■^'I- 
 
 
 wv> 
 
 G. Smith 
 
 Missions of the 
 Free Church in India 
 
 m 
 
 M\ 
 
 ii-'"'l 
 
 i "iH^ 
 
 \jr i lb- J.^ Mi* 
 
r^on 
 
 MI as IONS 
 
 FREE CHURCH IN INDIA. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 %ht (Bnxmxl ^sscmLJn oiiht Jfrtc Cljurtfj of ^cotlanb, 
 
 JfA y 23, 1871. 
 
 /' 
 
 GEORGE SMITH, LL.D., 
 
 SERAMPORE, 
 ElilTOR OF " THE FRIEND OF INDIA." 
 
 ^1 ftEt!.,0CT18 
 
 ^EUTPTBURGH: 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE & CO. 
 
 1«71. 
 
JAU 4 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Dr George Smith, Elder, next addressed the Agsembly. He said he would 
 confine himself to one or two points in which they were all interested, and 
 which had been more or less controverted. It seemed to him as an outsider, 
 looking not only at the missions of our Church, but at all Protestant missions 
 in India, carried on by all denominations, that now at last this Church had 
 projected and carried into execution a more perfect missionary policy, if he 
 might so express it, than any other Church had yet been permitted to do. Up to the 
 issuing of the present report, there could be no doubt that the Free Church mission 
 was, in the eyes of many members of the Church, somewhat defective. This could 
 no longer be said. In the first four pages of the report the siibjects grouped them- 
 selves under the four great heads which comprehended the whole of their mission- 
 ary operations. They had there the colleges and schools, which had been identified 
 with what was called the educational system of missions. They had there also — audit 
 was in this respect that up to this year their mission system had been defective — an 
 account of success among the Ghonds, the nomination of a missionary to labour 
 among the Santals, and generally statements concerning the work of pure evangeli- 
 sation, as distinct from civilisation, among the aboriginal tribes. Then they had, 
 thirdly, that noble institution, the Ladies' Society for carrying on Female Education 
 in India. And lastly, and in one sense most important of all, as being the very source 
 and root of their mission, they had the Chair of Evangelistic Theology now in full 
 operation, not simply as an optional, but as a necessary part of the academic and 
 theological course of the Church. It seemed to him that, so far as the outward machin- 
 ery — that was, so far as the plan or policy of the Foreign Mission of the Free Church 
 ■ — was concerned, they were now perfect. What they wanted was that blessing from 
 above which only the grace of God could give in answer to the prayers of His people, 
 and that abounding and increasing liberality which they ought to display when an 
 outwardly perfect scheme of missionary labour had thus been presented to them. 
 
 If he might for a moment be permitted to hint at a defect, he would say that, 
 compared with what their ideal of a mission ought to be, and what other missions 
 were in other Churches, they seemed to lack the home literary or intelligence 
 part of the mission work. Those members of the Free Church in India who were 
 interested in the success of missions were painfully aware that, whoever was to blame 
 for it, there was not a sufficient literary expression given to the work that was done 
 by their missions abroad. This was unjust to the missionaries on the spot, and it 
 was unfair to the committee here. But these were slight evils compared with the 
 fact, that the members of the Church were thus denied facts regarding the 
 
Lord's work, or were misled by imperfect information. Increasing liberality on 
 their part could not be expected, unless the whole truth were continually told 
 them, and the whole Church were thus brought ew rapport with the mission field 
 and missionary workers. It seemed to Dr Smith that this defect could be very 
 easily remedied. He could understand, from somewhat painful experience, how 
 impossible it was for the editor to find space for all the matter sent to him for pub- 
 lication. But if they took an example in this respect from the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society of England — which, so far as he knew, issued the most perfect 
 missionary publications in the world — they would either reserve the statement of 
 accounts for quarterly publication, or have a special Missionary JRecord for the 
 grown-up people, as for the children, devoted to the calm, intelligent, and catholic 
 discussion of missionary questions, as well as to the communication of missionary 
 information. 
 
 As to their colleges and schools, he could only bear testimony that more efiicicnt 
 educational institutions for their purpose — that was, institutions more efficient, not 
 only educationally, but in the communication of religious instruction with a view to 
 the changing of the human heart — they could not find. These colleges had shown 
 their educational efficiency in all the three Presidencies, and also in Nagpore, 
 by the position which the students took from year to year in the honour, as well 
 as in the matriculation and degree lists of the three Universities of Calcutta, 
 Madras, and Bombay. Indeed, so great had their success been, that it might 
 be said that they stood at the head of the non-Government colleges — that 
 was, of the colleges not directly taught, supervised, and supported by the State. 
 He might be told, on the other hand, that the influence of the university system 
 upon all their colleges in India had been of late of a secularising character. It must 
 be confessed that, in proportion as the Universities had exacted a more accurate 
 knowledge and a greater extent of knowledge, there seemed at first sight to have 
 been a falling off in religion. The tendency in India, as here, was too much, under 
 the influence of competition, to bring such a pressure to bear upon the students 
 that the whole subject of religious instruction was apt to be pushed into a subordi- 
 nate place. But before they came to that conclusion, they should take various 
 circumstances into account. He would attribute the recent falling off in baptisms, 
 not so much to the secularising effect of the Universities, as to the rationalising 
 influence of that English and American literature with which education in India 
 brings the students into such very close connection. No one who had not lived in 
 India could understand the energetic and active power which such literature was 
 exerting among the young men being taught there. The latest results of what is 
 called free thought in England and America are imported into India by every mail, 
 are eagerly expounded by several of the English newspapers conducted by Hindoos, 
 and are revelled in by youths who mistake license for liberty. That tendency was 
 directed and fed to a large extent by an influence to modify which their colleges 
 had been at first established — the influence of highly-cultured gentlemen who went 
 out as teachers in government colleges, and made use of their position as professors 
 of philosophy to propagate the most extreme forms of philosophical and religious 
 opinion with which many minds were occupied in this country. It was a notorious 
 fact, which had been brought under the notice of Government, that several of the 
 English professors of the Government Colleges in Bengal were avowed Comtists. 
 
There were decidedly Chrislian men who were professors in Government colleges, 
 but they were bound by their contract with Government not to utter one word of 
 Christianity or religion, at least during the class hours. They might occupy their 
 leisure as they pleased ; and he rejoiced to say that more than one, notably one who 
 is now a distinguished professor in Cambridge, and in the first rank of living 
 Orientalists, had been the means of adding several to the Church as the result of 
 Sunday and evening classes. But other professors, professors of philosophy 
 and history, did not feel themselves bound to silence, even in the class, on the 
 systems opposed to Christianity, and therefore propagated such views as those of 
 the Comtist school with immense influence and success amongst the immature 
 minds of the young men under their teaching. To the rationalising influence of 
 that English literature, to the teaching of Government colleges, and to another 
 influence upon which he would not dilate, the fact that the Brahmo Somaj arrested 
 the minds of many young men at the very stage where they were impressible, and 
 diverted them to the half-way house of a benevolent Theism — to these, much more 
 than to the secularising effect of university education, might be attributed the 
 falling off in the number of baptisms. 
 
 Now, what was the Church to dol Certainly they must not abandon their 
 position as to education. If ever the time came when this Church, and the Foreign 
 Committee of this Church, devoted less attention than they had hitherto given to 
 what had been the glory of their mission, the colleges and schools Avhich it had 
 created, then the greatest blow would be given to the progress of Christianity in 
 India which it had ever suffered. He thought he could show that it was to the 
 university system that they owed very much the success of the mission colleges. 
 If they asked his own opinion, as one who had no more interest in the matter than 
 in any other Indian questions, he would say, that while there was a tendency on the 
 part of the university system to secularise our missionary colleges, it was over- 
 balanced to a great extent by the liberty the universities had given to these 
 colleges. It rested with the Foreign Committee and the General Assembly of the 
 Church to neutralise that secularising influence, so far as it existed, by means of 
 missionaries who, the more rigorously the Universities insisted on a high standard of 
 secular knowledge, should the more zealously propagate Christian truth. He could 
 not help thinking that morning, when listening to the discussion on the Education 
 Committee's report, that the treatment of the religious question in the normal 
 schools here was exaclly similar to what ought to take place in India. The Educa- 
 tion Committee here, in consequence of the treatment of the religious question by 
 the Privy Council, had resolved that vigorous efforts should be put forth to see that 
 their certificated masters receive a still more thorough religious instruction than 
 hitherto. That was precisely the remedy in India, where all depended on the men 
 sent out by the Church as missionaries, and not on any University system. If they 
 were to take the worst view of it, and retire from their colleges altogether, they 
 would simply leave Satan to work his own will, leave the field to him, and find that 
 they would be glad to go back and resume the work under very great disadvantages. 
 
 The very existence of Universities in India at so early a period as 1857, was due 
 to two men, Dr Duff and Mr John Marshman, C.S.I. Up to 185i the whole of 
 the public funds and rewards devoted to education were confined to secular and 
 
godless schools and colleges, direcUy conducted and controlled by the Stale. Not 
 only the missionaries, but all Hindoos and Mussulmans, and those English and 
 East Indian gentlemen who conducted such successful institutions as the Doveton 
 College of Calcutta at their own cost, were kept at a distance, and, to that extent, 
 steadily discouraged. The evidence given, before Parliamentary Committees, in 
 1853, by Dr DufF and Mr Marshman — the latter the son of Carey's great colleague 
 at Serampore, and perhaps the most generous supporter of Christian education 
 India has ever seen — induced the present Lord Halifax, then President of the 
 Board of Control, to adopt and sign the famous educational despatch of 1854. 
 That despatch gave India three catholic universities, and the fair system of 
 grants in aid, while pledging Government to retire gradually from its own secular 
 colleges, and to devote its strength on the one hand, to grants-in-aid as in England, 
 on the other, to the education of the millions of the people in their own vernacu- 
 lars. What has been the result, so far as the higher instruction is concerned ? 
 Missionaries, and Christian men, as well as educated men of all creeds not in the 
 service of the Government, are represented with State officials in the senates and 
 syndicates of the Universities. Perhaps the most distinguished yice-Chancellor 
 the University of Bombay has had, has been our own ex-Moderator, Dr John AVilson. 
 Missionaries are represented in, and in my experience have full influence on, the 
 University committees, which fix the curricula of studies, and select the standards 
 and text-books affecting the education of the whole of India. Much has yet to be 
 done. Non-Government interests, whether missionary or not, are not yet suffi- 
 ciently represented in the Universities, and the vested interests of the Educational 
 departments try to prevent the Government of India from retiring from its expensive 
 colleges, and educating the ignorant masses. But we are now working on sound 
 and catholic principles, and ultimate success depends chiefly on the men sent out 
 as missionaries. The opinions expressed by some in this country regarding the 
 educational work of our mission was not that expressed in India. On the contrary, 
 it had been the glory of the Church to be identified with this educational system, 
 and the educational system was found to be so thoroughly evangelistic as directed 
 against Hindooism and Mohammedanism — he held it to be more thoroughly evan- 
 gelistic in this way than any other system — that it had been taken hold of by other 
 missionary agencies in India, and every other society bad simply imitated their 
 course. Where there used to be one missionary college in Bengal — and that well 
 known, throughout the whole native community, as Duffs School — they had now six 
 missionary colleges in and around Calcutta, turning out young men saturated with 
 Divine truth, and gradually, he believed, sapping the vast structure of Hiudooism 
 and Mohammedanism, which one day, however distant as men judge, must fall to 
 the ground. 
 
 Very different are the agencies required to evangelise the simple aborigines of 
 India, on hill or plain. Dr Smith congratulated Mr Templeton, or whoever might go 
 out to that field, upon being the first missionary appointed in this Church to lay 
 the foundation of a new missionary work and machinery among the Santals. There 
 was no success in modern missions — certainly no success in Indian missions — 
 so great as that which had been won during the last three years among the Santals, 
 where Mr Templeton was going to labour. In a country as large as England, the 
 Church and the Biptist Missionary Societies have already occupied portions of the 
 
field. There is ample room for a Presbyterian, a Free Church Mission, which, on 
 the assurance of the Church Missionary who had already won such triumphs in the 
 llajmahal district, would be welcomed by the Church of England. He (Dr Smith) had 
 more than once travelled through the country which rises from the heat and damp 
 of Lower Bengal gradually into the uplands of Behar, and the out-crop of the great 
 Vindhya range. A more promising field for evangelisation does not exist, and the 
 selection of a site for the central station reflected great credit on the judgment of 
 the llev. Mr Don, the valued Free Church minister of Calcutta, and of Dr M. 
 Mitchell, our able and zealous senior missionary there. Nor should this Church 
 omit to recognise the liberality of that Indian merchant prince, who, on this aa 
 on so many other occasions, has taken much of the pecuniary burden on himself. 
 Dr Smith next referred to the Chair of Evangelistic Theology, and congratulated 
 the Church on the excellent results likely to flow from that chair, which would 
 make it the envy of other Churches. That chair was the only institution which 
 any Protestant Church had to point to as a parallel to the Propaganda, which had 
 interested him during two recent visits to Eome, more than any other ecclesiastical 
 institution in the great city. When the Missionary Institute had been added, the 
 parallel would be perfect, so far as that was desirable. During a recent interview 
 with the Committee of the Church Missionary Society, he found that the chair 
 excited great interest in England. 
 
 In conclusion, Dr Smith called the attention of the Assembly to the fact, 
 that since the Disruption the average home income for foreign missions was only 
 i:;i3,100 a year. This includes the results of special efi'orts to clear oflT debt 
 in 1864 and 1866. An analysis of the very clear accounts in the report should 
 startle the laity of this Church into a higher sense of their duty to its foreign 
 missions. Last year, both at home and in India and Africa, the whole sum expended 
 in the name of the Church for these missions was £35,800. This looks well, 
 and would be well, if even the half of it were contributed by the Church. But what 
 is the truth? Of the whole sum, £14,000 was raised in India itself. He would 
 commend to all who still doubted the propriety of maintaining our colleges, the fact 
 that no less than£9,330 of this latter sum was contributed by Government as grants- 
 in-aid, and by students as fees— a sum practically equivalent to the whole salaries 
 of missionaries, European and Native, in India, which were last year £9,459. 
 Thus the colleges may in truth be left to those on the spot who can best judge of 
 facts as they are. Of the £18,123, which represents the income in this country, so 
 much is temporary and fluctuating from legacies and donations, that it was dis- 
 creditable, to quote one to whom this House would listen when the speaker could 
 have no such authority — "I am ashamed of the shabby sum of £14,000 raised 
 annually by the Free Church of Scotland for this work, especially in view of the 
 exertions that had been made to stimulate the Churches by Dr Duff. I am more 
 hopeful of the English Presbyterians than of the cold Northerners." These were the 
 words of Dr Wilson, who, when still I^Ioderator of the General Assembly, had thus 
 addressed, a fortnight ago, one of the largest and most enthusiastic meetings which 
 had ever been witnessed in Exeter Hall — a meeting to aid the foreign missions of 
 this Church, and of her zealous, liberal, and broad-minded sister Church in England. 
 If they contrasted this amount with the reputation in which this Church stood, and 
 deservedly so, in connection with these foreign missions ; if they contrasted it 
 
8 
 
 with the sums contributed proportionately by other Presbyterian Churches, as well 
 as with the sums raised by the religious societies in England, they must confess 
 that it was much too small. He would impress upon the Assembly, and upon those 
 274 congregations who had not found it proper to establish associations for foreign 
 missions, that the sum annually raised for foreign missions by the Free Church was 
 not in keeping with the sums contributed by the Church to other funds. He trusted 
 that the proceedings in this Assembly would have the effect of arousing the Church 
 to a higher sense of its duty in this department of its work. As Free Churchmen, 
 they felt that the Church was developing and broadening, but was not yet what it 
 would be. He could speak for Free Churchmen, and for many Christian men out- 
 side of Scotland, who watched the course of that development, and the efforts made 
 to increase that breadth, till the most vigorous of sects became the nucleus of a 
 true National Church — in time, he trusted, of one National Church. But, however 
 soon or late that result may be reached, and by whatever means, the glory of the 
 Free Church must more than hitherto be identified with the growing success and 
 extension of its foreign missions. This was demanded, alike by its own ecclesiastical 
 reputation and its own true spirituality. As the Church increased in its devotion 
 to foreign missions, and in its subscriptions to the cause, only then will it be a 
 Church worthy of the praise of men in all lands, and fully justify the praise of many 
 who long doubted its success. 
 
^< 
 
 tauioyd ; 
 
 '<y 
 
 PAWPHIET BINDER 
 
 IZ:^ Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 ;;^^ Stockton, Calif. 
 
■> 
 
 BW7469.F8S6 
 
 M.ss,ons Of the Free Church ,nlnd,a 
 
 1 1012 00041 603 
 
 ^ 
 
 >>^