■V
 
 AHY 
 OF THE. 
 U N IV LRSITY 
 OF 1 LLI NOIS
 
 BISHOP CALDWELL 
 
 ON THE 
 
 INSTRUCTION OF NON-CHRISTIANS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 MYSTERIES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 RELIGION. 
 
 A RE PLY 
 
 BY 
 
 THE BISHOP OF BOMBAY. 
 
 Reprinted for Private Circulation.
 
 Bishop Caldwell on the Instruction oe Non- 
 Christians in the Mysteries oe the Christian 
 Religion. A Reply by the Bishop of 
 Bo jib a v.* 
 
 Perhaps I ought to apologise to my Brother 
 Caldwell for replying to his pamphlet in a news- 
 paper, t Whatever Bishop Caldwell writes is sure 
 to command a sale. My only chance of being read 
 lies in coming before the public in this form. 
 
 I do not offer an apology for venturing to reply 
 to him at all, because the question is one of prin- 
 ciple on which every Bishop is bound to make up 
 his mind for himself. Were it a matter on which 
 experience alone could justify a man in having an 
 opinion, I should not venture to enter the lists with 
 him. 
 
 The principles involved in the question are, I take 
 it, two in number — 
 
 i. What we owe to God's truth. 
 
 2. What we owe to the souls of men. 
 
 * On Reserve in Communicating Religiotis Instruction to Non- 
 Christians in Mission Schools in India : A Letter to the Right 
 Reverend the Lord Bishop of Madras. By Bishop Caldwell. Madras, 
 1879. f The Bombay Church Chronicle. 
 
 A
 
 I trust I shall be pardoned for saying that the 
 first is almost ignored in Bishop Caldwell's treat- 
 ment of the subject. Indeed the only part of his 
 pamphlet in which my Brother grows somewhat 
 severe is in his handling of a letter of my own 
 (pp. 62 and 63) in which I had expressed my 
 opinion that instinctive reverence for God's truth 
 formed a factor in the problem to be considered. 
 
 But I will not begin with these principles, because 
 the way must first be cleared for their treatment. 
 Bishop Caldwell claims to demolish my plea for the 
 instinct of reverence by bringing to bear on that 
 "rampart of leaves and flowers," as he calls it, "the 
 shattering, irresistible force of a Krupp gun of 
 Divine Command." And I allow that if he is 
 right in his conception of what that command im- 
 plies, he is right also in saying that my " instinct" 
 must not be allowed to assert itself against it — 
 neither must any human opinion as to how one 
 may best benefit souls. If the command of our 
 Lord Himself, that we are to " preach the Gospel 
 to every creature," means that all the mysteries of 
 the Atonement and the Incarnation are to be taught 
 to every heathen child who is induced to attend 
 a Mission School by the bribe of a secular educa- 
 tion, then I have no more to say about what I 
 conceive to be due either to God's truth or to 
 human souls. If my Master has settled the 
 question I am not rash enough to attempt to 
 reopen it. 

 
 But there is one whole book of the New 
 Testament which furnishes a commentary on that 
 command. It is on the Bishop's handling of that 
 commentary that I propose to join issue with him 
 first. 
 
 If I can show that he is mistaken about this, 
 can show that our Lord's command as interpreted 
 by the Apostles themselves does not compel us to 
 teach the whole truth to those who cannot be 
 prepared to receive it, then the way will be open 
 for the arguments which I would draw from the 
 principles which I have brought forward : then 
 it is competent to us as Christian teachers to draw 
 our independent conclusions as to the way in which 
 the training of our pupils must be affected by these 
 two considerations : — 
 
 How far must the proclamation of Divine Truth 
 to unbelievers be restrained by the instinctive 
 reverence which we feel for that Truth itself ? " 
 
 How far shall we benefit children's souls by 
 teaching them, in their non-Christian condition, 
 truths which only the assistance of the Holy Spirit 
 can enable them to comprehend to their souls' 
 health ? 
 
 The Bishop claims then to have proved in his 
 pamphlet, from the Acts and the Apostolic Epistles, 
 that the Apostles, were they in India at this day, 
 would teach the whole Gospel of salvation to the 
 children of non-Christian parents who attended their 
 Missionary Schools, although they came there with 
 
 A 2
 
 no intention of becoming Christians — indeed, with 
 a decided intention the other way on their own 
 part and that of their parents. 
 
 The limited space at my command will not allow 
 of my reviewing in detail the Bishop's treatment 
 of the Apostolic preaching. In general, the first 
 point to be remarked is that a very strong inference 
 is to be drawn from the slender amount of proof 
 adduced by so able a writer from the one book 
 which is really in point. If a man of his con- 
 spicuous ability can get no more than he does out 
 of the Acts, there can be very little there. Still 
 more would this remark apply to one passage in 
 the Doctor's argument. On pages 16 and 17 of 
 his pamphlet he compares the history of S. Paul's 
 preaching at Ephesus with his address to the 
 Ephesian elders at Miletus ; and argues that 
 because the Apostle says in that address that he 
 had testified to Jews and Greeks " Repentance 
 toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus 
 Christ," it follows that in mixed assemblies of non- 
 Christians of every sort he had proclaimed to 
 unbelieving ears all the mysteries of the Christian 
 religion. I should have thought that if there was 
 one passage which showed the difference S. Paul 
 made in his preaching according to the audience 
 which he had before him, it was this address to 
 the Ephesian Presbyters. To them, and to the 
 Church which they represented, he says that he 
 " had not shunned to declare all the counsel of
 
 God." To the J civs and Greeks the substance of 
 his preaching had been " repentance toward God 
 and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." What 
 else should he have preached to them ? What 
 else can the Bishop suppose that I, and those who 
 think with me, wish to have taught in Missionary 
 Schools ? The sinfulness of sin, the fact of the 
 Resurrection, forgiveness through Christ — there is 
 the substance of the preaching of the Acts. And 
 neither in this nor in any other of the places 
 which Bishop Caldwell adduces as his proofs, do 
 we find iii the Acts of the Apostles that the 
 preaching of these three things came short in the 
 first preachers' estimation of a fulfilment of our 
 Lord's Jast command. If S. Paul had said to 
 the elders that in preaching to any non-Christian 
 he " had not shunned to declare all the counsel 
 of God," the Bish'op would indeed have made a 
 point by adducing the address at Miletus. But 
 this was exactly what S. Paul did not say. Nay, 
 we read that when "divers at Ephesus were 
 hardened and believed not," he took away from 
 them even what they had, the preaching of 
 repentance and the Resurrection. 
 
 But the greater part of the Bishop's argument 
 from the Acts consists of inferences from things 
 said about the Apostles' preaching — they preached 
 "the Gospel," "the way of salvation," therefore 
 they must have taught all the mysteries of the faith 
 to anv one who chose to listen. I submit that
 
 the whole of these inferences are a mere begging 
 of the question — they ought to have said so-and-so, 
 therefore they did say it. If instead of asking 
 what they must have said, we take what it is 
 recorded that they did say, we shall find that, as 
 Bishop Douglas pointed out, they taught that the 
 Man Christ Jesus was the judge of quick and dead, 
 and that through this Man was preached the for- 
 giveness of sins. His Godhead they never taught 
 to heathens, or the nature of His atoning Sacrifice. 
 Forgiveness through Him they taught of course. 
 You cannot teach the sinfulness of sin without 
 teaching that sin may be forgiven. But this is a 
 very different thing from the glib acquaintance of 
 Dr. Duffs Brahmin pupils with the Calvinistic 
 answers to such questions as, " How may a sinner 
 be said to be justified by faith ? " or, from the sing- 
 ing which Bishop Copleston has again and again 
 refused to listen to, in which non-Christian children 
 in Ceylon are made to proclaim, " I am saved ; I 
 love Jesus ; I have nothing to fear." 
 
 I say then without the least hesitation that, as 
 far as the Acts are concerned, the Bishop's argu- 
 ment breaks down altogether. If the Apostles 
 had preached to the heathen as he desires that 
 we should teach them in our schools, he would 
 have been able to adduce their teaching in black 
 and white, instead of having to infer it from S. 
 Luke's account. And the contrast between their 
 preaching to the heathen and S. Paul's address
 
 to the elders of the Church is as marked and 
 distinct as it can be. 
 
 As regards the argument from the Epistles, one 
 sentence is enough for the whole — the Epistles 
 were addressed to Christian men. The Bishop 
 argues that there are passages in the Epistles, 
 notably in two Epistles to the Corinthians, which 
 show that S. Paul must have preached to heathens 
 all the truth about the Natures of our Lord and 
 the mystery of His atonement for sin. 
 
 I deny the legitimacy of the inference alto- 
 gether, and maintain that it could never have 
 been made except in support of a foregone 
 conclusion. 
 
 But I must examine some of the arguments in 
 detail. 
 
 If the Apostle says in writing to Christians that 
 he had known " nothing among them but Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified," that he had " preached 
 among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of 
 Christ," it is a mere begging of the question at 
 issue to say that he taught them these things before 
 they were baptized, in the same terms and with all 
 the same fulness as after they were made members 
 of Christ. The Acts tell us what he taught the 
 unbaptized. The Epistles are his teaching to 
 Christians. I should have thought the mere con- 
 trast of the two was conclusive against the Bishop's 
 whole contention. 
 
 But again, to go more into detail, he contends
 
 that because the doctrine of Christ crucified is said 
 to have been foolishness to the Greeks and a 
 stumbling-block to the Jews, we must infer that 
 there had been proclaimed to unbelievers the whole 
 doctrine of the sacrifice of Calvary. Now I am far 
 from maintaining for a moment, as the Bishop makes 
 his supposed opponent maintain, that the Apostle 
 only taught to the heathen, or that we should only 
 teach to the heathen, " that Jesus, after living a 
 holy life, died as a martyr to the high moral truths 
 He taught, and as a pattern of patience and suf- 
 fering." It is true, as he remarks, that " no Greeks 
 would ever have regarded this teaching as foolish- 
 ness." But to proclaim, as S. Paul constantly did, 
 that Christ saves us from sin, is what I would have 
 every missionary proclaim to all alike. But it is 
 after by this proclamation he has made men feel 
 their need of a Saviour, and to those only who do 
 feel this need, that I would have him show how 
 Christ saves us. And the fact, without the manner, 
 of the Atonement was quite enough to cause con- 
 tempt among the Greeks and scandal among the 
 Jews. The bare idea of being saved from sin by 
 11 an impaled Jewish sophist " was food for laughter 
 to the cultured Greek — witness Celsus (quoted by 
 Dr. Liddon), who says that <s the Christians wor- 
 shipped no God, not even a demon, but a dead 
 man." And to the Jew, a crucified Messiah was 
 quite stumbling-block enough. And I must main- 
 tain that it is absolutely illogical to take the fact
 
 that S. Paul preached a doctrine of the Cross which 
 was foolishness to them which believed not, and to 
 argue from this as a premiss that the whole manner 
 of the sacrifice of the Cross may be taught to all 
 alike, regardless even of the consideration whether 
 they desire to hear it or not. 
 
 The presence of a child in a Mission School 
 indicates nothing, either on his part or his father's, 
 but the wish to qualify him for Government employ. 
 Well, if the Apostolic comment on our Lord's 
 words indicated that the whole counsel of God was 
 to be taught to every person without distinction, 
 the fact that the boy's presence in school indicated 
 nothing more than this would be no reason for 
 disobeying our Master. But if I am right in my 
 contention that neither the practice nor the writings 
 of S. Paul show that this was how he interpreted 
 the command, then we are at liberty to draw our 
 own conclusions as to what is required by the 
 two principles which I laid down in my opening 
 paragraph. 
 
 I may, perhaps, not be right in my contention ; 
 but I make bold to say that nothing in Bishop 
 Caldwell's publication has logically established the 
 opposite. 
 
 To sum up, then, as far as I have gone — 
 
 The thesis which I have undertaken to maintain 
 is, that we must be restrained by two considerations 
 from teaching " the whole counsel of God " to the 
 non-Christian children in our schools.
 
 IO 
 
 Those two considerations are — 
 
 i. Instinctive reverence for God's truth. 
 
 2. Regard for the souls of the children — to whom 
 the knowledge of the truth will be hurtful without 
 the teaching of the Holy Spirit to bring it home 
 to them. 
 
 Bishop Caldwell has undertaken to show that we 
 have no right to judge for ourselves on either of 
 these two points — that our Lord's command to 
 preach the Gospel to every creature, binds us to 
 proclaim the whole truth to every person whom 
 by any consideration, such as the bribe of a cheap 
 secular education, we can induce to come and 
 hear it. 
 
 He maintains that the practice of the Apostles in 
 the Acts indicates that this is how they interpreted 
 the command, and that this is further indicated by 
 what they write in their Epistles. 
 
 If his interpretation of these books is correct, my 
 two principles fall to the ground ; and therefore, 
 before maintaining my principles, I was bound to 
 do my best to overthrow the Bishop's arguments 
 from Scripture. 
 
 I consider that I have overthrown them. 
 
 I have dealt with the arguments from Scripture 
 by which Dr. Caldwell tries to show that neither 
 reverence for God's truth, nor regard for what one 
 conceives to be the good of souls, can justify us 
 in withholding from non-Christians the fulness of 
 Christian teaching. I have tried to prove that
 
 1 i 
 
 the practice of the Apostles, as recorded by S. 
 Luke in the Acts, shows that they thought they 
 had preached the Gospel to every creature when 
 they had proclaimed three primary truths — the sin- 
 fulness of sin, the fact of the Resurrection, forgive- 
 ness through the risen Saviour. I have tried 
 further to prove, as against the Bishop, that there 
 was nothing, as far as he had shown, in the writings 
 of S. Paul himself to convince us that his preach- 
 ing to non-Christians had ever gone beyond these 
 three truths. 
 
 If I am right in this criticism of his position, then 
 there is no barrier of unanswerable authority to pre- 
 vent me from bringing forward my own thesis that 
 there are two considerations to be taken count of 
 before we teach non-Christians the whole faith — how 
 is such teaching to be reconciled with the reverence 
 which we entertain for God's truth ? how far is it 
 safe for non-Christians to be instructed by the 
 medium of the mere intellect, in truths which must 
 be spiritually discerned before they can benefit our 
 souls ? 
 
 But in addition to the arguments from Holy 
 Scripture which I consider that I have already dis- 
 posed of, Dr. Caldwell gives a list of authorities by 
 whom he claims that his practice is supported ; and 
 I have a word to say about these before I proceed 
 to my positive argument. 
 
 Let me begin with that claim which will give 
 least trouble. My much revered predecessor, Dr.
 
 12 
 
 Douglas, is pressed into the service by Bishop 
 Caldwell, and brought forward as a supporter of 
 that system which he did his best to overthrow. I 
 confess that if this claim had been put forward under 
 a less respected name, I should have been tempted 
 to speak strongly about it. My predecessor pub- 
 lished seven letters in the Indian Church Gazette, 
 in which he dealt with the whole subject most care- 
 fully. It would not be too much to say that the 
 pamphlet in which these letters are contained fur- 
 nishes an exhaustive refutation of the arguments 
 by which Bishop Caldwell defends his own practice. 
 And all this he claims to set aside on the strength of 
 a single rhetorical sentence in a letter written with 
 a different object ! And this in spite of the easily 
 ascertainable fact that in the magnificent Charge, 
 which was Bishop Douglas' last utterance to his 
 clergy, he deliberately re-affirmed the position which 
 he had argued out in the Indian Church Gazette. 
 If Bishop Douglas may be cited as an authority for 
 teaching the whole truth to unbelievers, I see no 
 reason why Burke should not be cited as a Jacobin, 
 or Macaulay as an admirer of the Stuarts. 
 
 The authority of Justin Martyr is claimed, I 
 allow, with greater show of reason. That Father, 
 it is said, addressed to a heathen Emperor an 
 Apology for the Christian religion, in which he 
 proclaimed the deepest truths of Christianity, the 
 Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Presence 
 in the Eucharistic Celebration. These citations are
 
 '3 
 
 conclusive, no doubt, as showing that the Disciplina 
 Arcani was far from universally observed in the 
 Church of the early centuries. But this, I think, 
 no one would be disposed to dispute. And writing 
 openly about the Christian mysteries to prove their 
 innocent and laudable character is, I submit, a very 
 different thing from inducing people to come and be 
 instructed in them by giving them a secular educa- 
 tion. The fact that Justin published an Apology 
 gave no inducement to any one to read it with a 
 confessedly interested motive. It simply said to 
 the world — come and see that we have nothing to 
 be ashamed of — if you want to know our doctrines, 
 here they are, make the worst of them that ever 
 you can, and see if they render us worthy of per- 
 secution. I do not say that I would adopt Justin's 
 method. But I do say that the fact of his using it 
 proves nothing except that those who liked to read 
 him might learn about Christianity if they chose. 
 Did Justin or did any Christian Father drag truth 
 through the mire as we have done ? Did they say 
 to a whole town full of heathen parents — we will 
 teach your children anything you like, if only you 
 will do us the favour of letting them learn the 
 mysteries of our religion ; they shall go home and 
 do puja in the temples to every deification of 
 human lust ; or they shall worship the One God 
 without Christ under the teachings of a religion 
 which blasphemes Him : only let them learn 
 Christian truth in the morning, and they may
 
 profane it the whole afternoon ? I venture to say 
 that if they had done this, the Roman world would 
 never have been converted to a truth which its 
 teachers held so cheap. 
 
 What I have said about Bishop Caldwell's use of 
 Justin Martyr applies to all that he has adduced 
 from other great early Christian writers. To prove 
 that they did not always conceal the truth from any 
 one who would read their books and become ac- 
 quainted with it, is a totally different thing from 
 showing that they would have approved of a great 
 system for inculcating it without even a pretence 
 that the learners were inquirers. 
 
 Here, then, I leave the preliminary question of 
 authority, whether of Scripture or of uninspired 
 Christian teachers, and go on to argue the case on 
 its merits. 
 
 And first I maintain that instinctive reverence for 
 God's truth ought to prevent its being taught 
 broadcast to persons who have no desire to learn 
 it to their soul's health. I am not going to consider 
 for the present the case of persons who are, or may 
 be presumed to be, inquirers. Even there I should 
 probably desire to see more reserve than has been 
 used by those whose practice is in question. But 
 the present case, I repeat it once more, is that of 
 persons of whom nobody even pretends that they 
 desire to be made wise unto Salvation. 
 
 Is it a reverent treatment of God's truth to let it 
 be used by youths in a school as a mere instrument
 
 i5 
 
 of intellectual training ? They are interested, 
 Bishop Caldwell tells us ; they are receptive, in- 
 telligent, argumentative — very probably — but what 
 is the subject-matter on which these good qualities 
 are to be exercised ? The hidden Mysteries of 
 the Essence of the Godhead, the awful Transaction 
 which passed upon the Cross between the Father 
 and His Incarnate Son. When the Cherubim hymn 
 the Triune Glory of the Godhead, we are told that 
 they veil their faces w T ith their wings. But this is 
 a subject with which in missionary schools teachers 
 are to stimulate the intelligence of pupils whose 
 adoration is paid to Mahadeva. The elders cast 
 their crowns before the Throne as they glorify the 
 Lamb that was slain. Intellectual and argumenta- 
 tive interest qualify for hearing the subject of this 
 hymn, in the estimation of the earthly guardians of 
 its truths. I confess that I can but stare with blank 
 astonishment when I find that men of reverent 
 minds, w T ho receive the truths of revelation for 
 themselves with unqualified and adoring faith, not 
 only subject them to this treatment, but cannot 
 even understand one's protesting. The awful Fact 
 which when transacted upon Calvary turned the 
 noonday sun into darkness, is used as a school 
 exercise for unbelievers. And when one shudders, 
 they say — why not ? Does a man call the attention 
 of passing strangers to the fact that he wears on his 
 finger that circlet of unornamented gold which 
 signifies that the best hopes of his life have gone
 
 i6 
 
 down into his wife's early grave ? Should we ask 
 a man what ailed him if he winced at hearing his 
 sister's Christian name tossed about from mouth 
 to mouth among bachelors ? 
 
 Without saying an unkind word about individuals, 
 I think there must be something terribly wrong 
 in the system, when men grow r to regard the know- 
 ledge of the things of God as something about 
 which there need be no reserve. It will be replied 
 that the motive is a good one. I grant it thank- 
 fully. The teachers who are responsible for this 
 system have believed, however mistakenly, that 
 they were likely to make converts by its use. But 
 the history of a great part of the religious world 
 has too often been the history of such mistakes, of 
 wrong acts done with right motives. And when 
 good men treat God's truth in this way, one can 
 but say that before they could so act, they must 
 have been blinded by some terrible defect in the 
 system under which they have worked. When one 
 reads in the Lettres Edifiantes et Curteuses how the 
 Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay used to set up a 
 great Cross in the forest and celebrate mass by 
 its side, amidst a crowd of wondering aborigines 
 who had never heard the name of Jesus Christ, 
 one begins to ask whether its spiritual significance 
 was not degenerating into something more like 
 magic. And when one is asked, as I have been 
 asked in a Presbyterian school, to examine Hindu 
 boys in Saint John, one asks whether a kind of
 
 *7 
 
 magical significance is not attached to the " reading 
 of a chapter." Once for all, then, I acquit these 
 good men of all intentional want of reverence for 
 God's truth. They do not intend their boys to 
 treat the Bible as a lesson in English, or in history, 
 or in dialectic. But they teach it to those who will 
 so use it, knowing that this is what they will do ; 
 and why ? Because having lost sight of the fact 
 that our Lord left on earth a great teaching Body 
 called the Church, capable of endlessly adapting 
 her methods to the endless varieties of men's cir- 
 cumstances, they believe that He left only a Book 
 for each person to interpret for himself. By 
 reverent approaches or by irreverent, through the 
 conscience or through the mere intellect, by the 
 drawings of prevenient grace, or by the bribe of a 
 secular education, people have to be brought in 
 contact with that Book ; and till that is done you 
 have done nothing. Granted this as the principle 
 of work, and the whole system which I am depre- 
 cating must follow — the Bible to be put at all 
 hazards into the hands of all persons. It is, I 
 suppose, because I cannot believe in the power of 
 the Bible without the Church any more than in 
 that of the Church without the Bible, that I demur 
 utterly to casting down Gospel truth before all 
 comers without discrimination as to their power to 
 receive it. 
 
 Those who believe in the mission of the Church, 
 the " witness and keeper of Holy Writ," to divide 
 
 B
 
 i8 
 
 its teaching as the hearers can receive it, will be 
 able to treat its truths with due reverence. Those 
 who believe that each man has to grapple for him- 
 self with the whole mass of scriptural teaching, 
 and evolve the truth for himself by the use of his 
 private judgment, cannot afford to keep back any- 
 thing out of reverence. How else can they expect 
 anybody to learn ? In all this I am speaking not 
 of individuals, but of a school and a system. 
 Individuals become enslaved to the tradition of 
 the school, and so one sees the extraordinary 
 spectacle of individual reverence for God's truth 
 combined with this marvellous irreverence in the 
 treatment of it. 
 
 Once more, before leaving this topic, if it could 
 be proved by the practice of the Apostles that this 
 was how they treated our Lord's command, all these 
 considerations must go to the winds. But if, as 
 I hive tried to show above, Bishop Caldwell has 
 conspicuously failed in substantiating his position 
 from Holy Scripture ; if the Apostles thought they 
 fulfilled our Lord's command without treating His 
 truth in this way, then the fullest weight must be 
 given to all the considerations which I have 
 adduced. God's truth is the revelation of His 
 Nature, nay of His very Self. We are taught to 
 pray that His Name may be hallowed, viz. that 
 all by which He has revealed Himself may be 
 treated with profoundest reverence. I know not 
 how we can pray that prayer, and yet treat the
 
 most solemn truths about His Being- as though 
 the mere power of the understanding, unassisted 
 by the grace of the Holy Spirit, were capable of 
 using them to profit. 
 
 The second consideration by which I would wish 
 to regulate the communication of doctrinal truth 
 to non-Christian hearers, is that of regard for the 
 welfare of their own souls. 
 
 When a man seeks to know the truth with a view- 
 to believing unto salvation, it should be communi- 
 .cated by little and little, according as he is able 
 to bear it. When there is no pretence of such 
 desire, the communication should be far more 
 guarded : and this is the case we have to deal 
 with : catechumens and inquirers are not in ques- 
 tion. To my mind, I must confess, there is some- 
 thing absolutely incomprehensible about a system 
 which conveys all Christian truth to persons in the 
 position in question. I read the statement of S. 
 Paul that " the natural man receiveth not the things 
 of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto 
 him : neither can he know them, because they are 
 spiritually discerned." Bishop Douglas shall speak 
 for me here in an extract from one of those letters 
 which Bishop Caldwell has so summarily set 
 aside : — 
 
 " We have heard of a class of unbelievers en- 
 gaged in the study of S. Paul's epistles. Is this 
 a fact ? If it be, may we be permitted first to say 
 that such a fact shocks our simplest religious 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 instincts with a sense of the utter profanation of 
 truth which it involves ; and, next, to ask those 
 who are engaged in leading such studies, whether 
 or not spiritual things are spiritually discerned ? 
 The marvel to us is, that men of the schools of 
 religious thought which are wont to proclaim loud- 
 est the need of spiritual vision, are the chief 
 practical contradictors of its necessity. Out of 
 the very chair of Calvin, practice proclaims the 
 doctrine that spiritual things are intellectually 
 discerned." 
 
 To the mind of unregenerate men Divine Truth 
 is absolutely incomprehensible in the only sense in 
 which comprehension applies to the things of God. 
 An unconverted man may give accurate doctrinal 
 definitions compared to which the best intellectual 
 conceptions of many a pious Christian are the 
 merest fragment of undefined apprehension. And 
 yet that man may be more ignorant of God than a 
 child first lisping out " Our Father." If these 
 things are not known with the heart, they are not 
 known at all. And if there is one truth which the 
 Evangelical School has always professed, it is this 
 incomprehensibility of truth to the unconverted. 
 I have honoured many a man from whom I have 
 differed, for the way in which he treated Divine 
 knowledge as the exclusive prerogative of the 
 redeemed. Yet here we have this enormous in- 
 consistency ill these very men's treatment of the 
 heathen — fill their intellect with doctrinal truth, and
 
 21 
 
 it is expected that their conversion will follow. I 
 go so far as to assert that they are far less likely to 
 be converted than if they had been treated with 
 more reserve. Putting aside the natural fact that 
 they lose respect for what is held so cheap, we have 
 to deal with the supernatural fact that Divine Truth 
 can never be a neutral power. It has its Nemesis 
 for those who neglect it. And if it be said that 
 they are heathens now, and that they only remain 
 heathens when all is done, it must be replied that 
 one who with doctrinal knowledge remains outside 
 the faith, must of necessity be very differently 
 placed from those who have never known the truth. 
 To reject a Saviour whom one knows of is a very 
 much graver thing, and involves a very much 
 sorer judgment, than to do without one of whom 
 one knows little. 
 
 And what is true of the position of the individual 
 is true also of his influence on society. 
 
 I can imagine no responsibility more grave than 
 than that of flooding a country with unconverted 
 theologians, men whose consciences have been 
 hardened against truth, who know the ins and 
 outs of Christian doctrine with no experience of its 
 power over the heart. One man who can say, like 
 the men of Sychem, " I have heard Him myself, 
 and know with the innermost knowledge of ex- 
 perience that this is indeed the Saviour of the 
 world " — one such man will be a centre of illumination 
 from which the knowledge of Christ may shine 

 
 22 
 
 forth to illuminate a village or a neighbourhood. 
 And one man who can cynically say, " I know it all, 
 every detail of the doctrine : I know all about 
 Christ and His Atonement, and He has never been 
 anything to me ; you need not go and be taught 
 about this Saviour, you will remain just the same 
 as before " — each such man is a stumbling-block to 
 many who might otherwise have come to the truth. 
 
 The bare preaching of any part of the Gospel 
 must, it is true, produce some such effects. It must 
 be a savour of death unto death where it is not a 
 savour of life unto life. But in the first place, the 
 more intimate the knowledge the greater the con- 
 demnation ; and in the next, it is just this detailed 
 knowledge of the things of God which is likely to 
 prove hardening to the soul, where that of facts and 
 needs alone would have roused a desire for higher 
 things. Teach a man only that he is a sinner and 
 needs a Saviour ; that the very God who cannot 
 look upon sin has provided a Saviour for his needs ; 
 that He rose from the dead on the third day to 
 prove Himself to be the Saviour ; that that Saviour 
 if rejected now will sit as Judge hereafter, — and on 
 the one hand you have taught him as much truth as 
 S. Paul's practice shows that he would have taught 
 him ; and, on the other, you have excited, not sated, 
 the thirst for saving knowledge. 
 
 Until as much as this has been assimilated, you 
 cannot safely offer more. If this teaching touches 
 the heart, and the learner asks, " What must I do to
 
 23 
 
 be saved?" then at once the grace of the Holy 
 Spirit will furnish the supernatural apprehension 
 which can alone make him grasp further truth. 
 The very moment the conscience is at work, you 
 may begin to offer a more advanced kind of 
 doctrinal teaching. For the working of the con- 
 science in man is the response to the Divine 
 working of the Spirit : and where the Holy Spirit 
 is at work, the man is capable of being led into 
 all truth. I am dealing with principles now, and 
 I have only gone thus far into detail, because it 
 was necessary to do so in order to get the prin- 
 ciples clear. And the principle, I take it, is this 
 — that the great truths which I have proved to be 
 the substance of the preaching of the Acts, the 
 truths the scope of whose operation is to rouse 
 men to feel after Christ, are the truths which alone 
 should be taught to those who as yet are not 
 inquirers. 
 
 Those truths, to repeat them once more, are the 
 Holiness of God, the sinfulness of sin, pardon 
 through the risen Saviour. Without some know- 
 ledge of these, the man is not in a fit condition for 
 the work of the Holy Spirit to commence, for his 
 conscience is not sensitized. 
 
 These, therefore, must be taught to all, as they 
 were taught by Apostolic preachers. But until 
 these have produced an impression on the conscience, 
 no further teaching should be given. These are the 
 preliminaries to the Spirit's work. The application
 
 24 
 
 of anything more must be its sequel. And further 
 knowledge without spiritual apprehension will but 
 harden and deaden the conscience. 
 
 I propose now to sketch the positive principles 
 on which the teaching of non-Christians in Christian 
 schools ought in my opinion to be based, and then 
 in the light of those principles to compare the 
 rules of the S. P. G. with what Bishop Caldwell 
 proposes in their place, in conjunction with the 
 Bishop of Madras. Assuming all that I have laid 
 down as to what such teaching must not be, I 
 would take, as that which is to guide it, the rough 
 division of Christian truth which I indicated in 
 outline before. There are truths by which men 
 are to be warned, and truths by believing which 
 they are to be justified. The warnings and en- 
 couragements of the Gospel are one thing : its 
 saving principles are another. These assume a 
 desire to be saved : those are intended to elicit 
 it. Until once the will has been set to work 
 under the power of an awakened conscience, the 
 saving principles of the Gospel have nothing that 
 they can take hold of in the man. He may believe 
 every truth of Christianity with a perfect intellec- 
 tual assent : yet he does but believe to condem- 
 nation while his will is hostile or inactive. The 
 principle on which I would go to work, in its fully 
 developed form, may be expressed then in these 
 propositions — that until you have got the conscience 
 to work, each truth that you have impressed on the
 
 25 
 
 intellect leaves the man just so much the worse — 
 that the more fully he assents to the Gospel without 
 believing unto salvation, the less likely is he so to 
 believe, and the greater is his responsibility for not 
 believing — that when you have filled his head with 
 Christian doctrine and left his heart untouched, if 
 you have not made him a worse man for this liie, 
 you have increased his condemnation for the life 
 to come. 
 
 From this follows the practical method — that as 
 all Christian doctrine is divided into two great 
 parts, all teaching of that doctrine to non-Christians 
 must be based on a similar division ; that the 
 instruction to be given to all alike must comprise 
 those truths and those alone by which the con- 
 science is roused into action and the will made to 
 seek after God ; that when these have done their 
 work on the heart, and not till then, further truth 
 may be safely imparted. 
 
 Of course it follows from this that instruction in 
 saving truth can never be given broadcast in a 
 school which is attended by non-Christians. If 
 there are Christian children in such a school, they 
 must receive their religious instruction entirely 
 apart from the unbaptized. If there are inquirers 
 after Christianity, the teaching which is to lead to 
 full belief cannot be given in the form of a school 
 lesson in which ail alike take part. But at this 
 point I must break off for a moment to exhibit 
 side by side the rules which Bishop Caldwell
 
 26 
 
 criticises and those which he proposes in their 
 place, as regards this particular subject. 
 
 S.P.G. Rules. 
 
 I. — That in mixed schools of 
 baptized and unbaptized, provi- 
 sion be made for the separate 
 religious instruction of scholars 
 by the missionary or by a Chris- 
 tian teacher. 
 
 II.— That as soon as the con- 
 verts are sufficiently numerous, 
 separate schools be provided for 
 baptized and unbaptized. 
 
 IV.— That Bible lessons or 
 other religious instruction be 
 never given to mixed classes of 
 baptized and unbaptized. 
 
 VI. — That selected portions of, 
 and extracts from, Holy Scrip- 
 ture and special Catechisms and 
 Hymns and books of instruction 
 in the Christian faith be prepared 
 for the use of the unbaptized, 
 apart from the Christian scholars, 
 but under Christian teachers; and 
 that the Church Catechism be 
 reserved for the teaching of the 
 baptized. 
 
 Rules proposed by Bishop 
 Caldwell. 
 
 I. — That in all Mission schools 
 not less than an hour daily be de- 
 voted to the religious instruction 
 of all scholars, Christian and non- 
 Christian ; such instruction to be 
 mainly grounded on the historical 
 portions of the Holy Scriptures, 
 especially those of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 II. — That provision be made 
 for the separate instruction, at 
 least twice a week, of Christian 
 scholars and scholars who are 
 Catechumens, in the Church 
 Catechism and systematic Theo- 
 logy. 
 
 VII.— That it is highly desir- 
 able that in all Mission schools, 
 Bible classes for the religious in- 
 struction of non-Christian scholars 
 be held on Sundays by the mis- 
 sionary or the head-master, which 
 all such scholars shall be invited 
 to attend; due provision being 
 also made on that day for the 
 separate religious instruction of 
 the Christians. 
 
 The Bishop of Madras goes with Bishop 
 Caldwell ; I am all on the side of the Society. 
 For although the revised rules proposed by 
 Bishop Caldwell provide for separate instruction 
 on Sundays and two other days in the week in
 
 27 
 
 Church Catechism and systematic Theology, yet I 
 cannot think that there are any religious subjects 
 which should be taught to Christians and non- 
 Christians at the same time and in the same words. 
 To begin with, the whole teaching of Christian 
 children must be based upon an appeal to their 
 baptismal privileges. Their training in any religious 
 subject must not be a mere lesson in the facts of 
 Scripture history or the truths of Christian doctrine. 
 The single specimen of religious instruction which 
 the Church of England puts authoritatively into 
 our hands, starts with the baptismal standing as 
 the basis of all Christian instruction. Each child 
 is taught in the Church catechism what he is to 
 believe and do as regenerate and a member of 
 Christ. And I can understand no other method of 
 giving instruction to Christian children. To brigade 
 them with the heathen for Scripture lessons and 
 take them apart for Church Catechism and 
 Theology, is to confuse their whole perception 
 of their baptismal standing towards truth. You 
 cannot bisect Holy Scripture and teach people 
 that they learn one-half of its contents out of the 
 Old Testament and the synoptic Gospels, simply 
 as human beings ; and that they learn the other 
 half from S. John and S. Paul, and from the creeds 
 and formularies of the Church, in virtue of the 
 grace of their baptism. They must approach all 
 truth from the standpoint of grace, or they will 
 learn to approach it all from that of nature. To
 
 28 
 
 treat them in the way proposed by Bishop Cald- 
 well is to apply to Christian people the same 
 principle which I have denounced as applied to 
 their non-Christian fellow-scholars. It is to treat 
 some spiritual truths as capable of being naturally 
 discerned. We must choose between nature and 
 grace. We cannot mix up the two. 
 
 And again in teaching a mixed class, what course 
 is the Christian teacher to adopt ? Is he to 
 suppress, in instructing the Christians, all appeal 
 to what their baptism involves ? or is he to make 
 appeals to the conscience of his heathen pupils such 
 as the Catechism makes to Christians ? It is not 
 only what you teach children that matters, but what 
 you take for granted in teaching. A class in which 
 Christian privileges are assumed as the basis of all 
 religious teaching, is no place for the unbaptized. 
 A class where no such assumption is made, is no 
 place for Christian children. 
 
 Granted then that the religious instruction of 
 non-Christians will be given apart from the Chris- 
 tians, what ought to be the teaching in this class ? 
 I have already repeatedly indicated the highest 
 point to which it should attain — the sinfulness of 
 sin, the need of salvation, the provision for that 
 need in Christ, in fact the teaching of the Acts of 
 the Apostles. Take that single book as it stands ; 
 take the teaching which is actually recorded in it, 
 instead of reading into it what inferences you 
 please, and it furnishes a Divine model of what
 
 29 
 
 the instruction of non-Christians ou^ht to be. It 
 assumes all natural Theology as predisposing the 
 mind for the Gospel. It comprises the whole range 
 of the Old Testament regarded as a preparation 
 for Christ. It sets forth briefly the facts of our 
 Lord's Life, Death, and Resurrection. It proclaims 
 Him as the judge of quick and dead, and as the 
 Saviour provided by God. Expand its teaching 
 then to the utmost, teach in the fullest detail all the 
 facts which it indicates in outline, and base appeals 
 to the conscience of the pupils on the teaching 
 thus provided. When these appeals have done 
 their work, the way is clear for the full teaching of 
 the Gospel. Till then it is worse than useless. 
 
 If the teacher be an earnest missionary, such an 
 one as many of those men whose system I have 
 been compelled to attack, he will always be on the 
 alert for the signs of an awakened conscience. He 
 will know, though no one else may know, how many 
 of his non-Christian scholars regard their Scripture 
 lesson as something more than a history class. And 
 to these he will open out fresh truth according as 
 they are able to receive it. I do not ignore the 
 practical difficulties which he must encounter in 
 making this distinction, but at least the results can 
 hardly be smaller than those which the old system 
 has produced. 
 
 There is one more point of importance, the rules 
 on which I must print side by side, and record my 
 warm agreement with the Society, and my equally
 
 3° 
 
 emphatic dissent from my two brother Bishops — 
 the exclusion of the unbaptized from the school 
 prayers of the Christian children ; nay, here I must 
 go beyond the Society and ask them to define a little 
 further. 
 
 S. P. G. Rule. Rule of the two Bishops. 
 
 III. — That in schools attended III: — That in all Mission schools 
 
 by both baptized and unbaptized, the work of the day shall be com- 
 
 the latter, whether teachers or menced and closed with prayer 
 
 scholars, be not present while the by the missionary or head-master. 
 
 Christians are at prayer, save on The prayers used, if other than 
 
 their own spontaneous request, selections from the Prayer Book, 
 
 and with the express permission to be submitted for the Bishop's 
 
 of the missionary or his repre- approval, 
 sentative. 
 
 The two Bishops then leave it to the head-master 
 to use any prayers he chooses out of the Book of 
 Common Prayer, in the presence, and acting as the 
 spokesman of children, who, half an hour after, may 
 be doing puja to Krishna ! I confess that on such 
 a subject as this, I feel thankful for the restraint 
 which is put upon my pen by personal knowledge 
 of my two brethren. But the only way is to leave 
 it alone. I can be silent, but I could not write 
 with patience. 
 
 I would modify the S. P. G. rule by suggesting 
 that only professed candidates for baptism should be 
 allowed to take part in the school prayers. 
 
 Putting aside the, I should have thought, obvious 
 objection on the score of mere reverence and pro- 
 priety, the practical dilemma is the same in the case
 
 3i 
 
 of prayers as in that of religious instruction ; only I 
 am far less able to comprehend how any clergy- 
 man of the Church of England at least can fail to 
 recognise it as such. 
 
 If baptized and unbaptized children are to pray at 
 the same time and in the same words, either the 
 Christians must ignore baptismal rights, or the 
 heathens must assert them. But the one class base 
 their petitions on those rights. The other class 
 have not received them. 
 
 Profanation is the only word which I can employ 
 when I think of some of the collects of the Prayer 
 Book in the lips of a heathen. Confusion is no word 
 for the state of things which will be produced in the 
 mind of a Christian if he kneels down clay after day 
 to offer prayers to his Father in Heaven, in which 
 the filial relation plays no part. Is the Christian 
 child to pray as a heathen, or is the heathen child to 
 pray as a Christian ? Let those who bring them 
 to use common prayers take their choice between 
 the horns of this dilemma. I can understand its not 
 beine a dilemma to the late Dr. Wilson or Dr. Duff. 
 But neither of these great men believed or taught 
 the Church Catechism. My two brethren in 
 Madras and Tinnevelly teach children that when 
 they were baptized they were made " members of 
 Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom 
 of heaven," and then they set them down with 
 heathen children to use a common form of school 
 prayers ! Are the heathens members of Christ ? or
 
 32 
 
 have the Christians been taught a false doctrine ? 
 And if both questions be answered in the negative, 
 which class is to adopt a false standing when they 
 pray in common words ? 
 
 It will be objected to all the foregoing that I am 
 sketching an ideal system, while Bishop Caldwell 
 has been guided by experience. And to this I have 
 just two words to say in conclusion. 
 
 First, I hold that there are principles in Church 
 work which must override all other considerations. 
 The whole work being of a supernatural character, 
 it depends for all its success upon the blessing ot 
 Almighty God, and the immediate operation of the 
 Holy Spirit. We are fellow- workers with God, or 
 we are nothing. All practical methods of work 
 must therefore be continually liable to be challenged 
 on grounds of principle. Every worker must be pre- 
 pared at every stage to bring back his work to such 
 tests. If the work be the work of God, it must be 
 done by means which He can bless. And if my con- 
 tention be right, if the principles which underlie it be 
 well grounded, they are far too important and funda- 
 mental to be set aside on experimental grounds. 
 What we owe to Almighty God and His truth 
 cannot be wholly set aside by the consideration of 
 what we owe to mankind. Bishop Caldwell, and 
 more markedly still one writer who appeared on the 
 same side in the Church Missionary Intelligencer 
 for June, claim to treat considerations of reverence as 
 simply " a sentimental crotchet." I do not suppose
 
 33 
 
 that anything I have written will convince those who 
 take such a view : it may perhaps serve to show 
 them that the objection is one of principle, and not 
 one of sentiment alone. But indeed if such a posi- 
 tion be seriously taken up and adhered to, one feels 
 simply that there is no more to be said. If reverence 
 for God's revelation is liable to be treated as a senti- 
 ment, and the desire to save sacred things from pro- 
 fanation to be regarded as an amiable weakness, all 
 attempts to find common ground must be abandoned 
 as destined to fail. 
 
 But at least there is one very pertinent question 
 which may still be put — what have been the results 
 of the present system ? The pearls of Gospel truth 
 have now been thrown broadcast before many gene- 
 rations of heathen school-boys — what is there to show 
 for it ? If principle be brushed aside as sentiment, 
 by all means let us appeal to practice. If we are 
 forbidden the sentimental question — what will pro- 
 mote reverence for God's truth ? let us fall back on 
 the practical consideration, whether men's souls have 
 been saved by this means. I am not going beyond 
 the truth when I say that I have yet to meet the 
 writer who dares to say that is the case. The 
 champions of unreserve in sacred things do not pre- 
 tend that their system has made converts. This has 
 not been for want of zeal in its promoters, nor for 
 want of faith and love. Is it not, to say the least of 
 it, possible that the error may have lain in the 
 system ? 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 What my other points are worth I leave other 
 people to say ; but one thing I boldly claim for my- 
 self — I have shown that the system I am attacking 
 is not that of the Acts of the Apostles, if we read 
 that book as it stands. At least then it is worth the 
 experiment to try whether working like the Apostles 
 will produce apostolic results. 
 
 LONDON : R. CLAY. SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL.
 
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