'% PRINCETON, N. J. '^h t Presented by Vr'cS,^\,^-. ^C ^^ • )■.■»': I.*-)-.!.' -.;•.(» 'AJ^tl/t•^■. kr^' .■**«:'7' THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D. ./' BY GEORGE SMITH, CLE., LL.D., AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, D.D., F.R.S.," FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL SOCIETIES, ETC. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D. IN TWO VOLUMES. WITH PORTRAITS BY JEENS. VOL. II. NEW YORK: A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON TORONTO: JAMES CAMPBELL & SON. CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVL 1843-1844. W.0E8 Missionary of the Free Church of Scotland . • 1-45 CHAPTER XVII. 1844-1848. Continuity of the Work 46-83 CHAPTER XVIII. 1 844- 1 849. Lord Hardinge's Administration. — "The Calcutta Review" 84-111 CHAPTER XIX. 1 849- 1 850. Death of Dr. Chalmers. — Tour through South India. — Home by the Ganges and Indus . . . 112-170 CHAPTER XX. 1850-1853. Dr. Duff Organizing again 171-222 CHAPTER XXL 1851-1854. Moderator of the General Assembly. — Before the House of Lords' India Committee • . . 223-250 CHAPTER XXII. 1854-1855. In America and Canada. — Second Farewell to Chris- tendom ......... 251-306 iv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIII. 1 856-1 858. PASES The Mutiny and the Native Church of India . . 307-354 CHAPTER XXIV. 1 858-1863. Last Years in India ....... 355-396 CHAPTER XXV. 1 864- 1 867. In South-East Africa.— The Missionary Propaganda . 396-423 CHAPTER XXVI. 1 867-1 878. New Missions and the Results of Half a Centqry's Work ... 424-464 /^ CHAPTER XXVII. 1865-1878. Dr. Duff at Home ...... 465-494 CHAPTER XXVIII. 1877-1878. Peacemaking ......... 495-518 CHAPTER XXTX. 1877-1878. Dying 619-542 Index 543-553 ILLUSTRATIONS. Dr. Duff at Sixty . . . . . . Frontisjpiece. India . To face page 127 Lake Nyassa and South-East Africa. • • „ 460 LIFE OP ALEXANDER DUEE, D.D., LL.D. CHAPTER XYI. 1843-1844. MISSIONARY OF THE FREE CHUEGE OF SCOTLAND. The Power of Toutli. — Spiritual Independence and the People of Scotland. — Torpor of the Ministers for a century and a quarter. — Anecdotes from Dr. Duff's experience. — On Robert Barns. — Reproving an Officer for Profanity. — Sir Charles Napier. — Sir Robert Peel rebuked. — ^Duff's public silence on the Disruption Controversy. — Appeals from Dr. Brunton and Dr. Charles J. Brown. — All the Missionaries adhere to the Church of Scotland Free. — Dr. Duff's "Explanatory Statement.'' — A critical time. — The Disruption in Calcutta. — Dr. Simon Nicolson. — Messrs. Hawkins, M. Wylie and A. B. Mackintosh. — The Free Church in Calcutta. — Dr. Duff's four Lectures. — Lord Brougrham and Gibbon. — Duff describes the Disruption. — Free Church resolves to extend Foreign Missions. — The Property Wrong. — Sympathy of all Evangelical Churches. — Duff's disinterestedness. — Opening of the General Assembly's Institution of the Free Church of Scotland. — A Professorship of Missions urged. "^TOT only is the world the heritage of the young, -*^^ as has been said. The young make the world what it is. Dr. Duff had really done his work in India when he was twenty-eight ; he had, apparently, completed its parallel side iu Great Britain when he was thirty-three ; he had consolidated the whole sys- VOL. II. B 2 LIFE OF BR. DOFF. 1843. tern, and he saw it bearing rare spiritual as well as moral and intellectual fruit before lie was thirty-seven. So, in the same field of reformation, Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, Pascal and Calvin in France, Wesley and Simeon in England, and Chalmers in Scotland had sowed the seed and reaped the early harvests while still within the age which Augustine pronounces the " culmen ** and Dante the "key of the arch " of life. Dr. Duff might have spent the rest of his career in quietly developing the principles and extending the machinery of his system on its India and Scottish sides, but for two forces, in Church and State, which the shrewdest took long to foresee. His Kirk had to work its way back to the purity and spiritual independence of covenanting times — a pro- cess in which all the Churches of Europe are following it, from Italy and Germany to France and Ireland — and in so working it became broken into two. And the Afghan War was to prove only the first act in the prelude to the history of British India. That prelude closed in the Sepoy Mutiny. That history fairly began with the too rapid obliteration of the military and political system by which the old East India Company had brought the empire to the birth and had reared it into a vigorous childhood. Foreign Missions being of no ecclesiastical party but the privilege of all, we have seen how Dr. Duff, during his first visit to Scotland, had kept aloof from even the most vital controversies. To him, as charged with the conversion of a hundred and thirty millions of human beings, Whig or Tory, Voluntary or State Churchman, even " Intrusionist " or " ISFon- Intrusionist " were of little account save in so far as they could promote or hinder his one object. Even in India, on his return in 1840, he was so silent regarding his relation to parties and the course he ^t. 37. PEEPARED FOR THE DISRUPTION. 3 would follow if a rupture took place, that some doubted how he would act. In truth, the approaching cataclysm so weighed him down, in reference to its effects on his own mission, that he refrained from speech, in public, till the issue should be fairly put bofore him and his colleagues for decisive settlement. But not one of the clerical combatants in the thick of the fight knew its meaning, historical and spiritual, better than the missionary. His youth had been over- shadowed by the " cloud of- witnesses." His heroes had ever been the men of the Covenant. His hatred was that of the patriot rather than of the priest, to the Stewarts who, down to the last act in Queen Anne's time, had robbed the Kirk and its people of spiritual freedom. He waited only for the right time, the time of duty to the Mission as well as to his principles, to declare himself wifch an energy and an uncompromising thoroughness, hardly equalled by the ecclesiastical leaders who headed the host of disrup- tion heroes on the memorable eighteenth day of May, 1843. But not only had the education of the Highland boy, under such a father and teacher as his, early fed his young life with the history of his Kirk, which is that of his country. In his three years' wanderings over every presbytery and almost every parish of Scotland, from the Shetland Isles to the Solway, he had become acquainted with the actual state of religious and social life in a way unknown to Chalmers or the young Guthrie, or the most experienced Lowlander of the time. To the highest test which can try a Christian or a Church, the Christ-like philanthropy of missions, he had jealously brought the Church of Scotland from 1834 to 1840, its ministers and people, its parties and their professions, its policy and aims. He thus learned, as no one else could, the wrong, religious 4 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 843. and political, done to the country by the dishonest legislation of Queen Anne's advisers all through the eighteenth century, even to the Reform Act in the State and the Yeto Law in the Kirk. And a happy experience taught him, and Chalmers through him, that the heart of the people was sound in spite of the torpor and retrogression of a century and a quarter, that the Scotsmen of 1834-43 were the true spiritual descendants of their fathers of the first and the second Reformation. This had been his experience of the ministers of the " moderate party," who had formed the majority in the Kirk down to the year 1834 and who called in the civil courts to drive out the evangelical majority ten years after. Dr. Duff was wont to declare that, personally, he had received everywhere at their hands the most courteous and friendly treatment, with the two excep- tions of Peebles and Dunbar. Seeing that he kept his cause and himself aloof from parties. Moderates as well as Evangelicals invited him to their manses, placed their conveyances at his disposal, passed him on from presbytery to presbytery, and loyally obeyed the Assembly of 1835 in promoting meetings and subscriptions. The majority of the moderate minis- ters he found to be farmers and politicians, whose conversation was divided between agricultural talk and political criticism, " But," he once said, '* I do not remember their volunteering any remarks on the vastly higher subject of the spiritual culture of the human mind, or the Georgics of the soul, as it might be called." In one case the moderator of the presbytery, having duly summoned a meeting on the market day, could not himself be found to preside until it was reported that he had been seen among the crowd gazing at the tricks of a vagrant mountebank. The one evangelical member of that body charged ^t. 37. REMINISCENCES OF THE KIEK. 5 him witli tlie shameful forgetfulness, but the majority- hushed up the proceedings at a time when the daily newspaper was unknown. In another case Dr. Duff happened to succeed, in the guest chamber of the manse, a minister who was notorious for Unitarian views. The parish was ringing with the story, how he had surprised all by first delivering a communion address surcharged with the evangelicalism of the Puritans, and then, when suddenly called to fill a vacant place in the long services, had preached a dis- course of the most repulsively cold heresy. On inquiry it was discovered that he had compiled from the " Marrowmen," whom he despised, an address suited to evangelical congregations, and which alone he was wont to speak on such occasions. But for reminiscences such as those of Dr. Duff it would be incredible to what extent not only hetero- doxy but profanity, intemperance, and other immo- rality found a place among the moderate ministers in rural districts, especially in the Highlands and islands to which public opinion never penetrated. Many of them, among themselves, avowed theological opinions contrary to the Confession of Faith, the contract on which they claimed to hold their livings. At the upper end of a long strath in the Highlands lived a parish minister who was scarcely ever known to be sober. Business took him frequently to the other end of the valley, where he had to pass a distillery. It was the frequent sport of the owner to tempt the poor wretch, and then, placing him on his pony with his head to the tail, send him back amid the derision of the whole people, a man supporting him on either side. Another parish was a preserve of smugglers, whose rendezvous was the kirk, where the little barrels of Highland whisky were concentrated before despatch to the south. The isolated spot was the terror of the 6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. gangers, for wliom the hardy inhabitants, banded to- gether, were long more than a match. A new minister was presented to the parish, a man of great promise and considerable scholarship. His one weakness was a passion for the violin. Through that he fell so low, that when his parishioners assembled at the inn they sent for the minister to play to them, and even carried him off when well drunk to a house of doubtful repute where the revelry was continued. On one occasion he fell into the peat fire, where his limbs became so roasted that for six months he was laid aside and he was lamed for life. His brethren resented the scandal only by refusing to allow him to attend the presbytery dinner, and by denying him all help at communion seasons. Brooding over these insults, he resolved to adopt that form of retaliation which would be most disagreeable to colleagues some of whom differed from himself only by being greater hypocrites. He sent to the neighbouring cities for the most evangelical Gaelic ministers to assist him on fast and sacrament days. The result was that the smuggling parish became not only a new place, such as all the success of the excise could never have made it, but the centre of light to the whole presbytery. The people flocked from a great distance to hear the grand preaching in their own tongue. The drunkard's successor, appointed under the Yeto Act, was a godly man, and when the disruption came the whole parish left the Established Church. When farther north still. Dr. Duff found himself the inhabitant of a room in the manse which Avas curiously stained. On asking an explanation he was told that, as the most secure place, the attics had long been the storehouse of the smugglers of Hollands and small sacks of salt. So soon as the brig appeared in the harbour of Stromness, with flying colours, the minister at the beginning of the century promptly went on JEt 37. ROBERT BURNS AND HIS CENSORS. J board. Even if the day were Sunday lie would go in the face of all the people, before or after doing pulpit duty ! The manse had been built for the pur- pose of receiving the contraband articles, which were hoisted up by a pulley swung to a hook projecting from a window in the high-pointed gable. The plaster of the roof below was saturated with salt, which ap- peared in moist weather. Dr. Duff's investigations in Ayrshire found results hardly more satisfactory than in the Highlands and the Scandinavian islands. His familiarity with the poems of Robert Burns, and knowledge of the use which had been made of their finer strains by the young Hindoo reformers of Bengal, led him to make very minute in- quiries of some of the older men who had had personal intercourse with the poet. They assured him that Burns was often blamed for caricaturino^ sacred thin of s when, in truth, he was giving a most vivid description of sad reality. A man of Burns's pious training, knowledge of the Bible and exceeding acuteness, could not fail to be struck with the marked contrast between Christianity as expressed in the creed and in the life of a great body of the ministers and people. "Having thrown off the fear of man, and alas ! to some extent the fear of God," remarked Dr. Duff, " Robert Burns satirised this state of things in their gross literality with all faithfulness. Hence not a few who were godly men declared to me their conviction that the description given in ' The Holy Fair ' of scenes at the administration of the liord's Supper was not exagger- ated ; and the same was asserted of some of what were reckoned his more objectionable minor poems. Oh ! what these ministers have to answer for at the Day of Judgment. The mischief they did by lapsing into gross errors in doctrine, and more than loose practices in life, is incredible.'* To the end of his life 8 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1843. Dr. Duff held this to be the true explanation, founding alike on his own recollections in the present cen- tury, and on those of older men as to that which preceded it. The mass of the common people, who did not turn for spiritual life to the seceding churches which now form the vigorous United Presbyterian Church, found it in the study of the Bible and of writers like Ruther- ford and Boston, Bunyan and Doddridge. But this degeneracy of the Kirk had a:ffected the upper classes of society in a way incredible in these days of a healthy public opinion. The literature of the time, scanty though it be, reveals not a little of the truth. Dr. Duff met with this typical illustration of one form of the evil on a journey from Perth to Pit- lochrie by the Inverness coach. In the darkness he could not see them, but he could not help hearing the conversation of the three occupants whom he joined. The talk was of the Peninsular War, led by a Highland officer who had passed through its campaigns. The interest of the really striking infor- mation given by him was, however, marred by his habit of adding an oath to every two or three words, and not unfrequently by expressions of licentiousness as well as profanity. Should he interpose ? was a question long debated by Dr. Duff. Ignorant who his companions might be, and whether in a stage coach the end might not be worse than the beginning, he resolved to wait till daylight and the first stoppage. On arriving at Pitlochrie the young missionary asked the officer to speak to him privately for a moment on the road. Dr. Duff began by saying that he had been profoundly interested by many of the remarkable state- ments respecting the Peninsular War, a confession which seemed to gratify his companion. He could not, moreover, from the tone and tenor of their con- ^t. 37. REPEOVES AND CURES PROFANE SWEARING. 9 versation all the niglit, but come to the conclusion that the person who had given so much novel in- formation was, beyond question, a born gentleman. As a gentleman he must know that it was contrary to the ordinary rules of courtesy to say anything which, even unintentionally, might be very offensive to another. He, the officer, might have formed, in his youth, habits which were now contrary to the usages of poUte society. One of these was what is ordinarily called profane swearing, which was at one time considered to give zest to earnest conversation. Dr. Duff, being an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland, was sure that the officer would excuse him for remarking that many of the words interspersed in the narratives of the war grated with something more than harshness on his ear, and for thus unburJoning his own mind and conscience privately to him who had thoughtlessly used them. On- this the officer took him by the hand, warmly thanked him for his delicacy and faithfulness, admitted that he had never looked on swearing in that light, and regretted that no one had before spoken to him in that way. Without commit- ting himself to a pledge on the subject he promised to ponder the gentle reproof. When, some time after- wards. Dr. Duff was at Kingussie manse on the way south from Inverness, he learned that his companion of that night was a well-known landholder of the neighbourhood, and that a somewhat sudden change in his habits of speech and church-going had attracted attention. We may add to this another illustration, of even greater boldness, on the part of the young assis- tant surgeon from Aberdeen, who was on Sir Charles Napier's staff in Sindh. His at first timid remonstrance with the Commander-in-Chief, whose constant com- panion he was officially forced to be for many weeks, led the veteran to overwhelm him with a torrent of lO LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1843. renewed oatlis, followed by a most touching apology, though not, we fear, by any permanent reform. Nor were the southern visitors to the Highlands in these early days any better than the moderate minis- ters whose kirks they rarely entered. Sir Robert Peel and a party of his friends had leased the shootings around Kingussie. To most of them all days were alike for sport. The peasantry, finding themselves in a sore strait between their duty to their conscience and the temptations held out by the Sunday sportsmen, waited on their minister with entreaties for advice. He at once wrote to Sir Robert Peel a letter, read by Dr. Duff, which acknowledged all the kindness of the great statesman to the people, and asked him to respect their conscientious convictions. A week passed and no reply came. But on the next Sabbath the practical answer was given when, somewhat late. Sir Robert and his whole party took possession of the great pew belonging to the estate they had leased. On the next day the minister received a long and kindly letter from the Premier, declaring that it was he who should apologise for not ascertaining his duty to the people, and expressing a wish that all clergymen would act with similar faithfulness. Such reminiscences of his study of the inner life of the Church of Scotland, bad and good, lighting up his intimate knowledge of its history and his sympathy with the spiritual and civil patriotism of its people, made the disruption when it came a very real and joyous event to Dr. Duff, though far away from all its controversies and its triumphs. His enthusiasm burst forth the more impetuously that, for three years in India as during the five which he had spent in Europe, he had maintained an unbroken silence on the great spiritual-independence controversy. The chivalrous honour of the man prevented him from making any JEt Z7' '^2^ SHADOW OF THE DISRUPTION. II allusion to it in his official correspondence. Nor was Dr. Brunton, on the otlier side, less thoughtful. Neither could arrest the issue ; so long as that was doubtful or had not been precipitated by Providence, it might have been perilous for either to link to a temporary struggle, however great, the abiding principles of catholic missions to the non-Christian world. Thej would have been less than men if, in the intimacy of private correspondence, such sentences as the following had not occurred. But from first to last, and in every detail save the very serious questions of rights of property, legal and equitable as between Christian brethren, no controversy in all church history has ever been conducted so free from the spirit condemned by Christ and His Apostles, as the missionary side of the Disruption of 1843. After Dr. Duff's return to Cal- cutta in 1840 Dr. Brunton thus confidentially wrote to him on the 2nd April : " Your clerical friends are well ; as well, at least, as Non-Intrusion fever will allow. The excitation and the embitterment are by no means abating. Government declines to attempt any legisla- tive measure. Lord Aberdeen has given notice of one without saying what it is to be. Matters are getting more and more embroiled. Oh that peace were breathed into the troubled elements by Him who * still- eth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves and the tumult of the people.' Amidst the other lament- able consequences of this turmoil it swallows up every other interest in some of our fairest and purest minds, and the sweet call to missionary enterprise is too passionless to gain a hearing, where once it was plea- sant music. Send us better tidings from the lands of the South than we can transmit to you from this dwelling of storms." By 28th January, 1843, Dr. Brunton wrote of " the really appalling schism in the Church which seems now inevitable, and which may 12 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. most lamentably affect all lier great and glorious ' scliemes.' May God avert it ! In man there is now no help or hope.** - So rigorously did Dr. Daff carry out his official duty to the committee and his sense of what was best for the Mission, that when his most intimate friends pri- vately pressed him to say how he would act in the event of an actual disruption, he told them why he could not reply to such a question. What Lord Cock- burn calls " the heroism " of the 18th May, which made Francis Jeffrey declare that he was " proud of his country," was not officially intimated to the fourteen Indian missionaries till October. Not till the end of July had the preUminary letters from Dr. Brunton, and from Dr. Charles J. Brown representing the Free Church, reached them, declaring that each Church was determined to carry on the Foreign and Jewish Missions. Dr. Brunton wrote : " We are most anxious to retain the co-operation of those whom we have found experi- mentally so thoroughly qualified for their work and so devoted to its prosecution. We earnestly hope, there- fore, that you will see it to be consistent with your sense of duty to remain in that connection with us, which to us, in the past, has been a source of so much satisfaction and thankfulness. I write to you collec- tively, not individually, because we have no wish that personal considerations should influence your deci- sion." Dr. Chalmers was not present at the meeting of the provisional committee of the Free Church, for which Dr. C. J. Brown wrote the letter, which thus delicately concluded : " The committee do not of course presume to enter into discussion with you on the subject, or to say one word as to the course which you may feel it right to follow." To that Chalmers added this postscript, " I state my confident belief that, notwithstanding the engrossment of our affairs at ^t. 37. ALL THE MISSIONARIES JOIN THE FflEE CHURCH. 1 3 home, the cause of all our missions will prove as dear, and be as liberally supported as ever by the people of Scotland." With such faith, in such a spirit, did the second Knox and his band of 470, soon increased to 730 and now to some 1,100 ministers, commit their Church to extension abroad no less than at home. In this respect the third Eeformation was more truly Christ's than the second or the first. The joyful adherence of all the Eastern and Jewish missionaries and their converts, in contrast to the East India Company's Presbyterian chaplains, — the eager response of every one of the fourteen sent to the peoples of India, from Dr. Wilson then in Jerusalem, to Mr. Anderson in Madras, and Dr. Duff in Bengal, was added to complete the spiritual sacrifice, as well as the moral heroism, and to give a new stim- ulus to what Lord Cockburn called " the magnificent sacrifices which, year after year, showed the strong sincerity and genuine Scotticism of the principles on which the movement had depended." The words, in 1834, of Dr. Inglis, the founder of the Kirk's India Mission, were lighted up with a new and universal meaning, in the far East as in little Scotland. " The kingdom of Christ is not only spiritual but indepen- dent ;»no earthly government has a right to overrule or control it." For himself alone. Dr. Duff published an " Explan- atory Statement, addressed to the friends of the India Mission of the Church of Scotland, as it existed pre- vious to the Disruption in May, 1843." This passage takes up the narrative at the reception of the official appeals from Dr. Brunton and Dr. Charles Brown. " We were now laid under a double necessity openly to avow our sentiments. Was there any hesitation when the hour of trial came ? None whatsoever. So far as concerned my own mind, the simple truth is, 14 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. ' 1843. that as regards the great principles contended for by the friends and champions of the Free Church, I never was troubled with the crossino^ of a doubt or the shadow of a suspicion. In earHest youth these principles were imbibed from the * Cloud of Witnesses/ and other kindred works. And time and mature reflection, wholly undisturbed by the heats and col- lisions of party warfare, only tended to strengthen my conviction of their scriptural character, and to rivet the persuasion of their paramount importance to the spiritual interests of man. But though there was not a moment's hesitation as to the rectitude of the prin- ciples, and consequent obligation in determining the path of duty, there was a sore conflict of natural feeling, — a desperate struggle of opposing natural interests. Many of my dearest and most devoted personal friends still adhered to the Establishment ; and I could not but foresee how ecclesiastical separation might lead to coolness, coolness to indifference, and indifference to eventual alienation ; and that heart must be colder and deader than mine, that could, without a thought and without an emotion, contem- plate such an issue. All the most vivid associations connected with my original appointment, — the ardours and imaginings of inexperienced youth, — the exciting hopes and fears inseparable from an untried and hazardous enterprise, — anxieties felt and removed, — trials encountered, difficulties overcome, and success attained, — were all indissolubly linked with the Estab- lished Church of Scotland. The revered projector of the Mission, Dr. Inglis, and his respected successor, Dr. Brunton, had, each in his turn, throughout the long period of fourteen years, treated me rather with the consideration, the tenderness, and the confidence of a father towards his son, than with the formal but polite courtesies of a mere official relationship. When JEt s7. HIS "explanatory statement." 15 I looked at tlie noble fabric of the Greneral Assembly's Institution, so very spacious and commodious, and so ricbly provided with library, apparatus, and all other needful furniture ; and recalled to remembrance the former days, when we had to toil and labour in close, confined, and unhealthy localities, without the aid of library or apparatus, and with but a scanty and ill-favoured assortment even of the necessary class- books, and thought of the reiterated statements and explanations, appeals and pleadings, disappointments and long delays, ere such a fabric had reared its head as an additional architectural ornament to the metro- polis of British India ; and when, along with all this, I reflected on the high probability, or rather moral certainty, that separation from the Establishment must be followed by an evacuation of the present Mission premises, I could not help feeling a pang somewhat akin 1;o that of parting with a favourite child. Again, when I looked at the still nobler fabric within, — a fabric, of which the other was but the material tene- ment,— the living fabric, consisting of so many hun- dreds of the finest and most promising of India's sons, beaming with the smiles of awakening intelli- gence, and sparkling with the buoyancy of virgin hopes ; when I considered this fabric, so closely com- pacted through the varied gradations of an all-compre- hending system, that embraced the extremes of the lowest rudimental elements and the highest collegiate erudition, — a system so intricate, and yet so orderly, — so multifarious in its details, and yet so harmonious in its workings, scope, and ends, — a system, whose organization, discipline, and progressive development, it had required thirteen years of combined and inces- sant labour to bring to the present point of maturity and perfectness ; and when I thought how, in the present crisis of things, separation from the Establish- 1 6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 843. ment might prove tlie dissolution and breaking up of the whole into scattered fragments ; I could not help experiencing a sensation somewhat equivalent to that of beholding a numerous and beloved family engulphed in the deep, or swallowed up by an earthquake. Once more, when I thought of the doubtful and inadequate prospect of our support in the new relationship of a Free Church Mission, the anxious doubts and fears expressed on that head in private communications from home, owing to the tremendous pressure on the liberalities of the Christian people, for the urgencies of their own immediate wants, — the loss and alienation of many of the great and the mighty, who hitherto had smiled propitious on our labours, — the disadvan- tage and disparagement to our credit, cause, and good name, which might accrue from our abandonment of premises with which had been associated so much of what was reputable and successful in our past pro- ceedings,— the certainty that, by numbers of the more bigoted natives, such forced abandonment would be construed as a retributive visitation from the gods, on account of our persevering attacks on their faith and worship, — the confusion and disgrace which might thus, in their estimation, redound to Christianity itself, and the corresponding triumph to an exulting heathen- ism,— the dread of anticipated rivalries and collisions between the agents of Churches so violently wrenched asunder, and the scandal and stumbling-block which these might occasion or throw in the way of the struggling cause of a yet infantile evangelization; — when I thought of all this, and much more of a similar character, it seemed as if a thousand voices kept ringiug in my ears, saying, ' Pause, pause ; cling to the Establishment, and if you do so, you will advance, without interruption, in the gorgeous vessel of Church and State, which so majestically ploughs iEt. 37- CONSCIENCE HIS GUIDE. ij the waves over a sea of troubles.' In opposition to such a muster and array of antagonist influences, what had I to confront ? JN'ought but the blazing appre- hension of the truth and reality of the principles at issue, — their truth and reality in Jehovah's infallible oracles, — their truth and reality in the standards, constitution, and history of the Church of Scotland, — nought but the burning monitions of conscience, rela- tive to the morally compulsive obligation of walking in the path of apprehended duty. It seemed as if a thousand counter-voices kept pealing in my ears, loud as the sound of great thunders, or the noise of many waters, saying, ' Let pride or prejudice, self- interest or natural feeling, be allowed to obscure the apprehension of truth, or stifle the directive energy of conscience ; and then, though your dwelling be in the palaces of state, and your refuge the munition of rocks, there will be inward misgivings, that ever and anon shall cause the heart to melt, the hands to be feeble, the spirit to faint, and the knees to be weak as water. But, be fully persuaded in your own mind. Let no sinister influences be suffered to interfere. Let the apprehension of truth, derived from the Fount of Hevelation, be steadfast and unclouded, and the beckon- ings of conscience, illumined by the Word, meditation, and prayer be unreluctantly recognised and implicitly followed; and then may you stand erect in your integrity, undaunted and unmoved, though the earth should rend underneath your feet, and the rolling heavens overhead should rush into annihilation.' With views and sentiments like these, however power- ful might be the counter-inducements, how could I decide otherwise than I have done ? though, certainly, the existence of such powerful counter-inducements ought to stamp the decision with the unmistakeable character of honesty and conscientiousness. VOL. II. c 1 8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. "Doubtless, Lad I yielded to those alluring worldly temptations, wliicli were chiefly on one side ; or had I allowed carnal considerations of any kind to prevail against the sense of duty and the clear dictates of conscience, there were many plausible ready-made pretexts on which I might fall back, — many open- gated refuges into which I might retire, in order to palliate my tergiversation, screen my inconsistency from public view, conceal from others, and perhaps from myself, the secret actuating motives, and operate as a soporific on the troublesome mementoes of the inward monitor. But however convenient such a course might be for a season, — however soothing and flattering to the cravings of the natural man, how could it elude the piercing scrutiny of the all-seeing eye, or stand in arrest of judgment at the bar of the Great Assize ? " On the 10th August, the five Bengal missionaries of the Church of Scotland united in a despatch to both Dr. Brunton and Dr. Gordon, forwarding eight reso- lutions in which they declared their reasons for adher- ing to 'Hhe Free Protesting Presbyterian Church of Scotland," as Christian men and ministers. The reso- lutions were drawn up, we believe, by the youngest of their number, Dr. T. Smith. They issued to the public of India a joint '' explanatory statement," clear, judicial and full of Christian charity without com- promise. Denied by Dr. Charles their right, before disruption, to meet in kirk-session of which three missionaries were members and were the majority, they formed a provisional church committee, which held the first public service of the Free Church in Cal- cutta, in Freemasons' Hall, on the 13th August. Dr. Duff preached the sermon, afterwards published, and announced that the Rev. John Macdonald would, in addition to his daily missionary duties, act as minister ^t. 37. DR. SIMON NICOLSON AND MR. HAWKINS. 1 9 till the congregation could call a pastor from Scotland. A missionary character was given to the congregation from the first by the baptism of the convert Behari Lai Singh. Up to this day the five missionaries stood alone. But the Christian society of the metropolis and of many an isolated station in the interior was being profoundly moved. The earliest sign of the movement — which only repeated that in Scotland on a proportionate scale but in a far more catholic manner than was possible there — was a letter to Dr. Duff from the first physician in India. Who that knew him — what young official or merchant who was friendless and tempted, especially, did not love Simon Nicolson ? "I have been silent about your Church disruption till now, but I have watched it and you, and, with my wife and daughter, I cast in my lot with you. Your ordinary supplies will be stopped, but you must not let one of your operations collapse. Here is a cheque for E.s. 5,000, and more will follow when you give me a hint." Such was the sub- stance of the first communication, and from a country- man. The next came from Mr. Justice Hawkins, of the supreme court of appeal, then known as the Sudder Dewanny Adawlut, but since amalgamated with the High Court of Judicature. He offered not only other aid but himself. The ten years' conflict had led him to see the necessity of spiritual independence and equality in the priesthood of all believing members of Christ's Church, lay and teaching, and so he left the Church of England. Another English judge, Mr. Macleod Wylie, not only accompanied him but pub- lished a treatise to justify his action, under the title, "Can I Continue a Member of the Church of England?" which was answered by a scholarly chaplain, Mr. Quartley, to whose pamphlet Dr. T. Smith published a rejoinder. When, on Thursday, the 24th August, a 20 LTFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. public meeting of the adherents of the Free Church was called, it was found that nearly the whole of the elders and a majority of the members of St. Andrew's Kirk, representing all classes in the English and Eurasian communities, had thrown in their lot with the houseless missionaries. To them and the physician and judges already mentioned there were added as the executive or financial committee, Mr. A. B. Mackin- tosh, who still plans generous things for the Free Church ; Messrs. James Calder Stewart, Kobert Rose, D. Maccallum, W. Nichol, and M. Macleod. But where was a church to be found ? Dr. Duff went so far as to apply to Lord Ellenborough's government for the temporary use of a hall belonging to it, and used very frequently for dancing assemblies, but the authorities evaded the request by professing inability to understand the nature of the case. Then it was that the Eurasian committee oflPered the hall of their Doveton College to a man who had done so much for them. Six lay elders and six deacons were duly elected by the congregation, who at once prepared for the erection of a proper ecclesiastical building. After some five thousand pounds had been spent in rearing that designed by Captain Goodwyn, of the Engineers, it fell down the night before it was to be entered for worship. Undismayed the members erected, at a total cost of some twelve thousand pounds, the present church, which so good an authority as the late Bishop Cotton pronounced the prettiest in Calcutta. Closely allied with the Mission, feeding it with money and fed by it with men, the Calcutta Free Church has in the past thirty-five years enjoyed the ministratioon of the Revs. Mr. Mackail, Mr. J. Milne (of Perth), Mr. Pourie, Mr. Don (now of King Williamstown), and Mr. W. Milne (of Auchterarder). The members, averaging a hundred in number, have raised, in that ^t- 37. " A VOICE FROM THE GANGES.'* 2 I (period £106,500, an example of the Christian power of I a practical voluntaryism in its way even more remark- able than that of Free St. George's, Edinburgh, with its - ten thousand a year. This church laid on Dr. Duff, as senior missionary, the congenial duty of giving " some public exposition of the principles and grounds of separation from the Established Church of Scotland and of adherence to the Free Church of Scotland." To hear his four lectures on the sole and supreme headship of the Lord Jesus Christ over His own Church, the town-hall was filled. Under the title of "A Voice from the Ganges," the published lectures attracted great attention, and the volume has recently been cited, on both sides of the patronage controversy, by Sir Henry Moncreiff and others. In the light of the legislation of 1874, the latest of the blind steps of a party majority in Parlia- ment towards a reconstructed Kirk of Scotland, these introductory words of Dr. Duff read like prediction : ''The 'powers that be/ quitting their own proper functions and province, have, with what looks like the infatuation of judicial blindness, confederated against 'the Lord and His anointed/ They have gained, a temporary triumph. They have filled the land with their pasans and their songs. They securely calculated on a permanent ascendency. Though there be signs enough in tlie heaven above and on the earth below to rebuke their temerity, they still dream of empty visions. De- spite all reminiscences of the past, all monitions of the present, all ominous presages of the future, they still cling with doating fondness to the delusive hope that they have set and fastened the very key- stone of conservative policy, while they have only effectually sapped and undermined one of the main pillars on which it ought to rest. They meant, honestly perhaps, to up- hold, whereas they have only successfully destroyed ; — and not only destroyed, but succeeded in laying a combustible train which shall issue in results as much above their power to arrest as it was beyond their forecasting sagacity to foresee. Already has the influence of their great exploit extended to 22 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1843. other and far distant lands. Already has it begun to be felt on the banks of the Ganges. Nor is it likely to pause in its onward career till, with the prints and footsteps of its presence, it has permeated the globe. " Such being the momentous nature of the recent struggle between Church and State in Scotland, and such the magnitude of its present and prospective consequences, is it not incum- bent on every reflecting mind to inquire more minutely into the nature and character of the principles on account of which the unequal contest has so long been maintained ? These prin- ciples, it will be found, are not of mushroom growth, neither are they of yesterday. They are not of local, provincial, or national import merely ; neither are they of fleeting, ephemeral, perishable concern. No : they have been of old from the beginniug; the range of their operation is coextensive with the globe ; and the period of their duration runs parallel with eternity. Neither let it be supposed that the intrinsic value or grandeur of the principles is to be estimated by the appa- rent insignificance of the chosen battle-field. It is not the remoteness, the narrowness, or the barrenness of local territory that constitutes the criterion of greatness in respect to high- toned principle, or moral force, or spiritual truth. On the arid plain of Marathon, and beneath the rugged cliffs of Ther- mopylse, the heroic patriotism of one or two petty principalities of Greece earned for itself laurels, which have since inflamed the hearts of thousands, wherever the march of civilization has reached. On the isolated and bleak shores of lona, was achieved a conquest over ignorance and barbarism, which diffused its quickening influence over neighbouring states and far distant realms. In the obscure village of Wittemberg was fought 'the good fight,' which silenced the thunders of the Vatican, shook the sceptre from the right arm of civil and religious tyranny, liberated the human mind from the prison-house of ages, and lighted a flame in the citadel and temple of truth which shall yet illumine the world. And has not this earth — the globe itself which we inhabit — whose comparative unim- portance in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship is such that, by its annihilation, ' the universe at large would suffer as little, in its splendour and variety, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suff'er by the fall of a single leaf — has not this little speck, amid the statelier worlds jEt. 37. Scotland's fight foe spiritual independence. 23 that bestrew the fields of immensity, been selected as the scene of the most stupendous of all conflicts — the conflict be- tween the Prince of Light and the potentates of darkness — the conflict in whose mighty issues the flag of mercy was hung from the cross of satisfied justice, and the horrors of perdition exchanged for the hallelujahs of eternal joy ? " Nor has Scotland been heretofore unhonoured as the field for determining the strength of antagonist principles fraught with the weal or the woe of nations. There, the ambition of all- grasping Rome first fairly grappled with the passion of patriot- ism ; and there was she first most efi*ectually taught that the ' love of hearth and home * could inspire the poorest pos- sessors of the sternest and wildest of lands, with a spirit and energy that were more than a match for her invincible legions. There was her lordly aristocratic neighbour of the South at length constrained to learn, that the genuine spirit of liberty and independence could outlive the wear and tear of whole cen- turies of oppression ; and, ever and anon, rallying into fresh vigour, could humble in the dust the pride and flower of all her chivalry. Thus roughly cradled amid the storms, and nurtured amid the tempests of troubled life, the character of the Scottish people grew up into a robustness and hardihood, and their principles of action into a tenacity of sinewy strength, that could not brook the touch of foreign tyranny .'' From the spiritual kingship of Christ over the soul of every individual believer, through Bible revelation, Church annals and Scottish history, Dr. Duff traced the conflict between Erastian Csesarism and the inde- pendence of the spiritual man or church in purely spiri- tual things. He did not spare either the learning or the law of Lord Brougham, whose antecedents he thus showed to have coloured the decision which he gave against the liberties of the people, in the highest appeal court : — " Truth requires that it should be told, that it is to the bitter, rancorous, and inveterate hostility of the eccentric and not very consistent ex-Chancellor Brougham, that the new, unheard of and adverse decisions of the House of Lords as^ainst 24 lilFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843, the claims of the Church of Scotland are mainly to be attributed. With him aversion and opposition to the Evangelical party in the Church and their Non-intru- sion principles would appear to be natural and heredi- tary. His own grandfather, by the mother's side, (a Mr. Sym) was a minister of the Church of Scotland, forcibly intruded on a reluctant people by the bayonets of the soldiery, amid confusion, riot and bloodshed. The entire population of the parish deserted the church in a body. Poor Mr. Sym became merely the * stipend-lifter ' of the parish, having secured the fleece but scarcely one of the flock. Officiating, as he was legally obliged to do, every Sabbath, but finding nothing except bare walls and empty benches, and being apparently after all a man of some sensibility, he died, after a year or two, of a broken heart. At the time of his forcible ordination by a few wild men, imported for that worthy purpose, as a special commission, from the ' holy land ' of Moderatism, Aberdeenshire, there was only one friend present to countenance the lawless scene — designated in the record of the day's proceedings * a Mr. William Robertson, minister of Gladsmuir.' This was the gentleman who afterwards became Principal Robert- son, the celebrated historian and leader of the Moderate party. Mr. Sym, soon after his forced settlement, married Mr. Robertson's sister. When he, shortly after, died, he left a widow and infant daughter. This only child and niece of Principal Robertson subsequently married Mr. Brougham, and thus became the mother of Lord Brougham. No wonder though he should be so enamoured of a cause so dear to his grand-uncle and grandfather ! No wonder though he should manifest such repugnance to a cause which so preyed on the spirits of the latter as to cost him his life ! " ^t. 37. BROUGHAM, ROBERTSON AND GIBBON. 2$ The radical Westminster Revieiu, of all periodicals, wlien vindicating the Free Church in those contro- versial days, thus completes the story : — " The morn- ing of the 30th of May, 1751, saw the churchyard of the parish of Torphichen thronged with rustics in their Sabbath clothes. With sorrow and indignation they were to witness the settlement of a pastor over them in the teeth of their continued and universal opposition. A cavalcade of merry clergymen came riding up headed by Mr. William Robertson, the minister of Gladsmuir. He was a man about thirty, with a countenance which he has transmitted to his descendant Lord Brougham — altogether an active, keen, bright look. The cavalcade of clergymen were flanked and surrounded by a troop of dragoons. As the troopers and parsons dashed among the people, tradition says, Captain Hamilton, of Westport, drew his sword, and shouted, ' What ! won't ye receive the gospel ? I'll swap off the head o' ony man that '11 no (receive the gospel).' Thus did William E^obertson proceed to bestow the spiritual office. Many years elapse. He is the chief of the Kirk. He has won the crown of history. Writing to Gibbon in his days of celebrity, he gives the clue to his conduct when the dragoon-heading intruder at Torphichen. We find Principal Robertson the chief of the Kirk, congratu- lating the historian of the * Decline and Fall ' on his skilful management of superstition and bigotry in his chapters on Christianity. He thus gives us a glimpse of the moral theory of which the Torphichen intrusion was the application. The congratulation to Gibbon, and the dragoon ordination, were only the abstract and the concrete of the same thing." There have been more descriptions than one of the great day in the history of Scotland, by eyewitnesses, from opposite points of view, like Dr. Norman Macleod, 26 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. Dr. Buchanan and Lord Jeffrey. This is Dr. Duff's, in the town-hall of Calcutta : "At leDgfcli_, the memorable day — the 18th of May, 1843, — a day much to be remembered in the annals of Scotland, arrived. For days before, there was a mustering and a gathering of forces to the metropolis. The general outward aspect of things is changed. A strange and ominous foreboding seizes and occupies the minds of men. All look grave, solemn, austerely meditative. Eiot is banished from the streets ; mirth is silent at the festive board ; the voice of music and of song is touched with an air of plaintive melody. Everything betokens the ap- proach of some mighty movement, the awful hour of some grand catastrophe. The church of St. Andrews — the national saint of Scotland in days of popish idolatry — is specially fitted up for the occasion. Thither the marshalled forces resort. There they assemble in battle array. The antagonist principles, which con- vulsed the nation, and were now to rend the Church asunder, were there, embodied in the appropriate forms of the servants of Christ and the servants of Csesar. The house is divided into two. Look first at the side of worldly dignity and honour. Behold that brilliant spectacle with its dazzling throng. A visible throne is there, with its purple canopy. The Royal Commissioner is there — the visible representative of British majesty. The nobles of the land, the proud wearers of stars, swords, and coronets, are there, with their faithful satellites, joyously basking in borrowed radiance, and eager to do homage to the rising star and sensible symbol of earthly royalty. All things are there, fitted to allure the carnal eye, and fill and satisfy the carnal heart. Then turn to the other side. No visible throne is there; no marks or signs of earthly royalty are there ; no gorgeous drapery is there ; no obtrusive display of armorial devices is there ; no shining emblems of the ancient lineage and feudal pedigree are there; — nought is there, fitted to attract the carnal eye or fill and satisfy the carnal heart. But, to the eye of faith, before which the in- visible is revealed and the distant realized as present, there are transcendent glories manifested there. Tlierej is He Who holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, and Who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. Faith at once "'^icognises Him, Who is fairer than the sons of men — the chief ^t. 37. DESCRIBES THE DISRUPTION. 2/ among ten thouBand and altogether lovely. Faith at once hails and proclaims Him King of Zion, King of glory, King of saints. His servants are there, His chosen servants who fought the good fight, and, in many a battle-field, were ready to die rather than sufi'er the lustre of His crown to be tar- nished or the glory of His sovereignty to be eclipsed. And all the faithful of the land are there, — in winged prayers that have sped to heaven and returned, swifter than the sunbeam, laden with blessing. And holy angels are there, as minister- ing spirits, hovering over the scene with outstretched wings, in admiring complacency. All things are ready. The time, the hour, the decisive moment is come. To the National Established Church of Scotland, in the persons of her chosen delegates, the final question is substantially put — put, in the face of the nation, in the face of Christendom, in the face of the world; — Which of the two great antagonist principles is to prevail ? — the power of faith, or the power of sense — the love of heaven, or the love of earth — fealty to Christ, or fealty to Cassar — the honour and prerogative of Zion's King, or the exaltation of Zion^s sacrilegious spoiler — the freedom and inde- pendence of the Church, the Redeemer's immaculate spouse, or its unconditional surrender and submission, at the lordly dictation of a usurping foreign power ? " A deep and thrilling pause ensues. At length, the repre- sentative voice of the faithful, through their appointed organ, is heard in accents that bespeak the majesty of principle and of truth : — Faith hath triumphed over sense ; heaven over earth ; Christ over Caesar. From this hour we sever our con- nection with the State, as that connection can no longer be maintained without a surrender of the prerogatives of our Great Head, and all the blood-bought rights and liberties of His ministers and people. But these we cannot, we dare not surrender. They are not ours to give; but His, whose they are by inalienable right of eternal covenant. In order to maintain these sacredly inviolate, we hereby renounce our status, our honours, and other civil advantages — our homes, and incomes, and earthly all. In order to maintain these inviolate, we now separate ourselves, — not from the Church of Scotland as a true Church of Christ, — for her sound scriptural standards we still revere, and her simple and noble scriptural constitution we still admire, — but from the Ecclesiastical Establishment of Scotland^ 28 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. as now degraded and enslaved by the State. And from this house, in which the prerogatives of our Great Head, and the rights and privileges of His members have been ignominiously trodden in the dustj we go forth as freemen of the Lord — free citizens of the freest Commonwealth on earth — joyfully to do homage to our glorious King, seated, in unrivalled supremacy, on the ancient throne of His own kingdom and free dominion. So saying, forth proceeded, amid the solemn silence and un- broken stillness, that indicate the mighty throb and swell of inward emotion, too big for utterance ; — forth proceeded, from the desecrated and desolated sanctuary of an Establishment, once the nation's chiefest glory and renown ; — forth proceeded, the representatives of Scotland's piety and Scotland's patriot- ism— the representatives of Scotland's covenanted faith and Scotland's moral worth — the representatives of Scotland's unshaken loyalty to Zion's King, and Scotland's undying attachment to Zion's cause ; — forth they proceeded, amid the brightest gleams and sunshine of heavenly favour and the richest showers of heavenly blessing ; — forth they proceeded, to lay the foundation — firm and indestructible as the E-ock of Ages on which it is based — the foundation of one of the noblest edifices of any age or nation — the foundation of the Free Peotesting Chuech oe Scotland." The efiPect of tbe Disruption on the India Mission was, from tbe very first, to more than double its effi- ciency, and tbe reaction of tbe Mission on tbe Cburcb of Scotland Free was most blessed. As the first con- vener, Dr. Gordon, reported, tbe new yet old Mission started with only £327 in its treasury, but full of faith and power. Dr. Candlisb, in May, 1843, declared, when moving tbe appointment of tbe new committee, " I trust that tbe foreign scbeme of our protesting Church will be upbeld and maintained witb even increased eflficiency notwithstanding tbe demand for funds for our bome operations, and tbat we will give proof to tbe Christian world, and even to tbe ungodly world, of tbe soundness of that maxim referred to by our Moderator, tbat bome and foreign missionary associa- JEt. 37. THE FREE CHUECH A MISSIONARY CHURCH. 29 tions mutually act and react on one another ; and tliat the very increase of the sum received for our home operations will be the pledge of a large increase in the fund available for foreign missions. It would ill be- come me to bestow any panegyric on the godly men whom the Lord has shut up in that field of foreign missions. I believe that I may very safely concur in the expressions of confidence which fell from my friend and brother Mr. Guthrie, that we may reckon on having all the missionaries adhering to our pro- testing Church. At all events, it will be our duty to record, in reference to the missionaries in India, substantially what we have recorded in reference to the missionaries to the Jews, that the Assembly con- tinue to keep in their present oflSces all the mission- aries who shall adhere to the protesting Church of Scotland. . . We shall thus, I trust, if we cannot serve ourselves heirs to the accumulated wealth of the committee of the old Establishment, serve our- selves heirs to what is far more valuable than their wealth, — to the men whom God has raised up for this holy work, to the means of prosecuting that work, so far as these depend on the liberality which God puts into the heart of His people, and to the instrumentality by which the zeal of our people has mainly kept up the regular periodical issue of information on this subject." Dr. P. Macfarlan, seconding Dr. Candlish, stated that " there was not one of the schemes of the Church which had awakened more interest than this, an interest which had been to a great extent produced by the ardour and devotedness of Dr. Duff. Indeed it was singular, in the course of the doings of Divine providence, that the circumstance which rendered Dr. Duff's presence neces- sary in this country, viz., the effects of the hot climate upon his constitution, should have been the means of producing such an incalculable amount of good." 30 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1843. !N"ot only did tlie fourteen missionaries announce their personal devotion to the Free Church, but, knowing the demands on the home resources, they de- clared their conviction that funds might be raised in India for the three new colleges. This led the Church at home to announce, in the first annual appeal for congregational collections : " We concur with them in thinking that much will probably be done, by generous officers and civilians, whose Christian zeal and devoted- ness will only lead them to feel a deeper interest in the cause when its former supports may seem to be weakened; for, thank God ! there has been a revival of pure religion among not a few of the European resi- dents, and we should have little fear of the result, were the care of our present institutions devolved on the army alone. But when we consider that these Insti- tutions require to be indefinitely extended, if they are to exert any influence on the general mind of India, and that probably the buildings, which have hitherto afforded at once a suitable residence and a commodious scene of labour to our missionaries, may be alienated to other parties, we feel that redoubled energy is necessary at home, in addition to all the aid which can reasonably be expected from abroad, if we would main- tain and carry on the great work which has been so auspiciously begun.'* j The result was a sum of £6,402 that year, which steadily rose to £32,000 in Scotland alone thirty years after, and, on Dr. Duff's death, reached the total ,. sum of £535,000, or about three quarters of a million i sterling, if the revenue abroad, in India, Africa, and ■ the South Pacific, be added. The Free Church of Scotland would have been unworthy of her principles and of the men who, in the far East, loyally sacrificed themselves for her, if she had not started and ad- vanced as a Missionary Church, however far short of ^t. 37- THE PROPERTY WRONG. 3 1 a liigli ideal slie may be conscious tliafc she still falls. For, after all, it is rather a humiliatiDg fact that the whole sura of £560,000 given by her for foreign missions in thirty-six years does not equal that raised by her for all purposes every year. "'With the consent of both parties the Calcutta mis- sionaries continued their work in the Institution and mission-house built and furnished by themselves, to the close of the session of 1843. But what then? There were two easy solutions of the difficulty. Morally, equitably, the whole belonged to Dr. Duff and his colleag:ues, who had called it into existence. The college, its library and scientific apparatus, were the fruit of personal legacies and gifts made to Dr. Duff himself chiefly, and on the express under- standing that he was to use the funds as he pleased. His letters to Dr. Ewart and Mrs. Briggs, and the account of the funds raised by himself or pressed on his acceptance at home, illustrate this.* The Cliristian, the honourable, the gentlemanly solution was that first proposed by Dr. Duff, Dr. Wilson and the Free Church committee, that the old missionaries should continue their work, purchasing back from the Established Church the premises which were morally their own, if required; and that that Church, desiring to begin a new mission, should break fresh ground in the neglected cities of Upper India, whence it would have been ready to take possession for Christ of Sindh, the Punjab, and Central Asia. In his first official com- munication to Dr. Brunton, Dr. Gordon thus wrote of the buildinofs in Beno^al : the same was true of Bom- bay. In Madras there was no difficulty, for the mis- sionaries there only rented college rooms : — " Those at Calcutta we believe to be legally at the * Yol.i., pp. 371, 381,465. 32 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1843. disposal of tlie General Assembly of tlieEsfcablislimeiit, but equity and a general regard to the interests of Christianity require that they should not be wrested from their present possessors. Should it be found that any of tlie contributors to their erection object to this arrangement, a pecuniary compensation could be made to the Establishment for the amount of their con- tributions. Any difficulty of this kind would be re- moved by the mode of settlement proposed by Dr. Duff, who thus writes to our committee on the subject : — * Every consideration leads us strongly to urge, through, you, the propriety of purchasing, at a fair equivalent, the whole of the present premises. The Foreign Mis- sion committee of the Establishment would find ample unoccupied territory elsewhere. The once imperial cities of Agra and Delhi have for years been pleading for an extended branch of our Mission. What a grand field would these present for missionary operations ! For neiv men coming out, it must be all one whether they proceed to one place or another. They have languages, etc., to learn ; and the acquisition of these, whether in Calcutta, or Agra, or elsewhere, must be attended with the same difficulty. It is altogether different with those who have a local experience, and an acquaintance with local dialects, etc. Besides, it would wear the aspect of magnanimity were those who may plead legal rights to this property to dispose of it on friendly and equitable terms, for the sake of more widely diffusing the treasures of knowledge and the glad tidings of salvation over this vast and super- stition-ridden land.' " Time, which has brought not only the forgetfulness, by a new generation, of the animosities inseparable from the events of 1843, but the public and legislative confession by the Established Church in 1874 that it was wrong in upholding the proximate cause of tbe ^t. 37. EQUITY versus LEGALITY. 33 Disruption, has developed such co-operation by the two Churches in India and Africa at least, that we may be sure the men of this day would have gladly conceded the equitable settlement, the denial of which created a painful scandal then. For were not these the days of church-site refusals, of congregations forced to worship below high-water mark and under winter snows, of social and personal persecution, of lawsuits and dissensions, which would be incredible now were they not the too well attested evidence of the fact that of all hatreds the odium ecclesiasticum is the worst ? The Established Church committee, in an evil mo- ment for themselves and the cause of truth and charity, put forward a " Mr. Thomas Scott, auditor of ac- counts, etc.," to answer Dr. Duff's statement as to the funds given to the missionary personally and used by him, at his own discretion, for site, buildings, library, and apparatus. On the lowest ground the case was one in which no one could know so much as Dr. Duff himself. All the figures were on record, and the re- sult was seen in the whole Mission property ; but Mr. Thomas Scott had not even been the treasurer who worked with Dr. Dnfl in the financial statement. Yet from sheer weakness and ignorance the Established committee allowed Mr. Thomas Scott, in their name, to attack the first missionary of the Church of Scot- land, in the September number (1844) of its official Record. The refusal of the committee to act equit- ably had, in truth, raised such an outcry of remon- strance from all the Evangelical Churches that it felt bound to make some defence. Save for the miserable controversy thus forced on the Church, which had at once retired from even the ground of Christian equity when it saw iosult added to injury, we do not regret a circumstance which called forth Dr. Duff's reply. In eighty octavo pages, '' put in type in order to facilitate VOL. IT. D 34 I^I^E OF DR. DUFF. 1844. the transmission of copies by post, but not publisbed," he disposed of Mr. Thomas Scott and his ignorances or misrepresentations, in a style which makes the pamphlet a rare contribution to cryptic literature. Rare, not merely for the moral and logical extinc- tion of the official assailant, nor even for the gleams of autobiographic fact and humour in the history of the different funds, but for the magnanimous charity which robbed the whole of every sting, while a righteous re- sentment and holy indignation for his cause burned high. Apart from legacies and sums pressed on Dr. Duff for his private or family use, all of which he had poured into the Mission treasury, we may give this one case as an illustration of the nature of the funds in dispute : — " With Colonel Wilson and his excellent sisters I happened to he on terms of intimate friendship. Individuals of more kindly disposition and more benevolent hearts it has seldom been my lot to meet with. The Colonel had much to keep him in vivid remembrance of India. He was one of the British officers, who, under the mandate of the celebrated Hyder Ali, for upwards of two years lay in chains in the dungeons of Seringapatam. There were, moreover, other ties which still continued strongly to bind him to that distant land. He had repeatedly spoken to me about a special private commission, which he had set his heart on my executing for him on my return thither. As the period of my departure approached, he forwarded to me the requisite materials for its execution ; and, at or about the same time, he sent me the larger of the two donations — giving me to understand that his placing such a sum entirely at my disposal was intended not merely as a mark of personal respect and esteem, but also as a slight token of gratitude for what I had so cheerfully undertaken (and what in point of fact I was subsequently enabled) to accomplish on his account. ^ H: 4c ^ He H: ''Again J as to the argument for retaining certain funds on the ground that they had been ' granted by the people of Scotland to the earnest personal pleadings ' of the justly vene- rated Dr. Inglis, — if it be at all valid on the one sidcj it must ^t. 38. CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 35 be equally valid on tlie other. If it be really valid for retaining funds granted to the personal pleadings of one individual, repre- senting one class of sentiments^ it must be equally valid for re- storing funds that were granted to the personal pleadings of other individuals, representing another and totally different class of sentiments. On a matter of this kind delicacy forbids one to speak out; otherwise, how easy would it be to show that the funds granted, directly or indirectly, by the people of Scotland, to the earnest personal pleadings of the writer of these remarks, were, to say the least, not inferior in amount to those granted to the earnest personal pleadings of his revered father and friend. " But I am done with the painful subject, I hope for ever What I have written has been extorted from me in self-vindi- cation and self-defence. My sole object has been to set myself right with the Church of Christ, and even with the reasonable portion of the world at large, respecting matters of fact that affect character and integrity. Rather than provoke a quarrel or prolong a controversy on the subject, I at once, freely and for ever, relinquish all claim to any portion of the library and apparatus attached to the General Assembly's Institution, — however strong in moral equity I may still feel, and continue to feel, that claim to be. Indeed, could I have anticipated the manner in which the claim has been met, it never would have been advanced at all. But such was my estimate of the char- acter of the managing body at home, that I fondly hoped that a gentle hint as to the nature of the claim would have sufficed to have led to a reasonable and voluntary concession on their part — founded on a broad catholic, generous and magnani- mous view of the entire circumstances of the case. That the result has proved so contrary deeply grieves me — not so much on account of the loss which we incur, as on account of the loss which the cause of Christ is apt to sustain by the exhibi- tion of such a controversy in the sight of the heathen. May the Lord in His great mercy overrule the entire occurrence for good ! As to our immediate loss, I am much mistaken if there is not a spirit of life and liberality abroad among the Christian people of India, Scotland, England, and Ireland that shall very soon repair it — yea, perhaps, repair it so thoroughly, that our latter end, like that of the patient sufferer in the land of Uz, shall be better than the beginning. Time will show. 4: 4: ^ 4: « -X- 36 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 844. ''In many things, heretofore, I may have erred and come short. I may have erred in feeling ; I may have erred in motive; I may have erred in judgment ; I may have erred in over-zeal, not in regard to the great cause itself for which I pled — for who could be over-zealous in pleading for the tem- poral and eternal interests of a hundred and thirty millions of perishing idolaters ? — but I may have erred in over-zeal for particular modes and methods of promoting the cause, or for the independent possession of particular means and instrumen- talities towards its more effective and successful promotion. And if in these, or such-like, or in any other respects I may have erred, either through ignorance or otherwise, I again cast myself, without qualification or reserve, on the sovereign mercy of my God, in the atoning sacrifice and justifying righteousness of the Lord Jesus Chrisfc, and the sanctifying influences of the almighty Spirit of all grace ; — praying the Lord most fervently to forgive me freely these and all other sins and shortcomings whatsoever, — yea, and, in the plenitude of His ' unsearchable riches of grace,' so to illume the understanding, renew the heart, and strengthen every power and faculty of the regene- rated soul, that I may so err, so sin and so come short no more ! '' I do feel humbled and confounded to think that I should have been necessitated to devote so much of all valuable time to the elucidation of a theme so sterile and so profitless. Sur- rounded as I am by millions of poor blinded idolaters, to whom, as to all others, life is so short and uncertain and the redemp- tion of the soul so inestimably precious, it is with shame and unfeigned sorrow that, for a cause so intrinsically worthless, I have found myself called on, more especially by the agent of a missionary committee, to divert so much of time and thought and exertion from any of my evangelistic labours amongst them. Were any one at this moment to offer me, in free gift, a library and apparatus, of ten times or tenfold ten times the extent of those now in debate, under the contingent condition of its possibly entailing, some years hence, half the loss of time and vexation of spirit which, from first to last, has been incurred by the present wretched and unedifying discussion, I would fling the offer with loathing indignation away from me. Perish, would I say, perish for ever your library and apparatus, rather than that the Arch-enemy of souls should again have it m his power to convert them into an enginery for wasting the ^t. 38. MAGNANIMITY FOE CHRIST S SAKE. 37 season of a doomed sinner's probation, fomenting the spirit of acrimony and unkicdness, and kindling the flames of unhal- lowed controversy and strife — and that, too, in the very sight of tlie heathen whom we profess to pity and long to save. If, unrestrained by the miracles of grace and unawed by the grandeur of eternity, we desist not speedily — with what con- temptuous scorn may these hurl back upon us our arguments against the hatreds, the antipathies, and the discords which constitute the very soil of an ever-divided and ever-diverging heathenism ? With what ineffable disdain may they resent our most pathetical exhortations to mutual forbearance and heavenly charity ? And, oh, what a cutting, harrowing re- flection is this — that, under the influence of a blindfold zeal for the possession of a few paltry instrumentalities, which, if accumulated to infinity, could never of themselves save a single soul, any of us should be tempted to enact a part calculated to repel numbers of the dying multitude around us from the tree of life, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations, and fitted only to impel them to rush with more frantic speed into the embrace of an ever-yawning perdition ! May the Lord have mercy on any who, without being overborne by an imperative overmastering necessity, may directly or indi- rectly contribute towards such a fatal consummation ; and may we be endowed with the spii'it that would prompt us to ex- claim, in words of tenderness more touching than ever dropped from merely human lips ; ' Father forgive them, for they know not what they do/ '^ The other easy solution of the question, where shall the five missionaries, their staff, and their converts and students obtain a building large enough in all native Calcutta ? was this. Colonel Dundas and some Indian friends, in Scotland, had presented-Dr. Duff with about four hundred pounds as " a mark of respect" and for personal uses. This too he devoted to the Mis- sion. Adjoining the Institution in Cornwallis Square were three acres of unoccupied ground belonging to Government, but not enclosed and therefore the noi- some abode of all foulness. In vain had he asked the 38 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 844. local financial board to purchase it in order to meet the wants of the increasiag number of students and converts. The price was £3,500. On receiving a legacy of £1,000 he added this to the Dundas gift, and solicited the consent of Lord Auckland himself to the sale of the land for that sum, but tbe proposal liad first to be sanctioned by the Court of Directors. By the time that the deed of conveyance was ready, the Disruption controversy was approaching a close. Mr. Macleod Wylie, the barrister, who wrote a pam- phlet on *^ The Scotch Law of Patronage and the recent Secession," proving the Free Church right in law as in Scripture, advised Dr. Duff to keep the deed in his own name, the property being his own, until the issue of the conflict became clear. This he had done, and on this spacious open ground he might, naturally and most conveniently, have erected the new college. But he was too much of a Christian and a gentleman to do what might even seem, to Hindoo and Christian, a violation of that law of love which the ' residuary * committee, as it was called, had scorned. In the very reply to Mr. Thomas Scott he heaped coals of fire on its head by volunteering the explanation — " It is not intended to have any portion of this ground occupied for carrying on the missionary operations of the Free Church. Sufficiently ample it is, and most healthfully and favourably situated for the erection of a new Institution and Mission-house. Bat its proxi- mity to the old Mission premises has determined us not so to appropriate it ; that we may thereby prove to the world that, on our part at least, we are not actuated by vindictive or retaliatory motives, or ani- mated by a spirit of hostile rivalry. It will either be let or resold, and the proceeds, either way, will be wholly and exclusively applied to missionary purposes." The new Mission-house was erected there long after, Mt. 38. SYMPATHY OF EVANGELICAL CHURCHES. 39 and its yerj proximity to tlie old house enabled Dr. Duff to hold most friendly intercourse with so gentle and earnest a missionary as Dr. Ogilvie, whom the Church of Scotland sent up from Madras there to represent it. Thus was the controversial bitterness of the Western Kirk deprived of its evil results in the eyes of the young converts and the watchful heathen. The whole college vacation of 1843-44, extended to two months, was spent by the missionaries in exploring every nook and corner of the native city for a site and a temporary home. The renown of the Disruption sacrifice, which had gone out through all lands, had in India been increased by the decision to evict the missionaries from their college, even though they offered to purchase their own, very much as Carey and the Serampore brethren had been compelled to do in similarly indt\^ensible circumstances. From all sides, Hindoo as well as Christian, Anglican and Congrega- tionalist as well as Presbyterian, in America no less than in Asia and Europe, came expressions and proofs of indignant sympathy. This refers to the assistance of " W. Muir, Esq., Futtehpore," now Sir William Muir, K.C.S.L : " Calcutta, 4th October, 1843. " My Dear Sir, — I beg most gratefully to acknow- ledge your very handsome boon to our Free Church. Your note accompanying it, though short, was sweet and refreshing. One pregnant expression dropped from the lips of one of God's own children, has in it a consolation beyond all gold and silver. I know that your heart is with every good cause ; and I really believe that, however unworthy we may be, ours is one of the best of causes. It is the cause of Christ — the sole and supreme head of His Church — redeemed and ransomed by His precious blood. In case you might desire further information as to our movement, I 40 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. send you two or three pampTilets. We have many difficulties to contend with, but many friends to lend a helping hand; and, above all, many comforts of God's Holy Spirit to animate and sustain us. Our duty is to persevere in the work of the Lord, and leave all results with Him. The day of India's illumi- nation will yet dawn, and the light shall be glorious. That is enough for us, whether we are privileged to see it or not. — Yours very gratefully, Alexander Duff." The year 1844 opened with spontaneous gifts amounting to £3.400. The Protestant missionaries of Calcutta united in this catholic address. " To the Rev. A. Duff, D.D., W. S. Mackay, D. Ewarfc, J. Macdonald and T. Smith, Missionaries of the Scottish Mis- sion in Calcutta. "Dear Brethren, — We, the undersigned members of the missionary body in Calcutta, owing to events which have oc- curred in Scotland, and the decision at which you have felt it your duty to arrive on the matters in debate, are apprehensive that your connection with missionary operations in Calcutta generally, and especially your connection with the Institution founded by one of your number, and matured and presided over by you all, may be materially affected, — and desire to ex- press our sympathy with you under the peculiar circumstances in which you are placed, and our hope that your labours may be still continued in a sphere in which they have been so emi- nently useful. ^' While, as a missionary body, attached to different sections of the Church, and conscientiously differing as to the principles which have led to those events, we refrain from offering any opinion upon them, we yet can and do reiterate the expression of our conviction as to the expediency and desirableness of the continuance of your labours in Calcutta and in the sphere which you have hitherto occupied. " We feel that it is both natural and equitable, that the harvest should be reaped and enjoyed by those who have broken up the fallow ground, and according to their views of Chris- ^t. 38. ADDRESS FROM THE CALCUTTA MISSiONATtlES. 4 1 tian duty have diligently and faithfully sowed the seed of the kingdom of God for so many years. Nor are we unapprehensive that, should others, however well qualified, enter into your labours, the harvest, owing to their lack of experience and their necessary want of acquaintance with the language and habits of the people, would be considerably diminished, and the affections of many whose minds have by you been made familiar with the nature, doctrines, and precepts of Christi- anity, materially alienated from Christian influence, — a con- summation which we are confident no Christian, whatever might be his views on other subjects, can contemplate with indifference. '^ Irrespective of your labours in connection with the Insti- tution and other direct operations of the Scottish Mission, we should exceedingly regret anything that might remove you from a sphere in which your influence and co-operation with others, under the blessing of Christ, have so eminently sub- served the catholic purposes of our holy faith, both in Calcutta and India generally. " With regard to the momentous subject which has occa- sioned this communication, our prayer is, that all parties may be led to adopt the measures most conducive to the glory of our blessed Lord, and the extension of His kingdom. — We are, dear brethren, yours in the bond of the Gospel, *' (Signed) W. Yates, Baptist Missionary. A. Leslie, Do. J. Thomas, Do. - J. Brooks, General Baptist Missionary. Wm. Morton, London Missionary Society. G-. Pearce, Baptist Missionary Society. James Paterson, London Missionary Society. W. W. Evans, Baptist Missionary Society. G. Small, Do. James Innes, Church Missionary Society. James Long, Do. J. F. Osborn, Do. Jno. Campbell, London Missionary Society. Thos. Boaz, Do. R. De Rodt, Do. J. Wenger, Baptist Missionary Society. C. C. Aratoon, Do.-" 42 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1844. Arclideacon Dealtry, about to become the second Bishop of Madras, though a dignitary of the other Established Church, was even more emphatic, on the higher ground of a wrong done to the whole Catholic Church. The hunt for a college building, aided and sym- pathised in by good men of all creeds, concentrated itself on one place. In obtaining that Dr. Duff was helped by an orthodox Hindoo, the father of the most distinguished medical Bengalee, Rai Kanye Lai Dey Bahadoor, who has given us this account of it : " There was one house in Neemtollah street which was sufficiently commodious for the accommodation of an institution like the Free Church Institution, but it was in an untenantable condition, the joint owners thereof were not agreed among themselves and they had no mind to let the house for the use of a college. He knew a native gentleman, Rai Radhanath Dey Bahadoor, a man of note in his time as a deputy col- lector. Dr. Duff, if he liked, could have sent for him in order to confer with him on the subject of the house with the owners of which he was in relationship. But no ; he personally waited upon the Baboo from day to day in order to prevail upon him to use his interest with the proprietors to let the house on a long lease. The gentleman in question was himself a public-spirited man, and though an orthodox Hindoo he felt that in employing his humble services in this case he would be serving his country. He therefore heartily responded to the great missionary's desire, and succeeded in his intercession with the proprietors. Baboo Pran Kissen Sen and Brothers, to let the house, well known as that of the late Baboo Mothur Mohun Sen, to the Free Church missionaries. The terms offered were rather favourable to both the parties, which were the payment of a rent of Rs. 200 per month, and the defrayal of ^t. 38. LIGHT AEISING IN DAEKNESS. 43 the wliole expense of a thorough repair at a heavy outlay involving additions and alterations." Here on the 4th March, 1844, the General Assembly's Institution of the Free Church of Scotland met for the first time, and here it grew till on an adjoining site the present fine college was reared. There were the same missionaries, the same staff of teachers and monitors, the same converts to begin with, and more than a thousand students and pupils. The spacious hall, erst devoted to idol revelries, became the common place of worship of the living God in Christ. The shrine of the family image received the gallery class of children, who there learned to spell out the words of the Divine Teacher. From all parts of Eastern India and Scotland friends sent supplies of books for the new library. Dr. Mackay, who had built his usual observatory on the roof, was gladdened by the dona- tion of a Herschel ten-foot telescope from the son of Dr. Stewart, of Moulin memory. Dr. Duff's letters to Dr. Gordon, after reporting the tedious search and protracted negotiations which ended in success, thus broke forth on the 17th Feb- ruary, 1844, as he, doubtless, remembered the flash of the torch in the Tummel: "Never was there a happier or truer key-note struck than that with which Dr. Chalmers ushered in the ever memorable convocation, when he started with the text, ' Unto the upright there ariseth light in darkness.*" Even when in the depths of the darkness, he had faith and genius to form the scheme of a new chair of missions and education in the Free Church, of which he lived to procure the endowment and to be himself the first Professor : " Calcutta, January 20thj 1844. " My Dear Dr. Gordon, — ^Your truly welcome letter of October last was received in time last month to 44 MFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. acknowledge its receipt by the Government express. As I expected, it diffused great joy and gladness among all our friends. The promptitude, hearty goodwill and animating cheerfulness, — the unwavering faith in a covenant-keeping God, and the humble reliance on a gracious Providence indicated by its contents, tended mightily to invigorate our own spirits, and strengthen our hands, amid the changes, the discomforts and the inconveniences to which the recent disruption neces- sarily subjected us. We do render praise and thanks unto the Lord, for having put it into the hearts of our brethren and fathers at home to take up our cause, — the cause of poor, degraded, heathen India, — the cause of a hundred and thirty millions of perishing idolaters, — the cause of the Redeemer Himself, Who yet * shall see of the travail of His soul ' among these benighted millions, and be satisfied, — to take up this great and glorious cause, with such warmth and energy and holy zeal. It is a refreshing token for good ; yea, it is a pledge and earnest of prosperity and ultimate suc- cess. When, during the spring of last year, I received many letters from friends on both sides of the Church, all to the effect that, in the event of a disruption, those who seceded would have so much to do in making provision for their own spiritual wants that it would not be possible for them to take up the cause of foreign missions, I could not but feel alarmed at the bare possibility of such an issue. That it would be so I could not bring myself to believe. Still, the declara- tions made to me on this head were very strong and very baffling. In spite of the most positive assurances to the contrary, I had a secret, instinctive, irresistible persuasion that the thing was morally impossible. Thanks be to God that the event has so triumphantly proved it to be so ! The prominence given to the missionary cause at home and abroad, and the bold JEt 38. PLANS A PROFESSORSHIP OF MISSIONS. 45 trumpet note with which its claims have been sounded forth, proclaim that the Free Church of Scotland has started for the right goal, and in the right direction; and that having done so, she is destined to advance, with accelerative force, in the vigorous discharge of all the functions and duties of a true Church of Christ. May the Lord Himself watch over and guide her onward career ! " Connected with this subject, allow me to hint that a new professorship in the Free Church College, of missions and education, would tend mightily to im- part life, energy, wisdom and consistency to all her missionary and educational schemes, domestic and foreign. So far as I know, it would be the first pro- fessorship of the kind that has ever been established, and would tend more than anything else to stamp the Free Church as the introducer of a new era in the history of this world's christianization. I have pur- posely conjoined * missions and education,' as both united would comprehend a discussion of the best modes of imparting all useful knowledge, human and divine, to old and young, of all classes and of all climes, founded on the constitution of the human mind, history and experience, and, above all, the Word of God. *' We also desire to acknowledge the overruling providence of God, in the circumstance that our dear friend and brother, and fellow-labourer in the Lord, Dr. Wilson of Bombay, was enabled to be present to address the second General Assembly of the Free Church. And we desire to bless God for the strength vouchsafed to him on that occasion." CHAPTER XVII. 1844-1848. CONTINUITY OF THE WOBK. The Eural Stations. — The Storj of Bansberia. — Missionary Brother- hood.— Sir James Outram and the Sindh Prize-money. — Sir Henry Lawrence. — Reorganization of the Mission Completed. — Conversions and their Relative Value in Christianizing different Classes. — The Seven Baptisms. — The Native City again moved. Rival Hindoo College taught by Jesuits. — The True Zanana Teachinsf. — The " Pilo^rim's Progress " in Beno^alee. — Successful Vindication of the Rights of Conscience. — The Cry of " Hindooism in Danger " Renewed. —The Government Propagating Secularism. — Intolerance of the Hindoo Priestly and Wealthy Families. — More Baptisms. — Dr. Duff's Life Threatened. — His Intrepid Re- ply "to the Native Gentlemen of Calcutta." — Necessity for a Home, Church, and Manse for the Converts. — Life in Dr. Duff's Family. — Charge to the Four Free Church Catechists. — Mrs. Colin Mackenzie and the Rev. Goluk Nath. — Mercantile Failures in Calcutta. — Epistle from the General Assembly to the Converts. — Dr. Duff's Share in the First Jubilee of the Church Missionary Society. Having tlius founded and organized his second college, the Free Church General Assembly's Institution, Dr. DufE*s next care was for the branch schools by which the educated catechists and converts were evangelizing the rural districts. Takee, the first, was the property of the Chowdery clan of Hindoo landholders. They too remained faithful to their alliance with Dr. Duff. To secure a healthier position in which European mis- sionaries like Mr. Fyfe could Uve without serious risk, they removed the school from the somewhat inaccessible rice swamps to their town residence in Baranuggur, a northern suburb of Calcutta, now known for its jute factories and industrial prosperity. The Established )ft ^t. 38. THE STOEY OF BANSBERIA. 47 Churcli claimed the new station of Ghospara for the congregation of St. Stephen's, Edinburgh, who had supported Mahendra and Kailas, the native missionaries there. But Culna, being in a different position, was retained bj Dr. Duff and his colleagues as their second rural station. In succession, as the Mission grew in resources and ordained converts, Bansberia, Chinsurah, and Mahanad were added in Lower Bengal, while, long after, the south-eastern districts of the Santal country were taken possession of as a base from which to evangelize the non-Aryan and aboriginal tribes. The story of Bansberia illustrates the enthusiasm with which, not only in Calcutta, but to the farthest confines of India, good men, in the army and the civil service, sought to mark their sympathy with the Free Church Mission. On being driven from Ghospara, where the two ablest converts had begun a mission among the new sect of the Kharta-bhajas, or worship- pers of the Creator, with such promise. Dr. Duff re- solved to seek for a settlement in another county. Not even the natural irritation caused by the discussion of questions of property, in which equity was set at defiance, tempted him for one moment to dream of rivalry in a field so vast as that covered by the sixty millions of rural Bengal. He crossed the river Hooghly to its right bank, leaving the whole country on the left to the Established Church. A few miles to the north of the county town of Hooghly district, between that and Culna, he discovered the school-house of the Brumho Somaj, of Calcutta, closed and for sale. Dwarkanath Tagore, the successor of Rammohun Roy, had died in England, and his son was unable to maintain the educational work of the sect. The perpetual lease of the grounds as well as the large bungalow was pur- chased by Dr. Duff, whose first object it was to erect sub- stantial buildings for a Christian high school. For this 48 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. , 1844. there were no funds since the expenditure at Ghospara. Attracted by the self-sacrifice of the missionaries on the Disruption, Mr. Lennox, of New York, and his two sisters, had sent £500 to Dr. Duff, who at once distributed it proportionately among Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. Mr. Anderson and his colleagues re- fused the share allotted to them, on the ground of " the peculiar exigency and the local circumstances of the Calcutta Mission. Give us your prayers and keep the money; we have enough, my brother, — what is that between thee and us ? " Such loving renunciation called forth this remark from Dr. Daff in a letter to Dr. Gordon : " A finer exemplification of the genuine spirit that constitutes the bond of Christian brotherhood cannot well be conceived. How true it is that, in the spiritual body of Christ, if one of the members sufier all the other members suffer or sympathize with it. Distance of space and diversities of local interests are annihil- ated. The losses and difficulties of the Calcutta mis- sionaries touched a chord in the hearts of three noble- minded Christians in the city of New York — in ' the far west.' Now, across the Atlantic and the interven- ing continents of Europe, Africa, and part of Asia, their seasonable bounty reached us. We at once resolved to share it in equal proportion with our brethren in Madras and Bombay. The former having not suffered in temporalities as we had, return their share, with their blessings and their prayers. Blessed reciprocation and interchange of Christian good offices, and Christian love ! Shall we not magnify the name of the Lord, and pray more earnestly than ever for the spread and superabounding of a spirit such as this — not between members of the Free Church only, but between the true children of the living God in all Churches." Mt 38. SIB JAMES OUTRAM AND THE SINDH BLOOD-MONEY. 49 Soon the present fine college building of their own was to take the place of the hired house in Calcutta, and that would exhaust this and many other re- sources. There could be nothing for a new rural station like Bansberia till the central Institution was efficient. It was Sir James, then Major, Outram who came to the rescue. The first Afghan war had been succeeded by the even greater mistake of the policy of Sir Charles Ncipier in Sindh. The man who had written, " We have no right to seize Sindh, yet we shall do so, and a very advantageous, useful and humane piece of rascality it will be," received six thousand pounds as the GeueraFs portion of the prize-money. The Bom- bay officer who had protested against the ' rascality,' whose splendid administration of Sindh would have prevented war and secured a reformed country, had assigned to him three thousand pounds as his share. What was he to do with it? Though a Derbyshire man, three years older than Duff, as a great-grandson of Lord Pitmedden and a successful student of Marischal College, Aberdeen, Outram had watched the Scottish missionary's career with admiration. The puzzled officer turned to him for counsel as to the disposal of the money ; begging him in particular to ascertain privately if the Calcutta authorities would keep the three thousand pounds for the benefit of the injured Ameers. We may imagine the amazement, and indig- nation, of Lord Ellenborough at a proposal so simple, but so worthy of " the Bayard of India " and of the siugle-eyed missionary whom he had selected as his agent in so unique a transaction. The reply was, of course, a refusal, on the ground that the Ameers had been well provided for, and that the ofi*er, if it became public, would have the worst political e:ffect. The fact, accordingly, we learn now for the first time from Dr. VOL. II. B 50 L1J7E OF DR. DUFF. 1845. Duff's papers.* When lie communicated tlie refusal, Outram replied: "Very well, it cannot be helped; I regard this prize simply as blood-money, and will not touch a farthing of it for my own personal use, but will distribute it among the philanthropic and religious cliarities of Bombay." Soon after this Sir James wrote to Dr. Duff saying that, after a wide distribution of what he called blood-money, there still remained Rs. 6,000, and he asked, " Have you any object on the banks of the Ganges to which this can profitably be applied?" Instantly Dr. Daff replied, "Oh, yes! I want an educational institution in a populous locality on the banks of the river in an excellent situation, and have been waitino: a considerable time to secure the means of erecting a suitable building. Now singularly enough the minimum sum fixed on in my own mind was exactly Rs. 6,000, and if you approve the idea you may send that sum to me, and we shall commence at once the erection of the buildins^." The Mission-house was erected, and has been a source of numberless bless- ings to the neighbourhood; from its pupils a goodly number of conversions have sprung with a wide dif- fusion of Christian knowledge. The building still per- petuates the political purity and English uprightness of Outram, who replied, " What a pity I did not know about this earlier, otherwise for such objects, of which I highly approve, you might have got the whole of the money." When next he visited Calcutta, where Lord Dalhousie saw in him a kindred spirit, he spent a Saturday in the Institution. The man whose courage as a soldier and a statesman rose almost to madness, stipulated that he should not be asked to make a speech. The resting-place in Westminster * Sir Francis Outram has arranged for the preparation of a Memoir of his great father, by Sir Frederic Goldsmid. Mt 39. SIB HENRY LAWRENCE. 5 1 Abbey, and the equestrian statues by Foley on the Thames Embankment and fronting the Calcutta Clubs, commemorate his victories in Persia and the relief of Lucknow. But let not the Sindh blood-money and Duff's Bansberia school be forgotten, though recorded not on living marble or enduring brass. A greater man than even Outram, however, was from the first a generous ally of Dr. Duff. Sir Henry Lawrence, w^ho had found Christ when a young lieu- tenant of artillery at Dum Dum,and who had established at Ferozepore the American Presbyterian Mission from which the invitation to united prayer first sounded forth in 1860 among all English-speaking races, used to spend his whole income, beyond a bare sustenance, on Christian philanthropy in India. Every year from 1844 till he concentrated his energies on the Hill Asylums for soldiers' children, he sent four hun- dred pounds to Mr. Marshman for distribution among Dr. Duff's, the Serampore, the Church Missionary and other societies. At the same time others, such as Dr. T. Smith and the writer, were his frequent almoners down to the day of his heroic death. On his way home, in 1847, he took part in the public examination of the Institution, a fact to which we find Dr. Duff thus refer- ring at the time: " The Colonel Lawrence who assisted at the public examination is the same gentleman whose measures have been so wonderfully successful in pacifying the Punjab. He is to accompany Lord Hardin ge to England. For years past he has taken a warm interest in our Institution and its success, and has been a liberal contributor to its funds. In this and in other ways God is raising us up friends, even in high places ; and to Him we desire to ascribe all the praise and the glory." On his final return to India the year after, he and Outram, then seeking rest, hurriedly met in the dim- 52 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1845. ness of night in the desert of Suez, with impressions which Lady Lawrence thus recorded for her eldest son : " Our vans stopped ; papa got out, and in the twihght had ten minutes' talk with Colonel Outram. There is much alike in their characters, but Colonel Outram has had peculiar opportunities of protesting against tyranny, and he has refused to enrich himself I by ill-gotten gains. You cannot, my boy, understand the question about the conquest of Sindh by Sir 1 Charles Napier ; but I wish you to know that your I parents consider it most unjust. Prize-money has I been distributed to those concerned in the war. Colonel Outram, though a very poor man, would not take money which he did not think rightfully his, and distributed all his share in charity, giving £800 to the Hill Asylum at Kussowlie. I was glad, even in the dark, to shake hands with one whom I esteemed so highly." Thus Dr. Duff and his colleagues organized the second Mission in and around Calcutta, and among the most densely peopled portions of rural Asia — the counties of Hooghly and Burdwan to the north-west. " Oh," he wrote to Dr. Gordon, " that we had the resources, in qualified agents and pecuniary means, with large, prayerful, faithful hearts, to wait on the Lord for His blessing, and then under the present impulse might we, in every considerable village and district of Bengal, establish vernacular and English seminaries, that might sow the Seeds of divine truth in myriads of minds, and thus preoccupy them with principles hostile to ruinous error and favourable for the reception of saving knowledge. But to this end we would require not five hundred but fifty thousand for this Presidency alone. It looks like something utterly unattainable, yet the cost of one British vice for a single year — the annual sum expended on ^t. 39. CONVERSIONS AND THEIR RELATIVE IMPORTANCE. 53 ardent spirits, whicli destroy the bodies and tlie souls of thousands — would secure to us over fifty thousand schools!'* 'Nearly thirty years were to pass before, in Bengal proper, the Government did its duty on the secular side, and the Mutiny called the Yernacular Christian Education Society into existence to supply Bible schools, trained teachers and a pure literature, all on too small a scale. And now, as ever. Dr. Duff and all the Free Church of Scotland's missionaries in its three colleges and many schools, laboured and prayed for immediate conversions as the sign and the fruit of the Spirit's blessing on their patient sapping of the whole spiritual and social system of Brahmanism. Eeferriug to the baptism of a student, which had temporarily emptied the college in Madras, Dr. Duff wrote : " It must never be forgotten, that, while the salvation of one soul may not in itself be more precious than that of another, there is a prodigious difference in the relative amount of practical value possessed by the conversion of individuals of different classes, as regards its effect on society at large. It is this consideration, duly weighed, which explains the immense relative import- ance of the conversions that have taken place in connection with our several Institutions at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The number has been compa- ratively small. But the amount of general influence excited thereby must not be estimated according to the number. The individuals converted have be- longed to such classes and castes that the positive influence of their conversion in shaking Hindooism and convulsing Hindoo society has been vastly greater than it might have been if hundreds or even thousands of a different class or caste had been added to the Church of Christ. While therefore it is our duty to pray for immediate results, if the Lord will — to * attempt and 54 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. expect great things ' at His hands, — let us beware of being impatient. The Lord is working silently in the midst of us ; and when His time cometh He will make bare His holy arm for the salvation of multitudes. Meanwhile those occasional upheavings and convul- sions which apparently retard the progress of His cause He sovereignly overrules for its ultimate further- ance.'* That was written in April, 1844. In July there came to Dr. Duff's house one Gobindo Chunder Das, who had been removed from the old Institution during a panic caused by the baptisms of 1839. For six years the truth wrestled with the lad, overthrew now his timidity and now his pride, and sent him to Dr. Duff under strong convictions of sin and a firm resolution to sacrifice all for Christ. After the usual persecution by his family and clan he was received into the church and became a useful teacher in the college. He was the first-fruit of the Free Church Mis- sion as to his baptism, yet the change had been really originated in the old General Assembly's Institution. Every convert as well as every missionary thus main- tained the continuity of the work which had begun in July, 1830, in the Chitpore road. The conversion and baptism of young men of marked ability and high social or caste position now followed so fast on Gobindo' s that, once again, the Brahmanical community of Calcutta was moved to its depths. The year 1845 openedwith the public confession and admission of Gooroo Das Maitra, whom Dr. Duff gladly made over to the American Presbyterian Mis- sion at Lahore, when the Punjab became a British province soon after. There the Bengalee was ordained as a missionary minister. Thence he was long after " called," after the simple custom and ecclesiastical law of the spiritually independent Free Church, by the Bengalee Presbyterian Church in Calcutta, to be ^t. 39. BUNYAN's dream in the INDIAN VEENACULAES. 55 tlieir minister. To tliem, largely supporting him, lie still devotes liis life as preacher and pastor. At the same time Umesli Chunder Sirkar sought baptism. For two years the Bible teaching in the college had disturbed him, and had so drawn him towards Christ that his alarmed friends urged him to study Paine*s writings. These completed his conviction of the divine truth of Christianity, and of his duty to profess that conviction openly by obeying Christ's command. But he was young, only sixteen. He longed to instruct and take over with him his child- wife of ten, and his father was a stern bigot, of great authority and influence as treasurer to the millionnaire Mullik family. For two years, therefore, the boy- husband and his wife searched the Scriptures dili- gently in the midnight hours snatched from sleep, when alone, in the crowd of a great Bengalee house- hold, they could count on secrecy, though ever sus- pected. After much reading of the Bengalee Bible, TJmesh Chunder taught her the Bengalee translation of the " Pilgrim's Progress." * Here was the true zanana teaching, the best form of female education, that which has rendered all subsequent progress under English-speaking ladies possible. When the wife of twelve read the opening description of Christian's flight from the City of Destruction, she exclaimed, " Is * The greatest of human allegories has been translated into every principal Indian Vernacular. It has, in the East as in the West, proved to be the most popular Christian book next to the Bible. Mrs. Sherwood, wife of an Indian officer, and the weil-known storj- writer of the last generation, -wrote, in English, a curious adaptation of it for the use of the natives, called "TAe Indian Pilgrim; or, the Progress of the Pilgiim Nazareenee from, the City of the Wrath of God to the City of Mount Zion." But that the genius of Bunyan has made his Dream as suitable to the Oriental as to the Western, without such tampering with it, is shown by the popularity of the " Pilgrim's Progress " even with non- Christian Asiatics. 56 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. not this exactly our condition? Are not we now lingering in the City of Destruction ? Is it not our duty to act like Christian — to arise, forsake all, and flee for our lives ?" On the next idol festival, when even Hindoo married women are allowed liberty enough to visit their female caste friends in neigh- bouring houses in closed palankeens, Umesh conducted his true-hearted little wife to Dr. Duff's house. The then deceased Mahendra had supplied the copy of Bunyan's "Pilgrim" which had thus been blessed, and the more recent convert, Jugadishwar, had assisted Umesh in the flight. They came to the missionary's house on the Sabbath afternoon, on the close of a prayer meeting which one of the elders of the Free Church congregation, Mr. J. C. Stewart, son of Dr. Stewart of Moulin, used to hold with the converts. " While meditating in my own closet on the ways of God," Dr. Duff wrote afterwards, "and wondering whether and in what way He might graciously inter- pose to deliver us from our distresses, suddenly Umesh, his wife and Jugadishwar appeared before me. It looked like the realization of a remarkable dream. ' The Lord be praised,' said I. What could I say less ? His mercy endureth for ever. He had visited and holpen His servants." Now began a tumult such as no previous case, not even Gopeenath's, had excited. Dr. Duff's house was literally besieged. The Mulliks as well as the Sirkars, both families or clans, and their Brahmans, beset the young man. They attempted violence, so that the gate was shut next day to all but the father, the brother, and the wealthy chief of the Mulliks. For days this went on, for the missionary would not deny to the new convert's family that which was the only weapon he claimed for Christ — persuasion. At last the scene changed to the Supreme Court. Choosing his time ^t. 39. SIE LAWEENCE PEEL VINDICATES TOLERATION. 57 wlien the court was rising for the day, the father's counsel moved for a writ of habeas corpus to be directed to Dr. Duff to produce Umesh Chunder, on the affidavit that the youth was only a little more than fourteen years of age, and was kept in illegal restraint. The Chief Justice himself was on the bench, and Mr. Macleod Wylie happened not to have left the court. Sir Lawrence Peel, worthy to be the cousin of a states- man like Sir Robert, knew that Dr. Duff would not exercise restraint of any kind. Suspecting the truth of the affidavit, he investigated the case at once, and the writ was refused. The youth was really above eighteen years of age. There was no question raised as to his wife. Both were baptized, while a crowd of the Mulliks' followers raged outside, and their chief and the convert's father declined to be witnesses of the solemn service. In Bengal at least this was " the first instance of a respectable Hindoo and his wife being both admitted at the same time, on a profession of their own faith, into the Church of Christ by bap- tism." And the husband had brought the wife into the one fold. So, after the presentation by Gopeenath and his wife of their boy for baptism, the creation of the Christian family in the very heart of Brah- manism became complete. Silently is the little leaven leavening the whole lump. A week after, the tumult was repeated in the case of one who had been a student for eight years, and is now the Eev. Baikunta Nath Day, of Culna. He found refuge with Dr. Thomas Smith, then residing in the suburbs of Calcutta. Thence, in the missionary's absence, he was forcibly abducted, and was imprisoned, in chains, in a distant relative's house. Mr. Wylie obtained a writ of habeas corpus, but it was found im- possible to execute that, as happened about the same time in Dr. Wilson's case in Bombay. Meanwhile 58 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. against Clirist and the cliains Baikunta's family set all the sensual pleasures in which idolatry is so fertile. As Dr. Duff reported the case, "every attempt was made not only to pervert the mind, but corrupt the very morals of the young man — in order, if possible, to unfit him for becoming a member of the visible Church of Christ. What a testimony to the purity of Christianity ! — the very heathen practically confess- ing that impurity and uncleanness are incompatible with an honest or consistent profession ! and that one of the surest ways of preventing a person from becom- ing a Christian, is to debase his moral feeling, and brino- the stain of vice on his character ! What a testimony, on the other hand, against heathenism ! It can tolerate any enormity — theft, drunkenness, hypo- crisy, debauchery — these, and such like violations of the moral law, it can wink at, palliate, or even vindi- cate; but to seek for the pardon of sin, and the sanctification of a polluted heart, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the open profession of His name — this, this it cannot and will not endure, but must visit with reproach, ignominy, and persecution even unto death ! Happily, however, the young man was en- abled to resist all temptations and allurements; and happily, too, he was not overcome, so as to deny or be ashamed of the name of Jesus." The place of his captivity was discovered, the writ compelled his sur- render, and he has since been an earnest teacher and accredited preacher of the truth of which he thus witnessed a good confession. The record, in their own language, of the doubts and fears, the aspirations and convictions, the turning and the triumph of the converts from Brahmanism and Muhammadanism, in India, influenced by all the Churches but especially by the Scottish system of evangelizing, would form a volume precious to the JEt 39. THE SEVEN FAITHFUL ONES, 59 liistory of Christianity, early and later. The Clemen' tines and the Confessions of Augustine would have many a parallel. We do not doubt that coming generations of tlie Church of India will, in their own tongue, thus tell the wonderful works of God. But it would be well if the detailed experiences of the first converts in Calcutta and Bombay, in Madras and Nagpore, in Allahabad and Agra, in Lahore and Peshawur, were collected before it is too late. We need do no more than mention the names of the three other converts who made up the seven faithful ones whom Dr. Duff's Free Church College at the opening of the second year of its existence sent to the baptismal font. These were Banka Behari Bose, Harish Chunder Mitter, and Beni Madhub Kur. Nor were Hindoos the only converts. . Five Jews, headed by Eabbi Isaac, and forming an almost patriarchal household, were led by an English officer, whom the Disruption had attracted to the Free Church, to seek instruction from Dr. Duff and baptism into the name of Jesus the Messiah. Again was there raised the cry of " Hindooism in danger." The Institution, which in its college and school departments had risen to above a thousand in daily attendance, and thirteen hundred on the roll, lost three hundred youths in one week. In his first cam- paign of 1830-34, Dr. Duff had found himself fronted by the orthodox Brahmanical families only. But now these were reinforced by the wealthy clans of MuUiks and Seels, by men of low but respectable castes who, under the previous half-century of British rule, had risen from the buying and selling of empty beer bottles and other European refuse, to become landholders with a capital reckoned literally by crores of rupees or mil- lions sterling. The poverty and greed of the Brahman- ical priesthood, allied with the wealth of the socially ambitious nouveaiix riches, on whom it conferred a . 6o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. sanctified respectability, became apparently a far more formidable opposition than any which the Scottish Missions had yet been called to encounter. Nor was this all. Jesuits had invaded the diocese of the Irish Eoman Catholic bishop, and he was long in getting them driven out, only, however, to see them return in that greater force which has of late injured the true interests of the Papacy in the East. While the Brahmans cursed Dr. Duff, their low caste allies, the Seels and Mulliks, resolved to establish a rival college. They turned to the Jesuits, and to an Irish adventurer named Tuite, as the only so-called Christians who would consent to teach English and Western science on purely secular lines. Thus was established SeeFs Free College, of which a Mullik is still the secretary, and is now so fair as to write in the last report we have seen : " I must acknowledge the great benefit which has been derived by our children from the efforts of Christian missionaries." Similarly one Gourmohun Addy estab- lished the Oriental Seminary as an adventure school. Apart from the intolerance and bigotry of the move- ment it is deeply to be regretted, and most of all by the missionaries, that the natives of India, of all creeds, have not thus independently sought to supply educa- tion to their children after their own fashion. They began to do this in 1818 in the Hindoo College. But they always childishly fell back on Government for public instruction as for political and administrative development. As between them and the missionaries a fair grant-in-aid system would have brought out the self-reliant natives, and men of Dr. Duff's stamp at least had no fear of the issue in so fair a field. But as between Government and the missionaries — a Government necessarily neutral in principles and secular or antichristian in practice — the Churches and the Parliament of the governing country see all that is ^t. 39. HINDOO] SM FIGHTING CHKISTIANITY. 6 1 good in Hindooism destroyed, while that alone which can fill the moral void and supply the spiritual moti\^e power is officially discouraged. It is orthodox Hin- doos, in each generation, who are the present victims, as they bitterly complain. But it is the public security and contentment, the national progress and peace, which are threatened, as Lord Northbrook and even Lord Lytton have lately confessed. The Churches and their agents are meanwhile injuriously checked by the unparalleled patronage, by the Indian Government, of a system of purely secular public instruction, in de- fiance of the Despatch of 1854, which Dr. Duff, as we shall see, devised as a remedy fair to all. He himself must now picture the scene : — '^Calcutta, July 2, 1845. *' My Dear Dr. Gordon, — Our Institution is still standing — standing out bravely amid the incessant peltings of a storm which has continued to rage for two months with scarcely a single lull. Thanks be to God for the result ! Shaken it has been — severely shaken ; how could it be otherwise ? But the real wonder isj that it has not been torn up, root and branch. The combination against it has been all but universal, includ- ing nearly the whole rank, wealth and power of the native community, of all classes, sects and castes. . . *( "VVere it not for the adhesive force of the attachment of our pupils to ourselves and our system, the Institution, as a living one, would undoubtedly have been clean swept away. Whence, then, this attachment ? Solely from the considerate kindness with which love to their souls ever prompts us to treat- them ; and from the nature of the instruction received, both as regards its substance and the mode of its conveyance. Only let us become cold, lukewarm, or inattentive in our personal exertions and intercourse with the pupils ; and let the fulness and efficiency of our course of instruction suffer any material diminution or abatement; and then, however the Institution may rear up its head amid the sunshine and the calm, the very first gust of a tempest, like that which has recently swept over it, would blow it all away. There is no medium between 62 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. doing our work tliorougbly and not doing it at all. No exer- tion, therefore, and no reasonable expense, should ever be spared in maintaining unimpaired the vigour and effectiveness of the entire machinery — physical, intellectual, moral and religious. On this, humanly speaking, depends the whole dynamic force of our well-doing in connection with its vital bearings on the mightiest interest of time and eternity. '^ Recent events have also tended strikingly to exhibit the weakness and helplessness of Hindooism. Its whole strength, in the metropolis of India, has been mustered in hostile array against Christianity and its missionaries. Rajas and Zemin- dars, Baboos and Brahmans, have all combined, counselled, and plotted together. An eye-witness, at one of the great Sabbath meetings at which not fewer than two thousand were present^ assured me that several hundreds consisted of Brahmans, who, at times, literally wept and sobbed, and audibly cried out, saying ' that the religion of Brahma was threatened with de- struction, and that, unless energetic measures were instantly adopted, their vocation would soon be at an end ! ' In such a desperate crisis of affairs, what plans might naturally suggest themselves to men upborne by a penetrating consciousness of the rectitude of their own cause ? Would it not be the insti- tuting of a public lectureship, or some other engine for ex- posing the claims and pretensions of the so much dreaded Christianity? — the contemporaneous establishing of lecture- ships, professorships, or other appropriate means for expound- ing, inculcating, and upholding the tenets and peculiarities of the Hindoo religion and ritual ? But no ; the prevailing taste is not found, after all, to lie in this way ; a new current is dis- covered setting in a contrary direction. The grand object is to crush Christianity and perpetuate Hindooism. And how is this end to be compassed by the united wisdom of Hindoo ^ princes, nobles, and sages? By founding an English college ifor the teaching of European literature and science ! They have idone the worst which they could against us; and this is the worst ! In other words, the most effective measure which, in the present state of things in the metropolis of British India, the confederated votaries of Hindooism have been able to con- trive against Christianity — its encroachments and threatened successes — has been to originate a new scheme of English education ! — a scheme which, from its exclusion of Christianity ^t. 39. LEAGUE AGAINST DR. DUFF's COLLEGE. ' 63 may, in the first instance, be, or appear to be, hostile to it ; but which, in the long run, will by no means be found neces- sarily hostile, and often positively friendly ; while, in the end, it is sure to prove absolutely ruinous and suicidal as regards Hindooism ! In briefer and plainer words still — the only way at present in Calcutta for upholding Hindooism, is to establish a system which must eventually prove fatal to it ! What a singular commentary does this one fact furnish on the extra- ordinary peculiarity of the presence, position, and destiny of the British power in India ! Surely there are mysteries of Pro- vidence here to call for the gravest reflection, while they baffle all our eff'orts adequately to comprehend or conceive them ! *^ Recent events have also supplied fresh evidence of the importance of Calcutta as a centre of operations — a focus of emanative influences. To it, as the emporium of commerce, and the seat of the supreme government as well as of the supreme courts of review, natives resort from all parts of Eastern India. These keep up a regular and extensive corre- spondence with their respective homes. In this way intelli- gence of all movements and occurrences here is rapidly con- veyed to all parts of the country. A few days sufficed to make the principal stations, and many of the obscurest villages in Bengal, acquainted with the general drift and character of recent measures, and their originating causes. Not later than yesterday, I happened to receive a letter from a gentleman at a remote station, considerably beyond Allahabad, in the upper provinces. He states that the great anti- missionary movement, or rather Anti-Free-Church-Institution movement in Calcutta, almost immediately affected the missionary schools there. Some natives of that place, presently resident in Calcutta, had written to their friends, apprizing them of all that had happened, and urging them to sound the alarm far and wide, with the view of withdrawing all children from the missionary schools. Many took the alarm, and acted on the advice ; so that for a few weeks the schools were seriously affected. The panic, however, was gradually abating ; and it was expected that ere long all would return. Who may not perceive in these suc- cessive waves of alarm rolling over the great Gangetic valley, containing more than half the population of all India — stirring up the dormant myriads into something like wakefulness, originating new and unwonted inquiries, suggesting now 64 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1845. thoughts, introducing new ideas, and leading to new and strange forebodings of future change — who may not perceive in all this one of the many providential preparations for the ultimate and more effective propagation of the Gospel itself? And what is true of Calcutta is, in a corresponding measure, true of Madras and Bombay. '^ How often does the Word of God assure us that, sooner or later, the wicked shall be taken in their own craftiness, and fall into the pit which they have dug for others ! An instruc- tive example of this has occurred in connection with the recent antichristian movement. The united meeting of Hindoos had resolved to draw up a written form of agreement, which, under the threat of excommunication, or loss of caste, was to be forced on the parents and guardians of pupils attending our Institution. In compulsorily signing this agreement, they were to bind themselves to remove the pupils from ours, and send them to the new college. This agreement was regarded as the grand bond of union and strength to the confederacy, and the surest guarantee of the success of its leading scheme. Well, the agreement was formally drawn up. Its principal concocter happened to be a leader of the Brahma Sobha, or Vedant school of Hindooism, which professes to worship one supreme something, called Brahma. Now, from unchanging hereditary usage, every written document among the natives, however commonplace, must be headed by the name or designation of one or other of the popular deities. In this part of India it is usually that of Ganesha, the god of wisdom, or one or other of the names of the favourite Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnoo. Consistently with their own professions, the members of the Brahma Sobha could not employ any of these. Brahma, or any one of his pecAiiiar designations, is their symbol. On the present occasion, however, no peculiar symbol of the Brahma Sobha could be introduced, as that would offend and irritate the members of the Dharma Sobha, the devoted up- holders of polytheism in its grossest forms. It would also be objected to by the colluvies of individuals who belong to neither of these Sobhas. Accordingly, the author of the written agreement and his coadjutors thought they had solved the difficulty by proposing to insert, at the head of the document, the simple term for ^ God,' viz., Ishivar. This, they con- cluded, would suit all parties, and each might then put what ^t. 39. THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN LEAGUE. 65 interpretation on tlie word he pleased. An adherent of the Brahma Sobha might suppose it meant Brahma, the supreme god ; an adherent of the Dharma Sobha might suppose it meant any one of the gods in the Hindoo Pantheon ; an ad- herent of neither might suppose it meant the god of his system, whether that were Nature, Necessity, Chance, or any other equally preposterous phantom. With the capacious latitu- dinarian superscription of Ishwar, or ' God,^ therefore, the agreement was put in circulation. Reaching the gooroo, or Brahmanical spiritual guide of the Eaja Rhadakant Deb — a genuine representative of the uncompromising orthodoxy of the age of the Rishis, or divine sages, and Manu — he at once snuffed heresy in the document. * What innovation is this ? ^ exclaimed he, in conservative ire; ^what strange innovation is this ? Who ever heard of the simple term Lskwar being at the head of an orthodox document ? No, no ; this must be some new symbol of the Brahma Sobha; and by inserting it here, they wish to entrap us and commit us to their newfangled fancies. No, no ; this will not do at all.' So saying, in sub- stance, he seized his genuine calam or reed-pen, blotted out the term Ishwar, and substituted, Sri Sri Hari, one of the appellations of Krishna. The document then proceeded on its travels. It soon fell into the hands of a member of the Brahma Sobha. ' What ! ' exclaimed he in his turn, ' What ! sign a document with Sri S7'i Hari at the head of it V — Hari, whose most notable exploits were the running away with the clothes of a poor washerman, and the playing all sorts of fantastic pranks with sixteen thousand milkmaids! 'No, no; this will never do. To sign a document so headed, would be to re-commit me to a formal sanctioning of all the gods and goddesses whose worship, as a member of the Brahma Sobha, I profess to slight or despise.^ So saying, he must needs scratch out the obnoxious Sri Sri Hari, and re-introduce Ishwar instead. At length matters threatened to come to an open rupture. The subject was fully debated at a public meeting. It was there so far compromised. The wound, however, was only patched up — not healed. And though, from fear of failure, policy and other causes, an outward truce has apparently been the result, it has left a fatal sore, that keeps rankling within, and may some day unpleasantly show. Thus it has happened that the agreement which was expected VOL. II. P 66 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1847. to form the very bond of union and strength, has been so overruled as to prove a source of jealousy, rivalry and weak- ness ! '' After a lull for two years, the opposition was again fanned, by furtber baptisms, into a flame which threat- ened tbe destruction of Dr. Duff himself. Uma Churn Gbose, baptized by tbe Eev. Mr. Macdonald just before death removed tbat saintly man, was made over to the Churcb Missionary Society, for service at Jubbul- pore. Then followed, in 1847, four baptisms, by Dr. Duff, of Koolin Brabmans — Pran Kissen Gangooly, since employed at Arrab; Kalee Das Chukurbutty, sent to Hyderabad as a teacher ; Judoo Nath Ban- erjea, who became treasurer of the Small Cause Court at Kooslitea ; and Shib Chunder Banerjea. The last has ever since been one of the most faithful catechists and preachers yet given to the Church of India. Labouring with his hands like Paul, that he may be at no man's charges, and trusted by the Government he serves in its treasury, alike at Calcutta and Simla, the zealous, eloquent Rev. Shib Chunder Banerjea gives all his leisure to evangelizing his countrymen. With his name we may here associate that of a convert of 1850, who was baptized after Soorjya Koomar Haldar, head-master of a school, and Deena Nath Adhya, a Government deputy magistrate. Shyama Churn Mookerjea showed all the manly as well as Christian virtues which Macaulay failed to find in the Bengalee. Having embraced Christ with the whole strength of his nature, and being denied his wife in the absence of the Christian marriage and divorce law passed too late for his case, he visited this country to study as an engineer, shouldered his rifle as a volunteer in Agra Fort during the Mutiny, and has since been the generous friend of his poorer Christian countrymen. He started a native mission of his own in East Bengal, ^t. 41. THE THIED COVENANT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 67 and he is now tlie popular hymn-writer for and man- ager of those 'keertuns' or services of sacred song by which, every Sabbath evening, hundreds of Hindoos are attracted to hear the gospel in the Institution where he himself found Christ. To all the new con- versions of 1847 was added the first in Dr. Duff's old Institution since it had been opened by the Established Church — the baptism of one of his old students. That resulted in the defeat of the Hindoo application for a writ of habeas corpus, the youth having reached the years of discretion. The old animosity, fed by terror, burst out, and all native Calcutta held what the English daily papers called " an antichristian meeting," a " Hindoo demonstration against the Mis- sionaries and Christianity." The Hurkdru thus re- ported the scene on Sunday the 19th September, 1848 : " The meeting was crowded to excess by a curious and motley group of natives, of every caste and creed. There was the Gosain, with his head full of Jaydeva, and the amorous feats of his sylvan deity ; the Tan- trist, still heated with the hhachra or Bacchanalian carousal of the preceding night ; the educated Free- thinker, as ignorant of God as he was of the world when at college ; the Yedantist, combining, in himself, the unitarianism of the Yedist with the liberalism of the Freethinker — all assembled under the general appellation of Hindoo, to adopt proposals of the best means for the oppression of the common enemy. The proceedings began with Eaja Rhadakant Deb taking the chair. It was resolved that a society be formed, named the Hindoo Society, and that, in the first in- stance, each of the heads of castes, sects, and parties at Calcutta, orthodox as well as heterodox, should, as members of the said society, sign a certain covenant, binding him to take strenuous measures to prevent any person belonging to his caste, sect, or party, from 68 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1848. educating his son or ward at any of the missionary institutions at Calcutta, on pain of excommunication from the said caste, or sect, or party. Many of such heads present signed the covenant. It was presumed that the example will be soon followed by the inhabi- tants of the Mofussil. One of the orthodox party present at the meeting said, after its dissolution, addressing himself to the boys present — ' Babas, be followers of one God; that is, Yedantists. Eat whatever you like, do whatever you like, but be not a Christian.'* Such of the British residents in Calcutta thirty years ago as still survive, have a lively recollection of the ter- rorism of that time in the native quarter. The favour- ite and the familiar mode of attacking private enemies and redressing private wrongs, in defiance of the law, was by hiring latteeals, or club-men. The courts in the interior were then few, and comparatively powerless. Native landholders and British indigo-planters thus, too often, settled their differences about lands and crops, for the East India Company was too conserva- tive to keep pace with administrative and legislative necessities. But in Calcutta the Supreme Court had administered English criminal and sectarian civil law, ever since the dread days of Sir Elijah Impey, with stern impartiality. There, at least, there was quiet. Nevertheless, so determined were the orthodox and the vicious Hindoo majority to stop these conversions, that some of them plotted to get rid of the great cause of them all, as they supposed. Dr. Duff. Mr. Seton-Karr, then a young civilian, still recalls to us " the great stir made by some conversions, and the threats of a physical attack by latteeals to be made on Dr. Duff, to which he replied with his characteristic intrepidity." Having previously discussed " the new anti-missionary movement " in letters to the Hurharn, ^t. 42. HIS PERSON THREATENED. 69 signed " Indophilus,'* under the same name Dr. Duff addressed this " statement and appeal," this " word of faithful and firm, yet kindly admonition, to some of the Calcutta Baboos/' " TO THE NATIVE GENTLEMEN OF CALCUTTA. ''Dear Sirs^ — For some days past_, sundry disagreeable rumours have been afloat among the native community of this city. At first I treated them with perfect indifference ; but they have been reiterated so often, and have reached me from so many quarters, alike native and European, that I now deem it most just towards all parties thus publicly to notice them. The nature of these rumours may best appear from the follow- ing extracts from certain communications, which have been addressed to me by gentlemen of character and respectability. *' One writes thus : — ^ There is, I hear, a conspiracy among the wealthy Baboos to hire some ruffians to maltreat you. If you treat it (the report) with contempt, you will go on as usual. On the contrary, if you think the report to be true, you will avoid going out at night, or rather never go the same road twice together.' Another writes thus : — ' I am no alarmist; but, whether with reference to the late baptisms, or other general causes, I have been credibly and seriously informed this day that there is, or is to be, a plot, by which some rufl&ans of the baser sort are hired to assault you — when, or where, could not of course be stated. Weighing the matter well, I thought it right to communicate this in common pru- dence. Pray, do not at least go out at night, nor return by the same road,' etc. " These extracts, from some of the communications addressed to me by respectable gentlemen, are enough, in the way of sample or specimen, to indicate the general character of the rumours which have been currently prevalent and extensively believed for some days past. And it is the strength of their prevalency, in connection with the credence which they have so largely gained, which makes me feel that it is more kind, more friendly, and more just towards those at whom the rumours point, thus openly and frankly to appeal to you. ^'1. If that part of the rumours be true which alleges that you are at length to submit to sacrifices and self-denial for 70 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1848. the sake of being profusely liberal in tbe cause of native en- lightenment, no one can rejoice more in the fact than I do. The inculcation of the duty of liberality in a worthy cause has been one of the great objects of my life and labours since I came to India. And were but a tithe of what is now so lavishly expended on riotous and idolatrous feasts and festivals, and nautches, and marriages, and endless superstitious ceremonies, devoted to the cause of English education, it would undoubtedly tend to accelerate the progress of events towards a new and better era for this long benighted land. The religious societies in Great Britain raise anmialhj, by voluntary contributions, at least half a million sterling, or fifty lakhs of rupees, for the enlightenment not of their own countrymen, but of races of men scattered throughout the world whom they have never seen. And this they do because Christianity, which they be- lieve to be the only true and worthy revelation from God, enjoins them to love all men, and to do good to all, as they have opportunity. Now, if you begin to set a similar example of liberality in well-doing to the people of Asia, and primarily for the benefit of your own countrymen, or if you outrival your fellow-subjects in Great Britain, and thus be the means of stirring them up to still greater munificence, I shall hail the achievement as one that shall gain you immortal renown, and for your country, under the overruling providence of God, an accession of blessings that shall enrich and ennoble the latest posterity. " 2. As to the threats of violence, which, according to many- tongued rumour, are said to be loweringly suspended over the heads of parents who, in the free exercise of their own parental rights as free-born citizens of a free state, have been pleased, or may yet be pleased, to send their children to the Free Church Institution with which, for the last seventeen years, I have been connected, I must, in the absence of all positive proof, and in the exercise of ordinary charity, believe either that the report is unfounded or grossly exaggerated. That such rumours, even if wholly unfounded, should so readily gain credence with so many of our fellow- citizens, is melancholy enough, as indicative of some lingering remnants amongst us of the persecuting spirit and practice of a bygone age. But that any such threats as busy rumour insists on proclaiming, should really have been held out by a self -constituted body of private individuals, and JEt. 42. HIS APPEAL TO THE EDUCATED NATIVES. 7 1 hung, in terrorem, over the heads of free-born British subjects, their own fellow-citizens, would bo vastly more melancholy still. Such a portentous phenomenon would prove, beyond all debate, that the Calcutta Baboos were not what their best friends sincerely wish them to be. Such a flagrant outrage on the principles of toleration, equity, and civil order, would serve mournfully to convince the sincerest advocates of Indian amelioration, that despite the multifarious processes of thirty or forty years^ education, the Calcutta Baboos were still the representatives of antiquated intolerance, and openly repudiated any genial alliance with the fraternity of modern civilization. It would serve to transport us in vision to the days of Manu, or, rather, painfully to revive amongst us practices which, however conformable to the genius of the Institutes, would soon tend to plunge us into the very depths of a revolting barbarism. Again, then, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the credit of our native gentry, I must suppose that the rumours are either wholly unfounded or grossly exaggerated. Of one thing I am sure, and to their honour I must proclaim it, that, amongst the Calcutta Baboos there are those whose kind-heartedness, good sense, and enlightened principles, would lead them to shun and even denounce any violent and illegal measures to coerce their poorer fellow- citizens in the exercise of their undoubted rights and privileges, as men and as British subjects. '^ 3. As to the rumour of threats respecting myself, I shall continue to treat it as an ^idle tale.'' Among the Calcutta Baboos there are those whom I respect and esteem, and to whose keeping I would at any time entrust my life, in the most perfect confidence of friendship and protection. If others, who do not know me personally, should, in ignorance of my principles and motives, entertain unkindly or hostile feelings towards me, the fact would be in no way surprising. Even if the alleged threats were real, and not the progeny of lying fiction, I should not be in the least degree moved by them. My trust is in (xod ; and to me that trust is a guarantee of security far more sure than a lodgment within the citadel of Fort-William, with its bristling array of artillery. To this country I originally came, not of necessity, but by free choice, for the express purpose of doing what I could in diffusing sound knowledge of every kind, and especially the knowledge of 72 LIFE OF DE, DUFF. 1848. that great salvation which is freely offered in the gospel to all the kindreds and tribes of the fallen family of man. The only means employed are patient instruction, oral and written, in every variety of form, accompanied and enforced by the appli- ances of moral suasion. Old and young are uniformly dealt with, as endowed with rational and moral faculties, and, therefore, accountable for the proper use of them. They are exhorted to awake, and arise from the slumbers of inveterate apathj^, incon- sideration, and indifference. They are called upon to acquit themselves like men, in thinkiug, judging and acting for themselves, under a solemn sense of their responsibility to God, the alone Lord of conscience. Of course, it follows, that should any respond to the call that is thus addressed to them they must, in varying degrees, have eyes open to discern the error and the evil of many ancient hm^editary beliefs, habits, and practices. And should they be endowed from on high with the necessary fortitude to give effect to their new convictions, the result is inevitable; they must, to a great extent, separate themselves, in the present unpropitious and transitionary state of things, from the surrounding mass. That, instead of admir- ing the decision, and applauding the consistency of such a course of conduct, the great inert mass of conservatism should resent the separation as an insult, an indignity, an injury offered to itself, need occasion little wonder, however much the intel- lectual and moral blindness of such procedure may awaken serious regret. And that the human agents or instruments employed in effecting such changes, however pure in their motives, benevolent in their intentions, or disinterested in their ends and aims, should share in the resentment of the thoughtless, the unreasonable, the carnally-minded, the selfish, or the profane, follows as by a law of fatal necessity. " But we live by faith, and not by sight. Our principles are not of human, but of divine origination. They are not of mushroom growth, springing up to serve an ephemeral purpose to-day, and vanishing to-morrow. They are not like the ever-shifting sands of worldly expediency, glancing in the sunshine of popular applause before us at one time, and behind us at another; now obedient to the breeze on the right hand, and then on the left. No ; our principles are, in their fountain- head, old as eternity; and as they come streaming forth athwart the course of time, they bear upon their front the Mt 42. CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY. 73 impress of immutability. Vain then, preposterouslj vain, must be any attempt to drive us from the promulgation of these ennobling principles by threats of terror or of violence. For, not only are they in their own nature unchangeable, but, in their main scope, purpose and end, they exhibit an aspect of inexpressible kindness towards man; so much so, that were man not his own greatest enemy in rejecting them, were he only his own best friend in cordially embracing them, his whole nature would be renovated, and the earth itself, now filled with envies, jealousies, rivalries and violence, would be transformed into a universal Eden of blessedness. Here is a specimen of the system of principles or truths which we teach i — " * In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' ^ So God created man in His own image' (or moral likeness). 'And God saw every thing He had made, and behold it was very good.' ^ God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions.' 'By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.' But, 'the Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.' He is 'of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity.' ' The wrath of God is revealed from heaven ao^ainst all uno-odliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.' At the same time, the Lord hath proclaimed His name, saying, ' The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth ; keeping mercy for thou- sands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty,' As for the race of man, ' There is none righteous, no not one : there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God : they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.' But, ' God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' ' God is love.' ' Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' ' If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.' ' If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us : if we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' 'Let every one that nameth the 74 I'IFE OF DR. DUEF. 1848. name of Christ depart from all iniquity/ 'Blessed are tlie pure in lieart, for they shall see God/ ' Love your enemies ; bless them that curse you ; do good to them that hate you ; and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you/ ^ Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good/ " Such are some of the heavenly principles, which, in obedi- ence to a divine command, we feel ourselves imperatively called on to publish and inculcate, for the temporal and spiritual improvement of our fellow-creatures. And though numbers of the present generation, in their ignorance and infatuated blindness to their own best interests, should rise up to curse and otherwise maltreat us, through the appropriate agency of hired ruffians — nevertheless, so far from being deterred from prosecuting our chosen walk of truest benevolence, we shall only be impelled the more, by the pity and compassion which such suicidal opposition must ever inspire, to persevere with augmenting diligence and energy in the attempt to confer the greatest of benefits on those who thus blindly resist us ; — in the full assurance, that, however they may misconstrue our motives, or vilify our good name, or thwart our measures, their more enlightened descendants shall yet arise to bless us for our labours of love, and enshrine our names in perpetual re- membrance. But if it were otherwise ; if we knew for certain, that from our fellow-men we could expect nothing but hatred and contempt during life, and the brand of infamy attached to our names after death, we should still work on, sustained by the testimony of our own consciences and a full sense of the approbation of the great God. In this world we never expected any adequate return for our self-denying labours; it is to heaven we have always looked, in assured faith, for the eternal recom- pense of reward. Come then what may — come favour or dis- favour, come weal or woe, come life or death — it is our resolute purpose, by the blessing of God, to persevere. It is our hearths desire to see the soul of every son and daughter of India truly regenerated by the quickening word of the living God, accom- panied by the efficacy of His almighty Spirit ; and thus to see India itself at length arise from the dust, and, through the influence of her regenerated children, become a praise and a glory in the whole earth. And the realization of a consum- mation so glorious, so far from being retarded, can only be hastened by the vigorous execution of such intolerant and JEt. 42. HIS IISTEEPIDITY AND FAITH. 75 violent measures as rumour now so stoutly attributes to tlie sliorfc-sightedness of the Calcutta Baboos. Truly may tlie Christian^ with reference to the projectors of such measures, take up the sublimely benevolent prayer of his cruelly perse- cuted and crucified Lord, in behalf of the savage murderers, and say, ^ Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do/ Let the Calcutta Baboos, whom rumour represents as assembling, on Sundays, in secret conclave to brood over dark plots and hatch schemes of violence against their unoffending fellow-citizens, remember that the actual execution of such schemes would inflict deadly injury on no one but themselves, and irretrievably damage no cause but their own ; — while the cause of those whom they now mistakenly regard as adversaries, when they are in reality their best earthly benefactors, would thence receive an accelerative impetus, which the united friendly patronage of all the men of rank and wealth in India could not impart. In the early ages of relentless persecution by the emissaries of Pagan Rome, it passed into a proverb, that ^ the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the Church/ And let the Calcutta Baboos rest assured, that the vital prin- ciple involved in this proverb has lost nothing of its intrinsic efficacy or subduing power. The first drop of missionary blood that is violently shed in the peaceful cause of Indian evangeli- zation, will prove a prolific seed in the outspreading garden of the Indo-Christian Church. And the filrst actual missionary martyrdom that shall be encountered in this heavenly cause, may do more, under the overruling providence of God, to pre- cipitate the inevitable doom of Hindooism, and speed on the chariot of gospel triumph, than would the establishment of a thousand additional Christian schools, or the delivery of ten thousand additional Christian addresses, throughout the towns and villages of this mighty empire. " With sincerest wishes for your temporal and everlasting welfare, I remain, dear sirs, yours very truly, '' Indophilus.''^ "Calcutta, September 17th, 1847.' j> The increase of converts, some of tliem with families, and the formation of classes of theology for the train- ing of several of them as catechists, then preachers. 76 LIFE OF D"R. DUFF. 1848. and finally ordained missionaries and pastors, embar- rassed Dr. Duff and his colleagues, but in a way which rejoiced their hearts. At first, in Calcutta as in Bombay, the catechumens, whom the caste and intoler- ance of Hindooism excluded from their families and society, became inmates of the missionary's home and frequent guests at his table. To be thus associated with men of God and gentlemen of the highest Chris- tian culture, like the founders of the Bengal and Bombay Missions, was a privilege which the most scientific training in Divinity could not supply, and without which such training must have been one-sided or spiritually barren. What the intercourse with Dr. and Mrs. Duff was, and how they valued it, one of the ordained ministers, the Rev. Lai Behari Day, has thus recently told. The two Brahmans, Bhattacharjya and Chatterjea, still working as ordained missionaries, were his companions : "We three messed together by ourselves; but we joined Dr. Duff and Mrs. Duff (their children being away in Scotland) at family worship both morning and evening. Duff was punctual as clockwork ; ex- actly at eight o'clock in the morning — not one minute before or after — the prayer-bell rang, and we all were in the breakfast-room, where the morning worship used to be held. Duff was always observant of the forms of politeness, and never forgot to shake hands with us, asking us the usual question, ' How do you do?' By the way, Duff's shake of the hand was different from that of other people. It was not a mere formal, stiff, languid shake; but like everything else of him, it was warm and earnest. He would go on shaking, catching fast hold of your hand in his, and would not let it go for some seconds. The salutations over, we took our seat. We always began with siug- ing one of the grand old Psalms of David, in Eous'a ^t. 42. AT HOME WITH THE CONVERTS. 77 Doric versification, Mrs. Du:ff leading tlie singing. Dr. Duff, tlioQgli I believe lie liad a delicate ear for music, never led tlie singing; lie, however, joined in it. He generally read the Old Testament in the morn- ing, and the New Testament in the evening. When I joined the little circle — and there were only five of us, Dufi", Mrs. Duff, Jugadishwar, Prosunno and I — he was reading through the Psalms. He did not read long portions — seldom a whole psalm, but only a few verses. He seldom made remarks of his own, but read to us the reflections of some pious divine on those verses. When going through the Psalms he used to read the exposition of Dr. Dickson ; and in the evening, when going through the New Testament, he made use of the commentary, if my memory does not fail me, of Girdlestone. The reading over, we all knelt down. Oh, how shall I describe the prayers which Duff offered up both morning and evening ! They were such exquisitely simple and beautiful prayers. Much as I admired Duff in his public appearances — in the pulpit and on the platform — I admired and loved him infinitely more at the family altar, where, in a simple and childlike manner, he devoutly and earnestly poured out his soul before our common Father in heaven. Most men in their family prayers repeat, for the most part, the same things both morning and evening. Duff's prayers were fresh and new every morning and evening, naturally arising out of the verses read and carefully meditated over. And oh, the animation, the earnestness, the fervour, the deep sincerity, the child- like simplicity of those prayers ! They were fragrant with the aroma of heaven. They were prayers which Gabriel or Michael, had they been on earth and had they been human beings, would have offered up. I, at that time a young convert, experienced sensations which it is impossible to describe. I felt as I had 78 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1848. never before felt, I seemed to breathe the atmosphere of heaven. I seemed to be transported into- the third heaven, standing in the Holy of Holies in the presence of the Triune Jehovah. Duff's sympathies in prayer were wide and catholic. He prayed for every section of the Church of Christ, and pleaded, morning and evening, most fervently on behalf of the heathen perishing for lack of knowledge. In the mornings, we came away immediately after prayers to our breakfast, as we were required to be ready for the Institution by ten o'clock ; but in the evenings, when the family worship began at nine o'clock, Duff would often ask us to stay after prayers, and engage in conversation with us, not on any trifling, every-day, ephemeral thing, but on subjects of grave import; and sometimes we sat with him for more than an hour. How thankful do I feel for those quiet evening conversations, in which Duff impressed on our youthful minds the highest truths and the holiest principles. Those were, indeed, happy days ; if they could be called back, I would, if I could, prolong them indefinitely." This was in 1843, but by 1845 the resident converts had increased to thirteen, and four of them were mar- ried. " We have been literally driven to our wits' end in making even a'temporary provision for them," wrote Dr. Duff in 1845. No sooner was the necessity known than twelve merchants and officials, nine of them of the Church of England, presented him with a thousand pounds to build a home for the Christian students, in the grounds beside his own residence, which, with wise foresight, he had long ago secured. To this, as the Ben- galee congregation developed, and, according to Pres- byterian privilege, "called" its own native minister, he added a church and manse with funds entrusted to him for his absolute disposal by the late Countess of Effingham. The community has many years since JEt 42. CHARGE TO THE FOUR CATECHISTS. 79 become independent enougli to dispense with tlie con- verts' rooms. In the same year, Mr. Thomson, of Banchory, and other friends in Aberdeen, unsolicited by him, sent Dr. Duff ahbrary and scientific apparatus for the college, which completed its machinery. And then, just sixteen years after the young missionary had opened his school for teaching the English alpha- bet and the Bengalee Bible side by side, he saw the ripe fruit in the formal licensing by the Presbytery of the first four catechists, after strict examination, to preach to their countrymen the unsearchable riches of the Christ to Whom they had themselves been led by Western influences and along a difficult path. Long before indeed, under the more flexible system of epis- copal absolutism, Krishna Mohun Banerjea had become a minister, as Dr. Duff himself described with joy ; * and the two ripest of all the converts, Kailas and Mahendra, had been removed from earthly ministra- tion to the higher service. But when, with the double experience of nigh twenty years since he himself had been set apart " by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," the fervid missionary delivered the charge of the Church to the two Brahmans, the Rajpoot and the middle-class Bengalee whom he had taught with Paul-like yearning, he felt that he too had seen the Timothy and the Titus, the John Mark and the Tychicus of the infant Church of India. And so he spake to each, from the words of Paul, a torrent of spiritual eloquence which the journals of the day lamented their inability to report : " Let no man despise thy youth ; but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine." Nor did these four stand alone. Another * Vol. i. p. 444. 8o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1848. of his convert-students lie had given to the American Presbyterian missionaries in the Punjab, and of him he sent this report to Dr. Tweedie, who had just become convener of the home committee : Calcutta, 7th April, 1848. '' A few days ago an excellent Christian lady, wife of Captain Mackenzie, who so greatly distinguished himself at Cabul, writing to my daughter from Loodiana, near the Sutlej, enclosed the printed prospectus of a mission about to be established in the now British province of the Jullunder Doab. It is under the charge of the Rev. Goluk Nath, whom the writer of the letter is pleased to describe in these terms : — ' The minister of Jullunder, an old pupil of Dr. Duff ^s, of whom he speaks with the greatest affection,' etc. And again : * I had nearly forgotten to beg Dr. Duff to show the circular of the Jullunder Mission to any one likely to feel interested in it. Tell him that it is a kind of grandchild of his own, as Goluk Nath is the father of it,' etc. This young man was brought up in our Institution; but having gone to the northern provinces, he was led, in providence, to unite himself with our brethren of the American Presbyterian Mission, so that through him our Institution is, at this moment, diffusing the light of the gospel among the warlike Sikhs who so lately contested the sovereignty of India with Britain. The Lord be praised; His holy name be mao-nified ! "The four native young men who were sent, about three years ago, from this city to London, to complete their medical education, and graduate there, were specially selected from the students of our Medical College, and sent, partly at the expense of the Indian Government and partly at that of private individuals, under the charge of a medical officer in the Com- pany's service. In University College, London, they greatly distinguished themselves — all carrying off prizes, and some of them the very highest in different branches. Last year one of them returned with the diploma of surgeon from the Royal College of Surgeons 3 and lately other two have returned with the degree of M.D. conferred on them. The fourth, and most distinguished of them all, is still in London. Now, it can scarcely fail to interest you to learn, that of these four young JEt 42. MERCANTILE CRISIS IN CALCUTTA. 8 1 men one Lad received his preparatory education wholly, and other two chiefly, in our Institution. But what will interest you most of all will be, that of the two latter, the one who is still in London has lately made an open profession of the Christian faith, and been admitted by baptism into the Church of Christ. By last mail I received from himself a letter, which details some of the leading steps by which he was ultimately induced to devote his soul to the Lord Jesus Christ as his only Saviour; with various interesting reflections naturally called forth by the occasion. Thus, on all hands are we, from time to time, cheered with tokens of the Lord's loving-kindnesses towards us. '^ You will have heard of the fearful state of things among the mercantile community of this place. Their failures have also deeply affected and involved others who are not merchants. As agents or bankers, a large proportion of those in the civil, military, and other services of the Government had pecuniary dealings with them. So that, altogether, Calcutta never was in so calamitous a state as now. It really looks to a bystander as if overtaken by a universal bankruptcy, or by difficulties which border so closely on bankruptcy as not to be easily dis- tinguished from it. But why do I refer to this state of things at all ? I am necessitated to do so. Till towards the end of last year we found no difficulty in realizing the sum of about £1,200 annually, by local contribution — a sum which enabled us to pay the heavy rent for the Institution, with the salaries of all the native teachers and monitors, and sundry con- tingencies, and thereby relieved the home fund of that large amount annually. But since the latter part of last year we have been labouring under extreme difficulties, from the causes now stated. Still our trust is in the Lord Who has hitherto prospered us.^ )i The General Assembly of that year, responding to the joy which Dr. Daff, Dr. Wilson, Mr. Anderson, and Mr. Hislop, at Nagpore, felt in the converts thus gathered out of the ancient faiths of Brahmanism, Parseeism, even Mahammadanism and Jadaism, and the rude demon-worship of the jungle tribes, addressed an apostolic letter to them all. The epistle reached VOL. IT. G 82 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1848. Calcutta in tlie midst of the great car-festival of Jugganatli. While excited devotees were hymning the praises of the hideous " lord of the world,'* and dragging his still obscene and cruel chariot, the heathen students were dismissed and the Christian Hindoos met in an upper room of the college to receive the epistle which was to be read in all the native churches. Dr. Duff thus described the scene : "After prayer and sundry introductory remarks, the letter was read and listened to with the pro- foundest attention. Some practical exhortations fol- lowed, and the meeting closed with prayer. It was altogether a season of refreshment to our spirits ; and in this dry and parched desert land we do stand in need of such occasional cordials. It brought to our remembrance the great-hearted world-embracing spirit of the Apostle to the Gentiles, who could address the mightiest of his epistles to the body of true believers at Rome, whose faces he had not seen in the flesh. It made us vividly realize the unity of the Christian brotherhood, which, overleaping all interposing ob- stacles, would assimilate and incorporate into one all the scattered members of Christ's mystical body. It left a savoury impression of the vitalities of the Chris- tian faith on our souls, and made us feel that, though cut ofi" from the bodily presence of our brethren in the far west, we were not severed from their sympathies or their prayers." The immediate result was the formal organizing, on the 1st October, 1848, of the Bengalee Church, the members of which, from their familiarity with Eng- lish, had hitherto worshipped along with the ordinary congregation of the Free Church in Wellesley Square. Dr. Ewart was made the first pastor until the Hev. Lai Behari Day, and then the Rev. Gooroo Das Maitra were called. The Bengalee girls of the Or- Mt. 42. CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S JUBILEE. 83 phanage also, then under Miss Laing, worshipped h the new chapel in their own vernacular, and Mrs. Ewart established, for the girls of the prosperous Armenian and Jewish communities in the city, a school which long continued to supply them also with a pure Christian as well as English education. The year 1848 closed, after a truly catholic fashion, with Dr. Duff side by side with Bishop Wilson in keeping the jubilee of the evangelical Church Missionary Society. "I came away," he wrote officially to his committee, " much refreshed and exhilarated, feeling intensely that, after all, when the peculiarities of form and ceremony were dropped, and earnest souls under the influence of grace came to humble themselves before the Lord, and to praise Him for His rich and undeserved mercies, and to give free and unfettered utterance to the swelling emotions of their hearts, there was not, in reality, a hair's-breadth between us.'' CHAPTER XYIII. 1844-1849. LOBB HABDINGE'8 ADMINISTBATION.—TEE CALCUTTA EEVIEW. The year 1844 opens a New Period. — Lord Hardin ge. — Public Ser- vice opened to Educated Natives. — Dr. Duflf's Anticipations not realized till 1854. — The New Period one of Public Discussion. — John Kaye and John Marshman. — Sir Henry Lawrence and Cap- tain Marsh. — Establishment of the Calcutta Beview. — Dr. Duff's Recollections of the Event. — His Early Articles. — The Editorship forced on him. — Encourages Bengalee Essayists. — Sir John Kaye's Gratitude. — The Fever Epidemic of 1844. — Calcutta now a Healthy City. — Dr. Duff's Appeal for the Medical College Hospital. — De- scription of the Dying and the Dead. — The Ten Hospitals of Calcutta now. — Dr. Abercrombie and his Daughter. — Project of a Monument to John Knox. — Relief of the Highland Famine. — Mrs. Ellerton. — Duel of Warren Hastings and Philip Francis. — Letter to Mrs. Duff. — Bishop Wilson. — Letter to Principal Cunningham. — Andrew Morgan and the Doveton Colleges of Calcutta and Madras. The successive administrations of Lord Auckland and Lord Ellenborougli, by the violent contrasts which they presented, and the vital questions which they raised, summoned all Anglo-Indians, official and non-official, to discussion. The civil and the military services were placed, temporarily, in a heated antagonism. The dis- asters in Afghanistan, followed by the evacuation of the country after a proposal to sacrifice the English ladies and ofi&cers in captivity, and by the follies of a public triumph and the Somnath proclamation, had roused Great Britain as well as India. The annexation of Sindh and the war with Gwalior further stirred the public conscience in a way not again seen till the Mutiny, of which the Auckland-Ellen- JEt 38. LORD HARDINGE AS GOVEENOR-GENERAL. 85 borough madness was tlie prelude. And the whole was overshadowed bj a new cloud in the north-west, far more real, at that time at least, than the shadow cast by the advance of Russia from the north. The death of Runjeet Singh, who from the Sikh Khalsa, or brotherhood, had raised himself to be Maharaja of the Punjab, from the Sutlej to the Khyber and the glaciers of the Indus, had given the most warlike province of India six years of anarchy. It was time, if India was not to be lost, that one who was at once a soldier and a statesman should sit in the seat of Wellesley and Hastinofs. The new Governor-General was found in the younger son of a rector of the Church of England ; in the Peninsular hero who, at twenty-five, had won Albuera, had bled at Waterloo, had left his hand on the field of Ligny, and had become a Cabinet minister as Secretary-at-War. Sir Henry Hardinge went out to Government House, Calcutta, at sixty, and he returnee' ] in four years as Viscount Hardinge of Lahore. Before he left England he took the advice of Mountstuart Elphinstone, never to interfere in civil details. All through his administration he consulted Henry Law- rence, and saw himself four times victor in fifty-four days, at Moodkee and Ferozeshuhur, at Aliwal and Sobraon. Like his still greater successor, his victories were those of peace as well as war. He opened the public service to educated natives. He put down suttee and other crimes in the feudatory states. He stopped the working of all Government establishments on the Christian Sabbath, a prohibition requiring renewal, in the Public Works department at least, since his time. He fostered the early railway pro- jects, and carried out the great Ganges Canal. For the first time since, ten years before, Lord William Bentinck resigned the cares of ofiBce, our Eastern Empire felt that it was being wisely governed. ] 86 LIFE OF DR. DOFF. 1844. Almost the first act of the new Governor-General, in October, 1844, was to publish a resolution which deliofhted the heart of Dr. Duff, because it at once recognised officially the success of his persistent policy, and Government for the first time acknowledged the value of colleges and schools. Christian and indepen- dent, other than its own. Because English education had made such progress in Bengal since the decree of 1835, the Government directed that the public service be thrown open to natives thus educated, and that even for the lowest offices " in every instance a man who can read and write be preferred to one who cannot." Not only was the official department of public instruc- tion to submit, every New Year's Day, the names of students educated in the state colleges and fit for appointments, but " all scholastic establishments other than those supported out of the public funds '* were invited to furnish similar returns of meritorious stu- dents for the same reward. The order was received with such enthusiasm by both natives and Europeans, that even the bureaucratic Council of Education, which had adopted all Dr. Duff's educational plans while keeping him and his Christianity at arm's length, burst into the unwonted generosity of notifying that the measure was applicable " to all students in the lower provinces without reference to creed or colour." True this was only interpreting the Hardiuge enactment ac- cording to the Bentinck decree, which had in principle declared all offices, save the covenanted, open to natives, and the department still refused to spend the public money on any but its own secular schools. But the Council's notification, no less than the order of the Government of India, marked a decided advance to- wards that measure of toleration and justice to native and missionary alike, which Dr. Duff fought for till Parliament conceded it in 1853. ^t. 38. PUBLIC SERVICE OPENED TO NATIVE STUDENTS. 87 Unfortunately tlie laissez-faire instincts of the Eng- lish, and the nepotism of the vernacular Bengalee officials, co-operated to neutralise the reform for a time. The Council fixed the tests of fitness strictly to suit its own colleges, practically excluding the " private individuals and societies " that, in truth, had made G-overnment education what it had become. The Court of Directors objected to such a test as the English language and literature. In five years only nine stu- dents, all from Government colleges, were appointed to the public service. But when the leading Hindoos of Calcutta presented an address of gratitude to the Governor-General, and when Dr. Duff wrote to his committee in the following terms, both were right notwithstanding. For this order of Lord Hardinge was the second step, after Lord W. Bentinck's, towards that catholic system of public instruction which cul- minated in the establishment of the three Universities in 1857. " Henceforward those who possess the best qualifi- cations, intellectual and moral, are invariably and sys- tematically to be preferred. And this order extends from the highest situations of trust down to the lowest menial offices. In the latter departments alone it is calculated that there are at least ten thousand persons in Government service in the Bengal Presidency alone, emploj^ed in serving summonses, etc., who can neither read nor write. In the higher departments of the ser- vice not above a dozen of superiorly qualified persons have hitherto succeeded in forcing their way into hon- ourable employment. Of what mighty and indefinite changes, prospectively, does this order, then, contain the seeds ? And what pre-eminently distinguishes it is this, that it is so catholic. Government institutions, and all other institutions, public or private, missionary and non-missionary, are placed on an equal footing. 88 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1844. No partialities, no preferences in favour of young men trained in Government schools and colleges ! This is a remarkable feature. It is the first public recognition of missionary and other similar institutions, in imme- diate connection with the service of the State. What fresh motives for evangelizing labours in this vast realm ! I feel appalled and well-nigh overwhelmed at the new load of responsibility thus thrown upon us. Oh that the Christian people of Scotland would arise in behalf of the millions of India, as they have nobly arisen in behalf of their own thousands and tens of thousands at home ! That this Government notification will be followed by a sudden influx, an instantaneous rush of young aspirants into existing institutions, I do not mean to imply. But that it will furnish the strongest incentive to self-improvement, and impart the most powerful impulse to the general cause of education which has ever yet been supplied under British sway, is clear beyond all debate. . . Oh that we had the resources in qualified agents and pecuniary means, with large, prayerful, faithful hearts, to wait on the Lord for His blessing, and then, under the present impulse, might we, in every considerable villao'e and district of Benofal, establish vernacular and English seminaries that might sow the seeds of divine truth in myriads of minds, and thus preoccupy them with principles hostile to ruinous error, and favourable to the reception of saving knowledge." The predicted rush of native students took place. An impetus was given to the study of English, though not from the nighest, yet from a motive quite as high as that which feeds the competitive examinations annually held by the commissioners since the public service, civil and military, was opened to the whole nation. Had Lord Hardinge's order been carried out according to its spirit, or even letter, the natives of India must have ^t. 38. SIR JOHN KATE AND JOHN MAESHMAN. 89 found themselves now mucli nearer, because better prepared for, that share in then' own government the demand for which may create a political danger. For the Christian colleges would have supplied those ele- ments of moral character based on conscience and faith, which the cold secularism of the powerful state system steadily destroys without supplying the true substitute. Apart from this solution Lord Lytton is, to-day, as vainly attempting to meet the difficulty as all his predecessors. Ever since Lord William Bentinck had supplied the stimulus to the discussion of public reforms in the press, and DuS and Trevelyan, Macaulay and Met- calfe, had led the way, the more thoughtful Anglo- Indians had felt the want of a literary medium. The editors of newspapers themselves, like Captain Kaye of the daily RarJcaru and Mr. Marshman of the weekly Friend of India, were the first to urge the importance of establishing a magazine or review to which men of all shades of religious and political opinion could con- tribute. The former, afterwards Sir John Kaye, had been led, by ill health, to abandon a promising career in the Bengal Artillery for the sedentary pursuits of a literary life. His jDrofessional experience gained for him the confidence of the many officers who, in India, are always ready to feed journalists with valuable materials, and fitted him to become the historian of such contemporary events as the first Afghan war. Mr. Marshman had come out to India with his father at the close of the previous century ; he had received there an intellectual and spiritual training of un- usual excellence ; he had made the grand tour in Europe ; he had discharged professional duties in the Serampore College with great ability, and he had become the first Bengalee scholar, had established the first newspaper in that language, and had succeeded QO I'^^K OF DR. DUFF. 1844. Carey as Government translator. When tlie grand old Serampore brotherhood passed away, he became lieir to the debt which their benevolent enthusiasm — supporting at one time twenty-seven separate mission stations out of their own pocket — had incurred. With marvellous energy, by the first steam paper-mill in the East, by preparing excellent law and school books for all Bengal, and by establishing the famous weekly journal, he wiped out the debt. From first to last ho contributed sixty thousand pounds for the enlighten- ment and christianization of India. To these two, with Dr. Duff, we owe the Calcutta Review. To them we must add Sir Henry Lawrence and Captain H. Marsh of the old Bengal Cavalry. Marsh was a nephew of Mrs. George Grote, whose husband was a contributor to the Westminster Review. That became the model of the new undertaking in a mechanical sense alone. In all other respects the founders of the Calcutta Quarterly were out of sympathy with Bentham, Mill, and their school. ^ The first number appeared in May, 1844. A few weeks after Sir Henry Hardinge landed at Calcutta. Before, in 1874, writing the history of its first twenty years, we consulted the survivors of the band who had created its reputation — Duff, Kaye and Marsh- man, who have since passed away ; and we are happy in being able to add to the narrative the later state- ment of Dr. Duff, taken down from his own lips in those conversations with which, to himself and his friends, he lightened the pain of his last illness. The first number at once leaped into popularity. A second edition was called for, and then a third was published in England. *' In a very short time," Sir John Kaye wrote to us. Dr. Duff ** had written his article on 'Our Earliest Protestant Mission to India,' and from that time he became a contributor equally indefatigable Mt. 38. ORIGIN OP Tflii "CALCUTTA KEVIEW." 9 1 and able." Captain Marsh proved too trenchant a critic for the sensitive officials of those days, but his article on " The Rural Population of Bengal " would not now be pronounced so extravagant as Henry Lawrence then considered it. Of that he had written to the editor : " I have evolved myself of some form and embodiment akin to an article. Great fact if true — if confirmed by worthy John Kaye, good John Kaye, true John Kaye, and running in the same coach with earnest, solemn Duff — the silent, the unreplying, the uncorresponding Duff. Oh ! brave, brave ! Is it so ? Yes or no? Utrum horum — odd or even?" He had great admiration (never better bestowed) of Dr. Duff, wrote Sir John Kaye, and was pining under an un- answered letter. These are Dr. Duff's recollections of his early con- nection with the Calcutta Quarterly : " I am not one who cared much for what people said or thought, but there was one thing I felt keenly — the way my connection with the Calcutta Review was represented. Some high and mighty ones probably did not like the idea of a missionary having the control over it. If I make up my mind for a great principle based on the Bible, I don't care for all the emperors of the world. About the beginning of 1844 Kaye was under the necessity of leaving India for his health. I had no bitterer enemy at the time than he. One day I had an invitation from Lim, most unexpectedly, to spend the evening with himself and family. Nothing passed about the controversy, but he spoke on ail subjects on which he knew I was interested, and spoke so agreeably no mortal would dream that anything un- pleasant had existed between us. Thank God, I never cherished the spirit of resentment. It was my daily prayer to be preserved from the spirit of envy, jealousy, malice, uncharitableness, resentment, or vin- 92 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1844. dictiveness in any shape or foi^m ; tlie feeling being intense that if God for Christ's sake fororave me ten thousand times ten thousand transgressions, it was mj duty as well as privilege to forgive all who had offended or wronged me in any way whatever, whether they reciprocated the feeling or not. In the course of my long life nothing tended to give me greater peace of mind and conscience than the strenuous endeavour invariably to carry out this principle into living practice. To cherish hatred or the spirit of unfor- givinguess punishes himself vastly more than the person hated or unforgiven. I went to Kaye simply as a human being to a human being. What surprised me most of all was that before parting he asked me, in a very respectful way, whether I would not favour them by concluding the evening so pleasantly spent by engaging in family worship, which I was delighted to respond to. " Shortly after spending the evening at his house I received a long letter from him, in which he stated his views about the desirableness of having a first-rate quarterly Review for India ; that the only parties whom he had consulted in the matter were Sir Henry Lawrence, Mr. John Marshman, and Captain Marsh ; and that now, having ascertained they were favourable to the project, he wished to learn whether I would join with them and become a regular contributor. I had long felt very strongly the need of a powerful periodi- cal to do justice to the mighty affairs of our Indian Empire. I therefore had no hesitation in replying at once, expressing a sense of the extreme desirableness of such a periodical. Only, I added, all will depend on the principles on which it is conducted. If these be sound in all departments — political, civil, social, theological, religious and moral, the good accruing therefrom may be pre-eminent. On the contrary, if JEt 38. BECOMES EDITOR OF THE " CALCUTTA REVIEW." 93 the principles be unsound on these and other leading subjects, the evil will be proportionately great. I promised I would gladly join them in a close co- partnership to carry on the new E^eview, if he would pledge himself in the first place that nothing would appear in it hostile to Christianity or Christian sub- jects generally; and secondly, that whenever proper occasion naturally arose, clear and distinct enuncia- tions should be made as to sound Christianity and its propagation by missionaries in India. Mr. Kaye promptly assured me that these substantially expressed his own views, and if I would write an article for the first number he would leave me entirely free to choose the subject. Having a number of old documents in my possession relative to the first Indian, or Danish mission in Tranquebar, I wrote a very elaborate article on the whole subject of Missions, in which no important depart- ment was omitted. This article Mr. Kaye cheerfully inserted. It has since been reprinted at home. Dr. Andrew Thomson, of Edinburgh, making special allu- sion to it in his work on the Lives of Missionaries. '* In the second number of the Review I chose the subject of ' Female Infanticide among the Rajpoots and other Native Tribes of India,' and the extra- ordinary variety of operations carried on by our Government to extinguish it. I secured from the public library all the blue-books which had been published in all the Presidencies for fifty years past, in which many of the ablest and most enlightened servants of Government had taken an active share. I took special pains with it. Then there was in the fourth number ' The State of Indigenous Education in Bengal ; ' next came ' The Early or Exclusively Oriental Period of Government Education in Bengal.' I was preparing other articles of a similar kind, when the editorship came upon me. Mr. Kaye sent me a 94 I^IFE or DR. DUFF. 1845. polite message to come to liis house to consult on a very vital aud important matter. He said that al- ready the Review had proved an unexpected success. It would be very sad to let it go down just when entering on such an extensive work of great and obvious usefulness. The state of his health was such that he must almost immediately leave India under peremptory medical instructions. What was to be done with the Review ? No one could properly edit such a work aright except in India itself. ' Now I've applied to every man in the service, and out of it, whom I thought at all likely to be able and willing to undertake it, at least for a time, but every one posi- tively shrinks from the task.' To maintain it on the footing on which it started in a country like India, where, at that time, none attempted to make a liveli- hood from their own literary exertions, except editors of newspapers, whose hands were already too full, was desirable. Therefore in the most earnest way he appealed to me to assume the editorship, for a time at least, and be the sole responsible liead of it. The magnitude of the task at first appalled me. But writers of ability gave me articles, and occasionally supplied facts on subjects they were acquainted with, which, with their consent, I dressed up into articles. It came to be understood, when an article or materials for an article were sent, if the departures on any point did not diverge too far from the principles originally agreed on, that slight alterations might be made to adapt it to these principles without interfering with its leading objects. Mr. Kaye himself saw the fourth number in the press. Then it was that I took up the editorship, and I continued to hold it till obliged to return from India in 1849, when I gave up the management to my friend, the late Rev. Dr. Mackay, who was a man of exquisite taste and many literary JEt 39. HISTORY OF THE " CALCUTTA REVIEW. 95 accomplishments. It is but fair to Mr. Kaye to say that he insisted upon my taking some adequate re- muneration. I peremptorily declined. I looked upon the work as one calculated in many important ways to promote the vital interests of India, and in endeavour- ing to promote these I felt there was no incon- sistency between devoting a portion of my time to it besides the more direct mission work ; in fact, that the two duties worked into each other's hands and pro- moted the interests of each other. The grand object was to raise up the ivhole of India from its sunk and degraded position of ages, in every aspect of improve- ment, political, social, civil, intellectual, moral and religious. I felt, however, that the Institution I had founded ousfht to derive some direct benefit from the Review. Accordingly I took five hundred rupees a year for scholarships and prizes." This arrangement lasted till 1856, when the perio- dical passed into other hands. Nothwithstanding varying fortunes since, it is still true that no single literary authority supplies such valuable information regarding India as the seventy volumes of the Review. Dr. Dufi* contributed, from first to last, sixteen articles, some of which were republished in England. Up till the time of his final departure from India his principles continued to influence its management. Not the least valuable of the services it has rendered to India has been the enlisting of Bengalee essayists on its staff. Dr. Duff's students — men like Dr. K. M. Banerjea, the Rev. Lai Behari Day and Baboo B. B. Shome, besides the Datt and Mitter families — have contributed arti- cles of peculiar value for the information they give, and occasionally of such purity of style that the native authorship was not at the time suspected. To the last Sir John Kaye, in his numerous writ- ings, did not cease to express his affection for Dr. 96 LIFE OF DR. Durr. 1845. Duff. It miglit seem merely appropriate that he should dedicate to the missionary a volume on such a subject as " Christianity in India : a Historical Narra- tive," in words which express not only the author's gratitude for his kindness but " admiration of his character." In the history of Indian progress, how- ever, which Sir John wrote as a plea for continuing ** The Administration of the East India Company " during the charter discussions of 1853, the secular historian of a corporation that had generally dis- couraged Christian Missions, and so has since passed away, did not hesitate to record *' the great and successful exertions of private bodies to diffuse, principally through missionary agency, the light of knowledge among the people." The foremost place amongst these benefactors, he declares, all admit to be '' due to Alexander Duff and his associates — to that little party of Presbyterian ministers who now for more than twenty years have been toiling for the people of India with such unwearying zeal and with such wonderful success." And, after telHng the story, in its outlines, the historian concludes : ** There are missionary schools scattered over all parts of India, and freely the children come to be taught ; but there is not one which, either for the magnitude or for the success of the experiment, can be compared with those presided over by Duff and his associates. Bombay and Madras share worthily in these honours ; and the educational achievements of their Scotch divines deserve to be held in lasting remembrance." Again, as ten years before, was Dr. Duff led to ally with his higher spiritual calUng not only the press but science, directed towards purely philanthropic as well as educational ends. A succession of sickly seasons, followed by an epidemic of fever during the latter rains of 1844, had filled Calcutta and its neighbour- JEt. 39. EPIDEMICS IN THE GANGETIC VALLEY. 97 hood with thousands of sick, diseased and destitute natives, Hindoo and Muhammadan. The city had. grown to vast dimensions without those sanitary and municipal institutions which the self-governing com- munities of the West provide for themselves. The Government, which had all India to care for as well as the dense rabbit-warren of Bengal proper, left the capital to itself, so that there was the blackest dark- ness under the lamp. The heat, the moisture, the rapid vegetable growth of the tropical swamps of the great rice land of Eastern India, have ever formed the nursery of fever and cholera. Carried by river and monsoon, by armies of soldiers and bands of pilgrims, by traders and travellers, by the half-charred remains of the poor and the floating carcases of man and beast, the causes of zymotic disease — germs or gases, the ablest observers cannot tell — after slaying their tens of thousands on the spot, are borne to the colder and by no means cleaner lands of the West and the North, to sweep oS" thousands. So, since the march of Lord Hastings at least up the G-angetic valley against the Pindaree hordes, cholera and fever have periodically laid low black and white, British soldier and sepoy, Asiatic and European alike. Hygiene and quinine have now anticipated the latter, but the dread secret of the cholera fiend has yet to be wrested from nature in its most maleficent mood. Twenty years after 1844, when Lord Lawrence became Viceroy, he gave an impetus to sanitary science in India which it has never lost. To him the salvation of the lives of hundreds of our soldiers and thousands of our native subjects, every year, is due. And Calcutta has been made as healthy as many a capital in Europe, by drainage and waterworks, by conservancy and lighting arrange- ments, by public dispensaries, hospitals and asylums, not surpassed in Christendom. VOL. II. H 98 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1844. It was not so, however, wlien tlie kirk-session of tlie Free Churcli of Scotland in Calcutta asked Dr. Duff, at the close of the deadly season in October, to preach to the city of Him Who, as St. Matthew (viii. 16, 17) describes, "healed all that were sick:* that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The missionaries and the mem- bers of the Bengal Medical Service united with some of the "wealthy Bengalees in the plan of building the great Medical College Hospital for the poor of all creeds and classes. A member of the same Seel family who were starting a Hindoo college to destroy Dr. Duff's, presented the ground. Other natives gave large sums, the British residents showed their usual liberality, and the medical professors offered their services gratuitously. Funds were still wanted " to provide a Native General Hospital worthy of the city and commensurate with its wants, when a design which has been contemplated for some time past, by some of the most enlightened philanthropists of India, will be carried into effect without further delay.'* Hence Dr. Duff's sermon, which is in some respects the most characteristic he ever preached, as showing the breadth of his charity, the comprehensiveness of the Christi- anity which he came to plant and to water in Bengal till it should become there also the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. As in his college he welcomed all truth that his Master might sanctify it, so in the pulpit he pled in that Master's name for all men, for humanity in all its forms and needs, for the body as well as the soul. From the curse of sin he pointed to the sympathy of the one Saviour — '' not a mere sympathy of mercy and compassion, but a sym- pathy of power." By that Divine Example he pled for every Christian's sympathy. Turning to the three JEt. S^. PICTUEE OF THE FEVER-STEICKEN POOR. 99 ponderous folios in wliich a public committee had recorded tlie appalling facts, he thus pictured the suffering and the sorrow, as we have since seen both in the fever-desolated tracts on either side of the Hooghly, from Krishnaghur to Serampore : "What, if there be a total absence of all palliatives and allevia- tions ? Or what, still more, if there be the positive presence of all manner of provocatives to envenom and exulcerate the original malady ? Now this is precisely the fell and fatal predicament of numbers of the suffering poor around us. They come to this city from all parts of the country in quest of employment, or to beg for charity. They take up their abode with individuals nearly as destitute as themselves ; or they hire a wretched hut, or as wretched an apartment in some old building, for a few annas per month. They are attacked and laid prostrate by disease. Who can depict, who can g^equately conceive the loneliness, the desertedness, the imploring help- lessness of their forlorn condition ? Think of them, in hun- dreds and thousands, with scarcely any clothing to cover their nakedness by night or by day — unprovided with any sort of couch, on which to repose their aching limbs, — lying down on bare mats, or coarse grass spread on the damp ground in their narrow cheerless cells. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, exposed at different seasons to pinching cold or scorching heat, or drenching rain, or stifling dust, or steamy vapour, or suffocating smoke. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, panting for breath — immured in closely-built ill- ventilated dens — begirt with masses of old walls and tumbling ruins, with belts of jungle and patches of underwood and rank vegetation, that prevent all free exposure to the sun, which might rarefy or elevate the noisome vapours, and debarred all access to the winds of heaven that might dilute or dissipate them. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, surrounded by accumulated deposits of filth and rubbish, intermingled with heaps of decomposed animal and vegetable matters, which, simultaneously with the tainted pools and the putrid drains, constantly evolve and disengage all manner of noxious exhala- tions— sulphuretted hydrogen and other poisonous gases — together with the whole nameless and countless brood of lOO LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1 844. miasmata and malaria and otlier concentrated sources of ger- minating essences of plague and pestilence. Think of them,, in hundreds and thousands, not merely without the means of personal or domestic cleanliness, but often parched with thirst, without a drop of water to cool their burning tongues ; — or, if some portion of that needful element be scantily, and at wide intervals, supplied by some casual hand, it is supplied, either directly from the river, which, at one season, is unwhole- some from the quantity of its un filtered mud, and at another, equally so, from a copious infusion of ingredients that render it brackish and saline ; or from stagnant tanks, whose waters are impure and deleterious from the annual vegetable growth going on from beneath and all around — rendering them pro- gressively more and more shallow, and eventually converting' them into green and slimy nuisances that contaminate the surrounding atmosphere. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, craving for some cordial to soothe, or assuage, or mitigate inward agonizing pain, and if aught be granted to the petition of the rueful piteous look, that little is sure to consist of some raw, crude, indigestible substances that cannot fail to aggravate the fatal symptoms of the disease. Think of them, in hundreds and thousands, with cries and tears implor- ing the kindly offices of medical aid ; and if a farthing's worth of the commonest and cheapest native remedy be grudgingl)» doled out, it is only to accelerate their fate, — since the rude compound or preparation thus furnished is ' efficacious to enkindle the feeble flames of constitutional power, only to sinlt the more rapidly in death/ Think of them, in hundreds an'i thovisands, when, however prematurely, all hope of recover^' has been abandoned, and the dread of the disgrace, the re» proach, the infamy, the pollution to be incurred or contracted by the presence of a dead body in their vicinity, has aroused and alarmed the hitherto unconcerned and apathetic neigh- bours,— think of them, unceremoniously handed over to the heartless officers of death, who convey them roughly, without one look of sympathy or tear of commiseration, to the ghauts and banks of the river, where, pitilessly exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, they expire in a few hours, or, before they cease to breathe, are ferociously attacked by horrid vultures and beasts of prey. Ay, and what is most affecting of ail, — think of them, in hundreds and thousands, enduriug' JEt. 38. THE DYING AND THE DEAD. lOI these countless and untold sufferings in the present life, with- out any support or consolation drawn from the anticipated glories of the future. The humble disciples of Jesus, however poor or despised, neglected or scorned here below, can well afford to endure groans and griefs and agonies and tears ; be- cause the hope, full of immortality, renders the light affliction which is but for a moment, not worthy to be compared with the eternal weight of glory that is to follow. But these un- happy victims of a degrading superstition have to bear the unmitigated burden of all their sorrows, not only unvisited by earthly joy or uncheered by heavenly hope, but scared and haunted by ghastly spectres and images of terror that flit por- tentously around the portals of death and the grave. *'Who, after such a statement — and it is but a faint and feeble delineation of the terrible reality — who need wonder at the reiterated solemn averments of the sagest witnesses — that, so far as man can judge, *a vast majority of those attacked do perish for want of prompt attention, from exposure, and destitution of the comforts, and in many cases, the necessaries of life ' — that ' thousands of the poorer natives in and about Calcutta are continually exposed to the ravages of the more prevalent diseases of the country, and in a very large propor- tion, without a chance of being relieved ; that they die in thousands, not from the original force of disease, but from the want of an asylum,' or well regulated receptacle where pro- per medical treatment and care could be bestowed on them ? ''And if the constant state of disease, suffering and death, even in ordinary years, points to the necessity of establishing such a sanctuary of health, what shall we think of that necessity as enhanced by those extraordinary seasons of raging epi- demic which, as in the months of March and April last, occa- sionally visit and scourge this devoted city and neighbourhood? — when almost every dwelling is turned into a sepulchre, where the dead and the dying are stretched side by side ; — when the thoroughfares to the tomb and the funeral pile seem more crowded than the highways to the marts of business ; — when the head of a family goes to the field, or the office, or the market place, and, returning, finds a wife, or darliog child, or beloved friend already numbered with the dead; — when the prattling babe, that had been hushed to slumber by the caresses and lullabies of a fond mother, awakes, and, all unconscious of 102 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1844. tlie change, wonders wliy its natural fount of life refuses its wonted nourishment, and smiling as it gazes at the counte- nance now clenched in the gripe of death, wonders still more that it is not as before responsive to the playful smile; — when the halls that lately rung with the music and the songs of hilarity and joy, are suddenly turned into sick chambers or charnel houses that resound with the voices of grief, lamenta- tion and woe ; — when the vigorous youth and the blooming maiden, who to-night so surely calculated on treading life's flowery dale and luxuriating on the banquet of hitherto untasted joys, are literally reduced to ashes before the rising of to-morrow's sun ; — when the lordly oppressor drops his rod into the cold bosom of the oppressed, and both are consigned together to the common place of oblivion, where they shall dwell in peace till the last trumpet sounds ; — when the grasp- ing miser sinks down amid his accumulated hordes in the very act of repulsing a humble suppliant, covered with rags, con- sumed with hunger, and fainting with inanition ; — when the paleness of every countenance, and the careworn solicitude engraved on every brow, and the inquiring wistf ulness of every eye, and the abrupt, hurried and measured utterances of every lip involuntarily betray the strange anxieties and forebodings of beings who know not but the stoutest, and the healthiest, and the busiest now, may, in a few hours, be stretched as a lifeless ghastly corpse ; when hundreds, flying the city in de- spair, never reach their country or their homes, but, meeting death by the way, perish miserably there — infecting the air with contagious influences, which thus ripen a fresh harvest of mortality all around the fallen fugitives ; — in a word, when, alike in town and country, the king of terrors — holding high carnival and fitting jubilee — not only lives but reigns, and not reigns merely, but riots and revels in all the wantonness of a victor amid the indiscriminate carnage of a battle-field — sitting aloft upon piles of untimely slain as on a throne of triumph, and wielding his merciless sceptre over the living, as over myriads speedily destined to become the victims that shall glut but not satisfy his ravenous maw ! But enough :— - Surely, surely, if the suffering and mortality of ordinary years plead so impressively and resistlessly for the necessity of pro- viding an asylum for the thousands of hapless sufferers, that necessity is augmented and enchanced a hundred, yea, a ^t. 38. THE TEN HOSPITALS OF CALCUTTA. I03 thousand-fold, by tlie return, in almost periodic cycle, of an extraordinary season of smiting, all-devouring pestilence. " May I not tlien, dear friends and brethren, confidently call upon you, as professing disciples of the Lord Jesus to come forward now, and vigorously support this great and philan- thropic undertaking ? '' Soon there rose, by the side of the Medical College, the largest single hospital in the world, where, ever since, the poor Hindoo, the outcast devil-worshipper, the proud Muhammadan, the careless sailor, and the ad- venturous tramp have found at once the skill of the Christian physician, the ministrations of the Christian nurse, and not unfrequently the heart-healing of Him who gloried in that He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. The opening of the hos- pital marked a new development of medical education in the East, for the course of the Medical College was reorganized in 1845 so as to qualify its students for the diplomas of the British licensing bodies. And ever since, in Calcutta and its suburbs alone, the number of persons treated in this institution, now become ten hospitals and dispensaries, has risen to the third of a million of human beings a year. In 1877 there were 25,358 in-door and 300,204 out-door free patients. Philanthropj presents no grander triumph of the kind. In the close of his appeal Dr. DiifF made this refer- ence to the benevolent physician, John Abercrombie, M.D., who, since the beginning of the century, had been the foremost practitioner and philanthropist in Edinburgh : " What the Saviour did miraculously and instantaneously, may now, with His blessing, be grad- ually accomplished by mediate processes of an ordinary kind. And it were well if all Christian physicians kept more habitually in remembrance the great but too much neglected truth, that, while the application I04 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1845. of tlie means is theirs, the entire fruit and success of their endeavours must belong to the Author of life. In our own native land, there is at the very head of the medical profession at least one saintly man, — a father in our Israel and a prince in the realms of cultured intellect and high philosophy, — of whom it is verit- ably related, that he never proceeds to visit a patient without first committing the case, in prayer, to a gracious and merciful and covenant-keeping God. And sure we are that, were his noble and Christ-like example more extensively imitated, the blissful issue would soon become visible in the augmented number of happy sick-beds, ay, and it may be, in the greater frequency of effective recoveries ; — for it is recorded by the pen of inspiration, and engraven as with a rod of iron on the rock for ever, ' that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.' " The preacher did not know, as he spoke these words, that half Scotland was mourning the death of one whose spirit descended on a daughter ever since full of good works for the natives of the Highlands and of India alike. Personal and professional reasons apart, Dr. Duff had a special ground of gratitude to Dr. Abercrombie and his family. In his " Inquiries Con- cerning the Intellectual Powers," and his " Philosophy of the Moral Feelings," the busy and thoughtful phy- sician had produced two elementary works, still of interest to the general reader, but then of value to the young student as a harmony of revelation and science. These were precisely the manuals which the Christian colleges of India desired for their first year's students, as introductory to Bacon and Berkeley, Hamilton and Whewell. On the request of Dr. Duff, the publisher, Mr. Murray, and Dr. Abercrombie at once consented to sanction the appearance, in India, of a succession of cheap editions. The works long continued to be ^t. 39. DEATH OF DR. ABERCROMBIE. IO5 used, even by the Universities, for their " little go " examinations, nor have they yet disappeared from missionary schools. Hence the allusions in a conso- latory letter to Miss Abercrombie, written on the 7th February, 1845 : " It is many a day since I have received such a shock. For some time I felt as if literally stunned — so sudden, so utterly unexpected was the stroke. It seemed as if a veil of darkness overspread my eyes, which was only removed in a suffusion of tears. Many, many circumstances conspired to make me feel in a way altogether peculiar. His manifold acts of personal kindness and attention to myself when at home ; his more than paternal kindness to any of our dear chil- dren when labouring under disease ; his recent inde- fatigable attentions to our little boy, so vividly fresh in the mind; the earnest and truly disinterested manner in which he secured for us a cheap Calcutta edition of his two principal works for the use of native institu- tions ; his last undertaking in the way of preparing a series of works for the young, from which I looked for the richest accompanying blessings, to myriads at home and abroad ; all these, and many things else besides, came rushing into the mind like the sweep of a tropical torrent, and for a little quite overwhelmed it, under the announcement that siich a father, such a friend, such a Christian author was now no more. " To him beyond all question the change has been a blessed one. But He who wept at the grave of Lazarus proved that the tear of natural sorrow, dropping from the fount of natural sensibility, is not, within due limits, an unlawful tear. And then, it is the inestim- able privilege of the Christian, in the case of those who fall asleep in Jesus, to mingle joy with his sorrow — the joy of a hope full of immortality beaming through the thickest shadows of death and the grave. J06 LIFE OF DB.. PUFF. 1845. Weep he may, but liis weeping is like tlie genial summer sliower, pervaded and brightened by the rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Above all, it becomes the Christian, in resignedly submitting to the dispensations of his Heavenly Father, however dark or mysterious, to derive therefrom such sanctifying lessons as they may be designed to impart. Hence my delight at the weighty sentiment expressed by yourself, when you say, ' I trust it is our desire rather to be sanctified than merely to be comforted.' And my earnest prayer is, that you, my dear Christian friend, and all your sisters may be sustained, upheld, and truly sanctified under this sore bereavement — the sorest which could have overtaken you on this side of time. May He who is pre-eminently the Father of the fatherless be your refuge and your stay — your present and everlasting portion and reward ! May the great Angel of the Covenant embrace you in the arms of His love, hide you in His own pavilion, and shelter you under the outstretched wings of His mercy and grace ! " In the midst of such a trial it was indeed more than kind of you to remember us and our Hindoo flock here. I assure you the value of the original gift (an electric machine, sent for the Institution) is vastly en- hanced by this singular token of the deep interest and concern taken by yourself and dear departed father and other members of the family in our labours. I doubt not when the box is landed that it will prove a peculiarly valuable accession to our instrumentality of usefulness.*'* * The Rev. G. D. Cullen has supplied these new facts : " In June, 1841, Dr. Abercrombie invited a few of ns to meet him in the Waterloo Hotel, and his guest, Dr. Peter Parker, returuing from China to the United States. After hearinor his interestinsf account of the work in Canton, Dr. Abercrombie asked — could nothing be done in Edinburgh to promote Medical Missions ? On -our encouraging the proposal, it was asked who should be ALL 39. THE HIGHLAND FAMINE. JOHN KNOX. IO7 Hardly liad tlie Medical College Hospital been com- pleted when the generous Scotsmen of Calcutta turned to Dr. Duff to represent them in national movements of their own. One was, in 1846, the prospect of raising a monument to John Knox, which resulted in the purchase of his house at the Netherbow corner of the High Street of Edinburgh, and in the erection of the Church which bears his name. In this the missionary was their spokesman. But even more enthusiastically did he represent them when famine burst forth on his native Highlands, and the flower of the Celtic population began to wither and die, in the silence not of an Asiatic fatalism but of resigna- tion to the will of God like his who said, " Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him." Dr. Duff's Calcutta speech, in 1847, for their relief was a trumpet- blast, which produced such fruits that, up till a few years ago, money was sent from Bengal to the more destitute districts north of the Grampians. Among those who enjoyed an early and lasting friendship with Dr. and Mrs. Duff was Mrs. Ellerton. The name has no associations for the general reader, but it is that of one who, for nearly eighty years, was a famous historical character in Bengal. Mrs. Ellerton was a girl when, in 1780, she saw the notorious Philip Francis fall, shot through the body by Warren Hastings in the duel which was the procuriDg cause of the malicious impeachment and prolonged trial of the first Governor-General. It was a hot Thursday morning, of the 17th of August, when, close to the public road which still passes the residence of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, known as Belvedere, the two enemies met with their seconds. After secretary, and I named Dr. Coldstream. Dr. Abercrombie approved of the young naturalist, and I think I negotiated with my friend. But Dr. Abercrombie was the founder and the first president." I08 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1 844. months of obstructiveness in Council, detrimental to all good government, Erancis had promised to remain quiet in consideration of certain concessions made by the Governor-General. Francis broke his pledge, and Hastings openly wrote in reply to a minute of his enemy : " I judge of his public conduct by his private, which I have found to be void of truth and honour." The result was the duel, by high officials who had never before fired a pistol, under the two trees known as " the trees of destruction," from the deeds of which they were occasionally the scene. Mrs. Ellerton saw Francis fall, saw Hastings and his second bind a sheet round the body of the bleeding man and place him in the cot in which he was carried to Belvedere. Of every public event in India there- after till the Mutiny, of every change in Calcutta, she knew the personal history, and much of her knowledge she communicated to the Rev. J. Long, for the GaU cutta BevieWi when she accompanied him to all the historical landmarks in the city and its neighbourhood. She had been early married to John Ellerton, the indigo planter of Malda who opened the first Ben- galee schools, and made the first translation of the New Testament into that language, till the version of Carey — whom he helped — and Yates superseded his own published in 1820. "A widow indeed," this godly lady saw her daughter married to Bishop Corrie. In the evangelical circles of Calcutta and the interior she was ever welcome. We gladly rescue this letter from her to Mrs. DuS : "Bhaugulfore, 20th Oct., 1844. '^ My dear kind Friend, — The warmest thanks from a grate- ful heart attend you, for the kind interest you have manifested in my outward comforts. It has pleased the Lord to lay His hand upon me again, and I am confined to a sick room, but all ^t. 38. MES. ELLERTON TO MES. DUFF. IO9 must be well which He ordains. I am much better, though not yet able to join the domestic circle, and the doctor thinks the river air will complete my recovery. I believe my cabin is engaged in the Soorma, which will call here about the 27th, five days hence. The accommodations of Mrs. Ord's house in Wellington Square would suit me very nicely, but I am engaged to go to my nephew's. Dr. Jackson, at the General Hospital, who is to me as a second son, and as he has been obliged to send his wife and children in haste away, on account of their health, their apartments will be mine for a season. Nothing could be more acceptable and in unison with my feelings than the acceptance of your kind hospitality, for which L can never thank you sufficiently. May the Lord repay you ; He is my banker, for I am bankrupt in myself. With thanks I return Mrs. Davies' interesting letter. Give me a place in your prayers, dear Christian friends, and believe me yours affectionately in our dear Lord Jesus, " Hannah Ellerton.'' When Dr. Jackson left India, eight years after, Mrs. Ellerton became an inmate of the palace of the Bishop of Calcutta, whom she survived by three months, dying in 1858, at the age of eighty-seven. We read in Daniel W^ilson*s Journal — '* ' Would I take her in r ' * Yes : and rejoice to do it/ was my reply. It will be like the ark at Obed-edom*s, a blessing to my house and family, my guests and clergy." Again, writing in 1855 : *^ She is very chatty and pleasant and punctual in coming to meals. Many useful remarks fall from her in conversation. She has a turn for humour, and tells anecdotes of former times. There is a savour of downright piety and simplicity of heart in all she says. Her faculties are perfect. She loves authority and obedience. She jokes with me and calls me ' twice seven' (77). I keep four bearers for her exclusive use." It is a quaint picture of pr^-Mutiny days in Calcutta. Dr. Duff's letters to the venerable lady have disappeared. She spanned the three-quarters of a no LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. century from the first Govern or- General of the East India Company to the first Viceroy of the Crown — from Warren Hastings to Lord Canning. In the closing years of his second term of work in Calcutta, nothing out of his own special mission inter- ested him so deeply as the struggle of the Eurasian community to improve the academy which developed into the Doveton College. From 1846 to 1849 he maintained a close correspondence with the Eev. Dr. Cunningham, whom, at the request of the directors, he asked to select a Rector. The Jesuits on the one side, and the more sectarian Anglicans on the other, had opened rival schools, which threatened at once the Protestant teaching and the truly catholic basis of that of which Dr. Duff was visitor. In 1843 the short- lived leao'ue of the Brahmans with the Jesuits had led him to expose the immorality of the Order, which Dr. Mackay soon after traced historically in his Calcutta Bevieiv article on their China and India Missions. In 1848, Dr. Duff was compelled to re- turn to the charge in an elaborate treatise which became popular in this country under the title of " The Jesuits, their Origin and Order, Morality and Practices, Suppression and Restoration." He lent the Doveton Institution the services of Mr. Fyfe for a little, but still no Rector appeared. The times were not propitious, for the Disruption had absorbed into the pulpits, the colleges and the schools of the Free Church every available man of culture and piety. On the 7th August, 1846, we find these allusions to ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland, and to that chair of Foreign Missions, which he had first proposed in the letter on page 43 : " Your last General Assembly was an extraordinary one. What an ingenious device of Satan has that American slavery agitation been ! It is, perhaps, the only subject on which the world has JEX. 43. ANDEEW MORGAN AND TBE DOVETON COLLEGE. Ill heart interest euongh to unite in a plausible charge against our Church. Out here we have felt at one with you from the first — I mean, our Free Church members. When your article appeared in the North British, some of our ultra-liberals here at once took it up, and turned it into an argument against our Church, and it may amuse you to learn that I felt myself obliged, even here, on the banks of the Ganges, to vindicate our Free Church cause from public asper- sion by vindicating Dr. Cunningham and his article in the North British Bevieiv, yet so it was. As a curiosity I thought of sending you some of the papers; but remembering how full your hands were, I refrained. How strangely tangled and ramifying has the web of human affairs become. '^ Some time ago I hinted at a professorship of Missions and Education in your new college, but have not seen any symptom of a movement towards it. I have been surprised that an object so glorious should not have been contemplated in such a college. A missionary and educational professorship would indeed be a crown of glory to it." At last the man was found in the Rev. Andrew Morgan, who had made Auchterarder almost as famous by his school as the Disruption controversy had done. From February 1849 to December 1854 he gave his life for the elevation of the Eurasians and resident Europeans of India, in Bengal and Madras, till he died of overwork. Dr. Duff rejoiced in his success. Mr. Morgan stamped his manly G-od-fearing nature on a generation of youths who still, many of them high in the Indian services, call him blessed. Dr. Duff thus concluded one of his importunate letters to Dr. Cunningham about the Hector : " Oh what a loss has been sustained in the death of Dr. Chalmers ! It is too great for utterance." CHAPTER SIX. 1849-1850. DEATE OF DB. CHALMERS. --TOUR THROUGH SOUTH INDIA.— HOME BY THE GANGES AND INDUS. The Death of Dr. Chalmers. — Dr. Duff on his Career. — A Mission- ary to the Heathen rather than a Divinity Professor. — Addresses from all classes of the Indian Community. — The Brahman Pun- dits.— Mr. Lacroix and a Professorship of Missions. — Dr. Daff Summoned Home to Organize the Free Church Mission Soheme. — Tour in South India. — His Journal. — The People and the Land- Tax. — French and British. — Fort St. David and the East India Company. — Tranquebar. — Ziegenbalg, his Church and House. — Caste Christians and German Rationalism. — Jesuit Missions. — The Land of the Great Pagodas. — In the Seringham Temple. — Schveartz and his Work. — Heber. — Robert de Nobili's Tomb. — Bishops Sargent and Caldwell. — Nagercoil and Lace-making. — Ceylon. — Up the Ganges to Simla. — Futtehpore Sikri. — Lahore and Sir Henry Lawrence. — Brigadier Colin Mackenzie. — Meeting on the Indus with Dr. Wilson. — Bombay. — Edinburgh. It was early on a Friday morning in July, 1847, while Dr. and Mrs. Duff were enjoying on tlie house-top, as was their wont, the too brief hours of coolness before the tropical sun should rise high in the heavens, that an Episcopalian friend communicated to them the fact of the death of Dr. Chalmers, " the venerated father of your Church." The news seemed incredible. By the previous mail Dr. Duff had heard of his evidence, before the House of Commons' committee, on the re- fusal of sites for the erection of Free churches, and of the gathering of statesmen like Lord John Russell and of the London crowd to hear his ripened eloquence. iEt. 41. THE DEATH OF DR. CHALMERS. II3 But tlie Government express mail had brought th'e intelHgence, which moved even educated Hindoo society, famihar with his writings and taught by his greatest students. To Dr. Duff the loss, suddenly announced, was not that of a father and a friend alone, ^or was his sorrow the offspring of gratitude merely to the memory of one whose lectures and training and personal influence for five years had done more to make the Highland student what he had become than any other single influence. Nor did he think chiefly, moreover, of the solemn hour of his ordination in St. George's, and the second charge given to him in the same place by the great departed as by Paul to Timothy. Dr. Duff in the fulness of his own experi- ence on the wide arena of India and the East, and of his knowledge of the men who make the history alike of the Church and the world, thought of Thomas Chalmers as the earliest Scottish apostle of evangelical missions, as the preacher who, before even Dr. Inglis, had in 1812, and again in 1814, dared to tell his countrymen that they stood alone of all English- speaking peoples in their contempt for the mission- ary cause, and that the time was at hand when they must become the foremost of missionary nations. It was thus he wrote of Chalmers to Dr. James Buchanan, on the 7th August, 1847 : " Apart altogether from considerations of a more private or more general character, I feel that I could not, in my specific capacity as a missionary, keep silence. It is impossible for me to forget that one of the first steps in his splendid career as a Christian philantbropist_, was his unanswered and unanswerable defence of Bible and Missionary societies. It was, indeed, a defence which swept away the wretched sopbisms of the in- different and ungodly, like chaff before the whirlwind. It demonstrated to the world, that if such societies threatened to become popular, it was not from poverty of intellect on the VOL. II. I 114 I^I^E OF DR. DUFF. 1847. part of fheir friends, or from a drivelling irrational pietism on the part of their champions. From Bibles the transition was easy to the translators and distributors of Bibles and the promulgators of Bible truth. Accordiugly, at a time when missions were most despised, and missionaries held most despicable by the great and the wise and the mighty of this world, he stood forth the intrepid and triumphant vindicator of both. In his two discourses, entitled ' The Two Great Instruments appointed for the Propagation of the Gospel,' and, 'The Utility of Missions Ascertained by Experience,' preached and published upwards of thirty years ago, there are bursts of eloquence which he himself never subsequently sur- passed ; downright genuine eloquence, which does not lead us to the goal by slow marches of argument, or parade of verbal logic, or ingenious devices of subtlety, but flashes upon the subject with the revealing power of heaven's lightning, and at once makes every understanding to perceive, and every heart to feel. In the whole range of missionary literature it would perhaps be difiicult to meet with any treatises which, within a shorter compass than that occupied by the discourses now named, portray more strikingly the unrivalled claims of the Bible, exhibit a finer delineation of the missionary character, or embody a more powerful exposition and defence of the great object of the missionary enterprise. '^ But it has at times, and by interested parties, been more than insinuated, that the noble author's own example in some respects belied the glowing portraiture of his pen. Of this, no one that knew him well could ever be persuaded. As one of the few that have been raised up in any country or age, gifted from on high with a sight of mind that was telescopic, among the millions endowed with ordinary vision he was con- stantly liable to be misunderstood in his plans and doings. The schemes of such a man, rightly interpreted, would be found to affect, not Scotland or England alone — not the present age only, but the world and all posterity. And centuries hence, the truth not less than the magnificence of his concep- tions, may be appreciated and admired by the grateful descen- dants of those who have often joined the vulgar throng in vilifying the man, and in ridiculing or condemning his measures. *' Mighty, however, though he was in performance, his mind ^t. 41- CHALMERS AND EVANGELICAL MISSIONS. 1 15 was as mucli, if not more, of the legislative caste than the executive. Using ' speculation ^ in its highest,, noblest sense, he may truly be said to have been at once the most speculative and the most practical of living men. In religion and morals, as well as general philosophy, he was a theorist and experi- mentalist on the largest, surest scale. He first began, or rather, God, in mercy to his country and mankind, enabled him by His good Spirit to begin, with himself. His own personal experience he generalized and instantly rendered available in his management of human nature in a rural parish. His rural experience he generalized and applied to the unravelling of the more arduous complexities of an urban and suburban population. His rural and civic experience he next generalized, and transferred with giant power to the scaling of almost insurmountable difficulties, in the erection of new churches, and the establishment of a vigorous parocliial economy, with a view to effectuate and complete the christian- ization of a kingdom. But would he have stopped here ? The wishes and the hopes of many earnestly suggested. No. When, through the blessing of Heaven, he should have succeeded in rearing a monument of his later labours in the land of his fathers, mightier and more enduring far than that of the monarch whose boast it was that he found the capital of his empire of brick and left it of marble; when he should have established the means of everywhere converting that ^ bulky sediment,^ which now putrefies in all the loathsomeness of moral corruption at the base of society, into materials more precious than the gold of Ophir — materials enstaraped with the name and superscription of the King of Zion; then, if spared by the kindness of a gracious God, then it was that the Church, the world, expected that he would generalize his national experience, and bring it to bear, in the full breeze of triumph, on the countless outcast population of a globe. And, if privileged by Providence so to do, with a field so vast for the range of his excursive powers, and an object so transcen- dent for the sympathies of his benevolent heart, was it too much to hope that he would have been empowered from on high to speak in such a voice of thunder, and lighten in such flashes of love, as to arouse all Christendom from its guilty slumbers, and to awaken nations to seek their God ? But all fond hopes of such a glorious culminating crown to his mani- Il6 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1848. fold labours are now at an end. That ' grim tyrant/ whose fell triumphs he was wont to portray with such thrilling power, has interposed his mighty fiat. And now if, by general consent, he who has been so suddenly laid low was lono- acknowledged, in point of real intellectual and moral greatness comhinedy to be the master mind of his own country, if not of his own age, it only remains to be added, in justice to the character of the departed, that, though not a missionary himself, in the ordinary technical use of that term, or even no very active member of any missionary board or committee, yet, in all that constitutes the real grandeur of wide, all-com- prehending, God-like philanthropy, he has been, for years, the leading missionary spirit of Christendom. " Standing, as we do, in this great metropolis of Asiatic heathenism, surrounded by myriads that are perishing for lack of knowledge — myriads amounting, in the aggregate, to more than half of the race of man — it need not be wondered at that the mind should rapidly pass over all other features, however brilliant, and instinctively fasten on the missionary element in the character of our late revered father and friend/' All that Thomas Chalmers bad been, Dr. Duff one Sabbath evening told the Hindoo students of the Calcutta colleges who filled the Free Church Institu- tion. The secular newspapers of the time bewailed that they had not caught " the leading features in the life, labours and principles of that illustrious divine," as represented by the hands of such a master. Dr. Hanna has embodied a part of the sketch in the Memoirs of his father-in-law. But yesterday Scots- men, at home and abroad, united to place in their widest street, fronting Edinburgh Castle, Sir John Steeirs statue of the true successor of John Knox. To-day the nation is preparing to commemorate the centenary of his birth on the 17th of March, 1780. "Who could succeed him ? not indeed as national leader of the third Eeformation, but as a theological teacher and as a missionary influence at the head of ^t. 42. A MISSIONARY ABOVE ALL THINGS. II 7 the New College, which he had founded for the Free Church in Edinburgh. Many a heart turned instinc- tively to his greatest student, who had created two colleges of his own in Calcutta, and not a few else- where in imitation of these. While, after their or- derly fashion, presbyteries and synods, unanimously or by large majorities, and then the General Assembly itself, in commission, called on Dr. Duff to come home as the successor of Chalmers, every mail deluged him with private appeals to sacrifice his own *' predilec- tion.'* It was the old story of 1886, when every vacant charge with a large stipend thought to tempt him. Remembering that time, and with a conviction of the paramount claims of India more like that of Dr. Duff himself, two leaders of the Free Church only were found to plead publicly that he be let alone. Dr. Gor- don, secretary of the Foreign Missions Committee, and Thomas Guthrie. It was necessary for the missionary to act before the meeting of the General Assembly of 1849. He accordingly wrote a letter which Dr. Tweedie pub- lished on his own authority. Tracing all the way by which the Lord had led him, from his father's teaching to Chalmers's death, he declared that he must remain — must die as he had lived — the mis- sionary. "I trust, therefore, that Dr. Candlish, Dr. Begg, Dr. R. Buchanan, and other revered and be- loved men will readily excuse me for not entering more minutely into the ' merits ' of the question. They meant to honour me, and truly did honour me far more than I am conscious of deserving." The men of the world, too, he wrote, " whenever I met with such, as well as their organs of the public press, uniformly congratulated me on what they are pleased to designate as my contemplated ' elevation ' or ' pro- motion ' to the Edinburgh theological chair. I deem Il8 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. it, therefore, an unspeakable privilege to have it in my power to do anything, however humble, towards magnifying my much despised office. The conclusion of the whole matter is this, that in some form or other, at home or abroad or partly both, the Church of my fathers must see it to be right and meet to allow me to retain, in the view of all men, the clearly marked and distinguishiDg character of a missionary to the heathen abroad, labouring directly amongst them ; at home, pleading their cause among the churches of Christendom. . . For the sake of the heathen, and especially the people of India, let me cling all my days to the missionary cause." And the people of India, so far as its dumb millions could speak by representatives. Christian and non-Christian, reciprocated the sacrifice. His own converts, led by the sixteen foremost of their number, implored their *' much-loved spiritual father in the Lord,'* in an address of pathetic urgency, not to leave them. The native Christians of other churches, to which he had given not a few of his brightest sons in the faith, added their protestations. Hundreds of the Eurasians joined in the cry. Still more of his own Hindoo students and ex-stadents, to whom he had given Christ's view of truth and life and the world to come, though the Spirit had not brought them to the new birth, declared for educated native society, " If at this juncture you leave our country, everything will probably be undone. The incredible labours of your past years will likely either go in vain, or, at least, will not yield a very rich harvest." Thej^ thought, they spoke of " education," of *' civilization " only, not consciously at least of the spiritual force which makes a new creation. But rarest of all the addresses, which must have barred the way of the man most eager for the rest and the ^t. 43- REMONSTRANCE OP BRAHMAN PUNDITS. II9 culture of academic ease, was a Sanskrit remonstrance from eleven learned Bralimans " desirous of the Chief Good,'* '' to the most intelligent, virtuous, impartial glorious, and philanthropic people of Scotland." The orientalism which sounds like a p83an in the tongues of the East, may appear hyperbole in the prosaic com- monplaces of Teutonic speech. But, after making the largest allowance for the contrast, all our experience of Indian life, of Hindoo gratitude, of Bengalee lov- ableness, warrants us in quoting this translation as a dim reflection of the impression produced by the fervid personality of Alexander Daf£ on the people of India, seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, and yet He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live and are moved and are : ''The all-merciful, omnipotent, just, and impartial God, compassionating the wretched people of India, first sent the eminently holy Dr. Carey and others as missionaries. But, in the vast firmament of this country, they appeared as little stars and fireflies, and were consequently unable to dissipate the encompassing gloom. Then came Reicbardt, and Wilson^ and PiSard, and Ray, who have returned home, and a multitude of others, all of whom have done much for the real welfare of the truly wretched people of this country. But these have not done what they desired. They have not been very famous. Not only are their names unknown to most of the people of India^ but even in the city of their habitation a few persons only know the names of some of them. After making these prefatory remarks, we, the undersigned Sanskrit Pundits, sub- mit as follows : '^ We have spoken of the success of some missionaries, and presently we shall speak of the eminently pious and learned Dr. Duff. The Rev. Doctor has been greatly blessed by Almighty God. His name is in the mouth of every Hindoo because of his transcendent eloquence, learning, and philan- thropy. As to his eloquence ; from his mouth, which re- sembles a thick dark rain-cloud, there do issue forth bursts of incessant and unmeasured oratory ; so that he fills his audience T20 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. with rills of persuasive eloquence, just as the rain of heaven fills rivers, streams, brooks, valleys, canals, tanks, and pools, and, dissipating the dark delusions of false religion, he makes rise on their souls the light of true religion. This illustrious person, in order to the accomplishment of his object, has devoted his head and heart, and spent large sums of money. If some husbandmen, after ploughing, sowing, and watering a field, which held out to them the near prospect of a golden harvest, were to be stopped in their agricultural pursuits by one who, without considering either the labour bestowed upon the field, or the certainty of speedy gain, were to say to them, ' you must engage in something else,^ how, we would take the liberty of asking you, would the husbandmen feel, and how would the corn flourish ? We leave it to your cultivated understandings to apply this example to the case in hand. " Such a man as the Rev. Doctor was never seen in this country before. Now, alas ! the object of our devout wishes is far from being realized. That which never came to our minds even in the visions of the night is suddenly about to happen. Oh ! what must be the magnitude of the sin of this people to merit such a catastrophe ! Consider how difficult it is to reform the ignorant ; to remove mountains is, we think, a far easier matter. Consider, again, how almost impossible it is to break down the barriers of caste, and open up social in- tercourse between the highest and lowest classes of the Hindoo community; to make sun and moon rise in the west is more practicable. '^ With the illustrious Duff India weighs heavy, but the mere report of his recall has made her light. With his recall the grand net that has been spread in this land for the establish- ment of the true religion would seem to be taken away. Good men have become sad, and bad men are rejoicing. The friends of true religion are praying that God would change the minds of the people of Scotland, and prevent Dr. Dafi''s recall. H you are determined to blast the fruits of all missionary efforts that have been and are being made in this country, then our solicitations are like shedding tears in a forest, where there ia none to sympathise with us. But, should you fulfil the object of our desires, we would then be extremely glad. What need is there to write more to such wise and considerate men as you are ? Be pleased to excuse the length of this letter, and over. ^t. 43' SUMMONED HOME. 121 look all mistakes either in the matter or manner. Praying that we may be enabled to avoid the path of gross delusions, walk in the way of true religion that confers lasting benefits on all, and meditate on God with soul earnestness, we, with much humility, subscribe our names. (Signed) '^ Eaghu Nath Shiromani, Radha Krishna Tarka- BAGisHA, Shyama Charan Shiromani, Godadhar Tarkaba- GisHA, Kali das Kabibhushana, Ram Kamul Churomani, Thakqr das Nayapacchanana, Thakur das Churomani, Hari Prasad Bidyalankeb, Gour Chandra Bidyalanker, Chandra Shakhar Bidyabachaspati.'" The other Free Church missionaries and friends, Drs. Wilson, Mackay and Ewart, Messrs. Anderson, Hislop, and MacKail, and Mr. Justice Hawkins, united in the same request. But they agreed with Drs. Gor- don and Guthrie at home, that it was desirable for Dr. Dili? to return to Scotland for a time, to consolidate, in the Free Church, that work of missionary organ- ization to which he had given the years of his visit previous to the Disruption. When it became known that he would not sink the missionary in the divinity professor, the General Assembly urged his temporary return. The Swiss Eev. A. F. Lacroix, of the London Missionary Society, indeed went so far as to urge that the Free Church should found a chair in its new col- lege, " to be called the * missionary or evangelistic ' chair, having for its object to inapart information and instruction regarding that most interesting and impor- tant portion of the Christian system — the universal spread of our Lord's kingdom over the earth. To such a professorship, if ever it be established, I should hail to see you appointed, but to no other. May the day soon come when the Free Church of Scotland will deem it its duty, in this manner, to complete the good work it has begun, and which has already produced such beneficial effects in various parts of the pagan world 1 " 122 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1849. Fiye years before Dr. Daff had proposed sucli a foun- dation ; twenty years after he caused it to be laid. Dr. Nicliolson pronounced it most desirable, on medical grounds, that Dr. Duff should return to Eu- rope after ten years' labours, which had '' evidently shattered his constitution." He even agreed to allow the missionary to make a long land tour up the Ganges and Jumna valleys, and down the Indus to Bombay, in 1850, " provided you take the common precautions necessary in travelling in this country, and avoid all needless fatigue and exposure.*' But before this and &o far from this, the ardent evangelist resolved to make a survey of South India and Ceylon in the in- tervening hot and rainy seasons of 1849. Convioced that *' India is at this moment of all countries in the world the great missionary field," he determined that he would visit all its Evangelical and many of its Homanist missions, south and north and west, before he took his new message from the front of the battle to those who abode at home by the stuff. From April to August he suffered fatigues and ex- posure, he underwent risks and toil, such as no motive lower than the missionary's could justify, and few others could have borne after a decade of exhausting duties in Bengal. Fortunately he himself has pre- served for us a record of the tour in a MS. volume. The same steamer which took him from Calcutta to Madras carried off Mr. Anderson and his first ordained convert, Kajabgopal, to Scotland. After preaching a sermon for the Mission, and with Mr. Johnston visiting the branch station of Conjeveram — JSTellore being too dis- tant to the north, — and after taking part in the usual prayer meeting, in which he set forth the Saviour's in- finite and inconceivable love, he left Madras by palan- keen. Chingleput, thirty-six miles off, the third branch station of the Mission, was the first stage on his JEi. 43. DIARY OF HIS TOUR. 1 23 southward journey. The native converts presented him with the carefully bound black morocco note-book in which he wrote his diary during the enforced leisure of the long journeys and often weary waiting of pras- railway days. The volume, having his name engraved on its flap, is doubly hallowed by the signatures of the twenty-four men and women who put it in his hands. The name of the late Rev. Yenkataramiah heads the list. The diary was intended strictly for his own use, and no eye saw it till his death removed the restriction which we find in the midst of its entries. The whole, covering 960 closely written pages, which we trust will yet see the light in their completeness, forms a record of the social and religious condition of the people of the Carnatic and Ceylon, and of the missionary and ad- ministrative organizations for their elevation, from the days of Ziegenbalg and Schwartz, near the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the middle of the nine- teenth. Not unfrequently, in the solitary rest of the Sabbath and on the receipt of letters from his wife and daughter, does he break forth into passages of devout meditation and joyful thanksgiving. The time was the very hottest of a hot year, in the sandy tracts of the palmyra-palm country to the north of Cape Como- rin, when for weeks the heavens were as brass and the earth as iron, and when, away from the coast, not a breath broke the tropical calm of the sultry day and the stifling night. The palankeen tour began at Madras on the 11th May, 1849 ; but we may best in- troduce the extracts from the Journal by this passage, written near Cape Comorin on the receipt of a letter from his daughter regarding his wife's health : " Why should I be over-anxious ? Has not the Lord hitherto wonderfully preserved ? Oh wliy should T, who have 124 ^^^^ ^^ ^^^* i^u^^« 1849. been tlie child of so many mercies, be faithless or doubting ? If any man living should trust in the Lord absolutely, and cast upon Him the burden of all his cares, personal, social, official, and domestic, surely I am that man. All my days I have been a child of Providence, the Lord leading me and guiding me in ways unknown to me — in ways of His own, and for the accomplishment of His own heavenly ends. Oh, that I were more worthy ! Bat, somehow, I feel as if the more marvellous the Lord^s dealings with me, the more cold, heartless and indifferent I become. Is not this sad — is it not terrible ? All the finer ores are melted by the fire — the earthy clay is hardened. Oh gracious God, forbid that this should continue to be my doleful case ! May I not resemble the clay any more ! May I be like the gold and silver ore : when warmed and heated by the fire of Thy loving- kindnesses, may I be melted, fused, purified, refined, assimilated to Thy own holy nature. 0 Lord, soften, break, melt, this hard heart of mine ! / " This note-book is not intended as a record of my inner feelings, but I have been led unconsciously to write thus. May the Lord hear my prayer ! These jottings are not a complete record of what I have seen or thought upon. No; only a few brief notes, hastily and crudely committed to writ- ing, to refresh my own memory, and to suggest trains of in- ference and reflection which I have no time to record now, I specially note this in case, through any unforeseen con- tingency, this should fall into other hands than my own. There is not a syllable in this MS. in such a form as I should stamp with my imprimatur as fit to be given to the public. It is not so designed — how could it ? I am literally galloping over the country. Travelling by night — and almost every night — with only broken and unrefreshing snatches of sleep in the palkee ; and during the day either grilled in a solitary bungalow, or incessantly occupied, at a mission station, in talk- ing to friends, inspecting schools, or addressing adults or child- ren, how could I pretend to collect my thoughts or put them connectedly together ? But I note the fragments of a few scattered gleanings, merely to aid my own mind in afterwards reviewing the whole field, and gradually and deliberately forming my own conclusions. "May Wth, 1849. This evening, about eight o'clock, left our kind friends of the Mission, Madras, after addressing JEt 43' BEGINS HIS TOUR IN SOUTH INDIA. 125 shortly the girls and young men and praying with all. Spoke about the necessity of self-denial and self-consecration: devoted lives are a more powerful preaciiing than burning words. Friends loaded me with kindness. '^ Heard the gun at eight o'clock on the Mount Road. A pleasantly cool night, but could sleep little, and that little broken and unrefreshing. On Mount Road the coolies com- plained that the tin cases were too heavy. What was to be done ? A respectably dressed native came up who spoke English ; he stopped and assisted in explaining everything. I thanked him for his politeness, and said he had shown one feature of goodness, which consisted in showing kindness to the stranger. I gave him a few of the apples that a kind friend had put into one of the tin cases. He thanked me, and said he was one of Rhenius's Christians. ' Ah,' said I, ' that explains your kindness, so unlike the hard indifference of the heathen. I am a Christian, and welcome you as a brother in the Lord.' Verily, Christ is the Inspirer of love and good will. "Towards midnight the moon rose brightly. The road excellent, but few villages to be seen, and little real cultivation. Jungle everywhere instead of corn-fields. What is the cause ? It must be investigated. Land-tax partly, no doubt ; but the villainous exactions of underlings also. The system of in- terminable subdivision of land among children allows of no accumulation of capital. Hence no means of improvement; poverty everywhere increasing. The Gospel the only effectual remedy. " At daybreak found myself within five miles of Chingleput. Feverish from want of proper sleep, and the disturbance of the system by the shaking and jolting of the palkee. Stepped out to take a walk. The basin where I stood was flat. One or two large tanks or reservoirs of water — fresh, clear water — were in view. These, natural and assisted partly by art, are used for purposes of irrigation. They looked like small Scotch lakes at the foot of hills. Close to one of these I passed ; from it issued a small, clear, purling brook. It was the first of the kind I had seen for years ; for in Bengal proper, clear, crystalline streams or brooks are nowhere to be found. All there is stagnant pond, or marsh, or muddy water. But here was a little rivulet of pure, fresh water. My emotions and fancy were vividly 126 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. excited. I felt as if transported to the Grampians. I thought of the water of life, pure as crystal. I stepped from the roadside, and with the palms of the hand refreshed my dust- covered face and parched lips from the sparkling, gently mur- muring brook, lifted up my soul to God, and took courage. '^ The irrigated fields had on them rich green crops of rice. To see the naked granite masses rising here and there several feet above the surface from the very midst of luxuriant rice crops, was indeed a novel spectacle. Granite, the primordial rock, the backbone of the earth, associated often with nothing but the sterile peaks of Grampian and other lofty mountain rauges, in immediate and actual contact with thick green stalks of rice, was indeed a novel and surprising spectacle. The truth is, that nothing is wanting but capital, skill, industry, security and remunerativeness to turn the whole of this region into a paradise. By enlarging the present tanks and lakes, and excavating new ones, abundance of water might be collected for irrigation, and thus a perpetual summer and harvest might be the result. The hills might be clothed with wood of a useful description. All this would besides improve, the climate, mitigate the scorching heat, and almost annihilate the hot winds. These hills, moreover, abound with minerals, of essential utility in the arts of life, which have never yet been turned to any good account, but which, in time^ might be made to add indefinitely to the resources, the comforts and necessaries of the greatly multiplied people." So much for the Middlesex of South India, the first " jaghire " or principality acquired by the East India Company, which the devastations of Hyder Ali and the worse ravages of famine have thus marred, and the old ryotwaree system of land tenure and tax has prevented from recovering. The fort was taken bj Clive from the French in 1752. Dr. Duff here showed a keen interest in the pottery experiments of the Scottish doctor, for which the Government had made a grant. Of the Sabbath when he preached to the residents he writes : " Had a quiet afternoon to medi- tate and to pray, the first I have enjoyed for many lOO O 100 200 300 40O LontfttLdfi E. 75 of Greenwich. 80 TfiAK.J^^r^U r. I.dinlX^ Free Church, Mission- SlajUoas underimed JEt. 43. SKVEN HUMDRED MILES IN A PALANKEEN. 127 weeks. Felt thankful and refreslied." Afc raidnioflit he set out for Sadras, and continued to take the coast road by French Pondicheri, Cuddalore, Chillumbrum, Mayaveram, Danish Tranquebar, Combaconum, and Negapatam. After an unsuccessful attempt to cross by boat from Point Cahmere to Jaflfna in Ceylon, he struck inland to Trichinopoly and Madura, by weary, dustladen roads where now there is a busy railway. From Madura he made a second vain attempt, by E-amnad, to reach Ceylon, and therefore again struck inland to Palamcotta, just north of Cape Comorin. From that centre he went round the chief Christian stations of Tinnevelli. Thence he went to Trevandrum, on the west coast, by Nagercoil. Having studied the flourishing mission settlements in the intensely Brah- manical state of Travancore, and its northern neis^h- bour of Cochin, he went up the ^lalabar coast, by its picturesque back-waters, crossed the Western Ghauts by the Arungole pass to Palamcotta and Tutticorin, from which he sailed to Colombo, the capital of Ceylon. At Point de Galle lie took the mail steamer to Calcutta, where he delivered two lectures and a powerful ser- mon on his remarkable tour. The first described the missions in Tanjore and Tranquebar, the root of all Protestant evangelising in South India. The second discussed the condition of the Romanist and Syrian Churches, and of the black and white Jews in Cochin. The sermon was followed by the first account given up to that time by a competent outsider of the growth and " territorial " development of the Tinnevelli Church. SadraSj Noon, May 14//t. — "Reached weary, as usual, from the little sleep, and that little so broken, the occasional closeness, the flood of perspiration. No rest, till plunged in water — how reviving ! The air too is loaded with invisible, impalpable dust, which fills up the pores of the skin and produces a sad irritation there. But the cleansing efficacy of water ! To 128 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. know tlie significancy of it, as tlie chosen type of the cleans- ing influence of the Holy Spirit, symbolized in baptism, one ought to be steeped in the dry, heated, dust-laden air of the Carnatic for a day and night ; and after emerging from the water bath ! — ah, this is cleansing, with a keen sensation of deliverance from the cause of physical unrest 'and dis- quietude ! AuLAMPARNA, Ibth, — " The sepoy at the Bungalow very atten- tive. When he was getting water for a bath, read a portion of the precious Bible on the verandah, and lifted up my soul to God, not forgetting my dear wife and daughter and the boys in Edinburgh — nor the friends left behind in Calcutta and Madras, nor their great work. Oh it is pleasing to'^have the heart touched and melting by soothing remembrance of those that are dear to us, and linked by ties and relationships at once temporal and spiritual ! In my loneliness here, I feel as if more intimately and endearingly present than ever with distant beloved friends ! " Noo7i. — The cattle have been gathered in to escape the in- creasing heat, which goes on accumulating till four. They are taken into the palmyra grove, where there is almost a perfect shade. Looking at the intense luxuriance of this tropical herbage of every kind, herbage which in Europe we ever associate with the expensive luxury of greenhouses, the mansions and palaces of the titled gentry and nobility of the land, and contrasting the same with the half-naked, filthy, rudely clownish, woe-be- gone, care-toiled, miserable creatures that nestle in the midst of it all, calling it all their own, I am constantly struck with a resistless feeling of incongruity. The gorgeousness of this vegetable creation is not suited to the lank leanness and poverty- stricken tameness and wretchedness of the human. They are unsuited, unmatched. There is a painful sense of unadapted- ness in this respect. Such seeming natural riches in such close juxtaposition with such unnatural poverty. There is a sense of the incongruous produced by it which is positively painful. I feel somewhat, in gazing at it, as I would if gazing at a giant wedded to a dwarf, decrepit old age to youthful vigour, shocking deformity to exquisite beauty, or any other unre- sembling union. It is like a piece of untempered mortar im- bedded or embosomed in a casket of pure gold, or splinters of trap or whin stone locked up and cabineted in a network of ^t. 43. ECONOMIC STATE OF MADRAS. T 29 diamond, ruby and otlier gems. I have no words wherewitli to portray the strength or the painfulness of this sensation of incongruity. Surely it was not so always. Oh no. No incon- gruity between the first man and the first paradise. Intellec- tual beauty, heart holiness and physical loveliness adorned the first happy pair; and a paradise bestud and garnished with all the exuberant excellences of a world that had received the Almighty's blessing was their fitting habitation. Such an abode was worthy of such an inhabitant; and such an in- habitant of such an abode ! But the harmony, the congruity, the parallelism, no longer exists. Prospects the most pleasing are now tenanted by men the most vile. Gracious God ! is one apt to exclaim, are these poor, ignorant, superstitious, savage-looking people the descendants of him made in the image of God, and the noble occupant of the bowers of para- dise ? It is even so. Alas, alas! How has the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed ! But blessed be God, there is yet hope. Through the second Adam, even these forlorn specimens of human degeneracy may be reclaimed. This is the great design of the gospel. It is to regenerate, renovate, beautify and ennoble the nature of man, to make him worthy of an earthly paradise, and, by removing the curse, reconstitute the earth into a paradise fit for his recep- tion ! PoNDiCHERi, 16th. — " This French town is admirably laid out, and quite a model for a tropical city. Saw the Governor's house in passing; and the vast and splendid church edifice erected by the Jesuits, when their Mission was in the climax of its prosperity. Great numbers of the natives are still nominally Christian, that is, popish idolaters usurping the Christian name. Pondicheri (Pudu, or Puthu, Cberi, literally New Town) was once the most splendid European establishment in India. It was first given to a French merchant named Martin in 1672. To it resorted a number of colonists expelled by the Dutch from St. Thome, and the remains of an un- successful expedition against Trinomalee, possessed also by the Dutch. The system of French policy did open and un- necessary violence to the prejudices and customs of the natives. Lally forced them to work in the trenches and do other military duties which rudely interfered with the law and usages of caste. Dupleix actually destroyed their temples. VOL. II. K I JO LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. At one time the Frencli Government forbade any natives to reside within its boundaries who did not embrace the Romish- Christian faith. To this extreme persecuting, intolerant^ inter- fering spirit, in part, may be attributed the bad odour of the French with the native powers, and their rapid decline. The British, again, went to the other extreme — not of mere toler- ance, but of direct, active support of native prejudices and superstitions. This was very revolting. *' The French persecuted the Hindoo faith and upheld the Romish by unlawful means ; the English persecuted the Christian faith and upheld the Hindoo by unlawful means. The French admitted Native Christians into their service, in every department ; and so far well. But such admission was effected in a way not only to encourage proselytism, but to necessitate a vast amount of hypocrisy. The English, again, with the perfection of unreasonableness, prohibited Native Christians from entering their service in any department, and thus obtrusively and unwarrantably discouraged all con- version from Hindooism — in other words, the progress of the blessed gospel among this benighted people. This, probably, is one of the causes of the slow progress of Christianity in the land. As the French Popish Church has done so much for this part of India, why should not the French Protestant Church awake to its duty, and send its missionaries here, as it has done to South Africa ? Already are there German and American missionaries in the Indian field ; why not add the French ? CuDDALORE, \ltli. — '' 1 am now in the heart of the collec- torate or county of South Arcot, a name of frequent recur- rence in the eventful story of British India. What has the Christian Chuich done for this large district ? Almost nothing. A few itineracies, ephemeral and unimpressive, while the Jesuits have founded mighty establishments. Only one Pro- testant missionary stationed in the whole district ! That is a Propagation Society one, at Cuddalore; while it contains some of the strongest holds of idolatry — Chillumbrum and Trino- malee, described by Mr. Smith, now alas ! no more, and whoso was the first missionary house I ever entered in India, i.e., at Madras, May, 1830. " To-day despatched a letter to Calcutta, to my dear partner, enclosing a familiar epistle to the dear boys in Edin- ^t 43. FORT ST. DAVID AND THE E. I. COMPANY. I3I burgli — giving an account of my journey, fitted, I hope, to interest them. They are much in my thoughts and in my prayers. I feel as if I had not prayed enough for them. May the Lord forgive me for such shortcomings ! Indeed, I may here record the fact, that, though given much to inward de- votional meditation, I feel a diJSiculty in committing these more private thoughts and feelings to writing. If this be wrong, may the Lord forgive me and teach me better in the time to come ! To-day has been the hottest I have yet felt. At noon not a breath of air. The sultriness and the scorching heat dreadful. All around is still as death, as if all nature were paralysed. No animal, no bird, to be seen or heard, no human creature ; all are laid flat, glad to exist, to survive with a bare consciousness of being without the ability or the wish to exhibit any signs of active life. About two a slight breeze sprang up from the sea ; and though it never increased much, it was hke the letting in of water from heaven's reser- voirs on a languid drooping vegetation. "Fort St. David, the first occupied by the British in India, lies to the north-west. As I passed out of Cuddalore, I could not but think of it in ruins, while the originally small and obscure company of British merchants, — by whom the fort was intended to afford a precarious existence in a foreign land, then ruled over by the mightiest of Asiatic potentates, — has since risen to the rank of sovereigns of the most powerful empire in the East, an empire that has swallowed up all others from the happy vale of Kashmir to Cape Comorin ! The Company once depended on Fort St. David for its existence; the same Company now, installed into the office and throne of the Great Moghul, has so many mighty fortresses on which waves the flag of its uncontrolled sovereignty, that it can afford to allow the ruins of Fort St. David to be converted into materials for road-making and bridge-building and other works of utility and peace. " Yv^hile reminded of Edinburgh, by the local nomenclature of 'old^ and ^new town,' it was not a topographical association alone that brought it vividly to my remembrance last evening. Six o'clock here would be almost noon in Edinburgh. Yes- terday, Thursday, May the 17th, was the day on which the great and solemn General Assembly of our Church would con- vene in Edinburgh. And I could not but feel exhilarated at 132 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1849. the thonglit that, about the time when I was emerging from Cuddalore, the first possession of the British in India, the members of Assembly would be meeting in Edinburgh for the worship of the great God previous to entering on their deliberations, on whose result so much of the spiritual peace and prosperity of Scotland and the world may depend. The temporal sword of the Company, which first sought for itself only a quiet mercantile settlement at Cuddalore, has beaten down every barrier to the residence and labours of British Christians in this land. Will not the Church now arise, and, wielding the spiritual sword as vigorously, beat down every barrier to the reign of the Prince of light and peace, in this dark and long distracted realm ! If the congregated members of Assembly could only witness with their own eyes what I beheld this morning, methinks, like St. Paul of old when entering the city of Athens, their hearts would be exceedingly stirred up within them. Chillumbeum, 18th, two o*cloch, p.m. — ^'' When I left Madras, this day week, the thermometer in one of the coolest houses stood at 97° in the shade. Tlie heat has been increasing ever since. Yesterday, the heat was terrific during the lull between the land wind and the sea breeze. To-day, being farther inland, I found it still worse. This is a wonderful climate. Surely it may be ranked as one of the chief natural impediments to the spread of the gospel. Here I am all alone, seated in this bungalow ; for I have resolved not to lie down in the day, if the Lord will give me strength at all to sit up. The tendency is to languor and drowsiness and vegetativeness. At this hour the natives all around in every direction are asleep ; and there is a stillness like that of the Scottish Sabbath. But, oh, it is a suspension here — and a temporary suspension too — of the laborious activities of heathenism ! I keep myself awake by keeping the mind in constant employment. I write, I read, I meditate alternately. I cannot note the ten thousand thoughts that flit like the rapidly evanishing clouds on a gay day in summer or harvest at home, leaving, I fear, just as little of the profitable and the permanent. I touch the table, I draw back my hand, it is so hot. I take a sip of water, it is more than tepid, more than lukewarm — it is positively hot. Books — everything I touch is hot. When I write, no matter however heavily, the ink is not out of the ^t. 43. THE HEAT OF MAY. 1 33 pen when it is dry on the paper. No need of blotting paper, or sand, or any other artificial contrivance here. The hot air answers the purpose quite, and at no expense. The perspir- ation is oozing out in globules at every pore; and looking at it, I could say, almost visibly evaporating. This, however, is a refrigerant in its way. If the perspiration were checked, how torturing and feverish ! After a dead lull, the hot wind comes in in gusts ; they are literally like hot blasts from the mouth of the furnace. Having once visited the bottle-works at Leith, I never can forget the sensation when standing near the man who opened the mouth of the furnace, to rake the liquid materials within. The heat beat upon me like a hot arrow ; I thought I was felled or suffocated. Precisely simi- lar is the sensation which I have repeatedly had this day. And if it be such inside a well-sheltering bungalow, what must it be outside, under the direct influence of this terrible sun ? What an impediment to all locomotion and active personal exertion ! At home one rejoices in a dry warm summer day, as favourable to intended visitation and usefulness. But here, this dry warm summer day, the 18th May, is so dry and warm, that it compels a man to remain as quiet as he can in the house, in order to have some chance of barely existing or passively vegetating. What a terrible obstacle is this to active, all-pervading missionary exertion ! Teakquebae, 21st. — ^^This is the classic land of modern Pro- testant Missions, the region so often trodden by Ziegenbalg and Schwartz and their associates. To the north of the Coleroon scarcely a ray of light has penetrated the heathen gloom. Yesterday attended the Tamul service in the small native chapel at Mayaveram. The ritual was Lutheran. A native catechist acted as clerk. There is an altar, from which part of the service was read and part chauuted very beauti- fully ; the sioging was also very good. There were about thirty-six present — some of the elderly persons very devout, some of the young not so. After service I spoke words of exhortation to the natives, through Mr. Ockes as interpreter.^^ Afterwards, " he spoke much of the Christian poet of Tanjore, a remarkable old man, who has written from twenty to thirty volumes of poetry of different kinds, chiefly connected with Christianity, and exposures of heathenism. He showed the MS. of one, in which the daily, hourly, and momently super- 134 I^Ii'^2 OF DR. DUFF. 1849. stitions of the heathen were depicted at length and indicated with much power of sarcasm. He promised me a translation of it. It seems that the poetry is set to such tunes as are highly popular among the Tanmlians, and that the heathen will often listen to a rehearsal of these poems, though severely condemnatory of idolatry, when they would turn aside from a sermon altogether. But Mr. Ockes directed my attention to another person, if possible still more remarkable; that is a daughter of the poet, between thirty and forty years of age. Her husband, being a caste Christian, has employment In the Collector's. She knows a little of Sanskrit, speaks and writes Tamul with great effect, and speaks and writes English with equal fluency. Not for pay, but as a gratuity of kindness to- wards her neighbours, alike Christian and heathen, she teaches a number of their boys, varying from six to ten, the English language. I asked her what books she made them read. She said, ' such as she could obtain.' ' After the spelling books,' she ' taught English grammar, with the irregular verbs and other parts ; the English Bible, the Universal Letter Writer, with cutchery (judicial) papers and accounts!' She asked me all manner of questions about my family, about Calcutta and mission work there, about Scotland, not forgettiug ' Shet- land,' to show her knowledge of geography. I never met such a Hindoo female, one exhibiting such versatile talents and varied acquirements of a kind so utterly foreign to her class. On our way to the house of this remarkable woman, I exhorted her to steadfastness and perseverance in her Chris- tian course. '*' In Tranquebar to-day I entered, opposite the Mission-house, the church erected with so much trouble by the holy and per- severing Ziegenbalg. It has on its front a crown in large bas-relief; and beneath it the date, 1718. Its erection was one of Ziegenbalg's last works. It is called New Jerusalem, as the old or first church, reared by Ziegenbalg after his arrival in 1 706, and called Jerusalem, has since been swept into the sea, which has been palpably encroaching on this coast. The church is built in the form of a cross, each wing being of equal size. If the centre had a dome, instead of an ordinary roof, it might seem after the model of St. Paul's, London, on a small scale. The pulpit is at one of the centre corners, so as to be seen from every part of the building. I mounted the pulpit ; and JEt 43. EELICS OF ZIEGENBALG. 1 35 witli no ordinary emotion gazed around from tlie position from which Ziegenbalg, and Grimdler, and Schwartz, etc., so often proclaimed a free salvation to thousands in Tamul, German, Danish, and Portuguese. At the end of one of the wings, on either side of a j^hiin altar, lie the mortal remains of Ziegenbalg and Grundler. I stood with not easily expressed feeliugs over the remains of two such men, of brief but brilliant and immortal career in the mighty work of Indian evangelization. Theirs was a lofty and indomitable spirit, breathing the most fervid piety. '^ Afterwards went to the house in which Ziesrenbalof lived, having been planned and erected by himself. Entering a gateway, with shrubs on either side, the space widened. On the left was the dwelling of the devoted and untiring man; in front, a small chapel ; on either side of it, at the farther end, other buildings appeared, in which were assembled the children of his celebrated boarding-schools, but divided from each other, so that there was no access from the one to the other ; but an open door from each into the chapel, for Divine service. The dwelling-house is still entire, very neatly and commodiously planned. In it are the remains of the famous old library of the German Mission in a state of sad dilapidation — splendid old tomes of massive divinity in German and Latin, folios and quartos and octavos, almost all without their boards, and tied up with strings to prevent the leaves from falling away or being blown about by the winds ; many of them in an utterly unreadable state. Bishop Middleton offered four thousand pagodas for the library in his day; since then it has been miserably neglected. No one was authorized to accept the bishop^s offer, hence the library is lost. But what I felt most for was the pile of MSS., partly in German and partly in Latin, in the handwriting of the old missionaries. Some of these MSS. have disappeared — how or whither nobody can tell ; only the dregs now remain, in a wretched condition. Why does not some one rummage among them, pick out the best, and have them published to the world ? Some time ago, the pre- sent keeper of the library told me a mass of books and papers were in so decayed and useless a state that he got them all sold as waste paper, for three rupees ! The report is cur- rently credited that many of them were used as wadding for the guns of the Fort. Ziegenbalg's domestic chapel is now 136 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. in a filtliy state, filled witli the mouldering records of the Danish Government. The schools are partly in existence and partly dilapidated. " Copied the inscription in the churcli over Ziegenbalg's tomb. Certainly he was a great missionary, considering that he was the first; inferior to none, scarcely second to any that fol- lowed him. Less shining than Schwartz, he had probably more of spiritual unction and power, and simple-minded zeal, and devotedness, and practical wisdom. How afi'ecting to think of the wonderful labours of such men nearly a century and half ago; and those of their successors, continued in some shape up to this hour ; and yet to look at the town of Tranquebar, and ask for the results ! A few Danes and Dutch are there still; though the place, a few years ago, was transferred, by purchase, to the British Government. There is a Collector there, and some other officials. The Portuguese, once so renowned, are now almost gone. There are not above fifty or sixty in the whole town. The Portu- guese services, to which Ziegenbalg paid so much, attention, are nearly, therefore, at an end; the large church being used almost exclusively for Tamuls from the neighbourhood. As for Native Christians, where are they ? In the town of Tran- quebar, with its four thousand inhabitants, there are not now twenty Native Christians I There are a considerable number of Popish Native Christians, the Goa sect combining with the French Jesuits. Perhaps a thousand Romanists ! "Why is the Protestant Mission, on which such time and strength and labour have been lavished, so languid ? It is most melancholy. One of the missionaries, in trying to account for it, attributed it very much to the fact that the men who succeeded the early fathers of the Mission, were not of like spirit with them. Schwartz, it is known, joined the Propagation Society. Since 1760, the Mission languished, from want of men of spiritual power, faith and love. The rationalism of Germany infected even the missionaries. Towards the close of last cen- tury the Mission became as dead as the Protestant Churches in Germany; and continued so well up through the present century. During the early part of this century, when the Ger- man missionaries died out, their place was supplied by Danish. They too were lifeless, and the work retrograded. Then, about eight or nine years ago, after the Protestantism of ^t. 43. THE FIEST LUTHERAN MISSION. I37 Germany was fairly roused, a National Lutheran Missionary Society was formed, meant to embrace all the Lutheran Churches in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, etc. This society took up the Tranquebar Mission, about to be wholly abandoned by Denmark. AVhen the colony was transferred to the British, the Mission property was reserved ; it was meant to be trans- ferred to the German Mission, but the official legal documents have not yet reached, so that it is in abeyance. The church, however, is given for use to the missionaries ; but Ziegen- balg's house, chapel, and schools, are kept by the British Government till the official orders, as to the disposal of them, are received from home. ^' Throughout all the neighbouring villages there are sup- posed to be about two thousand native Christians, men, women and children. One- third of them are caste Christians, two-thirds Pariahs. Little is done in the way of Christian education, and that little shallow and imperfect. There is a school in the adjoining village of Puriar, where some English is taught. The caste Christians are Soodras, of the right hand and left. They will not eat or intermarry with Pariahs, nor sit promiscuously even in the house of God. The Soodra Christians sit apart, and the Pariahs by themselves. Argued the subject of caste at great length with Mylius, who thoroughly took up the caste side. I did not know before that the Ger- mans made the matter one of religious creed and ecclesiastical order.* Negapatam, 2Srd. — "Waited on Mr. Strickland, of the Jesuit Mission, by appointment. He received me in his own room, poor-looking indeed. A bedstead, chair and table, two tin boxes raised on wood, with travelling bag, constituted the whole furniture. The floor, beaten mud. Strickland is an Englishman, young, about thirty apparently. He has been here only two or three years. He is a relative of Miss Strickland, the authoress of the ' Lives of the Queens of Eng- land/ But her branch of the family, a century ago, became * For all the facts, see Sistory of the Tranquebar Mission, by the Danish Fenger, translated into Germ.an and English by Dr. Emil Francke. Tranquebar, 1863. For the caste question, see Bisliop Wilson's Life, by Bateman, and the Proceedings and Resolutions of the Conference of 120 Missionaries at Bangalore, in June, 1879. J 8 LIVE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. Protestant. And Sir George W. Strickland, M.P., is of that branch, the Jesuit having it that he obtained his baronetcy as a bribe for changing his faith. He asked if I had seen the ' Lives.' I said I had. Had I seen her Elizabeth and Mary ? Yes. Does she not make out a very different character for them than that usually given ? I admitted the fact, and lamented her subtle insinuating leanings towards Popery. Pie said he had heard that Miss Strickland had become Catholic, but was not sure. " Xavier originated the Mission. Thousands were converted along the coast, but the people of the interior were obstinate and prejudiced. Robert de Nobili came, assumed the garb of a Brahman in order to win natives to Christ, as also many of the forms and manners of Brahmanisra, such as were not sup- posed to interfere with the doctrines of Catholicism. But dis- putes arose. Robert might be so far wrong, but his errors were exaggerated. At length the pope forbade certain practices ; but the Brahman converts, rather than leave these, renounced their Christianity. Various success till about the end of last century, when, by the labours and intrigues of the French philosophers, the order of Jesuits was unhappily abolished by the pope. Then the pope requested the Archbishop of Goa to send what priests he could to the different stations, to keep Catho- licism in existence. The Portuguese once in the ascendant, Goa became supreme. But since the Portuguese were banished, and Goa reduced to a corner, it was unreasonable that it should be sovereign over India, under the change of dynasty. So the pope at last settled that Bombay, Madras and Calcutta be seats of sees ; in 1865, it was resolved that the Jesuits should proceed to India (the order being revived) and reassume their own. They come everywhere, with the pope's commission, and order the Goa priests to decamp. The latter refuse ; hence the schism and quarrel about property. The latter the Jesuits claim as all their own ; the Goanists resist. The latter in state of eccle- siastical rebellion. Being priests, their administration of ordi- nances were valid, though not legal^ being in an attitude of defiance to the pope. " The large buildings here were set on fire by the Goa priests and their party. Hence necessity for new edifice. Strickland travelled everywhere, and obtained by address and importunity large sums of money. The plan of a really magnificent JEt. 43' XAVIER S MISSION AND THE JESUITS. 1 39 structure has been approved. It is of three storeys; has ample accommodation for professors and students^ European and native. The first storey of the front range or elevation ah'eady completed. It is said that fifty or sixty thousand rupees have been obtained by Strickland for it, from natives, Europeans, Christians, Protestants and heathen. At present twelve fathers are here — six new, learioing the language, six stationary. There are twenty-five native yonths, most of them, gratuitously taught, some of them to be agents. Half a dozen are sons of Europeans. The most complete classical education is given, as the accompanying prospectus will show. These pay board, some twenty-five, some fifteen rupees per month. The fathers have no personal property, but a common fund or stock. Strickland came out at his own expense, took money and other property with him ; when he reached Tanjore ib all went to the common fund. In the great fire his library of books, worth eighty pounds, was burnt ; a friend in England sent him out a hundred pounds to replace it, the money went into the common stock. He knows not what has been made of it. He receives a salary for acting as chaplain to the Popish soldiers in Trichinopoly ; he never sees it, it goes into the common stock. Food and raiment are provided them out of this stock, which in the aggregate amounts only to an ordinary average of twenty-five rupees per month ! Besides this they get no salary. When any- thing extra is required for travelling, etc., the want is stated to the superior, and supplied by him if the fund admits of it. The former Jesuits tried to live out-and-out like natives, on rice and water. This did well for a year or so, while European strength lasted. But, by-and-bye, they got weak, their system relaxed, they took ill of cholera or other disease, and died like rotten sheep. In this way, in eight years, sixteen were cut off. This mortality was wondered at, till a brother of Lord Clifford came out as missionary. He with his English habits and strong practical sense, soon found out the cause, wrote home to the General in Rome for an order^ which enjoined the fathers to live better, in order to save their lives. This they have done, though simply. That is, they take daily a little fresh meat, such as mutton, fowls, etc., but no beef, out of respect to prejudices of natives. As to drink, if one is unwell or weakly a little wine is allowed; but 140 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. tlie ordinary fare is, to take a bottle of brandy, make it into four by mixing it with water, and allow one wine-glass of this grog daily at dinner for each father. This is little ; but it helps digestion. It is only as an extreme measure, in curing drunken soldiers, that total abstinence literally is to be insisted on. They wear a sort of white or yellow gown and red cap. This reconciles the natives to them. They also keep no Pariah servants, except horse grooms — all caste men. "He allowed caste to be of superstitious origin, and evil in some of its workings ; but good when worked properly for right ends. I asked him to explain. For instance, if a man begin to disobey — live immorally or such like — he may despise the priest and his ecclesiastical censures ; and these censures cannot be executed {at least at jpresent, added the Jesuit with emphasis) ; but if the head man of the caste threatens the offender with loss of caste if he do not mend his ways, he instantly attends to this ; since to lose caste would be to lose kith and kin, and be hurried adrift from house and home and everything valued here below. This was one example of the right use of caste. The number of native Romish proselytes south of the Cauvery to Comorin he reckoned at between 125,000 and 150,000. Unless Goa priests, most of these he admitted to be extremely ignorant, but now they are all to be taught. '^ The adults to be taught ? Yes ! not indeed to write or read, for he and his order saw no necessity for the mass to learn so. But orally they were to be taught creed, command- ments, and prayers, so that they should not be ignorant of the doctrines of their Church. Thus little knowledge is necessary to salvation. If they get a few elementary fragments and the water of regeneration, so as to give them a chance of getting to heaven, this is all that would be attempted in their case. But the children of Native Christians, what of them ? Those of the great mass not to be taught reading, but to be instructed orally like the parents. He was an enemy to the forcing of education, in the ordinary sense, upon all ; and to force a high education on the majority he did not approve. But the door would be opened to the capable. They would have schools for the able and the willing ; and a college (at Negapatam) for the best scholars to obtain a high education ; especially such as were destined to be agents for propagating ^t. 43. ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS. I4I the gospel. They had one native now who had passed the first part of his novitiate towards being a full priest, and five or six more preparing. But he did not expect many fit to be guides and leaders to supply place of Europeans, for two or three centuries to come. At present all the leaders must come from Europe; but in eight or ten years he expected all their missions to be self-supporting, as to temporal means. There were now between thirty and forty Jesuits in the southern districts ; fifteen or sixteen had arrived within the last two years. While theoretically they did not soon expect a native ministry, they were doing more to secure it than most of those who are always crying out about the necessity of raising it. *^ I asked whether they did not owe much of their success to the use of pictures, forms, and ceremonies — more fitted to tickle and captivate the senses, than to enlighten the under- standing, or affect the heart with spiritual impressions. He acknowledged that they made large use of visible representa- tions, signs, pictures, etc. Many of these were disagreeable to themselves; they would rather not have them. But the people were children led by the senses. And if they gave them only dry sermons, they never would get on. The people must have something to fascinate the senses ; but through these they aimed at the awakening of more spiritual sensibilities. And as the people were rude and gross, the pictures, etc., were often so too. This arose from necessity, not design. Such was * the state of the arts ^ amongst them, that any- thing more refined was beyond their taste or power of compre- hension. But, I said, was not the tendency of dealing so much in the sensuous, only to keep the people sensuous still — in a state of pupillage and perpetual imbecility ? Was it not to rivet the chains of sense upon them ? Was it not to externalize the mind, instead of subduing the dominion of external objects, and leading the soul to high and heavenly contemplations ? He did not think so. Their wish and hope were that the people might be gradually led along the ladder of the senses to better things. The ears must be stunned with sounds, the eyes glared with visible portraitures, and the other senses regaled with objects connected with sacredness, so as ulti- mately the inner man might be reached. T asked, if such a method of procedure was not fitted to prevent the soul 142 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. from ever attaining to tlie spiritual meditative mood of Thomas a Kempis, Fenelon and Pascal ? He allowed it was so, in the first instance^ but it could not be helped, the people were so gross. *' He then asked what I thought of the condition of the i Israelites, intellectually and morally, when they came out of ^ Egypt, as compared with the Hindoos. I perceived his design. Ifc was no doubt this, that if I said they were highly refined and civilized, he would argue that if God gave such a people such a multitude of ceremonies, why should not they to the Hindoos ? But not believing the Israelites to be so refined, I answered that, after the bondage and oppression of two hundred years, they were slaves, and had all the lowness, grossness, and carnality of slavish heads and hearts, and so required a very severe discipline of forty years in the wilderness partially to cure them, and even then they continued a stifFnecked, backsliding, idolatrously inclined people. Why, then, did God give them such ceremonies, etc. ? Because theirs was a preparatory ceremonial of types and shadows, to serve the purpose of schooling and discipline until the substance came. When the substance came, in the one great propitiatory all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ, then the types and shadows were done away. The system developed itself, unfolded itself, unshelled or unkernelled, or unlocked, or uncabineted itself, into the purely spiritual, the unchanging, the eternal. And ultroneously to impose forms and ceremonies now, when the spiritual economy was introduced, was worse than to impose the toys and rattles and garb of childhood on the man. It was to perpetuate the childhood, and render the mani- festation of the manhood impossible. He of course differed from this view of the case; but seemed to feel a little awkward in opposing it. *' I then asked whether it was true, that, not satisfied with mere pictures and sounds, they resorted to still more imposing representations, even such as were of a downright theatrical character : whether, for example, at Easter, the whole scene of the trial of our Saviour before Pilate, and the crucifixion itself, was not exhibited by living personages on a stage ? He admitted it was, but not wholly by living persons : that the different characters were usually represented by wooden figures as large as life : that these were fastened on JEt 43. TWO IDOLATEIES. I43 poles whicli pierced into them from beneatli : tliat tliey were carried by men in sucli a way that only the moving figures were visible to the audience — a screen interposing between the carriers and the audience : that he knew only of Pilate being acted by a living man : that the service was read giving an account of the whole as narrated in the Gospels, and that the different figures were introduced and acted their part as speakers^ through the men that carried them, in succession, after the manner of a sacred drama; and that he regarded all this as only a more living, graphic, affecting picture to aid the conception and quicken the sensibilities — exciting towards the different objects the feelings respectively due. He also allowed, that at the hour which the Catholic Church has fixed on as that on which the Saviour rose, the Resurrection, repre- sented by wooden figures and living persons, is carried about in procession, round the church or through the town ! To- wards the saints they wished to excite reverence, not worship. " He asked whether I did not consider the recent rise and growing ascendancy of the Romish Church as remarkable ? I did so. He considered this as a sign of the Church being the true one, while Protestantism was at a discount all over the world. The latter proposition I denied; as respected the former I stated that, far from regarding the present revival of the Church of Rome as a proof of its being the true one, in common with other Protestants I noted it as an infallible sio-n of its being the false and counterfeit one ! He looked aston- ished, and asked how I could think so ? I told him, from our interpretation of prophecy we expected, and Protestant inter- preters centuries ago expected, that the Romish Church, after having sunk and decayed through the great Reformation, would again revive, and obtain a short-lived ascendancy — pre- paratory, however, only to its speedy, final and irretrievable destruction. He marvelled still more ; and asked what pro- phecies I referred to. I told him among others, to the latter Dortion of Revelation. 'Ah,' said he, 'you think Rome to be ^Babylon ? ' ' Yes, I do — the Babylon, the mother of harlots, Hd and drunk with the blood of saints, destined ultimately to /be utterly annihilated.' He said, I would not long think this 'if I was acquainted with Catholic writers. I asked him if he considered Bossuet^s Treatise, the articles of the Council of Trent, the creed of Pope Pius IV., and such like, to be fair 144 I^I^^ 0^ I>^» DUFF. 1849. exposes of tlie Romisli system ? He said he did. 'Then/ said I, * in these and such like Popish documents I have studied the system ; and having done so, my opinion of it is what I have stated/ He asked what doctrines in particular I objected to. I stated a few, but said their name was Legion, and it would require a pretty long catalogue only to enumerate them. " I asked what he considered the chief impediments to the spread of Christianity in South India ? He said the character of the natives — especially caste — their apathy, their weakness of mind, etc. Second, the conduct of the British Government in not encouraging Christians in its service, but rather the contrary. The natives will not become Protestants, it is too tame, bare, naked for them ; become Catholics they dare not, as they would then have little chance of promotion in good offices. If not for this hindrance, thousands more would at once become Catholics. In passing through the hall where native pupils assembled saw several pictures, as usual. Among others the Virgin treading on the head of the ser- pent ; because, said he, ' we interpret the passage about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent, of the woman, the virgin mother, bruising the head.' " He attributed the failure, as he called it, of Protestant missions to the fact of their being upheld by Churches that be- longed not to the true one. I attributed the apparent success of the Popish missions to the use of means which could be employed only by the false Church. Moreover, I insisted on it, that genuine success was not to be reckoned by numbers or quantity, but by quality. Estimated by this test, I showed that Protestant missions, as a whole, are no failure, gave some particulars respecting the results of our own Missions at Madras and Calcutta, and solemnly averred my belief that we had converts, whom, in point of intellectual culture, and heart purity, and graciousness of disposition, and self-denial and proofs of integrity, the Popish missions could not parallel. He allowed that if, as he fancied, Protestant missions had failed, it was not for want of zeal or ability or devotedness. In par- ticular, he said this was the opinion of the fathers respecting myself. I took the compliment at what it was worth.'' * * See Catholic Missions in Southern India, to 1865. By Rev. W. Strickland, S.J., and T. W. M. Marshall, Esq. (Longmans). JEt 43. THE PAGODAS OF SOUTH INDIA. I45 First at Chill umbrum and again at Combaconum Dr. Duff entered the great country of pagodas. The famous Dravidian dynasties of the Pandyas, the Cholas and the Cheras, have left behind them in Madura, along the Cholamandalam or Coromandel coast, and in the western districts including Mysore and the Kailas of Elora, temples and palaces which so good an authority as Mr. James Fergusson, D.C.L., pronounces " as remarkable a group of buildings as are to be found in provinces of similar extent in any part of the world, Egypt, perhaps, alone excepted, but they equal even the Egyptian in extent." The de- vastating iconoclasm of the Muhammadan invader did not penetrate so far as Tanjore, till the aggressiveness of Islam in India had been exhausted or driven back. Against the perfect mosques of marble and cities of forts and palaces in Hindostan — perfect in their archi- tectural beauty and strength as even the Saracenic structures are not — the Dravidic Brahmans of the south, allied to the Moghuls in race, can set build- ings which surpass even these in tlie finish of details, though altogether barbarous compared with these, in the falseness of their design. As if in unconscious mockery of divine revealings, the city of priests and prostitutes, which forms the Yaishnava or Sivaite temple, lies four-square for a mile on each side, entered by imposing gateways and dominated by towers of gigantic height. But as you pass through court after court to the hideous gloom of the con- temptible sanctuary, and approach the obscene pene- tralia, the buildings diminish in size and elaboration, producing what even the pure architect pronounces " bathos." Of such in the Tanjore district alone there are upwards of thirty groups, any one of which has cost more to build, even in a land of cheap labour and oppressive superstition, than an English VOL. II. I 146 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1849. cathedral.* The most imposing mass of all is the Seringham pagoda, near Trichiuopoly. That "it is severe and in good taste throughout'* is ascribed to the fact that its completion was arrested by the French and English wars. If it grew from less to greater, instead of greater to less, Mr. Fergusson declares it would be one of the finest temples in the south of India. "Anxious to improve time," writes Dr. Duff, the keenest and most thoughtful of travellers, "I got an order from the Collector, Mr. Onslow, to visit the great pagoda." His companions were Colonel and Mrs. Wahab, who had been Dr. Wilson's hosts lonsf before at Jalna, and Captain Boswell, worthy brother of an evangelical chaplain in Calcutta, well known in those days. " There are not fewer than seven great courts or squares each surmounted by a high and massive wall one within the other, with a considerable space between. Each great square has its own gigantic granite entrances, surmounted by vast columns or towers in the middle of each wall of the square. The towers are covered all over with the usual mythologic sculptures. Each of these open courts is surrounded by minor shrines, small mandapums or Brahmanical receptacles. Through six of them we were allowed to pass, but the seventh is like ^the holy of holies,^ impassable by any but the sacred Brahmans, who revel within without fear of interruption from unholy gaze or unholy tread. Close to the seventh court is the great mandapum for pilgrim worshippers, a covered roof sustained by a thousand pillars wider apart and much loftier than those of Conjeveram. To the roof of this we were taken, whence we surveyed the whole, our attention being specially directed to the gilded dome over the shrine of the principal idol. On descending it was getting dark^ so we were preceded by torch-bearers. We then entered a spacious hall, in the * History of Indian mid Eastern Architecture. By James Fergus- son, D.C.L., etc., 1876 (Murray). JEt 43. THE PAGODA OF SEEINGHAM. 1 47 centre of whicli were several large lamps, and around them a few chairs. Then were brought out a large number of boxes with massive locks, and placed in a row before us. These contained a portion of the jewels and ornaments of the god of the shrine. One box was opened after another. Certainly the profusion of gold and jewels, wrought up into varied ornaments, was astonishing. There were many large vessels of solid gold, from one to several stones weight. The golden ornaments were bestud with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, etc. Such a spectacle I never saw. Gonjeveram was nothing to it. I had always looked on the accounts of such things as hyperbolic exaggerations before. And as to silver vessels and ornaments, they were countless. But the most surprising part of the exhibition was, the great golden idol or swamy. It was not a solid figure, but hollow ; and so con- structed as to be set up and taken down in parts again^ like the steel armour which completely clad the knights of the middle ages. The whole was of massive gold. There must be a huge wooden framework, of the shape and proportions of a man, around which these golden pieces are fixed so as to appear one solid piece of gold. The immense size of the figure may be inferred from this : when the feet and the hands, etc., were shown us in parts, I took the hand from the wrist to the extremity of the fingers, and having applied my arm to it, found it extended from my elbow rather beyond the top of my middle finger ; the feet and every other part in pro- portion. The figure, therefore, joined and compacted into one, must form a huge statue of at least fifteen feet in height, all apparently of solid gold. The joinings will be per- fectly concealed by the ornaments by which it is overlaid — ornaments for the feet, anklets, and such like ; ornaments for the arms, thighs, waist, neck, head, etc. In fact the sight of it, when erected, and covered with its ornaments, must be probably the most amazing spectacle of the sort now in the world. The platform on which it is carried, with its long projecting arms resting on the shoulders of those who carry it, is also overlaid with massive gold, the central part being brass for durability and strength. They also showed us, spread out at length, the covering gown of the deity nicely fitted to suit him. It was a fabric the tissue of which was like golden thread, inlaid most curiously with a countless pro- 148 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. fusion of pearls. No doubt the whole taken together must have been almost fabulously costly. They were the gifts of kings, princes, and nobles, when Hindooism was in its prime ; and must convey an awful idea of the hold which it took of a people naturally so avaricious, ere they would be so lavish of their substance. Whoever desires to know what a potent — yea, all but omnipotent — hold Hindooism must once have taken of this people, has only to pay a visit to the great temple of Seringham ! It is worth a thousand fruitless argu- ments and declamations. ** We asked what was supposed to be the value of all these golden materials with the countless jewels ? They replied, at least fifty lakhs of rupees, or half a million sterling ! And what might have been the cost of erecting the whole temple? At least ten crores of rupees, was the prompt reply, or a million sterling. And, very probably, this is no oriental exaggeration. Look at the cost of St. Paulas, London, or the Taj Mahal, near Agra, each said to have been a million sterling. If so, I cannot regard it as incredible that the awful and indescribably vast fabric of the Seringham pagoda cost less ! '' To witness the riches of this earth, which is the Lord^s, so alienated from Him and devoted to a rival deity that holds millions in thraldom, was sad enough. But what shall I say as to what followed ? Verily these shrines are the receptacles of the god of this world and his army of lusts ! A ring of ropes was placed around us, and the lights and boxes of gods and their ornaments, to keep off the immense crowd which gathered to witness the spectacle ! Then the guardians of the temple came to me, and asked if I wished to see a nach (a dance of the prostitutes of the temple). In the most emphatic way, and in a tone indicative of real displeasure, I said, ' No, no ; I wish nothing of the sort. It would give me real pain, and not pleasure. Do not, therefore, for a moment think of it.' The guardians or trustees of the temple spoke a little broken English, and so I spoke simply that they might understand me. Still, whilst the ornaments were being exhibited, I heard the tinkling of bells, and the preparatory notes of instruments of music. Then, sideways, I saw a procession of the temple girls, gaily and gaudily arrayed, march with the bearers of all manner of musical instruments. I took no notice of it but felt pained and wounded to the quick. I said no- JEt 43. THE GOD OF THIS WOELD. 1 49 thing to my companion. But as they were about to open new boxes of ornaments I abruptly rose, and said I had seen enough as specimens of the whole, thanked the trustees for their courtesy, and begged to bid them ' good-bye -/ on which one of them cried out in broken English, ' Oh sir, oh sir, your honour not stop to see the fun ! ' meaning the intended dance. ' No, no,' said I, moving hastily on ; ' I have seen enough — more than enough — may the Lord forgive me If my curiosity (or rather desire to know what heathenism really is) has led me beyond the threshold of forbidden ground.' So saying, and rushing precipitately onward, the rope ring was raised to let me pass on with my friend. The crowd hurled themselves pell-mell inwardly, and so ' the fun ' for that time was at an end. " With joy I again got out, and began to breathe the fresh air of heaven, thankful to have escaped the sad contagion. But doubtless, the matter of course way in which they expected that the crowning gratification, on our part, would be to see the dance, must serve as an index to their ideas of our countrymen generally, judging from past experience. Oh, for the dawn of a brighter day ! Surely the first rays of early twilight have emerged from the midnight darkness ! '^ Captain Boswell tells me that when he joined his present resrlment he found two funds established, to which each officer was expected in honour to subscribe : one was for the improvement of the native soldiery In personal appearance, etc. ; the other was with the view of granting donations of about a hundred rupees to the sepoys, to enable them to celebrate with more eclat their own heathen festivals, that is, in adding to the grandeur of processions, lighting up the temples, etc. Captain Boswell demurred to the latter; but said he would, in lieu, give double to the former. His command- ing officer was angry, and declared he would report him to the Commander-in-Chief, and meanwhile kept him back, depriv- ing him of certain command, etc. Such a fund, it appears, was formerly in every regiment. The very sepoys at last felt it was inconsistent, and respected more those who refused than those who gave. " The trustees of the temple walked out with us to the outer gate ; they asked who I was and whence ? I told them. They seemed gratified, and we parted. Formerly the Govern- ment managed the temple funds and affairs generally through 150 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1849. its officers, especially the Collector. But now, the whole management is vested in trustees^ nominated by the Brahmans of the temple, subject to veto of Collector. The pagoda lands of Serin gham yield annually about Rs. 40,000 (£4,000) ; offer- ings besides in plenty. '^ At the outer gate of the outer court, which is about four miles square, some of the stones are twenty or thirty feet in length, and five feet broad. Hence the Hindoos say it was the work of the gods ! Certainl^'it is far beyond their present mechanical skill and power. The great columns here (as at Conjeveram) which support the roof of the one thousand pillar mandapum within, are made out of one stone ; and the style of ornament seems the same everywhere, the chief difference being in the size. From the pillars, projecting in bold relief, are many mythologic figures — of men or demi-gods or gods on horseback, contending with elephants, tigers, bears, and other ferocious creatures. These are often very large, and cut out of the same block as the pillar to which they are attached. A work of vast labour, skill, and expense \'' As at Tranquebar Dr. Duff had fondly lingered over the traces of the earliest Protestant missionary to In- dia, Ziegenbalg, he sought out in Tanjore everywhere traces of the still greater, Schwartz. At Combaconum he especially noted how Schwartz had devised an educa- tional policy not unlike his own, and how his schools, supported by the British Government and by the Raja, were stopped only by the wars with Tippoo. At Tanjore Dr. Duff was, as everywhere, received with much kindness by Mr. and Mrs. Guest, of the Propaga- tion Society, which in 1829 had taken over Schwartz's mission as commenced by the Christian Knowledge Society in 1756. " The present hall of the house, which otherwise has been enlarged by the addition of wings, verandahs, etc., is the identical one in which Schwartz died. It was the hall of his ordinary dwelling and is still used as such. At 7 a.m. the church bell tolled ; I was really delighted with the sound. I went out to the church ; it was the bell summoning the pupils in the JEt 43. SCHWARTZ. 1 5 I boarding scliools, male and female, to prayer. Besides tlic cbiMren a few adult Christians from the neighbourliood at- tended. A native catecliist read the prayers, and the clerk sung several hymns, the boys and girls joining. The desk •was the one in which Schwartz was wont to officiate; for this was his church for the out-population in the vicinity of Tanjore. After the service was ended I mounted Schwartzes pulpit. Corning down, near the altar, I observed many monumental flag-stones oji the floor. Eeading the inscriptions, I saw that they were the tombstones of some of the missionaries and mem- bers of their families. But the one that attracted and absorbed my attention was the plain stone beneath which the mortal re- mains of Schwartz now lie till the dawn of the resurrection morn. With a pencil I took down the simple inscription, which Mr. Guest assured me was the unaided composition of Schwartz's royal ward and pupil, the Maharaja of Tanjore ! It is precisely as follows, with respect to the division of the lines and words : — " Sacred to the memory of The Revd. Christian Fredk. Swart25 Missionary to The Hoube. Society for Promoting Chiistn. know- ledge in London, who Departed this life on The 13th of February 1798 Aged 71 years and 4 months. Firm was thon, humble and wise, Honest, pure, free from disguise ; Father of orphans, the widow's support, Comfort in sorrow of every sort ; To the beniglited, dispenser of light, Doing, and pointiug to, that which is right: Blessing to princes, to people, to me. May I, my Father, be worthy of thee, Wisheth and piayeth thy Saeabojee, ''These lines are, indeed, as a composition of the order of doggerel. But, considering who the author was — a heathen prince — do they not contain a wonderful testimony to a Christian missionary ? And, notwithstanding the doggerel, does there not break throughout them a simple, touching, warm- hearted pathos, which moves and stirs up the feelings, and which, as in a mirror, portrays or reflects the kindhness. 152 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. the gratitude and the amiable unaffected simplicity of their author ? " Besides the mission premises outside the fort, it is well- known that Schwartz, through his paramount influence with the Eaja^ was enabled to erect a church within the fort. Nor is this all. Beside the large fort which contains the tower, there is a small fort or citadel, at the western extremity of the large one, somewhat more elevated than the latter, and separated from it by a high wall, at the summit of a slight ascent. It must have been the citadel. Besides being more strongly fortified, as the citadel, it was the sacred ground or enclosure on which the most famous pagoda in the province of Tanjore was reared. Near it too is the most sacred tank in the pro- vince— a tank from which water is conveyed to most of the other pagodas in the surrounding country ; a tank of whose water alone the Raja, Brahmans and other respectable people will drick; a tank which has different flights of steps descend- ino- into it, separated from each other by low walls, along which the women of different castes may pass in drawing water ; that is, a flight of steps for Brahman women, another flight for Soodras, etc. Within this small fort, also, none but Brahmans are allowed to reside as the guardians of the pagoda and its accompaniments. Yet, within this comparatively small and most sacred place, Schwartz had influence to secure the erection of a tolerably spacious Christian church, and near it a house for the minister to reside in whenever he pleased ; and the property of the church, house, and grounds has been secured in such a way that neither Raja nor Brahmans, under the existing order of things, can possibly touch it! Towards evening I went to see this singular monument of the triumph of Protestant influence and ascendancy at a heathen court, the most remark- able visible monument of the sort, perhaps, in the whole realm of Gentilism. Having reached it, and looked into Schwartz's dwelling rooms, humble and unostentatious, close by, I en- tered with something like an indefinable awe over my spirit. "The church is a neat edifice, nothing very imposing, and containing nothing very superfluous. At one end (the eastern) are the pulpit, desk, altar, etc., with benches for Europeans or East Indians to sit on if present. The greater half is simply matted, so that the native Tamulian Christians may sit down there (tailor-like) in their own way. Mt. 43' SCHWARTZ S CHURCH IN THE HINDOO PALACE. 1 53 " At the west end is tte marble monument, the product of a London genius erected at the expense of the Maharaja of Tanjore, the ^wisheth and prayeth thy Sarabojee^ of the pre- vious epitaph. It is simple, touching, affecting. It has been pronounced a failure, a disa|)pointment ; I know not why. Men of the world, men of carnality, men of mere ostentation and show in the fine arts, that is, men guided and lorded over by the senses, may discern nothing very remarkable, very striking, very imposing, very overpowering there. But the Christian, the Protestant Christian, cannot help being over- powered. The spectacle is, indeed, extraordinary. I confess it overpowered me. The monument is fixed in the wall ; in front of it there is a railing ; I approached it ; instinctively leant my elbow on it, gazed at the monument as if I were in a trance. I had no consciousness as to what had become of my compan- ions ; I was literally absorbed. I am not given to sentimentalism, yet I was absorbed. There was a spell-like power in that simple monument. I stood before it. I forgot time and space. I knew not where I was, for consciousness was gone. Call it dream, or vision, or trance, or absorption, I care not. It was human na- ture, human feeling, human sympathy. Before me, in solid, well grained marble, in bold but not obtrusive or glaring relief, was the couch of the dying saint; on it stretched lay the pale, bald, worn-out veteran apostolic man, whose assistance and mediation heathens, Hindoo and Muhammadan, as well as Christian governing powers, eagerly coveted, in the last gasp of expiring nature. Behind him, at his head, stood the affectionate, tender, sympathising, loving fellow-labourer, Guericke, who ever looked up to him as a father, and who, in the last communication from his pen, thus wrote of Schwartz : " ' Mr. Schwartz said nothing relative to his speedy decease until Wednesday ; but appeared to entertain a wish and expectation to recover. When I spoke to him on the sub- ject, and expressed a hope that God might yet restore him to health, he said, ' But I should not be able to preach, on account of my breath.' I replied, 'If you only sit here as you do at present, and aid us with your counsel, all things would go on quite differently from what they would if you were to leave us, etc* But on Wednesday, he said, as soon as I entered, ' I think the Lord will at last take me to Himself.' I spoke to him a great deal on the subject, but he 154 I^IFB OF DE. DUFF. 1849. remained silent, settled some pecuniary matter witli me, and gave me some money for Palamcottah. All this troubled me much. I prayed and wept ; could get no sleep for several nights, and lost my appetite and strength, for various thoughts how tilings would go on after his departure made me very restless. I wrote an account of his state to Mr. Macleod, and expressed a wish that he would consult physicians as to the best method of treatment. Mr. Macleod wrote immediately to General Floyd at Trichinopoly, to send a skilful physician to us on Friday, when the latter had a consultation with the Yallam and Tanjore physicians. They prescribed a medicine which had the effect of stopping the vomiting. Our joy was great, and on Saturday night I got a little sleep. At three in the morning I was waked up and informed that Mr. Schwartz wished to take the Holy Supper. I found him very weak, and spoke to him with much emotion. His great humility, his love to Christ, and his desire after grace, excited my astonishment. Prior to his communicatiug he prayed fervently, and for some length of time, in German, and acknowledged and bewailed himself as a sinner, who had nothing to bring before the justice of God but the sufficient merits of Christ. The humility, self-renun- ciation, poverty of spirit, the trust and thirst after grace and righteousness, which his prayer evinced, were witnessed by us all. He concluded with a petition for the whole human race, saying, * They are all Thy redeemed. Thou hast shed Thy blood for them ; have pity upon them.' Last of all, he prayed for the Christians especially, mentioned the Mission with sighs, and commended it to the compassion of Jesus. He received the Holy Supper (Mr. Kahlhoff and I taking it with him) with great emotion and joy, and was afterwards full of praise and thanksgiving. Finding himself weak he then lay down again, but soon raised himself, and occasionally spoke some- what confusedly. During the night he evinced some occasional wandering of mind ; but soon recollected himself when spoken to, and even mentioned that his head was affected. Contrary to our expectation he slept from two o'clock till ten, when the physician awoke him. We found him very feeble, but still sensible. He said to the physician, 'My whole meditation is the death of Jesus, and that I may be like Him,' and then added, ' the whole world is a maslc ; I wish to be where all is real' He likewise spoke to me to the same effect. At twelve JEt 43. SCHWAETZ DYING. 1 55 lie laid himself down again_, and so lie continues. He can speak but little, but wbat be does say is intelligent, and refers to that wbicb is bis element, and on wbicb bis mind is singly and solely employed. Tbe pbysicians say tbere is no danger as yet, but it now appears to me tbat our dear fatber will soon leave us. Ob, if God would graciously strengthen bim and spare bim to us yet a little wbile ! If he depart to bis rest, wbat shall we both do ? ' ''Who could have been represented as standing at tbe bead of tbe dying father with better eftect and more appro- priately, than this affectionate, loving son? And tbere be is, a striking likeness, it is said, in bold relief at tbe bead of tbe couch, looking wistfully at the pale collapsed features of tbe mighty saint, whose spirit was then departing to join tbe general assembly of tbe firstborn. And there is tbe Maha- raja Serfojee, in bis full dress, standing by tbe couch, and holding tbe left hand of the dying father in bis, tbe heathen prince emphatically acknowledging bis grateful obligations, as a son, to the Protestant Christian Missionary; wbile bis ministers of state stand respectfully and sorrowfully and sympatbisingly behind bim, gazing, too, at tbat bland countenance, wbicb re- tains tbe stamped impress of benevolence even in death. Al- together it is a simple, natural, and affecting scene, and the group who compose it possess an interest to the Christian mind beyond what mere words can express. *' There is a mistake, an obvious one, in the artist's desisfn. The Raja holds tbe father's left band in bis own left band. This is not an oriental custom. No real oriental would do so. But it is a poor, petty and gossamer-like criticism tbat would, on account of this natural mistake in a British artist, condemn the whole, and allow it no merit, and evade and stifle all tbe sanctified impressions which it is fitted to impart. " It was once rumoured tbat Serfojee wanted to have Schwartz's church removed from tbe fort and transplanted to a distance in the country beyond, out of view. He was asked if this was true. He replied, with indignation, 'No! So far from this, if the English were without a church in tbe fort I would let them have the use of my own palace ! ' And true to the spirit of tbe remark, when it was reported tbat tbere were rents in tbe walls of tbe church, and tbat it threatened to fall, he, at bis own expen^se and of bis own proper motion, con- 156 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1849. structed massive buttresses to support the walls all around, and they remain to this day, to testify of his sincerity and zeal for what concerned the honour of his father, Schwartz. Slst May J 1849. — " Last evening, the celebrated Tanjore poet, with two or three of his sons, grandsons, and one unmarried daughter, came to Mr. Guest's house to visit me, as well as re- gale me with a concert of sacred music, the hymns sung being those of the poet himself. As a young man he was brought up by Schwartz from Palamcottah to Tanjore. About twenty he began decidedly to feel the inspiration of the muse. He was twenty-two when Schwartz died, so that he distinctly re- members him, with many of his instructions and ways of pro- ceeding ; though I could learn nothing very material from him beyond what is already known, except the following anecdote which I give as I received it. "^Schwartz lived very simply and sparingly, taking little else to his dinner than curry and rice. One day he was invited to dine, or lunch rather, with the chief British authorities. He did not relish this much, but complied. His young assist- ants and others, who were wont to partake of his sober meals, thought this a good occasion for having a little feast. So some roast meat, a little wine, etc., were ordered for dinner, which was early, about two o'clock. Schwartz, returning earlier than was expected, and the dinner in his house being a little later than usual (owing to the greater preparations), was back as the table was covering, to the sui-prise and dismay of his assistants. 'Ay, ay,' said he, 'you're all determined on a feast to-day; then let as many as possible partake of it.' So, sending for the senior pupils in the boarding school, he got them all seated somehow at the table. At the head of it he sat himself, helped his assistants to their wonted curry and rice, while the roast meat and wine were distributed in small portions among the pupils.' " Before parting with the poet, I solemnly asked him whether in his old age he vividly realized the consolations of the gospel, and felt true joy in believing; and whether he leaned his whole soul and expectation on the sole work and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus ? He promptly answered that he renounced all reliance on self — on works of merit of any sort, that he trusted simply, absolutely to the Redeemer's righteousness, and in so doing he experienced inward comfort and joy. JEt 43. SCHWARTZ AND HEBER. 1 57 1st June. — " A note from Dr. Tweedie gave rather a discourag- ing view of tbe finances of the Church's missions. Oh eternal Father, spare me, if it be Thy holy pleasure, and fit me to do Thy work and will, in the attempt to arouse the Church to her high duty and destiny, in connection with the evangelization of the world ! 4th June. — "Yesterday and to-day there has been an oppres- sive stillaess in the air, up till four or five in the afternoon. Then a slight gust arose. Not a leaf moved on any tree. It seemed as if all nature drooped and were ready to die — unable even to gasp — for want of breath . The heat intense and awfully un- bearable; yet I continue well in the midst of it. What shall I render unto the Lord ? I think I can truly say that I feel the Lord's dealings far beyond what I can express. Bless the Lord, oh my soul ! He is a wonderful Lord — eternity alone can show forth His praise ; and yet eternity will never end, nor His praise be exhausted ! bth June. — "When the lamented Heber visited Trichinopoly, early in April, 1826, he mourned over the decay of the native church of that city. Its members were the objects of his latest care, and amongst them he left his latest blessing. ' This,^ says his chaplain, Mr. Robinson (afterwards Archdeacon of Madras), in his funeral sermon, preached in St. John's Church, Trichinopoly, April 9th, 1826, 'This was the first mission established by the venerable Schwartz, and his successors have for many years watched over its interests. But their hands are feeble, and the Church which is already gathered from among the heathen requires the aid of a nursing father to rear and protect its in- fancy. We fondly hoped we had found that protecting hand in our late excellent bishop. He loved, and if God had spared his life he would have cherished them as his own children. A few minutes only before he expired he spoke to me of their distress and helpless stnte, and of his plans for their revival and perpetual establishment. ' Brethren, I commend them now to you.' The bishop died on the 3rd April. Madura, 0th June. — " This was the scene of the celebrated experiment of Robertus De Nobilibus and his associates and successors. It is astonishing how little remains of the fruit of their labours. The tomb of Robert existed till within a recent period. It became to the Papists a sort of idola- trous shrine, where offerings and prayers were presented. 158 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1849. Collector Blackburne was a very energetic man and great im- prover. Chiefly through him were the walls of the fort and city of ancient Madura entirely levelled and removed, the fosse filled up, and the streets widened and enlarged ; so that now Madura is really one of the finest, cleanest, healthiest speci- mens of an Indian city. Well, the tomb of Eobert lay on the line of some of these improvements. The Collector decreed it should be removed. Appeal was made to Government, which simply resolved to let the Collector act on his own res- ponsibility; and he assumed it. The brother of Lord Clifford (subsequently drowned in the Cauvery) was here as a Jesuit father. He got his brother to move in the House of Lords for inquiry and arrest of the Collector's designs. Bat it was quashed. The tomb was removed and over it a street opened. 1th June. — '' Spent a day with the American missionaries. They asked all manner of questions, which I endeavoured to answer. In return, I asked many to-day. Having asked, if they once tolerated caste, what made them change their mind on the subject ? they replied by stating some of its discovered evils. Mr. Cheny also added, Hhat there was an expression in a work on *' India Missions," by Dr. Duff, of Calcutta, which, more than anything else, had opened the eyes and influenced the con- duct of most of them, and that was, that^ in the stupendous system of Hindooism, the legends of the gods, etc., were but the bricks, while caste was the cement of the whole edifice. I feel humbled and rejoiced that, unknown to myself, this work should have been the impulsive cause of so great a revolution in their method of proceeding, as that of unsparingly lopping off caste ! To God alone be the praise and the glory ! '* From Madura Dr. Duff went on to Eamnad, and thence, after long delay, made a second vain attempt to cross to Jaffna, then the seat of the most famous missions in Ceylon. While delayed on the coast he made a careful study of the engineering efforts, as yet fruitless, so to deepen the Paumben Channel as to allow ships to reach Madras and Calcutta without doubling Ceylon. There, too, he read up the legends of the Ramayan epic, which describe the m^arch of ^t. 43. TINNEVELLI : BISHOrS SAEGExVr AND CALDWELL. I 59 Earn and his monkey hosts to rescue his wife Sita from Havana, and here make the Eamisseram temple and Adam's Bridge the objects of popular pilgrimage. Again' turned back, Dr. Duff carefully surveyed the now most prosperous Churches of Tinnevelli and Travancore. We come upon these references, in the Journal, to the able missionaries who ai"e now Bishops Sargent and Caldwell : SuviSESSiPOORAM, June 26/7i.^'^This day spent at this place, as elsewhere, examining school children, addressing catechists, etc. The station is a very neat one, where before was no village at all. The name of it means ^ the city of the gospel.' The new church is large and nearly finished. It is used now for worship, and having in the evening visited perhaps the most famous devil temple in the south of Tinnevelli district, two miles from our station, in a solitary awe-inspiring grove, I iu the evening addressed the assembled congregation, chiefly on the subject of devils, dwelling on the Bible doctrine of the fall of Satan and his angels, and their absolute subjection to God, and the sin and folly of worshipping them. *' The number of temples in the grove, the strange variety of the figures and forms of the devils and the animals sacred to them, and the pottery horses on which, at night, they are supposed to ride, are all fitted to impress the imagination; and with torches blazing, music the most loud and discord- ant sounding, and the cries and yells of the devil dancers intermingled, all fitted to inspire terror. In a paper given me by Mr. Sargent is a full account of the devil worship. The song of the officer Pole, whose spirit is said to haunt the neighbouring grove, in which he is believed to have been buried, is the most remarkable specimen I have ever met with, of the assimilating and appropriating character of the popular superstition ; and of the ' pious fraud ' of the Jesuit author, who composed it in order, through the vulgar supersti- tion, to introduce the dogmas of his own Church. " Mr. Sargent is a superior Tamul scholar. He has charge of six or seven elderly persons from twenty- five to forty years old, who were long catechists and are candidates for holy orders. Their perseverance is remarkable. At this advanced age, within l60 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. ' 1849. tlie last two or tliree years tliey have so far mastered EngUsh as to read a simple book like the Bible. But their cbief instruction lias been in Tamul. They have got hold of the leading points in Paley's Evidences, on which I examined them. I never saw any of their uneducated stamp before able so to acquit themselves. The annual collection for all pur- poses by Mr. Sargent's people, Es. 450. They gave Rs. 1,500 for new church. Eydenkoody, 21th June. — ^^ This is the most southern of the mission stations. Its name imports the ' shepherd's dwelling.' Mr. Caldwell is a Scotsman brought up in Glasgow or Aber- deen. He first came out in connection with the London Missionary Society, which ho left several years ago, and allied himself to the Propagation Society. He is a thought- ful, reflective, contemplative man, perhaps the most so of all the missionaries. He has got the mission premises and village into admirable order. Indeed I have been more struck with his arrangements and success in this outward, physical aspect of things, than with anything previously seen. His new church is only begun, the foundations laid, and materials collected. Most of these southern churches are built of stone, chiefly a sandstone grit. Mr. Caldwell said he was most anxious first about the living stones of the spiritual Church, and he was afraid of the ' church building fever V He is said to have been once very high church. But, having married a daughter of old Mr, Mault, of Nagercoil, he has since softened down. Several miles to the south of this station the palmyra cultivation ceases, the country opens up and is more pastoral, and so towards Cape Comorin.'' Nagercoil, Jmie 2Stli. — "The Heraple of the serpent' is buried in wood of all sorts. Mr. Mault and Mr. Russel from the eastern station (a Scotsman) received me with the utmost cor- diality. The church, though not imposing from architectural style, is a very large one, capable of holding 2,000 people. The mission premises are very handsome and extensive. The girls' school is a very superior one ; I examined it with pleasure. Mr. Mault has been there since 1817, and never once home ! He has been a diligent, laborious and successful labourer. Mrs. Mault introduced the working of lace. Many who have left the school still support themselves by making it. The ma- terials come from England ; and the work and patterns are A^A. 43. TRAVA"NOOEE AND GENERAL MUNRO. 161 varied and beautiful. Saw them at work, to my great amaze- ment/' " The mission premises were betowed as a gift by the Raja of Travancore, at the instigation of Colonel, now General Munro. The seminary is supported mainly from the proceeds of an endowment in land, granted in the same way. Having introduced the name of Munro, it is impossible not to advert to his successful administration of the country. When it had been reduced to the last extremity ot anarchy and con- fusion the British Government assumed the administration. Colonel Munro was at once president and dewan, or prime minister; that is, really, autocrat or dictator. He accom- plished wonders. He reduced what was most creditable in the most ancient Hindoo laws into a code, from the Sanskrit getting them interpreted into Malayalam. He divided the country into five zillahs, giving each a regular court of justice, with a court of appeal from them at Trevandrum, presided over by the dewan, as his representative ; and also subordinate police agents throughout the country, under regular supervision and control. He settled also the revenue laws, and introduced some degree of fixity and order and equity. He encouraged improvements of every kind, especially intellectual, moral and religious. As there are so many Syrians and Papists, in the country, he secured the appointment of a Christian judge in every zillah court, where the first is usually a Brahman, and the second always a Christian, with a Brahman shastree or law expounder. He also secured the deciding of questions in which Christians were involved, by Christian law, not Hindoo. The spirit of this was meant to apply to converts from Hindooism. But though the constitution and the laws remain the same, everything depends on the administration, and now the prac- tice is often in direct opposition to the law. Colonel Munro's policy was to give power and influence to the Christians, as an antagonistic power to the Brahmans ; this led him to seek the revival of the Syrian Church, according to the scheme proposed by Dr. C. Buchanan. For this end he got from the Raja grants of land for endowments, and sums of money for building colleges, etc. The lands were worth more than a lakh of rupees. " He was very decisive in his measures. He had to do with desperadoes, and he put them down with a high hand. The VOL- II. M 1 62 LIFE OP DR. DUFE. 1849. place is still pointed out^ between Aleppi and Quilon, where, when passing by the canal by nighty his boat was shot at by robbers who knew not who was there. He was out instantly with his sepoy guard in pursuit ; the robbers were seized and hung up in trees^ on the very spot, to the wholesome terror of all robbers. His name is still everywhere spoken of ; and associated with the pacification, the legislation, jurisprudence, police, education, of Travancore. An old Syrian katanar or priest, hearing I was from Scotland, earnestly asked me about Munro Saheb, whether he was alive and well, adding, ' Tra- vancore, and especially the Syrians, never had such a friend ! ' " In order to give a fair start to the new courts, he got Mr. Mead, missionary of the London Society, now of Neyoor, to become the Christian judge of the south-east coast, near Nager- coil ; and Mr. Norton, of the Church Missionary Society, at Aleppi. The design was admirable; but it is questionable whether even the excellence of the object could justify an ordained missionary in becoming a civil judge. The plan did not succeed. The home society naturally disapproved of the measure; and Mr. Norton in particular was often heard to complain that, in spite of all vigilance and checks, bribes were constantly taken by subordinates, so that his name became associated with bribery and corruption, no very likely recom- mendation to his functions as a missionary. In the zillah where Mr. Mead was judge three or four thousand of the natives came forward to embrace Christianity. They were re- ceived on profession, as catechumens to be instructed. But, after Mr. Mead relinquished his judicial office, almost all of these quickly and unblushiugly apostatized from their profes- sion of Christianity, and re-embraced heathenism ! This is a 'pregnant fact ! '^ After a curious account of the Brahmanical princi- pality of Travancore, the old Syrian Church and the Jews of Cochin, Dr. Duff describes his third but long protracted effort to reach Ceylon, which he at last accomplished by native schooner from Tuticorin to Colombo. There the Rev. Dr. Macvicar, the chaplain, found him in the vestry in an exhausted state. He was able to study the missions and the administration ^t. 43. CEYLON. 163 only in the soutliwest corner of tlie island. At a time before that crown colony had begun to prosper he wrote, " One collector and one judge at Palamcottah appear to govern Tinnevelli, which has nearly as many people in it as Ceylon, much more quietly, peaceably and effectively." What delighted him most was the circulation in manuscript of an anonymous appeal to all the faithful in Christ Jesus throughout the world, to devote the first Sabbath of 1850 to united prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the diffusion of the gospel. He ascertained that the author was Mr. Murdoch, head-master of the Kandy Normal School. He published the appeal on his re- turn to Calcutta with the remark, " No earnest mis- sionary can peruse it without responding to the noble and magnanimous spirit of Moses, when told of Eldad and Medad prophesying in the camp : — ' Enviest thou for my sake ? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them.' " Hardly had Dr. Duff returned to Calcutta in August, the worst part of the Bengal rainy season, when he made his preparations for the completion of his mis- sionary survey of India. Early in October, when the first breath of the delightful cold weather of Northern India began to be felt, he took steamer up the Granges, relieving the tedium of a voyage against its mighty current by clearing off the arrears of his correspon- dence. Many an epistle of touching affection and fatherly counsel did he send to the native converts and Hindoo students, and especially to the young Bengalee missionaries. At Benares he could contrast the Brah- manism of the G-ano-es with that of the Coleroon and o the Cavery countries. At Agra and Futtehpore Sikri he saw the glories of Akbar and Shah Jahan. The latter place he thus described in a lady's album on his return to Scotland : 164 "LIF^ OF m\. DUFF. 1849. " About twenty-four miles to the west of Agra is a narrow ridge of sandstone hills, about three miles in length, called Futtehpore Sikri. There dwelt an aged Muhammadan saint, who was consulted by the celebrated Moghul Emperor Akbar, about an heir to his throne. Having reason to be satis- fied with the result of the consultation, the Emperor, in order to secure the continual counsel and intercession of so holy a man, took up his abode at Sikri, covering the hill with superb buildings of red sandstone for himself, his family, his courtiers and public offices. The whole hill is now one enormous mass of ruins and rubbish, with the exception of the mosque and tomb of the old hermit. The mosque is one of the largest and most imposing in the world. Its chief gateway, one hundred and twenty feet in height and the same in breadth, facing the south, on the brow of the hill, is truly magnificent. Inside this gateway, on the right of the entrance, is engraved on stone in large characters, which stand out boldly in bas- relief, a remarkable sentence in Arabic. Literally translated it is as follows, ' Jesus, on whom be peace, has said. The world is merely a bridge; you are to pass over it and not to build your dwellings upon it.' There is no such sentence authentic- ally recorded of Jesus ; but it does embody the spirit of some of His teachings. As an Arabic tradition it is singular and striking. True in itself, the spectacle of ruins by which it was surrounded seemed to be the most emphatic commentary on its truth. It was with peculiar emotions that I gazed at this curious inscription, and then at the ruined edifices which once were imperial palaces and courtly establishments re- plenished with all the grandeur and glory of the greatest and wisest of Asiatic sovereigns. Poor Akbar ! with all his magni- ficence he built his dwellings on the bridge ; and now they are all gone ! Let us take a lesson from the inscription and com- mentary of Futtehpore Sikri ! Let us lay up our treasures in heaven ; and through faith in the Divine Redeemer look forward to the mansions of everlasting light and glory there ! '' Zigzagging up the Ganges and Jumna valleys, and visiting all the mission stations as well as historical and architectural sites, Dr. Duff reached the then little frequented sanitarium of Simla, in the secondary range ^t. 43. THE SHEPHERD OP THE EAST. 1 65 of the Himalaya. But lie would not rest until he had penetrated five marches farther, to Kotghur, near the Upper Sutlej. That was then the most extreme station of the Church Missionary Society, although the Mo- ravian brethren have since distanced it, by planting themselves in snow-encompassed Lahoul, near forbid- den Thibet. The Simla commissioner ordered such arrangements of horses and bearers, that Dr. Duff made the journey to and from Kotghur in half the usual time. Not even Mr. Prochnow's mission seems to have interested him so much as the followinsf incident, which he often afterwards applied. When on a narrow bridle path cut out on the face of a precipitous ridge, he observed a native shepherd with his flock following him as usual. The man frequently stopped and looked back. If he saw a sheep creeping up too far on the one hand, or cominp^ too near the edg^e of the dano^erous precipice on the other, he would go back and apply his crook to one of the hind legs and gently pull it back, till it joined the rest. Though a Grampian Highlander, Dr. Duff saw for the first time the real use of the crook or shepherd's staff in directing sheep in the right way. Going up to the shepherd, he noticed that he had a long rod which was as tall as himself, and around the lower half a thick band of iron was twisted. The region was infested with wolves, hyenas, and other dangerous animals, which in the night-time were apt to prowl about the place where the sheep lay. Then the man would go with this long rod, and would strike the animal such a blow as to make it at least turn away. This brought to the traveller's remembrance the expression of David, the shepherd, in the twenty-third Psalm, *' Thy rod and Thy-stafF they comfort me " — the staff clearly meaning God's watchful, guiding and directing providence, and the rod His omnipotence in defending His own from 1 66 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 850. foes, wlietlier witliout or witliin. The incident sliowed that the expression is no tautology, as many of the commentators make it out to be. Before the close of 1849 Dr. Duff reached Lahore, by Jellundhur and Umritsur. Lord Dalhousie had be- come Governor-General before he was forty, and was then entering the Punjab. Sir Henry Lawrence had returned from his shortened furlous^h and was at the head of the new administration, with his brother John and Sir Robert Montgomery (after Mr. Mansell) as his colleao'ues. The second Sikh war had been fouofht, and the most triumphant success of British adminis- tration in the East was just beginning. Dr. Duff became Sir Henry's guest in Government House, of course, and many were the conversations they had on affairs public and private, missionary and philanthro- pic. On the last day of the year Dr. DufE thus wrote : " Yesterday I had the privilege of preaching the everlasting gospel to an assembly of upwards of two hundred ladies and gentlemen, civil and military, in the great hall of the Government House, now worthily occupied by Sir Henry Lawrence, whose guest I have been since my arrival. And, as indicative of the raclicalness of the change that is come over the firmament of former power and glory in this city, I may state that I had the option of holding public worship either in the Government House, formerly the residence (though now greatly enlarged) of the redoubted Ruujeet Singh's French generals, or in the great audience or Durbar Hall of the Muhammadan Emperors and Sikh Maharajas. What a change ! The tidings of the great salvation sounding in these halls — once the abodes of the lords- paramount of the most antichristian systems and monarchies ! Surely, the Creator hath gone up before us, though in the rough and giant form of blood- ^t. 44. HENRY LAWEENCE AND COLIN MACKENZIE. 167 stained war. God in mercy grant that in these re- gions, so repeatedly drenched with human blood, men may soon learn to ' beat their swords into plough- shares and their spears into praning-hooks ; ' and thus cultivate the arts of peace, and make progress in the lessons and practice of heavenly piety ! " Many of our friends in these quarters have been very anxious that we should extend a branch of our mission to Lahore. And, if we did so, I doubt not that very considerable local support would be obtained. But it appears that the missionaries of the American Presbyterian Church, who have for years occupied many important stations in Northern India, had long contemplated the establishment of a mission at Lahore. For the promotion of this object two of their number reached this place some time ago ; and already have some practical steps been taken in connection with their long-projected design. Such being the fact, let us rejoice that brethren, like-minded with ourselves not only in articles of faith but of discipline and government, have so seasonably and so vigorously entered on a field so vast and so promising. With thirty-five millions of unconverted heathen in the single province of Bengal, we can have little real temptation to rush into res^ions so remote, and so much less densely peopled. But let us, if possible, speedily spread out from our various centres until we pervade the whole land." There was another famous man in Lahore, then a young Scottish captain who had done such deeds in Afo^hanistan that Lord Dalhousie was consulting him about the new frontier finally fixed at Peshawur, and was sending him to be Brigadier in the Nizam's country. Colin Mackenzie had raised the 4tli Sikhs, and he was then bidding his sepoy children farewell. He and Dafi* were brother Highlanders, were brethren in Christ. 1 68 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1850. In her vivid journal Mrs. Colin Mackenzie has de- scribed the farewell parade, how Dr. Duff followed the gallant but sorely affected commandant, as he passed along every rank of the men drawn up in open column of companies, and witnessed a devotion on both sides such as has given India to Great Britain, and given it for Christ. Then to holy communion in the American chapel, just before he took boat down the Sutlej and Indus, clothed in the large '' postheen " or sheepskin presented to him by General Mackenzie. Dr. Duff was amazed at the progress made, even at that early time, in the pacification and civilization of the Punjab, which forms the triumph of Dalhousie* and John and Henry Lawrence. In a letter full of detail * The fact that the Marquis of Dalhousie's Diary and papers are shut up from publication till 1910, adds interest to this specimen of his letters to the officers who served liim : " (Private), GtOVERNMEnt House, ]Wi Sept.^ 1852. Mt dea.r Mackenzie, — I have to thank you for two letters, one enclosing a memo, regarding Sir W. Macnaghten, the other on the Contingent. I am sorry you should have had any doubt regarding the propriety of addressing me on that subject. I have been long painfully conscious of the difficulties with which you have had to contend in common with the whole body. The peculiarity of our position at the Court of the Nizam, and the existence of this war, have lately combined to retard a remedy, but I hope to apply it before long. This expression of mine will, 1 am confident, not pass beyond yourself. As for taking the country, I fervently hope it will not be taken in my time, at least. It does not depend on me, as you seem to assume. Treaties can't be torn up like old newspapers, you know. The testimony to your wife's work must be doubly gratifying to you from its obvious impartiality, since Lord Ashley does not seem even to have known that it was her work. I hope she is better. Your Singhs are behaving beautifully — coming down wading rivers up to their necks, and carrying plump Captain Bean in his palkee through on their heads besides, all readiness and good humour — and I hear with 100 supernumeraries. They shall certainly go to the front. Yours always sincerely, Dalhousie." "P.S. — I have omitted the acknowledgment of your handsome offer to serve with the corps brigaded. The arrangement you sup- posed has not been made however, and the 4th form part of an ordinary Brigade. D." ^t. 44. THE ADMINISTRATION OP THE PUNJAB. 1 69 and description, written for tlie instruction of liis younger son, he remarks tliat he now felt no hesita- tion in sailing down the Indus in a country boat, alone and unarmed — " save by prayer " — where, a short time before, lawless robber tribes infested the banks and life was in peril. When at the point nearest to Mool- tan, yet sixty-two miles from the famous forfc, he was hailed at noon by the driver of a riding camel, sent by friends to enable him to visit the city. In twelve hours he reached them, but at what a sacrifice those know best who have ridden a camel even for one. As he returned across country by Bhawulpore, he would have been gladdened could he have foreseen that one of his own converts would be appointed Director of Public Instruction in that long mis- governed Muhammadan principality, on the succession of a minor. Schools and railways, missionaries and British officers, civil and military, have since done for the Punjab and Sindh, more than any other province, under imperial Rome or Christian England has ever witnessed in the same brief period. And yet only a beginning has been made. It was thus that the Bengal met the Bombay mis- sionary, Dr. Wilson * having come as far as Sehwan on the first missionary tour through Sindh. *' Indus River, February 4th, 1850. *' Need I say with what intense feeling of delight we hailed each other, face to face, on the banks of that celebrated stream, and in a spot so isolated and remote from the realms of modern civilization — a spot never before trodden by the feet of two heralds of the Cross, but conspicuously displaying, among the edifices that * The Life of John Wilson, D.D,, F.E.8. (Murray), page 248, secoud edition. 170 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. . 1850. crown tlie rocky heights of Sehwan, the symbols of the Crescent ; and as visibly exhibiting, in the scat- tered ruins and desolation all around, the impress of rapacious and shortsighted tyranny ? Joyous was our meetiug, and sweet and refreshing has been our inter- course since. How have our souls been led to praise and magnify the name of our God, for His marvellous and ineffable mercies ! It is now ten years since we last parted in the neighbourhood of Bombay; and what centuries of events have been crowded into these ten years — alike in Europe and Asia, alike. in Church and in State ! And nowhere, assuredly, have the ex- ternal changes been greater than in the regions which we are now traversing. A few minutes ago we passed Meanee, a name which instantly recalled the strange series of events that terminated in the final overthrow of the Mussulman dynasties of Sindh, and added this once flourishing, but now greatly desolated realm to the vast Indian dominion of a Christian state. What a revolution already, with reference to the social and political relations of the people, and security of person and property ! Lawless violence and anarchy, abusive rudeness and barbarism, have already been exchanged for peacef ulness and established order, outward civility and respect." At Bombay Dr. Duff roused the native city by an address on the necessity of the Christian element in education, even when conducted by the Government, which produced a long newspaper war but with the best results. The end of April is the time when there is a rush of home-going Anglo-Indians eager to escape the worst of the hot season. Dr. Duff could secure only ** a den in the second lower deck," and had a fall on board. But the end of May saw him once more in Edinburgh, eager to begin his new crusade. CHAPTER XX. 1850-1853. DB, BUFF ORGANIZING AGAIN, Foreign Mission Finance. — Retrenchment or Advance ? — " Living Machinery." — Dr. Duff tells how he prepared his Speeches. — General Assembly of 1850. — His Five Orations. — His Appeal for Men for India. — Rajahgopal. — Mr, Justice Hawkins. — Three and a Half Years of Organizing Toil. — His Success. — The Education Question in India. — With Dr. M'Neile. — Sermon to Twenty Thou- sand Welsh. — The Poor Helping him. — Tender Reminiscences. — Spiritual Breathings. — Great Meetings. — Highland Emigrants from Skye. — Suffering and Triumphing. — Stranraer and the New Hebrides Mission. — Loudoun and the Marchioness of Hastings. — Persecuted by Self-seekers. — New Missionaries. — Summons to the Young Men of London. De. Duff found that he had returned to Scotland not a day too soon. There was urgently wanted for the Foreign Missions of the Free Church a financier in the best sense, one who could create a revenue self-sustain- ing and self-developing, as well as control expenditure so as to make it produce the best possible results. The financial management of religious and philanthropic organizations has been too often marked by the ignor- ance of mere enthusiasm on the one side, or the selfish- ness of dead corporations on the other. The men who have made the missionary enterprise of the English- speaking races one of the most remarkable features of the century's progress since the French Revolution, have not always allowed economic law to guide them in their pursuit of that which is the loftiest of all ideals just because the Spirit of Christ has made it the surest 172 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1850. of realities. It is a lesson to all philanthropic agencies, that he who was the most spiritual of men and most fervid of missionaries, with a Celtic intensity of fervour, was at the same time most practical as an economist and far-sighted as an administrator. He had shown this in the establishment of his first school and college in Calcutta ; he had proved it in his first home cam- paign of 1835-39, to which Dr. Chalmers had pub- licly acknowledged his indebtedness. Of both, all the material fruit, in subscriptions, legacies, buildings and capital endowments had been at once surrendered to the Established Church, when the civil authority decided in 1842 — as it vainly reversed the decision in 1874 — that the ' residuaries ' legally formed the Church of Scotland. In Calcutta and Bengal he, his colleagues and his converts every one, re-created the college and made the new yet old Mission more prosperous than ever, with the sympathy and assistance of all the Evangelical churches. It was now necessary that he should repeat, in Scotland, the organizing toil of his previous campaign, if the Foreign Missions of the Eree Church were to be worthy of its history and of the professions of its duty to the one Head of the Church Catholic. Not that the Free Church had been illiberal, even to the missions abroad, in the first seven years of its opera- tions. On the contrary, while contributing to Church History a new fact since the Acts of the Apostles, in what then appeared to all Christendom the marvellous contributions of a million of comparatively poor people, it had added to the original twenty Indian and Jewish missionaries with which it started, new fields in South Africa, in Central India, in rural Bengal and in Bom- bay. But while Chalmers, Guthrie and Dr. R. Macdonald created sustentation, manse and school funds, there was no one to put the foreign mission subscriptions Mt. 44. EAJAHGOPAL. 1 73 on an organized and self-acting system. When Dr. Duff was summoned home, after the death of Chal- mers, the first annual deficit was met by " a week of collecting " in July, 1817, which yielded £5,500. Next year the ladies of the Church filled the gap between a growing expenditure and a stationary revenue. In 18-10 the normal expenditure of ten thousand pounds, exclusive of much more met by friends in India, was raised, but on no certain plan which brought the people into the close harmony of knowledge, prayer and faith, with the missions. The missionaries them- selves offered to take less than the merely subsistence allowance made to them, until the Church should have done its home work, rather than permit withdrawal from any station. The Cape Town mission was, indeed, given up, but only because its agent was transferred to the new Bengal station at Chinsurah. Mr. Anderson and the Rev. P. Rajahgopal were lighting up again in Scotland the missionary flame which Dr. Duff's first visit had kindled and Dr. Wilson's happy furlough at the Disruption had spread. A critic so good as Hugh Miller thus wrote of the Tamul convert, whom, remembering the Parsee minister Dhunjeebhoy, thou- sands crowded to see and hear : " One of the most remarkable speeches made in the Assembly was that by the young India convert and missionary, Pajahgopal. All that appeared to us, judging with the eye of a European, as defects in his appear- ance were speedily forgotten in the force of his oratory. His features began to glow with animation, a wondrous power seemed to pervade and breathe through all his frame, and his tones rang clear and full through the remotest corner of the great hall. Nor did we less' admire his intellectual power." But while large sums were thus contributed for the more pressing wants of the Madras Mission, the genius of 174 ^^^^ OF DR. DUFF. 1850. a master was needed to call into existence a peren- nial supply for all. The £15,000 raised in 1847-48 was twice the normal annual revenue before the Disruption, but what guarantee was there for the future ? Before starting on his tour in South India, Dr. Duff thus referred to the financial outlook, in a private letter to his loyal friend Dr. Tweedie : '' I see you have had a discussion in the Edinburgh Pres- bytery on the subject of Associations. I truly sympathise with you in the midst of these waspish annoyances. I suppose it is part of the penalty which all must pay who strive with earnestness to push on God's great work in this world. Mean- while the trial to mere flesh and blood is not small ; but mighty is the grace and support of the Great Promisor. Your clear explanations cannot fail to have done good. The same mail brought a Witness,^ containing an editorial which^ from internal evidence, I think must be from the pen of Mr, * Dr. Duff was, like all public men of that day who loved liberty, a grateful admirer of the Witness all the time it was edited by Hugh Miller. It is inexplicable that that newspaper should have been allowed to become extinct — its name and influence might be yet revived. Mr. Hugh Miller, of H.M. Geological Survey, has sent to us, too late for insertion in the proper place, the only letter from Dr. Duff preserved by his distinguished father. " Calcutta, June 2nd, 1845 (Private). My Dear Sir, — Though personally unknown to me, methinks that in all broad Scotland there is no one better known. Being, through the kind attention of my friend Mr. John- stone, a reader of the Witness from its very commencement, it has often been in my heart to write to you. Not that I had anything particular to say, but having derived such unceasing gratification from the products of your pen, I often felt impelled to thank you as for a personal favour conferred. Often, when wearied and worn out by the never-ending ripple and attrition of labours in a strange field, have I been led to turn to the columns of the Witness, and there, in one or other of its fresh, racy and uniquely original editorials, have I often found a means of relaxation combined with profit. To you, Dear Sir, Scotland owes a debt of gratitude which, I fear, it neither will nor can ever repay. The Free Church in par- ticular, if it be lawful to indulge in such heathenish though classical allusions, owes you a nobler than an Olympian crown. May the Lord uphold and bless you still more and more." ^t. 44. THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH. 1 75 Lewis of Leith, on the subject of Associations. I fhink it admirable in spirit and conclusive in argument. I know this, that had I the means myself, I would print a hundred thousand copies of it and scatter it broadcast over the whole Church. I must say, that the Free Church cuts a sorry figure in the eyes of the missionary world, from having no provision of any kind made for the widows of those who jeopard their lives in the high places of the field, in the evangelistic service of the Church. My own trust has simply been all along in God, and therefore I have been silent on the matter ; but on some the subject operates very depressingly. " Since I last wrote a fine young man has come boldly out, and hitherto has resisted the importunities of friends. But the thought that your committee cannot employ any more as catechists, etc., operates most fatally in checking aspirations and preventing resolutions from being formed, at the time when the heart is warm and glowing — compelling, in fact, every young man, henceforward, to look to some secular calling as a means of livelihood. The Church prays and sighs for fruit ; and when God gives it, she then, owing to her own penuriousness, deliberately flings it all away. This, I think, is sin, on account of which the Lord will visit her by withholding His blessing. Indeed, here and elsewhere, it looks as if there were ominous signs of His doing so already. In that case missionaries had better at once retire ; and then let the faithless carnal ones see whether they can gather in the dribble now devoted to Missions, and add it to their own Sustentation Fund ! I trow not, or if they do, as material comforts increase at the expense of Missions, spiritual blessings will be withheld from their own souls and those of their flocks. God will not thus be mocked. I sometimes feel as if it were cowardly faithless- ness on my own part not plainly to speak out all this, and wash my hands of the whole guilt of it and retire to some other field of labour. For it stands to reason that, if moneys for spiritual work — work designed, through God, to convert souls — be given with a grudging, grumbling spirit, no real blessing can be expected. But I do believe that the grudging, grumbling spirit is very much confined to ministers of little faith, and carnal-minded deacons, who are better at keeping than giving money. I think the bulk of the donors give con amore, for Christ's sake ; and that is my ground of hope in the 176 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1850. matter. Would to God that there were more prayer along with the money ! " Let me again say, now is the time to send us out a thorough educationist with a missionary spirit. A man of talent, ac- quired attainments, and especially conversant with improved methods of teaching, is needed more than I can tell. The work of this sort, which was once my delight, is far too much for me now; one hour of it now tells on my frame more than six hours of it was wont to do when I first landed on these shores. And yet without it we have no proper foundation — no prepared materials for higher teaching. I would there- fore implore the committee to send us such a man, in lieu of the late Mr. Miller, of Chinsurah.-" Amid tlie discomforts of sixteen days' imprison- ment in a steerage berth, and during the rest of a few days at Southampton, he much revolved the remedy. When pacing the deck on his long Cape voyage in 1 834 he had decided on Presbyterial Associations. Now, placing the support of a missionary to the heathen beside the *' sustentation " of its own minister, as a spiritual duty equally imperative on every congre- gation, he aimed at weekly collections for both. Hurrying north to the General Assembly of 1850, after preaching in Regent Square Church, " to identify myself in spirit with our London friends," he thus again poured out his heart to Dr. Tweedie, on the 3rd of May : " Tuesday, the 28th, would do well for our Missions. Could we not get the whole day for them ? How often is a whole day given to the discussion of a case of discipline ! And is too much to give to that of the greatest cause on earth ? There is your report; Anderson, Nesbit, perhaps Eajahgopal, will speak, why not some other members of Assembly ? Then I would require at least two or three hours, to be able to say anything at all. If the whole day were given to the Mission, I would prefer to have the evening, so as to take up any matters that may have dropped during the day, etc. ^t. 44- LIVING MACHINEEY. 1 77 For yourself alone, at present, let me state a few thini^s that appear to me liiglily desirable to be done. First : To appoint a day of humiliation and prayer throughout the Church for past sins of negligence, with reference to the Redeemer's great command to evangelise the nations. This would, if done con amove, go mucli to the root of our evils, and mellow people's hearts and open the windows of heaven. Second : Substitute regular weekly subscriptions for the an- nual collections, as the only stable and productive and becomiug source of supply for a great and permanent undertaking. Third : Let the rule of proportion be better established, with reference to men's liberalities towards different objects. Fourth : Cut me off a county or a synod in which to give fair trial to the new experiment. There is no other way of fairly testing it. Occasional addresses and appeals go for nothing. I should like to see a living machinery established as a speci- men somewhere." The " living macliinery," tlie " stable and productive and becoming source of supply for a great and per- manent undertaking," was created. Such was the effect of his spiritual suasion on the country, the elders and the ministers, that the demands which he made, in the name of his Master, were conceded in the form of a quarterly — not weekly — Association in every con- gregation. The whole ten days' meeting was so marked by the contagion of the enthusiasm of himself and his Madras and Bombay coadjutors that it was pro- nounced ** a Foreign Missions General Assembly." Before we proceed to the details of his crusade, let us look a little more closely at the oratorical weapon which he wielded. Since discussing the influences which moulded his rhetoric in 1835, we have received this account of his methods as given by himself in con- versation with his children during the last months of his life. Beginning with a reference to his university experiences at St. Andrews he said : '' Among my fellow-students were Dr. Lindsay Alexander; Dr. Eobert VOL. IT. * nr 178 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1850. Lee; Dr. Arnot, of St. Giles's, Edinburgli; Dr. Forbes, the orientalist, and tlie three Craiks. In those days Itobert Lee was as much of an Evangelical as myself, if not more. There were some finical notions he used to express which led me to expect his mind would take a turn that would prevent him from becoming a mis- sionary. Henry Craik was about the noblest of the whole set. I had a letter from his daughter the other day, with a little volume of poems, sent to me because she knew the feeling of regard I had for her father. The three Craiks were most remarkable men in their way. George, whose aspirations were all towards literature, had made up his mind to support himself by literature. Some of his works are worth studying now ; for instance, ' The Life of Lord Bacon,' a very remarkable book. He threw light on some points in Bacon's literary character, which I have not seen taken notice of by any other author. His life of Bacon used to be one of my resources in Calcutta, as supplying profitable suggestions. The second was James, a most upright exem,plary character, afterwards minister of St. George's, Glasgow, who also had a great zeal for missions. I remember, on my first return from India, he was minister of Scone. When I was at Perth, I used to walk out on a summer morning to the manse, to breakfast with^, him, and had conversations on missions which were f)lways refreshing. I remember one morning in particular, in the course of conversation Craik remarked (we were very intimate in those days), * Duff, there's one thing connected with your speeches which I cannot understand.' I said, * What is that ?' He said, ' To a stranger who knows nothing about your mental character, or how you go about pre* paring for public speaking, there is one thing which is always striking ; it is this : they seem from beginning ALt 44. HOW HE PREPARED HIS SPEECHES. I 79 to end to be sudden, impromptu, spontaneous effusions, and yet there are parts of tliem tliat look so artistically (I don't forget his words) and arti- ficially prepared that it is difficult to believe they are impromptu eJBTasions.* Well, I said to him as a friend in confidence, in a general way when I was called upon to make a specific speech on a special occasion, my method was this : I abhorred the idea of addressing a great public audience on any subject without thoroughly mastering all the principles and details of it. I revolved these over repeatedly in my own mind, until they became quite familiar to me. I then resolved, having a perfect understanding of the subject, to leave the modes of expressing my views, or embodying them in language, till the time of delivery. I felt, if I myself entirely understood my subject I ought to be able to make it reasonably intelligible to all thoughtful men. In the course of a long and elaborate speech on a vital and important subject, there were often points of a delicate nature which required equal delicacy, or even nicety in giving them formal expression. These particular points I thought over and over again, until not only the thought became fixed and confirmed, but also the very modes of ex- pressing it. So in the delivery of the speech; when these particular points came np, I did not leave them to any expressions which at the time might occur to me, but gave them in the language with which they had become riveted and associated in my own mind ; but coming up in this way in their natural place and con- nection, strangers might not know but that they were the spontaneous effusion of the moment, like all the rest of the speech. "On the spur of the moment I gave Craik several illustrations of the real meaning, and significancy of all this. To his great joy I was enabled to state to l8o LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1850. him tTiat one morning, going out from Pertli to Scone, the beauty of the morning sky, the fresh- ness of the verdure everywhere, the warbhng of the birds, etc., suggested a passage then wrought out in my own mind, which afterwards formed what was reckoned one of the most stirring of the passages in one of my Assembly speeches. If I ever com- mitted a speech to writing and then to memory, to my own mind it always seemed to prove more or less a failure. The sermon I delivered in Calcutta, on the day of thanksgiving appointed by Lord Canning after the Mutiny, was delivered without a note, and though urgently pressed to publish it, I found it impossible to recall it. Sir James Outram, Beadon and others were present." During the ten days and nights of the General Assembly of 1850, of which the Rev. Dr. N. Patergon, of Griasgow, was the Moderator, Dr. Duff delivered five addresses. Published separately because of the crowds whom they drew to the great Tanfield Hall of Disruption memories, and of the interest which the imperfect report excited throughout Scotland and the evangelical churches, these orations cover eighty pages. As a whole they are marked by a condensation of style which the very fulness and variety of the speaker's experience, drawn from the wide extent of India, forced upon him. " This time twenty-one years ago," he began, ** when I was set apart by the Church of Scotland to proceed to India, all the world seemed to be in a state of calm ; there might be said to be a universal calm at least in the world of politics. Many, however, regarded it as the calm which was to precede the storm and earthquake ; and truly the earthquake speedily came — the French Revolution and its convulsions, and social changes in this land in con- nection with the Reform Bills and such like. So that, iEt. 44- FIRST ADDiiESS TO FREE CHURCH ASSEMBLY. l8l on returning four or five years afterwards, it appeared as if something like an earthquake had passed over the social fabric of this country ; as if the accustomed manners and habits of the people had exhibited some- what the aspect of a social chaos, and to it might figuratively be applied the words of a national poet — ' Crags, rocks, and knolls conf us'dly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world.' " Since returning the last time, and looking about expecting to find greater social changes from the still greater earthquake which had passed over this land, especially in the Church department, it was the delight not only of myself but of others from abroad, to find that instead of such a chaos all things had quietly settled down and were progressing in harmony and in order ; that the old Church in its new and free form had risen up entire in all its organisms and com- plete in all its parts.*' Now, he argued, that the machinery is perfect, apply it to foreign missions. " When addressing the General Assembly fifteen years ago, my knowledge of India was comparatively limited. It is so no longer. I feel this night, if there were time and patience on the part of the House, and if strength on my part were vouchsafed, that it would be easier for me to speak for six hours than for one. If the Lord spare me and I am privileged to visit different parts of the land, all I have gathered in connection with India shall be poured throughout Scotland in good time." His first speech, on the first business day of the Assembly, was on the report of the committee for the conversion of the Jews. As a missionary to the Gen- tiles he sought to express the intensity of his sym- pathies with a cause which is empiiatically that of foreign missions. He told of his own Jewish converts; 1 82 LIFE OF DK. DLIT. 1850. he described the last hours and Christian confession of the Rabbi whom, and whose family, he had baptized. He sketched the condition of the three Jewish settle- ments in Western and Southern India, and he pled for " harmony and earnest co-operation in promoting the spiritual and eternal welfare alike of Jews and Gentiles." On this the first occasion of addressing a General Assembly of the Free Church, he then asked the vast audience to bear with him while he poured out his testimony to the principles of spiritual and civil liberty for which the missionaries and ministers of the Disruption had sacrificed their all. Two days after, " as a colonist," he moved the adoption of the report on colonial and continental missions, telling the story of the Calcutta congregation, and advocating the claims of the Eurasians on the brotherhood of Englishmen as they had " never yet been pled before an ecclesiastical court in this land." He had still to sweep away another prejudice against the cause he represented, and yet it exists. Reminding the Church that he had, from the banks of the Ganges, long since volun- teered the assertion that Dr. Chalmers's Sustentation Fund for the ministers " is the backbone of the whole ecclesiastical establishment," he said, " With the same intensity with which I wish to see all nations evangelised and the gospel carried to all lands, I would wish to see this and other sustentation funds augmented vastly beyond their present measure, so as not only to uphold the existing ministry at the present rate, but in the way of vastly greater com- petency ; yea, and to see the fund increased so that it may maintain double the number of ministers, and overtake not only the existing religionism but the existinor heathenism of the land." Then in his fourth and fifth speeches he came to his own special subject of the India Mission. The JEt. 44- ^S AN OEATOB. 1 83 present writer remembers the time as that of his first experience of the orator's power. On each night, now swaying his arms towards the vast audience around and even above him, on the roof, and now jerking his left shoukler with an upward motion till the coat threatened to fall off, the tall form kept thousands spell-bound while the twilight of a northern May night changed into the brief darkness, and the tardy lights revealed the speaker bathed in the flood of his im- passioned appeals. As the thrilling voice died away in the eager whisper which, at the end of his life, marked all his public utterances, and the exhausted speaker fell into a seat, only to be driven home to a couch of suffering, and then of rest barely sufficient to enable his fine constitution to renew and repeat again and again the effort, the observer could realize the expenditure of physical energy which, as it marked all he did, culminated in his prophet-like raptures. In the midst of the speech of the 29th May, Dr. Tweedie took advantage of the climax which followed the description of the Seringham pagoda, to interrupt him. In truth, the leading men around him trembled for his life if he were to go on when it was near midnight, and in an atmosphere which could scarcely be breathed, and must be particularly oppressive to the eloquent speaker. The alarmed friend begged that the conclusion might be postponed. Dr. Duff was roused by the applause of the House to declare that he must go on ; and he did so for two hours more, while not a hearer moved save to catch the almost gasping utterance towards the close. His last speech, introduced by a debate on Popery, after vividly describing the Jesuit order in India, and the Protestant Missions in the South, glided again into the loved theme of the Church's duty to the heathen. The Assembly had risen towards his ideal a little 184 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1850. nearer than in his letters to Dr. T^veedie lie had ventured to expect. " Not only since the commence- ment of this Church in its present protesting form, but since the day, I may well and emphatically add, when the trumpet peal of victory sounded forth on the completion of the great Reformation of the six- teenth century, there has not been manifested by any Assembly of the Church of Scotland snch a vital interest in the cause of Missions as has been mani- fested by this Assembly. Night after night has been devoted to the consideration of missionary objects." Spoken by a Highlander to a Scottish audience, this passage produced an effect which we have never seen equalled in any audience, popular or cultured : " In days of yore, though unable to sing myself, I was wont to listen to the Poems of Ossian, and to many of those melodies that were called Jacobite songs. I may now^ without any fear of being taken up for high treason or for rebellion, refer to the latter, for there never was a Sovereign who was more richly and deservedly beloved by her subjects than she who now sits on the throne of Great Britain — Queen Victoria — and there are not among her Majesty's subjects any men whose hearts beat more vigorously with the pulse of loyalty than the descendants of those chieftains and clansmen who a century ago shook the Hanoverian throne to its foundation. While listening to these airs of the olden time, some stanzas and sentiments made an indelible impression upon my mind. Roving in the days of my youth over the heathery heights,, or climbing the craggy steeps of my native land, or lying down to enjoy the music of the roaring waterfalls, I was wont to admire the heroic spirit which they breathed ; and they became so stamped in memory that I have carried them with me over more than half the world. One of these seemed to me to embody the quintessence of loyalty of an earthly kind. It is the stanza in which it is said by the father or mother, — * I hae but ae son, the brave young Donald ; ' -^. — "Yesterday I officiated for Mr. Thomson, who is very unwell. The congregation consists in a large measure of officers and soldiers, a very interesting and affectiug spectacle. In the evening, I referred to the obli- gation of those who have been blessed with the gospel to send it to those still destitute of it. There was no collection made, but I believe Colonel Anderson and others mean to make a private subscription and send the amount to me, as a token of goodwill towards our Mission. At the close of the forenoon service a person sent word to the vestry that she wished to speak to me. On my going out, she began by saying that she was a servant ; that, being a nurse in an officer's family, she could not get out at night ; that the Lord had done much for her soul, and she desired to be grateful by remem- bering His cause ; that she happened to be in Edinburgh and heard me at last Assembly, and she concluded by begging me to accept of her mite for sending the gospel to the perishing heathen. So saying, she put a sovereign into my hand. I looked with some degree of wonder. She noticed my surprise, and simply in substance remarked, ' Oh, sir, what is that com- pared with what He has done for my soul ! ' And then she wound up by requesting that I would not make her name known ! Verily, it is refreshing to meet with such specimens of pure gold of the sanctu;iry in the midst of mountain heaps of such noisome rubbish of carnality and selfishness. On we must go, for these are some of the smiles of a Father's love, amid many many discouragements.""* Whitehaven, 29th Nov. — '' Reached Carlisle at quarter to ten o'clock, a hundred miles in three hours including all stoppages! What a revolution in travelling since that awful weary night when you and I left Edinburgh, 1st Nov., 1839, at * This was one of many similar cnses. More than one artisan and domestic servant have sent us, for perusal, letters which they treasure from Dr. DniF, who was more careful to acknowledge, iii loving vv(jrds, the self-sacritice of the humble, than all that the rich gave oat of their abundance. JEt 45. TENDER MEMORIES. 1 95 nine p.m., reaching Carlisle to breakfast next morning between eight and nine, with bones and backs half-broken with jam- ming in a box of a coach_, and eyes half-blind with attempts (alas, how vain!) at sleep; and hearts filled with sadness at the thought of those left behind ! And yet, after twelve years, we have three of them still with us — as if the Lord by His goodness were rebuking our faint-heartedness. One is gone — gone from us ; but oh, I do live in the hope that she has only gone before us to hail our arrival (if we are upheld faith- ful to the end) in a better world. I seldom allude to the dear child that bore your name, but the sweet image of her often crosses my mind. She was a perfectly loveable one ; and T know not whether I ever felt any stroke so acutely as her unexpected death. And even still, when alone by myself, the thought of her cheerful animated countenance, with its sweet expression and lisping tongue, often brings the tear to my eye, as now. . . In the same coach were several gentle- men,belonging to this place. Among other topics of conversa- tion was the expected preaching of Dr. Daff, in the Presbyterian church to-morrow — asking each other whether they were to attend, etc. Some said yes; and a foolish fop with flippant nonchalance remarked that he would rather go to the theatre than to any preaching, or even to hear Mrs. (I could not catch the name) deliver her lecture on Bloomerism ! No doubt this was quite sincere. It is the spirit of the world ; and that is the antagonist of the gospel. *' Mr. Glasgow, the Irish missionary from Goojarat, whom I saw there, is sure to meet with me. Cumberland, I understand, is very cold and dead in religious matters ; and as to liberality in giving, it seems to be utterly unknown here. In the largest Episcopal church here, with 1,500 in it, where the annual deputation comes from the Church Missionary Society, they announce after two or three sermons are preached, that the handsome, or sometimes they word it actually the ' munifi- cent' collection, of six or seven pounds has been made. When Mr. Burns lately showed some of the rich folks the announce- ment of £750 of a collection in Dr. Miller's, Glasgow, they would not believe it, alleging that there was a figure too much — that it must be either £75 or £50, and that even that seemed to them incredible ! When Mr. Burns assured them it was no mistake, they got off by saying, ' Then surely 196 LIFE OF BR. DUFF. 1852. these people don^t know how to value their money!' What stolid blindness ! as if what was given to God^s cause^ was so much thrown away and lost, instead of being the only money really saved \" Manchester, 24^/z- Dec. — " Our great meeting came ofif last evening, and, by God^s blessing, nobly. It was much owing to Barbour's skilful management. No such platform has been seen here, on any such occasion. Pastors of all churches present, and several clergy of the English Church ; Hugh Stowell, etc., speaking, making motions. Some of the lead- ing laity. The meeting quite an enthusiastic one. Before breaking up nearly a thousand pounds were announced as subscriptions, in hundreds and fifties ; Barbour hiniself giving £500. After a rather restless night I feel this morning tolerably well ; but, on the whole, it must be confessed to be too much for me. Oh that the Lord may come down among us in showers of blessing ! I have to address a meeting to-morrow.'' Glasgow, 19th Feb., 1852.— "Dr. Forbes dined with the Lorimers, after which we proceeded to Hope Street Church, the largest Free Church in Glasgow. It was crowded, pas- sages and all, to the very doors. It was a noble audience. Ah, how responsible a position to have to address such an assemblage of immortal souls ! I mourn that I do not feel it half enough, nor a tithe enough. There seemed to be an earnest response. Some of the ministers spoke shortly after- wards, all very warm ; honest Dr. Lorimer aUuding fully to his quarter- century's acquaintance with me. This morning, joined Miss Dennistoun, sister of Mrs. (Dr.) Wilson, Bombay ; and Mrs. Wodrow (widow of Wodrow the great advocate of the Jews, and descendant, I believe, of the historian) at breakfast. Thereafter a succession of callers.'' Paisley, IQth Alarch. — "I came here yesterday forenoon, met with the presbytery, and addressed a public meeting in the evening. All very cordial in this quarter. But I am nearly done up. Last week I delivered five addresses at Greenock and two at Dumbarton, beside the Sabbath services before and after. Here I gave two addresses yesterday, I have another to night, and one to-morrow." Wick Bay, I9th June. — (After a stormy passage.) "Oh for more real inward life in the midst of this endless tumult and turmoil ! " ^t. 46. IN THE FAR NORTH. 1 97 Thurso Castle, 12th Juhj. — "This morning your anxiously- looked -for communications reached me at Wick, dated 8th and 9th. I hope that on the 9th, at least, you would have received two letters from me — one dated 6th, on board the steamer in Kirkwall Bay, and the other of the same date after arriving at Wick. Be so good as to tell me specially in your next whether these came to hand. Truly the 9th July, 1829, (their marriage day) was a memorable day in our eventful history. The Lord be praised for its abounding mercies. Our cup has been made to run over — goodness and mercy follow- ing all our days and through all our steps. Oh that there were a corresponding ripening of the soul in divine things — brighter visions of glory ! On Wednesday, I proceeded with Mr. Thomson to meet the presbytery at Thurso, distant twenty-one miles — Mr. Taylor, of Pulteneytown, minister, ac- companying us. Sir George Sinclair (from whom I had several pressing invitations to stay with him a week or two at least) was at the meeting, which ended in a way the most satis- factory. We afterwards dined together. In the evening I addressed a public meeting of, they said, at least 1,600 — the large area of the church being crammed in every corner. It was a terrible stew. I was soon in a regular bath ; my very coat being wet through ; the consequent exhaustion what might be expected. But the result more than made up for all. *^That same night we returned to Wick, which we reached at daybreak next morning. On Thursday night I had another public meeting at Wick ; as the election-phrenzied arrange- ments on Friday prevented its being held on that day as originally intended. Then on Sabbath I had two services — one in Pulteneytown, the other in Wick. The latter tried me greatly, as Thomson's church, when crammed as it was, contains about 2,000. During the service I was greatly strengthened in body and otherwise ; but when done, I felfc so gone, that I could only get home and throw myself into bed, being unable to sit up even in an easy-chair. But this morn- ing, through the really fatherly and motherly attentions of Mr. and Mrs. Thomson (whose kindness could not possibly be surpassed) I felt greatly revived. And from all I hear I have reason to thank God for the service of yesterday, which seems to have been owned of Him in a peculiar way. To Mr. Thom- son many have spoken with tears of gratitude for impressions iqS i^ife op dk. duff. 1852. produced. A civic dignitary, not usually over-attentive in religious matters, told him, that ' he could listen for ever to that man/ and begged that *^when the collection for the Mission commenced, they would come to him/ Now, is not this a smile from above ? It is the Lord's gracious way; when the frown comes to humble one, the smile comes to cheer up again. Praised be His holy name. Sir George very kindly sent his conveyance for me to Wick, and I am now under his roof — treated by this man of God not merely as a brother, but as if I were his superior ! Oh, what a softening, subduing power is grace ! How it brings down all lofty imaginations ! and brings all to the obedience of Christ ! " Golspie, llth July, — ''What I long for is a little repose, to get mind and body brought back to some degree of equili- brium. What with incessant travelling and speaking, for the last two nights I have had, on one only two hours sleep, and the other three, that I might now almost sleep standing. I have, however, experienced much of the loving-kindness of the Lord; and that makes up for all fatigues, so far as the spirit is concerned.^' Alness, 24^/t July. — ''Your two most welcome letters were waiting me. For them, and especially the long and affec- tionate letter of the 19th, I return my warmest thanks. Truly the 19th July, 1834 (day of first departure from Calcutta, vol. i. page 269), was an ever-memorable day in our eventful history. And I always feel that it would be the basest ingratitude to our heavenly Father, who so marvellously carried us through the trials of that day, to forget it. Yea, if I forget the 19th July, 1834, 'let my right hand forget her cunning ; if I do not remember it, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.' This I do not feel to be too strong language to apply to a day of such signal trials mingled with such signal mercies. May He who hitherto hath spared us and our then helpless children still in the land of the living, mercifully continue to spare us all still — that as living monuments of His mercy and grace we may con- tinue to celebrate His praise." 26//i July. — (Dr. Duff had feared that he could not meet his daughter and her husband before they returned to India.) " I now do thank God, my heavenly Father^ for removing my ^t. 46, HOLT COMMUNION AT ALNESS. 1 99 fears on tliis head — fears, tlie offspring of disappointment at tlie thought of not meeting the objects of affection. E/s note again revived my sorely wounded and drooping spirit. And yesterday was a precious day to me. At the Assembly, Mr. Flyter, (from his daughter being married to one of our missionaries, and from General Munro, who did such noble work in Travancore, being his principal support) secured from me a conditional promise that I would preside on the occasion of his sacrament. The English services were in the church : the Gaelic services outside in a neiofhbourino- wood, fitted up with benches, tent, etc. I had, therefore, the English action sermon, fencing the tables, and the serving of the first table — occupying altogether upwards of three hours. The day was wet ; the church, a large one, crammed, passages and all. There was not a breath of air. So it was a vapour- bath, somewhat like Calcutta at the end of the wet season I was drenched clean through — my very coat soaking through. But notwithstanding, it was to my own soul a mighty re- freshment; I had glorious views of the Saviour^s finished work, and His gracious nearness in the communion. By His blessing others appear to have been similarly refreshed. Oh that such vivid impressions were abiding ! But it seems too much for earth, and for human nature, in its present state, to expect this. It is only in heaven that the glorified soul and body can sustain uninterrupted, bright and immediate vision of the Triune Jehovah. Near the Foot of Ben Nevis, I2th Aug. — '^ I am seated at a window looking across on Ben Nevis, which has not yet uncovered its brow from its nightcap of clouds. But the whole scene is elevating and imposing. On Tuesday mornino- I came from CuUoden House to attend the meeting of presbytery at Inverness; besides members a large body of elders and deacons attended from different congregations, town and country. In the end all very cordially agreed to work out the association plan. In the evening a large public meeting ... I went up, as all others did, to the fall of Foyers as the morning was fine — going, seeing, and returning to the steamer all within the hour. I will not here, even had I time, indulge in the ordinary poetic sentimentalisms about cataracts. The whole scenery is certainly very rugged and grand. I had no previous adequate idea of the beauty here. 200 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1852. and ruggedness there, and towering grandeur yonder, of the scenery along the Caledonian Canal. But the gem in the whole was Glengarry House and woody heights, while the sublime (next to Ben Nevis) was in the Glengarry hills. I do not now wonder that your youthful fancy was fired in these regions. I thought, as I passed, that I saw you, in mental vision, skipping along these beautiful lawns and banks and sloping acclivities — in all the gay and buoyant vigour of eighteen. And I trow that among all the gazers on that scene of inspiring and exhilarating joy, there would be no one more joyously elastic than my own beloved partner. But then, probably, this world, with its phantasmagoria of fleeting dreams, may have occupied the chief place in her affections ; while now, praised be God, the enduring realities of the everlasting future in the realms of day, have acquired their proper ascendancy; and so the sober pursuits of 49, Minto Street, Newington, may be not only more profitable, but in reality more prolific of pure joy to the spirit, than the gaysome lightsome buxom joyousnesses of Glengarry in the days of blooming and elastic girlhood.-*^ Portree, Skye. — " The elite of the whole Free Church population of the island were there, from end to end — many from fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and even thirty miles dis- tant ; several too of the leading, would-be great men still connected with the Establishment; and the moderate minister's own wife. It was a great day at Portree and Skye. So it was felt, I do believe. The services beginning at about eleven did not end till about six. And all that time the great bulk of the audience sat still without once moving from their seats. Feeling myself in much weakness and not a little mental depression, I could scarcely tell from what, I found more than ordinary freedom in addressing sinners, and could see from the countenances, and the tearful eyes, that impres- sions were produced. God grant that they may prove not ephemeral impressions on the mere sensibilities of nature, but living impressions, inwrought by the power of the Holy Ghost. After sermon old Mrs. McDonald came forward to embrace me. She had remained purposely for a fortnight to witness the opening of the church. Again came back to Portree about noon, met the presbytery of Skye; then addressed a public meeting in the church, which again was ^t. 46. EMIGKANTS LEAVING SKYE. 20I thronged. At some of the statements and appeals many were weeping — my prayer was that their hearts might bleed. To these people such statements and appeals come with all the force of novelty ; hence, doubtless, in part, the greatest im- pressions produced among them. All seemed to rejoice in the Lord ; and the Lord grant in mercy an abundant harvest ! After the meeting, who should come forward to hail me, but Miss Grant, sister of Dr. J. Grant, of Calcutta. She inquired most earnestly for you. As the steamer was to take on board some 150 or 160 emigrants for Australia, and a noisy scene would be kept up all the night, we went on board our yacht in the Portree harbour, to be quiet and get a little sleep. Wake- ful as usual, I was up at three, and roused the others, as the steamer was to leave exactly at four. ''At Raasay, Major Darrock, his lady and daughter and sons came on board. I had seen them at Greenock. They are excellent Christian people. They had been on a visit to Mr. Rainy, now proprietor of Raasay, and uncle of Mr. Daniels. Mrs. Darrock is a daughter of the late Mr. Parker, of Glasgow, one of Dr. Chalmerses greatest friends and supporters, and doubtless named in his Memoirs. I remember him well, when he came with Dr. Chalmers, as the new Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, and was present at his installation. I spent most of my time on board, in the fore part of the vessel, talking to and counselling the poor emigrants. It was a sad and sorrowful spectacle. My heart really bled for them. Some of them looked so dejected and woe-begone. Some kept gazing at their beloved Skye, quite overcome at the thought of their never seeing it any more. Some appeared to feel most of all at the prospect of being without the means of grace in the strange land whither they were going. To them all it looked like a plunge into the dark — a leap in a vacuum. Uneducated, they knew not what Australia was, nor where it was, nor what to believe concerning it. One poor woman, who was sobbing and weeping, asked me 'if it was not a wild country and full of wild people,^ and got no little comfort from my assurances to the contrary. She seemed to be wholly relieved on that head, when I informed her that I had myself been upwards of twenty years in a wilder country and among a wilder people, as I had been among down- right heathen, whereas the would be among her own country- 202 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1852. women, wlio were at least nominally Christian. At Broad- ford a fresh batch of emigrants were taken in. One of the boatmen was an awful specimen of profanity — cursing and swearing most vociferously. I have not for many a day — and never in the Highlands — heard anything like it. I went forward and looked gravely at him, speaking a gentle word of admonition. For a moment he was startled and arrested. But speedily he recovered himself^ and said, ' You pray too much — you pray too much,"* and commenced his cursing and swearing anew. I could only leave him, commending him to the mercy of that gracious God whose long-suffering patience he was so fearfully abusing. '^Reaching Loch Alsh, and bidding good-bye to all kind friends, I got into the boat in which Miss Lewis, of Edinburgh, and others had come on shore. When at Lochcarron I had received an invitation from Mrs. Lillingstone, widow of the late Mr. Lillingstone, proprietor of all this region and a man of extraordinary benevolence, who gave away at least three- fourths of his large income in acts of philanthropy. He also has large property in England. From what causes I cannot well explain, but this Highland property was some time ago sold to Mr. A. Matheson, but Mrs. Lillingstone remains in the mansion house. About eight I was there, and received with great cordiality. Mr. and Mrs. Matheson, and Miss Palmer, and other guests are here. I am to have a meeting here this evening, and to-morrow another somewhere in this quarter. "Portree (in Gaelic, ^King's Harbour,^ as there James V. stopped in his northern expedition against rebellious chieftains), is a striking land-locked haven, with its lofty precipitous headlands all around, and Raasay, with its peculiar dome- sarmounted hill in front. Raasay House, with its lawns and woods, takes one utterly by surprise, after traversing the dreary solitude to the west. Balmacura combines the softly beautiful and the sublimely grand in scenery." HuNTLY Lodge, 13th October. — "A most delightful meeting yesterday with the presbytery of Strathbogie ; and in the evening a grand public meeting. One of the presbytery elders, Mr. Stronach, a gentleman of property, who, as magistrate, was called in to quell the disturbance at the ever-memorable Marnock settlement, publicly declared that it was what dropped from me, on my visit to this place, seventeen years ago, which ^t. 46. LIVING MAETYRDOM. 203 first gave him the impulse towards missions^ an impulse which has sustained him ever since. Singular what drops of consolation now and then are afforded from on high. In coming from Perth, on the top of the coach, was the minister of Cromarty. He told me that a member (a female) of his congregation had been awakened to serious concern for her own soul by my address at Cromarty and that she was a changed character ever since. The Lord be praised ! '^ Kincardine O'Neil, November 24th. — '' Before leaving Rhynie this morning I wrote a short note to W. It was piercingly cold. A keen hard frost, with a cloudless sky, and icy wind. Since I left the pulpit on Sunday I have scarcely yet got into anything like warmth, either by night or by day. I have felt as if the cold were oozing through my whole body, from head to foot. Down in this region of Deeside it seems to be somewhat milder. But what with unseasoned rooms, and unseasoned beds, and frosty air, and chills after full meet- ings, I feel as if it were a sort of living martyrdom to be encountering all this, with concomitant and subsequent physical miseries — freezing, too, the flow of one's thoughts, and petrify- ing the genial feelings. But most gladly would I bear all, and a great deal more, if possible, for the sake of Him who so loved us as to lay down His very life for us, were I to behold substantial fruit to His praise and glory. I must, however, leave all to Him. Outwardly there is much of seeming coun- tenance given. What I lack is, real fruit — deeds of faith, alike in doing and giving, in connection with the Redeemer's cause. My own shortcomings are ever before me, and the ])icture of them present to the mind increasingly painful. Nought sustains me but the Divine assurance that ' the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin.' Blessed Saviour ! who would not then cheerfully toil and suffer for Thee ! Oh Thou, Whose locks were so often wet with the dews of night when praying on the mountain solitudes of Judasa for a sin-laden world ; and Who, for it, didst endure the agony and the bloody sweat ! But, that world shall yet be Thine; and in it shalt Thou yet be gloriously exalted ! Oh to be the humblest servant in Thy royal train and retinue ! " Banghory-Ternan, November 2bth. — " In crossing from Alford I had a magnificent view of the massive and lofty mountain of Lochuagar — reminded thereby of the unhappy 204 I^I^^ 0^ '^^' DUFF. 1852. Byron. Had a very deliglitful meeting with the presbytery of Kincardine O'Neil; and to-night, with the congregation here. I have still an oppressive cold on my chest — nostrils running without ceasing, with cough. In my bedroom shut up all day, till I went out to the meeting at six. Unable to speak very loud ; but the people were so still and attentive, that a whisper was almost heard by them. I am more than ever convinced that if I could only visit all the congregations in person, associations would at once be organized in every one of tliem. This was once the parish of the celebrated Principal Campbell, who wrote the famous essay on Miracles in answer to Hume. The ruins of his manse are still here. The whole of Deeside was wont to be a regular preserve of the Moderates. It is cancered all over with Moderatism still. Oh, for a life- breath from heaven to stir up the dead ! " To-morrow I expect to go by coach to Aberdeen, distant eio-hteen miles; and thence to Mr. Thomson^s, of Banchory House, brother-in-law of the Misses Fraser, who did so much for our new library." Banchory House, December 6th. — " The loving-kindness of the Lord in directing me hither has been unspeakable ; and I do desire to cherish a deeper sense of gratitude towards Him, who is the Author of all these mercies. I have been terribly beset by all sorts of applications from all sorts of persons and societies for all sorts of objects. From the shortness of my sojourn, it has been utterly impossible for me to attend to the great bulk of them. But as a specimen of the way in which I am sometimes captured, in spite of every effort to escape, I shall briefly narrate the facts of a case. " Some weeks ago I received a letter asking me to preach a sermon on behalf of a school established in a very destitute locality for the children of a colony of poor fishermen. I wrote to say that, with so many other engagements before me, which must be compressed within so short a time, I could not honestly, commit or pledge myself in any way to preach such a sermon ; but that if, after coming to Aberdeen, I found my strength equal to it, I had all the heart to respond to such a call. Well, when I saw last week that I was to be busied every day, I said that I could not engage to preach the sermon until I saw, by the end of the week, how I bore up under such accumulated labour. As the sermon was to be (if at all) on Sabbath even- Mt 46. AN ECCLESIASTICAL FRAUD. 205 ing, it would be time enougli to announce it at tlie preceding services of tlie day. The public meeting of Thursday, attended, they say, by at least 2,000 jammed into an immense edifice, well-nigh felled me. Still I had to go out to Skene, twelve miles distant, to bold a public meeting there on Friday evening. Returning to town on Saturday, I addressed a large body of the studeuts of all the colleges, at 2 p.m. After all this I felt so gone, that I wrote to Mr. Spence to say, that it seemed to me physically impossil)le to preach on Sabbath evening in his church, which holds 1,500 people; seeing that I had under- taken a double service (that is, a sermon and missionary address) in the Free Church here (Banchory) in the early part of the day. *^ Judge then of my surprise, when about nine o'clock at night I received an urgent note to the effect, that a sermon from me had actually been advertised in two of the Aberdeen papers, that there was no possibility now of countermanding said advertisements, that numbers from other congregations, in consequence of said advertisements, would assemble, etc. Well, I instantly replied, that whoever inserted such adver- tisements without my knowledge or permission, yea, quite contrary to the understanding between Mr. Spence and myself, had perpetrated a fraud and moral wrong ; and that I could not in any way be responsible for a failure or disappointment, seeing that I was no party, directly or indirectly, to the measure which occasioned it — adding that, unless I got greatly better than I was that evening, it would be impossible for me to preach the sermon after two services at Banchory. On Saturday night I had a better rest than ordinary, and so felt greatly relieved on Sabbath morning. I then reflected on the awkward position of parties; of the assembling of numbers, and no sermon ; of the talk and gossip to which this would lead; of the necessity of my publicly explaining the fraud which had been perpetrated upon me, in the way of self- vindication, and in proof that the fault was not mine; of the handle which might thus be furnished to the enemies of our Church and the scandal which might thereby accrue even to the cause of Christ; and in the end concluded, that I had better throw myself on the grace and protection of a loving Father, who knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are but dust. Then, early yesterday (Sabbath) I despatched 206 LIFE OP DB. DUFF. 1853. a special message to Mr. Spence, to say, that tlioiigli under no moral obligation in the matter, but rather the contrary, after such fraudulent usage, I would for the sake of preventing scandal, and therefore for the sake of Christ's cause, endeavour to do what I could in the evening. ^' So, our services here occupying from twelve to three, I hurried to my present home, changed, had some refreshment, and off at five to Mr. Spence's. On getting there, the front door could not be approached ; the church was full and crowds still lingering outside. Eound we went to a back lane, whence was a private waj^ to the vestry. But it too had been taken possession of. And after struggling on half way, I fairly stuck and could not move; nor could any one, however willing, all were so closely jammed together. It then occurred, to cry out to the officer within the vestry to open the door and let a number in, so as to allow of my getting forward. This suc- ceeded. In a moment the vestry was filled ; but I got in on the top of the tidal wave. Happily the pulpit was near the vestry, so I got into it at last, though not without difficulty, as the stairs were crammed. Through the service I got in a way which I could never have anticipated. Verily the Lord is a covenant-keeping Grod. Never was I more conscious of a real direct answer to prayer. Penetrated with a sense of weakness in every sense, I did throw myself absolutely upon the Lord for help and strength. And surely He did uphold me. From the earnestness of attention manifested it appeared that the truth was telling. The Lord seal it home ! " This morning my kind host and hostess had the whole of our Divinity students out to breakfast ; I talked with them till twelve.'' Ayr, bth Fehmari/, 1853. — " I was more than delighted with my visit to Kilmarnock. Air. and Mrs. Main are really excellent people. And there was quite an outburst of enthu- siasm through all the congregations in favour of my associa- tion plan. I have not yet met anywhere anything so thorough and full-hearted. It was all the more remarkable, inasmuch as several of the ministers in the presbytery spoke stoutly against it — not the minister of Kilmarnock. They, however, overshot the mark ; and by the adverse arguments they em- ployed— so low, so carnal, so selfish, so grovelling, so earthy — ' they only stirred up the bottftr-miuded among the other JEt47' ^T KILMARNOCK AND STEANRAER. 207 ministers, and elders, and deacons, and people, to come fortli, in my favour, far more zealously and enthusiastically than tliey otherwise would have done. Praised be the overruling providence of a gracious God/' Wigtown, 10th Fehriiary. — ^^Our meetings at Stranraer were very pleasant. When I was there fifteen years ago there was only one evangelical minister in the presbytery, who is now in the Free Church — Mr. Urquhart, of Port Patrick — with one evangelical assistant, Mr. Bell, of Leswalt, Lady Agnew's son-in-law. At that time a presbyterial association was formed, of which Mr. Urquhart was secretary. And he told us the other day, that except himself and another, not one acted it out. Papers and circulars were sent to the ministers, but they cast them aside or destroyed them. When the time agreed upon had come round for receiving the secretary's report, the presbytery asked him politely to postpone it till towards the close of the meeting, when the press of business would be over. When the close approached he stood up to give his report, and instantly one and all of the ministers rose, and politely bowing to him, took their hats, and left him alo7ie ! There was a fine exhibition of genuine Moderatism ! " At that time the Establishment had no church in Stranraer, and our public meeting was held in the Cameronian Church, Dr. Symington's. I was told the other day, what I had then forgotten, that in my address I spoke very strongly about the want of a church and the bickerings and divisions which led to it — asking, ^ What ! had the curse of God lighted on the place, that He should not have a house for the honour of His name there ? ' This appeal was taken in good part, and stirred up some present, so that the result was, the getting up of a quoad sacra church. Others at the meeting of presbytery remarked that impressions were then produced in many minds, which survived in their effects to this hour — that souls had been quickened. One venerable elder, who was an elder formerly in the Cameronian Church but is now one in the Free, said that he was present at the meeting eighteen years ago — that things were then said which made him and others weep — but that he did not observe a single tear in the eyes of the moderate ministers. And when I had done, his exclamation to those around him was, ^ Where got the Establishment that man ? ' In the midst of many cold- 208 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1853. nesses and rebuffs on the part of many, it is cheering to one's own soul to find that the Lord has been graciously pleased, in so many places, to honour one's message in dropping some seeds of life for the souls of others. Glencairn, 21st November. — ^^ We had scarcely started from the Thornhill station in an open gig, when it began to rain. Soon the wind rose and it continued to blow fiercer and fiercer, with occasional gusts of extreme violence, while the rain fell heavier and heavier — all direct in our faces, all the way, for nine long miles, over an undulating hilly country ! My poor throat, which you remember showed signs of weakness on Friday night, by the windy drench of Saturday has been made worse than it has been since last spring. But it is all well ordered. Yesterday I preached twice, though with ex- treme difficulty to myself. Happily the church, being one of the low-roofed kind, though crowded with seven or eight hundred people, did not require such loud speaking as many do. This morning, a clear hard frost ; but by eleven the mist suddenly descended, and has put an end to our in- tended drive to Glendarrock, and other fimous martyr scenes. Indeed, all the way on Saturday, when sorely pelted with wind and rain, my thoughts were intensely directed to Renwick and his shelterless wanderings. How often was he exposed to windy storm, and tempest — drenched with wet, shivering with cold, famished with hunger, with no covert at the end of exhausting journeys but the dripping cave in the rock, and no pillow or bedding but the stony or damp muddy floor ! Compared with his sufferings for th e sake of the truth, what have been all the trials and exposures to which any of us, in these days, have been subjected ! My soul, therefore, instead of being cast down, was rather uplifted in gratitude to God for His unspeakable loving-kindnesses towards me and miue. Oh, how apt we are to murmur, when at any time deprived of any little comforts to which we may have been accustomed ! Why not always reckon that our mercies, whatever these may be, are infinitely beyond what we deserve ? " Kilmarnock, 2bth Nov. — "I long to hear how you are all getting on in your new quarters. Certainly any sort of settled home, almost, is better than the life I have had of it in such tempestuous weather during this week, with so many meetings Mt 47. MEMORIES OF THE COVENANTERS. SOQ to attend alike in private and in public. But having a work to accomplish, I am bent on overtaking it, looking to Him who rides on the wings of the wind, for protection and support. Yesterday continued tempestuous ; the public meeting was at half-past six ; and what between the commixtion of terrene elements underneath, and of liquid elements overhead, and a superincumbent darkness like that of Egypt, it was no easy matter to work our way into the church. On arriving there I was astonished to see so large an audience on such a night of darkness and of storms. I hailed it as a token for good ; and though in much weakness bodily, felt greatly cheered in spirit. There is a latent leaven, a deposit from covenanting times, in that region still, which is beginning to show some signs of incipient fermentation. It was to the cross of San- quhar that Cameron affixed his famous Declaration, and sub- sequently Renwick affixed his — the Declarations adhesion to, or repudiation of which, was the judicial test for convicting or acquitting the Covenanters of the alleged crime of dis- loyalty or high treason. The cross itself was taken down a good many years ago, in improving the burgh. The top stone of it was taken possession of by one of the workmen, in whose house it was used as a stool for the children at the ingle-sidiQ. This being known, some of the Free Churchmen obtained it for a consideration ; and now it is set over the porch of the Free Church, as if to symbolize to the eyes of sense the fact that the Free Church is the body which has taken up and perpetuated the principles for which the heroes of the Covenant suffered and died ! Of the doings and suffer- ings of these men, of whom the world was not worthy, the whole neighbourhood abounds with traditions handed down from sire to son. Sanquhar lies about the centre of the coun- ties of Lanark and Dumfries_, Galloway and Ayr, in the moun- tain wildernesses and remote solitudes of which the storm of persecution chiefly raged, as it was among the almost endless and labyrinthine moors and mosses, glens and ravines, thickets and forests, caves and dens of these upland wilds, that the fugitives from a savage persecution sought refuge. This led to the celebrated saying of Renwick, that ' the moors and mosses of the west of Scotland were flowered with martyrs, and that if God would be confined to a place, it would be these wildernesses.' The vivid recalling of all these scenes greatly VOL. II. r 210 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1853. affected my own spirit, and seemed to vibrate througli every fibre of my being, imparting a peculiar hue to my thoughts, and intonation to my words in utterance. Stewarton, 28th November. — "Friday evening was most tem- pestuous at Loudoun, and the night seemed the very black- ness of darkness. The modern village is called Newmilns, the old one having been removed to clear and enlarge the parks of Loudoun Castle. It contains about 2,500 — mostly weavers, and nearly half of them avowed infidels and notorious drunkards ! It is really awful to hear of such a state of things anywhere in Scotland. Once on a time the people of Loudoun were religious — fought bravely for the Covenant ; while the earl was foremost in the good cause, his name being attached to the Covenant. But a succession of moderate ministers sucked the very life-blood out of the people ; and in two or three generations, the descendants of godly ancestors lapsed into the brutalities of heathenism. Mr. Noble, our minister, who is married to a Ross-shire lady, is a truly good man, and is, thank God, succeeding in making an impression on the mass. On Friday evening, I was amazed to see so many turn out — mostly men too ! — with the pale, lank countenances of the loom and its confined atmosphere. More intense attention there could not be. ''Dr. Laurie's (of Madras) father and grandfather were minis- ters of Loudoun — both Moderates. By the way, did I ever tell you the tragic story he related to me about the last Earl of Loudoun, father of the last Countess of Loudoun who became Marchioness of Hastings, and virtual queen of India for some years. When Laurie's grandfather was minister, the earl at- tended in church on the sabbath-day as usual. At the close of the service, he asked (what he never did before) the minister to accompany him to dine at the castle. This the minister stoutly refused to do, as he had made a rule of never dining out on the sabbath. The earl importuned, the minister still declined. At last the earl said, ' At any rate you'll not refuse a drive to the manse ? ' The road to the castle happening to pass close to the manse, this the minister could not well decline. So they drove on. As they approached the manse the minister reminded the earl, that he might ask the coachman to stop. But instead of this, he urged the coachman to quicken the horses' pace towards the castle. The minister being thus carried thither, in spite of ^t. 47. A TRAGEDY. 2 1 1 himself, thouglifc it as well to stay to dinner, as tlie earl was alone. By one means and another the earl contrived to keep him all night at the castle. At dawn the minister was up and out_, and on his way down the lawn, when he heard the report of a gun from tbe castle. He turned back, saw the servants in commotion; hastened where he saw them rushing, and soon was in the earFs bedroom, on the floor of which he lay welter- ing in his blood — and soon died — a suicide ! Then, from a document on his table, it was found that he committed his only child, then an infant of about five years of age, to the sole care and guardianship of Laurie, the minister ! This was the after Marchioness of Hastings ! And the unhappy father had evidently wished that the minister should be in the castle at the time of the tragic event, that he might bo more affected and drawn towards the fatherless child ! Of course Laurie did his best to discharge a trust so extraordinarily committed to him. What is title, what is fortune, what is noble descent, if the spirit of wisdom and of grace and of a sound mind be wanting ! Let us thank God, and learn, in whatever state we are, therewith to be content. Kilmarnock, bth December. — ^^ We had a large meeting in the spacious kitchen of Perceton House on Saturday evening, when the missionary boxes of Sabbath school children were opened and I addressed old and young on the subject of Mis- sions. Being crowded, it was very stirring and interesting. Real good was done, and that always is a recompense to me for any extra labour or fatigue. The exercises were very refreshino"; Main's sermon admirable. I partook of the communion with great joy, and in the evening preached to a huge and dense multitude. The church being much heated I came home dripping. Throughout the night, being very restless and half awake, the enemy took advantage of my physical weakness to tempt me with wretched thoughts and horrid dreams ! How I longed for the morning ! My prayer was to Him who said, ' Get thee behind Me, Satan,' and I rose unrefreshed in body, and cast down and disquieted in mind. This forenoon Mr. McFarlane of Monckton, son of the late Dr. McFarlane of Greenock, preached on John's Gospel vi. 16-21, and made many remarks singularly applicable to my state of mind. I felt it to be an answer to prayer ; and sinking as I felt my- self in the deep waters, I seemed to hear the voice of the 212 LIFE or DE. DUFF. 1853. Kedeemer, ' Fear not, it is 1/ and the ' Oli ye of little faitli ' from those gracious lips at once reproved and. uplifted me. Praise be to His holy name ! At half-past two I met the body of collectors connected with the three congregations, and addressed them with much comfort for an hour. A goodly number of friends are to be here to dinner at four ; and this evening I return to Perceton, and to-morrow meet the Ayr \ presbytery. I am dunned and pestered beyond measure with applications to speechify, preach, etc., for all sorts of things under the sun. Besides those forwarded by you I received many more directly. Peally, it consumes the languishing remnant of my life blood to be answering these, as I must do, for the most part in the negative. Ayr, 9th December. — '' We have had great doings here. The people are all in a blaze, alike about home and foreign objects. They were in a very sleepy state. But the Lord has given me astonishing freedom of speech amongst them. And it has evidently been blessed. To me, personally, it is very exhaust- ing. But I grudge nothing when I see good fruit. Last night the public meeting, which began at seven, did not break up till eleven o'clock ! I have yet a good deal of work before me. To-day I return to Perceton, on my way to the higher parts of Ayrshire — Catrine, Old Cumnock, etc. " After I wrote to you from Kilmarnock I half repented of having done so. But the truth is, that it is some relief to the mind to get itself disburdened. And to whom can I disburden it, if not to you — the partner of my joys and sorrows for nearly a quarter of a century? No one can ever fully know how much I often suffer, both in mind and body, in the midst of these frequent, prolonged, and violent exertions. And to none but yourself can I ever moot the subject except in the vaguest and most general terms. In the excitement of speaking, the spirit forgets the fragility of the body; and therefore, people think me strong. Ah, if they could see me in my solitary chamber, all alone, after such meetings as last night, their congratulations on my supposed strength would be ex- changed for downright commiseration. The whole frame feverish — the whole nervous system, from the brain down- wards, in a state of total unrest. The very tendency to sleep gone. Going to bed, as this morning, at half-past one, not from sleepiness but from inability to sit up longer through JEt. 47. CLOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND. 2 1 3 exliaustion. Turning and tossing from side to side, and long- ing for sleep. Then drowsiness, and half-sleep, and horrid dreams, and longing for the morning's dawn. Getting up disquieted and unrefreshed, to meefc a company at breakfast — with aching head besides, and sorish throat. Necessity for appearing as pleasant as may be, so as not to damp or dis- courage others ; and every etibrt in this way only increasing the pain. But enough ; I must say no more on such a subject. Yet, the Lord be praised ! in the midst of all this I have gleams and intervals of real spiritual enjoyment. Indeed, when most weak and pained, often is that enjoyment propor- tionally increased. And then, the favour which the Lord shows me in the sight of His people, and the good so often unexpectedly achieved — all this makes me feel that what I suffer is the discipline of a Father^s rod to keep me humble in walking before Him. '' I am alarmed at what you say about the statements in the American paper. Such things often exceedingly vex and annoy me. It is all well enough to thank God for any instru- ments He may raise up. It is quite another matter to speak or write of them in exaggerated terms amounting to flattery, and so far, to a disparagement of the great Giver. At public meetings I have usually got quit of such things by com- mencing at once my address when the prayer ends. But sometimes (not often) the minister praying has taken it into his head formally to introduce me to the audience; and then to speak of me in a way that has disturbed and discomposed my spirit. In such cases I am always conscious of not g'etting on h'Uf as well as when I am allowed to begin without a word being said about me.'^ All over Scotland and in many a manse there aro still grateful memories of tliese tours. Among others the Rev. T. Main, then of Kilmarnock and now of Free St. Mary's, Edinburgh, and convener of the Foreign Missions Committee, thus recalls the time : " The weeks during which it was our privilege to have Dr. Duff under our roof formed a happy time. He grew in our affection and admiration. To sympa- thise with him in his work went strai-^ht to his heart. 214 l^IFE OP DR. DUFF. 1853. He lived a most laborious life. His days were spent in his room in writing papers and conducting corres- pondence. At this time he was busily engaged in matters connected with the Indian Despatch of 1854, which entailed on him a great amount of toil. He kindly gave his evenings to us, pouring forth an amaz- inof wealth of information. In doinsf so he was un- consciously revealing a most capacious memory, an observant eye and a loving heart. One of the chief difficnlties that stood in the way of the formation of Associations, was the burden of pecuniary reponsibility that rested on most if not all of the cono^reofations. Dr. Duff felt its force, and set himself with self-denying devotedness to render assistance in helping to clear it out of the way. I have never seen any one so singu- larly sensitive as he. The effect was immediate. A want of sympathy repelled him, the reverse attached and drew him out. This was not the result of self- consciousness from the consideration of the position he occupied and what was due to himself ; it was an instinct of his moral nature. It was not he, but Christ that throbbed within him, his whole frame vibrating with the very sympathies of Christ. It must have been to him no ordinary trial, with his exalted sense of the magnitude of the enterprise, its close connection with the glory of Immanuel and the salvation of the myriads of lost sinners, to be brought into contact with the chilling atmosphere that prevailed around, and the grievously defective estimate of its surpassing iuiportance. *'His meeting with the Ayr presbytery did not realize his expectations, for wliile the brethren received him with the utmost possible respect, they did not see their way to adopt his plan of a quarterly contribution. He returned so sunk in spirit, that although we had a large party to meet him at dinner he scarcely opened JEt. 47. EFFECT OF THE CAMPAIGN. 2 I 5 his lips. On tlie way to the evening meeting Mrs. Main assured him that all would come right, that he would have a large and enthusiastic gathering. The church was crowded ; the spectacle inspired him, and he poured forth one of his most fervid and impassioned appeals. One of my deacons who sat beside me said, ' Did you ever hear anything like that ? it is like Paul pleading for the heathen world.' As I had not con- sulted with my office-bearers, I had no intention of forming a Foreign Mission Association that evening, but as Dr. Duff went on I felt that it would be to lose a most precious opportunity if I failed to do so. As Dr. Duff pronounced the benediction I ascended the pulpit, and summoned those of them who were members to remain behind for the purpose of forming an association. We met in laro-e numbers. The ut- most enthusiasm prevailed, with the result of trebling the contributions from the conofreo:ation. As we walked home Dr. Duff was like another man, his heart was filled with joy and his tongue with melody. " The exhaustion of such a long day's work was very great, but instead of retiring to rest he was accustomed to sit in his room till sleep overtook him, otherwise he would have spent a feverish and sleepless night. Althoug^h it was not till three in the mornins^ that he lay down, he appeared at breakfast as fresh and cheer- ful as possible. "A little incident occurred that evening which very deeply affected him. One of my people in humble life made her way to the vestry and asked me to secure for her the privilege of shaking hands with Dr. Duff. I gladly did so. Her heart was full, and she gave brief but expressive utterance to her feelings. On parting she left a sovereiQ:n in his hand for the cause. When I told him how scanty and precarious her subsistence was, it awakened within him a thrill of deep emotion. 2l6 LIFE OF DK. DUFF. 1853. He often referred to it as an illustration of the great- ness of tlie sacrifices made by the poorest of the people for the cause of Christ." So ends 1853, and the campaign. But, as if these toils were not enough for soul and body, continued for the four years which followed on the South and North India tours of 1849, the unwearied apostle of India was busy at the same time in seeking and sending out new missionaries, like Mr. and Mrs. Fordyce, and Messrs. T. Gardiner and Pourie, to Calcutta ; in lec- turino* to the Youngr Men's Christian Association in Exeter Hall, side by side with R. Bickersteth, Stowell, Baptist Noel, James Hamilton, Brock, Arthur and CandUsh; in undergoing frequent and long examina- tions before the India Committee of the House of Lords ; in helping the British and Foreign Bible Society to conduct its Jubilee in 1853, and raise a Jubilee fund ; and, finally, in discharging the onerous duties of Moderator of the Free Church General As- sembly. His Exeter Hall lecture on " India and its Evangelization "is an illustration of the skill with which he adapted himself to such an audience as the young men of London. After eighty pages of a suc- cession of pictures of travel, expositions of the hoary creeds and rituals of the East, descriptions of the ad- ministration of the British Government and state- ments of the power and progress of Christianity, he burst forth into this peroration : " Strive to realize the height and grandeur of your obligation to the millions of India's poor, cowering, abject children ; millions laid helplessly prostrate at our feet by a series of conquests the most strange and unparalleled in the annals of all time ; millions once torn asunder by relentless feuds and implacable hatreds, now bound together, and bound to us, by allegiance to a common Government, submission to common laws. yEt. 47. APPEAL TO THE YOUNG MEN OF ENGLAND. 2 1 7 and the participation of common interests ! Here is a career of benevolence opened up unto you, worthy of your noblest ambition and most energetic enterprise. Shrink not from it on the ground of its magnitude or difficulties. In contests of an earthly kind confidence in a great leader, with the heart-stirring traditions of ancestral daring and prowess, have heretofore kindled shrinking cowardice into the fire of an indomitable valour. When, about half a century ago, our gallant but vain -glorious neighbours boastfully pointed to * the rout of all the armies and the capture of almost all the capitals in Europe,* as a proof of the invinci- bility of their own arms, and the utter hopelessness of any further resistance or defence, the historian of Europe tells us that their old rivals, the English — at first well-nigh paralysed by the halo of uninterrupted success that surrounded their foes — began to revive when they beheld ' the lustre of former renown shining forth, however dimly, amid the bhize of present vic- tory.' When the names of Cressy and Agincourt and Blenheim came up before them in freshest remem- brance, they could calmly point to ' the imperishable inheritance of national glory ; ' their soldiers, their citizens, were alike penetrated with these recollections ; the exploits of the Edwards and the Henrys and the Marlborough s of former times, ' burned in the hearts of the officers and animated the spirit of the people.' Hence, the nation at length rose as one man to repel the danger of Napoleon's threatened invasion ; and hence, speedily, the addition of Salamanca and Yit- toria, Hugomont and Waterloo, to the long register of England's military renown; and of the name of Wellington as the greatest in the bright roll of her warriors. ** But England has had other battles, and other warriors, and other exemplars, nobler still, — nobler 2l8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1853. still in tlie eye of Heaven and tlie annals of eternity, however humble and unworthy in the eye of carnal sense and the records of short-lived time. And it is to these that you are now to look, when invited to enter on a nobler warfare — a warfare not physical or material, but moral and spiritual ; a warfare not with humanity itself, but with the evils that plague and exulcerate it ; a warfare not with men's persons, but with their ignorance, their follies, their errors, their superstitions, their idolatries, and their deadly sins ; a warfare with the springs and causes of all other war- fare ; a warfare whose ends and issues will be, the ex- termination of these springs and causes with their fatal consequences; a warfare not for the destruction of any, but for the regeneration of the whole race of man ; a warfare one of whose richest trophies will consist in men's beating their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, in nation's not lifting up sword against nation, neither learning the art of war any more ! And if, in entering on a warfare so high, so holy, so heavenly, and yet so arduous, a warfare with legions of foes, that have stood their ground for thou- sands of years, won a thousand victories, entrenched themselves behind a thousand battlements, and reared their standard on a thousand fortresses that frown defiance over the nations ; if, in entering on a warfare so terrible, ye are apt to be dispirited and cast down, lift up your eyes, and fix your gaze on the lustre of former renown. In this highest and noblest depart- ment of human warfare, ye may, with rapt emotions, point to another ' imperishable inheritance of national glory.' Ye may point to the illustrious company of England's sages and worthies, the noble army of her martyrs, and the ten thousand scenes that have been consecrated by their testimony and their blood. Ye may point to Wycliffe, the morning star of the Refer- JFA, 47' ^ CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 219 mation, whose aslies, as noted by tlie historian, in the execution of an empty insult, were exhumed and thrown into a neighbouring brook — ' the brook con- veying them into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, and these into the main ocean ; thus convertiDg the ashes into an emblem of the Reformer's doctrine, which is now dispersed all over the w^orld.' Ye may point to Cranmer, and Ridley, and Latimer, at whose stakes were lighted a fire, which, according to their own prophetic utterance, by Grod's grace, * will never be put out in England/ Ye may point to the Miltons and the Bunyans, the sages and the seers of the Commonwealth and Restoration. Ye may point to the Howards and Wilberforces, who irradiated the dungeon's gloom, and struck his galling fetters from the crouching slave. Ye may point to the .,Martyns and the Careys, the Williams and the Morrisons, who, spurning the easier task of guarding the citadel at home, jeoparded their lives in the high places of the field, when boldly pushing the conquests of the cross over the marshalled hosts of heathendom. And, when ye point to all of these and ten thousand more, tell me if their undying achievements do not burn in your hearts and animate your spirits, and incite your whole soul, with inextinguishable ardour, to deeds of similar daring and of deathless fame ? Or, — oh, mournful alternative ! is the spirit, the redoubted spirit, of Wy- cliffe now gone from amongst us ? Is the light of Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley, now beginning to be shrouded in darkness ? Is the seraphic fire of Mil- ton and of Bunyan for ever extinguished ? Has the mantle of Howard and of Wilberforce dropped to the earth, and found no one able, or willing, or worthy, to take it up ? Is there no soul of Martyn, or Carey, or Morrison left behind ? or is their unquenchable zeal buried with their mouldering ashes in the sepulchre ? 220 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1853. And wlien the distant wail of the perishing in other lands, deadened in its passage by ocean's waves to the ears of sense, sounds piercingly in the ear of faith, where is the successor of the martyr of Eramanga ? — is echo still left to answer. Where ? — and again mourn- fully to reduplicate. Where ? Forbid it, 0 gracious Heaven ! Arise then, ye Christian young men of Eng- land, and vindicate at once the reality and purity of your descent from the sages, the prophets, the wor- thies, and the martyrs of this favoured Patmos isle, by buckling on their armour, nerving yourselves with the energy of their faith and self-sacrifice ; marching like them, when duty calls, into the battle-field, and burn- ing for the posts of danger where these foremost warriors fell ! In the hour and crisis of England's peril, the, greatest of her naval captains hoisted the watchword of death or victory, in words familiar but immortal, — * England expects every man to do his duty.' In this the hour and crisis, not of England's peril merely, but of the world's agony and travail, well may we raise the standard, emblazoned with the watch- word, * The Church of Christ — Christ Himself, the great Head of the Church — expects every man, every professing member and disciple, to do his duty.' "Arise then, ye Christian young men of England, and, under the banner of the great Captain of salva- tion, rally your scattered forces ! Resolve, as if ye sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that ye shall re-exhibit to an admiring world the deeds of bygone heroism and renown. With such a Divine leader to guide you, such ennobling examples to in- spirit you, and such a brilliant cloud of witnesses encompassing you all around — the final conquest is certain, the victory sure. Arise then, ye Christian young men of England, and through you let the terrors of fire and sword, the faggot and the stake, -^t. 47- GREAT Britain's duty to ohrist and india. 221 be warded off from tliese peaceful shores — the asylum of the persecuted of all lands — the ThermopylaB of the old world's endangered liberties ! Through you, let the store-houses of British beneficence be opened for the needy at home and the famishing abroad. Through you, let Britain discharge her debt of grati- tude and love to the ascending Saviour, her debt of sympathy and goodwill to all nations. More espe- cially, through you, let her discharge her debt of justice, not less than benevolence, to India, in repara- tion of the wrongs, numberless and aggravated, inflicted in former times on India's unhappy children. In exchange for the pearls from her coral strand, be it yours to send the Pearl of great price. In exchange for the treasures of her diamond and golden mines, be it yours to send the imperishable treasures of Divine grace. In exchange for her aromatic fruits and gums, be it yours to send buds and blossoms of the Rose of Sharon, with its celestial fragrancy. In exchange for the commodities and dainties that luxuriate the carnal taste, be it yours to send the heavenly manna, and the water of life, clear as crystal, to regale and satisfy the new-created spiritual appetency. And desist not from the great emprise, until the dawning of the hallowed morn when all India shall be the Lord's ; — when the varied products of that gorgeous land shall become visible types and emblems of the still more glorious products of faith working by love ; when the palm- tree, the most exuberant of all tropical growths in vegetable nectar, and therefore divinely chosen by inspiration to set forth the flourishing condition of the righteous, shall become the sensible symbol of the dwellers there, who, fraught with the sap of the heavenly grace, and laden with the verdure and the fruits of righteousness, shall raise their voices in notes of praise, that swell and reverberate from grove to 2 22 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1853. grove, like the soft, sweet echoes of heaven's own eternal hallelujahs ; — when these radiant climes, pre- eminently distinguished as the ' climes of the sun,' shall become the climes of a better sun, — even the Sun of Righteousness — vivified bj His quickening beams, and illumined with the effulgence of His unclouded glory ; * Be these thy trophies, Queen of many Isles ! On these high Heaven shall shed indulgent smiles. First, by Thy guardian voice, to India led. Shall Truth Divine her tearless victories spread. Wide and more wide, the heaven-born light shall stream, New realms from thee shall catch the blissful theme ; Unwonted warmth the softened savagfe feel. Strange chiefs admire, and turbaned warriors kneel The prostrate East submit her jewelled pride, And swarthy kings adore the Crucified ! Yes, it shall come ! E'en now my eyes behold, In distant view, the wished-for age unfold. Lo, o'er the shadowy days that roll between, A wandering gleam foretells th' ascending scene ! Oh ! doomed victorious from thy wounds to rise, Dejected India, lift thy downcast eyes ; And mark the hour, whose faithful steps for thee, Through time's pressed ranks, bring on the Jubilee!'*' CHAPTER XXL 1851-1854. MODERATOR OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.— BEFORE THE HOUSE OF LORDS' INDIA COMMITTEE. The first Missionary Moderator of the General Assembly. — Learning and Piety. — Welcoming the Deputies. — Sir John Pirie. — The Twenty Years Charters of the E. I. Company. — Burke, Fox, and John Stuart Mill.— The Reforms of 1853.— The India Committees of Lords and Commons. — Dr. Duff's Statesmanship. — Letters to his Hindoo Students and his Wife. — His Evidence on Judicial and Administrative Questions. — Fighting the Earl of Ellenborough. — Evidence on Education and Christian Missions. — Real Author of the Despatch of July, 1854. — Lord Halifax and Lord Northbrook. — The Educational Charter of the People of India. — The Universities. — The Grant-in-aid System. — Death of Russomoy Dutt and the Christianizing of his Clan. — A Strange Baptism. — Dr. Duff Sorrowing yet Rejoicing. At the unusually early age of forty-five Alexander Duff was, in 1851, called by acclamation to the highest ecclesiastical seat in Scotland, that of Knox and Melville, Henderson and Chalmers. His immediate predecessor had declared that what the Preacher of the Old Testament calls ** the flourish of the almond tree " had been the chief recommendation in his case. The still young missionary found his qualification in " the office which it has been my privilege, however unworthily, amid sunshine and storm, for nearly a quarter of a century, to hold — the glorious office of evangelist, or that of ' making known the unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles.' " Wholly sinking, therefore, the man into the office, and desiring to magnify my office, I can rejoice in the appointment. In the early and most flourishing times 224 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1851. of the Churcli, the office of the aposfcle, missionary, or evangelist, who ' built not on another man's founda- tion,' was regarded as the highest and most honour- able. Those who thus went forth to the unreclaimed nations were the generals and the captains of the in- vading army in the field, while bishops or presbyters were but the secondary commandants of garrisons planted in the already conquered territory. And even in later times, when, in the progress of degeneracy and amid the increasing symptoms of decrepitude and decay, the bishop came to mount the ladder of secular ambition over the more devoted and self-denying mis- sionary, the office of the latter still continued to be held in considerable repute. Hence we read of Augus- tine, and Willibrord, and Winifred, and Anscharius, and many more besides, who fearlessly perilled their lives in labourinor to reclaim the Saxons, Frieslanders, Hes- sians, Swedes, and other pagan and barbarous tribes, being afterwards created bishops and archbishops, in acknowledgment of their arduous and successful toils. But in more recent times, when the office of the missionary fell into almost entire desuetude among the leading Reformed communities of Christendom, and the attempt to revive it was at first denounced as an unwarrantable intrusion and novelty, the name, once so glorious in the Church of Christ, came to be associated with all that is low, mean, contemptible, or fanatical ; but, praised be God, that of late years the name has been rescued from much of the odium, through a juster appreciation of the grandeur, dignity, and heavenly objects of the office that bears it. For the office's sake, therefore, wholly irrespective of the worthiness or unworthiness of the individual who may hold it, I cannot but hail this day's appointment as a sure indication that, whatever the case may be with others, the Free Church of Scotland has fairly risen ^t. 45. LEAENING AND PIETI. 225 above the vulgar and insensate prejudices of a vaunt- ingly religious but leanly spiritual age." DufF was the first missionary who had sat in the ! Moderator's chair since the first General Assembly in ■ 1560; but, almost without precedent, he sat there twice, as we shall see. John Wilson, of Bombay, was \ the second, twenty years after. Striking off from his own theme, in his opening and closing charges to the assembled fathers and brethren the Moderator of 1851 occupied himself with the stirring history and the consequent responsibilities of the Kirk which, ' from Knox to Chalmers, had fought and suffered for spiritual independence. His lesson was that all this struggling and success of the Kirk are but means to an end — the evangelization of the world. Reviewing, in his closing charge, the proceedings of the Assembly, which had been much occupied with an elevation of the standard and an extension of the area of theolo- gical scholarship, during the eight years' curriculum of the students, he found himself on familiar ground. " It ought to be counted one of the chiefest glories of our Church that, from the very outset, she resolved with God's blessing to secure not only a pious but a learned ministry." "What we desiderate is, learning in inseparable combination with devoted piety. Piety without learning ! Does it not in the case of religious teachers ever tend to fanaticism ; would it not be apt to make the life of the Church blaze away too fast ? Learning without piety ! Does it not ever tend to a frigid indifference ; would it not soon extinguish spiritual life in the Church altogether?" But a learned ministry is apt to be proud. ** Did it ever occur to these shrewd observers that an ignorant ministry is apt to be conceited ? And if we must choose between two evils, we must, according to the old adage, choose the least. But why choose at all? VOL. II. 0. 226 LIFE OP DR. DCJFF. 185 1. We repudiate absolutely the proudly learned as mucli as tlie conceitedly ignorant. . . Surely tlie in- finitely varying forms of open and avowed infidelity in our day render it more than ever necessary that the department of Christian evidence or apologetic theology should be cultivated to the uttermost, and that all the resources of sharpened intellect and ex- tensive erudition should be brought to bear upon it." In the delicate duty of welcoming and bidding God speed to the deputies from the Reformed Churches of France and Belgium, England and Ireland, of the Presbyterian rite, Dr. Duff showed his wonted tact and fervour. Pasteurs Monod and Bost, Durand and Carnot Anquier represented the former ; Professor Lorimer and Mr. E. Barbour, Dr. Kilpatrick and Mr. Hamilton, of Belfast, bore the greetings of the latter. To each the Moderator's wide experience of men and countries, of churches and societies, enabled him to say something pleasantly personal. M. F. Monod's Memoir of Rieu he had borrowed from an American friend in Calcutta, and had been comforted by it. M. Best's brother he knew as a missionary in Bengal. In the Belgian deputies he saw the fruit, through Merle D'Aubigne, of Robert Haldane's zeal. The English deputation led him to quote his favourite poet's lines '* On the New Forcers of Conscience," in order to remark : " If a mind like Milton's could have laboured under such huge misapprehensions of the character, genius, tendency and objects of Presbyterian doctrine, discipline and polity, are we to wonder that num- bers of the unlearned people in England should labour under misapprehensions still greater?" With the Irish representatives he found common ground in their Goojarat Mission, of which he brought them a pleasant report. According to precedent, he com- pleted his term of office by opening the General Mi 45. SIR JOHN PIRIE. 227 Assembly of 1852, with a sermon on " The Headship of Christ over Individuals, the Church and the Nations, practically considered,*' which, having been published at its request, ran through several editions. When in London, in 1851, Dr. Duff was called on to commit to the grave the body of his dearly attached friend Sir John Pirie. Sir John had long been head of a large shipping firm, had been Lord Mayor, and was the first chairman of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Company. Dr. Duff had been blessed to him in spiritual things, but when himself dying, recalled to his children only the services done to him and the Mission by his generous countryman. " Sir John Pirie had always done so much for me who had had no claim upon him, from the very first time I saw him in September, 1829, on my first going out to India, that I never knew how it was possible to return the obliga- tion. That very day when he came to call upon us in St. Paul's Churchyard — it was in the afternoon — we had just sat down to lunch which we had meant to make our dinner. He was then simply Alderman Pirie, and he said : ' The agents of your Mission in Scotland asked me to look out for a suitable ship in which to take a passage, and get it properly furnished. I've just come to tell you the thing is done ; and whatever remains I'll see to its being done, so you need not have a thought about it. Some day or other if you like to go to the docks you may see it, but there's no occasion. When you go on board at Ports- mouth, you will find everything done as perfectly as if you had looked after it yourself. I say this to relieve you of all care and anxiety, so that you may freely go about London, and get such other articles as you may wish to take with you. But my chief message at this particular time is from my wife. You see, I am too much occupied with the secular affairs of this life to be 228 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1852. able to bestow mucli time or attention on Missions, though I try to promote them in every way in my power ; but we have no family, and my wife therefore has plenty of time on her hands. She spends two whole days every week with Mrs. Fry in visiting New- gate, and she is continually going about seeking ways and modes of doing good. Her message is, you must not stop a day in London but come out at once to our house at Camberwell, and there all kinds of attention will be shown to you.' After his usual manner he would allow of no delay. Mrs. Pirie was waiting for us, and a warmer reception could not have been given to any of her oldest friends. Her house was ever after my home in London until her death in 1869.'* From its foundation under Elizabeth at the close of the sixteenth century, to its fall under Victoria in the middle of the nineteenth, the East India Company was the ally or the tool of the two great parties of the state. The periodical renewal of its charter, gener- ally every twenty years, involved the fall and the rise of Ministries. After the pure and exalted adminis- trations of Cromwell and William III., kings did not scruple to use its influence as a bribe, nor statesmen to covet its patronage for corrupt ends. The Eegu- lating Act of 1773, which created the Governor- Greneral and the Chief Justice, struck the first stroke at jobbery at home. But it so demoralized the ad- ministration at Calcutta, that in ten years a new charter became necessary. Burke, who had unhappily refused the invitation of the directors in 1772 to go out to India with full power, as head of a commission of three to examine and control their affairs, in 1782 began his lifelong course of unreasoning oppo- sition to a system which, when reformed, John Stuart Mill justly pronounced the wisest ever devised for the government of subject races. India placed Mr. Fox ^t. 46 THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S CHARTERS. 229 side by side with Lord North in the Duke of Portland's Coalition Ministry, to carry through Mr. Burke's Bill ; and India then made Pitt Prime Minister at twenty- four to devise the wiser measure which ended in the creation of the Board of ControL All over London Fox was caricatured as Carlo Khan riding an elephant full tilt against the India Office. When the next twenty years had brought round the time, in 1813, for another charter, the Court of Direc- tors were better prepared to defend their still neces- sary monopoly. The Lords rose as the aged Warren Hastings entered the House where, a quarter of a century before, he had been impeached. His evidence and that of a successor, Lord Teignmouth, of Sir T. Munro, Sir John Malcolm, and Charles Grant, pre- vailed to retain the China commerce for the Company. But India was opened to free trade, and, thanks to Wilberforce, to missionaries and schoolmasters. By the next charter of 1833 the China monopoly too passed away, the new province of the North- West was created ultimately a lieutenant-governorship, the last restrictions on the residence of Europeans in India were removed, and those administrative reforms were conceded which co-operated with Dr. Duff's missionary system. The subsequent twenty years formed a period of real and rapid progress. As the time approached for the charter of 1853, the governing classes in both India and England prepared for a conflict. By discussions in the press and petitions to Parliament, the Company was assailed by the selfish interests, and criticised by the reformers who sought only a more rapid develop- ment of the policy begun by Bentinck and Metcalfe and fostered by Dalhousie and Thomason, in spite of an alarmed conservatism. As the official advocate of the venerable corporation, Sir John Kaye took credit 230 LIFE OF Dli. DUFF. 1853. for all that had been done not only by the Dh^ectors, but in spite of them, by Governor-Generals, mission- aries and those whom they used to denounce as inter- lopers. So the Company was spared from extinction once more, by the Whigs under Sir Charles Wood as President of the Board of Control. But several com- promises were effected by the Cabinet and Parliament, most happily for both India and the mother country. The two greatest in reality, though they appeared little at the time, were, the concession of nearly all Dr. Duff's demands for a truly imperial, catholic, and just administration of the educational fands, honours and rewards ; and the transfer to the nation, by competi- tive examination, of the eight hundred and fifty highly paid appointments in the covenanted civil service. Besides these, Lower Bengal was created a lieutenant- governorship, like the North-West twenty years before, and the Punjab soon after ; and the Crown nominated a proportion of the Directors, reduced to eighteen. And then, as if to prepare the way for the coming but unexpected extinction, the new charter was passed subject to the pleasure of Parliament, and not for the almost prescriptive period of twenty years. It is not too much to say that, in securing all this, the three reformers who were foremost were the men who in 1830-35 had fought and won the battle of educational and administrative progress in India. As we read again the many thick folios which contain the evidence and reports of the select committees of the Houses of Lords and Commons on Indian territories, we see the suggestions of Dr. Duff, Mr. Marshman, and Sir Charles Trevelyan carried out even in detail. Again was Macaulay by his brother- in-law's side in the application of the principle of open competition to the appointments of India. Mr. Marshman did more than any other man to make Sir JEt. 47' BEFORE THE LOEDS COMMITTEE. 23 1 Frederick Halliday the first Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. But it was Dr. Duff wlio succeeded in placing tlie keystone in the arch of his aggressive educational system by the famous Despatch of 1854. He had returned to England determined to secure from his own countrymen the measure of justice to non- government colleges and schools which the bureaucracy of Calcutta had denied, in spite of Lord Hardinge's order. We have seen how he began by privately in- forming and influencing the statesmen and members of Parliament who cared for the good of the people of India. Wilberforce and Charles Grant were gone, and had left no successors. In the public action of Parliament itself, through the constitutional channel of its select committees of inquiry, he found the means not only of utilising the private work he had done, but of informing the whole country and prac- tically influencing legislation. When a government happens to be in earnest, as the Aberdeen ministry of the day were, and when legislation is inevitable, as the charter of 1853 was, there is no duty so delightful to the statesmanlike reformer as that of convincino- a parliamentary committee. Nor intellectually are there many feats more exhaust- ing than that of sitting from eleven to four o'clock, and on more days than one, the object of incessant questioning, by fifteen or twenty experts, on the most difficult problems, economic and administrative, that can engage the statesman. So long as the examina- tion in chief proceeds, or a friendly member follows along the witness's own line, all may go well. But when the cross-fire begins, when you are the victim of a member who is hostile to your views and is deter, mined to shake evidence damaging to his own, or of one who is at once conceited enough to prefer his own facts to yours and clever enough to delude you 232 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1853. into accepting partial premisses whicli will lead to his conclusions and upset yours, tlien there is need for the keenest weapons and t'ha most practised skill. This was Dr. Duff's position, and he was moreover one of a band of witnesses of rare experience and ability. Such were these members of the Leadenhall Street staff — John Stuart Mill, whose school have not even yet learned how great and wise he was on Indian questions ; and Thomas Love Peacock, whose piquant novels afford a wealth of classic wit and culture to readers with discrimination enough to discover genius. Of the same type of experience was Mr. Henry Keeve, of the Privy Council. Lord Hardinge stated the results of his administration as Governor- General and Commander-in-Chief. On the Indian side were judges and civilians of such distinction as Sir E. Eyan and Sir E. Perry, R. M. Bird and Mangles, Sir J. P. Willoughby and Sir F. HaUiday, and of such promise as Sir George Campbell. Among soldiers, besides Gough and Napier there were Cotton, Pollock and Melville. Scholars like H. H. Wilson, lawyers like N. B. E. Baillie, bishops, missionaries and priests, and finally Parsees submitted their evidence week after week during the sessions of 1852 and 1853. Among the members of the Lords Committee were peers of the official experience of Ellenborough, Tweed- dale and Elphinstone, Broughton and Glenelg. Clive was represented in his grandson Lord Powis. Lord Canning unconsciously prepared himself for a respon- sibility he then knew not of. Lord Monteagle of Bran- don, Lord Stanley of Alderley, and Lord Ashburton were constant and intelligent in their attendance. The Commons Committee numbered in its larger list the names of Joseph Hume, erst Bengal doctor and army contractor; Mr. Baring, destined to be Governor- General; Sir Charles Wood, whose private secretary Mt 47, HIS HINDOO STUDENTS. 233 he then was; Mr. Cobden; Mr. Yernon Smith, who might have learned more to fit him for the home management of the Mutiny when it came ; Mr. Lowe, always wise on India ; Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Macaulay, and Mr. James Wilson who thus took his earliest lessons in Indian finance, for which he was to do so much, and do it in vain, thanks to successors unequal to himself. Such were the witnesses, and such the 'personnel of the select com- mittees appointed to inquire into the operation of the charter of William IV., for the better government of Her Majesty's Indian territories till the 30th day of April, 1854. These letters show the spirit in which Dr. Duff continued his preparations for the committee. The first is addressed to Baboo Ishur Chunder De, one of his old Hindoo students who had become a mathe- matical tutor of the college, and the other teachers. The second was written to his wife. " London, 2nd April, 1853. " My dear Fbiends, — Thougli your last communication has been so long unacknowledged, rest assured it is not from abated interest in yourselves personally, or in your labours. Oh, no ! though separated from you in body I am constantly with you in spirit ; in the Institution and among your classes. If I am remaining in this country longer than I had expected, ifc is only for the sake of India's welfare. For India is ever uppermost in my mind ; and my prayer to God is that she may yet be ' great, glorious, and free.' I am here now, privately conferring with various influential persons connected with Parliament and the India House, concerning Indian affairs. There is undoubtedly a growing interest in the subject. The magnitude of the interests involved is beginning to be better understood, and I do fondly hope that much may yet be done, though not nearly so much as the best friends of India would desire. " The last programme of the annual examination is before 234 ^^^^ ^^ ^^- I^UFF* 1853. me ; and from it I see the indications of your diligence, as well as that of your pupils. Tell the latter, whether the older ones who are personally known to me or the younger ones who have entered since I left you, that I am intensely and unceas- ingly interested in their welfare and in the progress of their studies, and long very much to be once more in the midst of you all. By next mail I hope that Mr. Gardiner will go out to supply Mr. Sinclair's place. I cannot doubt that you and your pupils will all of you give him a warm, hearty, tropical reception. I remain, my dear friends, yours very sincerely, "Alexander Duff.'' '' Champion Hill, 14UFF. 1854. father, the fourth Earl of Aberdeen, was the Premier at that time of Crimean War preparations. How Lord Haddo and his wife had become active Christians, and how he with his son George had been sent to Malvern, is, with much else, told by the Rev. E. B. Elhott, * author of the Ilorce Ajpocalypticoe. At- tracted to Dr. Duff, first by his book on India and India Missions and then by spiritual sympathy. Lord Haddo makes this entry in his journal on Sunday, 6th August : " Dr. Duff drank tea with me yesterday, and we spent together a pleasant evening. He is going to make an extensive tour on his way to Calcutta, and I promised him letters, among others, to Elphinstone," who had been appointed Governor of Bombay. Dr. Daff urged Lord Haddo, who had been elected M.P. for Aberdeenshire just when told that he must soon die, to try a winter in Egypt. " At this critical time of trial," wi^ites Lord Haddo's biographer, " Dr. Duff's visits were a great comfort to him." He had told his wife and his father, on the 11th August, "I wish to be considered and spoken of as a dying man ; it will assist me in many things." " No words can express the in tenseness of my sympathy with you under pre- sent circumstances," was the response of Dr. Duff to a similar communication received when himself exhausted by the effect of a vapour bath, and able only to pro- mise to see Lord Haddo in the evening. Lad3^ Haddo, the present Dowager Countess of Aberdeen, joined her husband at once, and with both Dr. Duff read portions of Isaiah's prophecy, the 25th and 26tli chapters, and the lOord Psalm. " His remarks, and the prayer that followed, were always remembered by them after- wards." This was the beginning of intercourse valued * Memoir of Lord Haddo, in his latter years fifth Earl of Aber- deen. Fifth edition, 1869. JEt 48. WITH LORD AND LADY HADDO. 295 bj the noble Gordon family, by Lord Polwartli and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and resulting in the founda- tion of a memorial Mission in Natal, to be hereafter recorded. "Malvern, I9th August, 1854. "Dear Lady Haddo, — I was greatly affected by Lord Haddo's simple and transparently ingenuous and humble state- ment respecting himself and his religious feelings. One cannot be too jealous over oneself in so vital a matter ; nor exercise too severe a scrutiny into one's motives, or the ground of one's confidence. It is, however, a grand thing to re- member that, however precious, and however much to be desired certain frames and feelings may be, as fruits of the Spirit in the soul, and however much these may contribute to the enjoyments of a religious life, it is not to these we are to look as the foundation of our hopes. Ah, no ! If it were so, we should soon be reduced to the servitude of the poor toiling serfs of blind superstition. It is to the glorious promises of Jehovah, and the finished work of that atoning sacrifice on the cross, that we are privileged to look as the only sure and in- fallible foundation of all our hopes of real blessedness in time, and consummated blessedness through all eternity. With earnest prayer that you may be sustained from on high under your present sore trial, I remain, yours very sincerely, "Alexander Dufp.-'* On learning that he would not be able to leave Malvern in time to accompany Lord and Lady Haddo to Egypt, he wrote : * 28th August, 1854. — " This, to my own mind, is a great dis- appointment. But what can I say ? A life of probation like the present, when realized as such, consists very much of a succession of disappointed hopes and blasted plans and pur- poses. It is so to put our faith to the test. It is part of the furnace heat that is employed by the Divine Refiner to purge away more and more of the dross of earthly clingings, attach- ments and delights; to bring the soul to look to Him alone as the all-sufiicient and all-satisfying portion. Oh for the child- like confidence to enable us in all our trials to say, ^ Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight.^ ) ji 296 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1855. To Lord Haddo. — Qth September, 1854. — "Truly there is no peace except in simple undoubting reliance on tlie Lord Jesus Christ, — in His all-sufficiency and all-willingness to save unto the uttermost all who come unto God through Him. It is this faith in the Lord Jesus Christy realizing the glory of His person as Tmmanuel, and the whole absolute perfection of His work consummated on the cross, that removes the sense of guilt from the troubled conscience, and leads to a thirsting and panting of heart to be conformed to His image. Then it is that the gracious influences of the Holy Ghost may gradually be felt more and more, in their world-abandoning, God-loving results. By looking unto Jesus — the great Sun of righteousness — with believing, Joving hearts, these hearts of ours, under the transforming influence of the Holy Spirit, gradually contract somewhat of the Divine nature and likeness. A mirror may reflect the glorious orb of the sun, but does not itself change its nature so as to become self-luminous. But the heart that is renewed by the power of the Holy Ghost not only reflects the rays of the Sun of righteousness more and more distinctly, but itself gradually is so transformed as to become, as it were, self-luminous. It becomes a burnished and shining gem or diamond, as it were, from having been a mere clod of earth. Oh what a glory is here ! What an emanation from the cross ! . . I send a little work to your address, and it is for your son, whose demeanour when here won my heart. May the perusal of it be blessed to his soul ! With warmest remembrances to Lady Haddo, I remain, dear Lord Haddo, yours very sincerely, "Alexander Doff."'' The little work alluded to was ** The Miras^e of Life," which he sent to Lord Haddo's eldest son George, afterwards sixth Earl of Aberbeen, with this inscription : — " From Dr. Duff to the young friend who so kindly brought him grapes, at the Willows, Great Malvern, in August, 1854." Slowly did Dr. Duft's recovery proceed. The be- ginning of the winter, however, forced him south even from Malvern. After a residence at Bayonne, under Mt 49. IN EOME. LORD PALMERSTON S NAME. 297 the care of his wife and eldest son, who had completed his medical studies, he turned aside to Biarritz, where the winter was spent in seclusion in a mild invigorat- ing atmosphere, favourable to the still congested brain. His son acted as his physician and his secretary, answering the many communications from Great Britain and America, and particularly stating, " My father's intellectual powers are wholly unimpaired, and the substance of the brain is unaffected." After Pan and Montpellier, he was able to sail from Mar- seilles for Civita Vecchia, so as to reach Rome by Easter. There the papal police daily visited his lodg- ings, and all his applications for the return of his passport were ignored. At last, on appealing to the British Consul, he was told, "Go where you please; just say you are an Englishman : Palmerston is in power." The wisdom of this advice he often proved. At Rome he had a severe relapse. Seeking a region of purer warmth at that season, he resolved to sail from Genoa to Syria. When at Turin, on his way to the port, his spirit was roused by two very different but allied movements — the growth of constitutional liberty in Piedmont, which has since blossomed and fruited into a united Italy with Rome as its capital ; and a threatened division in the Waldensian Church. Of the former he wrote, on the 18th May : ** This is the only kingdom on the continent that has now a really free constitution. The boon of civil and re- ligious liberty is felt like a new pulse beating through the heart of the whole community, awakening the spirit of improvement and enterprise, industry and pro- gress in all directions. Hail, then, blessed Liberty ! thou genial and prolific mother and nurse of man's noblest aspirations and doings. More especially, hail liberty of conscience, liberty to seek after, worship, and serve the living God in the ways of His own appointment ! " 298 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1855. From the liour that, as a boy, he first read Milton's great sonnet, he had been eager to visit the valleys of the Yaudois. At La Tour he encountered a deputation to the Church from the Irish Presbyterians, and Dr. Stewart, of Leghorn, as representing the Free Church of Scotland. What they told him made him, in spite of his weakness, determine to go on with them to the Synod, at which certain fundamental points in the constitution of the Yaudois Church were to be dis- cussed. " The tyrannies and persecution of centuries could not annihilate the martyr Church of the Yau- dois," he exclaimed ; " they only bound its members together with a cement of increasing tenacity, even that of their manifested faith and shed blood. But now when, for almost the first time in their history, full civil and religious liberty has been conceded to them, questions of an internal kind have arisen, divid- ing men's judgments and alienating men's hearts from each other." He mastered these ecclesiastical dis- putes ; he saw Dr. Eevel, the Moderator, on the one side, and the leaders of the other party, and he so brought his power of spiritual suasion to bear on them that he left the Synod with the grateful assurance that he had won the blessedness of the peacemaker. " For the first time after a silence of twelve months," he wrote to his wife, "my tongue was unstrung in an Alpine valley, confronting the assembled descendants and representatives of perhaps the noblest race of confessors and martyrs which European Christendom has yet seen." But the effort and the snow and damp of that elevation proved too much. He hurried down to Genoa for Palermo, where he hailed an old friend in the Consul, whom he had met at the Cape de Yerd Islands in 1829. Thence by Alexandria he reached Beyrout, where he studied the noble American Pres- byterian Mission. He crossed the Lebanon by easy ^t. 49. FAREWELL WARNINGS. 299 stages to Damascus, and tlience doubled back to Jeru- salem, ** experiencing nought but benefit from the fresh and gentle exercise and the soothing ineffable influences connected with everything in ' Immanuel's land.' " Jaffa was the port of departure for Constan- tinople, whence he took steamer to Marseilles again. From St. Germain, near Paris, on the 10th of August, he reported such an improvement in his condition as to add : " Were I an independent man, I would soon take the risk into my own hands. Meanwhile, set aside by a committee for the recovery of health, I feel bound to act with due deference to the views and feelings of others." *' A great evangelical gathering " kept him for a little at Paris, where he had pleasant intercourse with Tholuck and Krummacher. He then reported himself at Malvern, only, however, to neglect the medical injunctions laid upon him, for they con- tained this sentence : '^ A brain like yours would prey upon itself if, after acquiring a certain amount of power, it was not allowed to exercise it." The glorious autumn quiet of an Edinburgh Sep- tember was all he could give to bis boys, then demand- ing a father's personal care more than ever. Along with the Rev. James Mitchell, of Poena, and the Rev. John Braid wood, of Madras, he was commended to the guidance and blessing of God by the Presbytery of Edinburgh assembled in the Free High Kirk. His address, delivered amid the public excitement of the Crimean War, contained these passages : " The law of the kingdom is that of growth and progress. Whether it be in the soul of an individual man, or in the body of a collective Church_, if we try to arrest its growth and out- spreading, or in other words, if we try to keep the good we have acquired to ourselves, we shall find that if there be truth in the Bible, and faithfulness in the God of heaven, that Church and that individual will begin to droop, and wither. 300 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1855. and decay ; and iSnally lose what lias been attained to, for tliey are tlien manifestly fighting against an eternal law of God. What is a Mission ? It is an aggressive expedition into an enemy's territory : and here I may ask, Are not the children of this world wiser in their generation than the chil- dren of light ? This country is at this moment at war with a mighty empire. Suppose you were to send forth your forces to occupy some small point of the territory of the enemy, is the work done when that portion of the territory is occupied at the outskirts ? . . . But is there not a limit to these constantly swelling demands ? There is. What is it then, you will next ask ? It is that we go on by means of your continu- ally increasiug support, conquering and still conquering, until, by the blessing of God upon the work, there shall be a sufficient extent of territory gained from the enemy which may itself supply the needful resources in men and means; and begin to be self- maintaining and self-propagating too. And when once this point of indigenous self-support has been reached in a mission, then your hands will be liberated, and you may carry your appliances of warfare elsewhere. But I insist that, till this point be reached, you must make up your minds to the fact, that the very success of your Missions must for a time entail increasing expense. This fact you must be prepared wisely to meet, and heroically to encounter. It does cut one's heart to the quick, — and I have felt it offcener than once, — when, with almost infinite toil and suffering, we have succeeded in gaining one point, and then another; when it pleased the Lord to raise up human agents, one after another, waiting to be sent forth ; and when we reported that they were ready to enter on the glorious enterprise, to find, that, instead of meeting with a prompt, and earnest, and cordial response, — rejoicing in our success, under God, and urging us to engage these voluntary recruits, and proceed onwards, and be outspreading, — the cold, freezing, killing answer has too often been, that on looking into the treasury at home, there are not means to employ these disciplined soldiers, and that we must not take them into our service. In short, you pray to God for success upon the labours of your missionaries, and when that success is granted, you heedlessly or wantonly fling it to the winds ! You, in effect, tell your missionaries, — You have faithfully toiled and laboured, and spent your strength in yEt. 49. PROGHESS THE LAW OP THE KINGDOM. 3OI bringing souls to God, and in training them for the office of evangelists ; but we are resolved that your labour shall be in vain, and your strength shall have been spent for nought ! Is it not enoupfh to raise the feelinor of moral indio^nation in one^s soul, when he is dealt with in this manner ? I pray you to excuse my plainness of speech. I cannot help it. He must be a traitor to his God and to the souls of the perishing, who, through cowardice or other similar motive, could be silent in such a case as this. I again ask you, then, how long is this state of things to continue ? The missions abroad have, through God's blessing, wonderfully prospered. Converts have been, and are still raised on every hand ; and when we find them prepared to go forth on the right hand and on the left, as some have already done, are we, instead of being cheered and urged to proceed, to be again chilled by the warning that we must not employ them, — that we must stand still, — and by making no further progress into the realms of darkness, must exhibit ourselves a spectacle of derision to hellish foes, and of pity and lamentation to the hosts of light ? " What, then, are we to be next told, that you are tired with success, since it costs more money, and money is not in the treasury of the Church ? When I look abroad over Scotland, I ask myself, is there not plenty of money there ? Yes; even to overflowing ; but it does not find its way into the treasury of the Lord. Such being the case, we must come to the question of stewardship, and we insist upon it that every farthing which God gives to an individual, is a farthing for which he must account, as to how and why he spends it; and until that doctrine bo enshrined in the soul and conscience, we need never expect to have fulness of means. But to me, who have had sore travailing and wandering through many lands, it has been a matter utterly overwhelming to the spirit, when I often saw such redundancy of means in the possession of professing Christians, and when I have been told in reply to earnest pleadings in behalf of a perishing world, — ' Oh ! we have nothing to spare/ How depressing has it been to hear this said, and then to look at the stately mansions, the gorgeous lawns, the splendid equipages, the extravagant furni- ture, and the costly entertainments, besides the thousands which are spent upon nameless idle and useless luxuries. It was as much as to say to God, the great proprietor^ who has 302 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1855. given ifc all, — 'Lord, P^'aj excuse me, as I wish to spend all tliis upon myself, and if I have a little driblet remaiuirig over, after I have satisfied myself, I will consent to give that driblet back to Thee/ The exclamation has been on my lip, in the hearing of such men, — Why, you are treating the cause of Christ much as the rich man in the parable treated Lazarus. You are driving that cause to the outer gate, and while self is made to fare sumptuously in the palace within, clothed in purple and fine linen, you leave the cause of Christ to starve outside yonder, or to feed on the crumbs that fall from your table, while covered with the sores of many a foul indignity. Why not reverse the picture in the parable ? Why not bring the cause of Christ inside the palace, and array it in royal attire ; while wretched self is cast out to famish at the door, rather than by pampering it to drag its possessor down to the pit of eternal woe ? When I talk in this general way, don't suppose that I am not aware that there are individuals who are making sacrifices. Thank God, there are many such among you. I know not any Church where the proportional number of such is really greater than in the Free Church of Scotland. But it is not for the most part amongst the wealthiest, — although there are precious exceptions there too, — it is chiefly amongst the middle and poorer classes. Now then, what is to be done ? What can the committee do ? What but dispense what they receive ? This is the current doctrine on the subject. But it is the duty of such a committee as ours, not merely to dispense, but to create. " I did not go forth over the length and breadth of Scotland for money alone; I repudiated the idea; I aimed at something higher and better. I felt in some degree in my own soul, the greatness and glory of this enterprise ; and my intense desire was to communicate, if I could, somewhat of the same impres- sion throughout the length and breadth of my native land— as thousands and tens of thousands can testify — to the souls of others, and to tell them what was their duty in this respect. Unless an individual be born again, and truly converted to God, he can never have any right feeling of heartfelt sympathy with the perishing heathen ; and therefore I appealed to the consciences of men on the subject of the personal regenera- tion. *' While I thank God for the considerable response which I ^t. 49. " PLATING AT MISSIONS." 303 met witli to my appeals from many of our godly ministers, and oflSce-bearers, and general membership, I must say, with regard to the Free Church as a whole, that response is not what I would wish, or had even reasonably anticipated. Wliat was my thought, and that of the other missionaries in India, before coming to this country ? We did not expect great things for India at the very time you were first engaged in this country in raising churches, manses, and schools, but we did expect, when these were to some good extent finished, that souiething mighty and worthy of her great name, and noble contendings for the Redeemer's Headship, not only over the Church but the nations, would be done for the world at large. When you were, in the providence of God, driven, as it were, out of the old Establishment, for adherence to great Bible principles, it was not surely that you might sustain and perpetuate the blessings you enjoyed among yourselves alone. Was that the only end you had in view ? If so, you would be resisting the progress of Christianity, and fighting against that Divine law to which I referred at the outset of my address. We certainly expected that when the noble vessel then begun was finished and launched upon the great deep, it would be found directing its course to other countries, and bearing, in proportions worthy and commensurate, its rich treasures of gospel truth and gospel grace to every region of the earth. But, alas, we are waiting for that day yet. When will it come ? — that is the question. Looking at it, then, in this light, there is, on the one hand, much to thank God for ; but there is, on the other hand, much to plead against. Oh, do not, I solemnly adjure you, in the name of the living God, do not settle down on your privileges; do not settle down on the mere fact that you have fought a great battle and gained a great victory ; that you have, as it were, the ark of the Covenant, the ark of the living God, with its priceless Jewel, the Headship of the Redeemer, in your keeping ; — for if, in the spirit of indolence or contracted selfishness, you keep it idly to yourselves, instead of proving your safety, it will prove your destruction. I long, therefore, for the time when the Church shall rise up and face the whole question, not in the light of a paltry and wretched carnalizing expediency, but in the light of God^s own unchanging truth. I believe that neither this Church nor any other Church has, as a whole, yet 304 I^IFE OF DK. DUFF. 1855. fully estimated tlie magnitude of the work to be done, or tbe force and resources of the enemy to be contended with ; and that you and all the rest have only hitherto been, as it were, plai/ing at mkslons ! " Dr. Duff then glanced at a few things that might be done, — pointing to the necessity of fervent prayer for the effusion of the Spirit of all grace, dwelling on the service which Chris- tian mothers could render to the missionary cause in moulding the minds of their children, and giving them a bent in this direction, — how Christian instructors, when teaching their pupils geography, could fix their thoughts upon countries where missionary labour was required, and could make a great impression upon their minds by a few simple remarks, — and also the great opportunities enjoyed by ministers in creating an interest in this department of the Lord's cause in their ordinary pulpit ministrations and in their prayers. He urged the instituting of a professorship on missionary subjects, or evangelistic theology, by which means the minds of the young men studying for the ministry would be imbued with a missionary spirit. ... If I had a congregation in any great city, I would act thus : not confining my home evan- gelistic labours to week-days, or even the mornings or even- ings of Sabbath-days, 1 would from time to time say to my people — ^ It is not right that you should be fed with what you reckon the highest seasoned food twice every Sabbath, whilst there are myriads perishing without, at our very doors, for lack of all food. We must cease to be selfish, — you must deny yourselves, and I must deny myself; and therefore in the afternoon I will get another person to take my place in the pulpit. He may not be so entirely to your tastes as your own pastor, but if not, he will at least give you wholesome and sound truth upon which to feed ; and you are to remember that at the moment when he is addressing you, I am down yonder speaking to poor souls who have never got any of the bread that came down from heaven ; and therefore in your prayers remember them and me.' Ah ! methinks, were that done for a Sabbath or two, the minister might be able, when in his own pulpit, to set before his flock intelligence which would refresh their own souls, informing them that one had been born yonder, and another here. Then might the gleam of happiness, not felt before, be awakened in many a soul ; JEt 49. A LESSON TO BARREN ORTHODOXY. 305 and it would be felt tliat self-denyinf^ benevolence was its own reward. And, then, why should this evangelistic process be confined to the ministry? Why should not all the godly membership of the Church take their share^ according to their varying capacities and opportunities, in this blessed work, some in one way, and some in another ? . . Surely Pciganism itself can scarcely be so hateful to a righteous God, as that barren orthodoxy of mere abstract belief, and idle talk, and unproductive profession. Ah ! were this better spirit to prevail more widely through all Protestant Churches, — the spirit that would prompt men to be not receivers only, but dispensers also, of what they had received, — the spirit that would lead all ecclesiastical bodies to make the doing of some active work for the Lord, in His own vineyard, as indispensable a condition of Church membership as the abstract soundness of a creed, and the outward consistency of moral life and conduct, what a strange and happy revolution would soon be effected. How soon would infidelity and home heathenism be cast down, what a new spirit of ennobling self-denial would be evoked, what a spirit of large-heartedness, which would flow forth in copious streams in behalf of a perishing world ! Were this realized, we might then suppose that the dawn of millennial glory was upon us. But, alas ! alas ! though the horizon seemed already reddening with the dawn, the Churches of Christ are still mostly drowsy and fast asleep. Ah ! it is this that saddens my own spirit. Of the cause of Christ I have never desponded, and never will. It will advance till the whole earth be filled with His glory. He will accomplish it, too, through the instrnmentality of Churches and individual men. But He is not dependent on any particular Church or men. Yea, if any of these prove slothful or negligent. He may in sore judgment remove their candlestick, or pluck the stars out of their ecclesiastical firmament. "If it were in my power, as I once thought it would have been, — but God brought me low, — it was my intention to have gone largely, not only into these, but also into many other collateral themes, ere I left Scotland. It so happened that orio'inally the Lord in His gracious providence endowed me with a physical frame that fitted me to encounter almost any amount of labour and fatigue with comparative impunity ; but from riding, as it were, on the topmost waves of active exertion, VOL. II. X 306 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1855. it pleased Him to lay me low; and, flingiDg me wholly aside, to address me as it were thus, ' You must now for a time at least retire from your work a shattered and broken man, and learn to bear your soul in patience before the Lord alone. Sit still, away from the world of busy men, and learn the power of solemn silence/ And although I must confess that this was hard to bear, with hundreds of doors of usefulness presenting themselves on every side, and that I convulsively struggled against the sentence, yet He soon made me feel that I was in the grasp of an almighty and invisible power, that held me fast, till I was made to learn the grace of patience and silent enduring submission to His holy will. " A few years ago, I felt that God in His providence called me to the discharge of a certain work in Scotland. So far as concerns my individual share in it, I now feel that that work has been substantially accomplished. The Foreign Mission Fund, — on whose prosperity all our operations in India and Africa must, for the present depend, — was in a very dilapidated state. By God^s blessing, that Fund has been rescued from its tottering state of insecurity, and placed on a stable and permanent foundation through the working of the associational plan, with its regular quarterly subscriptions and prayer-meet- ings, in the great majority of the influential congregations of the Church ; while in amount it has been doubled or trebled ; all that is required being the maintenance of the present system through proper agency and periodic visitation, as well as the extension of it to all the remaining congregations. And as the spirit of Missions rises in the Church, present contributions may even be indefinitely enlarged. And now, this my home work being for the present finished, while exigencies of a peculiar kind appear to call me back again to the Indian field, I cheerfully obey the summons ; and despite its manifold ties and attractions, I now feel as if, in fulness of heart, I can say. Farewell to Scotland." Leaving these and many other such words behind him for the quickening of the Churches, Dr. DufF, with his wife, set out from Edinburgh on the 13th of October for India, for the third time. CHAPTER XXIIL 1856-1858. TEE MUTINY AND THE NATIVE CHUBGH OF INDIA. Through Central India to Calcutta. — Tlie First Day in the Free Church and in the Institution.— Sir Henry Durand's Account of the Reunion. — Mutteiings of the Storm. — Tlie Santal Insurrection and Missionary Memorial to Government. — Tlie Enfield Cartridges. — The Meerat and Delhi Massacres. — Dr. Duff*'s Twenty-five Letters. — Handling the Musket. — Confidence in the Lord. — Plots and Panics in Calcutta. — The Centenary of Plassey. — The Massacre at Futtehghur. — The Horrors of Cawnpore. — Death of Sir Henry Lawrence. — British Troops in Cornwallis Square. — Mercy and the Gospel. — Fatal Optimism of the Calcutta Autliorities. — Fall of Delhi and Relief of Lucknow. — John Lawrence in the Punjab and Edwardes at Peshawur. — Death of Sir Henry Havelock. — Durand's Successful Operations. — Lord Canning's Merits and Defects. — Bishop Wilson at Eio^hty. — Dr. Duff's famous Patriotic Sermon. — Christian Statesmanship of John Lawrence. — Growth of the Church of India. — Its Roll of Martyrs and Confessors. — Thomas Hunter of Sialkot. — GoiDoenath Nundi, his Wife and Children. — Robert Tucker's Martyrdom at Fnttehpore. — The Benfralee and his Wife witness a good Confession. — Loyalty of the Native Church of India. — Duflf's Sympathy with the Educated Natives who suffered. The one condition on which the physicians allowed Dr. Duff to return to India was that he should still, for six months, abstain from work of all kinds, while he sought the climate of the Mediterranean or of Egypt for another winter. He reasoned thafc the dry and bracing j^et mild air of the Dekhan, or uplands of Central India, is quite as invigorating to the invalid, while there he could return to his loved duties of missionary overseer. Setting out from Trieste, he and Mrs. Duff joined the mail steamer at Suez, but without their baggage. For the first few days in the o 08 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1856. Red Sea, their fellow-passengers were busied prepar- ino- a wardrobe for each. While Mrs. Duff went on by Ceylon and Madras to Calcutta, charged with the care of more than one expectant bride, as is the pleasant duty of Anglo-Indian matrons, her husband joined the Government steamer at Aden for Bombay. There, of course, he forgot all prudence amid the philanthropic temptations of the Western capital. But " the subsequent journey through the delightful region of the Konkan, and the magnificent mountain scenery of Mahablesliwar to Satara, in the edifying society of my beloved friend, Dr. Wilson, soon operated with a reviving effect." From Poona by Ahmednuo-ofur, Auruncrabad and Jalna, where now the Rev. Narain Sheshadri conducts the most vigorous native Mission in the peninsula, he reached Nagpore, even then remarkable for the labours of Stephen Hislop, a colleague worthy of Dr. Wilson and himself. Hence by Kampthee, Jubbulpore and Mirzapore he came to Benares and Calcutta, having followed a chain of Christian fortresses across the whole breadth of Northern India. Just before the Sabbath of 17th February he entered his own city, in time to begin the third and last period of his evangehzing work in India, by " preaching the everlasting gospel from the pulpit of the Free Church. After a sublimely impressive prayer from my beloved friend, Mr. Milne, the pastor, I endeavoured, amid a mighty rush and conflict of emotions, to preach to an overflowing audience. After sermon what a greeting with beloved native converts and friends." Among the worshippers was Sir Henry Diirand, the grave young lieutenant of the Lady Holland, the friend of Judson, and even then amono" the foremost military statesmen of the empire. From his hotel next day, that officer thus addressed the daughter of his old fellow-voyager : ^t. 50. DURAND ON DR. DUFF. 309 "When Mr. Milne walked up into the pulpit, and your father sat down in front of it on the opposite side of the aisle to my- self, the thought occurred, — six-and-twenty years ago we were on Dassen Island, spending our last day there, and under a roof of a different kind, though gotliic too — for the ribs of the whale were then our gothic arches supporting a ship's awning. When the service began, one of the native Christians beside me found the hymn and handed the book to me. I can't tell you how this not little event thrilled and struck me. A quarter of a century ago who would have foretold me this ? thought I. Well, the service went on, and, finally, your father ascended the pulpit. The last time I heard him preach was on board a ship in 1830 ; and really, except for a flush which the excitement of the moment fully accounted for, there was remarkably little difference of appearance in the preacher of 1830 and of 1856. If it had not been for the place and the row of native Christians alongside of me, I could have fancied myself a quarter of a century back in the pages of time. When, however, the discourse began, and your father fairly plunged into his subject, the difference between the preacher of I80O and of 1856 was manifest. Great as were his powers in 1830, a quarter of a century had developed, ripened and invigorated those powers, and the flow of thought, language and illustration must have struck every one as it did myself. But as you were there, I only advert to this when thinking of what he was in 1830. You will have felt the discourse of Sunday last — as all who heard it must have done — as often marvellousltf beautiful and powerful, were it not that the Spirit of God can breathe Its own force into whomsoever It chooses. All the time, however, I felt that the exertion was too great, and I quite dreaded the tension of feeling and mind, and determined to tell you that you should do what you can to keep Dr. Duff from frequent exertions of this exhaustive character. At the end he scarce had strength to read the hymn. When leaving the church I saw that there were many more native Christians present than the row who were under the pulpit ; and it pleased me much to observe several native women. How different all this from Dassen Island, and a quarter of a century ago ! And who then would have pre- dicted such things ? As I drove away I thought, — well, I owe this great treat to Mrs. Watson, and I must thank her for it. 3IO LIFK OF DH, DUFF, 1856. ^' Anotlier was in store for me. I was sitting in my solitary den in this hotel, when a tap at the door this morning announced some one. It was Dr. Duff. He had very kindly called to take me with him on the occasion of his first visit to the Free Church School and College. It was a very striking sight, the assemblage of Bengalee scholars ; and very gratifying must have been to your father the evident pleasure with which the elder scholars and native teachers saw his face again. His address to them was admirable, as you may be sure, and occasionally — when, for instance, he adverted to the juxtaposition of Sliiva^s temple and the wires of the electric telegraph — there was a laugh which spread like wild-fire, all the young monkeys who neither heard nor under- stood laughing out of joyous sympathy; but on the whole your father was too much in earnest and under too great emotion to give them much laughing. He spoke to them for some time, — longer, perhaps, than was quite good for him- self—but who could be surprised at that, on his first visit to this Institution, his own creation, and one in which the hand of God is, perhaps, more apparent than in any other in India. As I looked at the lines of heads listening to him. Archdeacon Corrie's lament, at the time Government were founding the Hindoo College, recurred to me. ' They will raise only atheists and deists, and infidelity and immorality will be perpetuated under other forms than Hindooism,^ was Corrie's prediction to myself in 1830 of the probable fruit of the Hindoo College, then lately commenced. Little did Corrie think that just at that very time a rival Institution, on very difi'erent principles, was being founded ; and how that good man would have joyed to witness what 1 saw yesterday and to-day ! I shall note this day as one of the bright ones of my career in India, and yesterday too. We have not quite stood still in India for a quarter of a century. Dr. Duff and his coadjutors in labour have, under God^s providence, laid the corner-stone of an edifice which must swell into gigantic proportions before another quarter of a century is over. I don't think the new building, large and costly though it seem now, anything more than a mere nursery. There must be many such before long, and that in different quarters of India ; but wherever they are and whatever their numbers, Dr. Duff and his first five Hindoo pupils, one of whom I saw to-day, will be remembered as God's chosen instrument." JEt, 50. MUTTERINGS OF THE STOEM. 3 1 I Lord Canning, Durand's scboolfellow at Eton, took the oaths and his seat in Government House on the last day of February, 1856. There was many a wet eye when, at the historic Ghaut a few days after, the great Marquis of Dalhousie left the East India Com- pany's metropolis. In extent, in resources and in political strength he had developed its territories into an empire able to pass triumphantly through the ordeal of mutiny and insurrection, which the Government at home had invited, in spite of his protests against a reduction of the British garrison in inverse proportion to the addition of a province like anarchic Oudh. For the Crimean War had been succeeded by the Persian expedition, provinces as large as France were almost without an English soldier, and the predicted extinction of the Company's o^aj on the coming cen- tenary of Plassey next year was current. Already had the emissaries of the titular Kins^ of Delhi and the richly pensioned descendants of Sivajee and the Maratha Peshwa been abroad, the lions of London drawing-rooms, the keen observers of our early blunders before Sebastopol, envoys to the Shah of Persia, to the great Khans of Central Asia, and to our own feudatory kings. The twelvemonth of 1856-57, during which the new Governor-General was beginning his appren- ticeship to affairs, was the lull before the storm which few suspected and not one anticipated in the form in which it burst. Lord Dalhousie had protested in vain against the suicidal withdrawal of so many Queen's regiments and had urged reforms in the sepoy army which the jealous Sir Charles Napier resented. Henry Lawrence had predicted a collapse of some kind if military reorganization were longer postponed. The missionaries, as the most permanent and disin- terested body of observers in the country, had so far shown their uneasiness as to submit to Government 312 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. an elaborate memorial on the state of the people. Military reform was not within their ken. But they knew the people as no one else did, and they were the most valuable intermediaries and interpreters be- tween their own foreign Government and their native fellow-subjects, as more than one wise ruler has found, from Lord Wellesley to Lord Northbrook. The con- dition-of-Bengal question, as it was called, Dr. DufE and Mr. Marshman had represented with effect before the Parliamentary committee on the Charter of 1853, but the corruption of the police and the courts and the oppression of the peasantry could not be prevented in a few years. An insurrection of the simple abori- gines of the Santal hills, some two hundred miles west of Calcutta, against the exactions of their Bengalee usurers, had still further let a lurid light into the structure of Hindoo society, without education and still resisting the gospel. The Muhammadans, on the other hand, had not remained uninfluenced by the spirit which, more or less blindly, we encouraged ia the Government of their Sultan, in the still vain hope that we might change the leopard's spots. The Wahabee colony, in Patna and on the Punjab frontier, was busily recruiting co-religionists from Eastern Bengal to wage on us the intermittent war which continued from the capture of Delhi in 1857, to the drawn battle of Umbeyla in 1864, and the assassination of a Chief Justice and a Yicerov in 1871. Dimlv doubtful whether, after all. Great Britain was not making the mistake of giving new life to the cruel intolerance of Islam, its Christian philanthropists, headed by Sir Culliug Eardley, consulted Dr. Duff, among others, as to the law and feeling of the Muhammadans of India regard- ing the death penalty for apostasy. He collected from the best authorities, Asiatic and Anglo-Indian, a body of opinion which, while it showed that Islam cannot ^t, 51. THE GREASED CAllTEIDGES. 313 change, found a horrible commentary in the massacres eight months after. The leafy station of Dum Dum, almost a suburb of Calcutta, and the scene of Olive's first victory in Ben- gal, was the head- quarters of the Artillery in the east, as Meerut is still of the same arm in the north-west of India. At Dum Dum there is the Mao^azine for the manufacture of ammunition, and there, in 1857, was a musketry school for practice with the Enfield rifle, then recently introduced but long since superseded. One of the Magazine workmen, of low caste, having been refused a drink from the " lotah " of a sepoy, who was a Brahman, revenged himself by the taunt that all castes would soon be alike, for cartridges smeared with the fat of kine and the lard of swine would have to be bitten by the whole army, Hindoo and Muhammadan. That remark became the oppor- tunity of the political plotters. The horror, in a wildly exaggerated form, was whispered in every cantonment from Dum Dum to Peshawur. In the infantry and cavalry lines of Barrackpore, a few miles farther up the Hooghly and the Grovernor-Generars summer seat, the alarm was only increased when the General, Avho knew the sepoys and their language well, assured them that not one of the dreaded cartridg^es had then been issued, and that the troops might lubricate them for the Enfield grooves with beeswax. It happened — a fact which we now publish for the first time — that several of them had occasionally lounged into the famous manufactory of paper at Serampore on the opposite side of the river, where the cartridge paper was prepared, and there had witnessed the boil- ing of animal size for other varieties. The Barrack- pore, then the Berhampore, then the Meerut, and finally all the sepoys of the Bengal army, ignorant and pampered as spoiled children, honestly believed 314 I^I^E OF DE. DUFF. 1857. that the Enfield cartridge was meant to destroy their caste, and that the new Lord Saheb had been sent out thus to make them Christians, for had not his first order been tliat all recruits must be enlisted for service across the sea ? Thus opened January, 1857. All the evidence points to the last Sabbath in May, when the Christians should be in church, as the time fixed by the leaders for a general rising, from Calcutta on to the east to Maratha Satara on the west and over the whole land thence to the Himalayas. But the cartridge panic precipitated the catastrophe, broke it into detached attempts, and enabled the Christian civilization of a handful of white men, — not forty thousand at the crisis, — to save the millions of Southern and Eastern Asia. The weakness with which Government treated the attempts at Ber- hampore and Barrackpore emboldened eighty- five Mussulmans of the 3rd Cavalry at Meerut to refuse even to tear off the end of the suspected cartridges with their hands. On Saturday, the 9th May, they were marched to jail in fetters before the rest of the troops; on Sabbath evening the sepoys of all arms rose, freed them and all the convicts, and proceeded to massacre the Europeans, young and old, as they came out of church or were found in the comparatively isolated houses of an Indian station. Military incom- petence in the north-west completed what the imbeciHty of the Calcutta authorities had begun under their own eyes. General Hewitt allowed the maddened sepoys to rage unchecked, and then to march to Delhi to repeat tlie work of blood. In spite of John Lawrence's pro- tests. General Anson, the Commander-in-Chief who had hurried down from the Capua of Simla, refused to take possession of Delhi while it was still possible to do so. Old Bahadoor Shah, the king, had his tem- porary revenge for the just refusal of Lord Canning ^t. 51. HANDLING HIS MQSKET. 315 to allow Ills son to become his titular successor, and for the order which had warned him to transfer his court from the fortress of the city to a rural palace. This much will enable our readers to take up the sad yet heroic tale at the point where Dr. Duff became the chronicler, in a series of twenty-five letters which Dr. Tweedie published every fortnight in the Witness, and which afterwards, in the form of a volume, ran through several editioas. The special value of what we shall quote lies, for the historian of the future, in the picture of Calcutta and the report of contemporary opinion by a missionary whose personal courage was as undoubted as his political experience and discrimination were remarkable. His letters on The Indian Rebellion ; its Causes and Results not only supplement but correct the unsatisfactory narrative and speculation of Sir John Kaye, who had long left India and was unconsciously biassed by his official position in Leadenhall Street. The extracts we may best introduce by the remini- scence of the Rev. James Long, whose home in the Amherst Street enclosure of the Church Missionary Society was not far from Cornwallis Square. " At the period of the Mutiny we both lived in the native part of the town, with the smouldering embers of disaffection all around us. We had a vigilance com- mittee of the Europeans of our part of the suburbs which used to meet in Dr. Duff's house. I applied to the chief magistrate for a grant of arms for our mem- bers, but the request was negatived — that official, like most of those in Calcutta, could see no danger though we were at the mouth of a volcano. I mentioned the case to Dr. Duff, and by his advice I laid the request before Lord Canning. A favourable answer was received in a few hours, and muskets were supplied. I shall never forget the gleam of glee that lighted up his face as he handled his musket. He felt with the 3l6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. men of that day tliat necessity overrides all conven- tionalities.'* Calcutta, 16th Maij, 1857. — ^^We are at tliis moment in a crisis of jeopardy such as has not occurred since the awful catastrophe of the Black Hole of Calcutta. It is now certain that we narrowly escaped a general massacre in Calcutta itself. There was a deep-laid plot or conspiracy — for which some have undergone the penalty of death — to seize on Fort William, and massacre all the Europeans. The night chosen for the desperate attempt was that on which the Maharaja of Gwalior, when here, had invited the whole European community to an exhibition of fireworks, across the river, at the Botanic Gar- dens. On that evening, however, as if by a gracious interposi- tion of Providence, we were visited with a heavy storm of thunder, lightning, and rain, so that the grand entertainment of the Maharaja had to be postponed. The European officers, therefore, had not left the Fort; and the object of the con- spirators being thus defeated, was soon afterwards brought to light, to the horror of all, and the abounding thankfulness of such as acknowledge the loving-kindness of the Lord. From all the chief stations in the North- West, intelligence of a mu- tinous spirit manifesting itself in divers ways has been drop- ping in upon us for several weeks past. But at this moment all interest is absorbed by the two most prominent cases, at Meerut and Delhi. Such a blow to the prestige of British power and supremacy has not yet been struck in the whole history of British India. All Calcutta may be said to be in sackcloth. The three or four days' panic during the crisis of the Sikh War was nothing to this. Nearly half the native army is in a state of secret or open mutiny; and the other half known to be disafifected. But this is not all ; the populace generally is known to be more or less disaffected. You see, then, how very serious is the crisis. Nothing, nothing but some gracious and signal interposition of the God of Providence seems competent now to save our empire in India. And if there be a general rising — as any day may be — the probability is, that not a European life will anywhere escape the universal and indiscriminate massacre. But my own hope is in the God of Providence. I have a secret, confident persuasion that, though this crisis has been permitted to humble and warn us. JEt. SI. CALCUTTA DUEING THE MUTINY. 317 our work in India lias not yet been accomplished,, — and tliat until it be accomplished, our tenure of empire, however brittle, is secure. " Here it is seriously proposed, or suggested, that all the Europeans in Calcutta should be immediately constituted into a local militia, for the defence of life and property iu Calcutta and neighbourhood. Already it is known that the Muhara- madans have had several night meetings ; and when the procla- mation of the newly mutineer-installed Emperor of Delhi comes to be generally known, no one can calculate on the result. But never before did I realize as now the literality and sweetness of the Psalmist's assurance, — 'I laid me down and slept; I awaked : for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about. Arise, 0 Lord ; save me, 0 my God ! ' Our son Alexander, poor fellow, is at Meerut, the very centre aud focus of mutiny, — and where already Europeans have been massacred, though no names have yet reached us. You may tlierefore imagine in what a horrible state of suspense and anxiety Mrs. Duff and myself now are. May the Lord have mercy on him and us ! "Benares, where your son is, has as yet been free from actual mutiny ; though, doubtless, disaffection is as rife there as else- where. Humanly speaking, and under God, everything will depend on our Government being able promptly to re-take the fort of Delhi, and inflict summary chastisement on the mu- tineer-murderers there. The Governor of Agra is much trusted in, from his firmness and good sense ; and he reports that Agra is safe. Oudh, happily, is under Sir Henry Lawrence, the most prompt and energetic officer, perhaps, in the Company's service. He has already quashed mutiny there in a style which if our Government had only imitated months ago, there would have been an end of the whole matter now. Srd June. — " Though the Mission House be absolutely un- protected, in the very heart of the native city, far away from the European quarters, I never dreamt of leaving it. Our Mission work in all its branches, alike in Calcutta and the country stations, continues to go on without any interruption, thouQ^h there is a wild excitement abroad amono- all classes of natives, which tends mightily to distract and unsettle their minds. 3l8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. 16th June. — " Calcutta has been in a state of alarm far ex- ceeding anything that had gone before. . . Our great infantry station, Barrackpore, lies about twelve miles to the north of Calcutta, and on the same side of the river; our artil- lery station, Dum Dum, about four or five miles to the north- east. To the south is Fort William, and beyond it the great Allipore jail, with its thousands of imprisoned desperadoes, guarded by a regiment of native militia; not far from Alipore is Garden Eeach, where the ex-king of Oadh has been residing with about a thousand armed retainers, the Mussulman popula- tion, generally armed also, breathing fanatical vengeance on the 'infidels,' and praying in their mosques for the success of the Delhi rebels. Calcutta, being guarded by native police uiily, in whom not a particle of confidence can any longer be reposed, seemed to be exposed on all sides to imminent perils, as most of the European soldiers had been sent to the North- West. In this extremity, and in the midst of indescribable panic and alarm, the Government began to enrol the European and East Indian residents as volunteers, to patrol the streets at night, etc. Happily the 78th Highlanders arrived during ' the week, and their presence helped to act so far as a sedative. Still, while the city was filled with armed citizens, and sur- rounded on all sides with armed soldiers, all known to be dis- affected to the very core, and waiting only for the signal to burst upon the European population in a tempest of massacre and blood, the feeling of uneasiness and insecurity was intense. Many, unable to withstand the pressure any longer, went to pass the night in central places of rendezvous ; numbers went into the fort ; and numbers more actually went on board the ships and steamers in the river. "On Sabbath (14th) the feeling of anxiety rose to a perfect paroxysm. On Saturday night the Brigadier at Barrackpore sent an express to Government House to notify that, from cer- tain information which he had obtained, there was to be a general rising of the sepoys on Sabbath. Accordingly, before the Sabbath dawned, all manner of vehicles were in requisition to convey all the available European forces to Barrackpore and Dum Dum. Those which had been sent to the north by rail- way on Saturday were recalled by a telegraphic message through the night. But the public generally had not any dis- tinct intelligence as to the varied movements ; and even if they ^t. 51. PANIC SUNDAY IN CALCUTTA. 319 had, there would be the uttermost uncertainty as to the result. Accordingly, throughout the whole Sabbath-day the wildest and most fearful rumours were circulating in rapid succes- sion. ^' The great roads from Barrackpore and Dum Dum unite a little beyond Cornwallis Square, and then pass through it. If there were a rush of murderous ruffians from these military stations, the European residents in that square would have to encounter the first burst of their diabolical fury. It so ha'p- pened, therefore, that some kind friends, interested in our wel- fare, wrote to us at daybreak on Sabbath, pointing out the danger, and urging the necessity of our leaving the square. And before breakfast, some friends called in person to urge the propriety of this course. Still, I did not feel it to be my duty to yield to their expostulations. There were others in the square besides my partner and myself. Near us is the Central Female School of the Church of England, with several lady teachers, and some twenty or thirty boarders; the Chris- tian converts' house, with upwards of a dozen inmates ; our old Mission home, with its present occupants of the Established Church; in another house an English clergyman, with some native Christians ; and in another still, the Lady Superinten- dent of the Bethune Government School, and her assistants. If one must leave the square, all ought to do so ; and I did not consider the alarming intelligence sufficiently substantiated to warrant me to propose to my neighbours a universal abandon- ment of the square. So I went on with all my ordinary Sab- bath duties, altogether in the ordinary way. Almost all the ministers in Calcutta had expostulatory letters sent them, dis- suading them from preaching in the forenoon, and protesting against their attempting to do so in the evening. And though, to their credit, no one, so far as I have heard, yielded to the pressure, the churches in the forenoon were half empty, and in the evening nearly empty altogether. *' On Sunday, at five p.m., the authorities, backed by the presence of British troops, proceeded to disarm the sepoys at Barrackpore, Dum Dum, and elsewhere. Through God's great mercy the attempt proved successful. This, however, was only known to a few connected with Government House and their friends, so that the panic throughout Sunday night rose to an inconceivable height. With the exception of another couple, 320 - LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857 Mrs. Daff and myself were tlie only British residents in Corn- wallis Square on that night. Faith in Jehovah as our refuge and strength led us to cling to our post; and we laid us down to sleep as usual; and on Monday morning my remark was, * Well, I have not enjoyed such a soft, sweet, refreshing rest for weeks past/ Oh, how our hearts rose in adoring gratitude to Him Who is the Keeper of Israel, and Who slumbers not nor sleeps ! Then we soon learnt the glad tidings that all the armed sepoys had everywhere been successfully disarmed ; and that, during the night, the ex-king of Oudh, and his treason- able courtiers, were quietly arrested, and lodged as prisoners of state in Fort William. Calcutta, 24th June, 1857. — ''The centenary day of the battle of Plassey (23rd instant) which laid the foundation of our Indian empire, and which native hopes and wishes, and astrological predictions, had long ago fixed on as the last of British sway, has passed by; and through God's overruling providence, Calcutta is still the metropolis of British India. But, alas ! throughout the whole of the North-West Provinces, all government is at present at an end. The apparently settled peace and profound tranquillity which were wont to reign throughout British India in former years, once called forth from an intelligent French traveller the somewhat irreverent but striking remark, that the Government of India was ' like the good Deity : one does not see it, but it is everywhere.'' So calm, serene and ubiquitous did the power of British rule then appear to be ! How changed the aspect of things now ! Throughout the whole of the North-West, Government, instead of being in its regulating power and influence everywhere, is, at this moment, literally 'nowhere."* Instead of peace and tranquillity, security of life and property, under its sovereign and benign sway, universal anarchy, turbulence, and ruin ! — the military stations in possession of armed and bloodthirsty mutineers, — the public treasures rifled, — the habitations of the British residents plundered and reduced to ashes, — numbers of British ofiicers, with judges, magistrates, women, and children, butchered with revolting cruelties, — ^the remanent portions of the British that have yet escaped, cooped up in isolated spots, and closely hemmed in by myriads that are thirsting for their blood, while bands of armed rufiians are scouring over the country, bent on ravage, plunder, and murder, striking ter- JEt 51 THE CENTENARY OF PLASSEY. 32 1 ror and consternation into tlie minds of millions of the peace- fully disposed ! *^ Almost the only incident that has yet been brought to light, amid these scenes of dark and unbroken horror, is the fact that a poor wailing British child, found exposed on the banks. of the Jumna, beyoud Delhi, by a faqueer or religious devotee, was taken up by him, and brought to Kurnal, after being carefully nursed and cherished for several days. The parents of the poor infant were unknown, having in all pro- bability been murdered in their attempted flight. But once safely lodged in Kurnal, through the tender care of a dark heathen devotee, in whose bosom the spark of natural humanity still glowed, the child was soon caught up within the circle of British and Christian sympathy, whose special concern is for the poor, the needy, and the destitute. " The day — the last and fatal day to British power in India, if the vaticinations so long current among all classes of natives were to be trusted — was ushered in amid ten thousand anxieties despite all the preparations that had been made to meet it. What helped to heighten these anxieties was, that, by a singu- lar coincidence, that happened also to be the great day of the annual Hindoo festival of the Ruth Jattra, or pulling of the cars of Jugganath. Of these cars numbers of all sizes have been wont to be pulled along the streets of Calcutta and sub- urbs. On these occasions the entire latent fanaticism of the Hindoo community has been usually elicited, when the Brahmans and attendant throngs raise and re-echo the loud shouts of ' Victory to Jugganath ; victory to the great Jugganath.' The day and night, however, have now passed away without any violent outrage anywhere within the bounds of the city; and we are still in the land of the living this morning, to celebrate anew Jehovah's goodness. Doubtless the knowledge of the vast preparations that were made promptly to put down any insurrection tended, under God, to prevent any, by paralysing the hosts of conspirators under a conviction of the utter hope- lessness of success. Moreover, I cannot but note the fact, that our rainy season, which has been somewhat later in com- mencing this year, began to set in on Sunday, 21st inst., with a violent thunderstorm, since which very heavy showers have continued to fall in rapid succession, accompanied with violent gusts of wind. These gusty tropical showers rendered it par- VOL. IT. Y 322 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1857. ticularly disagreeable for any one to be out on our muddy and half-flooded streets. The very elements thus seemed to con- spire, along with the preparations on the part of man_, to defeat the counsels and purposes of the wicked, by conGning them to their own secret haunts of treason, sedition and meditated massacre. " The only disturbance in the neighbourhood took place at Agarparah, about half-way between this and Barrackpore. On the afternoon of Tuesday (23rd) a body of between two and three hundred Mussulmans rushed into the Government and Mission- ary schools, shouting that the Company's raj (or reign) was now at an end, and ordering the teachers, on pain of death, to destroy their English books, and teach no more English in the schools, but only the Koran, A violent affray with sticks, bamboos and bricks was the result ; but though a great many heads were broken, no lives were lost. This was a fair indi- cation of the spirit and determination of Muhammadanism generally ; and clearly proves how little not only Christianity, but even western civilization, has to expect from its intolerance, were it once to acquire the ascendancy in this land. 29th June. — " Still no cessation of heavy tidings from the North- West. In one of our journals to-day appears the letter of a- correspondent at Allahabad, who, after stating that the destruction of property there was total, thus proceeds : — ' Did the report reach you of the massacre of the Futtehghur fugi- tives ? It passed in atrocity all that has hitherto been perpe- trated. A large body of Europeans, men, women, and children, in several boats, left Euttehghur for this ; they were all the non-military residents of the place. On arrival at Bithoor (near Cawnpore), the Nana Saheb fired on them with the artillery the Government allowed him to keep. One round shot struck poor Mrs. — — , and killed her on the spot. The boats were then boarded, and the inmates landed and dragged to the parade-ground at Cawnpore, where they were first fired at, and then literally hacked to pieces with tulwars/ or axe -like swords. Calcutta, 7th July, 1857. — "Alas, alas ! the work of savage butchery still progresses in this distracted land. Not a day passes without some addition, from one quarter or another, to the black catalogue of treachery and murder. This very day Government have received intelligence of one of the foulest JEt. 51. THE CAWNPORE MASSACRE. 323 tragedies connected witli this awfal rebellion. At Cawnpore, one of the largest military stations iti Northern India, a mutinous spirit had early manifested itself among the native soldiery, and there were no European troops whatever to keep it in check, except about fifty men who had latterly been sent by Sir Henry Lawrence from Lucknow. But there was one man there whose spirit, energy, and fertility of resource were equal to a number of ordinary regiments — the brave and skilful veteran, Sir Hugh Wheeler. By his astonishing vigour and promptitude of action, he succeeded in keeping in abeyance the mutinous spirit of three or four thousand armed men. At the same time, with the forecasting prudence of a wise general, he began to prepare timeously for the worst, by forming a small entrenched camp, to which ladies, children, and other helpless persons, with provisions, were removed, while most of the British officers took up their abode either in or near it. At last the long-expected rising took place. The mutineers went deliberately' to work, according to the prescribed plan followed in other quarters. They broke open the jail and. liberated the prisoners; they plundered the public treasury; they pillaged and set fire to the bungalows of the ofiicers and other British residents, killing all indiscriminately who had not effected their escape to the entrenched camp. " Inhere Sir Hugh and his small handful with undaunted courage held their position against the most tremendous odds, repelling every attack of the thousands by whom they were surrounded, with heavy loss to the rebels. These were at last joined by thousands more of the mutineers from Sultanpore, Seetapore, and other places in Oudh, with guns. The conflict now became terrific^ — exemplifying, on the part of the British, the very spirit and determination of old Greece at Thermo- pylas. The soul of the brave old chief, in particular, only rose, by the accumulating pressure of difficulty, into grander heroism. To the last he maintained a hearty cheerfulness, de- claring that he could hold out for two or three weeks against any numbers. With the fall of the chief and some of his right-hand men, the remainder of the little band seem to have been smitten with a sense of the utter hopelessness of pro- longed resistance. They did not, they could not, know that relief was so near at hand, — that the gallant Colonel Neil, who had already saved Benares and the fortress of Allahabad with 324 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1857. ]iis Madras Fusiliers, was wltliin two or tliree days* march of tliem. Had this been known to them, they would doubtless have striven to hold out during these two or three days; and, to all human appearance, with success. But, ignorant of the approaching relief, and assailed by the cries and tears of help- less women and children, they were induced, in an evil hour, to entertain the overtures made to them by a man who had already been guilty of treachery and murder. " This man was Nana Saheb, the adopted son of the late Bajee Kow, the ex-Peshwa, or last head of the Maratha confed- eracy, who, for the long period of nearly forty years, resided at Benares, enjoying the munificent pension of £80,000 a-year. This Nana Saheb was allowed, by the bounty of the British Government, to occupy a small fort at Bithoor, not far from Cawnpore. Till within the last few months this man was wont to profess the greatest delight in European society, — to go out with British officers on shooting excursions, and to invite them to fetes at his residence. And yet, the moment that fortune seems to frown on British interests, he turns round, and, with Asiatic treachery, deliberately plans the destruction of the very men whom he had so often, in the spirit of apparently cordial friendship, feted and feasted. On Sunday, the 28th June, this man, with consummate hypocrisy, of his own accord sent over- tures to our beleaguered countrymen, — then bereft of their heroic chieftain, — swearing, ' upon the water of the Ganges, and all the oaths most binding on a Hindoo, that if the garrison would trust to him and surrender, the lives of all would be spared, and they should be put into boats, and sent down to Allahabad.'' Under the influence of some infatuating blind- ness, that garrison that might have possibly held out till relief arrived was induced to trust in these oily professions, and sur- render. Agreeably to the terms of the treaty, they were put into boats, with provisions, and other necessaries and comforts. But mark the conduct of the perfidious fiend in human form : No sooner had the boats reached the middle of the river than their sworn protector himself gave a preconcerted signal, and guns, which had been laid for the purpose, were opened upon them from the Cawnpore bank ! yea, and when our poor wretched countrymen tried to escape, by crossing to the Oudli side of the river, they found that arrangements had been made there too for their reception; for there, such of them as were en ^t. 51. DEATH OF Sin HENRY LAWRENCE. 325 abled to land were instantaneously cut to pieces by cavalry that had been sent across for the purpose. In this way nearly the whole party, according to the Government report, — con- sisting of several hundreds, mostly helpless women and children, — were destroyed ! such of the women and children as were not killed being reserved probably as hostages. 20 fh July. — "Heavier and heavier tidings of woe! About a week ago it was known that Sir Henry Lawrence — whose defence of Lucknow with a mere handful, amid the rage of hos- tile myriads, has been the admiration of all India — had gone out to attack a vast body of armed rebels ; that his native force, with characteristic treachery, had turned round upon him at the commencement of the figlit — and that, with his two hundred Europeans, he had to cut his way back, with Spartan daring, to the Residency. It was also known that, on that occasion, the brave leader was severely wounded; and two days ago intelligence reached us, which, alas ! has since been confirmed, that on the 4th instant he sunk under the effects of his wounds. What shall I say ? It is impossible for me to express the grief of heart which I feel in thus recording the death of Sir Henry Lawrence. In his character were singularly blended the heroic chivalry of the old Greek and the inflexible stern- ness of the old Roman, in happy combination with the tender- ness of a patriarch, and the benevolence of the Christian philanthropist. In him the native army, through whose mur- derous treachery he prematurely fell, has lost its greatest benefactor; while the girls' and boys' schools, founded by his munificence on the heights of the Himalaya, of Mount Aboo, and of the Neelgherris, must testify through coming ages to the depth and liveliness of his interest in the welfare of the British soldier's family in this burning foreign clime. I mourn over him as a personal friend, — one whose friendship re- sembled more what we sometimes meet with in romance rather than in actual everyday life. I mourn over him as one of tho truest, sincerest, and most liberal supporters of our Calcutta Mission. I mourn over him as the heaviest loss which British India could possibly sustain in the very midst of the most terrible crisis of her history, 4urr. 1857. comfortable words of Scripture and commended him- self to God, he brought out all the arms he had and prepared to defend his life. Sunset saw the ** brave legionaries" under Hikmut Oollah Khan, with the green flag of Islam, enter his park. Summoned to abjure Christ and accept Muhammad, he resolutely refused. As the police guard advanced he shot fourteen or sixteen of them — the accounts vary — before he fell confessing Christ. Robert Tucker is the glory of the Bengal civil service, and he was not alone in his heroism or in his confession. By the magistrate's orders the Rev. Gopeenath Niindi had left for Allahabad, a few days earlier, in charge of all the Christian women of the station, only to find that they had run into greater danger. The women returned to their husbands, while he, his wife and children set off to the missionary station of Mirza- pore. After the first day's march of fourteen miles in the heat of June, they found shelter in the village of a Brahman, who sought only to kill them for what they possessed. The scenes of horror witnessed there — for the armed vill asters butchered all travellers whom they could not easily rob — may be imagined from this instance. A Hindoo leather-worker, of low caste, returning from Cawnpore, saw his wife stripped of every rag and their infant swung by the feet till its brains were dashed out upon a stone, while he himself was driven off* naked. Determined to return to Alla- habad, Gopeenath gave up all he possessed ; *' they did not leave us the single Bible we had; our shoes also were taken." While the Brahmans quarrelled over the booty the Christian family fled. '* We went up to a well, and the people gave us water to drink. We then came to a potter's house, and begged him to give us a ghurra (pot), which he did. I filled it with water. ALt. 51. GOPEENATH NUNDI'S NARRATIVE. 345 that we might have a supply; for water in that part of the country, especially in the months of May and June, is very scarce and only found in deep wells. We travelled till nine a.m., when both ourselves and our dear children (two of them six years and the baby one year old) felt fatigued and tired, and sat down under the shade of a tree. The poor children cried most bitterly from hunger, but we had nothing to give them. We laid our petition before that God who fed His people, the Jews, with manna in the wilderness; and indeed He heard our prayer. We saw from a distance a marriage proces- sion coming towards us ; I went up to them, and they gave us five pice, which enabled me to buy suttoo (flour of grain) and goor (coarse sugar). With this we fed the children, and resumed our journey. We travelled till eleven a.m., when we found that our three children, having been struck by the sud, were on the point of death; for the sun was very powerful, and the hot wind blew most fearfully. Seeing no village near (and indeed, if there had been any, we should not have gone to it, for fear of losing our lives), we took shelter under a bridge, and having gathered some sand, made our poor children lie down. But they seemed dying, and we had no medicine to give them. We raised our hearts in prayer to our great Physician, who is always more ready to hear than we are to apply to Him. He heard our supplications. We saw a small green mango hanging on a tree, though the season was nearly over. I brought it down, and having procured a little fire from a gang of robbers who were proceeding to Allahabad to plunder, I roasted it and made some sherbet, and gave it to the children to drink. People of the poorer classes, when struck by the sun, always administer this as a medicine. It acted like a charm, and revived the children. From inability to proceed any farther, we made up our minds to remain there till next morning; but towards sunset the zemindar of the nearest village, a Hindoo by caste, came with the assurance that no injury should be done us, took us to his house, and comfortably kept us through the night, supplying all our urgent wants. We partook of his hospitality, and slept very soundly, as we had been deprived of rest for three days and three nights. " Early on the following morning we left our kind host's house, and started for Allahabad, which was only three miles 346 LIPB or DE. DUFF. 1857. off. We arrived at the ghaut about nine a.m. ; and, while crossing the river Jumna, we saw, with heartfelt sorrow, that the mission bungalow was burnt to ashes, and the beautiful church totally disfigured. On our arrival swarms of Muham- madans fell upon us ; but our gracious Father again saved us, by raising up a friend from amongst the foes. This was a goldsmith, a Hindoo by caste, who took us into his house, and kept us safe through the day. At sunset, when we left his protection, we fell into the hands of some other Muham- madans, who were roaming about like ferocious animals, thirst- ing after blood. When we saw there was no way to escape, and the villains ready to kill us, we begged them hard to take as to their head, the Moulvie, who for some days usurped the supreme authority there. With great diflSculty we induced them to comply with our wishes. When we were brought before him, we found him seated on a chair, surrounded by men with drawn swords. We made our salaams ; upon which he ordered us to sit down, and put to us the following ques- tions : ' Who are you ?' * Christians.' ' What place do you come from?' ' Futtehpore.' 'What was your occupation?' * Preaching and teaching the Christian religion.' ' Are you a padre ?' ' Yes, sir.' ' Was it not you who used to go about reading and distributing tracts in the streets and villages ? ' ' Yes, sir ; it was I and my catechists.' ' How many Christians have you made ?' 'I did not make any Christians, for no human being can change the heart of another ; but God, through my instrumentality, brought to the belief of His true religion about a couple of dozens.' On this the man exclaimed, in a great rage, and said, ' Tauba ! tauba ! (repent) . What downright blasphemy ! God never makes any one a Chris- tian ; but you Kaffirs pervert the people. He always makes people Mussulmans ; for the religion which we follow is the only true one. How many Muhammadans have you perverted to your religion?' 'I have not perverted any one, but, by the grace of God, ten were turned from darkness to the glorious lio-ht of the gospel.' Hearing this, the man's countenance became as red as fire ; and he exclaimed, ' You are a great " haramzadah " (traitor to your salt) ! you have renounced your forefathers' faith, and become a child of Satan, and now use your every effort to bring others into the same road of de- struction. You deserve a cruel death. Your nose, ears and JEt SI. WITNESSING A GOOD CONFESSION. 347 Lands should be cut off at different times, so as to make your sufferings continue for some time; and your children ought to be taken into slavery/ Upon this, Mrs. Nundi, folding her hands, said to the Moulvie, ' You will confer a very great favour by ordering us all to be killed at once, and not to be tortured by a lingering death/ After keeping silent for a while, he exclaimed, ' Subhan Allah, you appear to be a re- spectable man. I pity you and your family ; and, as a friend, I advise you to become Muhammadans : by doing so, you will not only save your lives, but will be raised to a high rank.' My answer was, ' We prefer death to any inducement you can hold out.' The man then appealed to my wife, and asked her what she would do ? Her answer was^ thank God, as firm as mine. She said, she was ready to submit to any punishment he could inflict, but she would not renounce her faith. The Moulvie then asked if I had read the Koran. My answer was, ' Yes, sir.' He then said, ' You could not have read it with a view to be profited, but simply to pick out passages in order to argue with Muhammadans.' Moreover he said, ' I will allow you three days to consider, and then I will send for you and read a portion of the Koran to you. If you believe, and become Muhammadans, well and good; but if not, your noses shall be cut off.' We again begged and said to him, that what he intended to do had better be done at once, for as long as God continued His grace we would never change our faith. He then ordered his men to take us into custody. While on the way to the prison, I raised my heart in praise and adora- tion to the Lord Jesus, for giving us grace to stand firm, and to acknowledge Him before the world. When we reached the place of our imprisonment, which was a part of the Serai, where travellers put up for the night, and where his soldiers were quartered, we found there a European family and some native Christians. We felt extremely sorry at seeing them in the same difficulty with ourselves. After conversing together, and relating each other's distress, I asked them to join us in prayer, to which they readily consented. While we knelt down and prayed, one of the guards came, and, giving me a kick on the back, ordered me either to pray after the Muhammadan form, or to hold my tongue. *' The next day. Ensign Cheke, an officer of the late 6th N. I., was brought in as a prisoner. He was so severely wounded, 348 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1857. that lie was scarcely able to stand on his legs, but was on the point of fainting. I made some gruel of the suttoo and goor which we brought with us, and some of which was still left, and gave him to drink ; also a pot full of water. Drinking this, he felt refreshed, and opened his eyes. Seeing me, a fellow-prisoner and minister of the gospel, he related the history of his sufferings, and asked me, if I escaped in safety, to write to his mother in England, and to his aunt at Bau- coorah; which I have since done. As the poor man was unable to lie down on the bare hard ground, for that was all that was allotted to us, I begged the darogah to give him a charpoy. With great difficulty he consented to supply one ; and that was a broken one. Finding me so kindly disposed to poor Cheke, the darogah fastened my feet in the stocks, and thus caused a separation, not only from him, but also from my poor family. While this was going on, a large body of armed men fell upon me, holding forth the promise of immediate release if I became a Muhammadan. At that time Ensign Cheke cried with a loud voice, and said, * Padre, padre, be firm ; do not give way.' My poor wife, not willing to be separated, was dragged away by her hair, and received a severe wound in her forehead. The third day, the day ap- pointed for our final execution, now came, and we expected every moment to be sent for to finish our earthly course ; but the Moulvie did not do so. Every ten or fifteen minutes, some one of his people would come and try to convert us, threaten- ing, in case of refusal, to cut off our noses. It appeared that the cutting off of noses was a favourite pastime with them. " On the sixth day the Moulvie himself came over into the prison, and inquired where the padre prisoner was. When I was pointed out, he asked me if I was comfortable. My answer was, ' How can I be comfortable, whilst my feet are fastened in the stocks ? however, I am not sorry, because such has been the will of my heavenly Father.' I then asked him, ' How he could be so cruel as not to allow a drop of milk to a poor innocent baby?' for our little one lived principally upon water those six days. The same day, the European and Sikh soldiers came out under Lieutenant Brasyer, and after a desperate fight, completely routed the enemy. Several dead and wounded were brought where we were, as that was his head-quarters. The sight of these convinced us that the JEt 51. BENGALEE CHRISTIAN CONFESSORS. 349 enemies would take to their heels. They gradually began to disperse, and by the following morning not one remained. We then broke the stocks, liberated ourselves^, and came into the fort to our friends, who were rejoiced to see us once more in the land of the living. Ensign Cheke died the same day, after reaching the fort. His wounds were so severe and so numerous, that it was a wonder how he lived so many days, without any food or even a sufficient quantity of water to quench his burning thirst. It must be a great consolation to his friends to hear that he died in the fort and received Christian burial. I had not sufficient conversation with him to know the real state of his mind ; but the few words he ex- pressed, at the time when the villains fastened my feet in the stocks, led me to believe that he died a Christian, and is now in the enjoyment of everlasting rest in heaven. " Other dear English and native Christians were in similar dangers and trials, but many if not all were massacred ; yet we are still in the land of the living. The manifestation of God's grace to us at the time we needed it most, was infinite. It was nothing but His grace alone that kept us firm. The enemy tried his utmost to throw us down. He put forth, on the one hand, all the worldly inducements a person can conceive, if we renounced our faith ; on the other hand, he brought before us a sure death, with all the cruelties a barbarous man could think of, if we did not become Muhamniadans. But, thank God, we chose the latter. The sweet words of our blessed Saviour, which are recorded in the 18th, 19th, and 20th verses of the 10th chapter of St. Matthew, were strikingly fulfilled in our case : ' And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak : for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you."* When the Moulvie failed by arguments, threats, etc., in bringing me to renounce my faith, he appealed to my wife ; but she too, thank God, was ready to give up her life rather than become a follower of the false prophet. When she saw the Moulvie was in a great rage, and was ready to order us to be tortured, by taking off our noses or ears, she began to instruct the twin boys — ^ You, my children, will be taken and kept as slaves, 35^ I^I^'E OF DR. DUFF. 1857. while we shall be killed ; but remember my last words, do not forget to say your prayers both morning and evening, and as soon as you see the English power re-established, which will be before long, fly over to them, and relate to them everything that has befallen us.' ' For He said, Surely they are My people, children that will not lie : so He was their Saviour. In all their aflBiction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them : in His love and in His pity He redeemed them' (Isa. Ixiii. 8, 9)."' Gopeenath Nundi and his wife lived; after thus wit- nessing a good confession, to reorganize the Churcli of Futtehpore, but they soon after entered into the blessedness promised by the King : " Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven." Thus did Dr. DufE see his Mission at once tried and consecrated anew. The Church of India undoubtedly had a few cases corresponding to the lihellatici of that of the Roman Empire. Did not Europeans and Eurasians also in some instances fail in the hour of fiery temp- tation ? Repeat the Kalima, or creed of Islam, was the ordinary test, but in the native Christian woman's case the threat of the loss of honour was added to that of death ; yet the apostates were generally the ignorant drummer-boys, the only Christians admitted by a short- sighted Government into the Bengal army, from which every baptized sepoy was expelled. While the missionaries themselves were surprised by the steadfastness and the faith of converts whose physique was generally weak and their praB-Christian associations demoralizing, the Government, led by the great Punjabee heroes, began to see that Christianity meant active loyalty. Native Christians, among them Mr. S. C. Mookerjea, of Dr. Duff's College, manned the guns in Agra Fort. Within a fortnight of the receipt of the Meerut massacre the Krishnaghur Christians — weak Bengalees — vainly offered " to aid the Govern- ^t. SI. ACTIVE LOYALTY OP NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 35 1 ment to the utmost of our power, both by bullock- gharries and men, or in any other way in which our services may be required, and that cheerfully without wages or remuneration." Those of Benares under Mr. Leupolt, formed a band which defended the mis- sion till Neil arrived, and they joined the new military police till the Calcutta authorities forbade them. Not a few, even then, served as men and officers with the police levy which saved Mirzapore, and in Mr. Hodg- son Pratt's corps which gave peace to Hooghly. The German missionaries in Chota Nagpore offered the blinded Government of Bengal a force of ten thousand Christian Kols ; and the American Dr. Mason volun- teered to send a battaHon of Christian Karens from Burma. Even the Christians of South India pressed their services on the Madras Governor. But in every case the fear of an "invidious distinction'* was assigned by the Bengal authorities, to the scorn of Dr. Duff, as a reason for refusing such aid. Yet there had always been Christians and even Jews in the Madras and Bombay armies, and there were not a few, Protes- tant and Romanist in the 17th M. N. I., which was fighting in Hindostan against the rebels. When it was too late, and all Behar was threatened, the Bengal Government eagerly sent to the missionaries, who had been by that time forced to flee for their lives, accepting the magnanimous offer. Dr. Duff did not confine his sympathies and aid to native Christians only. He wrote thus on the .6th October, 1857: " To prevent all misconception with reference to missionaries, it ought to be emphatically noted, that nowhere has any special enmity or hostility been mani- fested towards them by the mutineers. Far from it. Such of them as fell in the way of the rebels were simply dealt with precisely in the same way as all 352 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1857. other Europeans were dealt with. They belonged to the governing class, and, as such, must be destroyed, to make way for the re-establishment of the old native Muhammadan dynasty. The same actuating motive led to the destruction of native Christians, and all others who were friendly, or supposed to be friendly, to the British Government. In this way it is known that many of the natives of Bengal, who, from their superior English education, were employed in Govern- ment offices in the North- West, and were believed to be favourable to the continuance of our rule, were made to suffer severely both in life and property. Some of them were sadly mutilated after the approved Muham- madan fashion, by having their noses slit up and ears cut off ; while others, amid exposures and sufferings, had to effect the same hair-breadth escapes as the Europeans. In short, I feel more than ever persuaded of the reality of the conviction which I entertained from the very first, that this monster rebellion has been mainly of a political, and but very subordinately of a religious character; and that the grand proximate agency in exciting it was a treasonable Muhammadan influence brought skilfully to bear on a soil prepared for its action by many concurring antecedent causes of disaffection and discontent. Brahmanical and other influences had doubtless their share in it; but the preponderant central element has been of Muham- madan origin, directed to the realization of the long- cherished dynastic designs of Muhammadan ambition. " By the natives generally no special animosity has been exhibited towards the missionaries or their doings. The very contrary is the fact. On this sub- ject the editor of the Calcutta Christian IntelligenceVy a clergyman of the Church of England, has been en- abled to bear emphatic testimony. 'If any European,' says he, ' is respected and trusted by the natives at JEt. 51. THE MISSIONARIES AND THE MUTINY. 353 present, it is the missionary. All the influence of pubUc officers and their agents at Benares could not succeed in procuring supplies for the troops and others from the country round ; but a missionary well known to the people is now going round the villages and getting in supplies for the public service. The mis- sionaries and their families are living, at that and some other stations, at some distance from the other residents and from the means of defence, and are sur- rounded by the people on every side. How remarkable is this state of things ! The Grovernment, who have always fondled and favoured superstition and idolatry, are accused of an underhand design to cheat the peo- ple into Christianity ; and the missionaries, who have always openly and boldly, but still kindly and affec- tionately, denounced all idolatrous abominations, and invited their deluded votaries to eiaibrace the gospel of Christ for their salvation — they are understood by the people; and, if any Europeans are trusted, the mis- sionaries are at present.' " One of Dr. Duff's inquirers of 1830-1834 was Duk- shina Runjun Mookeijea, a Koolin Brahman who edited the Bengalee newspaper Gijananeshun, or " Inquirer," which was of such service to the good cause. He had not joined the Christian Church, but had always dis- tinguished himself by promoting reforms among his countrymen, notably that of female education, in which he was the Honourable Drinkwater Bethune's friend. When the time came to reward actively loyal natives. Dr. Duff submitted his claims to Lord Canning. The result of his services in the Mutiny was that the Bengalee Baboo found himself a Raja, and Talookdar of Oudh, having a confiscated estate conferred on him. When in Lucknow he did much to found the Canning College, on the educational basis of the familiar Greneral Assembly's Institution. There he enjoyed the fre- VOL. II. A A 354 ^^^'^ OF DE. DUFF. 1858. quent counsels of Dr. Duff, as to his duties as tlie feudal lord of thousands of ignorant tenants. And there his earliest act was to create a model village bearing for ever the name of his honoured counsellor and benefactor, the Christian missionary, who thus acknowledged the beautifully oriental compliment : " A village reclaimed from the juDgle of a rebel is a singularly happy type of the building of living souls, whom I would fain reclaim from the jungle of ignorance and error. And if through your gen- erous impulse the village of Duffpore is destined to become a reality, how would my heart swell with grati- tude to God of heaven, were I privileged to see with my own eyes its instructed, happy and prosperous occupants.'* CHAPTER XXIV. 1858-1863. LAST YEARS IN INDIA. Some Fruits of DaflP's Earlier Labours. — Administrative Progress. — Growth of the Bengal Mission. — Sindia, Dinkur Rao and Major S. C. Macpherson. — Native Female Education. — Dr. T. Smith, Rev. J. Fordyce, and Mrs. Mallens. — Zanana Instruc- tion.— Duff's Caste Girls* Day School. — Death of Lacroix. — Missionary Methods and Christian Unity. — Deaths of Dr. Ewart and Gopeenath Nundi. — Revival Meetings and Ardent Longings. — Conference in Edinburgh on Free Church Missions. — Mr. Bhattacharjya and the Mahanad Rural Mission. — A Competi- tion-Walla's Picture of Duff's Spiritual Work. — The Condition of the Peasantry of Bengal. — Fluctuating Tenure, Rising Land- Tax and Rack-Renting, — The Indigo Riots in Nuddea. — Dr. Duff's Letter to the Commission of Inquiry. — Rev. J. Long and the " Neel Durpun." — The Educational Destitution of Bengal. — Mr. Drinkwater Bethune and the Bethune Society. — The Mis- sionary-President and his Work. — A Founder of the Univer- sity of Calcutta. — Departure from the Principles of the Charter of Education since Duff's time. — Trevelyan's Proposal that he bo Vice- Chancellor. — Repeated Illness ends in Dysentery again. — Voyage to China. — Shut up to accept the General Assembly's Invitation to become Foreign Missions Superintendent. — AH Classes and Creeds unite to Honour the departing Missionary. — Reply to the Educated Hindoos and Muhammadans of Bengal. — Estimates of his Indian Career. — Sir Henry S. Maine and Bishop Cotton. In the eiglit years ending 1863, which formed the third and last of Dr. Duff's periods of personal service in India, he enjoyed a foretaste, at least, of that which is generally denied to the pioneers of phil- anthropy in its highest forms. " One soweth and another reapeth,'* is the law of the divine kingdom. The five years from 1830 to 1835 had been a time 35^ I^II'E OF DR. DUFF. 1858. emphatically of sowiog the seeds of a new system, but that had borne early and yet ripe fruit in the first four converts. The eleven years which closed in 1850 had been a time of laying the foundation of a second organization and of consolidating the infant Church. But, thereafter, educated and representative converts, Hindoo and also Muhammadan, flowed into it. One year saw so many as twenty, while catechumens became catechists, these were licensed as preachers, and these ordained as missionaries, themselves privileged to at- tract and baptize converts from among all castes and classes of their countrymen. At one time Dr. Duff found himself alone in the Bengal Mission, with his earlier converts become his colleagues and only Mr. Fyfe at his side. At another he rejoiced in reinforcements of young missionaries from Scotland. All around he saw the indirect results of his whole work since 1830, in native opinion, British administration, and Anglo- Indian society, the progress of which, having reached an almost brilliant position under Lord Dalhousie, was not only not checked, but received a new impetus in the Mutiny under Lord Canning. He saw the beneficial results of the Charter of 1853, he delighted in the perhaps too radical and rapid changes introduced by the Crown in 1858. For no one then realized that every reform in India, and even every material im- provement to be carried out by the Public Works Department means money at last, increased taxation of the poor, diminished power on the part of the people to withstand natural calamities, increasing debt and the risk of dangerous political discontent. Up to 1863, at least, not only was nothing of this apparent, in spite of the cost of trampling out the Mutiny, but the opposite seemed likely to be the case. For Lord Canning, led by Colonel Baird Smith's report on the famine of 1860-61, had given a political bottom to JEt 52. ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES. 357 financial reorganization, in bis adoption of tlie prin- ciple of tixity in the land-tax and permanence of tenure, as sanctioned by tbe Crown under Lord Halifax and tlie Duke of Argyll subsequently, but raslily upset by their successors. And Mr. James Wilson, followed by Mr. S. Laing, had established the corresponding prin- ciple of direct taxation of the trading, manufacturing, capitalist, and official classes, at once as the comple- ment of such fixity and the corrective of the unequal incidence of the public burdens on the land and its poor cultivators. This too was departed from, after 1863, by their doctrinaire successors, with conse- quences which every year shows to be more alarming and incurable save by a return to the Canning- Wilson policy. Dr. Duff's Bengal Mission went on growing. It had never been so prosperous, spiritually and educa- tionally, as in the Mutiny year. Then it entered on the new college buildings in Neemtolla Street, for which he had raised £15,000 in Scotland, England and the United States. The first visitor was Sindia, the Maharaja of Gwalior, descendant of the Maratha who fought Arthur Wellesley at Assye. At that time the chief was only twenty-seven years of age, but he had given promise of the same vigour of character as well as loyalty to the paramount power, which were to save him in the Mutiny and advance him to ever greater honour under almost every Viceroy to the present day. He was especially fortunate in the guidance, as political agent, of Major S. Charters Macpherson, and, as prime minister, of the Raja Dinkur Rao. The former was well-known to Dr. Duff, who had written at length, in the Calcutta Ueview, on his remarkable success in suppressing human sacrifices among the indio^enous tribes of Orissa. The latter was after- wards selected by Lord Canning himself as the native 35^ LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1858. statesman most competent to sit in tlie imperial legis- lature in Calcutta, and his memorandum on the govern- ment of Asiatics is still of curious authority. The two " politicals," the Scottish son of the manse and the Maratha Brahman, had combined to make the Maharaja a sovereign wise for the good of the people and of himself. His Highness had come to Calcutta to be further influenced by the Governor-General. He inspected Dr. Duff's college and school, from the lowest to the highest class, as models to be reproduced in Gwalior, " The number of boys — about twelve hundred — appeared greatly to surprise him ; and he was still more surprised when informed that they all came to us voluntarily, and that, with very few exceptions, we did not know their parents or guardians. They came spontaneously, and received freely at our hands combined instruction in literature, science and the Christian religion. And when he realized tlie fact that ours was not a Government institution, but one sup- ported wholly by private Christian benevolence, he seemed lost in wonder. One inference which his wise Dewan very adroitly drew was this, — that if private beneficence could erect such an edifice, and sustain its living educational machinery, it would neve» do for the Maharaja of Gwalior to aim at the ultimate realiza- tion of anything inferior in the capital of his dominions. That the impressions produced on the whole party were not transient merely, will appear from this note which reached me from Major Macpherson: 'The Dewan (prime minister) is exceedingly anxious to have an interview with you, to consult you about his measures of education. You cannot think how highly delighted His Highness's ministers, and all the rest are with your Institution. Nothing could exceed their admiration; and the Dewan thinks it the great work of JEt. 52. THE MAHARAJAS SINDIA AND HOLKAR. 359 Calcutta. He would go to you at any hour and any place.' This morning the Dewan called at my house, and is to come again on Monday. The enlightened intelli- gence of this man is truly surprising. His measures of education for the Gwalior state will doubtless, according to our estimate, be defective in some vital points. But they will be instrumental in awakening multitudes, in a certain way, from the sleep and slumber of ages ; and, under a gracious Providence, may be overruled as preparing the way for more decidedly evangelizing measures hereafter. A visit like that now intimated seems also to prove how important it is to maintain an Institution such as ours, in the metropoUs of India, in a state of efficiency, and of a scale of magnitude fitted to attract strangers to it. The sight of it in active operation has heretofore stimulated not a few to go away resolved to attempt sometliing of the kind in their own neighbourhoods. To others it has suggested improvements in the routine of existing seminaries. And now it bids fair to exert an important influence on the education of myriads in Central India. It is a city set on a hill ; and any abatement in its efficiency would be regarded not merely as a loss to the many hundreds taught in it, but as, in some sort, a national calamity." Thus was reproduced on a larger scale the experience of a quarter of a century before. Then Bengal zemin- dars, other missionaries, and the Government of India itself, had copied the model. Now it was studied by tributary sovereigns for reproduction in distant native states. But, up to this year, no Christian mission has been established in Gwalior, though the way has ever since been open. Under the less tolerant Maharaja Holkar, the other Maratha capital of Indore has for some time been evangelized; while in Jeypore and other Eajpoot states the United Presbyterian Church 3^0 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1858. of Scotland has proclaimed the glad tidings ever since the Mutiny and massacres pricked the national con- science. In the instruction and Christian education of Hin- doo ladies this period witnessed a movement which is working a silent revolution in native society. We have seen the wisdom with which, for Calcutta and Bengal at least, Dr. DufE had determined to confine himself, at the outset of his career, to the education of boys and young men, not only for their own sake, but at once to create a demand for instruction in, and to ob- tain an entrance into, the jealously guarded zanana, or female apartments. Up to 1854 nothing had been done in this direction which had not failed as prema- ture. Poor girls under the marriageable age of puberty at ten or eleven, had been attracted to day-schools. There aged pundits taught elementary Bengalee to a few dozen children, conducted to and from the place by old widows, and paid a farthing each for daily at- tendance. This was all that was possible in the con- dition of Hindoo society at that time ; and the Chris- tian ladies are to be honoured who toiled on amid such discouragements. Even 1850 was the day of small things in girls' as 1830 had been in boys' education in Bengal. But the fathers of 1850 had been the boys of 1830, and the time was ripe for advance. When still a youthful colleague of Dr. Duff, in 1840, Dr. Thomas Smith had published an article urging an attempt to send Christian ladies into the zananas. In 1854 the attempt succeeded. The Rev. John Fordyce, whom, with his wife. Dr. Duff had with true foresight sent out to the Bengalee orphanage, grasped the oppor- tunity. Aided by Dr. T. Smith, he established the Zanana Mission, which the genius of Lacroix's daugh- ter, Mrs. Mullens, so developed, and Government has so encouraged, that it has become the most effectual ^t. 52. TEE ZANANA SCHOOL SYSTEM. 36 1 means for edacating the women of India. Mr. For- dyce secured the promise of two or three Hindoo gen- tlemen to open their houses to, and to pay for, the instructions of his ablest teacher, a European gover- ness who knew Bengalee perfectly. All that was wanted was a modest carriage, a vernacular primer, and the Bengalee Bible. In the quarter of a century since that day, zanana instruction has become a part of the work of almost every mission station, and Government has appointed lady inspectors to test the results for grants-in-aid. Many a despised widow, yet never a wife, seeking peace at distant idol shrines has thus found Him Who is our Peace. Not a few wives have thus come to Christ with their husbands, or have brought their husbands with them. Even the aged head of the household, the grandmother or great- grandmother, next to the Brahman the stronghold of India's superstition, may be seen sitting at the feet of Jesus with the little children. The process is slow; but, as it co-operates with that begun in 1830, and propagates itself, fed ever more largely by the love and the truth of English and American ladies, it will change the family life and all society. Is it not thus that nations are born ? But zanana instruction is only half the machinery. It supplies a training as expensive and necessarily partial as education by governesses alone in English homes. As nothing can satisfactorily take the place of family influence on the whole character of the young, so there is no good substitute for the well- conducted school in their daily education. Mr. Drink- water Bethune had prematurely built his school for high-caste girls, who were conveyed to and from the place in covered carriages, and were there carefully submitted to zanana precautions, those against Chris- tianity included. Even under Christian ladies, and 362 LIFE OF DR. DDFF. 1858. wlien personally supported by Lord Dalhousie, tlie school has dragged on a sickly existence, because this sort of neutrality is fatal to life of any kind. By 1857 Dr. Duff saw that some of the families of his old and present students were ready to send their ladies to a day-school where Christianity should no more be the only form of truth " tabooed " than it. was in the col- lege. One Brahman, whose house adjoined the college, was found courageous enough to supply the rooms for the school. Mr. Fordyce's zanana governess, having successfully established that system, now took charge of this new experiment, along with a venerable but efficient pundit. Carriages were supplied for the girls at a distance, as the popularity of the school filled its benches, but fees were paid. Under the widow of one of the native missionaries. Dr. Duff's female school has gone on prospering. Five years ago we witnessed, in all India, no more suggestive sight than that school presented in its daily routine. Its founder's account of the first year's experiment was this : " Calcutta, \lth May, 1858. " My Dear Dr. Tweedie, — It is now a twelvemonth since, amid endless uncertainties, I was led to commence the experi- ment of a native female day-school from among the better castes and classes of native society. Beginning with a mere handful, the number gradually increased in spite of much open and secret insidious opposition. Miss Toogood has been indefa- tigable in her exertions ; and so has the learned pundit, who is one of the masters in our Institution. Other native geatlemeu have, in many ways, quietly lent their aid and valuable encour- agement. The girls have been remarkably steady in their attendance, through the varied good influences brought to bear upon them. The intelligence which many of them exhibit, as well as capacity for learning, must be regarded as remarkable. Their liveKness and docihty make it a perfect pleasure to be engaged in instructing them. I have made a rule of visiting them almost regularly once a day on my way home from our JEt 52. HIS HIGH-CLASS GIRLS* SCHOOL. 363 Institution, so that, in my own miud, I have a perfect map of the progress of the whole of them in their varied studies from the beginning. '' At the end of our first year it was thought desirable to hold a public examination, to which a select number of native gentlemen, as well as European gentlemen and ladies might be invited. When this intention became known, the youthful heirs of the late milUonnaire, Ashutosh De — a name univer- sally known in European and native society — sent to inform me that they and the female members of their family would be delighted if we held the intended examination in their house, one of the largest and most striking edifices in the native city. I thought this too good an offer to hesitate for a moment in accepting it. Other native gentlemen also testified their ap- probation, not in words only, but by more substantial signs. A Koolin Brahman, who had from the first sent his grand- daughter to the school, came to me with seventy-two rupees, suggesting that, as a means of raising the m(n^al tone of native female society, a few scholarships, varying from one to two rupees a month, might be awarded to the best of the senior pupils, and thus encourage the girls themselves, as well as their parents, to prolong their attendance; while the small sum thus bestowed would no longer be regarded as of an elee- mosynary description, and therefore degrading to the feelings, but as the properly earned reward of superior diligence, atten- tion and merit. I thought the idea a good one, and resolved to appropriate the donation to a new experiment in this untried direction. With the same object in view another native gentle- man from the North- West, who lately called on me, a nephew of the great government contractor Lalla Persad, sent me seventy-five rupees. Another native gentleman sent a nice clock for the benefit of the school, when it re-opened. The native ladies of the family of Ashutosh De sent two handsome silver medals. Several other native parties sent ten rupees and five rupees, for prizes or presents, expressive of approba- tion. All of this was indicative of an interest in the very quarter whence it was most desirable that interest should be awakened, so that I felt more than rewarded for all the trials and troubles of the past — thanked Grod and took courage. "Here, at eleven, there were actually assembled of the native girls the following: — 1st class, 7; 2ud class, 11; 3rd class. 364 I^II'E OF DE. DUFF. 1859. 15; 4tli class, 12; 5tli class, 17, — in all, 62; and this for many montlis past lias been the average daily attendance. As the whole examination was in Bengalee, I need say no more than that all the native gentlemen present, who understood it, expressed themselves more than satisfied. Indeed, that within a twelvemonth, the elder girls who have been there all along, should have made such marked progress, can only be attributed to their own natural quickness, and the excellence of the tuition under Miss Toogood and the pundit. Their sewing is very neat ; with the elements of arithmetic, the general map of the world and of India, they are already familiar ; while many things connected with remarkable places are told to them oyd1\j. They read very distinctly, and write their own lan- guage with great accuracy in the formation of the letters and in spelling. For months past they have been reading Genesis with explanations by Miss Toogood, who orally conveys to them religious knowledge suited to their capacity. Whatever, therefore, may be the fate of the school in future, it has as- suredly started more auspiciously than the most sanguine would have anticipated. The first remark to me to-day of the junior magistrate of Calcutta — the first native gentleman who ever attained to that high office, a very liberal and enlight- ened Hindoo — was, ' Well, when you came to India, such a spectacle as this was an impossibility.^ The saying is true. That it has become a possibility now, is surely a proof how true it is that some progress has been made."" The year 1859-60 was a time of trial for the Mission staff. '* Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel ? " were the words from which Dr. Duff, on the 24tli July, 1859, preached a discourse on the life and the death of the great- hearted Swiss missionary Lacroix. The acquaintance begun on the first night of Duff's arrival in Calcutta, the 27th May, 1830, had ripened into what the sermon described as "a close and endearing friendship, severed only by death." The two men, both Presbyterians though of different churches and missionary methods, had much in common. Both were highlanders. JEt. 53. THE SWISS MISSIONAEY, LACROIX. 365 " Young Lacroix was unconsciously trained on the mountains of Switzerland to become one of the most effective of missionaries on the plains of Bengal. How did that iron frame, the product of mountain nurture, fit him to endure the fatigues and rough exposure of constant itineracies in this exhausting tropical atmo- sphere ! How did the endlessly varied and striking imagery with which his mind was so amply stored amid Alpine scenery, fit him for conveying Divine truth under the apposite and impressive forms of figure, trope, and graphic picturing, to the metaphor- loving people of these orient climes ! How did the enthusiastic love of civil and religious liberty, infused by the heart-thrilling tales of his country's double thraldom and double deliverance, fit him to sympathise with the millions of our practically enslaved rural population — groaning, as they have been for ages, and still are, under the ghostly domination of a Brahman- ical priesthood, the galling exactions of lordly zemin- dars, and the unendurable tyrannies of the myrmidons of ill-administered law and justice." To that passage Dr. Dufi" appended this note in the published sermon : " As a native of the Scottish Grampians and a de- voted admirer of the heroic struggles of Wallace and Bruce, Knox and Melville, in achieving the civil and religious liberties of Scotland, he felt himself possessed of a key to the interpretation of much in the character of his lamented friend that appeared singular or unin- telligible to others. Indeed, in congenial themes such as those above alluded to, both were led to discover a mutual chord of sympathy that vibrated responsively in each other's breast, and served to knit them more closely together in the bonds of a sacred brotherhood." In another note the apostle of the teaching thus wrote of the apostle of the purely preaching method 366 ' LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1859. of Cliristian Mlssious : " Thou£rli he laboured far more and far longer than any other man in the du^ect preaching of the gospel to myriads in their own ver- nacular tongue, and though no foreigner, in this part of India, ever equalled him in his power of arresting and commanding the attention of a Bengalee-speaking audience, yet the success vouchsafed to his faithful, acceptable and untiring labours in the way of the conversion of souls to God, for which he intensely longed and prayed, was comparatively very small ! But notwithstanding this comparative want of success, over which at times he mourned, he never once lost heart. On the contrary, with unabated cheerfulness and elasticity of spirit, he perseveringly continued to labour on to the very end, in the assured confidence that not one of the ' exceeding great and precious promises' would fail; and that, sooner or later, India, yea, and all the world, would be the Lord's. He con- stantly delighted in saying, that the Christian's busi- ness was to labour, and labour on — to plant and water, and water and plant, without wearying and without fainting — leaving all results to God ! From love to Christ, and in obedience to His command, he intensely felt it was his duty to work, and work on, in faith, whether privileged to witness any success or not. The work of sowing was his; the blessing of 'increase' was God's. And thus, with the exception of two years' absence in Europe, did he labour on for thirty- eight years, seeing little fruit of his labours, and yet labouring to the very end as cheerfully and ener- getically as if he were reaping a glorious harvest. * It will come, it will come, after I am dead and gone,' was his prevailing thought, ' for the good Lord hath said it; and it is not for me to scan His ways, or to know the times and the seasons which He hath appointed.' Thus, like the ancient patriarchs, did he ^t. 53. DEATH OF MISSIONARIES. 367 live, and labour, and die in faith, not having received the fulfilment of the promises, but assured that the fulfilment would come, when they that have sown in tears and they that reap in joy shall both exult over the product of their united labours, safely gathered into the garner of immortality.'* In his daughter Mrs. Mullens, and his son-in-law Dr. Mullens, now a missionary martyr in Central Africa, Lacroix gave to the Church successors of his own spirit. Duff's funeral eloge is redolent of the spirit of David's over Jonathan. Death did not stop there. In a few months, and in one afternoon, fell cholera carried off Dr. Ewart, emphatically " a pillar " of the Mission and Duff's student friend. And when, in March 186], he was rejoicing over the induction of the Rev. Lai Behari Day, called by the Bengalee congregation to be their minister, there passed away to the confessor's reward the spirit of the Hev. Gopeenath Nundi at Futtehpore. " Little did I dream when parting with him then, that it was the last time I was to gaze on that mild but earnest countenance ! Little did I dream when we knelt down together, hand-in-hand, in my study, to commend each other to the Father of spirits, it was the last time we should meet till we hail each other before the throne on high, as redeemed by the blood of the Lamb ! But so it has proved ! I mourn over him as I would over an only son, till, at times, my eyes are sore with weeping. It is not the sorrow of repining at the dispensation of a gracious God and loving Father ! Oh no ; but the outburst and overflow of affectionate grief for one whom I loved as my own soul. But he has gone to his rest ; ay, and to his glorious reward ! His works do follow him. There are spiritual children in Korthern India, not a few, to mourn over his loss. The American Presbyterian 368 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1861. Mission, wliicTi "he so faithfally served, will sorely feel his loss. Oh, when shall we have scores and hundreds clothed with his mantle and imbued with his spirit ? Will any of our young ministers, animated by like faith and hope, at once come out and fill up the gap — • or, if they will not, will they at least pray that native men may be raised up here in greater numbers, both able and willing to mount the breach ? Some day the Lord will take the work into His own hands, and then rebuke the lagfsfard zeal of those who will not come forward now to His help against the mighty. ' This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fast- ing.' What a volume of significancy have we in these words ! Long have all churches and societies laboured by all manner of imaginable plans, methods, and enginery to drive out the monster demon of Hin- dooism; and hitherto but with very partial success. Perhaps it may be to teach us all, that ' this kind will not go out but by prayer and fasting,' by real self- emptying, self-denial, and humiliation before God, ac- companied by fervent, importunate, persevering prayer. Instead, therefore, of acting any longer as ingenious schemers of new plans, or as critics, judges, and fault- finders with old ones ; were all of us, at home and abroad, to betake ourselves more to self-humiliation and prayer, perhaps even ' this kind ' of demoniacal possession would soon be seen * going out ' from the souls of myriads, to the praise and glory of Jehovah's omnipotent grace." Mr. Pourie had transferred his i&ne missionary spirit to the Free Church congregation, which he was too soon to leave to find in Sydney a grave instead of the health he vainly sought. Dr. Mackay, long an in- valid, was compelled at last to leave the work he loved, and died in Edinburgh. In time the Mission was reinforced by younger men. But all this added JEt 55. A MISSIONARY EEVIVAL. 309 to tlie burden laid on Dr. Diiff, himself fast aging from thirty years' toil. Every rainy season laid him low, to recover only temporarily during the brief vacation of the cold weather. And there came upon him the questioning of a new generation of ministers in his own Church, as to the nature and the wisdom of the missionary method which Dr. Inglis had suggested in 1824, he himself had established in 1830 and worked with such immediate spiritual results ever since, Dr. Chalmers had approved and eulogized time after time, and the other evangelical churches had carefully followed after first ignorantly opposing it. Such questioning called forth the closing passage of his letter on Gopeenath's death, and these ardent longings, at a time when he had begun, with other evangelical Christians in Calcutta, a series of revival meetings such as had turned many to righteousness in America and Ireland just before. " My own firm persuasion is, that whether we, the weary, toiling pioneers, ploughers, and sowers shall be privileged to reap or not, the reaping of a great har- vest will yet be realized. Perhaps when the bones of those who are now sowing in tears shall be rotting in the dust, something like justice may be done to their principles and motives, their faith and perseverance, by those who shall then be reaping with joy, and gathering in the great world-harvest of redeemed souls. In the face of myriads daily perishing, and in the face of myriads instantaneously saved under the mighty outpourings of the Spirit of grace, I feel no disposition to enter into argument, discussion, or con- troversy with any one. Still my impulses and tenden- cies are to labour on amid sunshine and storm, to leave all to God, to pray without ceasing that the Spirit may be poured out on Scotland, England, India, and all lands, in the full assurance that such outpourings VOL. II. B B 370 LIFE OF DU. DUFF. l86i would soon settle all controversies, put an end to all tlieorisings about modes and metliods and otlier im- material details, and give us all so much to do with alarmed, convicted, and converted souls, as to leave no head, no heart, no spirit, no life for anything else. Yes; I do devoutly declare that a great, widespread, universal revival would be the instantaneous and all- satisfying solution of all our difficulties, at home and abroad I Oh, then, for such a revival ! How long, Lord, how long ? When wilt Thou rend Thy heavens and come down ? When will the stream descend ? These, and such like, are our daily aspirations. We are like the hart, thirsting, panting, braying for the water-brooks. We feel intensely that it is not argu- ment, or discussion, or controversy that will ever win or convert a single soul to God ; that it is the Spirit's grace which alone can effectuate this ; and it is in answer to believing, persevering, importunate prayer, that the Spirit usually descends with His awakening, convicting and converting influences. Our weapon, therefore, is more than ever the Word of God, and the arm that wields it, prayer. Surrounded as we are by the bristling fences and the frowning bulwarks of a three thousand years* old heathenism, we crave the sympathies and the prayers of our brethren in more highly favoured lands. Painfully familiar as we are with the 'hope deferred' which maketh the * heart sick,' we often feel faint, very faint ; yet, through God's grace, however faint, we have ever found ourselves still ' pursuing,' still holding on, with our face reso- lutely towards the enemy, whether confi-onting us in open battle, or merely evading the sharp edge of the sword of the Spirit by timely flight. Our motto has ever been, * Onward ! onward ! ' no matter what might be the Ked Sea of difficulties ahead of us. But, oh, as men — men of like feelings and infirmities as others ^t. 55. RURAL MISSION AROUND MAHANAD. 37 1 — it would tend to clieer and hearten lis did we find ourselves encompassed with the sympathies and the prayers of brethi^en at a distance. Not that God has ever left us without some witness or manifestation of His favour. We have had our own share of spiritual success ; a goodly number of souls, from first to last, have been converted to God. For this we feel deeply grateful. But we long for thousands, yea, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, and millions ! Will the Church at home, if wearied of giving its moneys, assist us by a united, mighty host and army of prayers ? " His own Church held a conference of two days on the whole history and methods of its missions, in November, 1861. Their founders, Duff and Wilson, were absent, but the former sent home to Dr. Cand- lish, who presided, sixty printed octavo pages of what he termed " rough notes." These were meant to do what in 1835 he had accomplished by the living voice. The discussion resulted in only good. It dispelled ignorance, quickened the zeal of the Church, and called forth volunteers for the mission field. And it greatly helped Dr. Duff in a new extension of his rural mis- sion among the swarming peasantry of the county of Hooghly. From Mahanad as a centre, under the Hev. J. Bhattacharjya, he mapped out the district into circle schools where, with the assistance of the Vernacular Education Society afterwards, Bengalee preaching and teaching went hand in hand. There, ever since, that Brahman missionary has lived as the pastor of many native Christians, as the superintendent and in- spector of schools, as the adviser of the local author- ities in public questions aiFecting the peasantry so that Lord Norfchbrook selected him to give evidence on the subject before Parliament, as the referee of the magistrate in questions of taxation and education, and 372 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1862. as tlie guide, pliilosoplier, and friend of his Hindoo neighbours. We cannot better part from Dr. Duff's purely missionary work at this time than by looking at this picture of it, drawn by a competition- walla in all the frankness of a home letter. Dr. Duff had just returned from a long inspection of the remarkable results of the Lutheran Mission to the aboriginal Kols, on the uplands of Chota Nagpore. "Calcutta, 16^ Feh., 1862. "Last Sunday was the communion in Mr. Pourie^s chui'ch. I drove down with Aitckison (now Chief Commissioner of British Burma, then in the Foreign Office) and as we entered he was called into the vestry. What they wanted with him was soon apparent, for the E,aja of KuppurtuUa, preceded by Dr. Duff, walked up the aisle in full oriental costume. That was a stirring sight, and has, as yet, had few parallels. He listened most attentively to the sermon. When I called yesterday he was full of it. The Raja had expressed himself much interested in the sermon, ' especially,^ said he, ' in that part of it where the clergyman showed how it is that Christ's death is efficacious.' Kuppurtulla is a Sikh Raja of some con- sideration, who has his head-quarters at the town from which he takes his title, in Colonel Lake's commissionership. He is almost a Christian, and but for strong political reasons would probably come forward for baptism. From his estates in the Punjab and Oudh he has a revenue of £50,000. He has proved himself a firm friend of the American Missions. He entirely supports one missionary, and has written for another. In Kuppurtulla he has built a school, a church, and mission premises. " On Wednesday night Dr. Duff, who has lately returned from a two months' tour in Chota Nagpore, gave an account of a visit to that province. . . The Kols are by no means so rude and barbarous a race as they have often been represented to be. They are a mild and intelligent people, but addicted to demon-worship. The accounts we have been getting at home of the spread of religion among that people JEt 56. AT WOEK IN THE COLLEGE. 373 have been enormously exaggerated. Dr. DufiP inveighed against such misrepresentations, as calculated to dishearten people here and at home when the real state of the case is known. Bat he showed what a good work it was, deep-laid and progressive. He travelled over the district with the Commissioner (Colonel Dalton), who is a sincere friend to the cause. Very striking and affecting it was to hear him contrast the spread of Christianity there with what it has taken thirty years of labour to effect among the caste-bound races of Bengal, and then to listen to the triumphant anticipa- tion of the fall of Brahmanism. . . I have seldom felt such a profound respect and admiration for a man as I did for that veteran missionary, as he spoke to me with the tear in his eye of the cause to which he has given his life, at what cost his attenuated and enfeebled frame too well shows. " On the morning of Saturday Dr. Duff took us to his college. As he drove in at the gates of the handsome edifice the thousand scholars were fast gathering, and we were loudly saluted by cries of 'Good morning, sir.' . . The upper, or English division, is opened by a prayer from Dr. Duff. He stood in the verandah, or gallery, from which open off the various classrooms. He prayed, amid the deepest silence and apparent reverence, for the overthrow of idolatrous superstition and the spread of the knowledge of the true God in India. . . The highest classes, where the students averaged in age at least twenty-one, were engaged in reading Abercrombie's ' Moral Powers,' and underwent an examination in the text and cognate matters that testified unmistakably to their aptitude for philosophical acquirements. Dr. Duff has an admirable way of speaking to the lads. In every class we entered he took up the subject in hand in an easy and familiar way. With great tact he took the opportunity of illustrating by it some great practical, scientific, or moral truth, in a stj'le that delighted the students, even when it led them to laugh at the rehgious prejudices in which they had been brought up.^ )i In these later years the successive presidents at the annual examination of the college were Sir Bartle Frere, when in Lord Canning's Council ; Sir Henry Durand, and Lord Napier. Lady Elgin inspected the 374 ^^^^ 0^ ^^- DUFF. 1859. classes, but Lord Lawrence was the first Governor- General, soon after that, to make a state visit such as his predecessors had confined to the secular Govern- ment colleges. In the many questions of administration which the events of 1857-9 forced upon the Government and the country Dr. Duff took a keen interest. But, as a missionaiy, he was called upon to express his views publicly only when the good of the whole people was at stake. Two social and economic difiiculties in Bengal demanded the interference of Lord Canning's later government — the rack-renting of the peasantry by their own zemindars, and the use of their feudal powers by English landlords or lessees to secure the profitable cultivation of the indigo plant. None knew the oppression of the uneducated millions so well as the missionaries in the interior, who lived among and for the people, spoke their language and sought their highest good. Again and again the united Missionary Conference had petitioned the Governor-General for inquiry, and the result was the Charter granted by Parliament in 1853. But nothing came of that, at first, for the people, and again the Conference asked for a commission of inquiry, with the result thus described by Dr. Dufi" : " All being then apparently smooth and calm on the surface to the distant official eye, the necessity for inquiry was almost contemp- tuously scouted." But, as soon as the crisis of the Mutiny would allow. Lord Canning's legislature passed the famous Act X. of 1859 to res^ulate the relations of landlord and tenant. Competition then invaded pre- scription, but the Act was as fair an attempt to pre- serve tenant-right while securing to the landlord the benefit of prices and improvements, as Mr. Gladstone's, which was influenced by it, was in L^eland long after. That was the first of a succession of measures, down to JEt 53. AGRARIAN DISCONTENT IN BENGAL. 375 tlie last yenr of Lord Lawrence's Yiceroyaltj, passed to secure the old cultivators all over India in their bene- ficial ri^ht of occupancy and improvements, while regu- lating the conditions on which their rent could be enhanced. Unhappily, outside of the permanent tenure districts of Bengal and Oudh, our own thirty years leases and land-tax, often raised, tempted the landlord to squeeze his tenantry, and both frequently fell into the hands of the usurers and the underlins^s of our courts. But in 1859 neither zemindar nor ryot, neither Bengalee nor English landlord, knew his rights. Early in 1860 the peasantry of the rich county of Nuddea began to refuse to cultivate indigo, and to mark their refusal by " riots, plunderings, and burnings/' The system was bad, but it was old, it was of the East India Company's doing, and its evils were as novel to the Government of the day as the difficulty of devising a remedy was great. Sir J. P. Grant, the second Lieutenant-Governor, was able and well-inclined to the people ; but at the other end of the official chain and in direct contact with the culti- vators, there were young civihan bureaucrats who made impossible such kindly compromise and reforms as have since preserved a similar industry in Tirhoot. In the absence of anything like statesmanship any- where, and amid the animosities of the vested interests, the whole of Bengal became divided into two parties, for and against the indigo-planters. The result was the destruction of an industry which was worth a million sterling annually to the country. Authorities who, like Dr. Duff and the Friend of Indian dared to seek the good of the people while striving to preserve the industry, were scouted, were denounced in the daily press, and their very lives were threatened. An Act was hastily passed to enforce the peace and appoint- ing a commission of inquiry on which the missionaries 2^'j6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1859. and all classes were represented. To tliat Dr. Duff submitted a letter, which was published because of "the character and position of the writer," with the acknow- ledgment that it dealt '' in a very broad and compre- hensive spirit with the subject of popular education as the chief remedy for the evils disclosed." " With the bearings of the indigo system in a merely political or commercial point of view," he wrote, ** I never felt it to be any concern of mine in any way to intermeddle. But to its bearings on the moral and social welfare of the people, to the task of whose elevation from the depths of a debasing ignorance my whole life has been consecrated, I have always felt it incumbent to give due heed. . , In common with my missionary brethren of all churches and denominations, I repudiate with all my whole heart and soul anything like ill-will to indigo planters or hostility to indigo planting as such." The truth is, that the planters were the victims who suffered most from the Company's trade system and from the failure of the Queen's Government to give Bengal the legislative courts and police which it needed — till too late. A personal case occurred to add new bitterness to the conflict which swept away the planters altogether. The Rev. James Long, a patriotic Irish agent of the Church Missionary Society, who worked for and sym- pathised with the people, made special researches into their vernacular literature, at the instance of Govern- ment. He caused a Bengalee play, termed Neel Dur* fun, or the Indigo Mirror, to be translated into Eng- lish, and a valuable contribution to our knowledge of native opinion it was. But it libelled both planters and their wives, as a class. And the translation was officially circulated by the Bengal Office, which thus became a partisan. Still not one of these offences, whether in the original, the translation, or the circu- /Et. 53. UNJUST IMPRISONMEISTT OF ME. LONG. 377 lation, exceeded tlie extreme violence of the planters in the daily newspapers. In an evil moment the planters forfeited all the sympathy due to the sufferers by other men's misdeeds, by proceeding against Mr. Long for libel, not civilly, but by the unusual and persecut- ing course of criminal procedure, and that before the least judicial of the judges of the old Supreme Court. The missionary, whom at other times the planters re- joiced in, was sentenced, to the horror of the majority of them, to a fine of a hundred pounds — immediately paid by a Bengalee — and imprisonment for one month at the hottest season of the year. The jail authorities did their best to make him comfortable, and he held daily levees of the best men and women of Calcutta, including planters. Dr. DufF was doubtless one of the visitors ; what he felt, for his friend and for the cause of righteousness, this letter shows : "Saturday. " My Dear Mrs. Long, — Accept my best thanks for the note from your beloved husband. It was very kind of him to remember me, and of you to send me the note so promptly. I am glad that he is out of Madras. His stay there could only have prolonged excitement; and what he needs above all things now is rest, rest, rest, to mind and body. He should go up to the hills at once, and all day wander over the breezy heights, communing with dumb but grand nature, in her most glorious manifestations, — or rather, with the great God whose handi- work is so glorious. " This mail brings London papers. I am glad to see the Daily News, next in influence to The Times itself, take Mr. Long's part in the Neel Darpun case, and condemn the planters, jury and judge. — Yours very sincerely, Alexander Duff.'' The catastrophe of the imprisonment sobered all parties, and Dr. Duff's fervid fearlessness only made the best of the planters his warm friends. Bat it re- quired nearly ten years of public discussion, even till 373 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1859. Sir George Campbell became Lieutenant-Governor, to secure tliat primary education for which Lord William Bentinck had appointed Mr. W. Adam in 1835, and which Duff and others had never ceased to demand. A school cess, even in Bengal, now gives the dumb millions who pay it, a chance of knowing their right hand from their left. When the Christian Vernacular Society for India was established, — an agency for giving the East trained Christian teachers and a pure literature, for which the first Lord Lawrence worked almost to the day of his death, — the Bengal Missionary Conference appointed Dr. Duff convener of a committee to faciUtate its in- troduction into Eastern India. He drew up a remark- able paper on '' The Educational Destitution of Bengal and Behar," which the Conference published. Mr. Long, who, with Mr. Lacroix just before his death, acted with him in the committee, writes to us that Dr. Duff's " sympathy with the masses grew with his increasing acquaintance with India, and with the de- velopment of the vernacular press. At the close of our last meeting, I recollect his saying, with great emphasis, ' though our direct missionary methods are different, — one devoted to English education, au other to vernacular schools, and the third to vernacular preaching, — there is not one essential point relating to the work of Christian vernacular instruction on which we differ.' Dr. Duff subsequently spent three days with me at the Thakoorpookur mission of the Church of England, and no one could sympathise more strongly than he did in the plans I was working out for peasant education. We met every month at the Missionary Conference, the Tract and the Bible Society's com- mittees, in all of which he took a very active part. He never encouraged the practice of denationalising native Christians in dress, modes of life, or names. He did JPA. 53. MR. DRINKWATER BETHUNE. 379 not like to see native gentlemen attired in European costume, and, as a consequence of this expensive style, demanding, as in the case of some converts, equality of salary with Europeans, for he declared that instead of equality this would be giving them three times as much." It was honourable to the Hindoo gentlemen of Cal- cutta— a community Dr. Duff had done more than any other man to create and to liberalise — that, in 1859, they united with the leaders of English society there in entreating him to fill the seat of president of the Beth- une Society. That institute had been created seven years before, oji the suggestion of Dr. Mouat, to form a common meeting place for the educated natives and their English friends, and to break down as far as pos- sible the barriers set up by caste, not only between Hindoos and all the world beside, but between Hindoos and Hindoos. Such had been the social and intellectual progress since 1830, that the time had come to develop the debating societies of youths into a literary and scientific association of the type of those of the West. Mr. Bethune had just before passed away, his remains followed to the grave by the whole city. His name was given to the new society, which was intended to express the whole aims of his life. The son of the historian of the siege of Gibraltar, and one of the Con- galtons of Balfour in Fifeshire, Drinkwater Bethune became the fourth wrangler of Airey's year at Cam- bridge, gave himself to literature and the law, joined Lord Brougham as a leading spirit in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, made a reputation as a Parliamentary counsel, and on going to India as Macaulay's successor was appointed president of the Council of Education, and there founded the female school which still bears his name. The new society started on a purely secular basis. 380 LIFE or DR. BUFF, 1859. Afraid of triitli on all its sides, and timidly jealous of tliat wliicli liad made the natives of tlie West all tliey were, it was about to die of inanition. Dr. Duff, who had watched its foundation with interest but was pro- hibted from helping it bj its narrow basis, was urged to come to the rescue. He asked for a detailed explana- tion of the rule confining its discussions to any subject which may be included within the range of general liter- ature and science only. Dr. Chevers, the vice-president, obtained from the members the unanimous declaration that this did not exclude natural theology, or respectful allusions, as circumstances might suggest, to the his- toric facts of Christianity, and to the lives and labours of those who had been its advocates. Then the mission- ary gladly became president and worked a magical change. The theatre of the Medical College, where the society met every month, proved for the next four years to be the centre of attraction to all educated Calcutta, of whatever creed or party. The orthodox Brahmans were there, taking part in the intellectual ferment, through leaders like the Eaja Kalee Krishna. *' Young Bengal " had higher ideals set before it, and found a new vent for its seething aspirations. Native Christians took their place in the intellectual arena beside the countrymen whom they desired to lead into the same light and peace which they themselves had found. Maharajas, like him of Benares from whose ancestor Warren Hastings had narrowly escaped, when they visited the metropolis to do homage to the Queen in the person of the Viceroy, returned to their own capitals to found similar societies. And, besides the powerful fascination of the new president's eloquence and courtesy, there was the attraction of lectures from every Englishman of note in or passing through the city. To take only the first session, of 1859-60, Dr. Duff opened it with a lecture on the Else and Progress /Et. 53. PRESIDENT OF THE BETHUNE SOCIETY. 38 1 of Native Education. Professor E. B. Cowell, now of Cambridge, followed in a pregnant paper on the Prin- ciples of Historic Evidence, which are conspicuous by their absence all throuo^h the annals and literature of Asia outside of the Hebrew records. Colonel Baird Smith expounded the Philosophy of Irrigation, and then went to Madras to die; the loss of this great engineer-general, and son-in-law of De Quincey, calling forth from Dr. Duff a burst of foelingc. Colonel Yule poured out the stores of his quaint learning on Java and the Javanese. Mr. Don, the latest colleague of the president, wrote on the Methods and Results of German Speculation ; Dr. Mullens on the Invasions of the Roman Empire and of India; and Miss Mary Carpenter on Reformatory Schools. Archdeacon Pratt contributed a monograph on Sir Isaac Newton such as one of the first mathematical philosophers of that day alon^ could have written. But most valuable of all were the lectures, on Socrates, on Cambridge, and such subjects, of the head-master of Marlborough, whose name, as Bishop Cotton, will ever be associated with Heber's as the best and the greatest of Indian prelates. Alternating with such lecturers were the Bengalee scholars, Dr. K. M. Banerjea and Dr. Rajendralala Mittra, and not a few essayists, Muhammadan, Hin- doo and Christian. But that the society might not beat the air with mere talk, its very practical president organized it in six sections, of education, literature and philosophy, science and art, sanitation, sociology, and native female improvement, under the late Henry Woodrow, Professor Co well, Mr. H. S. Smith, Dr. Chevers, Mr. Long and Baboo Ramaprasad Roy re- spectively. These worked and reported results, duly published, with all the enthusiasm, and more than the method of the Social Science Congress and such bodies. Native society still looks back on the four brilliant o 82 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. i860. years of Dr. Duff's presidency. Thus for rich and poor, educated and ignorant, Christian and non-Christian, he did not cease to sacrifice himself, and always in the character of the Christian missionary who, because he would sanctify all truth, feared none. All this, however, was but the play of his evening hours. The absorbing business of his daily life for six years, next to but along with his spiritual duties, was to secure strictly - catholic regulations for the University and the grant-in-aid systems which his evidence in 1853, following all his life-work, had called into existence. He had no sooner returned to India after that, than he was nominated by the Governor-General to be one of those who drew up the constitution of the University, and he was fre- quently consulted by the Bengal Goverument on the principles which should regulate grants to non-official colleges and schools. So long as he remained in Calcutta he secured fair play for the liberal and self- developing principles of the education despatch of 1854. When he and Dr. "Wilson ceased to injfiuence affairs and rulers, the public instruction of India began to fall back into the bureaucratic, anti-moral and politically dangerous system, from which Lord Halifax thought he had for ever rescued it. In all the Presidencies great state departments of secular educa- tionists have been formed, which are permanent com- pared with the Governments they influence, and are powerful from their control of the press. Every year recently has seen the design of Parliament and the Crown, of both the Whig and the Conservative minis- tries, in 1854-60, farther and farther departed from, as it is expressed in this key-note of the great des- patch : " We confidently expect that the introduction of the system of grants-in-aid will very largely increase the number of schools of a superior order; j^A. 54. INl^LUENCE THEOUGH THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 383 and we hope that, before long, sufficient provision may- be found to exist in many parts of the country for the education of the middle and higher classes, inde- pendent of the Grovernment institutions, which may then be closed.'* The departure of the local govern- ments from this healthy principle grieved Dr. Duff even in his dying hours, because of all its consequences in undiluted secularism, amounting, in the case of individual officials in Bengal and Bombay, to the propagation of atheism more subtle than that which he had overthrown in 1830 ; in poUtical discontent and active attacks on the Government, of which more than one Viceroy has recently complained ; and in the financial mistake which upholds departments too strong for control, while killmg the only system that cares for the masses by making the wealthy pay for their own education. For the first six years of the history of the University of Calcutta, in all that secured its catholicity, and in such questions as pure text-books, and the establishment of the chairs of physical science contemplated by the despatch. Dr. Duff led the party in the senate, consisting of Bishop Cotton, Archdeacon Pratt, Dr. Kay, Dr. Ogilvie, Dr. Cowell, Dr. Mullens, Dr. K. M. Banerjea, Sir H. Darand, Bishop Stuart, Mr. C. U. Aitchison, Mr. Samuel Laing, Sir 0. Tre- velyan and the present writer. Of his leadership, affecting the books and subjects daily studied by the thousands of youths under the jurisdiction of the University from Peshawur to Ceylon, Dr. Banerjea has thus written : " To his gigantic mind the suc- cessive Yice-Chancellors paid due deference, and he was the virtual governor of the University. The examining system still in force was mainly of his creation, and although it may be capable of improve- ment with the progress of society, yet those who complain of the large area of subjects involved in it 3B4 ^^'^^ 0^ ^^' I^UFF. 1863. Seem to forget that narrow-mindedness is not a less mischievous evil than shallowness of mind. Dr. Duff was again the first person who insisted on education in the physical sciences, and strongly urged the estab- lishment of a professorship of physical science for the University. Although he first met with opposi- tion in official quarters, yet his influence was such that it could not be shaken." The Viceroy is, by his office. Chancellor of the University, and he appoints the Vice-Ohancellor for a term of two years. Lord Elgin naturally turned to Sir Charles Trevelyan, who had been sent out as his fiuancial colleague in council. But although the honour had been well won, that official would not wear it so long as it had not been offered to one whom he thus declared worthier : " Calcutta, 22nd March, 1863. ''My Dear Dr. Duff, — I have wrifcten to Sir R. Napier requesting that lie will submit to the Governor-General ray strong recommendation that you should be appointed Vice- Chancellor of the University, and entirely disclaiming the honour on my part if there should have been any idea of appointing me. It is yours by right, because you have borne without rest or refreshment the burden and heat of the long day, which I hope is not yet near its close ; and, what concerns us all more, if given to you it will be an unmistakable public acknowledgment of the paramount claims of national educa- tion, and will be a great encouragement to every effort that may be made for that object. — Very sincerely yours, Ch. Trevelyan. '' Alas ! by that time *' the long day '* was already overshadowed, so far as residence in India was con- cerned. The friend of his student days at St. An- drews, and of his later career. Dr. Tweedie, had been taken away. Dr. W. Hanna had taken up the duty of the home control of the Foreign Missions only long enough to show how well he would have exercised it Mi. 57. FORCED TO RETURN TO SCOTLAND. 385 for both India, Africa and the Church, if he could have continued to bear the burden. Dr. CandUsh had tem- porarily entered the breach. Again, as in 1847, the cry reached Dr. Duff, " Come home to save the missions." But neither Committee nor General Assembly moved him till another finger pointed the way. In the fatal month of July, 186e3, his old enemy, dysentery, laid him low. To save his life, the physicians hurried him off on a sea voyage to China. He had dreamed that the coolness of such a Himalayan station as Darjeeling would complete the cure. But he was no longer the youth who had tried to fight disease in 1834, and had been beaten home in the struggle. He had worked like no other man, in East aud AYest, for the third of a cen- tury. So, in letters to Dr. Candlish from Calcutta and the China Seas, he reviewed all the way by which he had been led to recognise the call of Providence, and he submitted. He returned, by Bombay and Madras, to Calcutta, and there he quietly set himself to prepare for his departure. The varied communities of Bengal were roused, not to arrest the homeward movement, the pain of which to him, as well as the loss to India, they knew to be over- borne by a divinely marked necessity, but to honour the venerable missionary as not even Governors had ever been honoured. At first, such was the instinctive conviction of the true catholicity of his mission, and the self-sacrifice of his whole career, that it was re- solved to unite men of all creeds in one memorial of him. A committee, of which Bishop Cotton, Sir C. Trevelyan, and the leading natives and representatives of the other cities of India were members, resolved to reproduce, in the centre of the educational buildings of the metropolis, the Maison Carree of Nismes. The marble hall, the duplicate of that exquisite gem of Greek architecture in an imperial province, was to be VOL. 11. 0 0 3^6 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1863. used for and to symbolise tlie catholic pursuit of truth on a basis not less broad and divine than that which he had given to the Bethune Society. But, as there were native admirers of the man who thought this too Christian, so there were many of his own countrymen who desired to mark still more vividly his peculiar genius as a missionary. The first result ace ordi ugly was the endowment in the University of Duff scholarships, to be held, one by a student of his own college, one by a student of the Eurasian institutions for which he had done so much, and two by the best students of all the affiliated arts colleofes, now fiftv-seven in number. The Bethune Society and the Doveton College procured oil portraits of their benefactor by the best artists. His own students, Christian and non-Christian, placed his I marble bust in the hall where so many generations of I youths had sat at his feet. And a few of the Scottish I merchants of India, Singapore, and China offered him I £11,000. The capital he destiued for the invalided I missionaries of his own Church, and for these it is now I administered by the surviving donors as trustees. On f the interest of this sum he thenceforth lived, refusing I all the emoluments of the offices he held. The only i personal gift which he was constrained to accept was the - house, 22, Lauder Road, Edinburgh, which the same friends insisted on purchasing for him. The valedictory addresses which poured in upon him, and his replies, in the last days of 1863 would fill a volume. Almost every class and creed in Bengal was represented. The forty or fifty members of the united Missionary Conference, of which he had been a founder thirty-three years before, thus poured out their hearts, testifying in the name of all the Reformed Churches, British, American and European, to the value of that system of evangelizing Brahman and Muhammadan which, a generation before, their predecessors had op- ^l. 57. FAREWELLS TO INDIA. 387 posed : " Thej cannot refrain from bearing their testi- mony to the distinguished service he has rendered to the cause of Christian education, by means of the Free Church Institution, during the entire period of his missionary life, and by his valuable counsels in the estab- lishment of the University of Calcutta in recent years. Nor do they forget the powerful influence exerted upon the Christian Church during his visits home by his able advocacy of the claims of missions. In parting with their beloved friend and brother, the Conference desire to convey to him afresh the assurance of their w^arm affection and esteem. They glorify God in him, and while they regret that missionary work in India is deprived of his personal services, they wish him, in the new sphere opened to him at home, the continued enjoyment of the Master's favour, and the possession of divine peace, so long as life lasts." Private friends, like Durand, and high officials who knew only his public services, made it, by their letters and memorials, still more difficult to say farewell to a land which the true Anglo-Indian loves with a passionate longing for its people and their civilizers. Yery pathetic wa^s his farewell to his own students, those in Christ and those still halting between two opinions. But most charac- teristic of his whole work, his spiritual fidelity, and his cultured comprehensiveness, was the reply to the grate- ful outpourings of the Bethune Society, representing all educated non-Christian Bengal. The whole pamphlet, address and reply, marks the difference between 1830 and 1863, and in that difierence the work he had done. Having passed the philanthropic and educative objects of the society in review, he reminded its members : "Much as I have delighted in these objects, it is not solely, or even chiefly for the promotion of these, that I was originally induced to exchange my beloved native Grampians with their exhilarating breezes, for 388 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1863. the humid plains of Bengal with their red and copper sky and scorching atmosphere. Oh, no ! There is on record no instance, so far as I know, of mere liter- ature, mere science, mere philosophy, having had the power to sever any of their votaries from the chosen abodes of cultured and refined society, and to send them forth, not for purposes of discovery or research, but on errands of pure philanthropy, unto strange and foreign lands. But what these have failed to do, Christianity has been actually doing in ten thousand instances during the last eighteen hundred years. And why ? Because, while it seeks to promote man's earthly good in every possible way and in the highest possible degree, its chief aim is of a vastly higher and more transcendent kind. It is this higher, nobler, diviner aim, which supplies the impelling motive to disinterested self-denial in seeking to promote the highest welfare of man. It is the grand end which Christianity professes to have in view, with the marvellous love which prompted it, that of saving, through the incarnation and death of the Son of God, immortal souls from sin, guilt and pollution, and of raising them up to the heights of celestial blessedness, which has been found potent enough to move numbers to submit to the heaviest sacrifices — to relinquish home and the society of friends, with all their endeai^ing associations and fellowships — to go forth into the heart of the wilderness and even jeopard their lives in the high places of barbarism. And the strength of the motive thus derived is enhanced by the assurance that the sovereign antidote here provided, in His wis- dom and beneficence, by God Himself, for the woes and maladies of fallen humanity, is fraught with peculiar power^'the power of God' — the power of a divine energy accompanying the preaching of the gospel ; a power, therefore, fitted and designed by the ^t. 57. FAREWELL TO THE EDUCATED HINDOOS. 389 Almiglity disposer of all influence, to operate on the mind of man, in all states and conditions of life, with a far more imperial sway than any other known agency. While this assurance, again, is mightily con- firmed by actual historic evidence that there is tliat, in its wondrous tale of unspeakable tenderness and love, in the awful solemnity of its sanctions, in the vitalizing force of its motives, in the terribleness of its threatenings, in the alluring sweetness of its promises, and in the grandeur and magnificence of its proffered rewards, which has been found divinely adapted to pierce into the darkest heathen intellect, to arouse into action its long slumbering faculties, to melt into contrition the most obdurate savage heart and enchain its wild roving desires and restless impulses with a fascination more marvellous and more absolute far than aught that fables yet have feigned or hope con- ceived. " Truly blessed, according to the records of history, are the people that know the joyful sound. Designed of heaven to reacli and penetrate all ears, to move and affect all hearts, it has already gladdened the homes of multitudes among all kindreds and tribes and peoples and nations. Having an intelHgible message of peace and goodwill for every man, in every place, at every time and under every varying circumstance, it has been wafted by heralds of salvation over every girdling zone of earth. TJnrelaxed by temperate warmth, unscathed by torrid heat, unbenumbed by arctic cold, it can point to its trophies in every realm of civilization, in every barbarian clime, in every savage island. As a conqueror it has entered the palaces of mightiest monarchs and raised into more than earthly royalty the tenants of the humble wigwam. It has controlled the deliberations of sages and senates, it has stilled the uproar of tattooed warriors wielding the ruthless toma- 390 LIFE OF DB. DUFF. 1863. hawk. It has caused the yell and whoop of murderous onslauofht to be exchaog^ed for the soft cadences of prayer, and the mellow tones of praise and gladness. It has prevailed on the marauding hordes of the wilderness to cast off the habits and customs of a brutish ancestry, and to emulate the improved modes and manners of refined society. It has impelled them to fling aside the bones and the beads, the paint and the feathers, which only rendered nakedness more hideous, and to assume the garb and the vesture be- fitting the requirements of decency and moral worth. It has successfully invaded the halls of science, and humbled proud philosophy into the docility of childhood. It has wrought its way into the caverns of debasing ignorance, and illumined them with the rays of celestial light. It has gone down into the dens of foulest in- famy, and there reared altars of devotion in upright hearts and pure ; it has mingled its voice with the ragings of the tempest, and hung the lamp of a glorious immortality over the sinking wreck. It has lighted on the gory battle-field, and poured the balm of consola- tion into the soul of the dying hero. It has made the thievish honest, the lying truthful, the churl liberal. It has rendered the slothful industrious, the improvi- dent forecasting, and the careless considerate. It has ensured amplest restitution for former lawless exac- tions, and thrown bounteous handfuls into the treasury of future beneficence. It has converted extravagance into frugality, unfeeling apathy into generous well- doing, and the discord of frantic revelry into the har- monies of sacred song. It has changed cruelty into sympathy, hatred into love, malice into kindliness and goodwill. It has relieved the poor and the needy, comforted the widow, and blessed the fatherless. It has, on errands of mercy, visited the loathsome dun- geon, braved the famine, and confronted the plague. JEt. 57. HIS FAITH AND HOPE. 39 1 Ifc has wrencbed tlie iron rod from tlie grasp of oppression, and dashed the fiery cup from the lips of intemperance. It has strewn flowers over the grave of old enmities, and woven garlands round the columns of the temple of peace. And if, in spite of these and other mighty achievements, which have followed as a retinue of splendour in its train, its success may not have been so extensive and complete as the transcend- ency of its divinity might have led us to expect. Chris- tians never allow themselves to forget that the ages which are past have only witnessed its birth-throes and infantile development in any land — that the time is fast approaching when it will display its giant form, and go forth in the greatness of its strength ; when it will thresh the mountains of error and of sin, and scatter them like the dust before the whirlwind on the summer threshing-floor, and when, with every darkening cloud evanished, it will arise and shine with the eff'ulgency of noon-day over an emancipated and renovated earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. " That bright and glorious era for India and the world I have long seen in the vision of faith. The vividly realized hope of it has often sustained me amid toils and sufferings, calumny and reproach, disappoint- ment and reverse. And the assured prospect of its ultimate realization helps now to shoot some gleams of light athwart the darkness of my horizon ; and, so far, to blunt the keen edge of grief and sadness, when about to bid a final adieu to these long-loved Indian shores. Some of you may live to witness not merely its blissful dawn but its meridian efl'ulgence; to me that privilege will not be vouchsafed. My days are already in ' the sere and yellow leaf ; * the fresh flush of vernal budding has long since exhausted itself ; the sap and vigour of summer's outbursting fulness have well-nigh gone, leaving me dry and brittle, like a 392 LIFE OF DR. DUFF, 1863. withered herb or flower at the close of autumn ; the hoar frost of old age — age prematurely old — grim wintry old age, is fast settling down upon me. But whether, under the ordination of the High and Holy One, Who inhabiteth eternity, my days be few or many ; whether my old age be one of decrepitude or of privi- leged usefulness, my best and latest thoughts will be I still of India. Wherever I wander, wherever I roam ; wherever I labour, wherever I rest, my heart will be still in India. So long as I am in this tabernacle of clay I shall never cease, if permitted by a gracious Providence, to labour for the good of India ; my latest breath will be spent i-n imploring blessings on India and its people. And when at last this frail mortal body is consigned to the silent tomb, while I myself think that the only befitting epitaph for my tombstone would be — ' Here lies Alexander Duff, by nature and practice a sinful guilty creature, but saved by grace, through faith in the blood and righteousness of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; ' — were it, by others, thought desirable that any addition should be made to this sentence, I would reckon it my highest earthly honour, should I be deemed worthy of appropriating the grandly generous words, already suggested by the exuberant kindness of one of my oldest native friends, in some such form as follows: 'By profession, a missionary ; by his life and labours, the true and con- stant friend of India.' Pardon my weakness ; nature is overcome; the gush of feeling is beyond control; amid tears of sadness I must now bid you all a solemn farewell." Such was bis last message; and these were the words in which the two men in India best able to estimate his deeds impartially, spoke of him officially to natives and to Europeans. Sir Henry Maine, who had succeeded to the position JEt. 57. SIR HENRY MAINE ON DR. DUFF. 393 of Yice-Cliancellor of the University, whicli illness kept Dr. DufFfrom then filling, said of him in convocation: " It would be easy for me to enumerate the direct services which he rendered to us by aiding us with unflcTgging assiduity, in the regulation, supervision, and amendment of our course of study ; but in the presence of so many native students and native gentlemen who viewed him with the intensest regard and admiration, although they knew that his every- day wish and prayer was to overthrow their ancient faith, I should be ashamed to speak of him in any other character than the only one which he cared to fill — the character of a missionary. Regarding him then as a missionary, the qualities in him which most impressed me — and you will remember that I speak of nothing except what I myself observed — were first of all his absolute self-sacrifice and self- denial. Religions, so far as I know, have never been widely propagated, except by two classes of men — by conquerors or by ascetics. The British Government of India has voluntarily (and no doubt wisely) abne- gated the power which its material force conferred on it, and, if the country be ever converted to the religion of the dominant race, it will be by influences of the other sort, by the influence of missionaries of the type of Dr. Duff. Next I was struck — and here we have the point of contact between Dr. Duff's religious and educational life — by his perfect faith in the harmony of truth. I am not aware that he ever desired the University to refuse instruction in any subject of knowledge because he considered it dangerous. Where men of feebler minds or weaker faith would have shrunk from encouraging the study of this or that classical language, because it enshrined the archives of some antique superstition, or would have refused to stimulate proficiency in this or that walk of physical 394 ^i^^ 0^ ^^- i^uFF. 1863. science, because its conclusions were supposed to lead to irreligious consequences, Dr. Duff, believing his own creed to be true, believed also that it had the great characteristic of truth — that characteristic which nothing else except truth possesses — that it can be reconciled with everytliing else which is also true. Gentlemen, if you only realize how rare this combina- tion of qualities is — how seldom the energy which springs from religious conviction is found united with perfect fearlessness in encouraging the spread of knowledge, you will understand what we have lost through Dr. Duff's departure, and why I place it among the foremost events in the University year." Dr. Cotton, the Bishop of Calcutta, in his metro- politan Charge, finely characterized Duff, and thus un- consciously answered the ignorant objections of a new generation to his system : *' I need hardly remind you that such a view of evangelistic work in India as I am now trying to sketch was especially carried out by that illustrious missionary whose loss India is now lamenting, and whose name, though it does not adorn the Fasti of our own Church, yet may well be honoured in all Churches, not only for his single-eyed devotion to his Master's cause, during a long and active service, but for the peculiar position he took up in India, at a most important crisis. " It was the special glory of Alexander Duff that, arriving here in the midst of a great intellectual movement of a completely atheistical character, he at once resolved to make that character Christian. When the new generation of Bengalees and too many, alas ! of their European friends and teachers were talking of Christianity as an obsolete superstition, soon to be burnt up in the pyre on which the creeds of the Brahman, the Bhuddist and the Muhammadan ^t. 57. BISHOP COTTON ON DR. DUFF. 395 were already perisliing, Alexander Duff suddenly burst upon the scene, with his unhesitating faith, his indomitable energy, his varied erudition, and his never- failing stream of fervid eloquence, to teach them that the gospel was not dead or sleeping, not the ally of ignorance and error, not ashamed or unable to vindi- cate its claims to universal reverence ; but that then, as always, the gospel of Christ was marching forward in the van of civihzation, and that the Church of Christ was still * the light of the world.' The effect of his fearless stand against the arrogance of infidelity has lasted to this day ; and whether the number he has baptized is small or great (some there are among them whom we all know and honour), it is quite certain that the work which he did in India can never be undone, unless we, whom he leaves behind, are faith- less to his example." CHAPTER XXV. 1864-1867. IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA.— TEE MISSIONARY PROPAGANDA. Last Farewell to India. — In the Hotsptir with Captain Toynbee. — Reviewing the Past. — Spiritual Musings. — Death of a Missionary's Wife. — First View of the Kaffrarian Coast. — Cape Town on the Thirty-fourth Anniversary of the Shipwreck. — The First Mission- ary to the Hottentots. — EfiPorts of Ziegenbalg and Martyn for South Africa. — Dr. Duff's Wagon Tour from Genadenthal to Maritzburg. — With Bishop Gray during the Colenso Trial. — Preaching and Reorganizing at Lovedale and Burnshill, Pirie and King William's Town. — Dr. Livingstone. — Edinburgh, Perth and Aberdeen. — Lord Lawrence Visits the Calcutta Institution in State. — Duff's Plan of a Missionary Professorship, Institute, and Quarterly Review. — The CoUegio di Propaganda Fide. — Raymond Lull and Walaeus. — Cromwell's Protestant Council. — Duff's Ex- perience at St. Andrews. The Professorship Endowed. — Cor- respondence with H. M. Matheson, Esq. — The Institute and the Quarterly Postponed. — The Science of Religion. So Alexander Duff said farewell to India. He might have sought rest after the third of a century's toil. He was nearing, too, the sabbatic seventh of the three- score and ten years of the pilgrimage of man — a de- cade to which many great souls, like his own master and friend, Thomas Chalmers, had looked forward as a period of calm preparation for the everlasting sabbath- keeping. But Duff was again leaving India, and for the last time, only to enter on fourteen years of cease- less labour, as well as prayer, for the cause to which he had 2*1 ven his life. It was well for him that some months of enforced rest were laid upon him. These were still the days of Cape voyages, about to be made ^t. 57. VOYAGE TO CAPE TOWN. 397 things of the past for the majority of travellers by the Suez Canal. In the spacious cabins and amid the quiet surroundings of the last and best of the old East Indiamen, the convalescent found health ; while the invalids whom nothing could save in the tropics, and who too often now fall victims to the scorchino- of the Red Sea route, had another chance or a lenorthencd spell of calm before the bell sadly yet sweetly tolled for burial at sea. The wearied, wasted missionary, attended to the ghaut by sorrowing friends, went on board the Hotsjpur, on Saturday, the 20th December, 1863. Not only in the ship, but in Captain Toynbee, who is known as one of the foremost of Christian sailors, was he peculiarly fortunate. That officer has supplied these reminiscences of the voyage as far as Cape Town : " Knowing how many were grieving at Dr. Duff's departure from India, it could not fail to strike us that the ' proper lesson ' read in the morning ser- vice the next day was Acts xx., with the words, 'And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him; sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more ; * and Dr. Duff then so weak that he could only sit quietly by and listen. By the time that we had been a week at sea, however, he said that, though he could take no share in the Sunday morning service, as it was held in the open air which would make speaking too fatiguing, he would like to say a few words after the evening prayer. He began, taking the Ten Commandments as his subject, in so low a tone that it was difficult to hear ; but his enthusiasm seemed to overcome even the physical weakness, and his voice was full, and his lan- guage grand, as he preached for nearly an hour. All enjoyed and admired those sermons, which he con* tinned in a series each Sunday evening until we reached 398 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1863. the Cape, none ever complaining of their length, though their effect on himself was seen in his fatigued look the next day. We had invalid soldiers on board. He soon found out the sick men and visited them, holding a short service on the lower deck every day. He also interested himself in a school amongst the soldiers' children, and in the illness and death of Mrs. Ellis, the wife of a missionary going home for her health. Though his health improved he continued very weak. Being a very poor sleeper, he used to look sadly worn some mornings after a rough night ; but there was never anything approaching to complaining on his part, only a patient smile, and the remark, ' I heard my friend,'' as he called one of the sailors whose harsh voice had waked him more than once. The contrast between his patience and the impatience of others on board who were not so ill as he was, was noticed even by the servants. A young cavalry officer on board re- marked to me, * If all missionaries were like Dr. Duff, India would be a different place.' " The morning he spent in his cabin, but in the evening he used to come on deck and sit enjoying the glories of sky and sea, for which he had intense ap- preciation. He conversed with so much interest and animation that those were times of rare enjoyment. Sometimes he told us of his varied travels; once of his shipwreck. I was struck by the accuracy of his memory, which could, after so many years, reproduce the whole scene so correctly as not in any point to jar on the fastidiousness of a nautical ear ; and more than once by the deep feeling he entertained for the kind- ness shown to him when he was leaving India, and by his own sorrow that it was impossible for him, consis- tently with a right regard to health and power of use- fulness, to remain in Calcutta so long as life should be granted to him. When he left the ship in Table Bay, ^.t. 57. THEN AND NOW. 399 he was warmly cheered both by soldiers and sailors. Those who had been admitted to the high privilege of nearer acquaintance with him felt that the weeks he had spent on board had been truly ' a time of refresh- ing * both intellectually and spiritually." In the brief ship journal which Dr. Duff kept, we have these traces of his musing and his working : — Monday y 2\st December , 1863. — " To-day, about noon, had the last glimpse of Saugar Island, i.e. in reality of India. I remember my first glimpse of it in May, 1830. How strangely different my feelings then and now ! I was then entering, in total ignorance, on a new and untried enterprise ; but strono* in faith and buoyant with hope, I never wished, if the Lord willed, to leave India at all ; but by a succession of providen- tial dealings, I had to leave it twice before, and now for the third and last time. It has been the scene of my greatest trials and sufferings, as also, under God, of my greatest triumphs and joys. The changes — at least some of the more noticeable ones — were stated in my reply to the Missionary Conference. My feelings now are of a very mixed character. The sphere of labour now left had become at once familiar and delightful. If health be restored, my future is wrapped in clouds and thick darkness. I simply yield to what I cannot but believe to be the leadings of Providence, which seem to peal in my ears, 'Go forward ! ' and from the experience of the past my assured hope is, that if I do go forward, in humble dependence on my God, ^ light will spring up in my darkness.' I began my labours in 1830 literally with nothing. I leave behind me the largest, and, in a Christian point of view, the most successful Christian Institution in India, a native Church, nearly self-sustaining, with a native pastor, three ordained native missionaries, besides — with catechists and native teachers — flourishing branch mis- sions at Chinsurah, Bansbaria, Culna, Mahanad, etc. For all this, I desire to render thanks to the good and gracious God, Whose I am, and Whom I am bound to serve with soul, body and spirit, which are His. '^Some periods of my career were very stormy ones, especially the first and second. During the first I was in perpetual hostile collision with natives, who abused and insulted me 400 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1863. beyond measure in private and in tlie newspapers ; and also with Europeans, such as the ultra-orientalists, relative to the basis of education and its lingual media; and the lawyers, such as Longueville Clarke, on the rights of conscience in inquirers under legal age. During the second period I was still in violent conflict with all chisses of natives on a vast variety of subjects. At one time some of ^ the lewd fellows of the baser sort,' beaten down in argument, and confounded in their attempts to confute Christianity and de- stroy the Christian cause, entered into a conspiracy against my life. Lateeals or clubmen were hired to waylay and beat me in the streets. A timely discovery and exposure of the whole prevented execution. With the Governor-General, Lord Auck- land, I came into violent collision on the subject of education, and all the hosts of officials, secular journalists, and worldlings joined in one universal shout against me, of derision, scorn, con- tempt and indignation. Under all these oppositions I simply endeavoured to possess my soul in patience ; and conscious of the rectitude of my motives, and having a conscience void of offence toward God and man, I prayed God, in due time and in His own way, to vindicate the right and enable me to love my enemies. The third period of my sojourn has been less stormy ; and, praised be God ! I now leave India in the happy assurance that in ways unspeakably gracious, and on my part undeserved. He has ' made even my enemies to be at peace with me.^ Oh, what shall I render unto the Lord for all His goodness ? *^ At the close of 1833 I was for three weeks in a pilot brig at these Sandheads, while recovering from a severe jungle fever, with my dearest and then only child, who also was suffering from ague. To the south of Kedjeree we saw the DuJce of Yorh East Indiaman of 1,500 tons high and dry in a rice field, having been carried there in the tremendous cyclone of the preceding May, — perhaps the severest on record. The embankments were everywhere broken down. The sea rolled inland for scores of miles. Myriads perished. In some parts, as we passed we saw poor emaciated mothers off'ering to us their skeleton-like children for a handful of rice. The whole of Saugar Island was seven or eight feet under water. Plantations, cleared at a great expense, were de- stroyed ; and for years afterwards salt and not rice was the ^t. 57. DEATH OF A MISSIONARY'S WIFE. 4OI product. They are only now tolerably recovered. In carry- ing on the draining;, European superintendents resided in bun- galowSj raised ten or twelve feet from the ground^ to escape malaria, wild beasts, etc. Monday, 28th. — " Yesterday, and especially to-day, had much enjoyment in my own soul. The first three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans appeared more wonderful than ever in their delineation of man^s fearful apostasy from God, his utter helplessness and hopelessness, and the unspeakably glorious remedy in the unspotted righteousness of Christ. This illus- trates to my own mind the true doctrine of Scripture develop- ment. It is not the revelation of any new truth, but the un- folding of truth already there, in new connections and new applications, showing in this new expansion of it (as it appears to the more highly illumined soul) a breadth and extent of significancy not previously discerned. Thursday, Slst. — '^ The last day of the year. What a year to me ! In some respects the most memorable of my life ; for in it, in a way unexpected, the Lord, by His overruling provi- dence, has not only altered but reversed the cherished purpose of thirty-four years, which was to live and labour and die in India. Having already, in many forms, expressed my mind on this subject, I shall say no more now, but this : ' Oh, may the Lord make it increasingly clear to me that I am really doing His will — really seeking, in sole obedience to His will, to pro- mote His glory ! ' January \st, 1864. — ^' God in mercy grant that this year may unfold more clearly to my own mind and inward and outward experience His gracious purpose in blasting the cherished wishes and purposes of my whole ministerial life. What work, 0 Lord, hast Thou in store for me wherewith to glorify Thy holy name ? Oh for light on this still dark and most perplexing subject ! But I wait, 0 Lord ! — I wait — I wait on Thee. Tuesday, 19th. — *' The sea tempestuous — half a gale. I could not go to Mrs. Ellis as usual between 10 and II a.m. At noon made an effort to see her. She had suddenly become worse, and the captain wished me to tell her her case was critical. I could do so with all confidence, for previous conversations with her showed that she was a true follower of the Lamb. Calmly and resignedly to His holy will she spoke, placing her whole YOL. II. D D 402 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. . 1864 trust and confidence in Him, and in Him alone. ' Justified/ she said, 'by His blood/ she had nothing to fear for her- self, though she feelingly alluded to her husband, her mother and sisters at home, and two young children aboard. Soon after I left her I was obliged again to lie down, and was pros- trated the whole day and evening. She died, or rather fell gently asleep in Jesus, about eleven o'clock last night, and this morning at a quarfcer-past seven was most solemnly consigned to the deep, in her case looking with assured hope to the resurrection of the body, when tlie sea shall give up her dead. The captain read the English service, and all present were affected even to tears. The presence of the two children, too young to know their loss, touched the hearts of all. 21st. — "This forenoon another soldier died of dysentery, and in half an hour after was consigned to the deep. Captain Strange reading the funeral service. I had been seeing hira daily of late; he was very ignorant — could not read. I again and again reiterated the- simple principles of the gospel, and prayed with him, but without much satisfaction. To encounter the languor, weakness, and pains of a death-bed, ignorant of the very elements of the gospel ! oh, it is a lamentable con- dition indeed. Captain Strange is a very worthy kind-hearted man, particularly attentive to all the wants of the soldiers, temporal and spiritual. 2Srd. — " About 200 miles north of Madagascar. Last night very sleepless. Milton and Cowper, my favourite poets, read as a balm, acted on my turbid spirits somewhat like the spicy breezes from Araby the Blest on the senses or imagination of the old mariners. It is the rare combination of genuine poetry with genuine piety which achieves this result. Being now south of the Mozambique Channel, the wind has changed from S.E. to N.E., and is warmer. The term Mozambique reminds one of the adroitness with which Milton drags every- thing which constituted the knowledge of his time, by way of similitude, illustration, or otherwise, into his wondrous song. Keferring to Satan's approach to Paradise — delicious Para- dise— and to the way in which he was met and regaled by ' gentle gales,^ which, ' fanning their odoriferous wings, dis- pense native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole those balmy spoils,^ he thus proceeds : iEt. 58. COASTING KAFFEARIA. 403 * As, when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambio, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest, with snch delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.' 27th. — " Last night saw two lights in the direction of the land. A stellar observation showed we were opposite Buffalo River and Mountains. To-day off the eastern extremity of Algoa Bay, so that I must go back the whole distance traversed this morning, our Mission stations being in Kaffraria, east of the Keiskamma River. 29tk. — " At noon exactly off Cape Agulhas, the most south- erly point of Africa. With my binocular, Durand's parting gift, the lighthouse seen with great clearness. The coast high, bleak, rugged, barren, recalls the exclamation of one of the Scottish emigrants under Mr. Pringle, who arrived in 1820, somewhat farther to the west, near Simon's Bay : ' Hech, sirs, but this is an ill-favoured and outlandish-looking country. I wad fain hope, that thae hieland hills and muirs are no a fair sample o' our African location.' The dazzling white masses of sand — white as the driven snow — painfully remind me of Dassen Island, on which we were wrecked, 13th Feb., 1830 surrounded, except ab one point, by low rocky reefs, and itself a waste of white sand, in which the penguins lay their e^g^, and on which we mainly subsisted for about three days ! Praised be God for our wonderful deliver- ance then, and our continued preservation ever since ! I approach the termination of my present voyage with peculiar feelings — knowing no one at Cape Town, a journey inland of 700 miles before me, with not a glimpse of light, as yet, on the course to be pursued. But I approach in faith, because in the path of duty, humbly trusting that, when the time comes, light will arise on my darkness, to the praise and glory of a good, gracious, covenant-keeping God ! SOth. — " A furious south-easter ! Happily we had turned the Cape, so that the vessel was kept close on to the shore. At dawn we were a little to the south of Table Mountain, the loftiest of that wild and rugged mountain mass which stretches from Table Bay to the Cape, against which, as a 404 ^IPSl OF DE. DUFF. 1864. mighty breakwater, the stupendous billows of the confluence of all the great oceans for ever dash and roar. The wind being off land the sea was comparatively smooth, while the gale blew with the force of a hurricane. All around the sky was cloudless, except the summit of Table Mountain, which was covered as usual with a dense mass of clouds, its famous table-cloth. The whole scene was singularly grand. The waves rolling and curling and breaking into spray, and the spray whirled aloft by the furious gusts, gave the appearance all around of a dazzling white mist ; and dashing on the rocks that line the shore seemed to cover them with an elevated bank of foam and vapour, the mountain behind looking down in vast precipices, and towering aloft into mid-air, in rounded tops, or conical peaks, or rugged serrated ridges. At last the sun breaking through the upper edges of the clouds over the Table Mountain, and shining down on shore and sea, gave such a profusion of lights and shades a,nd colours, as no pencil could adequately portray. When fairly abreast of Table Moun- tain we could not be above half a mile from the shore. To the north-west of the Table Mountain, and separated by a high pass, is the singularly shaped hill which, as seen from Table Bay, resembles a gigantic lion couchant — the southern terminus of it called the Lion's Head, and the northern. Lion's Rump. When close under the head this morning, it looked like a mighty mitre (of cardinal or pope) resting on a dome-like cranium. On the rump we could see the signal flag. Below the rump, at its northern extremity, is Grreen Point, covered with beautiful villas and gnrdons; passing it, the whole of Cape Town, embosomed in the vast cul de sac or corrie of the mountain came into full view. The instant we rounded the point, the wind, which was strong enough before, blew with double fury across the level open between Table Bay and False Bay. But by skilful zigzag tacking the captain beat his way into the anchorage, in the very face of the hurricane fury of the south-easter, casting anchor exactly at half-past eight a.m. I felt impelled at once to enter my closet, shut the door, and return unfeigned thanks to my heavenly Father for the prosperous voyage to this place. Exactly on the evening of this day six weeks I embarked at Calcutta. What reason of gratitude have I for all God's mercies ! The servant who was wont to attend on me tapped at my cabin door, saying JEt 58. AT CAPE TOWN AGAIN. 405 that a gentleman from the shoi'e wanted to see me. It was about five minutes to nine, and we had not been anchored quite half an hour. Who should it prove to be but the Rev. Mr. Morgan, minister of the established Scotch Kirk, to take me to his manse.''' To His Wife. '' Genadentlialj Moravian Mission, IBfJi Feb., 1864. ''This is the thirty- fourth anniversary, ahke according to the day of the week, the day of the month and the hour of the night, of our ever memorable shipwreck on Dassen Island. How different my position this evening, in South Africa ! Comfortably lodged with the Moravian Brethren in this far- famed village, — the oldest and most populous of all South African Mission stations, — I feel, as it were, forced by the very contrast, to realize more vividly the night scene of thirty-four years ago on these South African shores. What changes and events have been crowded into these thirty-four years ! And yet, contrary to all ordinary expectation, both of us still, by God's mercy, in the land of the living, to celebrate Jehovah's loving- kindnesses. Oil, for a live coal from the altar to kindle up this naturally cold and languid heart of mine, so constantly apt to sink back into sluggishness and apathy, into a glow of seraphic fervour, in the review of God^s unspeakable mercies ! " In order to see somethinof of the woi'kin*^: of other Missions, I soon resolved to proceed to Kaffraria by the ordinary land route, 'i'he distance is about 700 miles — about the distance from John o'Groat's House to Land's End in Cornwall. This implied my getting a wagon and eight mules. All this prepar- ation occupied nearly a week, during which I saw many of the Cape Town notabilities. The Bishop and Dean, etc., called on me. The Ilonble. Mr. Rawson (whose acquaintance I made in Calcutta in 1849,) the Colonial Secretary, was so pressing in his invitation, that I went out with him to his beautifully situated house at Wynberg, and stayed over the night. The next day he took me to call on some of the notables of the place ; taking lunch with the Bishop, and ' I also went out to spend good part of a day with Dr. Adamson. Old Mr. Saunders is still living, and full of inquiries about you. " On Saturday, 6th Feb., I went by train (for there is a rail- way line of fifty-eight miles, to Wellington, N.E. of Cape Town) to Stellenbosch, thirty-one miles. Tnere I stayed with Mr. 406 LIFE OP DK. DUFF. 1864. Murray, one of the professors of the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church. His uncle was the late Dr. Murray, of the Free Church, Aberdeen. There saw the Wesleyan and Rhenish Mission schools, etc. Monday 8th, went by rail on to Wellington, its utmost limit. There saw a French mission: Ou Tuesday I went by covered cart, across a striking pass to Worcester, upwards of forty miles distant. There I stayed with Mr. Murray, minister of the Dutch Church, and brother of the professor, both most able and devoted men. There saw the Rhenish Mission schools. Wednesday, returned to Stellenbosch. Thursday, went out with Professor Murray to Piniel, twelve miles off, to see an independent self-sustain- ing mission, under a Mr. Stegman, who is in connection with no society. " To Eerse River, where I expected to find my wagon waiting for me. There finding all right, after breakfast I set off, in a S.B. direction and close to False Bay, crossed a lofty pass, called Sir Lowry Cole's Pass after the governor who sent the sloop of war to take us from Dassen Island. The custom in travelling here is, at the end of two or three hours, to stop and unyoke the animals (or, according to Colonial Dutch phraseology, to outspan), let them take a roll in the sand, and browse about, and drink water, for an hour. Towards evening came to a small inn, the only one between Cape Town and Genadenthal. I did not like the look of it ; so the evening being dry and weather pleasant I slept in my wagon. On Saturday I proceeded to Genadentlial, and the Moravian missionaries with their children and higher students were out in a green hollow, with carts, waiting to salute me.'' Christian Missions in South and East Africa are the offspring of those in India. It was Ziegenbalg, the first Protestant missionary to India, who, after a passing visit to the Cape in 1705, induced the United or Moravian Brethren to evangelize those whom the Dutch called Hottentots. Georg Schmidt, a Bohe- mian Bunyan, was no sooner freed from his six years'' imprisonment for Christ's sake, than, in 1737, he went out to Cape Town. He was with difi&ciilty allowed by the Dutch to begin his mission in Affenthal, in the ^t. 58. MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE IN AFRICA. 407 hills eighty miles to the east. There he did such a work in the " valley of apes " that a Dutch Governor long after changed its name to the " valley of grace," or Genadenthal. The Boers banished him to Holland, and it was left to the British to begin missions anew. What Ziegenbalg had urged Henry Martyn repeated. Standing beside Sir David Baird, as, in 1806, the British flag: a second time waved over the Dutch fort, the evangelical missionary-chaplain of the East India Company prayed " that the capture of the Cape might be ordered to the advancement of Christ's kingdom." From Genadenthal the great light radiated forth, east and north, amid the wars and butcheries which it would have anticipated, till now, after three-quarters of a century, a sixth of the whole population of South Africa, up to the Zambesi, is Christian. There are 180,000 native and 358,000 colonist Christians.* From south to north, from the Cape to the Nile mouths, an ever strengthening chain of missionary stations now draws Africa to Christ. Dr. Duff went to Africa to inspect those of his own Church, which had begun in Kaffraria in 1821, after the Kaffirs had been driven north behind the Keis- kamma. Divided, after the Disruption of 1843, between the Free and the United Presbyterian Churches, por- tions of which still imagine the existence of a purely metaphysical difference of opinion on the subject of the relation of the Church to the State, these Missions must be united again before there can be an indigenous Kaffir Church. Dr. Du:ff began, as his letters show, by personally inspecting and stimulating, while he learned (Experience from, all the Missions along the great trunk route east from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, north-east by Grahamstown to King Williamstown * South Africa and its Mission Fields, by Rev. J. E. Carljle. 1878. 408 LIFE OF DE. DUFF, 1864. and the stations in British Kaffraria, then north through the Orange Free State, and then east again into Natal. The time was three years before the first diamond was found. The season was unusnallj wet but cool. At Port Elizabeth the Eastern Provinces Herald thus reported how he met with the sailor who had saved his wife's life in the memorable ship- wreck : " Mrs. Duff would have perished but for the dauntless bravery of the second mate. Singularly enough when Dr. Duff visited this port he happened to be here also, and no sooner did he know of the arri- val of the veteran missionary than he hurried to the Rev. Mr. Eennie's house once more to see him. The meeting was very aflecting, Dr. Duff being unable to conceal his emotion at so unexpectedly beholding the preserver of his wife." The second mate had become Captain Saxon. Ecclesiastically all South Africa was in a commotion, not for the christianization of the forty or fifty mil- lions of Kaffirs, but because of sacerdotal and also evangelical struggles between Bishop Gray, claiming to be Metropolitan of Africa, and Dr. Colenso, insisting on remaining Bishop of Natal. But for the sacer- dotalism involved, the defence of Christian truth by Bishop Gray, and especially by Dean Douglas, after- wards Bishop of Bombay, would demand the unqualified gratitude of the whole Church. On the evangelical side of it Dr. Duff was so strongly drawn to Bishop Gray that he wrote to him several letters, two of which appear in the prelate's Biography. " Among the many letters of the period, the Bishop," writes his son, ** was pleased with one from Dr. Alexander Duff, a well-known Free Kirk missionary from India, who was at that time travelling in Africa. ' Since my arrival,' he says, * I have been perusing, with painful yet joyous interest, the trial of the Bishop of Natal for JEt 58. THE TRIAL OF BISHOP COLENSO. 4O9 erroneous teaching, painful because of the erroneous teaching, joyous because of the noble stand made by your lordship and the clergy at large for true primitive apostolic teaching.' " Again, from Maritzburg, where he heard the Bishop's charge, Dr. Duff repeated his expressions of sympathetic appreciation. But we know, from a conversation which we had with him immedi- ately on his return from x\frica, that he did more than this. At Wynberg, where the Bishop and he sat up a whole night discussing the history and cause of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, Dr. Daf£ demonstrated to the sacerdotal Metropolitan, who had denounced '' the Privy Council as the great Dagon of the English Church," that the spiritual independence inalienable from any Church worth}^ of Christ's name and spirit is not, and was not in the Free Church struggle, the supremacy of priests and prelates who un- church others by the fiction of " the grace of orders," but the right of the whole body, lay and clerical, as a kingdom of priests unto God, to worship Him, and administer all purely spiritual affairs solely according to conscience and without interference by the State, which has no jurisdiction there whether it endow the Church or not. '* Hence," said Dr. Duff to a prelate of whom the High Church party are proud though they still lack the courage of their convictions, ** your remedy is secession, with its initial sacrifice of state support and social prestige." The practical commentary on Dr. Duff's teaching was the action of Dean Douglas, whose indictment of Bishop Colenso in the metropoli- tan's court is a master-piece of evangelical theology. Yet when Bishop of Bombay he publicly declared that there could be no true or acceptable Christianity in India which did not flow from himself and those who like himself (and the Latin and Greek Churches) imagine they have " the grace of orders." 4IO LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1864. Dr. Duff began his work as representative of the committee of Foreign Missions, at its principal South African station of Lovedale, on the 17th March, 1864. The station is 650 miles north-east of Cape Town, and forty from King Williamstown. There to the presbytery, in conference, " he gave a long and interest- ing address in a low voice, often speaking in a whisper," according to the local report. The scholarly work of the Rev. W. Govan, founder of tlie chief missionary institute in the colony, he broadened and developed, alike on its industrial and educational side, following his Calcutta experience. At that time the Kaffir Christian community of the Lovedale district was 965 strong, of whom 345 were communicants. From Lovedale, nestling in low hills like Moffat, he proceeded to the large station of Burnshill, fifteen miles to the east, among the Amatole mountains, once Sandilli's capital, in the very heart of the scenes of five Kaffir wars. On the eastern side of these hills is the Pirie station, then conducted by the veteran Rev. John Ross, at that time forty years in the field. At all, and at King Williamstown, Peelton, and elsewhere, he preached through interpreters and mastered every detail of the work, putting it in a new position alike for greater efficiency and expansion. Thence ho pursued the still long and difficult track through Basutoland with its French Mission stations, delayed by swollen and unbridged rivers and tracks impassable for the rain. But the climate he pronounced as in the main a fine one, in which Europeans enjoy as good health as in Australia. At Queenstown, in April, he saw hoarfrost for the first time for many years. Delayed by natural obstacles, and often tempted to turn back, he wrote from Winbargh in the Orange Free State, " I am content to go on, having only one object supremely in view, to ascertain the state and ^t. 58. FAREWELL TO SOUTH AFRICA. 4II prospects of things in tliese regions in a missionary sense, so as to have authentic materials for future guidance if privileged to take the helm of our Foreign Mission affairs." After reaching Maritzburg, where he had much intercourse with Bishop Gray, and being attracted by the success of the Rev. Mr. Allison, at Edendale, he returned by steamer from Port Natal to Cape Town, where he received a public breakfast. Thence he sailed in the Sccxgu, — named after the second mate of the Lady Holland, — to England, which he reached in July. The fruits of his six months' tour of inspection we shall trace in the consolidation of the old, and the creation of new missionary agencies for Africa. While he had been at work in the south, Livingstone was exploring in the east and the centre of Africa, and both were unconsciously preparing for united action for the christian ization of the Kaffir race, from the Keiskamma to the head of Lake ISTyassa. As Duff was leaving Natal for the Cape, Livingstone, having completed his great Zambesi expedition of 1858-18c4, was boldly crossing the Indian Ocean to Bombay in the little Ladij Nyassa steam launch manned by seven natives who had never before seen the sea. Dr. Duff reached Edinburgh just in time to address the " commission " of the General Assembly, on the 10th August. Speedily he took his way north to his own county of Perth, in order to take part in the ordination of the Rev. W. Stevenson as a mis- sionary to Madras. The city hall could not contain the crowds to whom, after a sermon by John Milne surcharged with his Calcutta experiences. Dr. Duff addressed burning words on zeal in Foreign Missions the evidence of a revived Church. In Aberdeen, whence the Countess welcomed him to Haddo House, he had strength, a week after, to take part in the 412 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1864. ordination of anotlier missionary to Madras. " Not- withstanding bis enfeebled health his voice was dis- tinctly heard over the large audience, and his eloquent and seasonable address was listened to with close attention and evident delight," is the record of the local reporters. Soon there arrived from Calcutta intelligence which increased his activity before he was physically equal to the strain. A cyclone, more disas- trous in the destruction of life and property than any he had witnessed or has since been experienced, swept over the mouth of the Gausses on the 5tli October. From Calcutta to Mahanad the hurricane levelled not a few of the mission buildings, churches, schools and houses. The Kev. K. S. and Mrs. Macdonald, then in charge, reported that sixty girls in the Calcutta Orphan- age, and their own children, were nearly buried und( r the ruins of the old house. In a few hours after receiv- ing the news the sympathetic veteran, well knowing all that the disaster involved, organized an effort to raise two thousand pounds, and really sent out five thou- sand. This rash waste of returning strength had its result in his enforced absence from the General As- sembly of 1865 ; but Dr. Murray Mitchell, who re- presented him, announced a home income for Foreign Missions in the previous year of £27,000, besides £3,000 reported by Dr. James Hamilton to the Synod of the English Presbyterian Church as annually con- tributed for its visrorous mission in China. At this period, too, Dr. Duff was cheered by the fact that, for the first time in the history of British India, a missionary college — his own — had been formally visited by a Governor-General. Sir John Lawrence had learned, in his Punjab and Mutiny experience, the truth which he thus expressed in a formal repre- sentation to Lord Canning, the first Viceroy : " Sir John Lawrence does entertain the earnest belief that JEt. 58. JOHN LAWEENCE S CHRISTIAN POLICY. 413 all those measures wliicli are really and truly Christian can be carried out in India, not only without danger to British rule, but, on the contrary, with every ad- vantage to its stabihty. Christian things done in a Christian way will never, the Chief Commissioner is convinced, alienate the heathen. About such things there are qualities w^hicli do not provoke nor excite dis- trust, nor harden to resistance. It is when unchristianl ^ things are done in the name of Christianity, or when! | r4~* Christian things are done in an unchristian way, that|f mischief and danger are occasioned. The difficulty is, amid the political complications, the conflicting social considerations, the fears and hopes of self- interest which are so apt to mislead human judgment, to discern clearly what is imposed upon us by Chris- tian duty and what is not. Having discerned this, we liave but to put it into practice. Sir John Lawrence is satisfied that, wuthin the territories committed to his charge, he can carry out all those measures which are really matters of Christian duty on the part of the Government. And, further, he believes that such measures will arouse no danger ; will conciliate instead of provoking, and will subserve to the ultimate diffusion of the truth among the people." The pro- consul of the Punjab, who wrote these words, went further, urging the Viceroy that this policy " be openly avowed and universally acted on throughout the Empire," " so that the people may see we have no sudden or sinister designs, and so that we may exhibit that harmony and uniformity of conduct which befits a Christian nation striving to do its duty." When he himself was called by critical times to the same high office, his Excellency visited in state and presided at the first examination of Dr. Duff's college held after lie landed, just as he inspected the Government col- leges and presided as Chancellor of the University. 414 I^I^E OF DR. DUFF. 1865. What a change from even Lord William Bentinck's time, — from the days when Macaulay used his Indian experience to dogmatize to Mr. Gladstone on Church aud State 1 We have not Dr. Duffs letter to the Governor- General, but this was the simple reply of the \ Viceroy, whom, as they lately laid him to rest beside j Livingstone and Outram and Colin Campbell, in the I nave of Westminster Abbey, the Dean most truly pro- I nounced to be the Joshua of the British Empire: John Lawrence to Alexander Duff. '' Fehruaryy 1865. — I have had the pleasure of receiving your letter of the 31st January, and I am sure that I wish I could have been of more service to the Free Church Institution than I have been, for it is calculated to do much good among the superior classes of Bengal society. The advances they have made in education since I was a young man are very remark- able, bat it is too generally in secular knowledge only. Your Institution seems to be the only one in which a large number have the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Chris- tian religion also, and certainly, if we can judge from outward appearances, they have not neglected to do so.-" Now that Dr. Duff was fairly and permanently in Scotland, he felt that the time had come to lay broad and deep in his own country and Church the founda- tions of that missionary enterprise to which he re- garded all his previous home campaigns as prepara- tory. Here, as in India, he must leave behind him a system based on and worked by living principles, which would grow and expand and bless the people long after he was forgotten. Financially his quarterly associations were well, but they would be worthless if not fed by spiritual forces and not directed by spiritual men. And he had learned, even in the first year after his return, to be weary of the narrow controversies and sectarian competition which, though inseparable from such a time of transition as that through which ^t. 59. HIS MISSIONAEY PROPAGANDA. 415 Scotland, like all other countries, is passing to a re- constructed Kirk, are hostile to catholic energy and spiritual life. So he determined to launch his scheme of a Missionary Propaganda — of a professorship of Evangelistic Theology, a practical Missionary Insti- tute, and a Missionary Quarterly Review. No building is so familiar to the eyes of the many English and Americans who annually winter in Rome as the Collegio di Propaganda Fide. Standing on one side of the Piazza di Spagna, fronted by that hideous specimen of modern statuary which was erected by Pio Nono to commemorate the myth of the Immacu- late Conception, the college looks like a desolate bar- rack or theatre, out of which long files of youths march every morning and evening for a little fresh air. Yet, unattractive as is the building designed by Ber- nini, and forbidding the whole aspect of the place, there is no spot in Rome so fall of modern interest and so free from all that Protestants are accustomed to dislike in tlie long papal capital. Two centuries and a half ago the fifteenth Gregory founded that col- lege, to be the nurse of missionaries and the retreat of scholars from all parts of the earth. There, in lan- guages more numerous than those in which the public are invited to confess to the priests who flit about St. Peter's, youths of almost every tribe and nation and kingdom and tongue are fitted to go forth to tell the story of the Cross — and something more, unfortunately — to the heathen world. A library of thirty thousand volumes, rich in oriental manuscripts and works bearing on the superstitions of man's reli- gions, supplies an armoury for the student. The Museo Borgia, which boasts a portrait of the infamous Pope Alexander YI. side by side with the famous Codex Mexicanus, contains specimens of the idols, the arts and the industries of every country in the world 41 6 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1865. from China to Peru. And the Propaganda is com- pleted by the possession of a printing establishment, which turns out works in almost every language, of rare typographical beauty as well as considerable scholarship. There, under professors who are them- selves generally returned missionaries, upwards of a hundred and twenty youths are always under traiuiag to work in that field which is the world, whose har- vests are ever white for the sickle which there are so few reapers to wield, DufE had long been fascinated by the idea of a nur- sery of evangelists, from lona and the capitular bodies of the old cathedrals to that tolerated for a time by the Dutch under "Walseus at Leyden, in 1612, and to the great creation of Gregory XY. in 1622. Nor should it be forgotten that ** the philosophic missionary," the pioneer of all martyr-missionaries in Africa, Raymond Lull, had implored the Pope and the princes of Europe to found Christian propagandas. In 1311 he obtained from the Council of Vienna a decree for their estab- lishment in the Universities of Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca; while, in his own Majorca, he procured the foundation of a monastery for the instruction of thirteen students in Arabic and the Muhammadan controversy. When Cromwell used to play with the proposal to make him king, he declared to the Grison, Stoupe, whom he used as a trusty agent in foreign a:ffairs, that he would " commence his reign with the establish- ment of a council for the Protestant religion," in opposition to Gregory's Propaganda, which had pro- duced the slaughter of the Vaudois and Milton's sonnet. In old Chelsea College the council were to train men, and from it they were to help in the evan- gelization of Scandinavia and Turkey, of the East and West Indies, as well as of the Latin Church. In ^t. 59- ^ MISSIONAET PROFESSORSHIP. 417 1677 Dr. Hyde would Lave made Christ Churcb, Oxford, a " Collegium de Propaganda Fide.'* The father of all Christian scientists, Robert Boyle, when an East India director, revised the project for India which Prideaux advocated under the reign of William in 1694. And, so long ago as 1716, one of the earlier chaplains of the East India Company, Mr. Stevenson, urged the establishment of colleges in Europe to train missionaries and to teach them the lanofuasfes. " When passing through the theological curricu- lum of St. Andrews," said Dr. Duff to the General Assembly, *' I was struck markedly with this circum- stance, that throughout the whole course of the curri- culum of four years not one single allusion was ever made to the subject of the world's evangelization — the subject which constitutes the chief end of the Christian Church on earth. I felt intensely that there was something wrong in this omission. According to any just conception of the Church of Christ, the grand function it has to discharge in this world cannot be said to begin and end in the preservation of internal purity of doctrine, discipline and government. All this is merely for burnishing it so as to be a lamp to give light not to itself only but also to the world. There must be an outcome of that light, lest it prove useless, and thereby be lost and extinguished. Why has it got that light, but that it should freely impart it to others ? Years afterwards, on the banks of the Ganges, we heard that this Free Church had determined to set up its Hall of Theology, and that Dr. Welsh had succeeded so remarkably in procuring funds — thanks to those who have been so liberal since, the merchant princes of Glasgow 1 — that besides the ordinary theo- logical chairs, there were to be chairs of Natural Science, Logic, and Moral Philosophy, all demanded by the peculiar necessities of the times. I could not VOL. II. E E 4l8 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1 866. help feeling tliat now was tlie time for advancing a step farther, and on tlie spur of the moment was led to write to my noble friend Dr. Gordon, the Convener of the Indian Foreign Missions, to the effect, that surely this was the time and occasion for setting up a chair for Missions — in short, a Missionary Professor- ship ; that as the Free Church in her General Assembly had started as a missionary church, her New College should start as a missionary college. On my second return from India I talked of the subject to various in- fluential men in the Church, amongst others to the late Dr. Cunningham, who approved highly of the object ; but even he did not think the time was ripe for it. Crossing the Atlantic, I was wont to talk of it much to our friends in America ; and there was one Synod of the Presbyterian Church there that agreed to instruct its professor of theology to make this a distinct sub- ject of his prelections, namely to lecture on E vangelistic Theology ; and that is the only lectureship of the kind that I know of. On my last return from India I felt intensely, looking at the state of the country generally, that there was still much need of such a professorship, and perhaps the more need, because the world is more agitated and restless than ever, and young men more flighty, because of the multitude of secular open- ings in every direction.'* I An endowment of £10,000 was at once supplied uor the chair by men of various evangelical Churches. When the General Assembly of 1867, with whom the appointment of the first professor rested, could not agree as to which of two experienced missionaries, from Calcutta and Bombay, should be appointed to it, Dr. Duff was most unwillingly compelled to accept the appointment by the unanimous call of his Church. The donors, while sharing his enthusiasm, had desired to honour him by calling the chair by his name. This JEt. 60. COEEESPONDENCE WITH ME. H. M. MATHESON. 419 at least he prevented. They secured their personal as well as missionarj object far more effectually, as they and he thought, by stipulating only that the professor- ship should be of the status, and be devoted to the subjects his irresistible statement of which had led them to supply the capital of the endowment. Other- wise the money was made over unconditionally to the General Assembly, and by Dr. Duff as the representa- tive of the donors — of whom he himself was one — without legal document and so accepted by the Assem- bly in the act legislatively creating the professorship, " with consent of a majority of presbyteries.'* Dr. Daft was so jealous, in his Master's cause, of attempts made by a few ministers and professors to minimise the chair as novel to or inconsistent with the theological course of Protestant — and up to his own time non-missionary Churches — that immediately be- fore the meeting of that General Assembly he thus took care to secure the deliberate co-operation and formal consent of the donors. All have survived him, and their strong opinions in favour of the continuance of the chair as he devised it are known to his Church. These letters to the largest of the donors, H. M. Mathe- sou, Esq., have been submitted to us by that generous elder of the Presbyterian Church of England. ''17th May, 1867. '^Mt Dear Mr. Matheson, — , . As regards the mis- sionary professorship — to my own mind it is most perplexing, and despite all my endeavours and prayers fills me with an anxiety that is well nigh crushing and overwhelming. (1) I know not what your views are with regard to the proposal emanating from many quarters, that the chair should be left open to the appointment of a home minister as well as a foreign missionary. Some of the contributors, I know, would decidedly object to this, except in a case, not likely I hope ever to arisej viz., the Church's declaring that, among all her foreign 420 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1867. missionaries, retired or in the field, there was not one reasonably competent to fill it. And (2) I know not what your views are with reference to another proposal, which has gained extensive favour, viz., that, after the first appointment, it would be left open to make all subsequent ones only tempo- rary, or for a few years — thus reducing the professorship to a lectureship, and depriving the occupant of the chair of that accumulating influence over students and others which the status of a professor and long experience undoubtedly give. Some of the contributors, I know, would object to such an innovation in the case of the missionary chair. And I confess it is altogether different from my own understanding of the subject when applying to parties for contributions. Now if the Church were to sanction either or both of these proposals, and any of the contributors were to object, and decline to give their moneys unless the proposals were set aside, you can see what a dilemma we should be in, and how harassing such a dilemma to my own mind. 20lh May. — " I have no words wherewith to express my in- debtedness to you for the relief which your letter, received this morning, has afforded to my sorely burdened spirit. My own trust, all along, has been in a good and gracious God. I could not but believe that the cause was His ; and I had some- thing of an assurance that, if so. He would not sufi'er it, in the end, to be wholly defeated. And yet, in spite of all this I could not, in the hour of nature's weakness, amid apparently insuperable difficulties, help being filled with anxieties, and that too in very proportion to the greatness and goodness of the cause which seemed on the verge of shipwreck. You may judge then of the relief which such a letter as yours at once afforded m^. I could not help falling down on my knees to thank God for it; ^nd the very first words which came into mind were literally these : ^ 0 thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ? ' In the course of my own strangely chequered life I have had so many palpable answers to prayer, that I now feel deeply under a sense of the sin and shame of having, for a moment, given way to unbelieving doubts at all in connection with a cause that so vitally concerns the honour and cause of the adorable Saviour. 2bth May. — '*" I have to thank you for your last kind note ; but delayed replying to it till I could report definitely on the Mt 6l. FIEST PROFESSOE OF MISSIONARY THEOLOGY. 42 1 two points previously alluded to. Having now seen Candlisli, Buchanan and otlier leaders, I am warranted to say that all are of one mind on the subject ; and that, in some suitable way, provision will be made to ensure in all time coming the appointment of an experienced foreign missionary to the chair, and that it shall be a professorship for life. All this I have now reason to believe will be satisfactorily secured. . . As it is, all, I find, are hearty in carrying it out j and for the most part according to the expressed wishes of the contributors. There is therefore now no occasion, I am happy to say, for your coming to Edinburgh. 27th May. — ^'To-day the professorship affair came on. The two points were conceded, the election was made, and, to my own surprise, I am now the professor ! Oh, for grace to guide, direct and uphold me ! " Were it not for your timely interposition it is impossible that the matter could have been concluded as it has been. To you, therefore, under God I feel pre-eminently indebted, though the cause is not mine but the Lord Jesus Christ^s. Being wearied I can say no more now^ having been out from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.^' One circumstance which reconciled Dr. Duff to the toil of not only preparing lectures for the chair, but of delivering them in the three colleges, in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, every winter, was this, that he saved the whole salary for the foundation of the second portion of his most catholic project, the Missionary Institute. For he refused to touch any income as professor, or as convener of the Foreign Missions Committee, being content with the modest revenue from the Duff Missionary Fund. The bulk of that, even, he used to give away on the rule of systematic beneficence, of which he had always been the eloquent advocate. The Institute, as described by himself in his inaugural lecture to the students on the 7th November, 1867, still remains to be established by the ministers, elders, and members of the evangelical Churches who, under Lord Polwarth, have recently 422 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1867. drafted its constitution as tlie best memorial of him. The Missionary Quarterly, apart from the denomina- tional or official record of each church and society, he did not live to see. Planned under the editorship of Canon Tristram, with promises of assistance from a most competent literary and missionary staff repre- senting all the Churches, the much desired Quarterly does not seem to have found catholicity enough at home for its vigorous support. But in the East the Indian Evangelical Beview, a quarterly journal of mis- sionary thought and effort, has for seven years done well for all the Church catholic abroad the work which is far more needed by the Church divided at home. But though the Institute and the Quarterly still await Christian statesmanship in Great Britain, like the united college which he proposed in 1832 in Cal- cutta, and charity like his own to establish them, he took care that the professorship, of which he was himself one of the founders, should not be tampered with when he could no longer guard their rights. The Assembly having legislatively created the professor- ship, he did not rest until the same supreme court of his Church in the same way made attendance on the lectures in evangelistic theology part of the course essential for licence and ordination. When the present writer was one of the Assembly's commissioners for the quinquennial visitation of the New College, Dr. Duff prepared a scheme for the development of the chair, so, as to enable it to cover the whole subject of com- parative religion, or the science of religion, or the relation of the faiths of the non- Christian world to the Divine revelation of God in Christ. This, indeed, he had sketched in his inaugural lecture as the fourth of the nine parts of a collegiate course of evangel- istic theology. Honoured to be the first of the Re- formed Churches to make theology in its relation to ^t, 6 1. THE SCIENCE OF EELIGION. 423 the creeds and cults of heathendom a compulsory part of its eight years training of students of divinity, the Free Church of Scotland has the opportunity of making its academic course still more complete in the appointment of Dr. DuJBTs successor in the chair. CHAPTER XXVI. 1867-1878. NEW MISSIONS AND TEE RESULTS OF BALE A GENTUBTS WOEK, Missions on the Hortatory Method. — David's Example and Syste- matic Beneficence. — The Gonds of Central India. — Sir Richard Temple and Stephen Hislop. — The Santals of the Bengal Up- lands.— Narayan Sheshadri's Rural Mission. — Bethel and Sir Salar Jung. — Mission Buildings and Salaries. — Correspondence with Lord Northbrook on English Education. — United Cliristian College of Madras. — Dr. Dutf at the Church Mission's Com- mittee.— The Communion of Saints and Missionary Faith. — The Anglo-Indian Christian Union. — Letter from Lord Lawrence. — Drs. DufF and Lumsden visit the Lebanon. — Relation of the Mission to the Presbyterian Board of the United States. — Exten- sion of Kaffrarian Mission to the Transkei Country. — Natal Missions and Sir Peregrine Maitland. — James Allison. — Dr. Duff and the Aberdeen Family. — A Bright Career. — Gordon Memorial Mission to the Zulus. — Dr. Livingstone's Zambesi Project. — Dis- covers Lake Nyassa. — His Letters to the Free Church. — Rev. Dr. Stewart's Proposal. — Dr. DufF Launches the Livingstonia Expedition in 1875. — His Heroic Wish in 1877. — The Unconscious Founder of the Kew Hebrides Mission. — Dr. William Syming- ton's Diary. — The Immediate Fruit of Forty-nine Years of Mis- sionary Work. Not only as professor of 'Evangelistic Theology, but as superintendent or, so far as Presbyterian parity allowed, director of the Foreign Missions of liis Church, Dr. DiifE had the care of all the churches till the day of his death. None the less was he the adviser, referee, and fellow-helper of the other mis- sionary agencies of Great Britain and America. His third of a century's experience of India, what he had .learned in his careful tour of inspection in Africa, his JEt. 6l. CONSOLIDATION AND EXTENSION. 425 personal study of both Europe and America, were hencefortli all concentrated on one point — the consoli- dation and extension of the Missions. For this end he ever sought to perfect the internal organization of his own Church, which he had created at what an expenditure of splendid toil we have told. During the two years 1865 and 1866, the records of his office and of the General Assembly, and the newspapers of the day, show that he held conferences with the minis- ters, office-bearers and collectors of each congrega- tion and presbytery over a large part of Scotland, inform ing, stimulating and often filliug them with an enthusiasm like his own. Nothiug was too humble, nothing too wearisome for one already sixty years of age, if only the great cause could be advanced. To him a conference meant not a quiet talk but a burning exposition. As in 1866 the ordinary home income reached an annual average of £16,000, and the fees and grants-in-aid united with the subscriptions of Christian people abroad to double that, he felt that the time had come for new missions. He had told the General Assembly of 1865, in his first report, that their committee were " not only in- tensely anxious to strengthen their stakes, but also greatly to leugthen their cords. This can be done in either, or both, of two ways — either by giving larger scope and development to existing operations within the fields already chosen, or by entering on entirely new fields and there breaking up wholly new ground. For the active prosecution of either, or both, of these courses, your committee are prepared, to whatever extent this venerable Assembly may approve, or the Church at large may supply the necessary means. . • Our plan never was intended to be — and, in point of fact, never actually was — a narrow, one-sided, fixed, exclusive plan; but, on the contrarj^, in its original 426 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. iS^T- conception, a broad, all-compreli ending plan; only, its breadth and comprehension were to be gradually evolved or unfolded from a rudimental germ — requiring years of growth to exhibit its real nature and design, and whole generations for reaping the full harvest of its ripened fruits. From the very outset the two kindred and reciprocally auxiliary processes of training the young for varied future usefulness, and addressing the adults, through whatever lingual medium might be found most effective in reaching their understandings and their hearts, were simultaneously carried on, side by side." But he had provided for the development of the colleges through their local support, leaving the whole increased subscriptions of his Church thence- forth to go to " addressing the adults " in the rural districts of India, and in the barbarous lands of Africa and Oceania. To the General Assembly of 1867, in an oration full of his old fire, he thus commended and illustrated the principle on which he had acted all his life and sought to support his whole missionary advance : " The Systematic Beneficence Society is based on the grand principle of holding ourselves responsible to God for all that we have, and that it is our bounden duty to devote a large portion of the income which He may be pleased to give us directly to His cause and for His glory. It does seem strange that the great principle which lies at the root of the Beneficence Society — the grand New Testament principle, the principle of being stewards of God's bounties — should be looked upon by many in these daj^s as if it were a novelty. Why, it is a principle which is at least three thousand years old. We have the grandest exemplifi- cation of it in the history of David in First Chronicles xxix. In that chapter we are told how David poured JEt 6i. SYSTEMATIC BENEFICENCE. 427 out of his treasury gold and silver and precious stones ; and when lie had set the example which he did, he appealed to his nobles, and they liberally responded. Example is better than precept, and what took place in David's case was just what might have been expected. What was even more remarkable than the liberality displayed, was the willingness of heart which was shown. In fact, the whole principle of the Systematic Beneficence Society was expounded and acted out by David. If David's principle was acted upon now, instead of the subscriptions from the whole of our members to the Foreign Missions being four- fifths of a farthing for a week, it would be four-fifths of a shilling, and would not stop even there. On one occasion, when in Calcutta, I received a letter from an ofiicer who had served in the Sindh campaign. He had received between three thousand and four thousand rupees as his share of the prize money. I had seen him only once, when he happened to be passing through Calcutta. Having taken him to visit our Institution, he was greatly struck with it. In that letter he sent "what he called a tithe of his prize money, amounting to upwards of three hundred rupees, as a thank-ojffering to God. I thanked him warmly for his liberality ; and in doing so happened to refer to the 29 th chapter of Chronicles and 14th verse, stating that it was a blessed thing to have the means of giving, but that it was still more blessed when God was graciously pleased to give us the disposition to part with' these means. Some two or three weeks afterwards I received a second letter from the same officer, containing the whole of the rupees which he had received for his prize money, accompanied with the remark, * I had often read that chapter and that passage, but it had never struck me in that light before ; and I thank God for putting it into my heart to do as I have done.' 428 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1869. He tlien desired me to acknowledge tlie receipt of the sum in a particular newspaper, but stated that I was not to mention his name, but to say that it was from 1 Chronicles xxix. 14. That was not all. When the time arrived that he was able to retire upon a pension, instead of coming home, as many do, to indulge them- selves in luxurious ease and idleness, he entered as a volunteer in the service of his Lord, and became a practical missionary in India, for which bis knowledge of the vernacular and his other qualifications emi- nently qualified him ; and I can assure this Assembly that it was a noble work that he rendered. He is, alas ! no more ; but ' his works do follow him.' " The first new mission which Dr. Duff helped into existence was to the Gronds of Central India. From Nagpore Stephen Hislop had spent many a week among them in their hilly fastnesses, studying their language, taking down their almost Biblical traditions, and telling them of Him to whom their dim legends pointed, the Desire of all nations. When Sir Richard Temple was sent by Lord Canning to rescue the Central Provinces from misrule, Hislop became his guide and friend. The fruit of the missionary's re- searches appeared in one of the most valuable contri- butions to the literature of so-called pre-historic man, his " Papers relating to the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces." As the disciple of John Lawrence Sir R. Temple felt a keen interest in the millions of the rude tribes entrusted to him. On his first furlough thereafter, in August, 1865, he spent some days with Dr. Duff in Edinburgh, who acted as his guide over the city and — as he confessed to us with a twinkle — took him thrice in one day to long Scotch services. The two carefully discussed the subject of a mission to the Gonds, Mr. Hislop's papers on whom had just appeared. The result was the despatch of Mr. Dawson, ALt. 63. MISSIONS TO ABOPJGINAL TRIBES. 429 from tlie Nagpore staff, with the native catechist Hardie, to Cbindwara, as a centre, a healthy station in the Gond uplands of Deogurh. Gondee has been reduced to writing, and portions of Scripture have appeared in the language. Dr. Duff would fain have sent a missionary to the Sutnamees, the aboriginal sect of theistic worshippers of the "pure name" of God in the east of the Central Provinces, but that field was soon after supplied by the Germans. Ever since, in 1862, he had wandered over the forest land of the simple Santals, a hundred and fifty miles to the north of the rural missions in Hooghly and Burdwan, he had determined to plant a mission among that section of the people who were not cared for by the Church Missionary Society along the south bank of the Ganges, and by the Baptists on the Orissa and Behar sides. The Eev. J. D. Don and Dr. M. Mitchell were enabled by him to begin operations at Pachumba in 1869, when the chord line of the East Indian Hailway opened up the south country, skirted by the grand trunk road, and under the shadow of the Jain moun- tain of Parisnath. There, under three Scottish mis- sionaries, medical, evangelistic and teaching, in San- talee, Hindee and Bengalee, a staff of convert-cate- chists has been formed and a living native church created. The Santals, whom official neglect, toler- ating the oppression of Bengalee usurers, drove into rebellion in 1855, are coming over in hundreds to the various Churches, and promise to become a Chris- tian people in a few generations. When ritualistic sacerdotalism for a time introduced discord into the neighbouring Church of the Kols of Chota Nagpore, evangelized by the Lutheran missionaries sent out by Pastor Gossner, the proposal was made to Dr. Duff that he should enter on a portion of the field. 430 LI^^ OF BR, DUFF. 187 1. Bat tliougli liis own province, Bengal, enjoyed the least of Dr. Duff's fostering care, from Bombay the Eev. Narayan Sheshadri, the first educated Brahman who had joined the Church of Western India, went boldly forth to evangelize his peasant countrymen and the outcast tribes in the villaores around Brahmanical Indapoor, to the south of Poona, and in the country of the Nizam, of which Jalna is a British cantonment. As the catechumens around Jalna increased into a large community, they became perplexed by the denial of hereditary rights in the soil, and by the impossibility in a native principality of enjoying such sanitary and self- administering institutions as Christianity recommends. A new society had sprung to life from among the cor- ruption of the old, but to have fair play it must have standing ground of its own. Accordingly the Chris- tian Brahman applied to the Arab prime minister of the Muhammadan Nizam of Hyderabad to grant a site to the Hindoo and outcast cultivators and artisans who had become Christ's. The reply was the conces- sion of land rent-free for twenty-five years. There, under the protection of the Jalna cantonment, three miles distant, Narayan Sheshadri has made his village at once a model and a guarantee of what India will yet become. The pretty stone church, named Bethel, — Hebrew rather than Marathee, — stands in the centre of a square, on either of two sides of which are the public institutions of the young community : manse, schools, hospital, serai, market, smithy, wells. Within a radius of ninety miles are ten large towns, where, and in the intervening country, the catechists of Bethel evangelize their countrymen. The light has sliined forth into the adjoining province of Berar, penetrated by the Bombay and Calcutta railway at this end as the Santal country is at the other. No part of his duty gave Dr. Duff greater delight than that of assisting JEt. 65. MISSIONARY ECONOMICS. 43 1 in sucli an experiment as this, illustrating at once tlio principles of his system and supplying to all India an example for imitation. The expansion of the Missions forced on Dr. DulT the necessity of making a special appeal to the country for a fund to build houses for the missionaries, and substantial schools, in Africa as well as in India, where these did not exist. The task of raising £50,000 for this purpose was almost repulsive to him with his other engagements. But after a dehberate and per- sistent fashion he set himself to it. lie conducted a correspondence on the subject which it is even now almost appalling to read. He was zealously aided by members of the committee, and the result was success. The greater part of the money was paid in a few years, and has now been expended in manses, preaching halls, and schools which place the missionary in the heart of his work, and, for the first time in many instances, surround him by the same sanitary advantages as his countrymen enjoy in the European quarters of Cal- cutta, Bombay and Madras. Even before this, the rise of prices in these cities and throughout India, which had begun in the Crimean and culminated in the United States war, compelled the committee to revise the whole scale of salaries. To this, as one who had ever denied himself and who was beginning to live not a little in the past, he was reluctant to turn. He keenly felt the danger of robbing the missionary's life of its generally realized ideal of self-sacrifice for Him who spared not Himself, and so of attracting to the grandest of careers the meanest of men — the merely professional missionary. Few though they were, he had seen such failures in the Lord of the harvest's field. But duty prevailed, and he set about the work with business-like comprehensiveness. After a con- ference of conveners and secretaries, sitting in Edin- 432 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1872. bnrgli, liad taken eyidence and discussed tlie wliole subject of missionary economics, lie consented that the committee should be asked to sanction an increase somewhat proportioned to the rise of prices. And so, while as convener he left behind him a well- organized missionary staff, he and his committee went no further than the standard of such a subsistence allowance as, by keeping off family care and pecuniary worry, should permit the absorption of the whole man in the divine work. When, in 1872, Lord Northbrook was designated Governor-General, in succession to Lord Mayo whose assassination called fortirfrom Dr. Duff a warm eulogy of that Viceroy, the missionary made a representa- tion to his old friend on the subject of the education despatch of 1854. After a year's experience of his high office, his Excellency thus addressed Dr. Duff: "Government House, Calcutta, January 31sf, 1873. "Dear Dr. Duff, — As you were so good as to communicate with me before I leffc England through Mr. [now Lord] Kinnaird, I feel no hesitation in sending you the enclosed copy of a resolution upon education which will be issued to morrow, and which is the first expression of my views upon educational questions. Matters have been rather comphcated here by some resolutions of the Government of India issued in 1869, which went, in my opinion, too far in the direction of withdrawing Government support from the Enghsh colleges, and created great alarm among the educated natives. . . I have tried, while supporting Mr. [now Sir George] Campbell as I am bound to do, especially for his efforts to spread education among the people, and to give a more practical turn to it, to satisfy our native friends that we are no enemies to high English education ; and, in so doing, I have taken the oppor- tunity to repeat the principles laid down in 185 i, especially the position to be held by Sanskrit in the educational scheme. " I have had two very interesting conversations with Dr. Wilson at Bombay. My impression is that there is much room JEt. 66. COERESPONDENCE WITH LORD NOIiTHCEOOK. 433 for improvement in tlie sclieme for degrees at tlie Calcutta University^ and in the class-books and subjects for the Univer- sity examinations, and I have communicated with the Syndicate who have appointed a committee to inquire into the subject. Another and more serious question has arisen from some particulars which Mr. Murdoch (the secretary in India of the Christian Vernacular Education Society) has brought forward as to the contents of some of the vernacular class-books in the Government schools in Madras. It seemed to me to be very undesirable to direct public attention to this. The manner in which I shall deal with it is to direct an inquiry into the gene- ral suitability of the books used in Government schools_, and to communicate confidentially with the different Governments, requesting them to take the opportunity of expurgating the vernacular school books, if necessary, by the removal of any gross passages. — I am, Yours very sincerely, "NOETHBROOK.''' ^'Patterdale, Penrith, 30th April j 1873. " Dear Lord Northbrook, — I cannot sufficiently express my thanks to your Lordship for writing to me as you have done, amid your heavy cares and anxieties, on the subject of your educational policy. . . Soon after the letter was put into my hands, with the Government resolution on education, a telegram from India announced that your Lordship had delivered a great speech on the subject of education to the Convocation of the Calcutta University. " Let me in a single sentence say that I have read the Government resolution and your Lordship's speech not only with unfeigned but unmingled delight and admiration. In the general views expressed in them — views characterized as much by their wisdom and practical prudence as by their large- ness, comprehensiveness, generosity and liberality — I entirely concur. Indeed, there is scarcely a syllable in either which I could wish to see altered ; and as a friend of India, I do feel cordially grateful to your Lordship for so noble an exposition and so clear an enforcement of great and enlightened principles, such as those so distinctly laid down in the great Educational Despatch of 1854, for the carrying out of which in its full iu- tegrity I have always strenuously contended. The proposed VOL. II. F F 434 I'l^E OF DE. DUFF. 1873. mode also of dealing with the question raised by Mr. Murdoch about vernacular class-books and class or text-books^ generally appears to me eminently judicious. Your Lordship will kindly excuse me for presuming to write in this way, but I cannot help it, as it is the joint utterance of head and heart. . . • Rejoicing in the brilliant inauguration of your Lordship's Indian career, and praying that the God of Providence may guide, direct and sustain you under the tremendous responsi- bilities of your exalted office, — I remain. Very gratefully and sincerely yours, "Alexander Dopp." If Lord Novthbrook's views had continued to pre- vail, like those of all his predecessors, back to Lord William Bentinck's time — save Lord Auckland — there could not have arisen those causes of complaint which have ever since marked the hostility of the educational departments in India to the despatch, and which led Lord Lawrence to unite with the missionary societies in proposals for a protest to the Secretary of State for India. This action of the Governor-General in favour of the catholic principles of 1854, alike in the higher and in primary education, was followed by a most satis- factory development of the Institution at Madras. In 1832 Dr. Duff and the Calcutta Missionary Conference had in vain proposed to their Churches at home to co-operate in the extension of the then infant Institu- tion as a united Christian college, to train students for all the Missions. In 1874 he joyfully received a similar project from Madras for the union of the Free Church, Church Missionary and Wesleyan Societies in the development of its Institution into one well-equip- ped and catholic Christian college for all Southern India. The five years' experiment has proved so suc- cessful an illustration of evangelical unity and educa- tional efficiency that the college is likely to be perma- nently placed under a joint board, representing not ^t. 66. MISSIONARY UNITY. 435 only these Churches, but the Established Church of Scotland. The essential unity of all evangelical Christians Di\ Duff never rejoiced to exemplify more than along with the Church Missionary Society. He happened to bo in London on the 5th January, 1869, wlien the gener.-.l committee had met for the solemn duty of sending forth three experienced missionaries and ministers to India. These were Mr. (now Bishop) French ; the late Rev. J. W. Knott, who resiofned a rich livino- for a missionary's grave ; and Dr. Dyson, of the Cathedral Mission College, Calcutta. Good old Mr. Venn was still secretary. Dr. Kay was then fresh from the learned retreat of Bishops' College on the Hooghly. General Lake represented the Christian soldier-poli- ticals of the school of the Lawrences. The Maharaja Dhuleep Singh was there to join in supplications for the college to be founded for the training of his country- men to be evangelists, pastors and teachers, in the land of which he was born to be king. Bishop Smith, of China, who presided, closed the proceedings in words like these : *' We have been greatly favoured this day with the presence of so many veterans of the missionary work to say farewell to our brethren, and we have been delighted with the heart-stirring address and missionary fire of the ' old man eloquent.' The last time Dr. Duff and I met together was when he bowed the knee with me in my private study at Hong Kong, and offered prayer for us, for we also need sus- taining grace as well as our brethren. Here I find him to-day giving us words of encouragement. Advanced as he is on the stage of life, it is an unexpected plea- sure to see him again ; and we thank God that we have been permitted to listen to him. It is a blessing to meet on occasions such as these, to find that the old missionary fire is not extinct, and to know that 43^ I^I^E OF DR. DUFF. 1869. tlie good work is prospering. May it go on until the whole earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord." Dr. DnfF, in an impromptu utterance, had thus burst forth under the impulse of fervid affection and of gratitude that not the young and untried but the ablest ministers in England were going up to the high places of the field : ^^The communion of saints is a blessed and glorious ex- pression. Ever since I Lave known Christ, and believed in Christ for salvation, I have always felt that there is a tie peculiarly binding on the Church of Christ, whatever may be the form of government. Accordingly, I have always felt it an unspeakable privilege to be permitted not only to sympa- thise, but to co-operate in every possible way, with all who love Christ in sincerity and in truth, and will be co-heirs with Him in the glory to be revealed, and rejoice with Him for ever and ever, I cannot understand the grounds of separation between men who are living in the bonds of Christ. . . We do not stand alone. If we did, we should be hopeless. We stand very much in the position of Elijah on Mount Carmel. He stood alone in one sense : he was confronted with four hundred and fifty priests of Baal ; but he felt that he was not alone — that he had one greater and mightier than all that were against him, and his great prayer was to the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, that He might interpose and cause it to be seen and felt that there was a God in Israel, that he was His servant to do these things according to His word. He said, ' Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord.' That is our position. We must do all that he did. He prepared the altar and the sacrifice, and said, 'I have done all that I can; but if I had not done this, how could I look up and pray ? Having done that in accordance with God's word, I can look up and pray.' Let us, then, enter on the mighty work in this spirit, and while we confront the Himalayan masses of superstition and idolatry, let us first, the spirit of Elijah animating us, look up and say, ' 0 God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.' Yes, ^t. 6s> A PLEA FOB. THE ABLEST MEN AS MISSIONAEIES. 437 we as Christians can do still more. "We can say, ' 0 God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, do Thou interpose iu behalf of that great name, and send forth Thy Holy Spirit to accompany our efforts iu this work ; ' and the day will come when the fire shall descend and burn up the wood and the stones, and the mountain masses of obstacles, and consume them, and turn spiritual death into life. Yes, the day will come. But are we doing our part ? are we doing all that we can ? The individual missionary abroad may be doing all that he can as a mission- ary ; but are the communities that send him forth doing all that they ought to do ? If not, I feel intensely you have no warrant, no right to pray for the blessing of God. From what T am constantly reading in my own country, I see that we are making a mere mock in regard to Missions ; that we are simp'y playing at Missions, and are not doing the proper thing at all in this great country. If we go to war against a great city like Sebastopol — if we want to penetrate into the centre of Abyssinia — what do we do ? We take the best and most skilful and experienced of our brave generals, and our best officers and troops, and we send supplies in such abundance that there can be no want. If we wish to be successful we must use the means which are adapted to secure success. Now I feel intensely that I am humbled, that we as a people, as Churches and communities, are content with doing just a little, as showing some recognition of a duty, but not putting forth our power and energy, as if we were in earnest, and sending out the ablest and most skiful of our men. We are but trifling with the whole subject. The world is to be evan- gelized. We have eight hundred millions of people to be evangelized. Here, in Great Britain, we have one minister for every thousand of inhabitants, and yet we are content to send out one for two millions of people, and in China I do not sup- pose there is one for three millions, taking all the societies together. Would we desire to know what we ought to do ? Let us look to the Church at Antioch. When God had a great work to do among the Gentiles, what did He do ? Here is the Church at Antioch, with Barnabas and Simeon, Lucius of Cyrene, and other men of character, but not equal to Paul and Barnabas. Does the Holy Ghost say that Paul and Barnabas, having been the founders of the Church, were indispensable for its prosperity, and you must keep them — Lucius and the 438 LIFE or DR. DUFF. 1870. otliers will not be so mucli missed : send them to do tlie work ? No ; He says, ' Separate me Barnabas and Paul ; ' the otter men can carry on the quieter work, and fight the battle with heathenism if it be needed; the most able and skilled men must go forth on the might}'' enterprise — * Separate me Barna- bas and Paul/ Excuse me for saying this. In this day's meeting, which gladdens my own heart, I see something of this kind of process beginning. We do not want all the ablest men in this country to engage in the enterprise, but cannot some of them be spared as leaders of the younger ones? We need all the practical wisdom which the world contains to guide us and direct us in the midst of the perplexities which beset us in such fields as India and China. DiflRculties are increasing every day, and there are new difficulties arising that will require all the skill and wisdom of the most practical men we possess, and such men will, ere long, come forward with a power and voice which shall make themselves felt. It makes my heart rejoice to think that Oxford can send forth two of its Fellows ; that English parishes can spare two able and useful men to go forth in the name of the Lord. I see in this the beginning of a better state of things, and I have no doubt that the example will have the effect of stirring up and stimu- lating others to do likewise, and that some of the mightiest names among us will go forth. It will not do to say we should be satisfied with labourers only ; why should not some of the Church's dignitaries — why should not some of our bishops, if they be the successors of the apostles, go forth, and set an example, the value of which the whole world would acknow- ledge ? I wonder that a man who is prominent before the world for his position and rank does not surrender that, and go forth on a mission of philanthropy. I wonder at it. Some would be ready to follow. Bub at all events they would say. Here is sincerity, here is devotedness ; and it will no longer be said, ' You are the men who are paid for loving the souls of men.' I will not speak merely of Church dignitaries, but of other dignitaries. Peers of the realm can go to India to hunt tigers, and why cannot they go to save the souls of men ? Have we come to this, that it shall be beneath them, and beneath the dignity of men in civil life, to go forth on such an errand ? The eternal Son of God appears on earth that He may work out for us an everlasting redemption. It was not JEt, 64. ANGLO-INDI VN EVANGELIZATION SOCIETI. 439 beneatli Him to seek and to save tliat which was lost, and will you tell me that it is beneath the dignity of a duke, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, to go into heathen realms to save a lost creature ? ^' This recalled tlie Exetei Hall appeals of 1837. Again, soon after, be gave another proof of his true catholicity in writing, for tlie Indian Female Evange- list, conducted by the Church of England Society for Female Education in the East, an elaborate series of papers on Indian Womanhood from the Vedic age to the present time. Dr. Duff's philanthropic and spiritual efforts for the good of Europeans and Eurasians in India, con- tinued from his first years in Calcutta, found an or- ganized and permanent agency in the Anglo-Indian Christian Union, or Evangelization Society as it is now called. AYhen in Calcutta he had been the active chairman of a society for ameliorating the temporal condition of the people, he had so early as 1 841 helped to found a temperance society, he frequently lectured to the soldiers at Dum Dum and elsewhere on the subject, and he was most earnest in that movement for a sailors' home which ended in Lord Lawrence presenting the valuable site of the appropriate build- ing on the Strand of Calcutta. Just before his return to Edinburgh in 1864, the Anglo-Indians who happened to be present at the General Assembly of that year, led by Dr. K. MacQueen, united to send out a minister to the Scottish teaplanters who are turning the malarious wilds of Cachar and Assam into smiling gardens. The society was discouraged by the unfit- ness of the first instruments, but in 1870 Dr. Duff gave it new life. The increase of tea and indigo culti- vation, of cotton and jute factories, of railways, of the British army and subordinate civil service, had, since the Mutiny, raised the European and Eurasian Chris- 440 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1870. tians in India to a number little sliort of the quarter of a million. For these the Government chaplains and the few voluntary churches in the great cities and missionary services elsewhere had long been inade- quate. The £170,000 spent on the ecclesiastical establishment of 3 bishops and 153 chaplains, and in grants to Romish priests who are generally foreign Jesuits ignorant of the language of the Irish soldiers, might have been — ought now to be — applied in a man- ner both more equitable and more effective for its end in a country where vast revenues are annually alienated in support of Hindoo shrines and Muhammadan mos- ques. As it is there are British regiments without spiritual services, while chaplains are congested in the great cities for the benefit of wealthy congregations who are able and willing to supply themselves. The Church of England, led by good Bishop Wilson, had created an Additional Clergy Society which supplied ministers to destitute military and civil stations aided by state grants. In Madras the Colonial and Continental Church Society tried to fill the breach. But after the sudden removal by death of Dr. Cotton, who was like Duff himself the bishop of good men of every Church, not only the eclesiastical establishment but the aided societies became the instruments of the weakest form of Anglican sacerdotalism. The sacra- mentarianism of the bishops and chaplains sent out by successive Secretaries of State was not atoned for by grace like Keble's, or learning like Dr. Pusey's, or wit like Bishop Wilberforce's. Gradually in many places officers forsook the Church of England services, while the earnest soldiers among the troops marched to church murmured at the wrons^ done to the conscience. Many of the evangelical members of all the churches united in demanding reform. In 1869, after the five years' administration of Lord ALL 64. LOEDLA.WBENCE ON CHRISTIAN WOUK IN INDIA. 44 1 Lawrence, this took the form at Simla of a Union Church based on the reformed confession, which Dr. M. Mitchell organized. Next year Dr. Duff, as pre- sident of the Anglo-Indian Christian Union, selected the Rev. John Fordyce and sent him out as commis- sioner to report on the spiritual needs of the British and Eurasian settlers all over Northern India. Mr. Fordyce, after practically carrying out the zanana system in Calcutta, had returned to become minister first in Dunse and then in Cardiff. On reaching India he became pastor of the new Union Church at Simla during the hot and rainy seasons, and devoted the other half of each year to a visitation of the whole land from Peshawur to Calcutta. The railway companies, which had ten thousand Christian employes uncared for spiritually, welcomed his services. Wherever he went ofBcers and soldiers sought his return, or at least the establishment of some permanent evangelical agency among them. The letters from such among Dr. Duff's papers are full of a pathetic significance. The new society gradually worked out a catholic organization. The districts of country — omitting, it is to be regretted, the tea provinces of North-eastern Bengal, where scattered communities of Christians are settled — were mapped out into seven circuits, each with a radius of from 200 to 300 miles, easily accessible by railway. While Dr. DuflP, as president worked the whole from Edinburgh, Lord Lawrence, as patron, was active in London. To Mr. Fordyce the great and good Yiceroy thus wrote on the 24th June, 1874. ** I feel the full force of much which you have said as to the state of things in India, of the want all over the land of adequate religious influences. It is only too true that ' a famine of the word of life affects most fatally the native population, and imperils many of our fellow-countrymen.' Hence, as you say, there is a 442 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1870. double plea for more Christian work in India. I also fully concur in your remarks on tlie evil effects of tlie conduct of some of those who, while bearing the Christian name, have little regard for the precepts of that religion. All this is very sad ; but it is very difficult to bring to bear a practical remedy. Still, we must not despair. The difficulties which beset the subject should rather incite us to bestir ourselves and devise a remedy. The united efforts of Protestants of all Churches in the good work offer the best hope of success. We want men, and we want money, and above all we want some person of ability and zeal, and of some social influence, to take the lead and guide the helm, and so by continuous and systematic labour bring about the results which we so much desire.'* In addition to the formation of union congregations Dr. Duff in the last year of his life saw ten agents of the society at work in India, six of them ordained ministers, and sent out Dr. Somerville, of Glasgow, and the Rev. C. M. Pym, rector of Cherry Burton, to evangelize in the cold seasons of 1874 and 1877, as Dr. Norman Macleod had done in 1867. Financially as well as ecclesiastically the Government of India may yet be allowed to carry out the scheme which Lord Mayo's Government approved of in principle, that of so applying the present expenditure of £170,000 to purely military chaplains and in grants to Christian societies, that it may cover the whole extent of Anglo- Indian society, official and non-official. But India was the source of only half the cares and the labours of Dr. Duff after he left it. As convener of the Foreign Missions Committee of his Church, he established a new mission in the Lebanon, and three new missions in South-east Africa — in then indepen- dent Kaffraria, in Natal, and on Lake Nyassa; while ^t. 64. TOUR IN SYRIA. 443 Le lived long enough to receive cliarge of tlie New Hebrides stations of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The Church of Scotland in 1839 sent a missionary expedition to Palestine, consisting of M'Cheyne and Drs. Black, Keith and A. Bonar, which ended in the establishment for a time, by Dr. Wilson, of Bombay, of a mission to the Jews in Damascus. When, in 1852, Mr. William Dickson, editor of the Children's Mission- dry Record, visited Syria, Dr. Duff gave him a letter of commendation, and the result was the formation of a catholic committee in Scotland for the founding of schools among the Druses, Maronites, and Greek Christians of the Lebanon. In 1870, accompanied by Dr. Lumsden, principal of the New College, Aberdeen, Dr. Duff made a second tour in Syria to examine the schools. The district which they traversed from Bey- rout, where they landed on the 11th April, stretches from the " entrance of Hamath " on the north to Tyre on the south-west and Damascus on the south-east, embracing not only the range of Lebanon itself, with the country immediately to the south, but also Anti- Lebanon, and the far-reaching plain of Coele-Syria. This region is in extent about 100 miles by 30, and contains upwards of one thousand villages and ham- lets, with a population of half a milUon. The deputies held a conference with the missionaries of the Amer- ican Presbyterian Board, under whom not only a great college and many schools, but the Syrian Evangelical Church has been fostered into vigorous life. These brethren agreed that if the Free Church sent to the mountain an ordained minister, who should be a well-qualified educationist, they would cordially co-operate with him, " on the understanding that he do not institute a separate ecclesiastical organi- zation, OT interfere with the doctrine or discipline of the existing native Evangelical Church;" an under- 444 I'IFE OP DR. DUFF. 1874. standing in the wisdom of which Dr. Daff thoroughly concurred, being with them desirous that the various congregations of converts be united in one native Syrian Protestant Church. An ordained and a medical missionary have accord- ingly ever since evangelized the Meten district of Lebanon, from the centre first of Sook, and now of Shweir, encouraged, like the many missionaries in that comparatively small territory, by the administration of the Christian Rustem Pasha, under the constitution se- cured for that portion of the unhappy Turkish empire by Lord Dufferin after the massacres of 1860. The for- mation of the first congregation has raised the question of the relation of the new mission to the American, and that will doubtless be amicably settled according to the catholic principle laid down by Dr. Duff in 1870. Having consolidated the Kaffrarian Mission, on his return from South Africa in 1864 Dr. Duff saw it ex- tended to the north across the Kei. There the centre of the Idutywa Kaffir reserve, up to the Bashee River, formed in 1874, was called by his name, Duffbank. Three years later the Fingoes, through Captain Blyth and Mr. Brownlee, officials, contributed £1,500 to found an evangelizing and industrial Institute after the model of Lovedale, and to that was giv^en the name of Blythswood. With the station of Cunningham com- pleting the base, where there is a native congregation of more than two thousand Kaffirs, the Trar.r^k.^i territory is thus being worked, in a missionary sense, up towards Natal. There the fruit of the great missionary's in- fluence is seen in three mission centres, at the capital Pieter-Maritzburg ; at Impolweni, fourteen miles to the north; and at Gordon, within a few miles of the fron- tier of Zululand, now divided among thirteen feudatory chiefs advised and controlled by two British residents on the Indian political system. Natal was taken pos- JEt 68. THE NEW MISSIONS IN NATAL. 445 session of, for tlie highest civilizing ends, by the missionaries of the American Board so early as 1835, in the midst of the Kaffir war of that year, and when Dingane ruled the Zulus. His massacre of the -Boers drove out the missionaries till the British Government took possession of the country. That was in 1843, at the time when an old correspondent of Dr. Duff's was Governor of South Africa. Sir Peregrine Maitland had resigned the well-paid office of commander-in-chief of the Madras army rather than pass on an order com- pelling British officers and troops to salute Hindoo idols on festival days. Worthy to be a friend of Duff, he told the American, Grout, who was to work for ten years without making one convert from the Zulus, that he had more faith in missionaries than in soldiers for preventing war with barbarous tribes. When, long after, Dr. Duff in his wagon descended from the uplands of Basutoland and the heights of the Drakenberg upon the picturesque valleys and smiling plains of Natal, his heart was taken captive by Mr. James Allison, the highly educated son of a Peninsular officer. Allison was well advanced in years when he gave himself to the work of the Master. Commis- sioned by the Wesleyans, he broke new ground among the Griquas in 1832, and he went on pioneering till Duff found him settling his many converts, as an independent missionary, in the village of Edendale, which he created for them, while they paid the whole purchase-money by petty instalments. In 1873 Duff sent him to organize a similar settlement at Impol- weni, and there he died a few years after at the ripe age of seventy-three. It was a noble life, and yet not more noble than that of the majority of Christian pioneers in all our colonies, as well as in India, China, and the islands of the seas. His work at Maritzburg also was taken over by the Free Church of Scotland. 44^ LIFE OP DB. DUFF. 1874. When, in November, 1864, Dr. Duff went north to take part in the ordination of new missionaries, the first to welcome him to Haddo House was the Dowager Countess of Aberdeen. Eight months before, the fifth earl, her husband, to whom, while yet Lord Haddo, his companionship had been sweet at Malvern, had been called to his rest after years of incessant labour for the spiritual and temporal good of all around him in London, Greenwich, on his own estates, and in Egypt, where he sought and found prolonged life. The Malvern intercourse resulted in a friendly identification of Dr. Duff with the Aberdeen family in all its branches, very beautiful on both sides, and fruit- ful in spiritual results not only to him and to them, but, we believe, to the Zulu people. The letters that passed between the missionary and the Dowager Countess and her family are fragrant with the spirit of St. John's epistles to Kyria and Gains. In this chapter we have to do with them only in so far as they throw light on the origin of the Gordon Memorial Mission. Some dim glimpses of the exquisitely deli- cate relation between them may be seen by those who can read between the lines, in the " Sketches of the Life and Character of Lord Haddo, fifth Earl of Aberdeen, and of his Son, the Hon. J. H. H. Gordon,"* which Dr. Duff published in 1868, under the principal title of The True Nohility. James Henry Hamilton Gordon, the second son of the fifth Earl of Aberdeen, won all hearts at school and at college by his fine courage, his pure life, his personal beauty and the manly unconsciousness in which his character was set. At eighteen, in the year 1863, he became a zealous Christian like his father. *' Last New Year's Eve," he wrote to a friend, "I went * Published by the Religious Tract Society, in which Dr. Duff' showed a keen interest. /Et. 68 JAMES HENRY HAMILTON GORDON. 447' to bed witli scarcely a tliouglit about my soul ; but the very next day, by the grace of God, I was brought to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Yes, the birthday of the year is the bh^thday of my soul." First at St. Andrews, where Principal Shairp was drawn to him, and then in the larger world of Cambridge, he became the Lycidas of his fellows. The joy in the Holy Ghost made him the happiest among them. In 1867 he came out the second man in all the University. The youth whom every Sunday evening found in the Jesus' Lane school, and whose face was familiar at the University daily prayer-meeting, was also among the first in athletic sports, in sketching, in verse-writing, and in the debating society. He was captain of tlie University eight, and rowed No. 4 in the contest with Oxford. His inventive ambition showed itself in the construction of a breech-loader, which was to " beat all other possible breech-loaders in the rapidity of its fire." Mr. Macgregor's expe- riences sent him, in the long vacation, canoeing from Dover through France to Genoa, and back through Germany to Rotterdam. On his return, after an hour on the Cam, he went to his room to dress for dinner, when that happened on the 12th February, 1868, which Dr. Duff thus records : While he was engaged with his rifle, it went off, causing almost immediate death. The next day he was to have rowed in the inter-university race. Instead of that both Oxford and Cambridge put the flags at the boat-houses half- mast high, and not a man was seen on either river. He whom an accident had thus suddenly removed had not long before written to a fellow-student who feared that to profess Christ would be to invite the taunt of being a hypocrite : '*It is a happy thing to serve the Lord. Though we sometimes have to give up pleasure^, we gain a great deal of happiness even in this world. 448 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1874. Paul suffered a great many persecutions, yet lie said, * Eejoice in tlie Lord alway ; and again I say, Rejoice.' " Young Gordon had felt another ambition. When only fourteen he declared he would be a missionary. When nineteen he repeated his determination, saying to his brother, who had returned from New Brunswick as sixth earl, and was telling him of the winter life of the lumberers in its forests : " What could be more de- lightful than to go from camp to camp, Bible in hand, and share the life of those fine fellows, while trying to win them to Christ!'' But he added, with characteris- tic self- suspicion, that his love of adventure might have much to do with the desire. As time went on, however, he thought of studying for the ministry with this end. When, at the close of 1864, the Cape Govern- ment were offering for sale grants of land in Transkei Kaffraria, he leaped at the suggestion that when he came of age he might settle down as an ordained captain of civilization on a Kaffir reserve. ** I shall endeavour to follow the leading of my conscience and the guidance of God in making my decision on this matter," was the entry in his private diary. Truly, as Dr. Duff wrote, what might not such a Christian athlete, " the grandson of the great chief who once wielded the destinies of the British empire,'* have become among a people of noble impulses and self-forgetting courage like the Kaffirs ? What sudden death prevented him from doing, his sorrowing family enabled Dr. Duff to begin as a sacred duty. His elder brother, the sixth earl, having sought health in a warm climate and to gratify his love of adventure, was accidentally drowned on a voyage from Boston to Melbourne, as first mate of the ship Hero, The third and only sur- viving brother succeeded to the peerage in 1870. Accordingly there was drawn up a deed, unique in the history of Missions, since the Haldanes sold their ^t. 62. GOEDON MEMOETAL MISSIOIS. 449 estates the preamble of wliicli tells, formally but toucliinglj, its own story.* The Rev. J. Dalzell, M.B. a medical missionary and his wife, the daughter of Dr. Lorimer, of Glasgow, were sent out to select a site ; a teacher and two artisans followed, and by 1874 the Gordon Memorial Mission was establislied withm a few miles of the frontier of Zululand. This letter may be here given, referring to the career of him whose truly chief-like character will surely yet become a stimulus to the thu'teen feuda- tories of Zululand and the people. " Scarborough, ^th Sept., 1868. " Dear Lady Aberdeen, — Your letter, dated the 5th, I have read with a feeling of profound and thrilling interest. Lord Pol war th very kindly favoured me * We, tlie Right Honourable Mary, Countess of Aberdeen ; Grorge, Eai-1 of Aberdeen; Mary Lady Polvvai-th ; Walter Lord Polwarth ; the Honourable John Campbell Gordon; the Lady Harriet Gordon ; and the Lady Catherine Elizabeth Gordon ; con- sidering that we are desirous of founding a mission to the heathen in South Africa in memory of a beloved member of our family, the Honourable James Henry Gordon, who died on the twelfth day of February, eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, and for this purpose have resolved to set apart a sum of money, the interest of which will be sufficient to yield the salary of an ordained missionary and. to defray other expenses, also to provide the funds required to build a suitable house for the residence of such missionary, and consider- ing that it will be most advantageous that such mission and mis- sionary should be in connection with and under the responsible management of an existing mission by a Christian Church, and that the Foreign Missions Coiiiiuittee of the Free Church of Scotland have had for many years a mission to the natives in KafFraria, and are proposing to extend it by erecting one or more stations in the ter- ritory to the north and east of the river Kei : therefore we have paid to the E-ev Alexander Duff, Doctor of Divinity, for behoof of the said Foreign Missions Committee, should they accept of this present trust, the sum of six tiiousand pounds, to be by them per- manently invested according to their rules and practice, and we now hereby declare that the said sum is to be held in trust always for the purposes and subject to the conditions following; viz., First, The Memorial Mission Station shall be in the Transkei territory, or some part of Kafiraria, and shall be named " Gordon," etc., etc. VOL. II. G a 450 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1861. witli the leading facts in the life of the dear departed one. He has also favoured me with the narrative of the Canoe Voyage ^ than which I scarcely remember havinsr ever read anvthino^ more stirrino^. It reached me on the evening of a day. I at once opened it, to take a dip into it, intending to reserve the more care- ful perusal of it till the next day. But it soon so riveted me that I could not stop till I got to the very close. When done with it, I felt, well, had it pleased the Lord to spare his life, and send him to Kaffirland, with such athletic powers and fertiUty of resource, the Kaffirs would be impelled to make him their king, while he would bring them to the King of kings ! But, to the Omniscient, it ap- peared good to ordain it otherwise. But it makes one feel all the more strongly that there is a singular appropriateness in the blessed mode which has been fixed on for perpetuating his memory here below." When, in May, 1856, Dr. Livingstone completed the second of his expeditions from the Cape to St. Paul de Loanda, on the west coast of Africa, and thence right across the continent to the Quilimane approach to the Zambesi, he used this language : " We ought to encourage the Africans to cultivate for our markets, as the most effectual means, next to the gospel, of their elevation. It is in the hope of working out this idea that I propose the formation of stations on the Zam- besi beyond the Portuguese territory, but having communication through it with the coast. The Lon- don Missionary Society has resolved to have a station among the Makololo, on the north bank, and another on the south among the Matabele. The Church, Wesleyan, Baptist, and that most energetic body, the Free Church, could each find desirable locations.'* The Universities Mission, which he induced Oxford and Cambridge to send out, met with such losses, while ^t. 55- LIVINGSTONES DISCOVEEY OF LAKE NYASSA. 45 1 he himself buried his wife a hundred miles up the Zambesi from the sea, that the other Churches de- layed action. But the Rev. Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale, when he had hardly ceased to be a divinity student, was encouraged by some Scottish friends to join Dr. Livingstone in his next expedition. On the 16th September, 1859, the great Christian explorer re- vealed the waters of Lake Nyassa for the first time to Europe and America. There, 1,522 feet above the sea, the overjoyed missionary beheld the fresh-water sea stretching, as it proved, 350 miles to the north, towards Tanganika, the two Nyanzas and the Nile, with an average breadth of twenty-six miles, and a depth of more than one hundred fathoms. A se- cond time, in 1861, he returned to its southern end, with his brother and Dr. Kirk, only to have his con- viction strengthened that here was the centre whence the great Light should shine forth upon the peoples of Central Africa. Filled with this thought he ad- dressed these letters to the successive conveners of the Free Church Foreig:n Missions Committee in Edinburgh, before Dr. Duff's return from India and from his tour of inspection in South Africa. ''RiVEE Shire, 2nd Nov,, 1861. (Private.) " My Dear Dr. Tweedie, — On returning from the Rovuma I had nothing to say about ifc as anew missionary field, and therefore no heart to write at all. I indulged the hope also that information such as you desire might soon be obtained by looking down that river from Lake Nyassa, from the attempt to do which we are now returning. We left the Floneer in August lastj and in three weeks carried a boat past Murchison's cataracts. When we embarked on the Upper Shire we were virtually on the lake, though still about sixty miles from Nyassa, as that part of the river is all smooth and deep. The lake proper is over 200 miles in length, from twenty to sixty miles wide, and very deep. It lies on one meridian of longitude, and gives 452 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. l86l. access to a very large tract of slave-produclug country. Our mission has a special reference to this gigantic evil ; but without the co-operation of such missions as your Church con- templates ours must prove a failure. You must then take it for granted that my information may be tinged by my great anxiety for the establishment of Christian Missions, and en- deavour to form a calm and dispassionate judgment for your- self. '' We entered Lake Nyassa in the beginning of September and during the prevalence of the equinoctial gales. We be- lieve that we felt bottom in one of the bays in the north at 600 feet. As in all narrow deep seas surrounded by mountains, tremendous seas get up in about twenty minutes. In many gales we witnessed no open boat could live. We were obliged to beach our boat every night, and sometimes sat for days together waiting for the storm to cease ; on this account we could not accomplish all we intended in the way of exploration. We followed the western shore, and received nothing but the most contradictory reports about Rovuma. One asserted that we could sail out of the lake into the river ; another, that we must lift the boat a few yards ; another, fifty miles or a month. We durst not cross the frequently raging sea to ascertain for ourselves. There was a thick haze in the air all around, and it was only by sketches and bearings as the sun rose behind mountains that we were enabled at different latitudes to measure the width. Our information is therefore unsatis- factory. But leaving the physical geography till we get more light, we turn to the population. That is prodigious : no part of Africa I have seen so teems with people as the shores of Lake Nyassa. This may have been the fishing season, for all were engaged in catching fish with nets, creels, hooks or poison ; when the rains call them off to agriculture they may be much fewer in number. In some cases disturbances in their own countries had caused an influx of population to these sea- coasts. As we saw them their numbers excited our constant wonder, and we appeared to be great curiosities to them. They were upon the whole civil, and seldom went the length of lifting up the edge of the sail which we used as a tent, as boys do to see the beasts of a travelling menagerie ; no fines were levied nor dues demanded. When about half-way up the lake an Arab dhow lately built fled away to the eastern shore ^t. 55. LETTER FROM DR. LIVINGSTONE. 453 when we came near ; slie did the same on our retm'n south : their trade is in slaves. When we came within the sphere of this vesseFs operation the people became worse. They crept up to our sleeping places at that hour of the morning when deep sleep falleth upon man, and ran off with what they could lay their hands on. It was the first time we had been robbed in Africa. We had a few Makololo with us who had been reared amoug the black races and imbibed all their vices; their cowardly and bad conduct increased any difficulty we had. The slave traders seem to have purchased all the food, and when we got beyond their beat we came to the borders of a tribe of Zulus, called Mavite, from the south; and this presented a scene of great desolation, nothing was to be seen but human skeletons or putrid bodies of the slain. We had a land party in case of any accident to the boat. They were terrified at the idea of meeting the inflicters of the terrible vengeance of which the evidence everywhere met the eye, without a European in their company ; so I left the boat, and by some mistake was separated from it for three and a quarter days. We met seven Mavite or Zulus, and when I went to them unarmed, they were as much frightened of me as the men were of them. Tliey rattled their spears on their shields, and seeing that had no effect, refused to take me either to the boat or to their chief, and then sped up the hills as we may suppose seven Scotch gomer- als would do after they had seen a ghost. Want of food compelled us to turn after ascertaining that the lake reaches the southern borders of the tenth degree of south latitude. *' We found a chief called Marenga about 11° 44' S., a very fine fellow. He laded us with all the different kinds of food he possessed. He seemed an eligible man for missionaries to settle with, but very probably there are fine situations and people on the adjacent highlands which we could not explore. Nyassa is surrounded with mountains and elevated plateaux like that on which Bishop Mackenzie is located. Now we have already a pathway to the lake with but thirty-five or forty miles of land carriage. We have had no difficulties with the Portuguese as yet. When we took Bishop Mackenzie up to the highlands east of the cataracts, we discovered that the Portuguese had instituted an extensive system of slave-hunt- ing in the very country to which we had brought him. They had induced a marauding party of Ajawa to attack village after 454 I^IFE OF DR. DUFF. 1861. village of Mauganja, kill the men and sell tlie women and children to them. The first party we met had eighty-four cap- tives. The adventurers fled and left the whole on my hand, so I gave them over to the Bishop to begin school with ; other Portuguese companies were found, and about one hundred and forty handed over to the Bishop^s mission. Unfortunately the Mangauja are as ready to sell people as the Ajawa, but at this time the Manganja were all fleeing before the employes of the Portuguese. Believing that the effusion of blood might be stopped, and also the slaving, as they received but five yards of calico for the best captives — value out here, two shillings and sixpence — and only a shilling\s worth for a woman, we went to hold a parley with the Ajawa. We came upon them in a moment of victory : they were in the act of burning three villages, and some Manganja followers spoiled all our protestations of peace by calling out that one of their great generals and sorcerers had come. They rushed on us like furies, poured poisoned arrows among our small company at fifty paces distance from every point, and compelled us to act in the defensive. The Portuguese are at the bottom of the whole affair, and they seem to gather new vigour in their inveterate slaving by follow- ing in our footsteps. Had we been all cut off, the loss of mission and expedition would have been entirely attributable to them. I was unarmed, and the men had but a few rounds of ammunition when this slave trade episode occurred. " With regard to Government protection, none would be promised. Every member of the Government would indi- vidually be glad to hear of the extension of Christianity, and it would gratify them to find that officers, without detriment to their own service, had assisted missionaries; but as a Govern- ment they could not come under any formal obligation to protect British subjects in distant and uncivilized countries. This is my private opinion only. The Bishop here is not, so far as I can learn, a recognised dignitary in the eyes of the Government. I render every assistance I can, and would do the same to the missionaries of any other body, but I have no orders so to do. Some instructions in favour of giving the Bishop's party a passage were, I believe, sent to the Admiral ; but you could not depend on the same unless Lord Panmure were in office again. A mission to be effective must h&ye a steamer of its own, and made capable of being unscrewed at ^t. 55- LETTER FEOM DR. LIVINGSTONE. 455 tlie bottom of the cataracts and carried past them in Scotch carts. This would be the least arduous part of the undertak- ing. Don't imagine that a mission right in the slave market will allow much sailing about your studies in flowing dressing gowns and slippers. A great difficulty is the diS'erent way in which missionaries look at the work when at home and when they come actually to soil their hands. You could manage all about the steamer with ease ; some of your own people would do the thing better than any government contractor. The Burnses of Glasgow, younger and elder, offered to do anything in their line for me : 1 hereby make over all my interest in their offer, and I am sure they meant what they said. The Bishop has the best place in the country for a mission — cool, airy and abounding in flowing streams of deliciously cool water. At one time I feared that another mission micrht bo deemed an intrusion, as time has not yet diluted the home prejudices ; but any one seeing the prodigious population on the lake must confess that there is more work there than can be reached by one body of Christians, however powerful or wealthy. Very likely as soon as we get our little steamer on the lake we shall bo able to speak more positively about a healthy residence. At present the slave trade meets us everywhere ; the people are clothed with the inner bark of trees, and calico is so valu- able that it decides the only trade now in existence. We hope to alter this by buying their cotton, but the most effectual means of eradicating the trade entirely is the introduction of Christianity. " {Private and confidential.) The country between Cape Delgado and Delagoa Bay was committed to the Portuguese by the slave-trade treaties on the understanding that they would put down slave-trading therein. Instead of this they have uniformly acted on the principle of converting the terri- tory aforesaid into a private slave ^ preserve.' Their claims of sovereignty rest on the treaty which they have so shamefully misread. The governorships, with a mere nominal salary, are the rewards which the court of Lisbon distributes to its favourites. Hence the King of Portugal must know that he directly perpetuates slavery and slave-trading by making the emoluments arising therefrom the chief part of the dole which he deals out. They have no more right to keep out other nations from lawful commerce than England has to keep traders out of 456 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1862. China. Each nation possesses a few forts on the coast of a continent. Yet a ship was seized belonging to Mr. Sunley, H.M. Consul at the Comoro Islands, and sold by the Portu- guese because he attempted to establish lawful trade in the Angoshe River where a Portuguese dare not enter. I mention these things in the hope that some of your friends of the public press may take notice of them and render aid in opening the country. The Bishop informs me that when Prince Albert was applied to in order to lend his name as ' Patron ' of the Oxford and Cambridge Mission he declined, on the ground that ' Dr. Livingstone's expedition might compromise the rights of the Portuguese crown.'* It is understood that he is the chief stickler for the Portuguese pretensions, and unless power- ful public opinion be brought to bear on the Government, these pretensions will be urged as successfully as they were in the case of Mr. Sunley 's ship and the trading station Amberiz on the West Coast. Believe me, affectionately yours, '' David Livingstone. ''Nov. 18(h. — Since writing the foregoing we have seen the Bishop, and find that, disregarding my advice to keep to his own place and act simply on the defensive, he has been induced to go and attack the Ajawa twice. I hoped that the Ajawa might become friends with the English after they understood the objects of our coming, when they refused all negotiation and attacked us, but this will make them, I fear, enemies of the English. In speaking of the view that would be entertained of this at home, the Bishop and I have totally different antici- pations. It is probable that his views and those of a rather hot-headed missionary who figured at Bryan King's, in St, George's in the East, will be given in a high church paper called the Guardian. Your young friend will think our horizon rather cloudy, but it is well if he understands the whole of our affairs though written in a way that will not bear publication. I shall be thankful if you favour me with the judgment you have formed. " March Ist, 1862. — We have no daily post here. I have shown this to Mr. Stewart who is now with us ; and I would add that my remarks are framed to meet the eyes of the ordinary run of missionaries, and perhaps to screen myself from blame if such men should come out ; but for such as a man as Mr. JEt. 56. LETTEE FEOM DR. LIVINGSTONE. 457 Stewart I would say there are no very serious obstacles in the way. I would not hesitate to commence a mission myself, but Mr. Stewart, will give you his own impressions when he has seen all with his own eyes. If you get many of as long tangled epistles as this from the mission field I pity you. ''David Livingstone." " Shupanga, Zambesi^ 12th March, 1862. "Rev. De. Candltsh. " My Dear. Sir, — I am happy to inform you that Mr. Stewart arrived off the mouth of this river on the last day of January, and as it appeared that the most satisfactory way of going to work would be for bim to come and see the country and people with his own eyes, I invited him to accompany us while trying to take a steamer up to Lake Nyassa. By the kind assistance of Captain Wilson, of H.M.S. QorgoUy we soon had most of the hull aboard the Fioneer, but soon found out that she could not carry thirty-five tons of her sister, so we are forced to put the lake steamer together here, and then tow her up to the cataracts. We did not anticipate this detention of two months. Mr. Stewart will however be employed in picking up what he can of the language, and supposing him to be successful in his noble purpose of organizing a mission, this will prove no loss of time. The language is unreduced, and if you have never tried to write down the gibberish that seems to be bluttered out of the people's mouths, you will scarcely believe that the reduction of a language is such a gigantic task as it is. The tongue is spoken at Senna and Tette on the Zambesi, and up to the end of Lake Nyassa, 400 miles to the north. The Bishop Mackenzie is working at it, but years must elapse before it can become a proper or copious vehicle of religious thought. " I have given Mr. Stewart a cordial and hearty welcome, and rejoice in the prospect of another mission where there is so very much room for work. Nineteen thousand slaves pass annually through the custom-house of Zanzibar, and according to Colonel Rigby, H.M. Consul there, the chief portion of them comes from Lake Nyassa. We hope to do something towards stopping this trafiic, but it is only by Christian missions and example that the evil can be thoroughly rooted out. From all I have observed of Mr. Stewart he seems to have been specially raised up for the work, and specially well adapted for it. Be- 45S LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1875. fore becoming acquainted with him I spoke cautiously,, perhaps gave too much prominence to difficulties of which I myself make small account, and may have been led to it by having seen missionaries come out with curious notions, willing to endure hardships, but grumbling like mountains in labour when put about by things that they did not expect ; but to such a man I would say boldly. Go forward, and with the Divine blessing you will surely succeed. I am, etc., " David Livingstone. "Though I had not the pleasure of meeting you at Dr. Buchanan^s I met your daughters there, and beg to present kind salutations. " Ibth March. — The Bishop Mackenzie and Rev. H. Burrup died in January and February. Came down to meet us in a canoe which was overturned, clothes and medicines lost; fever and diarrhoea proved fatal — a sad blow ; but whatever effect it may have at home, not one hair's-breadth will I swerve from my work.'^ Dr. Stewart returned to Scotland to urge the pro- posal that his Church should found a mission settle- ment on Cape Maclear, the promontory at the south end of the lake to be called by Livingstone's name. Dr. Livingstone himself, during his two subsequent visits to Bombay, took Dr. Wilson, the Free Church mission- ary there, into his counsels, and the public of Western India supplied him with funds for the last expedition. His death, in April, 1878, on his knees in prayer amid the swamps of Ilala, gave to the Free Church a new motive for at once carrying out the trust which he laid upon it. Dr. Duff had sent out Dr. Stewart to Lovedale, after the disasters of the Universities Mission, to be ready from that base to advance to Nyassa. Sir Bartle Frere had returned from his mission to the slave-trading Muhammadan powers along the littoral of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, which Dr. Kirk's treaty with JEt 69. FIRST EXPEDITION TO LAKE NTASSA. 459 the Sultan of Zanzibar happily completed, leaving the worst offenders, Turkey and Egypt, alone to be dealt with directly by the Foreign Office. After conferences with him in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1874 Dr. Duff and James Stevenson, Esq., of Glasgow, launched the Livingstonia Mission, the greatest national enter- prise, it has been truly said, since Scotland sent forth the very different Darien expedition. In the new responsibilities and burdens which this added to the last five years of his life, he was assisted by Dr. M. Mitchell, as the official secretary of the committee. All the churches and cities of Scotland, but especially the Reformed and United Presbyterian Churches and the merchant princes of Glasgow, gathered round Dr. Duff. At the request of the Established Church co-operating with it in Africa as in India, he gave it the most brotherly facilities for founding a station, called Blantyre, on the healthy heights just above the Murchison cataracts of the Shire. In the absence of Dr. Stewart, Mr. Young, R.N., who had satisfac- torily led the " Livingstone Search Expedition," was lent by the Admiralty to command that organized to found Livingstonia. The first large party of Scottish missionaries and artisans left the London docks in May, 1875. Dr. Goold tells us how Dr. Duff led the devotions of the departing evangelists with such fervent absorption and earnest supplication, all heedless of the last warning bell, that the steamer was already on its way down the Thames before he could be got on shore. It was on the 12th of October, just eight years after Livingstone's discovery of it, that Nyassa*s waters burst on the view of the delighted missionaries, as the sun rose over the high eastern range and bathed in the light that symbolized a better Sun the seven hundred miles of coast then desolated by the slave-trade and demon-worship. Writing of 460 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1877. morning worship that day, the E^ev. E.. Laws, M.B., now head of the Mission, remarked, *' The hundredth psalm seemed to have anew beauty and depth of mean- ingf as its notes floated over the blue waves." Next year a second party went out with reinforce- ments under the Eev. Dr. Black, as yet the only and the ever to be lamented victim in this Mission to the cUmate of tropical Africa. Dr. Stewart took com- mand at the lake, and circumnavigated it for the second time, with the object of finding a sanitarium at its northern end, and completing our geographical knowledge of its coasts and the country which it drains.* Not only at Livingstonia but in Marenga's country on the west coast, and on Kaningina table- land in the interior, hundreds of natives have come under our protection and Christian instruction. Dr. Stewart has assisted in similar good work at Blantyre. The Chinyanja speech of the western Kaffirs has been reduced to writing, a grammar and vocabulary have been formed, and portions of St. John's Gospel and hymns have been translated into it, being printed by the Kaffir compositors at Lovedale. The machinery has been completed by a medical mission for the women, under Miss Waterston, L.M., with Kaffir sub- ordinates from Lovedale. The Mission has been relieved of the purely commercial concerns by some of its Glasgow founders, who have formed a Central Africa Trading Company, and have made several miles of a road from Kilwa towards the northern end of the lake, towards which the Royal Geographical Society's Expedition also is working. From Lovedale to the Nile, as will be seen in the map, the four missions of the Free Church, the London Society, the Church Society and the Universities have taken possession of * Proceedings of the Royal Geogra;phical Society, lOfch March, 1879. K *l .^iT^. O' j^ jfSf |f|l^^u|^g|" i. = ! r 1 I /^^^ I V -1 V '■'^ ' ^ M if h pr^lf^ tj ^^ k x5' ' tn\ Ir -fr^ 5^ JJ^S <^' S d t ^ cos H^-'i^it^^ -tk.j-=w^ b->^ \V. is iK.'^ 1^ ^ ^"-^ -^5^ ^T* --^t 5 e Stt- i-l ^t. 71. LONGINGS FOE AFRICA. 46 1 Africa for Clirist. On the west tlie Baptist Society are pushing towards tliem up the Kongo. Aided by a bequest of a million of dollars the American Board of Missions, which has done much already in Natal, is about to join the noble army from St. Paul de Loanda. Meanwhile, the easiest access to the heart of Africa is by the Free Church route, by the little Lady Nyassa up the Zambesi and Shire to the cataracts, by a road of seventy miles round these, cut by the Livingstone and Blantyre Missions, and by the Ilala, a fine sea steamer of forty-horse power, right up to the Bom- bashe, or northern end of Lake Nyassa. Dr. Duff's official and private correspondence with all concerned, and especially with Dr. Stewart, marks a breadth of Christian statesmanship and administrative foresight which his whole Indian and African experience from 1830 would lead us to expect. Let this heroic sen- tence suffice, written from Gruernsey as his last illness was creeping upon him, to Dr. Stewart on the 25th July, 1877 : '' Livingstonia is virtually your own mis- sion, and, humanly speaking, the success of the future will depend much, under God, on the wisdom with which the foundations are now solidly laid. I wish I could join you for a year^ if it were only to cheer by sympathy and hearty earnestness in seeing the outward prosperity of the work." Dr. Duff had a keen eye and a reverent regard for " providences," alike in his own life and in the history of the Church and the world. But even he never knew that the last new mission which he was called on to superintend, in the closing years of his life, owed its existence to himself. When the old Cameronians, the venerable Reformed Presbyterian Church, united with the Free Church of Scotland in 1876, it brought under the joint management of 1 3 Foreign Missions com- mittee a portion of the Mission in the Melanesian 462 LIFE OF DRv DUFF. 1877. group of tlie New Hebrides. When, in 1837, Dr. Duff was addressino: tlie members of the Church of Scot- land at Stranraer, he httle thought that a Cameronian minister was Ustening to him whom he was uncon- sciously stirring up to found that mission to the can- nibals of the South Pacific. The Rev. A. M. Syming- ton, of Birkenhead, has lately published this extract from the diary of his father, Dr. William Symington : October 27th, 18o7. — '^Had this day the unspeakable satis- faction and delight of hearing Dr. Duff advocate tke General Assembly's scheme for christianizing India. His statements are clear, his reasoning sound, and his eloquence surpassing anything I ever heard. Notwithstanding a weak frame and a bad voice, his appeals are most impassioned and thrilling. He touches the springs of emotion, lays down the path of duty /with unceremonious fidelity, and rebukes the apathy and nig- gardliness of professing Christians with fearless independence. I reckon it a great privilege to have heard and met with this great and good man. May it be blessed for increasing my zeal for the conversion of the heathen. January 12th, 1838. — ''Being old New Year's Day, which is foolishly observed as an idle day in this quarter, I called together the youth of the congregation, read some missionary intelligence, and delivered an address on the obligation of Christians to diffuse the gospel among the heathen. After- wards a juvenile association for missionary purposes was formed. Nearly sixty appended their names, and about £10 was subscribed on the spot. May this be the commencement of a mission to the heathen from the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland.'' The whole group of forty islands, with a population of a hundred thousand, is evangelized by five Presby- terian Churches, whose children maintain a missionary ship. The Day spring, to keep up communication among the stations, and with Sydney as their base fourteen hundred miles to the south-west. Of the twelve missionaries four are sent forth by the Free Church to JEt 71. THE MELANESIAN MISSION. 463 Aneityum and Aniwa, now wholly clirlstianized, Ipare and Futuna. In tlie century that has passed since Captain Cook discovered those paradises of the Pacific, even in the half-century since their cannibals murdered John Williams on Eromanga and some of his suc- cessors, both Melanesians and Polynesians have been formed into Christian churches so vigorous that Dr. Duff lived long: enousfh to learn how the once cannibal Aneityumese were paying £700 for an edition of the whole Bible in their own language. Thus all through his career, from first to last, his influence overflowed to other Churches, and the fruit returned to himself in a way rarely seen in the kingdom one law of which is thus expressed, " Ye have laboured, and others have entered into your labours." AVhen, in 1878, the forty-ninth year of the Mission which he had founded and extended closed with his own life, introducing the time of jubilee in the Jewish sense, what did Dr. Dufl* see ? Apart from the missions he had given to the Established Church of Scotland, and the missionaries, European, American and Asiatic he had influenced or trained for other Churches, we may thus coldly sum up results which in all their spiritual consequences and even historical ramifications no mere biographer can attempt to estimate. The one boy-missionary ordained by Chalmers, and sent forth by Inglis, in 1829, is represented by a staff of 115 Scottish and 44 Hindoo, Parsee and Kaffir missionaries in the half-century. Of these nearly half have passed to their eternal rest, leaving at present 38 Scottish and 18 native ministers ordained or licensed to preach the gospel, after a careful literary and theological education, besides five medical missionaries — one a lady — eleven lay professors and evangelists and several students of divinity. The two primary English schools of 1830 at Calcutta and Bombay have become 210 464 LII'E OF DE. DUFF. 1878. colleges and schools in which, every year, more than 15,000 youths of both sexes receive daily instruction in the Word of God underlying, saturating, conse- crating all other knowledge. English has become the common language of hundreds of thousands of the educated natives of India and Africa. But a pure and Christian literature has been created in their many vernaculars and even classical tongues, based on and applying the translated Bible. The Free Church con- verts alone have numbered 6,458 adults, who, from almost every false creed, impure cult and debasing social system in the East and the South, have sat down in the kingdom, many through much tribu- lation of which Christendom, as it at present is, has no experience. These with their families have not only created Christian communities which sweeten the society around them and are thus used gradually to leaven its whole lump, but they form twenty-eight congregations which, after many members have passed away to their eternal reward, number 3,500 communi- cants, 4,100 baptized adherents, and 800 catechumens, all under ministers of their own race. In 1878 they subscribed £750 to evangelize their countrymen, though themselves poor after much self-sacrifice. No mission can show so many converts, or nearly so many native missionaries, gathered from the ranks of educated Hindooism and used to break down the mighty mass of Brahmanism, as the India Mission of Dr. Duff, who was ever ready to abase himself while magnifying his office and defending his method. Each reader may judge for himself what share that method has had in all that makes the India of 1878 differ from that of 1829 especially in the significant fact that in that period the Protestant Christians of India have increased from twenty-seven thousand to half a million. CHAPTER XXYII. 1865-1878. BB. BUFF AT HOME, As a Friend. — Mrs. Duff. — Dr. Duff on her Death. — Mourning of the Bengalee Converts. — Solitude Thenceforth. — His Favourite Authors, Literary and Theological. — Hooker and Scott the Commentator. — On Anglo-Indian Partings. — College Work. — At Auchendennan on Loch Lomond. — At Patterdale on Ulleswater. — On Dr. Cotton and the Bishops of Calcutta. — To Sir Henry Durand and Lady Durand. — The Dowager Countess of Aber- deen.— Influence of Bengalee Converts on the Punjab. — Colonel Yule. — Sir Henry Maine. — Mr. John Marshman. — Dr. Moffat. — Free St. George's and Barclay Churches. — Archbishop of Canter- bury.— Miss Florence Nightingale. — Lord Shaftesbury. — Lord Halifax. — Dr. Duff's Unselfishness. Turning aside from the public conflicts and the official cares of the Missionary's life, let us rest awhile with him, so far as the stranger may do so, amid the sanctities of home and the intercourse of friendship. Of domestic joy and social delight he knew less than most public men, less even than most Anglo-Indian exiles, although his nature yearned for the one with a Celtic intensity, and was drawn out after the other with a chivalrous impulsiveness. In this he was like the first of missionaries, who in solitude turned from the scoffing philosophers of Athens to the seething mass of sinning idolaters in Corinth, determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Absorbed in daily and nightly toil after the highest quest and the divinest ideal, he could give to wife and child, friend and society, only the time which the exhausted body forced him to steal VOL. II. H H 466 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1865. from incessant energising. What to most men forms the sum of life, was with him an accident in living. This and the method of his work, the exacting punctu- ality which marked all his duties, enabled him to live many lives, making his fine physique the ready slave of his impetuous spirit. Hence, as no one desired the solace of family and friends more, the fervour with which all his relations with those lie loved were surcharged, and the fascina- tion which he exercised over the men and women whom he grappled to his soul. Hence, too, the comfort wherewith he could comfort the many strangers as well as friends who sought from him spiritual consolation or guidance. His face, his form, his bearing, the iron grasp and frequent shake of his hand, his sympathetic voice, his delicately suggested counsels or warmly urged advice, his emphatic rebuke or more enthusiastic approval, drew to him his equals, bound to him the converts, the students, the orientals whom he at the same time awed. His was a nature born to rule, while the grace of God humbled him into ruling by love. His will, directed by a desire loftier and a knowledge more complete than others possessed, some- times bore down opposition and silenced criticism. But he whose aim was equally lofty, and experience not very inferior, rejoiced in co-operation with a friend — even in working under a master — who never failed in anything he undertook for the Master of all. In spite of the parity of an ecclesiastical system which is strong by this very weakness, he and his many col- leagues in Calcutta, for thirty- three years, acted to- gether not only in unbroken harmony but in loving fellowship. Young theologians, frightened for a time from the mission-field by misrepresentations of his masterfulness, were amazed to observe when they reached Calcutta the unselfish skill with which he JEt 59. AS A HUSBAND. 467 found out tlieir specialities and encouraged their inde- pendent development. From John Macdonald in 1838 to tliose sent out in 1862 this was the case. The commu- nion between Duff and Mackay, Ewart and Dr. T. Smith was perfect, because they were all in different ways worthy of each other. So it was in the wider bonds of friendship) with the best men of his generation both in India and in the "West. Like drew to like all through his life, from the students' benches at St. Andrews. Next to the life hid with Christ in God, Duff found his solace and his inspiration in his wife. From her quiet but unresting devotion to him, and his excessive reticence regarding his most sacred domestic feelings, many failed to appreciate the perfection of her service not merely to her husband but to the cause for which he sacrificed his whole self. The extracts which we have given from his letters during their frequent separations, reveal more than was apparent at the time, save to those who, like the earlier converts, were the inmates of the home in Cornwallis Square. But it was when the hour came for the missionary and his wife to part for ever here below that the value of Mrs. Duff to his work as well as to himself could be realized. He had been welcomed home in July, 1864, after the prolonged tour in South Africa, by her who had preceded him. He had, in the intervals of missionary ordinations, ad- dresses and visits, enjoyed the ineffable peace, to the Anglo-Indian, of rest and then activity in the society of wife and children, for six brief months. Then, after a brief illness, tenderly nursed by them and by the new- made widow of Dr. Mackay, Anne Scott Duff was taken away. To the son whom he had left behind him in India, that source of endless partings for the sake of noblest work, the widowed father wrote an epistle of heart-breaking yet triumphant words, from which we take these sacred extracts : 4/^^ Bnssr Tw 3fL JBiJitftti. * 1 ac GTOir^ • s^ jpiw" arati yriJUBi:^, ■wfteau I ^ atom ^ ami ®£ tl&a law a..-- -— . ; ^a:, 3^i^ i?&S^. HSffiSk V-: iGTCPSw aodB : Time uire Itriniatfr <£ ^^ Tins ILamii^ off ®(iii &r Iff ai CTmiwwMiifti "IS* 8111199^ J ... J. Hm^ (fit iiilfij utfBJuitfC (iuliji. tCU i ■ ■■ ty V'juafej- dwart : in c- - 1^- w to aiilk i£* .. mM riwiWI r. "? dte" lot weep oftBKR.'wM&iDi My W-- knd^ •mm \ — wbsj ejes \&'^^ \- 6r MX, 5^ Ml H9 WIfK* 4^ fcgfcvfljgr pirtokffr <«£ «inr «s»eMial UMBwngiiyv hat wndbgtnir t ipqpg/ viP|K IS Tibe Iwo^ ^sC fib Mi9«^ fiafmS^ wiene «ldb»sB r flMM i^o^ a^ iirfiiiii— iiriiwpiijiiiiim wsAwaaim ^ HeawEA «a;^ 110^ lbs la«» fl»r si^ ■tite|fa»rf:|^iilijiiiB)ij^iHrdglfejaa»^^ %Mvil! l&Mi^ligig^piii h» iS^ pmmmj Mi§M imm fer ail iftg msm»Mm1^satilltmmwmt9mM.^mflAsiitlMSff&^i6isdf mb/ warn i^m»i ^w «ite^ Jew M^ smsg^ ^^m&^Amm:, 470 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1865. life went gradually, gradually ebbing away, till sbe literally fell asleep in Jesus. As there was no pain you cannot imagine the singularly sweet, placid and tranquil expression of her coun- tenance even in the paleness of death. To us it was a heart- rending spectacle. But our prayer was that the Lord might give us the spirit of simple, absolute resignation to His holy will. And our prayer has been wonderfully answered. What my own feelings are, I dare not venture to attempt to describe; nor would I if I could. They are known to the Searcher of hearts, and can only find relief in prayer. The uuion cemented by upwards of thirty- eight years of a strangely eventful life in many climes and amid many perils and trials and joys, so sud- denly, so abruptly brought to a final close in this world — oh ! it is agony to look at it in itself. But when I turn to the Saviour and the saintly one now in glory, I do see the dark cloud so lustred with the rainbow of hope and promise, that I cannot but mingle joy with my sorrow, and we can all unite in praising the Lord for His goodness. His marvellous loving- kindnesses towards us in our hour of sore trial. . ," Those who, out of her own home, knew Mrs. Duff best, were the Bengalee Christians of Cornwallis Square. When the news of her removal reached them their sorrow found expression through their minister, the Eev. Lai Behari Day, from the pulpit of the mission chm^ch. The testimony has a meaning in this Bio- graphy, not only because it shows what Christianity- makes a people of whom it has been most ignorantly said that their language has no word for gratitude. The passage vividly reflects the influence which Mrs. Duff exercised over the whole career of her husband. The preacher declared, as the result of his twenty-two years' experience since his baptism, that he had not seen " a more high-minded and pure-souled woman, of loftier character or greater kindliness." " Her distin- guished husband was engaged in a mighty work, and she rightly judged that, instead of striking out a path for herself of missionary usefulness, she would be doing JEt 59. SYMPATHY OF THE BENGALEE CONVERTS. 47 1 her duty best by upbolding and strcngtliening him in his great undertaking. Mrs. Duff rightly judged that her proper province was to become a ministering ano^el to her husband who was labouring^ in the hio-li places of the field, who had to sustain greater conflicts than most missionaries in the world, and who, there- fore, required more than most men the countenance, the attentions, the sympathy, and the consolations of a loving companion. And it is a happy circumstance for our Mission and for India at large that Mrs. Duff thus judged. The great success of the memorable father of our Mission is owing, under God, doubtless to his distinguished talents and fervent zeal ; but it is not too much to say that that success would have been considerably less than it has been had his hand not been strengthened and his heart sustained by the dili- gent and affectionate ministrations of his partner in life. I cannot refrain from expressing the deepest sympathy for the venerable patriarch of our Mission. The recollections of a long period of life spent together in the sweet interchange of kind offices must be deeply affecting. The angel of love wdio so long ministered to our revered spiritual father, and who was his companion and solace in these wilds of heathenism, upholding his arms in the time of conflict, comforting him in distress, watching over him in sickness, and ever pouring into his mind the balm of consolation, — that ministering angel has been removed from his side, and Dr. Duff has now, in the decline of his life, to pass the remainder of his days alone. What can we, his children on the banks of the Ganges, do further than express our profoundest sympathy with him, and commend him to the fatherly care of Him who is em- phatically the God of all comfort ?" Such sympathy following such experience went as far as human effort could go to heal the wound. Six 472 IIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1870. years after, wlien we met him for the first time in the familiar drawiDg-room in Lauder E^oad, and admired the rich landscape of hill and dale as seen from the southern window, the old man burst into tears, for her favourite view recalled the tender days of old and all the Calcutta memories. Thenceforth Dr. Duff was emphatically alone, though ever cared for with filial devotion and friendly affection. His spiritual experience became still deeper, his power to comfort sufferers like himself more remarkable and more sought after. In all his correspondence to the close of his life, and in his personal intercourse with those he loved, there is now a touch of tenderness, ever before felt but now more freely expressed. As the tall figure began to stoop more visibly, and the expressive mouth came to be concealed under a still more eloquent beard of venerable whiteness, and the voice soon became wearied into an almost unearthly whispering, new love went forth to one whose chival- rous simplicity was daily more marked. The flash of the eye and the rapid remark told that there was no abatement of the intellectual force or the spiritual fire ; while the pen was never more ready for action in every good cause and for every old friend, especially in the cause he had made his own all through life. As grand- children climbed on his knees, and grew up around him, at school and college, he renewed his youth. All children he delighted in ; with all he was a favourite. Few had such inner reasons as he to rejoice alway. The deepened solitude of his life after 1865, into which even the most loving and sympathetic could not penetrate, showed itself in a renewed study of the word of God and of those master-pieces of theological literature, practical and scientific, in which truly devout and cultured souls take refuge from the ecclesiastical as well as literary sensationalism of the day. He had JEt 64. HIS FAVOUEITE AUTHOES. 473 always cultivated the highest of all the graces — the grace of meditation, which feeds the others. He increasingly loved to muse, shutting himself up for hours in his study, or retiring for weeks to a friendly retreat, now in the Scottish, now in the English lakes. He was catholic in his tastes, literary and theological. He had found a strong impulse in the works of Thomas Carlyle, as they appeared, declaring on one occasion to the writer that no living author had so stimulated him. He enjoyed the majestic roll and exquisite English of De Quincey's sentences, finding in him, moreover, a definiteness of faith and even dogmatic conviction as to the divine source of all duty and action which, like many admirers of Carlyle, he hungered for in the ori- ginal of *' Sartor Resartus." Milton and Cowper were never long out of his hands. He was a rapid reader and a shrewd and genial critic of current literature. But he transmuted all, as the wisely earnest man will always do, into the gold of his own profession. The essayist and the poet, the historian and the politician, the philosopher and the theologian, while giving the purest pleasure and the best of all kinds of recreation at the time, became new material, literary, ethical and spiritual, for the one end of his life, the bringing of India and Africa into the kingdom of Christ. Let these two of his hundreds of letters to wife and children suffice to illustrate the higher uses of his solitude. The first was addressed to his daughter, the second to a daughter-in-law on the eve of one of those sore partings which are the lot of Anglo-Indians. " Oct. 9th, 1870. It is Sabbath evening. I am alone; and yet in a high and true sense, not alone — for, oh solemn truth ! God is here, hei^ej to note the inmost thoughts, feelings and desires of the heart. And what weakness, imperfection, defile- ment must His pure and searching eye discern in them all ! What absolute need of the application of the blood that cleanseth 474 ^^^'^ ^^ ^K- I^^FF. 1870. from all sin ! Here, toOj to note tbe secret struggles^ fears, hopes, joys of the soul, under fresh discoveries of its awful shortcominofs, and vet fresh discoveries too of the unsearchable riches of God*s forbearance, grace and love ! Though my thoughts daily resort to the members of my singularly scattered family, I have at times to-day been more than usually affected in thinking of them all. Shall we ever all meet here below again ? Grandfather (grandmother being privileged with visions of glory before us all), children and grandchildren ! Oh, it were to me a joyous and a happy spectacle, if it could be realized. But if not here below, in earth's changfiuo: climes, why not above ? Ah, would not the assured prospect of that be unspeakably more joyous and happy ! Then why not strive, through grace, to make it sure ? The invitation is to all — old and young — sheep and lambs together. Why, then, not welcome it ? Why not joyfully respond to it ? Here it is compendiously expressed : * The Spirit and the Bride say. Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely/ Oh, then, let all parents come. And let them by faithful and assiduous instruction, godly consistent example, and fervent wrestlings in prayer, strive, through grace, to bring their children along with them into the fold of the Good Shep- herd here below, that all hereafter may be re-united in His kingdom of glory above, where they shall cease to suffer and to sin, but never cease to be happy, singing perpetual hal- lelujahs uuto Him that sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb ! Amen. Oh, that the purport of such a vision of glory could be entertained hopefully by us all now ! How it would tend to cheer, revive and animate amid all the clouds and shadows, trials and perplexities, sorrows and anxieties of this strangely chequered probationary scene ! ** What was chiefly in my mind when I began was this — the fearful blindness, ignorance and apathy which characterize our estate by nature, and which nature cannot apprehend or feel, so as even faintly to desire to get rid of them. I was particularly led to think of this subject to-day, from having taken up and read a small volume, which was much esteemed and read in my younger days, but which of late years has fallen entirely out of sight, amid the sensational trash and trumpery of an unspiritual, materialistic, degenerate age. I JEi, 64. HOOKEE ON JCrSTIFICATIOX. 475 mean, Scott fhe CommeTitator'3 'Force of Trnth.* It isajahort personal narrative of the author's state of mind and conscience, while nnrenewed by grace, and of the remarkable series of Bteps and incidents by which at length he became ' a new creature in Christ Jesus '; and, as all the world has long ac- knowledged, one of the godliest of saints. The style of the work would, in this florid, ambitious and pretentious age, be reckoned heavy, dull a3d such-like. But it is solid, massive and fraught with condensed spiritual thought and experience, the perusal of which could not fail to interest and profit any one who was really in earnest about the salvation of his soul. One principal charm of the work consists in this — that after such a signal example of God's marvellous forbear- ance and the power of Divine grace, no one need despond. (Dr. Duff then goes on to analyse the work.) Scott was not then able to receive, as he afterwards fully received, the fol- lowing statement by Hooker, concerning justification: 'But the rijrhteousness wherein we must be found, if we will be justified, is not our own ; therefore we cannot be justified by any inherent quality. Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are found in Him. In Him God findeth us if we be feithful ; for by faith we are incorporated into Christ. Tiien, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and un- righteous, yet even the man who is impious in himself, full of iniquity, full of sin ; Aim, being found in Christ, through faith, and having his sin remitted through repent- ance ; }dm God upholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it ; taketh quite away the punish- ment due thereunto by pardoning it ; and accepteth him in Jesus as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that was commanded him in the law. Shall I say, more perfectly rio'hteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law? I must o take heed what I say; but the Apostle saith, "God made Him to be sin for us Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.*' Such are we in the Bight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever ; it is our comfort and our wisdom ; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned and God hath suffered ; that God hath made Himself the Son of man, and that men are made the rifrhteousness of God.' 47^ I^IFE OF DR. DUFF. 1875. " Scotfc says, tliat if at that time lie had met witli such. passages in the writiogs of dissenters^ or many of tbose modern pnblications which, under tlie brand of methodistical, are con- demned without reading or perused with invincible prejudice, he should not have thought them worth regard, but should have rejected them as wild enthusiasm. But, he says, ' I know that Hooker was deemed perfectly orthodox and a standard writer by the prelates of the Church in hi* own days. I had never heard that it had been insinuated that he was tinctured with enthusiasm; and the solidity of his judgment and acuteness of his reasoning faculties needed no voucher to the attentive reader. His opinion, therefore, carried great weight with it ; made me suspect the truth of my former sentiments, and put me upon serious inquiries and deep meditation upon this subject, accompanied with earnest prayers for the teaching and direction of the Lord therein.' The result ultimately was, that, 'after many objections and doubts, and much examination of the word of God,' he came wholly to accede to Mr. Hooker's sentiments on justification and all other vital doctrines. "I have felt that I could not have been better engaged during a portion of the evening of the day of hallowed rest than in copying the preceding precious extracts — in connection with the remarkable autobiography of so eminent a man as Scott, the Commentator. In your own case they will simply and happily tend to confirm scriptural truths with which you have long been familiar. The perusal of them may also be found useful in the case of any friend or acquaintance, whose soul may have never been agitated by the tempest of conviction under an overwhelming sense of the inflexible demands of God's violated law, so as to be constrained in agony to cry, ' What must I do to be saved ? ' or experienced the transports of joy, security and rest, in the peaceful haven of, ' Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ' — Jesus Christ and Him crucified, as He is freely ofiered in the gospel — ' and thou shalt be saved !' " "30^/t Aug. J 18 75. —To-morrow is likely to prove to you both, as parents, one of the most trying in your married life, more particularly to you, as a mother has peculiar feelings towards ' the infant whom she bore,' with which even a father cannot well intermeddle. To-morrow, as I understand, you are to part with your five children. And though it be not, JEt. 69. ON ANGLO-INDIAN PAETINGS. 477 thank God, for an indefinite period, yet for a period lono* enough to impart a wrench to natural feelings. I desire, there- fore, to mingle my own sympathies with your intenser emotions on the occasion. Well do I remember still a similar partino* and separation as far back as thirty-six years ago, at the close of 1839, when my dear partner (than whom there never was a tenderer and more affectionate mother) deliberately, and on principle, made up her mind, as an act of duty under the over-ruling providence of God, to part with four children — the youngest your own husband, a lovely and captivating infant of only eleven months old. In connection with the vocation to which God had called me I felt it to be my duty to return to India ; she, as a faithful wife, felt it to be her duty to accompany me. Having been in India, she was keenly alive to the peculiar diflaculties connected with climate, native servants, etc., in training children. Her mind, therefore, was made up, however sore and bitter the trial, to part with her children for the sake of their real benefit, if only a fitting home could be found for them. The separation, in our case, proved to be for eleven years ! '^Now, my dearest, it may tend to mitigate though it can- not annihilate the pain of parting with your dear ones, when you reflect on the exceeding goodness of God in providing for them such a home as they will have with tender, loving, and judicious relatives. There are singularly mitigating circum- stances under the unavoidable painfulness of the situation, circumstances which I have no doubt will evoke from your sensitive motherly heart feelings and corresponding expres- sions of gratitude to the great God, from Whom cometh down ' every good and perfect gift/ whether temporal or spiritual ; circumstances which, I trust, will enable you at parting to mingle a joyous cheerfulness with the inward experiences of natural heart-sadness; and which will enable you too, not only bravely and in faith to bear up under the trial, but even to speak words of cheering to the dear children, though it may be amid a flood of tears — nature's grand outlet and relief for the burden of nature's sorrows — on either side. *^ Regard it all as the overruling of a good and gracious God, who evermore, in Cowper's beautiful words, — * Behind a frowning Providence Hides a smiliucr face.' 478 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1875. " This temporary parting is only part of tlie cross which you have to bear ; and if borne in the self-denying, elevating Christian spirit, will yield you a reversion of blessings. We all would naturally cleave to our own individual likings ; for- getting that the grandeur of a living faith, a realizing trust in God, consists in our readiness to shape and mould our likings in entire accordance with Ilis holy will, and in entire con- sistency with the obvious requirements of duty. The present life is designedly one of trial or probation, in which souls are trained and disciplined for glory. It is therefore a mixture of light and darkness, clouds and shadows, pains and consolations, or a constant alternating interchange of these. The grand thing, then, is to find out the true Refuge — Christ — and to betake oneself wholly and absolutely to it, so as to be able intelligently, sweetly and confidently to appropriate, as one^s own, the words of such well-known and favourite hymns as ' Rock of Ages,^ ' Jesus, Lover of my soul,' etc. It is confidence in an almighty, all- willing, all-loving Saviour, which will strengthen the soul for all the contingencies, vicissi- tudes and trials of life ; and inspire with abounding confidence in the midst of them all ; yea, and enable one to take up and triumphantly appropriate ' the exceeding great and precious ' promises of such a Psalm as the 91st, and other portions of Scripture, which are all 'yea, and amen' in Christ, and, being Christ's, become the true believer's heritage. " It is a great matter to arrange for keeping up a frank, lively and constant correspondence with the children. No rigid or systematic rule on this subject can be laid down. But, under ordinary circumstances, perhaps the best and most likely way of permanently sustaining correspondence may be, not for the children to write spasmodically, by fits and starts, or for two or three of them to write by the same mail, but for one to write regularly each successive week. In this way the turn of each would come round in about once every month. In this way the period of one's turn to write would be looked for- ward to as an event ; for which materials would be found from lessons, or domestic matters, or incidents in the course of the daily walk, and thus encourage the development and exercise of the faculty of observation. For this latter I wish that the old children's work ^ Evenings at Home ' could be got ; as in it are some effective stories, and one which made a deep impression on my own mind when a boy, ' Eyes and No Eyes.' JEt 69. THE TOIL OF HIS LATER YEARS. 479 '' In spirit I shall be with you and yours daily. And here I may be forgiven for telling you what I have never told any one else before, either orally or in writing, viz., that for years past, as I am a wakeful sleeper and am always awake long before the usual hour for rising {six o'clock), my habit has been in- variably to remember in my meditations and prayers on my bed all those, separately and collectively, who are nearest and dearest to me, including of course yourself and W. and the dear children. This does not preclude my remembering them at other times as well ; but from this invariable practice of mine, all are sure to be remembered in my humble supplica- tions at least once every day. Will you both kindly not forget me in your daily approaches to a throne of grace ! And may Jehovah^s banner over you all be love." The University session of each year after his ap- pointment as Professor of Evangelistic Theology was a period of unusual toil and even hardship to Dr. Duff. Besides the often harassing and always anxious cares arising from his management of the foreign office of his Church, and the multitudinous calls of committees, societies, and other organizations, which, while neces- sary for average men, are often obstructive to the experienced, he had to discharge his college duties in the three cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen successively. At the last two he found a temporary home with the venerable widow of his old friend, Dr. Lorimer, and with Principal Lumsden or his brother. Much travelling in a Scottish winter and spring, after the extremes of Bengal, was not favourable either to comfort or health. Hardly had April set him free from lecturing, when May brought on the fatigues of the General Assembly. After that he would flee, not for rest but for solitude in his work, to the friendly shades now of Auchendennan then of Patterdale. Or he would gratify the Anglo-Indian crave for travel by a tour on the continent, out of the beaten track and alone, till the '' commission " of Assembly called him back in the middle of August. 480 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1869. In no home, after his wife's death, was he so happy as in that of George Martin, Esq., of Auchendennan. It was not only that he was embosomed in the natural beauties of Loch Lomond, living on its southern shores, gazing every hour of the day at its mighty Ben, visit- ing its wooded islands, or strolling through gardens in which art has only revealed the luxuriant beauty of nature. Nor was it only that he felt himself in his native Highlands, and became once more the friend of every peasant on the estate, ministering to them in the hall on the Sabbath evening, and winning them by his familiar gentleness in his walks, so that, when he left them each year, they congregated of their own accord to bid him a farewell of which a monarch might have been proud. He found in his hostess and host that perfection of Christian hospitality which leaves each guest alone within the simplest regulations of the household, yet gathers all together in the loving circle of social and spiritual sympathies. Hence such lan- guage as this in his letters, especially in the earliest, written eighteen months after his wife's death : Ever since " I have felt keenly that I have no longer a home in this world below. But in the bosom of your family I really experienced somewhat of the indescribable genial glow that made me feel as if once more at home." Again, on the second day of 1869, " In my- self I only feel conscious of endless shortcomings, so that my refuge is in 1 John i. 8-9, and the latter clause of verse 7." " The text quoted by (Isaiah 1. 10) was the passage of Scripture which first gave me relief, after months of darkness and despondency, one summer after I had become a student of theology." After being nursed through a painful illness in Auchendennan, he wrote, '' Humanly speaking, from the peculiar state of my health, I would not have been able to carry on my official duties in the college (Glas- ^t. 6s. AT PATTERDALE. 48T gow) had it not been for sucli a refuge from tlie wear and tear of city life.'* As Aucliendennan was liis spring retreat, tlie old hotel at Patterdale generally found him its occupant before the end of June. For eight years he found there a quiet spot, not too far from his office in Edin- burgh, and yet removed from solicitations to preach and speak and work in public. The rooms looking out on the garden and the water came to be regarded as his ; and there he was rather the honoured guest than the ordinary visitor. The stream of tourists every season passed by the quaint, comfortable house for the new hotel, leaving him to its sequestered delights, broken in upon only occasionally by a friend. There he found leisure for the arrears of correspondence which the College and the General Assembly had piled up, and calm to meditate new enterprises for his Master. When the afternoon post hour set him free he gave the summerevening hours to rambles and musings amid the glories of Ulleswater and Helvellyn. Walk- ing up Birk Fell or Place Fell to the slate quarry from ■which the lake is best seen, roaming among the woods of Patterdale Hall courteously opened to him at all times, chatting to the people in the village who learned to love him, or examining and giving his own prizes to the school, he was ever the same kindly old man, who half awed, half drew the little ones, while he lifted the old to a higher level of thought and feeliog. Official entries in the visitors' book of the school, the chatter of the children and the talk of their parents, and not a few most pathetic letters among his papers from both, tell of a life of simple invigoration to himself and beneficence to all around. Once when residing at Patterdale, more than six montlis after the loss of his voice during the May meetings, he rode up Helvellyn and walked over Striding Edge at the most VOL. II. II 482 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1872. dangerous part of tlie ridge. In the evangelical services of the little church of Patterdale he was a grateful worshipper. Much travel and knowledge of Christ and of his own heart had given him, while ever an earnest Presbyterian in secondary matters, a true catholicity in all essentials. " We all pray you may long be spared to visit us and to bless children in many lands — God bless you," is the closing sentence of an acknowledg- ment of his annual gifts to the school, by one of the children in the midsummer of 1872. But the Anglo-Indian has no friends like those who have, by his side, fought the battles of Christ and of civilization in the East. With many such Dr. Duff's correspondence was regular, free and full. In the year after his wife's death the Indian telegraph — so often the messeno^er of unforeseen disaster — flashed the news of the sudden disappearance of Bishop Cotton in the treacherous waters of the Ganges, on his return to his barge in the darkness after consecrating the cemetery of Kooshtea. That Scotland, where the greatest of the Metropolitans of India was little known, might learn what sort of standard-bearer in the one army of the Evangel he was who had thus fallen. Dr. Duff published in the official Record of his Church an eloge of rare tenderness and intensity as used of one ecclesiastic by another of a different organisation. " It was," he wrote, " the felicity of the writer of these lines to enjoy the intimate friendship and fellowship of the last three of the Metropolitan Bishops of India — Turner, Wilson, and Cotton ; while, from their me- moirs and the revelations of personal friends, he had become familiar with the lives and characters of the first three — Middleton, Heber, and James. He has, therefore, no hesitation in saying that, in many re- spects, Bishop Cotton was greater than the greatest of his predecessors. It is trae that, in the development ^t. 66. THE METEOPOLITANS OF INDIA — BISHOP COTTON. 483 of some one talent or faculty, and in the culture of some one department of literature, science, or theology, he might have been surpassed by one or another of them. But it was his happy lot to possess, in fair measure and proportion, some of the distinguishing excellencies of them all, unaccompanied by any of those countervailing qualities which might tend to neutralize their force or mar their brilliancy. He had the strong, masculine judgment, the ripe, classical scholarship, the legislative and organistic faculty of Middleton ; the gentle, kindly, amiable, conciliatory manners of Heber ; the calm, quiet, practical sense of James and Turner; the warm attachment and love for the essential verities of the evangelical system which distinguished Wilson. But, in his case, he was learned and scholarly without pride or pedantry ; firm and determined in the maintenance of what he believed to be right, without arrogance or dogmatism ; calm, for- bearing and placid in his temperament, without that impotence of will or general forcelessness of character which might betray him into undue compliances ; sin- cere and unaffected in his piety, without that impetuous fervour which might hurry him into unadvised utter- ances, or untoward courses of action. In his religious sentiments he was tolerant and charitable, without latitudinarianism ; orthodox, without rancour or bigo- try. Too conscientious and enlightened to stoop to any unworthy compromise, he was ever temperate, ever deferential to the opinions of others — respecting their liberty of conscience, and right, under responsi- bility to God, of judging in all matters for themselves. Sincerely devoted to the principles, the order and government of his own Church, he yet breathed that spirit of true Christian charity which could hail mem- bers of all the evangelical Churches as brethren in the Lord. Hence the truthful remark of the correspondent 484 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1870. of tlie The Times, that, ^ while advanciDg the interests of the Church of England in India, he had the happy art of winning the confidence of all sects of Christians, so that, more than any of those who preceded him, he was the bishop, not of his own people only, but of all Christian men.'" Still more keenly did Dr. Duff feel the almost equally sudden and no less lamentable death of his companion in his first voyage to India, Henry Durand. Notwith- standing the coldness, the opposition, the misrepre- sentations of self-seeking officials and the defenders of administrative or political abuses, Durand had risen to be Lieutenant-Grovernor of the Punjab. It was left to Lord Mayo, tardily, to confer on him the office which Lord Canning would have given to the Christian soldier, the righteous statesman, the im- placable foe of wrong-doing. The whole Indian empire was rejoicing, for its own sake, when at the opening of 1871, on the very frontier which he would have guarded from the follies of later times, this best representative of the Percies was struck down in the discharge of duty.* On learning Durand' s appointment. Dr. Duff thus had written to him. Sir Henry's remark to the present writer, on receiving the epistle, was that, compared with Duff's career for others, his life had been but " a flash in the pan." " Hareow-on-the-Hill, 2U}i Junej 1870. '' My Dear Sir Henry, — After an absence of three months in Syria, whither I had gone on a special mission of inquiry, I returned last evening to this place, where my daughter and family reside, in eight days from Constantinople, including a sojourn of two days in Pesth — such are the facilities of travel in these latter days. Owing to my being chiefly in postless * See his son's sketch in the introduction to the distinguished Engineer officer's First Afghan War and its Causes, 1879, JEt 64. SIR HENRY DUEAND. 485 regions, as well as the uncertainty of my movements, I was for nearly two months without letters or papers from home or friends, so that on arrival here I had almost everything to learn. One of the first items communicated was that of vour appointment to the Punjab. Need I say with what heartfelt joy the communication was received ? Hundreds of con- gratulations will, I am sure, be showered in upon you, all of them I doubt not sincere ; but from no one will any one of them have come, flowing from a more warmly attached heart than mine, or from a more sincere and intense admiration of great talents, linked with high-toned Christian principle, un- bending rectitude and pure patriotic unselfish motives. This, my dear old, and I may even add, almost life-long friend, is not vain flattery ; God knows it is otherwise. It is only a feeble expression of the profound conviction of my head and heart. And being a truthful expression so far as it goes, I cannot, in the very interest of truth and honesty, withhold it. I say, ' so far as it goes,' because were I writing of you to another, and not to yourself, I could and would say much more in the same strain. Few, if any, had the same opportunities as I have enjoyed of knowing the extraordinary nature of the trials, opposition, and obloquy to which, in the Aristides-like resolution to discharge duty, wholly irrespective of personal consequences, you have been subjected; your noble, heroic Christian bearing and demeanour under them all. And what I strongly felt I have often strongly spoken — and that too, at times, in high places and before high personages. And let me say that, from my general confidence in the overrulings of a righteous Providence, I never did despair of something like justice being done to you some day, sooner or later. This conviction of mine I have also been often led to express ; and now with my whole heart I thank the God of Providence for having put it into the hearts of those in high places (however unconsciously on their part) to fulfil His righteous purposes and behests. In the case of any tried one, like yourself, who in the main has put his trust in the Lord, I have never yet failed to note, at one time or other, and in one way or other, the verification of the precious words of the Psalmist : ' Trust in the Lord and do good ; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit 486 LIEE OF DR. DUFF. 1871. thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass, and He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noon-day.' Putting your trust, therefore, in the Lord, as in times past, go on, dear friend, go on ; and may it be seen in the issue that the disci- pline and preparation of forty years of varied trial have been mercifully ordained only to ensure a consummation of blessed fruitfulness duriug your five years' government of the Punjab ! "This being Indian mail-day here, I have snatched a few moments to convey, at the earliest possible date for me, my warmest and most heartfelt congratulations on your high and noble and well-earned appointment to the government of the country of the five rivers. Yours, with sincerest esteem and much affection, " Alexander Duff/' 504 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1873. he closed liis openiog address by setting against each man's *^ neglect of duty, its terrible doom," a con- summation of glory in the heavens. The Spectator pronounced the address a " plea for a true conception of Church work by comparison with the trifle which engrossed his auditors. It struck the right key-note and it did not go without its reward." The closing address was as practical as that was elevated. The Education Act he pronounced an " equitable compro- mise," such that " it will now be the fault of the local boards and of the electors of the boards if every- where we shall not have a religious education with the free use of the Bible and Shorter Catechism." Citing his own experience of the introduction of optional examinations on the evidences of revealed religion, of Butler and Paley, into the University of Calcutta, he pleaded for the endowment of such a free or open lectureship in the Scottish Universities, on the model of that established by Jefferson in Virginia, as would gather into one the whole Bible teaching of the schools in all their grades from the first standard to the degree of Master of Arts. / The death of Dr. Candlish in 1873 once more left I vacant the office of Principal of the New College, j Edinburgh, which that distinguished preacher had held along with the pulpit of Free St. George's since the death of Dr. Cunningham. Thirty-six years before, the sudden removal of Dr. Chalmers had led many, who valued home work more though they would have it that they did not love foreign missions less, to desire Dr. DuflT's recall that he might then fill the Principal's seat. Now that he was not only at home but a Pro- fessor in the College, it seemed natural as well as be- coming that one so venerable and of such reputation in all the Churches as well as in his own, should preside in the senatus and discharge the other duties ^t. 67. PEACE AGAIN THREATENED. 505 of a more honorary than exacting kind. Even in 1862, Dr. Hanna, when convener of the Foreign Missions Committee, had thus written to him : " Had the Church thought of calHng you home it could only have been to occupy such a position as that held by the late lamented Principal. Other arrangements have been made to fill that vacancy, and I do not foresee the opening of any other position such, in its station of command and influence, as to lead to your being invited to occupy it. . . It has been your privilege to devote such a life of labour and such an amount of consecrated genius to the mission field in India, that, with failing health, it seems not unnatural that you should retire from much at least of the labour of your present position, and it ought to be the Church's part to consider in what way she can best show her sense of the worth of the services you have rendered, and best promote the comfort and usefulness of your re- maining years. I can quite sympathise with all the feelings you have expressed as to an unwillingness in present circumstances to return home." But when the office of Principal became vacant in 1873, it did not, at first, occur to Dr. Duff to tbink of filling it. He lost no time in letting this be known privately, with the frankness that had marked all personal considerations in his case. But the com- promise of the previous General Assembly had not removed party bitterness. Dr. Duff had loyally ac- cepted it, and had been drawn somewhat more closely to the anti-union leaders than had been possible before. As the duty of the peacemaker had induced him to become Moderator at a crisis which he had successfully warded off", he came to see that the same duty required him to sacrifice his first intention. If Dr. Rainy, whom Dr. Candlish's death had made the leader of the old union majority, had been unanimously 506 LIFE OP DE. DUFF. 1874. accepted by the Church as Principal, Dr. Duff would have been delighted to see the son of an old personal friend in the seat. Even if the usual course of sending the proposal down to presbyteries, for their opinion, had been followed, he would have been satisfied that justice had been done to both parties, while regretting the want of complete unanimity. This was the very first opportunity for testing the reality of the recon- ciliation between the two parties. The unionists had, most reluctantly but generously, surrendered their rights as a large majority — had sacrificed even their duty, as their explanatory statement half confessed — in perpetuating what many considered to be schism. The separatists expected, rightly or wrongly, that their old opponents would in all matters take them into their confidence. Dr. Duff had believed that the compromise between them would bear a more severe strain than this. But when he learned that the ap- pointment of Dr. E-ainy would rouse the old anti-union bitterness into violent opposition, he became willing again to throw himself into the breach. He had agreed to the earnest request of the union majority so far as to become Moderator a second time. He yielded to the entreaties of the old separatist minority so far as to abandon his desire not to be nominated for Principal, expressed at a time when he had been incorrectly assured that Dr. Rainy's appointment would be unanimous. In the interests of the peace he had seemed to bring about as Moderator, he was willing to be appointed Principal. In both cases he underestimated the strength of ecclesiastical partisan- ship, even when, for the unity of Christ's Church, it is directed to the purest ends. Who doubts that, but for the existence of such partisanship, the Free Church of Scotland would have unanimously compelled its noblest son to take the seat of Chalmers, Cunningham, Mt 68. LETTER TO LOED DALHOUSIE. 507 and Candlish, even as it had a second time made him Moderator ? From the controversy in the newspapers and the General Assembly of 1874, which resulted in Dr. Duff resigning his two offices, and withdrawing the resig- nation after a deputation of its leading members on both sides had conveyed to him the Assembly's loving message, we take this one letter as most fully express- ing his views. It was written a month before the meeting of Assembly in reply to a communication from the late Lord Dalhousie, who, alike as Mr. Fox Maule, M.P., Lord Panmure and the eleventh Earl, had always been an active elder of the Free Church : *' Patterdalb, \Sth April, 1874. "Dear Lord Dalhousie, — Having about three weeks ago left Aberdeen for the South, your Lordship's letter addressed to me there has reached me in this retired corner of England, and I now beg most respectfully to acknowledge the receipt of it. " Fully appreciating the motives which prompted you to write it, I can only say that, from my strong impression of the candour, independence of mind and impartiality of judg- ment for which you have been noted, if the opinion of any man with a full and accurate statement of all the facts of the case before him could influentially weigh with me, yours assuredly would. I am, however, satisfied that with much of what has occurred, and of which, without any inquiry or solicitation on my part, I have from time to time been made more or less cognisant, of a nature amply suflScient to account for the passive attitude which, in consistency with the principles on which I have acted throughout my whole life, I have been literally constrained to assume, your Lordship, owing to your great distance from the scene of action, must in a great measure be unacquainted; otherwise, I cannot help thinking that some portions of your letter would have been withheld, or expressed in a somewhat modified form. Having, by the force of circumstances beyond my control, been in a manner driven into the position I now occupy I cannot but deliberately adhere 508 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1874. to it; unless more, or better, light be shed upon the whole subject than I now happen to possess. " Had your Lordship, who has so long generously honoured me with your friendship, written as an old friend to me, desiring to learn my own mature views relative to the recent movement— accompanied, it might be, with a friendly ex- pression of your own, according to the light then enjoyed — instead of assuming the correctness of the representation of these^ by other and mayhap interested parties — a representation, in some cases at least, to my certain knowledge one-sided, partial, or wholly erroneous — and acting without any inquiry, as concerns me, on that assumption — most gladly would I have entered into any needful explanations on the entire subject. But after all that has already transpired, I regret that I do not feel at liberty, in writing, to enter into any fuller explanatory details as regards the past. Nor is it necessary now. My own view of the nature and origin, the objects, the merits and the possible results of the movement appears to differ from that of your Lordship; I think it therefore quite enough, in the mean- time, to direct a copy to be sent you of a memorandum which I had written some time ago in answer to inquiries addressed to me, for the information of such as it might concern, briefly setting forth the views which I was then led to entertain, and which I still continue to entertain on the subject. " One thing, however, I must say — it is this : that the manner in which, according to current report and belief, certain parties went about their favourite object at the outset, and subsequently prosecuted it — with no regard for the unbroken continuance of the peace and harmony of our Church, which, as we fondly hoped and believed, had been happily restored at last Assembly — was well calculated painfully to wound my moral and religious sensibilities. " If on account of my remaining passive in the matter which is now agitating the Church, and freely allowing its members, so far as I am concerned, to think and act according to their own judgment, I should be regarded and treated as an offender by certain parties, and incur their serious displeasure and the alienation of their feelings towards me — seeing that it has been their own unworthy and objectionable proceedings alone which in honour and consistency constrained me to assume the passive attitude — I cannot help it. The sin and the shame, if such ^t. 68. LETTER TO LORD DALHOUSIE. 509 they be, will be theirs, not mine; and the forfeiture of their friendship in such case, from a moral point of view, will be really no loss, but positive gain, by unmasking, if not the hollowness, at least the shallowness of former professions. Anyhow, deeply conscious as I am of my own integrity of motive and rectitude of intention — which if driven to it, when the proper time comes, I shall be prepared fully to vindicate before the world— I feel intensely that it is a small matter for me to be judged or misjudged by man's fallible judgment: He that judgeth me is God, and to my own Master I stand or fall ; — while there will be furnished to me a new and striking illustration of the beauty, wisdom and force of the prophet's warning exhortation, ^ Cease ye from man^ whose breath is in his nostrils ; for wherein is he to be accounted of ? ' '^ As to the dreaded effect upon Missions of any event that can happen, I have no fear whatever — the God of Missions will see to them. If the zeal of the Church in that sacred cause draws its inspiration from anything connected with man's theories of ecclesiastical policy, or aught else of earthly kind — and not from the love of Christ, the love of souls and the glory of God — it is a spurious and worthless zeal, which the Holy Ghost, Whose supreme function it is to 'convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment,' cannot be expected to bless or prosper. As to my humble self, my life, from the outset of my ministerial career, has by a ' solemn league and covenant ' with my God been devoted to the promotion of the Mission cause, in some one way or other, as the Lord might direct. Whatever situation, therefore, I may occupy here below, or whether or not I occupy any situation at all, my unalterable purpose, by the help of God's grace, till the expiration of my latest breath, will be to spend and be spent, as best I may, in its advocacy, whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear. " With regard to any possible or probable issue of the recent movement, my sole trust is in the God of providence and grace, whose sovereign prerogative it is to bring light out of darkness, order out of confusion, and good out of evil. And my fervent prayer is, that in due time and in some good and gracious way or other. He may be pleased to interpose and overrule the present untoward state of things for the ultimate furtherance of His own all- wise and beneficent designs. 5IO LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1875. '' Thanking your Lordsliip very warmly for the seasonable and solemn remembrancer about the advance of old age, from which I earnestly desire to profit, by endeavouring more assiduously than ever, through the aids of the heavenly grace, to prepare to meet my God ; and thanking you very cordially for all the kind attentions of the past, whatever may be in store for the future, — I remain, etc., "Alexander Dofp.^' The conclusion of the affair formed an occasion for the display of simple Christian magnanimity on the part of the venerable missionary. Principal Rainy hap- pened to be absent from the first meeting of senatus after his appointment. Dr. Duff at once consented to preside. Again, when the session of 1875 had opened, Dr. Duff took occasion to allude, before all the students, to the introductory address, in terms which we find Dr. Rainy thus reciprocating in a private letter to him, dated the 25th November : " My absence was accidental. But I can hardly regret it, having heard of the very kind way in which you took occasion to speak of my address. I set it down en- tirely to your own generosity of feeling, but I do not value it the less on that account." Dr. Duff's long friendship with the writer's father, Dr. Harry Rainy, became still closer. After, as before, the controversy it was plainly seen that the Principalship was nothing to the man whose whole life had been a self-sacrifice, save as a means to the end of the unity of his Church and the consequent enlargement of its missionary zeal and enterprise. In 1876 some of the anti-union party, joined by others as the discussion went on, fastened the charge of " unsoundness " on the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, Professor of Oriental Languages and the Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Free Church College of Aber- deen, and a member of the Committee for the Revision JEt. 6g. A MOMENTOUS ISSUE. 51I of the Old Testament version. The cause lay chiefly in the article " Bible," which had appeared the year before, signed by him, in the new edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica. The college committee, to whose juris- 1 diction he was subject in the first instance, formally I reported that they found no grounds for a " libel," or \ judicial charge, against the writer ; but they expressed disapprobation at the absence of explanations as to the relation of his critical views to the Protestant doctrine of Scripture, and because of his theory of the literary side of what he fully admitted to be the inspired book of Deuteronomy. The case came before the General Assembly of 1877, which, by a majority, instructed the Professor's own presbytery of Aberdeen, as the court of first instance, to take it up judicially. It has gone on ever since, in Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly. The first two by large majorities have followed the college committee. The last General Assembly, by a majority of one in a house of 641 members who voted, instructed the Presbytery to charge the Professor formally with holding opinions on the authorship of Deuteronomy contrary to the^^ Confession of Faith. This, by large majorities, both I Presbytery and Synod have conscientiously found \ themselves unable to do, and the dijQ&culty will again | come up before the General Assembly of 1880. Strictly abstaining from expressing an opinion on a case which is still suh judice, we may briefly state Dr. Duff''s relation to a question which occupied his thoughts and his correspondence till his death. Know- ing it only in its early stages, when the Professor was charged with holding the rationalism of Kuenen, which he combats, and with impugning the inspiration and canonicity of all Scripture, which he upholds and preaches. Dr. Duff" shared the alarm of those who con- sidered that " the most momentous issue was involved 512 • LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1875. in the crisis." In his eyes that issue was not one of Hebrew scholarship and criticism on the recent field of the literary origin and structure of one of the sacred books, that its inspiration and canonicity might be established against the rationalist and the anti-super- naturalist, as each stage of the procedure has since shown. The historical veracity, infalUble truth, and divine authority of Scripture seemed to him to be at stake, and to the defence of that all his antecedents and all his principles summoned him. His experience in Calcutta, where he had declared that of all learned men the Biblical critic ought to be the most learned, his own method there, and his plea for learned as well as pious missionaries before the General Assembly, proved that he would have been the last to restrain the freedom of legitimate criticism, the first to see that what has been called the life of the Church's scholarship was not threatened by a judicial condemnation of opinions which might afterwards be fouud to be not inconsistent with the E/eformed doctrine of Holy Scripture. But before the inquiry and discussion, now of four years, had revealed the details of this particular investi- gation, it was natural that Dr. Duff should look first at what Professor Robertson Smith has since re- peatedly declared he holds in common with all the Reformed Churches, — the divine inspiration and au- thority of Deuteronomy and all the canonical books of Scripture. Dr. Duff had ever been foremost in the defence of the evangelical doctrine of the Bible as the Word of God, which was the root of all his missionary methods and successes. These years of controversy, forced on him in the interests of peace, were none the less busy in other good work of a catholic kind. The same events which, in 1874, roused Mr. Gladstone to expose what he called the monstrous exaggeration of Church power ^t. 69. VATICANISM PURE LITERATURE. 5 1 3 into papal power, by publishing his work on the Vati- can decrees in their bearing on civil allegiance, which, with other two, has since appeared under the title of " Eome and the Newest Fashio^is in Religion," sum- moned Dr. Duff to take part, with Dr. Thompson of Berlin and others, in the great Glasgow meeting, on Vaticanism of the 5th October, 1 875. There the old fire burst forth again as he addressed himself to the popular exposition of the resolution, " That the re- appearance of the papal system in the free nations of Britain and Glermany, with bolder pretensions than ever, and waging open war against all the institutions of modern society, is a fact of the gravest significance to the people of Scotland, who suff'ered so much from it in former days, and demands the earnest attention of every friend of civil and religious liberty and every lover of our Queen and country." The British and Foreign Bible Society again claimed his advocacy in Exeter Hall, although age and toil had begun to rob the once thrilling voice of its power. To the National Bible Society of Scotland he ever lent his strength, alike in consultation and public advocacy. His old love of the press, and his conviction, too rarely met with in the Church, of the importance of creating and disseminating a pure and robust literature, found constant exercise in the operations of the Tract and Book Society of Scotland as well as of England. Working side by side with Mr. Martin, of Auchen- dennan, he sent pure books and periodicals into many a far-distant manse and hamlet. He helped to organize the system of colportage for the agricul- tural, mining and manufacturing districts, and was never happier than amidst the gatherings of the colporteurs as they returned to tell in conference their doings. He knew the power of literature for good or evil, he bewailed the neglect of it by evan- VOL. II. L L 514 I^IFE OF DR. DUFF. 1876. gelicalism. He was prevented only by the multitudi- nous cares of his own proper duties, as missionary, convener and professor, from realizing his dream not only of a Missionary Quarterly, but of a weekly news- paper to compete with the secularism and sensuality which successfully appeal to the people, because they are offered nothing else. Himself familiar with literary work, and chivalrous with the inbred courtesy of the old school, he could have succeeded had he made the attempt when he was younger, for he knew, as few do, how to respect the literary profession. His experience of India, where Mr. Murray had encouraged him in reprints of copyright works, led him to desire such a modification of the law as would substitute royalties for monopoly, or some equitable system. At the end of his career, as at the beginning, he thus wrote of the civilizing effects of our English literature : ** In this country we are literally deluged with a constantly increasing torrent of pernicious literature, fraught with the seeds of sedition, impurity and irreligion — freely accessible to the humblest of the masses because of its cheapness. On the side of British patriotism and Christian philanthropy, there- fore, is it not most desirable that, by the relaxation or removal of present copyright restrictions, a sound and corrective popular literature might, by an ample re- duction of cost, be supplied and brought within reach of all classes over the land — much to the advantasre of authors, publishers and the public ? Again, with regard to India, English education of every grade is rapidly spreading among its teeming inhabitants. In all higher collegiate education, the English language, with one or other of the oriental tongues, such as Sanskrit or Arabic, is always one of the two languages on which students are examined for university de- grees in arts. Consequently, our English classics are ^t. 70. TOURS IN HOLLAND AND RUSSIA. 515 profoundly studied with peculiar zest and earnestness by thousands and even tens of thousands of intelligent native youths ; and English literature, as a living and not a dead one, becomes to them for ever after the main storehouse whence they draw their intellectual aliment." By nothing so much as by tours on the continent of Europe did Dr. Duff at once keep up the catholicity de- veloped by his Indian experience, and the elasticity of spirit which was essential for work such as he continued to the last year of his life. Almost every alternate year he so planned his time as to give the two months from the middle of June to August to this highest form of recreation. Now he was in Holland, now on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Again duty drove him as far east as the Lebanon ; another year saw him exploring Russia ; and another found him in Norway. The result to others of his solitary wander- ings was sometimes a speech or a pamphlet, but always the richest conversation for his friends, and the most precious letters to his family. To Lady Aberdeen we find him writing in 1871 : " The tour in Holland was most seasonable. I twice visited that country, and I did so with much interest. There is much in its past history of a stirring and ennobling character, on high Christian grounds ; though, alas, in these latter days, there has in this respect been much lamentable degen- eracy. My second visit was by special invitation from a union of evangelical societies, who were to hold a meeting in a wood near Utrecht. Some fifteen or six- teen thousand of the still remaining good people of Holland assembled on the occasion. In several parts of the wood some half-dozen rustic pulpits were erec- ted. The avowed object was to give an account of different Missions throughout the world ; but in so doing full liberty was given to the speakers to shape 5l6 LIFE OP DR. DUFF. 1876. their remarks so as to bear directly on the rationalism and other errors now unhappily prevalent in Holland. There was much solemnity on the occasion, and I sel- dom enjoyed any gathering so much." When at Hamburg, in August, 1871, about to make a tour by Denmark and Sweden through Russia to the great fair at Nijni Novgorod, on the Volga, we met Dr. Duff who had just returned from the same route, by Warsaw and the old Scandinavian cities of the Baltic. For a month he had been without letters, and all the fulness of his sensitive nature burst forth as he was told of recent events, home and ecclesiastical. In a rapid drive to Blankenese, and as during a long night we paced the deck of the steamer to sail on the morrow, he detailed, in return, the events of his tour with a combined practical accuracy and eloquent description which made him the most charming as well as instructive of companions. From Stock- holm through the autumn paradise of islands which form the Aland Archipelago and on by the gulf and ports of Finland, he reached St. Petersburg. One of his fellow-travellers, the Rev. John Baillie, tells in Good Words how, guided by the plan in " Murray," his topographical instinct led him straight through that city of distances yet intricacies to the new hotel which they sought. For him the glories of St. Isaac's were soon dimmed by the heartless irreverence of the Eusso-Greek priests and the superstition of the people, so that he declared he had not, even in the idolatries of the East, seen anything more degraded. At Mos- cow he revelled in the Kremlin and its associations, historical and oriental. But it was in the Troitsa Monastery, forty miles off, that he fully realized what Russia is, in its good and its evil. At this " Oxford of Russia '* he understood why it is that the most perfect form of civil and spiritual autocracy the world ^t. 70. LAST TOUR IN NORWAY. 517 has seen is not only a menace to the liberties of other countries, but is fatal to all progress among the Rus- sians themselves, so that the next great revolution must be there and soon. The sight and the memories of Warsaw completed the lesson. Thence he returned by Konigsberg and the famous old cities of the southern Baltic, and especially the island of Rugen, where he traced every detail of the old Norse mythology as he contrasted its now extinct horrors with the living abominations of the popular Brahmanical and Vaish- nava worship of India. At Breslau as well as War- saw he had inspected the Jewish Mission. His verdict on the state of the Lutheran Church in North Germany he expressed in the one word, " petrifaction." In the last of his long tours which he made in 1873 through Norway, he traversed the whole of its sea- board from the south up to the region of the midnight sun, whence he was able to telegraph from the Ultima Thule of Vadso on the Yaranger Fiord. Most travellers who visit that region are content, he told the General Assembly, with admiring " its deeply indented fiords with their beetling precipices, roaring waterfalls, and waving forests ; its elevated fields or plateaux of per- petual snow, and glaciers sometimes descending to near the sea level ; and its numberless valleys and lakes often of surpassing richness and softened beauties, — without ever trying to realize the fact that the very glories of physical nature in that land stand sadly in the way of its effective spiritual culture and improvement." He found at its height the movement towards spiritual liberty in the Lutheran Church, begun by the peasant preacher, Hans Nielsen Haug, and con- tinued by two evangelical professors in the University of Chris tiania. The new life had been driven into the one channel of the Foreign Mission Society, which from an institute at Stavanger had sent forth agents 5l8 LIFE OF DE. DUFF, 1876. to Madagascar and Zululand. At Durban Dr. DufF had met two of these, and now all his heart went out to the dn^ectors of the society. A home mission or Luther Institution had since been formed, and a party had arisen who desired to follow the example of the Free Church of Scotland. When Dr. Duff arrived at Christiania he found that the movement had assumed the proportions of a "land's" or national meeting re- presenting each of the five "stifts" or ecclesiastical provinces. Seeing in this, and certainly most ardently desiring, the beginning of " a national ecclesiastical revolution,*' or at least of reforms which might result in the continuance of " the established but spiritually free and independent Church of Norway," Dr. Duff yielded to the invitation to take part in the proceedings. ^ Thus at home and abroad, and on the only enduring basis of freedom for the conscience and the truth, he ^ver experienced the fact expressed in that pregnant sentence of the Lord's brother : " The fruit of right- eousness is sown in peace of them that make peace." CHAPTER XXIX. 1876-1878. DYING. Dr. Duff completes his Seventieth Year. — Accident in his Library. — Observing Public Events. — Progress of the Prince of Wales through India. — Correspondence with Sir Bartle Frere. — Pro- clamation of the Empress. — Conversation vs^ith Mr. Gladstone on the Muhammadan Question. — Invited to Lecture in Nave of West- minster Abbey on St. Andrew's Day. — Letter to his second Convert. — Memorial of Dugald Buchanan. — Renewed Illness. — Surgical Operation without Chloroform. — Message from first General Presbyterian Council. — At Neuenahr. — Letters on the Famine of South India and his Calcutta Students. — Resigns all his Offices. — Is removed to Sidmouth. — Meditations of the dying Saint — Last Messages. — The end is Peace. — The Burial. — The Unity of the Whole Career. — Mr. Gladstone on Alexander Duff. On tlie 25tli April, 1876, Dr. Duff completed tlie seventieth year of his busy life. The college session was at an end ; the Universities had crowned their winter course with the usual ceremonial of graduation ; the ecclesiastical and philanthropic societies, of which he was an active member, were preparing for the May meetings. It was the time of that one of the two sacramental '* fasts" in Edinburgh, every year, when the rapt stillness of devotion in the churches contrasts strangely with the rush of holiday-makers outside, and still perpetuates amid ever increasing difficulty the old covenanting associations of the time, when the people and their Kirk formed one educated spiritual democracy. Never of late had Dr. Duff felt so well, though always wearied by the attempt to over- 520 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1876. take the details of his varied and excessive duties, as when, spiritually braced by the exercises of a Scottish communion season, he addressed himself to the task of once more rousing the General Assembly to its duty to Foreign Missions. But the first stage of what wa^ to prove his fatal illness was at hand. When acknowledg- ing the receipt of a sum of money from the widow of Sir Henry Durand, destined as the annual prize for the best " essay on some important subject of Christian bearing and tendency in our Calcutta Institution where the name of the revered departed is still gratefully remembered," Dr. Duff thus alluded to an accident and an illness which his physician considered far more serious than the sufferer himself. ** I was delighted to learn you had met with good Dr. Bonar. He is a man of rare gifts, poetical as well as other, and of a high-toned Christian character. He is not only a dear friend but a near neighbour of mine here. It is quite true that, before he left Edinburgh early in May last, I was in ordinary health, but during his absence, towards the end of May, I met with a serious accident, having fallen from a considerable height heavily on my back in my study, my head knock- ing against a desk and getting sadly gashed. This confined me to my bedroom for weeks. When getting well and able to move about towards the end of July, I was suddenly seized with a violent attack of illness which disabled me for about two months. Since October, however, by God's great goodness, I have enjoyed ordinary health." The double warning was unheeded, and the old man of seventy-one persisted in discharging his office and professorial duties all through the session of 1876-77, travelling much between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in the rigour of a Scottish winter, and for the first three months of 1877 longing for the familiar surroundings ^t. 70. H.E.H. THE PEINCE OF WALES. 521 of his own home though lovingly tended by friends in the last two cities. Intellectually he seemed to grow in keenness of observation and energy. The great public events which marked the close of Mr. Gladstone's adminis- tration, the transfer of power to his rivals, and the consistent attitude of the Scottish people throughout, were viewed by him from a higher level than that of party. Like most Anglo-Indians and Englishmen who have lived much abroad, he looked at affairs as they affected not the domestic politics of Great Britain — while by no means indifferent to these — but the welfare of the great peoples of the East and West. Liberty, the free development of the nations under Christian institutions or influences, was what he sought, whether in his own country and its colonies or in America, alike for India and Russia and Turkey. The longer he lived out of India, above all, the more did he concern himself with its progress. Had he not sown many of the seeds of that progress ? Had he not been a part of the mighty machine of Christian civilization in Southern Asia, at a time when Bentinck and Macaulay, Charles Grant and Wilberforce were putting it together ? Was it not his daily employment to control the administration of an enterprise directed to the transformation of millions into Christian men and women ? For Dr. Duff the visit of the Prince of Wales to India and all that it involved had a profound interest. Personally familiar with the career of every Governor- General from Lord William Bentinck to Lord Canning, John Lawrence, Lord Mayo, and Lord Northbrook, he knew the tremendous influence of example for good or evil in such a position. Especially had the natives of India, ignorant of the spirit of Christian faith and worship, tested the sincerity of their rulers by the 522 LIFE OP DU. DUFF. 1876. letter, by a standard so familiar to their level as tliat of keeping a holy day. Had not the Marquis Wellesley eighty years before been so convinced of the evil poli- tical effects of Sabbath-breaking by Christians that he took steps to secure the better observance of the day among the European residents of Bengal ? Did not Yiscount Hardinge, with Henry Lawrence at his elbow, decree the discontinuance of public works on Sunday, a decree ever since too little regarded and never enforced ? Was it unknown or forgotten that when Lord Canning, in the year after the Mutiny, was about to make his triumphal march through the Punjab on any or every day of the week, as he had done through Hindostan, he received with silent courtesy the rebuke contained in the example of John Lawrence,* and thenceforth no tent was ever again struck on a Sunday in the Viceroy's camp? How would the Prince of Wales act in a rapid tour through the feudatory states as well as the ordinary provinces, when all the chivalry of India, Hindoo and Muhammadan, would be at the feet of the Queen's eldest son, when multitudes of the peoples and all the Christian officials would crowd around his Royal Highness ? The churches and communities which sent forth their future sovereign that he might thus prepare himself for the responsibilities of empire, did well to be in earnest about it. Presbyters and bishops invoked on his head the protecting blessing of Almighty God, praying, as in Lichfield diocese, that He would " strengthen, support, and sanctify him in his works ; that he might be a blessed instrument in Thy hand for promoting the welfare of India, and for spreading forth Thy gospel and advancing Thy kingdom." From * John, First Lord Lawrence of the Punjab, by Robert N. Cusfc. August, 1879. JEt. 70. INDIAN PEOGRESS OF THE PRINCE. 523 Gloucester cathedral a similar petition arose. In Westminster Abbey the Dean, taking for a text the description in Esther of the hundred and seven and twenty provinces of Xerxes, from India even unto Ethiopia, used language like this : " To-morrow the first heir to the English throne who has ever visited the Indian Empire starts on his journey to those distant regions which the greatest of his ancestors, Alfred the Great, a thousand years ago, so ardently longed to explore, which now forms the most precious jewel in the imperial crown. On this eve of that departure, solemn to him and solemn to us, we pray that the eldest son of our Royal House, in whose illness and recovery four years ago the whole nation took so deep an interest, shall now once more be delivered from peril by land and peril by sea, from the pestilence that walketh by day and the arrow that flieth by night ; we pray that he may be restored safe and sound to the mother, the wife and the little children who shall wait in anxious expectation his happy and prosperous return. But we pray, or ought to pray, yet more earnestly that his journey may be blessed to himself and to those whom he visits — in all things high and holy, just and pure, lovely and of good report. We pray that this visit, long desired and at last under- taken, to those marvellous lands, may by God's mercy leave behind, on the one side, the remembrance, if so be, of graceful acts, kind words, English nobleness, Christian principle ; and, on the other side, awaken in all concerned the sense of graver duties, wider sym- pathies, loftier purposes. Thus, and thus only, shall that journey on which the Church and nation now pronounce its parting benediction, be worthy of a Christian empire and worthy of an English prince, for the building up in truth and righteousness of that imperial inheritance, for the moral and eternal welfare 524 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1876. of his own immortal soul ; may the Lord bless his going out and coming in from this time forth and for evermore." In Scotland the societies most interested, like the Sabbath Alliance, turned to Dr. Duff for counsel. To the many who urged action, by memorial and public discussion, he gave in substance this wise advice : Let us not hastily or unadvisedly assume that this is a subject which his Royal Highness is disposed to treat with indifference, or that it is one which has not already engaged his own serious attention. He knows well how the due observance of the Sabbath is studi- ously provided for in the laws and constitution of this realm ; how vitally it enters into the liturgical services of the Church of England, of which the British mon- arch is the civil head ; and how precious it is in the deliberate judgment of the best and most reputable of her Majesty's Christian subjects, alike at home and in every other region of the earth. From his acquaint- ance with the history of India, he must be doubtless aware of the excellent effects produced by the ordin- ance of the Marquis Wellesley, relative to the better observance of the Sabbath among European residents, and by the decree of Lord Hardinge ordering the discontinuance of all public Government works on that day. From his ample observation also of men and manners in divers lands, he must know well how nothing tends to exalt Christians more highly in the favourable regards of Orientals of all races and sects, than a careful attention to the acknowledged require- ments and observance of their own faith. It seems, therefore, only fitting and deferential to assume and believe that his Hoyal Highness, knowing full well all this and much more of like kind, has of his own accord duly considered the whole subject in its varied legiti- mate bearings, and intelHgently made up his mind as ^t. 70. PROCLAMATION OF THE EMPRESS. 525 to the course of conduct which it would be most con- sistent and dignified for him, as a Christian prince, to pursue. Taking this general view of the case, alto- gether apart from the higher and more specific con- siderations connected with the obligations of divine law, as recorded in the Decalogue, and elsewhere in Holy Scripture, he recommended interested parties in the meanwhile to resort to no measure of a kind that might indicate a want of becoming confidence in the sound sense and good feeling of his Royal Highness ; to refrain from any overt action in the way of public meetings or official addresses or memorials, and to leave the decision as to the course of action to be ob- served to the spontaneous suggestions of the Prince's own mind, backed by the wise counsel of his advisers. As an old friend of the chief of these advisers, Sir Bartle Frere, Dr. Dufi* privately addressed him on the subject. The correspondence is most honourable to both, and to the Prince to whom it was submitted. The fact was elicited so early as the 11th September, -1875, a month before the departure, that one of the first instructions given by his Royal Highness to Sir Bartle Frere, when desiring him to arrange for the tour, had been to take care that no travelling or other secular work should be marked out for any Sunday. Her Majesty had expressed a similar wish. The desire and the example of the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, and of Sir Bartle Frere himself, were well known. And it was soon announced that Canon Duckworth was to be the Prince's chaplain on the tour. Dr. Duff delighted in every step of the royal progress during the next six months, as a message of goodwill to the peoples of India in the concrete form which all classes of them best appreciated. When the tour was happily concluded he thus wrote to a friend on the 15th April, 1876 : — " Taking it all and all in its varied 526 LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1876. and multiplied bearings and aspects, it is to my own mind tlie most remarkable tour to be found in the annals of all time." The royal visit resulted in such a titular and politi- cal proclamation of the Empire as ought to have been made on the 1st November, 1858, when the Queen assumed the direct sovereignty till then held by the East India Company in trust. Here again India became the sport of English party feeling, as it has often been the victim of ecclesiastical divisions. An act in itself desirable from its administrative and kindly social uses, was converted into an occasion of consti- tutional weakness. Dr. Duff thus expressed his view of it in a letter to Lady Durand, written on the 23rd December, 1876 : " The matter of the Queen's new title was miserably bungled and mismanaged in Parliament through the wretched spirit of political partisanship. But now that it has become an Act of Parliament, I feel that all loyal subjects ought to unite in trying to make it work for good in India. In the main, I hope that this will be the case, if our folks act wisely and prudently on the occasion of the Proclamation, and with good sense and good feeling afterwards. How my old revered friend and your beloved husband will be missed on the occasion. His experience, sagacity, far-sighted wisdom and noble superiority to the petty spirit of all mere partisanship, would have given weight and dignity to the Viceroy's counsels and actings." In an address to the people of Edinburgh on the Isl January, 1877, the day of the Proclamation at Delhi, Dr. Duff gave his reading of these events in the light of that spiritual aggression on the idolatries of the East to which he had sacrificed his life. By that time the Indian question had been directly made part of the great Eastern problem, which is still being slowly worked out in the divine evolution of JEt 70. NATION A.L INTErCESSION FOR MISSIONS. 527 history. It was in September, 1876, that Mr. Glad- stone summoned the conscience of England to pro- nounce a verdict on the Mussulman power which had caused the anarchic oppression of centuries to culmin- ate in the horrors of the Bulgarian massacres. Dr. DufF met him at Lady Waterford's soon after, and engaged in conversation on Muhammadanism, which the great statesman subsequently pronounced most fruitful in its suggestiveness. On no day of all his later years was Dr. Duff happier than on that of the one patron saint tolerated but forgotten by Scotsmen, till they go abroad. Their Churches had agreed with those of England and Ire- land to observe St. Andrew's Day, the 30th November, annually as a time of intercession with Grod for an increase in the number of missionaries. While with as much catholicity as is allowed to him Dean Stanley opened the nave of Westminster Abbey on that occasion to some great preacher, lay or clerical, of one of the Reformed Churches, there met in the hall of the Free Church General Assembly a congregation whose ser- vice was led by a representative of each of the three branches of the old historic Kirk. It happened, un- fortunately, that Dr. Duff was committed to preside at the Scottish intercessory service of 1876, when the Dean of Westminster asked him to preach in the Abbey from which Presbyterianism takes its con- fession and its catechisms, as the immediate successor of the venerable Dr. Moffat of South Africa. In the last sermon, of 1878, which he preached on these unique occasions, in the morning before the lecture in the nave, Dean Stanley thus gracefully, if not with perfect historical accuracy, alluded to Dr. Duff: — " For the fourth teacher in this succession there would have been, but for the imperative duties required by the like celebration in his own communion beyond 528 LIFE or DB. DQFF. 1876. the border, one whom the late Chief Ruler of India had designated as, amongst all living names, the one that had carried most weight amongst the Hindoo and the Muhammadan nations of our vast empire, as a faithful pastor and a wise and considerate teacher. Though he belonged in his later years to a communion which had broken off from its parent stock, yet his generous spirit eagerly welcomed the call which was made to him, and, but for the accidental circumstance to which I have referred, would gladly have responded to it. His place was filled by a representative preacher from the Church of Ireland." The catholic intercessory service was followed soon after by the promise to lecture, in Edinburgh Univer- sity, to the Missionary Society of the theological students of the Established Church, formed in 1825 by his Bombay colleague. Dr. Wilson, whose death at the close of 1875 he had mourned. As the years went on and death thinlied the ranks not only of his contem- poraries, but of his converts and students, he turned with ever fonder affection to the past — to those in the past still spared by time. This is one of many letters which show his closing days lighted up by the reflec- tion of his earlier triumphs in the cause of truth and righteousness, when he was still a ruddy youth of twenty-four, from the lecture-room of College Square shaking all Calcutta. He is writing to his second convert, the stout-hearted editor of the Inquirer of 1832, whom the University of Calcutta had honoured with the degree of LL.D. — the Rev. Krishna Mohun Banerjea : " 22, Lauder Road, Edinburgh, Wi June, 1876. ''My Dear Old Friend,— Though it is now a long time since I have written to you, or heard from you direct, I often hear of you, and constantly, indeed I may say daily, think of ^t. 70. TO HIS SECOND CONVERT. 529 you ; as it is my habit to remember, in my humble prayers, among others old Indian friends, and especially those who, like yourself, have been honoured in rendering good service in the cause of our common glorious Lord and Master Jesus Christ. Often, often also when alone — and I am often alone as regards human society — do I recall the singularly stirring days of ' auld lang syne,"* as we say in Scotland, the days of forty-five or forty-six years ago ! To think of them, and of the mighty changes since, often affords the greatest solace and encouragement to my own spirits. '^ But I cannot dwell on these now. About ten days ago I met with a severe accident which confined me to bed for a week, and I am now only slowly recovering from the effects of it. I cannot, however, let this mail leave without writing, however meagrely and briefly, to congratulate you on your well-merited university honour at last ! The late Bishop Cotton used to confer with me about it ; and we both lamented that the door was not then open. Since returning to this country, I again and again thought of applying to one of our Scottish Universities on the subject ; and some obstacle or other always came in the way. I, therefore, now rejoice the more on that account, that it has come to you in a way so natural and in every respect so honourable. Long may you still survive, my dear friend, to enjoy it ! Apart from this object it was my intention to write and thank you for a copy which has reached me of your latest work, ' The Aryan Witness,^ marked on the title page '^With the author^s compliments."' With all my heart I thank you for this very kind remembrance of me. I have already looked through it; and feel that it is every way worthy of your deservedly high reputation for learned research and scholarship, while you calmly maintain your cha- racter as a Christian. Long may you live to produce such works ! May the Lord bless you more and more ! Yours affectionately, " Alexander Duff."*' We trace a link witli a still earlier past in the ac- knowledgment of a contribution which Dr. Duff sent for the erection of a memorial of Dugald Buchanan, the Gaelic catechist of Kinlocli Rannocb, whose poems had fed his youthful fancy and coloured his later life. VOL. II. M M 530 LIFE OF DB. DUFF, 1877. Dr. DufF had hardly written his hopeful letter to Lady Durand at the end of 1876, when his malady assumed a new and acute form. Yet with unconscious heroism he struggled on all through the months to the close of the session. Incidentally, in a letter to Mr. Martin of Auchendennan on certain books submitted to him for his opinion, he thus described his con- dition : '^ Edinburgh, 1st Marcli, 1877. " For several months I have been much troubled with the slow and gradual but constantly increasing growth of a peculiar tumour in the hollow behind my right ear. The pain was un- ceasing by day and night. About a fortnight ago, when in Edinburgh, I felt constrained to consult two separate doctors. They both concurred in ibhe same judgment, viz., that the malady was a serious one, but was still, humanly speaking, removable by a surgical operation, which would be very pain- ful and necessitate my being confined to my room for a few days thereafter. I asked if it would make any material dif- ference if I delayed the operation for a week or ten days, as I was most anxious to finish my work in Glasgow, before being disabled thereby. The reply was, the sooner the operation is performed the better ; but since the malady had been so long maturing, a week or ten days longer might make no essential difi'erence. On Monday about 3 p.m. Dr. Watson came with his assistant to my house. Knowing how severe the pain would be he advised the use of chloroform. But, on the whole^ I declined this, on the simple ground that I would rather try and consciously bear pain necessitated by a visitation of Pro- vidence, than deliberately render myself unconscious of it during the necessary operation. This, with his wonted skill. Dr. Watson performed ; though more than once I all but fainted away under the acuteness of the pain. Soon, how- ever, by God's blessing, the acute pain was ended, and gave place to a dull bearable pain. ** Since then my head has been, and still is, bandaged up. I am quite unfit to see any one — indeed, peremptorily forbidden by the doctor to see any one but my daughter, who acts as the kindest of nurses towards me. I am not forbidden, however. JEt 71. GENERAL COUNCIL OE PRESBYTERIANS. 53 1 to read a little or write a little, though in the state of my head the doctor recommends as little of either as at all pos- sible. So I have looked again into the books/' Not only tTie General Assembly in May, but the first meeting of the General Presbyterian Council in July, was denied to the invalid. But his indomitable spirit burst forth, to the latter, in a letter burning with almost youthful enthusiasm for missionary extension. He urged that the first Council of all the Presbyterian Churches of Europe, America, and their colonies, re- presenting 19,373 congregations, should not allow its charity and faith to evaporate in conferences and resolutions only, but should undertake a joint mission in Melanesia, where already the New Hebrides group, consecrated by the blood of John Williams and the Gordons, is being evangelized by five Presbyterian Churches. The reply of the Council, which is to hold its second meeting at Philadelphia next September, thus concluded : *^ The Council desire to express their veneration and love for Dr. Duff, the first missionary to the heathen from the Reformed Church of Scotland, and they bless the Lord of the Church for his long and honoured services in connection with the spread of the gospel of the grace of God. It has been a subject of deep regret to the delegates from all Churches and countries, that in consequence of weak health Dr. Duff has been prevented from attending the meetings of Council. They ask Dr. Duff to accept, with their affectionate regard, the assurance of their earnest prayer that it may please God to spare him yet a little longer for the cause of Christ on the earth, and that in the retirement of the sick room he may abide in the peace which passeth all understanding, and be sup- ported by the sense of his blessed Master's presence." 532 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1878 Dr. Duff had sought health in his loved solitude of Patterdale ; but the long walks to which convalescence tempted him brought on persistent jaundice. The disease continued to gain on him in spite of a resi- dence for six weeks at the German bath of Neuenahr, of the skill of Dr. P. H. Watson, and of the loving attention of his devoted daughter and grandson. He was with difficulty brought back by slow stages to Edinburgh. There he wrote letters, resigning all the offices he held in the Church and in many societies, religious and benevolent. Not that his courageous though resigned soul anticipated removal. But he had resolved to devote his whole nature to a renewed advocacy throughout Scotland of the duty of more faithfully carrying out Christ's last commission. The Indian mail brought him a newspaper report of the proceedings of his converts, students and native friends, all Christians, who had met in the hall of the Free Church Institution on the 18th of August to un- veil a bust of their great teacher and spiritual father, made by Mr. Hutchison, of Edinburgh. He sum- moned strength to write to his successor there, Mr. Fyfe, who had presided on the occasion, a long letter, which thus closed: " It is true that 1 did, and do, most fervently long for the intellectual and moral, the social and domestic elevation of the people of India ; and that in my own humble way I did, and do still, labour incessantly towards the realizing of so blessed a consummation. I have lived in the assured faith, and shall die in the assured faith, that ultimately, sooner or later, it shall, under the overrulings of a gracious Providence, be gloriously realized. Meanwhile, though absent in the body I can truly say that I am daily present in spirit with yourself and all other fellow-labourers in India, whether European or Native. Indeed wherever I JEt 72. LOVE FOB THE NATIVES OP INDIA. 533 wander, wHerever I stay, my heart is still in India — in deep sympathy with its multitudinous inhabitants, and in earnest longings for their highest welfare in time and in eternity." To escape the northern winter he was removed to the sheltered Devonshire retreat of Sidmouth, where two years previously he had found rest. Not long before Sir Bartle Frere had tried to draw him as his guest to Africa, to the old scenes at Cape Town, to a tour among the missions new and old in Kaffraria and Natal. We shall never forget our parting interview the night before he left Edinburgh, when the veteran of seventy-two was still the old man eloquent, his eye flashing as he heard of the relief of the famine-stricken millions of South India, and his half audible voice seeming to gain momentary strength as he blessed God for the liberality of the Christian people who had saved them. On another he specially laid the duty of thanking the treasurers and collectors of the mission associations which he had created. " Ah," he ex- claimed, " we should never have got on without their assistance, and I have long felt that their services have never been sufficiently acknowledged.'* He was succeeded in his office of president of the Anglo-Indian Evangelization Society, by Lord Pol- warth, and was placed in the honorary position of its patron along with the great statesman who was to follow him all too soon. Lord Lawrence. But the chair of Evangelistic Theology, emphatically his own crea- tion and the pride of his Church, is not yet filled up. As he lay a-dying he was troubled at what he believed to be an inadequate estimate of its nature and im- portance, and dictated a remonstrance which cannot be much longer overlooked. He had resigned it, he wrote, in the belief that there would be carried out " the spirit of the General Assembly's enactment con- 534 I^IF^ OF DR. DUFF. 1878. stituting the chair, and the intention of its liberal founders, which was that it should be mainly, though not exclusively, devoted to the grand theme of Foreign Missions, the field of which is ' the world.' " Summoned from Calcutta by telegraph his second son reached his side just a month before he passed away, to join with his daughter and with the grandson who bears his name in tender ministration. Very pre- cious was the privilege of communion with the man of God during that month. So incessant had been his activities in his Master's service ; so eager was his spirit even then to complete, as he thought, his earthly work for such a Master, that he would fain have lived, yet was resigned to his Father's will. When the first joy of seeing his son was over, he said, " I am in God's hands, to go or stay. If He has need of me He will raise me up; if otherwise it is far better." That was on the 12 til January. As the days of weakness passed on, the poison in the blood gaining on the body but the brain holding untouched the citadel of the soul, he said on the 24th : "I had intended if spared — if spared — to resign next May absolutely both offices (the professorship and convenership). It seemed the natural course of procedure when entering on my jubilee year — the fiftieth year of being a missionary of the Established Church of Scotland. If God spared me, my intention then was, after being thus liberated from necessary official duties, to give myself wholly to the completion of the work which was only begun by the establishment of the missionary professorship ; that is, to try and rouse the people of Scotland to a sense of the paramount duty of devoting themselves to the cause of Missions, and secure the means of estab- lishing an endowment of a Home and Foreign Mis- sionary Institute, based upon the most unsectarian and comprehensive principles of the glorious and blessed ^t. 72. LAST MESSAGES. 535 gospel of Christ. If I saw this accomplished, or a solid prospect of its being soon accomplished, I should feel, as far as my humble judgment could discern, that my work on earth to promote the glory and honour of my blessed Saviour was completed, and would be ready to exclaim with old Simeon, ' Now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace.' But if all this were to be unexpectedly unhinged, and a totally different course in Providence opened up, I was prepared — thanks, eternal thanks, to the Great Jehovah, I was equally ready and willing — to submit to any change which He in His infinite wisdom, goodness and love might be pleased to indicate.'' Then, exhausted, he whispered, " I am very low and cannot say much, but I am living daily, habitually in Him." On the same day he dictated the names of dear friends, some fifty in all, to whom he desired a memorial of his affection to be sent from his library, specifying in one case the volumes to be given, which were the works of De Quincey. When told, three days after. Sir Joseph Fayrer's opinion of his state, he replied, " I never said with more calmness in my life, continually by day and by night, ' Thy will, my God, my God, be done,' " and he repeated this with great pathos. " In my own mind," he exclaimed, " I see the whole scheme of redemption from eternity more clear and glorious than I ever did." On his daughter repeating to him John Newton's hymn, written as if for the dying be- liever, " How sweet the name of Jesus sounds," the hardly audible voice responded with unearthly emphasis, " Unspeakable !" On the 27th Dr. Duff seemed to rally so far as to receive and to dictate replies to many messages of prayerful sympathy from such old friends as Sir 0. 53^ LIFE OF DR. DUFF. 1878, Trevelyan, Mr. HawkiDS, General Colin Mackenzie, and otliers. Recalling the heroism of that officer in the first Afghan disasters, he exclaimed, " That's true Christianity. Grive my intense and warmest love to him and to his wife. His manly heroic bearing always appeared to me an incarnation of the ancient heroes christianized. The loving Christian nature of himself and his wife ever drew me to both as with an irresis* tible attraction." On hearing a letter from Lord Polwarth read, he replied, *' I can respond ' Amen * to every sentence, as well as to the intense desirable- ness of having some common Bible enterprise to which all Christians of all denominations might freely give their generous and liberal support, and thus ultimately come together into a state of amalgamation and har- mony instead of the present lamentable condition of variance, discord, disharmony and jealousy, brooding over which has often well-nigh broken my heart. It is so contrary to the intense and burning love which brought the eternal Son of God from heaven to earth to seek and to save the lost, and from a scattered, degraded, dislocated society to raise up a world-wide brotherhood of Christian harmony, goodwill and love.'* After pausing a few minutes, he added, " Tell him I begged you to send my warmest Christian affectionate regards to good Lady Aberdeen, and my feelings of real goodwill and regard to all the members of that blessed family." After hearing a letter read from a valued correspondent, in which strong expressions were employed to describe the work he had been per- mitted to accomplish, he said, *' I have received these things with more than calmness, because I know in my own mind the deductions that should be made from such statements. Paul was jealous for his credit and character, not for his own sake but for the sake of the credit and character of Christianity." ' ^t 72. THEOUGH DEATH TO LIFE. 537 February found him still dying, but ever brightening in spirit and living much in the past. An allusion, in his hearing, to an attack in an Anglo-Indian newspaper on his policy in connection with Christian education and the Calcutta University, sent him back to his controversy with Lord Auckland. He indicated that he would have followed the same course now, and he dictated a vindication of that system for which all intelligent men of every class and church, save the secularists, now honour him. He even explained in detail the course of mental and moral philosophy, of natural and revealed religion, over which he used to take his students, and he left the request to Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, to write a manual of philosophy which should be abreast of the latest developments of thought, in East and West, while vindicating Christianity. Twelve days before the end came he made his last re- ference to purely public affairs. In reply to an earnest question about the war news, he was told that the son of his old friend, Sir Charles Trevelyan, was to open the debate in the House of Commons that night, when he exclaimed, " A smart, clever fellow that ! " On the 2ud February he alluded to the prospect of soon being laid beside the dust of his wife. Of the good and great men like Chalmers and Guthrie, whose remains lie in the same Grange cemetery, he said with earnestness, " There's a perfect forest of them." His last conscious Sabbath was that of the 3rd February. " I can feel, I can think, but the weakness prevents my almost opening my mouth," he panted. When one said to him, " You are like John at Patmos, you are in the Spirit on the Lord's day," the earnest response was, " Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! " But on that day the hand of death became more evidently visible. Still he could ask for his grandchildren, and was ever careful to thank his lovino^ ones for their ministra- I 53^ I^IFE OF DR. DUFF. 1878. tions. When, in the evening, his daughter repeated to him the twenty-third Psalm as he lay apparently unconscious, he responded at the end of each verse. Even on Saturday, the 9th, the departing saint could recognise the voices he loved, but his only response then was a grasp of the hand. Without a'cute suffer- ing, and in perfect peace, he lingered on till Tuesday morning, the 12th February. " He was just like one passing away into sleep ; I never saw so peaceful an end," was the remark of a bystander. Next morning the telegraph and long and intensely appreciative sketches of the missionary in The Times and Daily News, and in all the Scottish newspapers, carried the sad but not unexpected intelligence wherever the English language was read. In India, Africa and America alike, where he had been personally known and where his works follow him, the journals and ecclesiastical bodies gave voice to the public sorrow. In his own city of Edinburgh, to which the dear re- mains were at once conveyed from Sidmouth, the burial of Alexander Du:ff proved to be a lesson in Christian unity not less impressive than his own eloquent words and whole career. Around his bier, as he had often taught them to do in the field of Foreign Missions, the Churches gathered and Christians of all confessions met. The Lord Provost Boyd, the magistrates and council, in formal procession, represented civic Scot- land. The four Universities and Royal High School, professors and students, marched in the vast company around Bruntsfield Links, which were covered by the citizens and by crowds from the country, while the deep-toned bell of Barclay Church slowly clanged forth the general grief. How for the first time in t Scottish ecclesiastical history the three Kirks and their Moderators, the representatives of the English and American and Indian Churches through their ^t. 72. AT THE grave's MOUTH. 539 missionary societies and officials, trod the one funeral marcli; how peer and citizen, missionary and minister bore the pall or laid the precious dust in the grave till the resurrection, and how on the next Sabbath half the pulpits of Scotland and not a few elsewhere told this generation what the Spirit of God had enabled the departed to do, is recorded in the volume "In Memoriam" which his family published at the time. It was felt that not only Scotland had lost its noblest son, but all the Reformation lands had seen taken from them the greatest missionary of Christ. Let this picture of the scene suffice, drawn at the time by Lord Polwarth, in a letter to Lady Aberdeen. " Monday. — I have to-day stood at the grave of our dear old Dr. Duff, and was asked to act as one of the pall-bearers, as being a personal friend and as repre- senting you. I felt it a very great honour, and one of which I am very unworthy, but I believe few there loved him more truly than I did. Somehow I felt strongly attached to him from our first meeting. He was a truly great man, and all Edinburgh and far beyond seemed to feel that to-day. It was a solemn sacred sight. Such crowds of people lining the streets and all along the meadows ; such a long, long line of carriages, such an assemblage of men belonging to all the Churches ! The great missionary societies were all represented, the city, the univer- sities. As we walked into the cemetery we walked through a long row of students ! I stood at the foot of the open grave and watched the coffin lowered down. Mary's words were, ' His coffin should be covered with palm branches.' I felt not sorrowful in one sense, for he was weary, weary in the work. I climbed up the long, long stairs to his room in the Free Church offices to-day, but he will climb up no more in weariness. Then I felt it was the grave of a Christian 540 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1878. hero and conqueror, and came away with the desire that Ij even I, and many others may be enabled to unite and bear the standard he bore so nobly. " I noticed close beside me a black lad gazing with his big rolling eyes into the grave. How many there would have been from India had it been possible. One thing was forced on one's mind, — how utterly all the petty divisions which now separate Christians sink out of sight when one comes near the great realities." Lord Polwarth has charged himself with the leader- ship of a catholic movement for the establishment of the Duff Missionary Institute. Desirous in death to secure the completion of his missionary propaganda, Dr. Duff bequeathed to trustees selected from all the evangelical churches what personal property he had, as the foundation of a lectureship on Foreign Missions, on the model of the Bampton. Thus is preserved unbroken and full, for his own and for coming genera- tions, the self-sacrificing unity of a life which from youth to old age was directed by the determination to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified ; a life which Mr. Gladstone has thus linked on to the brotherhood of the whole Catholic Church : "I confess for myself that, in viewing the present state of the Christian world, we should all adhere openly and boldly to that which we believe and which we hold, not exaggerating things of secondary importance as if they were primary ; and, on the other hand, not being ashamed of the colours of the particular regiment in which we serve, nor being disposed to disavow the secondary portions of our convictions. Having said that I may say that I have said it for the purpose of attesting, as I trust it will attest, the sincerity with which I wish to bear testimony to the noble character and the noble work of the man whose memory I ^t. 72. MR. Gladstone's estimate of his career. 541 propose we sliould honour. Providential guidance and an admonition from within, a thirst and appetite not addressed to the objects which this world furnishes and provides, but reaching far beyond it, and an ambition — if I may so say — and an ambition of a very different quality from the commodity ordinarily circulated under that name, but something irrepres- sible, something mysterious and invisible, prompted and guided this remarkable man to the scene of his labours. Upon that scene he stands in competition, I rejoice to think, with many admirable, holy, saintly men, almost contemporaries of ours — contemporaries, many of them, of myself. Proceeding from quarters known by different names and different associations here, but engaged in a cause essentially holy in those different quarters of the world, I am glad to think that from the bosom of the Church of England there went forth men like Bishop Selwyn and Bishop Patteson, bearing upon their labours a very heroic and apostolic stamp. But I rejoice not less unfeignedly to recollect that they have competitors and rivals in that noble race of the Christian warfare, among whom Dr. Duff is one of the most eminent. Among many such rivals we might name the names of Carey and Marshman ; we might name Dr. Moffat, who is still spared to the world. But we must recollect Dr. Duff is one who not only stood in the first rank for intelligence, energy, devotion and advancement in the inward and spiritual life among those distinguished and admirable personages, but who likewise so intensely laboured in the cause that he shortened the career which Provi- dence would in all likelihood have otherwise committed to him, and he has reaped his reward in the world beyond the grave at an earlier date than those whose earthly career is lengthened into a long old age. He is one of the noble army of the confessors of Christ. 542 LIFE OF DE. DUFF. 1878. Let no one envy them the crown which they have earned. Let every man, on the contrary, knowing that they now stand in the presence and in the judg- ment of Him before Whom we must all appear, rejoice that they have fought a good fight, that they have run their race manfully and nobly, and that they have laboured for the glory of God and the good of man." A/ THE END. INDEX. Abbe Dubois, i. 40. Abercrombie, Dr., ii. 103. Miss, ii. 105. Aberdeen, Dowager Countess of, ii, 295, 446, 487, 530. Fifth Earl of, ii. 293. Sixth Earl, ii. 448. University, i. 508. Accadian Civilization, i. 207. Adam, John, the Civilian, i. 147. Kev. John, i. 22, 84, 140. W., i. 118, 226. Afghan War, i. 412. African Missions, ii. 405, 450. Agrarian Discontent, ii. 374. Agricultural Soc. of India, i. 258. Aitchison, Mr. C. U., ii. 372. Ajawa, ii. 454. Akbar, i. 89, 206. Alexander, Dr. W. L., i. 22. Alexandria, i. 395. Allison, J., ii. 445. Altenstein, i. 437. Americans in India, i. 241, 248 ii. 80, 158, 167, 250. Missions, ii. 443, 461, Amherst, Lord, i. 230. Anderson, Finlay, i. 421. of Madras, i. 346, 422 ; ii. 48. Aneityumese, ii. 463. Anglicists, The, i. 187, 220, 429. Anglo-Indian Christian Union, i. 234; ii. 439, 533. Anundo Chund Mozoomdar, i. 163, 283. Apologetics, i. 146, 157. Architecture in India, ii. 145. Arcot, ii. 130. Armenians, i. 95, 111 ; ii. 83. Aryan Civilization, i. 207, 231. Ashburton, Lord, ii. 234. Ashutosh De, ii. 363. Associations for Foreign Missions, i. 312 ; ii. 533. Atlantic Voyage, ii. 254. Auchendennan, ii. 480. Auckland, Lord, i. 425 ; ii. 38. Augustine, St., i. 152 ; ii. 2, 69 Avicenna, i. 207. Baboos, Calcutta, ii. 69. Bacon, Lord, i. 136. Baikunta Nath Day, Rev., ii. 57. Baird, Sir David, ii. 407. Balnakeilly, i. 4. Bangalore Conference, ii. 238. Banka Behari Bhose, ii. 59. Bansberia, ii. 47, 50. Bedini, Monsignor, ii. 253. Beef, i. 154. Behari Lai Singh, i. 475 ; ii. 19. Bengal, i. 415 ; ii. 374. Bengal Asiatic Society, i. 200, 258, 436. Bengalee, i. 121. Church, ii. 82. Students, i. 141 ; ii. 632. Beni Madhub Kur, ii, 59. Ben-i-vrackie, i. 4. Bentinck, Lord W., i. 61, 84, 148, 178, 211, 230, 260, 336, 433. His Great Decree, i. 194. Lady William, i. 339. Bethel in Dekhan, ii. 430. Bethune, D., ii. 361, 379. Society, ii. 379. Bhoidos of India, i. 208, 218. Bible, Dr. Duff's, i. 54, 7Q. in Education, i. 109, 121, 139, 201 ; ii. 512. Translation, ii. 108, 463. Biblical Criticism, i. 228; ii. 511. 544 index; Blackie, Professor, i. 11. Blantyre Missiou, ii. 459. Blythswood, ii. 444. Boileau, i. 237. Bombay Mission, i. 241, 413; ii. 430. Bonar, Dr. H., ii. 489. Boyle, K., ii. 417. Brahmans, i. 121. Braid wood, Bev. J., i. 347 Brewster, Sir D., i. 43. Briggs, Mrs., i. 54, 464. Brijonath Ghose, i. 254. Brougham, Lord, ii. 23. Broughfcon, Lord, i. 427. Brown, Rev. David, i. 249. Rev. Dr., i. 84, 236, 246. Rev. Dr. C, ii. 12. Brumho Sobha, i. 115. Brunton, Dr., i. 279, 461; ii. 11. Bryce, Rev. Dr., i. 37, 62, 236. Buchanan, Claudius, i. 110. Dugald, i. 11 ; li. 529. Buckingham, J. Silk, i. 147. Bunyan, ii. 55. Burke, i. 304 ; ii. 228. Burnell, Mr., i. 107. Burns, Rev. Dr., ii. 283. Robert, i. 152 ; ii. 7. William, Rev., i. 343. Cairo, i. 397. Calcutta, i. 40, 87 ; ii. 52, 81, 97, 316. Christian Observer, i. 227. Missionary Conference, i. 165 ; ii. 40, 386. Review, ii. 90. Caldwell, Bishop, i. 227 ; ii. 159. Cambridge University, i. 330. Campbell, Sir George, i. 431 ; ii, 432. Canning, George, and his sons, i. 68, 231, 304 ; ii. 110, 311, 331. Cape of Good Hope, i. 71, 273 ; ii. 403. Verd Islands, i. 70. Carey, Dr., i. 10, 105, 248, 258 ; ii. 541. Carlyle, Thomas, ii. 473. Caroline, Queen, i. 259. Carus, i. 325. Caste, i. 144, 153, 191, 215 ; ii. 158. Cathedral Mission College, i. 129. Chalmers, Thomas, i. 20,45, 63, 79, 274, 367, 383 ; ii. 12, 112, 537. Charaka, i. 208. Charnock, Job, i. 89. Charters of E. I. Company, i 35, 179 ;ii. 190,228. Ohaitunya, i. 467. China Missionaries, i. 458, 476. Chingleput, ii, 125. Chinsurah, ii. 47. Chowdery Family, i. 131. Church Missionaiy Society, i. 2, 36, 466 ; ii. 83 ; 435, Cameron, Mr. C. H., ii. 247. Candlish, Dr., ii. 28, 457. Canterbury, Archbishop of, ii. 491. Cawnpore Massacre, ii. 323. Centenary of Plassey, ii. 320. Ceylon, ii. 158. Chaplains, Indian, ii. 440. Cheras, ii. 145. Chevers, Dr. N., ii. 880. Children, ii. 478. Chindwara, ii. 429. Chinyanja Tongue, ii. 460. Cholas, ii. 145. Cholera, ii. 97. Church of India. (S^ee Converts,) Clarke, Mr, Longueville, i. 255. Clementines, The, ii, 59. Clifford, Father, ii. 139. Clift, Mr,,i, 133. Clive, Lord, i. 91, Cock Controversy, i. 235. Coldstream, Dr., i, 346; ii. 107. Colebrooke, i. 98. Colenso, Dr., ii. 408. Committees, i. 277. Comorin Cape, i, 421. Confession of Faith, ii, 6. Oongleton, Lady, i. 266, Conscience, Rights of, i. 251, 254, 418 ; ii. 56, 67. INDEX. 545 Conversions, relative value of, ii. 53, 245. Converts, i. 158, 162, 251, 281, 363, 466, 470 ; ii. 53, 76, 80, 339, 350. Coptic Church, i. 399. Cornwallis, Lord, i. 95, 258. Corrie, Bishop, i. 84 ; ii. 108. Cotton, Bishop, ii. 20, 394, 440, 482. Goods, i. 94. Cousin, v., i. 437. Covenanters, i. 10 ; ii. 209. Cowan, John, of Beeslack, i. 347. Cowper, W., ii. 402, 473. Craik, the Brotliers, ii. 178. Cromwell, ii. 416. Cuddalore, ii. ,130. Culna, i. 469; ii. 47. Canningham, Principal, i. 51 ; ii. 110. Cunningham station, ii. 444. Curral, The, i. 68. Cust, Mr. R. N., i. 221 ; ii. 522. Cyclones, i. 263, 423 ; ii. 412. Daby, Singh Raja, i. 93. Dalhousie, Earl of, i. 61 ; ii. 507. Marquis of, i. 437, 461 ; ii. 168, 311, 331. Dalton, Colonel, ii. 373. Dalzell, Rev. J., ii. 449. Danish Missions, ii. 93, 133. DiUite, ii. 2. Dassen Island, i. 78. Dealtry, Bishop, i. 146 ; ii. 42. Debating Societies, i. 149. Delhi in the Mutiny, ii. 328. De Quincey, T., ii. 473, 535. Derozio, Mr., i. 143. Dliuleep Singh, Maharaja, ii. 435. Dickson, W., ii. 443. Dinkur Rao, Raja, ii. 357. Disintegration, i. 103, 209. Disruption conflict, i. 309, 368 ; ii. 3, 11, 26, 33. Dissection, i. 208. Don, Rev. J., ii. 20, 429. Douglas, Bishop, ii. 408. Doveton College, i. 250; ii. 20, no. Dravidian Dynasties, ii. 145. Duel of Hastings and Francis, ii. 107. Dyson, Dr., ii. 435. DUFF, Alexander, Birth, i. 4; Parentage, 6; Schoolmasters, 11; Call, 13; at St. Andrews, 18; Friends, 22; to Chalmers, 27 ; Preaches, 23 ; gives him- self to India, 43 ; consults Chalmers, 46; Ordained, 53; Married, 61 ; at Madeira, 67 ; Shipwreck, 71 ; a second time, 82 ; reaches Calcutta, 84 ; ac- count of Hindoo College, 99; preliminary researches, 104 ; visits Carey, 105 ; his policy, 107; withRammohun Roy, 112; opens his School, 121 ; his School-books, 125; first Examina- tion, 129; first Assistant, 133; self- evidencing power of Scrip- tures, 139 ; Lectures and the Press, 142 ; Bengalee, 149 ; Female Education, 150; first Converts, 159 ; Project of United College, 165; varied work, 171 ; assisted by Sir Charles Trevelyan, 183 ; Angli- cists and Orientalists, 186 , Lord W. Bentinck's decree, 194; his new era of the English Language, 197; the Renaissance begun, 204; in Science also, 211 ; the Romanising Move- ment, 219; on Yernacular Education, 226 ; Calcutta Chris- tian Observer, 227 ; work for Europeans, 233 ; longings after Friendship, 242 ; with Bishop Wilson, 248; work for Eura- sians, 249 ; vindicates Rights of Conscience, i. 254; declines to attend a Ball, 259; as a Teacher, 262 ; thrice ill, 265 ; returns to Scotland, 273 ; his Reception VOL. II. N N 54^ INDEX. 274; London, 286; first Ora- tion, 290; its effects, 298; D.D. degree, 306; Home Temptations, 307; Catholicity, 313; Organi- zation of Associations, 315 ; in Perth, 319; in Dunbar, 322; in Cambridge, 325; with Lord W. Bentinck, 336; attracting new Missionaries, 341 ; to the Glasgow^ Students, 344; Great Exeter Hall Speech, 351; Vin- dication of his System, 357 ; Training Converts, 363 ; Charge to Dr. T. Smith, 371 ; Farewell to Assembly, 377 ; Chalmers' Eulogy of him, 383 ; in Egypt, 894 ; Sinai, 404 ; Bombay and Madras, 413; Fight with Lord Auckland, 429 ; Progress of ten years, 443 ; on his Colleagues, 450; his College, 452; Death of a Daughter, 461 ; with the Kharta-bhajas, 468 ; on Peace, 476. Vol. ii. Reminiscences of Kirk, 3; Free Church, 13; his ** Voice from the Ganges," 21 ; the Property Wrong, 31 ; New College, 42; plans Chair of Missions, 45; Outram and Lawrence, 49 ; on Conversions, 53 ; League against him, 61 at Home with the Converts, 76 on Lord Hardinge's Order, 87 The Calcutta Bevieio, 91; helps the Fever- stricken, 98; on Dr. Chalmers, 113 ; Tour in S. India, 123; Tour in K India, 163; on his Speeches, 177; Second Campaign in Scotland, 187; to Young Men, 216; Moderator, 223; before Lords Committee, 231 ; Education Des- patch, 245; in America, 252; in Canada, 279 ; at Malvern, 293 ; on Missionary Progress, 299; returns to India, 307; on the Mutiny, 315 ; on Bishop Wilson, 335; on Native Chris- tian Loyalty, 351 ; High-class Girls' School, 360 ; on Lacroix, 364; on the Indigo Controversy, 374; President of Bethune Society, 380 ; a Founder of the University, 382 ; leaves India, 385; reviews his Career, 399; African Tour, 407 ; returns to Scotland, 411 ; Evangelistic Theology chair, 416 ; promotes New Missions, 425 ; Syrian Tour, 443 ; Gordon Mission, 446 ; Livingstonia Expedition, 450 ; Melanesian Mission, 461 ; Eesults of his Work, 463 ; Death of his Wife, 467; favourite Authors, 472 ; with Friends, 480 ; a Peacemaker, 495 ; Mo- derator the second time, 500 ; on the Press, 513 ; Continental Tours, 515 ; on the Progress of the Prince of Wales, 522 ; Acci- dent, 530 ; Latest Letters, 533 ; Dying Meditations, 534; Death, 538; Mr. Gladstone on Dr. Duff, 540. Duff, James, i. 4, 6. Mrs., i. 61, 269 ; ii. 200, 467. Scholarships, ii. 386. Duff bank, ii. 444. Duff Church, i. 6. Missionary Institute, ii. 421. Fund, ii. 421. Duffpore, ii. 354. Dukshina R. Mookerjea, ii. 353. Dum Dum, ii. 312. Dunbar, i. 322. Duncan, Jonathan, i. 97. Dundas, Colonel, ii. 37. Dunkeld, i. 2. Durand, Sir Henry, i. Q^, 412, 476; ii. 309,484. Dutts, The, i. 95, 195; ii. 248. Dwarkanath Bhose, i. 470. Dysentery, i. 268. Eardley, Sir Culling, ii. 312. East India Co., i. 35, 90 ; ii. 131,228. INDEX. 547 Ecclesiastical Establishrnent, ii. 440. Economics, Christian, i. 312, 385; ii. 431. Eden, Misses, i. 427. Edradour, i. 315, 366. Education and the Public Service, ii. 86. as anBvangelizer, i. 110, IT^, 193, 261, 268, 292, 322, 359, 423, 451. as a Secularizer, i. 361, 416, 434, 438 ; ii. 244, 382. Charity, i. 249. Despatch of 1854, ii. 41, 246, 434. Female, i. 149, 372, 459 ; ii. 860. in Bengal, i. 95 ; ii. 190, 378. in Bombay, i. 416. in Madras, ii. 434. Edwardes, Sir Herbert, ii. 329. Elgin, Lord, i. 259. Elizabeth Town, U.S., ii. 275. Ellenborough, Lord, i. 476 ; ii. 49. 237, 243. EUerton, Mrs., ii. 107. Ellon Presbytery, i. 317. Elphinstone, Lord, ii. 236. Mountstuart, i, 426. Emigrants, Highland, ii. 201. English Language in India, i. 94, 123,190,197,295; ii. 513. Epidemics in Bengal, ii. 97. Established Church of Scotland, ii. 31, 38. Eurasians, i. Ill, 248 ; ii. 20. Evangelicals, i. 2. Evangelizing, i. 107. Bwart, Dr., i. 58, 269, 287, 335, 450. Mrs.,»ii. 83. Falck, i. 437. Famine, Highland, ii. 107. South India, ii. 53?. Fayrer, Sir J., i. 208 ; ii. 535. Fergusson, Mr. J., ii. 145. Ferrie, Kev. Dr., i. 23, 45, 171. Fever, ii. 99. Fife, Earl of, i. 309. Firdousi, i. 200. Flaxman's Group of Schwartz, etc., ii. 155. Forbe?, Dr. D., i. 14. Fordyce, Eev. J., ii. 216, 360, 441. Foster, John, i. 119. Fox, ii. 228. Francis, Philip, ii. 107. Free Church of Scotland, ii 18, 28, 497. French Bishop, ii. 435. in India, ii. 129. Frere, Sir Bartle, ii. 373, 458, 525. Friend of India, i. 116, 229, 257 ; ii. 490. Futtehgurh, ii. 343. Futtehpore Massacre, ii. 343. Sikri, ii. 163. Fyfe, Eev. W. C, i. 131; ii. 522. Gaelic, i. 11, 189, 213. Gardiner, Rev. T., ii. 216. General Assembly, i. 41, 53, 315,^ 357; ii. 81, 180, 503. German Missions, ii. 135. Ghospara, i. 469; ii. 47. Gibbon, ii. 25. Gladstone, Mr., i. 204, 273, 303 ; ii. 374, 512, 527, 540. Gobindo Chunder Das, ii. 54. Goldsborough, Sir J., i. 90. Goluk Nath, Rev., ii. 80, 489. Gonds, ii. 428. Goodeve, Dr. H., ii. 218. Gooroo Das Maitra, ii. 54. Gopeenath Nundi, i. 162, 283, 460; ii. 342, 367, 489. Gordon Memorial Mission, ii 44^ Rev. Dr., ii. 28, 43. Government House, i. 88, 92. Govindram Mitter, i. 93. Grampians, i. 15. Grant, Charles, i. 35, 97. Granville, Lord, ii. 234. Gray, Bishop, ii. 408, 494. 543 INDEX. Gregory XV., ii. 415. Grote, George, ii. 90. Groves, Anthony, i. 266. Gunga, i. 82, Gurney, Joseph, i. 286. Guthrie, Thomas, i. 321, 382. Haddington, Earl of, i. 43. Haldane, James, i. 327. Principal, i. 45. Halifax, Lord, i. 438 ; ii. 245, 492. Halley, James, i. 343. Hamilton, Canada, ii. 279. Hanna, Dr. W., i. 26 ; ii. 116, 384, 505. Hardinge, Lord, ii. 84. Hare, David, i. 99. Harper, Dr., i. 53. Hastings, Lord, i. 99. Marchioness of, ii. 210. Warren, '.i. 96, 184, 251 ; ii. . 107, 229. Havelock, Sir H., ii. 330. Hawkins, Mr., ii. 19, 186, 536. Heat of S. India, ii. 127, 132. Heber, Bishop, i. 186; ii. 157, 482. Hebich, Samuel, i. 421. Heredity, i. 1. Heytesbury, Lord, i. 426. Hill, Eev. J., i. 146. Hindoo College, i. 99, 143 ; ii. 60. Hindooism in Danger, ii. 59, 65. Hippocrates, i. 207. Hislop, Stephen, i. 348 ; ii. 428. Hobhouse, Sir J. C. {See Brough- ton.) Hodgson, Mr. B. H., i. 188. Holkar, Maharaja, ii. 359. Holland, ii. 515. Home Missions, ii. 271. Hooghly Eiver, ii. 47. Hooker, ii. 475. Hospitals, ii. 98, 103. Hudson Eiver, ii. 261. Hughes, Eev. T. P., i. 107. flume, David, i. 11. Hunter, Dr. John, i. 18. Eev. T. and E., ii. 342. Hyde, Dr., ii. 417. Hyder AH, ii. 34. Impolweni, ii. 444. Independence Hall, U.S., ii. 269. Indigo Controversy, ii. 374. Indophilus Letters, ii. 69. Infanticide, ii. 93. Inglis, Eev. Dr., i. 37, 305; iL 13, 463. Irish Presbyterian Mission, i. 413. Irving, Edward, i. 51. James, Bishop, i. 239. Jephson, Dr., i. 332. Jesuits, The, ii. 60, 137. Jews, ii. 59, 181. Jeynarain Ghosal, i. 102. Joh7i M'Lellan, The, i. 272. Johnston, Eev. J., i. 347. Jugadishwar Bhattacharjya, i. 474; ii. 371. Jugganath, ii. 82. Kaffraria, ii. 410, 444. Kailas Chunder Mookerjea, i 471. Kalidasa, i. 252. Kay, Eev. Dr., ii. 435. Kaye, Sir John, ii. 89. Kellie, Earl of, i. 436. Khartabhajas, i. 468. Khettur Mohun Chatterjea, i. 120. Kiernander, i. 92. Killiecrankie, i. 6. Kingston, Canada, ii. 285. Kinnaird, Lord, ii. 432. Kirk of Scotland, i. 32; ii. 4, 600. Kirkmichael School, i. 14. Knott, Eev. J. W., ii. 435. Knox, John, i. 33 ; ii. 107. Kol Mission, ii. 372. Kotghur, ii. 165. Krishna, ii. 65. Mohun Banerjea, Eev. Dr., i 153,160,207; ii. 383,528. Krishnaghur, i. 460. Kuenen, ii, 511. Kuppurtula, Maharaja, ii. 372. INDEX. 549 Lacroix, Rev. A. F., i. 84; ii. 121, 364. Lady Holland, The, i. QQ, Lahore, ii. 166. Lahoul, ii. 165. Laing, Miss, ii. 83. Lake, General, ii. 435. Lai Behari Day, Rev., i. 455, 475 ; ii. 76, 470. Land-tax of India, i. 415, 437. Languages of the East, i. 220. Laurie, Rev. Dr., i. 242 ; ii. 210. Lawrence, Lord, i. 251 ; ii. 97, 166, 329, 412, 441, 522, 533. Sir Henry, ii. 134; ii. 51, 90, 166, 325. Laws, Dr., ii. 460. Lawson, Patrick, i. 60. Learning for the Church, ii. 225, 512. Lebanon, The, ii. 442. Lectures, i. 146, 157. Lennox, Mr., ii. 48. Lepsius, i. 220. Leuchars Kirk, i. 53. Lewis, Dr. James, i. 290. Lieder, Rev. Mr., i. 402. Livingstone, Dr., ii. 411, 450. Livingstonia, ii. 459. London Missionary Society, 1. 3. Presbytery, i. 286, 289. Long, Rev. J., ii. 108, 315, 376. Lorimer, Dr., i. 274; ii. 196, 449. Loudoun, Earl of, ii. 210. Love, Dr., i. 289. Lovedale, ii. 410. Lucknow in the Mutiny, ii. 329. Lull, Raymond, ii. 416. Lushington, C, i. 42. Lutheran Missions, ii. 135, 429. Lycidas Poem, i. 331. Lytton, Lord, ii. 65. Macaulay, Lord, i. 180, 190. Macdonald, Rev. J., i. 286, 341. Macfarlan, Dr. P., ii. 29. Principal, i. 343. M'Cheyne, M., i. 276, 342. Mackail, Rev. Mr., ii. 20. Mackay, Rev. Dr. and Mrs., i. 131,^ 133, 450 ; ii. 43, 467. Mackenzie, General Colin, i. 441 ;. ii. 80, 167, 536. Bishop, ii. 453. Holt, ii. 490. Mackinnon, W., i. 420. Mackintosh, Mr. A. B., ii. 20. Macleod, Dr. Norman, i. 421 ; ii. 25. M'Leod, Sir Donald, i. 475. Macnaghten, Sir W. H., i. 187 McOosb, Dr., ii. 537. McNeile, Dr., ii. 197. Macpherson, Major, S. C, ii. 357 McQueen, Dr. K., ii. 439. Macwhirter, Dr., i. 365. Madeira, i. Q*7. Madras Christian College, ii. 434. Mi.ssions, i. 347, 422 ; ii. 124, 136, 434. Mahanad, ii. 47, 371. Mahendra, Lai Basak, i. 471, Main, Rev. T., ii. 206, 213. Maine, Sir H., i. 180; li. 392, 489. Maitland, Sir P., ii. 445. Mangalore, i. 420. Marenga, ii. 453, Marnoch case, i. 309. Marryat, Captain, i. QT. Marsh, Captain, ii. 90. Marshman, Dr., i. 26, 102, 429, 54L Mr.J.C.,i.93,229; ii.89,230, 490. Martin, Sir R., i. 269. G., ii. 480, 530. Martyn, Henry, ii. 407. Martyrs of the Church of India, ii. 340. Matheson, Mr. H. M., ii. 419. Mault, Mr., ii. 160. Mavite, ii. 453. May, Rev. Mr., i. 102. Mayo, Lord, ii. 432. Medical Colleges of India, i. 209; ii. 98. Medicine, Hindoo, i. 208. 550 INDEX. Meei'ut, ii. 313. Melanesia, ii. 462, 531. Metcalfe, Lord, i. 231. Middleton, Bishop, i. 37, 111. Mill, Kev. Dr., i. 111. Miller, Hugh, ii. 173. Milne, Eev. J., 1. 343; ii. 20, 250, 308. Milton, John, i. 16, 330 ; ii. 226, 402. Miiito, Lord, i. 185. Mitchell, Dr. M., i. 347; ii. 429. James, i. 98, 189. John Stuart, i. 180 ; ii. 232. Missionary Catholicity, i. 313; ii. 2, 40, 48. Defence, i. 253 ; ii. 299, 311. Eulogy, i. 260; ii. 352, 369, 393. Finance, ii. 30, 71, 425, 431. Institute, ii. 421, 540. Literature, i. 366, 458. Policies, i. 108, 164, 200, 232, 301 ; ii. 35, 144, 162, 239, 299, 371, 413, 426. Professorship, ii. 43, 111, 121, 417, 533. Quarterly, ii. 422. Salaries, i. 52; ii. 139, 431. Statistics, ii. 339, 463. Tours, i. 472; ii. 122, 164, 188. Work and Christ, i. 355 ; ii. 369. Moderate Party, ii. 4. Moderator of General Assembly ii. 223, 500. Moffat, Dr., ii. 493, 541. Mohesh Chunder Ghose, i. 158. Moira, The, i. 81. Moncreiff; Sir H., ii. 21. Monod, M. P., ii. 226. Montreal, ii. 288. Mooltan, ii. 169. Moral Philosophy, i. 20, 28. Moravian Missionaries, i. 267 ; ii. 405. Morgan, Eev. A., ii. 111. Morrison, Rev. Dr., i. 25. Mouat, Dr., ii. 247. Moulin, i. 3, 5, 387. Mozambique, ii. 402. Muhammad Ali, of Egypt, i. 395. Muhammadanism, ii. 312, 343. Muir, Sir W., ii. 39. Mullens, Dr. and Mrs., ii. 360, 376. Mulliks, The, 96. Mundy, Mr., ii. 104. Munro, General, ii. 161. Murray, Eev. Dr. (Kirwan), ii. 264. Mutiny in India, ii. 313, 327, 352. Nana Saheb, ii. 324. Napier, Sir Charles, ii. 9, 49. Narayan, Sheshadri, Eev., ii. 430. Natal, ii. 411, 444. Neil, General, ii. 329. New Hebrides, ii. 462. — London, Canada, ii. 280. York, ii. 262, 290. Newman, Cardinal, i. 303. F. W., i. 266. Newton's Hymn, ii. 535. Newton, Sir Isaac, i. 330. Nicolson, Dr. Simon, i. 269; ii. 19, 122. Nightingale, Florence, ii. 491. Nobokissen, Eaja, i. 93. Northbrook, Lord, i. 250; ii 65, 432. Norway, ii. 517. Nuddea Eiots, ii. 375. Nuncomar, i. 94. Nyanza Lakes, ii. 451. Nyassa Lake, ii. 451. Neemtolla Street, ii. 42. Ogilvie, Eev. Dr., ii. 39. Oliphant, Mr. T., i. 127. Omichund, i. 92. Ontario Lake, ii. 287. Orations of Dr. Daff, i. 290, 325, 349, 377 ; ii. 177, 274. Orientalism, i. 184, 436. Orientalists, The Pseudo, i. 186, 210, 219, 429. INDEX. 551 Outrarn, Sir J., ii. 49. Overland Koute, i. 388. Paclaumba, ii. 429. Pagodas of S. India, ii. 145. Paine, Tom, i. 141. Palmerston, Lord, i. 427; ii. 297. Pandyas, ii. 145. Pantaenus, i. 457. Parisnath, ii. 429. Parliamentary Committee, ii. 231. Parnell, Mr., i. 266. Parsees, i. 414. Patriarch Cottrge, i. 8. Patriotic Fund, ii. 337. Patterdale, ii. 481. Patterson, J. B., i. 275. Eev. Dr., ii. 279. Peacock, Sir Barnes, i. 180. T. L., ii. 232. Pearce, Eev. G., i. 103. .__ Eev. W., i. 165. Peel, Sir Lawrence, ii. 57. Sir Robert, ii. 10. Perth Presbytery, i. 317. School, i. 16. Peshawar, ii. 329. Philadelphia, ii. 263. Pieter-Maritzburg, ii. 444. Pilgrim's Progress, The, ii. 55. Pirie, Sir John and Lady, i. 61 ; ii 227. Pitlochrie, i. 5. Pitt, ii. 228. Plassey, Centenary, ii. 320, Political Economy, i. 135. Polwarth, Lord, ii. 421, 536. Pondicheri, ii. 129. Portobello, i. 274. Portuguese in Africa, ii. 455. in India, i. 249 ; ii. 138. in Madeira, i. 68. Pourie, Rev. J., ii. 20, 216, 368. Presbyterian Council, ii. 531. Presbyteries of Scotland, i, 315 ; ii. 187. Press, The, i. 227, 376,440; il 513. Prideaux, H., ii, 417. Principal of New College, ii. 505. Prinseps, The, i. 187, 219. Prize Essays on Missions, i. 366. Proclamation, Queen's Indian, ii. 246. Propaganda College, ii. 415. Prosunno K. Chatterjea, i. 475. Pundits on Dr. DufP, ii. 119. Queen Victoria, ii. 525. Proclaimed Empress, ii. 526. Quillimane, ii. 461. Radakhant Deb, i. 91, 195; il 65. Rainy, Dr. ii. 506, 510. Rajah gopal. Rev. P., ii. 173. Ram Komul Sen., i. 94. Ramchurn Pal, i. 467. Rammohun Roy, i. 40, 95, 112. Reeve, Mr. H., ii. 232. Reform Act, i. 273. Reformation, Scottish, ii. 4, 13. Reformed Pres. Church, ii. 461,499. Renaissance in India, i. 178, 231. Revivals, ii. 369. Ricketts, J. W., i. 250. Robert de Nobili, ii. 157. Robertson, Principal, ii. 24. Robinson Crusoe, i. 222. Romanist Missions, ii. 60 ; ii. 137. Rose, R., ii. 20. Runjeet Singh, ii. 85. Russia, ii. 85, 516, 521. Sabbath Observance, i. 239, 412, 457; ii. 85, 524. on Sinai's Top, i. 409. Schools, i. 31. St. Andrews, i. 17, 26. Day, ii. 527. Kirk, Calcutta, i. 234. 239. St. Catharine's Convent, 1. 406. St. David Fort, ii. 13. Sanskrit Pundits, ii. 119, 134. Santal Insurrection, ii. 312. Missions, ii. 429. Sargent, Bishop, ii. 159. Saugar Island, i. 82. 552 INDEX. Schmidt, Georg, ii. 406. School-books, i. 125. Cess, i. 436. Schwartz, ii. 150. Science against Hindooism, i. 140, 209, 456. Scotsmen in Calcutta, i. 234. Scott, The Commentator, ii. 475. Sectarianism, i. 166, 234; ii. 2. Serampore Missionaries, i. 150, 249. Serfojee, Raja, ii. 155. Seringham Pagoda, ii. 146. Seton-Karr, Mr., ii. 68. Shaftesbury, Lord, ii. 492. Shepherd of the East, ii. 165. Sheridan, i. 304. Sherwood, Mrs., ii. 55. Shib Chunder Banerjea, ii. Q6. Shipwrecks, i. 72, 82. Shoolbred, Dr., i. 361. Shyama Churn Mookerjea, ii. 66. Simeon, Charles, i. 2, 325. Sinai, i. 404. Sinclair, Sir George, ii. 197. Sindh War, ii. 49. Siiidia, Maharaja, ii. 337. Slave Trade, ii. 453. Smith, Baird, ii. 356. — — , Bishop, ii. 435. Rev. Dr. T., i. 347, 369, 451 ; ii. 18, 360. Prof. E,. ii. 510. Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (Scottish), 1.38; ii. 136. Soldiers, Work among, i. 243, 439. Soonderbuns, The, i. 26. Soorajood Dowla, i. 91. Sovereignty of God, i. 2. Spelling, Oriental, i. 222. Spiritual Independence, ii. 2, 21, 409. Stanley, Dean, ii. 527. Steeple Controversy, i. 235. Stein, Von, i. 415. Stephen, Sir James, i. 180. Stevenson, J., ii 459. Stewart, Dr., of Lovedale, ii. 451. Stewart, Mr. J. C, ii. 20, 551. of Erskine, i. 299. Stewart of Moulin, i. 2, 326. Strachan, J. M., ii. 248. Strickland, Rev. W., ii. 137. Stuart, Mr. G. H., ii. 251, 262. Students' Missionary Society, u 25, 31, 343, 528. Sustentation Fund, i. 3, 12. Systematic Beneficence Society, ii. 426. Suez Canal, i. 388. Susruta, i. 208. Swearing Reproved, ii. 8. Symington, Rev. Dr., ii. 206, 462. Syrian Church, ii. 161. Table Mountain, ii. 404. Tagores, The, i. 95, 120. Tait, Archbishop, i. 343. Takee, i. 131, 265; ii. 46. Tamul Poet, ii. 134, 156. Tanganika Lake, ii. 451. Tanjore, ii. 145. Taylor, Rev. J. W., 1. 23, 299. Temple, Dr., i. 266. Sir Richard, ii. 428. Thomson of Banchory, ii. 79. Dr. A., i. 50, 127. Dr. W., i. 320. Tiger Story, i. 264. Toleration, ii. 56. Toronto, ii. 283. Toynbee, Captain, ii. 397. Tranquebar, ii. 93, 133. Travancore, ii. 161. Trevelyati, Sir C, i 182, 211, 224 ; ii. 230, 244, on Dr. Duff, i. 195; ii. 384. Trinity, The, i. 161. Tucker, Robert, ii. 343. Turner, Bishop, i. 239, 253 ; ii. 482. Uma Churn Ghose, ii. 66. Umesh Chunder Sirkar, ii. 55. United College Planned, i. 165. Presbyterian Church, ii. 8,359, 498. INDEX. 553 United States {see Americans), ii. 250, 279, 291. University of Aberdeen, i 306. Calcutta, ii. 382. India, ii. 247. New York, ii. 292. St. Andrews, i. 17. Urquhart, John, i, 22, 45. Yaislinavas, i. 468. Yedas, i. 208. Venn, Mr., ii. 435. Vernacular Education, i. 226, 430, 436. Language, i. 105, 188, 225. Visions, Dr. Durs, i. 11. Voluntaryism, ii. 21, 498. Wagliorn, Lieut., i. 388. Wala3us, ii. 416. Waldensian Church, ii. 297- Wales, Prince of, ii. 521. Wallace, Rev. A., i. 45. Wallich, Dr., i. 217. Ward, of Serampore, i. 468. Waterston, Miss, ii. 460. Weber, i. 207. Welsh, Preaching to the, ii. 192. Westminster Abbey, ii, 527. Eeview, ii. 90. Whyte, Rev. A., ii. 493. Wilberforce, i. 35 ; ii. 229. William TIL, i. 90. Williams, John, ii. 463. Wines of Prance, i. 392. Wilson, Bishop D., i. 45, 234, 248 ; ii. 109, 334. Colonel, ii. 34. Dr. John, i. 86, 109, 166, 254, 302, 413; ii. 45, 169. 432, 458, 528. James, ii. 357. Mrs., (Miss Cooke), i. 149. Prof. H. H., i. 98, 252. Rev. J. H., ii. 493. Wiseman, Cardinal, i. 391. Woman in India, i. 459. Wood, Sir. C. {See Halifax.) Wordsworth, i. 431. Wylie, Mr. M , ii. 19, 38, 57, 249. Xavier, Francis, ii. 138. Yates, Dr., i. 26, 219. Young Men, Lecture to, on Mis- sions, ii. 216. Yonng, Mr. H., i. 166. Youth, ii. 1. Yule, Colonel H., ii. 489. Dr., i. 396. 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