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 OCCASIONAL PAPER. No. i6. 
 
 Cainkitrgc P^xssion to ^tll^i 
 
 IN CONNEXION WITH THE S.P.G. 
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF WORK 
 
 SINCE 1881. 
 
 EY THE 
 
 REV. G. A. LEFROY, M.A. 
 
 OF TRINITY COLLEGE AND THE CAMIJRIDGE MISSION. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 1890
 
 Camb. Miss. Delhi, 
 29. 4. 90. 
 
 Dear Dr Westcott, 
 
 When I was at Cambridge last year you asked me to furnish 
 as the next Occasional Paper something in the way of a general 
 review of our work and position of the last eight or nine years, 
 shewing especially the steps of progress which we have been enabled 
 to take during that period and the directions in which we are now 
 most conscious of the need for further development. In the year 
 1 88 1, Bishop Bickersteth of Japan, then our Head, sent you such a 
 review of the four years which had elapsed since the Mission had 
 definitely started with the arrival in Delhi of himself and Murray. 
 Since that time our Occasional Papers and other efforts (meagre at 
 best if the opinions on the subject which I found current in Cam- 
 bridge must be unreservedly accepted) to keep you at home ac- 
 quainted with the movements, the hopes and needs of our work out 
 here, have been confined almost entirely to the treatment of single 
 topics, specific and individual branches of our work. It can there- 
 fore scarcely be questioned that the time for something of a more 
 general and connected summary and review of the events of these 
 years has come, and this I will now attempt, in such time as I can 
 command for the purpose, to present. I cannot refrain from saying 
 at the outset how great and continuous has been our sense of loss 
 in the removal of Bickersteth from his work here — ordered though 
 we can well believe, and in part see, that it has been for the larger 
 service and greater strength of Christ's Church as a whole. Still 
 we cannot escape the sense that had it fallen to him to make this 
 review of the Delhi work once again, as he did in 1881, the record 
 of work and progress would have been different in many marked 
 and tangible ways from what it can be now. To one other sense of 
 sore loss now hanging over us I must just allude in passing. Next 
 to the loss of Bickersteth the greatest change which has come to 
 the Mission, the most serious crisis through which it has passed is 
 that which is now involved in your removal from Cnmhriduje to 
 Durham. \ou cannot know what a source of strength and support
 
 it has been to us through these years to feel that we had you at our 
 back committed definitely to the work, with a keen and, as ex- 
 perience has again and again proved to us, an unflagging interest in 
 it, ready at all times with counsel, help and encouragement. When 
 you leave Cambridge we know that this cannot continue to be so, 
 at any rate, quite in the same way and to the same degree as of old. 
 We comfort ourselves however by feeling that this change is itself 
 another of the signs of God's good hand resting upon our English 
 Church, a token that His purposes towards it are good, and that in 
 the well-being and gain of the whole the part too must eventually 
 gain. We know too quite certainly that even amid all the calls and 
 cares of Durham work India, and not least our own Mission to 
 Delhi, will continue to occupy a place scarcely secondary in your 
 thoughts and prayers. Now for our work — 
 
 I. Sf Stephen^ s School and College. This must necessarily take 
 the first place, not only because it always has occupied such in our 
 own thoughts and plans for our work, but also and still more because 
 the experience of each year is telling us, I believe, more and more 
 that in no other way have we, at any rate as yet, got into such vital 
 touch with any section of the people, in no other way can one get 
 the same opportunities of persistent progressive and, as one must 
 needs believe, irresistible influence as we do get with our pupils and 
 students in School and College. You know, I believe, that I am 
 myself rather drawing off from this kind of work and trying to get, 
 by Bazar preaching, ordinary intercourse or whatever means, among 
 the adults of the town, especially those who have not been touched 
 by English education and whom one has to reach wholly through 
 Urdu. I speak therefore as one in no sense committed to this special 
 educational work. And yet I never return to it, after some break in 
 teaching (as I did for instance this morning for the first time after 
 my return from England) without feeHng that in no other place or 
 way do I get the same opportunity of closest personal touch with 
 and influence on minds just in the most receptive and favourable 
 conditions. The more too one comes to reaUse the extraordinary 
 degree to which, in many respects, the people of India have become 
 demoralized and have lost their hold on many of the most elemen- 
 tary principles of right and wrong, the more one sees how essential 
 it is not only to preach the saving truths of Christ but to recreate as 
 far as possible the entire character and tone and mental standpoint. 
 Idolatry, pantheism, fatalism and many more equally injurious habits 
 of thought or action seem to have weakened the whole moral facul- 

 
 5 
 
 ties and obscured the most elementary moral perceptions to a degree 
 which it is difficult for us often to realise or believe. To take an 
 instance of the simplest kind. Any day talking in the Bazar if one 
 brings up as against the Hindu the wickedness, the follies and im- 
 moralities of Krishna, one of the best known and most widely 
 recognised Incarnations of the popular worship, one is met at once 
 by the reply, given in utter simplicity and complaisance of mind, 
 " O but then he was an ' avatar,' an Incarnation, and therefore the 
 laws binding on poor weak mortals like us must not be supposed 
 to be of force for him too. No doubt if we acted so we should 
 be most wicked and should expose ourselves as you say most 
 justly to shame and punishment, but Krishna was a god and so 
 he might do as he liked." I venture to say it is not easy for the 
 English mind even to conceive a position like this in which religion 
 is so absolutely divorced from moraUty, that the very fact of being a 
 god is claimed as the sufficient justification of utter lewdness and 
 foul immorahty. But does not the thought of such a state of things 
 existing help you to realise what are the conditions, what the diffi- 
 culties of preaching a gospel like the gospel of Christ to such minds, 
 and is it not easier to see how essential it is to get a hold of as 
 many young minds as possible and recreate some kind of moral 
 faculty, some basis of religious thought by that continuous personal 
 influence and that general development and education of thought 
 which is for the most part only possible in institutions like our 
 School and College ? It is significant that such an argument as that 
 I have referred to above, which may be and is given placidly and 
 without any suspicion of inherent weakness in the Bazar, would never 
 now be attempted in either School or College. They have at any 
 rate got beyond that. Their own truer instincts tell them now that 
 such a position could involve nothing but ruinous defeat all along 
 the line. But it is not only in a single point of this kind that we 
 are able to note the progress of thought and the growth of the 
 religious faculty in our students. We have not indeed, as you know, 
 been permitted as yet to see that visible fruit for which we so 
 earnestly long and pray in the actual conversion of individuals to 
 Christ and admission to His Holy Church. Nothing short of this 
 can possibly satisfy our deepest aims and longings, and may God 
 grant us, as we are sure He will, this great blessing and encourage- 
 ment as soon as ever He sees our work and the hearts of our 
 students to be ripe for the actual sending of the Spirit of Life. But 
 meantime, and short of this, we cannot but be conscious of, and
 
 greatly thankful for and cheered by, a very great change which in 
 the last two or three years has come over the general tone and 
 standpoint in religious matters of the pupils in the College and 
 higher classes of the School, and which, whether it yields at the 
 present time individual conversion or not, must mark a long step 
 onward in the preparation for and hastening of that consummation. 
 The light flippant objection to our Christian teaching, the assumed 
 matter of course antagonism is almost wholly a thing of the past. 
 There seems a general sense that the message, even if not absolutely 
 true in the sense in which we hold it to be so, is yet deserving of all 
 respect and pregnant with helpfulness and teaching for themselves. 
 Their questions are often directed to removing a real and honest 
 difficulty which our words may have suggested to them. Beside 
 this general change of tone there are individuals who we feel have 
 got much farther, who are certainly not, whether they are clearly 
 conscious of it or not themselves, far from the Kingdom of God, 
 who have entered more deeply into who and what Christ really is, 
 and who are kept back from avowed discipleship almost wholly by 
 the fearful lack of individuaHty and moral courage and resolute 
 determination of will which has eaten into the very being of the 
 nation. The one thing as it would seem which could strengthen 
 their will and nerve them for the tremendous wrench and effort 
 which is involved, for any of at all the higher classes in this country, 
 in the open profession of Christianity, would be that deep sense of 
 sin, that consciousness of moral responsibility and guilt and con- 
 sequent longing for a Saviour, which drove Christian from the city 
 of destruction, but that is just what seems to be practically non- 
 existent in the country. Indeed when we consider what the domi- 
 nant teaching for centuries past has been, it would be wonderful if 
 it still survived. In any case though have we not in what I have 
 said above sufficient cause of thankfulness and good reason to per- 
 severe in courage and the fullest certainty of eventual success ? It 
 is this growing sense of the vital importance to our work of an 
 educational institution that has made us for long so anxious to get 
 a better site and healthier and more commodious premises for the 
 College. This as you know we have at last, by the kindness of 
 Government and the support of many friends, been enabled to 
 secure, and the actual erection of the building will be commenced 
 we hope in a iQ\^ days. The foundation stone was laid some weeks 
 ago, with a few most kind and helpful words, by Sir Charles ElHott, 
 Head of the Public Works Department to the Government of India.
 
 The greater part of the money needed for the erection is I i)cHeve 
 in hand, but I hope that our friends and those who are identifying 
 themselves with our work here will remember how large the outlay 
 on furnishing suitable educational arrangements, apparatus, etc. will 
 necessarily be, and enable us to carry these most important matters 
 through in a fitting and satisfactory manner. The numbers of the 
 College are still very small — about 50 at present — but this is owing 
 to regulations for increase of fees &c. recently introduced by the 
 Government together with uncertainty in University examinations 
 which are affecting higher education throughout the Punjab. A 
 general increase, if a gradual one, seems certain in the future. 
 
 II. The Boarding- House and Hostel for Christian students in St 
 Stephen's School and College continues to prosper under Wright's 
 management. The numbers are still very small (twelve I think in 
 the School-House and two in the Hostel), but their general tone is 
 certainly very much higher than it was and they are making progress, 
 steady in their educational work, rapid in the not unimportant de- 
 partment of cricket. A considerable proportion of the school eleven 
 was this year furnished by our Christian students. They are also 
 being drawn more from the higher classes of native Christians — a 
 change in every way most desirable, and which inter alia enables the 
 Boarding-HoLise to be more nearly self-supporting than hitherto, 
 though it is still a long way from that desirable financial position. 
 
 III. The Readers' Trainiiig- School. Turning from an edu- 
 cational work which addresses itself primarily to the higher classes 
 of the city to that which is rather intended for the lower, I come to 
 the Readers' Training School which was established some eight years 
 since under Carlyon's supervision and is now located in our compound. 
 You know the need it was created to supply. Long before our 
 coming out Mr Winter had established in many places among the 
 Chumars both of Delhi and the surrounding districts little schools 
 of the very simplest type possible, but just intended to bring to those 
 poor people the only form and degree of education which they are 
 probably in their very degraded condition able to receive. A con- 
 siderable difficulty was experienced in finding teachers for these 
 schools and at first a very scratch lot had to be got together, of whom 
 the intellectual qualifications were not always, we may venture to say, 
 the most prominent. It was to meet this need that the training- 
 school was established. Christian boys — usually those drawn from 
 this very caste — the Chumars — and who have received their earliest 
 education in the schools under question, and shown there some
 
 intellectual and moral capabilities, are brought into our compound 
 and put under a course of training for three years in both secular and 
 religious subjects. We have been fortunate in securing for the 
 master of the school an old native Christian with some very special 
 qualifications for the work. There are only six students in the school 
 at present, and there seems no likelihood of their numbers swelling. 
 This is due partly, I think, to a want of reciprocity — of sufficient 
 give and take — which is too prevalent among Missions and which 
 often leads — whether intentionally or not — to the same kind of work 
 being taken up in a half-and-half kind of way in a number of different 
 centres and done weakly in all, instead of each Mission contributing 
 its element, strongly, to the common life of all. Partly also it is in this 
 particular case due largely to the fact that the demand for " readers " 
 (as these primary school semi-religious teachers are usually called) of 
 this standard and type is at present but very small in the districts 
 around us, as, to the best of my knowledge, no neighbouring Mission 
 has worked out anything answering to the system of low caste schools 
 established in the Delhi Mission. However, whether many or few, 
 they are being trained in a way which not only, I hope, gives them a 
 certain amount of head-knowledge, but is calculated to really form 
 their characters and give them a somewhat deeper and more living 
 hold on the Faith, and if this is so the work is bound to justify itself. 
 IV. The -Chu?}iar- Christian Congregations. Of these poor 
 people I will say very Httle chiefly because Mr Winter, in two or 
 three of his recent papers, has dwelt at considerable length on the 
 process we have been passing through and the present position of 
 affairs. I may just say shortly that after the considerable numbers 
 that were baptized from the Chumar (or leather-working) caste 
 between the years of 1875 and 1880 it soon became evident that if 
 the grossest scandals were to be avoided, and the reality of the 
 Christian profession in any degree maintained, the introduction of 
 some kind of disciplinary rules was an absolute necessity. These 
 from time to time during the last three or four years have been 
 gradually brought into operation, in each case the utmost effort being 
 made to carry with us the conscience and better feeling of all the 
 truer section of the flock, and in any case not to move too far in 
 advance of it. The rules have dealt with the most elementary and 
 vital questions, e.g. attendance at idolatrous feasts or ceremonies, 
 giving and taking in marriage the children of heathen parents, &c., 
 &c. The result of these rules, together with some other causes that 
 have been more recently operating, has been sad enough. A large
 
 number of former nominal adherents have dropped off, and the 
 present muster-roll of Christians of this class in Delhi, if all agents 
 or others connected in any pecuniary way with the Mission be 
 counted separately, would be a very small one. Still whatever the 
 result we must — as we all do — hold it to be gain, for I do not believe 
 that anything which has been done can be considered to have 
 quenched even the smallest flame of real faith and genuine disciple- 
 ship. It has been simply the sifting out of the wholly unreal and 
 dead portions from the more living mass. The future of the move- 
 ment in this direction depends entirely so far as we can judge on the 
 vitality and genuine Christianity of the present survivors. If they 
 are sufficient, and sufficiently strong to give a fresh impulse to their 
 old heathen caste-fellows, it can scarcely fail to be of a much more 
 genuine intelligent and permanent kind than was the wave which is 
 now — in so considerable measure — passing away. At present things 
 are entirely at a standstill — so far as additions from outside are 
 concerned — and this is undoubtedly best while we are consolidating 
 so much as we may of the ground already gained. 
 
 V. The Catechists' Class. The weekly Bible-Class in Urdu for 
 Catechists and some of the vernacular school-masters which Bicker- 
 steth started I still continue, and value it increasingly. The need of 
 our Mission Agents — next to a deepening of their spiritual Hfe and 
 a more definite sense of Consecration in their work — is undoubtedly 
 more systematic and clear doctrinal teaching than they usually get. 
 The vagueness of many of them as to Church doctrine and Bible 
 truth is simply astounding — teachers though they are supposed to be 
 of others, and largely as the tone of the nascent native church must 
 be set by them. In point of fact I beUeve myself it would pay very 
 well to give up a second evening in the week to instruction, e.g. 
 on the Creeds, or to a consideration of the best methods of Bazar 
 preaching (in which several of them are engaged), the best answers 
 to popular objections and to the preparation of sermons. This I 
 know was what Bickersteth was longing to do before he went, but it 
 has never been done yet. There is of course the double difficulty — 
 first of securing oneself amid the multifarious engagements of Mission- 
 work time for such real preparation as would justify the summoning of 
 the class, and secondly the interruption, to a certain extent, of the 
 work of the men. The second point however I am not inclined to 
 rate high, my own very strong conviction being that what we want is 
 not so much a greater number of hours of work as greater keenness 
 and fitness both spiritually and intellectually in the instruments
 
 lO 
 
 themselves, and I am convinced the experiment if once tried would 
 soon justify itself. The weekly class moreover has another advan- 
 tage, second only to the opportunity it affords for imparting definite 
 instruction— if second to that. The difficulty of getting really into 
 touch with the native mind, understanding them and getting them to 
 understand us, is one which lies in the very forefront of all our work 
 in this land. The difficulty of course must always exist in any con- 
 tact of alien races, but it is brought to its height when the races so 
 brought into contact are so infinitely far apart in all that constitutes 
 national characteristics as Englishmen and the natives of this land 
 are. 
 
 A greater contrast from almost every conceivable point of view 
 it would be I think hard to imagine. How terrible a source of diffi- 
 culty, misunderstandings, injured feelings, irritation and hitches of 
 every kind in our work this is you can easily conceive, and we cannot 
 but set the highest store on any opportunity of meeting which tends 
 to lessen it and bring us both more nearly into touch and mutual 
 understanding with each other — and to me the weekly class has 
 been very notably an opportunity of this sort. Miles apart as in 
 many respects we still are, and I fear must always remain, still in 
 our discussions, often discursive and wandering to a degree, in this 
 class, our references to difficulties in home life or in the Mission itself 
 as well as in the Bazar — an unfolding often of thoughts that have lain 
 rather deep in the heart — we have been drawn more closely together 
 than in any other contact of which I am aware, and I therefore 
 value it proportionately. 
 
 VI. English Bible Reading. For the last two years there has 
 been held also a weekly English Bible-reading, conducted sometimes 
 by Allnutt sometimes by Kelley, to which the more educated Chris- 
 tians, of an altogether higher stamp and larger intelligence, being for 
 the most part teachers in our own School and College or in the 
 Government School are invited. It affords doubtless an opportunity 
 of meeting similar in many respects to the class of which I have 
 just spoken, while naturally much more advanced and deep Christian 
 thought can be imparted. 
 
 VII. Readers' Classes. The system of instruction for those 
 actually engaged in the Mission work as Readers, which also we 
 owe to Bickersteth, has been carried on and developed. It falls 
 under two heads. 
 
 {a) The classes for the "In-readers" as they are called, i.e. 
 those who are stationed in Delhi itself or the suburbs.
 
 1 1 
 
 {b) for the "Out-readers," those i.e. whose work Hes in the 
 district at distances from Delhi varying from five to twenty-five miles. 
 For the first there is regular instruction every week for two hours on 
 Friday evening in religious subjects (at present Kelley is giving this) 
 and two hours on Saturday morning in secular subjects. 
 
 For the second or out-readers' division other arrangements have 
 to be made, as it would cause too serious an interruption to their 
 work to summon them every Saturday from their outlying homes. 
 We therefore have them in for three days at the beginning of every 
 month — always including a Sunday — to give them an opportunity of 
 taking part in the worship of the Church as a whole, and also to 
 give them such instruction as the time permits of. Since however 
 this is necessarily very limited we supplement it by a scheme, the 
 hint of which we got from Bishop Selwyn's life. While the harvest 
 is being cut in April the schools in the district are almost entirely 
 deserted ; the chance of earning a few pence by the labour of even 
 the smallest boy being one which these poor people can by no 
 means afford to lose. During this month therefore Mr Winter 
 closes the schools, we bring in all the readers, lodge them together 
 in our compound, and arrange for regular daily Services, as well as 
 for regular and so far as may be really thorough instruction. At the 
 end of the month an Examination is held for both out- and in-readers 
 and all promotion in pay depends (subject to the general conditions 
 of good conduct and satisfactory work in his school) on the place 
 they take in this examination, a proportion of two-thirds marks 
 securing a rise of Rs. i (about i^. 6d.), and of half marks a rise of 
 half a rupee in their monthly pay. From this system we believe that 
 very great benefit has accrued, and we are doing our utmost to raise 
 the standard a little year by year. 
 
 VIII. Bazar preaching. Few branches of our work are 
 attended with greater difficulty than this — difficulties so many and 
 great, that many missionaries have been induced, I believe, either to 
 abandon it, or at any rate assign it a place very secondary in their 
 labours to that which it once occupied. While fully appreciating 
 and admitting the force of what may be said against it, I yet cannot 
 believe that a method sanctioned I conceive by the practice of 
 almost every great missionary life in every age of the Church should 
 be abandoned. I continue it myself chiefly as bearing a public 
 witness — at whatever value more or less that be reckoned — to the 
 Faith, and secondly on the ground that beggars must'nt be choosers, 
 and that with the extreme difficulty that exists for us in any attempt
 
 to get contact with and influence on the masses of adults in the 
 city we dare not abandon our method, however unsatisfactory, till 
 we get another and better one. And at present it is very hard to 
 see what the new method is to be which is to supply the place of the 
 old. Certainly a continuance of a scene we went through last night 
 would test an adherence to the practice severely. Haig and myself 
 went to preach in the evening in one of the central Bazars of 
 the city. We had commenced but a short time when a blind 
 Mahomedan preacher — a noted and most stubborn antagonist — came 
 and stood scarcely five yards off and commenced in the most 
 strident tones pouring out a mass of what to us at any rate (what- 
 ever it may have represented to him) was the foulest and lewdest 
 blasphemy about the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of our Saviour, 
 &c., &c. From this he proceeded to deal in a way more explicit 
 than complimentary with the personnel of certain portions of the 
 Delhi Mission. It was very difficult to know what to do. To 
 reason with him was impossible. To withdraw at once would have 
 meant that every preaching in future would be liable to be put an 
 end to by a similar method, to stand silently and Hsten to such 
 ribaldry was intolerable and scarcely calculated to do much good : 
 we therefore continued our discourses, one after the other, trying 
 entirely to ignore him and keep to the subject matter of the Bible, 
 thus at any rate giving those who could distinguish both the 
 opportunity of contrasting methods and subject matter of Christian 
 and Mahomedan preachers respectively. Two or three times we 
 shifted our ground, moving some yards one way or the other, but 
 his simple object being to interrupt, he immediately followed and 
 stood up again at our side. Once when Haig standing about a 
 couple of yards from me on one side tried, just by standing there, 
 to prevent his getting nearer to me than that, he definitely hustled 
 Haig and tried to force his way past him. Owing however to a 
 material difference in bulk and build, an attitude of purely passive 
 resistance on Haig's part sufficiently met the difficulties of the 
 position. Of course in acting thus he is bringing himself within 
 the arm of the law and it may be necessary to invoke it, but one 
 feels that the victory will be more real, if by simple patience and 
 continuance one can put him to shame and divert him from such 
 an unseemly practice. That the majority of the bystanders did 
 thoroughly disapprove of his action, and that their sympathies were 
 being more genuinely won to us than they would have been by a 
 great deal of quiet unopposed preaching on our part I am convinced
 
 while he had a few men backing him up I heard constant remon- 
 strances with him of both Hindus and Mahomedans, to which 
 however he turned a deaf ear. And I honestly beUeve that any 
 opposition — however coarse — is better for us than the Hstless in- 
 difference with which our message is too often met. None the 
 less it makes it the more important for us to carry out another 
 of Bickersteth's schemes for which he left money funded, but which 
 has long hung fire, though now at last we are really taking it in 
 hand in earnest : that is to secure a preaching Hall in some one 
 of the main thoroughfares of the city, so situated that we might 
 commence perhaps at the raydar, in the Bazar, almost as at present, 
 but then as soon as a crowd was formed, draw back into the hall 
 and get them seated there. Not to speak of the physical saving, 
 for the fatigue of speaking in a crowded bazar is very great, you 
 get a much better hold of the people, are able to secure a more 
 continuous and attentive audience, and to regulate discussion and 
 debate better than is possible in the other way. The Scheme has 
 been tried in various other Missions, and always I believe with 
 success. The site is the chief difficulty, as the price of land in 
 Delhi is going up by leaps and bounds, but this we hope soon to 
 overcome, and if so the building will be put in hand at once. 
 A preaching station has been instituted for the last two years by 
 Carlyon and Haig during the hot months that they are in Delhi, 
 close to the banks of the sacred river of Jumna, to which crowds of 
 Hindus flock down every morning to bathe. There are some rather 
 special difficulties in securing an audience, as the recent contact 
 with the water induces a disinclination— partly physical, perhaps 
 partly ceremonial— to stand about long on the homeward road. 
 Still it is a place where one ought to meet the more religiously 
 minded of the Hindus, and this should be useful. 
 
 IX. Contact with the upper and move educated classes of the city. 
 This is an aim Avhich we have always set rather specially before our- 
 selves and one in which we have so far at any rate signally failed. 
 The School and College of course bring us into contact with the 
 younger portion, but the difficulties of even finding out and meeting, 
 much more of getting really to know, the more adult sections of the 
 community seem extraordinarily great. Of course in common with 
 other missionaries we suffer from the gulf there is, in little everyday 
 matters of Hving, house arrangement, customs, &c., between their 
 lives and ours. Whether in addition to this there is in Delhi a singu- 
 larly conservative tone whicli is antagonistic lo all unnecessary
 
 H 
 
 meeting with foreigners or approach to rehgious discussion I do not 
 know— we sometimes think so. A Literary Society has been recently 
 started, or more correctly resuscitated, by gentlemen of the class I 
 refer to, which seems likely to afford a rather unusually good oppor- 
 tunity for a certain kind of intercourse though not of the most direct 
 and satisfactory kind — still we must value what we can get, and two 
 or three of us have joined it to see what will come of it. It was this 
 same desire — to get at any rate into some kind of contact with such 
 people — and this same difficulty in effecting such, that induced me 
 after much thought and consultation both out here and at home to 
 accept some years since a seat on the Delhi Municipal Committee. 
 If my experience since then has taught me more clearly than I saw 
 before how much may be urged against such action, it has also shown 
 me opportunities of gain and good such as I did not at all anticipate. 
 Most of all perhaps I would say that by meeting naturally with many 
 native gentlemen on a footing of pure equality and for general busi- 
 ness purposes I have been able to understand them, to enter into 
 their method and processes of thought, to see them as they actually 
 are, in a way which I believe would scarcely have been secured by 
 any amount of avowedly religious intercourse, with the ring of con- 
 ventionality and formalism which so inevitably attaches to most of 
 such out here, with the exception of course of the very few genuine 
 earnest religious enquirers. Such experience I believe I have in 
 measure gained, and I cannot doubt that it ought to increase our 
 efficiency in dealing with them on other, and distinctively religious, 
 subjects. The difficulties attaching to the whole question however I 
 fully feel, and am not by any means clear in my own mind whether 
 it is really best to continue in the municipality or not. 
 
 X. Itineration. The work of visiting — chiefly in the cold 
 weather — the very fine agricultural classes which abound in the 
 neighbourhood round Delhi is one to which as you know our thoughts 
 have been latterly directed in a very special manner. At present 
 Haig and Carlyon— with Kelley at times when he can be spared 
 from the school — are told off for this work. It is restricted to the 
 cold weather by purely physical consideration, as much of it has to be 
 done in tents moving from village to village and preaching as you go, 
 and this mode of life is practically impossible for the European ex- 
 cept during the cold weather months. Carlyon is just starUng now 
 on a month's tour to see what can be done from the shelter of the 
 few more substantial "Dak bungalows" or rest-houses which are 
 dotted— at wide enough intervals— over the district. He will take
 
 15 
 
 out a horse with him and try to visit in the early morning and after 
 the heat of the day in part such villages as may be attainable from 
 each such centre. How desirable it is to keep up touch in this way 
 and not let the entire six months of the hot weather — with their 
 highly soporific tendencies and solvent properties — intervene between 
 one rehgious lecture and the next you can easily understand. This 
 whole question however is bound up with the difficulties of itinera- 
 tion from a city centre. We are convinced, and each year's experi- 
 ence convinces us more, that under such conditions really satisfac- 
 tory work in the district is impossible. On the one hand we arc 
 bound by the very principles of our brotherhood-life which do not 
 admit of any one member being very continuously absent from the 
 common life. On the other hand, both because of the hot weather 
 difficulty to which I have above referred and on more general grounds 
 one may lay it down as certain that to influence the district you must 
 be in and of the district. The nearer your life can approach to the 
 lives of those you want to influence the more persistent and continuous 
 can be the contact between you and them — the greater, by all the 
 laws of human nature, must be the result. In point of fact even 
 here in Delhi I am convinced that we all— -except possibly the edu- 
 cational members— suffer greatly from living where we do at a 
 distance from the city, with a considerable establishment of servants 
 and to all intents and purposes under the general conditions and 
 surroundings of a " Sahib's " establishment in this country. Whether 
 any other course is practically open to us it is difficult to say — there are 
 certainly very serious obstacles in the way but the loss involved in our 
 present manner of life is great. I was much interested at coming 
 across a few days ago the following words in a letter from Bicker- 
 steth, dated Oct. 6, 1880, to the present Bishop of Truro, then Vicar of 
 S. Peter's, Eaton ^Square — "I must only mention one point more — of 
 apparently very much smaller importance, but involving in it some 
 real issues of missionary expediency. We are living at present out- 
 side the city, and all our efforts to obtain a site for building within 
 the walls have failed. Thus we are a long way from the people 
 among whom we work. I see that one of the most experienced of 
 native Christians, himself in a high independent position under 
 Government, said the other day that had all English missionaries 
 who have come to India lived Hinduized lives among the people of 
 the land, instead of apart among their own people, India would 
 have been Christian before this. This is no doubt strong language 
 and takes no account of the immense difficulty which, to Europeans,
 
 \6 
 
 is summed up in the one word 'sun.' Still there are many who 
 think it is substantially true. If your people will ask for us, that we 
 may be guided as to whether some of us ought not to give up in part 
 our present brotherhood life, in order to adopt a mode of life more 
 distinctly native, we should so much thank them." I would earnestly 
 ask any who read these lines and are interested in our work to make 
 in all reality and earnestness the prayer he suggests for us. We 
 need it now no less than we did then. With regard however to the 
 district it seems scarcely open to question that the way to solve the 
 difficulty is to establish a branch Mission at one of the larger towns 
 in the country around Delhi, the members of which — three or four in 
 number — would be almost exclusively given up to this kind of work. 
 A scheme for the formation of such a branch has been as you know 
 already approved by our Committee and endorsed by the S. P. G. 
 who have promised according to their wont liberal money aid. What 
 is now wanted is the men. And these are — it should be clearly 
 understood — wanted not for the district work itself but to take the 
 place in the Delhi band of those men who, having already had ex- 
 perience of itinerating work, are only eager to devote themselves 
 entirely to it. Of course one new man might go into the district, if 
 for any reason it was thought specially desirable, but this is not what 
 we primarily need. One or two thorough educationalists who will 
 take up the work co7i aviore, really believing in it as a great mis- 
 sionary agency, together with one or two ready to devote themselves 
 to more general evangelistic work in the city— for the most part in 
 the vernacular— this is what we really and urgently want, and what 
 will allow the scheme for the rural mission— so full of promise as it 
 seems— to take actual form. I had hoped that possibly my visit to 
 England last year might have been the means of securing at any rate 
 one or two such men. It was not— at any rate definitively— though I 
 still hope that one at least with whom I then got into correspondence 
 may perhaps some day join us. But we do earnestly trust that you 
 and all who now clearly realise our wants will do their utmost, by 
 prayer and direct personal effort, to secure their fulfilment. In God's 
 good time it will surely come, and we are content to wait for this, 
 but we pray that it may be hastened. 
 
 XI. Literary labours. Another sphere to which, according to 
 our original programme, we were to have specially devoted ourselves 
 was that of literary effort. Writing in 1881 Bickersteth said "of the 
 last special duty assigned to us— literary works— I have at present 
 little or nothing to say I hope I may be able to render a more
 
 satisfactory account of our work in this line if four years hence I am 
 allowed to review a like period." Had he been permitted to make 
 such a review it goes without saying that he would have been able, 
 at any rate after the much longer interval which has in fact elapsed, 
 to render a more satisfactory account. As however he was to our so 
 great loss removed comparatively soon after writing these lines, and 
 it has fallen to me to make this review, I can only again take up his 
 words as to the absence of effort in this direction and hope — though 
 with a very much diminished hope — that if a certain number of years 
 hence " I am allowed again to make such a review I may be able to 
 render a more satisfactory account of our work in this line." Two 
 minor efforts I should notice. Some years since Allnutt started a 
 series of occasional papers addressed primarily to our old students, 
 by which it is hoped we may in some degree keep in touch with 
 those of them at least whose interest has been most aroused by our 
 teaching. We take it more or less turn about to write these papers, 
 working out, within small compass, each our own subject. One hopes 
 good has been done, though it is necessarily of the sort that one 
 cannot gauge. More recently Allnutt — in company with Dr Ewing, 
 Principal of the Native Mission College — has entered on a rather 
 larger scheme, viz. the editing of a fortnightly paper in English ad- 
 dressed to educated natives who have come much under the influence 
 of European education and thought. It is hoped thus to meet the 
 deeper needs of some at least amongst them, and save them from 
 that practical agnosticism and listless indifference as to all religious 
 questions into which the class to which I refer are so terribly liable 
 to slide. Their trial is no doubt a very severe one ; the dif^culty 
 of letting go so much with one hand, and yet keeping hold with the 
 other of what can rightly be retained and advancing to a higher 
 sounder standpoint of truth and knowledge, is one through which 
 not natives of this country alone have failed to pass successfully. 
 
 XII. The last point I wash to touch upon, and that but shortly 
 for the time left to me is very brief, is our brotherhood life on its more 
 inner side. There was much I suppose of experiment in the way 
 in which we were started as a distinct missionary effort, on the lines 
 of a brotherhood and yet in various ways less formal and rigid, 
 more in touch with what one may call the average tone of English 
 Church life than some other bodies who had preceded, or have 
 followed us, in the field. And it can scarcely be amiss now to try 
 in few words to gather up one or two results of these twelve years 
 of experience. Some great lessons of strength one has learnt. I
 
 i8 
 
 think, and some of weakness. No words that I could use would 
 enable you to understand the degree of help, encouragement, strength 
 and support which most— r/// of us I believe I may truly say — have 
 found in our common life with its recurring opportunities for united 
 devotion and study of God's word, and, almost more, its very con- 
 ditions permeated by a common sympathy and a deep bond of 
 fellowship. It has been to some of us at least an extraordinarily 
 happy life. And if there is one country more than another in the 
 world where it seerns to me special attention needs to be given to 
 the spiritual life of Mission workers, and to the due employment 
 of all means which will enable them to resist the intensely deadening 
 and hardening effect of the moral atmosphere they breathe, it is 
 India. A common life on lines more or less like our own, would 
 seem to meet this great, this paramount need, as few other plans 
 could. But I suppose almost always in this world for a gain in 
 one direction you must consent to some kind of curtailment, 
 restraint or loss in another. Such I fancy we suffer from in two ways. 
 Together with the difficulties, worries, expense and the like con- 
 nected, in a quite unusual degree in India, with the married life 
 we lose probably something of a power to enter heartily and in 
 truest sympathy into much of the lives of those among whom we 
 work, bound up as these are above all else with the conditions 
 from which we are separated. I was reading the other day those 
 words of Mr Deutsch's on *' that wonderfully fine rule " which was 
 a condition for admission to the Sanhedrin " that the aspirant must 
 be a married man, and have children of his own. Deep miseries 
 would be laid bare before him, and he should bring with him a 
 heart full of sympathy." The rule no doubt contained a principle 
 which — to say the least of it — we ought constantly to remember 
 though we do not act on it. Secondly, the united Hfe itself— full as 
 it has been, as I have already said, of gain and strength to us — and 
 immensely as I believe these advantages outweigh any counter- 
 balancing drawbacks, yet has got its difficulties. For one thing 
 just l)ecause we do form so complete, and so entirely a congenial, 
 society amongst ourselves, it makes it the less easy to admit natives, 
 even Christians, quite into the circle of our innermost Hfe. What- 
 ever relations we bear to them, however hard we may work amongst 
 them, we yet always have an inner line— a certain hedge of innermost 
 life amongst ourselves behind which we draw back at times, and 
 where they cannot follow us. And of this they are at least as 
 conscious as we. I can quite imagine that a single missionary,
 
 married or unmarried — amid the singular difficulties that beset him — 
 would have this gain that, if a man of the right mould and temper, 
 it would be easier for him than for us to get really into the closest 
 and most continuous touch with natives. He would go to them 
 not only for their sakes but for his own, thrown upon their com- 
 panionship, necessarily finding in them his real and closest personal 
 friends. Another thing, the very healthiness, as I hope, and 
 strength of the English atmosphere which we are able to maintain 
 by our constant contact with each other unquestionably adds to 
 the difficulty of becoming all things to all men, of loving as much as 
 possible what is purely and distinctively English in our Christianity, 
 and thus being able the more easily to enter into the thoughts, 
 share the standpoint, appreciate the characteristic and wholly 
 peculiar gifts of a mind so differently constituted from our own 
 as the ordinary Indian mind is. I do not know whether I have 
 conveyed any meaning in this last passage but I cannot write more, 
 and I think you will gather something — I have no doubt I mean 
 something whether I express it or not. 
 
 And now I must stop; but once again I would ask you, and 
 all to whom through you these words will reach, to plead for us and 
 for the work of which I have thus summarily spoken, with all its 
 imperfections and weaknesses and needs, its openings, encourage- 
 ments and blessings, that it and we may be fulfilled more and more 
 with the life of the Holy Spirit, with His gift of great love and 
 patience and wisdom and sympathy and tenderness, that so we 
 may be permitted to win many souls to the life hid with Christ 
 in God. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 G. A. LEFROY.
 
 15 
 
 OCCASIONAL PAPERS 
 
 already published. 
 
 1. Letter from Mr Bickersteth (April, 1879). 
 
 2. Letter frofn Mr Bickersteth (Sept. 1881). 
 
 LLigher Education at Delhi, by Rev. Dr Westcott (1882). 
 
 Religious Lnfluence in Mission Schools, by Mr Lefroy (1883). 
 
 Indian Muham7nedans, by Mr Bickersteth (1883). 
 
 Two Cold- Weather Tours, by Mr Carlyon (1884). 
 
 The Leather- Workers of DaryagaftJ, by Mr Lefroy (1884). 
 
 Account of Work, by Mr Carlyon (1885). 
 
 Report of London Meeting in May, 1885. 
 
 Educational Work in 1885, by Mr Allnutt (1886). 
 
 Mission Work in the Rohtak District by Mr Haig (1887). 
 
 Mission Work in Lndia, by Mr Lefroy (1887). 
 
 Lndia's Religious Needs, by Mr Allnutt (1888). 
 
 My First Tivo Years in Delhi, by Mr Kelley; with 
 St Stephen's College a?td School, by Mr Wright (i; 
 
 Christ, the Goal of Lndia, by Mr Lefroy (1889). 
 
 Copies of most of the above papers and of most of the previous 
 annual Reports still remain and may be obtained from either of 
 the Secretaries, G. M. Edwards, Esq., Sidney Sussex College, and 
 J. Tennant, Esq., 19, The Boltons, London, S.W. 
 
 Subscriptions may be sent to either of the Treasurers, Rev. J. T. 
 Ward, St John's College, and R S. Gregory, Esq., No. i, New 
 Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C, to the account of The Cainbridge 
 Mission to North Lndia, at Messrs Mortlock's, Cambridge; or 
 at the Central Agency for Foreign Missions, 54, Gresham 
 Street, E.G.
 
 
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