A REVIEW THE # 1 C OF REV. H. VENN ON ST. FRANCIS XAVIER AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. LONDON: BURNS & LAMBERT, 17 & 18 PORTMAN STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE. 1862 . [ The following pages are reprinted, with a few additions, from the “Weekly Register” of Nov. 8 tji and 1 5th ] A REVIEW ON ST. FRANCIS XAVIER, &c. We shall certainly not err in assuming that this hook, which the directors of Protestant missionary societies have long been eagerly expecting, is intended as their official reply to Mr. Marshall’s “ Christian Missions.” * It is characteristic of the ingenuousness of its author that it does not contain a solitary allusion to that work, nor to one of the many hundreds of Protestant witnesses cited in its pages. Their testimony is quietly ignored. Protestant reviewers of the more intellectual class have frankly admitted, as the special feature of Mr. Marshall’s work, that all its evidence is derived from Protestant sources. “ His honesty in making no assertion unvouched by Pro¬ testant writers,” is attested by the Examiner ,—June 14th, 1862,—as well as by other critics of the same order. Mr. Venn, as we might have anticipated, follows a different method. When Mr. Marshall affirms that a Protestant mission has failed, in India, in China, or anywhere else, he founds the assertion solely upon the unsuspicious evidence of the Protestant missionaries themselves, and confirms it by that of their warmest advocates. When he relates that a Catholic mission has succeeded, he proves this also, with * Christian Missions, their Agents , their Method, and their Results, by T. W. M. Marshall. 18G2. A 2 4 scrupulous and almost extravagant fairness, not by Catholic, but by Protestant testimony. Mr. Venn, declining to imitate such dangerous candour, asserts the success of Protestant missions on Ms own authority,—we shall see presently that he flatly contradicts even the agents of his own society,—and proves the failure of Catholic missions by that of half-a-dozen discredited witnesses, vehement Protestants, or angry apos¬ tates, notoriously hostile to the Catholic religion. We con¬ clude from this significant contrast in their respective methods, that Mr. Marshall was solicitous only to establish facts, while Mr. Venn had no other purpose than to suppress them. Of Mr. Venn’s 320 pages, 260 are devoted to what he calls a “Life of Francis Xavier.” To write the life of a saint is generally considered a task to which few men in any gene¬ ration are equal. Its difficulty is sufficiently indicated in the proverbial saying, “ Let a saint write about a saint.” Such a work involves the consideration of the most secret and marvellous operations of divine grace. It deals with myste¬ ries compared with which those of the natural order, which we encounter daily on our right hand and on our left, are almost trivial. It brings us into contact with men who, after being, like Abraham, the friends of God on earth, have be¬ come Princes in the Court of Heaven. It assists us to con¬ template an order of beings who, by the free choice of their Creator, and the faithful use of almost incredible graces, have attained to such surpassing glory, that if we coidd look for a moment upon the least and lowest of their number, the sight would deprive us of life. Ordinary Christians, even though habituated to the contemplation of divine things, speak of them with glad fear and awe, or do not speak at all. Mr. Venn has no sympathy with such reverential feelings. He does not believe in saints, except of his own school. A saint, like the apostle of India and Japan, is to Mr. Venn what St. Paul was to the Pagan Greek or Syrian, half fanatic and half impostor. And so here is Mr. Venn’s account of 5 St. Francis Xavier, of which it is fair to premise that nothing like it has hitherto appeared in Protestant literature. The Saint went to India, he says, because he had “a craving for the romance of Missions.” His letters “ reveal his dependence upon an arm of flesh”—p. 17. His practice of baptising dying infants, and his belief in the efficacy of their prayers, “ is a sad proof of the intellectual debasement of the Fomish system”—p. 41. His doctrine of purgatory “ appears strange to any one who takes his religion from the Bible,” and Father Newman is admonished for adopting this error of St. Francis—p. 49. “ How is Xavier to be acquitted of dishonesty?”—p. 56. a We look in vain in Xavier’s cor¬ respondence for any indication of the spirit which spoke out in the writings of St. Paul”—p. 67. “ In what did his spirit differ from that of a Mussulman ?” —p. 79. His miracles were “ palpable and impudent parodies upon the miracles of our Lord and his Apostles”—p. 100. “ His sentiments were de¬ based by superstition and ‘ creature’ dependence”—p. 120. His instructions for neophytes can only be quoted “ with an apology for recording such blasphemous fables”—p. 127. “ Of the peculiar duties of an evangelist to the heathen he had no conception ”—p. 145. He displays “ a hasty and angry temper, and an inordinate self-importance”—p. 240. “A want of thorough truthfulness is conspicuous in all his corres¬ pondence”—p. 257. Finally, “ his pretensions fall short of those of Samuel Marsden, or of Henry Martyn, or of Williams, or of Judson”—of whom the first made his fortune by farm¬ ing, the second never gained a solitary disciple, the third was denounced by his own Society for speculating in tobacco, and the fourth was an object of ridicule both to Pagans and Pro¬ testants. Compared, however, with these men, “ the results of his personal labours and of his Missionary usefulness sink into insignificance,”—p. 261; and while his life was marred by such fatal imperfections, his death, on the island of San- 6 cian, was but a pitiful scene contrasted with that of “ Mrs. Rosine Krapf, the genuine female Missionary”—p. 256. We are not going to remonstrate with Mr. Venn. We may safely leave him to the judgment of religious Protestants. We cannot reason with a man with whom we have neither principles nor instincts in common. No one disputes with a maniac, and in Mr. Venn's language we see only the delirium of exorbitant self-love. From the heights of a fancied supe¬ riority, and from a region of unclouded mental illumination, he looks down, not only upon earth, but upon Heaven, and, laughing to scorn the Saints of the Most High, invites them to gather round him, that he may teach them wisdom. If he could persuade them to leave the thrones on which they are exalted above the Angels, he would inform them, with calm severity, that while on earth they were both deceivers and deceived. He would reprove them because, like St. Francis Xavier, they taught “ blasphemous fables,” or wrought miracles which were “ impudent parodies,” or displayed the spirit of a Mussulman rather than of a Christian. Such is Protestantism as it manifests itself in Mr. Venn. Alas! for those who, when the Redeemer comes to judgment, will re¬ cognise in His all-glorious escort the very men whom they have reviled and blasphemed. Alas ! for the author of this wretched book. Alas! for the nation of which such as he are teachers. It would be as unprofitable to defend St. Francis Xavier from the outrages of Mr. Venn, as to vindicate St. Paul from the jibes of Tertullus, or St. Peter from the anger of Simon Magus. There are some books which refute themselves, and Mr. Venn’s is of that class. Resolved to insult St. Francis, this is his method. If the saint admonishes the princes of the earth to lend their aid in propagating the Gospel, as St. Paul would have done with still greater energy if such influ¬ ence had been available in his day, Mr. Venn cries out “he 7 trusts in an arm of flesh.” If with apostolic humility he depreciates his own labours, it is a confession of failure; if with Apostolic zeal he magnifies his office, it is “ inconsis¬ tency” and “ inordinate self-importance.” If he deplores the imperfections of some of his disciples, haying in view only the glory of God, and not the pecuniary interest of “ mission¬ ary societies” at home, it is an admission that he never made a real Christian. Mr. Venn is blinded by the excess of his own malice. He forgets that a pagan might argue still more plausibly, that St. Paul’s account of the Galatians or Corin¬ thians, and of the frightful abuses which prevailed among them, or our Lord’s terrible reproaches to the first Bishops of Asia, prove that primitive Christianity, was also a failure. Indeed there is not an argument in Mr. Venn’s immoral pages which is not far more fatal to the character and mission of the Apostles than to those of any of their suc¬ cessors. His comment upon the rare dissensions between the Jesuits and the Dominicans, which he borrows from the veracious and impartial Mosheim, is of the same force. Mr. Venn should remember that they differed, not, like Protestants, upon fundamental truths of revelation, but upon mere ques¬ tions of fact, depending on human testimony; such as the nature of certain Chinese rites, or Hindoo customs, which some believed, after long examination, to be purely civil, and others, less favourably placed for judging, to have a religious character. He should remember, also, if passion could pause to reflect, that even Apostles contended vehemently about questions of far deeper moment—Galat. ii. 11; and that St. Paul differed from St. Barnabas with so much warmth “that they departed one from another”— Acts xv. 39. If the dissensions, of which there are only two examples in three centuries, and which had their origin in the purest religious zeal, between the children of St. Ignatius and St. Dominic, are a scandal to the Catholic 8 Church, those between the first Apostles are a reproach to Christianity itself—as Celsus and Porphyry, anticipating Mr. Yenn, ingeniously argued. When Mr. Venn has proved in eight chapters, to his own satisfaction, that St. Francis was inferior even to sordid traders and speculators such as Williams and Marsden, who are accused by their co-religionists of basely cheating bar¬ barians to augment their own gains, he devotes a ninth to u the general results of Roman Catholic Missions among the heathen/’ His authorities, he confesses, are Fabricius and Mosheim, whose bitter enmity to the Church makes their testimony as dispassionate and impartial as a commentary on the criminal code by a society of felons. But Mr. Yenn had good reasons for not imitating Mr. Marshall’s method, and quotes only such witnesses because he knows that no others would serve his purpose. By their assistance he arrives at two conclusions; the first, that Catholic Missions, to which alone England, as well as every other European nation, owes her Christianity, are deficient in permanence; and the second, that Protestant Missions are manifestly superior to them in every land. Reserving to a concluding notice the latter assertion, we will confine ourselves at present to the former. Catholic Missions, Mr. Yenn considers, are transient and ephemeral. Let us visit all the countries in which he sees the evidence of this fact. (1.) If the Protestants of England, of whom millions have already sunk almost below heathenism, in spite of the ex¬ hortations of nearly one hundred thousand preachers, were abandoned for sixty years without any religious teachers whatever, and subjected during the whole period to every trial which can befal humanity, and to every snare which can corrupt the conscience of mankind, how many of them, does Mr. Yenn suppose, would be found, at the end of that time, to profess their belief in the Thirty-Nine Articles P Yet the native Catholics of India, to the number of about a 9 million, have survived this very trial. They have not indeed passed through it without injury; yet we may see in their almost unexampled fidelity God’s witness to St. Francis and his companions, and a striking contrast to the fate of certain apostolic churches, of which the sorrowful names of Smyrna and Ephesus, Antioch and Alexandria, are now the only memorials. And if the superhuman influence which effected a result so astonishing appears no longer to manifest itself in India, this is because, as the Pagans themselves constantly assert, the earthliness of Protestantism, and its ceaseless divisions and contentions, have inspired both Hindoo and Mahometan with such passionate aversion to Christianity, that perhaps St. Paul himself would now preach to them in vain. So long as they saw only teachers the severity of whose lives harmonised with the majesty of their doctrine, “ no missionary,” we are told, “ converted less than a thousand Pagans annually.”* It is the teaching of such missionaries as derive their authority from Mr. Yenn, and who, while living themselves in effeminate opulence, never open their mouths without reviling the Catholic faith, which suggests to the acute and scoffing heathen the following argument. “ Why should we become Christians,” they ask, as we learn from one who spent a life in India, “ when you tell us that three-fourths of the Christian world have adopted a creed no way superior to our own?”f Such is the in¬ evitable influence of Protestantism; it makes Christianity a jest and a proverb. The rare converts whom it attracts, as a hundred Protestant witnesses confess, are a scandal even to the heathen by their cynical profligacy; and whereas Mr. Venn assures the subscribers to the Church Missionary Society that they should learn to contrast the permanence of Protestant with the ephemeral duration of Catholic Missions, * Quoted by Marshall, Christian Missions , vol. i. p. 370. f Thirty Years in India , by Major II. Bevan, vol. ii. chap. 14, p. 240. 10 tlie Anglo-Indian writers proclaim in chorus, that the day which sees the downfall of British rule in India will also witness the instantaneous extinction of native Protestantism. “ If we were driven out of the country to-morrow,” says an ardent Protestant, “few vestiges would remain, at those places where the English have settled, as evidence of their ever having been under Christian rule.”* The opinion is founded upon personal knowledge of the real character of Hindoo Protestants, of whom Mr. Irving says, that “ their irregularities and lax morality have on many occasions shocked the feelings of even their heathen countrymen; ” of whom Captain Hervey reports, that they “become worse than they were before,” and that they are never employed in English families, because they are known to be “ rascals, drunkards, thieves, and reprobates;” “ most of whom,” as Dr. Brown confesses, “are Christians only in name;” and the sole result of whose education by Protestant missionaries is, in the words of Miss Martineau, that they “have no religion whatever,” and in those of a native “ Scholar of the Elphinstone Institution,” that “ they believe the Jesus of the English and the Krishna of the Hindus to be alike impostors.”f When Mr. Venn resolved to enumerate the countries in which the energy of Protestant contrasts with the debility of Catholic Missions, he should at least have omitted India from the catalogue. (2) In China, as Mr. Marshall has shown by an almost superfluous array of testimony, there is so little sign of the want of permanence which Mr. Yenn detects, that the triumphs of Picci, and Yerbiest, and Parennin have even been surpassed by men who have gone forth in our own day. The greatest conquests of the Church in that land have been • * Elwood, Narrative of a Journey to India , vol. ii, Letter 54, p. 109. f For these and many similar testimonies see MarsliaH’s “Christian Missions,” Vol. i. ch. 3. 11 gained by apostles, of whom some are yet living, and about eight hundred thousand converts, whose invincible constancy a crowd of Protestant witnesses angrily attest, have embraced the faith, in spite of ceaseless and almost unparalleled tor¬ ments, during the present century. “ The history of Chinese Catholicism/’ says one of the ablest of English journalists,* “ reminds us, by its fierce struggles and its splendid heroism, of the progress of the faith in the earliest ages of its European career.” Not only have new confessors risen up in every part of the empire, but, in the very province first evangelised by Picci—as a Protestant missionary bit¬ terly relates in 1858—the native Catholics, two hundred and forty-eight years after his death, “ number about seventy thousand souls,” though fifty times decimated by a bloody persecution, in the face of which their diminished ranks were perpetually recruited. Mr. Yenn can discover no signs of permanence here. On the other hand, while a host of English and American writers—quoted in the work to which we have referred— speak with a vehemence of reprobation which only personal observation could justify of the Protestant missionaries in China, and describe their salaried disciples as the scum and ofiscouring of the populace, a competent Anglo-Chinese authority, writing in the midst of the scenes which he describes, declares, in 1861, that “ Protestant missionary labour in China is a grand swindle, and the. sooner it is denounced and exposed the better.” f We need not, however pursue this example further, since even Mr. Yenn declines to make any allusion to Chinese Protestantism. In this case his courage fails him, and he maintains a discreet silence. He observes, however, with an exuberance of untruth which almost excites admiration, that one of the most signal defects of the Catholic system is, that it never ♦ * The Examiner , June 14, 1862. f Marshall, vol. iii., p. 413. 12 succeeds in creating a “ native ministry.” Yet there were in China, in 1859, four hundred and twenty-eight native Catholic Priests, and such a multitude of aspirants, that eighteen ecclesiastical colleges —of which one is in the wilds of Tartary—did not suffice to receive them. (3) In America, where Mr. Venn is particularly struck with the want of permanence in the Catholic missions, we see, in fact, a whole continent converted to the faith, which it retains to this day with an incorruptible tenacity which Protestant travellers record with amazement. It is difficult to satisfy Mr. Venn. “ The acquisitions of the Catholic Church in the New World,” said Lord Macaulay, and Panke uses almost the same words, “ have more than compensated her for what she has lost in the Old.” But the superficial investigations of these obscure writers are rebuked by the deeper researches of Mr. Venn. If they made seeming converts, he says, for he can admonish Anchieta and the Blessed Peter Claver as well as St. Francis Xavier, it was only because Christianity was “ enforced by law ! ”—and this systematic coercion was practised by missionaries who were themselves every hour at the mercy of the ferocious nations whom they evangelised, and who were martyred, literally in scores, from one end of the Continent to the other. It would be impossible even to enumerate the shocking untruths which are contained in this section of Mr. Venn’s book, and which betray a moral insensibility of which English literature furnishes few examples. Even Paraguay, where a Southey was constrained to praise and admire, only kindles in him a fresh access of obloquy. When the Missions were forcibly suppressed, the people, he says, “ relapsed into heathenism .” His authority is the JEncyclo- pcedia Britannica ! —and even this he deliberately falsifies, since the article which he cites only says, “ relapsed into a state of barbarism .” Yet we are told by Julius Froebel and Brantz Mayer, by Olmsted and Cochrane, and many other 13 Protestant writers, that the natives of Mexico and the South American provinces immeasurably surpass in dignity and courtesy the peasantry of England or Germany. M. D’Or- bigny also, who does not judge them, like Mr. Venn, from the parlour of the Church Missionary Society, but after dwelling for years among them, ascertained, by actual com¬ putation, that the Pagans are less than one-sixteenth of the whole South American population, and that sixteen hundred thousand native Catholics, far from having relapsed into heathenism, “push the Catholic Religion even to fanaticism; ” a fact confirmed, with angry surprise, by the Protestant writers quoted in Mr. Marshall’s chapter on America. The same thing is true of Central America, of Mexico, Lower California, and all the surviving tribes of Canada. No trial, no desolation, has been able to destroy the faith which was planted by Catholic Missionaries from the banks of the St. Lawrence to the frontiers of Patagonia. Yet Mr. Venn can discover in the missions of the Church no sign of “ per¬ manence.” It is perhaps fair to add, that, in addition to the “ Ency¬ clopaedia Britannica,” Mr. Venn quotes half-a-dozen lines from Muratori, which afford about as much assistance to his argument as might be derived from the Latin Grammar or the Adventures of Itobinson Crusoe. To cite Muratori in disparagement of the Paraguay Mission, which he repre¬ sented as one of the triumphs of Christianity, is as unreal and dishonest as to quote Guizot against constitutional government, or Thiers against the valour of French armies. But Mr. Venn believed that his clients would not detect the artifice, and was sure that if they did they would pardon it. Of Protestant Missions in America, as in China, Mr. Venn says not a word. Perhaps he knows something of that shameful contrast, admitted by a hundred Protestant writers, which forced Mr. Prichard to exclaim, “ It must be allowed 14 to reflect honour on the Koman Catholic Church and to cast a deep shade on the history of Protestantism/' * (4) Ceylon affords another of Mr. Venn's examples of the instability of Catholic missions. He might as well refer to the Pyramids of the Nile as an instance of the frailty of Egyptian architecture. If it would benefit the funds of his society, he would perhaps do this also. Yet he can hardly be ignorant that Sir Emerson Tennent, confirming the evi¬ dence of every Protestant writer, including the missionaries themselves, declares that “ neither corruption nor coercion could induce (the Catholic natives) to abjure their religion that his own agents in Ceylon confess that for fifty years they have made the experiment in vain ; and that while they are never sure of their own converts for twenty-four hours, the Catholic Cingalese, even peasants and fishermen, only laugh at the bribes with which they strive to corrupt their fidelity. (5) Lastly, for our limits warn us to conclude, Mr. Venn gravely assures his clients, that facts “ forbid us to reckon the Philippines as a missionary success "—p. 315. In vain Protestant witnesses of all classes represent that the “ whole population" are, in the words of the Pev. David Aheel, “bigoted Papists in vain Mr. Crawfurd, Sir Henry Ellis, Sir John Bowring, Mr. Oliphant, and other writers quoted by Mr. Marshall, describe the enlightened zeal of the Govern¬ ment, the spread of education, and the constant progress in material prosperity. Mr. Venn will not listen to them, lest they should compromise the annual receipts of his society. A single witness, a German naturalist, who thinks it clever to scoff at “ Augustinian, Dominican, and Franciscan friars," lends him an unsubstantial sneer, which he presents to his readers in place of evidence. Yet even this man declares, that “ the entire Archipelago is nothing but one rich church domain!" And who is Mr. Venn's solitary witness? Dr. * Natural History of Man, § 44, p. 427. 15 Scherzer, the gentleman in question, thus reveals his own qualifications as an adversary of the Catholic Religion. Contrasting the wealth and luxury of Protestant with the destitution of Catholic missionaries, he says : “ What a grati¬ fying contrast to the wretched appliances with which Catholic missions are compelled to eke out a precarious existence !”* “Do not possess gold,” was the injunction of our Blessed Lord to the first Christian missionaries, “ nor silver, nor money in your purses: Nor scrip for your journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff.”— St. Matt, x., 9, 10. The equipment of Protestant missiona¬ ries, as Dr. Scherzer jubilantly remarks, is in “gratifying contrast ” with these “ wretched appliances.” It must be confessed that Mr. Venn’s witnesses are worthy of a writer who calls St. Francis Xavier a Mussulman and a blasphemer. We have said enough to show the profound immorality of Mr. Venn’s hook, and having examined his first proposition, that Catholic missions have no permanence, we reserve for a concluding notice his second assertion, that they are every¬ where inferior to those which he superintends himself. We have seen that Mr. Venn can discover no signs of “permanence” in Catholic Missions. They have indeed won whole continents to the faith, and all the Christian nations of the earth, in both hemispheres, are their monuments. The most recently founded have already survived three centuries of trial, and they are as full of life and power at this moment, by Protestant testimony, in Asia, Africa, and America, and in all the islands of the sea, as at any former date. But this does not satisfy Mr. Venn. He even contrasts their brief duration and imperfect results, with the stability and effici¬ ency of Protestant Missions. It was perhaps through inad¬ vertence that he omitted to give examples of the latter, * Voyage of the Novara , vol. ii., ch. 16, p. 565. 16 which considerably impairs the symmetry of his conclusions. Possibly he designs to supply the defect in some future work, when Protestant Missions shall he old enough to appeal to their own history. Meanwhile, he proves one half of his argument by his own asseverations, and the other half he does not prove at all. Let us examine his method. (1). Mr. Venn vehemently admires the results of Pro¬ testant missionary labour in South India, and especially in Tinnevelly. “ Here,” he says, “ the Lord hath made bare his arm. . . . Here are numerous congregations of men and women . . . Here are many thousands of children who are being trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord etc., etc. He quotes these words from a Protestant Mis¬ sionary Report, for he never ventures to appeal to more impartial witnesses, but quite forgets, no doubt in the hurry of composition, to add the following passages from the same report. “ The Tinnevelly brethren are fully alive to the fact that Christianity is as yet only in an infant state in Tinne¬ velly “ there are many who are still very ignorant, and but barren professors;”* confessions which Mr. Venn does not admit into his book, and which, as we learn from other sources, leave more than half the truth untold. The Rev. Hr. Brown, speaking of this very Mission, says:—“ As whole villages came forward asking instruction, so whole villages also fell away, f And he adds, without regard for Mr. Yenn’s official theory, “we have no idea that there has been much spiritual good effected in that country.” A higher authority, the Christian Remembrancer , confesses in July, 1860, two years after the report quoted by Mr. Yenn, “ the onward movement in South India seems to have ceasedf and confidently predicts that “ missionary operations will ad¬ vance no further, but will in all probability retrograde , and * Proceedings of Missionary Conference, Madras, 1858. *j* Hist, of Prop, of Christianity, &c., vol. ii., p. 345. 17 that speedily. ” Yet this is Mr. Venn’s solitary example of Protestant missionary success ! Mr. Yenn may find equally emphatic confessions of hope¬ less failure in the writings of the Pev. William Clarkson, the Pev. Edward Storrow,* the Pev. J. M’Gh.ee, the Pev. H. Tupper, and a multitude of other Protestant ministers. He will pardon us if we adopt their estimate rather than his. It seems to us more worthy of credit. They speak of what they have seen, and their gloomy reports compel us to accept the acute suggestion of a native Protestant teacher, who can¬ didly confessed, in 1853, that “ he attributed the exaggerated accounts,” which it is Mr. Venn’s function to propagate, “to the necessity of creating a sensation at home at public meet¬ ings, in order to raise money.” But Mr. Yenn, who is altogether silent about Protestant missions in China, America, and many other lands, has more to say about India. “ The German brethren on the western coast,” he assures us, are also rejoicing “over the tokens of God’s gracious approval.” It may be so, but we prefer to hear their own account. We have seen that it is not quite safe to accept that of Mr. Yenn. In 1845, “the German brethren” commenced a mission in the JSTeilgherries. Being “ received with great indifference,” they opened a school, and as no pupils came, they paid one hundred boys “ ostensibly for working in the garden in the afternoon; but in reality for coming to school.” Such is their own admission. They next tried “ the direct preaching of the glorious Gospel,” which was so far successful, that, if we may be pardoned for repeating such words, “ some re¬ ceived Jesus into their Pantheon, and called upon His as well * This gentleman, after candidly admitting that more than four-fifths of the pretended Hindoo Protestants are not Christians in any sense whatever, observes of the remainder, u the general character of native Christians, it need hardly be said, is not of a high order .”—India and Christian Missions , cli. 4, p. 78. B 18 as upon other names!” We may easily believe that the heathen had quite as much reverence for that Name as the teachers who could thus dishonour it. The missionaries were more successful in collecting money than disciples, and one gentleman seems to have bequeathed to them his whole pro¬ perty. Meanwhile, as they report, “ there were several hope¬ ful cases, but no real conversion or baptism took place and this state of things continued so many years, that “ at last it became a great trial of faith and patience,”—soothed, how¬ ever, by domestic ease and the opulence which they would never have enjoyed at home,—“ to preach to the same well- known and apparently hopeless generation.” At length, at the end of 1856, their hopes revived, for “ we were strength¬ ened by the arrival of Brother Kettle.” This was evidently an auspicious event, and from that hour “ the signs of the coming day were unmistakeable.” The day, however, was hardly to be distinguished from the night, so faint was the illumination which accompanied it. “ In June, 1857, one man came for¬ ward and expressed a wish for baptism,” which they gave him, and probably other gifts with it. “ The sensation created among the hill-tribes by this baptism,” they say, as if so unexpected an event justified impressive language, “ was like an earthquake that shook the mountains from one end to the other.” The mountains, however, brought forth no¬ thing, and the earthquake quite as little, and the final result of the “sensation,” as their official narrative cheerfully records in 1858, was this :—“ Two souls have been given to us!”* In thirteen years, singularly prosperous in tem¬ poral affairs, the spiritual conquests of five Protestant Mis¬ sionaries—their total number in this region alone exceeded forty—amounted to “two” questionable disciples, of whose real character their report furnishes no account. Mr Yenn has only disdain for Catholic Missions, for the saints who * Proceedings of the South India Missionary Conference, p. 89. 19 conduct and the martyrs who adorn them, but sees plainly “the arm of the Lord” in the remarkable triumphs of “the German brethren.” “The great city of Madras,” according to Mr. Venn, is another place which is being rapidly regenerated by “ soul¬ transforming truths.” If, however, we turn from the Secre¬ tary of the Church Missionary Society to the missionaries themselves, we receive a very different report. “ The care¬ lessness and apathy of the people,” says the Rev. J. II. Gray, “ and their great ignorance of the plainest truths, have often compelled me to inquire what inducement they had to become Christians?” “The Bishop of Bombay,” adds the Rev. H. Tupper, in 1856, “assents to what is said on all hands, that there are but few native Christians of undoubted sincerity.”* Others frankly confess that there are none at all. We leave Mr. Yenn to convince these witnesses of their error. Madura, and the Protestant missions in that province, excite Mr. Yenn to enthusiasm, or at least to the affectation of it. Yet the Rev. W. Tracy confesses, in 1858, that after the efforts of thirty years, incalculable expenditure, and an average attendance of nearly four thousand scholars at a time, all instructed in the Bible and the Protestant religion, and required “ to attend religious service on the Sabbath,” “ few, if any, conversions occurred, either among the scholars or masters.”! And Mr. Yenn, at the moment of writing his book, had this very Report lying on his table ! Once more. The effects of Protestant educational schemes in India fill Mr. Yenn with unspeakable consolation, which he endeavours to' communicate to the faithful clients of the Church Missionary Society. “We behold,” to quote his book, “a large and powerful system of Anglo-vernacular education, based upon the Bible, and entirely pervaded by * Marshall’s “ Christian Missions,” vol. i., ch. 3. f* Proceedings, &c., p. 94. 20 its soul-transforming truths, steadily at work, moulding the minds of several thousands of youths of the middle and upper classes ; and, through the divine blessing, touching the hearts of not a few, and leading them to Christ/’ “It is the universal confession,” says Archdeacon Grant in his Bampton Lectures, “ that very few of the children so educated embrace the Christian faith.” “ The results have been,” adds the Rev. Mr. Knighton, “total want of moral principle, and utter infidelity in religion.” “ Results,” writes the Rev. Mr. Clarkson, referring to the unanimous confessions of Protest¬ ant missionaries in all the chief cities of India, “ as they have hitherto manifested themselves, are unfavourable, not only to the Gospel, but to the principles of natural religion.” Mr. Marshall, from whom we borrow these extracts, quotes twenty-three Protestant witnesses, who all give the same re¬ port. We refer our readers to the first volume of his work for their testimony. When we compare their frightful ad¬ missions as to the real effect of Protestant education upon the natives of India with Mr. Venn’s hollow and heartless boasts, we are reminded that St. Paul speaks of men who, while they talk unctuously of sacred things, are only, in the judg¬ ment of the Angels, “as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” We have heard enough of India, where, as a grave autho-. rity announced not long ago in the Times, “ the great Chris¬ tian movement has been hitherto Roman Catholic;” and where Protestantism, in spite of every temporal advantage, has so utterly failed, that an Anglican Chaplain earnestly recommends his co-religionists, in 1862, to give up all further attempts at conversion, because India, “ like its own sands, has drunk up so much of our missionary labour and like them has yielded so little.”* (2.) We have seen that Mr. Venn, to the great prejudice * Bow we got to Pehin , by the Rev. R. T. L. M’Ghee, Chaplain to the Forces, ch. 13, p. 291. 21 of his argument, which required a minute and conscientious comparison, such as Mr. Marshall has instituted, between Catholic and Protestant Missions in all parts of the world, does not venture to say a word about Protestant Missions in China. In this case he maintains an ominous silence. Though conducted by more than two hundred missionaries, of twenty different sects, at a cost of many millions sterling, they have continued so obstinately sterile, that even his for¬ titude of assertion fails him here. The reports of all the Protestant witnesses, of every creed and nation, are so abso¬ lutely unanimous, and describe with so much energy of expression the contrast between the Catholic and Protestant Missions, both in their agents and their results, that the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society seems to have comprehended that this was a prohibited topic. We will not, therefore, provoke a discussion which Mr. Yenn urgently deprecates, not by speech, but by what Sidney Smith calls “ brilliant flashes of silence/’ The reader who desires to see what is the “ permanence” of Catholic missions in this land, in the face of almost unexampled persecutions, and how they accomplish in poverty the evangelical triumphs which Pro¬ testantism, with all the resources of unlimited wealth, does not even attempt, will find evidence enough to satiate his curiosity in Mr. Marshall’s chapter on China. (3.) In spite of our cordial desire to follow Mr. Yenn step by step, as his observations on India enabled us to do, we must confess that his peculiar method effectually baffles our purpose. His remarkable account of “ the solid and unques¬ tionable fruits of Protestantism in South India,” he says, “ might be extended by a reference to the native churches established in Sierra Leone, in New Zealand, in many islands of the South Sea, in Burmah, in Madagascar, and elsewhere.” That he could give an account of all those regions, or of any regions whatever, quite as accurate and truthful as he gives of India, we have no doubt. He has offered us a sufficient 22 example of his capacity. But as he says nothing whatever about them, we must seek from other quarters the informa¬ tion which he declines to afford us. Perhaps he felt that in his pictures of India he had exhausted all the resources of his imagination, and that he could hardly expect to attain a second time to the same elevation. Let us see, by Protestant testimony, what are, in fact, the “ solid fruits” of Protest¬ antism in each of the countries referred to by Mr. Venn, and first in Western Africa. We must, of course, limit our appeal to two or three witnesses in each case. Mr. Brodie Cruickshank, an ardent friend and confederate at the missionaries in Western Africa, among whom he resided for eighteen years, detected in their converts “ a uniformity of weakness truly humiliating and deplorable,” and furnishes details of “ their general relapse into im¬ morality,” from which even Mr. Yenn would find it difficult to derive any material for congratulation. Mr. Duncan, also an associate of the Missionaries, declares with regret, that Protestant education in these regions “ is only the means of enabling (the natives) to become more perfect in villany.” M. Du Chaillu records their own private confession in 1861, “ that the positive success of the mission is not great ” and that it is never likely to be greater; and the Pev. Leighton Wilson reluctantly admits, that “ the missionaries have done little more than possess themselves of the outposts,” after efforts continued during a century and-a-half, and that “ in accomplishing even this much, they feel themselves greatly indebted to what has been done by the squadron”* (4.) In New Zealand, Protestantism had a fairer field for the display of its power than it may ever hope to possess again. A vigorous and intelligent race, feebly attached to pagan customs, and perhaps less subject than any other bar¬ barous people to the control of a national priesthood or the influence of traditional rites, seemed a sure and easy conquest. * Marshall, vol. ii, cli, 7. 23 “In Lidia” as Banke observes with admiration, in de¬ scribing tbe success of the Catholic Missionaries, “ their progress outwent all expectation, and they succeeded in overcoming, at least to a certain extent, the resistance of those national systems of religion which are the immemorial growth of the East.” In New Zealand , Protestantism en¬ tered into conflict with the feeble superstitions of the Maori, and was overcome by them! Even its nominal disciples, as Dr. Thomson reports in 1859, “ frequently appeal to their old gods for health;” while Mr. Wakefield adds, that “ they are distinctly inferior in point of moral character,” though educated from infancy in Protestantism, to their pagan fellow-countrymen. The missionaries themselves con¬ fess, in a report published by the Colonial Government in 1859, that nothing can now arrest the destruction of “a population which has once reached such a state of decrepi¬ tude,” and that their rapid decay is chiefly due to “ un¬ cleanness in body and mind, in all their thoughts, words, and actions;” while Mr. Cholmondeley predicts that even the colonists themselves, weary of a religion which can only engender strife and discord, “ will become either Poman Catholics, or Atheists and Materialists.” We commend to Mr. Venn’s careful attention the fifth chapter of Mr. Marshall’s work on “ Christian Missions,” in which he will find an authentic record of the “ solid fruits ” of Pro¬ testantism in the Antipodes. (5.) The islands of the South Sea, Mr. Venn considers, afford another example of the striking success of Protestant Missions. If it were possible to attribute this opinion to candid ignorance, we should be tempted to inquire in what remote solitude Mr. Venn has spent his life, that he alone should be unconscious of facts attested by every writer, without exception, who has examined the history of Pro¬ testant missions in the islands of the Pacific. We have no space to quote testimonies which never vary in their tone or 24 import during thirty successive years, and will content our¬ selves with a single example, which is not quoted by Mr. Marshall, probably because it is contained in a work pub¬ lished some months later than his own. The author of “ Christian Missions ” observes, that it is a special feature of the Protestant missions, in every part of the world, that “the latest report of them is always the worst.” We are about to furnish a remarkable example of the truth of this statement. The most recent work on the Sandwich Islands appeared during the present year. Its author, Mr. Manley Hopkins, who does not conceal his sympathies with Protestantism, was the Hawaiian Consul General, and his book is dedicated by permission to Earl Pussell, and published with a laudatory preface by the Protestant Bishop of Oxford. We could not desire a more unexceptionable witness. “ The missionaries,” says Mr. Hopkins, “ clothed and converted the natives, and they produced not, alas ! a regenerated people, but a nation of hypocrites .” Of their universal immorality he gives an account for which we refer to his own pages, and by which he explains, like the writers on Hew Zealand, their rapid progress towards extinction. All his statements are con¬ firmed by the confessions of the missionaries themselves, and by pregnant extracts from the official report of Mr. Dana, whose candid praises of the Catholic missionaries, he remarks, were quietly suppressed by the Missionary Society to whom his report was addressed, lest they should prove “ unsatis¬ factory to the supporters of the mission! ” “I visited,” says Mr. Dana, an Episcopalian Protestant, “ several churches and schools imder the jurisdiction of the Homan Catholic Bishop, which extends over all the islands of the group. So far as I observed , the missions are successful: the churches are well filled, and the priests bear good reputations for fidelity and self-denial, and several whom I met I found to be men of thorough education. They gained especially in public 25 esteem by tbeir conduct during the terrible visitation of the small-pox a few years ago.” Finally, Dr. Dae, in a series of articles published in the “ Polynesian,” in 1861, gives the following decisive testimony: “I do not recollect having been in any mixed company in these islands where the subject of the Protestant mission was introduced, without hearing a sneer, a sarcasm , or a reproach against it. On the other hand, wherever I have been, and with whomsoever I have met, I have never encountered any one, except in con¬ troversy, who did not speak in terms of respect of the Catholic Priesthood. ... I simply note a fact—it is for the reader to draw the conclusion.”* (6.) Of Burmah, to which Judson, the most conspicuous of the Protestant missionaries, bade farewell in these words : “ Dead the five hundred tracts I have left with thee! ” we have little to say. That Mr. Venn could furnish an account of it which would satisfy his subscribers, we are not tempted to doubt; but that the Burmese would recognise his portrait of them, we are quite unable to believe. The missionaries, as described by Mr. Venn, would be as brilliantly successful as “the German brethren” in Western India; but the report of them by Protestant eye-witnesses is much less flattering. We will quote only one. “ Their labours,” says Mr. Windsor Earl, writing on the spot, “ are rarely heard of, except through the medium of missionary publications brought out from England (7.) Of Madagascar we are quite sure that Mr. Venn knows nothing whatever, except what he has heard from Mr. Ellis. But we cannot accept the testimony of Mr. Ellis without corroboration. There is a tendency in the human mind to receive with distrust reports of victories narrated by a single individual, who claims to have accomplished them single-handed, and who cannot refer to a solitary witness of his triumphs. This instinctive misgiving acquires additional energy, when the scene of the reported victories is so remote * The Sandwich Islands, ch. 24. C 26 as Madagascar, and so rarely visited by European travellers. In the case of Mr. Ellis there is, moreover, a special motive for hesitation and reserve. Mr. Ellis is the General Pope of Protestant Missions. Like the Federal hero, his victories always prove to be defeats. We cannot, indeed, always expose the fictions of such writers, but a recent work by a well known German traveller enables us to appreciate Mr. Ellis without the risk of error. “He boasted everywhere/’ says Ida Pfeiffer, who fortunately visited Madagascar, and obtained the admission to the royal presence which Mr. Ellis ardently coveted, “ of the favourable reception he had met with. This favour was so great, in fact, that after a stay of scarcely four weeks at Tananariva, he received a peremptory order to depart .” In vain he humbly remonstrated, urging, among other reasons, that “the fever season was not yet passed.” Neither this nor any other plea availed, and Mr. Ellis hastened to England, to write an account of his triumphs in Madagascar, and to raise fresh subscriptions. At home he was as successful as gentlemen who possess his intimate knowledge of the English character usually are. But in Madagascar he and his companions appear to have left an evil odour behind them. “ The English,” says the same capable witness, “ had made themselves so hateful, not only to Padama, but to the people, that everything false and mendacious used to be called ‘ English.’ ” * We will only add, that the most confidential counsellors of Padama at this moment are the Catholic Missionaries, and that he has lately addressed a letter to the Sovereign Pontiff, soliciting his apostolic benediction for himself and his people. Is there any other land in which Mr. Yenn would prefer that we should institute a comparison between Catholic and Protestant Missions P Shall it be Syria, where the Pev. Mr. Williams declares that the Protestant missionaries “are merely playing at Missions?” Or Jerusalem, where, he observes, “ self-sacrifice and simple trust were not taught, either by pre- * The Last Travels of Ida Pfeiffer, pp. 132, 230. 1861. 27 cept or example, by tbe missionaries ?” Or shall it be the whole of Western Asia, where, according to the Protestant Bishop Southgate, the only Protestant converts “ are infidels and radicals, unworthy of the sympathy of the Christian public ?” Or would Mr. Yenn prefer Turkey, of which Sir Adolphus Slade candidly says, “ Protestant missionaryism certainly costs a great deal, but the good it may effect is as a drop of water, compared with the sea of benefits spread by the Poman Catholic Church, silently and unostentatiously, all over Turkey?” Or will Mr. Yenn accompany us to Egypt, where Dr. Durbin sorrowfully confesses of the pretended Protestant disciples, “ most of them resume the same religious views and feelings which prevail among their people;” and where an agent of the Malta Protestant College reports, “ very little Protestant progress has been made here, and I find everything poor and without life. But, on the con¬ trary, wherever you turn your eyes you see Poman Catholic progress ?” Or will Mr. Yenn carry us to Abyssinia, where Dr. Krapf tells us, that the Catholic missionaries so completely beat him and his companions out of the field, that “ it was evident the Protestant Mission must entirely abandon Abyssinia, and seek elsewhere for a sphere of labour ;” and where, as Mr. Mansfield Parkyns relates, the Moravians excited such universal disgust, that when they finally de¬ parted, “they left not a single friend behind?” Or shall we go to the Hottentots, of whom Mr. Cole and twenty more declare, “ Out of every hundred Hottentot Christians (so-called), ninety-nine are utterly ignorant of any correct notion of a future state?” Or to the Kaffirs, of whom the Pev. H. Calderwood observes, “ they may be said to have refused the Gospel?”* Or will Mr. Yenn provoke us to cross the Atlantic ? If we do, we shall have this report from the Far West, by a British Protestant, of the Catholic and Protestant missionaries. Of the latter, he says, “the reli¬ gious mission of too many has been adopted merely as the * Marshall, chaps, vii., viii. 28 means of securing snug locations for themselves and families; ” and of the former, that they “ put to shame their efforts after self-aggrandizement by singleness of purpose, and entire devotion thereto.”* Or lastly, shall we turn to the eastern provinces of the same continent, to receive from a well known English writer the following emphatic report ?—“ One thing is most visible, certain, and undeniable, that the Roman Catholic converts are in appearance, dress, intelligence, industry, and general civilisation, superior to all the others.”! We have examined, with such detail as our space allows, the assertions of Mr. Venn. For a more complete and exhaustive refutation of them, we refer our readers to Mr. Marshall’s volumes, in which many hundreds of similar testimonies, all derived from Protestant sources, will he found. Meanwhile, we regret to he compelled to add, that there is not a single statement in Mr. Venn’s book which is not demonstrably, and, we fear, wilfully untrue. Coarse, irreverent, and trivial—written with the graces of a dissent¬ ing sermon, and the research of a schoolboy’s theme—his volume is chiefly remarkable for insults to saints whom even Protestants revere, and for disrespect to martyrs which even Protestants will disavow; while he lauds with affected enthusiasm traders and adventurers whose real character we should never have known but for Protestant evidence. Such a book would have been simply odious from whatever quarter it had proceeded; but when we consider that so many shocking untruths are uttered with solemn complacency by a person who has not even the excuse of ignorance or fana¬ ticism, but who has a deep personal interest in confirming the popular delusion which he seeks to propagate by such means, they invite the reprobation of honest men, of all sects and parties, not only in the interests of religion, but in those of public morality. * The Oregon Territory , by Alexander Simpson, Esq., p. 31. f Sketches in Canada , by Mrs. Jameson, part ii., p. 287. "W. DAVY AND SON, GILBERT STREET, W.