Adam in 1835, and which Duff and others had never ceased to demand. A school cess, even in Bengal, now gives the dumb millions who pay it, a chance of knowing their right hand from their left. When the Christian Vernacular Society for India was established, — an agency for giving the East trained Christian teachers and a pure literature, for which the first Lord Lawrence worked almost to the day of his death, — the Bengal Missionary Conference appointed Dr. Duff convener of a committee to facilitate its in- troduction into Eastern India. He drew up a remark- able paper on " The Educational Destitution of Bengal and Behar," which the Conference published. Mr. Long, who, with Mr. Lacroix just before his death, acted with him in the committee, writes to us that Dr. Duff's " sympathy with the masses grew with his increasing acquaintauce with India, and with the de- velopment of the vernacular press. At the close of our last meeting, I recollect his saying, with great emphasis, ' though our direct missionary methods are different, — one devoted to English education, another to vernacular schools, and the third to vernacular preaching, — there is not one essential point relating to the work of Christian vernacular instruction on which we differ.' Dr. Duff subsequently spent three days with me at the Thakoorpookur mission of the Church of England, and no one could sympathise more strongly than he did in the plans I was working out for peasant education. We met every month at the Missionary Conference, the Tract and the Bible Society's com- mittees, in all of which he took a very active part. He never encouraged the practice of denationalising native Christians in dress, modes of life, or names. He did JEl. S3- ^^' DRINKWATEE BETHUiNB. 3/9 not like to soo native gentlomen attired in European costume, and, as a consequence of this expensive style, deinaiuling, as in the case of some converts, equality of salary with Europeans, for he declared that instead of equality this would be giving them three times as much." It was honourable to the Hindoo gentlemen of Cal- cutta— a community Dr. Dulf had done more than any other man to create and to liberalise — that, in 1859, they united with the leaders of English society there in entreating him to fill the seat of president of the Beth- une Society. That institute had been created seven years before, on the suggestion of Dr. Mouat, to form a common meeting place for the educated natives and their English friends, and to break down as far as pos- sible the barriers set up by caste, not only between Hindoos and all the world beside, but between Hindoos and Hindoos. Such had been the social and intellectual progress since 18 JO, that the time had come to develop the debating societies of youths into a literary and scientific association of the type of those of the West. Mr. Bethune had just before passed away, his remains followed to the grave by the whole city. His name was given to the new society, which was intended to express the whole aims of his life. The son of the historian of the siege of Gibraltar, and one of the Con- galtons of Balfour in Fifeshire, Drinkwater Bethune became the fourth wrangler of Airey's year at Cam- bridge, gave himself to literature and the law, joined Lord Brougham as a leading spirit in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, made a reputation as a Parliamentary counsel, and on going to India as Macaulay's successor was appointed president of the Council of Education, and there founded the female school which still bears his name. The new society started on a purely secular basis. 380 LIFE OF DR. DtJrr. 1859. Afraid of truth on all its sides, and timidly jealous of that which had made the natives of the West all they were, it was about to die of inanition. Dr. Duff, who had watched its foundation with interest but was pro- hibted from helping it by its narrow basis, was urged to come to the rescue. He asked for a detailed explana- tion of the rule confining its discussions to any subject which may be included within the range of general liter- ature and science only. Dr. Chevers, the vice-president, obtained from the members the unanimous declaration that this did not exclude natural theology, or respectful allusions, as circumstances might suggest, to the his- toric facts of Christianity, and to the lives and labours of those who had been its advocates. Then the mission- ary gladly became president and worked a magical change. The theatre of the Medical College, where the society met every month, proved for the next four years to be the centre of attraction to all educated Calcutta, of whatever creed or party. The orthodox Brahmans were there, taking part in the intellectual ferment, through leaders like the Raja Kalee Krishna. " Young Bengal " had higher ideals set before it, and found a new vent for its seething aspirations. Native Christians took their place in the intellectual arena beside the countrymen whom they desired to lead into the same light and peace which they themselves had found. Maharajas, like him of Benares from whose ancestor Warren Hastings had narrowly escaped, when they visited the metropolis to do homage to the Queen in the person of the Viceroy, returned to their own capitals to found similar societies. And, besides the powerful fascination of the new president's eloquence and courtesy, there was the attraction of lectures from every Englishman of note in or passing through the city. To take only the first session, of 1859-60, Dr. Duf£ opened it with a lecture on the Rise and Progress ^t. 53. riiESlDliNT OF TUE BETilUNE SOCIETY. 38 1 of Native Education. Professor B. B. Cowcll, now of Cambridge, followed in a pregnant paper on the Prin- ciples of Historic Evidence, which are conspicuous by their absence all through the annals and literature of Asia outside of the Hebrew records. Colonel Baird Smith expounded the Philosophy of Irrigation, and then went to Madras to die ; the loss of tliis great engineer-general, and son-in-law of Do Quincey, calling forth from Dr. Duff a burst of fcelins:. Colonel Yule poured out the stores of his quaint learning on Java and the Javanese. Mr. Don, the latest colleague of the president, wrote on the Methods and Results of German Speculation ; Dr. Mullens on the Invasions of the Roman Empire and of India; and Miss Mary Carpenter on Reformatory Scliools. Archdeacon Pratt contributed a monograph on Sir Isaac Newton such as one of the first mathematical philosophers of that day alone could have written. But most valuable of all were the lectures, on Socrates, on Cambridge, and such subjects, of the head-master of Marlborough, whose name, as Bishop Cotton, will ever be associated with Heber's as the best and the greatest of Indian prelates. Alternating with such lecturers were the Bengalee scholars, Dr. K. M. Banerjea and Dr. Rajendralala Mittra, and not a few essayists, Muhammadan, Hin- doo and Christian. But that the society might not beat the air with mere talk, its very practical president organized it in six sections, of education, literature and philosophy, science and art, sanitation, sociology, and native female improvement, under the late Henry Woodrow, Professor Cowell, Mr. H. S. Smith, Dr. Chevers, Mr. Long and Baboo Ramaprasad Roy re- spectively. These worked and reported results, duly published, with all the enthusiasm, and more than the method of the Social Science Consrress and such bodies. Native society still looks back on the four brilliant 3^2 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. i860. years of Dr. Duff's presidency. Thus for rich and poor, educated and ignorant, Christian and non-Christian, he did not cease to sacrifice himself, and always in the character of the Christian missionary who, because he would sanctify all truth, feared none. All this, however, was but the play of his evening hours. The absorbing business of his daily life for six years, next to but along with his spiritual duties, was to secure strictly catholic regulations for the University and the grant-in-aid systems which his evidence in 1853, following all his life-work, had called into existence. He had no sooner returned to India after that, than he was nominated by the Governor-General to be one of those who drew up the constitution of the University, and he was fre- quently consulted by the Bengal Government on the principles which should regulate grants to non-official colleges and schools. So long as he remained in Calcutta he secured fair play for the liberal and self- developing principles of the education despatch of 1854. When he and Dr. AVilson ceased to influence affairs and rulers, the public instruction of India began to fall back into the bureaucratic, anti-moral and politically dangerous system, from which Lord Halifax thought he had for ever rescued it. In all the Presidencies great state departments of secular educa- tionists have been formed, which are permanent com- pared with the Governments they influence, and are powerful from their control of the press. Every year recently has seen the design of Parliament and the Crown, of both the Whig and the Conservative minis- tries, in 1854-60, farther and farther departed from, as it is expressed in this key-note of the great des- patch ; " We confidently expect that the introduction of the system of grants-in-aid will very largely increase the number of schools of a superior order; ^t. 54. INFLUENCE THROUGH THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 383 and we liope that, before long, sufficient provision may be found to exist in many parts of the country for the education of the middle and hisfher classes, inde- pendent of the Government institutions, wliich may then be closed." The departure of the local govern- ments from this healthy principle grieved Dr. Duff even in his dying hours, because of all its consequences in undiluted secularism, amounting, in the case of individual officials in Bengal and Bombay, to the propagation of atheism more subtle than that which he had overthrown in I80O ; in political discontent and active attacks on the Government, of which more than one Viceroy has recently complained ; and in the financial mistake which upholds departments too strong for control, while killing the only system that cares for the masses by making the wealthy pay for their own education. For the first six years of the history of the University of Calcutta, in all that secured its catholicity, and in such questions as pure text-books, and the establishment of the chairs of physical science contemplated by the despatch, Dr. Duff led the party in the senate, consisting of Bishop Cotton, Archdeacon Pratt, Dr. Kay, Dr. Ogilvie, Dr. Cowell, Dr. Mullens, Dr. K. M. Bauerjea, Sir H. Durand, Bishop Stuart, Mr. C. U. Aitchison, Mr. Samuel Laing, Sir C. Tre- velyan and the present writer. Of his leadership, affecting the hooks and subjects daily studied by the thousands of youths under the jurisdiction of the University from Peshawur to Ceylon, Dr. Banerjea has thus written : " To his gigantic mind the suc- cessive Yice-Chancellors paid due deference, and he was the virtual governor of the University. The examining system still in force was mainly of his creation, and although it may be capable of improve- ment with the progress of society, yet those who complain of the large area of subjects involved in it 3B4 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1863. Stem to forget that narrow-mindedness is not a less mischievous evil than shallowness of mind. Dr. Duff was again the first person who insisted on education in the physical sciences, and strongly urged the estab- lishment of a professorship of physical science for the University. Although he first met with opposi- tion in official quarters, yet his influence was such that it could not be shaken." The Viceroy is, by his office, Chancellor of the University, and he appoints the Vice-Chancellor for a term of two years. Lord Elgin naturally turned to Sir Charles Trevelyan, who had been sent out as his financial colleague in council. But although the honour had been well won, that official would not wear it so long as it had not been offered to one whom he thus declared worthier : "Calcutta, 22nd March, 1863, "My Dear Dr. Duff, — I have written to Sir R. Napier requesting that he will submit to the Governor-General my strong recommendation that you should be appointed Vice- Chancellor of the Univei'sity, and entirely disclaiming the honour on my part if there should have been any idea of appointing me. It is yours by riglit, because you have borne without rest or refreshment the burden and heat of the long day, which I hope is not yet near its close ; and, what concerns us all more, if given to you it will be an unmistakable public acknowledgment of the paramount claims of national educa- tion, and will be a great encouragement to every effort that may be made for that object. — Very sincerely yours, Ch. Trevelyan.'' Alas ! by that time *' the long day " was already overshadowed, so far as residence in India was con- cerned. The friend of his student days at St. An- drews, and of his later career, Dr. Tweedie, had been taken away. Dr. W. Hanna had taken up the duty of the home control of the Foreign Missions only long enough to show how well he would have exercised it /^t. 57. FOllCRD TO KETUHN TO SOOTLAXD. 385 for both India, Africa and tlie Church, if he could have continued to bear the burden. Dr. CandHsh had tem- porarily entered the breach. Again, as in 1847, the cry reached Dr. Dull:, " Come home to save the missions." But neither Committee nor General Assembly moved him till another finger pointed the way. In the fatal month of July, 18G3, his old enemy, dysentery, laid him low. To save his life, the physicians hurried him off on a sea voyage to China. He had dreamed that the coolness of such a Himalayan station as Darjeeling would complete the cure. But he was no longer the youth who had tried to fight disease in 1834, and had been beaten home in the strusforle. He had worked like no other man, in East and West, for the third of a cen- tury. So, in letters to Dr. Candlish from Calcutta and the China Seas, he reviewed all the way by which he had been led to recognise the call of Providence, and he submitted. He returned, by Bombay and Madras, to Calcutta, aiid there he quietly set himself to prepare for his departure. The varied communities of Bengal were roused, not to arrest the homeward movement, the pain of which to him, as well as the loss to India, they knew to bo over- borne by a divinely marked necessity, but to honour the venerable missionary as not even Governors had ever been honoured. At first, such was the instinctive conviction of the true catholicity of his mission, and the self-sacrifice of his whole career, that it was re- solved to unite men of all creeds in one memorial of him. A committee, of which Bishop Cotton, Sir C. Trevelyan, and the leading natives and representatives of the other cities of India were members, resolved to reproduce, in the centre of the educational buildings of the metropolis, the Maison Carree of Nismes. The marble hall, the duplicate of that exquisite gem of Greek architecture in an imperial province, was to be VOL. 11. 0 C 386 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1863. used for and to symbolise tlie catholic pursuit of truth on a basis not less broad and divine than that which he had given to the Bethune Society. But, as there were native admirers of the man who thought this too Christian, so there were many of his own countrymen who desired to mark still more vividly his peculiar genius as a missionary. The first result accordingly was the endowment in the University of Daff scholarships, to be held, one by a student of his own college, one by a student of the Eurasian institutions for which he had done so much, and two by the best students of all the affiliated arts colleges, now fifty-seven in number. The Bethune Society and the Doveton College procured oil portraits of their benefactor by the best artists. His own students, Cliristian and non-Christian, placed his marble bust in the hall where so many generations of youths had sat at his feet. And a few of the Scottish merchants of India, Singapore, and China ofiered him £11,000. The capital he destined for the invalided missionaries of his own Church, and for these it is now administered by the surviving donors as trustees. On the interest of this sum he thenceforth lived, refusing all the emoluments of the offices he held. The only personal gift which he was constrained to accept was the house, 22, Lauder Road, Edinburgh, which the same friends insisted on purchasing for him. The valedictory addresses which poured in upon him, and his replies, in the last days of 1863 would fill a volume. Almost every class and creed in Bengal was represented. The forty or fifty members of the united Missionary Conference, of which he had been a founder thirty-three years before, thus poured out their hearts, testifying in the name of all the Reformed Churches, British, American and European, to the value of that system of evangelizing Brahman and Muhammadan which, a generation before, their predecessors had op- ^l. 57. FAREWELLS TO INDIA. 387 posed : " They cannot refrain from bearing their testi- mony to the distinguished service he has rendered to the cause of Christian education, by means of the Free Churcli Institution, during the entire period of his missionary life, and by his valuable counsels in the estab- lishment of the University of Calcutta in recent years. Nor do they forget the powerful influence exerted upon the Christian Church during his visits home by his able advocacy of the claims of missions. In parting with their beloved friend and brother, the Conference desire to convey to him afresh the assurance of their warm affection and esteem. They glorify God in him, and while they regret that missionary work in India is deprived of his personal services, they wish, him, in the new sphere opened to him at home, the continued enjoyment of the Master's favour, and the possession of divine peace, so long as life lasts." Private friends, like Durand, and high officials who knew only his public services, made it, by their letters and memorials, still more difficult to say farewell to a land which the true Anglo-Indian loves with a passionate longing for its people and their civilizers. Very pathetic was his farewell to bis own students, those in Christ and those still halting between two opinions. But most charac- teristic of his whole work, his spiritual fidelity, and his cultured comprehensiveness, was tbe reply to the grate- ful outpourings of the Bethune Society, representing all educated non-Christian Bengal. The whole pamphlet, address and reply, marks the difference between 1830 and 1863, and in that diffiirence the work he had done. Having passed the philanthropic and educative objects of the society in review, he reminded its members : "Much as I have delighted in these objects, it is not solely, or even chiefly for the promotion of these, that [ was originally induced to exchange my beloved native Grampians with their exhilarating breezes, for 388 LIFE OF DR.*-DU¥F. 1863. tlie humid plains of Bengal with their red and copper sky and scorching atmosphere. Oh, no ! There is on record no instance, so far as I know, of mere liter- ature, mere science, mere philosophy, having had the power to sever any of their votaries from the chosen abodes of cultured and refined society, and to send them forth, not for purposes of discovery or research, but on errands of pure philanthropy, unto strange and foreign lands. But what these have failed to do, Christianity has been actually doing in ten thousand instances during the last eighteen hundred years. And why ? Because, while it seeks to promote man's earthly good in every possible way and in the highest possible degree, its chief aim is of a vastly higher and more transcendent kind. It is this higher, nobler, diviner aim, which supplies the impelling motive to disinterested self-denial in seeking to promote the highest welfare of man. It is the grand end which Christianity professes to have in view, with the marvellous love which prompted it, that of saving, through the incarnation and death of the Son of God, immortal souls from sin, guilt and pollution, and of raising them up to the heights of celestial blessedness, which has been found potent enough to move numbers to submit to the heaviest sacrifices — to relinquish home and the society of friends, with all their endearing associations and fellowships — to go forth into the heart of the wilderness and even jeopard their lives in the high places of barbarism. And the strength of the motive thus derived is enhanced by the assurance that the sovereign antidote here provided, in His wis- dom and beneficence, by God Himself, for the woes and maladies of fallen humanity, is fraught with peculiar power — 'the power of God' — the power of a divine energy accompanying the preaching of the g;ospel ; a power, therefore, fitted and designed by the ^t. 57. FAREWELL TO TilE EDUCATED HINDOO:^. 389 Almighty disposer of all influence, to operate on the mind of man, in all states and conditions of life, with a far more imperial sway than any other known agency. While this assurance, again, is mightily con- firmed by actnal historic evidence that there is that, in its wondrous tale of unspeakable tenderness and love, in the awful solemnity of its sanctions, in tlie vitalizing force of its motives, in the terribleness of its threatenings, in the alluring sweetness of its promises, and in the grandeur and magnificence of its proffered rewards, which has been found divinely adapted to pierce into the darkest heathen intellect, to arouse into action its long slumbering faculties, to melt into contrition the most obdurate savaG:e heart and enchain its wild roving desires and restless impulses with a fascination more marvellous and more absolute far than aught that fables yet have feigned or hope con- ceived. " Truly blessed, according to the records of history, are the people that know the joyful sound. Designed of heaven to reach and penetrate all ears, to move and affect all hearts, it has already gladdened the homes of multitudes among all kindreds and tribes and peoples and nations. Having an intelligible message of peace and goodwill for every man, in every place, at every time and under every varying circumstance, it has been wafted by heralds of salvation over every girdling zone of earth. Unrelaxed by temperate warmth, unscathed by torrid heat, unbenumbed by arctic cold, it can point to its trophies in every realm of civilization, in every barbarian clime, in every savage island. As a conqueror it has entered the palaces of mightiest monarchs and raised into more than eartldy royalty the tenants of the Immble wigwam. It has controlled the deliberations of sages and senates, it has stilled the uproar of tattooed warriors wielding the ruthless toma- 390 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1863. hawk. It has caused the yell and whoop of murderous onslaught to be exchanged for the soft cadences of prayer, and the mellow tones of praise and gladness. It has prevailed on the marauding hordes of the wilderness to cast off the habits and customs of a brutish ancestry, and to emulate the improved modes and manners of refined society. It has impelled them to fling aside the bones and the beads, the paint and the feathers, which only rendered nakedness more hideous, and to assume the garb and the vesture be- fitting the requirements of decency and moral worth. It has successfully invaded the halls of science, and humbled proud philosophy into the docility of childhood. It has wrought its way into the caverns of debasing ignorance, and illumined them with the rays of celestial light. It has gone down into the dens of foulest in- famy, and there reared altars of devotion in upright hearts and pure ; it has mingled its voice with the ragings of the tempest, and hung the lamp of a glorious immortality over the sinking wreck. It has lighted on the gory battle-field, and poured the balm of consola- tion into the soul of the dying hero. It has made the thievish honest, the lying truthful, the churl liberal. It has rendered the slothful industrious, the improvi- dent forecasting, and the careless considerate. It has ensured amplest restitution for former lawless exac- tions, and thrown bounteous handfuls into the treasury of future beneficence. It has converted extravagance into frugality, unfeeling apathy into generous well- doing, and the discord of frantic revelry into the har- monies of sacred song. It has changed cruelty into sympathy, hatred into love, malice into kindliness and goodwill. It has relieved the poor and the needy, comforted the widow, and blessed the fatherless. It has, on errands of mere}'-, visited the loathsome dun- geon, braved the famine, and confronted the plague. JEt. 57. HIS FAITH AND HOrE. 39 1 It has wrenclied tlie iron rod from the grasp of oppression, and dashed the fiery cup from the lips of intemperance. It has strewn flowers over the grave of old enmities, and woven garlands round the columns of the temple of peace. And if, in spite of these and other mighty achievements, which have followed as a retinue of splendour in its train, its success may not have been so extensive and complete as the transcend- ency of its divinity might have led us to expect, Chris- tians never allow themselves to forget that the ages which are past have only witnessed its birth-throes and infantile development in any land — that the time is fast approaching when it will display its giant form, and go forth in the greatness of its strength ; when it will thresh the mountains of error and of sin, and scatter them like the dust before the whirlwind on the summer threshing-floor, and when, with every darkening cloud evanished, it will arise and shine with the efi'ulgency of noon-day over an emancipated and renovated earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. *' That bright and glorious era for India and the world I have long seen in the vision of faith. The vividly realized hope of it has often sustained me amid toils and sufferings, calumny and reproach, disappoint- ment and reverse. And the assured prospect of its ultimate realization helps now to shoot some gleams of light athwart the darkness of my horizon ; and, so far, to blunt the keen edge of grief and sadness, when about to bid a final adieu to these lonof-loved Indian shores. Some of you may live to witness not merely its blissful dawn but its meridian eff*ulgence; to me that privilege will not be vouchsafed. My days are already in ' the sere and yellow leaf ; ' the fresh flush of vernal budding has long since exhausted itself ; the sap and vigour of summer's outbursting fulness have well-nigh gone, leaving me dry and brittle, like a 39- T^IPS OF DR. DUFP. 1S63. withered lierb or flower at the close of autumn; the hoar frost of old age — age prematurely old — grim wintry old age, is fast settling down upon me. But whether, under the ordination of the High and Holy One, Who inhabiteth eternity, my days be few or many ; whether my old age be one of decrepitude or of privi- leged usefulness, my best and latest thoughts will bo still of India. Wherever I wander, wherever I roam ; wherever I labour, wherever I rest, my heart will be still in India. So long as I am in this tabernacle of clay I shall never cease, if permitted by a gracious Providence, to labour for the good of India ; my latest breath will be spent i-n imploring blessings on India and its people. And when at last this frail mortal body is consigned to the silent tomb, while I myself think that the only befitting epitaph for my tombstone would be — ' Here lies Alexander Duff, by nature and practice a sinful guilty creature, but saved by grace, through faith in the blood and righteousness of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; ' — were it, by others, thought desirable that any addition should be made to this sentence, I would reckon it my highest earthly honour, should I be deemed worthy of appropriating the grandly generous words, already suggested by the exuberant kindness of one of my oldest native friends, in some such form as follows : ' By profession, a missionary ; by his life and labours, the true and con- stant friend of India.' Pardon my weakness ; nature is overcome; the gush of feeling is beyond control; amid tears of sadness I must now bid you all a solemn farewell." Such was his last ^message ; and these were the words in which the two men in India best able to estimate his deeds impartially, spoke of him officially to natives and to Europeans. Sir Henry Maine, who had succeeded to the position /Et. 57. SIR HENRY MAlxNE ON DR. DUFF. 393 of Vice-Cliancellor of tlie Univcrsifcy, wlilcli illness kept Dr. DiifF from then filling, said of him in convocation : " It would be easy for me to enumerate the direct services which he rendered to us by aiding us with unflagging assiduity, in the regulation, supervision, and amendment of our course of study ; but in the presence of so many native students and native gentlemen who viewed him with the intensest regard and admiration, although they knew that his every- day wish and prayer was to overthrow their ancient faith, I should be ashamed to speak of him in any other character than the only one which he cared to fill — the character of a missionary. Regarding him then as a missionary, the qualities in him which most impressed me — and you will remember that I speak of nothing except what I myself observed — were first of all his absolute self-sacrifice and self- denial. Religions, so far as I know, have never been widely propagated, except by two classes of men — by conquerors or by ascetics. The British Government of India has voluntarily (and no doubt wisely) abne- gated the power which its material force conferred on it, and, if the country be ever converted to the religion of the dominant race, it will be by influences of the other sort, by the influence of missionaries of the type of Dr. Duff, Next I was struck — and here we have the point of contact between Dr. Duff's religious and educational life — by his perfect faith in the harmony of truth. I am not aware that he ever desired the University to refuse instruction in any subject of knowledo^e because he considered it dans^erous. Where men of feebler minds or weaker faith would have shrunk from encouraging the study of this or that classical language, because it enshrined the archives of some antique superstition, or would have refused to stynulate proficiency in this or that walk of physical 394 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1863. science, because its conclusions were supposed to lead to irreligious consequences, Dr. Duff, believing his own creed to be true, believed also that it had the great characteristic of truth — that characteristic which nothing else except truth possesses — that it can be reconciled with everything else which is also true. Gentlemen, if you only realize how rare this combina- tion of qualities is — how seldom the energy whicli springs from religious conviction is found united with perfect fearlessness in encouraging the spread of knowledge, you will understand what we have lost through Dr. Duif's departure, and why I place it among the foremost events in the University year." Dr. Cotton, the Bishop of Calcutta, in his metro- politan Charge, finely characterized Duff, and thus un- consciously answered the ignorant objections of a new generation to his system : " I need hardly remind you that such a view of evangelistic work in India as I am now trying to sketch was especially carried out by that illustrious missionary whose loss India is now lamenting, and whose name, though it does not adorn the Fasti of our own Church, yet may well be honoured in all Churches, not only for his single-eyed devotion to his Master's cause, during a long and active service, but for the peculiar position he took up in India, at a most important crisis. " It was the special glory of Alexander DuiSP that, arriving here in the midst of a great intellectual movement of a completely atheistical character, he at once resolved to make that character Christian. When the new generation of Bengalees and too many, alas ! of their European friends and teachers were talking of Christianity as an obsolete superstition, soon to be burnt up in the pyre on which the creeds of the Brahman, the Bhuddist and the Muhammadan ^t. 57. BISHOP COTTON ON DK'. DUFF. 395 were already perishing, Alexander Duff suddenly burst upon the scene, with liis unhesitating faith, his indomitable energy, his varied erudition, and his never- failing stream of fervid eloquence, to teach them that the gospel was uot dead or sleeping, not the ally of ignorance and error, not ashamed or unable to vindi- cate its claims to universal reverence ; but that then, as always, the gospel of Christ was marching forward in the van of civilization, and that the Church of Christ was still ' the light of the world.' The effect of his fearless stand against the arrogance of infidelity has lasted to this day ; and whether the number he has baptized is small or great (some there are among them whom we all know and honour), it is quite certain that the work which he did in India can never be undone, unless we, whom he leaves behind, are faith- less to his example." CHAPTER XXV. 1864-1867. IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA.— TEE MISSIONARY PROPAGANDA. Last Farewell to India. — In tlie Hotspur with Captain Toynbee. — Reviewing the Past. — Spiritual Musings. — Death of a Missionary's Wife. — First View of tlie Kaffrarian Coast. — Cape Town on the Thirty-fourth Anniversary of the Shipwreck. — The First Mission- ary to the Hottentots, — Efforts of Ziegenbalg and Martyn for South Africa. — Dr. Duff's Wagon Tour from Genadenthal to Maritiiburg. — With Bishop Gray during the Colenso Trial. — Preaching and Reorganizing at Lovedale and Barnshill, Pirieand King William's Town. — Dr. Livingstone. — Edinburgh, Perth and Aberdeen. — Lord Lawrence Visits the Calcutta Institution in State. — Duff's Plan of a Missionary Professorship, Institute, and. Quarterly Review. — The Collegio di Propaganda Fide. — Raymond Lull and WaljBus. — Cromwell's Protestant Council. — Daff's Ex- perience at St. Andrews. The Professorship Endowed. — Cor- respondence with H. M. Matheson, Esq. — The Institute and the Quarterly Postponed. — The Science of Religion. So Alexander Duff said farewell to India. He might have sought rest after the third of a century's toil. He was nearing, too, the sabbatic seventh of the three- score and ten years of the pilgrimage of man — a de- cade to which many great souls, like his own master and friend, Thomas Chalmers, had looked forward as a period of calm preparation for the everlasting sabbath- keeping. But Duff was again leaving India, and for the last time, only to enter on fourteen years of cease- less labour, as well as prayer, for the cause to which he had given his life. It was well for him that some months of enforced rest were laid upon him. These were still the days of Cape voyages, about to be made /Et. 57. VOYAGE TO CAPE TOWN. 397 things of the past for tlie ranjoritj of travellers by the Suez Canal. In the spacious cabins and amid tlie quiet surroundings of the last and best of the old East Indiamen, the convalescent found health ; while the invalids whom nothing could save in the tropics, and who too often now fall victims to the scorching of the Red Sea route, had another chance or a lengthened spell of calm before the bell sadly yet sweetly tolled for burial at sea. The wearied, wasted missionary, attended to the ghaut by sorrowing friends, went on board the Hotspur, on Saturday, the 20th December, 1863. Not only in the ship, but in Captain Toynbee, who is known as one of the foremost of Christian sailors, was he peculiarly fortunate. That officer has supplied these reminiscences of tlie voyage as far as Cape Town : " Knowing how many were grieving at Dr. Duff's departure from India, it could not fail to strike us that the * proper lesson ' read in the morning ser- vice the next day was Acts xx., with the words, 'And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him; sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more ; * and Dr. Duff then so weak that he could only sit quietly by and listen. By the time that we had been a week at sea, however, he said that, though he could take no share in the Sunday morning service, as it was held in the open air which would make speaking too fatiguing, he would like to say a few words after the evening prayer. He began, taking the Ten Commandments as his subject, in so low a tone that it was difficult to hear ; but his enthusiasm seemed to overcome even the physical weakness, and his voice was full, and his lan- guage grand, as he preached for nearly an hour. All enjoyed and admired those sermons, which he con- tinued in a series each Sunday evening until we reached 198 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. Jlib- the Cape, none ever complaining of tlieir lengtli, tliougli their effect on himself was seen in his fatigued look the next day. We had invalid soldiers on board. He soon found out the sick men and visited them, holding a short service on the lower deck every day. He also interested himself in a school amongst the soldiers' children, and in the illness and death of Mrs. Ellis, the wife of a missionary going home for her health. Though his health improved he continued very weak. Being a very poor sleeper, he used to look sadly worn some mornings after a rough night ; but there was never anything approaching to complaining on his part, only a patient smile, and the remark, ' I heard my friend,^ as he called one of the sailors whose harsh voice had waked him more than once. The contrast between his patience and the impatience of others on board who were not so ill as he was, was noticed even by the servants. A young cavalry officer on board re- marked to me, * If all missionaries were like Dr. Duff, India would be a different place.' " The morning he spent in his cabin, but in the evening he used to come on deck and sit enjoying the glories of sky and sea, for which he had intense ap- preciation. He conversed with so much interest and animation that those were times of rare enjoyment. Sometimes he told us of his varied travels; once of his shipwreck. I was struck by the accuracy of his memory, which could, after so many years, reproduce the whole scene so correctly as not in any point to jar on the fastidiousness of a nautical ear ; and more than once by the deep feeling he entertained for the kind- ness shown to him when he was leaving India, and by his own sorrow that it was impossible for him, consis- tently with a right regard to health and power of use- fulness, to remain in Calcutta so long as life should be granted to him. When he left the ship in Table Bay, /T-t. 57. THEN AND NOW. 399 he was warmly cheered both by soldiers and sailors. Those who had been admitted to the high privilege of nearer acquaintance with him felt that the weeks he had spent on board had been truly 'a time of refresh- ing ' both intellectually and spiritually." In the brief ship journal which Dr. Duif kept, we have these traces of his musing and his working : — Monday, 2lst December, 1863. — " To-day, about noon, had the last glimpse of Saugar Island, i.e. in reality of India. I remember my first glimpse of it iu May, 1830. How strangely different my feelings then and now ! I was then entering, iu total ignorance, on a new and untried enterprise ; but strong- iu faith and buoyant with hope, I never wished, if the Lord willed, to leave India at all ; but by a succession of providen- tial dealings, I had to leave it twice before, and now for tho third and last time. It has been the scene of my greatest trials and sufferings, as also, under God, of my greatest triumphs and joys. The changes — at least some of the more noticeable ones — were stated in my reply to the Missionary Conference. My feelings now are of a very mixed character. The sphere of labour now left had become at once familiar and delightful. If health be restored, my future is wrapped in clouds and thick darkness. I simply yield to what I cannot but believe to bo the leadings of Providence, which seem to peal in my ears, 'Go forward ! ' and from the experience of the past my assured hope is, that if I do go forward, in humble dependence on my God, ' light will spring up in my darkness.' I began my labours iu 1830 literally with nothing. I leave behind me the largest, and, in a Christian point of view, the most successful Christian Institution in India, a native Church, nearly self-sustaining, with a native pastor, three ordained native missionaries, besides — with catechists and native teachers — flourishing branch mis- sions at Chinsurah, Bansbaria, Culna, Mahanad, etc. For all this, I desire to render thanks to the good and gracious God, Whose I am, and Whom I am bound to serve with soul, body and spirit, which are His. '' Some periods of my career were very stormy ones, especially the first and second. During the first I was in perpetual hostile collision with natives, who abused and insulted mo ({.OO LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1863. beyond measui'e in private and in tlie newspapers ; and also with Eui'opeans, such as the ultra-orientalists^ relative to the basis of education and its lingual media; and the lawyers, such as Longueville Clarke^ on the rights of conscience in inquirers under legal age. During the second period I was still in violent conflict with all classes of natives on a vast variety of subjects. At one time some of ' the lewd fellows of the baser sort/ beaten down in argument, and confounded in their attempts to confute Christianity and de- stroy the Chi'istian cause, entered into a conspiracy against my life. Lateeals or clubmen were hired to waylay and beat me in the streets. A timely discovery and exposure of the whole prevented execution. With the Governor-General, Lord Auck- land, I came into violent collision on the subject of education, and all the hosts of officials, secular journalists, and worldlings joined in one universal shout against me, of dei-ision, scorn, con- tempt and indignation. Under all these oppositions I simply endeavoured to possess my soul in patience ; and conscious of the rectitude of my motives, and having a conscience void of offence toward God and man, I prayed God, in due time and in His own way, to vindicate the right and enable me to love my enemies. The third period of my sojourn has been less stormy ; and, praised be God ! I now leave India in the happy assurance that in ways unspeakably gracious, and on my part undeserved. He has * made even my enemies to be at peace with me.' Oh, what shall I render unto the Lord for all His goodness ? "At the close of 1833 I was for thi*ee weeks in a pilot brig at these Sandheads, while recovering from a severe jungle fever, with my dearest and then only child, who also was suffering from ague. To the south of Kedjeree we saw the Duke of Yoric East Indiaman of 1,500 tons high and di'y in a rice field, having been carried there in the tremendous cyclone of the preceding May, — perhaps the severest on record. The embankments were everywhere broken down. The sea rolled inland for scores of miles. Myriads perished. In some parts, as we passed we saw poor emaciated mothers offering to us their skeleton-like children for a handful of rice. The whole of Saugar Island was seven or eight feet under water. Plantations, cleared at a great expense, were de- stroyed; and for years afterwards salt and not rice was the ^t. 57. DEATH OF A MISSIONARY'S WIFE. 4OI product. They are only now tolerably recovered. In carry- iii<^ on the draining, European suporlutendents resided in bun- galows, raised ten or twelve feet from the ground, to escape malaria, wild beasts, etc. Monday, 2St}i,. — " Yesterday, and especially to-day, had much enjoyment in my own soul. Tho first three chapters of the E2)istle to the Romans appeared more wonderful than ever in tiieir delineation of man's fearful apostasy from God, his utter helplessness and hopelessness, and the unspeakably glorious remedy in the unspotted righteousness of Christ. This illus- trates to my own mind the true doctrine of Scripture develop- ment. It is not the revelation of any new truth, but the un- folding of truth already there, in new connections and new applications, showing in this new expansion of it (as it appears to the more hi^^lily illumined soul) a breadth and extent of significancy not previously discerned. Thursday, Slst. — " The last day of the year. What a year to me ! In some respects the most memorable of my life ; for in it, in a way unexpected, the Lord, by His overruling provi- dence, has not only altered but reversed the cherished purpose of thirty-four years, which was to live and labour and die in India. Having already, in many forms, expressed my mind on this subject, I shall say no more now, but this : * Oh, may the Lord make it increasingly clear to me that I am really doing His will — really seeking, in sole obedience to His will, to pro- mote His glory ! ' January Isf, 1864. — "God in mercy grant that this year may unfold more clearly to ray own mind and inward and outward experience His gracious purpose in blasting the cherished wishes and purposes of my whole ministerial life. What work, O Lord, hast Thou in store for me wherewith to glorify Thy holy name ? Oh for light on this still dark and most perplexing subject ! But I wait, O Lord ! — I wait — I wait on Thee. Tuesday, 19fh. — " The sea tempestuous — half a gale. I could not go to Mrs. Ellis as usual between 10 and 11 a.m. At noon made an eflFort to see her. She had suddenly become worse, and the captain wished me to tell her her case was critical. T could do so with all confidence, for previous conversations with her showed that she was a true follower of the Lamb. Calmly and resignedly to His holy will she spoke, placing her whole VOL. II. D D 402 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1864, trust and confidence in Him, and in Him alone. 'Justified/ she said, ' by His blood/ slie had nothing to fear for her- self, though she feelingly alluded to her husband, her mother and sisters at home, and two youug children aboard. Soon after I left her I was obliged again to lie down, and was pros- trated the whole day and evening. She died, or rather fell gently asleep in Jesus, about eleven o'clock last night, and this morniug at a quartei'-past seven was most solemnly consigned to the deep, in her case looking with assured hope to the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead. The captain read the Englisli service, and all present were affected even to tears. The presence of the two children, too young to know their loss, touched the hearts of all. 21st. — '^This forenoon another soldier died of dysentery, and in half an hour after was consigned to the deep. Captain Strange reading the funeral service. I had been seeing hitn daily of late; he was very ignorant — could not read. I again and again reiterated the simple principles of the gospel, and prayed with him, but without much satisfaction. To encounter the languor, weakness, and pains of a death-bed, ignorant of the very elements of the gospel ! oh, it is a lamentable con- dition indeed. Captain Strange is a very worthy kind-hearted man, particularly attentive to all the wants of the soldiers, temporal and spiritual. 2orc?. — " About 200 miles north of Madagascar. Last night very sleepless. Milton and Cowper, my favourite poets, read as a balm, acted on my turbid spirits somewhat like the spicy breezes from Araby the Blest on the senses or imagination of the old mariners. It is the rare combination of genuine poetiy with genuine piety which achieves this result. Being now south of the Mozambique Channel, the wind has changed from S.E. to N.E,, and is warmer. The term Mozambique reminds one of the adroitness with which Milton drags every- thing which constituted the knowledge of his time, by way of similitude, illustration, or otherwise, into his wondrous song. Referring to Satan's approach to Paradise — delicious Para- dise— and to the way in which he was met and regaled by * gentle gales,^ which, ' fanning their odoriferous wings, dis- pense native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole those balmy spoils,' he thus proceeds : ^t. 58. COASTING KAFFKARIA. 403 ' Ah, when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Ilcipn, and now are past Mozanibio, oif at sea north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the sjiicy shore Of Arab}' the Blest, with sucli delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.' 27th. — " Last niG:ht saw two lio^lits in the direction of the land. A stellar observation showed Ave were opposite BufTalo River and Mountains. To-day off the eastern extremity of Algoa Bay, so that I must go back the whole distance traversed this raorniug, our Mission stations being in Kafifraria, east of the Keiskamma River. 29fk. — " At noon exactly off Cape Agiilhas, the most south- erly point of Africa. With my binocular, Darand's parting gift, the lighthouse seen with great clearness. The coast high, bleak, rugged, barren, recalls the exclaination of one of the Scottish emigrants under Mr. Pringle, who arrived in 1820, somewhat farther to the west, near Simon^s Bay : * Hech, sirs, but this is an ill-favoured and outlandish-looking country. I wad fain hope, that thae hieland hills and muirs are no a fair sample o' our African location.^ The dazzling white masses of sand — white as the driven suow — painfully remind me of Dassen Island, on which we were wrecked, 13th Feb., 1830 surrounded, except at one point, by low rocky reefs, and itself a waste of white sand, in which the penguins lay their eggs, and on which wo mainly subsisted for about three days ! Praised be God for our wonderful deliver- ance then, and our continued preservation ever since ! I approach the termination of my present voyage with peculiar feelings — knowing no one at Cape Town, a joui'Dey inland of 700 miles before me, with not a glimpse of light, as yet, on the course to be pursued. But I approach in faith, because in the path of duty, humbly trusting that, when the time comes, light will arise on my darkness, to the praise and glory of a good, gracious, covenant-keeping God ! 30th. — " A furious south-easter ! Happily we had turned the Cape, so that the vessel was kept close on to the shore. At dawn we were a little to the south of Table Mountain, the loftiest of that wild and rugged mountain mass which stretches from Table Bay to the Cape, against which, as a 404 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1864. mighty breakwater, the stupendous billows of the confluence of all the great oceans for ever dash and roar. The wind being off land the sea was comparatively smooth, while the gale blew with the force of a hurricane. All around the sky- was cloudless, except the summit of Table Mountain, which was covered as usual with a dense mass of clouds, its famous table-cloth. The whole scene was singularly grand. The waves rolling and curling and breaking into spray, and the spray whirled aloft by the furious gusts, gave the appearance all around of a dazzling white mist ; and dashing on the rocks that line the shore seemed to cover them with an elevated bank of foam and vapour, the mountain behind looking down in vast precipices, and towering aloft: into mid-air, in rounded tops, or conical peaks, or rugged serrated ridges. At last the sun breaking through the upper edges of the clouds over the Table Mountain, and shining down on shore and sea, gave such a profusion of lights and shades and colours, as no pencil could adequately portray. When fairly abreast of Table Moun- tain we could not be above half a mile from the shore. To the north-west of the Table Mountain, and separated by a high pass, is the singulai'ly shaped hill which, as seen from Table Bay, resembles a gigantic lion couchant — the southern terminus of it called the Lion's Head, and the northern. Lion's Rump. When close under the head this morning, it looked like a mighty mitre (of cardinal or pope) resting on a dome-like cranium. On the rump we could see the signal flag. Below the rump, at its northern extremity, is Green Point, covered with beautiful villas and gardens; passing it, the whole of Cape Town, embosomed in the vast cul de sac or corrie of the mountain came into full view. The instant we rounded the point, the wind, which was strong enough before, blew with double fury across the level open between Table Bay and False Bay. But by skilful zigzag tacking the captain beat his way into the anchorage, in the very face of the hurricane fury of the south-easter, casting anchor exactly at half-past eight a.m. I felt impelled at once to enter my closet, shut the door, and return unfeigned thanks to my heavenly Father for the prosperous voyage to this place. Exactly on the evening of this day six weeks I embarked at Calcutta. What reason of gratitude have I for all God's mercies ! The servant who was wont to attend on me tapped at my cabin door, saying .^t. 58. AT CAPE TOWN AGAIN. 405 that a gentleman from the shoi'o wanted to see mo. It was about five minutes to nine, and wo had not been anchored quite half an hour. Who should it prove to be but the Rev. Mr. Morgan, minister of the established Scotch Kirk, to take me to his manse.'' To His Wife. '' Genadenihal, Moravian Mission, ISth Feb., 18G4. "This is the thirty- fourth anniversary, alike according to the day of the week, the day of the month and the hour of the night, of our ever memorable shipwreck on Dassen Island. How different my position this evening, in South Africa ! Comfortably lodged with the Moravian Brethren in this far- famed village, — the oldest and most populous of all South African Mission stations, — I feel, as it were, forced by the very contrast, to realize more vividly the night scene of thirty-four years ago on these South African shores. What changes and events have been crowded into these thirty-four years ! And yet, contrary to all ordinary expectation, both of us still, by God's mercy, in the land of the living, to celebrate Jehovah's loving- kindnesses. Oh, for a live coal from the altar to kindle up this naturally cold and languid heart of mine, so constantly apt to sink back into sluggishness and apathy, into a glow of seraphic fervour, in the review of God's unspeakable mercies ! " In order to see something of the working of other Missions, I soon resolved to proceed to KafFraria by the ordinary land route. The distance is about 700 miles — about the distance from John o'Groat's House to Land's End in Cornwall. This implied my getting a wagon and eight mules. All this prepar- ation occupied nearly a week, during which I saw many of the Cape Town notabilities. The Bishop and Dean, etc., called on me. The Ilouble. Mr. Rawson (whose acquaintance I made in Calcutta in 1819,) the Colonial Secretary, was so pressing in his invitation, that I went out with him to his beautifully situated house at Wynberg, and stayed over the night. The next day he took me to call on some of the notables of the place ; taking lunch with the Bishop, and I also went out to spend good part of a day with Dr. Adamson. Old Mr. Saunders is still living, and full of inquiries about you. " On Saturday, 6th Feb., I went by train (for there is a rail- way line of fifty-eight miles, to Wellington, N.E. of Cape Town) to St'^llcubosch, thirty-one miles. There I stayed with Mr. 406 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1864. Murray, one of tlie professors of the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Eeformed Church. His uncle was the late Dr. Murray, of the Free Church, Aberdeen. There saw the Wesleyan and Rhenish Mission schools, etc. Monday 8th, went by rail on to Wellington, its utmost limit. There saw a French mission. On Tuesday I went by covered cart, across a striking pass to Worcester, upwards of forty miles distant. There I stayed with Mr. Murray, minister of the Dutch Church, and brother of the professor, both most able and devoted men. There saw the Ehenish Mission schools. Wednesday, returned to Stellenbosch. Thursday, went out with Professor Murray to Piniel, twelve miles off, to see an independent self-sustain- ing mission, under a Mr. Stegman, who is in connection with no society. " To Eerse River, where I expected to find my wagon waiting for me. There finding all right, after breakfast I set off, in a S.B. direction and close to False Bay, crossed a loffcy pass, called Sir Lowry Cole's Pass after the governor who sent the sloop of war to take us from Dassen Island. The custom in travelling here is, at the end of two or three hours, to stop and unyoke the animals (or, according to Colonial Dutch phraseology, to outspan), let them take a roll in the sand, and browse about, and drink water, for an hoar. Towards evening came to a small inn, the only one between Cape Town and Genadenthal. I did not like the look of it ; so the evening being dry and weather pleasant I slept in my wagon. On Saturday I proceeded to Genadenthal, and the Moravian missionaries with their children and higher students were out in a green hollow, with carts, waiting to salute me.'' Christian Missions in South and East Africa are the offspriug of those in India. It was Ziegenbalg, the first Protestant missionary to India, who, after a passing visit to the Cape in 1705, induced the United or Moravian Brethren to evangelize those whom the Datcli called Hottentots. Georg Schmidt, a Bohe- jnian Bunj^-an, was no sooner freed from his six years' imprisonment for Christ's sake, than, in 1737, he went out to Cape Town. He was with difficulty allowed by the Dutch to begin his mission in Affenthal, in the ALt 5S. MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE IN AFRICA. 407 lulls eiglity miles to the east. There he did such a work in the " valley of apes " that a Dutch Governor long after changed its name to the " valley of grace," or Genadenthal. The Boers banished him to Holland, and it was loft to the British to boorin missions anew. What Zicgcnbalg had urged Henry Martyn repeated. Standing beside Sir David Baird, as, in 1806, the British flag a second time waved over the Dutch fort, the evangelical missionai'y-cha[)laiu of the East India Company prayed " that the capture of the Cape might be ordered to the advancement of Christ's kingdom." From Genadenthal the great liirht radiated forth, east and north, amid the wars and butcheries which it would have anticipated, till now, after three-quarters of a century, a sixth of the whole population of South Africa, up to the Zambesi, is Christian. There are 180,000 native and 358,000 colonist Christians.* From south to north, from the Cape to the Nile mouths, an ever strengthening chain of missionary stations now draws Africa to Christ. Dr. DufF went to Africa to inspect those of his own Church, which had begun in KafFraria in 1821, after the Kaffirs had been driven north behind the Keis- kamma. Divided, after the Disruption of 1843, between the Free and the United Presbyterian Churches, por- tions of which still imagine the existence of a purely metapbysical difference of opinion on the subject of the relation of the Church to the State, these Missions must be united asfain before there can be an indio-enous Kaffir Church. Dr. Duff began, as his letters show, by personally inspecting and stimulating, while he learned experience from, all the Missions along the great trunk route east from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, north-east by Grahamstown to King Williamstown * 8vdh Afiica and its M!isiuu FieJch, by Rev. J. E. Carlyle. 1878. 4o8 LIFE OF DK. DUFF. 1864. and the stations in British Kaffraria, then north through the Orange Free State, and then east again into Natal. The time was three years before the first diamond was found. The season was unusually wet but cool. At Port Elizabeth the Eastern Provinces Herald thus reported how he met with the sailor who had saved his wife's life in the memorable ship- wreck : " Mrs. Duff would have perished but for the dauntless bravery of the second mate. Singularly enough when Dr. Duff visited this port he happened to be here also, and no sooner did he know of the arri- val of the veteran missionary than he hurried to the Rev. Mr. Rennie's house once more to see him. The meeting was very aflectiug. Dr. DufF being unable to conceal his emotion at so unexpectedly beholding tlie preserver of his wife." The second mate had become Captain Saxon. Ecclesiastically all South Africa was in a commotion, not for the christianization of the forty or fifty mil- lions of Kaffirs, but because of sacerdotal and also evangelical struggles between Bishop Gray, claiming to be Metropolitan of Africa, and Dr. Colenso, insisting on remaining Bishop of Natal. But for the sacer- dotalism involved, the defence of Christian truth by Bishop Gray, and especially by Dean Douglas, after- wards Bishop of Bombay, would demand the unqualified gratitude of the whole Church. On the evangelical side of it Dr. Duff was so strongly drawn to Bishop Gray that he wrote to him several letters, two of which appear in the prelate's Biography. " Among the many letters of the period, the Bishop," writes his son, " was pleased with one from Dr. Alexander Duff, a well-known Free Kirk missionary from India, who was at that time travelling in Africa. ' Since my arrival,' he says, ' I have been perusing, with painful yet joyous interest, the trial of the Bishop of Natal for ^t. 58. THE TRIAL OF BISHOP COLENSO. 409 erroneous teaching, painful because of the erroneous teaching, joyous because of the noble stand made by your lordship and the clergy at large for true primitive apostolic teaching.' " Again, from Maritzburg, where he heard the Bishop's charge. Dr. Duff repeated his expressions of sympathetic appreciation. But we know, from a conversation which we had with him immedi- ately on his return from Africa, that he did more than this. At Wyuberg, where the Bishop and he sat up a whole night discussing the history and cause of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, Dr. Duff demonstrated to the sacerdotal Metropolitan, who had denounced " the Privy Council as the great Dagon of the English Church," that the spiritual independence inalienable from any Church w^orthy of Christ's name and spirit is not, and was not in the Free Church struggle, the supremacy of priests and prelates who un- church others by the fiction of " the grace of orders," but the right of the whole body, lay and clerical, as a kingdom of priests unto God, to worship Him, and administer all purely spiritual affairs solely according to conscience and without interference by the State, which has no jurisdiction there whether it endow the Church or not. "Hence," said Dr. Duff to a prelate of whom the High Church party are proud though they still lack the courage of their convictions, " your remedy is secession, with its initial sacrifice of state support and social prestige." The practical commentary on Dr. Duff's teaching was the action of Dean Douglas, whose indictment of Bishop Colenso in the metropoli- tan's court is a master-piece of evangelical theology. Yet when Bishop of Bombay he publicly declared that there could be no true or acceptable Christianity in India which did not flow from himself and those who like himself (and the Latin and Greek Churches) imagine they have " the grace of orders." 4IO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1864.. Dr. Duff began his work as representative of the committee of Foreign Missions, at its principal South African station of Lovedale, on the 17th March, 1864. The station is 650 miles north-east of Cape Town, and forty from King Williarastown. There to the presbytery, in conference, " he gave a long and interest- ing address in a low voice, often speaking in a whisper," according to the local report. The scholarly work of the Rev. W. Grovan, founder of the chief missionary institute in the colony, he broadened and developed, alike on its industrial and educational side, following his Calcutta experience. At that time the Kaffir Christian community of the Lovedale district was 965 strong, of whom 345 were communicants. From Lovedale, nestling in low hills like Moffat, he proceeded to the large station of Burnshill, fifteen miles to the east, among the Amatole mountains, once Sandilli'.s capital, in the very heart of the scenes of five Kaffir wars. On the eastern side of these hills is the Pirie station, then conducted by the veteran Rev. John Ross, at that time forty years in the field. At all, and at King Williamstown, Peelton, and elsewhere, he preached through interpreters and mastered every detail of the work, putting it in a new position alike for greater efficiency and expansion. Thence he pursued the still long and difficult track through Basutoland with its French Mission stations, delayed by swollen and unbridged rivers and tracks impassable for the rain. But the climate he pronounced as in the main a fine one, in which Europeans enjoy as good health as in Australia. At Queenstown, in April, he saw hoarfrost for the first time for many years. Delayed by natural obstacles, and often tempted to turn back, he wrote from Winburgh in the Orange Free State, " I am content to go on, having only one object supremely in view, to ascertain the state and .'Et. 58. FAREWELL TO SOUTH AFRICA. 4II prospects of things in these regions in a missionary sense, so as to have authentic materials for future guidance if privileged to take the helm of our Foreign Mission affairs." After reaching Maritzburg, where he had much intercourse with Bishop Gray, and being attracted by the success of the Rev. Mr. Allison, at Edendale, he returned by steamer from Port Natal to Cape Town, where he received a public breakfast. Thence he sailed in the Saxon, — named after the second mate of the Lady Holland, — to England, which he reached in July. The fruits of his six months' tour of inspection we shall trace in the consolidation of the old, and the creation of new missionary agencies for Africa. While he had been at work in the south, Livingstone was exploring in the east and the centre of Africa, and both were unconsciously preparing for united action for the christianization of the Kaffir race, from the Keiskamma to the head of Lake Nyassa. As Duff was leaving Natal for the Cape, Livingstone, having completed his great Zambesi expedition of 1858-18('4, was boldly crossing the Indian Ocean to Bombay in the little Lady Nyassa steam launch manned by seven natives who had never before seen the sea. Dr. Duff reached Edinburgh just in time to address the "commission" of the General Assembly, on the 10th August. Speedily he took his way north to his own county of Perth, in order to take part in the ordination of the Rev. W. Stevenson as a mis- sionary to Madras. The city hall could not contain the crowds to whom, after a sermon by John Milne surcharged with his Calcutta experiences, Dr. Duff addressed burning words en zeal in Foreign Missions the evidence of a revived Church. In Aberdeen, whence the Countess welcomed him to Haddo House, he had strength, a week after, to take part in tlio 412 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1864, ordmation of another missionary to Madras. " Not- withstanding his enfeebled health his voice was dis- tinctly heard over the large audience, and his eloquent and seasonable address was listened to with close attention and evident delight," is the record of the local reporters. Soon there arrived from Calcutta intelligence which increased his activity before he was physically equal to the strain. A cyclone, more disas- trous in the destruction of life and property than any he had witnessed or has since been experienced, swept over the mouth of the Ganges on the 5th October. From Calcutta to Mahanad the hurricane levelled not a few of the mission buildings, churches, schools and houses. The Rev. K. S. and Mrs. Macdonald, then in charge, reported that sixty girls in the Calcutta Orphan- age, and their own children, were nearly buried under the ruins of the old house. In a few hours after receiv- ing the news the sympathetic veteran, well knowing all that the disaster involved, organized an effort to raise two thousand pounds, and really sent out five thou- sand. This rash waste of returning strength had its result in his enforced absence from the General As- sembly of 1865; but Dr. Murray Mitchell, who re- presented him, announced a home income for Foreign Missions in the previous year of £27,000, besides £3,000 reported by Dr. James Hamilton to the Synod of the English Presbyterian Church as annually con- tributed for its vio^orous mission in China. At this period, too, Dr. Duff was cheered by the fact that, for the first time in the history of British India, a missionary college — his own — had been formally visited by a Governor-General. Sir John Lawrence had learned, in his Punjab and Mutiny experience, the truth which he thus expressed in a formal repre- sentation to Lord Canning, the first Viceroy : " Sir John Lawrence does entertain the earnest belief that ^t. 58. JOHN LAWRENCES CHEISTIAN TOLICY. 413 all those measures wliicli are really and truly Christian can be carried out in India, not only without danger to British rule, but, on the contrary, with every ad- vantage to its stabihty. Christian things done in a Cliristiau way will never, the Chief Commissioner is convinced, alienate the heathen. About such things there are qualities which do not provoke nor excite dis- trust, nor harden to resistance. It is when unchristian things are done in the name of Christianity, or when Christian things are done in an unchristian way, that mischief and danger arc occasioned. The difficulty is, amid the political complications, the conflicting social considerations, the fears and hopes of self- interest which are so apt to mislead human judgment, to discern clearly what is imposed upon us by Chris- tian duty and what is not. Having discerned this, we liave but to put it into practice. Sir John Lawrence is satisfied that, within the territories committed to his charge, he can carry out all those measures which are really matters of Christian duty on the part of the Government. And, further, he believes that such measures will arouse no danger ; will conciliate instead of provoking, and will subserve to the ultimate diffusion of the truth among the people." The pro- consul of the Punjab, who wrote these words, went further, urging the Viceroy that this policy " be openly avowed and universally acted on throughout the Empire," " so that the people may see we have no sudden or sinister designs, and so that we may exhibit that harmony and uniformity of conduct which befits a Christian nation striving to do its duty." When he himself was called by critical times to the same high, office, his Excellency visited in state and presided at the first examination of Dr. Duff''s college held after he landed, just as he inspected the Government col- leges and presided as Chancellor of the University. 414 LIFB OF DR. DUFF. 1865. What a change from even Lord William Bentiuck's time, — from the days when Macaulay used his Indian experience to dogmatize to Mr. Gladstone on Church and State ! We have not Dr. Duff's letter to the Governor-Gleneral, but this was the simple reply of the Viceroy, whom, as they lately laid him to rest beside Livingstone and Outram and Colin Campbell, in the nave of Westminster Abbey, the Dean most truly pro- nounced to be the Joshua of the British Empire : John Lawrence to Alexander Duef. " February, 1865. — I have had the pleasure of receiving your letter of the olst January, and I am sure that I wish I could liave been of more service to the Free Church Institution than I have been, for it is calculated to do much good among the superior classes of Bengal society. The advances they have made in education since I was a young man are very remark- able, but it is too generally in secular knowledge only. Your Institution seems to be the only one in which a large number have the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Chris- tian religion also, and certainly, if we can judge from outward appearances, they have not neglected to do so." Now that Dr. Duff was fairly and permanently in Scotland, he felt that the time had come to lay broad and deep in his own country and Church the founda- tions of that missionary enterprise to which he re- garded all his previous home campaigns as prepara- tory. Here, as in India, he must leave behind him a system based on and worked by living principles, Avhich would grow and expand and bless the people long after he was forgotten. Financially his quarterly associations were well, but they would be worthless if not fed by spiritual forces and not directed by spiritual men. And he had learned, even in the first year after his return, to be weary of the narrow controversies and sectarian competition which, though inseparable from such a time of transition as that through which jr.t. 59. HIS MTSSIONABT PROPAGANDA. 415 Scotland, like nil other countries, is passing to a re- constructed Kirk, are hostile to catholic energy and spiritual life. So he determined to launch his scheme of a Missionary Propaganda — of a professorship of Evangelistic Theology, a practical Missionary Insti- tute, and a Missionary Quarterly Review. No building is so familiar to the eyes of the many English and Americans who annually winter in Rome as the Collegio di Propaganda Fide. Standing on one side of the Piazza di Spagna, fronted by that hideous specimen of modern statuary which was erected by Pio Nono to commemorate the myth of the Immacu- late Conception, the college looks like a desolate bar- rack or theatre, out of which long files of youths march every morning and evening for a little fresh air. Yet, unattractive as is the building designed by Ber- nini, and forbidding the whole aspect of the place, there is no spot in Rome so full of modern interest and so free from all that Protestants are accustomed to dislike in the long papal capital. Two centuries and a half ago the fifteenth Gregory founded that col- lege, to be the nurse of missionaries and the retreat of scholars from all parts of the earth. There, in lan- guages more numerous than those in which the public are invited to confess to the priests who flit about St. Peter's, youths of almost every tribe and nation and kingdom and tongue are fitted to go forth to tell the story of the Cross — and something more, unfortunately — to the heathen world. A. library of thirty thousand volumes, rich in oriental manuscripts and works bearing on the superstitions of man's reli- gions, supplies an armoury for the student. The Museo Borgia, which boasts a portrait of the infamous Popj Alexander VI. side by side with the famous Codex Mexicanus, contains specimens of the idols, the arts and the industries of every country in the world 4l6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1865. from China to Peru. And the Propaganda is com- pleted by the possession of a printing establishment, which turns out works in almost every language, of rare typographical beauty as well as considerable scholarship. There, under professors who are them- selves generally returned missionaries, upwards of a hundred and twenty youths are always under training to work in that field which is the world, whose har- vests are ever white for the sickle which there are so few reapers to wield. Duff had long been fascinated by the idea of a nur- sery of evangelists, from lona and the capitular bodies of the old cathedrals to that tolerated for a time by the Dutch under WaljBus at Leyden, in 1612, and to the great creation of Gregory XV. in 1622. Nor should it be forgotten that " the philosophic missionary," the pioneer of all martyr-missionaries in Africa, Raymond Lull, had implored the Pope and the princes of Europe to found Christian propagandas. In 1311 he obtained from the Council of Vienna a decree for their estab- lishment in the Universities of Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca; while, in his own Majorca, he procured the foundation of a monastery for the instruction of thirteen students in Arabic and the Muhammadau controversy. When Cromwell used to play with the proposal to make him king, he declared to the Grison, Stoupe, whom he used as a trusty agent in foreign affairs, that he would " commence his reign with the establish- ment of a council for the Protestant religion," in opposition to Gregory's Propaganda, which had pro- duced the slaughter of the Vaudois and Milton's sonnet. In old Chelsea College the council were to train men, and from it they were to help in the evan- gelization, of Scandinavia and Turkey, of the East and West Indies, as well as of the Latin Church. In Ait. S9- ^ UISSIONAKY PEOFESSORSHIP. 417 1677 Dr. Hyde would Lave made Christ Churcli, Oxford, a " Collegium de Propag-atida Fide." The father of all Christian scientists, Robert Boyle, when an East India director, revised the project for India which Prideaux adv^ocatcd under the reign of William in 1G94. And, so long ago as 1716, one of the earlier chaplains of the East India Company, Mr. Stevenson, urged the establishment of colleges in Europe to train missionaries and to teach them the lanofuao-es. *' When passing through the theological curricu- lum of St. Andrews," said Dr. Duff to the General Assembly, " I was struck markedly with this circum- stance, that throughout the whole course of tlie curri- culum of four years not one single allusion was ever made to the subject of the world's evangelization — the subject which constitutes the chief end of the Christian Church on earth. I felt intensely that there was something wrong in this omission. According to any just conception of the Church of Christ, the grand function it has to discharge in this world cannot be said to begin and end in the preservation of internal purity of doctrine, discipline and government. All this is merely for burnishing it so as to be a lamp to give light not to itself only but also to the world. There must be an outcome of that light, lest it prove useless, and thereby be lost and extinguished. Why has it got that light, but that it should freely impart it to others ? Years afterwards, on the banks of the Ganges, we heard that this Free Church had determined to set up its Hall of Theology, and that Dr. Welsh had succeeded so remarkably in procuring funds — thanks to those who have been so liberal since, the merchant princes of Glasgow ! — that besides the ordinary theo- logical chairs, there were to be chairs of Natural Science, Logic, and Moral Philosophy, all demanded by the peculiar necessities of the times. I could not VOL. IT. E E 41 8 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1866. help feeling tliat now was tlie time for advancing a step farther, and on the spur of the moment was led to write to my noble friend Dr. Gordon, the Convener of the Indian Foreign Missions, to the effect, that surely this was the time and occasion for setting up a chair for Missions — in short, a Missionary Professor- ship ; that as the Free Church in her General Assembly had started as a missionary church, her New College should start as a missionary college. On my second return from India I talked of the subject to various in- fluential men in the Church, amongst others to the late Dr. Cunningham, who approved highly of the object ; but even he did nob think the time was ripe for it. Crossing the Atlantic, I was wont to talk of it much to our friends in America ; and there was one Synod of the Presbyterian Church there that agreed to instruct its professor of theology to make this a distinct sub- ject of his prelections, namely to lecture on Evangelistic Theology ; and that is the only lectureship of the kind that I know of. On my last return from India I felt intensely, looking at the state of the country generally, that there was still much need of such a professorship, and perhaps the more need, because the world is more agitated and restless than ever, and young men more flighty, because of the multitude of secular open- ings in every direction." An endowment of £10,000 was at once supplied for the chair by men of various evangelical Churches. When the General Assembly of 1867, with whom the appointment of the first professor rested, could not agree as to which of two experienced missionaries, from Calcutta and Bombay, should be appointed to it, Dr. Duff was most unwillingly compelled to accept the appointment by the unanimous call of his Church. The donors, while sharing his enthusiasm, had desired to honour him by calling the chair by his name. This Ait. 60. CORRESrONDENCE WITH MH. II. M. MATIIESON. 4I9 at least he prevented. They secured tteir personal as well as missionary object far more effectually, as tlicy •and lie thought, by stipulating only that the professor- ship should be of the status, and be devoted to the subjects his irresistible statement of which had led them to supply the capital of the endowment. Other- wise the money was made over unconditionally to the General Assembly, and by Dr. Duff as the representa- tive of the donors — of whom ho himself was one — without legal document and so accepted by the Assem- bly in the act legislatively creating the professorship, " with consent of a majority of presbyteries." Dr. Duff was so jealous, in his Master's cause, of attempts made by a few ministers and professors to minimise the chair as novel to or inconsistent with the theological course of Protestant — and up to his own time non-missionary Churches — that immediately be- fore the meeting of that General Assembly he thus took care to secure the deliberate co-operation and formal consent of the donors. All have survived him, and their strong opinions in favour of the continuance of the chair as he devised it are known to his Church. These letters to the largest of the donors, H. M. Mathe - son, Esq., have been submitted to us by that generous elder of the Presbyterian Church of England. "11th May, 1867. ''My Dear Mr. Matueson, — . . As regards the mis- sionary professorship — to my own mind it is most perplexing, and despite all my endeavours and prayers fills me with an anxiety that is well nigh crushing and overwhelming, (1) I know not what your views are with regard to the proposal emanating from many quarters, that the chair should be left open to the appointment of a home minister as well as a foreign missionary. Some of the contributors, I know^ would decidedly object to this, except in a case, not likely I hope evoi- to arise, viz., the Church's declaring that, among all her foreign 420 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1867. missionaries, retired or in the field, there was not one , reasonpbly competent to fill it. And (2) I know not what your views are with reference to another proposal, which has gained extensive favour, viz., that, after the first appointment, it would be left open to make all subsequent ones only tempo- rary, or for a few years — thus reducing the professorship to a lectureship, and depriving the occupant of the chair of that accumulating influence over students and others which the status of a professor and long experience undoubtedly give. Some of the contributors, I know, would object to such an innovation in the case of the missionary chair. And I confess it is altogether different from my own understanding of the subject when applying to parties for contributions. Now if the Church were to sanction either or both of these proposals, and any of the contributors were to object, and decline to give their moneys unless the proposals were set aside, you can see what a dilemma we should be in, and how harassing such a dilemma to my own mind. 20th May. — " I have no words wherewith to express my in- debtedness to you for the relief which your letter, received this morning, has afi'orded to my sorely burdened spirit. My own trust, all along, has been in a good and gracious God. I could not but believe that the cause was His ; and I had some- thing of an assurance that, if so. He would not suffer it, in the end, to be wholly defeated. And yet, in spite of all this I could not, in the hour of nature's weakness, amid apparently insuperable difficulties, help being filled with anxieties, and that too in very proportion to the greatness and goodness of the cause which seemed on the verge of shipwreck. You may judge then of the relief which such a letter as yours at once afibrded me. I could not help falling down on my knees to thank God for it ; and the very first words which came into mind were literally these : ' 0 thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ? ' In the course of my own strangely chequered life I have had so many palpable answers to prayer, that I now feel deeply under a sense of the sin and shame of having, for a moment, given way to unbelieving doubts at all in connection with a cause that so vitally concerns the honour and cause of the adorable Saviour. 2ht]t May. — '^ I have to thank you for your last kind note ; but delayed replying to it till I could report definitely on tho JEt. 6i. FIKST PROFESSOR OF MISSIONARY THEOLOGY. 42 1 two points previously alluded to. Having now seen Candlisli, Buchanan and other leaders, I am warranted to say tliat all are of one mind on the subject ; and that, in some suitable way, provision will be made to ensure in all time coming the appointment of an experienced foreign missionary to the chair, and that it shall be a pi'ofessorship for life. All this I have now reason to believe will be satisfactorily secured. . . As it is, all, I find, are hearty in carrying it out ; and for the most part according to the expressed wishes of the contributors. There is therefore now no occasion, I am happy to say, for your coming to Edinburgh. 27th May. — "To-day the professorship affair came on. The two points were conceded, the election was made, and, to my own sur]3rise, I am now the professor ! Oh, for grace to guide, dii'ect and uphold me ! " Were it not for your timely interposition it is impossible that the matter could have been concluded as it has been. To you, therefore, under God I feel pre-eminently indebted, though the cause is not mine but the Lord Jesus Christ^s. Being wearied I can say no more now, having been out from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m." One circumstance which reconciled Dr. Duff to the toil of not only preparing lectures for the chair, but of delivering them in the three colleges, in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, every winter, was this, that he saved the whole salary for the foundation of the second portion of his most catholic project, the Missionary Institute. For he refused to touch any income as professor, or as convenor of the Foreign Missions Committee, being content with the modest revenue from the Duff Missionary Fund. The bulk of that, even, he used to give away on the rule of systematic beneficence, of which he had always been the eloquent advocate. The Institute, as described by himself in his inaugural lecture to the students on the 7th November, 1867, still remains to be established by the ministers, elders, and members of the evangelical Churches who, under Lord Polwarth, have recently 422 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 86 7. drafted its constitation as the best memorial of him. The Missionary Quarterly, apart from the denomina- tional or official record of each church and society, he did not live to see. Planned under the editorship of Canon Tristram, with promises of assistance from a most competent literary and missionary staff repre- senting all the Churches, the much desired Quarterly does not seem to have found catholicity enough at home for its vigorous support. But in the East the Indian Evangelical Review, a quarterly journal of mis- sionary thought and effort, has for seven years done well for all the Church catholic abroad the work which is far more needed by the Church divided at home. But though the Institute and the Quarterly still await Christian statesmanship in Great Britain, like the united college which he proposed in 1832 in Cal- cutta, and charity like his own to establish them, he took care that the professorship, of which he was himself one of the founders, should not be tampered with when he could no longer guard their rights. The Assembly having legislatively created the professor- ship, he did not rest until the same supreme court of his Church in the same way made attendance on the lectures in evangelistic theology part of the course essential for licence and ordination. When the present writer was one of the Assembly's commissioners for the quinqiiennial visitation of the New College, Dr. Duff prepared a scheme for the development of the chair, so, as to enable it to cover the whole subject of com- parative religion, or the science of religion, or the relation of the faiths of the non-Christian world to the Divine revelation of God in Christ. This, indeed, he had sketched in his inaugural lecture as the fourth of the nine parts of a collegiate course of evangel- istic theology. Honoured to be the first of the Re- formed Churches to make theology in its relation to ALt. 6 1. THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION. 423 the creeds and cults of beatliendom a compulsory part of its eight years training of students of divinity, the Free Church of Scotland has the opportunity of making its academic course still more complete in the appointment of Dr. Duff's successor in the chair. CHAPTER XXVI. 1867-1878. NEW MISSIONS AND TEE RESULTS OF HALF A CENTURY'S WORK. Missions on the Hortatory Method. — David's Example and Syste- matic Beneficence. — The Gonds of Central India. — Sir Richard Temple and Stephen Hislop. — The Santals of the Bengal Up- lands.— Karayan Sheshadri's Rural Mission. — Bethel and Sir Salar Jung. — IMiesion Buildings and Salaries. — Correspondence with Lord Northbrook on English Education. — United Christian College of Madras. — Dr. Duff at the Church Mission's Com- mittee.— The Communion of Saints and Missionary Faith. — The Anglo-Indian Christian Union. — Letter from Lord Lawrence. — Drs. Duff and Lumsden visit the Lebanon. — Relation of the Mission to the Presbyterian Board of the United States. — Exten- sion of Kaffraria.n Mission to the Trauskei Country. — Natal Missions and Sir Peregrine Maitland. — James Allison. — Dr. Dutf and the Aberdeen Family. — A Bright Career. — Gordon Memorial Mission to the Zulus. — Dr. Livingstone's Zambesi Project. — Dis- covers Lake Nyassa. — His Letters to the Free Church. — Rev. Dr. Stewart's Proposal. — Dr. Duff Launches the Livingstonia Expedition in 1875. — His Heroic Wish in 1877. — The Unconscious Founder of the New Hebrides Mission. — Dr. William Syming- ton's Diary. — The Immediate Fruit of Forty-nine Years of Mis- sionary Work. Not only as professor of Evangelistic Theology, but as superintendent or, so far as Presbyterian parity allowed, director of the Foreign Missions of his Church, Dr. Daff had the care of all the churches till the day of his death. None the less was he the adviser, referee, and fellow-helper of the other mis- sionary agencies of Great Britain and America. His third of a century's experience of India, what he had learned in his careful tour of inspection in Africa, his ^t. 6 1. CONSOLIDATIUN AND EXTENSIOIJ. 425 personal study of both Europe and America, were henceforth all concentrated on one point — the consoli- dation and extension of the Missions. For this end he ever sought to perfect the internal organization of his own Church, which he had created at what an expenditure of splendid toil we have told. During the two years 1865 and 1866, the records of his office and of the General Assembly, and the newspapers of the day, show that he held conferences with the minis- ters, office-bearers and collectors of each congrega- tion and presbytery over a large part of Scotland, informing, stimulating and often filling them with an enthusiasm like his own. Nothing was too humble, nothing too wearisome for one already sixty years of age, if only the great cause could be advanced. To him a conference meant not a quiet talk but a burning exposition. As in 1866 the ordinary home income reached an annual average of £16,000, and the fees and grants-in-aid united with the subscriptions of Christian people abroad to double that, he felt that the time had come for new missions. He had told the General Assembly of 1865, in his first report, that their committee were " not only in- tensely anxious to strengthen their stakes, but also greatly to lengthen their cords. This can be done in either, or both, of two ways — either by giving larger scope and development to existing operations within the fields already chosen, or by entering on entirely new fields and there breaking up wholly new ground. For the active prosecution of either, or both, of these courses, your committee are prepared, to whatever extent this venerable Assembly may approve, or the Church at large may supply the necessary means. . . Our plan never was intended to be — and, in point of fact, never actually was — a narrow, one-sided, fixed, exclusive plan; but, on the contrary, in its original 426 LIFE Ofc^ Dli. DUFF. iS^?- conception, a broad, all-compreliending plan; only, its breadth and comprehension were to be gradually evolved or unfolded from a rudimental germ — requiring years of growth to exhibit its real nature and design, and whole generations for reaping the full harvest of its ripened fruits. From the very outset the two kindred and reciprocal!}?- auxiliary processes of training the young for varied future usefulness, and addressing the adults, through whatever lingual medium might be found most effective in reaching their understandings and their hearts, were simultaneously carried on, side by side." But he had provided for the development of the colleges through their local support, leaving the whole increased subscriptions of his Church thence- forth to go to " addressing the adults " in the rural districts of India, and in the barbarous lands of Africa and Oceania. To the General Assembly of 1867, in an oration full of his old fire, he thus commended and illustrated the principle on which he had acted all his life and sought to support his whole missionary advance : " The Systematic Beneficence Society is based on the grand principle of holding ourselves responsible to God for all that we have, and that it is our bounden duty to devote a large portion of the income which He may be pleased to give us directly to His cause and for His glory. It does seem strange that the great principle which lies at the root of the Beneficence Society — the grand New Testament principle, the principle of being stewards of God's bounties — should be looked upon by many in these days as if it were a novelty. Why, it is a principle which is at least three thousand years old. We have the grandest exemplifi- cation of it in the history of David in First Chronicles xxix. In that chapter we are told how David poured .-Et. 6i. SYSTEMATIC LENEFICENCE. 427 out of his treasury gold and silver and precious stones ; and when he had set the example which he did, he appealed to his nobles, and they liberally responded. Example is better than precept, and what took place in David's case was just what might have been expected. "What was even more remarkable than the liberality displayed, was the willingness of heart which was shown. In fact, the whole principle of the Systematic Beneficence Society was expounded and acted out by David. If David's principle was acted upon now, instead of the subscriptions from the whole of our members to the Foreign Missions being four- fifths of a farthing for a week, it would be four-fifths of a shilling, and would not stop even there. On one occasion, when in Calcutta, I received a letter from an ofiicer who had served in the Sindh campaign. He had received between three thousand and four thousand rupees as his share of the prize money, I had seen him only once, when he happened to be passing through Calcutta. Having taken him to visit our Institution, he was greatly struck with it. In tliat letter he sent "what he called a tithe of his prize money, amounting to upwards of three hundred rupees, as a thank-offering to God. I thanked him warmly for his liberality ; and in doing so happened to refer to the 29th chapter of Chronicles and 14th verse, stating that it was a blessed thing to have the means of giving, but that it was still more blessed when God was graciously pleased to give us the disposition to part with these means. Some two or three weeks afterwards I received a second letter from the same ofiicer, containing the whole of the rupees which " he had received for his prize money, accompanied with the remark, ' I had often read that chapter and that passage, but it had never struck me in that light before ; and I thank God for putting it into my heart to do as I have done.' 428 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1869. He then desired me to acknowledge the receipt of the sum in a particular newspaper, but stated that I was not to mention his name, but to say that it was from 1 Chronicles xxix. 14. That was not all. When the time arrived that he was able to retire upon a pension, instead of coming home, as many do, to indulge them- selves in luxurious ease and idleness, he entered as a volunteer in the service of his Lord, and became a practical missionary in India, for which his knowledge of the vernacular and his other qualifications emi- nently qualified him ; and I can assure this Assembly that it was a noble work that he rendered. He is, alas ! no more ; but ' his works do follow him.' " The first new mission which "Dr. Duff helped into existence was to the Gronds of Central India. From Nagpore Stephen Hislop had spent many a week ^mong them in their hilly fastnesses, studying their language, taking down their almost Biblical traditions, and telling them of Him to whom their dim legends pointed, the Desire of all nations. When Sir Richard Temple was sent by Lord Canning to rescue the Central Provinces from misrule, Hislop became his guide and friend. The fruit of the missionary's re- searches appeared in one of the most valuable contri- butions to the literature of so-called pre-historic man, his " Papers relating to the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces." As the disciple of John Lawrence Sir R. Temple felt a keen interest in the millions of the rude tribes entrusted to him. On his first furlough thereafter, in August, 1865, he spent some days with Dr. Duff in Edinburgh, who acted as his guide over the city and — as he confessed to us with a twinkle — took him thrice in one day to long Scotch services. The two carefully discussed the subject of a mission to the Gonds, Mr. Hislop's papers on whom had just appeared. The result was the despatch of Mr. Dawson, /El 63. MISSIONS TO ABOlilGINAL TRIBES. 429 from the Nagpore staff, witli the native catcc-hist Hardie, to Cliindwara, as a centre, a liealtby station in the Grond uplands of Deogurh. Gondee has been reduced to writing, and portions of Scripture have appeared in the language. Dr. Duff would foin have sent a missionary to the Sutnamees, the aboriginal sect of theistic worshippers of the "pure name" of God in the cast of the Central Provinces, but that field was soon after supplied by the Germans. Ever since, in 1862, he had wandered over the forest land of the simple Santals, a hundred and fifty miles to the north of the rural missions in Hooghly and Burdwan, he had determined to plant a mission among that section of the people who were not cared for by the Church Missionary Society along the south bank of the Ganges, and by the Baptists on the Orissa and Bchar sides. The Rev. J. D. Don and Dr. M. Mitchell were enabled by him to begin operations at Pachumba in 1869, when the chord line of the East Indian Railway opened up the south country, skirted by the grand trunk road, and under the shadow of the Jain moun- tain of Parisnath. There, under three Scottish mis- sionaries, medical, evangelistic and teaching, in San- talee, Hindee and Bengalee, a staff of convert-cate- chists has been formed and a living native church created. The Santals, whom ojQ&cial neglect, toler- ating the oppression of Bengalee usurers, drove into rebellion in 1855, are coming over in hundreds to the various Churches, and promise to become a Chris- tian people in a few generations. When ritualistic sacerdotalism for a time introduced discord into the neighbouring Church of the Kols of Chota Nagpore, evangelized by the Lutheran missionaries sent out by Pastor Gossner, the proposal was made to Dr. Duff that he should enter on a portion of the field. 430 I^ir^ OP BR. DUPP. 1871. Bat tliougli bis own province, Bengal, enjoyed the least of Dr. Duff's fostering care, from Bombay the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, the first educated Brahman who had joined the Church of "Western India, went boldly forth to evangelize his peasant countrymen and the outcast tribes in the villages around Brahmanical Indapoor, to the south of Poena, and in the country of the Nizam, of which Jalna is a British cantonment. As the catechumens around Jalna increased into a large community, they became perplexed by the denial of hereditary rights in the soil, and by the impossibility in a native principality of enjojdng such sanitary and self- administering institutions as Christianity recommends. A new society had sprung to life from among the cor- ruption of the old, but to have fair play it must have standing ground of its own. Accordingly the Chris- tian Brahman applied to the Arab prime minister of the Muhammadan Nizam of Hyderabad to grant a site to the Hindoo and outcast cultivators and artisans who had become Christ's. The reply was the conces- sion of land rent-free for twenty-five years. There, under the protection of the Jalna cantonment, three miles distant, Narayan Sheshadri has made his village at once a model and a guarantee of what India will yet become. The pretty stone church, named Bethel, • — Hebrew rather than Marathee, — stands in the centre of a square, on either of two sides of which are the public institutions of the young community : manse, schools, hospital, serai, market, smithy, wells. Within a radius of ninety miles are ten large towns, where, and in the intervening country, the catechists of Bethel evangelize their countrymen. The light has shined forth into the adjoining province of Berar, penetrated by the Bombay and Calcutta railway at this end as the Santal country is at the other. No part of his duty gave Dr. Duff greater delight than that of assis.ting ^.t. 65. MISSIONARY ECONOMICS. 43 1 in such an experiraent as tliis, illustrating at once the pi'iuciples of his system and supplying to all India an example for imitation. The expansion of the Missions forced on Dr. DufT the necessity of making a special appeal to the country for a fund to build houses for the missionaries, and substantial schools, in Africa as well as in India, where these did not exist. The task of raising £50,000 for this purpose was almost repulsive to him with his other engngements. But after a deliberate and per- sistent fashion he set himself to it. He conducted a correspondence on the subject which it is even now almost appalling to read. He was zealously aided by members of the committee, and the result was success. The greater part of the money was paid in a few years, and hns now been expended in manses, preaching halls, and schools which place the missionary in the heart of his work, and, for the first time in many instances, surround him by the same sanitary advantages as his countrymen enjoy in the European quarters of Cal- cutta, Boml)ay and Madras. Even before this, the rise of prices in these cities and throughout India, which had begun in the Crimean and culminated in the United States war, compelled the committee to revise the whole scale of salaries. To this, as one who had ever denied himself and who was beginning to live not a little in the past, he was reluctant to turn. He keenly felt the danger of robbing the missionary's life of its generally realized ideal of self-sacrifice for Him who spared not Himself, and so of attracting to the grandest of careers the meanest of men — the merely professional missionary. Few though they were, he had seen such failures in the Lord of the harvest's field. But duty prevailed, and he set about the work with business-like comprehensiveness. After a con- ference of conveners and secretaries, sitting in Edin- 432 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1872. burgh, liad taken evidence and discussed tlie whole subject of missionary economics, he consented that the committee should be asked to sanction an increase somewhat proportioned to the rise of prices. And so, while as convener he left behind him a well- organized missionary staff, he and his committee went no further than the standard of such a subsistence allowance as, by keeping off family care and pecuniary worry, should permit the absorption of the whole man in the divine work. When, in 1872, Lord Northbrook was designated Governor-General, in succession to Lord Mayo whose assassination called forth from Dr. Duff a warm eulogy of that Viceroy, the missionary made a representa- tion to his old friend on the subject of the education despatch of 1854. After a year's experience of his high office, his Excellency thus addressed Dr. Duff: "Government House, Calcutta, January S\st, 1873. "Dear Dr. Duff, — As you were so good as to communicate with me before I left England through Mr. [now Lord] Kinnaird, I feel no hesitation in sending you the enclosed copy of a resolution upon education which will be issued to morrow, and which is the first expression of my views upon educational questions. Matters liave been rather complicated here by some resolutions of the Government of India issued in 1869, which went, in my opinion, too far in the direction of withdrawing Government support fi-om the English colleges, and created great alarm among the educated natives. . . I have tried, while supporting Mr. [now Sir George] Campbell as I am bound to do, especially for his efforts to spread education among the people, and to give a more practical turn to it, to satisfy our native friends that we are no enemies to high English education ; and, in so doing, I have taken the oppor- tunity to repeat the principles laid down in ISSi, especially the position to be held by Sanskrit in the educational scheme. " I have had two very interesting conversations with Dr. Wilson at Bombay. My impression is that there is much room ^t, 66. CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD NORrKBROOK. 433 for improvement in the scTieme for degrees at the Calcutta University, and in the class-books and subjects for the Univer- sity examinations, and I have communicated with the Syndicate who have appointed a committee to inquire into the subject. Another and more serious question has arisen from some particulars which Mr. Murdoch (the secretary in India of the Christian Vernacular Education Society) has brought forward as to the contents of some of the vernacular class-books in the Government schools in M idras. It seemed to me to be very undesirable to direct public attention to this. The manner in which I shall deal with it is to direct an inquiry into the gene- ral suitability of the books used in Government schools, and to communicate confidentially with the different Governments, requesting them to take the opportunity of expurgating tho vernacular school books, if necessary, by the removal of any gross passages. — I am. Yours very sincerely, "NORTHBROOK." "Pattrrdale, Penrith, 30th A2oril, 1873. " Dear Lord Northbuook', — I cannot suflBciently express my thanks to your Loi'dship for writing to me as you have done, amid your heavy cares and anxieties, on the subject of your educational policy. . . Soon after the letter was put into my hands, with the Government resolution on education, a telegram from India announced that your Lordship had delivered a great speech on the subject of education to the Convocation of the Calcutta University. " Let me in a single sentence say that I have read the Government resolution and your Lordship's speech not only with unfeigned but unmingled delight and admiration. In the general views expressed in them — views characterized as much by their wisdom and practical prudence as by their large- ness, comprehensiveness, generosity and liberality — I entirely concur. Indeed, there is scarcely a syllable in either which I could wish to see altered ; and as a friend of India, I do feel cordially grateful to your Lordship for so noble an exposition and so clear an enforcement of great and enlightened principles, such as those so distinctly laid down in the great Educational Despatch of 1854, for the carrying out of which in its full in- tegrity I have always strenuously contended. The proposed VOL. II. F F 434 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1873. mode also of dealing with the question raised by Mr. Murdoch about vernacular class-books and class or text-books, generally appears to me eminently judicious. Tour Lordship will kindly excuse me for presuming to write in this way, but I cannot help it, as it is the joint utterance of head and heart. . . . Rejoicing in the brilliant inauguration of your Lordship's Indian career, and praying that the God of Providence may guide, direct and sustain you under the tremendous responsi- bilities of your exalted office, — I remain. Very gratefully and sincerely yours, "Alexander Dupp." If Lord Nortlibrook's views had continued to pre- vail, like those of all his predecessors, back to Lord William Bentinck's time — save Lord Auckland — there could not have arisen those causes of complaint which have ever since marked the hostility of the educational departments in India to the despatch, and which led Lord Lawrence to unite with the missionary societies in proposals for a protest to the Secretary of State for India. This action of the Governor-General in favour of the catholic principles of 1854, alike in the higher and in primary education, was followed by a most satis- factory development of the Institution at Madras. In 1832 Dr. Duff and the Calcutta Missionary Conference had in vain proposed to their Churches at home to co-operate in the extension of the then infant Institu- tion as a united Christian college, to train students for all the Missions. In 1874 he joyfully received a similar project from Madras for the union of the Free Church, Church Missionary and Wesleyan Societies in the development of its Institution into one well-equip- ped and catholic Christian college for all Southern India. The five years' experiment has proved so suc- cessful an illustration of evangelical unity and educa- tional efficiency that the college is likely to be perma- nently placed under a joint board, representing not ^t. 66. MISSIONARY tJNITY. 435 only these Churches, but the Established Church of Scotland. The essential unity of all evangelical Christians Dr. Duff never rejoiced to exemplify more than along with the Church Missionary Society. He happened to bo in Loudon on the 5th January, 1869, when the general committee had met for the solemn duty of sending forth three experienced missionaries and ministers to India. These were Mr. (now Bishop) French ; the late Rev. J. W. Knott, who resigned a rich living for a missionary's grave ; and Dr. Dyson, of the Cathedral Mission College, Calcutta. Good old Mr. Venn was still secretary. Dr. Kay was then fresh from the learned retreat of Bishops' College on the Ilooghly. General Lake represented the Christian soldier-poli- ticals of the school of the Lawrences. The Maharaja Dhuleep Singh was there to join in supplications for the college to be founded for the training of his country- men to be evangelists, pastors and teachers, in the land of which he was born to be king. Bishop Smith, of China, who presided, closed the proceedings in words like these : '' We have been greatly favoured this day with the presence of so many veterans of the missionary work to say farewell to our brethren, and we have been delighted with the heart-stirring address and missionary fire of the * old man eloquent.' The last time Dr. Daff and I met together was when he bowed the knee with me in my private study at Hong Kong, and offered prayer for us, for we also need sus- taining grace as well as our brethren. Here I find him to-day giving us words of encouragement. Advanced as he is on the stage of life, it is an unexpected plea- sure to see him again ; and we thank God that we have been permitted to listen to him. It is a blessing to meet on occasions such as those, to find that the old missionary fire is not extinct, and to know that 43^ LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1869 the good work is prospering. May it go on until the whole earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord." Dr. Duff, in an impromptu utterance, had thus burst forth under the impulse of fervid affection and of gratitude that not the young and untried but the ablest ministers in England were going up to the high places of the field : "The communioD of saints is a blessed and glorious ex- pression. Ever since I liave known Christ, and believed in Christ for salvation, I have always felt that there is a tie peculiarly binding on the Church of Christ, whatever may be the form of government. Accordingly, I have always felt it an unspeakable privilege to be permitted not only to sympa- thise, but to co-operate in every possible way, with all who love Christ in sincerity and in truth, and will be co-heirs with Him in the glory to be revealed, and rejoice with Him for ever and ever, I cannot understand the grounds of separation between men who are living in the bonds of Christ. . . We do not stand alone. If we did, we should be hopeless. We stand very much in the position of Elijah on Mount Carmel. He stood alone in one sense : he was confronted with four hundred and fifty priests of Baal ; but he felt that he was not alone — that he had one greater and mightier than all that were against him, and his great prayer was to the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, that He might interpose and cause it to be seen and felt that there was a God in Israel, that he was His servant to do these things according to His word. He said, ' Hear me, 0 Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord.' That is our position. We must do all that he did. He prepared the altar and the sacrifice, and said, ' I have done all that I can ; but if I had not done this, how could I look up and pray ? Having done that in accordance with God's word, I can look up and pray.' Let us, then, enter on the mighty work in this spirit, and while we confront the Himalayan masses of superstition and idolatry, let us first, the spirit of Elijah animating us, look up and say, ' O God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.' Yes, ALL 63. A TLEA FOR TUE ABLEST MEN AS MISSIONARIES. 437 we as Christians can do still more. We can say, ' 0 God, tho Father of our Lord Jesus, do Thou interpose in behalf of that great name, and send forth Thy Holy Spirit to accompany our efforts in this work ; ' and the day will come when the fire shall descend and burn up the wood and the stones, and the mountain masses of obstacles, and consume them, and turn spiritual death into life. Yes, the day will come. But are wo doing our part ? are we doing all that we can ? The individual missionary abroad may be doing all that ho can as a mission- ary ; but are the communities that send him forth doing all that they ought to do? If not, I feel intensely you have no warrant, no right to pray for the blessing of God. From what I am constantly reading in my own country, I see that we are making a mere mock in regard to Missions ; that we are simply playing at Missions, and ai'e not doing the proper thing at all in this great country. If we go to war against a great city like Sebastopol — if we want to penetrate into the centre of Abyssinia — what do we do ? We take the best and most skilful and experienced of our brave generals, and our best officers and troops, and we send supplies in such abundance that there can be no want. If we wish to be successful wo must use the means which are adapted to secure success. Now I feel intensely that I am humbled, that we as a people, as Churches and communities, are content with doing just a little, as showing some recognition of a duty, but not putting forth our power and energy, as if we were in earnest, and sending out the ablest and most skiful of our men. We are but trifling with the whole subject. The world is to be evan- gelized. We have eight hundred millions of people to bo evangelized. Here, in Great Britain, we have one minister for every thousand of inhabitants, and yet we are content to send out one for two millions of people, and in China I do not sup- pose there is one for three millions, taking all the societies together. Would we desire to know what we ought to do ? Let us look to the Church at Antioch. When God had a great work to do among the Gentiles, what did He do ? Here is the Church at Antioch, with Barnabas and Simeon, Lucius of Cyrene, and other men of character, but not equal to Paul and Barnabas. Does the Holy Ghost say that Paul and Barnabas, having been the founders of the Church, were indispensable for its prosperity, and you must keep them — Lucius and tho 438 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1870 otTiers will uot be so tnuch missed : send tliem to do tlie work ? No ; He says, ' Separate me Barnabas and Paul ; ' tbe otlier men can carry on the quieter work, and figlit fclie battle witb heathenism if it be needed; the most able and skilled men must go forth on the mighty enterprise — ' Separate me Barna- bas and Paul/ Excuse me for saying this. In this day's meeting, which gladdens my own heart, I see something of this kind of process beginning. We do not want all the ablest men in this country to engage in the enterprise, but cannot some of them be spared as leaders of the younger ones ? We need all the practical wisdom which the world contains to guide us and direct us in the midst of the perplexities which beset us in such fields as India and China. Difficulties are increasing every day, and there are new difficulties arising that will require all the skill and wisdom of the most practical men we possess, and such men will, ere long, come forward with a power and voice which shall make themselves felt. It makes my heart rejoice to think that Oxford can send forth two of its Fellows ; that English parishes can spare two able and useful men to go forth in the name of the Lord. I see in this the beginning of a better state of things, and I have no doubt that the example will have the effect of stirring up and stimu- lating others to do likewise, and that some of the mightiest names among us will go forth. It will not do to say we should be satisfied with labourers only ; why should not some of the Church's dignitaries — why should not some of our bishops, if they be the successors of the apostles, go forth, and set an example, the value of which the whole world would acknow- ledge ? I wonder that a man who is prominent before the wox'ld for his position and rank does not surrender that, and go forth on a mission of philanthropy. I wonder at it. Some would be ready to follow. But at all events they would say. Here is sincerity, here is devotedness ; and it will no longer be said, ' You are the men who are paid for loving the souls of men.' I will not speak merely of Church dignitaries, but of other dignitaries. Peers of the realm can go to India to hunt tigers, and why cannot they go to save the souls of men ? Have we come to this, that it shall be beneath them, and beneath the dignity of men in civil life, to go forth on such an errand ? The eternal Son of God appears on earth that He may work out for us an everlasting redemption. It was not JEt. 64. ANGLO-INDI\N EVANGELIZATION SOCIETY". 439 beneath Him to seek and to save that which was lost, and will you tell me that it is beneath the dignity of a duke, or an Arclibishop of Canterbury, to go into heathen realms to save a lost creature ? " This recalled the Exetei Hall appeals of 1837. Again, soon after, lie gave another proof of bis true catholicity in writing, for the Indian Female Evange- list, conducted by the Church of England Society for Female Education in the East, an elaborate series of papers on Indian Womanhood from the Vedic age to the present time. Dr. Duff's philanthropic and spiritual efforts for the good of Europeans and Eurasians in India, con- tinued from his first years in Calcutta, found an or- ganized and permanent agency in the Anglo-Indian Christian Union, or Evangelization Society as it is now called. When in Calcutta he had been the active chairman of a society for ameliorating the temporal condition of the people, he had so early as 1 841 helped to found a temperance society, he frequently lectured to the soldiers at Dum Dum and elsewhere on the subject, and he was most earnest in that movement for a sailors' home which ended in Lord Lawrence presenting the valuable site of the appropriate build- ing on the Strand of Calcutta. Just before his return to Edinburgh in 1864, the Anglo-Indians who happened to be present at the General Assembly of that year, led by Dr. K. MacQueen, united to send out a minister to the Scottish teaplanters who are turning the malarious wilds of Cachar and Assam into smiling gardens. The society was discouraged by the unfit- ness of the first instruments, but in 1870 Dr. Duff gave it new life. The increase of tea and indigo culti- vation, of cotton and jute factories, of railways, of the British army and subordinate civil service, had, since the Mutiny, raised the European and Eurasian Chris- 440 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1870. tians in India to a number little short of the quarter of a million. For these the Government chaplains and the few voluntary churches in the great cities and missionary services elsewhere had long been inade- quate. The £170,000 spent on the ecclesiastical establishment of 3 bishops and 153 chaplains, and in grants to Romish priests who are generally foreign Jesuits ignorant of the language of the Irish soldiers, might have been — ought now to be — applied in a man- ner both more equitable and more effective for its end in a country where vast revenues are annually alienated in support of Hindoo shrines and Muhammadan mos- ques. As it is there are British regiments without spiritual services, while chaplains are congested in the great cities for the benefit of wealthy congregations who are able and willing to supply themselves. The Church of England, led by good Bishop "Wilson, had created an Additional Clergy Society which supplied ministers to destitute military and civil stations aided by state grants. In Madras the Colonial and Continental Church Society tried to fill the breach. But after the sudden removal by death of Dr. Cotton, who was like Duff himself the bishop of good men of every Church, not only the eclesiastical establishment but the aided societies became the instruments of the weakest form of Anglican sacerdotalism. The sacra- mentarianism of the bishops and chaplains sent out by successive Secretaries of State was not atoned for by grace like Keble's, or learning like Dr. Pusey's, or wit like Bishop Wilberforce's. Gradually in many places ofiicers forsook the Church of England services, while the earnest soldiers among the troops marched to church murmured at the wrong: done to the conscience. Many of the evangelical members of all the churches united in demanding reform. In 1869, after the five years' administration of Lord A^A. 64. LORD LAWRENCE ON CHRISTIAN WORK IN INDIA. 44 I Lawrence, this took the form at Simla of a Union Church based ou the reformed confession, which Dr. M. Mitchell organized. Next year Dr. DufF, as pre- sident of the Anglo- Indian Christian Union, selected the Rev. John Fordyce and sent him out as commis- sioner to report on the spiritual needs of the British and Eurasian settlers all over Northern India. Mr. Fordyce, after practically carrying out the zanana system in Calcutta, had returned to become minister first in Dunse and then in Cardiff. On reaching India he became pastor of the new Union Church at Simla during the hot and rainy seasons, and devoted the other half of each year to a visitation of the whole land from Peshawur to Calcutta. The railway companies, which had ten thousand Christian employes uncared for spiritually, welcomed his services. Wherever he went officers and soldiers sought his return, or at least the establishment of some permanent evangelical agency among tbem. The letters from such among Dr. Duff's papers are full of a pathetic significance. The new society gradually worked out a catholic organization. The districts of country — omitting, it is to be regretted, the tea provinces of North-eastern Bengal, where scattered communities of Christians are settled — were mapped out into seven circuits, each with, a radius of from 200 to 300 miles, easily accessible by railway. While Dr. Duff, as president worked the whole from Edinbui'gh, Lord Lawrence, as patron, was active in London. To Mr. Fordyce the great and good Viceroy thus wrote on the 24th June, 1874. " I feel the full force of much which you have said as to the state of things in India, of the want all over the land of adequate religious influences. It is only too true that ' a famine of the word of life affects most fatally the native population, and imperils many of our fellow-countrymen.' Hence, as you say, there is a 442 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1870. double plea for more Christian work in India. I also fully concur in your remarks on tlie evil effects of tlie conduct of some of those who, while bearing the Christian name, have little regard for the precepts of that religion. All this is very sad ; but it is very difficult to bring to bear a practical remedy. Still, we must not despair. The difficulties which beset the subject should rather incite us to bestir ourselves and devise a remedy. The united efforts of Protestants of all Churches in the good work offer the best hope of success. We want men, and we want money, and above all we want some person of ability and zeal, and of some social influence, to take the lead and guide the helm, and so by continuous and systematic labour bring about the results which we so much desire." In addition to the formation of union congregations Dr. Duff in the last year of his life saw ten agents of the society at work in India, six of them ordained ministers, and sent out Dr. Somerville, of Glasgow, and the Rev. C. M. Pym, rector of Cherry Burton, to evangelize in the cold seasons of 1874 and 1877, as Dr. Norman Macleod had done in 1867. Financially as well as ecclesiastically the Government of India may yet be allowed to carry out the scheme which Lord Mayo's Government approved of in principle, that of so applying the present expenditure of £170,000 to purely military chaplains and in grants to Christian societies, that it may cover the whole extent of Anglo- Indian society, official and non-official. But India was the source of only half the cares and the labours of Dr. Duff after he left it. As convener of the Foreign Missions Committee of his Church, he established a new mission in the Lebanon, and three new missions in South-east Africa — in then indepen- dent Kaffraria, in Natal, and on Lake Nyassa; while ^t. 64. TOUli IN SYRIA. 443 he lived long enoiigli to receive cliargo of the New Hebrides stations of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The Church of Scotland in 1839 sent a missionary expedition to Palestine, consisting of M'Cheyne and Drs. Black, Keith and A. Bonar, which ended in the estabhshment for a time, by Dr. Wilson, of Bombay, of a mission to the Jews in Damascus. When, in 1852, Mr. William Dickson, editor of the Children's Mission- ary Record, visited Syria, Dl^ Duff gave him a letter of commendation, and the result was the formation of a catholic committee in Scotland for the founding of schools among the Druses, Maronites, and Greek Christians of the Lebanon. In 1870, accompanied by Dr. Lumsden, principal of the New College, Aberdeen, Dr. Duff made a second tour in Syria to examine the schools. The district which they traversed from Bey- rout, where they landed on the 11th April, stretches from the '' entrance of Hamath " on the north to Tyre on the south-west and Damascus on the south-east, embracing not only the range of Lebanon itself, with the country immediately to the south, but also Anti- Lebanon, and the far-reaching plain of Coele- Syria. This region is in extent about 100 miles by 30, and contains upwards of one thousand villages and ham- lets, with a population of half a million. The deputies held a conference with the missionaries of the Amer- ican Presbyterian Board, under whom not only a great college and many schools, but the Syrian Evangelical Church has been fostered into vigorous life. These brethren agreed that if the Free Church sent to the mountain an ordained minister, who should be a well-qualified educationist, they would cordially co-operate with him, " on the understanding that he do not institute a separate ecclesiastical organi- zation, or interfere with the doctrine or discipline of the existing native Evangelical Church;" an under- 444 ^i^^ 0^ ^^- DUFF. 1874. standiDg in the wisdom of whicli Dr. Duff thoroughly concurred, being with them desirous that the various congregations of converts be united in one native Syrian Protestant Church. An ordained and a medical missionary have accord- ingly ever since evangelized the Meten district of Lebanon, from the centre first of Sook, and now of Shweir, encouraged, like the many missionaries in that comparatively small territory, by the administration of the Christian Rustem Pasha, under the constitution se- cured for that portion of the unhappy Turkish empire by Lord Dufferin after the massacres of 1860. The for- mation of the first congregation has raised the question of the relation of the new mission to the American, and that will doubtless be amicably settled according to the catholic principle laid down by Dr. Duff" in 1870. Having consolidated the Kaffrarian Mission, on his return from South Africa in 1864 Dr. Duff saw it ex- tended to the north across the Kei. There the centre of the Idutywa Kaffir reserve, up to the Bashee River, formed in 1874, was called by his name, Dufi'bank. Three years later the Fingoes, through Captain Blyth and Mr. Brownlee, officials, contributed £1,500 to found an evangelizing and industrial Institute after the model of Lovedale, and to that was given the name of Blythswood. With the station of Cunningham com- pleting the base, where there is a native congregation of more than two thousand Kaffirs, the Traucik.n territory is thus being worked, in a missionary sense, up towards Natal. There the fruit of the great missionary's in- fluence is seen in three mission centres, at the capital Pieter-Maritzburg ; at Impolweni, fourteen miles to the north ; and at Gordon, within a few miles of the fron- tier of Zululand, now divided among thirteen feudatory chiefs advised and controlled by two British residents on the Indian political system. Natal was taken pos- ^t. 68. THE NEW MISSIONS IN NATAL. 445 session of, for the highest civilizing ends, by tho missionaries of tlie American Board so early as 1835, in the midst of the Kaffir war of that year, and when Dingane ruled the Zulus. His massacre of the Boers drove out the missionaries till the British Government took possession of the country. That was in 1843, at the time when an old correspondent of Dr. Duff's was Governor of South Africa. Sir Peregrine Maitland had resigned the well-paid office of commander-in-chief of the Madras army rather than pass on an order com- pelling British officers and troops to salute Hindoo idols on festival days. Worthy to be a friend of Duff, he told the American, Grout, who was to work for ten years without making one convert from the Zulus, that he had more faith in missionaries than in soldiers for preventing war with barbarous tribes. When, long after, Dr. Duff in his wagon descended from the uplands of Basutolaud and the heights of tho Drakenberg upon the picturesque valleys and smiling plains of Natal, his heart was taken captive by Mr. James Allison, the highly educated son of a Peninsular officer. Allison was well advanced in years when he gave himself to the work of the Master. Commis- sioned by the Wesleyans, he broke new ground among the Griquas in 1832, and he went on pioneering till Duff found him settling his many converts, as an independent missionary, in the village of Edimdale, which he created for them, while they paid the whole purchase-money by petty instalments. In 1873 Duff sent him to organize a similar settlement at Impol- ■weni, and there he died a few years after at the ripe age of seventy-three. It was a noble life, and yet not more noble than that of the majority of Christian pioneers in all our colonies, as well as in India, China, and the islands of the seas. His work at Maritzburg also was taken over by the Free Church of Scotland. 446 LIFE OP 'DR. DUFF. 1874. When, in November, 1864, Dr. Duff went north to take part in the ordination of new missionaries, the first to welcome him to Haddo House was the Dowager Countess of Aberdeen. Eight months before, the fifth earl, her husband, to whom, while yet Lord Haddo, his companionship had been sweet at Malvern, had been called to his rest after years of incessant labour for the spiritual and temporal good of all around him in London, Grreenwich, on his own estates, and in Egypt, where he sought and found prolonged life. The Malvern intercourse resulted in a friendly identification of Dr. Duff wdth the Aberdeen family in all its branches, very beautiful on both sides, and fruit- ful in spiritual results not only to him and to them, but, we believe, to the Zulu people. The letters that passed between the missionary and the Dowager Countess and her family are fragrant with the spirit of St. John's epistles to Kyria and Gains. In this chapter we have to do with them only in so far as they throw light on the origin of the Gordon Memorial Mission. Some dim glimpses of the exquisitely deli- cate relation between them may be seen by those who can read between the lines, in the " Sketches of the Life and Character of Lord Haddo, fifth Earl of Aberdeen, and of his Son, the Hon. J. H. H. Gordon,"* which Dr. Duff published in 1868, under the principal title of The True Nobility. James Henry Hamilton Gordon, the second son of the fifth Earl of Aberdeen, won all hearts at school and at college by his fine courage, his pure life, his personal beauty and the manly unconsciousness in which his character was set. At eiorhteen, in the vear 1863, he became a zealous Christian like his father. "Last New Year's Eve," he wrote to a friend, "I went * Published by the Eeligious Tract Society, in which Dr. Duff showed a keen interest. ^t. 68 JAMES HENRY HAMILTON OUllDOX. 447 to bed -witli scarcely a tliouglit about my soul ; but the very next day, by the grace of God, I was brought to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Yes, the birthday of the year is the birthday of my soul." First at St. Andrews, where Principal Sliairp was drawn to him, and then in the larger world of Cambridge, he became the Lycidas of his fellows. The joy in the Holy Ghost made him the happiest among them. In 18G7 he came out the second man in all the University. The youth whom every Sunday evening found in the Jesus' Lane school, and whose face was familiar at the University daily prayer-meeting, was also among the first in athletic sports, in sketching, in verse-writing, and in the debating society. He was captain of the University eight, and rowed No. 4 in the contest with Oxford. His inventive ambition showed itself in the construction of a breech-loader, which was to " beat all other possible breech-loaders in the rapidity of its fire." Mr. Macgregor's expe- riences sent him, in the long vacation, canoeing from Dover through France to Genoa, and back through Germany to Rotterdam. On his return, after an hour on the Cam, he went to his room to dress for dinner, when that happened on the 12th February, 1868, which Dr. Duff thus records : While he was engaged wdth his rifle, it went off, causing almost immediate death. The next day he was to have rowed in the inter-university race. Instead of that both Oxford and Cambridge put the flags at the boat-houses half- mast high, and not a man was seen on either river. He whom an accident had thus suddenly removed had not long before written to a fellow-student who feared that to profess Christ would be to invite the taunt of being a hypocrite : "It is a happy thing to serve the Lord. Tliough we sometimes have to give up pleasure, we gain a great deal of happiness even in this world. 44^ LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1S74. Paul suffered a great many persecutions, yet he said, ' Rejoice in the Lord alway ; and again I say. Rejoice.' " Young Grordon had felt another ambition. When only fourteen he declared he would be a missionary. When nineteen he repeated his determination, saying to his brother, who had returned from New Brunswick as sixth earl, and was telling him of the winter life of the lumberers in its forests : " What could be more de- lightful than to go from camp to camp, Bible in hand, and share the life of those fine fellows, while trying to win them to Christ!" But he added, with characteris- tic self -suspicion, that his love of adventure might have much to do with the desire. As time went on, however, he thought of studying for the ministry with this end. When, at the close of 1864, the Cape Govern- ment were offering for sale grants of land in Transkei Kaffraria, he leaped at the suggestion that when he came of age he misfht settle down as an ordained captain of civilization on a Kaffir reserve. *' I shall endeavour to follow the leading of my conscience and the sfuidance of God in makinsf mv decision on this matter," was the entry in his private diary. Truly, as Dr. Duff wrote, what might not such a Christian athlete, " the grandson of the great chief who once wielded the destinies of the British empire," have become among a people of noble impulses and self-forgetting courage like the Kaffirs ? What sudden death prevented him from doing, his sorrowing family enabled Dr. Duff to begin as a sacred duty. His elder brother, the sixth earl, having sought health in a warm climate and to gratify his love of adventure, was accidentally drowned on a voyage from Boston to Melbourne, as first mate of the ship Rero. The third and only sur- viving brother succeeded to the peerage in 1870. Accordingly there was drawn up a deed, unique in the history of Missions, since the Haldanes sold their ^t. 62. GORDON MEMOEIAL MISSION. 449 estates the preamble of which tells, formally but toucliinn-ly, its own story.* The Rev. J. Dalzell, M.B. a medical missionary and his wife, the daughter of Dr. Lorimer, of Glasgow, were sent out to select a site ; a teacher and two artisans followed, and by 1874 the Gordon Memorial Mission was established within a few miles of the frontier of Zululaud. This letter may be here given, referring to the career of him whose truly chief-like character' will surely yet become a stimulus to the thirteen feuda- tories of Zululand and the people. " Scarborough, 9th Sept., 1868. " Dear Lady Aberdeen, — Your letter, dated the 5th, I have read with a feeling of profound and thrilling interest. Lord Polwarth very kindly favoured me * We, the Right Honourable Mary, Countess of Aberdeen ; George, Earl of Aberdeen ; Mary Lady Polwarth ; Walter Lord Polwarth; the Honourable John Campbell Gordon; the Lady Harriet Gordon ; and the Lady Catherine Elizabeth Gordon ; con- sidering that we are desirous of founding a mission to the heathen in South Africa in memory of a beloved member of our family, tho Honourable James Henry Gordon, who died on the twelfth day of February, eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, and for this purpose have resolved to set apart a sum of money, the interest of which •will be sufficient to yield the salary of an ordained missionary and to defray other expenses, also to provide the funds required to build a suitable house for the residence of such missionary, and consider- ing that it will be most advantageous that such mission and mis- sionary should be in connection with and under the responsible managemer.t of an existing mission by a Christian Church, and that the Foreign ^lissious Coi:iiuittecof the Free Church of Scotland have had for many years a mission to the natives in Kaffraria, and are proposing to extend it by erecting one or more stations in the ter- ritory to the north and east of the river Kei : therefore we have paid to the Rev Alexander Duff, Doctor of Divinity, for behoof of the said. Foreign Missions C immittee, should they accept of this present trust, the sum of six thousand pounds, to be by them per- manently invested accoi'ding to tlieir rules and practice, and we now hereby declare that the said sum is to be held in trust alwa3's for the purposes and subject to the conditions following; viz., First, The Memorial Mission Station shall be in the Transkei territory, or some paz-t of Kaffraria, and shall be named " Gordon," etc., etc. VOL. II. G (J 450 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. lS6l. with the leading facts in the life of the dear departed one. He has also favoured me with the narrative of tlie Canoe Voyage, than which I scarcely remember having ever read anything more stirring. It reached me on the evening of a day, I at once opened it, to take a dip into it, intending to reserve the more care- ful perusal of it till the next day. But it soon so riveted me that I could not stop till I got to the very close. When done with it, I felt, well, had it pleased the Lord to spare his life, and send him to Kaffirland, with such athletic powers and fertility of resource, the Kaffirs would be impelled to make him their king, while he would bring them to the King of kings ! But, to the Omniscient, it ap- peared good to ordain it otherwise. But it makes one feel all the more strongly that there is a singular appropriateness in the blessed mode which has been fixed on for perpetuating his memory here below." When, in May, 1856, Dr. Livingstone completed the second of his expeditions from the Cape to St. Paul de Loanda, on the west coast of Africa, and thence right across the continent to the Quilimane approach to the Zambesi, he used this language : " We ought to encourage the Africans to cultivate for our markets, as the most efiectual means, next to the gospel, of their elevation. It is in the hope of working out this idea that I propose the formation of stations on the Zam- besi beyond the Portuguese territory, but having communication through it with the coast. The Lon- don Missionary Society has resolved to have a station among the Makololo, on the north bank, and another on the south among the Matabele. The Church, Wesleyan, Baptist, and that most energetic body, the Free Church, could each find desirable locations." The Universities Mission, which he induced Oxford and Cambridge to send out, met with such losses, while Alt. 55. LIVIKGbTONE S DISCOVERY OF LAKE NYASSA. 45 I he himself buried his wife a hundred miles up the Zambesi from the sea, that the other Churches de- layed action. But the Rev. Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale, when he h "' ci'sions, relative value of, ii. b'3, 245. Cuiiverts, i. 158, 1G2, 251, 281, 363, 466, 470 ; ii. 53, 7(3, 80, 339, 350. Coptic Chuicli, i. 399. Cornwallis, Lord, i. 95, 258. Corrie, Bishop, i, 84; ii. 108. Cotton, Bishop, ii. 20, 394, 440, 482. Goods, i. 94. Cousin, v., i. 437. Covenanters, i. 10 ; ii. 209. Cowan, John, of Bceslack, i. 347. Cowper, W., ii. 402, 473. Craik, the Brotliers, ii. 178. Cromwell, ii. 416. Cuddalore, ii. 130. Culna, i. 469; ii. 47. Cmniingham, Principal, i. 51 ; ii. no. Cunningham station, ii. 444. Curral, The, i. 68. Cust, Mr. R. N., i. 221 ; ii. 522. Cyclones, i. 263, 423 ; ii. 412. Daby, Singh Raja, i. 93. Dalhousie, Earl of, i. 61 ; ii. 507. Marquis of, i. 437, 461; ii. 168, 311, 331.. DaUon, Colonel, ii. 873. Dalzoll, Rev. J., ii. 4 111 Danish Missions, ii. 93, 133. Dante, ii. 2. Dassen Island, i. 78. Dtaltiy, Bishop, i. 146 ; ii. 42. Debating Societies, i. 149. Dellii in the Mutiny, ii. 328. De Quincey, T., ii. 473, 535. Derozio, Mr., i. 143. Dhn'eep Singh, Maharaja, ii. 435. Dickson, W., ii. 443. Dinkur Rao, Raja, ii. 357. Disintegration, i. 103, 209. Disruption conflict, i- 309, 368; ii. 3, 11, 26, 33. Dissection, i. 208. Don, Rev. J., ii. 20, 429. Douglas, Bishop, ii. 408. Dovcton College, i. 250; ii. 20, 1 10. Dravidiun Dynasties, ii. 145. Duel of Hastings and Francis, ii. 107. Dyson, Dr., ii. 435. DUFF, Alexander, Birth, i. 4; Parentage, 6; Scliooltnasters, 11; Cali, 13; at St. Andrews, 18; Friends, 22; to Chalmers, 27 ; Preaches, 23 ; gives him- self to India, 43 ; consults Chalmers, 46; Ordained, 53; Married, 61 ; at Madeira, 67 ; Shipwreck, 71 ; a second time, 82 ; reaches Calcutta, 84 ; ac- count of Hindoo College, 99; preliminary researches, 104 ; visits Carey, 105 ; his policy, 107; with Rammohun Roy, 112; opens his School, 121 ; his School-books,125; first Examina- tion, 129; first Assistant, 133; self evidencing power of Sc:i])- tures, 139 ; Lectures and the Press, 142 ; Bengalee, 1 19 ; Female Education, 150; fir.-t Converts, 159; Project of United College, 165; varied work, 171; assisted by Sir Charles Trevelyan, 183 ; Angli- cists and Orientalists, 186 ; Lord W. Bentinck's deci'ee, 194; his new era of the English Language, 197; the Renaissance begun, 204; in Science also, 211 ; the Romanising Move- ment, 219; on Vernacular Education, 226; Calcntta Chrus- tian Observer, 227 ; "work for Europeans, 233 ; longings after Friendshij), 242; with Bishop AVilson, 248; work for Eura- sians, 249 ; vindicates Rights of Conscience, i. 254; declines to attend a Ball, 259; as a Teacher, 262; thrice ill, 265; returns to Scotland, 273 ; his Eeccplion VOL. II. N N 54^ INDEX. 27't ; London, 286 ; first Ora- tion, 290; its effects, 298; D.D. degree, 306; Home Temptations, 307; Catholicity, 313; Organi- zation of Associations, 315 ; in Perth, 319; in Danbar, 322; in Cambridge, 325 ; vpith Lord W. Bentinck, 336; attracting new Missionaries, 341 ; to the Glasgow Students, 344; Great Exeter Hall Speech, 351 ; Vin- dication of his System, 357 ; Training Converts, 363 ; Charge to Dr. T. Smith, 371 ; Farewell to Assembly, 377 ; Chalmers' Eulogy of him, 383; in Egypt, 394 ; Sinai, 404 ; Bombay and Madras, 413; Fight with Lord Auckland, 429 ; Progress of ten years, 443; on his Collcngues, 450; his College, 452; Death of a Daughter, 461; with the KiiarLa-bhajas, 468; on Peace, 476. Vol. ii. Roininiscences of Kirk, 3; Free Church, 13; his ''Voice from the Ganges," 21; the Propeity Wrong, 31 ; New College, 42 ; plans Cliair of Missions, 45; Outram and Lawrence, 49 ; on Conversions, 53; League against him, 61; at Home with the Converts, 76; on Lord Hardinge's Order, 87 ; The Calmitta Review, 91; helps the Fever-stricken, 98; on Dr. Chalmers, 113 ; Tour in S. India, 123; Tour in N. India, 163; on his Speeches, 177; Second Campaign in Scotland, 187; to Young Men, 216; Moderator, 223 ; before Lords Committee, 231 ; Education Des- patch, 245; in America, 252; in Canada, 279 ; at Malvern, 293; on Missionary Progress, 299; returns to India, 307; on the Mutiny, 315; on Bishop Wilson, 335; on Native Chris- tian Loyalty, 351 ; High-class Girls' School, 360; on Lacroix, 364; on the Indigo Controversy, 374; President of Bethune Society, 380; a Founder of the University, 382; leaves India, 385; reviews his Career, 399; African Tour, 407 ; returns to Scotland, 411 ; Evangelistic Theology chair, 416 ; promotes New Missions, 425 ; Syrian Tour, 443; Gordon Mission, 446 ; Livingstonia Expedition, 450 ; Melanesian Mission, 461 ; Eesidts of his Work, 463 ; Death of his Wife, 467; favourite Authors, 472 ; with Friends, 480 ; a Peacemaker, 495 ; Mo- derator the second time, 500 ; on the Press, 513 ; Continental Tours, 515 ; on the Progress of the Prince of Wales, 522 ; Acci- dent, 530 ; Latest Letters, 533 ; Dying Meditations, 534; Denth, 538 ; Mr. Gladstone on Dr. Dnff, 540. Duff, James, i. 4, 6. Mrs., i. 61, 269 ; ii. 200, 467, Scholarships, ii. 386. Duffbank, ii. 444. Duff Church, i. 6. Missionary Institute, ii. 421. • Fund, ii. 421. Duffpore, ii. 354. Dukshina R. Mookevjea, ii. 353. Dum Dum, ii. 312. Dunbar, i. 322. Duncan, Jonathan, i. 97. Dundas, Colonel, ii. 37. Dunkeld, i. 2. Durand, Sir Henry, i. 6Q, 412. 476; ii. 309,484. Dutts, The, i. 95,195; ii. 213. Dwarkanath Bhose, i. 470. Dysentery, i. 268. Eardley, Sir Culling, ii. 312. East India Co., i. 35, 90 ; ii. 131,223. INDEX. 547 Ecclesiastical Establishment, ii. 440. Economics, Christian, i. 312, 385; ii. 431. Eden, Misses, i. 427. Edradoiir, i. 315, 366. Education and the Public Service, ii. 86. as anEvangolizer, i. 110,174, 193, 261, 268, 292, 322, 359, 423, 451. as a Secularizer, i. 361, 416, 434,438; ii. 241, 382. Charity, i. 249. Despatch of 1854, ii. 41, 246, 434. Female, i. 149, 372, 459; ii. 360. in Bengal, i. 95; ii. 190, 378. in Bombay, i. 416. in Madras, ii. 431'. Edwardes, Sir Herbert, ii. 329. Elgin, Lord, i. 259. Elizabeth Town, U.S., ii. 275. Ellenborongh, Lord, i. 476 ; ii. 49. 237, 243. Ellerton, Mrs., ii. 107. Ellon Presbytery, i. 317. Elphinstone, Lord, ii. 236. Moimtstuart, i. 426. Emigrants, Highland, ii. 201. Eiiizlish Language in Ind'a, i. 94, 123,100,197,295; ii. 513. Epidemics in Bengal, ii. 97. Established Church of Scotland, ii. 31, 38. Eurasians, i. Ill, 248; ii. 20. Evangelicals, i. 2. Evangelizing, i. 107. Ewavt, Dr., i. 58, 269, 287, 335, 450. Mrs., ii. 83. Falck, i. 437. Famine, Highland, ii. 107. South India, ii. 53?. Fayrer, Sir J., i. 208; ii. 535. Fergnsson, Mr. J., ii. 145. Fer. ic, Rev. Dr., i. 23, 45, 171. Fever, ii. 99. Fife, Earl of, i. 309. Firdousi, i. 2u0. Flaxman's Group of Schwartz, etc., ii. 155. Forbes, Dr. D., i. 14. Fordyce, Rev. J., ii. 216, 360, 441. Foster, John, i. 119. Fox, ii. 228. Francis, Philiji, ii. 107. Free Church of Scotland, ii. 18, 28, 497. French Bishop, ii. 435. in India, ii. 129. Fiere, Sir Bartle, ii. 373, 458, 525. Friend of India, i. 116, 229, 257 ; ii. 490. Futtehgurh, ii. 343. Futtehpore Massacre, ii. 343. Sikri, ii. 163. Fyfe, Rev. W. C, i. 131 ; ii. 522. Gaelic, i. 11, 189, 213. Gardir.fr, Rev. T., ii. 216. General Assemblj', i. 41, 53, 315, 357; ii. 81, 180, 503. German Missions, ii. 135. Ghospara, i. 469; ii. 47. Gibbon, ii. 25. Gladstone, Mr., i. 204,273, 303 ; ii. 374, 512, 527, 540. Gobindo Chunder Das, ii. 54. Goldsborongh, Sir J., i. 90. Goluk Xath, Rev., ii. 80, 489. Gonds, ii. 428. Goodeve, Dr. H., ii. 218. Gooroo Das Maitra, ii. 54. Gopcenath Niindi, i. 162, 283, 460; ii. 342, 367, 489. Gordon Memorial Mission, il 446 Rev. Dr., ii. 28, 43. Government House, i. 88, 92. Govindram Mitter, i. 93. Grampians, i. 15. Grant, Charles, i. 35, 97. Gi-anville, Lord, ii. 234. Gray, Bishop, ii. 408, 494. 548 I^"DEX. Gregory XV., ii. 415. Grotc, George, ii. 90. Groves, Anthony, i. 266. Gunga, i. 82. Gurney, Joseph, i. 236. Guthrie, Thomas, i. 321, 8S2. Haddington, Earl of, i. 43. Ilaldane, James, i. 327. Principal, i. 45. Halifax, Lord, 1. 438; ii. 245, 492. Halley, James, i. 343. Hamilton, Cannda, ii. 279. Hanna, Dr. W., i. 26 ; ii. 116, 384, 605. Hardinge, Lord, ii. 84. Hare, David, i. 99. Harper, Dr., i. 53. Hastings, Lord, i. 99. Marchioness of, ii. 210. Warren, ;i. 96, ISi, 251 ; ii. 107, 229. Havelock, Sir H., ii. 330. Hawkins, Mr., ii. 19, 186, 536. Heat of S. India, ii. 127, 1"2. Heber, Bishop, i. 186; ii. 167, 482. Hebich, Samuel, i. 421. Heredity, i. 1. Heytesbnry, Lord, i. 426. Hill, Eev. J., i. 146. Hindoo College, i. 99, 143 ; ii. 60. Hindooism in Danger, ii. 59, 65. Hippocrates, i. 207. Hislop, Stephen, 1. 348; ii. 428. Hobhouse, Sir J. 0. {See Erough- ton.) Hodgson, Mr. B. H., i. 188. Holkar, Maharaja, ii. 359. Holland, ii. 515. Home Missions, ii. 271. Hooghly River, ii. 47. Hooker, ii. 475. Hospitals, ii. 98, 103. Hudson River, ii. 261. Hughes, Rev. T. P., i. 107. Hume, David, i. 11. Hunter, Dr. John, i. 18. Rev. T. and R., ii. 342. Hyde, Dr., ii. 417. Hyder AH, ii. 34. Impolweni, ii. 444. Independence Hal], U.S , it. 269. Indigo Controversy, ii. 374. Indophilus Letters, ii. 69. Infanticide, ii. 93. Inglis, Rev. Dr., i. 37, 305; ii. 13, 463. Irish Presbyterian Mission, i. 413. Irving, Edward, i. 61. James, Bishop, i. 239. Jephson, Dr., i. 332. Jesuits, The, ii. 60, 137. Jews, ii. 59, 181. Jeynarain Ghosal, i. 102. John 3rLellan, The, i. 272. JolmsLon, Rev. J., i. 347. Jugaoishwar Bhattacharjya, i. 47 1-; ii. 371. Jugganath, ii. 82. Kaffraria, ii. 410, 444. Kailas Chunder Mookeijea, L 471. Kalidasa, i. 252. Kay, Rev. Dr., ii. 435. Kaye, Sir John, ii. 89. Kellie, Earl of, i. 436. Kliattabbajas, i. 468. Khettur Mobun Chatterjoa, i. 120. Kiernander, i. 92. Killiecrankie, i. 6. Kingston, Canada, ii. 285. Kinnaird, Lord, ii. 432. Kirk of Scotland, i. 32; ii. 4, 500. Kirkmichael School, i. 14. Knott, Rev. J. W., ii. 435. Kno^, Jolm, i. 33 ; ii. 107. Kol Mission, ii. 372. Kotghur, ii. 165. Krishna, ii. 65. Mohun Banerjea, Rev. Dr., L 153.160,207; ii. 383,528. Ki'ishnaghur, i. 460. Kucnen, ii, 511. Kuppurtula, Maharaja, ii. 372. INDEX. 549 Larrolx, Rev. A. R, i. St; ii. 1-21, 364. Lndy Holland, 'I'he, i. G6. Lahore, ii. IGG. Lahoul, ii. 165. Laing, Miss, ii. 83. Lake, General, ii. 435. Lai Ec'Iira-i Da}-, Ruv., i. 455, 475; ii. 7G, 470. Land-tax of India, i. 415, 437. Languages of the East, i. 220. Laurie, Rcr. Dr., i. 2t2; ii. 210. Lawrence, Lord, i. 251 ; ii. 97, 106, 320, 412, 411, 522, 533. Sir Hcury, ii. 134; ii. 51, 90, 166, 325. Laws, Dr., ii. 460. Lawson, Patiick, i. 60. Learning for the Church, ii. 225, 512. Lebanon, The, ii. 412. Lectures, i. 146, 157. Lennox, Mr., ii. 43. Lepsius, i. 220. Leuchars Kirk, i. 53. Lewis, Dr. James, i. 290. Liedcr, Rev. Mr., i, 402. Livingstone, Dr., ii. 411, 450. Livingstonia, ii. 459. London Missionary Socio y, i. 3. Presbytery, i. 280, 280. Long, Rev. J., ii. 108, 315, 376. Lorimer, Dr., i. 274; ii. 196, 419. Loudoun, Earl of, ii. 210. Love, Dr., i. 289. Lovedale, ii. 410. Lucknow in the Mutiny, ii. 329. Lull, Raymond, ii. 416. Lushington, C, i. 42. Lutheran Mission?, ii. 135, 429. Lycidas Poem, i. 331. Lytton, Lord, ii. 65. Macaulay, Lord, i. 180, 190. Macdonald, Rev. J., i. 286, 341. Macfarlan, Dr. P., ii. 29. Principal, i. 343. ]\rChoyne, M., i. 276, 342. MnHcail, Rev. I^fr., ii. 20. Mackay. Rev. Dr. and Mrs., i. 131, 133,450; ii. 43, 467. Mackenzie, General Colin, i. 441 ; ii. 80, 167, 536. Bishop, ii. 453. Ilolt, ii. 490. TJackiiinon, \V., i. 420. Miu-kintosh, Mr. A. B., ii. 20. Macleod, Dr. Norman, i. 421; ii. 25. MLeod, Sir Donald, i. 475. Macnaghton, Sir W. H., i. 187 McCosh, Dr., ii. 537. McNeile, Dr., ii. 197. Macpher.'-on, Major, S. C, ii. 357 McQueen, Dr. K., ii. 439. Macwhirter, Dr., i. 365. Madeira, i. 67. Madras Chri.stian College, ii. 431'. Missions, i. 347, 422 ; ii. 121, 136, 434. Mahanad, ii. 47, 371. Mahendra, lial Basak, i. 471. Main, Rev. T., ii. 206, 213. Maine, Sir H., i. 180; ii. 392, 489. Maioland, Sir P., ii. 445. ^Mangalore, i. 420. Marenga, ii. 453. Marnoch case, i. 309. Marry at, Ca|)tain, i. G7. ]\D)rsh, Captain, ii. 90. Marshman, Dr., i. 26, 102, 429, 541. Mr.J. C.,i.93,229; ii.8L>, 230, 490. Martin, Sir R., i. 269. G., ii. 480, 530. Martyn, Henry, ii. 407. Maityrs of the Cluirch of Lidia, ii. 340. Matheson, Mr. H. M., ii. 419. Mault, Mr., ii. 160. Mavite, ii. 153. May, Rev. Mr., i. 102. Mayo, Lord, ii. 432. Medical Colleges of India, i. 209; ii. 98. Medicine, Hindoo, i. 208. 550 INDEX. Meenit, ii. 313. Melanesia, ii. 462, 531. Metcalfe, Lord, i. 231. Middleton, Bishop, i. 87, 111. Mill, Eev. Dr., i. 111. Miller, Hui?li, ii. 173. Milne, Eev. J., i. 343; ii. 20, 250, 308. Milton, John, i. 16, 330 ; ii. 226, 402. Minto, Lord, i. 185. Mitchell, Dr. M., i. 347 ; ii. 429. James, i. 98, 189. John Stuart, i. 180 ; ii. 232. Miscsiouary Catholicity, i. 313; ii. 2, 40, 48. Defence, i. 253 ; ii. 299, 811. Eulogy, i. 260; ii. 352, 369, 393. Finance, ii. 80, 71, 425. 431. Institute, ii. 421, 540. Literature, i. 366, 458. Policies, i. 108, 164, 200, 232, 301 ; ii. 35, 144, 162, 239, 299, 371, 413, 426. Professorship, ii, 43j 111, 121, 417, 533. Quarterly, ii. 422. ■ Salaries, i. 62; ii. 139, 431. Statistics, ii. 339, 463. Tours, i. 472; ii. 122, 164, 188. Work and Christ, i. 355 ; ii. 369. Moderate Party, ii. 4. Moderator of General Assembly ii. 223, 500. MofFab, Dr.,ii. 493,541. Mohesh Chunder Ghose, i. 158. Moira, The, i. 81. Moncreiff, Sir H., ii. 21. Monod, M. P., ii. 226. Montreal, ii. 288. Mooltan, ii. 169. Moral Philosopliy, i. 20, 28. Moravian Missionaries, i. 267 ; ii. 405. Morgan, Eev. A., ii. 111. Morrison, Rev. Dr., i. 25. Mouat, Dr., ii. 247. Moulin, i. 3, 6, 387. Mozambique, ii. 402. Muhammad Ah, of Egypt, i. 395. Muhammadanism, ii. 312, 343. Muir, Sir W., ii. 39. Mullens, Dr. and Mrs., ii. 360, 376. Mulliks, The, 96. Mundy, Mr., ii. 104. Munro, General, ii. 161. Murray, Eev. Dr. (Kirwan), ii. 264. Mutiny in India, ii. 313, 327, 352. Nana Saheb, ii. 324. Napier, Sir Charles, ii. 9, 49. Narayan, Sheshadi'i, Eev., ii. 430. Natal, ii. 411, 444. Neil, General, ii. 329. New Hebrides, ii. 462. ■ London, Canada, ii. 280. York, ii. 262, 290. Newman, Cardinal, i. 303. F. W., i. 266. Newton's Hymn, ii. 535. Newton, Sir Isaac, i. 830. Nicolson, Dr. Simon, i. 269 ; ii. 19, 122. Nightingale, Florence, ii. 491. Nobokissen, Eaja, i. 93. Northbrook, Lord, i. 250; ii. 65, 432. Norway, ii. 517. Nuddea Eiots, ii. 376. Nuncomar, i. 94. Nyanza Lakes, ii. 451. Nyassa Lake, ii. 451. Neemtolla Street, ii. 42. Ogilvie, Eev. Dr., ii. 39. Oliphant, Mr. T., i. 127. Oinichund, i. 92, Ontario Lake, ii. 287. Orations of Dr. Daff, i. 290, 325, 349, 377 ; ii. 177, 274. Orientalism, i. 184, 436. Orientalists, The Pseudo, i. 185, 210, 219, 429. INDEX. 551 Ontram, Sir J., ii. 49. Overland Route, i. 388. Pachumba, ii. 429. Piigodas of S. India, ii. 145. Paine, Tom, i. 111. Palmoi'ston, Lord, 1. 427 ; ii. 297. Pandyas, ii. 145. Pantaenus, i. 457. Pari snath, ii. 429. Parliamentary Committee, ii. 231. Parnell, Mr., i. 266. Parsees, i. 414. Patriarch Cottnge, i. 8. Patriotic Fund, ii. 337. Patterdale, ii. 4S1. Patterson, J. B., i. 275. Rev. Dr., ii. 279. Peacock, Sir Barnes, i. 180. T. L., ii. 232. Pearce, Rev. G., i. 103. Rev. W., i. 165. Peel, Sir Lawrence, ii. 57. Sir Robert, ii. 10. Penh Presbytery, i. 317. School, i. 16. Peshawur, ii. 329. Philadelphia, ii. 263. Pieter-Maritzburg, ii. 444. Pilgrim's Progress, The, ii. 55. Pirie, Sir John and Lady, i. 61 ; ii. 227. Pitlochrie, i. 5. Pitt, ii. 228. Plassey, Centenary, ii. 320, Political Economy, 1. 135. Polwarth, Lord, ii. 421, 536. Pondicheri, ii. 129. Portobello, i. 274. Portuguese in Africa, ii. 455. in India, i. 219 ; ii. 138. in Madeira, i. 68. Pourie, Rev. J., ii. 20, 216, 368. Presbyterian Council, ii. 531. Presbyteries of Scotland, i. 315 ; ii. 187. Press, The, i. 227, 376, 440 ; ii. 513. Prideaux, II., ii. 417. Principal of Now Collogo, ii. 505. Prinseps, The, i. 187, 219. Prize Essays on Missions, i. 366. Proclamation, Queen's Indian, ii. 246. Propaganda College, ii. 415. Prosunno K. Chatterjca, i. 475. Pundits on Dr. Duff, ii. 119. Queen Victoria, ii. 525. Proclaimed Empress, ii. 526. Quillimane, ii. 461. Radakhant Deb, i. 91,195; il 65. Rainy, Dr. ii. 506, 510. Rajahgopal, Rev. P., ii. 173. Ram Komul Sen., i. 94. Ramchurn Pal, i. 467. Rammohun Roy, i. 40, 95, 112. Reeve, Mr. II., ii. 232. Reform Act, i. 273. Reformation, Scottish, ii. 4, 13. Reformed Pros. Church, ii. 461, 499. Renaissance in India, i. 178, 231. Revivals, ii. 369. Ricketts, J. W., i. 250. Robert de Nobili, ii. 157. Robertson, Principal, ii. 24. Robinson Crusoe, i. 222. Romanist Missions, ii. 60 ; ii. 137. Rose, R., ii. 20. Runjeet Singh, ii. 85. Russia, ii. 85, 516, 621. Sabbath Observance, i. 239, 412j 457; ii. 85, 524. on Sinai's Top, i. 409. Schools, i. 31. St. Andrews, i. 17, 26. Day, ii. 527. Kirk, Calcutta, i. 234. 239. St. Catharine's Convent, 1. 406. St. David Fort, ii. 13. Sanskrit Pundits, ii. 119, 134. Sautal Insurrection, ii. 312. Missions, ii. 429. Sargent, Bishop, ii. 159. Saugar Island, i. 82. 552 INDEX. ScTimidt, Georg, ii. 406. School-book.s i. 126. Cess, i. 436. Schwartz, ii. 150. Science against Hiudooism, i, 1-tO, 209, 456. Scotsmen in Calcutta, i. 234. Scott, The Oomi-nentntiir, ii. 475. Sectarianism, i. 166, 234; ii. 2. Serampore Missionaries, i. 150, 249. Serfojee, Raja, ii. 155. Soringhara Pagoda, ii. 143. Seton-Karr, Mr„ ii. 68. Shaftesbur}', Lord, ii. 492. Shepherd of the East, ii. 1C5. Sheridan,!. 304. Sherwood, Mrs., ii. 55. Shib Chunder Bauer jea, ii. 66. Shipwrecks, i. 72, 82'. Shoolbred, Dr., i. 361. Shyama Churn Mookerjea, il. 66. Simeon, Cliailes, i. 2, 325. Sinai, i. 404. Sinclair, Sir George, ii. 197. Sindh War, ii. 49. Sindia, Maharaja, ii. 337. Slave Trade, ii. 453. Smith, Baird, ii. 356. , Bishop, ii. 435. Rev. Dr. T., i. 347, 369, 451 ; ii. 18, 360. Prof. R. ii. 610. Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (Scottish), i. 38; ii. 136. Soldiers, Work among, i. 243, 439. Soonderbuns, The, i. 26. Soorajood Dowla, i. 91. Sovereignty of God, i. 2. Spelling, Oriental, i. 222. Spiritual Independence, ii. 2, 21, 409. Stanley, Dean, ii. 527. Steeple Controversy, i. 236. Stein, Von, i. 416. Stephen, Sir Jatnes, i. 180. Stevenson, J., ii 459. Stewart, Dr., of Loveda'.c, ii. 451. Stewart, Mr. J. 0., ii. 20, 551. of Erskine, i. 299. Stewart of Moulin, i. 2, 326. Strachan, J. M., ii. 218. Strickland, Rev. W., ii. 137. Stuart, Mr. G. H., ii. 261, 262. Students' Missionary Society, i, 25, 31, 343, 528. Susteutation Fund, i. 3, 12. Systematic Beneficence Society, ii. 426. Suez Canal, i. 388. Susruta, i. 208. Swearing Reproved, ii. 8. Symington, Rev. Dr., ii. 206, 462. Syrian Church, ii. 161. Table Mountain, ii. 404. Tagores, The, i. 96, 120. Tait, Archbishop, i. 3t3. Takee, i. 131,265; ii. 46. Tamul Poet, ii. 134, 156. Tanganika Lake, ii. 451. Tanjore, ii. 145. Taylor, Rev. J. W., i. 23, 299. Temple, Dr., i. 266. Sir Richard, ii. 428. Thomson of Banchorv, ii. 79. Dr. A., i. 50, 127. Dr. W., i. 320. Tiger Story, i. 264. Toleration, ii. 56. Toronto, ii. 283. Toynbee, Captain, ii. 397. Tranquebar, ii. 93, 133. Travancore, ii. 161. Trevelyan, Sir C, i. 182, 211, 224; ii. 230, 244. on Dr. Duff, i. 195; ii. 384. Trinity, The, i. 161. Tucker, Robert, ii. 343. Turner, Bishop, i. 239, 253 ; ii. 482. Uma Churn Ghose, ii. 66. Umesh Chunder Sirkar, ii. 56. United College Planned, i. 165. Presbyterian Church, ii. 8, 369, 498. INDEX. 553 TJnitod States {i^ce Americans), ii. 250, 279, 291. Uiiiver.sity of Aberdeen, i. 306. CuUutta, ii. 3S2. India, ii. 217. New York, ii. 292. St. Andrew.s, i. 17. Urquharb, John, i, 22, 45. Vaislinavas, i. 408. Vedas, i. 208. Venn, Mr., ii. 435. Vernacular Educai ion, i. 226, 430, 436. Language, i. 105, 183, 225. Visions, Dr. Diilff^, i. 11. Voluntaryism, ii. 21, 498. Waghorn, Lieut., i. 388. Walajus, ii. 410. Waldcnsian Cluircb, ii. 297 Wales, Prince of, ii. 521. Wallace, Ecv. A., i. 45. Wallicb, Dr., i, 217. Ward, of Seramporc, i. 468. Waterston, Miss, ii. 400. Weber, i. 207. Welsh, Preaching to the, ii. 192. Westminster Abbey, ii, 527. Review, ii. 90. Whyte, Rev. A , ii. 493. Wilbcrforce, i. 35 ; ii. 229. William III., i. 90. Williams, John, ii. 463. Wines oi' France, i. 392. Wilson, Bishop D., i. 45, 234, 218 ; ii. 109, 334. Colonel, ii. 34. Dr. John, i. 86, 109, 166, 254, 302, 413; ii. 45, 169. 432, 458, 528. James, ii. 357. Mrs., (Miss Cooke), i. 149. Prof. II. H., i. 98, 252. Rev. J. n., ii. 493. Wiseman, Cardinal, i. 391. Woman in India, i. 459. Wood. Sir. 0. {See Halifax.) Wordsworth, i. 431. Wylie, Mr. M , ii. 19, 38, 57, 249. Xavier, Francis, ii. 138. Yates, Dr., i. 28, 219. Young Men, Lecture to, on Mis- sions, ii. 216. Yonng, Mr. H., i. 166. Youth, ii. 1, Yule, Colonel H., ii. 489. Dr., i. 396. Zanana Education, ii. 300. Ziegcubalg. ii. 134, 406. 1 1012 0 043 9984 DATE PU^ PRINTED IN US A^ GAYLORO