m.
 
 L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS
 
 d
 
 INDIAN .MISSIONS 
 
 ADDRESSED TO 
 HIS GRACE 
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY ALEXANDER DOUGLAS, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF BOMBAY 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 
 HonUon 
 
 RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 HIGH STREET I TRINITY STREET 
 
 <©ifotlr I (ffamtrflig? 
 
 1873
 
 LONDON : 
 
 K. CLAY, ISONS, AND TAYL )i:, PHINTICRS, 
 
 BRKAD STREET HILL.
 
 PREFACE TO THIS EDITION. 
 
 r I IHE issue of a new and cheaper edition of this 
 , --'- letter enables me to correct some misinterpreta- 
 tions which appear to have been made, more especially 
 of the language which I have used in speaking of 
 '' common Christianity." I must request that my 
 words may be taken as. meaning precisely what they 
 say, neither more nor less. The main object of the 
 portion of my letter in which that subject is dis- 
 cussed is to point out the exact nature of our Indian 
 enemy, and, as a consequence, the hopelessness of 
 conquering him, by means of abstract and philoso- 
 phic, as distinguished from organic and embodied, 
 truth. I see around me in India a number of active 
 and earnest men, representing a multitude of reli- 
 gious associations, European and American ; and de- 
 voting themselves to the conversion of the country 
 upon a principle which, if plain speech is tb describe 
 it, is indifference to belief in the Church of Christ. 
 The " Bible only " theory is carried out on its widest 
 scale by Protestant Missions as a whole in India, 
 and an open and very general avowal is made that 
 all questions of ecclesiastical system and organiza- 
 tion are of little importance, and have no necessary 
 A 2
 
 4 Preface. 
 
 connection with Christian life. This theory is not 
 the theory of the Church of England, which in 
 its creeds and its formularies utterly repudiates it, 
 and is as certainly impotent for the conquest of 
 Hindooism as it is radically untrue. And I have 
 pointed out its essential weakness. But I have 
 omitted all personal reflections on the many excel- 
 lent persons who are misled by it, and I have been 
 content to mark out the lines of a truer and wiser 
 policy, which, as it is the policy of the Church and 
 of Scripture, so also contains within itself the 
 promise of that Divine blessing which is the pledge 
 of success. 
 
 That, then, is what I have said, and* I would 
 
 explain, if possible more clearly than before, that 
 
 Caste and Hindooism are, to all practical intents, 
 
 convertible terms j so that nothing is done while 
 
 the overthrow of Caste is left undone. Until Caste 
 
 is taken by storm, something may be effected among 
 
 the camp followers and those who hang upon the 
 
 outskirts of the fortress, but we have made no real 
 
 progress in conquering Hindooism itself. Caste is 
 
 our enemy, and nothing less. What then is Caste % 
 
 Caste is a wcial system of the most compact and 
 
 consolidated kind. The men who devised it looked 
 
 very deeply into human nature, and, inventing a 
 
 system which should in some way satisfy sense, 
 
 imagination, and conscience, have deceived men into 
 
 a belief that their blood unites them eternally with 
 
 God, while they have actually welded countless 
 
 millions together into a solid mass which hitherto 
 
 if' "^
 
 Preface. 5 
 
 has been impenetrable. Caste is, in fact, an idolatrous 
 Church association, fashioned by imagination, but 
 fashioned out of nature and blood aiid race ; and 
 this false Church is built up as a fortress, only not 
 impregnable, and is still cased with the iron plates 
 of an inexorably rigid discipline, which can be 
 pierced by nothing less than the artillery of God. 
 And what are we doing to destroy these iron-shielded 
 walls of Caste % To assault this terrible fortress— 
 the strongest and most terrible which ever man 
 devised — Protestant Missions as a whole, and the 
 Church of England too generally, are bringing up a 
 form of the religion of Christ which I have called 
 an abstraction and a philosophy, because in theory 
 and in practice it goes far to deny that our Lord 
 commissioned His followers, while they taught the 
 one truth, at the same time to found the one and 
 universal Church. Protestant Missions as a whole 
 have been an attempt to convert India by teaching 
 the truth and giving it the Bible, without at the 
 same time giving it the Church of Christ. In doing 
 this they have severed things which God has joined 
 together, and they have preached an imperfect 
 gospel, because they have not endeavoured to embody 
 truth in the organic life of the Catholic but single 
 society. And with what result % With failure, I 
 believe, at all seriously to shake the walls of Caste. 
 The failure, too-, as I believe, can be accounted for : 
 naturally, because an abstraction such as even Chris- 
 tian truth becomes when divorced from the organic 
 life of a community, is essentially unsuited to con-
 
 6 Preface, 
 
 tend with a social system wliich is full of corporate 
 vitality; and supernaturally, because Christ gave 
 Himself to the world as the head of a society, and 
 to assail Caste by truth, as dissociated from the 
 kingdom which embodies it, is to disobey the com- 
 mands of our leader, and to fight Goliath with 
 merely human weapons, which grace Las not proved 
 and faith has not sanctified. 1 must say then again, 
 and say it with all possible emphasis, though with 
 the deepest charity towards those who do not receive 
 it, that we have no right to expect the blessing of 
 our adorable Head till we work openly and avowedly 
 as " His Body, the fulness of Him who filleth all in 
 all." Until we distinctly aim at founding every- 
 where in India a corporate organization, and that a 
 branch of the one Holy universal (vhurch, we may 
 teach, but we shall teach little more than a Christian 
 logic ; and we may diffuse throughout the atmo- 
 sphere of India some elements of Christian thought, 
 but that thought will be little more than a form of 
 Christian opinion. It will not be a faith and a 
 living religion ; it will only be a theory, and weak 
 theory, of truth. 
 
 As for the truths which the Church holds in 
 common with those who repudiate corporate Chris- 
 tianity, and as for the persons who hold those truths, 
 no one would recognize more thankfully than I what- 
 ever is the work of God's Spirit, and whatever good 
 has been done by many who have laboured while 
 we were in a state of sleep. But God forbid that I 
 should in such wise recognize the work of God's
 
 Preface. 7 
 
 Spirit beyond our borders, as to give up that truth, 
 which God, in undeserved mercy, has preserved to 
 us, and which they, as yet but not I hope for long, 
 have failed to find. And God forbid that we as a 
 Church should cast away what they have lost, when 
 our vocation is to supply their serious deficiencies. 
 Our error in India has too often been, that we have 
 followed rather than led those who are separate 
 from us, and that we have imitated not only their 
 zeal, which often has been admirable, but their un- 
 spiritual methods of work. If even now, so late, 
 we were true to ourselves and to the glory of our 
 own Catholic ideal, we should lead our dear Pro- 
 testant brethren by the beauty of that truth which 
 we should display and publish • and we should 
 conquer Caste by the majesty of our Divine but still 
 undeveloped strength. 
 
 As regards a brotherhood, I have myself no doubt 
 that only some such machinery can supply the force 
 that is needed to effect a Titanic work, and I say 
 what I think, asking wise men to judge what I say, 
 and to criticize my plan of warfare, provided only 
 that they criticize as counsellors of war who really 
 intend to fight. And what does war mean? It 
 means, at least, that we shall have an army of some 
 sort, and we have not an army now. We need men 
 by hundreds, not to say by thousands, and we need 
 such men as Patrick, as Columba, as Boniface, to 
 lead them, by tens. We need, too, men '^ unbound 
 by any tie except the nails which fasten them to the 
 
 * 2 Tim. ii. 4.
 
 8 Preface. 
 
 cross of Christ, men who will not hesitate to throw 
 away, their lives for Christ's cause, as soldiers when 
 they mount a breach, cheering while they die. And 
 these multitudes must be men who can be main- 
 tained at a moderate and practicable cost. Where 
 are these tens, these hundreds, even thousands, to 
 come from, unless we can evoke the enthusiasm of 
 sacrifice % We must find them while their hearts are 
 yoang and burning, and we must pierce their souls 
 by hopes which reach above this earth, and catch a 
 sight of homes beyond the stars. I cannot believe 
 that married men are to be found in any numbers 
 for such a work, or that if found they are, as a rule, 
 the fittest soldiers for such a warfare, or that they 
 can be maintained at a rate proportional to the 
 funds which can be procured. Bishop Claughton 
 questions the accuracy of my estimate of present cost. 
 I shall be glad to find that I erred upon the side of 
 excess, but I believe that error rather lies upon the 
 side of deficiency. Speaking as I did of India only, 
 I am of opinion that I greatly understated the average 
 expenditure. At any rate, the proof of my error is 
 to be dbtained easily, and no one will be more ready 
 to acknowledge it, when proved, than I shall be 
 myself. 
 
 But upon this whole branch of the subject I do 
 but ask practical and earnest men of every school to 
 put to themselves this question. How is India — 
 not to say Asia — to be won to the Church of Christ 
 — as Europe was won in a former epoch-? How is 
 this vastest and most populous of the continents
 
 Preface. 
 
 to be lifted out of its horrible idolatries to that faith 
 and kingdom into which we are built % How is this 
 work to be done — not discussed only, but really- 
 done ? It seems to me, plainly enough, that past 
 efforts, while as a whole they have been defective 
 in so far as they have failed distinctly to aim at 
 giving the Church, have also been absurdly inade- 
 quate to the dimensions of the hugest and most 
 stupendous labour which ever man aspired to ac- 
 complish. And I fall back upon an army like that 
 which converted Europe, but adapted to modern 
 circumstances and to that state .of general freedom 
 in which men have learnt from God to be a law 
 unto themselves. I can at least conceive of such a 
 body of men, steadfast in their own hearts, like him 
 whom the Teutonic race has looked to as the model 
 apostle, and like those who even now are working 
 together in the dark places of our great towns. 
 Certainly, history has been written to very little 
 purpose if it has not taught us that the religions 
 warfare of Missions needs a peculiar kind of army, 
 and that men unentangled in the cares of life have 
 been the chief soldiers of conversion, especially in 
 difficult and dangerous times. Eeason and common 
 sense appear to me to add the conviction, that India, 
 with its tropic climate, and with its teeming myriads, 
 bound closer together by Caste than ever the multi- 
 tudes of a race were bound before, needs not less 
 bold or devoted assailants, needs not men less ready 
 to sacrifice themselves, and live by rule. To this 
 tribunal, — to History, to Reason, to Common Sense,
 
 10 Preface. 
 
 enlightened by tlie Blessed Spirit, — I appeal on be- 
 half of India, asking the Church to draw out of its 
 sheath the sword of God. And the Church may not 
 sleep a moment longer. The Philistines are upon 
 her. Already, in the European press of this country, 
 Christian unbelief, leagued in a Satanic alliance with 
 Hindoo Pantheism, is rising up to dispute with the 
 Church the mastery of the souls of India. Now and 
 at once is the time for efforts, worthy of her Divine 
 gifts and her immense capacities. May the Spirit 
 of her glorified Head guide her to exertions, as full 
 of courageous and chastened wisdom as proportioned 
 to her latent and unimagined strength. 
 
 Bombay, A'pril 21, 1873.
 
 INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 My dear Lord Archbishop, 
 
 In the year 1869, within a few months after I 
 had entered upon the charge of the Diocese of Bom- 
 bay, I addressed a letter to the Committee of the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of which 
 your Grace is the President, pointing out the more 
 important circumstances in the condition of the 
 Western Presidency, regarded as a field of Mission- 
 ary labour, and the manner in which as a Church 
 we were fulfilling our duties to the population of 
 this portion of our Indian Empire. In that letter 
 I showed that within my Diocese there is a popu- 
 lation estimated at from twenty-one to twenty-five 
 millions, speaking five different languages, and that 
 our efforts as a Church for the conversion of this 
 multitude of souls were represented by about six- 
 teen European Missionaries, most of them belonging 
 to the Church Missionary Society, and located in 
 Bombay or its remote vicinity, and in the Province 
 of Sindh. At the same time I recommended to the
 
 Indian Missions. 
 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel that it 
 should at once occupy, with two or three Mission- 
 aries at each place, some of our chief European 
 stations in the ]\Iahratti- speaking portion of the 
 country, and chiefly along the line of the old 
 Madras road ; that tract being recommended for 
 occupation because of the importance of several of 
 the stations in themselves as centres of European 
 influence, under the shadow of which the Native 
 Church would most naturally arise, — because the 
 several stations would form a connected chain 
 having each a link of about seventy miles in length ; 
 — because one language is spoken in it ; — because 
 the climate is about the best for Europeans which 
 can be found in India, — and because it could most 
 easily receive from me such personal oversight and 
 care as I can give. The Committee of the Society 
 received my recommendations not only with a 
 general approval of the scheine, but with an interest 
 for which I am deeply grateful, and which took 
 substantial form in an immediate grant of 3,000/. 
 towards a commencement of the work, and in an 
 appeal both for men and for the means which were 
 further needed to support them. 
 
 \The Plan a2opeared practicable.] 
 
 A scheme such as this, confined as it was to one 
 portion of a vast territory, could be regarded, as 
 your Grace will perceive, only as a beginning ; but 
 it appeared to me wiser to set before the Church a
 
 Indian Missions. 
 
 small and very practicable plan, wliich was so far 
 complete within itself, and, as I thouglit, within easy 
 and not distant accomplishment, than to propose 
 suddenly and at once a serious attempt, on a scale 
 commensurate with the greatness of the endeavour, 
 to subdue twenty- five millions of unbelievers to the 
 mild yoke of Jesus Christ. Our efforts in India, if 
 compared with the herculean nature of the work 
 which is to be done, and with the gigantic character 
 of the conquest which is to be effected, have hitherto 
 been so feeble and insignificant, that it seemed in 
 accordance as much with religious prudence as with 
 sound sense to ask the Mother Church to take a 
 little step, and not to put before it that full course 
 over which its Divine Head graciously invites it to 
 travel until that step had been fully taken. Nor was 
 I unaware that God is best pleased to work from 
 small beginnings, and that a humble effort, carefully 
 conceived, as it was most in accordance with our 
 .past performances, was also most likely to receive 
 that blessing from above, without which even the 
 grandest schemes must be formed in vain. 
 
 \The Flan was not carried out for want of Men, and 
 the consequent Necessity of calling attention to 
 the Failure.^ 
 
 Small, however, as the plan was, it is with pain, 
 and, when I recollect how highly God has blest that 
 Church which is our Mother, even with no small 
 sense of humiliation, that I have now publicly to
 
 14 Indian Missions. 
 
 bring to the notice of your Grace, as the chief 
 Bishop of the Anglican community, and as the 
 President of our English Missionary Societies, that 
 after three years no addition has been made to our 
 little band of Missionary clergy, and that the 
 scheme which one of our Societies so heartily ap- 
 proved seems nearly as far as ever from its accom- 
 plishment. The reason, too, of this failure, as your 
 Grace I believe know,«, is not the want of means, 
 which here no less than in England are t,'reater and 
 more abundant than the men, and which I am con- 
 fident would still more rapidly flow in from many 
 sources if hope received that stimulus which comes 
 from the sight of hearty and generous exertions, 
 but an absolute dearth of men who are prepared 
 to undertake this most arduous kind of religious 
 labour. And as a dearth of this sort — felt as much 
 by the Church Missionary Society as by the Society 
 which I addressed — can be overcome only by an 
 outpouring of those dews from heaven and those 
 waters of God the Holy Spirit which make a Church 
 fruitful in works of devotion, as well as by those 
 arrangements of sanctified wisdom and inventive- 
 ness suited to each age and crisis of the Church's 
 history, which God uses and blesses as the instru- 
 ments of His sovereign will, I am impelled, by my 
 vows and by the account which I must give of all 
 these unbelieving millions, to invite the particular 
 attention of your Grace and the Mother Church to 
 the neglected condition of this portion of our 
 greatest national dependency, and to lift up my
 
 Indian Missions. 15 
 
 voice, however weak it may be, in the ears of my 
 fellow- churchmen, that, through their prayers, their 
 labours, their gifts, and above all, their self-oblation, 
 something may be done, here and throughout India, 
 not wholly unworthy of us as a people and as a 
 Church which God has blessed. And I am the 
 more bold to make this appeal because, while I have 
 felt for some time that I must make it, I have lately 
 been informed that this great dearth of men is a 
 trial which has come home to the hearts and con- 
 sciences of many in England, and that your Grace, 
 in ready response to the feelings of sorrow and 
 shame which it has aroused, has appointed a day of 
 common intercession to. the Lord of the harvest, that 
 He may send forth labourers into this and other 
 whitening portions of the wide field. Nor, as I 
 would fain hope, shall my voice be heard in England 
 only, for I trust that the Church in Scotland, waking 
 up as it now is to a consciousness of what it owes to 
 the world, will more and more perceive that its own 
 life depemds on that life which it bestows on others. 
 And I do not, I feel sure, presume too much on those 
 ties of blood, language, and religion which unite us 
 with our brethren in America, if I venture so far as 
 to cross the Atlantic, and to invite our sister Church 
 to consider that, while other Christian Associations 
 of the United States have taken up the work of 
 Indian Missions with an earnestness which makes 
 the term "American Missionary " a household word 
 throughout the land, that Church which lays espe- 
 cial claim to the character of Apostolic has yet to
 
 1 6 Indian Missions. 
 
 put in its first appearance on that field which more 
 than any other at the present time clamorously calls 
 out for Apostolic labourers. 
 
 \The Church of England not suficiently alive to what 
 is due to India.'] 
 
 My Lord Archbishop, I have not scrupled to 
 speak of the past efi'orts of the Church of England in 
 India as feeble, and I would now take leave to say 
 that the conscience of that Church has never yet been 
 really touched by a sense of its obligations to India, 
 or its heart warmed at the sight of that glorious 
 work in this land to which God still graciously calls 
 it. Thirty-five years ago this confession must have 
 taken a far wider range, for men were then saying 
 that even our own flesh and blood had been cast off 
 like refuse upon every part of our great Colonial 
 Empire, and had been left in a state of provision 
 for their religious life so meagerly disproportionate 
 to their necessities that truth could only describe 
 their condition as one of utter neglect, in which no 
 man cared for their souls. That stone of reproach 
 has now, thank God, been rolled away. The Colonial 
 Church has now been planted, we may even hope 
 rooted, in all those nascent communities which 
 carry in them so much of the future destiny 
 and prospects of the human race, and the mother 
 of so hopeful a progeny has seen abundant cause 
 to bless God for His gifts and to prepare herself 
 for new and greater efforts, in a confidence which
 
 Indian Missions. 
 
 is not reliance upon herself but on that arm of 
 God which has so manifestly upheld her. In 
 that work the Church of England has, as it has 
 seemed to me, served her apprenticeship, and should 
 now, when she has thus fully learnt her work 
 as a propagator of truth and of Christ's Kingdom, 
 take up with perfected strength and wisdom the 
 conversion of Asia as her calling and business during 
 her mature life. It needs, I think, no powers of 
 prophetic vision to discover this as God's purpose 
 when He thus took her into His own hands, and 
 trained her by a work which is both so good in 
 itself and is now, upon the whole, completed. But 
 those who love the Church of England best are 
 looking, scarcely yet with alarm, but with something 
 of a suspicion, that an energy so far beyond any- 
 thing in her former history, so different from that 
 timidity and " trust in princes " of the Georgian 
 era, which lost America at once to the Church and 
 to the nation, may after all have been but fitful and 
 galvanic, and that she, whom her loving and ad- 
 miring children had begun to call the Mother of 
 Churches, may have exhausted herself by an effort 
 which for a time was marvellous, but which really 
 was only a prodigy, not natural, not normal, not 
 such as could be growing and continuous, not Catho- 
 lic, not Divine. The gates of the temple of God 
 cannot be closed. The boundaries of the empire of 
 the Church cannot ever be fixed. War must con- 
 tinue till all opposition to the great King is over- 
 come, and there can be no limit to His dominions 
 B
 
 1 8 Indian Missions. 
 
 until the utmost parts of the earth have been won 
 as His possession. One victory, therefore, can only 
 be the preparation for another campaign, and one 
 conquest but the spur to fresh aggressions, by which 
 new and large conquests may be achieved. Yet 
 now, when we might have thought that the Church, 
 like a giant refreshed by the excitement and satis- 
 faction of the great work which has been done, 
 would have girded itself to fresh labours, and, 
 saying, "I have supplied the more pressing needs 
 of my own children, and of the regions which they 
 have occupied as colonists," would have looked 
 around and afar, and asked, " On what new field can 
 I find room for the exercise of my growing strength % 
 Where can I now anew go forth conquering and 
 to conquer % " we see no signs of this continued 
 and expanding vitality. It really seems as if a 
 lethargy was creeping over those young and stalwart 
 limbs, and as if the giant, instead of seeking fresh 
 Philistines to vanquish, was disposed rather to lie 
 down in soft inglorious repose. At any rate, 180 
 millions of unbelieving souls, conquered by the 
 prowess of Great Britain, and held in subjection by 
 an iron hand, which will never relax its grasp till 
 the arm of Great Britain, as a power among the- 
 nations of the earth, drops in paralysis, a-v^aken in 
 the Church of the nation no strong thrill of sym- 
 pathetic interest. Nothing has as yet been done 
 to prove that the Church is even disposed to arouse 
 itself to strenuous and hero-lilce exertions. Eyes 
 were opened for a short space when the mutiny
 
 Indian Missions. 19 
 
 shocked the nation by revealing the cruelty and 
 intense malignity of evil which lay, ready to explode, 
 beneath the thin surface of a quiescent servility. 
 Samson rose up and shook his conscience for a 
 moment. But now it would almost seem that 
 Samson has lain down again. 
 
 [It is difficult to account for this, when we consider the 
 many signs of the Finger of Ood in the circum- 
 stances which have given Great Britain the Empire 
 of India.] 
 
 Why 1 I would crave permission of your Grace 
 to ask, why is this ? A Bishop in India, at all 
 events, cannot help asking, why it is that India is 
 so little thought of? Why it is that the Church 
 does so feebly what must be done with all its vigour 
 if anything is to be done at all 1 He finds himself 
 here, one of three bishops, bearing names derived 
 from the three chief seats of English Sovereignty, 
 names which connect them and their offices with 
 the territory and soil of India, and through that 
 with an Imperial dominion, the most singular 
 and the most clearly indicating the Finger and 
 Providence of God which history has seen. A 
 company of traders, with no objects in view but 
 those which commerce furnishes, settles itself in 
 one or two corners of India, and takes its almost 
 unnoticed place among the incongruous circum- 
 stances of Indian life, unconscious all the while 
 that it is really like that new piece of cloth of 
 which Christ speaks, and that it is inserted within 
 b2
 
 20 Indian Missions. 
 
 the old garment of Oriental Society. As time went 
 on, such Western and even Christian vigour as was 
 in the new cloth got itself mixed up in the decayed 
 and rent condition of the older vesture, and its 
 influence spreading inconceivably, and its power 
 asserting itself very marvellously, the new patch 
 covered more and more of the old robe, at the same 
 time drawing into itself the potency of the nation 
 from which it issued, till a Company grew into a 
 mighty Sovereignty, and handed over its authority 
 to the Queen of England, who now rules from 
 Peshawur to Ceylon with undisputed sway. We 
 did not seek this Empire. We scarcely wished for 
 it. It rather came to us and was forced upon us 
 than deliberately sought for and conquered by us. 
 We found ourselves here in a position out of which 
 this Empire has grown, as if by a kind of fate and 
 predestined necessity ; and now we feel that all our 
 glory as a nation is bound up with our tenure of it, 
 and that it is now as much our duty as our choice 
 to keep it, for such a work throughout the continent 
 of Asia as God only fully knows, and time only 
 can reveal. But who, — I do not say what religious 
 man, but who that has the intelligence to see what 
 Christ has done as a civilizer, — can at all doubt 
 what the Divine j'urpose mainly is, or what Society 
 is most distinctly called, and most strictly bound to 
 give that purpose execution % We are not the only 
 European nation whose influence has been felt in 
 India. But of all the other European nations 
 whose settlements have been established here, the
 
 Indian Missions. 21 
 
 influence has gradually vanished. And now Great 
 Britain occupies the place which for centuries was 
 held by the champions of the Crescent, and the 
 Cross of St. George waves above every battlement 
 of India, and gleams from every ensign even of 
 those sepoy regiments which wear her scarlet 
 uniform and uphold her power. Can any man 
 doubt why it is that not Portugal, which once 
 could give to England a portion of India, as the 
 dowry of a Queen, and not France, which contested 
 the possession of India with England on many a 
 hard-fought field — that not Portugal, nor France, 
 but England, is the representative of the Christian 
 faith in this country, the possession of which is 
 the key to the mind and conscience of the whole 
 East ? Your Grace at any rate will not doubt this. 
 Eong ago St. Paul taught the Athenians that every 
 tribe of men on the face of the whole earth, how- 
 ever far they might have strayed from the right 
 knowledge of their Creator, had not been abandoned 
 by Him, but that all their times, changes, and 
 migrations were ordered, and all the bounds of 
 their habitation fixed, by His all-gracious and all- 
 ruling Providence, in order that, feeling in due time 
 their blindness, and groping their way even through 
 darkness towards Him. they might find Him at last 
 near at hand. Who, then, can doubt that God is 
 now approaching the inhabitants of India through 
 the commerce and the migrations of the English 
 race*? Who can doubt that God wills the con- 
 version of Asia, no less than He willed and accom-
 
 22 Indian Missions. 
 
 plished the conversion of Europe in a former era % 
 or when he sees the English race and language 
 paramount at once in America, in the Pacific, in 
 Australia, and in Asia, can hesitate to believe that 
 God now delegates to that race and to its Church 
 the chief place in the conversion of the regions still 
 darkened by idolatry, and above all in the con- 
 version of India, where by so mysterious a 
 Providence England is supreme % 
 
 Why, then, a bishop in India cannot but ask, 
 why is the Church that sends me here so cold and 
 apathetic, as she looks on 180 millions of people 
 placed beneath her tutelage, handed over by the 
 marked determination of the King of Kings to her 
 converting care ? I look around me as a bishop 
 representing at once the Church Catholic and the 
 Church of England in this country, and, reflecting 
 on my position as living among twenty-five millions 
 of unbelievers, I see that all which the great 
 Church of England does for their conversion is 
 to look on with favour at the work of two ill- 
 supported Societies, which after using all the in- 
 fluence of speeches, meetings, sermons, and deputa- 
 tions throughout the length and breadth of Eng- 
 land, are able to send us sixteen missionaries, and 
 then say, after three years of efi"ort for extension on 
 the part of one of them, that their power is 
 exhausted, and that men are nowhere to be found. 
 An Indian bishop in such circumstances is certainly 
 the most pitiable of objects. But the Church, 
 which can do no more than leave him in this state
 
 Indian Missions. 23 
 
 of prostrate impotency and inefficiency, must surely 
 have reasons enough for searching into the grounds 
 of her deficiencies, and for asking what it is in her 
 system and methods of working which renders her 
 unable to answer the calls of duty, and to evoke 
 the enthusiasm of her sons. The Church, which I 
 deeply love, and which I have desired through nearly 
 thirty years faithfully to serve in three quarters of 
 the globe, will, I am sure, forgive me when I thus 
 fearlessly point out her blemishes, and when I 
 openly proclaim her sluggishness, her coldness, her 
 indifference, not now for the first time imputed by 
 those whose hearts have been given to her, but 
 never more apparent than in her past and present 
 treatment of India, never more likely, if not ex- 
 changed for fervour, to bring down God's blighting 
 judgments on her and on her nation, because never 
 were opportunities so great, and never had a Church 
 so great a call from Him, Who never calls with- 
 out offering those gifts which enable men to answer 
 Him. 
 
 [The Importance of using the Opportunities lohich the 
 present State of India affords.^ 
 
 Opportunities ! I do not hesitate to say that 
 India at this moment stands with open mouth, if 
 still with stammering and inarticulate tongue, asking 
 for a religion. The masses of this vast country are 
 still inert and unreached in their stolid and stagnant 
 stupidity, crushed and ground to dust by a religion
 
 24 Indian Missions. 
 
 which can produce nothing but tyranny in Govern- 
 ment and general debasement, because while it 
 idolizes life in a brute, through its system of Caste 
 it looks with scorn and contempt upon the body and 
 soul of ordinary human beings. But, to those who 
 can perceive those influences which operate within 
 the heart of things, it is evident that the root of 
 such intelligence as supports the still abundant 
 growth of superstition is even now cut, and that 
 the work of fuller decay is but time's business. 
 The more intelligent among the Brahmins defend 
 idolatry upon grounds which are fatal to its per- 
 manence, maintain it as an accommodation to the 
 ignorance of the people, and profess to look down 
 upon the grossness which confounds the symbol 
 with the divinity. The cannons of the English 
 army, which have shattered in turn the fortresses of 
 Hindostan, have been followed up by conquering 
 agencies in the sphere of thought, not by any means 
 so clearly perceptible, but perfectly indisputable, 
 and every year the work of destruction goes on in 
 ratios which multiply, and in forms so thoroughly 
 efi'ective, that even now it may be affirmed with 
 tolerable confidence, that if direct English influence 
 should cease from this period, the India of the 
 future cannot be the India of the past. A tide of 
 Western knowledge and of those arts of civilization 
 which a knowledge of nature, .given by Christ, 
 fosters, pouring in new notions and ways of think- 
 ing, as well as new habits of action, is carrying 
 before it and sweeping out of existence old views
 
 JggU 
 
 Indian Missions. 25 
 
 and habits, and, along with these, faith in the old 
 religion, of which these departing customs are an 
 actual part, or with which they stand in close 
 internal relations. And, destruction visibly spread- 
 ing, the more intelligent of the Hindoos are feeling, 
 as the old passes away. What do you give me in 
 exchange for my own religion % The interval is 
 one chiefly of doubt, but not as yet of rejection ; 
 though European influences, actively at work in 
 some quarters, are doing all that they can to produce 
 positive antagonism to Christianity. Some, at all 
 events, there are, and .there may be many, whose 
 minds are not content to be a blank, and whose 
 hearts ask for something which may fill them. We 
 know that at the coming of "the Desire of all 
 Nations," the void in human nature, as it existed in 
 that great Empire of Rome which was then the 
 world, was making itself felt within those contrite 
 and wounded spirits whom Christ came to heal, and 
 actually led them to Him for healing, — and that 
 afterwards, when the deluge of the barbarians came 
 surging over the same empire in its dissolution, 
 there were in all those hosts, so varied in their 
 origin and forms of savagery, impulses and yearn- 
 ings, inexplicable by themselves, after goods and 
 treasures which they were blindly seeking, but 
 which Christ alone could and did satisfy, so that 
 prostrate Rome conquered for Christ those who were 
 her conquerors, and won over them a greater victory 
 than that by which they vanquished her. As, then, in 
 these two greatest eras of revival, the crash of change
 
 26 Indian Missions. 
 
 was accompanied by a thirst and a demand for 
 something new and permanently good, so, I doubt 
 not, here at this very time, the condition of India is 
 nothing else but one great and splendid opportunity, 
 which, if the Church does but seize it at the critical 
 moment, will have the conversion of the East for 
 its final consequence ; but if this opportunity be 
 coldly suffered to pass by, unwelcomed and un- 
 improved, it will, at no distant date, rise up to 
 overwhelm us, like one of those great tidal waA^es 
 which suddenly and without warning overleap the 
 barriers imposed by God to check the flow even of 
 the ocean j and, when the work of judgment has 
 been done and the mighty wave has receded, the 
 historians of all future time will find^ in it their 
 most striking lesson, the prophets will take up their 
 most solemn parable, and the poets will point their 
 darkest moral as they show how England fell. 
 
 \The Church called upon not to miss its Oi^portunity.'] 
 
 Men, Brethren, and Fathers of the Church of 
 England, let me cast aside fear, reserve, convention- 
 alities, and let me speak to you as a Christian to 
 Christians, as a man to men. Are we indeed a 
 portion of the Church which Christ founded ? Are 
 we Christians in something else than name ? Do 
 we believe that He whose name has been given to 
 us, and whose cross we carry upon our foreheads 
 and often wear above our hearts, is not a man only 
 but very God, and now reigns above as Universal
 
 Indian Missions. 27 
 
 King? If you belong to the Catholic Church, if 
 you are Christians in reality, how can you rest in 
 your ^beds, and how can you repose among your 
 green fields and uplands, and in your peaceful homes 
 — whether these are palaces, or halls, or parsonages, 
 or cottages among country scenes, or whether your 
 lot is cast among the streets and squares of busy 
 cities — how, I ask you, can your consciences be still 
 while you so faintly carry on the war for your all- 
 conquering King 1 Here is, not India only, but 
 Asia at your feet, waiting to be conquered. Here, 
 in an age of universal change, and of preparation for 
 greater things to come, the whole Eastern world — 
 500 millions of the human race — is appearing before 
 you, not in dreams and visions of the night, but by 
 palpable and already historic Providences, and is 
 saying to others indeed also, for in this work there 
 is no monopoly, but to you above all, " Come over 
 to India and help us ; come from the West to repay 
 the donations of the East." And what is your 
 answer? "We have no men to spare you. We 
 want all our good men here. Consider the state of 
 our great cities. How can we think of India, when 
 charity begins, and has so great a work to do, at 
 home ? " As if charity at home was not nourished 
 and increased by charity abroad ! As if the Jew of 
 Tarsus, and the model men of all times, had not left 
 us an eternal example of indebtedness to Greeks and 
 barbarians, to bond and free ! As if large -hearted- 
 ness, breadth, and comprehensiveness of spirit did 
 not deepen and feed roots, at the same time that
 
 28 Indian Missions. 
 
 they spread branches ! As if sacrifice was not the 
 only specific for all moral evils, domestic as well as 
 foreign ! As if, too, sacrifice did not multiply in 
 proportion to the greatness of its aims ! And as if 
 for every man that sacrifice spends on its most noble 
 and heroic work a thousand did not spring up, as if 
 from the earth, quickened by the new life which he 
 communicates, enamoured of the death which their 
 example died, and eager for the unseen crown which 
 they have learnt from him to covet ! The Church 
 exists but for progress and conquest. Its com- 
 mission, never abrogated, is not "stay," but "go." 
 Its main work, like that of Eome in its ascendency, 
 is not at its centre, but on its borders. There is the 
 school where its legions, having passed their time of 
 training at home, may go out to do the work of 
 men, and after long years return, veterans and 
 covered with the scars of genuine warfare, to shed 
 the glory of their hoar hairs and the seed of their 
 ripe experience on the perplexing, though less trying 
 und self-sacrificing, labours of the Church at home. 
 And if it comes to calling in the legions of the 
 Church, from border, aggressive, and external war- 
 fare, or, what is practically the same thing, if con- 
 quest, ever advancing, never resting, is not the 
 Church's chief work, there is a worm at the core, 
 there is a cessation at -the heart itself of the full 
 beat and impulses of life. Decay, if not outwardly 
 apparent, is inwardly proceeding ; and, even if a 
 bloom is still upon the surface, death is at work 
 within. A policy of peace and abstinence from
 
 Indian Missions, 29 
 
 conquest may be possible in earthly kingdoms, and 
 in them may be as expedient as it is commendable, 
 but in the kingdom of Christ not to advance is to 
 retreat, and not to make new conquests is both to 
 lose what has been won, and to lay open the very 
 centre and citadel of power to an enemy, whose 
 armies are ever on the alert, and who is ready, at 
 any instant, to turn his own attitude of defence into 
 a sharp attack, where it will most be felt, on his 
 inactive and undefended adversaries. 
 
 {The Contrast between the Work of the World in 
 India and that of the Church.'] 
 
 But again, let me ask, what are your hearts doing? 
 These millions, 180 millions — for I cannot too often 
 remind you that we have here to answer for about 
 a fifth portion of the earth's inhabitants, men like 
 yourselves, in whom the blood of Adam runs, — where 
 are your hearts, when your eyes fall on them, and 
 see them at the foot of your armies, and governed 
 by your own sons, brothers, countrymen ? Soldiers 
 flow into the country, and give up their lives in war 
 to duty when it calls them, and even in peace to the 
 more terrible demands of a climate which wears 
 them out, and to disease, which occasionally breaks 
 out in fierceness, and cuts them off by tens and 
 hundreds in a day. Civilians flow in also, eager 
 for employment, until now the stream is checked 
 because it is superabounding. Merchants and men 
 of business add themselves to the gathering waters,
 
 30 Indian Missions. 
 
 peopling the Presidential towns, and directing the 
 whole course of trade, which in remote corners of 
 the land feels everywhere their presiding influence. 
 Barristers and solicitors succeed, and reap from a 
 litigious people harvests of gold, which, after a few 
 years of strenuous work, they carry back with them 
 to their native soil, there in comfort and in rest to 
 end their days. Engineers and artisans follow on 
 the track of the Railroad, the Steamboat, and the 
 Telegraph, making locomotion easy, and distributing 
 with swiftness and precision the produce which the 
 land yields, and the intelligence which interests all 
 nations. We rule the land ; upon the whole un- 
 selfishly and wisely. We restrain throughout the 
 land such evil as an honest love of right and truth 
 can put down, by instruments far from perfect, but 
 the best which the land furnishes. We diffuse in- 
 telligence by education, the best among us thinking 
 that such light as intellect alone can give is better 
 than none, and hoping that a time may come when 
 that better light of conscience and the heart, which 
 the true God only can bestow, may be added to it. 
 And we cover the land with a coating of Western 
 civilization, spreading rapidly and carrying far and 
 wide obvious advantages. Eut when we look for 
 the presence of those profounder influences, which 
 by giving new hearts can alone communicate real 
 and intrinsic vitality, when we look for the Church 
 of Christ and her servants, coming with the grace of 
 God, and with the life, the power, the sacrifice, the 
 knowledge, which might bring down the fire of
 
 Indian Missions. 31 
 
 heaven, and add to this man of Western clay, and 
 to all his works, that Divine Essence which alone 
 can give virtue and value to them, then, alas, this 
 stream, hitherto so ample that it needs to be deter- 
 minedly checked rather than stimulated in its flow, 
 changes into a faint dribble scarcely to be discerned, 
 and now of late the few drops which before rather 
 trickled than ran, seem ceasing. Where, then, I 
 have a right to ask the whole Church, where is your 
 heart ? These countless multitudes, what are they % 
 Are they things to be ruled % to be used as a camp 
 of active exercise for your armies % to provide for 
 your sons that livelihood which your little island 
 cannot yield them? to" make cotton for your Lan- 
 cashire manufactories and to consume your piece 
 goods % to be made money of ? to have the cream of 
 their productions skimmed from them and carried 
 home? Is this all? Is this what a fifth of the 
 people of the earth was made for ? And, when it 
 comes to that balancing of productions of which even 
 commerce makes so much, and to a case of exchange, 
 in which you can give them far more than you 
 receive, treasures beyond all estimation, the gifts of 
 heaven in return for the productions of earth, are 
 they to be " things " still ? a school for your soldiers ? 
 a provision for your children ? feeders for your 
 commerce ? not souls, each one of whom is loved by 
 our Father Who is in Heaven, and for whom Christ 
 upon the cross shed, drop by drop, the blood of the 
 Son of God ? It cannot be that such indifierence 
 can long continue.
 
 32 Indian Missions. 
 
 \Th%8 Difference to he attributed to Insularity of 
 Feeling, and Want of Imagination, more than 
 to deliberate Neglect.'] 
 
 It cannot be that yon liave looked on them, and 
 then, Jew-like, deliberately passed them by npon 
 the other side. It rather is through that insularity 
 of temper, which keeps Englishmen, travellers and 
 rovers though they be, within the groove of those 
 demands which most importunately address their 
 more immediate ear, or through that want of range 
 in the national imagination, which seems unable to 
 realize the dignity, or I will say the majesty, of our 
 position as a people, and to bring home to us in any 
 conscious way at once the universality of the sphere 
 in which God is calling us to act, and the vastness 
 of our strength and capabilities as a Church, if we. 
 had but the faith and the zeal to put out that 
 strength which we reserve within us ; — it is through 
 causes such as these, rather than through any dead- 
 ness and decay of soul, that our conduct as a Churcli 
 is so sadly in contrast with our boasted vigour as a 
 nation. And, therefore, I shall yet confidently hope 
 that the Church which I serve will not always be as 
 impotent in India, or, at all events, in this part of 
 India, as it now is, and in this hope I shall venture 
 to lay before your Qrace and the whole Church some 
 further considerations, which are offered with diffi- 
 dence and only from a sense of duty, as my humble 
 suggestions for the removal of that drought of men,
 
 Indian Missions. '^'^^ 
 
 ready to sacrifice themselves as Christ's devoted 
 soldiers, which is now our grief as a Church, and 
 our scandal before the world and our self-sacrificing 
 Roman neighbours. 
 
 \It is absolutely necessary that we should recog- 
 nize the Bi-fficulty of Converting India.'] 
 
 It is, I believe, of primary importance that we 
 should clearly recognize the extraordinary difficulty 
 of the work which is set before us for accomplish- 
 ment j because, until this is seen, our efforts as a 
 Church will not only not be sufficient in magnitude, 
 but will not be of a kind and on a plan which are 
 adapted to the practical result which must constantly 
 be kept in view. Great as have been the feats of 
 the Church in the nineteen centuries of her past 
 history, the conversion of Asia, when it has been 
 effected, will be regarded as by far her greatest work. 
 And if, limiting our view to India, as the citadel of 
 the whole fortress hitherto impregnable, we consider 
 only the conquest which has to be achieved here, 
 nothing short of a faith which might remove the 
 Himalayas can even hope for the coming of that 
 day when India will have turned from its foul 
 idolatries to the pure love of Jesus Christ. What 
 we have to do is to move a compacted mass — a 
 monster shall I call it? — of 180 millions of men, 
 and a monster like that of the poet, which "moveth 
 all together if it move at all." Those who know by 

 
 34 Indian Missions. 
 
 observation the versatility and flexibility of that 
 Brahminical race which so long has domineered over 
 the social life of India, openly or secretly administer- 
 ing affairs in such a way as to maintain its own pre- 
 eminence, will not speak of the East as unchanging 
 without qualifications. Certainly nothing more im- 
 mediately catches the eye of an examiner of India 
 at tlje present time, than that discernment of the 
 Brahmins which has led them to perceive that 
 education is the road to power, and the readiness 
 with which they have adapted themselves to Western 
 ways of action, while yet, I fear, they retain the 
 subtlety, the intrigue, and, I must add, the falsehood, 
 to which they owe their former influence. In the 
 sphere of thought, and in acts and habits of a super- 
 ficial kind, there has been considerable innovation. 
 But in the main elements which go to form society, 
 change is still unknown, certainly not perceptible. 
 Forc^ has put down the immolation of a widow upon 
 her husband's funeral pyre ; but the strong efforts of 
 a few persons to break through the tyranny which 
 condemns even child- widows to perpetual mourning 
 for a husband whom they have scarcely seen, are 
 ineffectual as yet even in Bombay, where European 
 influence is most apparent, and the very knowledge 
 of such a change as contemplated or conceivable has 
 not penetrated the cloud of ignorance in which the 
 remoter regions are enfolded. The village system, 
 to which we ascend from that of our family, is still 
 the same as existed two thousand and two hundred 
 years ago, when India was seen by the Greeks who 
 
 i
 
 Indian Missions, 35 
 
 followed Alexander. Buddhism has passed through, 
 the land as a rationalizing and reforming agency. 
 Mahometanism conquered the land and established 
 a civil supremacy which lasted through many 
 centuries. 
 
 \Tlie Immohility of Caste.'\ 
 
 Yet Caste and its accompaniments stand, as at 
 once the product and the bulwark of the religion ; 
 and it is even conceivable that Caste may outlast 
 the religion, and maintain its place upon the basis 
 of infidelity. At any rate, of all those forces which 
 hold men together in societies, none is so difficult as 
 Caste to reach by any power of dissolution. I^othing 
 but birth can give it, and, while its privileges seem 
 to the possessor above all price, it is held on condi- 
 tion of maintaining rules of the minutest stringency. 
 It comes to a man out of an unseen world, through 
 supposed relations with his Creator ; it so follows 
 him in life that the character of every act, great and 
 small, is regulated by it ; and it goes with him in 
 and through death as determining his everlasting 
 destiny. Erom the individual who is affected by it 
 all individuality is gone, his social position absorb- 
 ing his personal life, and subjecting him to the will 
 of his fellows, who hold in their hands everything on 
 which he depends for life and happiness. Thus Caste 
 is the ruler of India, even of those Hindoos who are 
 hopelessly and for ever upon the outer side of all its 
 advantages, and India, so far as it is Hindoo, and 
 excepting only so far as our presence here has scarce 
 c 2
 
 36 Indiaft Missions. 
 
 perceptibly afi'ected its social arrangements, is one 
 great stereotyped community, every man's habits and 
 lot fixed for him at birth, and no one able to break 
 through the fence, behind which causes beyond 
 human control have placed him here, and, as it 
 seems to him, elsewhere and for ever. Society is in 
 a state at once of wholeness and immobility. It 
 cannot be attacked in detail, for it is a whole every- 
 where. Its parts cannot be disintegrated, for it is 
 without divisibility. It must be upheaved all 
 together, and changed all together, if at all. 
 
 [The Conversion of India a more difficult Work than 
 that of the Roman Empire and the Barbarians of 
 Europe.^ 
 
 There is thus the greatest possible difference be- 
 tween the social circumstances of the East and those 
 of that more Western world, in which the Church 
 won its two past triumphs. In both of those eras 
 society was held together by but loose bonds of co- 
 herence, and when it came in contact with the order 
 and discipline of the Church in which love was the 
 centralizing influence, society was in a state of con- 
 scious confusion, like that of bees when they have 
 lost their queen, and are eager to find for themselves 
 a new bond of unity. In the Roman Empire decay 
 everywhere was busy ; religion had dropped such 
 power as it ever had to hold families and people 
 together, and philosophy was as weary of itself and 
 its insoluble perplexities as it had wearied all its 
 followers. When, therefore, the Church with its
 
 Indian Missio7ts. 37 
 
 community of hearty life appeared, it seemed like a 
 rock amid universal change and dissolution, and men 
 of deeper thought and more earnest feeling, discern- 
 ing in it the one solid element in the social state, 
 built their lives upon it. To the barbarians, con- 
 scious of their strength and juvenescence, but seeing 
 in everything besides and in their own achievements 
 little but wreck and destruction, while yet their 
 hearts, moving ever onwards and forwards, were 
 filled with all the eagerness of hope^ the Church was 
 the one green oasis in a desert, and the one haven 
 in a sea of storms. And when they looked upon 
 the diligence and regularity of that life, which was 
 exhibited by the monastic orders, from which 
 chiefly, or almost solely, the elements of civilization 
 issued, the choice souls among them discovered in 
 the Church of Christ the one place where they 
 could settle themselves and tind rest. There was a 
 sense of need, and the Church was the satisfaction 
 of it. The Church, and the Church only, filled up 
 a manifest void. But here in India, while there is 
 dissatisfaction in some quarters with the follies of 
 idolatry, and some feeling that a religion is wanted, 
 society closes up its serried ranks and says, " There 
 is no room for any new associations here, and there 
 is just as little need." Before, in those two past ages 
 of revival, individualism was strong — in the first 
 the individualism of decomposing civilization, in the 
 second the individualism of strong undisciplined 
 barbarity; but individualism felt its own solitariness 
 and isolation, and as the first cried out for an asso-
 
 38 Indian Missions. 
 
 elation better tlian it had lost, the second was seek- 
 ing an association which it had never found. Here 
 there is no sense of personal responsibility, and the 
 social cravings are so far more than satisfied, that 
 society submerges and swallows up the individual 
 in itself, and wraps the welcomed swathing bands 
 of infancy around the limbs of men. And thus, 
 while the need of the Church as a society is greater 
 than anywhere or ever before, because never was 
 society built upon a falser basis, there is a positive 
 surfeit of the social appetite, and the heart of the 
 Hindoo, gorged with that which cannot feed it, 
 has no hunger for wholesome and satisfying food. 
 Society, wanting in all elements of greatness, and 
 dividing men from each other by barriers which are 
 in every sense insuperable, stagnates, yet lives on ; 
 stifles aspiration, and yet in some sense satisfies 
 desire ; crushes conscience to death while it fills life 
 with a religion ; subdues a man to meanness of 
 servility, in which he ceases even to care for being 
 free. Here, therefore, the range of mountains which 
 faith in Christ is to remove are not mountains only, 
 but mountains with roots piercing so deeply into 
 the very heart of the earth, and the whole so per- 
 fectly compacted together, that little short of a con- 
 vulsion shaking the earth itself can tear them up 
 and plant them in the sea. It is not numbers only 
 which have to be moved. It is numbers in a state 
 of iron-bound coherence and solidity, th« iron of 
 Caste having so entered into the soul of society, and 
 so clamping it together, that nothing short of an
 
 Indian Missions. 39 
 
 explosive force, strong eDough to rend the rocks and 
 break the mountains into pieces, can make an inlet 
 large enough to admit the kingdom of Christ. 
 
 \The Church tlierefore^ if anything is to he done, must 
 put forth all its Power.'] 
 
 And therefore, through your Grace, I presume to 
 call upon the Church of England, whose place should 
 be the foremost in this labour, deliberately to gird 
 itself for an effort which shall tax all its members 
 to the extremity of every power and gift with which 
 God has graciously endpwed them, yet not too great 
 for their capacity ; for never yet before had any 
 portion of the Church so many, so various, and so 
 great endowments latent within her, and nothing 
 now is needed but the fervour, the courage, and th« 
 devotion, which shall put those magnificent endow- 
 ments forth, 
 
 [It must also he clearly seen that the Foundation of 
 the Kingdom of Christ is the Object of Aim. It is 
 more necessary to i^oint this out because this is not 
 seen clearly and unmistalcahly noiv.] 
 
 It is, I believe, also, not less important that we 
 should act on the clear conviction that our work, 
 regarded as to its form and specific nature, is the 
 foundation of the kingdom of Christ. And it is the 
 more necessary to bring this to the notice of the 
 Church in England, because our past efforts have
 
 40 Indian Missions. 
 
 scarcely taken their shape from this idea, or had 
 this object before them as their definite aim. It is 
 with pain that I express this opinion, and indeed 
 that I enter upon this part of my subject at all, 
 because I feel that I cannot escape from some allu- 
 sion to matters of controversy, and from a criticism 
 of policies with whose objects in the main I sym- 
 pathize, and of men, both of our own Church and 
 external to us, whose earnestness and motives I 
 admire. But, as truth is among the dearest of those 
 goods towards which the heart of man reaches, so 
 the utterance of what in our conscience we believe 
 to be the truth, is the first duty which we owe to 
 God, to society, and to ourselves. And, if only our 
 language in such utterance be chastened by that 
 singleness of purj^ose Vt^hich removes from it all 
 personal asperities, and avoids that spirit of party 
 which too often in these days dips even a religious 
 pen in fire or poison, nothing but good can follow 
 from outspokenness ; since, if that which is said be 
 indeed true, the feeblest protest may have some 
 influence in removing things which obstruct pro- 
 gress ; or, if it be error and not truth, that which 
 it wrongly opposes does but shine with even more 
 than its former lustre, the darkness which vainly 
 attempted to obscure it only bringing out its full 
 light. I must, therefore, not shrink from recording 
 my opinion, as an observer of Protestant Missions in 
 India, and of our own particular share in these Mis- 
 sions, that the Catholic spirit of our Book of Common 
 Prayer has not exerted its legitimate influence, and
 
 Indian Missions. , 41 
 
 that our work has been too much an appendage to 
 an imposing but unreal Spirituahsm. Protestant 
 Missions, as a whole, have been an attempt to infuse 
 into the mind of India a somewhat abstract, logical, 
 and hard thing, most commonly described here as 
 Christianity, and which modern Calvinism likes to 
 call " the Gospel." And we of the Church have not 
 definitely endeavoured to bring home to the heart 
 of India that Person whom it would welcome as its 
 King, and that Society of flesh and blood which 
 even Caste would submit to, as His human yet 
 Divine kingdom. 
 
 {Missionaries of the Church co-operate with others on 
 the ground that Belief as to the Catholic and visible 
 Church is an open and indifferent Question.] 
 
 There are Missionaries of our Church who come 
 to India with an intelligent belief in " one Holy 
 Catholick and Apostolick Church," and whose con- 
 duct in their calling is throughout consistent with 
 the historic sense of that article in the faith of a 
 Christian. But a large proportion of our own Mis- 
 sionary clergy seem to see in their distinctive appel- 
 lation something which abolishes the separation 
 between the Church and its opponents in England, 
 and which makes all Missionaries brothers ; their 
 relationship being founded on the sentiment that 
 they in common desire to see the conversion of 
 India. In Great Britain and America, and other 
 parts of the Protestant world, such men are the
 
 42 India7t Missions. 
 
 recognized agents of certain distinct associations — of 
 the Church, of the Independents, of Dissent in all 
 its different divisions — and in all these countries 
 which I have named, they act as men who avowedly 
 differ in matters of importance, while at the same 
 time many of them do not wish to carry their differ- 
 ence beyond the range which is imposed by the fact 
 that they outwardly and organically are separate. 
 Here they meet and actively co-operate as if there 
 was no difference between them. The man who has 
 been ordained by a successor of the Apostles, and 
 who has received tlie apostolical commission, meets 
 as a brother minister the man who ascribes his 
 ministry to a call and nomination by the people, 
 and consults with him on terms of perfect indiffer- 
 ence how they are to co-operate in the work of 
 breaking down the v/alls of Caste, and making India 
 Christian. In so far as such fraternal counsels and 
 acts are a symptom of that longing for union 
 which no abundance of division can wholly stifle, 
 every Christian heart must welcome them as an 
 element which may help to keep our hope of a re- 
 united Christendom from verging on despair. Eut 
 into such considerations I cannot here enter. I 
 state this fact only for the purpose of proving, if 
 proof indeed is not superfluous, that the majority of 
 our Missionary clergy have before them as their 
 object, not the foundation of the Church of Christ, 
 but the spread of something which all Protestants 
 have in common, and which, as it certainly is not 
 something concrete, social, and organic, is really an
 
 Indian Missions. 45. 
 
 abstraction — Christianity in a state of disembodied 
 ghostliness — and a philosophy, popularly called 
 "the Gospel." 
 
 l^Such Non-recognition of the Church as an Article of 
 Faith fatal in India, above all Countries.^ 
 
 !N'ow, I believe that such a mode of action is, to 
 use the mildest language, a fatal mistake anywhere, 
 because, if it were granted that a portion of the 
 Teutonic mind is gifted with a power of digestion 
 equalled only by what is ascribed in fable to the 
 ostrich, and is able to assimilate truth in its hardest 
 form, so as to get from steel itself spiritual nourish- 
 ment, when others would eat death, even this Teu- 
 tonic heart is beginning to ask for a religious King ; 
 and certainly in no other part of the world can 
 men's souls live long on metaphysics, or anywhere 
 except within the fellowship of a spiritual kingdom. 
 And, most^ assuredly, if our notions of truth are to 
 be gathered from Holy Scripture, rather than from 
 the brief traditions of a school, the whole word of 
 God teaches us that the Son of God came to be 
 " the King of all the earth," and that the Gospel 
 which He and His Apostles preached is the " Gospel 
 of the kingdom." It is not in a chapter of the Old 
 Testament here and there, that, after much digging 
 and searching, we may at last find the kingdom, 
 like a deeply buried jewel. The sheen of the ex- 
 pected monarch and His Empire glistens in a circlet 
 of diamonds upon the forehead of the whole Book.
 
 44 Indian Missions. 
 
 And the Cross of Christ, which is the central object 
 of the New Testament, as to faith it is nothing else 
 but the throne of His 'triumph over Powers and 
 Princedoms, so it carries His kingship emblazoned 
 above His thorn-crowned head, in words which His 
 enemies vainly struggled to obliterate, and which 
 His saints have ever cherished as the charter of 
 their redemption and their most priceless and dearest 
 glory. 
 
 [The Indian Mind imaginative, and its Temperament, 
 founded on Religion, eminently social?^ 
 
 But in India, above all quarters of the earth, the 
 mistake is of that profound sort which can only be 
 called disastrous. India is logical and metaphysical, 
 and the Indian mind rejoices to spin the fine threads 
 of a philosophy so exceedingly subtle, that the 
 coarser understanding of the West can scarce per- 
 ceive the distinctions which it draws, or make its 
 countless intricacies terminable. Bat India too 
 loves ideas, and if truth is to enter its mind, it must 
 come to it realized in forms which can satisfy imagi- 
 nation ; above all it must come to it clothed in the 
 embodiment of a society. The Indian mind revels 
 in incarnations and manifestations of Divinity, and 
 the several castes are but the different members of 
 their imagined God, carnalized once for all in forms 
 of social life, which like the God himself are essen- 
 tially unchangeable. " The points at which such a 
 religion most naturally connects itself with the
 
 Indian Missions. 45 
 
 truth are obvious ; and tlie points at which, the 
 truth and Brahminism are wide as the poles asunder 
 are conspicuously plain. Abstraction in religion is 
 of all things the least intelligible to the Hindoo, the 
 farthest from his mode of conceiving the Divinity, 
 the most remote from his imagination and his affec- 
 tions. His eye is not accustomed to the northern 
 snow nor his sensuous nature to that colder tem- 
 perature of a critical intellect in which the man of 
 I^orthern Europe rejoices. He is a child of the 
 sun, with all his faculties mellowed and softened by 
 a climate which both heats the passions and ener- 
 vates strength. What then will such a mind care 
 for a mere abstraction ? for the residuum which is 
 left in what is called "common Christianity?" for 
 the spirit which remains in its nakedness, when the 
 several organizations in which the spirit visibly 
 appears are separated from it, and that which is 
 offered for belief is the supposed essence of them 
 all % The Hindoo will say : " I do not want an 
 essence. I do not care for something merely im- 
 palpable. I need a God who can come near my 
 whole nature, to my body as well as to my soul. I 
 need the essence and the idea, but not in the hard 
 deductions of a syllogism, or in the cold skeleton of 
 a scheme and a plan and a system of salvation. I 
 require to see something fleshly, something social, 
 something better, it may be, yet still like my caste, 
 something in which my heart can live, and which 
 shall feed that religious instinct and appetite which 
 tells me that God can in a manner incarnate Himself
 
 46 Indian Missions. 
 
 in combinations of men and realize Himself in forms 
 which will make me one with my fellows, through 
 an organization which at the same time makes me 
 one with Him." I have already said that even for 
 the Church to wedge its way into the closed-up ranks 
 of Caste is a work of superhuman difficulty, and I 
 do not now mean to affirm that the Hindoo will be 
 brought to say what I have just put into his mouth 
 easily, but I do say that to expect of an abstract 
 thing-^" common Christianity " — that it can effect 
 this work of conversion and the overthrow of Caste, 
 is the mosb hopeless delusion which ever beguiled 
 humanity. Society can fight society, life in one 
 organic form can struggle with organic life in 
 another mode of combination, and society and life 
 Avhen it is Pi vine, must, if it be true to itself, in 
 time break in and overcome a phalanx, however 
 strong, which is merely human : but an abstraction 
 cannot fight with a society; an abstraction has not, 
 as the Church of God has, the fervour, the life, the 
 attracting force which can at once beat down oppo- 
 sition, and draw men to a King whom they can love, 
 and a kingdom in which they can love each other. 
 Conceive a man asking another to leave his caste, 
 and throw himself into the loving arms of a philo- 
 sophical abstraction ! of " Common Christianity ! " 
 
 \What a Missionary sliould Preach.'] 
 
 This, however, is what Protestant Missions in 
 India, as a whole, are doing ; and, if many of our 
 Missionaries are offering something better, this is
 
 Indian Missions. 47 
 
 the public aspect of the system, and this is what 
 the possible convert cannot but think, as he surveys 
 what is behind and before him. A Missionary, as 
 I conceive, should go forth as the messenger of the 
 great King, who reigns from the Cross glorified in 
 Heaven. That King, ever since His ascension day, 
 has, as our own Andrewes paints Him, rained down 
 the gifts ai;id largesses of his coronation, making 
 the streets of His city run with rivers of oil and 
 wine, copious enough to satisfy the spiritual needs 
 .of total humanity. He is a human king, and He 
 works, as such a king must work, by the human 
 instruments and ordinances of His kingdom, con- 
 veying, through men of" flesh and blood like His 
 own, gifts without stint, and mercies mthout 
 measure. A preacher, therefore, of " the Gospel of 
 the kingdom " is one who should go out into the 
 highways and hedges to invite man to a social feast, 
 announcing everything as ready. He should not 
 scruple to put himself forward as one sent from 
 Heaven. He should say, " I come to you full of 
 gifts, which may be had for asking, because He for 
 whom I come is no Moses Avith a law written on 
 hard stone tables, but a giver, ' full of grace and 
 truth.' If you will believe on my Master, I, by His 
 power, will give you, through water, union with 
 His human nature, and thus for yourselves a new 
 nature, involving fellowship with all saints, and, 
 after that, as you become more perfect Christians, I 
 will give you, Himself — His Elesh and Blood — as 
 Divine food. At the same time I will give you
 
 48 Indian Missions. 
 
 truth for the enlightenment of your intellect, having 
 from my King all that truth, which He Himself is 
 and gives to man." Such, as I conceive, is the 
 message which an ambassador from Christ should 
 convey to man, and such the actual grace which by 
 his office is imparted. If, too, he cannot speak 
 thus, and thus impart blessings, what is he but 
 one of the Philosophers ? What but a teacher 
 in the schools of more or less truth, not a repre- 
 sentative of Him who is the mediator between God 
 and man, not sent by Christ as Christ by the 
 Father 1 
 
 [ What alone a Missionary can Preach if he is indif- 
 ferent to Faith in the Church.'\ 
 
 Yet what can a man say when he appears before 
 the world as the representative of " Common Chris- 
 tianity?" He cannot invite men to the Church of 
 Christ, because the Missionary cause depends on 
 treating the Church as one of many sects, and any 
 outward and organic form as a part of non-essential 
 religion. He cannot speak as one commissioned by 
 Christ and Christ's Church, because that would be 
 inconsistent with fraternal recognition of the Mis- 
 sionary brethren. He cannot treat the Sacraments 
 as means of life, because that exalts ordinances 
 to an atmosphere in which a merely intellectual 
 spiritualism evaporates. He can only teach truth, 
 and truth not as it came into the world with Christ, 
 its root and its revealer, the twin brother of grace,
 
 Indian Missions. 49 
 
 linked to grace in indissoluble union, but in its 
 nakedness, as a thing by itself, without the life which 
 comes to it from embodiment in the forms and 
 ordinances and blessings of a social and beautiful 
 religion. He can but become in the eyes of the 
 Hindoos a teacher, and a teacher, as it must seem 
 to them, without a worship and a religion ; a mere 
 rival of the moulvies and the shastris, who are 
 learned in the lore of Mahomet and the Brahmins ; 
 while the Bible must take its place only as one of 
 the sacred books of history, a competitor with the 
 Koran and the Vedas or the Puranas for the in- 
 tellectual homage of the Eastern world. 
 
 [Besides, the Church and its Unity, visibly seen, is the 
 one great Persuasive to Faith in Christ, as God 
 come in the Flesh. '\ 
 
 And, besides, only in proportion as we appeal to 
 the heathen on the ground of Catholicity can we 
 expect that blessing of God which will make our 
 message supernaturally persuasive to them. '^0 one 
 can deeply meditate upon that seventeenth chapter 
 of St. John's Gospel, which throws such light upon 
 the subject of Missions, without seeing there, clearly 
 revealed, these three linked propositions : (1) That 
 the Father sent the Son into the world to be Man. 
 (2) That the Church, sent by the Son, as His second 
 self, and filled with His Divinity, is designed to be 
 fully one within and without. (3) That the sight 
 of this oneness is the one argument which shall 
 
 D
 
 50 Indian Missions. 
 
 persuade the world to accept belief in Christ as the 
 Son of God. That is (1) God in the Son became 
 flesh. (2) God in a secondary sense became manifest 
 in the Church, which is the mystical body of the 
 Son. (3) This union seen by the world would have 
 a voice which would convince the world, saying, 
 *' If men through Christ are united, who and what 
 can Chi'ist the uniting man be but God?" If this 
 be so, it follows, first, that a true faith in God as 
 come in the flesh has visible union as its necessary 
 product : and, next, that except by this faith, and 
 the union which is its consequence, the world's con- 
 version cannot be achieved. Only by an united 
 body can conversion be efl'ected, because disunion is 
 death, and out of death life cannot come. Only the 
 Catholic Church, and therefore not a mere abstract 
 and divided Christianity, can bring India to the 
 faith of Him Whose Flesh is as real as His Divinity. 
 It is on grounds such as these that I ask the 
 Church of England to put forth all its strength, 
 and that strength, not so much in the form of its 
 necessary protest against error, as in the form of 
 far more essential Catholicity, so that taking its 
 proper place at the head rather than, as now, in 
 the rear of Protestant Missions, it may provide 
 an element of union, elsewhere undiscoverable, and 
 working openly and avowedly as a part of the 
 Catholic Church, draw down that blessing from 
 its Head which otherwise cannot but be withheld 
 from it.
 
 Indian Missions. 51 
 
 \The Church recommended to work through tlie Instru- 
 mentality of a Brotherhood.^ 
 
 I have stated that the work is one of extra- 
 ordinary difficulty, and I have avowed my con- 
 viction that the foundation of the Church, as 
 distinguished from the mere teaching of abstract 
 truth, must be our recognized object. But, looking 
 at India, with that keen eye which desires to see 
 something actually done and not only unpractically 
 talked about, I perceive that we have yet to come 
 to close quarters with the difficulty which is before 
 us, and that the question must be asked, in what 
 particular way and by what especial machinery are 
 we to go to work as the Church of Christ ? For 
 myself, my Lord Archbishop, I shall be thankful 
 if any man or woman, belonging to any school of 
 opinion, will come to work here in any way, pro- 
 vided he or she be in heart an honest child of the 
 Church, and desire, according to light given, to 
 obey and carry out its rules and principles. But 
 when I consider the climate — not by any means so 
 dangerous to life as fear too commonly supposes, 
 yet still tropical, and needing expensive supports to 
 health, especially in the case of mothers and 
 children — when I also consider all those changes 
 and exceptional circumstances, which accompany 
 life within the tropics in the case of ordinary 
 Europeans, I cannot but regard it as a mistake to 
 suppose that India can be treated as if it were 
 
 D 9
 
 52 Indian Missions. 
 
 within the temperate zone, and as if the idea of an 
 English parish priest could be realized here in its 
 completeness. And, therefore, I cannot believe 
 that the clergy, whose work lies among the people 
 of the country, can do wis^ely in laying them- 
 selves out for family life. The home of one of our 
 married Missionaries is certainly not more than 
 furnished with those comforts which a woman and 
 a mother requires, if life in this land is not to V>e 
 a positive burden to her, and the funds of our 
 Societies are admiuistererl with strictness and care ; 
 yet, if the total sum expended is divided among 
 the men who at a given time are available for 
 service, the actual cost of a IMissionary must be 
 computed, if I do not miscalculate, at from 500Z. to 
 600/. a year. A cost such as this seems of itself to 
 point to something mistaken in the system, and, 
 to the mind of one who considers the sources of the 
 Missionary revenues, is, at all events, an insuperable 
 obstacle to any great extension of the work. The 
 cost, however, is not the only objection. The work 
 of Missions, in India pre-eminently, is a work of 
 war, and a Missionary should be in the condition of 
 a soldier, and be ready, like a certain great and 
 famous general, when he came to take the chief 
 command of our armies in India, to start at short 
 notice, and go anywhere without impediments, and 
 do what war requires. We need soldiers who have 
 no ties but those which bind them to the work of 
 the Church, and who are steeped in that spirit of 
 ready obedience, which, when it hears "go,"
 
 Indian Missions. 53 
 
 '• goeth," aud when ifc hears " come," " cometh." 
 But in the case of one who is married there are 
 other ties and obligations. Whatever his devotion, 
 a conflict of duties must often of necessity arise ; 
 and a conflict in which the work of God must give 
 way to those nearer and more imperative calls, which 
 family life by God's ordinances imposes. Thus it 
 will happen that a Missionary is compelled to retire 
 while yet his own personal powers are unenfeebled ; 
 and a knowledge of foreign languages which only 
 years and hard labour can give, combined w^ith an ex- 
 perience which is positively invaluable, must bow to 
 the exigencies of a husband's or a father's position^ 
 and to a conscience which, seeking no excuse for 
 retirement, yet cannot be regardless of duties, from 
 which once the man might have been free, but 
 which, when assumed, become strong and binding 
 on him. On the whole, therefore, from these and 
 similar considerations, I am forced to the conclusion, 
 that a new and more sacriticial element must be 
 incorporated into our Missionary system, not neces- 
 sarily as exclusive of that w^hich exists, but as 
 an addition to it. And I look to some form of 
 Missionary brotherhood as the element which we 
 need, and as the chief remedy for our acknowledged 
 shortcomings. 
 
 \Oiily in such a way can the Spirit of Sacrifice he 
 fostered.^ 
 
 I am not indifferent to the formidable host of pre- 
 judices which will arise at the mention of a brother-
 
 54 Indian Missions. 
 
 hood within the Church of England, even though 
 the sphere for its energies is India, and its work 
 abnormal. But mere prejudice at the best is weak, 
 and, when a work is to be done, a liberal age will not 
 be slow to call prejudice blind and mere conservatism 
 stolid. Let those who object show in what other way 
 such work as ours in India can be performed, and I, 
 for one, will not be slow to help in doing it along 
 with them. The truth, I suppose, really is, that the 
 abuses of the monastic system so sickened the souls 
 of men at the time of the Reformation, that not 
 content with correcting abuses and purging out cor- 
 ruption, or even with abolishing the Orders, we went 
 to the limits of the opposite extreme, and, so far at 
 any rate as body and outward system is concerned, 
 we got rid of sacrifice. I suppose, also, since, in 
 this material world, spirit can only speak through 
 sense and form and organization, that in getting rid 
 of the body we went a long way towards smothering 
 the soul , which if it could not, while spiritual life at 
 all remained, be wholly suppressed, yet for want of 
 a body has only been able to break out in fitful, 
 irregular, and eccentric ways, such as Dissent in many 
 forms furnishes, instead of manifesting itself in 
 orderly course and disciplined measure. Yet far be 
 it from me to say that monasticism, in many of its 
 most prominent features, is not daily more and more 
 becoming a thing of the past, or that, because it 
 converted and civilized our once savage European 
 ancestors, it is not unsuited to modern life, and the 
 freer march of Existing society. I do not ask for
 
 Indian Missions. 55 
 
 monks, but for men who will forsake all for Christ's 
 sake. I ask for a brotherhood of men who will turn 
 their backs once and for ever upon the world, and 
 who, seeking only Christ and His cause, will go 
 wherever the Church sends them, and do whatever 
 the Church bids them, as soldiers obey their king, 
 counting not even life dear, if they may run a course, 
 noble while it lasts, and leading them in the footsteps 
 of that Lamb whom they will follow, whithersoever 
 He goeth. 
 
 [ What tee lose and sufer from the discouragement 
 of Sacrifice.'] 
 
 And who shall say" what losses we incur as a 
 Church, or what we have in time past borne and do 
 now positively suffer, because we have not made 
 such a call upon the hearts of men, and given full 
 scope to the spirit of sacrifice 1 The mania for divi- 
 sion, nowhere so loud and uproarious as in England 
 and its offshoots, is but a portion of our penalty. 
 There are men and women, in all ranks and places 
 — and they are the flower of the community — who 
 in their souls yearn to devote themselves to Christ 
 and His Church, and who have in them a craving 
 thirst to do good, which only sacrifice can satisfy. 
 To these, men and women, the baits which allure 
 other men have no charm, and that which they seek 
 creates in ordinary men fear and aversion. To their 
 ears a voice speaks, inaudible to others, saying to 
 them, " Friend, come up higher." Their temper is
 
 56 Indian Missions. 
 
 of that finest and most pure kind which when culti- 
 vated forms a saint, lifting them far above all earthly 
 aims into that serene air which spirits breathe, and 
 which sustains angelic natures. Their "conversa- 
 tion is in Heaven." Their one aim is to mount 
 up on wings like eagles. They run and are not 
 weary. They walk towards God and do not faint. 
 And though, imperfect as they must be till clothed 
 upon with that brightness of immortality which 
 certainly awaits them, their natures may sometimes 
 lead them into flights of eccentricity, especially if 
 the Church withholds its maternal guidance, and 
 though sometimes this enthusiasm may take shapes 
 which to cooler minds seem, and perhaps are, erratic, 
 btill that which they possess is intrinsically great, 
 and the services which such as they can yield to the 
 Church are simply priceless. But how throughout 
 our past history have we treated such persons % How 
 do we often treat such persons even now ? AVe check 
 enthusiasm. We drown zeal in floods of common 
 sense. We are too prudent to cut regular channels 
 in which fervent devotion can flow. We are so 
 ashamed of mistakes, that we discourage wise ven- 
 tures. We are so carefid to be safe, that we become 
 guilty of timidity. We are stifl" and inelastic, and 
 therefore inexpansive. And thus, when God is 
 giving us visibly nothing less than the world as our 
 horizon, we scarcely look beyond the borders of the 
 four seas which hem our little island in. What, too, 
 is the consequence ? I speak not of the attracting 
 forces in Dissent which draw off rude and less edu-
 
 Indian Missions. 57 
 
 cated natures, or of Eomanism, wliich allures more 
 iuiagiDative and cultivated souls. But how do we 
 aifect those who still remain faithful to us % We 
 affect them thus, as well as in other ways. Souls 
 which were made for the world confine within them- 
 selves energies for which earth is small enough, and 
 instead of going forth like Mackenzie or Patteson, 
 to hew and pioneer a way for Christ and civilization, 
 tlii'ough dense thickets of ignorance, superstition, vice, 
 and horrible cruelties, still abounding, and thus to 
 make for themselves a name, long to be loved on 
 earth, but still more memorable in heaven, they stay 
 at home, and often either sink to mediocre inactivity, 
 (jr, perhaps, retaining vigour, stir up party strife to a 
 heat which threatens to consume the Church itself 
 ill the furnace of its own vitality. When I look from 
 tliis distant spot on the condition of the Church of 
 England at the present time, I seem to see in it a 
 liigh-pressure engine of steam working with every 
 valve closed, and likely at any moment to burst, 
 ))ecause it keeps all its heat in and does not let off 
 enough of its now abounding fervour. Never before 
 in any portion of the Church did the fire of God's 
 Spirit burn in so many hearts and in so many varied 
 forms of graces. But the Church is steaming, like 
 one of those American ships of which we sometimes 
 read, at full power and with every furnace heated to 
 whiteness, and every point of escape heavily loaded. 
 Would it not be well, I would ask your Grace, to let 
 off a little of this mighty steam, and thus at once 
 ease the Churcli at home and profit others % Some
 
 58 Indian Missions. 
 
 times the vision changes. Fire becomes water. And 
 then the life which is in the Church appears like 
 three rivers, named from three parties, for which 
 litigation has cut sharp and defined channels, squar- 
 ing by human rules subjects and thoughts which 
 only recognize the freer curves of a spiritual kind of 
 measure. In the Colonies and in the United States 
 these rivers, if they exist at all, exist but as schools, 
 because in these places life is in a state of expansion, 
 and the Church, freely dealing with its own concerns, 
 blends its discords into a harmony. But in England 
 three parties, coming down like three torrents from 
 the mountains, and finding in the narrow valley 
 where they meet barriers which they cannot pass, 
 have nothing else to do but wildly and with loud 
 tumultuous roar to dash against each other, raising 
 up on high a foam which Heaven does not love, and 
 making an angry and confused noise, heard far ofi', 
 which is a proverb and a byword among the nations. 
 And why % Chiefly for want of outlet. Give the 
 waters room, my dear Lord Archbishop, and soon 
 this deafening tumult will be hushed. Let but the 
 Church throw down those banks of insularity, which 
 have no place in a nation which now fills the earth, 
 and in a Church which boasts its Catholicity. Here 
 is a land, filled with 180 millions of dry if not thirst- 
 ing souls, which these waters, now so turbid and 
 destructive, were sent by God from heaven to irrigate. 
 Let off this surplusage, that these millions may suck 
 it all in, and give you in return harvests which will 
 fill the Church's granaries with recovered souls, and
 
 Indian Missions, 59 
 
 pour into the Church's heart, as her special reward, 
 peace — that peace which God, angry because of her 
 neglect, now withholds from her. Policy no less 
 than duty calls on you, my dear brethren of the 
 Church, to turn those arms which are now sharpened 
 for fratricidal conflict on enemies more worthy of 
 them, and on lands to which the hand of God points 
 you, as the noblest of all fields of spiritual conflict. 
 If you will do this, there will be no need of unions 
 for Church defence, or of societies for fraternal 
 prosecution. For want of such legitimate warfare 
 you are destroying yourselves rather than Satan's 
 empire. The caged eagle is now beating its wings 
 against the bars of a prison, fretting itself to death, 
 clawing at the Creeds, and tearing its own vitals out, 
 for want of proper prey. Let it but fly where its 
 instincts carry it. Soon it will scent afar ofi" the 
 carcass of that abominable and obscene idolatry, 
 whose ill savour goes up into the nostrils of creation. 
 That rather than your own flesh is the carrion on 
 which God wills that it should satiate its appetite ; 
 devouring indeed, but only that the old and corrupt 
 may disappear, and that out of peeled bones life may 
 arise, and a continent be born again by the recreative 
 will of the Omnipotent Redeemer. 
 
 [Such a Brotherhood should act in Subordination 
 to Authority in the Church.^ 
 
 As I have pointed to a Missionary brotherhood as 
 the expedient which, by giving consistency and an 
 organism to sacrifice, is to all appearance the practical
 
 6o • Lidian Missions. 
 
 remedy for that indifference and drought of men 
 which now prevails, it might appear that I am bound 
 to indicate at least the outlines of a plan, on which 
 such an order of men can both be formed and operate. 
 Yet such an order cannot be made out of a theory, 
 and can be created only by some person gifted with 
 the genius of construction, who, knowing well his 
 own age and its recjuirements, as well as the needs 
 of such great countries as India, can see ideally the 
 pattern of such a brotherhood where Moses saw the 
 tabernacle, and reduce that idea to the shape which 
 it must take in our own age from sound sense and 
 possibility. May God if he see fit raise up such an 
 one, a true Englishman and yet a true Catholic. 
 Such an one God will bring forth out of obscurity, if 
 a Missionary brotherhood be according to His will. 
 I may say, however, that the history of the Church 
 has not been written for nothing, and that the 
 records of Eoman Missions warn us, that as an order 
 may work in a spirit of opposition to Church autho- 
 rity and thus defeat its own objects, so subordination 
 to such authority as is legitimate should be the 
 guiding principle of a brotherhood. At the same 
 time, if this be kept in view, the Church has no 
 need unduly to limit its independence, much less to 
 treat it with distrust as if doubting its allegiance and 
 devotion. On the one hand let a brotherhood avoid 
 the spirit of party, and give to itself all such breadth 
 and comprehensiveness as is consistent with obedi- 
 ence, subordination, and definiteness of aim. On 
 the other, while honestly desiring only to do the
 
 Indian Missions. 6 1 
 
 Church's work and as a servant humbly to tie or 
 untie the lachet of the shoes of her glorious feet, let 
 it not become too much a part of the older order and 
 regularity of the Church's system, but cherish care- 
 fully that fire of earnestness and that dashing enthu- 
 siasm, which are the life as much of a mission as of. 
 an army, and which may still obey the reins of a cool 
 and unimpassioned judgment. 
 
 [i Brotherhood 7nay perhaps he engrafted on exisHng 
 Societies. '\ 
 
 Whether it would be possible to engraft the sys- 
 tem of a fraternity upon the oldest of our Missionary 
 Societies, which has ever acted as the willin<^ hand- 
 maid of the Church, those alone can say, who in 
 England itself can form a judgment based upon, 
 existing circumstances. It is obviously desirable, if 
 it be possible, to adapt existing machinery to new 
 demands rather than to add new kinds of agency, 
 and it is at least conceivable that, under the. in- 
 fluence of a Board of Missions representing the two 
 Convocations, the Society might be so far changed 
 and enlarged as to incorporate into itself the new 
 yet not alien eleinent of an Indian brotherhood. 
 l>at, once let the Church clearly perceive that one 
 of its chief offices is to foster, if not to form, a band 
 of men who will go wherever sent, and do whatever 
 they are commanded, the support of these men 
 being quite a secondary however important a con- 
 sideration, then other things will adjust themselves.
 
 62 Indian Missions. 
 
 taking their proper places. Let but the personal 
 difficulty be looked at in the face and in God's 
 strength be overcome. Let but the Church of 
 England recognize and adopt a scheme by which 
 persons shall be found and fashioned, as ready to 
 do her greatest work and to give themselves to the 
 cause of Christ and His Church, as those eager and 
 devoted multitudes, whom Rome so easily finds 
 ready, in this and every land, to do her bidding. 
 Once, in fact, let the Church heartily acknowledge 
 sacrifice as the spirit which it is her first duty to 
 create and embody ; then all besides will follow. 
 This rod of power will both swallow up other rods 
 and bear leaves and blossoms. Life will create for 
 itself the things which are to cherish it. Old 
 agencies will renew their life, or new agencies will 
 arise and absorb those less vital forces which will 
 vanish before them. 
 
 [TAe Nature and illimitahle Extent of tJds jxirt of 
 India as a Missionary Field.] 
 
 If I am to state how I would recommend that 
 the Church should here enter on increased work, 
 under whatever kind of agency — and such a state- 
 ment may be expected from me — it seems to me 
 that it should be our aim to occupy centres of 
 influence with bodies of Missionaries, each body 
 under a bishop ; or, .if for any reason it should 
 appear that a bishop should come in later to crown 
 a prospering work, under some kind of leader.
 
 Indian Missions, 63 
 
 The work of each, such body, thus located amid a 
 large population, should be carried on, I believe, 
 under a distinct perception of the fact that Euro- 
 peans can work here only as leaven which is 
 inserted in an immense lump, and that, as only 
 Indians can go out over the land to convert the 
 masses of India, Europeans can but expect to 
 fashion a select few, into whom they can pour the 
 light of God, that through them it may be diffused 
 generally. The actual form and pattern of their 
 work can hardly be cut out beforehand upon any 
 theory, and each locality, having its own differences 
 of circumstance, will also have its own peculiarities 
 of work. I believe, however, that such bodies, 
 settled here and there over the country, would 
 gradually find everywhere an increasing number 
 of persons ready to be infolded, and, when once 
 brought to Christ, worthy to be moulded by loving 
 hands for such work as they are capable ; while by 
 literary labours, when the language is mastered, 
 original and translational, they would sow broadcast 
 seeds of true thought, which intelligence would 
 mentally absorb, and which in due time would bear 
 fruit manyfold. A central power of this kind, so 
 vastly superior in every way to all other influence, 
 could not but take a lead in proportion as it became 
 firmly established, even if grace and the Divine 
 blessing were not with it. Blessed as it would be 
 by the reviving Spirit, it can be nothing else than 
 the power, sooner or later to reveal itself, of an 
 endless life.
 
 64 Indian Missions. 
 
 The number of such centres are practically without 
 limit. To say little of our own proper territory — 
 the Mahratti, the Guzeratti, the Cauara, the Sindh 
 regions, in three of which are several European 
 stations, each the natural seat of a Mission such as 
 I have proposed to the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel — Eajpootana consists of about tvvent}- 
 live principalities or dukedoms, each under its own 
 ruler, with powers regal and despotic, the chief of 
 them having the power of death. Each of these is a 
 natural field for a distinct mission, and in each, re- 
 moved as they are almost wholly from direct English 
 influence, idolatry in the form of prominently dis- 
 gusting filthiness lifts its unblushing head. Katti- 
 war, a large territory lying on the west of Guzerat, 
 as Eajpootana on the east, is a similar collection 
 of native principalities, and among these, too, a 
 choice is open to us. And in Guzerat itself, encased 
 within our territories, there is the very considerable 
 kingdom of the Gaekwar, with a revenue of nearly 
 a million and a half sterling, which, ruled as it is 
 by an utterly debased sovereign, is almost wholly 
 beyond English influence, and is filled with evils, 
 which, as things now are, only a mission, and that 
 a strong mission, could touch effectively and remove. 
 80 that a choice really without limit is before 
 us, and beginning where influence would be the 
 strongest, our extension would proceed according as 
 we found men.
 
 Indian Missions. 65 
 
 [Invitation given to Men and Women of Sacrifice.'] 
 
 And now I would crave your Grace's permission 
 to put forth an invitation to such men and women 
 as are fitted for the work of Missions in India, and 
 who are free to undertake that work. I have shown 
 that India must be won by the Church as India has 
 been won by the nation, — through the labours, the 
 devotion, and the lives of her children, freely given. 
 Who are there ready and willing to say to God, 
 '' Here I am, send me " ? And first let me address 
 myself to those younger members of our Universi- 
 ties whose line in life is not yet taken, and let me 
 tell them that here in India there is a course on 
 which the greatest gifts of mind may run a race, at 
 least as splendid as the world of Europe can offer, 
 and among countless millions whose resurrection to 
 a life at once intellectual and spiritual is an object 
 at which ambition itself might nobly aim. But to 
 these I will not presume to speak myself. I will 
 rather take into my mouth the words of a Missionary 
 from whom no one can withhold the tribute of a most 
 profound admh*ation, and whose intense love of souls 
 no less than his wisdom in most respects as an 
 Evangelizer, entitle him, above all men, perhaps, 
 since the days of the Apostles, to ask from men of 
 station, of culture, and of intellect, the sacrifices which 
 he himseK made with such ungrudging abnegation. 
 It was thus that Xavier addressed himself through
 
 66 Indian Missions. 
 
 his order about 330 years ago to the members of 
 his own University of Paris : "^ — 
 
 \Xavier''s Ajopeal to the Members of his own 
 
 University ?[ 
 
 •' There is now in these parts a large number of 
 persons who have only one reason for not becoming 
 Christian, and that is that there is no one to make 
 tbem Christians. It often comes into my mind to 
 go round to the Universities of Europe, crying out 
 everywhere like a madman, and saying to all the 
 learned men there, whose learning is so much greater 
 than their charity, ' Ah, what a multitude of souls is 
 through your fault shut out of heaven and falling 
 into helV Would to God that these men who 
 labour so much in gaining knowledge would give 
 as much thought to the account which they must 
 one day give to God of the use they have made of 
 their learning and of the talents entrusted to them ! 
 I am sure that many of them would be moved by 
 such considerations, would so exercise themselves in 
 fitting meditations on Divine truths, as to hear what 
 God might say to them, and then, renouncing their 
 ambitions and desires, and all the things of the 
 world, they would form themselves wholly according 
 to God's desire and choice for these. They would 
 exclaim from the bottom^of their hearts, * Lord, here 
 am I, send me whithersoever it shall please Thee, even 
 to India.' Good God, how much safer and happier 
 
 * Coleridge's "Life of St. Francis Xavier," p. 155.
 
 Indian Missions. 6'j 
 
 would they be. With what far greater confidence 
 in God's mercy would they meet their last hour, the 
 supreme trial of that terrible judgment which no 
 man can escape 1 . . . They labour night and day 
 in acquiring knowledge, and they are very diligent 
 indeed in understanding the subjects which they 
 study ; but if they would spend as much time on 
 that which is the fruit of all solid learnings and be 
 as diligent in teaching to the ignorant the things 
 necessary to salvation, they would be far better pre- 
 pared to give an account of themselves to our Lord 
 when He shall say to them, ' Give an account of thy 
 stewardship.^ .... It has come to this pass as I 
 see, that the men who are the most diligent in the 
 higher branches of study, commonly make profession 
 that they hope to gain some high post in the Church 
 by their reputation for learning, therein to be able 
 to serve our Lord and His Church. But ail the time 
 they deceive themselves miserably, for their studies 
 are far more directed to their own advantage than 
 to the common good. I declare to God that I had 
 almost made up my mind, since I could not return 
 to Europe myself, to write to the University of 
 Paris, and to show them how many thousands of 
 intidels might be made Christians without trouble, 
 if we had only men here who would seek not their 
 own advantage but the things of Jesus Christ. 
 And, therefore, dearest brothers, ^ pray ye the Lord 
 of the harvest that He send lahon,rcrs into Jdis 
 harvest^ "
 
 68 Indian Missions. 
 
 \Men of high Gifts will find in India a very noble 
 Sphere.'] 
 
 I invite persons of every grade and measure of 
 talent, for in so wide a field tliere is room for every 
 variety of labour ; but I also ask for a fair share of 
 men whom God has blessed with endowments of the 
 highest kind. And I protest against the almost 
 incredible opinion that the highest gifts are to be 
 reserved as the exclusive heritage of the Church at 
 home. Such, at any rate, was neither the precept 
 nor the practice of St. Paul, who, the farther he was 
 from head-quarters, the nearer he seemed to himself 
 to be to that work which God had given him to 
 do. I ask for some of the cream of English gifts, 
 spiritual and intellectual. I invite the Church to 
 devote to God that which costs it something. 
 Earthly rewards to such as these India can scarcely 
 promise. 
 
 [What India has to offer to devoted Souls.] 
 
 What India can give is more tempting to those 
 who are the fittest for the work which it requires : 
 service of God, the opportunity of doing that from 
 which other men shrink, literal and sensible con- 
 formity to Christ's example, great and unquestion- 
 able sacrifice. Yet not these only, but, as their 
 reward even upon earth, more of the love of Christ, 
 closer communion with the Lord whom they singly
 
 Indian Missions. 69 
 
 follow, keener and more vivid realization of His 
 Sacramental Presence, the sight of souls rescued 
 out of this naughty world that they may be saved 
 through Christ for ever. 
 
 I call, then, on brotherhoods, sisterhoods, guilds, 
 associations, and on men and women, of all ranks, 
 classes, and circumstances, to come forward and offer 
 themselves to the Church for service in India. Come 
 out, my dearest brethren and sisters, from your little 
 cliques and parties and narrow sympathies, and claim 
 for yourselves a place within a sphere wide enough 
 for the ambition of an Alexander, looking on India 
 and the continent of Asia as a dominion which prayer 
 and faith and love may win for Christ. Here is that 
 opportunity which you are seeking for the practice of 
 all those lessons of wisdom, which the Church in 
 these days of its revival has recovered for you. Do 
 you ask for room to prove your faith in Christ's 
 atoning sacrifice ? Here is the place where you may 
 show it in an indisputable manner, by giving your 
 own lives for countless millions of lost souls which 
 that atonement purchased. Do you wish to deny 
 yourselves ? Here, leaving father and mother, houses 
 and lands, and everything to which the heart clings 
 the closest, you may bear a climate which will try 
 your health and test your endurance ; and you may 
 also bear with patience an ignorance and a debase- 
 ment, accumulating through thousands of years 
 which only love itself can tolerate, and yet which 
 love will remove by that very toleration. Do you 
 wish to serve the Church, as that Body of Christ
 
 70 Indian Missions. 
 
 Himself, which you love with such a love as you can 
 give to Him only % JS^owhere does the Church need 
 you more. Nowhere is the Church weaker, l^o- 
 where has the dark shadow of a sincere yet spurious 
 spiritualism fallen thicker ; obscuring faith in Christ, 
 as come in the flesh, till faith has become compara- 
 tively impotent ; too inward to make its light shine, 
 too feeble to fight with unbelief, too much divided 
 within itself to overthrow Satan, Will you not come 
 to show what life sacrifice can infuse % Will you not 
 lift on high the standard of the Cross with all the 
 zeal of a crusader, and, in the name of Christ and 
 His Church, conquer or die for Him who " loved you 
 and gave Himself for you " % 
 
 For myself, if of myself I must speak for a moment, 
 1 cannot but be conscious that, in thus appealing to 
 others, I am asking what I have not done, and now, 
 having given what Lord Bacon has called '' pledges 
 to fortune," am even called not to do. But in the 
 history of a Church, when gifts have been lost wholly 
 or in part, a time will arise through the internal 
 working of the Spirit of God, when the sense of loss 
 becomes strong, and when some of those who feel it 
 are compelled to come forward and speak out, even 
 when checked by the thought that they will indicate 
 to others a height which themselves they cannot 
 climb. That '' heaven-kissing " peak, my dear 
 Lord Aichbishop, which L have shown to men of 
 to\vering souls, is confessedly beyond my own attain- 
 ment. It is my most humble part to point out to 
 men of sacrifice a course of glorious adventure over
 
 Indian Missions. 71 
 
 which I do not aspire to lead them, to give precepts 
 which I am unable to recommend by my own ex- 
 ample, to show my face rather than my back to noble 
 men whom I call upon to go and take a citadel, 
 when another, advancing at their head, might say 
 " Come." Yet, as I lay down that pen which too 
 long has tried your Grace's patience, I must express 
 my persuasion that the policy to which it has given 
 so imperfect an utterance is really the counsel of a 
 Divine Leader, who at this time demands of our 
 Church that she should put forth her strength, and 
 my hope that the writer, moved by the sight of the 
 unutterable misery which throngs around him, may 
 be the all-unworthy instrument through which that 
 Leader condescends to make known His sovereign 
 wiU. 
 
 Believe me, 
 
 My dear Lord Archbishop, 
 
 Your Grace's 
 
 Very faithful brother and servant in Christ, 
 
 H. A. BOMBAY. 
 
 PtJna, St-^t. 12, 1872.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CLAT, SOKS, AND TAYLOK, PRINTERS 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
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