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 OCCASIONAL PAPER 
 
 Cambribgc Ultssbn I0 §c%r, 
 
 IN CONNEXION WITH THE S. P. G. 
 
 MISSIONARY WORK IN INDIA 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. G. A. LEFROY, M.A., 
 
 OF TRINITY COLLEGE AND THE CAMBRIDGE MISSION. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 1887
 
 CAMKRIDGE MISSION, DELHI, 
 
 April 29, 1S87, 
 
 Dear Dr Westcott, 
 
 As I was leaving your house at Westminster 
 in August last year you asked me to throw into the form of an 
 occasional paper the substance of a sermon I preached in the Abbey 
 on Missionary work in India. This letter is to be an attempt to 
 comply with your request. The object I set before myself in that 
 sermon was to enable an English congregation to realise rather more 
 clearly than they usually do the conditions of our life and work out here, 
 having regard more particularly to the moral tone and atmosphere 
 of the country as a whole. And with this aim I introduced as far as 
 possible specific facts and incidents in detail. It was not without 
 some effort that I did so, but I am very deeply convinced that only 
 by such and not by any generalities — however well generalised and 
 true — can you at home gain any true conception of the state of 
 things out here in this respect. For generalities, whatever or 
 however much they may mean to any one w^ho is personally 
 acquainted with the country, mean much less, or at any rate some- 
 thing wholly different, to one who has no such personal acquaintance 
 and who therefore necessarily interprets them by the general tone 
 and standard of ideas prevailing at home, with which alone he is 
 familiar. And for two reasons in particular I long very much that you 
 all at home, who are so deeply interested — not to say yourselves 
 engaged in — our work, should have some true conception of the 
 moral tone of this country. In the first place without it you cannot 
 possibly appreciate the difficulties with which we have to contend : 
 for every day that one works in the country the conviction comes 
 home to one, I think, with greater and greater force that, behind 
 all apparent temporary or local causes of difficulty and seeming 
 failure, real and most weighty though many of these undoubtedly 
 are, there lies as the most serious difficulty of all that we encounter 
 in Mission work an intensely low moral tone, which has permeated 
 and now broods over the whole country, checking really healthy
 
 progress in well nigh every direction, and above all blunting the 
 power of conscience and the consciousness of sin to a degree of 
 which you can scarcely conceive, but which gives a terrible fulness of 
 meaning for us to the words of our Lord, ''They that are whole 
 have no need of a physician but they that are sick. I came not to 
 call the righteous but sinners to repentance." And on the other 
 hand looking away from ourselves one may I think believe that such 
 a view if truly gained would have no small value for many at home 
 in its bearing on their own work. For one of the sorest difficulties 
 surely we have to contend with is the feeling of doubt which at times 
 steals over one as to how far, in spite of all the efforts being made, 
 Christianity is really making headway and gaining ground in the 
 struggle with unbelief and sin. There have been moments I am 
 sure for all of us when it has seemed as though merely to hold its 
 ground taxed to the uttermost the power of the Church of Christ, 
 and we have scarcely realised the possibility of strong onward 
 movement and great victories of the faith. At such times if we 
 could clearly realise that however great the shortcomings, however 
 terrible the failings, there yet had been secured by the power of the 
 Cross of Christ operating so long on our land a definite advance to a 
 standpoint of public moraHty and public conscience, which really 
 differentiate the conditions of our home life to an almost in- 
 conceivable degree from the conditions of life in countries where 
 that power has not yet made itself felt, this would surely give us the 
 very spring of encouragement and hope, which we need to enable us 
 more clearly to realise the victory by which our Faith has overcome 
 the world, and to brace ourselves for larger, more self-sacrificing 
 and earnest efforts to make that victory our own. And the con- 
 viction that this is in the most intensely true sense really the case 
 has been borne in on me with ever deepening intensity during the 
 seven years I have spent here in Delhi, and it is the conviction 
 I would fain communicate to you. In its fullest force it cannot 
 probably be gained except by actual personal experience of life 
 under both conditions. It has often been said that we do not really 
 appreciate the blessings we enjoy till we lose them, and I have 
 no doubt that in the present instance just because the principle 
 of faith in all the relations of man to man, whether political, com- 
 mercial, social or family, has so deeply permeated our English life, 
 we are too often tempted to overlook its power and treat the 
 blessings which flow from its operation as matters of course. It 
 
 ^ utuc 2.
 
 5 
 
 requires however no very large experience of life in India to convince 
 one how far this is from being the case. For we stand here face 
 to face with a society where the principle sometimes so loudly 
 asserted among ourselves of leaving nothing to faith, of believing 
 only that for which we have the evidence of our own senses is^not 
 indeed absolutely adhered to, for this would mean I conceive the 
 entire dissolution of society, but still carried out with very con- 
 siderable consistency, and where the exercise of faith though not 
 wholly wanting is yet proportionately circumscribed. And for the 
 purpose of a comparison such as that I wish to institute few places 
 could be better suited than Delhi just because it has been as yet 
 singularly little affected by western influence and Christian thought. 
 For many centuries the capital of Hindoo and Mahommedan 
 empires and the seat of a high oriental civilisation, the old traditions 
 linger on with unusual tenacity and show the greatest reluctance 
 to yield before the tide of change and western influence which is 
 rising with such force over most parts of this vast Peninsula. It is 
 obvious that this very stagnation and dogged resistance to change — 
 so regretable in many ways — makes it a singularly good field for 
 comparison and for ascertaining the true and legitimate effect of the 
 principles which have for long been operative here and have been as yet 
 comparatively undisturbed in their action by alien influences. What 
 then is the characteristic of Indian life which strikes one most 
 forcibly? In the answer to this there can be but little doubt. 
 Few I suppose with any wide experience of Indian life would 
 hesitate to name as the defect which strikes one most painfully, 
 which permeates most widely through and most fatally corrupts their 
 life, the want of faith — of faith in man as man — the want of trust 
 whether of trustfulness or trustworthiness — the atmosphere of sus- 
 picion and mistrust on the one hand with their invariable correlations 
 of deceit, falsehood and untrustworthiness on the other, which so 
 broods over the land. This it is which, amongst much that is good 
 and worthy of our own imitation in Indian character, is yet so fatally 
 paramount and constitutes the most formidable obstacle in the way 
 of all attempts, whether of the government or of the missionary, to 
 raise them to a higher life. 
 
 Take their political life. It is generally admitted that, as well for 
 the strength and vigour of our own rule as for the sake of the natives 
 themselves, it is highly desirable that they should be admitted to a 
 more considerable share than they have hitherto enjoyed, both in the
 
 counsels and executive of our Indian Empire. Those of you who at 
 all follow the course of Indian affairs will know how great have been 
 the efforts recently made to bring about this desirable change, while 
 it is beheved to be one of the principal objects of the Royal 
 Commission at present sitting out here to secure still further advance 
 in this direction. But what is it which is the chiefest difficulty? 
 Without the smallest doubt the general untrustworthiness and want 
 of uprightness and strength of character in the nation at large. It is 
 hard to find even a few men, even in the highest classes, who can be 
 said to be in any really wide sense worthy of faith, of reliance and 
 trust, who can be depended upon — in the same way as you can, 
 broadly speaking, depend upon Englishmen — to adhere to truth and 
 justice, where they come it may be in conflict with their race or 
 caste prejudices. An instance which happened not verv- long ago in 
 Delhi will bring home to you, better than many generalities, the kind 
 of tone I refer to. A well-known native judge addressing his court 
 begged them not to suppose that he was there to administer justice, 
 or respect truth. " I have been put here " he said "by the English 
 authorities in this place, and what I mean to do is to keep them 
 content^ and to give such decisions as may be most agreeable to 
 them." One can imagine the effect such an address — if one could 
 conceive its being made — would have on an EngHsh court, but — and 
 this surely speaks almost more eloquently than the words of the 
 individual as to the tone of the country — they neither shocked nor 
 startled the court to which they were addressed, nor called forth any 
 protest, but were accepted as the statement of the most natural and 
 intelligible principle possible. How, I ask, can political or national 
 life live — not to say flourish— in such an atmosphere ? Take another 
 instance : an Englishman high in the Civil Service told me that a 
 
 ^ The incident was told me by a leading member of the bar here and its 
 accuracy may be entirely relied on. Nor, I venture to say, would there be any 
 inclination to doubt it amongst those most conversant with the country. At 
 any rate if such a one were to question its accuracy I have not a moment's 
 hesitation in saying that he would do so not on the ground that it was in itself 
 inherently impossible, contradictory to what we know of the tone of native society 
 and opposed to facts, but simply on the ground that, from prudential reasons and 
 from the fear that it might reach the ears of those very English authorities, it 
 is improbable that a man would make such an outrageous remark. That this 
 would be the line taken by any Anglo-Indian w^ho wished to criticise the story 
 there cannot be a doubt, and yet this surely bears less forcible witness than the 
 story itself to what I want to illustrate.
 
 short time ago a native gentleman was speaking to him about the 
 strength of EngHsh rule out here, and he said, " The secret of it is 
 the extraordinary way you hang together and back each other up. 
 In the old days the Delhi Emperor scarcely ever sent a Governor 
 into one of his more distant provinces — Behar, Bengal or the like — 
 without the feeling that in all likelihood the man would throw off his 
 allegiance, and try to establish an independent rule. And in scores 
 of cases the fear was justified by the result, and few things con- 
 tributed more to the instability and dissolution of the Empire than 
 this ; but with you it never seems even to suggest itself to the 
 Viceroy or Lieut.-Governor that they might do this." So essentially 
 is it true that this sort of thing does not even suggest itself to us, 
 that one can scarcely repress a smile at the suggestion when it does 
 reach us from another : but to the speaker what seemed extraordinary 
 was, not that such things should occur, but that they should not 
 occur. And after making fullest allowance for the changed con- 
 ditions — the centralisation of power, the improved communications 
 etc., which go so far, I suppose, to make this sort of thing impossible 
 now — one would surely not be right in overlooking that difference in 
 the moral conditions, which was what had taken most hold on the 
 mind of the speaker in this instance, and seemed to him to lie at the 
 root of the matter. Not least among the reasons which would make 
 it impossible for our Viceroy or Lieut.-Governor to distinguish them- 
 selves now in the way suggested, would be the absolute refusal of 
 the whole body of English Executive in the province to cooperate 
 with them in any way in such a step, or to do anything but oppose 
 them to the utmost of their power. But this was just what was 
 lacking under the Mahomedan rule; there was no coherency 
 because no loyalty or allegiance or faith. And if all this is changed 
 now, the change is due not less surely to moral than to physical 
 causes or administrative measures. Again, an English judge told 
 me that in a case which recently came on before him the nephew of 
 a very respectable native gentleman appeared as a witness, and gave 
 on oath evidence that turned out to be the most palpable and 
 bare-faced perjury. Meeting the uncle shortly afterwards, my friend 
 expressed to him his sorrow at having found his nephew in such 
 a position. The uncle however saw nothing to be ashamed of in the 
 matter. He pointed out that it was a party dispute between Hindus 
 and Mahomedans, that his co-religionist had demanded this service 
 of the nephew, and it would have been impossible for him to refuse
 
 8 
 
 to render it. The gentleman added, that under the same circum- 
 stances he would have had no hesitation in pursuing a similar Hne of 
 conduct. After this instance from what may be called high life it 
 will scarcely perhaps be worth quoting a somewhat similar case 
 which happened to a friend of mine from a lower social stratum. It 
 is however, I believe, a type of a case of very frequent occurrence, so 
 I will give it. A case in which he was concerned was coming on in 
 court. Shortly before it came on his cook came to him and asked 
 whether he could be of any service, i.e. give evidence on any point 
 in the matter. My friend replied with some astonishment, " No ! 
 what do you know about it ? You were not present at all when the 
 affair happened." "True, oh gracious -defender of the poor," was 
 the reply, with clasped hands and in a tone of deepest humility and 
 devotion, " but do I not eat my master's bread and salt and shall 
 I be so basely ungrateful as to hesitate to render him any service he 
 may direct?'" 
 
 Another Httle point I may mention which will perhaps appeal to 
 you rather forcibly. It is a by no means uncommon belief among 
 our poorest Christians here in Delhi (I refer to those drawn from the 
 Chumar caste, of whose history you already know something) that 
 large sums of money are sent by the charitably disposed faithful in 
 England, and intended as alms for the support of the poor Christians 
 
 ^ I cannot refrain from mentioning a point small in itself but which recently 
 came home to my own mind with tremendous force. As you know I took, 
 after 6^ years' work here, a three months' run home last year. Nothing I think 
 struck me as more remarkable, or bore clearer witness to the change to another 
 moral atmosphere, than the ordinary attitude taken towards servants, the quiet 
 natural way in which questions were asked them, the matter of course and quiet 
 acceptance of their answers. I do not refer now to any questions of special im- 
 portance or matters in which there might be supposed to be some temptation to 
 be untrue, but just to the ordinary comings and goings and petty details of the 
 home life in which it never seems to occur to one to doubt the truth of the reply. 
 And yet it is just in these little points that the difference between the two 
 countries comes so vividly out: for, out here, I am not I hope being over hard 
 on the run of Hindoo and Mahomedan servants when I say that it is the exception 
 when you get a man whose word — even in the most petty and absolutely in- 
 different matter, and where you can conceive no possible reason why he should 
 tell you anything but the truth — can be wholly relied upon. They scarcely seem 
 capable of discriminating very strictly between truth and falsehood. I cannot 
 convey to you at all a sense of the impression this experience made on me, or 
 the kind of revelation it was to me of the difference in the moral tone of the two 
 countries.
 
 9 
 
 out here, but arrested in transit and pocketed by the Missionaries. 
 These grow fat on the proceeds of their peculation, only passing on a 
 sufficient dole to the origina'ly-intended recipients to prevent an 
 actual outcry and exposure in the matter. In the same way, views 
 are held by outsiders — Hindus and Mahomedans, even of a far 
 higher class — about our work, which have got a very ludicrous side 
 but which perhaps may be thought to form a no inconsiderable part 
 of the answer to the question, why our work does not seem to 
 get on more rapidly among them and bear more fruit. A very 
 humorous instance of this came before us quite recently. Writing 
 some three years ago of Wright's attainments in the Urdu language I 
 remarked that they were still in the stage which might be described 
 as elementary. Things however have greatly changed since then, 
 and during the last few months especially the strides of progress 
 have been most rapid. Encouraged by this his Munshi (teacher 
 in the language) a short time ago thought that the time had come to 
 play a master stroke, and by still further stimulating the zeal of his 
 pupil secure results which could not but reflect with credit on the 
 master. He therefore reminded him one day in strict privacy, that 
 Mr Allnutt's furlough was strictly coming on; and that when he 
 went the college principalship would be vacant. He further added 
 that he had heard Mr Lefroy, though next in the running, was not 
 very keen about it; and then urged Wright to brace up all his 
 energies and see if he could not, by unremitting industry during the 
 next few months, carry it off over my head. The idea of Wright 
 making the running in the dark, with the intention of coming with a 
 rush at the end and beating me on the post, was one that tickled us 
 immensely. The belief is widespread that the College work 
 especially carries with it high emoluments; and that, whether 
 employed in that department or elsewhere, we are rapidly amassing 
 large sums of money is a fact that no sane man would question 
 for an instant. 
 
 I cannot do better I think than quote in conclusion a paragraph 
 bearing on this subject which recently appeared in our Indian 
 Times, the "Pioneer." That paper — whatever its faults may be — 
 will certainly not be suspected of looking at things from a too 
 exclusively Christian stand-point, or being narrowed in its judgement 
 of the natives by any very strict religious views, though I am 
 indeed thankful to recognise the change that has most noticeably 
 come over its tone since the editorship changed hands not very long
 
 lO 
 
 ago. The position he takes is exactly the one I want to occupy, 
 viz. — not that bribery, corruption, disloyalty and the like are unknown 
 in England, or are confined to India — but most emphatically that the 
 standard of public morality as a whole on such points is in the two 
 countries absolutely and infinitely different. 
 
 " Bribery is peculiar to no creed or country ; and England, who 
 has seen one of her greatest geniuses ending his venal life in dis- 
 honoured old age, has had no immunity in the past. But the latest 
 case of conspicuous bribery brought to light in India displays 
 features that mark the corruption of the East as something altogether 
 different — in class as in degree — from the judicial abuses of the 
 West. Mahomed Yusuf Saib, late temporary Deputy Collector and 
 Magistrate of Coconada, has been convicted of taking bribes ; and the 
 evidence showed, first, that he took bribes from both prosecutor and 
 defendant in the same case ; secondly, that prosecutor, defendant, 
 and a third party were all present when the larger bribe was given ; 
 and thirdly, that the lawyers on both sides were told that the bribe 
 was going to be given, and were duly informed when it had been 
 given. There is something generous about broadly planned venality 
 like this, which defies secrecy altogether. It would only require the 
 publication by the parties in the Governmental Gazette of each 
 such transaction satisfactorily completed to make the system perfect 
 and irreproachable." 
 
 Let me turn for a moment to their commercial life. What is 
 it which so contracts the limits of native enterprise, and so hinders 
 the development of those resources which the country undoubtedly 
 possesses, but the development of which is confined at present 
 almost wholly to EngUsh capital and English energy? There are, 
 I believe, two chief causes. On the one hand, while the actual 
 wealth of the country has, it can scarcely be doubted, considerably 
 increased, the sense of pubHc credit — the kind of trust, which is 
 an absolute condition of all commercial enterprise and all banking 
 operations — is almost wholly lacking ; and the money is accordingly 
 hoarded away in the earth, and only borne witness to by the profuse 
 masses of gold and silver jewellery which load their women on all 
 great occasions. A recent writer in India estimates the amount of 
 bullion, which during the last forty years has entered the country and 
 been disposed of in the above manner, leaving scarcely a trace 
 of itself in the quarters where one would" be certain to find it in
 
 I J 
 
 England, at about 350 millions sterling'. And similar in kind is the 
 other chief cause which so limits the development of the trade 
 and resources of the country. So deeply does the spirit of distrust 
 pervade the commercial classes that all enterprise involving the 
 cooperation of others is shrunk from, and even that partnership 
 in business so universal, so essential among ourselves, is with rare 
 exceptions unknown to them, and in fact scarcely possible. A man 
 can trust only himself. He would never believe that his partner 
 if really left to himself would act honestly, or give him his true share 
 of the profits ; consequently almost every business is owned by 
 one man, or at most by two or more brothers. How this fetters the 
 development of trade, how impossible it makes undertakings on any 
 large scale, you can readily imagine. 
 
 I will only allude most shortly to the outcome in the sphere of 
 social and family life of this principle I have been trying to trace, 
 this want of mutual trust and faith. You know I am sure the feature 
 of social life out here which, to one accustomed to English life, strikes 
 one at once most forcibly and most painfully. I refer of course to 
 the seclusion of women, their entire absence from all society of men. 
 And to what is this due, to what does it testify? to what but an utter 
 want of faith ? — of faith in the purity of their women, of faith in the 
 honour of their men — and to the necessary effect which such an utter 
 want of faith must inevitably have on the relation of the sexes and 
 on the whole constitution of society. And it is not social life only in 
 its best and most elevating aspect which is thus destroyed, but family 
 life as well. I will not disgust you with the rules which a morality, 
 which is above all else ignoble and wanting in trust, has introduced 
 even into the innermost relations of the family, so that an elder 
 brother may not so much as speak to his younger brother's wife and 
 the like: but I leave it to you to say how much of the purity and 
 beauty and deep trust and love of our own English homes could 
 have originated in, or could long survive, such an atmosphere". 1 
 
 1 India Revisited, by G. Smith, M.P., p. 19, publ. Wm. Isbister, 1886. 
 This little pamphlet {is. I think) would be worth reading by anyone who wants 
 to see the programme of the more advanced reform party in India stated with 
 quietness and moderation. It was originally published in an article in the 
 Contemporary Rcvieio. 
 
 2 I may refer shortly — the subject docs not admit of treatment at much 
 length — to the fearfully low moral tone which in other ways also broods over 
 the country. That the most awful coarseness, immorality and impurity are
 
 have nothing I think to add. An almost entire absence of faith as 
 a principle of life — a low degraded moral tone — a blunted conscious- 
 ness of sin which leaves the individual scarcely capable of shame or 
 honest repentance in any way, except a very intense desire to escape 
 punishment — these are some of the prominent conditions of the 
 life amidst which our lot has been thrown : and these, when they 
 have sunk through long centuries into the very blood of the people 
 and sapped their life, will make us scarcely wonder if results of 
 missionary labour do not make themselves seen as immediately or 
 as abundantly as we might wish. Three words in conclusion and 
 I have done. 
 
 far from unknown to English life one is compelled too sadly to admit: but even 
 here, as in the case of bribery and corruption, I do claim that the general 
 standard of the public conscience on the matter in the two countries is absolutely 
 different. Take this in proof. The standard Persian work, the classic with 
 which the education of almost every school-boy commences, and an intimate 
 acquaintance with which is expected from every native gentleman calling himself 
 in any degree educated, is the Gulistan of Sadi. Natives, Mahomedans especially, 
 can never tire themselves in praise of its beauty, the purity of its style, etc. 
 It consists of a great number of short anecdotes arrayed under certain heads, 
 as "Government," "Education," "Love and Youth," and the like. And yet 
 the moral tone of this much lauded book may be judged from the fact that a 
 laf'ge number of the stories are simply untranslateable into English and are 
 omitted altogether in any English version ; and this not on account of any mere 
 coarseness of expression etc., such as one is familiar with even in the case of 
 a Shakespeare, but because the whole point of the story turns on some of the 
 most degrading sins known to man. I have just been reading the original and 
 so speak of what I know. And this is the text-book put, in all indigenous 
 schools, in an absolutely unexpurgated form into the hands of every boy at the 
 age of lo or ii. Urdu English Dictionaries bear only too painful evidence to 
 the same fact. One has recently been published in Delhi whose pages are 
 stained not here or there, but everywhere, by a grossness such as you could 
 scarcely believe possible: and yet in a certain sense there is no question that the 
 author makes out his case when he pleads in self extenuation that any dictionary 
 which excluded such would fail absolutely to be a faithful mirror of the life, 
 thoughts, and languages of the people of the land. 
 
 One more point, almost too unnatural and painful to English ears to be 
 mentioned. Our own schoolboys tell us that some of the foulest thoughts and 
 language they have learnt has been learnt at their mother's knee; the young 
 mothers often delighting to get their young children and pit them against each 
 other, — contests of obscenity and vile abuse. Startling revelations on this subject 
 come out from time to time from the pen of native gentlemen, who are beginning 
 to realise by the contact with Englishmen at once what home life 77iay be and 
 what their home life too often is. But I have said enough. I hope not too 
 much.
 
 I. 1 do not claim, I should be most loth that you should think 
 I do claim, to have given a complete or exhaustive description of 
 Indian life. From other points of view accounts might be written, 
 and written with every bit as much truth, which would present to 
 you the picture of a people with much that is good, much that is 
 attractive, not a little perhaps that would be worthy of our own 
 imitation, in their character and life. Even on the side to which I 
 have confined myself I have no doubt that others, approaching it 
 from a different standpoint, would be able to adduce instances and 
 show facts which would seem to point to a conclusion different from 
 the one I have arrived at, and to which due weight ought doubtless to 
 be given if we wish to attain exact conclusions. But w^hat I do claim 
 is that to Indian life there is, to say the least of it, a very dark side 
 — a side infinitely darker, both in intensity and especially in wide 
 extent, than any parallel that could be adduced from home — and 
 that side I have tried to bring out, believing deeply that on that 
 side at any rate I have in no way exaggerated the evil or drawn the 
 picture in too dark colours. 
 
 Secondly, and this is for us out here rather than for you, the 
 presence of such evils should rather nerve than dishearten us in our 
 work, and we should see in them the sure pledges of the victories 
 which await our Faith. How great the strain in this respect is, I 
 doubt whether you can at all adequately realise. To have to live in 
 a country where you can in the full sense of the word trust scarcely 
 any one, or no one at all : where nine-tenths of religious enquirers 
 end their visit with a request for pecuniary help for the instruction 
 in the English language, or for a recommendation to some official 
 post : where nine-tenths of the servants, or considerably more, seem 
 absolutely incapable of giving you a simple straight answer to the 
 most ordinary indifferent question : where even in contact with the 
 higher social classes you have to ask yourself with reference to almost 
 every remark what the real animus and ultimate bearing of it is : — 
 this constitutes a strain on one's own moral tone about the most 
 severe I can conceive, and one to which it is not wonderful if at 
 times not missionaries only among the Englishmen employed in this 
 land in some measure succumb, and allow themselves to follow lines of 
 action which would have been impossible at home. And at times, as 
 the realization of it is borne in with special vividness, one is almost 
 tempted to despair and throw up the whole work in disgust, believing 
 it to be impossible ever to get a hold on a people who seem so to
 
 14 
 
 have lost the very primary conditions of morality. And yet would 
 there not be more reason to despair, at any rate to think that one 
 had no work to do amongst them of importance suflficient to detain 
 one far from home and friends, if it were not so ? If from England, 
 with its long centuries of Christian discipline, we came to this land to 
 find a standard of public moraUty and good faith and a public con- 
 science very much the same in all main respects to that we had left 
 behind, could we possibly avoid the conclusion that there was i^o 
 need for any special exertions on our part, that their own faith or 
 civilization or what not could impart to them practically all we had 
 ourselves to give, and therefore that the sooner we got home again 
 the better ? But when one sees how fearfully the long centuries of 
 training this country has undergone \\2i\t failed to raise it to anything 
 of a higher life, nay have seemed rather to sink it even lower and 
 lower — with public purity, faith and uprightness, surviving only as 
 dreams or as names in ancient literature — then surely we must feel 
 that we have what they have not, and that in duty to our Lord we 
 must communicate to them the spring and principle of all that is 
 lasting and true and pure in our own English life. 
 
 And lastly, what by the very nature of the case can so meet their 
 need as the Revelation of the God man ? They have lost faith in 
 man as man because they have lost faith in God the creator and 
 original of man, the One in whose image man was created, and 
 whose Holiness, Purity and Truth at once assure us of the reality 
 of these, and constitute the everlasting guarantee that man, corrupted, 
 imperfect, unworthy as he so often is, has yet another possibility 
 open to him, a higher, a truer, a more congenial nature to which he 
 is truly heir — and how is that faith to be received but by their eyes 
 being opened to behold the Word " who was made flesh and dwelt 
 among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten 
 of the Father) full of grace and truth?" Through touch with that^ 
 perfectly human life they can be led, as in no other way, to the 
 perfectly divine life in all its fulness of Grace and Truth. O do 
 pray for us that the Divine life may so flow in our veins and so shine 
 in our lives that we may be permitted to hasten the day of His 
 coming — the day of that coming when the earth shall be full of the 
 knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the seas. 
 
 G. A. LEFROY. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED HY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
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