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THE ECCLESIASTICAL EXPANSION
OF ENGLAND

THE

ECCLESIASTICAL EXPANSION
OF ENGLAND

IN THE GROWTH OF

THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR
1894-95

BY

ALFRED BARRY, D.D., D.C.L.

FORMERLY BISHOP OF SYDNEY AND PRIMATE OF AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA

ILontion

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK

1895

All rights reserved

PREFACE

The one object of these Lectures — delivered on the
Hulsean Foundation in 1894-95 — is to make some
sHght contribution to that awakening of interest in
the extraordinary reHgious mission of England, which
seems happily characteristic of the present time.

The first thing needful is certainly to bring
before our people some plain historical account of
the actual facts and conditions of the case, — of the
wonderful opportunities opened by God's Providence
to our English Christianity, — of the extent to which,
in various methods and degrees, they have been
used for the propagation of His Gospel. There has
been, and still is, a singular ignorance on these
points, even among earnest and educated Christian
men — corresponding, perhaps, to that ignorance of the
world-wide scope of English influence and responsi-
bility in the political sphere, which it has been of
late the object of some of our most statesmanlike

VI HULSEAN LECTURES

writers to dispel. Even where there is knowledge
of the subject, it is mostly of some one special
development of missionary enterprise, without any
comprehensive view of our mission as a whole, in
the mutual relation of its various parts, and in their
relation to Church life and thought at home.

In this volume I have therefore attempted to give
some general outline of the threefold mission, which
appears to me to be laid upon us. In the Lectures
themselves I could only attempt to bring out some
salient and characteristic features of the great subject ;
and I have ventured accordingly — at the cost of
some repetition — to subjoin three Appendices, giving
in greater detail a continuous account of the growth
of the work — first in the Colonial Expansion, next in
our Indian and Oriental Mission, lastly in our relation
to the uncivilized races, brought within our sphere of
dominion or of influence.^ It seemed to me that
the simple record was sufficient to bring home to our
minds and our consciences some necessary lessons,
both of warning and of encouragement.

The Lectures are addressed properly to my
fellow - Churchmen, and therefore deal with the

^ An interesting sketch of the subject, on a somewhat difterent
method, will be found in the Rev. Prebendary Tucker's English
Chuvih in Other Lands, or the Spiritual Expansion of England.

PREFACE vii

religious expansion of England, mainl)- as it is
exemplified in the growth of our own Church, now
becoming the great Anglican Communion. For the
study of the subject has forced upon me more and
more a strong and even painful sense of the inadequacy
of our efforts, to rise to the height of our great voca-
tion, to use, as we should use, the spiritual leadership
which belongs to us as the Church of England, and
to bring to bear upon the work the almost inex-
haustible resources, material and spiritual, which God
has given us. Yet the time is acknowledged to be
in every way a critical time, on which the welfare,
and even the existence, of our Church as a National
Church may depend. As in the lesser Britain at
home, so in the Greater Britain of our world-wide
Empire, the one thing needful for the Church at such
a time is to prove the spiritual vitality and capacity
of development, which are the signs of an authori-
tative mission. Every day shows us more plainly
that the two aspects of our work cannot be separate,
perhaps can hardly be distinct from each other.

Now in the missionary sphere almost all has
hitherto been left to our great voluntary Societies,
and they have proved themselves nobly worthy of the
charge. But we are beginning to see that, if the work

viii HULSEAN LECTURES

is to be worthily carried out, there must be some
practical acknowledgment of the duty which lies upon
the Church as a whole, and, as following from this,
the missionary responsibility of all her members, as
an integral part of their Church membership. How
this is to be carried out without injury or discourage-
ment to our existing agencies is a problem not yet
solved, perhaps not yet ripe for solution. But it is
much that the true ideal should be, as it has been of
late, brought forcibly before the minds of Church-
men. If it could be in any great degree realized,
the missionary work of the Church would no longer
be treated with indifference, as an extraneous and
more or less fanciful enterprise, which it is a matter
of option to take up or to ignore, or even viewed
with some impatience, as likely to interfere with more
urgent and more solid work at home.

It is in the hope of suggesting some serious
thought on these subjects that these Lectures have
been written. If that hope shall be in any degree
fulfilled, it will be to me a cause of the deepest

thankfulness.

A. B.

The Cloisters,

Windsor Castle.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND

Spiritual Vitality a test of Spiritual Truth. — I. The Religious
Expansion also Ecclesiastical — Its Analogies to the National
Expansion — Its close connection with it — Its relation to our
Religious Divisions — The Function in it of our own Church. — II.
The three great Missions of the Church of Christ in the Past : the
Conversion of the Empire ; the Conversion of the Barbarians ; the
Building up of Christian Nations. — III. The three present
Missions of our Church : in the Sphere of Colonial Expansion ;
in the Mission to India and the East ; in the Conversion of the
Lower Races. — IV. The Impulse to Missions given by Church
Revivals at home — The Evangelical Revival — The High Church
Movement — The Broad Church School. — V. Plea for missionary
thought and sympathy in University Life . . . Page i

LECTURE II

THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE

I. The Colonial Expansion — Its free diversity and unity, both Civil
and Ecclesiastical — The Impulse to Church Expansion due to the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, both for the Colonists
and the Subject Races. — II. The old North American Colonies —
The growth under difficulties of the Colonial Church — The Dis-
ruption— The Development of the Sister Church of America. —

HULSEAN LECTURES

III. The Colonies of British North America— The pecuUar condi-
tions of growth of the Colonial Church — Its present condition and
promise.— IV. The West Indian Settlements— Negro Evangeliza-
tion and Emancipation — The present condition, Civil and
Ecclesiastical. — V. The Australasian Colonies — Early conditions
of settlement in Australia and marvellous subsequent growth —
Similar History of Church Development — Different History of
New Zealand — Present position and progress. — VI. The South
African Colonies — Their peculiar difficulties in State and Church
— The present position in both. — VII. The Lessons of Colonial
Church Extension — Expansiveness of Anglicanism — Relation of
Establishment to Church Life — Synodical Government and Lay
Rights — Ideal of Church Unity in Federation — The Solidarity of
the Work abroad and at home . . . Page 49

LECTURE III

OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST

I. The fundamental difference of our Oriental from our Colonial
Mission — Its relation to Native Religions — Its dependence on our
Idea of Christianity. — II. (A) The earlier Forms of Christianity in
India — (B) The Attitude of our Civil Power: first, in the early
Days of Settlement ; next, during the first Period of Struggle for
Empire; thirdly, from the Charter of 1813 to the close of the
Dominion of the Company ; lastly, from the Imperial Proclamation
of 1858 — (C) The early deadness of Missionary Spirit in the
Church — The Evangelical Revival and Church Missionary Society
— The rapid growth of Church Organization and Missionary
Enterprise generally — The many hindrances — The undoubted
advance and promise — The direct and indirect educational Work
— The Overflow to the Straits, Burmah, and Borneo. — III. The
relations to China and Japan, and our responsibilities to each —
The earlier Christianity in Both — The later opportunities and
action — The different P^unctions to be discharged in the two
cases — The present position and prospect. — IV. The Relations in
Western Asia to Persia and Turkey — Our Function of Aid and
Brotherhood to the Ancient Churches, as in Palestine and Syria. —
V. The true character of our Oriental Mission, and its Lessons
to our Church Life at Home . . . . ■ lOi

CONTENTS XI

LECTURE IV

THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES

I. The Message of universal Brotherhood — Initiated and sustained by
Christianity — ReaUzed under the P'atherhood of God — Harmonizing
under itself all Influences of Civilization, and using all develop-
ments of Natural Religion. — II. The Expansion from Colonial
Centres — (A) To Indians and Negroes in North America and the
West Indies— (B) To Aborigines, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders,
from Australasia — (C) To the Native Tribes in and around the
South African Colonies— (D) To the Native Races in and near our
Indian Empire and its Dependencies. — III. The Independent
Mission beyond the Sphere of our Dominion — Africa, its Paganism
and Mohammedanism — The Slave-Trade and Liquor-Traffic — (A)
In Western Africa — Sierra Leone, Yoruba, the Niger — (B) In
Eastern Africa— The Church Missionary Society at Mombasa —
The Universities' Mission — The Mission to Uganda — (C) The
Melanesian Mission of the South Pacific. — IV. General Summary
— The present condition and future promise of the Work, and its
inestimable Importance to true Humanity. — V. The Position of the
Church of England in it — Signs of Awakening — The right leader-
ship of a University ..... Page i6i

APPENDIX I

OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE GROWTH OF THE

COLONIAL CHURCHES . . . . 213

APPENDIX II

THE EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST . 272

APPENDIX III

OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES . . 336

LECTURE I

THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND

Spiritual Vitality a Test of Spiritual Truth.— I. The
Religious Expansion also Ecclesiastical — Its Analogies
TO THE National Expansion— Its close Connection with it
—Its Relation to our Religious Divisions— The Function
IN it of our own Church.— IL The three great Missions
of the Church of Christ in the Past : the Conversion of
the Empire ; the Conversion of the Barbarians ; the
Building Up of Christian Nations.— III. The three
present Missions of our Church : in the Sphere of
Colonial Expansion ; in the Mission to India and the
East; in the Conversion of the Lower Races. — IV. The
Impulse to Missions given by Church Revivals at Home—
The Evangelical Revival— The High Church Movement
—The Broad Church School.— V. Plea for Missionary
Thought and Sympathy in University Life.

^

Lo ! i}iy brook became a river^ and my river
became a sea.

EccLus. xxiv. 31.

In these words I find a vivid picture of that Eccle-
siastical Expansion of England, of which in the
Hulsean Lectures of this year I desire to speak —
venturing to adopt with modification the title of that
most striking work, proceeding from the historical
Chair of this University, which has given to so many
of us a new and grander view of the mission and
destiny of our race/ In so doing I have no fear of
departing from the original purpose of the Hulsean
foundation — devoted as it is to the maintenance of
Christian truth. For all spiritual truth expresses
itself in spiritual vitality ; and of such vitality what

^ I had little idea, when I made this reference to Sir John Seeley's
famous book, how soon its distinguished author would pass away, to
the infinite loss, not only of the University, but of the whole English-
speaking race, whom he had certainly roused to a more thoughtful and
enthusiastic appreciation of their splendid inheritance.

4 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

can be a surer sign, than the capacity of the world-
wide expansion which we have to trace — an expan-
sion not only in length and breadth, but in depth
and height ? As in the grand vision of Ezekiel,^ it
is only the stream of living water, flowing from beneath
the altar of God, which goes out, widening and
deepening at once, so that "the brook becomes a
river, and the river becomes a sea," which washes
every shore of humanity.

I. I speak of ecclesiastical, not merely of
religious expansion. For we need to remember,
both theoretically and practically, that the Divine
order of evangelization, which the Lord Jesus Christ
was pleased to choose, has been, from the Day of
Pentecost downwards, not merely the manifestation
of a Divine truth, but the embodiment of that truth in
the faith of a living society — living naturally, because
it is a society of living men — living supernaturally,
because these men are drawn together into the
Indwelling Presence of a living Christ. This convic-
tion is, of course, no new truth ; for it is written on
every page of the New Testament. But — in singular

^ Ezekiel xlvii. 3-5 : " He measured a thousand cubits, . . . the
waters were to the ancles. Again he measured a thousand, . . . the
waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, . . . the
waters were to the loins. Afterward he measured a thousand, and it
was a river that I could not pass over ; for the waters were risen, waters
to swim in, a river that could not be passed over."

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 5

accordance with that tendency of modern thought,
which along all its lines pursues the historical method
of study, and realizes accordingly through all ages
the unity of a growing human society — it has been
brought home with fresh emphasis to the religious
thought of our own days. In relation both to the
light of Christian truth and the indwelling life of
Christian grace, it is not in the free energy of a simple
individuality alone with God, but in the harmony of
this sacred individuality with a no less sacred unity,
that we have been taught to recognise the true force
of evangelization of the world.

There are, it will be observed, many points of
striking analogy between the expansion of our nation,
and the expansion through English hands of the
Church of Christ.

We note that in both the forward steps of advance
are mostly due to some bold individual enterprise,
throwing itself absolutely on the strength of a
personal vocation ; or perhaps to some voluntary
association of men, who, in respect of such enterprise,
are of one mind and one soul. For this voluntary agency
is the natural spring of free growth ; it is because
of its special development in the English-speaking race
that its dominion has extended in an unexampled
degree over the world. But in either case it is the
society — the nation or the Church — which, moving

6 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

more slowly and more strongly, organizes and
establishes the conquests won. Hence, as the
expansion in the civil sphere assumes the form of
a great national federation, so the spiritual expansion
is not a mere aggregation of individual souls or
little religious communities, but the expansion which
gradually absorbs these in the growth of one Church
— a spiritual federation — Catholic in idea and pro-
mise, and gradually advancing towards Catholicity
in fact.

It follows naturally from this order of growth, that
the advance in both expansions has been often all
but unconscious — gradually moving on, perhaps half-
reluctantly, under the sense of some immediate need
and opportunity — not without anomalies and vicissi-
tudes, and with but inadequate idea (except in some
lucid intervals of statesman-like foresight) of the
grandeur and comprehensiveness of its mission.
What Sir John Seeley says of our national expansion,
that " we seem, as it were, to have conquered and
peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind,"
has its application also to our Church progress. Its
growth has not only been gradual and tentative ; but
has been liable to constant intervals of apathy or
timidity, and has sometimes been an almost uncon-
scious yielding to an irresistible tendency. But these
irregularities, although we look back upon them with

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 7

some excusable wonder and impatience, are really
signs of a natural and living growth. Our action has
been, not the creation of an artificial building, which is
conceived as a whole, and which therefore stands out
in a dead symmetry incapable of continued develop-
ment, but the planting of a tree, which is always
striking its root deeper in the soil of humanity, always
spreading out its branches in picturesque irregularity,
always rising higher towards the light and air of
heaven.

We note, once more, that in both cases we seem
only now to be awaking to any adequate conception
of the solidarity of life and work, which belongs to
us as a race, at home and abroad. The early stages
of growth are perhaps naturally unconscious ; the
period of maturity, although it is not incapable of
further development, is the time of a more reflective
self-consciousness. At such a period we have now
certainly arrived. We are accordingly beginning to
understand that the colonies and dependencies of
the nation, and the colonial and missionary branches
of the Church, are not excrescences, possessions,
aggregations, but integral parts of the national and
ecclesiastical life — to realize the truth already referred
to, that extension is not the mere juxtaposition and
connection of a congeries of separate communities,
but a real, continuous, inevitable expansion of one

8 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

pervading unity. Many members there are, yet but
one body, in which the life-blood, diffused from the
central heart, is returned to stimulate and strengthen
it again. It has been shown brilliantly, in the book
to which I have referred, how true this is in respect
of the nation and the race. Not less true, and (as
I trust) increasingly recognised, is this same law of
expansion in respect of the spiritual life of the
Church. Nay, as in the lesser Britain of old, so in
the Greater Britain of the present, there are, as we
shall see, cases, in which the recognition of unity
through the Church has preceded and aided its
recognition in the life of the whole commonwealth.

Nor is the closeness of this analogy strange ; for
it depends on a close actual connection between the
two developments. The expansion of the Church
of Christ through English hands has been, in most
cases, simply the following up of the unexampled
expansion of commerce, dominion, intellectual and
moral civilization, which has been granted to Eng-
land, and which has made the English-speaking race
one of the great ruling factors in the present and
future history of the world. We know that at home
our English Christianity has been inseparably bound
up with all our higher English life ; history tells us
that the Church has been here a chief factor in the
building up of our national unity, even while she has

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 9

witnessed for the higher and grander unity, in which
all peoples and languages are one. So we have felt
that it must be in the greater Britain of our world-
wide expansion. True it is that, as Tertullian once
showed how the Cross of Christ had outstripped
even the eagles of Roman dominion, so now we
rejoice to see that the forlorn hopes of the army of
the Lord have planted His banner beyond even the
wide circle of English influence. But, as a rule, the
mission of the Church has been to interpenetrate
with a diviner life and unity the ever -widening
sphere of English power and responsibility. So in
the splendid vision to which I have already referred,
the divine stream from the altar of God mingles
with the great river of Israel, so that the combined
waters become a life-giving flood, filling with
luxuriance of vegetable and animal life what else
would be but a dead and barren sea.^

It is, indeed, only too clear, that this principle of
a right harmony or coincidence in national and
ecclesiastical expansion is greatly marred, as to its
full development, by the religious divisions which
break up our English Christianity. If, even in the
main, there could have been a practical realization of
that old Anglican ideal, which made the nation and
the Church coextensive — recognising, indeed, the

^ Ezekiel xlvii. 7-12.

lo HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

unity of the one as natural and of the other as
spiritual, but taking it for granted that, as all
Englishmen were born into the one, so they would
be, as a matter of course, born again into the other
— then the religious expansion of England would
have gone on without difficulty or complication.
The nation, as a nation, would have avowed, and
practically expressed, its Christianity. The Church
would have embodied the truth of the Gospel in the
growth of a spiritual society, covering the whole area
of English dominion.

To some extent, as we shall see, this was so in
the earliest ages of extension. But now, of course,
the division of our English Christianity into separate
religious Communions, as it is one chief hindrance
to the reality of its national influence at home, so
necessarily, by impairing the unity, checks the
natural progress, of expansion abroad. The nation
is afraid or reluctant to take any decided religious
action. The Church, although she can never ignore
her universal responsibility, finds herself practically
but one of many " denominations," each of which
pursues its own separate method of evangelization,
with the certainty of a waste of spiritual strength,
and the danger of mutual interference and even
collision. Abroad she has nothing, or next to
nothing, of that " Establishment " which recognises

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND ii

in her a certain spiritual leadership ; and, although
something of this leadership may devolve upon her
by force of circumstances, or may be freely conceded
to her, yet any claim of it as matter of right would
be jealously resisted.

It may be asked whether, under these con-
ditions, there can be ecclesiastical expansion, pro-
perly so called. The answer must be that, in
spite of these unhappy divisions, the old and
true idea is so far preserved, that everywhere
the progress of the Gospel is inseparably connected
with the growth of some religious Communion.
From time to time, indeed, efforts have been
made to obliterate these religious divisions in an
" undenominational " evangelization ; but, except
for a time, and under some special circumstances,
these efforts have naturally borne but little fruit.
For an " undenominational Christianity " — although
it is not an unreal and lifeless thing — although,
indeed, there are conditions, under which we may
have to accept it and use it — is clearly not accord-
ant with the ideal of the New Testament, and is
not the Christianity which conquered the world.
It is one thing to recognise that, when our unhappily
divided Communions do God's work freely, each
in its own way, there results by a " natural (or super-
natural) selection " a large measure of common

12 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

teaching on the essentials of the faith ; it is another to
attempt to bring out that common element artificially,
by cutting off on every side whatever this denomina-
tion or that would reject, and either disconnecting
that which remains from the life of any religious Com-
munion, or making it, almost inevitably, the nucleus
of a new " undenominational Church." We come
nearer to the true ideal by recognising the spiritual
importance even of our divided religious Communions,
and trusting, on the great essentials of the faith, to a
spiritual unity underlying these divisions, than by
disconnecting Gospel teaching and Church com-
munion, and so, in respect of corporate Christian
life, " making a solitude and calling it peace." Mean-
while we have to mitigate, as far as possible, the
disintegrating effect of our divisions now, and to
strive and pray for some fuller reunion hereafter.

Now, in these lectures, I must be content to
speak in the main of the ecclesiastical expansion,
simply as it is exemplified in the growth of what
we have learnt to call the Church of the Anglican
Communion.

It is not because I forget or ignore for a moment
the extension of our English Christianity through
other religious Communions. There are departments
of the work for God, in which they have un-
doubtedly taken the lead. In celerity and energy

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 13

of work, in liberality and earnestness of devotion, in
the actual fruitfulness of their labours under God's
blessing, they have often put the Church to shame.
Nor can we fail to see that, on the one hand, the
strong organization and government of the great
Roman Communion, and, on the other, the free un-
trammelled energy of Nonconformity, have some
advantages for rapid progress, which cannot attach to
our more complex and comprehensive system. In
such progress, however and by whomsoever it is
made, we rejoice. We thank God that, in spite of this
waste of spiritual force and development of spiritual
friction — in spite, moreover, of the perplexity and
scandal caused by the unhappy manifestation of the
religious divisions of Christendom before the won-
dering or scoffing heathen — He has been pleased
to bless all our separated and disintegrated efforts
with abundant blessing, beyond what we either
desire or deserve. But, even if it were not a
hopeless task to attempt any survey of the whole
missionary work of our English Christianity, I
should still feel that it is the work of our own
Church, which calls for our special thought, simply
because it belongs to our special responsibility.
That responsibility is great and obvious. As the
Branch of the Catholic Church, which for more than
twelve centuries has had its mission in this land.

14 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

and has accordingly rooted itself deep in the spiritual
soil, — as the National Church, which has been
closely bound up with our whole history, and has
been in it the chief representative of a national
Christianity, — it is clear that the Church of England
has a vocation of responsibility here, which can
attach to no other religious Communion. She can-
not ignore it, or devolve it upon others. When, as
in our great colonies, the vast area of territory is
mapped out into her ecclesiastical parishes, there is
in this not a claim of spiritual dominion, but an
acknowledgment of her duty of universal service.
We shall, indeed, be forced to see how in many
branches of this work she has risen but slowly and
inadequately to her vocation ; but we may fairly
hope that in this matter, as in others, she is at last
beginning to assert something of her proper leader-
ship, and to show the peculiar power, which she un-
doubtedly has, of moving, not one class or section,
but the whole of English society. Nor can I doubt
— what, indeed, loyalty to our own principles must
suggest — that in the long run it is in the extension
of her Communion — with its harmony of evangelical
truth and apostolical order — with its unequalled
comprehensiveness of opinion and faith — with its
acknowledgment of freedom and divergence in
detail, upon the old lines of the Catholic faith and

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 15

organization — that there is the surest hope of a
right ecclesiastical expansion of England over the
length and breadth of the earth. For in all these
things we may trace, in a higher sphere, the very same
characteristics, which, in respect of political and
social progress, have made the English - speaking
race — even beyond other races not inferior in char-
acter and civilization — the great conquerors and
colonizers of the world.

II. But before we consider this expansion in
any detail, it is beyond all else necessary to realize,
more clearly and vividly than we are wont to do,
the extraordinary scope of that duty of Evangel-
ization, which by God's Providence has been laid
upon our English Christianity, and (as I have said)
especially upon our English Church. It has always
seemed to me to combine in one comprehensive
duty the three chief phases of mission, laid succes-
sively upon the ancient Church, each of which
wrought itself out through centuries of gradual
progress.

The first phase was what we know as the Con-
version of the Empire — the growth of the Divine
Seed, as sown in the soil of an ancient civilization,
to become the great tree overshadowing the earth.
The three main threads of that ancient civilization
— the intellectual and artistic culture of Greece, the

i6 IIULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Splendid order of Roman law and dominion, the
strong and luxuriant vitality of Oriental religion,
seeking everywhere earnestly after God, and finding
Him, clearly if imperfectly, in the revelation to
Israel — were laid hold of, and bound firmly round
the Cross of Christ, as the Revealer of truth, the
King of men, the Saviour of the soul. For all in
various ways, although they knew it not, were pre-
paring for Him, and were thirsting for that which
He alone could give. The task of Christianity here
was not to create, but to regenerate, human society.
It had accordingly, first, to breathe a new vitality
into philosophies and organizations and religions
which were decaying or dead, to regenerate to a
higher life all the natural ties which bind society
together, and so to assimilate, while it exalted and
purified, all the elements of true civilization. It had
next to create a new and diviner unity in the
Catholic Church, bound together and living by
spiritual ties — one in essence, yet capable of
manifold development in faith and life and organ-
ization— gradually expanding till it became coex-
tensive with the whole community, not without a
struggle with the old order, which it thus inter-
penetrated, but a struggle which after some four
centuries ended in harmony.

Hardly was this task accomplished, the vision of

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 17

Constantine fulfilled, the bitter enmity of the
Empire changed into submission or alliance ;
hardly was the truth of the Gospel asserted in
the age of the Councils, against wild Gnostic
theories, and rationalisms of heresy denying one
side or the other of the Divine Mystery ; when
a new phase of missionary duty dawned upon
the Church in the conversion of those whom
we roughly call the barbarian races — by their
continual incursions breaking up in the West the
fabric of Roman Empire, and yet in most cases
capable of receiving from it the germs of a new
civilization. Of that civilization the old Roman
law and order, no doubt, supplied the frame-
work ; but the spirit, which gave life to this organ-
ization, was unquestionably the spirit of Christianity.
The kingdom which St. Augustine in the very
agony of the dying Empire saw rising out of its
ruins — the kingdom which confronted Alaric, which
was impersonated in Leo and Gregory, which con-
verted the Goths and Franks, and moulded the new
Western Empire of Charles the Great — was the
Church as the Kingdom of God. The conquerors
of the old kingdom bowed their proud necks, and
became subjects of the new. To win the victory
over these unconquerable races, and to infuse
through them fresh blood into the effete body of

C

i8 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Roman civilization, was not only a tremendous
task, on the whole splendidly performed, but it
was altogether a new one. It was at once to
civilize and to Christianize ; to create written lan-
guages and literatures, in order to speak in and
through them the Divine truth ; to draw those
who, like all barbarians, were isolated and mutu-
ally antagonistic, into the Catholic unity of a
Christendom ; to confront and temper material
force by a spiritual power, which at least claimed
to be the power of righteousness and love and
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was again a
task which occupied centuries in its accomplish-
ment.^ But, just in proportion as that task was
successfully performed, just in proportion as these
so-called barbarian races were raised by it out of
real barbarism, they united with the old Latin
races, to become the parents of that European
civilization, which is the dominant power of the
world, and which bears, as in our own land, the
Cross as its standard.

Then succeeded for the Christianity thus victorious
a third great task — again the task of many ccn-

^ The conversion of the Goths began in the latter half of the fourth
century. Ulfilas, the apostle of the Goths, laboured from about
A.D. 340-381. The conversion of the Teutonic races can hardly be
considered as complete, till the conversion of Germany in 754, and the
consolidation of the new Christian Empire of the West in 800,

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 19

turies. It was the task of gradually forming and
inspiring in each European country the develop-
ment of civilized national life, growing up, as it
seemed, naturally and irresistibly within the unity of
Christendom, which might have been thought likely
to overbear and to absorb it. In fact, the idea that it
should be thus absorbed was expressed historically,
in the efforts made from time to time to fuse all its
diversities in a Holy Roman Empire, and, more
successfully, in the assertion by the Papacy of an
universal dominion, claiming to be temporal as well
as spiritual, and interfering with the freedom and
independence of national action. But, in spite of
both efforts at an universal autocracy, the nation
asserted itself as the true unit of human society.
Under the One Divine Fatherhood, under the One
Kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was laid upon
Christianity to secure some approach at least to the
right ideal of the future. For the ideal Christendom
is not an universal Empire, but a free brotherhood
of nations — each having its own language and
thought, each its own constitution and history, each
its own development of character and destiny.

How wonderfully, under God's blessing, that last
task was gradually performed, we can see perhaps
best in the history of our own country. It was the
conversion of England, which really began that

20 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

history. We trace the widening- and deepening
course of the river of evangelization, flowing from
the combination of two distinct sources in the south
and the north, and mingling, not without some
cross-currents of roughness and antagonism, with the
weaker stream of the earlier British Christianity.
We see how, as it flowed on, it raised out of the
stagnation of barbarism all the races which mingle
in our national life — Saxons and Danes on our own
soil, Normans in their home on the other side of the
Channel — how it gradually fused isolated and
antagonistic tribes into something of a national
unity, and through the synods of the one Church
gave birth to the parliaments of the one Realm. We
note how in the early days the Nation and the
Church were in material, although not in principle of
life, identical, and how the higher and more spiritual
life interpenetrated the lower, both growing together
into the Christian civilization of the future. Even
when the older conception of identity gave place to
that of an alliance between Church and State, the effect
still was to Christianize to an almost unexampled
extent all the higher life of the country. The
characteristic tone of our literature in all its growth
shows us the living impress of the English Bible and
the English Prayer-Book, from which it may be
almost said to have taken its rise ; the character and

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 21

history of our institutions bear witness to the truth
of the old saying that " Christianity is a part " — and a
leading part — " of the law of the land." Everywhere
it was certainly English Christianity, which was the
inspiring and moulding force in our national growth.

Nor is ours an isolated experience. Perhaps,
through our very insularity, the principle of that
national growth was here most clearly visible, and
least interrupted by foreign invasion or internal
revolution. But our history is but a type of an
universal process — affecting all the European nations
alike, although having its special development in each
— which has gradually formed an European Christen-
dom, and through it dominated the civilization and
history of the world.

III. Now I cannot but think, that the threefold
sphere of our present mission of Church expansion
combines, very remarkably, phases in the extension
of the Kingdom of God, which correspond sub-
stantially to these three chief missionary achieve-
ments of the past, but which have grown upon us in
a somewhat different order, and coexist at this
moment in one great duty and responsibility.

Thus to the last of these ancient missionary
developments corresponds what is to us the first and
closest circle of expansion, over those great colonies
which are, or are to be, the New Englands of the

22 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

future — leading, if not dominant, elements in its
progress and civilization.

We are only now beginning to realize the great-
ness of that field, unexampled, so far as I know, in
the history of the world. There is the vast Con-
tinent of North America, all but completely occu-
pied by our English-speaking race — in those oldest
colonies, which have now grown into the great
American Republic, and in the Dominion of Canada
and the West Indian Islands, which are still our own.
There is the Australian Continent, with New Zea-
land and the islands of the Pacific, itself only less
vast than the other, more than four-fifths of the size
of Europe, evidently destined to be the dominant
power of the Southern Ocean. There is the third
great group of the South African colonies, with the
" spheres " (to use the common phrase) " of influence "
extending far beyond the limits of our actual
dominion, and in all human probability likely to
extend much farther still, if there is any force in the
analogy of the history of the past. These — to say
nothing of lesser outlying colonies and dependencies
— fairly girdle the world. Familiar as the fact is to
us, this vastness comes upon us as a new revelation,
when we find it possible to sail literally round the
globe, and at each halting-place to hear the English
language and to be under the British flag.

I THE THREEFOLD AHSSION OF ENGLAND 23

These are all young and vigorous communities —
living offshoots of the old English tree — strong in
material resources, which are capable of almost
infinite development — strong in fulness, almost ex-
uberance, of enterprise, of independence, of aggres-
sive energy. How shall they grow, so far as they
have not yet grown, to the true greatness, for which
mere bigness is no security, and show themselves
worthy of the noble vocation which clearly lies
before them ?

We have given them our commerce and our
wealth ; we have given them the nobler treasures
of our institutions, our language, and our litera-
ture ; we are recognising more and more, in con-
tradistinction to an earlier and narrower policy,
that the colonies, which are still bound to us freely
by the living bond of loyalty and sympathy, are
really integral parts of what has been happily
called the Greater Britain. We speak popularly,
and yet, I think, inaccurately, of our Colonial
Empire. For it is really not an empire, but a
commonwealth of free communities — like (to use a
well-known comparison) the Eastern tree, whose
branches, fully grown, root themselves afresh in
the soil, till the whole becomes a wide-spreading
grove, yet all indissolubly united to the parent
stem, and all pervaded by the sap of a common life.

24 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

It is well. But beyond this lies the yet higher
duty of ministering to them the Christianity which
is the life of our life — that it may be the moulding
and inspiring force in the growth of these new
nations, as it was in the growth of the old
European nations in the days of their youth — and
of embracing all, without overbearing the inde-
pendent rights and character of each, in the world-
wide unity of the Church of Christ. The sense of
this duty was not unfamiliar to the first colonizers
of the sixteenth century — to a Frobisher, a Gilbert,
a Raleigh. " To discover and to plant Christian
inhabitants in places convenient " was the leading
idea of the charters, which were granted to these
early pioneers of our colonization. As time went
on, the better organization ^ of the Christianity thus
planted was the desire alike of the Laudian ascend-
ency, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration. In
the old days of identity of Church and State, and

^ In the reign of Charles I. an Order in Council appears to have been
made to commit to the Bishop of London for the time being the care
and pastoral charge of our " British Foreign Plantations." Under the
Long Parliament — on the representations of John Eliot, "the Apostle
of the Red Men" — a corporation was formed "for Promoting and
Propagating the Gospel in New England," and a collection of ;i^i2,ooo
for it made in England and Wales by Cromwell's order, and invested
in land. The corporation was reconstituted in 1662, and generally
known as the "New England Company." Its work was first in New
England, then, after the disruption, in New Brunswick, and in various
parts of British North America and the West Indies.

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 25

even in those of the sole recognition of the Church
as the organ of a national Christianity, it would
have seemed to England impossible to neglect the
duty of a Christian nation.

Even when these older conditions passed away,
that same duty was the guiding principle of our
great Church societies — the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel — in days when the State
hesitated to support English Christianity, and the
Church, as a body, had not yet taken up the work.
Gradually, as the division of that Christianity into
many religious Communions became an accomplished
fact, all these Communions in different degrees recog-
nised the duty which belonged to the whole, and, in
spite of their unhappy divisions, laboured to carry it
out. Never, therefore, was the evangelistic duty
altogether neglected ; never was any English colony
altogether unblessed, by the planting of the seed
of Christianity, and by some connection with the
Church life of the old home.

But yet it must be confessed that only in the
present century have we been awakened to any
adequate conception of a true expansion of the
Church over these growing communities, with such
freedom and completeness, as shall enable it to
flourish and strike independent root in the new soil.

26 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Looking back as we do in the light of experience,
it is hard for us to understand how, in spite of the
remonstrances of thoughtful and earnest men, the
Church generally should have acquiesced so long
in ideas plainly inadequate, and a policy both
narrow and timid. Probably the general tone
of opinion on the relation of the colonies to the
mother-country reflected itself in this poor concep-
tion of the duty of the Church to her children
scattered abroad. Hardly more than a hundred
years ago, after the great disruption of our American
colonies, was this right principle of Church expan-
sion recognised by the foundation of the first
bishoprics of our Anglican Communion, planted in
them, and in the North American colonies which
still remained. Only within the reign of our Queen
— the Victorian era, of which men now begin
to speak, as they used to speak of the Eliza-
bethan — has the work then begun been rapidly
developed, till the colonial area of expansion has
been adequately filled ; and daughter Churches
have been planted there in full completeness of
organization, with fuller development, through their
Synods, of representative institutions than we know
at home — often in their federation anticipating (as in
Australia and New Zealand) the action of the civil
communities — substantially, with variation to suit

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 27

variety of circumstance and need, reproductions of
the old Church, and in all cases by loyal adhesion
freely united to her. Nay, tentatively at least, the
Church has realized in consultation and determina-
tion the " Imperial Federation," which in civil
matters is yet only an aspiration and a hope, and
even gathered the representatives of the Church —
at once a daughter and a sister Church — of the
great Transatlantic Republic round the ancient
chair of St. Augustine. The insularity of our
Church, as of our nation, has thus given place to
an irresistible expansion. But yet that expansion
has not been on the principle of absolutism on the
one side and dependence on the other. The ideal
of the Roman Church may be spiritual Empire ;
ours is free spiritual Federation. It is the desire
of the Church of England, true to her ancient spirit
and traditions, to sit, not as a queen over spiritual
dependencies, but as a mother among her daughter
Churches. *' Lo ! here am I, and the children
which God has given me."

But, although even this task might well tax all our
missionaryenergy, there is clearly laid upon us another,
which corresponds in great degree to that first ex-
pansion of the ancient Church within the limits of
the Roman Empire.

It comes upon us mainly by the marvellous

28 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

growth of our Indian Empire, swaying through a few
thousands of Englishmen the destinies of nearly 300
millions of subjects, of all races, all characters, all de-
grees of civilization, and implying, moreover, necessary
relations with great Asiatic powers, China and Japan
in the far East, the Turkish and Persian Empires in
Western Asia and Egypt. That extraordinary Em-
pire is clearly a trust committed to us, for the benefit
of humanity and for fellow-working with the dis-
pensation of God. It brings us into contact with
civilizations older than our own, with political and
social organizations of far-reaching power, with great
religions, counting their adherents by tens and
hundreds of millions. What are we doing with this
momentous trust ? Clearly we have here not to de-
stroy or supersede, but to infuse new life into what
is in different degrees decaying or dead — to rule, to
educate, to inspire the races, which are to us as
subject-races, and yet brethren still, already in the
family of humanity, potentially in the household of
God.

How shall we discharge that mission ? It has its
material aspect, in the protection by a strong hand of
peaceful industry, in the diffusion through commerce
of the treasures of the world, in the development of
the immense resources of our Empire, in the enhst-
ment of our growing physical science and art for the

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 29

mastery of Nature, and the material civilization of
humanity. It has its intellectual aspect, in the ad-
vance of the knowledge of all truth which God has
taught us, by the introduction of our language and
literature, our science and philosophy, and by the
education w^hich diffuses that knowledge through the
masses of the people. It has its moral and social
aspect, in the estabhshment among conflicting races
of the Pax Britannica ; in the maintenance — I had
almost said the creation — of truth and justice in the
government of the Empire, and in its dealings with
external powers ; in the moral influence of example of
manliness and purity, of honesty, truth, and benefi-
cence. And in all these aspects — in spite of many
errors, many failures, many sins — it is beyond doubt
that substantially our mission is accomplishing itself,
and our Empire is proving itself a priceless benefit to
humanity.

But, if there be any truth in the claims of Christian-
ity— if any lesson from its history in past ages — that
mission must be crowned by some religious ministra-
tion. For the right relation of men to nature and to
humanity cannot but depend on the reality, and the
knowledge, of the relation to the Supreme Power, in
which all " live and move and have their being." We
are face to face in India, not only with strange and
barbaric superstitions, but with great religions, which

30 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

seek to realize intelligently that supreme relation —
the vast, complex, heterogeneous system which we
call vaguely Hinduism, the reaction of negation
against it in Buddhism, the grand but hard and barren
Monotheism of Islam. On the vitality of all these
religions — still strong in the minds and hearts of the
great mass of the people — the very introduction of
our civilization is telling, primarily on the educated
classes, ultimately on the people, of whom they are
the natural leaders, for disintegration and destruction.
If we believe, with St. Paul at Athens, that in all
these religions there is the feeling after, and in
measure finding, God, and yet that in the Lord Jesus
Christ alone there is the power to reveal the true
relation to the Father, of which they have but dim
and imperfect glimpses — if we feel, as we must feel,
that to have simply undermined or destroyed these
religions, without supplying some higher faith which
may fill up the religious void, is a cruel injury to
the spiritual character of the people — then it ought
to be clear beyond contradiction, that we cannot be
content to have rendered these lower services, great
as they are, to civilization, but that a spiritual
" necessity is laid upon us to preach the Gospel," and
to extend the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yet here again we cannot but confess that only
in this century have we been awakened — and still

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 31

but imperfectly — to this tremendous obligation, this
unspeakable privilege. Only of late has the civil
power, at times bitterly hostile, still oftener cold and
discouraging, assumed (as in the grand Imperial
Proclamation of 1858) that position for which alone
we can ask — the position of a just and yet gracious
neutrality. Only within the last sixty years has any
real progress been made towards the evangelization
of these Asiatic lands, and the extension in them of
the Church of God. Now in India itself, in spite of
some legal difficulty and jealousy — in Burmah, in
Borneo, in China, in Japan, as in each access was
opened to English influence — we see new churches
planted everywhere, new missions opened, new sees
created, the Holy Scriptures translated and circulated
by thousands in native tongues, and a native Ministry
formed for native service. Partly by extension of
Church organization, partly through individual effort
and the energy of our great missionary societies,
the work, one yet in many forms, is advancing with
ever-increasing rapidity, although as yet it has but
occupied the mere fringe of the great territory which
lies before it.

But the extension here has necessarily a different
ideal from that which suits the growth of the colonial
Church. It is to be a diffusion, not of spiritual dominion^
but of spiritual influence. It cannot and must not

32 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

aim at reproduction of the English Church itself, with

local variation but substantial identity. If ever these

Eastern races are to be won to Christ, it will surely

be by the service of men and Churches of their own

blood and thought and character. For a time here,

as in all else, they will need guidance and inspiration

from English Christianity. But these native Churches

— in full harmony with our own on all essentials of

Catholic truth and order — in full communion with

what is the Mother-Church of their first conversion —

must yet develop themselves after their own way,

and assume by degrees, and not always by slow

degrees, a spiritual independence. We have, indeed,

necessarily to bear our witness for God in our own

way, through that development of doctrine and

organization and worship, which is our priceless

inheritance from the centuries of the past. For if

we are to " propagate the Gospel," it must be by the

communication of our own Christian life in all its

fulness ; if we are to do the duty of an elder

brotherhood in Christ, we must not shrink from the

responsibility of teaching and leadership. But still

our real work is not to transplant the full-grown

English tree, but simply to sow the living seed of

Christianity, and leave it to grow — from the one root

indeed, but according to all the varieties of spiritual

atmosphere and soil. It is a work of infinite glory,

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND s^

hardly less infinite difficulty. How shall we have
sufficient energy and wisdom and love to fulfil it ?

But yet beyond these two spheres of missionary
expansion, and in great measure from the very fact
that these are occupied, there is added a third work,
corresponding, although with much difference, to the
conversion of the barbarian races in days gone by.
Within our Oriental Empire and our West Indian
Settlements — in close connection with our Colonies
— even beyond these, in the world-wide extension
of our commerce — we are brought into relation
with what we must call the inferior races, more
or less barbaric. No true humanity can be content
to make this simply a commercial and political
relation ; it must be a relation of moral duty. We
cannot consent merely to use them, and perhaps
use them up, for our own gain ; merely to make
them our slaves or our subjects. They are brought
under our influence that we may at once civilize
and Christianize them — enrolling them in the family
of humanity, as the family of God.

That sphere of influence we are by our own act
continually extending. Every year new tribes are
drawn within it — now in the islands of the Indian
Ocean and the Pacific — now in the various regions of
that dark African Continent, of which the nations of
Europe are calmly distributing the dominion, actual

D

34 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

or virtual, among themselves — now in the aboriginal
races of our Indian Empire, or those which are included,
sometimes, as in South Africa, for their preservation,
too often, as in North America and Australasia, for
their gradual extinction, within our Colonies. How
shall that expanding sphere be rightly filled ?

Our commercial intercourse and the introduction
of our material civilization should tend — in measure
I trust that they do tend — to the improvement and
enrichment of all the conditions of outward life. But
at the best they cannot go to the root of the matter ;
for they alter rather the environment of man's life
than his true humanity. In practice, moreover, we
know but too well that, unless tempered by some
higher principle, they are apt to be stained by fraud
and rapacity and cruelty, and to spread, among
ignorant or reluctant tribes, the things which are to
them an infinite curse.

The extension of our dominion should tend — in
the main I cannot doubt that it does tend — to peace
and order, to justice and truth, even to beneficence.
But we have seen how, not so much through the
policy of our government as through the selfish and
lawless action of individuals, it may bring in cruelty
and oppression. Nay, it may even assume something
of the form of the dread struggle for existence, in
which the strong simply overbear and extirpate the

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 35

weak, and the black or red man perishes before the
white — not, indeed, by the white man's presence, but
by the white man's sin. The days were — thank God
they are no longer — when it brought with it the
oppressive yoke of actual slavery. We have to watch
with some jealousy, lest, in covert form, it should still
involve anything of the principle of that accursed
thing.

To these forces we cannot wholly trust. Nor,
again, greatly as we prize the extension of know-
ledge and intellectual culture, can we for a moment
believe that in this is the inner secret of true
brotherhood. No ! if this influence of England is
to be an elder brotherhood of protection and guid-
ance— if it is to realize the higher humanity, which,
rising above the mere animal struggle, shall sub-
ordinate self-interest to self-sacrifice — it must be by
the religious acknowledgment of brotherhood under
our common Father in Heaven, and of the glory
of self-sacrifice in the Cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ. There must be an inclusion in the Church
of Christ of those who to the mere trader may
be simply instruments of gain, to the thirst for
dominion mere slaves or subjects, but to the true
Christian potentially " fellow-citizens with the saints
and of the household of God."

Of this branch of missionary duty our English

36 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Christianity has never been wholly neglectful ; but in
this also our present century has been a century of
new awakening, both in respect of an energy of service
and sacrifice, which has been glorified again and
again by martyrdom, and of a wise discrimination,
which studies more deeply the conditions of a right
evangelization. For the very planting of Christianity
we have to prepare this virgin soil ; we have to
educate intelligence by teaching and character by
work ; we have often to create written language, and
invent new phrases to convey new conceptions.
And the Christianity which is thus planted must
evidently be of a simple kind, addressing itself
primarily to the heart rather than the mind, appeal-
ing to the universal instinct of God, drawing men
to a living Christ, and gradually advancing to the
thoughtful realization of the whole Gospel. It will
need and accept more of the guidance and discipline,
which are appropriate for childlike and childish
character ; for a time — perhaps for a long time — it
must depend largely on English teaching and
authority and inspiration. But it must still aim at
being a native Christianity — gradually building up
a native Ministry and the independence of native
Churches. We must be (as Bishop Selwyn ex-
pressed it) simply " the white corks to float the black
net " ; and it is certainly this net, which must be cast

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 37

into the tropical sea, if we would " gather of every
kind " to draw them to the eternal shore. As yet
the work is most imperfect, both in visible expan-
sion, and in the depth and solidity of the Christianity
which it spreads. But it is a real and effective
work, advancing rapidly under God's blessing. We
thank God that in every dialect of Africa and
Polynesia, in every aboriginal tongue of India and
Australasia, the voice of Christ Himself speaks to
those whom He has made His brethren, and, in
answer, the voice of praise goes up to our Father
from Churches of the Lord who died for all, which by
His grace it has been given to us to plant in His
Name.

IV. So these three great missionary works for
God go on continually with a great and even
formidable expansion, in which necessarily each
achievement of to-day only opens out to us some
greater opportunity and call for the morrow. The
history of the past must lead us to expect that it can
only work itself out gradually, through generations
and even centuries. " History" (said Bishop Lightfoot
in 1873, in his remarkable "Comparison of Ancient
and Modern Missions " ^) " is an excellent cordial for
drooping courage." ... To histor}^ I appeal. . . .

^ Address to the Meeting of S.P.G. in 1S73, published by the
Society.

38 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

" It will be found, if I mistake not, that the
resemblances of early and recent missions are far
greater than their contrasts ; that both alike have
had to surmount the same difficulties, and been
chequered by the same vicissitudes ; that both alike
exhibit the same inequalities of progress, the same
alternations of success and failure, periods of accelera-
tion followed by periods of retardation, when the
surging wave has been sucked back in the retiring
current, while yet the flood has been rising steadily
all along, though the unobservant eye might fail to
mark it, advancing towards that final consummation,
when the earth shall be covered with the knowledge
of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

Be it remembered, moreover, that though we may
rightly distinguish these phases of our mission, they
cannot for a moment be separated ; they not only
coexist, but ultimately they are really one. Every
colonial Church becomes in due course, as I know
by experience, a new centre of its own missionary
expansion to the heathen races with which it is
brought into contact. Every development of our
mission to the civilizations of the East has to
include in the universal brotherhood of Christianity
those outlying races, hardly above barbarism, for
which, as a rule, the older religions found no place
of regard or inclusion. Nor should it be forgotten

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 39

that every advance of our Christianity abroad reacts,
both for instruction and for inspiration, on our own
Church at home, and so accounts for the well-known
fact that the eras of most rapid expansion are also
the eras of the intensest central life. Our brook
may have grown into a river, and our river into a
sea ; but the waters are still one in their widest
expansion, moved not only by earthly currents, but
by the great tide of an attraction from above.

This solidarity in spiritual life is to my mind
remarkably illustrated by the significant fact, that
this century, of which I have had to speak again
and again, as a new era of missionary expansion, is,
by no mere coincidence, the era of great Church
revivals here. Each of these revivals has overflowed
(so to speak) beyond the home sphere in a new
impulse of our missionary energy.

The great Evangelical Revival of personal Chris-
tianity which marked the opening of the century
— realizing above all else Christ as the head of each
individual soul, expressing itself accordingly both in the
glow of individual enthusiasm and in the voluntary
association of those whose hearts God had touched
— this revival certainly by His blessing kindled, out
of some previous languor, a new and aggressive life
in missionary enterprise. That impulse naturally
reproduced the characteristics of the home move-

40 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

ment. It is true that, for example, in respect of
India, it told through such men as William Wilber-
force upon th"^ whole community ; it altered and
improved the attitude of the civil power towards
the work of moral and religious improvement of its
subjects ; it wrung from a half- reluctant govern-
ment the provision for a fuller organization of the
Church in that great empire, in spite of the sturdy
opposition of the old school of East India Directors.
But its real force abroad, as at home, was in strong
religious individualism. It showed itself in the new
growth of individual missionary fervour ; as, for
example, in the noble band of Cambridge men — all
of that school of Charles Simeon, which stirred here
the academical waters to a new spiritual energy
— who, going beyond the strict limits of their official
duty as chaplains in India, were precursors of the
great expansion of our evangelization of the native
races. It showed itself in the spirit of religious
association, which created nearly a hundred years
ago the great Church Missionary Society, not with-
out (as has been shown lately) a reviving influence
by reflex action on the older Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel. It outran, as usual, the
slower extension of Church organization. Each
individual servant of the Lord laboured in his own
way, and as he seemed to find his special vocation.

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 41

The Society at home by necessity assumed in the
vacant ecclesiastical field, where a hundred years ago
there were but few colonial or missionary bishops,
an authority, without which there must have been
disintegration and anarchy. So the movement went
on, throwing out (so to speak) its swift irregular forces,
to lead the way of enterprise, and to prepare for the
advance of the army of th« Lord.

Then, some thirty years later, there followed,
under changed need and circumstance, that great
Church movement, which, as its leaders expressly
declared, was designed, not to supersede, but to
supplement, the work of the earlier revival. Its
faith — how could it be otherwise ? — was equally in
the Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet not so
much now of the individual soul, as of the whole
Church which is His body, the fulness of Him who
filleth all in all. We know how, without sacrificing
the priceless, blessing of the earlier movement, it has
by this leading conception transformed, within the
memory of us older men, the whole tenour and spirit
of our Church life at home. But, like the other, it
could not but overflow into the vast missionary
sphere. There its peculiar vocation was not only
to diffuse the light of the Gospel — not only to plant
isolated missionary centres — but to extend every-
where the spiritual organization of the Church itself.

42 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

that the life of the IndwelHng Presence of Christ
might thrill through it. Everywhere new Sees have
been planted, xiew branches of the Church formed, in
all completeness of independent life and government.
In less than sixty years these have been multiplied
more than tenfold even in our own dominion — to
say nothing of the equally rapid growth of the
sister Church in America. So a vast ecclesiastical
federation (so to speak) has been created of the
mother and the daughter or sister churches, by
which the insularity of days gone by has been
exchanged for a world-wide extension. And happily,
abroad as at home, the growth of organization has
proved itself to be the medium of a brighter and
larger spiritual extension. The serried ranks of our
host have moved on, where their precursors had
everywhere shown the way ; and, as in the armies of
this world, the massive order of discipline has been
a help, and not a hindrance, to the enthusiasm of
personal bravery and devotion.

Nor, my brethren, is this all. There has spread
among us a third religious influence, having a
necessary relation to these great movements— a
relation, sometimes of apparent antagonism, but
ultimately of real harmony. It is not so much
the rise of a party or a school, as a diffusive wave
of opinion and feeling, affecting all sections of the

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 43

Church in different degrees, tending at once to broaden,
and yet, so far as it grasps firmly the supreme truth
of Christ, to deepen our conceptions of the function
of the Gospel and the Church. Its motto is the
harmony of the natural and the supernatural ; the
Headship of Christ, on which it fixes our eyes, is not
merely over the soul and over the Church, but (as
St. Paul describes it in his Ephesian and Colossian
Epistles) over all humanity as made after His
likeness — nay, all created being gathered up in
Him. No one can doubt that this influence has
so interpenetrated those earlier movements here, that
the strongest assertions of supernatural grace in the
soul and the Church hold now a new relation to
the acknowledgment of the natural light and gifts of
God to humanity, and express themselves in tones
unknown to the corresponding witness of days
gone by.

But how far and in what way has it so over-
flowed as to tell in the mission sphere ? Not (I
think) so much to kindle there fresh enthusiasm,
either of individual service or of Church expansion.
There have been times, when it has perhaps tended,
if not to chill, at least to throw over " the native
hue of resolution " something of " the pale cast of
thought." But its work has rather been to bring
home to us the greatness and complexity of the

44 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

work itself, and so to suggest a thoughtful inquiry
into what should be its guiding principles. We
have learnt more of the right connection of the
Gospel and the grace of Christ with all the lower
elements of civilization — commercial, political, intel-
lectual, moral — which God has given us to use for
humanity. We have learnt more of wise adap-
tation in method and degree to the varieties of
race, of cultivation, of capacity, that the seed sown
may have none of the failures of the parable, but
may strike root deep and bear abundant fruit.
Above all, we have come to appreciate better the
relation in which we are to stand to the religions of
the world, in their crudest forms and in their most
imposing developments — at once (with St. Paul at
Athens) recognising everywhere searchings after God,
not unblessed with gleams of light from above, and
yet declaring with decision and confidence the Christ,
in whom the Unknown God is revealed without doubt
or imperfection.

Thus it seems to me that all these three influ-
ences of revival, as they coexist now in our whole
Church life, and give it greater fervour, larger com-
prehensiveness, deeper thought, so have told power-
fully upon its expansion over the races of the earth.
I trace their combined effect everywhere, not only
in missionary work and literature, but in the organs

1 THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 45

of public opinion and statesmanship. Yet perhaps
most strikingly of all in the remarkable utterances
of the great Missionary Conference of this year
(i 894) — marking, to my mind, an epoch in the work,
both because it could speak in the name, not of this
or that Society, to which it is but optional to belong,
but of our whole Church, in the glory and responsi-
bility of whose action we must have our part ; and
because, with singular candour and comprehensive-
ness, it has given us for the first time a survey of the
whole of this great subject.

V. But, as we proceed with this survey, there is
more and more forced upon us the conviction that our
English Christianity in general is far from rising to
its great call, and that our own Church in particular
is far from taking her right leadership in its work
for God. For there has not been as yet any ade-
quate realization by the great body of English
Churchmen of the true condition of our missionary
call and responsibility. The work is still far too
much regarded as a merely subsidiary and extrane-
ous work, which it is a matter of option to take up
or to pass by. Therefore those, to whom a truer
estimate has been brought home, must plead earnestly
for what is now, under God's blessing, the one thing
needful — that all men should consider, far more
than has yet been done, the greatness of this our

46 HULSEAN LFXTURES lect.

Mission, as at once a spiritual necessity and a spiritual
glory, its indissoluble connection with our Church
life here, and che moral impossibility for any one of
us rightly to stand aloof from it, giving it no aid of
labour, of contribution, of sympathy, of prayer.

Where, I thought, could I more fitly make appeal
for such thought and interest than in this place ? It is
more than forty years since a great servant of God ^
pleaded the cause to which his life was given before
this University, as the home at once " of mature learn-
ing and youthful energy." His call to his hearers
was that they would help to " fill up the void, till
there shall be no spot of earth which has not been
trodden by the messengers of salvation." His en-
treaty was — " Let it be no longer a reproach to the
Universities that they have sent so few missionaries
to the heathen." His words were memorable in
themselves, still more memorable in their fruit.
There were those who took up his concluding words
in the cry " Here am I ; send me." The first direct
answer was our share in the Universities' Mission in
Central Africa, to which we have given our best — not
least certainly, that first noble Bishop Mackenzie,
whom it was my privilege to know and love as a
leading spirit here, and whose example of a willing

^ I allude to the four memorable sermons on " The Work of Christ
in the World," preached by Bishop Sclwyn in 1S54.

I THE THREEFOLD MISSION OF ENGLAND 47

sacrifice of the highest intellectual gifts, and of the
choicest blessings of academic life, lived on and lives
still in its power, though his work was cut short by
an early death. For a new era has been opened in
our University thought and life. We thank God for
the higher conceptions of duty embodied in the
Mission of our sister University at Calcutta, in our
own Delhi Mission, of which not long ago I saw the
splendid work, perhaps in other unknown impulses
of devotion and self-sacrifice, which have found for
each his own vocation and ministry. Now that half
a century of this fruitfulness has passed by, is it not
well to survey what, by God's grace, has been done,
to estimate the urgency of our present call, to fore-
cast, so far as we may, the yet greater capacities of
the future ? Such survey, in the three great fields,
to which I have called your attention, I shall attempt
to make.

Meanwhile, my brethren, I leave the general
subject to your thoughts. If our Church is to rise to
her great opportunity, we must pray for the light as
well as the grace of God ; we must yield the service
of the mind as well as the heart. For the time de-
mands, not only the motive power of strong enthusiasm,
but the directive guidance of a wisdom, thoughtful
and patient — able to discern the needs and oppor-
tunities of our warfare over the whole field of our

48 HULSEAN LECTURES lect. i

vocation — able to give to each movement its right time
and its right proportion — able at once to fight against
evil and falsehood, and to discern and foster all that
is good and true — able to estimate what must be
wrought by our own English Christianity, and where
we must be content to sow the Divine Seed, and leave
it to grow in independent growth, in other ways and
by other forces than our own. Where, I ask again,
can we look for that great combination more fully
than in our old Universities — old in the inherited
and developed wisdom of centuries, young in the
unceasing influx of those who have the privilege and
responsibility of higher education, and on whom life
is just opening, in all its free variety of vocation and
capacity ?

In this, as in all else which touches the higher
life of England, may God grant us grace here to
meet His call ! Surely it will be an infinite blessing
to add our contribution, great or small, to the slight
beginnings which have so great an end — to the brook,
which through all time is continually swelling to a
river great and deep, and sweeping on to lose itself
in that boundless eternal sea, which reflects the glory
of the great white Throne.

LECTURE II

THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE

I. The Colonial Expansion— Its free Diversity and Unity,
BOTH Civil and Ecclesiastical— The Impulse to Church
Expansion due to the Society for the Propagation
OF the Gospel, both for the Colonists and the Subject
Races.— II. The old North American Colonies— The
Growth under Difficulties of the Colonial Church
—The Disruption— The Development of the Sister
Church of America. — III. The Colonies of British
North America— The peculiar Conditions of Growth
OF the Colonial Church— Its present Condition and
Promise. — IV. The West Indian Settlements— Negro
Evangelization and Emancipation— The present Con-
dition, Civil and Ecclesiastical.— V. The Australasian
Colonies— Early Conditions of Settlement in Aus-
tralia and marvellous subsequent Growth— Similar
History of Church Dev elopment— Different History
OF New Zealand— Present Position and Progress.— VI.
The South African Colonies— Their peculiar Diffi-
culties in State and Church— The present Position in
Both.— VII. The L^ssoNS of Colonial Church Extension

— EXPANSIVENESS OF ANGLICANISM— ReLATK -N OF ESTABLISH-
MENT TO Church Life— Synodical Government and Lay
Rights— Ideal of Church Unity in Federation— The
Solidarity of the Work Abroad and at Home.

The children which thou shalt have . . . sJiall say

. . . in thine ears^ The place is too strait for me :

give place to me that I may divell.

Isaiah xlix. 20.

The promise, addressed originally to the Jewish
realm and Church of the Restoration — in itself nar-
rowed and humbled from its high estate, yet great, as
the cradle of the great Jewish dispersion, which was
the appointed preparation for the universal kingdom
of the future — certainly comes home w^ith a special
emphasis, both of past fulfilment and of future pro-
mise, to the English nation and the English Church.
It is the beacon-light of our course of expansion,
under the leading of God's Providence, in that vast
colonial sphere of which I am to speak especially to-
day— so marvellously filled with those who are not
subjects, but children of the old mother-country, and
who, in almost all cases, have gone forth, simply
because these little islands are far too strait for their
irresistible growth. We are told on authority that

52 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

some 350,000 of our people on the average leave
these shores every year, to settle in some part of the
territory given to the English-speaking race. Far
above other nations — as strong and highly civilized
as ourselves — we are by universal consent acknow-
ledged as the great colonizing race of the world. By
free propagation of our national life, we have planted
everywhere new scions of the old tree. At this
moment our language is more widely spoken than
any tongue of man in the world's history, and bids
fair at no distant period to girdle the globe. To
those who cry so urgently " Give me place that I
may dwell," our answer has been to open, for dominion
or settlement, no inconsiderable portion of the whole
earth.

I. Now in this remarkable progress we observe
what seems at first sight a paradox. Both the centri-
fugal and centripetal forces — the force of expan-
sion and the force of concentration — appear on the
whole to grow equally, and by this combined
growth to sustain the right balance of variety and
unity. In this we have, indeed, only an exemplifi-
cation of what shows itself as a general law in the
advance of civilization in all its phases. Thus, in its
material aspect, we see that every day dispersion
peoples more of the outlying regions of the
world, and yet improved rapidity of communication

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 53

of body and of thought draws these closer together,
and, as men say, makes the inhabited world smaller.
So it is, again, in respect of intellectual progress.
The various developments of knowledge grow upon
us in an almost bewildering abundance ; and yet the
correlation of all, diverse as they are in place, in
time, and in character, is the last word of modern
philosophy. So is it, once more, in the higher social
and moral civilization. Each day brings out to us
here new varieties of free development, new diver-
gences from older and simpler standards ; yet more
and more we come to see that human society moves
as a whole, and to feel the moral ties to all, which
bind humanity in one.

But certainly there can be no more striking ex-
hibition of this general law than in the remarkable
colonial expansion, at which we have now to glance,
both in the civil and in the ecclesiastical sphere.

These great colonies have in increasing degree
their independence of development, their variety of
condition and character, their freedom of original
and peculiar enterprise. The strong government from
the old centre, which suited well their dependent
infancy, would now simply snap, like an iron band
round a growing tree, with the result of a terrible
disruption. They must take their own way ; they
must be in the main self-governed and self-reliant.

54 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

But yet — in contradistinction to a passing phase of
political opinion on both sides, which was a reaction
from the older coercive condition of things — we find
a growing sense that for the sake of all there must
be some strong elastic unity, to keep together the
widely-scattered limbs in pne body. The bond will,
of course, be rather a moral than a legal bond, not
knit by compulsion, but growing in free loyalty.
The ideal rising before us is that of a Federation, not
really " Imperial " in the true sense of the word, but
of free communities in one great Commonwealth —
daughter-nations gathered round the Motherland. It
may need to be cemented by commercial relations ;
it must express itself hereafter in some form of
representative institutions ; but in its essence it is
the living unity of the one blood, one tongue, one
flag. It is but an ideal, as yet imperfectly realized ;
but to have a right and noble ideal is the secret of
true progress. How to realize it more perfectly is
one of the most difficult and yet urgent problems of
British statesmanship.

Now what is true of the national is true also
of the ecclesiastical expansion. The day is happily
gone by, when the colonial Churches were left im-
perfect, mere dependencies on the distant Church at
home. Everywhere they strike independent root,
growing to self-support and self-government, and to

11 THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 55

an ecclesiastical organization more fully developed
than among ourselves. We have seen how gradually
the stiff bonds of our formal ecclesiastical law, once
thought to bind them, have been broken off or have
dropped away. But yet at the same time the
desire and realization of unity are so strong, especi-
ally among the intelligent lay -members of these
Churches, that they may at times seem to us ex-
cessive, arguing timidity as to free and independent
development. Still there is a true instinct in them.
These Churches, practically independent as they are,
yet by free adhesion bind themselves to the doctrine,
the government, the liturgical forms, of the old
Church at home. Nay, while they are completing
their own organization, uniting dioceses in provinces,
and expressing that union in larger synodical action,
still they gladly concede to the See of Canterbury
a kind of free patriarchal authority, both of advice
and of guidance, and in the Lambeth Conference are
moving, tentatively but steadily, towards some true
synodical unity in the future.

So in both its aspects this great colonial expan-
sion advances, without, so far as we can see, any
breach of continuity, or tendency to disintegration.
For the policy, which led to the great civil disruption
of the eighteenth century, is now a thing of the past.
But certainly it is in the ecclesiastical aspect that

56 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the unity is most complete and safest from danger.
Even now it is one most important influence bearing
upon the more difficult problem of civil unity ; and
it may be that history will repeat itself, and that the
initiative of the Church may prepare the way for the
" Imperial Federation," which as yet exists only in
idea.

In tracing this expansion of the Church, we see
that, of course, the first impulse came from the old
centre. But it is perhaps characteristic of our Eng-
lish method, that it did not come in the first instance
from Church authority as such. As in our commercial
and political expansion, so in this, the first moving
force has been voluntary action, in part of individuals,
mainlyof great Societies within the Church itself. Some
two hundred years ago — when the corporate action
of the Church fell into abeyance, and when voluntary
association in all directions strove to fill up the void,
untrammelled by legal difficulties and official timidity
— was formed the old Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, which embraced within the
scope of its operation the whole English community,
abroad as well as at home. Out of it, for the
discharge of the foreign duty of the Church, there
sprang in 1701 the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel, which took the whole world of foreign
parts as its field of labour — assuming as its device a

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 57

ship bearing to our settlers and our heathen subjects
the Gospel in the hand of the Ministry, and as its
motto the old cry from Macedonia, '' Come over and
help us." It has been so constituted as to seek work
rather than power, to claim no independent authority,
but to move along true Church lines, and to be
literally the handmaid of the Church herself. It
leaves the choice of its missionaries to a Board
appointed by the chief authorities of the Church at
home ; it subordinates them in their work not to
itself, but to the authorities of the Church abroad.

So, continually advancing, as fresh needs called
for fresh enterprise, it has been, at first almost alone,
afterwards far above all other agencies, the main
instrument of our Colonial Church Expansion — wisely
determining to give freely support and encourage-
ment to each new branch of our Church in its early
days of weakness and struggle, gradually to educate
each to independence, and, as soon as the new plant
had rooted itself, and grown to strength and fruitful-
ness, to pass on, and sow the good seed elsewhere in
virgin soil. Certainly the record of its work, which
it has recently given to the world, is a glorious
record. The testimony borne again and again by
the Assembly of the American Church might be
taken up from all quarters of the colonial sphere —
that the Hand of God " planted and nurtured through

58 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the Society the Church " in every land — that the
Society furnished for many generations " the only
point of contact, the only bond of sympathy, between
the Church of England and her children scattered
over the waste places of the New World " — that
" whatever the Church abroad has been in the past,
is now, and shall be in the future, is largely due
under God to the long-continued nursing, care, and
protection of the venerable Society."^

The time is probably at hand, when, like other
branches of the Church of Christ, our Church as
such, through its authorities at home and abroad,
must enter more determinately on the work, to
harmonize and organize, if not to originate, effort
But meanwhile this Society is in some sense a
" Board of Missions " to the Church itself Thanks to
its original principles, it has no difficulty in adapting
itself to the fuller developments of Church organiza-
tion ; and so, without interference or assumption, it
aids, alike by support and by encouragement, the
growth of our Anglican Communion in this all but
world-wide sphere.

Nor should it be forgotten that this expansion of
our Church to her own children — the children of the
dispersion — is indissolubly connected with that
missionary work to the heathen races, of which we

^ See the Digest of S. P. G. AWon/s, pp. 84, 85.

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 59

shall speak more hereafter. Partly because in many
cases, where our colonists are mingled with heathen
fellow-subjects or immigrants, the two missions from
home go on side by side, and more or less inter-
penetrate each other. Partly because, as we shall
see, every colonial Church, so soon as it is firmly
established, becomes itself a centre of independent
missionary enterprise, carrying on to others that
Christianity, which is a trust for all mankind, and
obeying the moral logic of the Divine command,
" Freely ye have received ; freely give." And, indeed,
while there is perhaps more of Christian enthusiasm,
more of chivalrous romance, in the greater daring
of those forlorn hopes of the great army of God,
which throw themselves, isolated and unsupported,
upon the territories of barbaric or civilized heathenism,
yet perhaps this gradual spread of the Gospel and
the Church of God from the spheres which it
already fills, keeping touch (so to speak) at every
point with its base of operation, may yield more
solid and permanent results of conquest, and certainly
must better tend to weld together the Christian races,
and those whom we fain would Christianize, in the
great brotherhood of Christ.

Let me briefly indicate the successive advances
of our English Christianity over the widening area of
EngHsh dominion and colonization.

6o HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

II. The first field of our enterprise was naturally
in those oldest North American colonies, which now
form the great American Republic.

In the earliest days of her colonization (as the
charters of Sir Humphry Gilbert and Sir Walter
Raleigh plainly show) England w^as not unmindful of
her Christianizing mission ; for " to discover and to
plant Christian inhabitants in places convenient " was
the declared purpose of every expedition. Nor was
it otherwise when, in the Stuart period and under
the Commonw^ealth, the advance of colonization con-
tinued. But the distracting effect of religious divisions
at home reproduced itself on the other side of the
Atlantic. In Virginia the Church was well founded
and strong ; but in the vigorous and advancing
colony of New England the influence of the old
Puritan settlement was not only dominant but
singularly intolerant ; and in Maryland and Pennsyl-
vania, although with an avowed toleration, the leading
influences were those of the Roman Catholic and
Quaker Communions. Still there was everywhere
an earnest desire for the expansion in some form ot
our English Christianity. It is notable that, as we
have already seen, the first Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel was directed to New England, formed
under the sanction of the Long Parliament in the
opening year of the Republic, and constituted afresh

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 6i

immediately after the Restoration. But, so far as
our own Church was concerned, the missionary work
was slow and greatly hindered. For it had to be
carried on under obvious material difficulty over a
vast and thinly-peopled territory ; it had to contend
against the far more formidable moral and social
difficulties, entailed by conflict with the native
people and by the existence of negro slavery. In
many of the provinces, especially in New England, it
met with discouragement and antagonism, partly at
home and even more abroad, from those who had
departed, or had been driven, from her Communion
to be the ancestors of modern Nonconformity. In
1675 the Bishop ■ of London (Bishop Compton),
urging greater vigour and completeness in the work,
declared that there were " scarce four ministers of our
Church in the vast tract of North America." Even
when in 1701 the rise of our Society for the Propaga-
tion of the Gospel gave the new impulse so greatly
desired, and from the first directed its energies, not
only to the care of our own people, but to the con-
version of the native races, still its resources, both
in men and in money, were far from adequate to its
gigantic task.

The State itself, indeed, in various ways aided, es-
tablished, and endowed the Church for its evaneeliz-
ing work ; for in those days it had not learnt to shrink

62 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

from the plain recognition of a national Christianity,
as the supreme factor in the growing national life.
But the fatal error — perhaps in part through this
State connection — was made of refusing to the
Church in America that independence and complete-
ness of organization, which on its own principles
implied the creation of an indigenous Episcopate.
Not that the more thoughtful and earnest Churchmen
were blind to this preposterous error. Laud had
proposed to send a bishop to New England ; after
the Restoration a bishop was actually nominated
for Virginia, but never sent.^ The old Missionary
Society in Queen Anne's reign pressed for some
appointments under the ancient Suffragan Act, if no
other way could be found ; and provision was actually
made for the creation of four bishoprics, two for the
North American Continent and two for the West
Indian Islands. But the Queen's death unhappily
frustrated the project. Under the Hanoverian
dynasty still more urgent pleas and even entreaties
were used by such men as Archbishop Seeker (sup-
porting earnest petitions from America, as from the
clergy of Connecticut in 1771), and were used utterly
fj-j vain — defeated (so we read) by the indifference or

^ It would appear that llic nonjuiing bishops in 1722 consecrated
Dr. Welton and Mr. Talbot for ministration in America ; but their
Episcopate was necessarily covert in action and seems to have died out.

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 63

hostility of the Government, and a professed fear
of exciting Nonconformist jealousy. The result, of
course, was that, while other Christian communities
naturalized themselves (so to speak) without difficulty
on the American soil, the Church never took its
right lead, because it remained in some degree an
exotic, dependent on the Church in England, and in
the eyes of the people identified with the English
connection.^

Still, under all discouragement the work of its
extension went on — not only for the colonists, but,
in spite of much jealousy and some opposition, for the
negroes and Indians. Independently of all that was
done by local exertions and State aid, we find that in
1783 the old Society had nearly eighty missionaries
at work ; and it is especially to be noted that now,
as always, our Church cared much for education, as
one important means of extending the light of the
Gospel. Primary schools arose everywhere, a Cate-
chizing School for negroes and Indians in New York,,
and a " King's College " of higher education there,
which is the parent of a great American University
(Columbia College) in our own time.

^ In 1 76 1 it appears by a return made to the Bishop of London to
have numbered less than one-fourth of the whole population of about
1,000,000. It was only in Virginia and in North and South Carolina
that the Church included the bulk of the population (see Wilberforce's
Histoiy of the American Chtcrch).

64 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Then came in 1783 the great storm of the
Disruption, and, naturally, it fell heavily on our
Church — largely loyalist in sentiment, and looked
upon commonly as an emblem of that English
dominion which had been shaken off. Almost all
the missionaries from the old country were driven
away to England, or over the border to the colonies,
which still remained faithful ; many thousands of
the loyalists, under violent pressure, had to take the
same course. More than ever now, in its enforced
separation, the Church cried out for its own native
Episcopate. Still to England it appealed in vain ;
the authorities of the Church hesitated ; the Govern-
ment of the day discouraged or forbade. It was
by this most unfortunate hesitation that John
Wesley, who had himself been a missionary of the
old Society in former days, was induced, with much
misgiving, and against the strong protest of his
brother Charles, to set apart, with the title of
bishops, the chief of his ministers, on the express
ground that, as there were ''no bishops with legal juris-
diction," his action "violated no order and in\'aded no
man's right." The effect was unhappily to determine
the separate existence of the body of " Episcopal
Methodists " — now, I believe, one of the largest
Christian Communions in the whole Republic. At
last, by aid of the proscribed and persecuted Episcopal

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 65

Church in Scotland, the long-needed step was taken
in the consecration of Bishop Seabury for Con-
necticut in 1784; and, three years after, the
authorities of the Church of England, in answer to
a more general request from a Church Convention,
ventured to follow up that action by sending forth
two more bishops (Bishops White and Proovost) from
the ancient chapel at Lambeth.

From that time onwards the Church became at
last an independent branch — at once a daughter and
a sister Church, in full and yet free communion with
the old Church — one substantially in doctrine, wor-
ship, discipline, and yet claiming full liberty of
revision and variation in details. Very clearly is this
relation brought out by the comparison of the
American Prayer-Book in its present form with the
old Prayer-Book of the Church of England, from
which it is derived.

Under most serious disadvantage its independent
life began : long imperfection of system had brought
about ignorance and disorganization ; there hung
over it the shadow of natural, although undeserved,
doubt of its native character and loyalty. The loss
of the Episcopal Methodists took from it the mass of
the great middle class, which should have been its
backbone of strength. The fatal effect of these
drawbacks is visible still ; for it is very far from

F

66 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

being — what perhaps it might have been — the leading
Communion, in numbers, of American Christianity.

Still, under God's blessing it has greatly pros-
pered. A hundred years have passed ; and now it
has its seventy bishoprics at home, more than four
thousand clergy, some three millions and a quarter of
professed members, besides many others to whom it
ministers. It has even its missions to the heathen,
at home and abroad, under six missionary bishops.
By universal testimony, moreover, its leadership in
education and culture, and its influence over the
higher life of the people — intellectual, social, re-
ligious— are far beyond its relative proportion of
members, and are advancing day by day. No
one who has any knowledge of the subject can
fail to be struck with the boldness and ability of
its leaders, or with its own strong religious activity
and enterprise. Its correspondence with the cosmo-
politan character of American society is singularly
illustrated by the fact, that in the grand cathedral
now begun in New York there are to be seven
chapels, clustering round the apsidal east-end, and
that in each of these there will be celebration of
our service of Holy Communion in a different
tongue. Its hopeful confidence in its future is
shown in the lead, which, beyond all other branches
of the Anglican Communion, it has taken in pre-

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 67

paring for the Home Reunion of our English-speak-
ing Christianity, as yet but a hope and aspiration,
yet surely not destined to be wholly unfruitful. But,
while this Independent life is thus manifesting itself
on every side, the tie of spiritual unity with the
Mother -Church is drawn closer and closer. No
branch of our Anglican Communion is more vigor-
ously and loyally represented in the great Lambeth
Conference. It represents our first field of Church
expansion ; in spite of our own errors, failures, mis-
fortunes, we can look upon it with pride and thank-
fulness to God who gave the increase.

III. Glance next with me across the border to
the vast area, which still remains as British In North
America — even now but thinly peopled in com-
parison with the great Republic, yet with nearly
five millions already of Inhabitants, and growing
rapidly with a steady and vigorous growth.^ It
Is now a grand Federation, uniting under the
one Dominion Government a group of colonies,
varying in age of settlement, in social condition and
occupation. In race and climate and internal govern-
ment— from the old colonies of Newfoundland, Nova
Scotia, Canada, which have belonged to us since

^ In 1871 the population was 3,695,002; in 1881, 4,324,8'io ; in
1891, 4,833,239. The greatest increase is in Manitoba, British
Columbia, and the Territories, which from 1881 to 1891 grew from
163,165 to 349,646.

68 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the later
colonies of Manitoba and British Columbia, which,
as well -inhabited territories, are but of yesterday.
Overshadowed in some sense by the colossal Re-
public of the United States, the Dominion still keeps
its distinctive character, its vigorous independence,
its loyal attachment to the old home, its confidence
in its own future. Clearly it is a singularly hopeful
and interesting sphere of our national expansion.
What is the history there of the corresponding
expansion of our Church ?

In general outline it is not unlike that which has
been already traced. But it has its characteristic
differences.

The first, and most important, is that, from a
far earlier period in this history, the Church there
had that independence and completeness, which were
so long lacking to the older settlements. The
Episcopate was founded there at much the same
time as in the United States — in the Bishopric of
Nova Scotia in 1787, and Quebec in 1793.

Then, again, the continuance of the civil tie to
England has naturally led to the continuance in
different degrees of aid from the Mother- Church,
through both her great Societies, for the ecclesi-
astical settlement of the newer lands. The Church,
moreover, in these lands, if it has had to face the

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 69

difficult task of civilizing and Christianizing the old
Indian races, yet has at least been free from the
tremendous moral and social difficulties, which in
the United States were the consequence and the
judgment of negro slavery.

Yet it has had hindrances of its own. In the
old province of Quebec — where the mass of the
population is French in origin ^ — the Roman
Catholic Church, strong in numbers, and in endow-
ments secured by English law, has an overshadowing
predominance ; and our own Church, stripped by
confiscation of the support designed in old times
for the maintenance of its work, labours on with
difficulty, hardly receiving from the State in reli-
gious and ecclesiastical matters even the imparti-
ality, which alone it claims. Meanwhile there have
been opened to us that wonderful North - West
country, once but a vast hunting-ground, inhabited
by scattered Indian hunters, now one of the finest
of rich agricultural districts, and the chief home of
English immigration ; and, far away on the Pacific
coast, the settlements and ports of British Columbia,
carrying onwards the full stream of English com-
merce to Japan and China, and to the great Austral-

^ In this province, out of 1,488,535 inhabitants, 1,186,346 were
returned in 1 89 1 as French-speaking, and 1,291,708 as Roman
Catholic. The old city of Quebec, and the newer and more flourishing
city of Montreal, are virtually French towns.

70 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

asian colonies. To these, as so often, the creation
of a great artery of material communication in the
Pacific Railway has been the bearer of prosperity
and civilization and of the Gospel itself; and they
present to the Canadian Church a task of absorbing
interest, of tremendous difficulty, of glorious oppor-
tunity. Curiously enough, her work there, invert-
ing the usual order, began in missions to the
Indians, of whom, there and in Canada, some
120,000 still remain, well cared for, and not, it is
said, diminishing, and among whom a native
Church has grown up. Afterwards, as the English
population poured in with overwhelming rapidity,
and cities sprang up where only a few native huts
had been, an ever-growing work to our own people
followed, and every nerve has been strained to meet
it. The Church organization has been spread over
the whole country — the advance belonging entirely
to the last fifty years — alike in the French-speaking
people of Montreal, in the prosperous and growing
English province of Ontario, in the great expanse
of Manitoba and the Territories, and in the new settle-
ments of British Columbia. In most cases the Episco-
pate has been, as it should be, not so much the latest
completion of the Church system, as the organ of
independent Church advance ; and each fresh See
has been a centre of new spiritual life. Still re-

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 71

ceiving, and having a right to receive, some aid from
the old country, which pours in every year at least
40,000 of poor and struggling immigrants, the
Church is becoming more and more independ-
ent, organized, under synodical government, to be
an ecclesiastical federation, corresponding to the
federation of the civil community. First, indeed,
it has been of all colonial Churches to assume
for its Metropolitan the archiepiscopal title, which
implies co - ordination with the highest dignities
here. It has created its own Church Society for
sustentation, and its Board of Missions for evangel-
ization. Every way, like the great Dominion in
which it is rooted, it seems to me one of the most
vigorous and growing offshoots of the , Anglican
Communion. Not as yet having so entirely sur-
mounted difficulty and discouragement as to have
attained its right dimensions, for in its twenty-one
dioceses it has less than a million of professed
members, and only some fifteen hundred clergy ;
but it has clearly in it a far larger promise, and it has
been singularly distinguished by hard and earnest
work, simplicity of purpose, readiness for sacrifice.
May God fulfil the one, and bless the other !

IV. Side by side with these extensions over
what is substantially an English-speaking race, there
went on in the West Indian Islands, gradually added

72 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

to the dominion of England at various periods
during nearly three centuries, a more distinctly-
missionary work. In relation to the comparatively
few English settlers, the work to be done was not
unlike that which had to be carried out on the
mainland ; but the mission to the heathen races,
there subordinate, assumed here a primary import-
ance. It had to do not only with the remnant of
the aboriginal inhabitants of the islands, but far
more with the negro race, imported under the slave
trade, which has superseded them, and which now,
set free from its bondage, and multiplying under
our rule, assumes a larger influence and a greater
spirit of independence day by day.

In that expansion, far more than, I think, in any
other, support and aid have been naturally and
rightly given by the State. When Barbados, pos-
sessed in 1605, was granted to Lord Carlisle in
1627, it was (so said the Charter) for "propagating
the Christian faith" as well as "for enlarging His
Majesty's dominions." Probably the very fact of
exercising here for the first time dominion over a
lower race, held under the absolute power and
tutelage of slavery, brought home to our rulers
some strong sense of a national responsibility to
God for them. Certain it is that in every island,
as it was gained, the Church was established and

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 73

endowed for a work, in which it obviously needed
both material support and the countenance of
authority. Only in late times — and that even now
incompletely — has the contrary policy been adopted,
rather, it would seem, in deference to the supposed
fashion of the times in England, than by any
spontaneous demand from the islands themselves.
Happily, as it has been thus adopted, the need and
hardship which it, of course, brought with it, have —
largely by the aid of our old Missionary Societies —
been boldly met.

Here obviously the great and abnormal difficulty
was presented by the contact with slavery. How
should it be dealt with by those who could not
preach a servile insurrection, and yet could not
relinquish the principle of the Christian faith, as to
the unity of all men in Christ ? Clearly there is a
flagrant theoretical inconsistency in treating the
slave, now as a living chattel to be bought and sold,
having no right to freedom, or to the ties of domestic
purity and love, and now as a true man, made in the
image of God, and redeemed by the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. There was a strong inhuman
logic in that old slave-holding law, which made it a
crime to teach a slave even to read and write, lest
he should be educated into consciousness of his
rights. But the Church was content to follow the

74 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Apostolic precedent. She dealt with slavery as St.
Paul dealt with it in the case of Onesimus — not to
overthrow it by violence, but to proclaim the great
principle, " no longer a slave, but a brother beloved
in the Lord " ; and to leave it to work by its own
power on the public mind and conscience of England.
Meanwhile, in the case of slaves committed to her
charge by trust, her hands were clean ; she antici-
pated the gradual emancipation, which was wrought
out afterwards by the law of the State.^ For at last
the power of Christian principle did work victoriously,
against a tremendous force of prejudice, of vested
interest, of supposed expediency. By an unexampled
sacrifice the slaves were redeemed to freedom. Wisely,
the tremendous change was prepared for by degrees ;
and at last (to use the words of an eye-witness)
on the great day, ist August 1838, when "eight
hundred thousand human beings lay down at night
as slaves, and rose in the morning as free,"

^ Such a trust was held by the S.P.G. in respect of the estates of
Codrington College. At all times it seems to have been discharged
with a wise humanity, and the condition of the slaves became mainly
that of serfs attached to the soil, under conditions of increasing inde-
pendence and privilege. But, when the question of slavery began to
force itself on the Christian consciousness, the Society, feeling that it
could neither relinquish its trust, nor venture on an immediate en-
franchisement, set itself to work to "make provision for their gradual
emancipation, and set an example, which may lead to the abolition
of slavery without danger to life or property" (see Digest of S.P.G.
Records f p. 202),

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 75

thousands joined as brethren with brethren " in
offering up prayers and thanksgivings to the Father,
Redeemer, and Sanctifier of all," and the momentous
day of a vast social revolution " passed over in
perfect peace."

Then instantly began a new energy of work.
By the Negro Education Fund, aided by parlia-
mentary grants from the State, but in at least two-
thirds a bounty of free gift, the Church entered upon
the duty of training the new freemen for the grave
responsibilities of liberty, by intellectual and moral
and spiritual agencies. Schools and churches were
built ; clergy and schoolmasters and catechists were
set to work. In some fifteen years, from 1835 to
1850, more than ;^ 170,000 was spent on this most
important work. It is on record that "few missionary
efforts have ever produced such great results in a
short time, as were effected by this movement."

There is much of striking interest, very im-
perfectly known, in the early history of our Church
in the West Indies. Take but one specimen in the
noble foundation, as early as 1703, of Codrington
College, as a society of men devoted under unusual
conditions to the conversion of the heathen. How
strikingly it anticipates some of the ideas or aspira-
tions of our own day — when it creates a kind of
missionary brotherhood " under vows of poverty.

76 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

chastity, and obedience," and bids them " study and
practise Medicine and Surgery as well as Divinity"!^

The moral and social problems, which emancipa-
tion opened, are far from being completely solved,
either in Church or in State. Perhaps we understand
better now, than in the first enthusiasm of deliverance,
how hard it is, in dealing with a negro race, to
harmonize rightly freedom and authority, to stimu-
late work without compulsion, to unite them socially
and politically with the European races, to give to
their native Christianity thought as well as emotion,
solidity as well as enthusiasm. But to the greatness
of these problems the Church is clearly alive, and
doing all she may, under God, to solve what on any
other than Christian principle is surely hopeless of
solution.

Meanwhile we may note that here also, after too
long a delay, the full Church organization is rapidly
developing itself Not till 1824 was the Episcopate
initiated at Barbados, after some 200 years of
occupation. Not till the next year was it planted
in the great island of Jamaica, full 170 years after
it was conquered for England by the sword of
Cromwell. Now we have there in the various

^ More than half the clergy in Barbados have been educated in the
College, and coloured missionaries have been sent from it to the heathen
in West Africa.

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 77

islands nine bishops, more than 400 clergy, aided
by a great band of lay workers for God ; and at
least 600,000 professed members of our Church are
gathered at her altars, and in many languages send
up the same worship to the Throne of Grace. There
have been troubles and disappointments; disestablish-
ment and spoliation have tried the Church by
hardship ; but it has grown, as usual, in a close yet
independent communion with the Church at home,
with its own synodical self-government, and its own
provisions of self-support. Whatever difficulties and
dangers wait upon the future of these fair, luxuriant
islands, at least she will try, seriously and hopefully,
to face them in the strength of God.

Other phases of Christian teaching may appeal more
easily, and with more vivid excitement, to the emo-
tional character of the negro race. But the Christian
action of our Church, just because it is marked by a
characteristic sobriety and solidity, by a right har-
mony of order and liberty, of thought and work and
emotion, should supply that influence, which seems
to be most necessary for the steady development of
a higher life in the negro race — free as it is now
from all legal bondage, and yet subject still to the
inherent European ascendency.

V. And now we have to pass in thought from
these regions of the North-West far away to the

78 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Southern Hemisphere. There is here also a splendid
inheritance of our English race — first in the vast con-
tinent of Australia, stretching from the tropical heat
through all varieties of sub-tropical climate into the
temperate zone ; next in the great islands of New
Zealand, reproducing in the Antipodes a glorified
English climate, fittest of all cradles of a new English
race ; lastly, close at hand, within the sphere partly
of dominion, partly of influence, in the many islands
which stud the waters of the Pacific.

The seed of what is clearly destined to be the
dominant power of the South was sown, as you will
remember, under strangely adverse and dangerous
conditions. It is hardly more than a century ago —
just three years after the loss of our old North
American colonies — that, on the shores of one of the
noblest of all harbours, which is now one of the great
emporiums of the world's commerce, there landed, to
settle in a corner of that vast territory, about a
thousand Englishmen — convicts sentenced to trans-
portation, soldiers to guard, and authorities to rule
them with a rod of iron. Hardly more than fifty years
ago, after the discovery of gold, did the great tide of
free immigration pour in, to swamp (so to speak) the
older tainted source by its purer waters. Swiftly in
these later days has that Australian community grown
in numbers and in power. It has learnt how to draw

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 79

out material treasures of the land, often richer far
than the gold ; to call into existence great and even
splendid cities ; to follow up material wealth with
higher intellectual, social, and moral civilization ; to
create new Englands, free in self-government and
virtual independence, yet after the old pattern.
There are men yet living, who can remember in
Australia a few huts, where now a city of nearly
half a million of people stands; who made or watched
the first English settlement in the Maori land of New
Zealand, and who have seen within their own memory
the whole of that marvellous growth of a great
community. There are youths living now, who in all
human probability will see that growth immensely
increased ; for as yet there are hardly more than three
human beings for every two square miles of Aus-
tralia. The little settlement of 1787 has grown into
a group of six great colonies, all now under inde-
pendent self-government, with little more than the
link of loyalty to the old country, which every
Australasian still calls " home," destined evidently,
like the North American colonies, to form a great
confederation at no distant time. It is an extra-
ordinary inheritance. Unlike our other chief colonies,
but like the mother-country, it has no frontier except
the sea ; it has vast resources, as yet but little
drawn out ; it has already a population of some four

8o HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

millions, almost entirely of British origin ; it has a
material future (I think) assured, with capacity, if
it will, of advancing to the greatness, which needs
more than material influences of development.

But what of the Christianization of this new
continent ? What of the expansion of our own
Church, to follow up the rapid growth of this great
community ?

It was an unhappy time, when, in 1787, the first
inauspicious beginning was made. It is all but in-
credible, and yet but too certain, that the Government
of that day, sending out its wretched convicts and its
soldiers, made no provision whatever for religious
ministration to their moral and spiritual welfare.
Only two days before the ships sailed, through the
urgency of William Wilberforce and the Bishop of
London, permission was granted to a volunteer, the
Rev. R. Johnson, to join the expedition as Chaplain, not
only without endowment, but without any sanction or
authority. His was a splendid enterprise indeed ; his
name surely deserves to be remembered with honour
in the roll of our history, as we cannot but believe that
it is written in the Book of God. On landing, where
our old Elizabethan settlers would have knelt down
like Columbus, and prayed, not without thanksgiving,
for God's blessing, it was thought enough that the
British flag should be run up amidst cheers, and

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 8i

rations of rum served out to the troops. Under
infinite discouragement, with a patience and earnest-
ness, as noble surely as the noblest martyrdom, that
one minister of Christ still bore his witness, gathering
a half-reluctant congregation in the open air, wherever
he could find shade from the fierce Australian sun ;
till after six years he succeeded in building a rough
church, out of his own means and almost with his
own hands. But the light so kindled seemed almost
to be swallowed up in the encompassing darkness.
Who can wonder that there grew up there a society
of which competent observers declared that it was
immoral beyond any known immorality, — that, even
long after, there were in two years 400 capital
convictions in a population of less than 40,000
people, — that the condition of the convicts in New
South Wales and Tasmania, and still more in Norfolk
Island, whither the worst were sent, is described as
a " Hell upon earth," — that towards the aboriginal
inhabitants there was so much among the early
settlers of cruelty, violence, bloodshed, that we turn
away with shame from many pages of their history ?
Yet even so, thank God ! the seed sown faithfully
and loyally did strike root and so grew up as
gradually to overshadow the land — nay, by the hand
of Samuel Marsden, one of the ablest and most
earnest of workers, to spread to the then heathen land

G

82 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

of New Zealand, and prepare for its future evangeliza-
tion. By the labour, not only of the ministers of
Christ, but of some noble laymen in high places of
authority, the Church began to make head against
these adverse currents of worldliness and sin. Slow,
indeed, was the advance, and marked by the same
timidity as to its completeness and independence.
For some forty years a few scattered servants of God
worked without organization and guidance ; then it
sounds almost ludicrous to tell how this vast continent
was made an Archdeaconry of Calcutta, some 6000
miles away; at last in 1836, under the auspices of
the great Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister,
the first bishop was sent out, to rule over some score
perhaps of clergy, ministering in churches, simple
even to rudeness, planted here and there as best
might be done. Fifty years had passed, and yet
how slow had the expansion been !

Then, as usual, a new impulse was given to the
work of the Church — aided again by the unfailing
energy of our old missionary societies — meeting
not unworthily the rapid civil growth of Australia.
Look only at the period of about another fifty years,
and how marvellous the change ! The one See
has grown to fourteen in Australia, and six in New
Zealand ; the few scattered clergy to at least 1 1 00 ;
the members of the Church to more than a million

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 83

and a half. Hard, indeed, the work is, with none
of the romance and enthusiasm of missions to the
heathen. Hard it is to cope with the material
difficulty of an ever- advancing colonization, always
occupying new ground ; hard, in the absence of all
endowment, to secure the material resources for
this extension ; harder still to strive against the
disintegrating and bewildering influence of our
wretched religious divisions ; hardest of all to over-
come— what are perhaps not unconnected with these
— the fear in civil authorities of any identification
with ecclesiastical policy, and the secularizing forces
of indifference, worldliness, sin, presenting themselves
there in cruder and more obvious forms than in our
more complex society here. Hard in all these ways
the work has been, and is still, to an extent here
but little understood ; and they who know it best
most feel its actual imperfections. But yet, by God's
grace, it has been, and is being, done, not only to
meet the continual advance of our own English
people over the great Continent, but to deal with
the aboriginal inhabitants, the remnant who still
are left, and with the Chinese immigrants, whom,
against all natural jealousies, it embraces in the
Christian brotherhood ; to aid the Melanesian
Mission, which carries the banner of Christ to the
islands of the Pacific, and to undertake the New

84 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Guinea Mission, which is the especial enterprise of
the AustraHan Church as such.

There are many fruits, visible and invisible, of
this progress, for which we may well thank God.
But I can hardly conceive a more striking sign of
its influence, than the vast difference in tone and
method, which distinguished our settlement in New
Zealand from that earlier colonization of Australia
itself There the first Christianization of the native
races preceded our civil occupation of the country ;
and in that occupation the expansion of the Church
of Christ kept fair pace with the rapid national
growth. Is it a mere coincidence that in this case
the principles of a right colonization, carrying with
it in true harmony all the influences which have
made England great, were not inadequately realized
in practice, — that our relations with the native
races, if they could not be free from warlike anta-
gonism, yet at least, so far as our authorities were
concerned, were unstained by fraud and cruelty and
wanton bloodshed, — that the possessions and rights
of these races, dwindling in spite of all care through
the contact with English habits, English diseases,
English intemperance, English sin, are preserved to
this day under the British flag, — that the tone and
character of the whole colonial society are singu-
larly full of a wholesome and vigorous promise ?

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 85

There, happily, from early days our Church was
planted in all its integrity, under the strong and
noble leadership of the first great Bishop of New
Zealand. He found there already a vigorous native
Christianity — the fruit after many failures of the
seed sown by the earlier pioneers of the kingdom of
God, long before our English settlement began. It
was his task to make the Church from the first
the mother of Englishmen and Maories alike, even
in times of struggle and war. In it — perhaps more
wisely and completely than in any other branch of
the Church — were the lines of Church organiza-
tion laid down. On the impulse, as I believe, of
the same great worker for God, the first be-
ginning was made in Australia and New Zealand
of the full synodical action, which has now spread
over the whole colonial Church. Under the same
impulse, almost from the beginning, the missionary
duty of the Church in the islands of the Pacific was
carried out — with generous aid, indeed, from home,
but with continually increasing dependence on the
resources of the Australasian Churches. True, in-
deed, it is that, to the infinite sorrow of its first
planters, there passed over the native Maori Christi-
anity the blight of a partial apostasy to a strange
hybrid religion, due, not to distrust or alienation
from the Gospel in itself, but to jealousy of its sup-

86 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

posed identification with the encroaching dominion
and influence of the English race. But that bhght
(thank God !) is gradually passing away : in Church
membership and in Church ministry English and
Maories are one, in the name of the one Lord who
died for all.

VI. Finally, we have to turn to the last great
field of our colonial growth — far away in the group
of South African colonies, with the yet larger and
vaguer sphere of influence, extending beyond them,
and bringing them almost into touch with the purely
missionary work, at which we must glance hereafter.
It is the same growth in essence which goes on here,
but under widely different circumstances. For here
the Europeans are but a few — a ruling few — among
a swarming population of native tribes, varying in
race and character, in warlike power and in civiliza-
tion, and continually increasing in number under the
comparative peacefulness of our sway. Even in the
European race there is a marked and serious divi-
sion between the children of the English conquerors,
and those descendants of the Dutch from whom
the first colonies were taken, who still form a strong
element in their population,^ and have their inde-

1 Even in the Cape Colony the European and white inhabitants are
about a fifth of the whole, and of these — some 377,000 in 1891 — it is
calculated that 230,000 are of Dutch origin. In Natal the white popu-

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 87

pendent territories upon the frontier. Our colonial
power there, ever since the old Cape Colony was
ceded to us some eighty years ago, has had, and
is having still, a stormy growth — with many an-
tagonisms of the Dutch within our borders, who
have often gone out to be the first colonizers beyond
them, — with many wars, at once of aggression and
self-defence, such as always mark the advance of
a civilized power amidst comparatively barbarous
tribes. In spite of singular errors and vacillations
in our policy, bringing with them much disaster and
some disgrace, that advance is continuous, and, on
the whole, irresistible ; its last development, curi-
ously characteristic in its origin and its course, is
but of yesterday. But its very success brings with
it problems of special difficulty, which as yet have
been most inadequately dealt with, and which will
tax all our enterprise and statesmanship, if they are
to be righteously and wisely solved.

Nor can we fail equally to trace some special
features of difficulty and conflict in the advance in
these regions of our colonial Church. There was,
indeed, from early times much missionary activity.
Our own old Missionary Society entered upon the
work but six years after the first beginning of

lation is not a tenth of the whole, and in the outlying provinces —
Zululand, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Mashonaland — it is but a handful.

88 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

English dominion, and that work was supported and
encouraged by the civil power. Other Communions
of our English Christianity were at least as zealous
and active in the service of the one Master. But
from the beginning there was a somewhat unusual
development of religious diversity, with the usual
results of disintegration and even collision. When,
some thirty years after the original settlement, our
first bishop (Bishop Gray) — a most earnest and able
servant of God — was sent out, he was appalled by
finding twenty different forms of Christianity being
taught, and some two hundred ministers of religion
working with but little organization or unity of
effort. Strong Churchman as he was, he felt it a
primary duty to do what might be done to mitigate
these unhappy divisions, and to establish relations of
sympathy, if not of union, with other missions than
our own. That his attempt was not quite in vain
was witnessed by the universal mourning of " all
classes, ranks, and denominations " over his grave.

Then when, under his splendid leadership, the
work of our own Church, as usual, showed at once
a stronger and more rapid growth, there came upon
it, as we know but too well, the distracting and
paralyzing influence of most unhappy division. It
has been a division, deep-seated and obstinate, in-
volving collision between ecclesiastical and civil law,

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 89

raising constitutional questions of infinite importance
and difficulty. In its origin, moreover, it is more
complicated than is ordinarily known in this country.
Beginning in the conflict of the Colenso controversy
■ — between freedom of thought and criticism, on the
one side, and zeal for the old historic faith against
all which seemed to menace it, on the other — it
passed first into a distinct antagonism between the
exercise of metropolitan authority and the resistance
to it in the name of diocesan independence and of
individual freedom; and then into a conflict, which
all colonial Churchmen know well, between the
assertion of a quasi-independence for a Church of
South Africa in full communion with the Mother-
Church, and the desire to remain an integral part
of the Church of England itself, not only in its
essential doctrine and discipline, but also in respect
of its law, its jurisdiction, its connection with the
national life. The first phases of the controversy
have in great measure passed — buried in the graves
of its early champions ; but the last still remains.
Brighter hopes of reconciliation are at last dawning,
yet even now not wholly free from cloud. Need it
be said how greatly it has hindered the expansion
of our Church, both over our own people and the
heathen tribes around ? If it has brought out in
the first champions on both sides some singular

90 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

greatness and nobility of character, — if it has forced
colonial Churchmen generally to study first prin-
ciples, to anticipate the consideration of inevitable
problems, to throw themselves with some intelligent
earnestness into the vocation which they believe
that God has given them, — yet all these forces have
been too much wasted by internal friction, by that
want of due sense of proportion which is the in-
evitable curse of controversy, by the breach of unity,
which, even if it be only of external unity, must
be a sore hindrance to the advance of the army of
God.

Yet still, although these unhappy causes have
kept back the Church from leadership in the progress
of the kingdom of God, we can see that her walls
are being built up, " even in troublous times." Some
quarter of a million of members she has gathered in,
in ten dioceses, served by four hundred clergy, with,
as usual, large help of lay workers. Her influence
has spread beyond our own borders to Zululand and
Mashonaland, and has even ventured to enter the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. As yet it
has embraced but a small part of the whole popula-
tion, in the grasp of what is largely a missionary
work. But, if only (which God grant !) intestine
division can be healed, there seems to be diffused
there a spirit of enterprise, not without some origin-

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 91

ality and strong Church feeHng, from which, if it
please God, we may look for far more abundant
fruit hereafter.

VII. Such is, my brethren, a survey, necessarily
but imperfect, of this first great phase of Church
expansion — the nearest to our interest and to our
hearts — the most important of all in numbers and
in power/ Already it numbers more than three
millions of English Churchmen in our colonies
— more than three millions and a quarter in the
American Church, which has grown out of our oldest
colonial settlements. Already it is a great and
vigorous organization, with more than 160 bishops
and 7000 clergy, and growing under full synodical
government. Yet, great as it is, it would have been
far greater under a wiser and bolder action in the
past, and it evidently has capacity of far larger
greatness in the future.

It has been, be it remembered, almost entirely
the work of the last half-century. When the present
reign began, there were in the whole of this Greater
Britain only five colonial Sees, where there are now
eighty-seven ; while in the sister Church of America
the same period has seen an increase from sixteen
to seventy-five. I can myself well recall a memorable

^ A more detailed historical outline of this expansion of the colonial
Empire and colonial Church will be found in Appendix I.

92 IIULSEAN LECTURES lect.

day, marking the first chief epoch in this rapid
expansion, when in i 847 four colonial bishops were
consecrated at one great service in Westminster
Abbey — the first Bishop of Cape Town, and the three
who began the ecclesiastical division of the Aus-
tralian Continent, — and when those who consecrated
them, and those who thronged the Abbey as wor-
shippers and communicants, felt that the Church of
England was entering on a new phase of glorious duty
as a nursing mother of churches. Marvellously since
that day has the work been blessed and prospered.
As Bishop Lightfoot truly said in 1888, every new
See " means the completion of the framework of
settled Church government ; it means the establish-
ment of an Apostolic Ministry. ... It is the enrol-
ment, as a corporate unity, of one other member
of the great Anglican Communion."

This extension, moreover, has been not simply
an enlargement, but an advance of the true idea, and
a deepening of the spiritual power, of our Church
life. We cannot but see that, like the extension of
our colonial Empire itself, it has had its lessons of
instruction, warning, encouragement, to our Church
as a whole.

Certainly, it shows how much real adaptability
there is, in what has been often thought to be an
over-rigid system of doctrine and organization and

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 93

worship, to meet an extraordinary variety of need
and circumstance. The reproach of insularity
against the Anglican Communion is acknowledged
to be a thing of the past. Yet the colonial Churches
are essentially reproductions, with variation, of the
old Church at home, one with it in spirit and
traditions, and in the great principles of doctrine
and organization. They only need more plainly,
and, as being free in their legislation and govern-
ment, they can secure more easily, what we require
here — some larger elasticity of thinking and work-
ing, within, and not against, the law of the Church.
It is a vivid symbol of that adaptability that (as I
once heard it eloquently set forth) as the sun rises
on the Easter morning on each successive section of
the globe, his rise is greeted everywhere in lands
which girdle the whole earth by the free glad offer-
ing of the same Eucharistic worship — the same
" Glory to God in the highest " of our own English
rite.

Nor is it less instructive — in view especially of our
present conditions — to examine the position, which
our Church holds in the lands where it is not now
under the condition of Establishment.

Let me, indeed, candidly say that my own
experience of that position has taught me to prize,
not less but more, the spiritual advantage which

94 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

comes, not so much to the Church as to the com-
munity, from that simplest and most obvious witness
for a national Christianity and a national religious
unity. I see it in its effect on collective action, on
national education, and on public opinion, — in the value
to the State of an unquestioned spiritual leadership in
the Church, always ready, through an organization
coextensive with the nation, to serve what concerns
its highest interests, — in the value to the Church
both of the Establishment, which gives her that
leadership, and by connection with the national life
strengthens her comprehensiveness, and of the Endow-
ment which secures to her clergy an unequalled
measure of independence, and enables her to venture
on work for good, lying beyond the sphere of
obvious and pressing need. I cannot think that
the principle of absolute dissociation of the State
from all religious effort, especially in new and
struggling communities, is wiser and more righteous
than the old policy, which held it a part of national
duty and interest to give material support to what
certainly concerns the highest element of national
life. Nor is it difficult to see that, if even the moral
value of Christianity is believed in at all, it runs
directly counter to the obvious tendency of our own
days, which is to call upon the community, as such,
to supply to its poorer members what belongs to

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 95

their higher Hfe. On many points of our present
grave controversies, a flood of Hght would be thrown
by a few years of colonial Church experience.

But yet, that experience has also taught us, in
regard to these advantages, great as they are, that —
even if they could be kept free from the drawbacks
which we feel here, although, indeed, these drawbacks
are largely of the abuse, and not the essence of
Establishment — they do not really belong to the
central and inherent life of our Church. With-
out them she is the old Church of England still,
retaining much of her sense of universal mission,
something at least of the spiritual leadership, gladly
conceded, when it is not claimed, and above all, the
strength of that harmony of authority and freedom,
of truth and order, of the old and the new, which
by God's grace has been given to her so signally
among the churches of Christendom.

Not unconnected with this is the lesson in
free and representative self-government, which the
colonial Churches have read to the Mother-Church
at home. There are few more interesting ecclesi-
astical studies, than to trace the growth of this
.synodical government from small beginnings, and
within no great space of time, till it has become
fully organized, with as true a reality of dignity and
power as in the parliaments of the rising nations

96 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

themselves. Of course, this synodical government,
as it had its difficulties and imperfections and
scandals in the Church history of the past, so, while
human nature, even in the Church, has its elements
of vv^eakness and sinfulness, will still fail in some
respects of the true ideal. But no one who has
experience can doubt that, in Church as in State, it
is a condition of vigorous and growing life. And
in that system there is one leading feature above
all, which is absolutely universal in all the daughter
Churches of our Anglican Communion. I mean the
resolute co-ordination of the laity with the clergy,
under the constitutional presidency of the Episcopate,
in the government of the Church in all its phases.
It is a principle, which, as the whole course of our
Church history, especially in the great Reformation
period, plainly shows, is thoroughly consonant with
our old English tradition ; although it has long
fallen here into a comparative abeyance, and has
only been revived, vaguely and tentatively, in our
own time. Even these imperfect revivals I hail with
infinite satisfaction. They carry with them no legal
authority ; but they bring to bear that power of
idea and of strong moral influence, which gradually
expresses itself in institutions : they prepare and
educate Churchmen for a firmer and more definite
policy in the future. Still they are as yet too vague

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 97

and unpractical ; they cannot claim the character
of a real synodical action of the whole Church.
Believing, as I have always believed, and as now
after experience I believe more than ever, that under
any contingency, whether of Establishment or of
Disestablishment, this representative government of
the whole body is the one thing most needful, for the
vigorous internal life of the Church itself, and for its
rightful influence over the public mind, I cannot but
hold that here the experience of the colonial Church
is of priceless value. It shows how, on our own
Anglican principles, it can work safely and effectively,
without trenching on the sacredness of the Ministry
or of the Episcopal authority, without danger of dis-
ruption or confusion, and how by its very existence
it takes away the necessity, and even the excuse, for
crude, irresponsible, and one-sided assertions of lay
power, whether of individuals or of party associations.
Yet perhaps even fuller of instruction and en-
couragement is the lesson read to us as to the
nature of true Church unity. Of a Catholic unity,
there are but two ideals — the one of submission of
all Churches to one central autocracy, which for
such pretension has naturally to claim infallibility —
the other of free federation of Churches, mother
and daughter and sister Churches alike, in those
" orders and degrees " which " jar not with liberty

H

98 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

but well consist," under the one sole Headship of
the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. May it not be
given to the Anglican Communion, in spite of all
its weaknesses, its anomalies, its shortcomings, to
approach at least to the realization of that second
and truer ideal — primitive, as we believe, in its
essential idea, and yet surely the unity, to which the
future must belong, and in which lies the best hope
of some reunion of our divided Christendom ? The
growth of that unity, if it is to be natural and
vigorous, must be gradual, not without vicissitudes
and irregularities. But the increase in numbers and
in interest of each decennial Lambeth Conference
shows that it is real, in present vitality and in future
promise.

As it grows, moreover, it must, as a secondary
consequence, supply, as Church unity supplied of
old, a wonderful building and sustaining force to the
national unity; which, in spite of the many influences
of complication and disruption, shall, we trust, still
hold together the world-wide Commonwealth of our
Greater Britain.

Is it asked, " What is now the one thing need-
ful ? " I should answer that in Church, as in State,
our crying need is a larger general knowledge of the
main course of this vast expansion, and, as resulting
from this, a far clearer conception of the solidarity

II THE EXPANSION IN THE COLONIAL SPHERE 99

of the whole work, both abroad and at home — per-
haps a freer interchange of workers over the whole
area of our Anglican Communion ^ — certainly the
removal of all idea of separation, even of superiority
and inferiority, in the two fields of service. That
need is, I trust, being in some measure supplied
already. The last half-century has been a period of
rapid enlargement both of knowledge and concep-
tion. But there is much yet to be desired. Between
the old Church at home and the young colonial
Churches there should be a maternal and filial relation
— of sympathy, appreciation, sacrifice on the one
side, of loyalty and even reverence on the other.
But it should be a relation — all of duty and all of
love — in which the mature wisdom and dignity of
age and the fresher enterprise of youth may blend
together in one common unity of the Church, in one
common service of the Lord, who is its Head. May
that relation, as it is our ideal, so be realized in
actuality more and more !

^ I see with much satisfaction that some approach is being made to
the realization of what I myself urged long ago — an interchange of
young clergy, after some short service in the Ministry, between English
and colonial dioceses, under which they shall go out for a term of
years (unless they choose to remain altogether) and find their places
still kept for them in the Church at home. It would, I know, be an
infinite help to the colonial Church. It would, I believe, be of in-
finite value and instruction to these clergy themselves, and through
them to the service of the Church here.

LECTURE III

OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST

The fundamental Difference of our Oriental from our
Colonial Mission — Its Relation to Native ReliCxIons—
Its Dependence on our Idea of Christianity. — II. (A)
The earlier Forms of Christianity in India — (B) The
Attitude of our Civil Power : first, in the early
Days of Settlement ; next, during the First Period of
Struggle for Empire ; thirdly, from the Charter of
1813 TO the Close of the Dominion of the Company ;
lastly, from the Imperial Proclamation of 1858 — (C)
The early Deadness of Missionary Spirit in the Church
— The Evangelical Revival and Church Missionary
Society — The rapid Growth of Church Organization
AND Missionary Enterprise generally — The many Hin-
drances— The undoubted Advance and Promise — The
direct and indirect Educational Work — The Overflow
to the Straits, Burmah, and Borneo. — III. The Rela-
tions TO China and Japan, and our Responsibilities to
Each — The earlier Christianity in Both — The later
Opportunities and Action — The different Functions

TO BE discharged IN THE TWO CaSES — THE PRESENT

Position and Prospect. — IV. The Relations in Western
Asia to Persia and Turkey — Our Function of Aid and
Brotherhood to the Ancient Churches, as in Palestine
and Syria. —V. The true Character of our Oriental
Mission, and its Lessons to our Church Life at Home.

As I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found
an altar zvith this inscription, " To the Unknowfi
God.'' Whom therefore ye ignorantly worsJiip, him
declare I unto you. ^^^3 ^^ii_ ^3^

In the spirit of these great words our English
Christianity has to enter upon the second phase of
that threefold work of Church expansion, which
God has especially laid upon it — to be to us at once
a spiritual necessity and a spiritual glory. It is (as
we have seen) brought home to us mainly by the
growth under His Providence of our extraordinary
Indian Empire, and by the relations which it entails
with other Asiatic powers — with the great Empires
of China and Japan in the far East, and with the
Mohammedan Empires of Turkey and Persia in
Western Asia and in Egypt.

Before we attempt any examination of it in
detail, it is well to understand clearly what is the
general character of the great sphere of influence

104 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

thus opened to us, and what are the principles which
must be our guides in entering upon it.

I. It is, in the first place, wholly different in
character from the sphere of that first expansion
at which we have already glanced — over our vast
colonial Empire in America and the West Indies,
in Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa.
There our main duty is to our own fellow-country-
men— to keep these " children of the dispersion "
true and living members of the spiritual Israel.
Only out of this has there grown up, as we shall see
hereafter, a mission to the subject-races; and although,
in relation to the negro race, this mission had con-
siderable importance from the beginning, yet it has
at all times held a secondary place, and has of
late years been largely undertaken by the colonial
Churches themselves. There we had simply to Chris-
tianize the free development of colonization for our
own people ; even for the heathen we had to cover
a spiritual ground, previously all but unoccupied,
and never had to displace any strong and organized
religious system. There accordingly the expansion
aimed at, and largely achieved, has been mainly
a literal expansion of our own Anglican Church,
under some difference of conditions — with greater
need of variety and freedom of development — with a
greater predominance of extension, as distinct from

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 105

edification, of evangelistic rather than pastoral duty —
but still substantially the same in all essentials of
doctrine, worship, and ministry. Even when, as in
the case of the great American Republic, the tie of
civil unity has snapped asunder, the spiritual bond of
Church unity holds still. It was because of this
virtual unity, that we ventured to read from colonial
experience some not unimportant lessons for our
whole Church life.

Here all these conditions are changed, if not
reversed. Here we are brought into contact with
vast populations of other races, in which our fellow-
countrymen are but a handful, although in spite of
this fewness they sway a dominant and pervading
power. While we have to care still, and that deeply,
for the Christianity ot our fellow-countrymen — both
for their own sakes, and in order to Christianize this
dominant influence — yet the duty to the native races,
especially within the borders of our own Empire,
assumes a direct and urgent importance. Here we
are face to face with great and highly -organized
religions, shaken indeed and undermined by our
Western civilization, but still strong in vitality and
authority over countless millions of the people.
Here it follows that the expansion, with which we are
charged, is an extension of spiritual influence, rather
than of spiritual territory — handing on the torch of

io6 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

light and grace to a native Christianity of the future,
to which we can give, and are bound to give, teach-
ing, inspiration, and guidance, but which must de-
velop itself in its own way, as God shall direct it, in
harmony, as we trust, but not in identity, with our
own Church of England. As in the spheres of
political government, of intellectual education, of
moral and social development, so in the higher
religious sphere, it would be worse than folly to
ignore or destroy all that is old, even for the creation
of a new and higher life ; or to act as if we supposed
that conditions of secular and religious life, which
have been to us a natural growth through centuries,
can be in their completeness universally applicable to
wholly different circumstances and antecedents.

Therefore it is with us here as with St. Paul
at Athens. We stand in the presence of a vast
and complex human society, of races, civilizations,
characters, wholly different from our own ; we discern
there, as an universal and a dominant force, the
acknowledgment and worship of a Supreme Power ;
we see, on the one side, great masses of the people
" wholly given to idolatry " of many visible repre-
sentations of many gods, and, on the other, philoso-
phies of a subtle and transcendental sort, which
either seek vaguely for something underlying these
idolatries, or pass into negation or agnosticism in

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 107

regard to ultimate truth. How and on what prin-
ciples shall we act ?

We know that all these alien races are yet
children of God in the one blood of a common
humanity, and that for all, although they know it
not, the one Saviour lived and died ; we know that
under His Providence all these various developments
of that humanity have been ordered ; we believe
that He through His Spirit has awakened all "to
feel after Him and find Him," as the life in whom
" they live and move and have their being " ; we
conclude, therefore, that the resulting worship, how-
ever it may err and fail, is still the ignorant worship
of a God unknown, yet not unfelt, and that, as such,
it is of the essence of the higher life of the people,
embodying their true humanity and rising above
material and visible things. So far as this all serious
contemplation of the facts of the case agrees. Even
the thoughtful agnostic has come to recognise the
reality and the transcendent force of the religious
element in human life and history. If among earnest
believers in Christ, jealous for the honour of their
Master, there has been anything of contempt and
alienation of spirit towards all other religions, this
has long passed away.

But then comes the great division of thought,
depending on the conception of what Christianity

io8 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

itself is. If it is merely one, perhaps the best, of
these searchings after God, differing from others not
in kind, but in degree, — if, in the spirit of the old
philosophic paganism, we regard all religious systems
as simply local developments of the universal instinct
of God, each rooting itself like a native plant in its
own spiritual soil, and growing by adaptation to its
human environment, — if we hold that to all alike,
however they may differ in degree of enlightenment,
the Supreme Being is unknown and unknowable, as
regards any definite and certain knowledge, — then we
cannot heartily follow St Paul to the end, which he
had so definitely and so constantly before him. No !
we shall stand still, or go on, if we do go on, in per-
plexity and with hesitation. Perhaps we shall keep
our Christianity to ourselves, and let all other religions
go their own way, content to guard them from inter-
necine conflict with one another, and to purge them
from dangerous or immoral accretions. Perhaps, if
we do seek to introduce our Christianity at all, wc
shall advance it with reserve and bated breath, as
a thing simply better in degree than what it would
displace, and likely therefore to do spiritual good, if
only it can prove itself suitable to its new conditions.
Perhaps we shall attempt the impossible task of
separating its enlightenment and its morality from
the doctrine, which it asserts as a supernatural revela-

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 109

tion, and try to introduce these into other religious
behefs — possibly to be assimilated by them, possibly
to act as a solvent of them in a distant future. Nay,
we may even attempt the still more impossible
enterprise of fusing together Christianity and the
religions with which it comes in contact — glorifying
the Protean adaptability, by which Hinduism finds
room for all beliefs, from the highest monotheism to
the lowest superstitions — accepting, and even exag-
gerating, what is true and good in the religion of
Islam, and going so far as to hold that its stern
and arid simplicity may be the best thing attainable
by races of little spiritual advancement — adopting a
strangely metamorphosed Buddhism, as a new theo-
sophy, half mystic and half agnostic — and endeavour-
ing, like the Gnostics of old days, to weave Christianity
into a fantastic harmony with these alien systems.

It is clear that we must go far, very far, beyond
this conception of Christianity, if we are to take up
the witness of St. Paul — not as a student in the
Hellenizing school of Tarsus, or a disciple of the
tolerance of Gamaliel, but as one who was, and
knew that he was, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and
who could say accordingly with full confidence,
" Whom ye ignorantly worship. Him declare I unto
you." We must hold Christianity to be the absolute
religion ; we must see in it the promised treasure.

no HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

not of this or that race or age, but of all races
and all ages of the world ; we must acknowledge it
to be the complete manifestation of God, as one
with all humanity, in which the scattered and broken
lights of other religions are brought together in divine
harmony, and in which what was otherwise seen
only by glimpses, in the twilight of speculation and
hope, shines out in the noonday brightness of cer-
tainty. And this conception, at once thoughtful and
enthusiastic, can only come, as of necessity it must
come, from the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ — not as
a teacher, somewhat more enlightened than Gautama,
— not as a master in morality, somewhat more living
and less formal than Confucius, — not as a prophet,
somewhat wiser and more spiritual than Mohammed,
— not even as one, perhaps the greatest, of many incar-
nations of Deity, — but, in the light in which He is
set forth in Holy Scripture and the Catholic creeds,
as the Eternal Son of God, the one Incarnation of
Deity in a true humanity, living, dying, rising again
and ascending into Heaven, in order that He might
draw all men to Himself, and to the Godhead in
Him.

Then, and then only, can we feel that " necessity
is laid upon us to preach the Gospel," and extend
the Church of Christ. Only the true disciples of
Christ, who have come to know Him as He is, can

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST in

be His apostles, and by the very charge of apostle-
ship become His disciples more deeply and more
truly. As the summons to the field in warfare is
the test of loyalty and courage, so the call to
missionary enterprise at once supplies the touchstone
of the reality of our faith, and, when obeyed, perfects
that faith in clearness of conception, in enthusiasm
of love, in consciousness of a strength made perfect
in weakness. Better, far better, the narrowest and
most intolerant exhibition of that faith, if it be living
and powerful, than the lukewarm hesitation which is
closely akin to indifference or uncertainty. But why
should we be content with either alternative ? Why
should we not, with St. Paul, acknowledge and even
reverence the gleams of truth, which show us that in all
these searchings for God He left Himself not without
a witness, and yet walk, and call all men to walk, in
that full light of life, which only He can give, who
is the Light of the World, because He is the Word
of God ?

Such then is the task which presents itself to us
— surely one of a splendid complexity and difficulty.
Such is the one spirit, in which we have either duty
or right to undertake it. Let us examine, necessarily
in the briefest outline, how far it has been actually
attempted by England as in profession a Christian
nation, and by our Church as the national Church,

112 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

and so a foremost representative of the national
Christianity.

II. First, and infinitely most important, is the
aspect of this great question, which concerns the Indian
Empire, as most within our power, and therefore closest
to the heart of our responsibility. Although our first
entrance upon India goes back nearly three hundred
years, to the close of the reign of Elizabeth, yet it is
only about one hundred and thirty years, since, out
of what was but a commercial settlement, we began
to build up the fabric of this vast Empire of nearly
three hundred millions of people, swayed by a mere
handful — less than one in two thousand — of our
English countrymen. For the civilization of that
Empire — material, intellectual, social — we have un-
doubtedly laboured with unwearied energy, and with
a not unchequered but magnificent success. Under
our sway the material well-being of India has
advanced by leaps and bounds ; intellectual culture
has been inspired with a new life and diffused by
general education ; the moral influence of strong and
righteous government, and of some noble individual
example, has told powerfully upon the native mind
and character. How far, meanwhile, have we carried
out there — what certainly the course of history in
our own land should have taught us — the belief that
Christianity is the inspiring and dominant force of

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 113

true civilization, and that the expansion of the
Church of Christ is essential to the unity and moral
life of Empire?

(A) Let it be remembered that there is very much
of Christianity in India, with which we have had
nothing to do. It had flourished long before we set
foot in India ; and it exists now, with support indeed of
respect and sympathy, but without other aid from us.

The old Church of St. Thomas on the Malabar
coast traces its origin very far back — by its own not
impossible tradition to Apostolic times, certainly to
early Christian centuries. We know that about two
centuries after Christ, Pantaenus, the renowned head
of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, went out
to preach " among the Brahmans," and it was most
probably in this ancient Christian church that he
laboured. For we know not how many centuries it
was the one representative of Christianity, strong,
but still isolated and undiffused, among the millions
of India.

Then under the Portuguese dominion came in
the great Roman Catholic Missions, overspreading,
and by force absorbing, the older Church at the
close of the sixteenth century ; and, now that it has
been set free, still drawing from it to the Roman
obedience nearly as many converts as remain in the
old independence. That work was, indeed, backed

I

114 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

by the temporal power, even to compulsion and per-
secution ; but its real glory was in the splendid
labours of the saintly Xavier and the strong Jesuit
Missions, with their monasteries, schools, colleges,
and stations, scattered over the South. It was a
vigorous and flourishing work ; it went perhaps to
an excess in the adaptation of Christianity to native
ideas and customs, even to native superstitions ; it
certainly relied too much on the secular arm, and
accordingly it may have been tempted to be content
with nominal and external conversions ; but it has
left its deep trace in the existence of a strong
native Christianity, sustained and extended by a
wealth of resource and energy, which often puts
our own work to shame. Of some two millions
and a half of Christians in India, two -thirds at
least are included in the Roman Catholic Com-
munion.

Under the Dutch ascendency, again, which suc-
ceeded the Portuguese in South India, an effort was
made for evangelization, strongly backed by the
secular power ; and this also has left some fruits,
especially in Ceylon, although since the loss of that
secular pressure it has greatly languished.

On these works of conversion we look with deep
respect and thankfulness ; but they bear in no respect
on the fulfilment of our own religious mission to

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 115

India. We have still to ask two questions — What
religious attitude has been assumed by the civil
power of the Empire ? What has been done by
the free missionary energy of English Christianity ?

(B) The civil power, unlike in this respect the Por-
tuguese, the French, and the Dutch, which preceded
it, has from the beginning refused to bring material
force to bear, directly or indirectly, on the Christian-
ization of the people. God forbid that it should
have been otherwise ! The weapons of the true
Christian warfare are not carnal, but spiritual.
Political admixture and the use of temporal power
have been the secret of the decay in many regions
of the East of what was once a flourishing
native Christianity. But still there is necessarily
some duty in this respect laid upon a nation pro-
fessedly Christian, which has planted in India a
ruling English population, and has assumed the
responsibility of empire over hundreds of millions
of natives, whom Christianity must look upon
as God's children committed to our charge. How
far has this twofold duty been recognised and
carried out ?

In considering the first aspect of this duty, we
find that, under the long rule of the East India
Company, some religious provision was made from
the beginning for the Englishmen who were engaged

ii6 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

in the military and civil service. Naturally, per-
haps inevitably, this was inadequate at first ; it
was some eighty years from the grant of the first
Charter before the first church was built (in 1681) ;
it was a century before the services of chaplains and
schoolmasters were regularly organized. Only by
degrees, and against much discouragement and
opposition, has this religious establishment been
developed into its present fuller organization. Even
now we are told that it is hardly sufficient for its
own proper work, and that it cannot adequately
reach the non-ofificial English population, which is
now considerable, and still less the Eurasians, who
are in many cases poor and even indigent, ex-
posed to special difficulties and temptations, and
cared for neither by Government authority nor
direct missionary agency. It must be added that,
as an Establishment, supported out of Indian
revenue, it is not unfrequently attacked. But
clearly, at any rate for the Englishmen in the
public service, it represents the most obvious
national duty.

In relation to the Christianization of the natives,
the attitude of the civil power has varied. In the
first instance — in the days when the Church and
the nation were held to be coextensive — there was,
at least in theory, a recognition of Christian duty

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 117

towards them. The chaplains were directed to
learn the vernacular language, that they might be
able " to instruct the Gentoos, who shall be servants
or slaves of the Company, in the Protestant reli-
gion." Even when this old conception gave way —
when the duty of the chaplains was thought to be
virtually confined to ministration to the European
population, and when all evangelization was left to
voluntary religious agency — the civil authorities in
the early part of the eighteenth century were at
least not unfavourable to the religious work, and
at times were inclined to help it. The great mis-
sionary Schwartz, who laboured in South India
with splendid success from 1750 to 1798, was
held in the highest respect and honour, perhaps in
some degree because of his unequalled influence
over native princes.

But, as the British power in India advanced, and
began to assume the character of political ascend-
ency, the civil authority passed from a not unfriendly
neutrality to an attitude of discouragement, opposi-
tion, even persecution, towards any attempt at
Christianization of the native races. In the eyes
of the governing authorities — for the sake both of
their increasing commercial interest and of the
rapid growth of political power — the one thing
needful was the avoidance of anything which

ii8 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

might rouse hostility, or even impair friendship,
in the native powers around them. To advance
Christianity in face of the strong religious forces
of Hinduism and Mohammedanism was, therefore,
from their point of view, an act of political madness
or political treason. Hence the period of the most
rapid advance of our dominion was the darkest
time of difficulty and persecution, in relation to
any work of Christianization. We cannot wonder
that there grew up in the native mind a conviction
that the English had no religion of their own, and
paid homage indiscriminately to all the varying and
antagonistic forms of native religion, provided only
that they were strong enough to command respect.
In 1774 we find Warren Hastings — one of the
chief founders of our Empire — laying it down as
a fundamental rule of policy " to discourage mis-
sionary effort." Nor was this suggestion allowed
to be a dead letter. After the death of Schwartz
in 1798, any such effort was met by prohibition
and even deportation. In that year some agents
of the London Missionary Society were expelled ;
in 1799 the famous Baptist Mission of Marshman
and Carey, which marked a new departure in the
Christianity of South India, had actually to take
refuge under the Danish flag at Serampore. When,
on the renewal of the East India Company's Charter

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 119

in 1793, Wilberforce carried a resolution in the
House of Commons, that it is the duty of our
Government towards " the inhabitants of the British
dominions " to " adopt such measures as may gradu-
ally tend to their advancement in knowledge, and
to their religious and moral improvement," the
clauses embodying this resolution in the renewed
Charter were sneered at as " the pious clauses," and
dropped by the timidity of the Government. The
opposition of the adherents of the policy of Warren
Hastings was then too strong to be overcome.

Even when better times began, every step in
advance was bitterly opposed by them. The very
extension of the Episcopate to India, plainly neces-
sary even for our English ministrations, was only
carried against resolute antagonism and ominous
warning. Still stronger was the opposition to any-
thing which looked like even an indirect attack
upon heathenism. When it was resolved to abolish
flagrant immoralities, based on native superstitions,
— to prohibit Sttttee, religious infanticide, human
sacrifice, voluntary or compulsory religious torture,
— when Christian officials were relieved from com-
pulsory attendance and indirect homage to idolatrous
ceremonies, — when caste was no longer supported by
law or regarded in Government appointments, —
when to some extent the civil rights of Christian

I20 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

converts were protected, — at every point a hard
struggle had to be waged against the adherents of
the old policy.

Still, in spite of this opposition, there was
a continual advance won by the growing strength
of a higher public opinion, to which the main
impulse was given by the great Evangelical
Revival. When in 1 8 1 3 another opportunity was
given by renewal of the Company's Charter, the
cause, which had been ridiculed and baffled twenty
years before, was strong enough to advance to a
position far beyond what it had then hoped for.
Through the untiring energy of Wilberforce and
his friends, clauses were inserted, ensuring absolute
toleration by the Government of all missionary work,
and at the same time completing the organization
of our Church in India by the creation of its first
Bishopric at Calcutta. The Act marked the in-
auguration of a new era. It was only necessary
that the civil power should assume, or resume, a
position of friendly and sympathetic neutrality, to
meet the rise of a new enthusiasm of missionary
enterprise, which then showed itself on all sides.
Towards that position, through the remaining period
— nearly half a century — of the rule of the East
India Company, more and more controlled by the
imperial power, it continually advanced. But there

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 121

is reason to think that the old spirit of opposition
or disHke still remained, stimulated from time to
time by symptoms of religious fanaticism and alarm
among the natives, and manifesting itself to some
degree at headquarters, and still more through the
local authorities, especially of the older school.

The great storm of the Indian Mutiny here, as in
many other points, did much to clear the air. It
shook the confidence of men in the old system ; it
showed that scrupulous timidity, in face of native
religion and superstition, had not disarmed the
religious fanaticism shown in the incident of the
" greased cartridges," or prevented Hindu and Mo-
hammedan from uniting against us ; it induced, at
least, some question whether a bolder policy, pro-
moting rather than hindering the growth of a strong
native Christianity, might not have been even
politically a safer one. The grand Proclamation,
in which the direct dominion of the Crown was
announced from the steps of Government House,
Calcutta, at the close of 1858, inaugurated another
new era. It is not a little remarkable that, as it
was first drawn by the Secretary of State, it was
intended simply to assure the natives, still uneasy
and apprehensive, that no compulsion or authori-
tative interference should be used against their
religions. Accordingly it merely " disclaimed the

122 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

right, or the desire, to impose rch'gious convictions
on any of Her Majesty's subjects " ; it promised
absolute reh'gious toleration, and sternly prohibited
all infringement of it ; it acknowledged it as " a
duty to do all tor the welfare of the whole people."
But when it was submitted to the Queen, she with
her own hand prefixed to this disclaimer the words :
" Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity
and acknowledging the solace of religion," and
added a conclusion of prayer : " May the God of all
power grant to us, and to those in authority under
us, strength to carry out these our wishes for the
good of our people." ^ In the Proclamation, so wisely
and nobly completed, all is done which the imperial
power has a right to do ; the open confession of
Christian faith is of priceless significance to the
native mind, and commands the respect of races, in
whom a strong religiousness of tone is dominant ;
the reliance on the Divine strength, to be sought in
prayer, stamps still further with a religious im-
press the power, which has to rely primarily not
on material force, but on moral ascendency, and
the confidence which it creates. If only it be
carried out in spirit as well as in letter, if the State
passes from suspicion and hostility to a fair and
friendly neutrality, no Christian man can claim or

^ See Life of Priiice Consort, vol. iv. pp. 2S1-335.

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 123

desire more. There were, indeed, some great
servants of the Crown in India, who, not only by
their own fervent reh'gious faith, but by their view
of what was our true poHcy, and even duty to the
Indian people, were led to go beyond this position,
and would have desired virtually to extend Chris-
tianity, especially in the schools, by governmental
authority. But happily the wiser counsels of men,
not less enlightened as politicians, and not less
earnest as Christians, prevailed ; and the civil
power, as such, preserves that true impartiality
which was promised in the Proclamation of 1858.^

(C) But the second and far graver inquiry remains :
" How far has the free action of English Christianity
— especially in our own Church — taken up, with or
without encouragement, our religious mission to the
millions of our Indian fellow - subjects ? " If to
commerce they supply simply one of the great
markets and granaries of the world, — if to our
dominion they are but subject-races, to be ruled by
a benevolent and tempered despotism, — yet has the
Church of Christ cared for them as potentially
" fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household
of God " ? The answer to this question is for the
past a sad and humiliating answer. As for our own

^ See an interesting account of the discussions on this subject in the
Li-^e of Sir Bartle Frere, vol. i. pp. 255-265.

124 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Church, she was satisfied with the ministration of the
chaplains to the EngHshmen ; and this, when they
were earnest in their service, could not but overflow
in some slight degree to the natives dependent upon
them. But as to direct Christianization of the
natives, the missionary spirit in our Church was so
dead, that our old societies — the Society for Promot-
ing Christian Knowledge and the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel — representing the strongest
religious earnestness of the times, had to be content
to give aid to the Danish Lutheran Missions in 1705,
and to support and direct the splendid missionary
energy of the great German Schwartz from 1750 till
his death in 1798. The first English missionary
enterprise came from outside the Church's pale. In
1799 began the famous Baptist Mission of Carey,
Marshman, and Ward at Serampore, which trans-
lated the Bible into thirty native languages, and
entered on the work of higher native education ; in
1798 the London Missionary Society ventured to
enter upon the field, although in the first instance its
efforts were checked by the same opposition which
had banished the Baptist Mission. It is, of course,
true that the Nonconformist Communions were
less impeded by legal difficulties, and by responsi-
bility for the English population in India, than our
own Church. Still, had there been in her then any

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 125

true missionary enthusiasm, the will would surely
have found the way.

It was undoubtedly (as has been said) the great
Evangelical Revival which roused the Church of
England from this spiritual torpor, and from this
miserable narrowness of conception of her charge in
India. It was to such men as William Wilberforce,
Charles Simeon, and Charles Grant that the impulse
was due, which at once forced the nation through
Parliament to recognise its moral and spiritual duty,
and stirred the Church to enter with some energy
upon this greatest of all missionary fields. It was by
men trained in this University, in the school of Simeon,
and sent forth to chaplaincies in India — Brown,
Buchanan, Currie, Thomason, Henry Martyn — that
the conventional bonds of limitation to the English
ministry were broken ; and that, in the darkest
period of discouragement and opposition by the civil
authority, the public opinion of Englishmen in India
was educated to a truer idea of our Christian responsi-
bility, and direct support given to the effort to bring
to the clear revelation of God in Christ the ignorant
worship of His Indian children.

But, above all, the rise of the great Church
Missionary Society in 1799 for "Africa and the
East " marked the preparation for a new epoch of
evangelization. From the beginning it was, unlike

126 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the older Missionary Society, the creation of one
school of opinion in the Church, and designed to
work on the principles which were to that school
most dear ; as such it is perhaps but natural that it
should have claimed a larger share of self-government,
not only at its origin, when there was no Church
organization to cover the field of mission work abroad,
but even when, as in our own times, that organization
is fully developed. It may be permitted to us to
wish that those who founded it had been content
simply to revive and strengthen the older missionary
agencies — so to concentrate, instead of dividing, the
missionary interest, and to fuse voluntary enterprise
gradually in the expansion of the Church itself But
yet we thankfully acknowledge that it has done, and
is doing, a magnificent work, not least in India.
More perhaps than any other Society, it has kindled
to activity in the cause a great body of our laity,
especially in the middle class, and has evoked
accordingly a strong spirit of enthusiasm and splendid
sacrifices, both of money and of men ; it has thrown
itself mainly, almost exclusively, not into the work
of colonial expansion, of which I have already spoken,
but into direct aggression under the banner of the
Cross on the strongholds of heathenism. There have
been critical times, when, as of late in the case of
Uganda, it has been the one agency, which has for-

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 127

bidden retrogression, and bidden men go forward,
even through a sea of difficulty, in the way of God.

The revived missionary spirit had now free scope
by the victory gained over the old spirit of opposition
in the Charter of 181 3. From that memorable time
we may date the beginning of that continuous
progress, which has (thank God !) gone on with
constantly accelerated rapidity down to our own
time.

The first fruit of that victory was the creation of
the See of Calcutta in 18 14. It was the first step
towards completeness of Church organization, followed
naturally by assistant Bishoprics of the same type
at Madras in 1835 and Bombay in 1837. Probably
in the first instance the idea of their estabHshment
was mainly the strengthening and right ordering of
the ministrations of the chaplains to the English
people ; but it was happily impossible to limit the
spiritual effect, which told, as usual, powerfully on the
whole work of the Church, pastoral and missionary
alike. Then came a long interval in the extension
of the Episcopate, due mainly to legal difficulties ;
but it was succeeded by a rapid erection of other
bishoprics, founded with but secondary aid from the
civil power,^ and all marked more distinctly with a

^ The new bishops in most cases, if not in all, received the recognition
and support of appointment to senior chaplaincies.

128 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

missionary character. On our occupation of Burmah
followed the creation in 1877 of the See of Rangoon ;
in the same year the See of Lahore in the old Sikh
kingdom; in 1879 the purely missionary Bishopric
of Travancore, in friendly relation with the old Church
of St. Thomas ; in 1890 the See of Chota-Nagpore,
crowning the remarkable work of conversion of the
Kols ; in 1893 ^^e See of Lucknow, relieving the
vast dioceses of Calcutta and Lahore ; and this year,
as I trust, the Bishopric of Tinnevelly, succeeding
the earnest episcopal labours of Bishops Caldwell and
Sargent in the most interesting and vigorous of all
our missionary works in India.

The expansion so marked is here again not one
merely of form and organization, but at once a result
and a stimulus of increased spiritual vitality. The
charge committed to our Indian bishops is, indeed,
a complex charge, half-aided and half-impeded by
Church Establishment. It has to do with the
building up through the chaplains of our English
Christianity, so infinitely important not only to our
own spiritual life, but for its moral influence over the
subject-races ; it has to care for the poorer English-
men, unconnected with the public service, and with
the mixed Eurasian race, placed in a position of
peculiar difficulty and peculiar temptation ; it has to
direct, inspire, and control, as far as possible, the

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 129

growing missionary work, carried on mainly by our
great Church Societies.

For this is indeed (thank God !) a work growing,
and that rapidly. It was only in 18 14 — the year
of the first Bishopric — that the Church Missionary
Society entered upon it, followed in 1820 by the
older Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
Now out of small beginnings great things have
grown. Mainly through the action of the two
great Societies, and such missions as those of our
Universities at Calcutta, at Delhi, and in Chota-
Nagpore, we see British India studded with
evangelizing centres of Christian light and grace —
stations, churches, schools, colleges, Zenana and
medical missions — ministering to various classes
and races in various languages — with a large body
both of English and of native clergy, with a far
larger army of native lay workers, and, gathered
in by these, some hundreds of thousands of native
Christians. It needs a right organization to weld
together all these various works, to unite the pastoral
and missionary agencies, the English and native
Christianity. But, although the full synodical
action which we have in the colonial Churches is
not yet developed in India, still it is gradually but
surely growing up ; and the ten bishops, some 800
clergy, and the laity, English and native, are gathered

K

130 IIULSEAN LECTURES lect.

as one Church round the Metropolitan See of
Calcutta.

Meanwhile, let it be remembered that this work
of our Church is but a part of the whole evangelistic
effort, which is being made by English Christianity.
We must, I think, confess with shame that in this
field she has not retained, as fully as she ought to
have retained, her spiritual leadership of energy and
sacrifice. Side by side with ourselves, the Baptist,
Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian Com-
munions from Great Britain, and various missions
from the corresponding bodies in the United States,
throwing into the work the characteristic American
energy, are labouring with an earnestness and success
under God's manifest blessing, at least equal, in some
points superior, to our own.^ We thank God that it is
so. There is, indeed, a serious scandal and hindrance
to Christian progress in the divisions, by which the
forces of the great army are broken up into inde-
pendent and isolated groups of combatants ; there
is a bewilderment to the heathen in this endless
multiplication of different forms, methods, even

^ The Report of the Board of Missions (p. 28) says : — "A most note-
worthy fact is the prominence of America as an evangelizing force. . . .
Of the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist groups of Missions, un-
questionably the most important are the American." The same Report
shows (p. 30) that the native Christians belonging to other Comnumions
(excluding the Roman Catholic and the Syrian) are more than twice the
number of those connected with our own Church.

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 131

creeds, of what should be one Christianity ; even
within our own Church the division between our
two great Societies has been known to give rise to
distinction in the native mind between "S.P.G. and
C.M.S. Christians." But yet "notwithstanding every
way Christ is preached," both in His word and in
His grace ; and, except, perhaps, on the part of the
Roman Catholic Missions, it is found that, in the face
of the dark forces of idolatry and error and infidelity,
there is developed an underlying sense of unity and
fellowship, which does much to mitigate, although
it never can remove, the evil of our unhappy
divisions. In the spirit of some well-known words
of Lord Macaulay, we may well confess that it is
hard to think much of our internal differences, in a
land where the question is whether men shall bow
down to idols and worship cows.

But what fruit is there of these labours for Christ
— so tardily begun, and even now so inadequate in
resource and power?

In estimating the results as yet achieved, it is
well first to gain some conception of the extra-
ordinary greatness and difficulty of the task. The
ground is not clear for rapid and easy progress.
Against the advancing banner of the Cross there
stand out colossal forces of antagonism. Far the
greatest, and widest in power, is the vast and hetero-

132 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

geneous system which we call roughly Hinduism,
strengthened by the iron force of caste, throwing out,
like one of its own many-armed idols, all forms of
attraction, from gross idolatry to transcendental theo-
sophy. In Ceylon and Burmah, in reaction from this,
we find the strange ascetic negation in Buddhism of
personality divine and human, with only an iron law
of Kharma as its rule, and unconsciousness, if not
extinction, as its goal ; and yet carrying with it,
to meet the spiritual hunger which it denies, many
strange forms of the grossest superstition. In the
North of India we see the power of the strong,
though sterile, Monotheism of Islam, with its bare
simplicity of belief and worship and life, powerful
over ignorant and uneducated minds, incapable of
adapting itself to culture and civilization. Last,
yet not least in its opposing force, there is, where
our Western education has spread, a blank Ag-
nosticism, or a vague Deism, at times gliding into
Pantheism, which holds itself to be the highest
wisdom ; while at the other end of the scale, among
the non- Aryan races, base superstition and devil-
worship utterly degrade humanity. It is against
this complex formidable antagonism that Christianity
has to win its way, and prove itself mighty to pull
down, one after another, ancient strongholds of evil.
Yet, were this all, the advance were comparatively

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 133

easy. Christianity could recognise and welcome
whatever in all these beliefs was true, as a broken
light from God ; and by its own Divine brightness
scatter the darkness of their errors and corruptions,
and throw light on the ultimate mysteries, which
they cannot pretend to solve. But on our own side
there is the disintegration which splinters up our
Christianity — with its waste of spiritual force, with its
friction always in danger of passing into antagonism,
with its scandal in the eyes of the bewildered or scoff-
ing heathen. There is the offence which comes from
the un-Christian lives of those who call themselves
Christians, whether of English or of native blood.
There has been, among those who are in earnest —
although, I trust, it is diminishing — some narrow-
mindedness, intolerant and denunciatory, of native
thought and faith, and some want of wisdom and
insight into the true methods and opportunities of
our missionary work. There is, on the other hand,
the paralysing influence of sceptical or anti-Christian
thought among ourselves, which is well known and
eagerly taken up against our missionary work in
India. There is still a terrible inadequacy in our own
resources material and spiritual — the result of com-
parative ignorance or apathy of the mass of our own
people at home ; while there comes back to us
everywhere a bitter cry, from those who see a great

134 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

door and effectual opened, and who long, in spite of
the many adversaries, to enter in. Can we wonder
that, as yet, we are still but on the fringe of the
immense work, with perhaps one in a hundred of
even professing Christians ?

But that, in spite of all these hindrances, Christi-
anity is at last making swift headway, is happily
beyond a doubt. What Bishop Lightfoot said some
twenty years ago, in the light of a careful comparison
of ancient and modern missions, as to the present
achievement and the coming " advent of a more
glorious future " in the whole mission-field, is cer-
tainly and obviously true in India. The testimony
comes not merely from the missionaries at home
or abroad. Great leaders of our Indian Govern-
ment— such men as Lord Lawrence, Sir Bartle
Frere, Lord Napier, Sir Richard Temple, Sir
William Hunter — witness unhesitatingly to great
present achievements, far greater future prospects.
Even the Government Bluebook tells the same story
in more prosaic language. The fact, moreover,
speaks for itself, that in the last twenty years the
number of native Christians in British India has
increased by 66 per cent, against all the force of
prejudice, and the social ostracism, which is almost
a martyrdom, inflicted on those who avow themselves
Christians.

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 135

But this is far from giving an adequate idea of
the real position. The large conversions have, as yet,
been mainly among the non-Aryan races, especially
in the South. No one can doubt the reality and
vigour of this portion of the work here, who sees it, as
I myself have seen it, close at hand. We can visit,
on the one hand, as at Palamcottah, strong central
missionary stations, with their churches, crowded with
devout worshippers and communicants, their colleges
and schools, orphanages and hospitals, and round
these in the villages native congregations under
native Ministry, reckoned by tens of thousands,
steadily advancing to self-government and self-sup-
port. We may go far out in the wilderness, as to
Nazareth, and find there a bright vigorous Christian
community, with its church as the centre, and
gathered round it, under the patriarchal sway of one
English missionary, all the appliances of civilization :
schools — elementary and industrial and art schools —
which stand high in the education of the country ; a
dispensary, which is the blessing of all the neighbour-
hood for miles round, heathen as well as Christian ;
even the opportunities of athletic exercise and sport,
which give to the life there a brightness, curiously in
contrast with the impassive and sombre aspect of the
native population around, devil-worshippers for the
most part and half-barbarian. Allowing to the full

136 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

for all imperfections, — acknowledging vicissitudes of
advance and stagnation, of success and failure, —
recognising the formidable difficulty now pressing
upon us, in relation to the tremendous and complex
force of caste, — we may feel confident that, under
God's blessing, we are founding and building up a
vigorous native Christianity, and that naturally and
inevitably its diffusive influence must spread rapidly
in the future.

All this bears (thank God !) its visible fruit in the
present. But there is another work going on — to
my mind at least equally important — which is
simply preparing for that future. It addresses itself
to the higher races, and especially to the educated
classes, who throng our high schools and universities ;
for them it establishes schools and colleges of
higher education, in which, under avowedly Christian
auspices, there is imparted to all, as an integral part
of that education, instruction from Holy Scripture in
Christian truth. Christian morality. Christian devotion.
This educational work is not in itself new. From
the first it has formed an integral part of all
Christian mission. The foundation of Bishop's
College, for training of Christian students and
ministers, and for education of non-Christians, dates
from the first creation of the Indian Episcopate.
From that day to this educational institutions of

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 137

various grades have been found in every mission
station. But under the development of the Univer-
sity system in India, this work of higher general
education has assumed a new prominence, in the
various Christian colleges, rising everywhere side by
side with Government institutions purely secular?
and Hindu or Mohammedan colleges. Originated,
I believe, by leaders in the Presbyterian mission
work, and still having under their auspices some of
its most magnificent institutions, it has been taken
up with all earnestness by our own Church. I have
seen it in splendid energy at the S.P.G. Colleges at
Trichinopoly and Tanjore, the C.M.S. College at
Agra, under the Oxford Mission at Calcutta, and the
Cambridge Mission at Delhi.

It is a work, indeed, not without serious draw-
backs, which have led some thoughtful minds to
doubt the soundness of its principle, and its right to
claim a place in missionary work. Against ancient
tradition and practice, it opens the mysteries of our
faith, not only to Christians or Catechumens, but to
heathens who are not even inquirers ; it may seem to
dissociate the light from the grace of Christ, and
acceptance of Christian truth from open Christian
profession ; it may suggest the idea, only too con-
genial to the Hindu mind, that Christianity is only a
philosophy to be intellectually learnt, or a morality

138 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

which can be dissociated from its doctrines. It does
not, of course, aim at direct proselytism, and in its
indirect results it has yielded little fruit of con-
version— hardly as much as we might have hoped
for.

But its effect for good largely, I believe, out-
weighs these objections. It is a twofold effect. It
has already pervaded the higher thought and culture
of India — drifting away from its old moorings in
search of a religion — with Christian ideas of God and
man, Christian morality, Christian promise of salva-
tion ; and, if there be a Divine vitality in all these, it
must surely prepare the minds and souls of these
leaders of Indian society for some greater future
movement of conversion. It begins and carries
on, again, for the native Christians in these
colleges — sometimes having halls or hostels of
their own — the work, beyond all others necessary,
of preparation for that educated native Ministry, from
which, as many believe, the future impulse of con-
version must come ; and in this leads up to the work
of those other colleges, which are devoting them-
selves especially to the training of Christian students
for that Ministry itself. This latter effect, moreover,
is growing every day. In one great southern
college — the splendid " Christian College " at Madras
— the number of Christians amonc!" the students is

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 139

nine times what it was twenty years ago, and at this
moment nearly one -sixth of its graduates are
Christians in profession. It must be added that
this effect tells also upon the efficiency of that more
general Christianizing influence, by making it pos-
sible to officer our colleges, mainly or wholly, with
Christian teachers.

The work itself, moreover, is constantly associated
with direct Christian witness — as notably in the
Oxford Mission, united with the old Bishop's College
at Calcutta, and carrying out mission work in some
of the villages, in which an overwhelming majority
of the real people of India still dwell ; as at Delhi
in the preaching of our own University Mission in
the streets and the great mosques of that stronghold
of Mohammedanism. And that its witness falls on
minds eminently receptive I saw by my own ex-
perience ; when I was allowed again and again to
speak on just those distinctively Christian subjects
which seemed to meet the greatest Indian needs —
the thirst for God, satisfied in Christ ; the witness of
sin, righteousness, and judgment ; the inseparability
of Christian morality from Christian faith — to
hundreds of attentive and intelligent hearers, students
or graduates of our Indian Universities.

Clearly it is a great seed-time, not unlike, as it
seems to me, the early centuries, when Christianity

140 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

had already made its way among the poor and
simple, the hard workers and patient sufferers who
form the great body of human society, and when
the wise and the great in this world were passing
from contempt or indifference, first to attention — now
of antagonism, now of sympathy — and then to an
adhesion, which prepared for the great and sudden
change which we call the Conversion of the Empire.
God grant that our seed-time also may yield — it
may be suddenly — a like harvest! How that
harvest shall come, how we shall be able to give full
scope and independence to the native Christianity
under the native Ministry, which we are raising up,
so that it may take — as, if it is to be vigorous, it
must take — its own free development on the lines of
essential truth and Church order, we cannot tell.
Meanwhile we have simply to bear our witness for
Him in our own way. He has blessed, and is
blessing, our poor efforts in the cause. We have
only to pray for a larger outpouring of His Spirit
upon ourselves, and on those to whom we minister.

Such is the expansion of the Church in our great
Indian Empire — only the beginning of what by God's
blessing is visibly approaching. It has necessarily
overflowed beyond the limits of India itself, as a
purely missionary and largely educational work into
Burmah, under the guidance of the Bishopric of

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 141

Rangoon/ as yet numbering but a few thousands of
native converts, but advancing with steadiness and
promise — through the mission stations of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Singapore and the
Straits Settlements — into the great island of Borneo,
so strangely and romantically opened through Sarawak
and Labuan to Western civilization and Christianity ;
where, again, we have as yet but a few thousand con-
verts, but where the mission stations are rising every-
where as centres of light and grace. But in these
outlying agencies the phase of work is rather of that
enlightenment and elevation of uncivilized races, of
which I shall have to speak hereafter.

III. It is far otherwise in relation to the great
Empires of China and Japan, to which our position
in the East has opened the way, as in commercial
and political, so in religious opportunity. To both
these countries, moreover, we have contracted a
grave self-made responsibility — not as in India from
assumption of dominion, but from our resolution to
force on them an intercourse, which against their
will has brought them within the dominant force of
Western influence. Mainly, I suppose, for the sake
of our commerce — partly because it was held that
no country has a right to isolate itself completely

^ A far greater work is being done there by the Roman Catholic and
Baptist Missions.

142 IIULSEAN LECTURES lect.

from the commonwealth of nations — we insisted on
piercing the wall of separation which both Empires
had deliberately set up ; and, curiously enough, we
have thereby made the Chinese race a rival of our
own in the colonization of the world, and have raised
up in Japan what is clearly to become one of the
dominant powers of the far East.

All this, indeed, is but of yesterday. It is little
more than fifty years since China was thus opened
to a measure of communication with Europe through
certain ports, hardly extending even now far into the
interior, and where it does extend, liable to violent
interruptions. It is but thirty years ago that first
the United States, and then Great Britain, insisted
on treaties for an admission by Japan of an inter-
course, which there has been welcomed without
limitation or hindrance. The effect, indeed, has
been in the two cases strangely different. The vast
Chinese Empire has remained all but untouched,
except in commercial relations ; wrapped up in the
pride of its own elaborate, but mechanical and un-
progressive, civilization, and in the stolid tenacity of
its inherited customs ; still looking, or affecting to
look, on the Western nations as barbarians ; and if
it borrows their mechanical inventions, showing itself
incapable of rightly understanding and using them.
The lesser Japanese Empire — in size, position, and, as

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 143

it believes, in destiny, the Great Britain of the
Pacific — has assimilated with marvellous rapidity
the Western civilization, not merely in mechanical
externals, but in much of its idea and spirit ; it has
passed from a kind of theocracy under a deified
Emperor, too sacred really to rule, and superseded
by the chief, of a feudal aristocracy, to an Imperial
Government of constitutional type ; it has reorganized
its whole society, both for peace and for war, on a
modern basis ; it has, or believes that it has, learnt
rapidly all that the West has to teach, and then
made all its own, and developed it through its own
people. The result of that contrast has been shown
to an astonished world in the unexpected course of
a war, which makes an epoch in the history of the
far East.

But in both cases equally we have brought on
ourselves the responsibility of rightly dealing with
these remarkable peoples — with the proud unpro-
gressive deadness of the one, and with the ambitious
and exuberant life which we have stimulated in the
other. And to deal rightly is freely to give what we
have freely received, not merely of material, social,
intellectual, but of moral and spiritual treasure.
Christianity ought surely to be at least as expansive
and self-communicative, as commerce and enlighten-
ment, dominion and dominant influence. At the

144 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

present time all material hindrances to its advance
have been in great degree taken away. How far
has it entered in at the door, which God's Providence
has opened ?

It is not a little remarkable, that in centuries long
past Christianity had made its way into both these
Empires. We find from plain monumental evidence
that in China more than a thousand years ago the
missions of the 'Syrian Church, which we know as
Nestorian, had diffused, under imperial toleration or
favour, a vigorous Christianity, preaching all the great
doctrines of the faith, and yet rooting itself firmly in
indigenous habit and thought. But yet, we know
not why, it seems to have died out, or to have been
extinguished. Then, again, in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, long before China was legally
open to Europeans, the enthusiasm of the Jesuit
Missions ventured in, adopting the dress and
habits and ideas, and perhaps some of the super-
stitions of the country, and succeeding in planting a
Roman Catholic Church. That Church remains to
this day, although, as so often in the East, its
Christianity was discredited by admixture of political
and aggressive influences. It numbers its hundreds
of European and native priests, has its colleges and
monasteries, and claims above a million of converts.
But as for England's part in the work of Christ,

Hi OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 145

it has been as yet singularly small. Such as it is, it
belongs only to this century, and mainly to the last
half of it, since the cession of Hong-Kong and
opening of the ports in 1841. More even than
usual, as it seems to me, it is hindered by disin-
tegration and division. We find no less than
twenty- five distinct missionary Societies, represent-
ing all the various Communions, English and
American, into which we are so unhappily divided ;
and from all these as yet scarcely 200,000 souls,
out of the hundreds of millions in China, brought to
acknowledge God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our
own Church has only made a beginning in the
work, in which she ought rightly to have led. But
gradually, and not slowly, there is advance, where-
ever there is enterprise and self-sacrifice. From
three Episcopal centres already — Victoria in Hong-
Kong, North China, and Mid -China — the Church
is making way, working through both her great
Mission Societies ; translating Holy Scripture and
the Prayer-Book into the written Chinese and the
many vernaculars ; pushing on the work of Christian
education ; doing all that may be done to deal with
Chinese religions in the spirit of the text ; anxiously
considering how transition shall be made from our
own Anglican system and organization to some
growth of an independent native Christianity.

L

146 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

Here, as elsewhere, the half- century has been but
a time of sowing the seed — against most formidable
difficulties — in spite of negative impassiveness and
bursts of positive hostility from without, and weak-
ness of resource and division w^ithin. But the
teaching of all experience will be falsified, if the
next half-century shall not, by God's blessing, yield
a rapid harvest.

Perhaps in Japan the history is even more re-
markable. It was not till the sixteenth century
that European commerce — Portuguese, Dutch, and
Spanish — reached Japan. Then, once more, the
great Jesuit Missions nobly used the opportunity.
Under Xavier for a short time, and far more under
his successors, a strong Christianity sprang up, with
hundreds of churches, and some two millions of
adherents. Unhappily, in this case even more than
in China, it mixed itself up with political struggles,
and even invoked, in the time of its power, the
support of the secular arm. The hour of retri-
bution came. By terrible persecution, often nobly
borne, by civil war and massacre, the Christianit}-,
which had seemed to show such promise, was all
but rooted out ; at every city gate edicts of per-
petual proscription were posted, as against a
pestilent superstition, seditious and dangerous to
righteousness and peace. Then for more than

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 147

two hundred years Japan was deliberately closed
to the outer world. When it was reopened, some
relics of the old Christian community were still
found, to form the nucleus of the Roman Church as
it now exists.

Then, shortly after the great political revolution,
the anti-Christian edict was repealed, and free course
given to Christian missions. The opportunity has
been eagerly seized, but with even more, as it would
seem, of divided and disorganized effort than in
China. Roman, Russo- Greek, Anglican, Presby-
terian, various Protestant missions from England and
America, all are at work with much earnestness,
not without influence on the inquiring Japanese
mind, but yet by their bewildering variety neces-
sarily discrediting their message to its acute intelli-
gence. Our own Church Mission, in union with the
Mission from our sister Church in America, seems
to be developing what calls itself a " Church of
Japan," dealing freely, as some may think rashly,
with standards of faith and government ; but to my
mind having in it promise, because it has the germs
of independent action. It is a young Mission, work-
ing largely through educational agencies, making
use of religious communities of men and women for
evangelistic work, thoughtful at once and enthusiastic.
It has already overflowed into the Korean Mission ;

148 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

and it has clearly promise of no inconsiderable
progress.

On both these great regions we may enter in
the spirit of the text. There are, indeed, religions
everywhere occupying the ground, but they have
but little of strong grasp and vitality ; they cry
out for some higher guidance and inspiration.
In China the remarkable and dominant system of
Confucianism is not a religion ; it may rather be
said to have superseded the ancient conception of
a supreme God, much debased into polytheistic
idolatries, by what is simply a code of morality,
agnostic as to any living God, hardly inquiring even
into man's future destiny, utterly unconscious of any
intrinsic power of evil in humanity, and therefore of
any need of salvation. Taouism, with its vague
Nature-worship, and its devotion to astrology and
magic ; Buddhism, with its religious negations and
the revulsion of superstition and demon-worship, can
hardly fill this religious void. Nor is there much
hope in that which underlies all these, and is
especially sanctioned by much of the Confucian
system — that strange and bigoted ancestral worship,
which opposes a dull dead weight to all progress
and enlightenment.

The one strong religious force is that of Moham-
medanism, rooted in China since the seventh century,

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 149

and said to include some thirty millions of adherents ;
and we know by experience that this can never
supply the impulse of life, enlightenment, enthusi-
asm, which the vast inert mass of the Chinese race
so greatly needs. If this is to come from any power,
it must be from the Divine force of Christianity.
Now, at last, that force has learnt to rely on . its own
spiritual weapons alone, free from the admixtures
which have ruined it in days gone by. Who shall
tell what God will yet work through it ?

But Japan, for another reason, yet perhaps even
more than China, cries out for some true and vital re-
ligion, not here to rouse, but rather to meet the rising
inquiry, to direct and mould the vigorous national
life, to give to advancing civilization that moralizing
and spiritualizing influence of which we in Europe
know well the need. Shintoism — which seems to
be in essence a deification of the long line of the
Mikados, as being, like the Pharaohs, children of the
sun — though it be still a State religion, can hardly
consist with the modern ideas of government and au-
thority. Buddhism, in a less negative form than else-
where, with large developments of ritual, ceremonial,
leligious observance, has more than usual of strength ;
but it cannot adapt itself to a rapidly progressive
energy and aspiration. Here, again, a Christianity
truly spiritual should be able to lay hold of the mind

I50

IIULSEAN LECTURES lect.

of the people, which is clearly in search of some true
religion. The old Christianity of Japan would never
have been destroyed but for the occasion which it
gave for regarding it as a dangerous political and
social force. Let the Christianity of our day only
keep itself clear from baser admixtures, and, I may
add, from the suspicion of desire to Europeanize a
community proud of its own native life, and for it
here also there should be " a great door and effectual
opened," in spite of " many adversaries " from with-
out and from within.

IV. It is a vast and difficult sphere of influence
which is open to us here in the far East. But, even
now, our view of English duty and opportunity in
Asia would not be complete, without a glance at
those regions of Western Asia — Persia and Armenia,
Syria and Palestine, Egypt and Abyssinia, once
mainly a great Christian Empire, now under the
heavy blight of Mohammedan domination. Here also,
as I need hardly remind you, there lies on England
a self-assumed responsibility, created by the policy
which, for our own national and commercial interests,
and especially for the sake of our Indian Empire, we
have been led to pursue towards the Mohammedan
power itself What we shall do as a nation — by
diplomatic force or, as in Egypt, by direct interfer-
ence— I do not inquire ; only I would urge that the

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 151

welfare, in the material and moral sense, of the sub-
ject-races in these Empires should be very close to
our hearts and consciences. Who can doubt that in
the terrible Armenian crisis of this moment our
responsibility is assuming a most critical and urgent
phase ?

But to us, as a Church, the right course is clear.
We are bound, indeed, to minister to our own English
people in these regions ; we may sustain, as at
Jerusalem and elsewhere, agencies for conversion of
Jews and Mohammedans. But our main duty is to
the ancient Christian Churches — Greek, Armenian,
Assyrian, Coptic — which, with whatever defects and
drawbacks, have yet under centuries of oppression
and persecution retained a tenacious and earnest
Christian faith, and exercise over their people a
strong religious power. And that duty is twofold.
First, to help them in a true spirit of Christian brother-
hood towards reform, education, enlightenment in
their own Christian life and their Church system —
asking in return no concession of authority, no
adoption of what is purely Anglican, but only
increased faithfulness to Catholic truth, freed, if it
may be, gradually from accretions and corruptions
which have gathered round it. Next, if possible, to
form some bond of unity and of mutual sympathy
between the various Christian Churches of the East

152 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

— now, even in the face of the common enemy, so
jealous and antagonistic to one another. Where can
the misery and scandal of the divisions of Christianity
be so painfully felt, as when we stand in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, see it cut up into various
portions, assigned to the sections of the Church,
separated in all things but a common violent hostility
to the Jews, and watch the Turkish guard in the
central area round the Sepulchre itself, contemptu-
ously securing it for the common access of all, and
keeping the rival Churches from strife and blood-
shed ?

More and more, as it seems to me, is the true
nature of this twofold duty being discerned by our
Church, and in some slight measure being done.
Certainly it is in this spirit that under the Anglican
Bishopric at Jerusalem, extending its influence over
Egypt and Cyprus, the work is now going on, gladly
welcomed and accepted by the heads of the Oriental
Churches. Certainly the same spirit is manifested
in the Archbishop's Mission to the Assyrian Churches,
and the action of the Eastern Church Association.
It is not our business to proselytize, except from
Judaism and Mohammedanism. Hard as it may be
in some cases to decline receiving those who come to
us, yet in general we resolutely leave proselytism from
the Eastern Churches, to Rome on the one hand, and

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 153

ultra-Protestantism on the other. It has been the
opinion of some serious thinkers, not of our own
Communion, that our Church might one day form a
Hnk for the reunion of Christendom on the basis of
Scriptural truth and Apostolical order. Nowhere,
as it seems to me, does this function more plainly
force itself upon us, than in those regions of Western
Asia, even as they are now, much more as they may
be one day, when the Mohammedan yoke is broken.
Overtaxed as our missionary energy is with what
seem nearer and more urgent claims, may some
larger measure of it still be found for quiet and un-
aggressive ministration here !

V, Such then, in brief outline, is our manifold
vocation ; such the extraordinary duty which lies
before us.^ Absolutely impossible would its fulfil-
ment be, if we thought that it obliged us to aim at
a literal expansion of our own Anglican system, to
destroy all existing religions in a spiritual Nihilism,
with a view to building our own fabric on their ruins,
or even to take upon ourselves the task of sustaining
from this little centre the rule and the direction of
a world-wide Evangelism. But now, at least, we see
plainly that this is not our ideal. Never, as I think,

^ In Appendix II. will be found a somewhat more detailed historical
sketch of what is being done by ourselves and by others, in the various
spheres of this Oriental Mission.

154

MULSEAN LECTURES

SO wisely and comprehensively as in the great Mis-
sionary Conference of the last year were the true
conditions of the great problem realized.

The name of our oldest Missionary Society
contains the very kernel of the truth. We have
simply to propagate the Divine life, which by God's
mercy has been engrafted on our own, by the com-
munication at once of His light and His grace, and
then to leave these to develop themselves, as He
wills, in all the variety of native Christianity. We
may, indeed, not only plant, but train and prune
and water — so it be done modestly and wisely.
But the increase, for which we pray, is in God's
hand ; and His appointed way, as we see in Nature,
is not a dead artificial symmetry, but a free and
exuberant irregularity of growth.

Surely, if we understand what the Divine life of
Christianity is, we shall see how by such propaga-
tion it can be made to take up into itself what is
good and true in these great alien religions ; while yet
it supplies from its own inexhaustible fulness the
new impulse, which shall throw off the encrustations
of superstition and corruption, and fill up the fatal
voids of spiritual defect. Face to face with the
strange heterogeneous system which we call Hindu-
ism, it is surely possible to cherish and develop that
pervading religiousness of idea and practice, which

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 155

recognises the Divine everywhere, breathing Hfe into
nature, and stooping to incarnations in humanity.
But how infinite the refreshment and bris^htness,
in contrast with the oppressive and grotesque
complication of Hindu mythology, when we can set
forth the Divine simplicity of the one living God,
immanent in Nature, and yet infinitely transcendent
in true Personality, and of the one Incarnation of
Godhead in a true humanity, to draw all peoples
and nations and languages to Himself! So in the
presence of the great reaction of Buddhism, we can
acknowledge the beauty of its teaching of self-
sacrifice, of purity, of love, of holiness, in its perfect
man ; we can hail its declaration of the equality of
all men without respect of persons, breaking the iron
bondage of caste ; we can see the moral value of its
recognition of an eternal law, though it be an iron
law, of retribution. But yet what a change it is from
death to life, when on the void of its dreary
agnosticism as to any personal God, and even any
true personality in man, there dawns the living
reality of both, as manifested in the Christ, satisfying
worthily the deep instinct of worship, which from the
gloom of this agnosticism takes refuge in the wildest
and basest superstitions ! Once more, when we try
to estimate the wonderful system of Confucianism,
we can honour its firm grasp of morality, as of the

156 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

very essence of our human nature, and as the only
basis of human society ; its reverence for the
fatherly authority, which is the most sacred of
earthly things, and for the time-honoured ancestral
teachings, which are the gradually accumulating trea-
sures of human wisdom. But yet how can we help
feeling that the very condition of the Chinese Empire,
so mechanical and so unprogressive, so inert and so
corrupt, is a witness of the deadness of the most
complete moral system, if it be not inspired with
that life of a true religion of God and of man, which
we can give it in the manifestation of the Lord Jesus
Christ ? More truly still, in the contemplation of the
grand simple Monotheism of Islam, we can reverence
its strong and pervading conception of a Divine w^ill,
a Divine law, a Divine self-revelation, which exercises
over the masses of its people so true and so strong
an influence for self-abnegation and self-sacrifice, for
bravery and, in some things, for temperance. But
yet, in its absence of all recognition of something
Divine in humanity, capable of freedom and responsi-
bility, and of any real unity between the infinite
majesty of God and the finiteness of His creatures,
we see the fatal defect, which makes its existence
incompatible with enlightenment and progress, w^ith
true spirituality of aspiration, with the right hatred
of sensuality and slavery ; and we seem to hear how

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 157

its bare sterility cries out for the truth of God as
one with man, and of man as being, not a slave or tool,
but a son of the Divine Fatherhood.

To carry onward this life-giving light of Christ
is indeed an arduous work. " Who (cries St. Paul
himself) is sufficient for these things ? " But it is a
work, which by His blessing can be done, if only not
the few, but all, the members of our Church will but
understand its glory, and the necessity laid upon
all to rise to their grand vocation. As yet it is
only in its beginning. The harvest hitherto gathered
in is but scanty, for the labourers have been few ;
and in respect of it our own Church has certainly
not risen adequately to her vocation and her oppor-
tunities. But there can happily be no doubt that
the preparatory work is telling, and that with rapid
increase of power, over Oriental society, wherever
the Western influence prevails. There can be as
little doubt, that, although still inadequately, there is
a most remarkable and auspicious growth in our
own understanding and enthusiasm of Mission. The
next half-century should, under God's blessing, see a
mighty change, if only we have faith and wisdom to
use its opportunities. Nor will it really overtask or
dissipate our strength. On the contrary, it is a work
which reacts in blessing on our own Church life
here.

158 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

It has its lesson of wisdom. For it will un-
doubtedly teach us more and more what is the
real essence of our Christianity, as distinct from the
secondary developments of thought and organization,
which may often be temporary and local in their scope,
— what is its relation to the philosophies, the religions,
the civilizations, which at once express and mould
the progress of humanity, and which often have their
analogues in our own life here, — what it may learn
and assimilate from them, while it still asserts its
own inherent power of spiritual dominion over all
humanity, and its own revelation of the mysteries of
God and man, into which nothing else can enter.
Just as the wandering through all the regions of
the earth brings us home to understand our own
country better, and to love it more, so the com-
parison and contrast of these many philosophies
and religions should show us so clearly what our
Christianity really is, that we may ourselves enter
more fully into its Divine truth and life.

It has its lesson of enterprise and of encourage-
ment. For, in spite of all the failures due to our own
error and unfaithfulness, it is impossible not to see
in the mission-field everywhere, more plainly than in
our own complex condition of society, the rcalit}' of
tlic power of Christianity over all races and classes
of men, and its unquestionable leadership over all

Ill OUR MISSION TO INDIA AND THE EAST 159

other civilizing influences which strive to reahze the
brotherhood of mankind.

It has its lesson to us of self-sacrifice, ennobling
our present Christianity with the light of true
martyrdom for Christ, alike in the sharpness of death
and the quiet endurance of life, and perhaps dis-
closing to us the need of forms of Christian service,
which plainly embody such self-devotion as a rule of
life, detached from the complications of our more
ordinary vocations.

It has, and should have in fuller completeness, its
lesson of unity, drawing us out of our miserable
divisions by the very enthusiasm of common service,
and teaching us the right proportion of the faith, by
the comparison, in the face of heathenism, of the
great essentials of our Christianity, in which we are
still at one, with the lesser elements of truth and
order, in which we are unhappily separate from each
other.

These lessons we are, I think, in some sense
learning. But the growing understanding of our
mission, of which we seem to see many traces, will
impress them more and more upon us, alike through
thankfulness for what has been done, and the
prayer which we cannot but utter for advance, un-
hasting and unresting, into the almost infinite
possibilities which open before us. Through them

i6o HULSEAN LECTURES lect. hi

we shall come to see that the mission of England to
the earth is not merely to enrich it by her commerce,
and girdle it with her dominion, but to hold up the
Lord Jesus Christ to all the nations, that He may
draw them out of darkness and deadness into the
light of life.

LECTURE IV

THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES

I. The Message of Universal Brotherhood — Initiated and

SUSTAINED BY CHRISTIANITY — REALIZED UNDER THE FATHER-
HOOD OF God — Harmonizing under Itself all Influences
OF Civilization, and using all Developments of Natural
Religion. — II. The Expansion from Colonial Centres —
(A) To Indians and Negroes in North America and the
West Indies — (B) To Aborigines, Chinese, and Pacific
Islanders, from Australasia— (C) To the Native Tribes
IN and around the South African Colonies — (D) To the
Native Races in and near our Indian Empire and its
Dependencies. — HI. The Independent Mission beyond
THE Sphere of our Dominion — Africa, its Paganism and
Mohammedanism — The Slave Trade and Liquor Traffic
— (A) In Western Africa — Sierra Leone, Yoruba, the
Niger — (B) In Eastern Africa — The Church Missionary
Society at Mombasa— The Universities' Mission — The
Mission to Uganda — (C) The Melanesian Mission of the
South Pacific. — IV. General Summary — The Present
Condition and Future Promise of the Work, and its In-
estimable Importance to True Humanity. — V. The Posi-
tion OF THE Church of England in it — Signs of Awakening
— The Right Leadership of a University.

M

There is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian,
bond nor free, but CJirist is all, and in all.

Col. iii. ii.

I. It has been strikingly said by a foremost writer
of our day on that science of language, which is
virtually a science of humanity — " Not till the word
barbarian was struck out of the dictionary of man-
kind and replaced by brother . . . can we look for
even the first beginnings of our science. This
change was effected by Christianity. The idea of
mankind as one family, as the children of one God,
is an idea of Christian growth. . . . The science of
mankind is a science, which without Christianity
would never have sprung into life." ^ The passage
is quoted by Bishop Lightfoot as a comment^ — the
more striking because it comes not from a professed
theologian — on St. Paul's great declaration in the
text, which is in itself a splendid interpretation of

^ See the quotation from Max Muller's '' Lectures on the Science of
Language," in Lightfoot's Colossians, p. 284.

1 64 IIULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the symbolic gift of Pentecost. It is not enough
for him here (as in the Epistle to the Galatians) ^
to break down the barrier between Greek and Jew,
and to assert the right of the bond -slave to an
equality with the freeman. Writing to an essentially
Greek community, representative of Greek culture,
and in face of an incipient Gnosticism, proud of
its peculiar and hidden wisdom, he claims for the
" barbarian," whom this cultured and philosophic
world despised, and even for the " Scythian," whom
it looked upon as one of the most savage types of
barbarism, that since " Christ is all in all," obliterat-
ing all distinctions by uniting humanity in Himself,
they are brethren in Him, on the basis of a complete
spiritual equality before the common Father of all.

It is with some special emphasis on this universal
message of Brotherhood in Christ, that our English
Christianity enters on the third great sphere of its
missionary expansion ; in which it is called to
minister to the uncivilized peoples of the world —
" subject - races," as they naturally are to the
dominant European race, and, most of all, to its
English-speaking section.

Never, indeed, can it forget, or let others forget,
that this message, grand as it is, yet is not its
primary message. The true Gospel, which is the

1 Gal. iii. 28.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 165

same under all phases of Evangelism, is the declara-
tion, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, of the
Fatherhood of God. The Christian idea of unity
is, first, the unity of each soul with God, drawn by
Christ to Himself in the twofold grace of salvation
and regeneration, and through Himself to the God-
head, into whose name each is individually bap-
tized ; and next, as an inevitable consequence of
this, an indirect but most powerful unity of all men
in one communion and fellowship. As in the
material, so in the spiritual universe, it is primarily
the attraction of each to the one centre, which
makes all one, and even gives opportunity and
scope to the purely secondary attractions of one
upon another. It is a strange error of some
modern criticism, which looks upon Christianity
from without, to suppose it to be primarily a grand
idea and scheme of human unity, which may be
identified, or compared, with those other modern
schemes of which the air is full. If ever in any
degree that same error is entertained from within,
the result must always be, as it has been, dis-
astrous to the true life of the Church. In the
New Testament it is the Headship of Christ which
is really all in all, whether over the individual
life, or over the Church, as His Body, or over the
whole created being gathered up in Him.

i66 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

But Still in its right place this truth of Brother-
hood is, because it needs to be, strongly emphasized
in this phase of our great Evangelism. It is not
merely proclaimed as an idea ; it is embodied in
the creation of that world-wide spiritual society,
into which all races and all sections of humanity
are born again, in a perfect equality of right and
blessing. In the Church of Christ there may be
(so to speak) an elder brotherhood of guidance,
protection, instruction, leadership ; and a younger
brotherhood of trust, submission, discipleship, obedi-
ence ; for this belongs to differences of gift and
opportunity and mission. But it will be a brother-
hood still, always tending in desire, and gradually
in fact, to a removal or mitigation of those in-
equalities, which must be little indeed, when viewed
from the standpoint of the Supreme Fatherhood of
God.

The great conception, thus proclaimed and thus
realized, is not only, as Max Miiller has testified.
Christian in its origin. For its maintenance as a
reality, it still depends on the sanctions of Christi-
anity. It is true that the idea of civilization itself
approaches to its meaning ; for what is civilization
but the preparing men and races to take their place
in the free commonwealth of humanity ? But this
phase of the idea is vague and abstract in com-

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 167

parison with its Christian fulness and vitality. The
"Divine Republic" after all, like its modern antitypes,
w^as but a dream ; the well-centred Kingdom of God
is a reality. It is true, again, that the progress of
democracy professes to realize it through its own
famous motto. But — while the two first elements
of that motto are defective, because they are but
half-truths — the crowning Fraternity is in itself
but a grand phrase, because it does not recognise
one Supreme Fatherhood ; and it is this which our
Lord revealed, and stamped on the forefront of the
daily prayer of Christendom.

Other bonds, therefore, of human unity there
are ; but no other goes to the very root of the
matter. The commerce, which unites men by the
bond of material interest, may make them fellow-
traders — partners in a world-wide association for
gain ; the knowledge, which awakens in all a
nobler intellectual sympathy, may make them
fellow- students in one great school of thought and
experience ; the law of order and peace, which
helps to the formation of a true human society,
may hold them together as fellow -subjects ; but
the real Brotherhood, which touches not only the
body and the mind, but the heart and the spirit,
is a living thing only to those, to whom Christianity,
as a truth and a life, is the universal and absolute

i68 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

religion — not for this or that race, but for all — not
for one age, but for all generations.

Again and again it has to bear its witness in
these days for this unity, against the revival of the old
forces of separation under new names, in a civiliza-
tion which calls itself Christian. There is still the
intellectual contempt for the barbarian, as incapable
of high religious idea and aspiration, reviving under
philosophic guise the old pagan theory of religions,
adapted to certain races, and limited by certain
latitudes. There is, most formidable in practical
effect, the pride in civilized strength, which would
make him a tool, to be used and broken by the higher
races — sometimes avowing, directly or indirectly, a
policy of extermination, as inevitable in the struggle
for existence, — sometimes expressing itself flagrantly
and unblushingly in the extreme horror of slavery, —
more often in these days tending to assume subtler
and more specious forms of selfish domination. There
is the gross and rapacious selfishness of the merely
commercial spirit, which, in the scramble for the
markets of the world, is simply anxious to make
merchandise of barbarian ignorance or distress, and
ready, as in the deadly traffic in strong liquor and
arms, to sell for gain to these lower races, ignorant and
at times unwilling, what is simply their destruction
in body and soul. The old witness of Christianity

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 169

for real human brotherhood is as necessary now as it
was in days past ; that witness, in season and out of
season, whether the world frowns at it or sneers, it
will still bear unflinchingly.

It will bear it, moreover, not in mere theory, but
by the object-lessons of experience, showing that
these barbarian races, even the lowest in the human
scale, can be educated, humanized and Christianized
at once, and brought out of what has been thought a
hopeless darkness and bondage into liberty and light.
I know that this is true of the Australian aborigines,
who have passed with the world into a byword of
contempt, and on whom it has done its cruel best to
fulfil its predictions of hopelessness. The world at
large knows well how Charles Darwin, with the noble
candour characteristic of his nature, bore testimony to
the unexpected success, with which the work of the
South American Mission had raised out of the merest
savagery the tribes of Terra del Fuego, of whom
he had himself despaired, and how he supported
that work with help and sympathy to his dying day.^
We have here but another instance of the truth of
the wisdom of God revealed to babes, and of the
strength of God made perfect in the veriest weakness.
The Church of Christ has but to go on in the path

^ See a letter from Admiral Sir James Sulivan, quoted in Danvins
Life, vol. iii. pp. 127, 128.

170

liULSEAN LECTURES lect.

which the Master has appointed — knowing that His
Gospel is sent Hterally to every creature, and that
He has promised to draw all men without exception
to Himself.

It is true that, in dealing with barbarian races, the
Church is learning better how to use and to harmonize
those lower influences of unity — commercial, intellec-
tual, social — under its own supreme spiritual influence,
and to acknowledge that all are in various ways
working together with God for the Kingdom of
Heaven, because they develop the true humanity, in
work and thought, in duty and social affection. More
and more, again, from the very objections which it
combats, it is learning needful lessons of patience,
discrimination, wisdom, adaptation, in the delivery of
its message. But the essence of its twofold work
must be unchanged and unchangeable, because it is
inspired by the central truth of our Christianity that
" Christ Himself is all in all." As St. Paul elsewhere
draws out the meaning of these words,i ^^ jg » ^yjsdom "
to the mind, even of the simplest and most ignorant ;
He is " righteousness " to the moral sense, be it ever
so rudimentary and overlaid ; He is " sanctification "
to the spirit, even if it be debased by superstition
and carnalized by idolatry. For in all He is " re-
demption " from blindness and sin and godlessness.

^ See I Cor. i. 30.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 171

It is, moreover, a part of this acknowledgment of
brotherhood, that, in this sphere also of evangeliza-
tion, our Christianity should recognise everywhere
among these races some growth of that true humanity,
rising above the merely animal life and its instincts,
which is the image of God in them, and should
shrink from any endeavour to stamp upon them an
absolutely new and European impress. We have
been emphatically warned, by those who have the
wisdom of experience, against the temptation to
enforce upon the docility of these weaker races the
acceptance of our whole English life, with all the
habits, institutions, ideas, which are to us through the
natural growth of ages a part of our very selves, but
which there would be only like an artificial mask
over the true nature/ The warning is wise and far
from needless in the material, the intellectual, and
the social spheres. There are, indeed, some leading
principles of truth and righteousness and purity and
love, which we are bound to infuse into the native
life, and which must carry with them some visible
expression in custom and regulation. But these
should be left free, as far as possible, for a natural
development in adaptation to race and climate, to

^ At the Missionary Conference of 1894 the "undue introduction of
Western ways " was held up as a danger to be avoided, and the warning
was enforced by some remarkable illustrations.

172 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

needs and opportunities. It is a fatal pedantry,
unreasonably and unwarrantably presumptuous, which
would overbear such freedom. It is like the attempt
to translate literally into these simpler languages
ideas of our own, which they are incapable of ex-
pressing. But in the religious sphere, above all, we
have still, as before, to learn from St. Paul at Athens
how to recognise everywhere the rudiments of an
ignorant worship of God, and guide it out of its
dimness into the full light of the Gospel. It is
true that here we have not, as in that work of
which I spoke in the last lecture, to deal with
great historical religions, having coherence and
organization, literatures and philosophies. Among
these barbaric races there is an infinite variety of
religions, but all crude and undeveloped ; like heaps
of sand (as it has been said), they cumber, rather
than occupy, the ground. But one who has devoted
to this work of Evangelism a long period of singu-
larly thoughtful and sagacious, as well as earnest
service, has lately reminded us that our object
cannot be the mere " destruction of false and im-
perfect religions ; none are wholly false ; none are
without materials at least, which must be retained,"
" I venture to say," he adds, " that there will be
found in the backward races generally, first, a sense
of difference between right and wrong ; next, belief

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 173

in a life not bodily and in a life after death ; lastly,
belief in a power around men and above them,
greater and higher than human, to which in the
consciousness of their own weakness they can
appeal." ^

All these are at once reachings out of the soul
after God, and revelations of the Spirit of God to the
soul. Rough-hewn though they may be, they must
be treated reverently, and built into the walls of
the great fabric of the Church. It is, indeed, very
true that the work of absolute construction, out of
new material as well as old, will here occupy a more
principal place ; in greater degree it will have not
only to be carried out in the first instance, but con-
tinued, certainly for generations, by our own hands ;
gradually, but only gradually, can we hope that in it
these, our younger and less civilized brethren, will
take their share. But yet we have to keep this hope
always steadily before us ; to educate those whom we
have drawn into the brotherhood, that they may
grow up out of their own rude conceptions into the
full Christian life ; and hereafter to build up through
native Christianity and native Ministry the spiritual
temple. The style of such building may not be the

1 See the Rev. Dr. Codrington's paper on dealing with " Various
Forms of Paganism," in the Report of the Missionary Conference of
1894 (pp. 113, 114).

174

HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

style which we most love, or that which is absolutely
the most perfect ; but, as in respect of the material
fabric, it will be that which best suits the actual
needs and conditions, and, whatever its form may
be, it will rest on the one foundation, and will have
the one Presence, which alone can consecrate. It is
because in this respect we are learning (as I hope)
the right lesson — in part from larger and humbler
thought, in part from our past errors and failures —
that there is now so much of hopefulness in this
important sphere of our ministry.

It is a sphere, so large and so varied, that it is
more impossible than ever to survey it as a whole.
But we can see that it falls naturally into two
divisions — distinct rather than separate.

II. On the one hand, there is brought home to
us most obviously and most closely the ministration
to these lower races, as subject -races in our own
colonies and possessions, to whom only too often we
owe, over and above the general spiritual obligation
of our Christianity, a debt of atonement for wrongs
done to them in the past. Glance only at the chief
groups of our colonies in this light, as inevitable
centres of civilization and Christianization.

(A) First, this ministration began with our colo-
nization of North America. There it came home to
us in two chief relations — to the native Indian

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 175

tribes, gradually dispossessed or subjected to English
sway, and to the imported negro population of
slaves. Far different was its effect in these two distinct
spheres of work — in the one scarcely holding its
own — in the other winning the most famous of moral
victories.

For the Indians never, indeed, even from the
beginning, has it been altogether forgotten or
neglected. It was taken up, as an integral element
of duty, by our oldest Missionary Society. But yet
it has never held its right place of control, in the
name of true humanity, over the strong forces of
conquest and self-aggrandizement, which bring into
human history the fierce struggle for existence, and
which, gradually or swiftly, have destroyed the
weaker. Not, indeed, that even here it has been
without fruit. To speak only of our own Church
and the sister Church of the United States, there
has been a very earnest and not unsuccessful
ministration to the remnant of those ancient tribes.

In British North America alone — in Canada, in
Manitoba, and British Columbia — there are still more
than 120,000 Indians, of whom 75,000 are settled
on Government reserves ; and among these races,
not deficient in vigour and intelligence, there has
grown up a native Church with a native Ministry.^

^ Both] ourJ^Missionary Societies are at work, but the Church

176 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

At last we are realizing our brotherhood. The civil
authority strives to protect them from wrong and
distress, and to arrest the process of decay ; the
Church aids by her freer and more spiritual agencies,
and welcomes them into the family of Christ^

But far more important here, both in the Southern
mainland colonies and in the West Indian Settle-
ments, was the relation to the negro race, brought in
from the sixteenth century by the slave trade, to
supersede the dwindling native inhabitants in the
service of the white man. How that relation was
dealt with by our English Christianity we have
already considered in part. But we look at it now
as an element in our general mission to the bar-
barian races. Strange and monstrous it seems to
us, that for so many generations the Church of
Christ in all its branches should have excused or
condoned that flagrant wrong, virtually denying the
true humanity of the oppressed race, and yet salving
the conscience by the plea, that those who were
torn violently from their barbarian homes were thus
brought within the scope of those forces which pre-

Missionary Society with greater power. It has aheady at work thirty-
two European and twenty-seven native clergy, a large number of lay
readers and catechists, chiefly native, and nearly 13,000 baptized Indians,
besides Catechumens. Its ministrations are in more than twenty Indian
languages, some of which are dying out.

^ The majority of the Indians in Manitoba are now Christian ; it is
otherwise in British Columbia.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 177

serve such humanity — the force of civilization and
the higher force of Christianity. Yet, by a noble
inconsistency, it did labour earnestly for their edu-
cation and Christianization — through other English
Communions often more successfully than through
our own. And by these labours — not without defect
and lingering superstition, not without an excess of the
emotional element, in comparison with the intellectual
and the moral, which seems natural to the African
temperament — the negroes under our dominion were
won from heathen darkness to Christ ; in the eye
of the law mere bondsmen and human chattels, they
were baptized spiritually into the glorious liberty
of the children of God. Between the two principles
there was a hopeless contradiction ; for centuries
there went on, now a struggle for the mastery,
now vain attempts at compromise and mitigation.
But at last the great truth of the text — the truth of
human brotherhood in Christ — prevailed. The cry,
now hackneyed and commonplace, " Am I not a man
and a brother ? " pierced through the thick folds of
prejudice and self-interest to the heart and con-
science of England. By an unexampled sacrifice at
the moment — at the cost of far greater unknown
sacrifices in the future — the great wrong was at last
undone, not by the unaided strength of the sense of
justice and philanthropy, but by these inspired into

N

178 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

a diviner glow through Christian faith. Not, indeed,
without heavy penalty — for no sin ever quite escapes
penalty — in the present condition, moral as well as
material, of our own West Indian Settlements. But
the penalty has to be borne patiently. The wrong
will not be quite undone, till, by the necessarily slow
process of regeneration, the race now set free can be
educated to a stronger and nobler life.

But all this in our own experience was as nothing,
compared with the fatal legacy of this internecine
conflict, left to the colonies which revolted from
England to become the great American Republic.
Far deeper seated was the evil there ; far longer and
far fiercer the conflict, before it could be cast out ;
far higher the price of atonement to be paid, in the
threatened disruption of the Republic itself, in the
gigantic civil war which followed, and the torrents
of blood of the dominant race which it shed ; far
heavier the permanent penalty of internal disunion
and conflict, and of the present infinite perplexity
of the coexistence of the two unequal races on a
theoretical equality of right and privilege. But here,
again, it was the Christian enthusiasm, raising and
ennobling the strong sense of patriotism, which pre-
vailed. Against much fancied wisdom of the world,
mighty vested interests, religious hypocrisies and
inconsistencies, the truth of the Brotherhood broke

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 179

here also the yoke of oppression. Whatever be the
issue, we thank God for the proof of its supreme
moral power to conquer the world — not only to
protect the weak against the strong, but to teach
the strong the lesson of self-sacrifice in the light of
the Cross.

(B) Not wholly dissimilar, although on a lesser
scale, has been our experience in the later group of
our Australasian colonies. In x'\ustralia itself the
aboriginal inhabitants are but a poor remnant.
They have almost perished, not, as men will have
it, by the white man's presence, but by the white
man's crime. Nor will those who know the facts
ever accept the plea of excuse put forward, that they
are incapable of civilization or religious brotherhood.
Wherever the attempt has been honestly made, it
is found that they can hold a place, though not a
high place, in the family of true humanity. Now
at last — almost too late except in the North and
West — this ministration is being taken up, and has
been blessed. I have seen their settlements flourish-
ing under civil protection and religious guardianship.
In Western Australia, for example, it is a strange
reproduction of history to come across a great Bene-
dictine monastery, with its large pastoral and agri-
cultural estate, cultivated peacefully and happily by
hundreds of native Christian helpers. Meanwhile, in

i8o HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

New Zealand — dealing, it is true, with a higher race,
but dealing with it on far higher principles — we
have by this ministration created a vigorous Maori
Christianity, with its native congregations, sometimes
shaming our own, and its native clergy, working and
consulting side by side with their English brethren.
It is true that there has been struggle, and that
the association of Christianity with the aggressive
English influence once produced a strange apostasy.
But this is now rapidly passing away. The one
fear now is the gradual dwindling away of this fine
and hardly barbarian race. Yet this also is mainly
in our own hands. If only our English laws for
their protection can be loyally observed and en-
forced— if only strong drink and English disease
can be kept from them — there is no reason why
here the two races should not live together, not in
equality indeed, but in that Christian brotherhood,
for which noble servants of God have laboured and
prayed.

But the Australasian Church has other forms of
this same ministration. It has to deal with the
Chinese immigration — rightly limited by statesman-
ship, less excusably resisted by trade jealousy ; and,
whatever the civil community may do, the Church
cannot but welcome these immj'grants — mostly poor
and industrious workers — and try to draw them to

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES i8i

Christ. It has its Chinese catechists and workers ;
its Chinese Bibles and Prayer-Books and Services ; it
has made some beginning towards the ordaining of
a Chinese Ministry. Year by year, as I know, it has
its adult baptisms, after careful examination ; far
beyond the circle of actual discipleship, it is exer-
cising over the Chinese population a strong moral
influence for good. It reaches out the hand to that
evangelizing work in China itself, of which I have
spoken. Through those who return to their own
land, who knows whether it may not help to sow
there the seed of a native Christianity ?

But this is not all. The Church of Christ
there is brought in contact with a modified and
mitigated form of the great American question.
Thank God ! there are here no avowed slavery
and slave - trade to deal with. But the labour
traffic of tropical Australia with the Pacific Islands
(into the whole merits of which I do not desire to
enter ^) is here also introducing for work in the

^ Following the guidance of those whose judgment is infinitely more
valuable, I venture still to deprecate this trafific altogether ; first, because
the population of the islands is insufficient to bear the drain ; next, be-
cause of the great difficulty of enforcing laws, however excellent, against
fraud and violence in the traffic. It would be, I think, infinitely better
to draw the coloured labourers required from South India, where the
population is superabundant, and where the supervision of the British
Government would check all abuses. But there is on this matter much
conflict of opinion ; and at any rate I rejoice to see that the Church in

1 82 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

tropical North, under the white man's mastership,
one of those lower and weaker races. No one can
doubt, who looks at the history of the past, that
it has to be most carefully watched, lest it should
be stained by oppression and cruelty, or degenerate
into bondage. Who can ever forget how through
its abuse the blood of Bishop Patteson was shed ?
It is the plain duty of our Christianity to raise and
educate public opinion, and to support the efforts,
now honestly made, for the prevention of all abuse
and oppression by law. But meanwhile, by its
very existence, there is laid upon the Australian
Church a new missionary duty and opportunity,
towards those who are thus brought within the
reach of its ministration — to care for their material
and social welfare ; to draw them into the Christian
brotherhood, not for their own sakes only, but that,
when they go back to their homes, they may carry
their Christianity with them, and take up the great
principle of our Melanesian Mission, by becoming
centres of converting influence to their heathen
countrymen. That duty is now (thank God !) being
earnestly attempted by the Church, not only in direct
religious ministration, but by a beneficent influence
over the whole condition of these imported labourers.

Queensland is using much exertion for the care, temporal and spiritual,
of the imported labourers.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 183

Out of this work for God, under His Providence, it
may be that great things will grow.

(C) Once more round the third great group of our
colonies in South Africa — so rapidly developing in
the older settlements to civilized prosperity and self-
government — so constantly, and almost inevitably,
extending, as at this moment, the area of new
dominion over barbarian peoples — there is growing
up another most important phase of this same
ministration ; and this, moreover, a work of wider
scope, and under more favourable conditions, than
those which have started from the other two colonial
centres. It has a larger, a more varied, and, on the
whole, a nobler material to deal with. For here the
native peoples are in many cases of higher vigour and
capacity ; here, moreover, they are not dwindling
away, but by the peace which we enforce, and the
greater material prosperity which we diffuse, are
increasing in number and in strength day by day ; here,
in spite of some painful inconsistencies and vacilla-
tions in our policy, they are learning to trust more and
more implicitly in the beneficence of English rule.
And these regions, again, unlike many other parts of
Africa, have great tracts of inland country, at high
levels, and in climates where our English settlers have
no difficulty in living among the native tribes.
Nowhere, perhaps, in the world is there so wonderful

i84 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

a meeting-ground of races. By the very provision,
which the Church strains every nerve to make for the
true Christianity of her own people, she is affecting
for good the swarming native population ; and direct
evangelization of these tribes has invariably followed.
There is no barrier of race or character, which can
stop the expansive force of Christianity, or break up
the communion of all races in the one great brother-
hood. Even in the older dioceses there has always
been ministration to the coloured races. But every
new bishopric founded — in Kaffraria, Zululand,
Mashonaland, Lebombo — is stamped more and more
distinctly with the sense of our mission, to civilize
and Christianize at once these dark races committed
to our charge. The work is still in its beginning,
struggling on everywhere, as a pioneer for future
advance ; but already in some ten languages at
least the gospel of Christ is preached, and in
answer to its preaching the same prayers go up to
the one God and Father of all. Overtasked the
energies of the Church, indeed, are, and beset with
some peculiar difficulties, from without and from
within. But here also (thank God !) the ministration
is continually enlarging and deepening its power.
It is a hopeful work, among these races of various
degrees of civilization, but, in many cases at least,
undoubtedly having desire and capacity of advance.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 185

It is a work imperatively needed. Amidst an almost
bewildering diversity of conditions, increased by the
constant necessity of assimilation of new material,
and in face of many forces of complication and
disintegration, the message of a real unity of all
in Christ will sound with a peculiar emphasis of
promise.

These, and such as these, are the works of this
evangelism, forced upon us by a spiritual necessity in
the New Englands which are now striking deep root,
and so growing as to cover vast regions over the
length and breadth of the world. If there is not in
them the same heroic and romantic interest, which
attaches to incursions, far from all material support,
into the darker regions of the world, it may be well
thought that they represent the most solid and hope-
ful form of the discharge of our great missionary
duty. By the Church at home — by the stronger
colonial Churches themselves — there is an ever-
increasing effort to fill with the light and grace of
Christ these nearest circles of human neighbourhood.

(D) Nor is this vocation wanting to us in our
more scattered colonies and dependencies. We have
seen especially how it grows upon us in our great
Indian dependency, in relation to its uncivilized
tribes, and how it has extended itself naturally by
the annexation of Burmah, by the establishment of

i86 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the Straits Settlements, by the occupation of Labuan,
and the protectorate of North Borneo.^ Time fails
me to sketch, even in outline, these advances from
our base of operation in India of the army of God.
But such advance there must always be. Wherever
we have assumed authority, and rooted our settle-
ments in new soil, a Christian responsibility must be
created for us by our own act. We cannot forget
that the flag, which we raise, bears the double
blazonry of the Cross.

IV. But the banner of the Cross itself goes further
than the British flag. Over and above this, our
natural sphere of expansion, there comes to us the
call to enterprise and sacrifice — perhaps even more
impressive and more romantic in its spiritual interest
— that we may extend the bright unity of the
kingdom of God over the tribes beyond our borders
— still only on the outskirts of humanity, still wan-
dering in the darkness and division of barbarism.
Although beyond European dominion, they are not
untouched by the expanding influence of European
commerce and intercourse. On us, to whom falls far
the greatest share in this intercommunication, there lies
the greatest responsibility, to see that it is tempered
and exalted by the sense of brotherhood in Christ.

^ For a fuller account of these various works of Evangelization, see
Appendix III.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 187

There are two great spheres of this more enter-
prising Christian ministration, at which alone time
permits us to glance — the great Dark Continent
of Africa and the islands of the South Pacific. It
has been the work of the last eventful half-century to
open — I may almost say to discover — the vast inland
area of Africa, with its 170 millions of people of
many races and many languages, of many degrees of
civilization and capacity. The old blanks in its
map are being filled up day by day. From the
earliest times it has been in various ways under the
dominion, often the oppression, of stronger races. To
say nothing of the great Mohammedan power, once
dominant and still very strong, we have seen but
lately how the nations of Europe — English, French,
German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish — are arro-
gating to themselves the right of dividing it into
spheres of influence — mainly, it must be confessed,
for their own aggrandizement in commerce and in
power, yet partly also from the irresistible tendency
of civilization to draw the barbarian races to itself
for some participation in its blessings. Of its vast
population nearly three-fifths are already thus brought
directly within the European sphere, and of this
sphere about one-half falls to our English responsi-
bility. Even over the rest, through free states and
outlying settlements, the indirect influence of the

i88 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

European civilization spreads, till hardly a portion
of it remains quite untouched.

In this very fact our Christianity must recognise
a spiritual necessity laid upon us to carry to these
backward and barbarian races, by word and deed,
the glad tidings of the human brotherhood in Christ.
Africa has been called pre-eminently " the Pagan
Continent." Some three -fourths of its people lie
outside the great religions of the world. They are
not without that instinct of God, and ultimately of
One Supreme God, which seems all but universal ;
but this instinct is in them overlaid by superstitious
fear of demons — by the gross idolatry which men
call Fetichism — by an abject terror of witchcraft
and magic — by a proneness to the horror of human
sacrifice, according with, and stimulating, the barbaric
thirst for blood. Over nearly one-fourth reigns the
religion of Islam — somewhat degraded and corrupted
perhaps by contact with Paganism. In itself it is, of
course, a far higher form of belief, strong in its sim-
plicity of faith and in its laws of devotion and of
temperance, in old time propagated from the North
by the sword, now rather making its way by its in-
trinsic religious power. There are those, even of our
own people, who are inclined to exalt its influence
for good over the lower races above the higher and
more complex power of Christianity. They believe

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 189

in the Law rather than the Spirit. But over and
above its universal defects, it is self-condemned in
Africa by two fatal hindrances. It is the strong-
hold of the slavery which destroys humanity, and of
the polygamy which condones sensuality and degrades
womanhood. Who can really hope that out of it the
regeneration and deliverance of Africa will come ?

Clearly, under the marvellous order of God's
Providence, there is an urgent call to our Christianity
to enter upon this vast and absorbing field of religi-
ous interest. As yet there are in all but some three
and a half millions who call themselves Christian.
What wonder that the mission to " the Dark Con-
tinent " has always stirred the souls of those who
love Christ, and know that in Him is the one life
and unity of human-kind ?

There rise up, indeed, against us in the way for-
midable difficulties and offences from the sins of our
own people. It was — we remember it with shame
and sorrow — through the slave-trade that, in days
gone by, this great Continent was subjected to the cruel
yoke of oppression from without. There was from
the beginning of the sixteenth century the horrible
European slave-trade, condoned for ages by Christi-
anity, in which England bore a chief share of profit
and disgrace, till after long struggle, as we have
seen, the sense of Christian brotherhood broke down

190 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

the inhumanity of slavery. Now (thank God !)
through her tardy but earnest repentance — abohsh-
ing the trade for herself — endeavouring by treaties
to draw other European nations into the same crusade
against it — putting it down by force, not without
much sacrifice of treasure and of blood — it may be
said to have received its deathblow, and to be
rapidly passing away. But there are still, be it
remembered, two forms of this accursed traffic,
for which Mohammedanism is mainl}- responsible.
There is the slave-trade by sea in East Africa,
mainly from Zanzibar, to Persia, Arabia, and Egypt,
which it is now our effort to destroy. Revealed to
us by Livingstone and Stanley, so as to stir the
heart and conscience of England, it is (we believe)
gradually giving way before that effort. If only our
resolution be bold and whole-hearted, we must win
here again the battle of humanity. There is a third
form of slave-trade — the interior slave-trade, with its
accompaniments of man -hunting and bloodshed —
mainly again in Arab hands — partly from the inland
to the coast, but worst of all through the Soudan
to Mohammedan lands. Against this the African
career of Charles Gordon was a perpetual, and for a
time a victorious, struggle ; but since the disasters
in the Soudan, it has sprung again to life, and once
more it must be our mission to destrov it.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 191

But this is not the only wrong inflicted on the
African races. If the slave-trade abomination is
mainly of the past, there is now a less outrageous,
but hardly less fatal, cruelty in the unscrupulous
European traffic, sacrificing humanity for the sake of
reckless gain — by the sale of fire-arms, helping and
stimulating that internecine war between rival tribes,
which is the natural curse of barbarism, — by the
introduction of fiery and poisonous strong liquor, of
which it has been said that it may make civilized
men brutes, but that it turns barbarians into devils.
And this great wrong is done, not by Mohammedans,
but by nations calling themselves Christian — not
mainly (I rejoice to know) through England, although
our hands are not clean in the matter. It must be
checked in the name of common humanity, in the
higher name of Christian brotherhood. Better, men
say sometimes, that the African should have been
left to his barbarism, than that a new poison and
madness should have been brought in by civilization.
But it can only be checked by consent of civilized
nations ; and we may thank God that — roused, as
usual, mainly by Christian witness — the public
opinion of Europe has been stirred to interference,
and something has been done by international con-
ference to wipe out this reproach to Europe.

Still, against all discouragement and enmity our

192

HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

English Christianity has gone out on its mission, at
once of brotherhood and atonement. The course of
that mission has been singularly chequered in its
results — now of swift success, now of what seems
weary failure. But it has been almost always full
of nobleness, because full of labour and sacrifice
even to death. There have been martyrdoms by
the hands of men ; there has been the foreseen lay-
ing down of earnest and saintly lives in the land,
which is the black man's home, but too often the
white man's grave. But the blood so shed for
Christ has been the seed of His Church. Over the
bodies of the fallen new soldiers of Christ have
pressed on. I well remember, after Bishop Hanning-
ton's martyrdom, how, while easier posts in the
Church abroad were long vacant, many volunteers
were found immediately in our Church at home,
praying to be allowed to follow in his steps.

Glance with me at only three salient positions of
our own Church in this advancing warfare.

(A) The first is in Western Africa. It arose out
of the resolution to put down the slave-trade, and the
need of provision in the region of Sierra Leone of a
home for the rescued slaves — a strange heterogeneous
people from many tribes, speaking many languages,
and a people, moreover, naturally bewildered and
degraded by slavery. Some eighty years ago, mainly

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 193

through the great Church Missionary Society, the
work — a difficult and often deadly work — began.
Again and again the European missionaries suc-
cumbed ; after the establishment of the Episcopate
in 1852, bishop after bishop went out to labour for
a brief time and to die. So the need of a native
Ministry was forced on the mind of the Church ;
schools and a college for its education and training
were founded, from which a long succession of
native servants of God has been sent forth to
labour under His blessing. Now a native church
has grown up, " self-governing, self-supporting, self-
extending," having its own Missionary Association
for the heathen and the Mohammedans round,
numbering in our own Communion nearly 20,000
souls, while almost an equal number belong to the
Wesleyans. It is a position won for Christ in the
very citadel of heathen darkness. God grant that
from it His soldiers may go out to gain fresh
victories for the Cross !

Then in the same region two other Missions have
succeeded. First, the Yoruba Mission on the Bight
of Benin, long vexed by slavery at Lagos and bloody
raids from Dahomey ; till Lagos, the very centre of
the Western slave-trade, was annexed by England,
and the Dahomey savages were awed into peace.
There also the city of God has been built, although

O

194 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

in troublous times ; an almost wholly native Church
has grown up — with but a few English missionaries
to guide and inspire its work — numbering some
thousands of people, and gradually raising them up
through many difficulties and imperfections to the true
Christian life. Next the Niger Mission, penetrating
into the interior up that great river, against immense
hindrance of disease and savage violence, gradually
advancing, as the Royal Niger Company developed a
great trade, and as the sphere of English influence ex-
tended far inland to touch heathen and Mohammedan
powers. There is a special interest here in the fact
that an almost wholly native Ministry was first
crowned in 1 864 by a native Episcopate in the
person of Bishop Crowther. Striking and eminently
suggestive is the story of his life — first a slave-boy,
brought down to Lagos, and rescued by an English
cruiser ; then educated at the Sierra Leone native
college, baptized, ordained, consecrated as a bishop ;
labouring for more than thirty years as at once a chief
Pastor and a chief Evangelist ; and at the last Lam-
beth Conference raising his gray head in special re-
spect and honour among the bishops of the Anglican
Communion. Here also gradually and steadily the
work of Christ is growing, and some thousands of
converts are drawn into His sacred Brotherhood.
(B) Turn now to the opposite region of Eastern

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 195

Africa, from Cape Gardafui to the Zambesi, with a large
mixed population of many tribes and languages — in
older times the seat of Arab power — next a Portuguese
settlement and the region of the Eastern Mohammedan
slave-trade — now gradually absorbed by the English
and German and Italian spheres of influence. From
Zanzibar, the seat of the Arab Sultanate, now under
our protectorate and virtual government, the lines of
our own advance radiate inwards, first under the East
Africa Company, now by assumption, gradually and
half-reluctantly, of imperial power and responsibility.
In this region the first pioneers of discovery and
of linguistic labour some fifty years ago were the
devoted missionaries Krapf and Rebmann, under
the Church Missionary Society. On it somewhat
later the attention of Europe was riveted by
the expeditions of Livingstone and Stanley. The
country — till then unknown, now full of promise
for settlement and commerce, especially in the high-
lands of the interior — was opened up. At once
Christian missions of all the English-speaking Com-
munions poured in, working side by side, often with
limitation of territory by mutual agreement, studying
native languages, creating by translation of Holy
Scripture native literatures, carrying with them, as
far as possible, all the forces of civilization under the
banner of the Cross. As on the Western coast, the

196 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

war against the slave-trade, and the settlement of the
rescued slaves, formed the first nucleus of the native
Church. It is not a little significant that the old
slave-market at Zanzibar is now the site of a noble
church — an omen, as we trust, of the full triumph of
Christian brotherhood over this last stronghold of
slavery. Those who have the knowledge and re-
sponsibility of authority, there and at home, are at
times forced to meet the eager urgency of anti-slavery
enthusiasts by pleas for some caution and graduality
in advance. But no one doubts that, swiftly or slowly,
the desired end will come ; no one questions that to
bring it about is the imperative duty of England.

In the work of our own Church here our thought
is concentrated on three chief missions — at Mombasa,
Zanzibar, and Uganda — each having in its own way
a thrilling interest — all ennobled by sacrifice and
martyrdom.

The work at Mombasa was inherited from those
first missionaries, who were content for some thirty
years to labour patiently, sowing the seed but seeing
no harvest. Now, there and at Frere Town, the
memorial of Sir Bartle Frere's^ mission for the
suppression of the slave-trade, there has grown up a
flourishing station of the Church Missionary Society,
the Sierra Leone of the East, sending out its pioneers
to the country round, reaping already a harvest, which

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 197

Is, we believe, only an earnest of a greater ingather-
ing to come.

Of deeper interest still in this place is the
Universities' Mission, founded in answer to the
stirring appeal of Livingstone : " I return to Africa,
and shall die there. But I leave it with you to sec
that the door, which I have opened for Christianity
and civilization, shall never be closed." It began with
bright hope and strong enthusiasm. It has been
ennobled (from the days of my dear friend. Bishop
Mackenzie, downwards) by the free offering of our
best lives to the service of God. I hardly know of
a nobler and more Apostolical succession than in the
list of the bishops of Central Africa. It has been in
God's mysterious Providence visited with almost un-
exampled trials of delay and disappointment ; but
now at last it is emerging into vigour and promise —
first, under Livingstone's guidance, making its way
to the Shire highlands near Lake Nyassa, up the
valley of the great Zambesi, where its first bishop
found his early grave ; then under Bishop Tozer
transferring its headquarters to Zanzibar ; and thence
first under his guidance, then by the splendid labours
of Bishop Steere and Bishop Smythies, diffusing in all
directions the influence of the gospel of Christ, with
(as was natural) some special devotion to the educa-
tion of a native Ministry, and the translation into

198 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

various native languages of the Word of God. At
this moment it is working at Zanzibar itself among
the liberated slaves, educating the youths for Christian
work and the native Ministry ; on Lake Nyassa,
under the new bishop of that land, it has pene-
trated to the very centre of the slave trade, at the
spot to which at first the steps of Bishop Mackenzie
were led ; on the mainland it has founded various
mission stations, each forming a little centre of
Christian light and grace. Two points it presents
of special interest — the one, that the main work is
done through a kind of Christian brotherhood, with
community of living and gratuitous service, preaching
Christ (as has been well said) by a Christlike life ;
the other, that already there are developed the rudi-
ments of synodical action and consultation for the
advance of this infant Church. Already it has its
thousands of converts ; but its leading principle is
simply to sow everywhere the seed of what shall, by
God's grace, be hereafter the wide-spreading and fruit-
bearing tree.

Yet perhaps of even greater, and certainly fresher,
interest is the story of Uganda — far inland in a fine
fertile region on the high plateau of the great
Victoria Nyanza Lake — among a people fierce,
indeed, and turbulent, but of some unusual vigour
and promise — inaugurating a victorious conflict of

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 199

Christianity with the slave-holding power of Islam.
It was a challenge of Stanley, nobly and promptly
answered by the Church Missionary Society, which led
to its first initiation — a bold hazardous advance into
the interior, far from the base of operation on the coast.
Some twenty years ago the first pioneer expedition
started, not without the usual willing sacrifice of
devoted lives. From that day to this, in spite of
losses and apparent failures, it has never relaxed its
grasp on this far outpost of the Gospel. Gradually,
and (as events have shown) wisely and solidly, have
the foundations of a native Christianity been laid.
Hardly more than ten years ago the advancing work
was organized under the bishopric of Eastern Equa-
torial Africa. The Mission has gone through the
strangest possible vicissitudes ; under the capricious
favour and enmity .of the native kings ; in conflict
with the deadly antagonism of Arab Mohammedan-
ism ; through — we confess it with sorrow — internal
struggle, which took, indeed, the form of conflict of
Roman and Protestant Christianity, but which was at
bottom a rivalry of the influences of France and
England in the scramble for Africa.

It has been tried by the fiery ordeal of persecu-
tion, in which the strong simple devotion of Bishop
Hannington was swiftly closed by martyrdom, and a
yet more cruel martyrdom was borne with extra-

200 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

ordinary heroism by many of the native converts.
There was a time, when the East Africa Company,
overtasked and unsupported, spoke of relinquishment
of Uganda. Then, to its immortal honour, our
Church Missionary Society stood boldly in the gap,
appealed successfully for a great offering to the
service of Christ, and initiated the movement, which
has led, not without the usual hesitation and reluc-
tance, to the assumption of Protectorate by the im-
perial power, and which is now to be crowned by the
establishment of rapid communication between the
coast and this splendid inland outpost of Christianity
and of civilization. The whole history is one of the
most striking examples of the ever-recurring experi-
ence of the mission work. It tells the old, old story
— which our own early Christian forefathers knew so
well — of the indestructible inherent power of the
faith of Christ, to triumph over apparent hopeless-
ness, and of His grace, to work out what the world
calls impossibilities.

So on every side of this African continent are
being kindled the first beacons of Christian light —
beams in darkness, of which we pray that they may
grow.

(C) Now, as to the last and one of the noblest
specimens of this ministration, we turn our eyes far
away to the archipelago of the Pacific ; where the

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 201

tropical ocean, in the close neighbourhood of our
great Australasian settlements, is studded with islands,
fertile and beautiful as the garden of the Lord.
With these the enterprise of our commerce, the
interest of inquiry and research, the extension of our
power of protectorate or dominion, have brought us
into contact. For good and for evil they lie now
within the scope of our English civilization ; their
brotherhood with us must be cemented by our
English Christianity. From that Christianity there
has gone forth a strong wave of evangelization.
Our own action is but a part of that beneficent
impulse ; it goes on side by side with great work
which has been done by the London Missionary
Society and by the Wesleyan and Presbyterian Com-
munions— securing, so far as may be, by territorial
arrangements, that these various currents of Christian
influence shall not cross and disturb each other.

The original impulse was given to it by a famous
son of this University — the first great Bishop of
New Zealand — some fifty years ago ; when his
unsatisfied missionary energy, ashamed of being
outstripped by commercial enterprise, overflowed
from his vast diocese to the still untouched islands
of the Melanesian group. In his little twenty-ton
schooner, by voyages in the aggregate of 20,000
miles, he visited these scattered islands ; and saw at

202 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

once, from the babel of different tongues which
sounded in his ears, that there was but one means
of reaching them with the great tidings of the
Gospel — by persuading the natives to entrust to
him, for education and instruction, boys and youths,
who might go back to be the mission teachers of
their countrymen — by thus weaving (as he expressed
it), and floating by the white corks, the black draw-
net of the Church of Christ. Difficult and gradual
in any case this work must have been ; for by the
barbarian all strange intercourse is suspected. But
it was hindered and encompassed with danger by
our own evil doings — the fraud, the violence, the
treachery, which had disgraced the European trade
and the colonial labour-traffic. Still, against all diffi-
culty and danger, it has been carried out patiently
and resolutely to a great success. First at Auck-
land, afterwards at Norfolk Island, these native
lads, often sons of chiefs, were gathered by scores
and hundreds to a centre of light and brotherhood
— an lona of the South Pacific — trained there not
only by teaching but by love, inspired not only
by Christian truth but by Christian grace. Then
in due course they were sent back to their islands,
to give to their own people the new life with which
God had blessed them. The Bishop and his
English fellow-workers from the headquarters were

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 203

always going out on their island voyages in the
mission ship of the Southern Cross, to visit, to
superintend, to encourage the little native con-
gregations growing up ; and then returning to
study the native languages, to translate into them
our Scripture and our prayers, and to renew their
own Christianity by the refreshment of a com-
munity of life and worship. So first under Bishop
Selwyn, then, as the work grew and needed un-
divided superintendence, under Bishop Patteson,
this wise and earnest course of evangelization went
on ; and, but for those hindrances from the white
man's sin, it would probably have gone on rapidly
without check or opposition. Btit there came a
day, when all England, as I well remember, was
thrilled with one impulse of sorrow and indignation,
by the sad tidings that the priceless life of our
noble Missionary Bishop — so singularly rich in
wisdom and devotion and love — had been sacri-
ficed, in the blind fury of revenge for outrage done
by white hands, by the people whom he loved so
well. When his body came back, floating alone
in the native canoe, and with the palm branch over
the deadly wounds, it was impossible not to see how
the martyr bore " the marks of the Lord Jesus "
Himself, as dying for those who set at nought and
slew him ; and the sense of his likeness to his Master

204 HULSEAN LFXTURES lect.

was deepened, when we heard how, anticipating the
future, he had entreated — with an entreaty, I
fear, disregarded — that no vengeance for his
death should be taken on those who knew not
what they did.

Yet tliat martyrdom — infinite as was the loss
that it entailed — gave a new strength to the Mission,
by the outburst of reverence and sympathy which
it evoked, and by the halo of glory which it cast
over the work. The beautiful Memorial Church at
Norfolk Island, like all Christian memorials, has been
(to use the old phrase) at once " for remembrance
of the dead, for the advance of the Church, and for
the glory of God." You know how the banner of
the Cross was grasped by the strong hand of the
son of the first great founder of the Mission, and
we can never forget — what for obvious reasons I
cannot here dwell upon — at what cost of sacrifice
his unwearied and undaunted service was given. So
nobly started — so bravely and wisely carried on, not
by the leaders only, but by the whole body of
English and native workers — so thoroughly per-
vaded by the spirit of the Brotherhood of Christ —
who can doubt that this its seed-time shall yield
hereafter, perhaps at no distant date, a harvest
thirty or a hundred-fold ? Who can fail to trace
to it the inspiration, which has stirred the whole

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 205

Australasian Church to become a Missionary Church,
and, as at this moment in the great island of New
Guinea, to follow up our English Protectorate by
the higher and holier unity of the Kingdom of
Christ ?

I have been able to touch only on a few salient
points of this mission to the " barbarian races " —
to give some characteristic specimens of an all but
world-wide work, great in difficulty, but great in
promise. It will have been seen that everywhere
it has been largely the work of this eventful half-
century ; that everywhere it is as yet only an
imperfect development, a seed-time rather than a
time of spiritual harvest ; yet that everywhere it puts
to shame, and contradicts by fact, despondent or
cynical prophecies of impossibility, and shows itself
able to educate even the lowest races in the true
Brotherhood of Christ. It has but its thousands
as yet out of the millions of heathenism. But the
experience of the Church in the past tells us that
it is through the few, each becoming a new centre
of diffusion, that the many are won. Who can
over-estimate its importance to the higher life and
progress of humanity ? If, as some believe, there is
to be a future of independence or dominance for
the black and yellow man, it is surely of infinite
consequence that this future should be humanized

206 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

by the Christian brotherhood. If we rather believe
that the dominion of the white man is still to
remain and grow through the ages, we must hold,
as an indispensable condition of that permanence,
that it must be not a selfish and despotic power, but
one which acknowledges itself a trust from God, and
which, therefore, by self-restraint and self-sacrifice,
labours for the benefit of these His weaker children.

The work is almost overwhelming in its greatness,
and bewildering in its variety of circumstance and
opportunity. But that by God's grace it has to be
done, and done in great degree by England, is
clear to all who have even the slightest knowledge
of the subject. Certainly it is doubly blessed — to
those who give, as well as to those who receive.
Like our national expansion, it does not exhaust,
but rather stimulates, vitality at home. For expan-
siveness is in itself a condition of healthy Church
life ; and there are lessons here also of boldness
of enterprise and sacrifice, simplicity of teaching
in the essentials of faith, confidence in the inde-
structible power of Christian progress, which the
Church has learnt and embodied in her home
life.

V. My tale, so far as I can tell it, is now
told.^ In brief and necessarily imperfect outline, I

^ For a more detailed account see Appendix III.

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 207

have tried to give you some idea of that great
threefold mission of expansion which God has laid
upon us. There is much reason why we should
ponder it very seriously. For not only have we
to acknowledge that our English Christianity, as a
whole, is still far, very far, from adequacy of resolu-
tion and sacrifice in this great work ; but, as the
story has gone on, it must have forced on us the
conviction, that — except perhaps in the first sphere
of the colonial expansion — the great Church of
England, so richly endowed by God's goodness with
wealth, material and spiritual, has failed to rise
adequately to the call which God's Providence has
so plainly and solemnly uttered ; nay, that she has
not maintained the spiritual leadership, which ought
to belong to her in the general advance of English
Christianity.

What, we ask anxiously, is the reason of this
shortcoming ? Not certainly any inherent defect in
her own faith ; for that rests on the living Word o(
God. Not defect in her constitution ; for this is, we
believe. Apostolical in its great essential lines, and
unfettered by irrevocable decisions and claims, in
respect of practical variety and development. Not (I
think) any want of confidence in our own principles
and our o\vn mission ; for never, I suppose, were these
more fully studied and grasped, than in our own

2o8 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

time. Not defect in energy and enthusiasm for the
kingdom of God ; for, in defiance of many adverse
influences of the age, this century, under God's
blessing, has been eminently an age of Church
revivals, which have to some extent (as we have
seen) overflowed with the missionary work. Not
want of the materials for knowledge and study of
the opportunities, difficulties, conditions, of our right
relation to the various races of the world ; for never
did so great a flood of information on this subject,
in its general and in its religious aspect, pour upon
us from all quarters. No ! the real cause lies for
the Church, as for the nation, in the failure of the
great mass of our people even to understand the
extraordinary greatness and complexity, difficulty
and glory, of the work laid upon us, and to feel
adequately that the duty and privilege of taking
some part in it, by thought and labour, by offering
and prayer, are integral parts of living Christianity
for us all, and that only by universal energy can it
possibly be done. Here, as so often, it is want of
thought, rather than want of heart, which is at the
root of failure.

There arc, I trust, some signs of awakening in
our Church to a truer idea of that solidarity of the
world-wide Anglican Communion, to which allusion
has so often been made. Each successive meeting

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 209

of the Lambeth Conference indicates at once the
growth of that Communion in extent, and the
stronger sense of the Hving unity which binds it
together, and brings an infinite variety of thought
and character and experience to bear upon its
counsels and its corporate action.^ Less than thirty
years ago, the Conference began with much appre-
hension and hesitation ; now we can hardly imagine
how Church unity could exist without it ; in the
future I can hardly doubt that it will develop more
and more of a true Synodical character. As in the
nation, so in the Church, the extension in length and
breadth has brought with it the better extension in
depth and height — in depth of fundamental principle,
and height of noble aspiration.

With this there comes naturally a larger concep-
tion of missionary duty. I see, if I mistake not,
a growing strength and thoughtfulness and far-
sightedness in the work of our existing missionary
agencies, especially of those University missions,
which most deeply interest us in this place. I trace
everywhere a fuller reliance on native Christianity
and native Ministry, and therefore a truer idea of

^ In 1867 there were but 144 bishops to invite ; of these 76 attended,
and in England one archbishop and several bishops held aloof. In
1877 there were no English abstentions ; 173 bishops were invited, and
100 attended. In 1888, invitations were issued to 209 bishops, and of
these nearly 150 attended.

P

210 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.

what our own function is in the work of God. I
see, as notably in the great Missionary Conference
of last year, not merely a fuller and franker pro-
clamation to the world of the whole scope of the
missionary work, in all its latest developments of
extension and opportunity, of difficulty and failure,
in its relation to extraneous forces of help or an-
tagonism ; but the growth of a conviction that, in
some way, the Church, as a body, must take up the
work, using and harmonizing and supplementing the
voluntary agencies, which have laboured so long and
with such abundant blessing. I trace, if I mistake
not, in the leaders of public opinion, a growing
respect for missionary work, and a far clearer idea
of its dominant influence on the advance of true
civilization, and even of the national power, which
subserves it. All these signs induce a confident
hope that, as the beginning of this century was our
great era of missionary revival, so its close may
herald an even greater and more general advance.
It is well, for how else can our Church have the
blessing of Him who has given her this great
mission ? How else can she vindicate, even before
the world, the position of national leadership, which
she is bound to claim ?

But if this is to be so, suffer me to urge that
there should be some leadership of idea and of

IV THE MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 211

practical sympathy here. First, because a great
University is one chief power in that higher edu-
cation of public opinion, which is the one thing
needful. Next, because it is the academic home
of those who should be, and will be, among the
future leaders of our English Church and nation
in these critical times, which, because they are
critical, are times of glorious opportunity. It is,
as I have already reminded you, from this pulpit
that some of the noblest missionary appeals have
been uttered in this century. It is from the Chair
of History in Cambridge — by the voice of one whose
loss the University is at this very time deploring —
that lessons on the true expansion of England have
been read to this generation, which are acknow-
ledged to have made a new epoch in our conception
of national glory and responsibility. I have but
attempted to enforce and apply these lessons, as best
I may, to the growth of our national Christianity
through our national Church ; which, like England
herself, certainly occupies an unique position of
mission for the extension of the kingdom of God.
It is the glory of our ancient Universities that
through all the ages they have stamped with a
Christian impress, and animated by a Christian
spirit, all the highest and boldest thought of
England. Amidst all changes — themselves changes

212 HULSEAN LECTURES lect. iv

of expansion in every aspect of academic life — I
cannot for a moment believe that they have lost any-
thing of that ancient glory, I only wish that I could
bring home to you anything of the sense of urgency
in this great matter, and of the longing to see our
Church awakened to it, which some experience has
wrought into my own mind.

To that spirit here, at once old and new, my
appeal has been very earnestly, if very imperfectly,
made. And now, what shall I more say ? What can
be added to the silent eloquence of that record of fact,
which is the most conclusive argument and the most
stirring exhortation ? If it shall contribute, however
slightly, to inform and rouse public opinion on this
great subject, which is thought to be hackneyed, just
because it is really unknown, — if it shall stir in any
one soul here the spirit of inquiry, sympathy, resolu-
tion, sacrifice, — then, by God's blessing, and through
the strength made perfect in human weakness, it will
not have been set forth altogether in vain.

APPENDIX I

(To Lecture II)

OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE GROWTH
OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES

It may be well — at the cost of some repetition — to
subjoin a somewhat more detailed outline of this
remarkable growth, which is mainly the work of the
last hundred years. For, while abundant materials
exist for its study, it is not known, as it should be
known, to English Churchmen ; and, where it is
known, it is seldom viewed as a whole, in the relation
of its various parts to one another, and in the rela-
tion of the whole to the corresponding growth in
vitality and influence of the Church at home.

The history of this growth for the last two cen-
turies is substantially written in the Records of the
old Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of
which an invaluable Digest has recently been given
to the world.^ For, although from the beginning of

^ For certain portions of this sphere information may be found in the
admirable Church Missionary Atlas ; but the main work of that Society
is in the other two fields. The Reports of the Board of Missions are
also most valuable, as looking at the subject from a more independent
and comprehensive point of view.

214 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

our colonization our religious duty, both to our own
colonists, and to the races with which they came in
contact, had been to some degree recognised by both
Church and State, and although it was under the
Commonwealth that the first Society was formed for
" the Propagation of the Gospel in New England,"
yet the steady and continuous extension of the
colonial Church dates from the time ( 1 6th June 1 70 1 )
when the Charter of our own Society was granted
by William III., after earnest consideration of the
subject by a Committee of the Lower House of
Convocation, and by the authorities of the still
older Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge.
In it the Crown acknowledged its duty " to promote
the glory of God by the instruction of our people "
(English and heathen) " in the Christian religion " ;
and the Church, acting by the voluntary energy of
its clergy and people, expressed in the seal and
motto of the Society the sense of its mission, like
that of St. Paul, to " come over and help " both the
English settlers and the native races. Beginning
gradually and under many difficulties, the Society
was able by God's blessing to record at the end of
its first forty years that " near a hundred churches
had been built," " many congregations set up," " great
multitudes of negroes and Indians brought over to
the Christian faith," and *' seventy missionaries con-
stantly employed in the further service of the Gospel."
Since that time its resources have increased about
thirty-fold, and its operations have extended over the
world-wide field of English dominion and influence.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 215

Many other Societies have since followed its lead,
chiefly those of the various Nonconformist |Com-
munions ; and although the work of our own Church
Missionary Society is properly directed to the con-
version of the heathen, its operations have naturally
overflowed in some degree into the colonial sphere.

Still it is mainly through the work of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, that in
this sphere the Church of England has put forth
her evangelistic energy towards her own scattered
children, and as she has " freely received," is ready
" freely to give." But this voluntary agency has, of
course, been but one element, although, indeed, the
most active and aggressive element, in the advance
of the kingdom of God. For in various methods
and degrees, as will be seen, the State in the early
times of colonization always recognised, by some kind
of " Establishment," a religious duty of the nation
as such, at any rate to the English settlers, especially
those engaged in the civil and military service of the
Crown. Of that material support but little now re-
mains. In deference to the cry for religious equality,
it has been gradually withdrawn, often, in the first
instance at any rate, to the great hardship of these
young and struggling communities. But its influence
for good upon the earlier times of growth still re-
mains in effect. As the colonies, moreover, gained
strength and resource, and advanced towards self-
government, they began to do much for their own
spiritual needs. Here also there was at first a
similar aid given by the colonial governments.

2i6 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

either to the Church of England alone, or to it in
conjunction with other chief denominations. This
also has mostly passed away. But the colonial
Churches have now been able to draw upon the
resources of more settled and richer communities
through voluntary contribution ; and, though with
continual strain, to be not only self-sustaining, but
able to take up the work of evangelization to the
faces around them. As in civil, so in ecclesiastical
life, the problems which are before us, and the
energies by which they have to be solved, are repro-
duced in simpler and more vivid reality in these
younger communities.

I. The work in the first instance began in the
North American colonies and the West Indian
Settlements.

The North American colonies differed greatly
in their origin and religious condition. The old
colony of Virginia was founded under distinctly
Church auspices; and by 1612 it was laid out in
parishes, churches were built, and maintenance for
the clergy assured. A similar condition of things
prevailed to some extent in North and South Caro-
lina, founded in 1662 under a charter, alike "for
the enlargement of His Majesty's dominions," and
for " the Propagation of the Christian faith." On
the other hand, the colony of New England, which
soon took the lead in population and energy, was
essentially Puritan and Independent in its origin,
and showed itself absolutely intolerant towards all
other religious communions. Maryland, settled under

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 217

Lord Baltimore in 1634, was mainly Roman Catholic,
and in Pennsylvania Quakerism was predominant,
although in both toleration was from the beginning
extended to all. In New York, taken from Holland
in 1664, the Dutch element (swelled by influx of
persecuted Protestants from France, Belgium, and
Germany) was Calvinistic ; the English settlers were
of all sects ; and no establishment of the Church
was in the first instance attempted. Thus from the
beginning the religious diversity, still characteristic
of the great Republic, was impressed on these grow-
ing and vigorous English societies, gradually occupy-
ing a vast territory, and subjugating, or dispossessing
and destroying, the native races. Necessarily it
intensified the natural and inevitable difficulties of
evangelization, which in themselves were sufficiently
serious — the scattering of the English population,
always pushing out new outposts of colonization
far away from existing religious ministration ; the
hindrances of frequent Indian wars and massacres ;
the complications and inconsistencies incident to
negro slavery ; the constant jealousy and frequent
opposition to any Christian work of ministration and
education among the lower races ; the tendency to
lawlessness and demoralization, inevitable in the early
stages of irregular growth.

It will be obvious that the problem of Church
extension presented itself in these different spheres
under greatly different conditions. But, except in
Virginia and the Carolinas, the work of our own
Church was carried on under serious difficulties.

2l8

HULSEAN LECTURES

material and social, and great discouragement. It
was (so to speak) on a foreign soil, and had little or
nothing of the spiritual leadership which belonged
to it at home. In 1761 a return made to the Bishop
of London ^ showed in —

New England

New York

New Jersey .

Pennsylvania

Maryland

Virginia

North Carolina

South Carolina and Georgia

Population.

435,000

100,000

100,000

280, 000

60,000

80,000

36,000

28,000

Church People.

40,000
25,000
16,000
65,000
36,000
60,000
18,000
20,000

280,000

Still, however, the Records of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel show that the work
went steadily on, in both its pastoral and evangelistic
aspects ; and it was true to the traditions of the
Church of England in its devotion to the extension
of education, not only in primary schools, but in
higher schools and colleges, such as " King's College,"
founded and endowed with land in New York in
1754, which is now, as "Columbia College," one
of the great University Institutions of the United
States,

From the first, moreover, there was an earnest
effort made to deal not only with the English settlers,
but with the subject -races, the Indian aborigines,

^ Quoted in Wilberforce's History of the American Churchy p. 154.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 219

and the negro slaves. It had to reckon with strong
forces of antagonism in the secular life. It was hard
to witness for Christian brotherhood in the constant
struggle of aggression and warfare, through which
the Indian tribes were dying out before the white
man, and dying hard, with a savage resistance. It
was hard to witness for Christian equality in face of
the legal relation of master to slave, always inhuman
in idea, often inhuman in practice. Even in American
Christianity generally there was much tendency
to commit the spiritual anachronism of justifying
slavery under the Christian dispensation by Old
Testament precedents, and to excuse the inherent
wrong of slavery by real or supposed results of
advantage to the slave. On the whole, however, it
would seem that the witness was faithfully and not
ineffectually borne ; although its noble inconsistency
with the institutions of secular life necessarily
created jealousy, even when it was not met by
direct antagonism and persecution. In our Church
the religious difficulty of slavery was especially felt,
because the chief centres of her influence were in the
slave-states of the South.

Still, in face of all hindrances, some real advance
was made. Even among the Indian tribes a native
Christianity sprang up, although it could hardly be
said to have flourished, except in some special
localities. The negro population was substantially
Christianized ; and its Christianity, if it was not
free from superstition and exclusive fanaticism, had
certainly more fervour and reality. The time when,

220 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

not without terrible penalty, the force of Christian
principle was to wipe out the sin of the past by
destroying slavery was yet in the distant future.

But besides these difficulties, which attached to
all forms of English Christianity, there was one which
was peculiar to our Church, and which it brought
upon itself The fatal error was made of keeping
our Church in America a mere dependency, refusing
it an Episcopate of its own, and so not only
obliging all its ministers to seek ordination 3000
miles away, but preventing it from striking root as
an indigenous and independent Church. Efforts
were indeed made against this unhappy and inde-
fensible policy, by those who saw that " an Episcopal
Church without Episcopacy was a contradiction
in terms." Archbishop Laud first secured in 1634
the extension to America of the authority of the
Bishop of London ; but, unsatisfied with this,
proposed in 1638 a Bishop for New England. After
the Restoration, a Bishop of Virginia, with authority
over all the American provinces, was actually
nominated, but never sent. In 1703, in view of
supposed legal difficulties in the way of more direct
action, it was proposed, on petition from the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, to pro-
ceed under the old Suffragan Act, and " dispose of
the Bishops of Colchester, Dover, Nottingham, and
Hull for service in foreign parts " ; and after much
discussion, the proposal was so far virtually accepted,
that provision was made in 1 7 1 i for the erection
of two bishoprics for the mainland and two for the

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 221

West Indian Islands. But the death of Queen Anne
stopped the whole scheme, and, in spite of the most
earnest representations at home, and memorials from
the American clergy, the advisers of the new
Hanoverian dynasty utterly refused to entertain it.
In despair of action by authority, some of the
American clergy had recourse to the nonjuring
Bishops; and in 1723 the Rev. J. Talbot and the
Rev. R. Welton appear to have been consecrated
by them as Bishops for America, but to have
exercised hardly any Episcopal functions. The
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel bore
its continual witness against an anomalous position,
which Archbishop Seeker described as " without
parallel in the Christian world." In vain Bishop
Sherlock protested against the intolerant opposition
of New England Nonconformity ; in vain the great
Bishop Butler drew out a scheme of extreme modera-
tion, pointing out that no coercive power, no inter-
ference with civil authority, no maintenance at the
expense of the colonies, were claimed ; in vain
Archbishop Seeker declared that nothing was desired
but what was virtually " a complete toleration for the
Church of England in the country," and Bishop
Lowth that the Church was deprived of " the common
benefit, which all Christian Churches in all ages, and
in every part of the world, have freely enjoyed."
Indifference or timidity in the Government, and
vehement Nonconformist opposition to the very idea
that " Episcopacy should rear her mitred front among
the children" of the Pilgrim Fathers, carried the day

222 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

against manifest reason and justice through all the
period of the English connection.

Then came the great storm of the Disruption. It
fell heavily on the English Church in America, partly,
indeed, because its members were largely loyalist, but
mainly because this fatal policy caused it to be looked
upon as a mere English dependency, and, as such,
incapable of a patriotic acceptance of American
independence. Almost all the missionary clergy of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
(seventy -seven in number) had to retire, or were
driven out ; many of the clergy and thousands
of the laity of the Church were forced to take refuge
in the provinces which still remained British. Thus
in Virginia itself, which had been the strongest
centre of our Church life, there were at the outbreak
of the Revolutionary War 164 churches and 91
clergy; at its close only 28 clergy remained, 95
parishes were totally, and 34 partially forsaken, and
only 38 in working order. It was indeed a dark
and troubled time ; but it was " the darkness before
the dawn " of its independent life.

For, as soon as the tie to England was severed,
the Church was driven by the very force of circum-
stances to complete its independent organization.
But the anomalous position, in which it had been so
long placed, had told dangerously on the opinion and
feeling of Churchmen as to Episcopacy itself.^ There

^ An interesting sketch of this troubled period of transition will be
found in Bishop Perry's History of the Constitution of the American
Church (the Bohlen Lectures for 1890), published by Whittaker, New
York, in 1891.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 223

were some who were inclined to depreciate it, if
claiming to be anything more than a superintendency
for convenience and good order. Even among those
who held firmly to it on principle, there was difference
of opinion, whether the Church should first reorganize
itself by free Convention, and then seek the Episcopal
succession from England, or whether it should first
obtain its Bishops, and then under their guidance
proceed to reorganization. There was, moreover,
some conflict between the assertion of a large measure
of independence for the Church in each State, if not
in each diocese, and the sense that the whole Church
should bind itself together and proceed as one body.
In some important points there was an even more
serious conflict between the growth of a spirit of
innovation and latitudinarianism, and the attachment
to the old Catholic principles of faith and Church
order. Everywhere men were anxiously considering
what ought to be done, and what could be done.

Finally the clergy of Connecticut cut the Gordian
knot by taking the first step for themselves, electing
the Rev. Samuel Seabury as their first Bishop, and
sending him to seek consecration, first from the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and then, on failing in this
application, from the Episcopal Church of Scotland.
By the Scottish Bishops he was consecrated on 14th
November 1784. Meanwhile, the advocates of more
cautious and united action had met in General
Convention at Philadelphia in 1785, taken steps for
Church organization and revision of the Prayer-Book,
and, choosing Dr. White of Philadelphia and Dr.

224 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Proovost of New York as future Bishops, requested
consecration for them from the Archbishop of
Canterbury. After some correspondence, and the
withdrawal at the request of the Enghsh Bishops of
certain proposals for serious alteration of the Prayer-
Book, the request was granted ; and with formal per-
mission from the Crown and under Act of Parliament
the two were consecrated at Lambeth on 4th February
1787.

All this delay and hesitation had had one most
disastrous effect. In 1784 John Wesley, who had
been in former days a missionary of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Georgia,
resolved, not without misgiving, and against the
serious remonstrance of his brother Charles, to
ordain Dr. Coke to be a " Bishop " in America, on
the express though insufficient ground, that, as there
were there " no Bishops with legal jurisdiction," he
" violated no order, and invaded no man's right."
The step so taken at once showed how the Methodist
body in England was drifting into that position of
separation which it at first so earnestly disclaimed,
and in America it determined the separate existence
of the great " Episcopal Methodist " Communion.

There was, moreover, not inconsiderable danger
of disunion, and even conflict, between the repre-
sentatives of the Scottish and English Episcopate,
aggravated by some antagonism of ecclesiastical
opinion and party. But at last — largely by the
wisdom and conciliatory spirit of Bishop White — all
were brought together. By the General Conven-

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 225

tion of 1789 the lines of Church organization were
laid down ; the American Prayer- Book established,
in substantial agreement with the English, but with
important variations ; a complete Synodical system
established ; and the Church launched on its career
of independent life, at once a daughter and a sister
Church to the Church of England.

It does not belong properly to our subject to
trace its further history in detail. It is sufficient
to note that from that moment a steady progress
began, at first slow and difficult, but soon passing
into a continuous and remarkable growth, fairly
corresponding to that marvellous increase of the
great Republic itself, which, from some four millions
at the time of the Disruption, has brought it to more
than sixty millions at the last census. That growth,
moreover, belongs mainly to the last half-century.
In the first fifty years the bishoprics of the Church
only rose to sixteen, and belonged almost entirely
to the older Eastern States, from New York to
Chicago ; in the next, the sixteen had increased
to seventy-five, the Church organization following
the extension of population to the West, and,
not content with filling the whole of the great
territory at home, sending out six missionary
bishops, to meet and work in harmony with our
own Missionary Episcopate.^ At the present
moment the Church has some 4300 clergy, and
about three millions and a half of professed mem-
bers. The adverse circumstances of its origin and
1 The full list is given in the S.P.G. Digest at p. 757,
Q

226 HULSEAN LECTURES aIt.

development have indeed told seriously upon it, and
the loss of the Episcopal Methodists — now one of
the largest of the religious Communions in America
— has robbed it of those, especially of the great
middle class, who should be its members. In point
of numbers, accordingly, it is far from equal, either
to the Roman Catholic or to the greater Protestant
Communions. But its influence over the education
and thought and culture of the country, as also over
its wealth and power, is far beyond its proportionate
numbers, and is, indeed, one of the dominant forces
in public opinion and Christian faith — growing of
late, moreover, by common acknowledgment, with
great rapidity. Its Synodical government is singu-
larly full and vigorous,^ and it has shown in respect
of Church policy (as notably on the great question
of Home Reunion) a remarkable spirit of enterprise
and large-heartedness, which give it a leading place
in the Anglican Communion.

At the same time it seems clear, that the sense of
unity between it and the Mother-Church has tended
continually to increase in strength and fervour. The
revision of its Prayer-Book in i 892 has in many points
indicated a reversion to the old English forms, from
which it had previously diverged. The free loyalty
towards what is rapidly becoming the Patriarchal
authority of the See of Canterbury is strongly

^ It only seems to need some lesser aggregations of the dioceses into
provinces, with Provincial Synods, under the General Convention,
which — including more than sixty Bishops and a very large body of
clerical and lay representatives — must be somewhat unwieldy for any
detailed work.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 227

shown at the great Lambeth Conferences. To the
old Missionary Society it has deh'ghted to testify its
affectionate respect and gratitude. At a Missionary
Conference in 1878 the Bishop of Long Island,
speaking as a representative of the Church, greeted
" the venerable Society as the first builder of our
ecclesiastical foundations," and " laid at her feet the
golden sheaves of the harvest from her planting " ;
and in 1884, at the Centenary of the American
Episcopate, the General Convention repeated the
acknowledgment of its service, in making " the
Church of England the mother of Churches, as
England herself has become the mother of
nations."

Certainly in this — the first and greatest offshoot
from the parent tree — there is much of present
vitality and of future promise. If ever the Anglican
Communion is to become, as has been prophesied,
a future link of greater unity in Christendom, it may
well be that one chief advance towards this " consum-
mation, devoutly to be wished," may find its place in
the extraordinary religious diversity of the great
Republic.

II. The next field of this Church expansion
is to be found in the great territory of British North
America ; and here also the political and religious
condition of the different colonies has greatly
varied.

The possession of the oldest colonies, Newfound-
land and Nova Scotia (discovered by Cabot in
1497), was long disputed between England and

228 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

France, and became ours finally at the Peace of
Utrecht in 17 13. Subsequently Prince Edward's
Island, Cape Breton, and New Brunswick were
united with them. The population was naturally a
mixed one, although the English element soon pre-
dominated. The province of Quebec or " Lower
Canada " was substantially French in origin and
population, and in it Roman Catholicism was
strongly established. Conquered by England in
1763, it had at first few English inhabitants;^ but
the number was greatly increased in 1784 by
immigration of loyalists from the revolted colonies,
and in 1789 formed a not inconsiderable minorit}^,
about one - fifth of the whole. Still the French
population and character are strongly predominant,
and the Roman Catholic Church, protected in its
endowments and privileges by British law, is com-
pletely in the ascendant. On the other hand, the
rival province of Ontario or " Upper Canada " is
distinctly English, and, although later in origin, is
rapidly outstripping the older province in population
and prosperity.

These are the old colonies, which have been
settled, and in various degrees prospering, for many
generations. But the growth of the new colonies of
the North-West belongs almost entirely to the last
half- century. The vast territory, once called
Rupert's Land, and now " Manitoba and the North-
West Territory," was granted to Prince Rupert and

' It was estimated that in 17S3 only "746 English Protestant
families " were to be found in the province of Canada.

1 GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 229

the Hudson Bay Company in 1670 ; but for some
two centuries it was but a great hunting-ground,
with only a few EngHsh traders and a scattered
Indian population. Now, opened out by the
Canadian Pacific Railway, it has become a great
agricultural country, and the chief home of English
immigration — having already at least a quarter
of a million of inhabitants, and increasing rapidly
every day. Farther away still to the west, British
Columbia, which only became a Crown Colony in
I 849 — thanks, first, to a rapid increase of popula-
tion through the discovery of gold, and next, to its
remarkable position as the terminus of the Canadian
Pacific, and as a natural emporium of trade with
China, Japan, and Australasia, — has now more than
100,000 people, and is increasing fast in prosperity
and strength. In both these new colonies, although
they contain settlers of all nations, the English
element is absolutely supreme. In them and in
Canada there is still a native Indian population of
about 120,000 — a remnant of the old inhabitants
— now well cared for by the Government, and (it
is said) loyal and prosperous, and not any longer
dwindling in numbers.

The Colonies, thus differing in history and char-
acter, and growing each in its own way, have since
1840 been formed into a great federation (the
" Dominion "), with the exception of Newfoundland
— an exception which in all probability will soon be
done away ; and material intercommunication by
the Canadian Pacific Railway, which made such

230 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

federation possible, is welding it more and more
closely together. Without the extraordinary energy
and wealth, the vast population and cosmopolitan
character, of the United States, the Dominion has
evidently a sturdy and vigorous life, and a promise
of far larger growth in the future. The population
is far less mixed, and, except in the province of
Quebec, it is substantially British. It is now nearly
5,000,000, and increasing every day.^ Accordingly
the British character is more thoroughly preserved,
under perhaps simpler and more elastic social condi-
tions, than in the old country, and in spite of the
attractive force of the great Republic, free loyalty to
the British flag is a dominant force in it.

In this new and vigorous community it is obvious
that the problem of Church expansion presents
itself again under very many different aspects. In

^ The Census returns for the Dominion of Canada show an increase
from 3,695,002 in 1871 to 4,324,810 in 1881, and to 4,833,239 in 1S91.
The distribution is as follows : —

i83i.

1891.

Ontario

1,926,862

2,114,321

Quebec .

1,359,027

1,488,535

Nova Scotia

440,572

450,396

New Brunswick

321,233

321,263

Manitoba

62,260

152,506

British Columbia

49,456

98,173

Prince Edward's Island

108,891

109,078

The Territories (in the N. W. ) .

56,446

98,967

The P'rench-speaking population was in 1891, 1,404,974, of which
1,186,246 were in the province of Quebec.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 231

all, almost from their first beginning, the missionary
energy of the Church, chiefly represented by the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, has been
at work. In most cases some support was at first
given by the civil power in the older colonies, and
" Clergy and School Reserves " of land set apart for
the maintenance of religion and education, which
have now been mostly confiscated for secular uses.
The history has in many points much resembled
that of the first colonies. But it has features
of its own. On the one hand, the progress of
Christianity has not been complicated by the
necessity of dealing with the negro race, except to a
small extent, and under little difficulty, in Bermuda ;
and the relations to the Indian population have been
more friendly and peaceful. On the other hand, the
dominance of Roman Catholicism in the province of
Quebec, and in less degree in some of the other
provinces originally French, causes great internal
division and religious antagonism ; and under it the
progress of our own Church suffers much dis-
couragement and hindrance. In the newer colonies
of the North -West, moreover, the comparatively
sparse population, scattered over a vast territory, is
singularly hard to reach, and the Church there still
needs and receives not inconsiderable aid from
home.

In this sphere, happily, the completion of the
Church organization by the Episcopate came earlier
in the history. In answer to a memorial from the
clergy of Nova Scotia, the first bishopric was there

2Z2 IIULSEAN LECTURES app.

established in 1787 (the year of the first con-
secration from Lambeth for the United States),
in the person of Bishop Inglis, himself a sturdy-
American loyalist, driven by persecution from
Trinity Church in New York ; and his charge for a
time extended, not merely in name, but in a very
real activity, over the whole of British North
America. As usual, the introduction of the Episco-
pate marked a new epoch of progress, in spite of the
discouragement of the withdrawal of material support
by the civil power. The first extension of the
Episcopate was to the struggling Church of Quebec
in 1793, in the midst of the French Roman Catholic
population, with but six clergy ministering to a
comparatively few English people. Then there
was, strangely enough, a pause for more than forty
years ; till in 1839 the old colony of Newfoundland,
needing for many reasons special superintendence,
received its first bishop, and the See of Toronto was
planted in the rapidly growing and thoroughly
English colony of Upper Canada. From this time
onward the advance has been rapid. The dioceses
of the old provinces have been divided ; the growth
of the new provinces was met by the creation of the
See of Rupert's Land in i 849, and of British Columbia
in 1859 ; and these dioceses also have been divided
again and again, till at the present time there are
twenty-one Sees in British North America. The
creation of each is at once a sign and a means of
Church advance — in the Eastern and more settled
provinces more pastoral, in the new provinces of

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 233

the West more distinctly evangelistic, both to the
European population and to the still remaining
Indian tribes, and to a mixed population of foreign
immigrants. Its ministrations are carried on in
seventeen languages, and have to deal with five
European colonial races, and twenty-seven Indian
races, besides negroes and Chinese.

In the Church thus advancing, full Synodical
action of clergy and laity under Episcopal presi-
dency has everywhere grown up with a very real
and vigorous power. Naturally it began as
diocesan, but by degrees the precedent of civil
federation was followed in the Church ; most of the
dioceses are now united in the two provinces of
Canada and Rupert's Land, and the few which as yet
lie outside these provinces, form a part with them
of a General Synod of the whole Dominion, formed
in 1893.^ It is notable that this branch of the
Colonial Church has been the first to assume for its
metropolitan the title of " Archbishop," implying
its independence and self-government, although pre-
serving a loyal deference to the Patriarchal See of
Canterbury. Like others, it has its own Board of
Missions to the Indians, working in harmony with

^ The ecclesiastical province of Canada includes the dioceses of
Nova Scotia, Quebec, Toronto, Fredericton. Montreal, Huron,
Ontario, Algoma, and Niagara. The province of Rupert's Land, the
dioceses of Rupert's Land, Moosonee, Saskatchewan, ^L^ckenzie River,
Qu'Appelle, Athabasca, Calgary, and Selkirk. Outside these the
dioceses of British Columbia, Caledonia, and New Westminster join
with them in the General Synod. Newfoundland alone follows the
civil community in holding a position of isolation, which is most
anomalous and can hardly be permanent.

234 IIULSEAN LECTURES app.

both the great Enghsh Missionary Societies, which
in different ways assist in the work.

The strength of the Church varies greatly in the
different colonies — highest in Newfoundland and the
province of Ontario, lowest in the province of Quebec/
But, taking it as a whole, it cannot be said to hold
its right place of spiritual leadership. It is out-
stripped, not only by the Roman Catholic, but by
some Protestant Communions. Of 5,000,000 in-
habitants the professed Church members are but
little above 730,000, ministered to by about 1450
ordained clergy in the twenty-one dioceses.^ Why
this has been so, it is hard to say. The difficulties
are not unlike those which have been encountered in
the United States ; in less degree, delay in ade-
quately completing an indigenous Episcopate has
kept back the growth of independent life ; the
presence of the strong French and Roman Catholic
element has added a peculiar difficulty. Certainly
there has been, and still is, much energy shown by
our own great Missionary Societies, mainly the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which
employs even now more than 200 missionaries,
and has expended a million and a half on
the evangelistic work. The character of the

^ In Newfoundland about 40 per cent, in Ontario about 20 per cent,
in Quebec only 6 per cent of the whole population.

" The Census of 1891 for the Dominion, excluding Newfoundland,
gives for the Roman Catholic Church 1,992,067 (of whom 1,291,708 are
in the province of Quebec) ; for the Church of England 646,059 (of
whom only 75,472 are in that province) ; for the Presbyterians 754,193 ;
and f(jr the jNlcthodists 839,815.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 235

Canadian Church, Hke that of the Dominion
itself, has been marked in a high degree by strong
earnestness, a spirit of hard work and self-sacrifice,
and much practical vigour and endurance under
difficulty. It has in it what should be the elements
of much future progress. While we recognise it as
a sturdy and vigorous offshoot, we cannot but
earnestly desire for it a far larger growth.

III. The work of Church extension in our
West Indian Settlements began at nearly the same
time as in North America, but of course under very
different conditions ; for it had to deal with a
comparatively few English settlers, and a large
negro slave population.

The islands came into our possession at very
different periods, and under different conditions, from
the beginning of the seventeenth century onward.
Mostly discovered by Columbus in 1498, becoming
our own, partly by conquest from Spain, partly by
settlement, they were made for generations a
battlefield between France and England, taken and
retaken again and again, and finally became our
undisputed possession at various periods in the
eighteenth century. The area of all together is
not great ; but their fertility and beauty are extra-
ordinary, and the population dense. Barbados and
the other Windward Islands, with Tobago and
Trinidad, have now a population of about 550,000 ;
Antig-ua and the other Leeward Islands about
I 28,000 ; the great island of Jamaica (conquered by
Cromwell in 1655) about 640,000 ; and the Bahamas

236 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

about 52,000. Closely connected with them are
our settlements on the mainland, in British Honduras
and Panama, having about 67,000 people, and
British Guiana having 300,000. All the islands —
from which the native inhabitants died out, or were
deported to South America under the Spaniards
— are now densely populated by the negro race,
imported by the slave-trade,^ and having rapidly
increased, both under slavery and since the Eman-
cipation. On the mainland the population is more
mixed, including, besides the Europeans, both the
negro and the native Indian elements.

The mission of our English Christianity there was
not, therefore, as in the North American colonies,
to great masses of our own people, with only a
small remnant of the native races ; but it represented
our first effort for the evangelization of a large
heathen population, over whom a comparatively few
Europeans held absolute sway. The slave-trade,
while it flourished largely in English hands, always
excused itself, with more or less sincerity, by the
plea that through it a race, in itself barbarian and
heathen, was brought within the range of civilization
and Christianity. Accordingly, from the beginning
of our dominion, provision was made by the civil
authority for the extension of the Church by a
system of " Establishment," which still in part
remains, though it has been gradually diminished,
and in many regions abolished. The Church, so

'^ In Trinidad there has been some importation of coolies from India,
and some Chinese immigration.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 237

established, recognised the education and conversion
of the negroes as its primary charge, and in spite
both of some jealousy from their white masters and
of the obvious inconsistency between the legal view
of the slaves as mere chattels, and the recognition of
them as " men and brothers " in the Gospel, laboured
with no small success on their behalf, and un-
doubtedly implanted in them a Christianity, perhaps
too largely emotional, and not free from lingering
superstition, but nevertheless showing much vitality
and strength. Meanwhile the free missionary
energy of our Church in England, chiefly represented
by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
was ready to aid the Church there, especially in
the great crisis of Emancipation, and to give it
support, when in some quarters the withdrawal
of State aid brought upon it a time of struggle
and difficulty. The result of these labours is
seen in the fact that the negro race as a whole
has been Christianized, and that at this moment,
of some 1,400,000 souls, 600,000 are returned as
members of our own Church alone.

The work was greatly aided by the establishment
of what was the first strictly missionary college of
the Church of England. Codrington College was
founded by the will of General Codrington in 1703,
under the charge of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel — " as a nursery for the Propagation
of the Gospel, providing a never- failing supply
of labourers for the harvest of God." It was,
especially for the time, a remarkable foundation

238 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

— anticipating much of what we now see to be
needed for evangelization of the lower races. For
it provided for " a convenient number of Professors
and Scholars to be maintained, all under vows of
poverty and chastity and obedience, who shall be
obliged to practise Phisick and Chirurgery as well
as Divinity," " that they may minister both to body
and soul." In 17 14, after some legal delays and
difficulties, it was opened, and from that day to this
has done invaluable work as a school and a training
college for white and coloured students. It may be
noted that the first objects of its care were the
negroes, some hundreds in number, attached to the
estates, who were soon educated and Christianized,
" treated with much humanity and tenderness," and
gradually emancipated, before the general law of
Emancipation was passed in 1838, with a view "to
afford an example which may lead to the abolition
of slavery without danger to life and property." It
is on record that in 1 840, while the emancipated
" labouring population was on many estates wayward
and refractory," the Codrington negroes " were
steady, manageable, cheerful and industrious."

The same error was here also unhappily com-
mitted in withholding far too long an indigenous
Episcopate. The bishoprics of Jamaica and Bar-
bados were not created till 1824; and after this
there was a delay of nearly twenty years, before any
further extension took place. Subsequently, as in
other fields of the colonial Church, but somewhat
more slowly, the full development of Church organiza-

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 239

tion has been carried out. Out of the diocese of
Barbados were formed the dioceses of Antigua and
Guiana in 1842, Trinidad in 1872, and Windward
Islands in 1878; out of the diocese of Jamaica
those of Nassau in 1861 and British Honduras in
1883, and, in some connection with these, the Mis-
sionary Bishopric of Falkland Islands — the home
of the " South American Mission" — in 1869. All
these, except the last, are united in the " Province of
the West Indies " under a Primate, and all have
their diocesan and provincial Synodical action.

The great question, of course, which here met
and troubled the work of evangelization, was the
question of negro slavery. That slavery as such is
flagrantly inconsistent with the fundamental prin-
ciples of Christian brotherhood, is clear to us now.
But in itself, or in modified form of serfship, it has
run through all the earlier stages of human civiliza-
tion ; for it is simply an extreme form of the sacrifice
of the weak to the strong, which is the survival in
humanity of the " struggle for existence " ; and there
are even cases — of which the African slave-trade
furnished an example — in which it superseded the
yet extremer form of slaughter and extermination.
Nor is it difficult to see that, especially where it was
tempered by noble inconsistencies of humanity and
Christian sympathy, it might have in practice some
apparent compensations of good, even to the subject-
race, which misled good and thoughtful men. In
the West Indies, moreover, it could put forward the
plea, not only of apparent necessity, but of a pre-

240 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

scription of some three hundred years, from the days
when Hawkins first opened the EngHsh slave-trade
in the Ehzabethan era. It was obvious that only
by the progress of the true "humanity" of self-
sacrifice of the strong for the weak, which has to
fight against the lower spirit of selfishness, and of
the faith in right principle, which steadily refuses to
" do evil that good may come," could an institu-
tion, so deep-rooted and engrained in social life, be
gradually cast out. It was the task of Christianity
to create and foster that higher humanity, under
the sense of a common Fatherhood of God and a
common salvation in Christ — to enunciate the great
principle, " No longer a slave, but a brother beloved
in the Lord," and leave it to work on the minds and
hearts of the people. So had the slavery of serf-
ship been gradually destroyed in Europe ; so now
the question, " Am not I a man and a brother?" which
is to us somewhat obsolete, was to be asked in
relation to a wider brotherhood of all humanity.

The real battle had, of course, to be fought at
home ; the Church in the West Indies had simply
to act as an auxiliary, and meanwhile prepare both
masters and slaves for the coming change. It was
fought enthusiastically, perseveringl}^, and at last
victoriously by English Christianity, alike in the
Church and in the ranks of Nonconformit\', in the
fervour of the great Evangelical Revival. By an un-
exampled sacrifice of some twenty millions from the
national Treasury — in spite of difficulties, commercial
and social, in part foreseen — in the face of a mani-

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 241

fold opposition, both of vested interest and of mis-
taken social principle — the great Emancipation Act
was passed, providing for a period of compulsory
apprenticeship, and for complete liberty in 1838.

Meanwhile, from the year 1835 onwards, the
Church, mainly through the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Gospel, with the aid of parliamentary
grant and a " King's Letter," made a fresh effort,
by the " Negro Education Fund," to erect negro
churches and schools, and to support missionaries,
clerical and lay, and so to prepare the slaves for the
responsibilities of freedom. So complete was the
preparation that — to quote the words of the first
bishop of Barbados (Bishop Coleridge) — "eight
hundred thousand human beings lay down at night
as slaves, and rose in the morning as free as our-
selves. It might have been expected that on such
an occasion there would have been some outburst of
public feeling. I was present, but there was no
gathering that affected the public peace. There was
a gathering, but it was a gathering of young and old
together in the House of a common Father. It was
my peculiar happiness on that memorable day to
address a congregation of nearly 4000 persons, of
whom more than 3000 were negroes, just emanci-
pated. . . . There were thousands of my African
brethren joining with their European brother in
offering up their prayers and thanksgivings to the
Father, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of all." ^ The
task so nobly begun, of welding together the two

1 See the S.P.G. Digest, p. 203.

242 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

races in the development of a true Christian civiHza-
tion, is still far from complete. It has involved
difficulties and disasters, then but imperfectly antici-
pated, which are the inevitable penalty of past
misdoings, and which have been in part increased
by our own mistakes of subsequent policy. But
still to have undertaken it is one of our greatest
national glories, and, at whatever cost, it has to be
carried out.

In these colonial settlements it may be said that
the evangelistic work is mainly over, and has passed
into a pastoral care of the English and native races
side by side. In British Guiana we see the same
process at an earlier stage. The work of evangel-
ization is still prominent and advancing year by
year. The country (the '' El Dorado " of Sir Walter
Raleigh) was first colonized in 1663, and after
passing successively through English, Dutch, and
French hands, it became ours in i 8 1 4. The work
began there, with some aid from the civil power, by
our two great Missionary Societies, both to the Eng-
lish colonists and to a singularly mixed population
of native Indians, negroes, coolies from India, and
Chinese immigrants. It received, as usual, a new
impulse on the creation of a bishopric in 1842, and
the first bishop (Bishop Austen), in an Episcopate
of more than fifty years, was permitted to see the
growth of a vigorous native Church, ministering in
six languages to the heathen races, and, out of a
population of 300,000, showing more than half as
members of our own Communion.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 243

In Central America, again, British Honduras,
discovered by Columbus, and for a time disputed
between Spanish and English seekers of its mahogany
and logwood, passed into our possession in 1798,
It became a part of the colony of Jamaica in 1824,
and was under the charge of the Bishop of Jamaica,
till a separate bishopric was established there in
I 89 1. It has a mixed population of English and
coloured races of about 3 1,000 ; and among these a
few clergy are at work under the Bishop. At Panama
the great works for the Canal have drawn together a
mixed and disorganized population of about i 5,000 ;
and here a body of some 2000 Church members has
been gathered by clergy, working under the See of
Jamaica.

Beyond these Churches — still colonial, although
having a strong missionary element in their religious
work — there are, as usual, outlying missions, which
arise out of colonial settlement — on the Moskito
and in the diocese of the Falkland Islands, which
will be noticed hereafter in connection with our
mission to the barbarian races.

Such is the third sphere of this extension of the
Church — the first typical example of the evangeliza-
tion, at once of our own brethren, scattered as a
colonizing and dominant race over the world, and
of the heathen races brought by God's Providence
under their dominion and influence. It has cer-
tainly been blessed with no inconsiderable success.
P'or besides the English settlers and the great negro
population, it ministers to Indians, Chinese, and

244 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Hindus in at least eight languages, and numbers
some 600,000 members of our Church, with a body
of nearly 300 clergy under nine bishops. It will
have before it a work of great interest and difficulty,
in helping to solve for the West India Islands the
great social problems of unity between the white
and coloured races, and of progress in civilization
under the conditions of emancipation.

IV. The next is the great continent of Australia
in the Southern Hemisphere, with New Zealand and
the islands of the Pacific. It is a vast and magnificent
inheritance, not less in area than the whole continent
of Europe. It has almost every variety of climate
and of material resource, of splendid pasturage and
singularly rich mineral treasure. Perhaps of all
our settlements it is most like the mother-country, in
having no frontier but the sea ; and having been
won, not by conquest, but by settlement, it is almost
entirely British, with but a slight admixture of any
foreign element in its growing population. Its
material greatness in the future seems to be assured,
in spite of the serious disadvantage of frequently-
recurring droughts, the effects of which can be, and
will be, mitigated, but cannot be removed. Allow-
ing for all drawbacks, it could support a far larger
population ; for, as yet there are on the average less
than three white inhabitants to every two square
miles.

Yet this great inheritance, discovered by Captain
Cook in 1770, was for generations greatly misused.
Australia itself had its first occupation under most

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 245

inauspicious conditions as a convict settlement in
1788. Had the civil authorities designed to make
it — what in its worst phases, on the mainland and in
Norfolk Island, it was called — a " hell upon earth,"
they could hardly have done so more effectually
than by sending out some 800 convicts and 200
soldiers to guard and coerce them, without any pro-
vision whatever for their moral and religious welfare,
and so beginning our occupation of this great future
colony without the faintest recognition of the Christi-
anity, which was the very heart of our own greatness.
It was only at the last moment, on the earnest
appeal of William Wilberforce, and the remonstrance
of the Bishop of London, that — with the ever-
ready aid of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel — one minister of Christ, the Rev. R. Johnson,
was grudgingly allowed to join as a volunteer, and
do what he could, unaided and unrecognised, for
those outcast children of England and of its Church.
No missionary in the most barbarian country could
have met with greater discouragement and difficulty.
No church was provided for some years, and then a
rude building, raised by his own exertion and almost
by his own hands. The first schoolhouse was burnt
down intentionally. The authorities were obliged for
very shame to compel a Sunday attendance of the
convicts and their guards at public worship ; but
beyond this no effort whatever seems to have been
made to help forward that ministration of light and
grace, which a community of this kind, more than
any other, required. The natural result followed in

246 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

the corruption and demoralization of the rising
settlement beyond — so men said at the time — any-
thing ever known in an English society. It was
kept down in its more criminal forms by a severity
necessarily stern, and at times cruel ; but, both in the
unhappy convicts themselves — many of whom, trans-
ported for slight offences, were capable of better
things — and in those who had charge of them, it
festered under the surface with the deadliest effect.
It can hardly be called less than a crime, against
humanity and against God, to have founded a New
England under such almost incredible conditions.

Nor can it be forgotten that the baneful influence
of this condition of things told upon the relations of
the new settlers to the native tribes — a sparse nomad
population, certainly of one of the lower types of
race, but by no means incapable of civilization, and
amenable to influence for good, had there been any
disposition to exercise it. But in too many cases
the blacks were treated as little better than wild
beasts ; their natural hostility to the intruders was
aggravated by cruelty and oppression, and met by a
war of extermination. There is no chapter in the
history of the extension of our empire from which
we turn with deeper sorrow and shame. It is
simply a marvel, that from such an origin there
should have grown up in about a century a great
community, rich in wealth, in civilization, and in
promise, evidently destined to be a strong English
empire of the South.

The first stages of this growth were compara-

GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 247

tively slow and difficult. Free immigration, indeed,
soon began to mingle its purer waters with the
stream of continued convict settlement. In i 8 i 7,
of a population of i 7,000, only 7000 were convicts,
chiefly males ; in 1833, of males above twelve there
were 21,843 convicts, and 17,578 free. The con-
vict system had its better side in the* country at
large, where the convicts were " assigned " to service,
under a mastership almost absolutely arbitrary, which
might, however, be kindly and reformatory in effect ;
and the convict labour on public works was of so
much value to a thinly -peopled colony, that even
those who disliked it came to look upon it as almost
indispensable. The convict population itself was of
very mixed character. It included, indeed, hardened
and abandoned criminals ; but it included also those
who had never been deeply criminal, or who by
good conduct had done much to wipe out the past,
and had become after a time useful and prosperous
citizens. But it was difficult, if not impossible, to
weld together the free and convict elements of
society. Some of the governors who attempted to
do so met with failure and disaster. Gradually,
after much strife and controversy, there grew up a
desire, which soon became a demand, for the aboli-
tion of convict settlement, with the substitution (if
possible) of free immigration, assisted from public
funds. In 1 840 the demand was granted : trans-
portation was abolished for New South Wales, and
the colonies developed from it, forming the bulk of
the community; although it lingered till 1853 in

248 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Tasmania, where Port Arthur had exhibited it in one
of its worst forms; and till 1864 in the sparsely-
peopled colony of Western Australia. The popula-
tion in 1840 had risen to about 150,000 on the
mainland, and 50,000 in Tasmania — still, after more
than fifty years, a mere handful in a territory of
some 4,000,000 square miles — and the cessation of
the convict-labour was a serious material loss and a
serious anxiety.

It was the discovery of gold in 1851 — first in
New South Wales, then, in far greater richness, in
Victoria — which caused a vast influx of population,
and began the course of Australian prosperity. From
that time onwards advance has been swift and un-
broken ; assistance for immigrants, once the rule in
all colonies, has been found unnecessary, and has
almost entirely disappeared. The average immigra-
tion is still about 20,000 a year, and the settled
population increases rapidly. In the last fifty years
it has grown from some 200,000 to more than
4,000,000, and the increase of wealth, diffused in a
remarkable degree through the great mass of the
people, has kept pace with it. The century which
has elapsed since the first settlement has developed
six considerable colonies — Victoria in 185 1, and
Queensland in 1859, out of New South Wales, and,
independently, Tasmania, first colonized in 1803,
Western Australia in 1829, and South Australia in
1836; while New Zealand, only settled in 1839,
has become an independent colony with nearly
700,000 people. Great cities have sprung up — too

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 249

large, indeed, in comparison with the whole popula-
tion— with all the appliances of civilization ; schools,
colleges, and universities, museums and galleries of
art have been created and liberally supported ; the
constitutional government of the old country has
been reproduced in a somewhat more democratic
type. In spite of the inevitable vicissitudes of
prosperity and adversity, rapidity and slowness of
advance, everything indicates an undoubted promise
of far greater growth in the future.

It remains now to inquire as to the parallel pro-
gress of English Christianity, and especially of our
own Church of England.

It has been seen that, without aid or even recog-
nition from the civil power, the first planting of the
Church of Christ in the colony was due to the
voluntary energy of a few devoted men — Richard
Johnson, Samuel Marsden, William Cowper, and
others, aided by support from the Church at home
through the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel. But by degrees — partly through the
growth of a higher public opinion in England,
under the influence of religious revival — mainly,
however, through the urgent representations of some
of the early governors, appalled at the consequences
of moral and religious neglect — the State, through
the Home Government, and subsequently through
the colonial legislatures, was induced to give some
establishment and endowment. It aided the Church,
at first alone, then with the larger denominations
— the Roman Catholic (mainly Irish), the Presby-

2SO HULSEAN LECTURES app.

terian, Methodist, and Congregationalist bodies. From
the beginning the Church took and has retained the
lead, far more than in any other group of colonies.
It is significant that, although without any claim of
territorial authority by law, the whole land was
divided into " parishes," which in the country were
often great missionary districts ; churches were built,
mostly simple and homely structures ; and clergy
and catechists sent out as the area of colonization
extended. Gradually, as the colonies became
self-governing and self-supporting, this material
support — which under the conditions of colonial
life was then, and in some measure would still be,
of infinite value — was withdrawn, leaving behind it
some few remains of endowment ; and the Churches
were thrown entirely upon their own resources, under
a recognition of their corporate existence and govern-
ment, on the whole friendly, from the colonial
legislatures.

The early steps of religious, as of civil, progress
were comparatively slow, not only under the obvious
difficulties, material and moral, of the position, but
because here also, although for a shorter period, the
Church was left without its independent Episcopate.
For some forty years there was apparently no
ecclesiastical organization, beyond the parochial. In
1829 the first step was taken, under the great Duke
of Wellington as Prime Minister, by the appointment
of the Rev. R. Broughton to have jurisdiction as
Archdeacon over the few Australian clergy — an im-
portant step, although it is ludicrous enough to find

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 251

that his archdeaconry was supposed to belong to the
diocese of Calcutta, some 6000 miles away ; and a
step, moreover, which by this very absurdity necessi-
tated a further advance. In a few years, after
visiting in all quarters, he returned to England with
his report, and was consecrated the first Bishop of
Australia in 1836. A new epoch, as usual, opened
upon the Church. The Bishop was then backed by
the power both of Church and State, and he was a
man of such earnestness, statesmanlike ability, and
strong character, as to use it to the utmost. The
great societies of S.P.C.K. and S.P.G. at home gave
valuable and timely aid, under the first withdrawal
of support from the colonial Treasury. By their aid
not only were new churches built in the country dis-
tricts, but great progress made in Church education
in colleges and schools, both for clergy and laity.
In Sydney itself the foundation was laid in 1837 of
the first Australian cathedral,^ the erection of which
went on at intervals for about thirty years, till it
was completed and consecrated on St. Andrew's
Day in 1868, on what was then thought to be an
ample scale, although, in the extraordinary growth
of the city since that time, it is now found plainly
insufficient. Enormous as Bishop Broughton's
diocese was, and in spite of the difficulty of com-
munication in those early days, his influence —

^ It is not a little curious that in 1819 — long before a bishopric
was contemplated — Governor Macquarie planned a "cathedral" on
the same site, of dimensions, moreover, far greater than those after-
wards thought sufficient, and actually laid a first stone of it, which was
renewed and laid again in 1837.

252 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

both a stimulating and direct influence — was felt
everywhere; and when he died in 1853, "carrying
with him the veneration and respect of his fellow-
colonists ... of all classes and of all sects," the
great impulse had been given, and the era of rapid
progress had begun.

It was the time of the vast influx of population
through the gold discoveries. Happily the Church
was in some degree prepared to meet it. In 1841,
by the suggestion of Bishop Blomfield, the " Colonial
Bishoprics' Fund " was formed, to be under God's
blessing the greatest agency for the extension in
the colonial Church of the full ecclesiastical organiza-
tion.^ The effort was aided by munificent private
benefactions at home, and met, as far as possible, by
contributions in the colonies themselves. The Church
seemed to awake suddenly to the greatness of her
colonial call and opportunity.

Of that awakened earnestness the Australian
Church had the fullest benefit. In 1842 the
Bishopric of Tasmania was founded. At a
memorable service in Westminster Abbey, on St.
Peter's Day 1847, which again marked an epoch
in colonial Church history, three bishops were con-
secrated at once (with the first great Bishop of
Cape Town) — for the rising diocese of Melbourne,
for the new settlement of Adelaide, and for the great

^ Between 1841 and 1892 it had collected and expended a sum of
nearly ;^840,ooo — which has been the means of drawing out far larger
resources abroad and at home — and had aided the foundation of Hfty-
five new bishoprics.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 253

coal district of New South Wales at Newcastle.
After what seems a long delay, the old colony of
Western Australia received a Bishop of Perth for its
scattered white and black population in 1857. In
Queensland — made a distinct colony in 1859 — the
Bishopric of Brisbane was at once founded. The
diocese of Sydney, still great, was subdivided further
by the Bishoprics of Goulburn in 1863, of Grafton
and Armidale (formed from Newcastle) in 1867,
and Bathurst in 1869, and, after a considerable
interval, Riverina ^ in 1884. In Victoria, then
the most rapidly advancing of all the colonies, the
Bishopric of Ballarat, in the gold district, was founded
in 1875, to relieve the diocese of Melbourne.
Finally, the vast diocese of Brisbane was similarly
subdivided by the creation of the Sees of North
Queensland in 1878, and Rockhampton in 1892.
Nor should it be forgotten that from the Australian
Episcopate was derived in 1841 the Bishopric of
New Zealand, with the six Sees which have sub-
sequently grown out of it. It was nearly half a
century from the first colonization before the one
See of Australia was founded in 1836; but it had
developed into twenty-two when the next half-century
had elapsed. Churches and clergy had multiplied at
least tenfold, and the change from the rough, homel}'
wooden church to cathedrals, of various degrees of
dignity and even of splendour, in all the dioceses was

^ This bishopric is notable as having been founded by the munifi-
cence of a single colonist (the Hon. John Campbell), who had already
largely contributed to some of the earlier Sees of New South Wales.

254 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

but a visible symbol of the extraordinary growth of
the Church itself.

It was, moreover, the glory of the Australasian
Church that through it the foundation of Synodical
government in the colonial Church generally was
laid. There was, indeed, the precedent of such
government, both diocesan and general, established
in the American Church since 1785. But in the
various colonial Churches, although there were
Church Committees and diocesan Societies, acting
as councils to the bishops, the beginning of true
Synodical representation and government dates from
an Episcopal Conference at Sydney in 1850, of the
Bishops of Sydney, New Zealand, Tasmania, Adelaide,
Melbourne, and Newcastle — declaring the necessity
of such government, and preparing for its intro-
duction. It can hardly be doubted that in this most
important matter the initiative came from the great
Bishop of New Zealand (Selwyn), and is one of the
greatest of the debts which the Church owes to him.
The idea was at once, and all but universally, taken up ;
and the result has been " the establishment in all
parts of the world of fully representative and legally
constituted synods, consisting of bishops, clergy, and
laity — each having a voice in all matters considered.
In most cases the synods have received the recog-
nition of the legislatures." ^ The Australian Church

^ The dioceses of Sydney, Newcastle, Goulburn, Grafton and Armi-
dale, Bathurst, Riverina, form the province of New South Wales, under
the Bishop of Sydney as MetropoUtan. These dioceses, with those
of Tasmania, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Ballarat, North

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 255

has its diocesan synods everywhere ; in New South
Wales its Provincial Synod ; and a General Synod
embracing all the dioceses of Australia and Tasmania.^
New Zealand has its diocesan and General synods.
In the former case there is some irregularity in the
position of quasi-independence held by the lower to
the higher synods ; " in New Zealand the system
was laid down from the first on sounder Church
lines. But in both cases it has become a great
working reality, of priceless value to Church life and
progress.

The extension of the Church in Australia, from
the singularly inauspicious beginnings of 1788, has
been, under God's blessing, a marvellous growth. It
has now its fifteen bishops, more than eight hundred
clergy, and at least a million and a quarter of pro-
fessed members. More than in any other colonial
group, it retains much of spiritual leadership — readily
conceded, if not claimed as a right, by all religious
Communions except the Roman Catholic. Largely
aided by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in its earlier stages, it is now not only self-
supporting, but able, as will be seen hereafter, to

Queensland, and Rockhampton, meet in the General Synod every five
years, under the Bishop of Sydney as Primate.

^ See the interesting sketch of "The American, Colonial, and
Missionary Episcopate Church Organization" in the S.P.G. Digest, pp.

743-767-

- The Provincial Synod of New South Wales is recognised by law ;
the General Synod, embracing various colonies not yet united by
federation, can have no such recognition, and has only a supreme moral
authority.

256 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

venture on independent missionary work to the
heathen races within and near its borders.

It remains now to notice the great offshoot from
Australia in the group of islands which form New Zea-
land. This possession also, although but of yesterday,
is already one of the finest of our New Englands —
with a long coast-line and fine harbours, a splendid
climate, well fitted to receive and preserve the Eng-
lish type of humanity, considerable wealth and
variety of natural resources, and a singular beauty
and grandeur of scenery. Its history, civil and
ecclesiastic, has many points of striking and instruc-
tive difference from that of the Australian continent ;
and it cannot be doubted that this difference is mainly
due to the fact that in this case Christianity preceded,
and largely moulded, the process of colonization.

Discovered by Tasman in 1642, and rediscovered
by Captain Cook in 1770, it was not colonized till
1839 by the New Zealand Company, and it was
made a British colony in 1 840. Meanwhile, as
early as 18 14, Samuel Marsden from Australia, with
the aid of the Church Missionary Society, became
the " Apostle of New Zealand," labouring himself in
the North Island among the Maori people at inter-
vals up to 1837, and leaving a settled mission there.
The progress at first was unusually slow : for eleven
years no conversion took place ; at the end of
seventeen years only thirty converts had been bap-
tized. But then, as so often, after long and patient
sowing, the harvest was suddenly given ; and a
considerable native Church was formed under the

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 257

Church Missionary Society, before the first coloniza-
tion in 1839. Meanwhile the Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel devoted itself mainly to the
support of Christianity among the English settlers,
who rapidly poured in. They were of a far different
type from the first Australian immigrants. There
was in them no convict element ; the New Zealand
Company was careful as to the character of their
settlers, and did much for their higher welfare ; in
Canterbury, under the auspices of our own Church,
and in Otago, under Presbyterian auspices, a
colonization was attempted, which should embrace
all classes of society and carry with it provision for
churches and clergy, colleges and schools, as well as
for material necessities. The result has been the
planting there of a singularly vigorous and thoroughly
English life, amidst surroundings of climate and
natural resources, which ought to perpetuate it with
little change and without degeneration.

In 1 84 1, George Augustus Selwyn was conse-
crated Bishop of New Zealand, and from the first
resolved to be the spiritual father both of the Eng-
lish and the Maori peoples, and to unite them, if
possible, in true Christian brotherhood. By that
time there were about 30,000 native Christians ; and
(as he himself said) " a few faithful men, by the
power of the Spirit of God, had been the instruments
of adding another Christian people to the family
of God." It was his task — over and above his
Melanesian Mission — to extend, organize, and deepen
the work among both races.

S

258 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Unhappily there came on almost inevitable col-
lisions between them, in respect of the occupation
of the land, resulting in the Maori Wars ; and the
result was felt painfully in the religious sphere.
Among the Maori Christians there arose a move-
ment of apostasy from Christianity — not in itself,
but as the religion of the English — to a strange
hybrid religion/ mixing some Old Testament and
Christian elements with gross heathen superstition.
It was a terrible disappointment, which almost broke
the hearts of the Bishop and his fellow-labourers.
But as soon as peace was restored, the Maori
Christianity began to recover, and in great measure
has recovered, from this temporary obscuration.
The native population, although dwindling under the
influence of English sin, English habits of life, and
English disease, still, however, numbers some 40,000.
Out of these at least half are baptized members of
our Church, ministered to by native clergy, side by
side with their English brethren in the Ministry.
For them everything is done, both by the Church,
and now by the civil authority also, to protect and
advance them in secular and religious prosperity.

Meanwhile the English population has rapidly
increased, especially in the Southern Island, till it
now numbers about 700,000. There was accordingly

^ It acknowledged the protection of the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin
Mary, and borrowed some of its rites and doctrines from the Old
Testament. But the Scriptures were to be burned, Sabbath observance
abolished, the Christian law of marriage abrogated, and the religion
of the English destroyed. A priesthood claiming superhuman powers
sprang up, and carried out some persecution of Christianity.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 259

a corresponding development of Church organization.
In 1856 was founded the See of Christchurch in
the Canterbury settlement; in 1858 that of Wel-
lington at the seat of government ; in the same year
the Sees of Nelson and Waiapu ; in 1866 that of
Dunedin in the predominantly Presbyterian province
of Otago ; and in i 869, on the resignation of Bishop
Selwyn, the old See changed its name to Auckland.
Added to these is the outlying Missionary Bishopric
of Melanesia, created in 1861. All these are united
in the province of New Zealand, with full Synod ical
government, both diocesan and provincial.^ The
Church numbers about 250,000, ministered to by
234 clergy (English and Maori) ; it has an admirable
system of Church schools and colleges ; and it builds
not only fresh churches every year, but cathedrals
of some dignity and magnificence, to be the mother-
churches of their respective dioceses. Like the
colony itself, the Church manifests a healthy and
vigorous life. For the Maories it still receives some
help from the Church Missionary Society. Other-
wise it is not only self-supporting, but able to give
large support to its daughter Melanesian Mission.
In whatever point of view we regard it, we see
every sign of a steady future growth on true Church
lines.

V. The last great sphere of Colonial Extension
is in the group of South African colonies — singularly

1 The Sees of Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Nelson, Waiapu,
Melanesia, and Dunedin form the province of New Zealand, under an
elective primacy, not restricted to any one See.

26o HULSEAN LECTURES app.

unlike the Australasian, because won mainly by con-
quest, containing accordingly a considerable foreign
European element, and a mass of heathen population,
which is not dwindling but growing rapidly, under
the pacifying and civilizing influence of the English
sway.

The Cape Colony, founded by the Dutch, was
taken by England in the great European War, and
after restoration for a time, became ours permanently
in 1806. It contained a sturdy Dutch people, a
Hottentot population in a state of virtual serfship,
and an element of imported negro slavery, which
was abolished in 1834, On its frontier it had a
large varied population of "Kaffir" tribes, with
whom there have been constant wars, and through
these an irresistible and inevitable expansion of the
English territory and influence. New provinces
have been continually formed, with a comparatively
few European settlers and a dense native population.
Still attached to the Cape Colony (which became a
self-governing colony in 1853) are Kaffraria and
Griqualand ; separate from it Natal in 1856 ; Basuto-
land in 1883 ; Zululand, annexed after the great war
in 1887; Bechuanaland, where a protectorate was
established in 1884; Mashonaland and Matabele-
land, annexed in 1895. Almost every year sees
some extension, first of influence, next of pro-
tectorate, finally of dominion, often made after wars,
undertaken against the will of the Home Govern-
ment, and not without some reluctance by the local
authorities, but, as all experience shows, almost

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 261

inevitable, where barbarian tribes, many being war-
like and independent, are in contact with a civilized
and colonizing race. This extension has not
been without much error and fault, especially
where the hand of authority has been forced by
individual enterprise of commerce and settlement,
which has in time to be recognised, controlled, and
organized. The result has been a singular incon-
sistency and vacillation of policy, which has had
most disastrous effects. But, in spite of all, the
extension goes on continually — much as in India —
by an irregular and almost unconscious growth of
responsibility and power ; and no one can doubt
that it is on the whole infinitely for the advantage
of the subject-races, and their advance in happiness
and in civilization. The position is, moreover, com-
plicated, first, by the existence in the Cape Colony
of a strong Dutch element, jealous of the growing
English ascendency ; next, by the establishment on
our frontier of the Dutch powers of the Orange Free
State and the Transvaal (which have been under
English sovereignty, but are now independent states),
and of the Portuguese territory of Delagoa Bay ;
lastly, by the inevitable contact, present or future,
with the spheres of influence or settlement on the
north of other European nations, out of which great
trouble and national danger may arise. No field of
our colonial expansion is for all these reasons of
greater interest and promise, and at the same time
of greater risk and difficulty. The area occupied
is large and continually increasing ; the English

262 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

settlers number rather less than 200,000 ; the Dutch
and French and other Europeans about 250,000 ;
and the native population of various tribes and char-
acters, now at least 2,200,000, is increasing with
great rapidity, and shows in various degrees intelli-
gence, vigour, and capacity for civilization.

This description of the difficulty and conflict,
under which this group of colonies has grown up,
applies in some sense to the progress of the Church
in it. On the first cession of the Cape to England
in 1795, the Dutch Reformed Church, somewhat
rigidly Calvinistic, and showing much of a strong and
rugged religious life, was guaranteed in its position
and endowments ; and in the early days our own
iGw people, for want of other provision, took refuge
in it.^ From 1 806 onwards there was simply
ministration by the chaplains to the English troops
at Cape Town. But in 18 19 the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel entered the field, pressing
for a division of the inhabited districts into parishes,
and for provision of some maintenance for a regular
Ministry. Considerable aid, both in grant and in
appropriation of lands as Clergy Reserves, was given
by the Colonial Government ; and the work accord-
ingly began. An occasional visit was made by the
Bishops of Calcutta — Bishops James, Turner, and
Wilson ; and at last the first bishop of Cape Town

^ In 1806, when Henry Martyn, who, on his way to India, was present
at the capture of Cape Town, was requested to officiate at a funeral, no
Prayer-Book could be found, although he " sent for one to all the
English families."

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 263

(Bishop Gray) was consecrated in 1847, to take
charge of a diocese of 250,000 square miles.
Happily in him, as in Bishop Broughton in Australia,
the infant Church found one who in energy, ability,
power of ecclesiastical statesmanship and organiza-
tion, holiness and devotion of life, was equal to the
great occasion. Liberally supported by the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel,he was able to take with
him a body of workers, to begin the urgently-needed
provision of churches and schools, and to hold
visitation of his enormous diocese. There he found,
already working for God, much of Christian evan-
gelism, but with even more than usual of division,
and so of confusion. " Not less," he said, " than
twenty different forms of religion " were being
pressed upon the heathen mind. It was true that
" a kindly and brotherly spirit " prevailed among the
Christians, thus dwelling " in the very midst of the
kingdom of darkness." Strong Churchman as he
himself was, he was able and willing to show a large-
hearted sympathy to all, and to rejoice that every
way Christ was preached. In spite of the contro-
versies which vexed his spirit in the later days, and
the necessity which he felt of asserting strongly the
faith and the authority of the Church, that sympathy
was fully reciprocated. When he finished his course
of devoted service in 1872, we read that all classes,
ranks, and denominations united " to do honour to
his memory," and " representatives of the Dutch Re-
formed, the Congregational, the Wesleyan, the Roman
and other Christian communities stood in affectionate

264 IIULSEAN LECTURES app.

and respectful sorrow at his grave, in acknowledg-
ment of his fervent and large-hearted Christian
service towards all." That experience is happily
one which has often been repeated.

But the evil of division, though mitigated, could not
be removed ; and our own Church, which should be
at least some link of unity, had been as yet far from
anything like her right leadership. Still, as usual,
with the introduction of the Episcopate the work of
speedy expansion began. In 1853 the Cape Colony
was divided by the establishment in the East of the
See of Grahamstown, and beyond it the Bishopric of
the growing settlement of Natal ; and this was the
beginning of the advance which since that time has
created Sees more and more distinctly stamped
with missionary impress — in Zululand in 1870, in St.
John's (formerly " Independent Caffraria") in 1873,
in Mashonaland in 1886; and, moreover, even
beyond our own sphere of dominion, Bloemfontein
(in the Orange Free State) in 1863, Pretoria (in the
Transvaal) in 1878, and Lebombo (in the Delagoa
Bay district) in 1891. With this extension the
work of Church organization in Synodical govern-
ment kept pace.^ Had no disturbing causes inter-
vened, a rapid progress might have been confidently
anticipated.

But on the Church in South Africa, thus pro-

^ The Sees of Cape Town, Grahamstown, Maritzburg (now Natal),
St. Helena, Bloemfontein, Zululand, St. John's, Pretoria, Mashonaland,
and Lebombo form the province of Cape Town, under the Bishop as
Metropolitan. Mauritius and Madagascar are independent Sees.

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 265

gressive under difficulty, there broke the storm of
the Colenso controversy, raised by the action of the
first Bishop of Natal. Into the history and the
merits of the controversy it is here impossible to
enter. But in estimating its effect on the colonial
Church, it is necessary to understand the complex
issues which it raised. In its first beginning the
question was whether Bishop Colenso's published
opinions on Biblical inspiration, on the doctrine of
the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the
impossibility of accepting ex animo the teaching of
the Church of England upon Holy Scripture, as
expressed in her Ordination questions and Services,
did or did not formally constitute heresy, and demand
his deposition.^ On the one hand, Bishop Colenso
appeared as the champion of free thought and criti-
cism ; on the other, Bishop Gray threw himself with
characteristic energy into the defence of the historic
faith. But his action in citing his suffi"agan to
appear before himself as Metropolitan with two
Episcopal assessors, refusing his appeal to the Court
of the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, pro-
ceeding to pronounce a sentence of deposition and
excommunication, assuming charge of the "widowed
diocese of Natal," and afterwards consecrating a new

^ The great body of the EngHsh Episcopate, while al:)Staining from
formal condemnation, expressed to Bishop Colenso, in a letter drafted
by the Bishop of London (Tait), their strong sense of the incompati-
bility of his published utterance, as to the Ordination questions and the
Baptismal services, with the position of a bishop — especially a mis-
sionary bishop— of the Church of England, and suggested his retire-
ment. See Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i, pp. 342. 343.

266 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

bishop therein, raised a distinct question as to the
extent of metropolitical authority, and of ecclesiastical
authority generally, in the colonial Church. Out of
this, again, arose a third question of the relation of
the Church of South Africa to the courts, ecclesiastical
and civil, of the Church at home. Ecclesiastically
this took the form of a question as to the right of
appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
acknowledgment of his primacy by oath of canonical
obedience to him of all bishops consecrated in Eng-
land ; which was upheld on the one hand as a link of
unity in the Anglican Communion, and resisted on
the other as encroaching on the independence of
metropolitans. In relation to the civil courts, it was
raised not only by their general decisions on ecclesi-
astical and doctrinal questions, but by their refusal
in this case to recognise the validity of the deposi-
tion, as affecting the title of Bishop Colenso and the
temporalities of the See, their discovery of a certain
legal invalidity in the letters patent of the Bishop of
Cape Town as metropolitan, and their judgments,
not wholly consistent with each other, on the legal
position of the colonial Episcopate. These were
obviously questions of grave import, and, moreover,
questions of general application to the whole colonial
Church. In relation to Natal, many embraced the
side represented by Bishop Colenso on the last two,
who had no sympathy with his peculiar opinions,
although all acknowledged the sincerity and devotion
of his character, his past services to the missionary
cause, and his strong fatherly sympathy with the

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 267

native races under his charge. Finally, after much
communication with the Archbishop and the Bishops
in England, and reference of the whole question to
the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, the result was
a general recognition by the Church at home, and
by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in particular, of Bishop Macrorie, consecrated at
Cape Town in 1 869 under the title of Bishop
of Maritzburg, to the charge of such clergy
and laity as would acknowledge him in Natal.
From the time of his consecration onwards the result
was a schism in the Church there — the support of
legal authority being on the side of Bishop Colenso,
and the section of clergy and laity who adhered to
him — the adhesion, on the other hand, of the larger
section of Churchmen in the colony and the great
majority of Churchmen at home being given to
Bishop Macrorie. The unhappy division, with other
controversies which were developed out of it, greatly
distressed and distracted the South African Church.
It was, indeed, the means of determining some im-
portant questions for the colonial Church, of suggest-
ing some points of its future policy, and of throwing
it more distinctly upon its own independent powders.
Perhaps it forced the Churchmen of South Africa to
deeper thought on the great principles involved, and
induced much earnestness and sacrifice on both sides.
But the effect was necessarily to waste energy, to
produce friction, and to check progress, causing a
grave scandal in the eyes of the heathen, and giving
much occasion to the enemies of the Church. By

268 IIULSEAN LECTURES APr.

the death of Bishop Colenso in 1883, and the sub-
sequent resignation of Bishop Macrorie in 1892, an
opportunity offered itself for terminating the schism.
Accordingly in 1893 Bishop Baynes was consecrated
to take charge of the whole diocese ; and there seems
great hope, although even now not unclouded with
anxiety, that under his auspices unity may be
restored.

There is, indeed, much need. For as yet — prob-
ably in great degree through these divisions and
scandals — our Church holds numerically a very
secondary place, especially in Natal. Out of a gross
population of some two millions, little more than
150,000 are professed members of our Church. As
in other cases, the numerical test gives but an im-
perfect idea of the real influence which the Church
exercises ; but it shows only too clearly how far
she is from holding her right place in the South
African colonies.

With the South African work may naturally be
connected St. Helena and Mauritius.

In St. Helena, which became English in 1673 —
first granted to the East India Company by Charles
II., and made a Crown Colony in 1834— the mis-
sionary work began in 1704, among a mixed popu-
lation of but a few English, and the rest of Hindu,
Chinese, and Malay origin, with an African element,
chiefly of liberated slaves. The Mission was visited
by Bishop Gray about 1850, and its first bishop
was consecrated in 1859. It is but a small charge.
There are now only about 5000 inhabitants in the

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 269

island ; but of these nearly 4000 are members of
our Church, and there seems to be much vitality in
this little community.

Mauritius, discovered by the Portuguese in the
sixteenth century, and long possessed by the French
as the " He de France," became ours in 18 14. It
has a dense population, largely Hindu by birth or
descent, and the remainder of singularly mixed
European and native elements. With it are joined
the Seychelles, about 1000 miles to the north. The
work of our Church is carried on here under the
shadow of an overwhelming Roman Catholic influ-
ence. On the cession of the island by the French,
the position of the Roman Catholic Church was
guaranteed by treaty, and it appears to have re-
ceived from our Government something more than
justice. Meanwhile very little was done for our own
Church, although up to 1856 it was supposed to
receive Government support. Gradually, however,
mainly through the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, the Mission was taken up, and in 1854 the
first bishop was consecrated, and vigorous work begun
in what is certainly a great and interesting mission-
field. But of some 388,000 people, of whom perhaps
one-fourth are Christians, mainly Roman Catholic,
our Church has only about 10,000, ministered to by
twenty-two clergy under the Bishop's direction.

In this branch of our colonial Church, more
than in any other except the West Indian, the
ministry to the heathen races occupies a primary
place. It will be seen hereafter how that missionary

270 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

duty is carried out, both in the dioceses of the South
African province, and in the outlying Missionary
Bishopric of Madagascar. In spite of all its diffi-
culties and troubles, there is about the whole South
African Church much of peculiar interest and im-
portance.

VI. This brief outline of the history of the
colonial development of the Church shows the
primary importance of this first sphere of Church
expansion.

Among the English-speaking race it is in the
strictest sense an expansion of an Anglican Com-
munion, showing, of course, much freedom and
variety of development in its various parts, but yet
on all essential points having a thorough solidarity
of work with the old Church at home, and virtually
reproducing it, in respect of doctrine, worship, and
discipline. Towards the lower races, brought into
connection with the Colonies and the colonial
Churches, while it is not the most striking or heroic
missionary agency, yet perhaps it supplies the firmest
basis and the most solid growth of evangelization,
and it creates new centres of such evangelization in
the daughter churches, to work in harmony with the
continuing and increasing missionary energy of the
Mother-Church.

Although, as we have seen, the Church has not
always maintained her right leadership in the ex-
pansion of English Christianity, yet her colonial
branches form a really great organization, which has
reacted for cfood, both in lessons of guidance and in

I GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 271

power of inspiration, upon the Church at home. It
has now — including the Church in America, as once
a daughter and now a sister Church — more than
160 bishops, more than 7000 clergy, and about
6,250,000 professed members, all united under a
free Synodical government, and attached to the old
home, not so much by law as by a spiritual loyalty.
As such, it is clearly to the Mother-Church, much
as the colonies to the mother-country, a source of
strength, by an enlargement and variety of develop-
ment which still preserves unity, while it takes
away the narrowness and stiffness of insularity. It
tells also on the national life, by anticipating and
perhaps preparing for that free federation of the
English-speaking race, which is as yet in the civil
sphere only an aspiration. But in relation to the
whole Church of Christ it has a still higher function,
as presenting perhaps the greatest type of that free
ecclesiastical federation, in which lies the best hope
of some reunion of our divided Christendom.

APPENDIX II

(To Lecture III)

THE EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST

Our religious mission in the East is twofold.^ To
our own English people, few in number but domi-
nant in power, it is, as in the colonial sphere, a
simple expansion of the Anglican Church, essentially
the same as at home, although with variations of
detail ; and to this the State in India rightly gives
support. To the native races it is a mission of the
Church of Christ as such — a mission of expansion,
not of spiritual dominion, but of spiritual influence.
Our ultimate aim must be to create and foster every-
where a native Christianity, embodying itself neces-
sarily in native churches, which shall, slowly or
swiftly, rise to independence, and have free com-
munion with us, as daughter or sister churches in the

' A general idea of the work of our Church in this mission may be
gained by study of the C.Al.S. Missionary Atlas and History, the Digest
of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the excellent Reports
of the Board of Missions ; and the outline there drawn can be filled up
from the many detailed accounts now accessible. The chief work of
other Christian bodies is recorded in the Report of the London Mis-
sionary Society, and those of the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Wesleyan
Societies, both English and American.

APP. II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 273

common faith. But, for the accomplishment of this
end, we cannot for a time refuse to exercise some
dominant influence. Our extraordinary ascendency
in the East must be accepted as a great fact,
ordained by the Providence of God, carrying with it
an unexampled power and responsibility, in the re-
ligious as in the secular sphere. No thinking man
can regard it as an absolute possession, to be used
for our own purposes ; and, indeed, in that view it
might be questioned whether it is an advantage or a
burden. It must be regarded as a trust for the true
civilization of humanity, which, to every one who
believes in God at all, is the working out through
human hands of His dispensation to man. But to a
Christian the key to that dispensation is the mani-
festation of the Lord Jesus Christ ; and therefore this
unexampled ascendency must involve a religious
mission, as the crown and consummation of all its
other responsibilities. Our own Christianity came
to us from the East, Semitic in origin, although de-
veloped by assimilation of Aryan elements. There
is laid upon us a spiritual necessity to return it,
thus developed, to its old home, and to try its power
as a religion of all humanity, not only over the
Semitic and Aryan races of Asia, but over the lower
and weaker races, which they have so long held in
subjection.

This Eastern mission may be said to be created
for England by the possession of our Indian Empire,
ruling, directly or indirectly, nearly three hundred
millions of these various races. That Empire sup-

T

274 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

plies, indeed, the chief sphere of its actual exercise ;
but it necessarily brings with it relations both to the
Empires of China and Japan in the farther East, and
to the Turkish and Persian Empires in Western Asia,
and out of these arise secondary but not unimportant
opportunities and duties of evangelization.

I. It would be impossible, even if it were not
unnecessary, to attempt here any complete outline of
the growth of our Indian Empire.^ But in order to
understand the history of our religious mission in
India, it is well to have some general notion of the
various stages of the growth of that Empire, and of
the influences which, in its past progress and in its
present maturity, it brings to bear upon the people
of India.

(A) These stages of growth seem to fall naturally
under five divisions.

The first steps of political progress were, as
usual, slow. For about 150 years from our first
landing in India at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, our settlement was little more than a pros-
perous commercial settlement, daily advancing in
wealth, and acquiring, indirectly and almost uncon-
sciously, large political influence. In its successful
growth much was due to the fact that its earlier
stages belonged to a critical time of disorganization
of native powers, giving opportunity to European
advance. At that period " India had no jealousy of

^ An admirable sketch of the previous history of India, of the Euro-
pean settlements other than our own, and of the chief stages of the
development of our Empire, will be found in Sir William Hunter's
Indian Empire^ cc. vi. vii. x. xi. xii. xiv. \v,

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 275

the foreigner, because it had no sense whatever of
national unity. The English did not introduce a
foreign domination into it ; for the foreign domina-
tion was there already." ^ For just then the great
Moghul Empire of Akbar and his successors, which,
if it was a foreign domination, still supplied some
political unity, was breaking up, by revolt of its
tributary kingdoms, and by the attack of the Mah-
ratta power. Our English settlement had perhaps,
in the first instance, to meet more formidable diffi-
culties from the previous ascendency of the Portu-
guese and Dutch influence in India ; its growth
to power subsequently involved a long struggle
in the eighteenth century with the French settle-
ment, which at one time seemed destined to rival
or supersede it, but of which now only a shadow
remains. But from the time when it began, nearly
three hundred years ago, in the creation of the first
East India Company in 1600, it steadily extended
itself, simply as a commercial enterprise, under vicissi-
tudes of native favour and opposition, and against a
continual pressure of European jealousy. Its earliest
settlements belong to the seventeenth century —
Madras in 1639, Bombay (superseding Surat) in
1668, Calcutta in 1686; its first acquisition of
territorial power, simply for protection of trade, was
in 1689. But, until the middle of the eighteenth
century, our East India Company was but one of

^ See Seeley's Expansion of Englajid, pjx 203, 204. In Part II.
Lecture III. there is an instructive sketch of the conditions favouring
the growth of our power in India.

276 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

many European companies — Dutch, French, Danish,
and German — and its aims were mainly com-
mercial.

The succeeding half-century saw a comparatively
rapid growth to political ascendency. This growth
began from the war of France and England in the
Carnatic, and the careers of Clive (175 i-i 767) and
Warren Hastings (1774- 1785). The victory of
Plassey (1757) was the birthday of British rule in
India. " Clive," says Sir W. Hunter, " laid the
territorial foundations of the British Empire ; Hast-
ings may be said to have created a British adminis-
stration for that Empire." Trade interests were
still paramount with the directors at home. But in
India commercial began to give way to political
ideas. In the division and rivalry of native powers,
and by the gradual extinction of French influence,
the career of Empire had begun ; and, through
wars with the Rohillas, the Mahrattas, and the king-
dom of Mysore, it extended itself victoriously in the
latter half of the eighteenth century.

The next critical stage of advance began with
the period of the great revolutionary and Napoleonic
war with France, when Napoleon himself contem-
plated, as a sequel to his Egyptian campaigns, an
invasion of India and overthrow of the British
power. The Governor-Generalship of Lord Wellesley
(1798- 1 805) was the critical time. It marked the
first conception, and the partial acquisition, of a
really imperial position — by extension of our
dominion in the North, by the conquest of Mysore

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 277

and the victories which first broke the Mahratta
power, and by the estabHshment of our headship
over a great confederacy of subject princes. In it
the victory of British Empire was substantially won ;
and it only remained to consolidate and complete
it. This was successfully done under the Marquis
of Hastings (1814-23) and Lord Amherst (1824-
28). By the conquest of Nepal, the destruction
of the Pindari bands, the final Mahratta war, and
the first annexation of Burmah, " the map of British
India was so drawn, as to remain substantially
unchanged till the time of Lord Dalhousic."

The succeeding period was still one of growth,
although not unchequered by serious trouble.
The attempt under Lord Auckland (1836-42) to
extend our sovereignty over Afghanistan was a
disastrous failure, which for a time shook our ascend-
ency in India. But the forward movement, although
checked here, still continued, in the conquest and
annexation, first of Scindc, then, after a severe
struggle, of the Sikh country, lastly, after a second
war, of a large portion of Burmah. Under Lord
Dalhousie (1848-56) the policy of annexation was
carried to its highest point by the absorption of
" lapsed territories " — Nagpur, Berar, Oude, and
others — into the British dominion. The fabric of
the British Empire was completed, and since his
death the frontier has hardly advanced.

The result of this masterful and perhaps over-
hasty policy was seen in the terrible Indian Mutiny
of 1858. Happily it was mainly confined to the

278 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Bengal army ; and the feudatory princes and the
mass of the people either remained loyal, or at least
refused to join it. Even so, uniting Hindu and
Mohammedan against us, it taxed all our power to
put it down, by feats of arms extraordinary even
in the East. Then a new era began with the
assumption of direct imperial rule in India in 1858,
inaugurating a new policy, discouraging annexation
as far as possible, controlling with as little inter-
ference as may be the feudatory kingdoms, and
striving to give to the native race in our own
dominions education, freedom, and some share in
government. Except perforce in Burmah, after a
third war, no extension of dominion has taken
place ; and, with some interruptions and much varia-
tion of degree, the same general draft of policy has
been followed up to the present day. The promise
of the Queen's Imperial Proclamation in 1858 to
rule " for the benefit of all her subjects " has been
on the whole most faithfully kept.

So the extraordinary fabric of our Indian Empire
has grown up, with all the irregularity and vitality
of a natural growth, not by the fulfilment of a great
fore-conceived design on our own part, but by force
of circumstance and gradual openings of oppor-
tunity ; in which, if in any portion of human history,
we must trace the leadings of the " Divinity which
shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." It
is a vast and marvellous Empire indeed. In the
year 1891 we find that our own territory included
nearly a million of square miles, and a population of

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 279

221,172,952, of which Httlc more than 100,000 are
European, and only 90,169 arc actually British.
The " Feudatory India " of the native states in-
cluded 644,7 1 7 square miles, and a population
of 66,908,147 (about one-half to a square mile
of the average of British India). The Portuguese
and French settlements included i 808 square miles,
and a population of 844,507 — far the densest
per square mile in all India. In all, as intestine
wars are put down, and the effects of famine and
pestilence mitigated, the population grows with a for-
midable rapidity — the gross increase between 1881
and 1 89 1 being nearly 28,000,000.^ The charge
thus committed to us, and held in absolute dominion
by a mere handful of Europeans — hardly more than
one in three thousand — is certainly a tremendous
charge. It includes people of various races,- various
languages,^ various degrees of civilization, various

^ There is no doubt that since 1891 the increase has gone steadily
on ; and it is believed that at this moment the whole population
amounts to nearly 300,000,000.

^ Sir William Hunter gives from the Census of 1881 the following
estimate : — (a) The pure Aryan race (the Brahmans and Rajputs, about
16 millions for British India and 21 millions for all India ; (/-') the mixed
population of Christians, low-caste Hindus, and aboriginal tribes, 138
millions for British India and 184 millions for all India ; (r) the
Mohammedans, 45 millions for British India and 50 millions for all
India (see T/ie Indian Empire, p. 89). The proportion has probably
not greatly changed in the Census of 1891.

^ In 1887 no less than 142 non-Aryan languages were tabulated,
spoken by some 50 millions of people. Sir Monier Williams enumerates
eight chief Aryan languages — Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujerati, Pan-
jabi, Kasmiri, Sindi, Oriya — as spoken by nearly 200 millions of
people {Hinduism, S.P.C.K., pp. 7, 8).

28o HULSEAN LECTURES afp.

religions ^ — distinct and often mutually antagon-
istic. If in this diversity lies much of the secret of
the acceptance of our sway, through the belief that
in it is the one security against internecine war, and
the one chance of firm government and even-handed
justice to all alike, yet it creates a formidable diffi-
culty for a Government, which desires not only to
rule securely, but to elevate, to unite, and to civilize
this great heterogeneous mass of humanity.

If we inquire how our trust for civilization has
been fulfilled, we shall of course have to confess,
especially in the earlier stages of growth, man)^
errors and faults and many failures, partly through
these and partly from inherent difficulties or impos-
sibilities. But it cannot be for a moment doubted
that under our rule the natural prosperity and
civilization of India has so advanced as to transform
the whole face of native society for good, and to
promote especially the happiness of the poorer and
weaker classes ; that, both by the indirect influence
of contact with the English language and literature,
and through them with Western science and thought,
and by the direct diffusion of education through a
great system of schools, colleges, and universities,
our services to intellectual progress have been incal-
culable ; that the higher moral civilization has been
signally promoted by the influence of a firm and just

^ In 1891 the Census gave in British India of Hindus 155,171,943,
of Mohammedans 49,550,491, of Buddhists 7,095,398, of Animistic
reh'gions 5,848,427, of Sikhs 1,407,968, and of lesser rehgions 607,063.
Of Christians there were then only 1,491,662 in British India, and
in all India 2,601,355 — "ot quite one in a hundred.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND TIIK EAST 281

government, giving more and more of freedom and
share in its administration to the subject-races, and
also on the whole, although here not without chequered
results of good and evil, by the subtler influence of
English character and example. Through the com-
bined force of these material, intellectual, and social
elements of advance, the effect of our rule has been
to breathe a new life into old civilizations, decaying
or dead, and to elevate in the scale of humanity
tribes almost barbarous, which those civilizations
ignored or oppressed.^

(B) But how far have we carried on this benefi-
cent work as a Christian people ? How far (that is)
have we crowned its lower developments b)' the
diffusion of the light and grace of Christ, which
should be the inspiration of them all ? How far
has there been an expansion of the Church of
Christ as the universal kingdom, in which true
civilization teaches men to play their part ?

Of the Christianity of India, inadequate as it is,
the greater part belongs to the work of other hands
than ours. It is no new thing in that country. We
are apt to forget that the knowledge of the Gospel
and the planting of the Church of Christ there are of
very ancient date. The deeply interesting " Church
of St. Thomas " on the Malabar coast traces itself
back, if not to an Apostolic, at least to an early

^ I may be allowed to refer for an outline of these various phases
of influence to cc. ii. iii. iv. of my own little book on England s Mission
to India (S.P.C.K. 1895), from which considerable portions of this
Appendix are taken.

282 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

age} There seems no doubt that Pantcenus,the famous
head of the great Catechetical School at Alexandria
— a man, like Apollos, " mighty in the Scriptures "
— went out to preach " among the Brahmans " at
the close of the second century ; and we are told
by St. Jerome that he found Christianity already
existing, and discovered a Hebrew original of
St. Matthew's Gospel, left there by the Apostle
Bartholomew. It is at least probable that the scene
of his labour was this ancient seat of Christianity.
Certainly in the later centuries Missions from the
Church of East Syria, commonly known as Nes-
torian, established in India (as also in China and
other lands of the East) a vigorous native Christi-
anity. But for some reason there was in India
little power of expansiveness in this ancient Christian
faith. For many centuries it stood alone in India,
till it was oppressed and superseded by the Roman
Catholic Missions. Yet of what might have been

^ Its own tradition of foundation by St. Thomas the Apostle rests
on no sufficient evidence, and is generally rejected. But it is not in
itself impossible ; for early Roman coins found in the country show a
communication with Rome and the West, through the Red Sea fleet,
in the first centuries. The settlement of the curious colony of the
"White Jews" at Cochin in the same locality claims for itself an
origin " after the destruction of the Second Temple " (a.d. 70). The
other tradition (referred to hereafter in the text), tracing the Christianity
found in the second century to another Apostle, is notable. Possibly,
after all, the Gospel may have been preached there in the first century.
The other authors to whom the planting of this early Christianity is
referred are a Manichcean Thomas of the third century, of whom little
or nothing is certainly known ; and an Armenian merchant Thomas of
about the eighth century, who, however, appears rather as a restorer
than as a founder.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 2S3

the seed of an extensive evangelization of India, the
only fruit is now the old Malabar Church, numbering
some 300,000 souls, besides nearly the same number
who have been drawn from its independent life to
the Roman obedience.

The Roman Catholic Church, in some rivalry of
the older Nestorian Missions, entered upon the field
in the fourteenth century, working mainly through
the Dominican and Franciscan Orders. But the
great impulse to its work was given under the
Portuguese dominion in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, chiefly through the splendid Jesuit Missions
of Xavier and his successors, supported, even to
compulsion, by the Portuguese Government, and
absorbing for a time, not without persecution, the
older Syrian Church. These Missions were evidently
full of vitality and power. They may have carried
to excess the adaptation of Christianity to native
thoughts and habits, and even native superstitions.
Certainly they relied far too much on the secular
arm, and did not shrink from direct persecution ; and
accordingly they may have been satisfied too often
with merely external conversions.^ Still, in spite of
all defects and errors, they did a great work ; and they
have left behind, especially in the Portuguese and
French territories, a strong Roman Catholic Church,
which, if it still retains something of these same

^ Bishop Cotton did not hesitate to say in 1864 of Xavier himself,
"While he deserves the title of the Apostle of India for his energy,
self-sacrifice, and piety, I consider his whole method thoroughly wrong,
and its results in India and Ceylon deplorable."

284 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

defects, shows a real vitality, great self-denial and
self-sacrifice in its workers, and strong influence over
the native mind. It includes within it the " Syrian
Catholics," drawn over from the old Malabar Church ;
it flourishes, as is natural, greatly in Portuguese
India (where there has been some conflict between
the old Archbishopric of Goa and the Court of Rome)
and in the French territory. But it is a great and
growing power everywhere. In British and Feuda-
tory India it numbered in 189 1, 1,277,926 mem-
bers, in Portuguese India 281,248, in French India
35,727 ; organized in seven provinces, with a full
hierarchy of thirty archbishops and bishops, and
more than two thousand clergy, and with a great
array of schools and colleges. Of the whole Christian
population of India (about 2,600,000), some two-
thirds are included in the Roman Communion. But
its missionaries are drawn from various European
nations ; and English influence, even through the
Roman Catholic Church here, appears to occupy a
secondary place.

Once more under the Dutch ascendency an effort
at evangelization was made by the Dutch Reformed
Church, again supported by strong pressure from the
Government. But when, on the English conquest,
the pressure was withdrawn, the religious influence
languished, and has left at present but slight traces
in India and in Ceylon.^

On all these works for God we look with interest

^ For a very interesting account of these earlier attempts see Dr.
George Smith's Conversion of India, cc. ii. iii. iv. (Murray, 1893).

/

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 285

and sympathy ; we rejoice in their successes ; we
learn by their failures ; with the ancient Syrian
Church we have close and friendly relations. But
they have not, of course, any bearing on our dis-
charge of the mission which God has laid upon us in
India. They show us, indeed, its greatness and its
difficulty. For we see that we are not bringing in a
spiritual power absolutely new ; we are attempting
a work in which other Churches of Christ have so
far failed, that the Christianity planted has had only
a local and exceptional success, and made but little
impression on the mass of the vast Indian population.
It seems to us strange that the expansive force of
Christianity, which has spread its power so widely
and so deeply over the Aryan races of Europe,
should have for so many centuries failed to lay hold
of the cognate races of India, or to make head
effectively against the religion of Islam. We have
learnt much from the experience of the past — to
repudiate all material and political force in our
religious warfare, and to rely for spiritual effect upon
spiritual weapons only, — to ally our direct Christian-
ization with all the other civilizing influences, and
especially with the work of education, and to deal
more wisely, because more sympathetically, with
native religion and native thought. But if we are
to succeed where other Christian efforts have failed,
we certainly have before us a stupendous task, needing
more than we have yet shown of wisdom and en-
thusiasm and reliance, in spite of all discouragements,
on the Divine strength, made perfect in weakness.

286 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

(C) Now, when we put all aside which God has
wrought through other hands, and consider what
has been actually done through the English rule in
India towards the Christianization of the people, we
have, of course, to distinguish between the action
of civil authority, and the action of the English
Church, and of English Christianity in general,
through the various Communions into which that
Christianity is unhappily divided.

The civil authority, unlike the Portuguese and
Dutch Governments preceding it, has at all times
refused to support the work of Christianization,
either by force of law, or even by material support.
From the beginning some provision has been made,
more or less completely, for the spiritual needs of
those who, whether as soldiers or as civilians, are
engaged in the public service ; and this provision
has extended indirectly to the English settlers who
have gathered round them, and in some slight
degree also to the Eurasian population, which stands
in a position of peculiar difficulty and disadvantage
between the dominant and the subject races. Even
here the provision at first was scanty enough.
Although the earliest Charter to an East India
Company was granted in 1600, yet it was not till
1 68 1 that the first English Church was begun in
India, and not till 1708 were the services of chap-
lains and schoolmasters put on a regular ecclesias-
tical footing. In the first century of our settlement
in India, only nineteen chaplains were sent out. As
to the natives, it was, indeed, ordered in 1708 that

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 287

the chaplains should learn the vernacular languages,
" to enable them to instruct the Gentoos, that shall
be servants or slaves of the Company, in the
Protestant religion." But even this direction ap-
pears to have remained generally a dead letter.

In regard to the independent missionary effort
which gradually sprang up, the attitude of the
civil power varied at different times, from friendly
neutrality to direct hostility. In the early period
from 1600 to about 17 JO, before the rise of the
East India Company to political power, it was on
the whole favourable. The great missionary
Schwartz, who laboured in South India from 1750
to 1798, was protected and honoured by the
authorities — perhaps in some measure on account
of his singular influence over native princes. But
as soon as the second period of rapid political
growth and high aspiration began, the relation was
gradually altered, evidently from motives of policy.
The civil power did not profess neutrality ; it was
hardly content even with discouragement ; it
assumed a position of direct hostility and actual
persecution.

No one, of course, would have desired more than
neutrality from civil authority. The history of the
earlier attempts at Christianization plainly teaches
us how fatal it would be to true spiritual interest,
that the civil authority — especially in an Eastern
community, which can hardly understand any action
from it which is not compulsory — should bring any
legal or material force to bear on the religious

288 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

work. Immediate and apparent advantage would
be dearly purchased by that which is ultimately
injurious to reality and permanence. We are told
that even now our missionaries often find it hard
to convince their native hearers, that they are not
simply servants* of the British Government, engaged
in furthering its political ends. The more the
spiritual work is left to its own intrinsic power, —
the more clearly mere English ascendency is distin-
guished from the higher enthusiasm of Christian
Brotherhood, — the better will it be for the advance
of true Christianity.

But the policy of hostility, indefensible in prin-
ciple, and perhaps of doubtful expediency, was now
plainly shown. The sole considerations of those
who guided our Indian Government were, first,
commercial peace and prosperity, and, next, the
advance of political power. Both depended on
friendly relations with the native races, Hindu and
Mohammedan, in which we were at first content
with a subordination almost servile, but gradually
assumed equality and superiority. All modes of
action which could imperil these friendly relations
were sternly prohibited or discouraged ; and among
these religious aggression, or even religious self-
assertion, was thought to be the most dangerous.
It is, moreover, notable that this hostility increased
with our advance in power. In 1774 we find
Warren Hastings — one chief founder of our Indian
Empire — laying it down as a fundamental rule of
policy " to discourage all missionary efforts " among

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 289

races so strongly attached to their religious beliefs.
Missionaries from England were actually driven to
take refuge under the Dutch flag — the London
Missionary Society in 1798 at Chinsurah, and the
remarkable Baptist Mission in 1799 at Serampur.
In 1812a body of American missionaries (of whom
the famous Judson was one) were expelled from
Bengal. In fact the period from 1774 to 181 3,
which was the brightest in the history of our
Conquest, and which, in fact, established our
Empire, was the darkest period of discouragement
and persecution of missionary effort. Nor was the
tone of authority at home more favourable. In
1793 Wilberforce's proposed clauses in the renewed
Charter of the Company, venturing on the modest
declaration that our duty required us " to promote
the religious and moral improvement" of the native
peoples, were sneered at as " the pious clauses," and
dropped by the timidity of the Government. Even
activity in respect of vernacular education was
mostly looked upon with an unfavourable eye at
headquarters, lest it should indirectly shock religious
prejudice, or associate itself with direct Christian
teaching. To this rule there were, of course,
noble exceptions of men in the highest spheres
of authority and influence, who were not ashamed
to confess Christ, and that with a singularly earnest
and enthusiastic confession. But the general drift
of the policy of the Government was but too
obvious. It was only through some of the chap-
lains, who had a legal status and could not be put

u

290 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

down, that in this dark time efYbrt was made to
change public opinion, and, even in defiance of it, to
do something to Christianize the natives.^

Step by step, however, pubHc opinion in India
and at home was being educated to a higher con-
ception of national policy and national duty. The
chief force which wrought upon it in this direction
is undoubtedly to be traced to the great Evangelical
Revival. It was to such men as William Wilberforce,
Charles Simeon, and Charles Grant at home, that
the forward steps were due ; as it was by men trained
in the same school and sent to chaplaincies in India
— David Brown, Claudius Buchanan, Daniel Corrie,
Thomas Thomason, Henry Martyn — that a change
was wrought in the opinion of Anglo-Indian society.

The year 1813 was the great turning-point.
Wilberforce, whose " pious clauses " had been scouted
in 1793, was now able to carry them through
triumphantly, although not without strenuous opposi-
tion, and to add provisions which went far beyond
them. One virtually gave to missionary work legal
right and forbade interference ; another established
the See of Calcutta, the beginning of the full Church
organization so much needed, and at the same time
a fresh impulse to the whole work of the Church
among English and natives alike. The growing
strength of missionary duty and enterprise had, in
fact, forced recognition from the civil authority, and

^ How hard a task this was, against the prevalent thought and
practice of the time, is shown clearly in Dr. G. Smith's Life of Henry
Martyn.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 291

took advantage of it at once. The Baptist and
London Missionary Societies, which had already
entered the field, were now able to labour peacefully
and effectively ; and our own Missionary Societies
took up the work — the Church Missionary Society
in 1 8 14, and the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in 1820. From this time may be dated a
continually increasing friendliness of action, although
with much caution and even timidity, from the civil
power in India and at home. The Bishoprics of
Madras in 1835 and of Bombay in 1837 were
founded with the same legal authority and support
as Calcutta. Not without much opposition and
some apprehension, the State ventured to prohibit
superstitious practices, plainly immoral — such as
Suttee, religious infanticide, and human sacrifice ; to
relieve our officials from compulsory attendance,
which appeared to be participation, at idolatrous
ceremonies ; and to give some measure of legal
protection to Christian converts. Meanwhile the
voluntary missionary energy, which asked simply
for a fair field and no favour, was steadily and
rapidly advancing ; and the higher civil authorities
in India began to recognise more fully its value
even to the wellbeing of the Empire, and not to be
ashamed to confess it. So things continued during
the later period of the rule of the Company in India —
not without vicissitudes and occasional checks through
fear of Hindu fanaticism, but with considerable pro-
gress on the whole in the favourable conditions of
missionary work.

292 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

But it was the great storm of the Indian Mutiny
of 1858 which finally cleared the air. It is true
that the incident of the " greased cartridges " showed
how terrible and how blindly unreasonable was the
violence of Hindu fanaticism. Yet the union against
us of Hindu and Mohammedan, in spite of their
mutual religious hatred, at once showed that the
rising was not properly a religious rising, and yet
made it clear that, in respect of both, our policy of
religious neutrality had utterly failed to conciliate,
and had left untouched the elements of alienation
and antagonism towards English and Christian
civilization. Men began to inquire whether, after
all, the religious bond is not the only bond which
can really unite alien races, differing in all else from
one another. They saw that, so far as native Chris-
tianity had spread, it proved itself in the hour of
trial to be such a bond of sympathy and loyalty ;
they asked themselves what would have been the
effect, even from a secular point of view, if that
native Christianity had been, as it might have been,
extended far and wide. When the rule, moreover,
of the old East India Company was brought to an
end by the direct assumption of imperial power, it
was but natural that the dominance of merely com-
mercial and prudential ideas should give way to some
higher conceptions of national duty and responsibility.
The effect was seen in the celebrated Proclamation of
November 1858, in which Her Majesty, speaking as
" Victoria by the grace of God . . . Queen, Defender
of the Faith," thus addressed her Indian subjects : —

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 293

Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity and
acknowledging with gratitude the solace of religion, we dis-
claim alike the right and the desire to impose our convictions
on any of our subjects. We declare it to be our Royal Will
and Pleasure that none be in any wise favoured, none molested
or disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or observances,
but that all alike shall enjoy the equal and impartial protec-
tion of the law. . . . It is our earnest desire to stimulate the
peaceful industry of India, to promote works of public utility
and improvement, and to administer its government for the
benefit of all our subjects resident therein. In their prosperity
will be our strength ; in their contentment our security ; and
in their gratitude our best reward. And may the God of all
power grant to us, and to those in authority under us, strength
to carry out our wishes for the good of our people I

It is not a little remarkable that the draft of this
Proclamation, as submitted to the Queen by the
Secretary of State, simply contained the declaration
of complete religious toleration and impartiality, and
of desire to rule for the benefit of the whole people.
We owe to the Queen herself the addition by her
own hand of the opening confession of Christian
faith, and the closing prayer for God's blessing.^ So
wisely and nobly completed, it is clearly all that the
most earnest Christianity could desire from the civil
authority.

It asserts — as is but wise and right — the principle
of unreserved toleration, and forbids all intervention
of material force or favour. But the avowal of
Christian faith, and the prayer to the one true God for
His blessing on labour for the good of all the people,
native and English alike, under the imperial sway,

^ See Life of the Prince Consort, vol. iv. pp. 28 1-335.

294 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

mark, as it seems, a wholly new departure on the
part of the civil power. It was said truly at the
time, " It is the principle of our Government, not
its external form, which has been changed. ... A
century hence men will date the history of progress
from the Proclamation of the Queen." It bears just
that witness for Christ, telling strongly on the native
mind, which alone can be rightly demanded and
really needed. Beyond the moral effect of this wit-
ness it cannot rightly go. Even recent experience,
as notably in the religious conflicts between Hindu
and Mohammedan at Bombay, tells us how needful
it is for the Government to show a firm and obvious
impartiality. Probably, as Christian ideas tell more
powerfully upon the educated native mind, some
more decided action in deahng with native customs
and superstitions, with a view to the moral and social
wellbeing of the people, will be accepted, or even
demanded. But such action must be kept clear
both of the reality and of the appearance of State
proselytism.

The two duties in this respect, which remain for
the Government of India, are clearly marked out in
the Imperial Proclamation.

For the English in India, engaged mainly in the
service of the State, it is clearly right by some kind
of *' Establishment " to provide for them religious
ministration, which would have been theirs at home.
In relation to the natives, we must so carry out the
promise of impartial toleration, as not virtually to
favour native religions, and not to fail in giving fair

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 295

protection to Christian converts. If these two
duties be done resolutely and ungrudgingly, the
civil power will have done all that it is called upon
to do, in a matter which bears powerfully on the
highest welfare of its subjects. Christian zeal occa-
sionally urges it to go farther ; but wisely and
rightly that demand has been refused.

(D) Meanwhile, under this relation to the civil
power and to those other civilizing influences, which
it is labouring not unsuccessfully to foster, there
remain two questions. First, how far has the Church
of Christ striven to enter by her own spiritual power
upon the vast field of missionary enterprise ? Next,
how far has the Church of England, as a National
Church, taken her right place of leadership in this
sacred work ?

It must at once be confessed that, although our
settlement in India is three centuries old, and our
dominance there of not inconsiderable antiquity, yet
it is only in this century that any serious attempt
has been made to rise to our high vocation.

In the earlier times of our history, we see with
some shame that the missionary energy of our Eng-
lish Christianity was not strong enough to undertake
so great a work, and to overcome the discouragement
and opposition, which, as we have seen, it would have
had to encounter from the civil authority. P^or a
time, indeed, it seemed almost dead. Setting aside
the older Syrian and Roman Catholic Christianit\%
the first missions appear to have been the Danish
Lutheran Missions in 1705. Our Church was, as

296 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

yet, contented to help them through the old Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and this aid
was continued till 1824. Then followed in 1750 the
great missionary work of Schwartz, again under the
guidance and with the support of the Society for Pro-
moting Christian Knowledge — still, as it would seem,
unable to find English Churchmen ready to enter upon
the work of evangelization. It was by his hand that
the Tinnevelly Missions were founded in 1750. His
labour was earnest and unwearied, and his influence
in South India over the native races and the native
princes extraordinary/ For forty - three years he
wrought for his Master in faith, sowing the seed of
which future times were to reap the harvest," and his
farewell words to the old Society in England were
full of hope.

Meanwhile it was the zeal of English Noncon-
formity, stirred by the religious revival of the close
of the eighteenth century, and able to move without
legal hindrance and difficulty, which led the way in
evangelization, outstripping the direct action of the
Church herself In 1790 Marshman and Carey,
in spite of the open hostility of the East India
Directors, founded the famous Baptist Mission at
Serampur, which, over and above its active mis-

^ We are told that during our wars with Mysore, he was the one
representative of the English whom Haidar Ali would trust.

- Not, it must be added, at once ; for after his death, and during
the period of discouragement which followed, the converts made by
him and by other faithful labourers — who are said to have been some
50,000 — greatly fell off, and in some cases the Missions appear to have
died out.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 297

sionary work, translated and printed the Bible in
more than thirty native languages, and began in
1 8 1 8 the work of higher education, by founding a
college for " the Instruction of Youth in Eastern
Literature and European Science." The London
Missionary Society entered upon the field in 1798,
in spite of great discouragement.

From that time onward — and especially since
the Charter of 1 8 1 3 gave free scope to missionary
enterprise — there has been a continually and rapidly
increasing development of activity from all sections
of our British Christianity. Outside the pale of our
own Church, we see missions — Baptist, Congrega-
tional, Presbyterian, Methodist — both from our own
country and from the United States of America,
working mainly through voluntary Societies, with
great earnestness and self-sacrifice, and often with
abundant blessing. It is said that at this monlent
there are no less than twenty - nine British and
seventeen American Societies at work in India.-^
The spectacle, indeed, of religious division thus
afforded is sad enough in itself, and disastrous in
its effect, however that effect may be in practice
mitigated. Yet " notwithstanding every way Christ
is preached " ; and, so preached, He is drawing men
to Himself.

Before entering upon our proper subject, which is
the expansion of the work of the Church of England,
it is right to glance at the work thus done by others,
which as yet far exceeds what she has been able

^ See Dr. George Smith's Conversion of India, pp. 161, 162.

298 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

to accomplish. Of less than 800,000 Christians
in India outside the Syrian and Roman Catholic
Churches, the Census of 1891 gives the following
list : —

Baptist

202,746

Presbyterian ....

46,351

Methodist .....

32,123

Lutheran and other foreign bodies .

69,405

Congregationalist and unsectarian .

50,936

Various smaller bodies and unspecified

25,010

426,571

It is clear from this list that the work done for
Christ by others puts our own Church to shame. But,
although even now inadequately, she is beginning to
awake to her great opportunity and responsibility ;
and it is not presumptuous to believe that, if she
rises adequately to that duty, her work is carried on
with singular advantage, under that constitution of
Evangelical truth and Apostolical order, which God
has been pleased to preserve to her, and ought to be
able to move with unequalled power all sections of
our English society.

Now up to the beginning of this century the
Church herself, except by indirect aid, was satisfied
with the provision for the European population

^ In these are included the results of very remarkable work done
by American societies, of which the Report of our own Board of
Missions says (p. 162): "Perhaps the most noteworthy fact is the
prominence of America as an evangelizing force. Of the Baptist,
Presbyterian, and Methodist groups of Missions, unquestionably the
most important are the American."

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 299

through the chaplains, who, of course, when they
were earnest and enthusiastic, could not but do
something- for the natives around them. A splendid
example of this extension of evangelistic influence
was set by the " five chaplains "—Brown, Buchanan,
Corrie, Thomason, Marty n — to whom reference has
already been made. The example was the more
striking, because it was shown against the greatest
difficulties in the darkest time of discouragement
and opposition. Although they were not properly
missionaries, it has been said that —

Few men have had so important a share in establishing
Christianity as these five — Brown by his personal influence
in Calcutta and faithful preaching to the elite of English
society there for twenty -five years ; Buchanan by his pub-
lished books on the Syrian Church and the need of an Indian
Episcopate ; Corrie and Thomason by their quiet and untiring
labours for the spiritual good of officers and civilians, and
afterwards in the direct cause of missions ; Martyn by the
example of zeal and devotion which he set to succeeding
generations.!

But earnest and fruitful as this work for Christ was,
yet it was necessarily quite inadequate to fulfil our
missionary duty and opportunity. It was simply a
preparation for better things to come.

Our real missionary work begins from the critical
time of opportunity given in 181 3. The creation of
the See of Calcutta in 18 14, both in itself and in its
significance as a victory over the vehement opposition
of the older school of the East India Directors,

1 See the Church Missio7jary Atlas of India, pu])lishccl hy the
C.M.S. in 1887.

300 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

marked the opening of a new era, as in Church
organization, so in evangelistic spirit and activity.
For it was the entrance of the Church of England,
as a body, upon the great field now opened to her.
In the same year the Church Missionary Society —
one of the chief fruits of the overflowing energy
of the Evangelical Revival, founded especially for
" Africa and the East " — began active operations in
India, and was followed by the older Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in 1820. Since that
time there has been a remarkable progress, and that
progress, moreover, grows with a continually increas-
ing rapidity.

On the one hand, the right organization of the
Church has advanced, although it has had to over-
come many legal obstacles, much timidity, and some
active discouragement. The Sees of Madras and
Bombay were founded in 1835 and 1837, with the
same authority as the older See of Calcutta ; and,
after a lonsf interval, followed the creation of other
bishoprics, founded without any further aid from the
State than the assignment to each new bishop of a
senior chaplaincy, and all plainly stamped with a
missionary character — the See of Rangoon in 1877,
of Lahore in 1877, of Travancore in 1879, of Chota-
Nagpore in 1890, of Lucknow in 1893. In the
vast diocese of Madras, where native Christianity
is strongest, Bishops Caldwell and Sargent were
appointed in 1877 as assistant - bishops over the
native Christian communities, sustained and directed
by the great Missionary Societies ; and, now that

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 301

they have passed away, it is to be hoped that legal
obstacles may be overcome or boldly disregarded, so
that an independent See of Tinnevclly may be at
once established. All these bishoprics are subject
to the authority of the metropolitan See of Calcutta,
and, with Colombo and Rangoon, constitute the
" Province of India and Ceylon." It is only to be
desired that their number should be considerably
multiplied, and that, so far as possible, Synodical
action, both diocesan and general, should be largely
developed. For the task assigned to an Indian
bishop is a singularly important and complex task.
He has to weld together, as far as possible, English
and native Christianity, and to be the organ of com-
munication between the Church and the civil power.
He has to sustain through the chaplaincies the
Christianity of our own people in India ; to provide
for the poorer English, unattached to the public
service, and the Eurasian class, which is placed
under peculiar disadvantage ; and to direct and
stimulate the missionary activity of our great
Societies.^

Happily that activity has enormously increased,
studding British India with mission stations, churches,
schools, colleges, as centres from which the light and
grace of Christianity may be propagated. Side by

^ In these should be inckided the old Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, which has done invaluable service, not only in
translation and provision of Holy Scripture, the Prayer- Book, and
Christian literature, but in hel]:iing to found bishoprics, and in giving
grants to the dioceses for Church building, for educalit)n, and general
Church work.

302 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

side with them, partly in connection, partly in inde-
pendence, there have grown up such missions as the
Oxford Mission at Calcutta (now closely united with
the old " Bishop's College "), the Cambridge Mission
at Delhi, the Mission from Trinity College, Dublin,
in Chota-Nagpore, and the Cowley Mission at Bom-
bay and Poona. The Indian Church Aid Society
is endeavouring, although with inadequate resources,
to meet the needs of the Eurasian population, which
has hitherto been greatly overlooked. The Zenana
and Medical Missions, in connection with the two
great Societies, are taking up to some extent the
work of female education, both in the zenanas and
in schools.^ Every year now sees the initiation of
some new enterprise. Late as our efforts are, and
still quite inadequate to the need and hopefulness of
the work, they have, indeed, been signally blessed
already, and under that blessing they show not only
sustained vitality, but a very remarkable growth.
Yet, as usual, every step of achievement only makes
it more evident that, as yet, we have but made a
slight beginning of an almost infinite work. From
all quarters there comes the cry that " a great door
and effectual is opened," although " there are many
adversaries."

^ The returns of 1892 show that the two Societies had of European
and Eurasian clergy 231, of native clergy 286, of lay teachers (almost
entirely native) 3843 ; of native Christians baptized 198,629, and of
Catechumens 22,095. ^^ colleges and schools of all kinds there were
of European and Eurasian teachers 238, of native Christians 2804, of
natives not Christian 822, and of scholars 79,983. The baptisms in
1892 were 10,790. Of these the greater part belong to the Church
Missionary Society.

n EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 303

The work is certainly one of stupendous difficulty
and of many hindrances. It has to make its
way against a deep-seated power over the mass of
the people of great native religions — Hinduism,
Buddhism, Mohammedanism — to say nothing of
strange superstitions and devil-worship in the non-
Aryan races. In dealing with Hinduism the way is
barred by the tremendous force of religious caste,
closely bound up with the social organization of the
people. Among the educated classes,^ where faith
in the old religion has given way before the influence
of Western education and Western literature, the
blank Agnosticism, or the vague Theism or Pantheism,
which succeed, are hindrances quite as serious to the
work of evangelization. That work suffers even
more from internal defects — the evil of our unhappy
religious divisions, the errors of the past as to the
right spirit and method of dealing with native religion
and thought and character, the secularist influences
in English life and literature, the defects in true
Christian character in those, English or native, who
call themselves Christian. The resources at its
command, both in men and money, although greatly
increased and increasing still, are most inadequate to
its extraordinary task ; and our English Churchmen
as a body are far from being awakened to the great-
ness of their vocation.

It is, therefore, no wonder that as yet it has

1 It should be remembered that, in spite of our exertions in founda-
tion of universities, colleges, and schools, hardly 7 per cent of the
population can even read and write.

304 HULSEAN LECTURES APr.

scarcely begun to touch the great mass of the Indian
people. Hardly one in a hundred is even professedly
Christian. But that, in spite of all hindrances,
Christianity in India is rapidly advancing, both in
achievement and in promise, is happily beyond ques-
tion. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
has published certain " Laymen's Opinions of the
Value of Missions in India" from men in high official
authority, such as Lord Lawrence, Sir Bartle Frere,
Lord Napier and Ettrick, Sir Richard Temple, and
even from the official Bluebooks, which prove this
unmistakably. They all agree in this, that while the
present visible results of missionary work are con-
siderable, they are as nothing compared with the
indirect and preparatory influence which is pervading
and stirring Indian society as a whole.

"I speak" (says Sir Bartle Frere, for example) "simply as to
matters of experience and observation and not of opinion, just
as a Roman prefect might have reported to Trajan or the
Antonines ; and I assure you that, whatever you may be told
to the contrary, the teaching of Christianity among i6o
millions of civilized, industrious Hindus and Mohammedans
in India, is effecting changes, moral, social, and political,
which, for extent and rapidity of effect, are far more extraordi-
nary than anything that you or your fathers have witnessed in
modern Europe."

"I have shown you" (says Sir Richard Temple) "that success
has already been \ouchsafed. I wonder whether our fore-
fathers foresaw the greatness of the success which a hundred
years would produce. And you will remember that the result
has been attained by an increase of 50 per cent in each
decade during the last thirty years, or one generation of man.
And during the coming generation the result is likely to be

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 305

even greater, because the work is now backed up, not only by
European energy and the zeal of the English Church, but also
by the influence which education on the part of the State is
producing throughout the la,nd and amongst all classes of the
people. Thus India is like a mighty bastion which is being
battered by heavy artillery. We have given blow after blow,
and thud after thud, and the effect is not at first very remark-
able ; but at last with a crash the mighty structure will come
toppling down, and it is our hope that some fine day the
heathen religions of India will in like manner succumb."

But independently of opinion, the simple fact
speaks for itself, that, according to the census returns,
the number of native Christians in nineteen years
(from I 872- 1 891) has increased in British India by
66 per cent, and in all India (including the native
states and the French and Portuguese territories) by
46 per cent — the increase of the whole population
being only 20 per cent. If we examine the work
of the missions (excluding the Roman Catholic and
Syrian Christians) the figures are even more remark-
able. In forty years, from 185 i, the number of
native clergy has increased from 21 to 797, of
native lay preachers from 493 to 3491, of congrega-
tions from 267 to 4863, of native Christians from
91,092 to 648,843, and of scholars from 64,043 to
299,051 in day schools, besides 144,263 in Sunday
schools. It is notable also that the proportionate
increase is greatest where the actual numbers are
lowest. Thus in Madras it is 22 per cent, while in
the N.-W. provinces it reaches 139, and in the
Punjab 335 per cent.^ Clearly in quarters which

^ In 1851, exclusive of Roman Catholics, there were but 115 native
Christians in the Punjab. There were in 1890, 18,792.

3o6 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

have hitherto seemed hopeless, the seed sown in
patience is beginning at last to yield an abundant
harvest.

But this is far from representing the whole effect
of Christianity in India. For of the Christian work
now undoubtedly advancing, there stand out two
distinct phases — the one immediate, the other only
prospective, as to fruit.

There is, first, the direct missionary work, rapidly
forming native Christian communities, and organiz-
ing them into native Christian Churches. It is clear
that this branch of the work has advanced most
successfully among the non - Aryan races — in
Southern India, in Chota-Nagpore, in Burmah, in
Borneo, and elsewhere.^

The old missions in the Tinnevelly district,
established by Schwartz more than a century ago,
but of late years blessed with a new outburst of
religious and evangelistic vitality, are, perhaps, the
best illustrations of this advance." With these may
be classed the remarkable mission in Chota-Nag-
pore, now going on with such signal success, under
the direction of the bishop of that new diocese, and
with the aid of a third " University Mission " from
Trinity College, Dublin.

These missions are again of two distinct types.
At Palamcottah, for example, the headquarters of

^ The Historical Sketches y published by the S.P.G., of various fields
of missionary work, are well worth careful study.

^ There is at this moment some check to this advance — possibly con-
nected with the difficult question of caste. But it is probably only
temporary.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 307

the Church Missionary Society, there is a strong
central organization — with some twenty European
and fifty- eight native missionaries, besides twelve
English ladies engaged in the Zenana Mission —
with its great church,^ its training college, its schools
for boys and girls, its dispensaries, its orphanages.
Round this centre are gathered in the adjacent
country districts dependent missionary stations,
served partly by local ministers, partly by mission-
aries from Palamcottah itself There are nearly
a thousand villages containing native Christians ;
some are completely Christian villages ; there are
more than 600 native catechists, evangelists, and
schoolmasters, and the whole number of native
Christians is about 56,000.^ Each little native
Christian community has its native pastor and
Church council, and all are being gradually organ-
ized into something of independent life. They have
thus their native Ministry, largely increasing every
day ; they are being gradually trained to self-
government by councils, clerical and lay, of native
Christians and Church officers, having limited but
definite and effective powers ; in some degree they
are becoming self-supporting, in money as well as in

^ That church has at its Sunday Tamil service a native congrega-
tion of at least 1200, and some 250 communicants.

2 Under the S. P.G. Missions in the Tinnevelly district — so arranged
as not in any way to cross those of the C. M.S.— there are somewhere
about the same number of native Christians. Renieml)ering how large
a majority of the natives of India belong to the villages, it is especially
satisfactory that Christianity should be thus spreading in the village
society.

3o8 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

men. Clearly the right principle is here being
followed. European direction and inspiration are
being freely and ably given. But the whole stress
of the work is rightly laid upon native agency, by
which alone there can be any hope of winning the
native races to Christ ; and the native Christians
are being raised to religious independence and re-
ligious equality with their English brethren. The
old paternal relation is thus gradually passing into a
kind of elder brotherhood in Christ. Nor is there,
I believe, any serious difficulty in this enterprise,
although it naturally needs both caution and de-
liberation. Growth which is to be deep-seated and
permanent must, of course, be gradual ; and there
will be, moreover, from time to time some errors
and vagaries in the newness of native Christianity
and native ministry. But on the whole, it is certain
that the native converts are rising to their duties and
responsibilities.

There are, on the other hand, outlying mission
stations — such as Nazareth under the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel — where
one or two European missionaries rule with a
kind of patriarchal authority over a native city in
the wilderness, relying, however, entirely on the
support of native colleagues in the Ministry. Such
a village is a little society of purely Christian type,
with a church as its centre, and, gathered round it
in a great square, schools of all kinds, a dispensary, a
gymnasium, various workshops, and the residences,
plain and simple enough, of the missionary staff It

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 309

is obvious at once that all the social influences, else-
where so fatally antagonistic, are here enlisted in the
service of Christianity ; and that all the agencies of
civilization are inspired and harmonized under the
supreme spiritual force. Such must be the one
right method of evangelizing a race, which needs
to be raised out of a low intellectual condition and
a debasing devil-worship, at once to true humanity
and true faith.^

By such missions as these there is a directly
evangelistic work going on everywhere, especially in
Southern India, mainly under the auspices of our
two great Missionary Societies. In respect of this
work generally, the old Apostolic experience is
repeated — " Not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble, are called." By it
Christianity is drawing in, and welcoming, in the
name of its Master, the poor and the simple, of
lower class and lower race ; it is admitting to the
Brotherhood, where there is " neither Barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free," those whom the earlier
civilizations of India treated simply as subjects,
almost as slaves. It need hardly be added that
here, as in other similar experiences, those whom
the wisdom of the world despises are found able to
receive the simplicity of the wisdom of God, and to
be so raised by it to a higher humanity, as to become

^ Nazareth certainly is a hive of bright and intelligent Christian life,
with its fine church and beautiful native services, its admirable Dispen-
sary of St. Luke, its flourishing schools, especially its famous industrial
and art schools, its gymnasium, and its orphan homes.

3IO HULSEAN LECTURES app.

capable not only of true Christian membership, but
of efficient Christian Ministry. The work for God
has its vicissitudes of rapid advance, and of occa-
sional stagnation and apparent retrogression ; it has
its experience of the instability and failure, especially
attaching to work on uncivilized races. But there is
no doubt whatever either of its general advance at
this moment, or of its future promise. Just in pro-
portion as it assumes a true indigenous character, it
will lay hold of that vast Indian population which
lies far from the busy life of the great towns, and
is comparatively untouched by mere intellectual
culture.

But side by side with this simple evangelistic
work, there is going on by the hands of our mission-
aries a less direct, but not less important, advance
through educational agencies.

Of the direct missionary work, indeed, a large
school system always forms an integral part ; and
of the mission schools some are entirely for
Christian children, while others admit both heathen
and Christian, and bring all in different degrees,
unless objection is made by parents, under religious
teaching. The work of primary vernacular edu-
cation in India was begun by Christian agency ; and
in Southern India, in spite of all governmental pro-
visions, missionary agency is even now said by
authority to be " the only agency that can at present
bring the benefits of teaching home to the humblest
orders of the population." This educational work
is carried on in schools of all grades ; and it is

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST " 311

necessarily affecting, morally and religiously, the
whole mass of the rising generation.

From early times, moreover, our Church in India,
true to its old traditions, has taken the greatest care
for Christian education of a higher type. The first
Bishop of Calcutta (Bishop Middleton) founded
"Bishop's College" in 1820, on a splendid scale.
It was designed for education of Christians, native
as well as European, for various grades of the
Ministry ; for general instruction of non- Christian
students ; for translation of Holy Scripture and the
Prayer- Book ; for the reception and training of
missionaries sent out from England. From that
time onward educational work of this comprehensive
character has always been carried on in various
colleges and high schools, uniting in different pro-
portions general education with distinct Christian
and ministerial training.

But of late years, with the advance of the
University system in India, this work has assumed
larger dimensions, and has developed especially the
element of general education. It affects accordingly
the higher castes and the higher culture of India.
As a religious work, it is less direct than the
regular mission agency ; it appeals less obviously to
Christian sympathy ; but yet it is, as I trust, likely to
tell very powerfully on a future Indian Christianity.

In great colleges affiliated to the Universities
there is now being given under avowedly Christian
auspices a general education of the highest order,
of which systematic instruction in Holy Scripture

312

HULSEAN LECTURES

and in the fundamental truths of the Gospel forms
an integral part. This instruction is given to all
alike, to native Christians and to those students,
Hindu or Mohammedan, who do not profess to be
even Catechumens or inquirers after the faith. As
yet it has yielded but little visible fruit of conver-
sion— less, as it appears to me, than might reason-
ably have been hoped for — although such converts
as have been made are naturally men of high educa-
tion and position. Nor is it hard to see that in
itself it is liable to some rather serious dangers.
But, on the whole, the balance of opinion and
experience is decidedly in its favour — provided
always that the colleges are really Christian colleges,
not only refusing to allow religious teaching to
become vague and colourless, or to be crowded out
by the pressure of secular subjects, but maintaining
in all teaching and government a true Christian
tone. For this end it seems clear that their
teachers should be, wholly or predominantly.
Christian teachers ; and — thanks to the growth of
higher education in the native Christian community
— this would now seem to be attainable, although
perhaps at greater cost and with a more restricted
choice of men. After all, a school is what its
teachers make it. If the Christian tone is really
kept up, in living force, the value of this work will
be infinite.^ It deals, perhaps in the only way as
yet possible, with the higher castes, and — what is as

^ On this subject, see an admirable pamphlet by the Rev. S. S.
Allnutt, of the Cambridge Mission at Delhi.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 313

yet much the same — the leaders of the higher
culture, rapidly extending itself in India. It lays
hold of the great movement for education, and
moulds it by Christian hands and through Christian
influences ; and thus it is rapidly saturating the
educated classes everywhere with Christian idea and
with Christian morality. The effect on the future
cannot but be great.^ If India is ever to be won
for Christ, no one doubts that it must be through
native agency. Clearly it is through the free native
development of the great fundamental principles of
Gospel truth and Church life that success must be
achieved in God's appointed time.

For that future success the educational work, now
going on everywhere, is doubly a preparation. It
has a general preparatory influence on the whole
native mind, moving it, as by a great undercurrent,
towards a future anchorage on the Christian shore.
Perhaps in the union of direct visible evangelism
among the simpler and poorer classes, and this in-
direct influence over the intellectual and social
leaders of the community, the condition is not wholly
unlike that of the early Christianity, when it began
to confront, as a victorious force, the power of
heathen religions and philosophies in the old Roman

^ " Nothing can be more disastrous to the cause of Christianity in
India than the relaxation of Christian effort in the matter of higher
education. If our mission schools go, then our missionaries will have
no hold whatever on the educated classes. . . . It is an admitted fact
that Christianity has an immense influence outside the circle of the two
million Christians " ( fVor^ among the Educated Classes in India, by
S. Satthianadhan, M.A.)

314 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Empire, and to force them to pass from contempt and
indifference to inquiry, and from inquiry to adhesion.

But besides this general influence, it is more
definitely and decisively preparing for the future,
by educating the native Christians to become the
teachers of their countrymen, both in the ordained
Ministry of the Church and as lay evangelists. This
effect, moreover, is rapidly advancing. It is stated
that in the great " Christian College " at Madras,
the number of Christians among the students is nine
times as great now as it was twenty years ago, and
that at this moment one -sixth of those who have
graduated from it are professed Christians.^ In this
respect it evidently leads up to the higher work of
the regular training colleges for native clergy, of
which there are some splendid specimens in India.
Both classes of colleges are now being in great degree
officered by their former students ; and many of the
native teachers have already attained to a high
standard of education and ability. In spite, there-
fore, of the slowness and the indirect character of this
branch of the work, and of those dangers to which
I have adverted, it is in its own way invaluable.

This work is going on in many quarters. It
began with the leaders of the Presbyterian Missions
in India ; and in their hands are still some of its
finest developments — such as the great " Christian
College " at Madras, with its really splendid

^ See Rev. Dr. Miller's paper, read at Chicago in 1893, on " Educa-
tional Agencies in Missions." There is an excellent hostel for resident
Christian students attached to the College.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 315

buildings and its immense educational influence.
But it is being taken up energetically by our
own Church. I had myself the opportunity of
seeing the flourishing Colleges of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel at Trichinopoly
and Tanjore, the Church Missionary Society College
at Agra, the Colleges of the Oxford Mission at
Calcutta, and the Cambridge Mission at Delhi.
In different degrees, and in the last two Missions
in a high degree, the educational work in the
colleges and their affiliated schools is connected
with direct missionary enterprise — mainly in Calcutta
towards the Hindu, and in Delhi towards the
Mohammedan population. Most of all perhaps
in Calcutta — where the revived Bishop's College and
the Oxford Mission are most happily united under
the Rev. H. Whitehead — the more general work of
education is being merged in ministry to Christian
students, in evangelistic work in the villages of the
Sunderbunds district, and in direct missionary train-
ing. In Delhi, while the St. Stephen's College
flourishes under the Rev. S. S. Allnutt, the preaching
to the educated Mohammedans in the lecture-hall of
the native quarter, and even in the precincts of the
mosques, is carried on by the Rev. G. A. Lefroy,
with splendid ability and earnestness, and with that
clear understanding of the strength and weakness of
Mohammedanism, by which alone the work can be
rightly directed.^

^ A brief recent experience in Intiia showetl me the receptivity of
the educated heathen mind. At Trichinopoly, both in the hall of the

3i6 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

(D) Such are the present condition and future
prospects of the work in India itself. In Ceylon,
which is substantially Indian in character, although
not under Indian government, the experience is
much of the same kind. This beautiful island
itself, of some 25,000 square miles, now con-
taining 3,007,789 people, was occupied by the
Portuguese in 1505, taken from them by the
Dutch in 1656, and from the Dutch by Eng-
land in 1795. Under both the earlier dominions
great efforts were made for Christianization, un-
happily backed by civil compulsion. The effect of
the Portuguese effort still remains ; that of the Dutch,
which resulted in the nominal conversion of about
350,000, died out almost entirely under the tolera-
tion, which was exaggerated into indifference, of
English rule. Our neglect of religious duty in

College and under the shadow of the gigantic temple of Shrirangam, at
Madras in the Christian College, at Calcutta in the house of the Oxford
Mission, at Agra in the C.M.S. College, hallowed by the memory of
the saintly Bishop French, and at Delhi in the fine hall of St. Stephen's
College, I was allowed to address large audiences, varying from about
100 to 800 or 900, of educated natives, mostly members, present or
future, of the Universities. I chose subjects of directly Christian wit-
ness, in view of what seemed to be the greatest needs — the "Thirst
for God " satisfied in the Lord Jesus Christ, the witness of the Spirit to
" Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment," and the inseparability of Chris-
tian morality from Christian truth. In every case I had, as it seemed,
intelligent and most attentive audiences, well able to understand Eng-
lish, and to follow in it subjects of no slight difficulty, and ready to
listen to a treatment which, while it was, of course, not directly con-
troversial, certainly did not shrink from the most definite Christian
doctrine, and the most earnest pleading against mere speculative
curiosity and indifference.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 317

the first instance was great. Nothing was done
by the Church for the natives till 1 8 1 7, when
the Church Missionary Society entered upon the
field ; although Nonconformist missionaries from
America and from England preceded her in the
work. The Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel only began active operations in 1840, and
the Bishopric of Colombo was not created till
1845. Tardy and inadequate as our work has
been — at first supported by Government aid, which
is now withdrawn — it has since that time advanced
steadily and not slowly.

The work itself has two singular points of
interest. In the first place, Ceylon is a remarkable
mission-field. Of its population the Sinhalese (about
1,850,000) are Buddhists, the Tamil immigrants
(about 620,000) are Hindus, the Moormen (about
210,000) are Mohammedans. The Christians num-
ber 302,000, of whom at least 246,000 are Roman
Catholics; of the rest probably two -thirds are
members of our Church. In the next place, there
is in our Church a resolute attempt to harmonize
with regular Synodical government the self-governing
action of the Church Missionary Society, which
after much difficulty appears to be succeeding, and
to weld together the European and native Christians
on a footing of equality in one Church system.^
Although it is as yet only in its beginning, the pro-

^ In the Synod there are of English and Eurasian birth 38 clergy
and 61 lay representatives, side by side with 29 native clergy and 54
lay representatives. It often happens that English forms a medium of
communication between the Sinhalese and Tamil people.

3i8 HULSEAN LPXTURES app.

gress made is considerable ; and, if only this Church
unity can be preserved, its promise is great.

Burmah also, which has passed under English
sway by successive conquests from 1826 to 1886, is
a part of the Indian mission-field. It is, even more
than Ceylon, the home of the Southern Buddhism ; of
its inhabitants — nearly 8,000,000 — about 6,900,000
are professed Buddhists, and a complete organization
of Buddhist monks and religious teachers pervades
the country. Besides these there are Hindus, Moham-
medans, and Nat-worshippers (Animistic) — in all
about 600,000. The number of Christians is hard
to ascertain; the census returns give 120,768, of
whom only 19,000 are European and Eurasian ;
but the returns for the various religious bodies differ
considerably from these. Of these the Roman
Catholic Mission began in 1720, and now, thoroughly
organized with both European and native workers,
has a large proportion ; the Baptist Mission, begun
in 1 8 1 3 (chiefly American), has also a thorough
organization and a large body of converts. Our own
Church was, again, very late in the field : the first
chaplain was only appointed in 1843 ; the regular
mission work (of the S.P.G. alone) began in 1877 ; and
the Bishopric of Rangoon was not created till the
same year. Its most successful work is among the
Karens (Nat-worshippers) ; among the Burmese
Buddhists the direct and immediate progress is slow.
But, as in India, there is great promise in the
educational institutions, especially the S.P.G. College
(St. John's) at Rangoon, for higher education, which

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 319

has now 650 students, chiefly of the higher classes,
and has sent out 10,000 to all grades of the Civil
Service. Meanwhile, under the Bishop, mission
stations are rising in many quarters, with thirteen
European clergy, eight native pastors, i 1 5 cate-
chists, and (as yet) about 6300 native Christians.
The fruit of these is yet in great measure to come, but
it is hard to make up the lee-way of our long neglect.

Beyond these more settled spheres of work lie the
missions in the Straits Settlements and Borneo, now
formed into the diocese of Singapore, Labuan, and
Sarawak, which will be referred to hereafter.

The survey of this Mission in India and depend-
encies suggests to us at least these conclusions.
First, that it offers a field of extraordinary and
manifold interest, on which we are bidden to enter,
by the wonderful leadings of God's Providence, and
by the inalienable responsibilities of extraordinary
power. Next, that for many generations that call
has been shamefully ignored or neglected, and that
even now its full scope and significance are most
imperfectly realized. Thirdly, that our tardy and
inadequate efforts are nevertheless largely blessed, and
that Christianity is at last manifesting itself as an
advancing and victorious power. Lastly, that our
Church of England needs a far greater awakening of
understanding and devotion, if she is to any extent
to vindicate her position as the representative of a
national Christianity, and to use rightly the extraor-
dinary resources and advantages, which it has pleased
God to give her.

320 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

II. Our relations with the Empires of the far East
— China and Japan — are created partly by the
extension of our commerce, partly by the possession
of the Indian Empire, Avhich makes England one of
the greatest of Asiatic powers.

(A) The extraordinary Empire of China — in area
variously estimated from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000
square miles, and from 300,000,000 to 405,000,000
of inhabitants ^ — known as the kingdom of the Since
or Seres to the Greeks and Romans, and as Cathay
in the Middle Ages— is unique in character among
the empires of the world. With a vast and varied
country, rich in all natural resources, a coast-line of
2500 miles, and unequalled river communication, it
has remained comparatively isolated from the world.
With a teeming population, industrious, intelligent,
and enterprising, with a great literature and civiliza-
tion of immemorial antiquity, with an universal
system of education, opening all posts of an elaborate
civil organization, it yet remains an example of an
unprogressive and unwieldy empire, incapable, as it
seems, collectively of energy and progress, ignorantly
contemptuous of all other civilization than its own,
and unable to resist, except by a stolid inactivity,
aggression from without.

It is at least a remarkable coincidence that its
civilization is destitute of all vital religious inspiration.
Confucianism, the so-called religion of the educated
classes, is little more than a code of strong but

^ Of these China proper, about 1,300,000 square miles, has all but
about 23,000,000 of the people, averaging some 300 to a square mile.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 321

somewhat formal morality, based simply on rever-
ence for earthly authority, parental and national.
Taouism and Buddhism, which prevail largely
among the masses, are almost equally Agnostic as
to the ultimate relation of man to a living God,
although the former perhaps implies the conception
of a Supreme Cause unknown and unknowable, and
although both have developed a strange variety of
lower worships and superstitions. It is a curious
sign of the absence of any strong religious vitality
in them, that many authorities declare ancestral
worship and sacrifice to be the real religion of China,
and that, in conjunction with this, profession of two
or all of the three so-called religions is often taken
up by the same individual. The only positive
religion which has rooted itself in China is the stern
Monotheism of Islam, which is said to be the religion
of some thirty millions.

It is notable that in very early times the Chris-
tianity of the Nestorian Churches of East Syria
spread itself into China, as into India, and had be-
come an important power in the seventh and eighth
centuries.^ It was found there when, in the thirteenth
century, in answer to an invitation from the great
Khan (Kublai Khan), Christian teachers were sent
from Rome, and when Marco Polo visited Cathay.

1 An inscribed pillar, discovered at Singan-fu in the seventeenth
century, and bearing in a Syriac inscription the date 781 A.D., gives the
names of the Nestorian patriarch and of a bishop and priests in China,
adds a short outline of Christian doctrine, and quotes a decree of the
Emperor favouring Christianity. (See Dr. G. Smith's Conversion of
India, pp. 18-24.)

Y

322 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

But it seems to have given way before the growing
force of Roman Christianity in the next centuries,
and perhaps before the inroads of Mohammedanism.
Then in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, long
before China was formally opened to Europeans, the
Jesuit Missions, adopting the dress and customs, and
perhaps some superstitions of the people, penetrated
into the country, and laid the foundation of a Roman
Catholic Church, which is still the only considerable
representative of Christianity in China — served chiefly
by missionaries from France, and now organized into
30 vicariates, with 41 bishops, 664 European and
559 native priests. It claims about 1,200,000 native
Christians. It should be noticed also that for the
last two centuries there has been a Russo- Greek
Mission from the side of Siberia, and the Bible and
other religious books have been translated into
Chinese. But of the work of this Mission little is
known.

The first effort of English Christianity was made
through the London Missionary Society in 1808, by
sending out Dr. Robert Morrison to the East India
Factory at Canton, where he established an Anglo-
Chinese college, and published his Chinese Dictionary
and a Chinese version of the New Testament. He
was followed by American missionary Societies from
1830 to 1838. But it was not till 1843, when, after
a war with China, Hong-Kong was ceded to England,
and the treaty ports opened, that any vigorous evan-
gelization was attempted. Then missions of all
kinds poured in, with much energy, but more even

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 323

than usual of religious diversity. In 1844 the Church
Missionary Society began work. The Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel gave aid for a chaplaincy
at Hong-Kong ; helped to establish there the
first missionary bishopric (of Victoria) in 1849,
for spiritual care of our English people and con-
version of the natives ; and began active work under
the Bishop in 1863. Since that time, as usual, there
has been considerable development. A bishopric
of North China, chiefly supported by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, was created in
1872, and one of Mid -China (through the Church
Missionary Society) in 1880, with its centre at
Shanghai, in joint action with a missionary bishop
of our sister Church in America. Our Church has
now at work about 40 European and 20 native
clergy, more than 320 native Catechists, and perhaps
10,000 native Christians. But ours is but a small
part of the whole work done by the various Com-
munions of English and American Christianity, and
by some joint action, as in the China Inland Mission.
In 1889 it was estimated that, on the whole, there
were in various parts nearly 800 missionaries and
about 35,000 native communicants, probably repre-
senting a body of some i 50,000 converts.

The work done is, therefore, but small, although,
as usual, progress has advanced rapidly of late years.
It is certainly carried on under most formidable diffi-
culties— the negative hindrance of the remarkable
apathy of the Chinese in regard of all religious interest,
their confidence in their own superiority and real or

324 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

affected contempt for the foreigner, and their extra-
ordinary tenacity of ancestral custom and prejudice,
— the positive hindrances of slander, denunciation,
and violence, stirred up by the priests, and covertly
fomented by the governing class in spite of imperial
edicts of toleration, breaking out from time to time
in massacre. In fear, moreover, of difficulties likely
to arise with the feeble and corrupt Chinese Govern-
ment, missionary action is regarded with scant favour
from a commercial and political point of view in
England. But we have simply to hold our post
and persevere, till, as seems likely, some change —
possibly some revolution — shall break down the great
wall of hindrance still barring progress, and perhaps
create the sense of the need of a new life, which
Christianity alone can satisfy. Besides this direct
action, moreover, much might be done by bringing
Christian influence to bear upon the Chinese im-
migrants in America and in our colonies, who should,
on their return, become missionaries to their own
people. The work, after all, is but half a century
old. According to all experience this is but the
seed-time, from which the next half-century should
see some harvest.

(B) The Empire of Japan is, in a wholly different
way, at least equally remarkable. Comparatively
small in area — about 150,000 square miles, with a
population of 40,000,000 — it is in size, in position,
and (as its people believe) in destiny, the Great
Britain of the North Pacific. Placed in the neigh-
bourhood of the great Empires of China and Russia,

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 325

and of the advancing dominion of England and
France in the South, it holds its own with extra-
ordinary vigour, and is now emerging, since the late
victorious war with China, as a dominant power in
the far East. Its record of progress during the last
half-century is perhaps unexampled in the history of
the world. For two hundred years, up to 1854, it re-
mained, like China, rigidly closed to the outside world,
till first the United States, and then Great Britain,
virtually forced an entrance. But, unlike China,
Japan welcomed and assimilated, with an extra-
ordinary readiness and intelligence, all the ideas and
resources of the Western civilization which now
poured in. In less than half a century the whole
face of society has been changed. The quasi-theo-
cratic sovereignty of the Mikado, practically super-
seded since 1143 by a feudal aristocracy with the
Shogun at its head, gave way suddenly, in 1868, to
the inauguration under the Mikado of a constitu-
tional government. Education, through universities,
colleges, and schools, at first officered by Europeans,
now almost entirely in native hands, has flooded the
rising generation with Western ideas, literature, and
science. A powerful army and navy have been organ-
ized, for conquest as well as defence ; commerce has
been largely developed ; and a new life, not without
certain elements of precocity and turbulence, has
been breathed into the " Old Japan," which will soon
be in its ancient form a thing of the past. Japan
now claims to deal on equal terms with any one of
the Western powers, and to take the leadership of

326 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

the East out of the hands of the stationary and dis-
organized Empire of China.

Over this growing Hfe the native religions exercise
but Httle real power. Shintoism, which is professed
as the state- rehgion, appears to be an organized
ancestral worship, wrought out especially into rever-
ence for the Mikado, as descended from super-
human beings of days gone by ; with, however, an
incongruous admixture of Nature-worship, gross and
superstitious in character, which it is the object of
the new regime to suppress. Buddhism is the religion
of the great mass of the people, and has developed
accordingly an elaborate system of ritual, ceremonial,
and worship of inferior powers. Neither has any
strong religious vitality ; both are giving way before
the influence of Western knowledge and thought.
But, again unlike China, Japan seems to realize the
need of some vital religion, and to be in search of
one, which may satisfy the cravings of its intellectual
and practical growth, and ally itself w^ith freedom
of progress. The alternative seems practically to
be, whether it shall attempt to frame such a religion
for itself,^ or shall embrace Christianity.

It is notable that there was once in Japan a
strong native Christianity, of which the seed was
sown by the splendid labours of Xavier and his
Jesuit successors in the sixteenth century. It be-
came thoroughly indigenous, adopting, as usual, much

^ The more enterprising Japanese have had visions of a "grand
national Church," Christian in idea, but "free from all sectarian teaching,
and the crippling influence of creeds."

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 327

of native habit and character, and something of
native superstition, and in half a century is said by
the Japanese to have gathered two milHons of mem-
bers. But it was unhappily mixed up with political
conflict, and invoked for its progress the power of
the sword. By the sword it perished ; in 1587 the
Government began an unrelenting persecution of
the Christians, often nobly borne, and an attempt at
self-defence was met by massacre in 1637 of 37,000
at one time. Christianity was formally proscribed
by an edict posted in every town and village, on
pain of death, as a pestilent and immoral supersti-
tion ; and in 1624 all Europeans were expelled
from Japan, except a few Dutch, shut up in a small
island, and the country closed against the rest of the
world for 230 years. When it was reopened in
1854, it was found that Christianity had not been
quite stamped out. What remained of it became
the nucleus of a Roman Catholic Church, now fully
organized with numerous stations, and about 40,000
members.

Meanwhile, as usual, missions of all kinds began.
The Russian Church has a flourishing mission, with
many native clergy and catechists, and some 14,000
members. Various missions, American even more
than English, are also at work. Our own Church
entered the field through the Church Missionary
Society in 1869, and through the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in 1873, working hand in
hand with the American Church, which had preceded
us in 1859, and forming with it that which calls

328 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

itself a " Church of Japan," and shows much vigour
of self-government and independence. The first
English bishop was consecrated in 1883. Since
that time great progress has been made in organiza-
tion of religious and educational work. Our Church
mission is still only in its infancy, with perhaps 50
clergy, English and native, and some 3000 mem-
bers, while the converts of other Communions are
more than 30,000. But it has singular promise,
especially in its attempt to found a Church, having
much independence, although in full communion
with our own, which may perhaps serve as a link of
union for the divided Christian bodies in this in-
quiring and enterprising country.

(C) An offshoot from the mission to Japan is the
mission to Korea, urged upon the Church at home
by the Bishops of Japan and North China in 1887.
Korea, which has lately been the battlefield of China
and Japan, and has passed from the nominal
suzerainty of the one to the more vigorous protec-
torate of the other, is a somewhat backward and dis-
organized country of 82,000 square miles, and more
than ten millions of people. In religious faith it
seems almost a blank, " The Confucian philosophy
is the religion of the learned classes ; the unlearned
have none, unless it be an excessive reverence and
dread of ghosts and evil spirits." Korea evidently
needs both secular civilization, which it will receive
from Japan, and the higher life of Christianity.

The Roman Catholic Church has long had a
mission there, now fully organized, which has had

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 329

its numerous converts, and has grown under per-
secution and through actual martyrdom. The
Russian Church has also a mission ; the Scottish and
American Presbyterians have been at work since
1882, and have completed a Korean translation of
the New Testament. There are said to be on the
whole about 17,000 native Christians, and more
than 300 mission stations. Our own share in the
work is but of yesterday ; and the Korean mission,
working with the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, is peculiar, as having set the example of a
mission, headed from the beginning by a bishop
(consecrated in 1889), with a small body of clergy
and lay catechists. It has begun with much vigour
and self-sacrifice ; but has not as yet had time to
yield much fruit.

In regard to this sphere of action we may draw
the same conclusions as in the case of our Indian
Missions. Our vocation is, of course, less urgent and
direct, and can claim from us accordingly less ex-
penditure of resource, and less absorbing interest. It
needs much more caution and wisdom in carrying
it out, because our political relations with these
great independent Empires are somewhat vague and
precarious — complicated, moreover, by relations to
other European powers — and because wc often feel
doubt how far we can rightly invoke material support
for protection of our missionaries in their arduous
and dangerous work. But nevertheless the Mission is
a real one, and, from its very slight present beginnings
it will have to be carried out far more effectively.

330 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

III. In Western Asia there devolves upon our
English Christianity an entirely different kind of
duty. In this case also it is brought home to us
through our Indian Empire, and the intimate relations
which it creates with the Persian and Turkish Empires.
The conditions, moreover, differ considerably in these
two Empires.

(A) The population of the smaller Persian
Empire — estimated at about 7,750,000 — is almost
entirely Mohammedan. Hardly more than 150,000
are outside the pale of Islam ; and of these perhaps
120,000 are Christians, and the rest Jews or Parsees.
The Monotheism of Islam has superseded that of
Zoroastrianism, as the latter superseded the Vedic
elemental religion of the earliest Aryan races. But
the Mohammedanism of Persia is of the Shiah
division, less rigid perhaps than that of the Sunni
section, and, in the developments of Sufism and
Babiism, inclining to a mystic aspiration after
absorption in a Deity, more or less Pantheistic in
conception, as the ultimate religion, for which the
ordinary forms of Mohammedanism are but stepping-
stones. In this aspect Henry Martyn in 181 1
believed that he saw a preparation for " the first
Persian Church" of Christ. The Christian popula-
tion belongs either to the Armenian, or to the Syrian
" Nestorian " Church. Both are apparently depressed
and weak, needing help to shake off ignorance,
despondency, and corruption. The latter is the
remnant of a Church formerly among the greatest
Christian Communions, which, as has been seen, was

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 331

once the chief means of the diffusion of Christianity
in India and in China.

Our main duty here seems clear. We may do
what we can for the conversion of Mohammedans to
Christ ; but the one thing most needful is to give
the aid, especially the educational aid, which is
earnestly desired, and gladly welcomed, by these
struggling Eastern Churches. This idea is strictly
adhered to by the "Archbishop's Mission to the
Assyrian Christians" begun in 1886, and steadily
carried on under some difficulty. On the other hand, a
virtual proselytism from the native churches is carried
out by a French Roman Catholic Mission, and by
the vigorous Missions of the American Presbyterians.
The C.M.S. Mission seems to occupy an intermediate
position — at its first origin in 1875 desiring to work
with and through the native Churches, but gradually
coming to form a Communion of its own, distinct
from them, although not unfriendly. Taken all
together, the strength of this effort is as yet very
small. It helps to keep alive the witness for Christ
in this alien land, but it can do no more.

(B) In the greater Turkish Empire, on the other
hand — occupying in Europe, Asia, and Africa
1,263,000 square miles, and estimated to contain
38,650,000 people — the condition is altogether
different We find a large Christian element,
amounting to above 15,000,000, or more than a
third of the whole ; but it is greatly divided.

There is the Greek Orthodox Church, in its
Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch,

332 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

and Jerusalem, of 7,630,000 souls ; besides the
affiliated churches of Greece and Cyprus. There is
the Armenian Church of 4,000,000, separate from
it on points of Church government, rather than
essential Christian doctrine. There are the two
Syrian Communions known as " Jacobite " and " Nes-
torian," numbering about 600,000. There are in
Egypt the Coptic and Abyssinian Churches of some
2,250,000 souls. There is the '* Bulgarian Church"
of at least a million. These Churches are separate
from each other, in most cases professedly through
doctrinal differences, which, however, hardly go in
reality to the foundation — perhaps more truly
through racial diversity, and questions of Church
order and jurisdiction.

Then comes in the aggressive Roman Communion
claiming about 800,000, of whom some 270,000
use the Latin, and the rest the Greek ritual. There
is another aggressive agency through the American
Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries. It
has hundreds of stations, and is said to have 60,000
''attendants" and 11,000 communicants. It has
printed and circulated millions of translations of
Holy Scripture in various languages.

Our own chief missionary agency is the Palestine
Mission, sustained by the Society for the Conversion
of the Jews and Church Missionary Society, and
now organized under the Anglican Bishop in Jeru-
salem, who has charge also in Egypt and in Cyprus.
Besides this the Church Missionary Society has
stations in Egypt, in Abyssinia, and in Constantinople.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST ^33

For purposes of conversion it would be altogether
inadequate, although, especially at Jerusalem, it does
gather in Jewish converts, and associates itself with
various ministrations to them of instruction and
beneficence.

But in Turkey, even more than in Persia, our
true function is clearly to cultivate and strengthen
unity with these ancient Christian Churches, and to
give them whatever help we can. They not only
have a glorious record in the past, but for more than
a thousand years have kept steadfast to the essentials
of the Christian faith and Church life, under the
constant oppression, and the not unfrequent per-
secution, of the Turkish power. With them, rather
than with us, lies the Christian future of Persia
and Turkey, as the disintegration and decay of the
Mohammedan power advance. Under our happier
circumstances we can give them brotherly help,
especially in respect of education and reform ; and
we can also endeavour to serve the cause of reunion
among those, whose unhappy divisions and antago-
nisms are the main hindrance to Christian progress,
and the scorn of the Moslem. This right principle is
making way in public opinion and Church action, in
spite of the natural and almost inevitable temptations
to proselytism under the present condition of Eastern
Christianity. Nowhere is it more faithfully carried
out than under the present Anglican Episcopate in
Jerusalem, which is now welcomed and honoured by
the authorities of the Eastern Churches.^ More and
^ A remarkable sign of this friendly relation is the recent concession

334 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

more it commends itself in itself, and by its results,
to English Churchmen at home/

It must be added that our tenure of Cyprus, and
occupation of Egypt, impose upon us special duties
in respect of these countries, both to sustain the
Christianity of our English colonies of soldiers and
civilians in both, and to minister in every way to
the higher welfare of the native inhabitants.

Cyprus has a predominantly Christian population,
about 140,000, almost all Greek Churchmen, as
against 46,000 Moslems. Here our work is simple
— to cultivate friendly relations with the Greek
Church, to develop education, and to help it to a
higher religious and intellectual life ; and meanwhile
to provide spiritually for our own people.

Egypt — with its 6,800,000 people — presents to
us a larger problem. The mass of the people are
Arab in origin and Mohammedan in religion ; the
old Coptic Church, in spite of long oppression and
persecution, still has about 400,000 souls, and has,
moreover, the Abyssinian Church under its jurisdic-
tion ; and the foreign population of various European
nationalities amounts to 100,000, and belongs to
various forms of Christianity. Our duty in Egypt,
performed with much success under unexampled

by the Greek Patriarch of a little chapel in the Church of the Holy-
Sepulchre, for celebration of the Holy Communion after the Anglican
rite.

^ The "Eastern Church Association" has clone much good by
emphasizing this principle. In its Report for 1894 there is an admirable
sketch by Mr. Brightman of the position and the relations of the
various Communions of Eastern Christianity.

II EXPANSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST 335

difficulties, is to justify our occupation by promoting
the material, intellectual, and moral welfare of the
people. Education, which has a splendid Moslem
representative in the great collegiate mosque of El-
Azhar, is being pushed on through Coptic and
governmental and mission schools. Efforts are
being made to aid the ancient Coptic Church, now
under our rule relieved from Mohammedan oppres-
sion, and beginning a movement towards education
and reform. For our own garrison, and for the
English visitors, good spiritual provision is made in
Cairo and other chief centres.

The work, therefore, to be done in this sphere is
one which needs perhaps less active enthusiasm, but
even greater wisdom, than in the spheres of direct
evangelization. As yet it has been but little done,
being " crowded out " (so to speak) by more imme-
diate interests. But, as political interference is more
and more forced upon us, by the disorganization and
corruption of the Turkish Empire, and by the cruel
oppression of its Christian subjects (of which we have
before us at this moment a terrible example), our
religious duty will become more urgent, and our
religious opportunities will increase. The peculiar
nature, moreover, of the Mission makes it one, which
the Church of England by its very nature is especially
fitted to discharge.

APPENDIX III

(To Lecture IV)
OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES

This mission, at once of civilization and of Christian-
ization, is closely connected with the other two.
For it grows necessarily out of our colonial expan-
sion and our Eastern Empire, and our dominion
through both over the subject -races of the earth.
But it extends beyond these to the still larger
" sphere of influence," opened to us, in the first
instance, by commercial expansion and maritime
enterprise of discovery, and often developed into
protectorate and dominion.

It should be noted that this extension of influ-
ence itself is only a part — although indeed a leading
part — of that universal movement, which is asserting
for the European nations in general an ascendency
over the other races of the world. In respect of it,
indeed, our own action is sometimes forced, against
a not unnatural reluctance to extend the enormous
sphere of our national responsibility, by the advance
of other European powers, and the necessity of
maintaining, in face of this advance, the commercial

APP. Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 337

leadership, on which our own prosperity depends.
But in spite of this reluctance, and the hesitations
and vacillations of policy which it is apt to produce,
the English-speaking race seems naturally to be
brought to the front, by some special aptitude for
colonization and conquest, and some special power
of dealing with these barbarian races.

The reality of this European ascendency is un-
equivocal ; nor is there any sign of the fulfilment of
some despondent predictions of its passing away.
The one question is, whether it shall be a selfish
and destructive ascendency, gradually exterminating
the weaker races, as has been the case to so great
an extent in North America and Australia, or an
ascendency like that which we exercise in India —
firm, indeed, but unselfish and beneficent, caring for
its subjects, protecting them against tyranny and
oppression, and endeavouring to promote their
happiness and civilization. The decision of that
question will depend largely on the effective power
of Christianity. Whatever other influences may
work for the progress of that unselfish benevolence,
which we significantly call *' humanity," it is impos-
sible to doubt the truth — so forcibly brought out in
Kidd's Social Evolution — that the dominant influence
must be that of the religion, which so emphatically
proclaims human brotherhood.

In examining historically how far our English
Christianity has exercised this influence over our
relation to the weaker races, we must note that its
missionary effort is only a part of a larger action of

z

338 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

evangelism. The Roman Catholic Church holds
everywhere a leading position in this service of the
kingdom of God, and its work is done mainly
through men of other nationalities than ours. The
Lutheran and Calvinistic Communions of the Conti-
nent, although in less degree, are represented in the
same service. The various American Communions
— especially the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the
Methodist, and the Congregational Communions,
— are singularly active and aggressive in this war-
fare against heathenism. Our English Christianity
may perhaps assert some leadership in this general
advance, corresponding to our leadership in coloniza-
tion and dominion ; but it certainly does no more
than this, and at times may be thought to fall short
of it.

We have, moreover, to confess that in this service
the missionary enterprise of our own Church is often
put to shame by the energy, swifter, if not greater,
of the Nonconformist Communions in England
itself. The London Missionary Society especially,
somewhat older than our own Church Missionary
Society, has constantly led the way ; as, for instance,
in India, Madagascar, and Polynesia. If we add to
its work that which is done by the Presbyterian, the
Wesleyan, and the Baptist Missions, the aggregate
result far exceeds anything which the Church of
England has been able to achieve. In this sphere,
as in that of our Oriental Mission, we can hardly
think that our Church has sufficiently assumed the
spiritual leadership, to which, as the National Church,

OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES

339

she is undoubtedly called in all that belongs to the
religious mission of England. It is, of course, true
that she has duties and responsibilities at home,
which no other religious Communion has to bear ; it
is true also that similar duties and responsibilities
grow upon her abroad with bewildering rapidity,
as the Greater Britain of our dominion grows by
an irresistible expansion. But yet the resources,
material and spiritual, which God has given her are
vast, and these also advance by a corresponding
growth. They might be, and ought to be, by God's
blessing, adequate to the whole of the glorious task
to which He calls her.^

It is necessary to keep these actual conditions in
view, in tracing the gradual extension, chiefly in
this century, of this missionary influence of our

1 The amount of money spent in this service is a rough but fairly
trustworthy test of the missionary zeal shown. In relation to this test,
we find that in 1892 the contributions to the mission cause through
missionary societies were for —

Church of England ^^396,643

Presbyterians

London Missionary Society .

Methodist ,, ,,

Baptist ,, ,,

Moravian ,, ,,

China Inland Mission .

Episcopal Church in America

Other American Missions
It will be observed that the combined contribut
outside the pale of the Church exceed ours by more than ;^ioo,ooo,
and that the American contribution is more than half as large again.

(The figures, except those for the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, are taken from The Centenary Record oi \\v^ Baptist Missionary
Society, 1892.)

150,018
108,247
121,123

78,460

23,489

29,932

52,870

687,733

ons of English missions

340 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Church, exercised through our two great Missionary
Societies, but especially through the Church Mission-
ary Society, which is able to give it more undivided
attention and to devote to it larger resources.

To this mission, as it grows out of our colonial
expansion, some reference has already been made.
It is only necessary here to refer to it somewhat
more in detail. It may be noted that from the
beginning it has never been altogether ignored or
neglected. But it has passed through great vicissi-
tudes. In the earliest period of our colonization it
was always openly acknowledged, even in the charters
granted by the Crown. At the first foundation of
our old Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
the conversion of the natives was put side by side
with the care of our English settlers ; and this pro-
vision was never allowed to remain a dead letter. In
1 74 1 Archbishop Seeker was able to speak of the
conversion " of great multitudes of negroes and
Indians." But the greater part of the eighteenth
century was in this respect, as in others, a time of
dulness, if not deadness, of religious enthusiasm. A
new era was opened by the great Revival, beginning at
the close of that century — first the Wesleyan Revival,
which was intended not to divide but to reanimate
the Church, and then the " Evangelical Revival " in
the Church itself. To it and to the Evangelical
party are undoubtedly due two glorious works,
closely connected with each other — the abolition
of the slave-trade, and the revival of missionary
enthusiasm, as shown by the creation of the Church

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 341

Missionary Society. Perhaps this enthusiasm is
strongest still in that section of the Church. But,
like other principles of the Evangelical Revival, it has
spread to other schools, and has to some extent
diffused a sense of universal obligation through the
whole body.

I. In the North American Colonies — both those
which have now grown into the great Republic and
those which still form British America — the relation
of the English settlers to the natives was mainly one
of hostility. Attempts were made at friendship and
alliance (as notably in the foundation of Pennsyl-
vania) ; lands were bought, instead of being seized ;
peaceful relations were prescribed by authority. But
the inevitable tendency of the increasing English
settlements was to encroach upon the red men ;
English vice, moreover, and strong drink had fatal
effect upon them ; and the general result was to
drive them, not without bloody struggles, from their
old homes, gradually exterminating them, till there
remain now but a small remnant. Of course Christi-
anity, whether through our own Church or the other
religious Communions, necessarily bore some witness
against this internecine war, as an abuse of our superior
strength, endeavouring at least to mitigate its bitter-
ness of struggle, and to spread Christianity among
these races — fierce, indeed, and barbarian, but far from
being incapable of moral and religious civilization.
But it cannot be said that this witness, although in
many cases it was splendidly borne by " Apostles of
the Indians," so prevailed, as to control and temper

342 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

the general hostility to the native tribes, under
which they have dwindled away.

Now, it is true, for the remnant still left, that
relation is wholly changed. To speak only of
British North America, where there are said to be
about 35,000 Indians in Canada, 52,000 in Mani-
toba and the North-West, and 35,000 in British
Columbia, the civil power, settling about 75,000 on
reserved lands, gives to them care and protection,
which seem to prevent such Indian risings as recur
from time to time in the United States ; and the
Church of Christ has laboured not unsuccessfully for
their conversion. In our own Church the main
work has been carried on in the North-West since
1823 by the Church Missionary Society — the
energies of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel being devoted to the building up of the
Church among the English settlers. The Society
has now at work 32 English clergy, 27 native
clergy, and 66 native lay-teachers, and ministers
in various Indian languages to about 1 3,000
native Christians. The Church of Canada, more-
over, has already instituted its own Domestic and
Foreign Missionary Organization, working under
synodical authority in the various dioceses, and is
beginning to assume some part of the missionary
duty. The change has come too late to save the
Indian population generally ; but their numbers are
said now not to be diminishing, and there can be no
doubt that those who remain will be absorbed into
the civilization and Christianity of the dominant race.

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 343

II. In the old North American Colonies and in
the West Indian Settlements, the relation to the
negro race was not of hostility and extermination,
but of the absolute domination of slavery, under
which it grew and multiplied. It has been already
seen how slavery was dealt with by the civil power :
first, sanctioned and promoted by laws ; next,
gradually mitigated in its oppressive dominion by
laws, logically inconsistent, but practically bene-
ficent ; lastly, abolished utterly — by peaceful process
in our West Indian Settlements — through the tre-
mendous convulsion and bloodshed of the great Civil
War in the United States. It has been also seen
how our English Christianity, fighting as usual the
battle of true humanity, passed through a corre-
sponding process — first, indeed, positively or nega-
tively sanctioning slavery, and persuading itself that
it was an institution not unnatural or unscriptural,
and overruled for the conversion of the race to
Christ ; then with a noble inconsistency striving, in
spite of legal difficulty and social jealousy, to admit
those, who were in the eye of the law mere chattels,
to the brotherhood and the liberty of the children of
God ; lastly, so telling on the public conscience by
the declaration " Not a slave but a brother " as to
induce the unexampled sacrifice — great in our own
case, tremendous in the American Republic — by
which slavery was for ever undone among the
English-speaking race. The general effect has been
the preservation and Christianization of the negro
race as a whole.

344 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

There remains still a problem of infinite difficulty
— again far more painfully felt in the United States.
The slave-trade has brought together two distinct
races — the one necessarily dominant, the other
capable of development under domination, but as
yet showing but little sign of capacity for civilized
independence ; and these are brought together
under institutions which give them a legal equality.
How shall they be fused together, socially if not
physically ? How shall the lower race be educated
and inspired to fitness for the independence, which is
secured to it by the law ? In our ow^n colonies, how
shall the negroes, increasing in number and power,
be led without compulsion to work and progress ?
In the United States, how shall the tremendous
danger of a conflict between races be averted ?
The existence of these difficult problems is the
penalty of natural misdeeds in the past, which has
to be faced patiently and resolutely in the present.
Clearly Christianity, which has in some sense pro-
duced these problems, is bound to take a leading
part in their solution — first, by guidance and educa-
tion to the negro, and next, by endeavour to create
some brotherhood, though not necessarily one of
strict equality, betw^een the races.

The work, in this respect, of the Christianity of
the United States, and of our ow^n sister Church in
particular, lies, except by brief reference, beyond
the scope of this summary. But in our West
Indian Islands — thanks to the work of our own
Church, largely aided by the civil power, and of

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 345

other Christian Communions — there has been great
and successful progress. The effort made at the
time of the Emancipation by the Negro Education
Fund bore an abundant fruit ; the value of Codring-
ton College as a training school for the Ministry,
both European and native, can hardly be exagger-
ated. In Barbados we find that of a population of
182,867, all, with insignificant exceptions, are
returned as Christian, and of these 147,063
belong to the Church of England, ministered to by
about fifty-three clergy, with much lay help. In
the Windward Islands the population of about
144,000 is Christian, with the exception of a
Hindu coolie element ; and some 45,000 are
members of the Church, the remainder being
divided among many other Communions. In
Jamaica there are but 6990 non-Christian out of
607,798 (of whom not more than 15,000 are white),
and the Church of England has ninety-five clergy
and about a third of the whole population. In
Antigua and the Leeward Islands there are about
127,000 people, all Christian, except a few Chinese
immigrants, and the Church of England has thirty-
five clergy and some 52,000 members. In the
Bahamas the population, about 52,000, is wholly
Christian, and the Church has twenty clergy, besides
a large staff of catechists under the Bishop of
Nassau, and about 16,000 members. In all these
dioceses, therefore, the evangelistic work is mainly
over ; it remains simply to build up an established
Christianity, among the comparatively few English

346 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

settlers, and the great mass of the coloured popu-
lation.

There are, however, in this sphere constant
developments of more directly missionary work, to
which reference has already been made.

Thus in British Guiana the leading element of
the work of the Church is the mission to the various
races of the strangely mixed population — to the
Aborigines, the East Indian coolie immigrants
(about 100,000), and the Chinese immigrants (about
8000). How far the whole population of about
300,000 is Christianized, I do not know. But
150,000 are said to belong to our own Church, and
we have some forty clergy under the Bishop engaged
in a work mainly evangelistic. Nor is it otherwise
in British Honduras, where of 31,000 inhabitants
about 14,000 are negroes and 14,500 Spanish
Indians. The chief Christian agency here is the
Roman Catholic. Our own work at present is very
slight ; but it has now a bishop at its head, and will
in all probability advance.

But far the most interesting mission work in this
sphere is that of the Missionary Bishopric, having
its centre on British territory in the Falkland
Islands, and working through the South American
Mission Society. It began some fifty years ago
through Captain Allen Gardiner, who was at once
its founder and a martyr in its cause. It was
designed to deal with those Patagonian tribes, who
seemed to be utterly incapable of civilization, but
were reached, and at once humanized and Christian-

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 347

ized, by the power of the Gospel. It is on record
that Charles Darwin himself, who had held that
opinion, yet with his usual candour confessed him-
self converted from it by actual facts, and to his
dying day gave the Mission his sympathy and
support/ But it has also its ministration to our
own English countrymen scattered in South
America, and our seamen in its ports, and through
them to the natives over whom they have influence.
It has its stations everywhere in South America —
in the Falkland Islands, in Terra del Fuego, in the
Argentine Republic, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and
Chili. The work appears to be singularly laborious,
and somewhat distracting by its variety, and the
disjointed character of its organization. But it
shows clearly much simplicity and earnestness in its
ministry to these sheep scattered in the wilderness.

More interesting still in this connection is the
mission undertaken by the "West Indian Church
Association " in Barbados to the negroes in West
Africa (with the aid of a corresponding Committee,
and of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
in England), which has been at work since 1855 in
the district of the Pongos river. It was the first
missionary enterprise of the members of this Colonial
Church, mainly of African descent, to their African
brethren. It has been singularly tried by disaster
and difficulty, some distress as to resources, and much
loss of life. But, in spite of all these, it has per-

^ See a letter from Admiral Sulivan to the Daily At'?^'^, 24th April
1885.

348 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

severed, and now works from five centres through
clergy and catechists. By it the Susu tongue, spoken
widely in West Africa, has been reduced to writing,
and a translation into it of the New Testament and
Prayer-Book made. It has played a leading part in
the supersession of the slave-trade in that region by
legitimate commerce, and it has done much in the
work of native education. Like most West African
missions, it has had to " sow in tears," and wait
patiently, till it can " reap in joy."

III. The mission work which has devolved on
the Church in Australasia is of varied character. It
is carried on both in Australia and in New Zealand
under Boards of Missions, including all the bishops
and certain members appointed by the synods, and
having diocesan committees under them ; and it is
assuming larger dimensions year by year.

In Australia this missionary action seems least
effective in the sphere of its closest responsibility.
The aboriginal population, never perhaps very large,
has almost died out, except in Western Australia,
where there are about 15,000, and probably about
the same number in Northern Queensland. In New
South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, there
are still some scattered native settlements, now in all
cases cared for by the governments in temporal
matters, and under care of the Church through the
Board of Missions, or some other Communion, in re-
ligion. Of the two colonies, where the natives most
abound, Queensland seems to have done little,
but is now taking up the work ; Western Australia

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 349

has made more attempt, but still with very in-
adequate resources. The most remarkable mission
in this colony is perhaps the Benedictine Monastery,
alluded to in Lecture IV., where hundreds are
gathered, converted, and brought to settled habits of
life and industry. But, speaking generally, it can-
not be said that even now our English Christianity
has done much to atone for the sins committed in
the past, by the neglect, oppression, and extermina-
tion of the aboriginal race. The idea that they are
incapable of civilization and conversion is certainly
untrue. They would never have occupied a high
place ; but still room might have been found for them
in the brotherhood of humanity, had there been
desire and earnestness in the cause. On one occa-
sion Bishop Selwyn preached in Australia on the
text, " Lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is
left " ; and the exhortation is needed still.

For the Chinese immigrants found in consider-
able numbers in the Northern territory, and scattered
elsewhere, chiefly in the great cities, more has been
done. From a civil point of view they are looked
upon with scant favour, partly through trade-jealousy
of cheap labour, partly from a more statesmanlike
fear of large alien immigration. But our Church has
for many years endeavoured to draw them to Christ.
In Sydney, where they are the market-gardeners of
the city at Botany, there is a flourishing mission, a
Chinese church, Chinese catechists, and one ordained
Chinese clergyman. Every year sees adult baptisms
after careful training, and baptism and instruction of

350 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

the children ; and the influence for good over the
Chinese community extends far beyond the pro-
fessed Christians. The mission has its dependent
stations in New South Wales, and has sent out
catechists to Brisbane and Riverina. In Melbourne
a lesser mission is vigorously at work, and a church
is in prospect of erection. In Ballarat, where the
Chinese population, partly engaged in the mines, is
diminishing, but still numbers some hundreds, mis-
sion work has gone on for twenty-five years. In
Brisbane the work is only beginning, but has now
six stations. But it is in the Northern territory of
South Australia and in North Queensland that the
Chinese most congregate ; and, as yet, the Church
in these regions, which has a severe struggle for its
own existence, does not seem to have been able to
meet the need.

Another phase of mission is to the Polynesian
islanders, often erroneously called Kanakas, who are
brought in as labourers for the sugar plantations in
North Queensland. On the policy and righteous-
ness of this " labour traffic " there is great difference
of opinion. But, thanks to much earnest witness on
the subject, the outrages which once disgraced it are
being put down, and much care is taken by law for
the temporal welfare of the labourers. The Church
necessarily feels, and is vigorously trying to dis-
charge, her missionary duty to them. Through the
Board of Missions successful work, educational and
evangelistic, is going on ; and there is every reason
to hope that, through those who go back to their

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 351

islands, the work so nobly done by the Melanesian
Mission may be greatly aided. In this work the
new Bishop of Melanesia and the Bishops of Queens-
land are joining hands.

Besides these internal missionary works, consider-
able aid is given both in Australia and in New
Zealand to the Melanesian Mission, which will be
referred to below.

The last missionary enterprise of the Australian
Church is to New Guinea, in which, at the desire of
the Australian colonies, a British protectorate, and sub-
sequently a British dominion, have been established.
In this dominion, of some 86,000 square miles, with
a large population, our English Christianity has to
work. The London Missionary Society has again
led the way (since 1871), and under the splendid
leadership of the Rev. W. G. Lawes and Rev. J.
Chalmers, whose names are as household words
everywhere among the natives, it has 7 European
and 106 native missionaries, and a not inconsider-
able number of native Christians and scholars.
There is also a Roman Catholic mission at work, of
which less is known. It will be, of course, under-
stood that our own mission was not sent out, without
consultation with these earlier labourers, and care to
avoid infringing on their spheres. It began in 1886,
sustained by the Australian Church, with liberal
grants in aid of ;^iooo from the Society for Pro-
moting Christian Knowledge, and ^1000 from the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. It has
its mission schooner, and has taken out clergy and

352 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

laymen, prepared both for religious and for in-
dustrial work. As so often, it was tried by the loss
through fever of its leader, the Rev. A. A. Maclaren ;
but it has established itself, and is steadily and hope-
fully at work.

In New Zealand the chief missionary work, now
mainly of the past, has been to the Maori race, as
described in Appendix I. By it, through our own
Church, and through Roman Catholic and Wesleyan
missions, the whole Maori population now existing
has been Christianized. The overflow from that
work, when it passed into the hands of the first
Bishop of New Zealand, was the Melanesian Mission.

Such is the missionary work of the Australasian
Churches, and it is almost entirely self-supporting, with
the exception of the aid still given in England to
the Maori Church in New Zealand and the Melanesian
Mission. Even this aid is being gradually diminished,
and will probably at no distant time pass away.

IV. In the third group of the South African
Colonies, containing even within our own borders a
large and increasing native population, the work of
the Church has been from the beginning- marked
with a distinctly missionary character. In the Cape
Colony itself the whole European and white element
was in 1891 but 376,987, out of a population of
1,527,224; in Natal only 46,788, compared with 3
native and Indian population of 496,855; in the
outlying districts — Zululand, Bechuanaland, and
Basutoland — a mere handful, perhaps 6000, out of
more than 400,000. While, therefore, the care for

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 353

these European settlers is at once difficult and in-
finitely important, the mission to the native races
necessarily assumes almost as great a prominence
as in our old West Indian Settlements, although,
unfortunately, there are nothing like the same re-
sources for meeting it. These native races vary
greatly in origin and character. In the Cape Colony
alone the census of 1891 enumerates Kafirs and
Bechuanas, Fingoes, Hottentots, Malays, and mixed
tribes. Beyond its limits lie the Zulus, Basutos,
Mashonas, Matabeles, and others. Many of them
are, as we have reason to know, vigorous and war-
like ; many stand high in the uncivilized scale for
intelligence and capacity. From the beginning,
therefore, the colonies themselves have presented a
singularly varied and interesting mission-field to the
barbarian races.

That field has been entered upon by representa-
tives of all the chief sections of our unhappily divided
Christianity. Roman Catholic missions occupy a
lesser place than usual ; from the Continent we find
German, Swiss, Norwegian, and Swedish societies
at work ; from England and America, besides the
missions of our own Church, come Presbyterian,
Methodist, Baptist, and Congregational Missions ;
and the old Dutch Reformed Church, although in
less proportion than other Christian bodies, has its
native converts. In spite of the evil of these divi-
sions, and the special causes which have impeded
the action of our own Church, there has been con-
siderable progress. Taking the Cape Colony alone,

2A

354 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

where the census returns are most accurate, we find
that while the European and white Christian popu-
lation is returned at about 372,000, there are already
319*253 native converts.^ In the other colonial
districts the proportion of the native population is
far larger, and the proportion of the native converts
should increase with it.

In our own Church it will be noticed that even
in the Cape Colony the number of native members
is about equal to that of the Europeans. In the
newer colonial districts every new See is marked
more and more with a distinctly missionary impress.
The Bishop of Zululand, for example, has but 648
whites, while the native tribes number 150,000 ; the
Bishops of Kaffraria and Mashonaland have almost
their whole work among the natives. The minis-
tration is to at least twenty races and in ten
languages. As yet but few native Christians have
been found fit for the Ministry ; but progress in this
respect goes on steadily and not slowly.

Nor is this all. Beyond the limits of our own
colonies we have the outlying bishoprics of Bloem-
fontein, in the Orange Free State, of Pretoria in the

^ Of these there are in the

Dutch Reformed Church

Church of England

Presbyterian ....

Methodist ....

Congregationalist .

Roman CathoHc

It will be noticed that the proportion of native converts in the Non-
conformist Communions is singularly large.

White.

Black.

223,627

77,693

69,789

69,269

12,684

24,418

21,707

89,815

2,634

67,078

14,853

Uncertain

Transvaal, of Lebombo in Delagoa Bay ; and, while
these minister to our scattered English people under
foreign government, they have, and will have in
increasing degree, their mission to the native tribes.
Farther still, the new diocese of Nyassaland forms a
link with the independent missions of Central Africa.

In this group of colonies, therefore, far more than
in America and Australia, the mission to the lower
races will necessarily assume a special prominence.
How to build up a native African Christianity, and
to weld it together in true brotherhood with the
Christianity of the English settlers, dominant in
power, and steadily increasing in number, will be
its great problems in the future. Towards their
solution only an imperfect beginning has been made,
especially by our own Church. But in the extra-
ordinary diversity of races, and the danger of rivalry
and conflict, the need of the bond of some religious
unity must be very keenly felt.

V. In similar connection with our great Indian
Empire there are some outlying missionary agencies
to the lower races, over and above that important
ministration to races of this type within the Empire
and its dependencies, which has been noticed
already.

The way into the great island of Borneo was
opened by the remarkable enterprise of Sir James
Brooke in 1838, his establishment as Rajah of
Sarawak, and the acquisition of the island of
Labuan as a British colony, and of North Borneo as
a protectorate. Previously attempts had been made

356 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

at settlement from the beginning of the seventeenth
century by the Dutch and English ; and the former
have secured a protectorate over a large portion
of the island. Its whole area is 280,000 square
miles, and the population of heathen Dyaks, Moham-
medan Malays, and Chinese, amounts to nearly
2,000,000. 01 this Sarawak and North Borneo
together have about 71,000 square miles and some
500,000 people. The dominion and civilization
of these regions have not been attained without
severe struggles against native piracy and Chinese
insurrection, but appear to be now fairly established.

On the invitation of Rajah Brooke, mission work
began in i 847 under the Rev. F. T. Macdougall —
afterwards consecrated as Bishop of Labuan and
Sarawak in 1852 — first through an independent
society, afterwards under the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Gospel. In spite of the usual diffi-
culties and strong Mohammedan opposition, it has
grown in scope and organization, now working from
six stations, chiefly among the Dyaks, who are
intelligent and capable of civilization. It is still
little more than a beginning, with ten clergy under the
bishop, and about 3000 or 4000 native Christians.
But, as usual, it has established stations and schools
in many quarters, to be centres of future progress.

The " Straits Settlements " of the Malay Penin-
sula include the islands of Singapore, Penang, and
Panker, with the districts of Malacca and Wellesley,
and the protected states of Perak and Salangor.

The Peninsula itself is divided between the

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 357

Siamese and British governments, England having
succeeded to the earlier Portuguese and Dutch
dominion. The population generally is mixed of
Siamese, Malay, and Negroid elements. But the
great city of Singapore — one of the chief emporiums
of Eastern commerce — has an extraordinary variety
of races. In 1881 the census gave only 2769
Europeans of various nationalities, 22,155 Malays,
12,058 Klings^ (from India), 5881 Javanese, and
no less than Z6,j66 Chinese. The population now
probably exceeds 150,000; and the total imports
and exports i^2 6,000,000 annually. There is a
corresponding mixture of religions ; Christian
churches, Mohammedan mosques, Hindu temples,
and Chinese joss-houses rise side by side. As a
mission -field it is one of infinite interest, but of
infinite complexity and difficulty.

The mission work of the Society for the Propaga-
tion of the Gospel began in i 86 1, working in conjunc-
tion with chaplaincies supported by the Government
for the benefit of its civil and military servants.'^ In
1872 the Peninsula was separated ecclesiastically
from the See of Calcutta, and united with Labuan
and Sarawak under one P^piscopate. The work is
carried on from Singapore and many other centres ;
but as yet it has but some eight clergy and 2000
native Christians. The cosmopolitan character of the
people, while it, of course, makes progress difficult,

^ The name is said to be a corruption of Telinga (Telugu).

2 It is on record, that, when the Imperial Government contemplated
disestablishment of these chaplaincies, the whole Legislative Council of
Singapore protested against the resolution, and secured its withdrawal.

3S8 HULSEAN LECTURES api'.

should also make it an important centre for the
diffusion of Christianity through various races of the
East, if only it could be more strongly occupied.
Especially it should bear upon and strengthen the
work which we are endeavouring to do in China
through Christian influence on the returning Chinese
settlers, who form the great majority of the in-
habitants of Singapore.

VI. We have next to consider the independent
missions to these lower races, not directly connected
with our Colonial and Indian Empire. The two
forms of our mission melt into each other. That
Empire extends already so widely in all quarters of
the world that the spheres mainly untouched by it are
only two — Africa and Polynesia. Even over these
our English influence continually spreads — beginning
usually in enterprise of discovery and commerce,
and growing continually, almost against our will,
into protectorate and dominion. But, as yet,
their inhabitants are generally independent, and our
influence over them, for civilization and Christianiza-
tion, depends on their own willingness to receive us.
Africa is still the " Dark Continent," although it is
already fringed on every side by various European
settlements, and although the work of exploration,
and the opening of commercial and other inter-
course, have wonderfully advanced in our generation,
and are advancing still every day. The 170
millions' who inhabit it arc of various races, marked
by six great divisions of language. Of the
Hamitic family are the languages of the North,

OUR iMISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES

359

Egyptian, Libyan, and Ethiopic ; the Semitic are
represented by the Arabic and Abyssinian ; the
negro tribes cover the great central region from
East to West, with an infinite number of languages
and dialects ; the Bantu in the Southern and
Eastern Africa is similarly divided ; the Nubo-
Fulah is spoken in the Soudan and its neighbour-
hood ; and the languages of the Hottentots, Bush-
men, and pigmy tribes, belong to the far South.
All these various races, divided from one another, and
constantly liable to internecine wars, are of various
degrees and capacities of civilization. There is in
them little independent force and no internal unity.
Evidently they must be, and will be, absorbed or sub-
jugated by the stronger power of the civilized races.
At present the battle for mastery is between the
Asiatic and the European races, and of the issue
of this conflict there can be little doubt. At this
moment it is estimated that far the greater part
of the continent is included within the " spheres of
influence," into which the European nations have
calmly assumed the right of dividing it. The last
returns give for —

Siiuare Miles.

Population.

British Africa

French ,, ....
German ,, ....
Portuguese Africa ....
ItaHan ,, ■
Spanish ,, •

2,810,000
2,997,000
823,000
842,000
602,000
214,000

47,656,000

27,320,000

6,920,000

5,650,000

7,300,000

450,000

8,288,000

95,296,000

36o HULSEAN LECTURES app.

The whole of the rest, including the Boer States,
the Congo Free State, and Turkish Africa and
Morocco, occupies only 3,232,000 square miles, and
contains 73,950,000 people, and even over this
European influence largely prevails.

Clearly, therefore, the Dark Continent is directly
or indirectly under European ascendency.

This ascendency over the weaker African races
was in days past abused to the horror of the slave-
trade. As in all barbarian countries, slavery is
everywhere a domestic institution in Africa, fed by
war and man - hunting, or, as in old times, by
distress from famine and insolvency. Of that
institution the slave-trade took advantage, and not
only helped to sustain and extend it, but added to
it extremes of cruelty and suffering before unknown.
The slave - trade through Christian nations, after
lasting for more than three centuries, is happily —
mainly through the initiative taken by England — a
thing of the past. But two forms of this trade
still remain, of which the central influence is in
Mohammedanism — the slave-trade of East Africa
by sea to Mohammedan countries, of which Zanzibar
was a chief centre ; and the interior slave-trade
through the Soudan, against which General Gordon
and Sir Samuel Baker fought for a time successfully,
but which in the present condition of the Soudan
has unhappily revived. Of both these forms of
oppression and injustice it is clear, that they have
to be put down by defeat of the inhuman power
of Mohammedanism, and almost equally clear

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 361

that this beneficent task will devolve mainly on
England.

But if this abuse of superior power is doomed,
as undoubtedly it is doomed, to perish before the
advance of European influence, there is a danger,
lest that advance should beget less flagrant, but
hardly less deadly evils, if it still be abused to
purely political or commercial selfishness.

The " scramble for Africa," now rapidly growing
in scope and intensity, if it is carried on simply to
open new markets and gain new territories, without
any sense of duty and mission to the native races,
may not only bring its penalty to ourselves by
making Africa a battle-field of disastrous struggle
between European nations, but may become a
tyranny and a destruction to those whom we ought
to benefit and help to a higher humanity. The
ideal at which this dominant influence, whether in
our own hands or in others, should aim, is such a
government as that which the Anglo-Indian Govern-
ment endeavours to be, securing something like
unity and peace, tempering might by right, develop-
ing the natural resources of the territories, and
educating the native races, intellectually, socially,
and morally, to a true civilization. Only so far as it
attains to this, can it have its justification and blessing.

Far worse, even than this, is the unscrupulous
ascendency of the merely commercial spirit — using
the ignorance and recklessness of the natives to
the utmost, as simply means of gain, if not oppor-
tunities of fraud ; selling to them what must be

362 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

their curse and their destruction ; conniving at the
slavery, with all its attendant cruelties, which we
profess to repudiate. Of all the most fatal in its
effect is the selling to the native tribes the fire-
arms, which are used for intestine wars, and the
strong liquor, often made more deadly by shameless
adulteration, which is rapidly degrading and even
destroying these weaker races. There may be
difference of opinion as to the extent of this evil ;
but no one can doubt that it is so disastrous in its
effects, as often to outweigh all advantages of inter-
course with civilized nations, and that it is steadily,
and often rapidly, increasing, as this intercourse
extends. After all, it is but a modified form of the
reckless use of the weak for the material benefit of
the strong, of which the slave-trade was a crude
unblushing example.

Against all these forms of selfishness the battle
of a true humanity has to be waged. It can be
waged successfully only by international agreement.
If England is true to her old traditions, she will be
foremost in the cause ; but she cannot act alone.
The chief motive force to generate such agreement
will be now, as of old, the spirit of Christian
brotherhood ; but its higher influence must be
supported by material force. Towards such inter-
national action we are, it may be hoped, slowly and
imperfectly, but steadily advancing.

Looking now to the religious aspect of our rela-
tion to Africa, we see that it is emphatically the
"Pagan Continent." Of its 170 millions of people

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 363

the mass lie altogether outside the pale of the great
religions of the world. The paganism of Africa, by
the very nature of things, is marked by local and
racial variety. Hardly anywhere is there absence of
belief in the supernatural — ^mostly, as usual, in some
one supreme power, above and below the lesser
supernatural powers, gods, demons, or spirits. But
this is strangely overlaid by belief in witchcraft of
various kinds, and by fetichism — a virtual idolatry of
objects, into which some supernatural power has been
infused. The effect is to oppress and darken life
with gross superstitions, properly so called, culmin-
ating in terrible human sacrifices, demanded through
the priests or wizards by the powers of good and
evil. Here also it is clear that the disintegration
and spiritual weakness of the native races will give
way to the ascendency of some nobler religion ; nor
can there be any doubt that they are capable of
being raised by it to a higher humanity. Again
the question appears to be whether the conquering
religion shall be Mohammedanism or Christianity.

Mohammedanism w^as from the seventh century
propagated by the sword in Northern Africa, where
it trod down or extirpated w^hat was once a great
and flourishing Christianity — in Egypt the very
centre of Greek enlightenment and religious philo-
sophy— elsewhere the cradle of Latin Christianity
itself It has spread largely, both in West Africa
and in the Soudan and on the East Coast, partly
perhaps still by force, partly by its own intrinsic
superiority to paganism, and by its power over bar-

364 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

barians as a religion of the law. It is said to rule
over some forty millions of people, with a sway vary-
ing greatly in its effective force, and in the purity of
its Monotheism. Christianity in North Africa, as
in Asia, is of ancient date. Its disintegration by
schism, heresy, and persecution, and its final super-
session by the religion of Islam, form one of the
saddest chapters in Church history. It survives
only — oppressed, and in measure corrupted — in the
Coptic and Abyssinian Churches of the North-East.
In the other parts of Africa its introduction has
followed naturally with the growth of European in-
fluence. But as yet it cannot be said to number
more than three and a half millions of adherents —
scarcely one-fiftieth of the whole population.

With which of these two religions is the future
religious civilization of Africa to rest? Independ-
ently of the confidence of Christian faith, history
supplies an unequivocal answer. The religion of
Islam, with its grand but bare Monotheism, its
fatalism, and its dependence upon law, has had, and
still has, power over simpler and cruder conditions
of human society ; but not being, in the true sense, a
religion of humanity, will not only fail to further
culture and progress, but will hardly coexist with
them. In Africa, moreover, it is marked by two
fatal disqualifications. First, its polygamy condones
voluptuousness and degrades womanhood ; next, it is
the very strength of the slave-trade and slavery,
which are the curses of Africa. Where it supersedes
gross paganism, we may recognise it as an instrument

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 365

for good in the hand of God. But the future cannot
rest with it. If only European nations were as
earnest and as united in their Christian faith, as in
the service of their commercial and political ascend-
ency, no one can doubt that Christianity, although
it be now but a comparatively small force, would
steadily and irresistibly prevail.

These then being the relations in which we stand
to Africa, it remains to see what progress has been
made by English Christianity towards their right
fulfilment.

The answer is twofold. First, in South Africa,
as has been already seen, the colonial Church
furnishes a base of operations, from which we have
begun to advance already in the spiritual warfare,
and shall, I trust, advance more rapidly and in
greater force in time to come. In the next place,
we are establishing elsewhere scattered outposts on
the outskirts of the great continent, from which we
may hope to converge upon the dark interior.

So far as our own Church is concerned, this latter
work has been carried on in the main by the great
Church Missionary Society, expressly founded for
" Africa and the East," and through its founders
connected with the noble work of the abolition of
the slave trade. It is true that the older Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel began some effort
upon the Gold Coast in 175 i, and in Sierra Leone
after 1787; and that it has materially aided the
Pongos Mission of the West Indian Church. There
arc still in connection with its Mission about 2000

366 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

native Christians. But, true to its primary relation
to the colonial Church, it has transferred its main
interest to the work of the South African Church,
and the field has been left to the missionary energy
of the younger society.

VII. In Western Africa the Church Missionary
Society has three important missions — the Sierra
Leone, the Yoruba, and the Niger Missions.^

" Western Africa," as ordinarily understood, ex-
tends from the Senegal river to the Cameroon moun-
tains, including the valley of the Gambia and the
great basin of the Niger. France has possessions on
the Senegal, and a large tract in the interior up to
the Sahara ; the free Republic of Liberia (inhabited
by negroes from the United States) is on the " Grain
Coast " ; England occupies Sierra Leone, the Gold
Coast, and the delta of the Niger ; and the two negro
kingdoms of Dahomey and Ashanti ^ are trouble-
some neighbours to our Gold Coast Settlements.
The Mohammedan influence is strong through the
great Fulah tribe, distinct from the pagan negroes,
who are divided into many tribes, with a bewildering
variety of languages.

Sierra Leone, a settlement of the Portuguese since

^ The other most important Mission is the Weslcyan, which has
stations in Sierra Leone, on the Gambia, in the Gold Coast and Lagos
districts, with thirty-four European missionaries, and a large number of
native teachers, and with 13,000 Church members, and more than
50,000 adherents. Our sister Church in America has had a mission at
Cape Palmas under a missionary bishop since 1S51.

^ The Basle Society, in spite of difficulty and persecution, has estab-
lished a mission in Ashanti itself, which claims 4000 native converts.

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 367

1 46 1, became a great centre of the slave-trade. On
the aboHtion of the trade, having passed into Eng-
Hsh hands, first of a Company in 1791, afterwards
of the Crown in 1808, it was made a home for
hberated and rescued slaves — necessarily a strangely
mixed population, degraded and demoralized by
slavery. Its territory gradually extended ; and in
1 88 1 it had above 60,000 people, of whom more
than 35,000 were "liberated Africans," and only
271 Europeans. The Church Missionary Society
began its work in 1 8 5 i ; the bishopric was estab-
lished in 1852. Necessarily the beginning was made
entirely by Europeans ; but the country became the
" white man's grave " ; missionary after missionary
succumbed, and the first three bishops died of
fever in seven years. By the teaching of necessity,
it was seen that the work must be done by a
native ministry. Accordingly Fourah Bay Training
College was established, and has worked successfully
since 1827. It has sent out already some sixty
native clergy and the first native bishop (Bishop
Crowther). The native Church is now organized,
independently of the Church Missionary Society ; to
be already " self-governing, self-supporting, and self-
extending " ; and to be hereafter, we trust, a centre
of light and evangelization to the natives around.
At this moment it has 19 clergy, 92 lay teachers,
and 14,000 native Christians, besides the staff still
retained at work under the parent Society.

Yorubaland, extending from the Bight of Benin
far inland, has a population of about two millions,enter-

368 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

prising and partly civilized, open to commerce, and
possessing large cities, of which Abeokuta is the chief.
Of all the West African regions it had suffered most
from the slave-trade and the ravages to which it
gave rise — the chief centre of the trade being Lagos
on the coast. The C.M.S. Mission began in 1 844
with glad welcome and rapid progress. Subsequently
it suffered greatly, first from inter-tribal wars and
native jealousy of British advance, leading to persecu-
tion and expulsion from Abeokuta ; and next, from
savage Dahomey inroads and massacres. In defiance,
moreover, of all that could be done by force or by
treaty, the slave-trade continued ; till in 185 i Lagos
was taken and annexed by England, and has since
become a flourishing town of nearly forty thousand
people. In spite of all obstacles the Mission has
steadily grown. As at Sierra Leone, an independent
native church has been formed, with ten clergy, many
lay teachers, and 6500 native Christians ; while the
Church Missionary Society still has nine European and
seven native clergy, and about 2000 native Christians.
The lower basin of the great river Niger, with an
inland territory of 500,000 square miles, and a popu-
lation estimated at about 30,000,000, has now been
brought into the " British sphere of influence" through
the Royal Niger Company. The upper basin, con-
taining some powerful Mohammedan states, is in
the French sphere ; and out of the juxtaposition of
the two nations difficulties and • troubles constantly
arise. The Niger itself was discovered as early as
1797 ; three successive expeditions were sent up

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 369

the river by the British Government in 1841, 1854,
and 1857, with a view to further discovery, com-
merce, and evangelization. Although they suffered
many disasters, they achieved much in opening up
the country. Along the river a large and increas-
ing trade with the interior has sprung up.

The Church Missionary Society did not begin its
labours here till about 1857, and for a long time
progress was very slow. There were many hind-
rances— the great variety of languages and the need
of study and translation in each, the difficulties of
climate and circumstance, the hostility of savage
tribes (some being cannibals), and the abuses of
European trade, especially in the liquor -traffic.
Gradually, however, as usual, way was made ; a
missionary steamer was launched on the Niger, and
stations formed on the coast (as at Bonny and Brass),
and up the river. There are now at work under
the Church Missionary Society nine European and
native clergy, besides lay teachers, and the native
Christians are about 1300.

This Mission is especially notable, as the one in
which the native Ministry has been crowned by a
native Episcopate in the person of Bishop Crowther.
His history is a singularly striking one, as indicating
the capacities, intellectual and spiritual, of the negro
race. Brought down as a slave-boy and liberated
by a British cruiser in 1822, he was instructed at
Sierra Leone and baptized in 1825 ; he entered
Fourah Bay College as its first student in 1827, and,
after years of study and teaching, was ordained in

2B

370

HULSEAN LECTURES

1843. ^or twenty-one years he ministered, both
as a pastor and an evangehst, in various African
missions ; he took a leading part in all the Niger
expeditions, and became leader of the Mission in
1857. Finally, he was consecrated as the Bishop of
the Niger in 1864, and after twenty-seven years of
faithful and self-denying service died in 1891, not
long after a visit to England in 1888 for the last
Lambeth Conference, where he was received with
singular cordiality and respect. The example is a
notable one. With needful caution and discrimina-
tion we may hope to see it followed, as the native
Ministry grows to maturity.

These are the chief outposts of our Church on
the West African coasts — signs and fruits of our
atonement for the slave-trade, which so long deso-
lated the country. The great hope of advance of
Christianity in that region is the prospect of their
becoming, in due course, missionary centres to their
heathen fellow-countrymen.

VIII. On the other side of the continent, " East
Africa," which extends from Cape Gardafui to the
Zambesi, presents another field, of large extent and
population, representing three chief linguistic divi-
sions of the native tribes. It has been long under
dominant Mohammedan influence, having intercourse
by sea with Arabia. Arab governments, partially
civilized, were found there by the Portuguese in the
sixteenth century; and through them the whole
region, and especially Zanzibar, became the seat of
the Eastern slave-trade and of piracy. It is only of

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 371

late years that European power has made itself felt
here, gradually absorbing the Arab Sultanate of
Zanzibar. In 1890 and 1891 the whole of this
region was divided into the " spheres of influence "
of Germany, Italy, and England. Zanzibar itself
fell under the British Protectorate, with a large tract
of country — stretching along the coast, and inland up
to the Victoria Nyanza and the borders of the
Congo Free State — administered by the British East
Africa Company under imperial control. The main
objects in view are to develop commerce, to destroy
the East African slave-trade, and to carry on the
work of civilization and Christianization. The task-
is facilitated by the wide prevalence of the Swahili
language.

The two chief centres of our own missionary
work here are Mombasa and Zanzibar, the head-
quarters respectively of the Church Missionary
Society and Universities' Missions.^

The pioneers of missionary work in East Africa
were the Germans, Krapf and Rebmann, working
under the Church Missionary Society from i 844 to
about 1 88 1. By geographical discovery, by re-
markable linguistic labour, and in less degree by
direct evangelism under infinite difficulties, they
were content simply to sow the seed, and look for-
ward in faith to the harvest. Then followed the

^ Many other missions are at work — the Presbyterian missions, both
of the Established and Free Churches, the London Missionary Society,
and (in German East Africa) several German societies. Others, both
British and American, start from the western side, especially on the
Congo, and meet these in the interior.

372 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

journeys of discovery of Burton and Speke, of
Baker, Livingstone, and Stanley ; and by them the
country was opened up to EngHsh knowledge and
enterprise. The C.M.S. Mission has its head-
quarters at the island of Mombasa — the chief
depot of the East Africa Company. After the
visit of Sir Bartle Frere to negotiate for the aboli-
tion of the Eastern slave-trade, the island and
Frere Town, a settlement on the mainland, became
— like Sierra Leone in former times — a settlement
of liberated slaves, the nucleus of a native Church.
From it extension took place to the Rabai district,
and to the country of the great Masai tribe, which
is said to be fierce and savage, but not incapable of
civilization. Progress under constant difficulty and
occasional persecution, here as elsewhere, was the
substance of its history.

But from this base of operations a bold advance
was soon to be made. The discoveries of Speke
and Burton, following up a hint of Krapf, had
made known the two great inland seas, now called
Lake Tanganika ^ and the Victoria Nyanza. Living-
stone and Stanley followed in the same track ; and
Stanley in particular surveyed the Victoria Nyanza
and the country round, lying 3800 feet above the
level of the sea, in a region not unfit for European
settlement, with a people superior to the ordinary
native tribes, evidently having promise of being
capable of civilization. Of these tribes the king-

^ In this region the London Missionary Society has several
stations.

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 373

dom which we call Uganda^ is the chief power,
and Stanley had much intercourse with its king,
Mtesa. On his return to England he challenged
English Christianity to send missionaries to this
remarkable country, which Mohammedanism had
already penetrated. His challenge was promptly
and nobly taken up by the Church Missionary
Society, and some ;^24,ooo raised to meet this
splendid vocation.

It seemed a hazardous enterprise to plunge many
hundred miles from the base of operations into
an unknown land. But in seven months the first
expedition was ready to start from Zanzibar in June
1876 ; and from that time onward the Mission has
been vigorously carried on. It has had more than
usual of trouble and vicissitude — in conflict with
the Arab slave-traders and the power of Moham-
medanism—under alternations of favour and hostility
from the native kings, at one time resulting in cruel
persecution — under the difficulty and scandal of
conflict between our Mission and a subsequent
Roman Catholic Mission, which is substantially a
rivalry of English and French influences. But, as
usual, the work made progress, and in 1884 the
first bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa (Bishop
Hannington) was consecrated as its head. He had
scarcely begun his work, when, by the hostility of
Mwanga, king of Uganda, he was called to seal it
by martyrdom, and a cruel persecution, borne with
extraordinary faithfulness, fell on the native converts.
^ The people themselves appear to call it Buganda.

374 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

This also passed away ; the Church had grown under
it, and had already made translations of parts of the
New Testament, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer in
their own tongue.

Then came another trial. The British East
Africa Company, appalled by pecuniary risk and
difficulty, and unsupported by our Government,
announced their intention of withdrawal from
Uganda. Once more the Church Missionary Society
rose nobly to the occasion, and in a few days raised
^16,000 to supply the needful funds. The Govern-
ment sent out a Commission of Inquiry; subsequently
they accepted the responsibility of a British Pro-
tectorate in 1894, and are resolving now on a railway
from Mombasa to Uganda.

The history is a remarkable one. Here, for once,
Christian enthusiasm has outstripped even com-
mercial enterprise, and become the pioneer of national
advance. We may confidently hope that Uganda is
won for ever, as an outpost and centre of Christian
civilization in the heart of the Dark Continent.
Already we see considerable advance. There are
at work 2 5 European and 8 native clergy, 3 1
European and 1 2 8 native lay teachers ; of native
Christians in the coast district 2535, and in the
interior 1700. But, since the first stages of difficulty
and failure seem to have passed by, it is all but
certain that this advance will speedily and signally
increase.

The Universities' Mission was founded in 1859,
in answer to a stirring appeal from Livingstone in

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 375

1856, by combination of the Universities of Oxford,
Cambridge, Dublin, and Durham. Its sphere of
action was farther to the south, in the neighbourhood
of Zanzibar and the basin of the great river Zambesi.
Headed by Bishop Mackenzie — one of the most
distinguished of the Cambridge teachers of his day,
who had previously been Archdeacon of Natal — the
expedition started in 1861, under the guidance of
Livingstone himself, for the Shire uplands in the
valley of the Zambesi, intending there to establish
its first settlement, and to make slaves, rescued on
the way from Arab slave-holders, the nucleus of a
native Church. It began its work with enthusiasm
and hope, and with a strong support of public interest
and sympathy. But, more than even the Uganda
Mission, it met with disaster and failure. In less
than a year its noble and saintly leader died of fever,
and his companions were similarly struck down, or
sent home as invalids. Bishop Tozer, who succeeded,
despairing of success in that region, transferred the
enfeebled and dispirited Mission to Zanzibar in 1864 ;
and there for a time it languished, the enthusiasm
of support at home slackened, and its bright hopes
seemed quenched in utter failure. But it held on
still, and under Bishop Steere (1874-82) — a man of
strong character, high linguistic culture and ability,
and absolute devotion — it revived marvellously out of
apparent deadness. This revival continued under the
leadership of Bishop Smythies — a worthy successor
of Bishop Steere — who, after a laborious and self-
denying episcopate of ten years, has but lately passed

376 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

away — another of those earnest and holy men, who
have been content to lay down their lives in the
African Mission. Still having its centre, with school
and college and hospital, at Zanzibar — where it deals
with the liberated slaves, and has signalized its remark-
able ascendency by erecting a fine church on the site
of the old slave-market — it has established stations
on the mainland in the Rovuma and Usambara dis-
tricts, and has pushed on to Nyassaland, which is now
the seat of a second Missionary Bishopric. Every-
where at last, after long delay and trial, openings
seem to present themselves. In Nyassaland the
presence of its own bishop has given a fresh impulse
to the work, carried on especially on the borders of
the great lake, and coming almost into touch with
the missions on the other two lakes of Tanganika and
Victoria Nyanza.

It is a characteristic feature of this Mission, that
it already has Synodical government and organization
in full force under Episcopal presidency, and gains
from it the great benefits of unity, counsel, and
direction of its scattered missionary works. Perhaps
it is an even more striking characteristic, that the
great body of its missionaries form a kind of free
brotherhood, sustained by a common fund, and re-
ceiving from it only the needful expense of main-
tenance. In both it has struck the keynote of an
initiative, which may be of the greatest value to the
whole Missionary Church.

The Mission in 1893 had its 2 bishops, 24
European and 5 native clergy, 56 European lay

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 377

teachers (male and female), and 104 native lay-
readers and teachers ; the adult lay members of the
Church were 3551, and there were more than 2000
children in its schools. The " bread cast upon the
waters " has been " found after many days " ; and
the Mission, once apparently doomed to failure, is
now at last brightened by success and hopefulness.

It will be seen by this brief summary that, as yet,
our mission to Africa is but in its infancy. The
great mass of the people of Africa are still un-
touched ; those who are won to Christ are but a few
sheep, scattered in the wilderness. But on every
side of this vast Continent, which is now opening
itself rapidly to our discovery and commerce, and
becoming an important factor in the history of the
world, the difficult task of the first planting of centres
of Christian influence has been achieved, not without
infinite sacrifice of devoted Christian lives. If we
may trust the teaching of experience, we may fairly
hope that the next half- century will be an era of
rapid spiritual development — provided only that
Christian evangelism keeps pace with commercial
and political enterprise.

In connection with our Mission in Africa, the
progress of Christianity in Madagascar may be
noticed here, although in itself it is an entirely
independent development. This large and beautiful
island, discovered by the Portuguese in the sixteenth
century, has received settlers from many European
races, but has fallen, and is clearly destined to fall
more completely, under French domination. It has

378 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

a large mixed population, about 4,000,000, of native
tribes, of which the Hova is the chief, with an idola-
trous religion, involving some ancestral worship and
much belief in sorcery. The English connection with
the island is purely commercial.

The chief representative of English Christianity
here is the London Missionary Society, which began
its work in 181 8, reducing the Hova language to
writing, translating the Scriptures, and building up
a large and flourishing Christian community.^ There
is also, under French auspices, a Roman Catholic
Mission. The work of our own Church is com-
paratively recent — through the Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel, and (for a time) the Church
Missionary Society — first in 1864 at Tamatave, and
subsequently, by express invitation of the Hova
authorities, at the capital Antananarivo. As the
work grew, it needed, of course, the superintendence
of a bishop. But the London Missionary Society
opposed the creation of a Madagascar bishopric,
especially in the capital, as likely to interfere with
their own very successful work, and as inconsistent
with the usual understanding to avoid trenching on
a province already occupied by Christianity. Even
the Church Missionary Society authorities were in-
clined to be content with Episcopal supervision from
Mauritius. The Government, influenced by this
opposition, refused to advise the grant of the royal

^ The return for 1894 gives 32 English and 1061 native ministers,
63,020 "church members," 283,738 "native adherents," and about
74,000 scholars.

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 379

license to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Archbishop
Tait), and, after many efforts at conciliation, he
advised another reference to the Scottish Bishops,
as unfettered by legal difficulties. By them the
first bishop (Kestell -Cornish) was consecrated in
1874, with the support of the Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel — the Church Missionary
Society having withdrawn their Mission. The con-
troversy was, indeed, most unfortunate. But it need
hardly be said that there is abundant room for
various missions in this great island, and there is
reason to hope that the fears of collision have proved
unfounded.^ At present our Church has there about
27 clergy and 10,000 native Christians. But the
French invasion, and coming French ascendency,
may, it is feared, interfere with the work of our
English Christianity.

IX. The other chief sphere of this same form of
missionary work to the barbarian races is in the great
congeries of islands, which stud the Pacific Ocean
off the eastern shores of Asia, and which we call
generally Polynesia. Like Africa, although in less
degree, it is bordered on every side by higher
civilizations. In the north are the great Eastern
Empires of China and Japan ; on the south-west our
Australasian colonies, with lesser settlements of other
European powers, are the strong representatives of
the West. Here also the same result follows from

^ The Bishop has joined with the missionaries of the London Society
in the work of Bible translation, and other religious and charitable
works.

38o HULSEAN LECTURES app.

this contact — first the intercourse of maritime
discovery and commerce ; then the extension of
dominant influence, the assumption of protectorate,
and the creation of dominion. Here also there is
in some degree the same rivahy, and not unfrequent
colHsion, of the advancing powers. Happily in this
region there has been no slave-trade ; nor, except in
a highly -modified form, any approach to its cruel
abuse of superior strength. Happily also in this
region the advance of the higher Christian brother-
hood has mostly kept pace with the secular expansion,
and in not a few cases has preceded it, striving not
unsuccessfully to control or temper the more selfish
influences of the merely commercial spirit, and the
greed of political aggrandisement.

The field is one of great extent, of singular interest,
yet of singular difficulty. These islands are numbered
by hundreds, mostly of great beauty and fertility ;
the native races, while they are barbarous, in many
cases even to cannibalism, are far from being un-
intelligent, and have proved themselves highly capable
of culture and civilization ; nor, except where they
have been deceived or oppressed, are they unwilling
to open intercourse with Europeans. But, over and
above the serious difficulty of the tropical climate,
the extraordinary mixture of races, and the bewilder-
ing babel of tongues, are necessarily most serious
hindrances to the creation among them of anything
like unity and brotherhood. Still these hindrances,
great as they are, have not prevented us from in-
cluding these islands, for good and for evil, within

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 381

the sphere of European Influence. It has been felt
(as Bishop Sehvyn expressed it) that where the
discoverer, the trader, and the settler went, the
missionary of the kingdom of God must also go.

The leading position which England occupies in
these regions, both through her commercial supremacy
and by her great colonial possessions, has, of course,
laid a special responsibility on our English Chris-
tianity, which within the last half- century it has
striven to fulfil. There has been through all its
divisions an universal movement for Polynesian evan-
gelization. To say nothing of Roman Catholic
missions, of which we know but little, and which
are often rather foreign than English, the various
Nonconformist Communions, both of England and of
America, have been active labourers in this mission-
field. The London Missionary Society has done
splendid work in the Society Islands, the Samoan
Islands the Hervey Islands, the Loyalty Islands, and in
the great island of New Guinea ; and its missionaries
are said to have more than 42,000 native adherents.
The Wesleyan Missions have absolutely Christianized
the Friendly Islands and the Fijian group, which
now have their independent native Churches. Pres-
byterian Missions have established themselves in the
New Hebrides. Other Christian bodies have taken
part in this great movement ; and the separation of
the islands from one another, and mutual agreement
to avoid trenching on fields already occupied, have
done much to mitigate the evil effects of our religious
divisions.

382 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

The chief part taken by our own Church is re-
presented by the Melanesian Mission, occupying the
Solomon Islands. It was originated in 1847 by
Bishop Selwyn, stirred (as he said) to action by the
knowledge, that these islands had long been visited
in the interests of trade, while no European mission-
ary of any nation or creed had found his way thither.
Struck with the babel of languages — two or three,
perhaps, even in a small island — he saw at once that
the one chance of reaching these islanders was
through men of their own race, taught and Christian-
ized, and sent back to be missionaries for Christ in
their old homes. Accordingly in the year 1849 ^^
set out in a little 20 -ton schooner, the Undine (which
made voyages of 20,000 miles before it was super-
seded by a larger vessel), and after friendly inter-
course with various islands, brought home to
Auckland his first cargo of Melanesian boys, to be
instructed and trained. For years this same work
continued, in his hands and those of Bishop Patteson,
to whom it was given up in 1861. First at Auck-
land, afterwards at Norfolk Island, the Missionary
School and College were established ; by Bishop
Patteson and the Rev. R. Codrington and others
the native languages were studied and classified, and
translations of Holy Scripture and the Prayer-Book
made. Gradually the young scholars grew up, were
trained, and, wherever fit, ordained for the Ministry ;
and through them the work of Christ in the various
islands began, and the spiritual harvest has been
gathered in. Norfolk Island is the central Christian

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 383

community, European and native ; and from it the
Bishop and his fellow-labourers go out continually to
direct and inspire the local workers in the various
islands, more of which are occupied every year —
returning after each voyage for rest and study, and the
restoring influences of a common Christian life and
worship. This method of evangelization has, of
course, its failures and disappointments ; but on the
whole it has vindicated itself by its results, and the
Christianity, which it implants, is distinctly a native
Christianity.

Success in this, as in the other missionary fields,
would have been far greater, if it had not been marred
by the sins of our own people — by fraud and de-
moralization in commerce, and by the abuses, even
to kidnapping and murder, of the labour-traffic from
Queensland. Some vessels engaged in that traffic
actually personated the Bishop and his vessel, and
carried off the deceived natives by force. Finally,
this flagrant evil culminated in a catastrophe, which
stirred the whole heart and conscience of England.
In 1 87 1 five men had been thus carried from Nukapu.
Soon after Bishop Patteson landed, unarmed and
alone as usual, on the island. His boat's crew waiting
for him were assailed with fatal effect by a shower of
poisoned arrows ; and soon a native canoe was seen
floating out, with the body of the murdered Bishop
laid in it, and a palm branch of five knots placed
upon his breast. The murder was the savage revenge
on the white man of those who knew not what they
did. He himself had foreseen its possibility, and

384 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

had protested by anticipation that no vengeance
should be taken for his death. At the time he was
in the zenith of his influence ; he had 565 young
islanders under his care, representing some fifteen
languages ; and everywhere his " Southern Cross "
was hailed with joy and confidence. But his death
was not in vain. It checked, and for a time abolished,
the labour-traffic ; it stirred an infinite sympathy at
home, which was expressed even in the Queen's
Speech in Parliament ; it gave a fresh impulse and
support to the Mission, carried on with unabated
earnestness by the Rev. R. Codrington and Bishop
John Selwyn, consecrated in 1875. The beautiful
Memorial Church at Norfolk Island was raised to his
memory ; and it is not a little significant of subse-
quent progress, that, on the very spot where he was
murdered, a memorial cross has been erected, and is
now reverently guarded by the islanders.

Since that time the Mission has gone on and
prospered. Spent by unremitting labour and sacrifice.
Bishop John Selwyn had reluctantly to retire disabled,
and take up quieter Church work in England. His
successor, Bishop Wilson, on his way out has been
able to arrange with the Church authorities in Queens-
land for the care and Christianization of the islanders,
again brought into that colony under stricter regula-
tions, and for combination of this with the work of
the Melanesian Mission itself.

The Mission, as a whole, is full of brightness and
interest. It has proved plainly that in these islanders,
barbarous and savage as they have been, there are

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 385

the rudiments of moral and spiritual life, which
Christianity can use and guide to perfection ; and
that their Christianity, when it has been thus im-
planted, is a real and vital power.^ By the nature of
the case it is but the seed-time of the future. But
hardly anywhere has Christ been more faithfully
and effectually preached, by life as well as word.

Besides the Melanesian Mission, it may be well
to refer briefly to two other efforts of our Church in
the Pacific.

The former is in the Fijian islands, which since
1874 have become a British possession. With the
native population. Christianized by the Wesleyan
missionaries since 1835, there is no idea of inter-
ference. But there is in the island a not inconsider-
able English settlement, mainly of Churchmen, and
there has been an importation of coolies — 7000 from
the Melanesian Islands, and 4000 from North India—
who lie beyond the pale of the Wesleyan ministra-
tion. Accordingly some few English clergy have
taken up this branch of the work, and it has been
proposed to found a Missionary Bishopric in Fiji for
this and for evangelization of neighbouring islands.^

The second is some 2500 miles away, in the

^ In Samoa, after the late German inroad, when a hurricane drove
some of the German ships on shore, the Samoans, not long ago savages
and cannibals, actually saved many of the sailors at the risk of their
own lives. There could hardly have been a more striking object-lesson
in practical Christianity.

^ The late Hon. John Campbell of Sydney, the founder of the See
of Riverina, left by will an estate for the endowment of this Bishopric
of Fiji, which, however, under the present depression, cannot be
adequately realized.

2C

386 HULSEAN LECTURES app.

Hawaiian group of islands. The social and political
condition of these islands, discovered by Captain
Cook and the scene of his death, has been strangely
confused. English influence has hitherto been
strong ; but from their position the islands fall more
naturally under American influence, and may pass
under an American protectorate. They are beautiful
and fertile islands of volcanic formation, and appear
to have now about 90,000 inhabitants, European,
Hawaiian, and Chinese.

The religious history of these islands is strange
enough. In 1786 two English sailors were seized and
detained, but kindly treated by the king. They gained
influence, and taught something of Christianity. In
1 8 1 9 the king and the people broke through the
superstition of the Tapu, destroyed their idols, and
were in search of a new religion. Christian mission-
aries began to answer the call — American Congrega-
tionalists in 1820, the London Missionary Society
in 1822, Roman Catholics in 1829. It was not till
i860 that, at the request of the king and his queen
Emma, the grand-daughter of one of the English
sailors of 1787, the Church of England took up the
work, and, with the liberal aid of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, sent out a bishop and
some clergy in 1861. The Mission, begun under
most favourable auspices, has not quite fulfilled its
first expectations. But it has about 2000 people
attached to it, and is well organized, with a cathedral,
an hospital, a sisterhood, churches, and schools, and a
small body of clergy under the bishop.

Ill OUR MISSION TO THE BARBARIAN RACES 387

X. Such is the last sphere of our missionary enter-
prise— in no quarter neglected, but in none adequately
filled. To our own Church especially there is un-
doubtedly a call to far greater enterprise. For upon
the manifestation of a vital strength in our Christianity
depends in no slight degree the future of a true
civilization of these backward races. Nor can we
doubt that through this ministration, as through that
of our Oriental Mission, we are ourselves learning
lessons, both of wisdom and of faith, as to the essen-
tial truth and force of Christianity, which must react
for good on our own Christian thougrht and life.

THE END

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