Indian missions : a letter addressed to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury

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INDIAN MINIONS

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ADDRESSED TO
HIS GRACE

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

BY

HENRY ALEXANDER DOUGLAS. D.D.

BISHOP OF BOMBAY

iLontron

RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE

HIGH STREET 1 TRINITY STREET

©xforlr !• CTambnUgc

1S72

INDIAN MISSIONS.

Statement of a Plan of Missions submitted to the Sck:iety
for the Propagation of the Gospel.

My dear Lord Archbishop,

In the year 1869, within a few months after
I had entered upon the charge of the Diocese of
Bombay, I addressed a letter to the Committee of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of
which your Grace is the President, pointing out
the more important circumstances in the condition
of the Western Presidency, regarded as a field of
Missionary labour, and the manner in which as a
Church we were fulfilling our duties to the popula-
tion of this portion of our Indian Empire. In that
letter I showed that within my Diocese there is
a population estimated at from twenty- one to
twenty-five millions, speaking five different lan-
guages, and that our efforts as a Church for the con-
version of this multitude of souls were represented
by about sixteen European Missionaries, most of
them belonging to the Church Missionary Society,
and located in Bombay or its remote vicinity, and
in the Province of Sindh. At the same I recom-
mended to the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel that it should at once occupy, with two or

B 2

4 Indian Missions.

three Missionaries at each place, some of our chief
European stations in the Mahratti speaking portion
of the country, and chiefly along the line of the old
Madras road ; that tract being recommended for
occupation because of the importance of several of
the stations in themselves as centres of European
influence, under the shadow of which the Native
Church would most naturally arise, — because the
several stations would form a connected chain hav-
ing each a link of about seventy miles in length; —
because one language is spoken in it; — because the
climate is about the best for Europeans which can
be found in India, — and because it could most easily
receive from me such personal oversight and care
as I can give. The Committee of the Society
received my recommendations not only with a
general approval of the scheme, but with an interest
for which I am deeply grateful, and which took
substantial form in an immediate grant of 3000/.
towards a commencement of the work, and in an
appeal both for men and for the means which were
further needed to support them.

The Plan one which appeared practicable.

A scheme such as this, confined as it was to one
portion of a vast territory, could be regarded, as
your G-race will perceive, only as a beginning ; but
it appeared to me wiser to set before the Church a
small and very practicable plan, which was so far

Indiaji Missions, 5

complete within itself, and, as I thought, within
easy and not distant accomplishment, than to
propose suddenly and at once a serious attempt, on
a scale commensurate with the greatness of the
endeavour, to subdue twenty-five millions of unbe-
lievers to the mild yoke of Jesus Christ. Our efforts
in India, if compared with the Herculean nature of
the work which is to be done, and with the gigantic
character of the conquest which is to be effected,
have hitherto been so feeble and insignificant, that
it seemed in accordance as much with religious
prudence as with sound sense to ask the Mother
Church to take a little step, and not to put before
it that full course over which its Divine Head
graciously invites it to travel until that step had
been fully taken. Nor was I unaware that God
is best pleased to work from small beginnings, and
that a humble effort, carefully conceived, as it was
most in accordance with our past performances,
was also most likely to receive that blessing from
above, without which even the grandest schemes
must be formed in vain.

The Plan not carried out for want of MeJt, and the conse
quent Necessity of calling attention! to the Failure.

Small, however, as the plan was, it is with pain,
and, when I recollect how highly God has blest that
Church which is our Mother, even with no small
sense of humiliation, that I have now publicly to

6 Indian Missions.

bring to tlie notice of your Grace, as tlie chief
Bishop of the Anglican community, and as the
President of our English Missionary Societies, that
after three years no addition has been made to our
little band of Missionary clergy, and that the scheme
which one of our Societies so heartily approved
seems nearly as far as ever from its accomplishment.
The reason, too, of this failure, as your Grace I
believe knows, is not the want of means, which
here no less than in England are greater and more
abundant than the men, and which I am confident
would still more rapidly flow in from many sources
if hope received that stimulus which comes from
the sight of hearty and generous exertions, but
an absolute dearth of men who are prepared
to undertake this most arduous kind of religious
labour. And as a dearth of this sort — felt as much
by the Church Missionary Society as by the Society
which I addressed — can be overcome only by an
outpouring of those dews from heaven and those
waters of God the Holy Spirit which make a Church
fruitful in works of devotion, as well as by those
arrangements of sanctified wisdom and inventiveness
suited to each age and crisis of the Church's history,
which God uses and blesses as the instruments of
His sovereign will, I am impelled, by my vows and
by the account which I must give of all these
unbelieving millions, to invite the particular atten-
tion of your Grace and the Mother Church to the
neglected condition of this portion of our greatest

Indian Missions. 7

national dependency, and to lift up my voice,
however weak it may be, in the ears of my fellow-
churchmen, that, through their prayers, their
labours, their gifts, and above all, their self-oblation,
something may be done, here and throughout
India, not wholly unworthy of us as a people and
as a Church which God has blessed. And I am
the more bold to make this appeal because, while I
have felt for some time that I must make it, I have
lately been informed that this great dearth of men
is a trial which has come home to the hearts and
consciences of many in England, and that your
Grace, in ready response to the feelings of sorrow
and shame which it has aroused, has appointed a
day of common intercession to the Lord of the
harvest, that He may send forth labourers into this
and other whitening portions of the wide field.
Nor, as I would fain hope, shall my voice be heard
in England only, for I trust that the Church in
Scotland, waking up as it now is to a consciousness
of what it owes to the world, will more and more
perceive that its own life depends on that life which
it bestows on others. And I do not, I feel sure,
presume too much on those ties of blood, language,
and religion which unite us with our brethren in
America, if I venture so far as to cross the Atlantic,
and to invite our sister Church to consider that,
while other Christian Associations of the United
States have taken up the work of Indian Missions
with an earnestness which makes the term " Ameri-

8 Indian Missions.

can Missionary " a household word throughout the
land, that Church which lays especial claim to the
character of Apostolic has yet to put in its first
appearance on that field which more than any
other at the present time clamorously calls out
for Apostolic labourers.

The Church of England not sufficiently alive to what is
due to India.

My Lord Archbishop, I have not scrupled to

speak of the past efforts of the Church of England

in India as feeble, and I would now take leave to

say that the conscience of that Church has never

yet been really touched by a sense of its obligations

to India, or its heart warmed at the sight of that

glorious work in this land to which God still

graciously calls it. Thirty-five years ago this

confession must have taken a far wider range, for

men were then saying that even our own flesh and

blood had been cast off like refuse upon every part

of our great Colonial Empire, and had been left in

a state of provision for their religious life so

-Yjjy meag^ly disproportionate to their necessities that

truth could only describe their condition as one of

utter neglect, in which no man cared for their souls.

That stone of reproach has now, thank God, been

rolled away. The Colonial Church has now been

planted, we may even hope rooted, in all those

nascent communities which carry in them so much

of the future destiny and prospects of the human

Indian Missiojis. 9

race, and the mother of so hopeful a progeny has
seen abundant cause to bless God for His gifts and
to prepare herself for new and greater efforts, in a
confidence which is not reliance upon herself but
on that arm of Grod which has so manifestly upheld
her. In that work the Church of England has, as
it has seemed to me, served her apprenticeship, and
should now, when she has thus fully learnt her
work as a propagator of truth and of Christ's
Kingdom, take up with perfected strength and
wisdom the conversion of Asia as her calling and
business during her mature life. It needs, I think,
no powers of prophetic vision to discover this as
God's purpose when He thus took her into His own
hands, and trained her by a work which is both so
good in itself and is now, upon the whole, com-
pleted. But those who love the Church of England
best are looking, scarcely yet with alarm, but with
something of a suspicion, that an energy so far
beyond anything in her former history, so different
from that timidity and '•' trust in princes " of the
Georgian era, which lost America at once to the
Church and to the nation, may after all have been but
fitful and galvanic, and that she, whom her loving
and admiring children had begun to call the Mother
of Churches^ may have exhausted herself by an effort
which for a time was marvellous, but which really
was only a prodigy, not natural, not normal, not
such as could be growing and continuous, not
Catholic, not Divine. The gates of the temple of

lo Indian Missions.

Grod cannot be closed. The boundaries of the
empire of the Church cannot ever be fixed. War
must continue till all opposition to the great King
is overcome, and there can be no limit to His
dominions until the utmost parts of the earth have
been won as His possession. One victory, there-
fore, can only be the preparation for another
campaign, and one conquest but the spur to fresh
aggressions, by which new and large conquests
may be achieved. Yet now, when we might have
thought that the' Church, like a giant refreshed by
the excitement and satisfaction of the great work
which has been done, would have girded itself to
fresh labours, and, saying, *' I have supplied the more
pressing needs of my own children, and of the re-
gions which they have occupied as colonists," would
have looked around and afar, and asked, "On what
new field can I find room for the exercise of my
growing strength ? Where can I now anew go forth
conquering and to conquer?" we see no signs of
this continued and expanding vitality. It really
seems as if a lethargy was creeping over those young
and stalwart limbs, and as if the giant, instead of
seeking fresh Philistines to vanquish, was disposed
rather to lie down in soft inglorious repose. At any
rate, 180 millions of unbelieving souls, conquered
by the prowess of Great Britain, and held in sub-
jection by an iron hand, which will never relax its
grasp till the arm of Great Britain, as a power among
the nations of the earth, drops in paralysis, awaken
in the Church of the nation no strong* thrill of

Indian Missions. 1 1

sympathetic interest. Nothing has as yet been done
to prove that the Church is even disposed to arouse
itself to strenuous and hero-like exertions. Eyes
were opened for a short space when the mutiny
shocked the nation by revealing the cruelty and
intense malignity of evil which lay, ready to
explode, beneath the thin surface of a quiescent
servility. Samson rose up and shook his conscience
for a moment. But now it would almost seem
that Samson has lain down again.

// is difficult to account for this, when we consider the
viany signs of the Finger of God in the circicmstmices
which have given Great Britain ihe Empire of India.

Why ? I would crave permission of your Grrace
to ask, why is this? A Bishop in India, at all
events, cannot help asking, why it is that India
is so little thought of? Why it is that the Church
does so feebly what must be done with all its
vigour if anything is to be done at all ? He finds
himself here, one of three bishops, bearing names
derived from the three chief seats of English
Sovereignty, names which connect them and their
offices with the territory and soil of India, and
through that with an Imperial dominion, the
most singular and the most clearly indicating the
Finger and Providence of God which history has
seen. A company of traders, with no objects in
view but those which commerce furnishes, settles
itself in one or two corners of India, and takes

12 Indian Missions.

its almost unnoticed place among the incongruous
circumstances of Indian life, unconscious all the
while that it is really like that new piece of cloth
of which Christ speaks, and that it is inserted
within the old garment of Oriental Society. As
time went on such Western and even Christian
vigour as was in the new cloth got itself mixed
up in the decayed and rent condition of the older
vesture, and its influence spreading inconceivably,
and its power asserting itself very marvellously,
the new patch covered more and more of the old
robe, at the same time drawing into itself the
potency of the nation from which it issued, till
a Company grew into a mighty Sovereignty, and
handed over its authority to the Queen of England,
who now rules from Peshawur to Ceylon with
undisputed sway. We did not seek this Empire.
We scarcely wished for it. It rather came to us
and was forced upon us than deliberately sought
for and conquered by us. We found ourselves
here in a position out of which this Empire has
grown, as if by a kind of fate and pre-destined
necessity ; and now we feel that all our glory as
a nation is bound up with our tenure of it, and
that it is now as much our duty as our choice to
keep it, for such a work throughout the continent
of Asia as Grod only fully knows, and time only
can reveal. But who, — I do not say what religious
man, but who that has the intelligence to see what
Christ has done as a civilizer, — can at all doubt
what the Divine purpose mainly is, or what

Indian Missions. 13

Society is most distinctly called, and most strictly
bound to give that purpose execution? We are
not the only European nation whose influence has
been felt in India. But of all the other European
nations whose settlements have been established
here the influence has gradually vanished. And
now Great Britain occupies the place which for
centuries was held by the champions of the
Crescent, and the Cross of St. George waves above
every battlement of India, and gleams from every
ensign even of those sepoy regiments which wear
her scarlet uniform and uphold her power. Can
any man doubt why it is that not Portugal, which
once could give to England a portion of India,
as the dowry of a Queen, and not France, which
contested the possession of India with England on
many a hard-fought field, that not Portugal, nor
France^ but England, is the representative of the
Christian faith in this country, the possession of
which is the key to the mind and conscience of
the whole East ? Your Grace at any rate will
not doubt this. Long ago St. Paul taught the
Athenians that every tribe of men on the face of
the whole earth, however far they might have
strayed from the right knowledge of their Creator,
had not been abandoned by Him, but that all
their times, changes, and migrations were ordered,
and all the bounds of their habitation fixed, by
His all -gracious and all-ruling Providence, in
order that, feeling in due time their blindness,
and groping their way even through darkness

14 hidiayt Missions,

towards Him, they might find Him at last near
at hand. Who, then, can doubt that God is now
approaching the inhabitants of India through
the commerce and the migrations of the EngHsh
race ? Who can doubt that Grod wills the con-
version of Asia, no less than he willed and ac-
complished the conversion of Europe in a former
era ? or when he sees the English race and lan-
guage paramount at once in America, in the
Pacific, in Australia, and in Asia, can hesitate to
believe that God now delegates to that race and
to its Church the chief place in the conversion of
the regions still darkened by idolatry, and above
all in the conversion of India, where by so
mysterious a Providence England is supreme.

Why, then, a bishop in India cannot but ask,
why is the Church that sends me here so cold and
apathetic, as she looks on 180 millions of people
placed beneath her tutelage, handed over by the
marked determination of the King of Kings to
her converting care ? I look around me as a
bishop representing at once the Church Catholic
and the Church of England in this country, and,
reflecting on my position as living among twenty-
five millions of unbelievers, I see that all which
the great Church of England does for their con-
version is to look on with favour at the work of
two ill-supported societies, which after using all
the influence of speeches, meetings, sermons, and
deputations throughout the length and breadth of

Indian Missions, 15

England, are able to send us fifteen missionaries,
and then say, after three years of effort for
extension on the part of one of them, that their
power is exhausted, and that men are nowhere
to be found. An Indian bishop in such circum-
stances is certainly the most pitiable of objects.
But the Church, which can do no more than leave
him in this state of prostrate impotency and
inefficiency^ must surely have reasons enough for
searching into the grounds of her deficiencies, and
for asking what it is in her system and methods
of working which renders her unable to answer
the calls of duty, and to evoke the enthusiasm of
her sons. The Church, which I deeply love, and
which I have desired through nearly thirty years
faithfully to serve in three quarters of the globe,
will, I am sure, forgive me when I thus fearlessly
point out her blemishes, and when I openly pro-
claim her sluggishness, her coldness, her indif-
ference, not now for the first time imputed by
those whose hearts have been given to her, but
never more apparent than in her past and present
treatment of India, never more likely, if not ex-
changed for fervour, to bring down God's blighting
judgments on her, and on her nation, because
never were opportunities so great, and never had
a Church so great a call from Him, Who never
calls without offering those gifts which enable
men to answer Him.

1 6 Indian Missions,

The Importance of using the Opporttmities which the
present State of Lidia affords.

Opportunities ! I do not hesitate to say that
India at this moment stands with open mouth,
if still with stammering and inarticulate tongue,
asking for a religion. The masses of this vast
country are still inert and unreached in their
stolid and stagnant stupidity, crushed and ground
to dust hy a religion which can produce nothing
but tyranny in Government and general debase-
ment, because while it idolizes life in a brute,
through its system of caste it looks with scorn
and contempt upon the body and soul of ordinary
human beings. But, to those who can perceive
those influences which operate within the heart of
things, it is evident that the root of such intelli-
gence as supports the still abundant growth of
superstition is even now cut, and that the work
of fuller decay is but time's business. The more
intelligent among the Brahmins defend idolatry
upon grounds which are fatal to its permanence,
maintain it as an accommodation to the ignorance
of the people, and profess to look down upon the
grossness which confounds the symbol with the
divinity. The cannons of the English army,
which have shattered in turn the fortresses of
Hindostan, have been followed up by conquering
agencies in the sphere of thought^ not by any

Indian Missions. l^

means so clearly perceptible, but perfectly indis-
putable, and every year the work of destruction
goes on in ratios which multiply, and in forms so
thoroughly effective, that even now it may be
affirmed with tolerable confidence, that if direct
English influence should cease from this period,
the India of the future cannot be the India of the
past. A tide of Western knowledge and of those
arts of civilization which a knowledge of nature,
given by Christ, fosters, pouring in new notions
and ways of thinkings as well as new habits of
action, is carrying before it and sweeping out of
existence old views and habits, and, along with
these, faith in the old religion, of which these
departing customs are an actual part, or with
which they stand in close internal relations. And,
destruction visibly spreading, the more intelligent
of the Hindoos are feeling, as the old passes away,
what do you give me in exchange for my own
religion ? The interval is one chiefly of doubt,
but not as yet of rejection ; though European
influences, actively at work in some quarters, are
doing all that they can to produce positive an-
tagonism to Christianity. Some, at all events,
there are, and there may be many, whose minds
are not content to be a blank, and whose hearts
ask for something which may fill them. We know
that at the coming oi " the Desire of all Nations,"
the void in human nature, as it existed in that
great empire of Rome which was then the world,

c

1 8 Indian Missioyis.

was making itself felt within those contrite and
wounded spirits whom Christ came to heal, and
actually led them to Him for healing, — and that
afterwards, when the deluge of the barbarians
came surging over the same empire in its disso-
lution, there were in all those hosts, so varied in
their origin and forms of savagery, impulses and
yearnings, inexplicable by themselves, after goods
and treasures which they were blindly seeking,
but which Christ alone could and did satisfy, so
that prostrate Rome conquered for Christ those
who were her conquerors, and won over them a
greater victory than that by which they van-
quished her. As in these two greatest eras of
revival the crash of change was accompanied by
a thirst and a demand for something new and
permanently good, so, I doubt not, here at this
very time, the condition of India is nothing else
but one great and splendid opportunity, which, if
the Church does but seize it at the critical moment,
will have the conversion of the East for its final
consequence ; but if this opportunity be coldly suf-
fered to pass by, unwelcomed and unimproved, it
will, at no distant date, rise up to overwhelm us,
like one of those great tidal waves, which sud-
denly and without warning overleap the barriers
imposed by God to check the flow even of the
ocean ; and, when the work of judgment has been
done and the mighty wave has receded, the histo-
rians of all future time will find in it their most

Indian Missions. 19

striking lesson, the prophets will take up their
most solemn parable, and the poets will point their
darkest moral as they show how England fell.

The Church called upon not to miss its Opportunity.

Men, Brethren, and Fathers of the Church of
England, let me cast aside fear, reserve, conven-
tionalities, and let me speak to you as a Christian
to Christians, as a man to men. Are we indeed
a portion of the Church which Christ founded ?
Are we Christians in something else than name ?
Do we believe that He whose name has been given
to us, and whose cross we carry upon our fore-
heads and often wear above our hearts, is not a
man only, but very God, and now reigns above as
Universal King ? If you belong to the Catholic
Church, if you are Christians in reality, how can
you rest in your beds, and how can you repose
among your green fields and uplands, and in your
peaceful homes — whether these are palaces, or
halls, or parsonages, or cottages among country
scenes, or whether your lot is cast among the
streets and squares of busy cities — how, I ask you,
can your consciences be still while you so faintly
carry on the war for your all-conquering King ?
Here is, not India only, but Asia at your feet,
waiting to be conquered. Here, in an age of
universal change, and of preparation for greater
things to come, the whole Eastern world — 500
millions of the human race — is appearing before

c 2

20 Indian Missions.

yon, not in dreams and visions of the night, but
bj; palpable and already historic Providences, and
is saying to others indeed also, for in this work
there is no monopoly^ but to you above all, " Come
over to India and help us; come from the West
to repay the donations of the East." And what
is your answer ? " We have no men to spare you.
*We want all our good men here. Consider the
state of our great cities. How can we think of
India, when charity begins, and has so great a
work to do, at home ?" As if charity at home was
not nourished and increased by charity abroad!
As if the Jew of Tarsus, and the model men of all
times, had not left us an eternal example of in-
debtedness to Greeks and barbarians, to bond and
free ! As if large-heartedness, breadth, and com-
prehensiveness of spirit did not deepen and feed
roots, at the same time that they spread branches !
As if sacrifice was not the only specific for all
moral evils, domestic as well as foreign ! As if,
too, sacrifice did not multiply in proportion to the
greatness of its aims ! And as if for every man
that sacrifice spends on its most noble and heroic
work a thousand did not spring up, as if from the
earth, quickened by the new life which he com-
municates, enamoured of the death which their
example died, and eager for the unseen crown
which they have learnt from him to covet ! The
Church exists but for progress and conquest. Its
commission, never abrogated, is not '* stay," but

India7i Missions. i\

"go." Its main work, like that of Rome in its
ascendency, is not at its centre, but on its borders.
There is the school where its legions, having
passed their time of training at home, may go out
to do the work of men, and after long years return,
veterans and covered with the scars of genuine
warfare, to shed the glory of their hoar hairs and
the seed of their ripe experience on the perplexing,
though less trying and self-sacrificing, labours of
the Church at home. And if it comes to calling
in the legions of the Church, from border, aggres-
sive, and external warfare, or, what is practi-
cally the same thing, if conquest, ever advancing,
never resting, is not the Church's chief work,
there is a worm at the core, there is a cessation
at the heart itself of the full beat and impulses of
life. Decay, if not outwardly apparent, is in-
wardly proceeding ; and, even if a bloom is still
upon the surface, death is at work within. A
policy of peace and abstinence from conquest may
be possible in earthly kingdoms, and in them may
be as expedient as it is commendable, but in the
kingdom of Christ not to advance is to retreat,
and not to make new conquests is both to lose
what has been won, and to lay open the very
centre and citadel of power to an enemy, whose
armies are ever on the alert, and who is ready,
at any instant, to turn his own attitude of defence
into a sharp attack, where it will most be felt, on
liis inactive and undefended adversaries.

22 India7i Missions.

The Contrast betzveen the Work of the World in India
and that of the Chnrch.

But again, let me ask, what are your hearts
doing? These millions, 180 millions — for I can-
not too often remind you that we have here to
answer for about a fifth portion of the earth's
inhabitants — men like yourselves, in whom the
blood of Adam runs, where are your hearts, when
your eyes fall on them, and see them at the foot
of your armies, and governed by your own sons,
brothers, countrymen ? Soldiers flow into the
country, and give up their lives in war to duty
when it calls them, and even in peace to the more
terrible demands of a climate which wears them
out, and to disease, which occasionally breaks out
in fierceness, and cuts them off by tens and
hundreds in a day. Civilians flow in also, eager
for employment, until now the stream is checked
because it is superabounding. Merchants and
men of business add themselves to the gathering
waters, peopling the Presidential towns, and
directing the whole course of trade, which in
remote corners of the land feels everywhere their
presiding influence. Barristers and solicitors suc-
ceed, and reap from a litigious people harvests of
gold, which, after a few years of strenuous work,
they carry back with them to their native soil,
there in comfort and in rest to end their days.
Engineers and artisans follow on the track of the

hidian Missiofis, 2,3

Railroad, the Steamboat, and the Telegraph,
making locomotion easy, and distributing with
swiftness and precision tl^.e produce which the
land yields, and the intelligence which interests
all nations. We rule the land; upon the whole
unselfishly and wisely. We restrain throughout
the land such evil as an honest love of right
and truth can put down, by instruments far from
perfect, but the best which the land furnislies.
We diffuse intelligence by education, the best
among us thinking that such light as intellect
alone can give is better than none, and hoping
that a time may come when that better light of
conscience and the heart, which the true God only
can bestow, may be added to it. And we cover
the land with a coating of Western civilization,
spreading rapidly and carrying far and wide
obvious advantages. But when we look for the
presence of those profounder influences, which
by giving new hearts can alone communicate
real and intrinsic vitality, when we look for
the Church of Christ and her servants, coming
with the grace of God, and with the life, the
power, the sacrifice, the knowledge, which might
bring down the fire of heaven, and add to this
man of Western clay, and to all his works, that
Divine Essence which alone can give virtue and
value to them, then, alas, this stream, hitherto so
ample that it needs to be determinedly checked
rather than stimulated in its flow, changes into a

24 Indian Missions.

faint dribble scarcely to be discerned, and now
of late the few drops which before rather trickled
than ran seem ceasing. Where, then, I have a
right to ask the whole Church, where is your
heart ? These countless multitudes, what are they ?
Are they things to be ruled ? to be used as a camp
of active exercise for your armies ? to provide for
your sons that livelihood which your Httle island
cannot yielcj them ? to make cotton for your Lan-
cashire manufactories and to consume your piece
goods ? to be made money of ? to have the cream
of their productions skimmed from them and car-
ried home ? Is this all ? Is this what a fifth of
the people of the earth was made for ? And,
when it comes to that balancing of productions
of which even commerce makes so much, and to
a case of exchange, in which you can give them
far more than you receive, treasures beyond all
estimation, the gifts of heaven in return for the
productions of earth, are they to be " things "
still? a school for your soldiers? a provision for
your children? feeders for your commerce? not
souls, each one of whom is loved by our Father
Who is in Heaven^ and for whom Christ upon
the cross shed, drop by drop, the blood of the Son
of God? It cannot be that such indifference can
long continue.

Indian Missions. 25

This Difference to be attributed to Insidarity of Feeling,
and Waiit of Imagination, more than to deliberate
Neglect.

It cannot be that you have looked on them,
and then, Jew-like, deliberately passed them by
upon the other side. It rather is through that
insularity of temper, which keeps Englishmen,
travellers and rovers though they be, within the
groove of those demands which most impor-
tunately address their more immediate ear, or
through that want of range in the national
imagination, which seems unable to realize the
dignity, or I will say the majesty, of our position
as a people, and to bring home to us in any
conscious way at once the universality of the
sphere in which Grod is calling us to act, and the
vastness of our strength and capabilities as a
Church, if we had but the faith and the zeal to
put out that strength which we reserve within
us ; — it is through causes such as these, rather
than through any deadness and decay of soul, that
our conduct as a Church is so sadly in contrast
with our boasted vigour as a nation. Aud, there-
fore, I shall yet confidently hope that the Church
which I serve will not always be as impotent in
India, or, at all events, in this part of India, as
it now is, and in this hope I shall venture to lay
before your Grrace and the whole Church some
further considerations, which are offered with
diffidence and only from a sense of duty, as my

26 Indian Missions.

humble suggestions for the removal of that drought
of men, ready to sacrifice themselves as Christ's
devoted soldiers, which is now our grief as a
Church, and our scandal before the world and our
self-sacrificing Eoman neighbours.

It is absolutely necessary that zve should recognize the
Difficulty of Converting India.

It is, I believe, of primary importance that we
should clearly recognize the extraordinary difficulty
of the work which is set before us for accomplish-
ment; because, until this is seen, our efforts as a
Church will not only not be sufficient in magnitude,
but will not be of a kind and on a plan which are
adapted to the practical result which must con-
stantly be kept in view. Great as have been the
feats of the Church in the nineteen centuries of
her past history, the conversion of Asia, when it
has been effected, will be regarded as by far her
greatest work. And if, limiting our view to India,
as the citadel of the whole fortress hitherto impreg-
nable, we consider only the conquest which has to
be achieved here, nothing short of a faith which
might remove the Himalayas can even hope for
the coming of that day when India will have
turned from its foul idolatries to the pure love of
Jesus Christ. What we have to do is to move a
compacted mass — a monster shall I call it ? — of
180 millions of men, and a monster like that of the
poet, which " moveth all together if it move at all."

Indimi Missions. 27

Those who know by observation the versatility and
flexibihty of that Brahminical race wliicli so long
has domineered over the social life of India, openly
or secretly administering affairs in such a way as
to maintain its own pre-eminence, will not speak
of the East as unchanging without qualifications.
Certainly nothing more immediately catches the
eye of an examiner of India at the present time,
than that discernment of the Brahmins which has
led them to perceive that education is the road to
power, and the readiness with which they have
adapted themselves to Western ways of action,
while yet, I fear, they retain the subtlety, the
intrigue, and, I must add, the falsehood, to which
they owe their former influence. But in the main
elements which go to form society change is still
unknown, certainly not perceptible. Force has put
down the immolation of a widow upon her hus-
band's funeral pyre ; but the strong efforts of a
few persons to break through the tyranny which
condemns even child-widows to perpetual mourning
for a husband whom they have scarcely seen, are
ineffectual as yet even in Bombay, where European
influence is most apparent, and the very know-
ledge of such a change as contemplated or con-
ceivable has not penetrated the cloud of ignorance
in which the remoter regions are enfolded. Tlie
village system, to which we ascend from that of
the family, is still the same as existed two thousand
and two hundred years ago, when India was seen ]>y

28 Indiayi Missions.

the Greeks who followed Alexander. Buddhism
has passed through the land as a rationalizing and
reforming agency. Mahometanism conquered the
land and established a civil supremacy which lasted
through many centuries. "

The Immobility of Caste.
Yet caste and its accompaniments stand, as at
once the product and the bulwark of the religion;
and it is even conceivable that caste may outlast
the religion, and maintain its place upon the basis of
infidelity. At any rate, of all those forces which
hold men together in societies none is so difficult as
caste to reach by any power of dissolution. Nothing
but birth can give it, and, while its privileges seem to
the possessor above all price, it is held on condition
of maintaining rules of the minutest stringency.
It comes to a man out of an unseen world, through
supposed relations with his Creator ; it so follows
him in life that the character of every act, great
and small, is regulated by it ; and it goes with him
in and through death as determining his ever-
lasting destiny. From the individual who is
affected by it all individuality is gone, his social
position absorbing his personal life, and subjecting
him to the will of his fellows, who hold in their
hands everything on which he depends for life and
happiness. Thus caste is the ruler of India, even
of those Hindoos who are hopelessly and for ever
upon the outer side of all its advantages, and

Indian Missions. 29

India, so far as it is Hindoo, and excepting only
so far as our presence here has affected its social
arrangements, is one great stereotyped commu-
nity, every man's habits and lot fixed for him
at birth, and no one able to break through the
fence, behind which causes beyond human control
have placed him here, and, as it seems to him,
elsewhere and for ever. Society is in a state at
once of wholeness and immobility. It cannot be
attacked in detail, for it is a whole everywhere.
Its parts cannot be disintegrated, for it is without
divisibility. It must be upheaved all together,
and changed all together, if at all.

The Conversion of India a more diffictdt Work thait that
of the Roman Empire and the Barbarians of Europe.

There is thus the greatest possible difference be-
tween the social circumstances of the East and
those of that more Western world, in which the
Church won its two past triumphs. In both of
those eras society was held together by but loose
bonds of coherence, and when it came in contact
with the order and discipline of the Church in
which love was the centralizing influence, society
was in a state of conscious confusion, like that of
bees when they have lost their queen, and are
eager to find for themselves a new bond of unity.
In the Roman Empire decay everywhere was busy ;
religion had dropped such power as it ever had to
hold families and people together, and philosophy

30 Indian Missions.

was as weary of itself and its insoluble perplexities
as it had wearied all its followers. When, there-
fore, the Church with its community of hearty life
appeared, it seemed like a rock amid universal
change and dissolution, and men of deeper thought
and more earnest feeling, discerning in it the one
solid element in the social state, built their lives
upon it. To the barbarians, conscious of their
strength and juvenescence, but seeing in every-
thing besides and in their own achievements little
but wreck and destruction, while yet their hearts,
moving ever onwards and forwards, were filled
with all the eagerness of hope, the Church was
the one green oasis in a desert, and the one haven
in a sea of storms. And when they looked upon
the diligence and regularity of that life which was
exhibited by the monastic orders, from which
chiefly, or almost solely, the elements of civilization
issued, the choice souls among them discovered in
the Church of Christ the one place where they
could settle themselves and find rest. There was
a sense of need, and the Church was the satisfac-
tion of it. The Church, and the Church only,
filled up a manifest void. But here in India, while
there is dissatisfaction in some quarters with the
follies of idolatry, and some feeling that a religion
is wanted, society closes up its serried ranks and
says, " There is no room for any new associations
here, and there is just as little need." Before, in
those two past ages of revival, individuah'sm was
strong — in the first the individualism of decom-

Indian Missions, 3 1

posing civilization, in the second the individualism
of strong undisciplined barbarity ; but individual-
ism felt its own solitariness and isolation, and as
the first cried out for an association better than
it had lost, the second was seeking an association
which it had never found. Here, not only is there
no sense of personal responsibility, but the social
cravings are so far more than satisfied, that society
submerges and swallows up the individual in itself,
and wraps the welcomed swathing bands of infancy
around the limbs of men. And thus, while the
need of the Church as a society is greater than
anywhere or ever before, because never was society
built upon a falser basis, there is a positive surfeit
of the social appetite^ and the heart of the Hindoo,
gorged with that which cannot feed it, has no
hunger for wholesome and satisfying food. Society,
wanting in all elements of greatness, and divid-
ing men from each other by barriers which are in
every sense insuperable, stagnates, yet lives on ;
stifles aspiration, and yet in some sense satisfies
desire ; crushes conscience to death wdiile it fills
life with a religion ; subdues a man to a meanness
of servility, in which he ceases even to care for
being free. Here, therefore, the range of moun-
tains which faith in Christ is to remove are not
mountains only, but mountains with roots piercing
so deeply into the very heart of the earth, and
the whole so perfectly compacted together, that
little short of a convulsion shaking the earth itself
can tear them up and j^lant them in the sea. It

3 2 Indian Missions.

is not numbers only which have to be moved. It
is numbers in a state of iron-bound coherence and
solidity, the iron of caste having so entered into
the soul of society, and so clamping it together,
that nothing short of an explosive force, strong
enough to rend the rocks and break the moun-
tains into pieces, can make an inlet large enough
to admit the kingdom of Christ.

The Church therefore, if anything is to be done, nwst put
forth all its Power.

And therefore, through your Grace, I presume
to call upon the Church of England, whose place
should be the foremost in this labour, deliberately
to gird itself for an effort which shall tax all its
members to the extremity of every power and gift
with which Grod has graciously endowed them, yet
not too great for their capacity ; for never yet before
had any portion of the Church so many, so various,
and so great endowments latent within her, and
nothing now is needed but the fervour, the courage,
and the devotion, which shall put those magnifi-
cent endowments forth.

It must also be clearly seen that the Foundation of the
Kingdom of Christ is the Object of Aim. It is more
necessary to point this out because this is not seen clearly
and unmistakably now.

It is, I believe, also, not less important that we
should act on the clear conviction that our work,
regarded as to its form and specific nature, is the

hidian Missions. 33

foundation of the kingdom of Christ. And it is
the more necessary to bring this to the notice of
the Church in England, because our past efforts
have scarcely taken their shape from this idea, or
had this object before them as their definite aim.
It is with pain that I express this opinion, and in-
deed that I enter upon this part of lay subject at
all, because I feel that I cannot escape from some
allusion to matters of controversy, and from a
criticism of policies with whose objects in the main
I sympathize, and of men, both of our own Church
and external to us, whose earnestness and motives
I admire. But, as truth is among the dearest of
those goods towards which the heart of man
reaches, so the utterance of what in our conscience
we believe to be the truth, is the first duty which
we owe to God, to society, and to ourselves. And,
if only our language in such utterance be chastened
by that singleness of purpose which removes from
it all personal asperities, and avoids that spirit of
party, which too often in these days dips even a re-
ligious pen in fire or poison, nothing but good can
follow from outspokenness ; since, if that which is
said be indeed true, the feeblest protest may have
some influence in removing things which obstruct
progress; or, if it be error and not truth, that
which it wrongly opposes does but shine with even
more than its former lustre, the darkness which
vainly attempted to obscure it only bringing out
its full light. I must, therefore, not shrink from

D

34 Indian Missions.

recording my opinion, as an observer of Protestant
Missions in India, and of our own particular share
in these Missions, that the Catholic spirit of our
Book of Common Prayer has not exerted its legiti-
mate influence, and that our work has been too
much an appendage to an imposing but unreal
Spiritualism. Protestant Missions, as a whole, have
been an attempt to infuse into the mind of India
a somewhat abstract, logical, and hard thing, most
commonly described here as Christianity, and
which modern Calvinism likes to call "the Grospel."
And we of the Church have not definitely endea-
voured to bring home to the heart of India that
Person whom it would welcome as its King, and
that Society of flesh and blood which even Caste
would submit to, as His human yet Divine king-
dom.

Missionaries of the Church co-operate with others on the
ground that Belief as to the Catholic aiid visible Church
is an open and indifferent Question.

There are Missionaries of our Church who come
to India with an intelligent belief in " one Holy
Catholick and Apostolick Church," and whose con-
duct in their calling is throughout consistent with
the historic sense of that article in the faith of a
Christian. But a large proportion of our own
Missionary clergy seem to see in their distinctive
appellation something which abolishes the separa-
tion between the Church and its opponents in

Indian Missions. 35

England, and which makes all Missionaries brothers;
their relationship being founded on the sentiment
that they in common desire to see the conversion
of India. In Great Britain and America, and
other parts of the Protestant world, such men are
the recognized agents of certain distinct associa-
tions,— of the Church, of the Independents, of
Dissent in all its different divisions, — and in all
these countries which I have named, they act as
men who avowedly differ in matters of importance,
while at the same time many of them do not wish
to carry their difference beyond theVange which
is imposed by the fact that they outwardly and
organically are separate. Here they meet and
actively co-operate as if there was no difference
between them. The man who has been ordained
by a successor of the Apostles, and who has re-
ceived the apostolical commission, meets as a
brother minister the man who ascribes his ministry
to a call and nomination by the people, and con-
sults with him on terms of perfect indifference how
they are to co-operate in the work of breaking
down the walls of caste, and making India Chris-
tian. In so far as such fraternal counsels and acts
are a symptom of that longing for union which no
abundance of division can wholly stifle, every
Christian heart must welcome them as an element
which may help to keep our hope of a re-united
Christendom from verging on despair. But into
such considerations I cannot here enter. I state

D 2

36 Indian Missions.

this fact only for the purpose of proving, if proof
indeed is not superfluous, that the majority of our
Missionary clergy have before them as their object,
not the foundation of the Church of Christ, but
the spread of something which all Protestants
have in common, and which, as it certainly is not
something concrete, social, and organic, is really
an abstraction — -Christianity in a state of disem-
bodied ghostliness — and a philosophy, popularly
called " the Gospel."

Such Non-recognition of the Omj^ch as an A i^ticle of Faith
fatal in India, above all Countries.

Now, I believe that such a mode of action is, to
use the mildest language, a fatal mistake any-
where, because, if it were granted that a portion
of the Teutonic mind is gifted with a power of
digestion, equalled only by what is ascribed in
fable to the ostrich, and is able to assimilate truth
in its hardest form, so as to get from steel itself
spiritual nourishment, when others would eat death,
even this Teutonic heart is beginning to ask for a
religious King ; and certainly in no other part of
the world can men's souls live long on metaphysics,
or anywhere except within the fellowship of a
spiritual kingdom. And, most assuredly, if our
notions of truth are to be gathered from Holy
Scripture, rather than from the brief traditions of
a school, the whole word of God teaches us that
the Son of God came to be " the King of all the

Indiaji Missions. 37

earth," and that the Gospel which He and His
Apostles preached is the " Grospel of the kingdom."
It is not in a chapter of the Old Testament here
and there, that, after much digging and searching,
we may at last find the kingdom, like a deeply
buried jewel. The sheen of the expected monarch
and His Empire glistens in a circlet of diamonds
upon the forehead of the whole Book. And the
Cross of Christ, which is the central object of the
New Testament, as to faith it is nothing else but
the throne of His triumph over Powers and Prince-
doms, so it carries His kingship emblazoned, above
His thorn-crowned head, in words which His ene-
mies vainly struggled to obliterate, and which His
saints have ever cherished as the charter of their
redemption and their most priceless and dearest
glory.

The Indian Mittd imagmative, and its Temperament^
founded on Religion^ eminently social.

But in India, above all quarters of the earth,
the mistake is of that profound sort which can
only be called disastrous. India is logical and
metaphysical, and the Indian mind rejoices to spin
the fine 'threads of a philosophy so exceedingly
subtle, that the coarser understanding of the West
can scarce perceive the distinctions which it draws,
or make its countless intricacies terminable. But
India too loves ideas, and if truth is to enter its
mind, it must come to it realized in forms which

^S Indian Missions.

can satisfy imagination ; above all it must come
to it clothed in the embodiment of a society.
The Indian mind revels in incarnations and mani-
festations of Divinity, and the several castes are
but the different members of their imagined
God, carnalized once for all in forms of social life,
which like the God himself are essentially un-
changeable. The points at which such a religion
most naturally connects itself with the truth are
obvious ; and the points at which the truth and
Brahminism are wide as the poles asunder are con-
spicuously plain. Abstraction in religion is of all
things the least intelligible to the Hindoo, the
farthest from his mode of conceiving the Divinity,
the most remote from his imagination and his
affections. His eye is not accustomed to the
northern snow nor his sensuous nature to that
colder temperature of a critical intellect in which
the man of Northern Europe rejoices. He is a
child of the sun, with all his faculties mellowed
and softened by a climate which both heats the
passions and enervates strength. What then will
such a mind care for a mere abstraction ? for the
residuum which is left in what is called *' common
Christianity " ? for the spirit which remains in
its nakedness, when the several organizations in
which the spirit visibly appears are separated from
it, and that which is offered for belief is the sup-
posed essence of them all ? The Hindoo will say :
— " I do not want an essence. I do not care for

Indian Missions.

39

something merely impalpable. I need a God who
can come near my whole nature, to my body as
well as to my soul. I need the essence and the
idea, but not in the hard deductions of a syllogism,
or in the cold skeleton of a scheme and a plan and
a system of salvation. I require to see something
fleshly, something social, something better, it may
be, yet still like my caste, something in which my
heart can live, and which shall feed that religious
instinct and appetite which tells me that God can in
a manner incarnate Himself in combinations of men
and realize Himself in forms which will make me
one with my fellows, through an organization which
at the same time makes me one with Him." I have
already said that even for the Church to wedge its
way into the closed-up ranks of caste is a work of
superhuman difficulty, and I do not now mean to
affirm that the Hindoo will be brought to say what
I have just put into his mouth easily, but I do say
that to expect of an abstract thing — "common
Christianity " — that it can effect this w^ork of con-
version, and the overthrow of caste, is the most hope-
less delusion which ever beguiled humanity. Society
can fight society, life in one organic form can
struggle with organic life in another mode of
combination, and society and life when it is Divine,
must, if it be true to itself, in time break in and
overcome a phalanx, how^ever strong, which is
merely human, but an abstraction cannot fight
with a society ; an abstraction has not, as the

40 Indian Missions.

Oliiirch of Grod has, the fervour, the life, the
attracting force which can at once beat down
opposition, and draw men to a King whom they
can love, and a kingdom in which they can love
each other. Conceive a man asking another to
leave his caste, and throw himself into the loving
arms of a philosophical abstraction, of " Common
Christianity " !

What a Missionary should preach.

This, however, is what Protestant Missions in
India, as a whole, are doing ; and, if many of our
Missionaries are offering something better, this is
the public aspect of the system, and this is what
the possible convert cannot but think, as he surveys
what is behind and before him. A Missionary, as
I conceive, should go forth as the messenger of the
great King, who reigns from the Cross glorified
in Heaven. That King, ever since His ascension
day, has, as our own Andre wes paints Him, rained
down the gifts and largesses of His coronation,
making the streets of His city run with rivers of
oil and wine, copious enough to satisfy the spiritual
needs of total humanity. He is a human king and
He works, as such a king must work, by the human
instruments and ordinances of His kingdom, con-
veying, through men of flesh and blood like His
own, gifts without stint, and mercies without
measure. A preacher, therefore, of "the Gospel
of the kingdom " is one who should go out into
the highways and hedges to invite man to a

Indian Missions. 41

social feast, announcing everything as ready. He
should not scruple to put himself forward as one
sent from Heaven. He should say, " I come to you
full of gifts, which may be had for asking, because
He for whom I come is no Moses with a law
Tvritten on hard stone tables, but a giver, ' full of
grace and truth.' If you will believe on my
Master, I, by His power, will give you, through
water, union with His human nature, and thus for
yourselves a new nature, involving fellowship with
all saints, and, after that, as you become more per-
fect Christians, I will give you. Himself — His Flesh
and Blood — as Divine food. At the same time I
will give you truth for the enlightenment of your
intellect, having from my King all that truth, which
He Himself is and gives to man." Such, as I
conceive, is the message which an ambassador
from Christ should convey to man, and such the
actual grace which by his office is imparted. If,
too, he cannot speak thus, and thus impart blessings,
what is he but one of the Philosophers ? What but
a teacher in the schools of more or less truth, not
a representative of Him who is the mediator
between God and man, not sent by Christ as
Christ by the Father ?

. What alone a Missionary can Preach if he is indifferent
to Faith in the Church.

Yet what can a man say when he appears before
the world as the representative of "Common Chris-
tianity." He cannot invite men to the Church of

42 Indian Missions,

Christ, because the Missionary cause depends on
treating the Church as one of many sects, and any
outward and organic form as a part of non-essential
religion. He cannot speak as one commissioned by
Christ, and Christ's Church, because that would be
inconsistent with fraternal recognition of the Mis-
sionary brethren. He cannot treat the Sacraments
as means of life, because that exalts ordinances
to an atmosphere in which a merely intellectual
spiritualism evaporates. He can only teach truth,
and truth not as it came into the world with Christ,
its root and its revealer, the twin brother of grace,
linked to grace in indissoluble union, but in its
nakedness, as a thing by itself, without the life
which comes to it from embodiment in the forms
and ordinances and blessings of a social and beau-
tiful religion. He can but become in the eyes of
the Hindoos a teacher, and a teacher, as it must
seem to them, without a worship and a religion ; a
mere rival of the moulvies and the shastris, who
are learned in the lore of Mahomet and the Brah-
mins ; while the Bible must take its place only as
one of the sacred books of history, a competitor
with the Koran and the Yedas or the Puranas for
the intellectual homage of the Eastern world.

Besides^ the Church and its Unity, visibly seen, is the one
great Persuasive to Faith in Christ, as God come in
the Flesh.

And, besides, only in proportion as we appeal to

the heathen on the ground of Catholicity can we

Indian Missions. 43

expect that blessing of God which will make our
message supernaturally persuasive to them. No
one can deeply meditate upon that seventeenth
chapter of St. John's Gospel, which throws such
light upon the subject of Missions, without seeing
there, clearly revealed, these three linked proposi-
tions: (1) That the Father sent the Son into the
world to be Man. (2) That the Church, sent by
the Son, as His second self, and filled with His
Divinity, is designed to be fully one within and
without. (3) That the sight of this oneness is
the one argument which shall persuade the world
to accept belief in Christ as the Son of God. That
is (1) God in the Son became flesh. (2) God in
a secondary sense became manifest in the Church,
which is the united mystical body of the Son. (3)
This union seen by the world would have a voice
which would convince the world, saying, " If men .
through Christ are united, who and what can
Christ the uniting man be but God ? " If this be so
it follows^ first, that a true faith in God as come in
the flesh has visible union as its necessary product :
and, next, that except by this faith, and the union
which is its consequence, the world's conversion
cannot be achieved. Only by an united body can
conversion be effected, because disunion is death,
and out of death life cannot come. Only the
Catholic Church, and therefore not a mere abstract
and divided Christianity, can bring India to the
faith of Him Whose Flesh is as real as His Divinity.

44 Indian Missions,

It is on grounds such as these that I ask the
Church of England to put forth all its strength,
and that strength, not so much in the form of its
necessary protest against error, as in the form of far
more essential Catholicity, so that taking its proper
place at the head rather than, as now, in the rear
of Protestant Missions, it may provide an element
of union, elsewhere undiscoverable^ and^ working
openly and avowedly as a part of the Catholic
Church, draw down that blessing from its Head
which otherwise cannot but be withheld from it.

The Church recommended to work through the Instru-
mentality of a Brotherhood.

I have stated that the work is one of extra-
ordinary difficulty, and I have avowed my con-
viction that the foundation of the Church, as
distinguished from the mere teaching of abstract
truth, must be our recognized object. But, looking
at India with that keen eye, which desires to see
something actually done and not only unpractically
talked about, I perceive that we have yet to come
to close quarters with the difficulty which is before
us, and that the question must be asked, in what
particular way and by what especial machinery
are we to go to work as the Church of Christ ?
For myself, my Lord Archbishop, I shall be
thankful if any man or woman, belonging to any
school of opinion, will come to work here in any
way, provided he or she be in heart an honest

Indian Missions. 45

child of the Church, and desire, according to
light given, to obey and carry out its rules and
principles. But when I consider the climate —
not by any means so dangerous to life as fear too
commonly supposes, yet still tropical, and needing
expensive supports to health, especially in the case
of mothers and children — when I also consider all
those changes and exceptional circumstances, which
accompany life within the tropics in the case of
ordinary Europeans, I cannot but regard it as a
mistake to suppose that India can be treated as if
it were within the temperate zone, and as if the
idea of an English parish priest could be realized
here in its completeness. And, therefore, I
cannot believe that the clergy, whose work lies
among the people of the country, can do wisely
in laying themselves out for family life. The
home of one of our married Missionaries is cer-
tainly not more than furnished with those comforts
which a woman and a mother requires, if life in
this land is not to be a positive burden to her,
and the funds of our Societies are administered
with strictness and care; yet, if the total sum
expended is divided among the men who at a
given time are available for service, the actual cost
of a Missionary must be computed, if I do not "
miscalculate, at from 500Z. to 600/. a year. A cost
such as this seems of itself to point to sometliing
mistaken in the system, and, to the mind of one
who considers the sources of the Missionary

46 India7i Missions.

revenues, is, at all events, an insuperable obstacle
to any great extension of the work. The cost,
however, is not the only objection. The work of
Missions, in India pre-eminently, is a work of war,
and a Missionary should be in the condition of a
soldier, and be ready, like a certain great and
famous general, when he came to take the chief
command of our armies in India, to start at short
notice, and go anywhere without impediments,
and do what war requires. We need soldiers
who have no ties but those which bind them to
the work of the Church, and who are steeped in
that spirit f ready obedience, which, when it
hears " go " " goeth," and when it hears " come,"
" Cometh." But in the case of one who is married
there are other ties and obligations. Whatever
his devotion, a conflict of duties must often of
necessity arise ; and a conflict in which the work
of Grod must give way to those nearer and more
imperative calls, which family life by God's
ordinance imposes. Thus it will happen that a
Missionary is compelled to retire while yet his
own personal powers are unenfeebled. A know-
ledge of foreign languages which only years and
hard labour can give, combined with an experience
which is positively invaluable, must bow to the
exigencies of a husband's or a father's position, and
to a conscience which, seeking no excuse for
retirement, yet cannot be regardless of duties,
from which once the man might have been free ;

Indimt Missions. 47

but which, when assumed, become strong and
binding on him. On the whole, therefore, from
these and similar considerations, I am forced to
the conclusion, that a new and more sacrificial
element must be incorporated into our Missionary
system, not necessarily as exclusive of that which
exists, but as an addition to it. And I look to
some form of Missionary brotherhood as the element
which we need, and as the chief remedy for our
acknowledged shortcomings.

Only in such a way can the Spirit of Sacrifice be
fostered,

I am not indifferent to the formidable host of
prejudices which will arise at the mention of a
brotherhood within the Church of England, even
though the sphere for its energies is India, and
its work abnormal. But mere prejudice at the
best is weak, and, when a work is to be done, a
liberal age will not be slow to call prejudice blind
and mere conservatism stolid. Let those who
object show in what other way such work as ours
in India is to be done, and I, for one, will not be
slow to help in doing it along with them. The
truth, I suppose, really is that the abuses of the
monastic system so sickened the souls of men at
the time of the Reformation, that not content with
correcting abuses and purging out corruption, or
even with abolishing the Orders, we went to the
limits of the opposite extreme, and, so far at any

48 Indian Missions.

rate as body and outward system is concerned, we
got rid of sacrifice. I suppose, also, since, in this
material world, spirit can only speak through
sense and form and organization, that in getting
rid of the body we went a long way towards
smothering the soul, which if it could not, while
spiritual life at all remained, be wholly suppressed,
yet for want of a body has only been able to break
out in fitful, irregular, and eccentric ways, such as
dissent in many forms furnishes, instead of mani-
festing itself in ordinary course and disciplined
measure. Yet far be it from me to say that
monasticism, in many of its most prominent
features, is not daily more and more becoming a
thing of the past, or that, because it converted and
civilized our once savage European ancestors, it
is not unsuited to modern life, and the freer
march of existing society. I do not ask for monks,
but for men who will forsake all for Christ's sake.
I ask for a brotherhood of men who will turn
their backs once and for ever upon the world, and
who, seeking only Christ and His cause, will go
wherever the Church sends them, and do whatever
the Church bids them, as soldiers obey their king,
counting not even life dear, if they may run a
course, noble while it lasts, and leading them in
the footsteps of that Lamb Whom they will follow,
whithersoever He goeth.

Indian Missio7is. 49

What we lose and suffer from the discouragement of
Sacrifice.

And who shall say what losses we incur as a
Church, or what we have in time past borne and do
now positively suffer, because we have not made
such a call upon the hearts of men, and given full
scope to the spirit of sacrifice ? The mania for divi-
sion, nowhere so loud and uproarious as in England
and its offshoots, is but a portion of our penalty.
There are men and women, in all ranks and places
— and they are the flower of the community — who
in their souls yearn to devote themselves to Christ
and His Church, and who have in them a craving
thirst to do good, which only sacrifice can satisfy.
To these, men and women, the baits which allure
other men have no charm, and that which they
seek creates in ordinary men fear and aversion.
To their ears a voice speaks, in>4udible to others,
saying to them, ^' Friend, come up higher." Their
temper is of that finest and most pure kind which
when cultivated forms a saint, lifting them far
above all earthly aims into that serene air which
spirits breathe, and which sustains angelic natures.
Their " conversation is in Heaven." Their one
aim is to mount up on wings like eagles. They run
and are not weary. They walk towards God and do
not faint. And though, imperfect as they must be
till clothed upon with that brightness of immor-
tality which certainly awaits them, their natures

E

50 Indiari Missions,

may sometimes lead them into flights of eccentricity,
esjoecially if the Church withholds its maternal
guidance, and though sometimes this enthusiasm
may take shapes which to cooler minds seem, and
perhaps are, erratic, still that which they possess
is intrinsically great, and the services which such
as they can yield to the Church are simply priceless.
But how throughout our past history have we
treated such persons ? How do we often treat such
persons even now ? We check enthusiasm. We
drown zeal in floods of common sense. We are too
prudent to cut regular channels in which fervent
devotion can flow. We are so ashamed of mistakes,
that we discourage wise ventures. We are so
careful to be safe, that we become guilty of timidity.
We are stiff and inelastic, and therefore inexpansive.
And thus, when Grod is giving us visibly nothing
less than the world as our horizon, we scarcely look
beyond the borders of the four seas which hem our
little island in. What, too, is the consequence ? I
speak not of the attracting forces in Dissent which
draw off rude and less educated natures, or of
Romanism, which allures more imaginative and
cultivated souls. But how do we affect those who
still remain faithful to us ? We affect ihem thus,
as well as in other ways. Souls which were made
for the world confine within themselves energies
for which earth is small enough, and instead of
going forth like Mackenzie or Patteson, to hew and
pioneer a way for Christ and civilization, through

Indian Missions. 5 1

dense thickets of ignorance, superstition, vice, and
horrible cruelties, still abounding, and thus to
make for themselves a name, long to be loved on
earth, but still more memorable in heaven, they
stay at home, and often either sink to mediocre
inactivity, or, perhaps, retaining vigour, stir up
party strife to a heat which threatens to consume
the Church itself in the furnace of its own vitality.
When I look from this distant spot on the condition
of the Church of England at the present time, I
seem to see in it a high-pressure engine of steam
w^orking with every valve closed, and likely at any
moment to burst, because it keeps all its heat in and
does not let off enough of its now abounding fer-
vour. Never before in any portion of the Church
did the fire of Grod's Spirit burn in so many hearts
and in so many varied forms of graces. But the
Church is steaming, like one of those American ships
of which we sometimes read, at full power and with
every furnace heated to whiteness, and every point
of escape heavily loaded. Would it not be well, I
would ask your Grace, to let off a little of this
mighty steam, and thus at once ease the Church at
home and profit others? Sometimes the vision
changes. Fire becomes water. And then the life
which is in the Church appears like three rivers,
named from three parties, for which litigation has
cut sharp and defined channels, squaring by human
rules subjects and thoughts which only recognize
the freer curves of a spiritual kind of measure. In

E 2

52 Indian Missions.

the Colonies and in the United States these rivers,
if they exist at all, exist but as schools, because in
these places life is in a state of expansion, and the
Church, freely dealing with its own concerns, blends
its discords into a harmony. But in England
three parties, coming down like three torrents from
the mountains, and finding in the narrow valley
where they meet barriers which they cannot pass,
have nothing else to do but wildly and with loud
tumultuous roar to dash against each other,
raising up on high a foam which Heaven does not
love, and making an angry and confused noise,
heard far off, which is a proverb and a byword
among the nations. And why ? Chiefly for want
of outlet. Give the waters room, my dear Lord
Archbishop, and soon this deafening tumult will
be hushed. Let but the Church throw down
those banks of insularity, which have no place in a
nation which now fills the earth, and in a Church
which boasts its Catholicity. Here is a land, filled
with 180 millions of dry if not thirsting souls, which
these waters, now so turbid and destructive, were
sent by God from heaven to irrigate. Let off this
surplusage, that these millions may suck it all in,
and give you in return harvests which will fill the
Church's granaries with recovered souls, and pour
into the Church's heart, as her special reward,
peace — that peace which God, angry because of
her neglect, now withholds from her. Policy no
less than duty calls on you, my dear brethren of

Indian Missions. 53

the Church, to turn those arms which are now
sharpened for fratricidal conflict on enemies more
worthy of them, and on lands to which the hand of
Grod points yon, as the noblest of all fields of
spiritual conflict. If you will do this, there will
be no need of unions for Church defence, or of
societies for fraternal prosecution. For want of
such legitimate warfare you are destroying your-
selves rather than Satan's empire. The caged
eagle is now beating its wings against the bars of
a prison, fretting itself to death, clawing at the
Creeds, and tearing its own vitals out, for want of
proper prey. Let it but fly where its instincts
carry it. Soon it will scent afar off tlie carcass of
that abominable and obscene idolatry, whose ill
savour goes up into the nostrils of creation. That
rather than your own flesh is the carrion on which
God wills that it should satiate its appetite ; devour-
ing indeed, but only that the old and corrupt may
disappear, and that out of peeled bones life may
arise, and a continent be born again by the recrea-
tive will of the Omnipotent Redeemer.

Such a Brotherhood should act in Subordination to
AtUhority in the Church.

As I have pointed to a Missionary brotherhood
as the expedient which, by giving consistency and
an organism to sacrifice, is to all appearance the
practical remedy for that indifference and drought
of men which now prevails, it might appear that I

54 Indian Missiojis.

am bound to indicate at least the outlines of a plan,
on which such an order of men can both be formed
and operate. Yet such an order cannot be made out
of a theory, and can be created only by some person
gifted with the genius of construction, who, knowing
well his own age and its requirements, as well as the
needs of such great countries as India, can see ideally
the pattern of such a brotherhood where Moses saw
the tabernacle, and reduce that idea to the shape
which it must take in our own age from sound
sense and possibiHty. May God if he see fit raise
up such an one, a true Englishman and yet a true
Catholic. Such an one God will bring forth out of
obscurity, if a Missionary brotherhood be according
to His will. I may say, however, that the history
of the Church has not been written for nothing,
and that the records of Eoman Missions warn us,
that as an order may work in a spirit of opposition
to Church authority and thus defeat its own objects,
so subordination to such authority as is legitimate
should be the guiding principle of a brotherhood.
At the same time, if this be kept in view, the
Church has no need unduly to limit its indepen-
dence, much less to treat it with distrust as if
doubting its allegiance and devotion. On the one
hand let a brotherhood avoid the spirit of party,
and give to itself all such breadth and comprehen-
siveness as is consistent with obedience, subordina-
tion, and definiteness of aim. On the other, while
honestly desiring only to do the Church's work

Indian Missions. 55

and as a servant humbly to tie or untie the latchet
of the shoes of her glorious feet, let it not become
too much a part of the older order and regularity
of the Church's system, but cherish carefully that
fire of earnestness and that dashing enthusiasm,
which are the life as much of a mission as of an
army, and which may still obey the reins of a cool
and unimpassioned judgment.

A Brotherhood may perhaps be engrafted on existing
Societies.

' Whether it would be possible to engraft the sys-
tem of a fraternity upon that oldest of our Mission-
ary Societies, which has ever acted as the willing
handmaid of the Church, those alone can say, who
in England itself can form a judgment based upon
existing circumstances. It is obviously desirable, if
it be possible, to adapt existing machinery to new de-
mands rather than to add new kinds of agency, and
it is at least conceivable that, under the influence
of a Board of Missions representing the two convoca-
tions, the Society might be so far changed and en-
larged as to incorporate into itself the new yet not
alien element of an Indian brotherhood. But, once
let the Church clearly perceive that one of its chief
offices is to foster, if not to form, a band of men
who will go wherever sent, and do whatever they
are commanded, the support of these men being
quite a secondary however important a consider-
ation, then other things will adjust themselves.

56 Indian Missions.

taking their proper places. Let but the personal
difSculty be looked at in the face and in God's
strength be overcome. Let but the Church of
England recognize and adopt a scheme by which
persons shall be found and fashioned, as ready to
do her greatest work and to give themselves to the
cause of Christ and His Church, as those eager and
devoted multitudes, whom Rome so easily finds,
ready, in this and every land^ to do her bidding.
Once, in fact, let the Church heartily acknowledge
sacrifice as the spirit which it is her first duty to
create and embody ; then all besides will follow.
This rod of power will both swallow up other rods
and bear leaves and blossoms. Life will create for
itself the things which are to cherish it. Old
agencies will renew their life, or new agencies will
arise and absorb those less vital forces which will
vanish before them.

The Nature and illimitable Extent of this part of India
as a Missionary Field.

If I am to state how I would recommend that
the Church should here enter on increased work,
under whatever kind of agency — and such a state-
ment may be expected from me — it seems to me
that it should be our aim to occupy centres of
influence with bodies of Missionaries, each body
under a bishop ; or, if for any reason it should
appear that a bishop should come in later to crown

Indian Missions. 57

a prospering work, under some kind of leader.
The work of each such body, thus located amid a
large population, should be carried on, I believe,
under a distinct perception of the fact that Euro-
peans can work here only as leaven which is
inserted in an immense lump, and that, as only
Indians can go out over the land to convert the
masses of India, Europeans can but expect to
fashion a select few, into whom they can pour the
light of Grod, that through them it may be diffused
generally. The actual form and pattern of their
work can hardly be cut out beforehand upon any
theory, and each locality, having its own differ-
ences of circumstance, will also have its own pecu-
liarities of work. I believe, however, that such
bodies, settled here and there over the country,
would gradually find everywhere an increasing
number of persons ready to be infolded, and, when
once brought to Christ, worthy to be moulded by
loving hands for such work as they are capable;
while by literary labours, when the language is
mastered, original and translational, they would
sow broadcast seeds of true thought, which intel-
ligence would mentally absorb, aud which in
due time would bear fruit manyfold. A central
power of this kind, so vastly superior in every
way to all other influence, could not but take a
lead in proportion as it became firmly established,
even if grace and the Divine blessing were not
with it. Blessed as it would be by the re-

58 Indiafi Missions.

viving Spirit, it can be nothing else than the
power, sooner or later to reveal itself, of an end-
less life.

The number of such centres are practically
without limit. To say little of our own proper
territory — the Mahratti, the Gruzeratti, the Oanara,
the Sindh regions, in three of which are several
European stations, each the natural seat of a Mission
such as I have proposed to the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel — Rajpootana consists of
about twenty-five principalities or dukedoms, each
under his own ruler, with powers regal and des-
potic, the chief of them having the power of death.
Each of these is a natural field for a distinct
mission, and removed as they are almost wholly
from direct English influence, idolatry in the form
of prominently disgusting filthiness lifts its un-
blushing head. Kattiwar, a large territory lying
on the west of Gruzerat, as Rajpootana on the east,
is a similar collection of native principalities, and
among these, too, a choice is open to us. And in
Gruzerat itself, encased within our territories, there
is the very considerable kingdom of the Graekwar,
with a revenue of nearly a million and a half
sterling, which, ruled as it is by an utterly debased
sovereign, is almost wholly beyond English in-
fluence, and is filled with evils, which, as things
now are, only a mission, and that a strong mission,
could touch effectively and remove. So that a
choice really without limit is before us, and begin-

Indian Missions. 59

ning where influence would be the strongest, our
extension would proceed according as we found
men.

Invitation given to Men a7id Women of Sacrifice.

And now I would crave your G-race's permission
to put forth an invitation to such men and women
as are fitted for the work of Missions in India, and
who are free to undertake that work. I have shown
that India must be won by the Church as India has
been won by the nation, — through the labours, the
devotion, and the lives of her children, freely given.
Who are there ready and willing to say to Grod,
" Here I am, send me " ? And first let me address
myself to those younger members of our Universities
whose line in life is not yet taken, and let me tell
them, that here in India there is a course on which
the greatest gifts of mind may run a race, at least
as splendid as the world of Europe can offer, and
among countless millions whose resurrection to a
life at once intellectual and spiritual is an object at
which ambition itself might nobly aim. But to
these I will not presume to speak myself. I will
rather take into my mouth the words of a Mis-
sionary from whom no one can withhold the
tribute of a most profound admiration, and whose
intense love of souls no less than his wisdom in
most respects as an Evangelizer, entitle him, above
all men, perhaps, since the days of the Apostles, to
ask from men of station, of culture, and of intellect.

6o Indian Missions.

the sacrifices which he himself made with such
ungrudging abnegation. It was thus that Xavier
addressed himself through his order about 330
years ago to the members of his own University of
Paris :* —

Xavier s Appeal to the Members of his own University,

" There is now in these parts a large number of
persons who have only one reason for not becoming
Christian, and that is that there is no one to make
them Christians. It often comes into my mind to
go round the Universities of Europe, crying out
everywhere like a madman, and saying to all the
learned men there, whose learning is so much
greater than their charity, 'J.A, what a multitude
of souls is through your fault shut out of heaven and
falling into hell' Would to God that these men
who labour so much in gaining knowledge would
give as much thought to the account which they
must one day give to Grod of the use they have
made of their learning and of the talents entrusted
to them ! I am sure that many of them would be
moved by such considerations, would so exercise
themselves in fitting meditations on Divine truths,
as to hear what Grod might say to them, and then,
renouncing their ambitions and desires, and all the
things of the world, they would form themselves
wholly according to Grod's desire and choice for
these. They would exclaim from the bottom of
their hearts, ' Lord, here am I, send me whitherso-

* Coleridge's ' Life of St. Francis Xavier,' page 155.

Indian Missions. 6i

ever it shall please Thee, even to India' Good God,
how nmch safer and happier would they be. With
what far greater confidence in God's mercy would
they meet their last hour, the supreme trial of that
terrible judgment which no man can escape ! . . .
They labour night and day in acquiring knowledge,
and they are very diligent indeed in understanding
the subjects which they study ; but if they would
spend as much time on that which is the fruit of
all solid learning, and be as diligent in teaching to
the ignorant the things necessary to salvation, they
would be far better prepared to give an account of
themselves to our Lord when He shall say to them,
* Give an account of thy stewardship' .... It has
come to this pass as I see, that the men who are
the most diligent in the higher branches of study,
commonly make profession that they hope to gain
some high post in the Church by their reputation
for learning, therein to be able to serve our Lord
and His Church. But all the time they deceive
themselves miserably, for their studies are far more
directed to their own advantage than to the common
good. I declare to God that I had almost made up
my mind, since I could not return to Europe myself,
to write to the University of Paris, and to show
them how many thousands of infidels might be
made Christians without trouble, if we had only
men here who would seek not their own advantage
but the things of Jesus Christ. And, therefore,
dearest brothers, 'pray ye the Lord of the harvest
that He send labourers into His harvest' "

62 India7i Missions.

' Men of high Gifts will find in India a very noble
Sphere.

I invite persons of every grade and measure of
talent, for in so wide a field there is room for every
variety of labour ; but I also ask for a fair share
of men whom Grod has blessed with endowments of
the highest kind. And I protest against the almost
incredible opinion that the highest gifts are to be
reserved as the exclusive heritage of the Church at
home. Such, at any rate, was neither the precept
nor the practice of St. Paul, who the farther he
was from head-quarters the nearer he seemed to
himself to be to that work which Grod had given
him to do. I ask for some of the cream of English
gifts, spiritual and intellectual. I invite the Church
to devote to Grod that which costs it something.
Earthly rewards to such as these India can scarcely
promise.

What India has to offer to devoted Sotils.

What India can give is more tempting to those
who are the fittest for the work which it requires :
service of God, the opportunity of doing that from
which other men shrink, literal and sensible con-
formity to Christ's example, great and unquestion-
able sacrifice. Yet not these only, but, as their
reward even upon earth, more of the love of Christ,
closer communion with the Lord whom they singly
follow, keener and more vivid realization of His

Indian Missions. 63

Sacramental Presence, the sight of sonls rescued
out of this naughty world that they may be saved
through Christ for ever.

I call, then, on brotherhoods, sisterhoods, guilds,
associations, and on men and women, of all ranks,
classes, and circumstances, to come forward and
offer themselves to the Church for service in India.
Come out, my dearest brethren and sisters, from
your little cliques and parties and narrow sym-
pathies, and claim for yourselves a place within
a sphere wide enough for the ambition of an
Alexander, looking on India and the continent of
Asia as a dominion which prayer and faith and
love may win for Christ. Here is that opportunity
which you are seeking for the practice of all those
lessons of wisdom, which the Church in these days
of its revival has recovered for you. Do you ask
for room to prove your faith in Christ's atoning
sacrifice ? Here is the place where you may show
it in an indisputable manner, by giving your own
lives for countless millions of lost souls which that
atonement purchased. Do you wish to deny your-
selves ? Here, leaving father and mother, houses
and lands, and everything to which the heart
clings the closest, you may bear a climate which
will try your health and test your endurance ; and
you may also bear with patience an ignorance and
a debasement, accumulating through thousands of
years, which only love itself can tolerate, and yet
which love will remove by that very toleration.

64 Indian Missions.

Do you wish to serve the Church, as that Body of
Christ Himself, which you love with such a love as
you can give to Him only? Nowhere does the
Church need you more. Nowhere is the Church
weaker. Nowhere has the dark shadow of a
sincere yet spurious spiritualism fallen thicker;
obscuring faith in Christ, as come in the flesh, till
faith has become comparatively impotent ; too
inward to make its light shine, too feeble to fight
with unbelief, too much divided within itself to over-
throw Satan. Will you not come to show what life
sacrifice can infuse ? Will you not lift on high the
standard of the Cross with all the zeal of a crusader,
and, in the name of Christ and His Church,
conquer or die for Him who " loved you and gave
Himself for you " ?

For myself, if of myself I must speak for a
moment, I cannot but be conscious that, in thus
appealing to others, I am asking what I have not
done, and now, having given what Lord Bacon has
called " pledges to fortune," am even called not to
do. But in the history of a Church, when gifts have
been lost wholly or in part, a time will arise through
the internal working of the Spirit of God, when
the sense of loss becomes strong, and when some of
those who feel it are compelled to come forward and
speak out, even when checked by the thought that
they will indicate to others a height which them-
selves they cannot climb. That highest heaven-
ward peak, my dear Lord Archbishop, which

Indian Missions. 6^

I have shown to men of towering souls, is con-
fessedly beyond my own attainment. It is my
most humble part to point out to men of sacrifice
a course of glorious adventure over which I do not
aspire to lead them, to give precepts which I am
unable to recommend by my own example, to show
my face rather than my back to noble men whom I
call upon to go and take a citadel, when another,
advanciug at their head, might say " Come." Yet,
as I lay down that pen which too long has tried
your Grace's patience, I must express my persuasion
that the policy to which it has given so imperfect
an utterance is really the counsel of a Divine
Leader, who at this time demands of our Church
.that she should put forth her strength, and my
hope that the writer, moved by the sight of the
unutterable misery which throngs around him, may
be the all-unworthy instrument through which
that Leader condescends to make known His
sovereign will.

Believe me.

My dear Lord Archbishop,
Your Grace's
Very faithful brother and servant in Christ,

H. A. Bombay.

Puna, SeiJt. 12, 1872.

LOKDON: printed by W. CLOWES AKD SOSS, STAJtFORD STREET AND CHARING CROt?.

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