Libris THE CANADIAN PRESENTED TO THE CANADIAN SCHOOL OF MISSIONS with the COMHJME1TTS OF DR. J. LOVELL HURRAY FRQM-THE- LIBRARY-OF TR1NITYCOLLEGETORONTO * ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA SOME IMPRESSIONS FROM A RECENT VISIT. BY THE RIGHT REV. ALFRED BARRY, D. D., D.C.L., CANON OF WINDSOR, FORMERLY PRIMATE OF AUSTRALIA. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. LONDON: ^_- SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, w.c. ; 43 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, B.C. BRIGHTON: 129 NORTH STREET. NEW YORK: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 1895 DEC 1 f 1987 PREFACE. A CONSIDERABLE portion of the contents of this volume was originally written for the Guardian, and is here reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors and editor of that paper. But the whole has been re written, and very greatly enlarged. It will be, of course, understood that it makes no claim to originality or authority ; jipjijdoes it attempt any judgment whatever as to the various ways in which our Mission to India is now being discharged, more thought fully and more earnestly than ever. It is ^written simply for the information of Church men at home, who have little knowledge of the actual facts and opportunities, past and present, and who accordingly fail to realize the critical importance and urgency of the problem before us, which a short visit to India impressed on my own mind, as it had never been impressed before. I have tried A 2 4 PREFACE. to make it, as far as it goes, an accurate presentation of the subject ; but I write under correction from those who have fuller know ledge. My one object is to bring home to Church men generally, so far as I may, a stronger sense of the extraordinary greatness of our Mission, and of the universal duty and responsibility, which it lays upon us all. If it should stir any readers to serious thought and inquiry on these important subjects if it should in any degree help to increase the encouragement and support, given from home to those who are labouring in the singularly arduous work of our Church in India it will be to me a cause of the deepest thankfulness. Never did the old motto of the S. P. G. " Come over and help us"- address itself more emphatically to the Church of England, than in the cry which comes to us on behalf of the two hundred and eighty millions of our Indian Empire, committed under God s Providence to our charge. ALFRED BARRY. THE CLOISTERS, WINDSOR CASTLE. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. IMPRESSIONS OF INDIAN LIFE . . . . 7 II. THE ADVANCE OF MATERIAL CIVILIZATION . 36 III. THE ADVANCE OF INTELLECTUAL CIVILIZATION 54 IV. THE ADVANCE OF MORAL CIVILIZATION . , 83 V. THE ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION THE ATTITUDE OF THE CIVIL POWER . 114 VI. THE ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION THE WORK OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST . 136 VII. THE ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 170 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA. CHAPTER I. IMPRESSIONS OF INDIAN LIFE. The conditions of our Mission to India. The pervading English influence in the cities and in the villages. The infinite variety of race and character and civili zation in the native races, and the corresponding variety of religions. The educated minority and the uneducated mass of the people ; tendency to ag nosticism in the former, and the strong hold of native religions on the latter. The responsibility and the glory of our Indian Empire. IN these pages I can only attempt to give some brief account of the impressions derived during a recent tour of about three months in Southern and Northern India, beginning 8 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA at Colombo and extending as far as Delhi partly from what I myself saw, and partly from what I learnt from the larger knowledge and experience of others. It is especially to the religious Mission of England to India that I desire to call attention. But this cannot be dissociated from the material, intellectual, social, and moral effects, which our Empire is working on the vast and varied population under its rule. Not without some fear of presumption do I venture to speak at all from brief acquaint ance on such a subject, knowing that I must inevitably glance at questions of singular complexity and difficulty, as of singular in terest and importance. One of our leading Indian Bishops said to me that, after many years of study and labour, he was more sensible every day of the imperfection of his own knowledge of all the conditions of the problem, which presents itself to all who are working, thoughtfully as well as earnestly, for the Christianization of India. The con fession was but an exemplification of the general truth, that the growing knowledge of the expert always discloses to him the ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 9 extent of his ignorance ; because, as has been well said, every expansion of the bright circle of knowledge increases the number of the points, in which it touches the dark ness of the unknown. He is led naturally and rightly to deprecate the formation of hasty and sweeping conclusions on so diffi cult a matter. But at the same time there may be some value in what from this point of view may be called "lay opinion," if only it be fairly intelli gent and sympathetic. Some things there are which a fresh eye can see, just because it has not pored too long upon the thing con templated ; some elements of a picture, which are more truly appreciated by those who stand at some distance from it, than by those who are at work upon it every day, and know it in every line of detail. Such opinion must, of course, express itself modestly and under correction. Yet, under right conditions, it may have something to say imperfect, of course, but true as far as it goes to those who are as yet unacquainted with the subject, and who desire simply to gain some general conception of its leading outlines. 10 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA It may also have some advantage in respect of the one object, which I have in view. That object is to bring home more strongly to Churchmen in general a sense of their privilege and responsibility, in respect of the extraordinary Mission to India, laid upon England by the Providence of God. Perhaps there may be some force in a plea oa this great subject, from one who is not engaged in carrying it out, and therefore tempted to exaggerate its importance, but on whom its true character has been by some recent experience very strongly impressed. As in respect of our Empire, so in relation to the extension of our Church, it would be well, if we were more frequently able to see with our own eyes what Gocl has wrought, and so to realize more vividly our own vocation to " fellow working with Him." Only on these grounds do I ask the attention of my readers to this brief sketch of our Mis sion in India, in general and in special relation to the work of our own Church. To one who tries to estimate the character of this Mission, and the extent to which it ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA II is being discharged, especially in its Christian aspect, there is something singularly instruc tive in the vivid impressions made by the slightest personal experience of Indian life. It becomes clear to him that in many judg ments and expectations as to the progress of Christianity in India, there is, to say the least, a most inadequate idea of the conditions under which that progress has to be made. Perhaps this is not surprising. For, in spite of all that one can have heard or read on the subject, the first sight of Indian life comes upon the mind as a new revelation of the extraordinary opportunities, difficulties, re sponsibilities, imposed upon our English civilization and Christianity by the possession of an Empire, certainly unique in the history of the world. (I) As soon as we set foot on Indian soil, we seem to pass into a wholly new and wonderful world. There is indeed something singularly impressive in the luxuriant splendour of tro pical vegetation, the brightness and variety of local colour, the new forms of architecture and adornment, the strangeness of all the conditions of outward life. But the one I 2 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA thing, which strikes us beyond all else in most significant impressiveness, is the presence of a swarming population, not only " in num bers numberless," but in an almost bewildering variety of race and colour, through which a mere handful of white men numbering certainly not more than one in two thousand- move in unquestioned supremacy, and in different degrees dominate and leaven the whole of this vast heterogeneous mass of human life. The very sight enables us to realize vividly all that we have learnt ; first of that diversity of race, language, character, creed, in our two hundred and eighty millions of subjects 1 , which alone makes our rule possible ; and next, of the extraordinary con fidence, which that multitude places in the superior strength and knowledge and power of government of the English race. We Englishmen are, I fear, not generally popular ; we are too much separated from the 1 In 1891 the population of British India was 218,155,115, of Feudatory India 63,459,819, of the French and Portuguese possessions 844,307, making a total of 282,459,241. The gross increase since 1881 was 27,916,944. The European population was only 110,504. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 13 natives, partly by our own tendency to super ciliousness and want of sympathy, partly by the barrier of caste-jealousy on the other side ; but we are certainly trusted with an implicit and almost pathetic trustfulness. A young Englishman put in authority, whether of office or even of superintendence over some public work, practically rules over a crowd of native subjects. Those who are under him come to him for decision of ques tions, not merely of their actual duty, but of their domestic and social life, and accept what decision he manages to give to the best of his light, with a respect and obedience often rather overpowering to the giver. What ever the Sahib says is to be done. At times this obedience is carried to excess : as when a native official at a level railway crossing allowed an English carriage to cross in face of an approaching train, because, as he said, though he knew the danger, " the Sahib wanted to go on, and who am I, that 1 should stand against his will?" But upon that implicit obedience our rule depends, and Lord Macaulay s old saying is perfectly true, that it is yielded, not so much from fear of 14 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA what a Sahib may do, although his doings are to the native mind incalculable, but in the belief that somehow he will try to do what is true and right, and that, whatever his defects may be, it is only from him that any measure of fair justice and honesty can be hoped for. It is a significant thing that, when a native is raised to the dignity of a Judgeship in the Supreme Court, it is apt to be noted as remarkable, if he com mands, as fully as his English colleagues, the confidence of his countrymen. And this trust (be it remarked), is placed in us by races not savage and apathetic, but intelligent and enterprising, inheritors in many cases of a civilization older than our own. It is given, not only to the English Government, but, unless it is forfeited by weakness or wrong-doing, to individual Englishmen. That it places in our hands a vast power for good and evil, and brings with it an almost immeasurable responsibility for the welfare and happiness of those who thus commit themselves to our charge, is obvious to all who hear of it. But all this, as I have said, comes home to us afresh, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 15 when the living evidence of it is before our eyes. As we go on, moreover, through the country, this conviction grows upon us more strongly at every step. We land generally at one of the great English cities. At Bombay or Calcutta, and (perhaps in less degree) at Madras, although still the Europeans are but few among many, yet their influence is patent as well as dominant. In the European quarter with its magnificent buildings, its large and often splendid shops, its English names and titles which meet the eye every where, the English shipping in the harbour, and the English gardens and cricket and football grounds we might for a moment fancy ourselves on the other side of the world, only noticing that everything has about it an unusual largeness of scale. When, however, we pass on to the older cities such as Trichinopoly or Tanjore or Madura in the south, and Delhi or Agra in the north we are struck at once with the almost exclusive prominence of native life, in many points apparently unchanged, except as enjoying greater prosperity and security, 1 6 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA from what it was in the ages before the English flag waved on Indian soil. The " dominant race" appears but here and there ; it seems lost in the exuberance of that native life, just as the little English church is lost under the overshadowing magnificence of some vast Hindoo temple or Mohammedan mosque. But yet it is dominant still, and its almost unseen influence pervades the whole. Even when, as at Jeypore or Hyderabad, we see in the capitals of independent native princes the strange richness and picturesque- ness of a still more purely native life, yet, although it effaces itself (so to speak) to outward observation, the ruling English in fluence directs everything. Its Resident, with his small gathering of attendants and officers, is the moving and controlling spirit ; and the more intelligent and enlightened of the native princes take pleasure in introduc ing often in greater completeness, because from a treasury which has no fear of Parlia ment before its eyes the finest products of English civilization l . Everywhere accord- 1 At Jeypore, for example, there are splendid public gardens zoological as well as botanical and in these a ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 7 ingly there grows upon us a sense not only of the reality, but of the vastness, com plexity, and difficulty of our English power, hardly to be appreciated by those who have acquaintance only with Western institutions and character. But yet this is not all. It should always be remembered, although to our experience it is infinitely strange, that the village popula tion constitutes the real " people of India. More than ninety per cent, of the whole people are found in villages, or small towns hardly greater than villages l . Each village lies apart a little nest of houses under its group of palm trees and bananas, with some hundreds of acres around it for cultivation of rice or other grain, and a tank or stream, on which it depends for its chief necessary of magnificent museum, admirably classified and made to illustrate various ages and various countries. 1 In 1891, out of a population of over 282,000,000, there were less than 14,000,000 of people in the 222 towns, having a population of 20,000 or more, in India (including the Feudatory kingdoms). See Sir W. Hunter s Indian Empire, pp. 780-783. The census returns" show that about 200 millions in British India alone are engaged in agriculture or other work on the land. B i8 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA life. Invariably it has as its centre some rude temple, except where in the compara tively few Christian villages an equally rude church takes its place. In spite of the unifying influence of the railways which are exfr nsively used by the poorer classes in India, both for communication between village and village, and, though in less degree, between the villages and the great centres of population each of these little village communities lives a life very much self-contained, and in many points unaffected by modern change. Still, as of old, its very occupations are hereditary, and it has its grades of unquestioned rank. Very wisely the Central Government leaves it much of internal independence, rules it lightly, and deals with it through its own head-man. Except for the enjoyment of the Pax Britannica, its whole life seems to be handed down substantially unchanged from generations of a dim and distant past. But this is not really so ; even in these remote villages the English influence is at work. One plain sign of that influence is the ex istence everywhere of the school, aided, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 9 inspected, and tested from head-quarters ; everywhere the central authority, however distant, is reverenced and obeyed ; in many cases, even in heathen villages, the English missionary is respected and welcomed ; and slowly but surely, through these combined influences, there is, in spite of appearances, a gradual progress towards higher conditions of life, with a profound belief in English authority and leadership. Thus even in these sequestered villages, which few who travel through the country see, and which yet are the homes of the great mass of the people where, if anywhere, that mass has to be leavened by civilization and Christianity- even here there is essentially the same combination as in the great cities, of the exuberant native life, and the pervading in fluence of a few English minds and wills. (II) The slightest acquaintance thus gained with the real condition of the people brings home to us at once what people in England often fail to understand the extraordinary variety of race, of character, and of civiliza tion with which we have to do. It is true that, as Sir Monier Williams tells us, " The B 2 2O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA bulk of the population is still Hindu, and the moral influence of the Indo-Aryan race is still paramount." But there is an infinite diversity of race and character. There is the pure Aryan race ; there are non-Aryan tribes representing an earlier race of in habitants ; there is the vast mixed population of Aryan and non-Aryan elements, which largely increases at every census ; there is the great body of the Mohammedans, strong especially in Northern India 1 . The lan guages spoken are at least two hundred 2 , 1 Sir William Hunter gives for the census of 1881 the following estimate : (a) the pure Aryan race (the Brah- mans and Rajputs), about 16 millions for British India and 2 1 millions for all India ; (&) the mixed population of Christians, low caste Hindus, and aboriginal tribes, 138 millions for British India and 184 millions for all India; (c) the Mohammedans, 45 millions for British India and 50 millions for all India (see The Indian Empire, p. 89). The proportion has probably not greatly changed in the census of 1891. 2 In 1887 no less than 142 non- Aryan languages were tabulated, spoken by some 50 millions of people. Sir Monier Williams enumerates eight chief Aryan languages Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujerati, Panjabi, Kasmiri, Sindi, Oriya as spoken by nearly 200 millions of people. (Hinduism, S. P. C. K., pp. 7, 8.) ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2 I varying from comparatively rude dialects to languages of the highest type, rich in a national literature of many generations. The races, who speak these many languages, vary similarly in degree of civilization. Some those especially who are held to be abori ginal have hardly risen above a simple and half-barbaric condition of society. Others have inherited civilizations far older than ours, from the height of which they some times profess to look down upon the newer growths of the West. Nor is there less diversity of character between (for example) the unwarlike tribes of South India, and the vigorous races of the North-West between the acute and supple Bengali, and the stronger and simpler Sikh or Mohammedan. Singularly complex again is the array of the religions of India from the mere devil- worship of the ruder tribes to the three great organized systems of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, which claim a high place in the religions of the world, and have their sacred literatures, their philosophic theologies, and their elaborate customs and ordinances and rituals. Among these Christi- 22 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA anity, although (as we shall see) of ancient origin in India, seems to occupy only an insignificant place : for of professed adherents it has as yet but one in a hundred of the whole population. But in this respect like the English power itself it is a living and aggressive force ; it acts as a leaven gradually diffusing its waves of influence through the whole mass. With it, if with any religion, lies, by the confession of all, the destiny of the future. But how shall it best grow ? In face of the bewildering variety of the elements, with which we have to do, our main strength must, no doubt, be in sim plicity simplicity of policy, simplicity of character and action, simplicity of faith ; we must know our own minds, and have the courage of our opinions. Nowhere is the principle of Solvitur ambit lando more apt to cut the Gordian knot of what seems specu- latively hopeless ; nowhere does the Divine command to go forward more often open a way through the sea of difficulty. But it is also clear that this simplicity must be that which comes, not from ignorance or reck lessness, but from a large and thoughtful ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 23 knowledge of all the conditions of the pro blems, which we have to solve, of the many forces, which we have to resist, and of the still more numerous and important forces, which we have to use and direct. The union of these two requisites is difficult ; to the world it may seem impossible. But happily in all Christian ages the Apostolic experience is verified that " the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (Ill) The same acquaintance with the actual life of the great mass of the people teaches us another lesson, hard for the English mind to realize. It is that the educated class of natives, who declaim at the National Congress, and express themselves so vehemently in the vernacular press, are but a small fraction of the population an oligarchy, partly of culture, and partly of caste and are, moreover, most imperfectly representative of the ideas and needs of the Indian people, for whom they claim to speak. In spite of the remarkable efforts which have been earnestly and success fully made in the cause of education, by the foundation of schools, colleges, universities, 24 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA the fact remains that less than one-seventh of the population are as yet possessed of the most rudimentary knowledge *. There will be, I cannot doubt, a great advance in this respect in the next generation : even in the remotest village the boys, at any rate, are learning to read and write and cipher, and, although still very much behindhand, we are making some progress towards the develop ment of female education. But, as yet, the great mass of the people, especially in the villages, remain (so to speak) dumb and unawakened from the quiet and somewhat torpid narrowness of an uneducated life. They know nothing of what we are apt to 1 In British India, out of 112,295,457 males, there were under instruction 2,593,887, and not under instruction but "literate" (i.e. able to read and write) 9,903,664; out of 108,404,653 females, 162,248 under instruction, and 447,924 literate. This gives on the whole about eleven in 100 males, and little more than one in 200 females. The proportion is considerably larger in the Hindu than in the Mohammedan population. Among the Christian population there is an extraordinary rise of the educational standard. Of the males thirty-six per cent., of the females nearly seventeen per cent., are under instruction or literate. The proportion is exceeded only in the small and higher-class population of Parsis and Jews. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 25 suppose to be national aspirations, and if they did know anything about them, they would care very little for them. Their needs are material and social, rather than political. Nor do they, it is believed, generally recog nise their educated fellows as their true leaders and champions. With all its mis takes and defects, the English Government has and they know that it has a better and a more sympathetic understanding of their real wants arid interests. They feel it to be a far truer guardian of their real wel fare -than those who profess to be their representatives, and who in their name heap upon the supreme authority an unmeasured abuse, which under no government but our own would be tolerated for a moment. (IV) This same fact bears, moreover, very strongly on a right estimate of the religious condition of the Indian people. We in England are apt to suppose that the old religions have almost entirely lost their hold upon the native mind. Of the educated class this is to a great extent true. European science and literature have necessarily ex ploded much with which faith in Hinduism is 26 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA closely bound up ; by the spirit of hopefulness and enterprise which they create, they tend to dissipate the Pessimism and despondent Agnosticism of Buddhism ; they have told, though probably with less effective power, on the narrowness and sterile bareness of Mo hammedanism. The result, in the younger generation now growing up, is undoubtedly this, that the great majority of those who fill our colleges and universities even if they retain their old profession of religion, and submit, sometimes after ineffectual struggle, to the iron constraint of caste are being reduced to a condition of virtual Agnos ticism, or are inclining to a vague belief, Deistic or Pantheistic, in some Supreme Power, as underlying the old idolatrous sys tem in which they were brought up, or are being influenced by Christian ideas and Christian morality, although they do not dream of embracing the Christian faith. To the reality of this result there is an all but universal testimony, and it is a result on which no thoughtful man can look without a mixture of hope and dissatisfaction, and without grave anxiety. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 27 But, as has been already said, the educated class, although absolutely considerable, is comparatively small. Over the mass of the population the old religions still exercise a strong vitality of power ; they influence every action of daily life, and regulate all the details of social organization. As Bishop Caldwell most truly says 1 , there is a marked religiousness of character about the Indian mind. Under the visible idolatry of various deities, we constantly trace a vague but effective conception of some one Supreme Power, in which men " live and move and have their being." The principle of what Max Mtiller has called " Henotheism" in the Vedic system, through which each god, Indra or Agni or Varuna, represents at the moment to the worshipper the whole essence of God head, is found by a little inquiry to pervade insensibly the whole mind of the Indian villager. I well remember hearing it ex- 1 In his Relation of Christianity to Hinduism, where he traces a " Divine Element struggling with what is earthly and evil " in Hinduism, "in the religiousness the habit of seeing God in everything which has formed so marked a characteristic of the people of India during every period of their history." 28 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA pressed in a very simple and secluded village in the Sunderbims near Calcutta. " Yes/ they said to the missionary, " it is One God everywhere, and He gives us all things." The time, no doubt, must come when, in religious as in civil matters, the mass of the native people will follow in the steps of those who are their natural leaders, and when ac cordingly the religions, which the educated classes are learning to put aside, will gradu ally lose their hold upon the Indian mind in general. But certainly it has not yet come. The strength of this religious spirit manifests itself in many ways, for evil as well as for good. From time to time, as we have but lately seen, it breaks out in some burst of religious fanaticism and religious conflict, which shows the world what those expe rienced in authority know full well how much discrimination and caution are necessary for the maintenance of authority and the pre servation of the public peace. From our own religious point of view, if it is more hopeful than a dull apathetic Agnosticism, and if it may be, as it should be, a preparation for a higher and more definite faith, yet it ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 29 obviously generates something more than negative antagonism to Christian progress. To say nothing of the silent and yet tena cious power of the superstitions of the lower races, lingering too often under the surface even after conversion to Christianity, no one who has his eyes open can doubt the vitality of the two great religions of India. Let a man only visit the ghats of Benares or the vast temples of Southern India, as at Shi- ringham or Madura or Tanjore inhabited as they are by thousands of Brahmins attached to their service, and thronged by tens or hundreds of thousands of devotees ; let him note the infinity of labour and treasure lavished upon them, and the idols, which are supposed to hallow them ; let him watch the worship which goes on continually in the temple precincts and on the edge of the sacred river. He cannot but be impressed, and that vividly and painfully, with a sense of the strong hold, which the complex and heterogeneous system, called vaguely Hindu ism, still has upon the minds and lives of some two-thirds of the population. Let him again enter the great mosque of Delhi on a Friday 3O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA at the hour of prayer, and watch the simple and fervent devotion of thousands of wor shippers ; or for this is perhaps even more striking observe how the solitary Moslem at the road-side or on the ship-deck breaks off his occupation at the appointed hour, and in the sight of the world betakes himself to his prayers ; and he must conclude that the sterner and simpler religion of Islam has, if perhaps somewhat less of fervour, yet an even greater tenacity of power over some fifty millions of the Indian people. If Christianity is charged, as undoubtedly it is charged, with the sacred duty of filling with a Divine life the religious void, which our education has created in all who have felt its influence, it has, at the same time, in respect of this vast uneducated majority, to reckon with religions still strong in vitality, and bound up with all the inherited traditions of individual and social life. To deal rightly with them needs not only strong faith and courage, but also something of the Divine wisdom and tender ness of our Master Himself. Like St. Paul, face to face with the religiousness of Athens, dimmed, but not destroyed, by superstition, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 3! our Christianity has, on the one hand, to recognise in them an ignorant worship of the Unknown God, and yet, on the other, to declare with authority what they are but dimly groping after, and by such declaration to destroy what is evil in them, and to trans figure with a new brightness whatever is good. The task is a great one indeed. It is hardly inferior in difficulty and importance to that which confronted the Christianity of the early centuries in the Roman Empire ; it may perhaps be thought to involve, in its necessary antagonism to the tremendous power of caste, an even fiercer struggle than was known in the conflict with the Paganism of that day. For, if the supremacy of the English Government forbids all overt perse cution of Christian converts, yet the unre lenting pressure of a social and domestic ostracism, avenging all breach of caste and all defection from domestic or national rites, inflicts on the profession of Christianity a virtual martyrdom, which is more difficult to face, just because its action is indirect and impalpable, r r 32 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA (V) In virtue of all these considerations, every step in an Indian journey impresses more and more upon the mind a deep sense of the wonder and the difficulty of the Empire, which has been there given us, and which has grown up in a comparatively short time from small beginnings, with all the irregu larities and complexities of a natural growth. From that Empire, England neither receives nor expects any direct gain ; its possession lays upon her many burdens, and brings with it many international complications and an tagonisms ; hardly a month passes without some "little war" with uncivilized tribes on our frontier, or some danger, real or fancied, of collision with Russia or France. Naturally enough there are those who doubt whether it really adds to our national strength, while they argue that it certainly increases our national vulnerability. There are some who warn us gloomily of the precariousness of our tenure of it, especially in view of our generous but hazardous policy of endeavouring to raise and educate the subject races, and to give them some measure of independence and self-government. There are others, who, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 33 accepting too hastily the unmeasured com plaint and vituperation of some of the educated natives, dwell on our errors and shortcomings and injustices, till they almost persuade themselves that we have attempted an impossible task. But, whatever may be thought in the abstract on these subjects, no man can doubt that to hold this Empire, and to use it, is one of the greatest and noblest duties ever laid upon a civilized nation. To relinquish it would be simply a treason against humanity; for it would undoubtedly surrender a vast population no inconsiderable propor tion of the inhabitants of the whole world to intestine strife, to suffering and oppression, and in great degree to virtual barbarism. If there be such a thing as a blessing on the peacemakers of the world if it be the highest of all privileges to diffuse light, to minister justice, to secure social order and unity, among millions who would otherwise be hopelessly divided or enslaved then the possession of our wonderful Empire is among our highest national glories. That in a world like this such glory must entail some neces sary burden, both of difficulty and danger, is c 34 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA obvious enough : but it is a burden to be borne, not only patiently, but gladly. To one who believes in a Divine Sovereignty of righteousness over all humanity, it con stitutes the grandest of all missions the mission of " fellow -working with God." Every Christian nation must be, in some sense, a chosen people of God, for the blessing, not of itself only, but of all the nations of the earth. Each has its mission ; each has its corresponding power and oppor tunity ; on each a moral necessity is laid, which it is not a matter of choice to accept or to refuse. Certainly such high mission is now in a very signal degree given on the English-speaking race, by the very fact of its world-wide extension of dominion and influence. For of no other nation could it be said, that its citizens may literally sail round the world, and at every halting-place hear their own language, and be under their own flag. Certainly, in that mission of England no small part belongs to her Indian Empire, both in itself, and in the relations with which it necessarily brings her with other great Asiatic communities relations. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 35 which frequently result, almost against our own will, in the extension of our dominion, and which in all cases necessarily tend to a formidable growth of our " sphere of in fluence." If then this extraordinary mission is ours, the question which presses upon every thoughtful mind is this, What have we done rightly to use our marvellous power, and to meet our unique responsibility ? c 2 CHAPTER II. THE ADVANCE OF MATERIAL CIVILIZATION. The right proportion of the elements of civilization essen tial to true progress. The advance of material civilization in increase of agriculture, manufacture, and trade, and the diffusion of the necessaries of life. The security given by good government. The need and hope of future advance. (I) THE Mission thus entrusted to the Eng lish race in India maybe shortly described as the advancement of civilization in the fullest sense of the word. Now this advance- including both the cultivation of the indi vidual and the knitting of human society together, and requiring, accordingly, some harmonious development of liberty on the one hand, and of law and order freely obeyed on the other -is to us, as has been said, a " fellow-working with God." It is ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 37 at once the acknowledgement and the ser vice of His dispensation for the progress of humanity. For ourselves it involves the lower blessedness of receiving the gifts of God ; in our relation to others, and to the lower and weaker races of the world especially, it calls us to the higher blessedness of giving, which is the true Imitatio Dei. In both we are ruled under what Hooker has taught us to call the " Law Eternal, which God has set Himself to do all things by." Now these gifts of God to our daily life are material, intellectual, moral, spiritual. On the union of all these, and of all these in their right proportion and order, our true happiness and progress depend. If any one gift, even the highest, be taken to be all in all, the result is to break the full harmony of our nature, by stunting or per verting the development of some of its parts. But if the lower gifts the material, for example, or the intellectual be exalted to the highest place, the result is an idolatry, which must become a degradation and a snare. The aspiration of Christianity for the individual is embodied in the Apostolic 38 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA prayer l that " our whole spirit, and soul, and body may be sanctified to God," so that the human nature may, in the right gradation of its parts, grow as a whole into His likeness. Yet what is true of the individual is true also of the corporate life. On the right proportion, therefore, of the material, the intellectual, and the spiritual depends the true civilization of the race. It follows, therefore, that those who, having ascendency of character and power, desire to use it, under the law of God, for the benefit of their fellow-men, must follow this same Divine order, in the diffusion of material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual influences. Just so far as they neglect its right proportion, they will not only fail of their complete duty and responsibility, but may often do harm as well as good, by so developing a lower element of humanity as to starve or eliminate the higher. Material improvement and in tellectual progress will be too clearly pur chased, if they, directly or virtually, claim to be all-sufficient in themselves ; or if they destroy even a morbid and superstitious 1 i Thess. v. 23. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 39 development of the spiritual faculty, without substituting something higher and better in the same sphere. In the service of a com munity there may be, perhaps there must be, some division and discrimination in this beneficent labour. Some elements of it may be best wrought out by law, others by free spiritual influence ; some may have to be implanted, others must spring up of them selves, needing only protection and encourage ment ; some may more naturally devolve on the community, others on the individual ; some may belong more properly to the State, others to the Church. But all must be recog nised as essential. Every agency, which confines itself to one, must so allow for the others, as to give them fair scope, not only abstaining from discouragement, but helping by intelligent sympathy. Of the civilization which makes a community great, it must transmit, not a part, but the whole, to those whom it would raise to its own level. The process must be gradual, and it may well be imperfect ; it must certainly allow much for variation in form and detail. But yet the perfect seed has to be sown, and left to 40 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA develop itself, with full freedom and conse quently with large variety, in the new spiritual soil. If this be so, it is clear that the duty which England owes to India is a manifold and complex duty. How far is that duty being done in anything like completeness ? That there is a desire to do it, and that, as the sense of its difficulty and complexity grows upon us, there is an increasing study of the means and conditions of its accomplishment, we may take for granted. Nor can we doubt that in various degrees all the elements are taken into practical account. But how far is the right proportion of these elements preserved ? (II) It concerns us, first, to consider what has been done for material improvement, as an element, although, of course, only a subordin ate element, in true civilization. It is one of the lessons of modern thought to recognise more fully its function as subserving the higher elements of growth ; it is one of our chief practical problems to arrange that it shall not only advance in itself, but that its effect shall be more thoroughly diffused through the ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 41 whole mass of society. Both are perhaps in a special degree applicable to the condition of the people of India ; under both these aspects their rulers may rightly believe that by material improvement they are doing much for the whole elevation of their subjects. The common tendency to exaggerate its value must not be allowed to create a re action of depreciation or neglect in more thoughtful minds. Where the head of each district has to act, as a kind of terrestrial Providence, to a territory averaging some 3,859 square miles and 876,000 people, he will have much to do, if he is to secure for them even the most rudimentary standard of the material necessaries of life. Now in respect of material improvement, no one, who compares the present with the past, can for a moment doubt that British rule has changed for good the whole face of the country, and affected every class of Indian society. This immense material progress is clue most of all to strong and righteous government ; next, to the introduction of Western Science and Art, and the efforts of English energy and enterprise ; and last, 42 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA not least to the industry, intelligence, and docility of the native races. In all direc tions the initiative of the central and local authorities is, of course, needed by those who have been long accustomed to govern ment more or less despotic ; and it has been freely and ably given, yet, as far as possible, so as to stimulate, and not to supersede, individual work. If it be asked how this great material progress has been aided by English authority, the answer must be that in India, as else where, it depends on two main requisites the increased provision of all that tends to better supply of the needs of the outward life, and the security given for protection against oppression and injustice, and for the enjoyment by all of the fruits of labour. That under the English Government both these requisites have been secured to a very high degree is beyond question. Now, with regard to the former of these two requisites, it is clear that one great effect of British government has been an extra ordinary development of commerce and in dustry, and a vast increase of the material ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 43 wealth of India. On the one hand, the creation of great ports, crowded with the shipping of every nation, has produced this effect by bringing India into commercial relations, both of import and export, with the outer world. On the other, the whole country has been united, and its various parts enabled to help one another, by the improvement of roads and waterways, and by the opening of some 17,000 miles of railway either constructed and worked, or guaranteed and assisted by the State. This creation or improvement of the means of intercommunication now used by multitudes of natives beyond all expectation tends to bring various races and various localities into closer union, and immensely facilitates the removal of local jealousies and abuses, and the general task of orderly government. By it, and by the security for life and property which the strong central authority ensures, commerce in all its branches has been immensely stimulated with the twofold effect of encouraging various forms of agri cultural and pastoral labour, of handicraft and manufacture, and of bringing the produce 44 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA of the whole country within the reach of every locality, almost of every individual. Nor is this all. Agriculture, which, together with the care of cattle, is the employment of some 70 per cent, of the whole people, has been aided by great irrigation works, in Sind and the North- West Provinces, in the Madras Presidency and in Burma. One result is, that India now raises immense supplies of rice, wheat, millet, and other grain, not only for the consumption of her own teeming popu lation, but for an export, which affects power fully the markets of the world. Another is that the famines, which once desolated the country periodically, have been greatly miti gated, even when they cannot be wholly pre vented. Meanwhile there has grown up a large and increasing cotton industry, sup plying the enormous native demand, and exporting to the extent of more than .30,000,000 a year. Tea, coffee, indigo, tobacco, cinchona and silk to say nothing of the opium crop, which to many seems a questionable benefit are also cultivated largely and successfully. Stock is extensively raised, not only horses and oxen and asses, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 45 but camels and elephants, both by Govern ment and by individual enterprise. The forests, which in former times were ruinously wasted, are now carefully preserved by authority, and made sources of revenue. In consequence, the trade of India has, of late years especially, " increased by leaps and bounds." The returns show a vast sea-borne trade (chiefly through Calcutta, Bombay and Kurrachee) in exports at least i 20,000,000 a year and in imports about ^107,000,000; and there is a still larger internal trade, which it is difficult to estimate exactly. In some cases Indian manufacturers, especially at Bombay, have learnt to compete with England. The great and varied mineral wealth of the country is being worked more and more fully every year. The material resources, in fact, of all kinds, which seem almost inexhaustible, are being rapidly de veloped by abundant native labour, with promise, moreover, of an almost indefinite increase 1 . 1 On all this subject there is a mass of valuable infor mation in chaps, xix, xx, and xxi of Sir William Hunter s Indian 46 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA In all this undoubted progress very much is due to an enlightened and generous policy at headquarters. It is, no doubt, true that in governing India we are forced to consider, not merely the immediate interests of the country, but the maintenance of our Empire, on which ultimately its peace and prosperity depend. There may be some ground, even beyond this, for the accusation occasionally levelled against our rule, that in the direc tions given by the Government and Parlia ment at home, rather than in the policy of our best Indian officials it has at times allowed English to interfere with Indian interests. But taking our policy as a whole, and refusing to judge by exceptional errors, there is in it a strong and ever-growing resolution to place the good of the great Indian population itself beyond all other considerations 1 . In itself, and not merely in 1 This disposition was nobly shown in the recent debate in the House of Commons on the imposition of duties on import of cotton into India. No one doubted the hardship which it inflicted on a great English industry, already in a critical condition. But an overwhelming majority decided that Indian interests must be taken as having a paramount claim. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 47 comparison with other Oriental governments, it need not be afraid of fair and dispassionate examination. But the increase of aggregate wealth is not the one thing needful. If such increase is to be really beneficent, there must be a right diffusion and distribution. Now in India there is need of great vigilance and fairness, in order to secure to the mass of the popula tion their fair share in its increased prosperity. But it is certain that its effect is felt in different degrees by all classes of the community both in the improvement for all of the comfort and well-being of every-day life, and in the fact that the increase of the aggregate wealth of the country enables the authorities, by in creased revenue, to remove or mitigate the danger of that distress and suffering, which must always menace a country where great masses of the people habitually need, and are able to secure, only the bare necessaries of existence. Slowly, but surely, the material conditions of life are being improved. A new and higher standard is being realized by those who have wealth or even com petence. Even for the poorest something 48 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA is secured. Labour is more regular and better paid : some progress is made towards the enforcement, so far as is possible, of laws of health and cleanliness ; much is done for the care of the poor and the sick, the aged and the helpless ; some regulation is at least attempted for improvement of native habitations. But, far above all other influences, even in this point of view, is the second great requisite the beneficent effect of good government. Of course the cost of that government, including that of the military force by which it is supported, is no in considerable burden on a country in which the great mass of the people are poor. But the taxation is far lighter than under any previous Government amounting at present to about 3s. a head annually and it is, of course, regulated by an honest endeavour to secure fairness and equity, and to prevent the pressure from falling excessively on the poor 1 . Its benefits, after all, are cheaply 1 In the Indian Empire, pp. 543-551, Sir W. Hunter gives most interesting particulars on this head. Under our Government, " any native who does not trade or own ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 49 purchased. To the individual it gives pro tection against robbery and injustice and cruelty, either by officials or by powerful fellow-countrymen, and so encourages work by affording him security for the enjoyment of the fruits of his labour ; it enables him to know exactly beforehand what are the burdens which that labour may have to bear, and to be sure that they will never be unjustly and unexpectedly increased ; in times of distress and scarcity it steps in to supply needful food, and to open relief works by which it may be earned. Between races it sets up the Pax Britannica, to forbid those internecine wars between the various king doms, which in old days spread over the face of the land almost infinite misery and desola tion, sweeping off tens and hundreds of thousands, and reducing many a fertile region to a howling wilderness. Not without serious difficulty it keeps down in classes the fierce land, drinks no spirituous liquor and uses no English cloth or iron, need pay only about ^d. annually " less than four days wages for the poorest. Under the Governments which it superseded, " the revenue officer took all that he could get, and would have taken treble the revenue we assess if he were strong enough to exact it/ D 5O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA antagonisms of race and creed, which still, as we have lately seen at Bombay, can burst out, and for a time gain mastery even in our capital cities, and which are prevented from working mutual destruction only by the strong hand of English force. There is a well-known apologue attributed to a Hindu speaker when he was asked what would be the effect of the withdrawal of the English raj. It would be (he said) like the effect of opening all the cages of the carnivora at the Zoological Gardens " There would be for a time fierce growling and sounds of struggle, and then a silence, in the midst of which the tiger would be seen walking up and down, and licking his jaws. Now the tiger in India is" (he added) "the Mohammedan." No one who knows India will doubt that this apologue tells a plain and certain truth. Even for bodily security, even for the peace and comfort of bodily life, it is impossible to overestimate the service rendered to India by the English rule. (Ill) It is indeed true that we are far from satisfied with what we have yet done. The ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 5 I very advance which has been made creates the opportunity, and stimulates the desire, of further improvement, both among the people, who have learnt to realize that they have rights and claims upon the English Govern ment, and in the minds of the authorities, on whom there devolves a continually increasing responsibility. That the material condition of the masses of the people, constantly on the verge of distress or starvation, leaves very much still to be desired, is obvious enough ; that in many cases provisions in tended to do good to them have, through error in themselves or defects in their administration, especially through native officials, resulted in failure, and worse than failure, is allowed by all who have practical experience ; that the poverty of the people makes it very hard for the country to sustain the regular and unrelenting pressure of necessary taxation, Indian financiers know only too well. In some sense even success has brought in fresh difficulties ; for the very in crease of population, consequent on the check of destructive agencies, makes the problem of maintenance more and more perplexing. P 2 52 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA These obvious imperfections of our success are, we may add, seriously exaggerated, not only by the discontented and often unreason able criticisms of educated natives, but by the characteristic English tendency to find fault with all official action, and to demand from it an impossible immunity from mistake and failure. But, in spite of all drawbacks, the broad, general fact remains. The English Govern ment sincerely desires to minister to the material welfare, not of this or that class, but of the whole community. Here it certainly strains every nerve to fulfil its beneficent mission ; and its efforts have been splendidly successful, both in its own proper dominions, and in the territories of the native princes, who, under the stimulus or restraint of British influence, are sometimes even freer to pro mote the material well-being of their subjects. How constantly, in the case of other Eastern countries cursed with the blight of misgovern- ment, do their friends long for the firm and kindly hand of a few of those Anglo-Indian officials, who have thus been the benefactors of untold millions of toiling and suffering people! ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 53 If in all aspects of its Mission the English rule was as successful as in this, it need have little fear of adverse criticism. It may even be thought that material advancement occu pies too high a place in its policy and in its results. If we left India, the traces of our rule would be seen in works of prosaic material usefulness, rather than of beauty or grandeur. But what is here done has to be regarded, and, on the whole, is regarded, as simply the material basis on which a higher and nobler superstructure has to be raised. As in the individual, so in the community, the flesh has to serve the spirit. The outward life and its equipment must be in the main not an end, but a means for intellectual and spiritual advancement. CHAPTER III. THE ADVANCE OF INTELLECTUAL CIVILIZATION. The variety of our educational task. The intellectual effect of the introduction of the English language, literature, and religion. The direct educational machinery the Universities, the Colleges, the various kinds of schools. The backwardness of female education. The general result. FROM the material we pass next to the intellectual civilization. Certainly our Govern ment in India has here the note of a liberal and progressive Government, careful for the benefit of the ruled rather than the rulers. Absolute despotisms, wise perhaps in their generation, are mostly inclined to discourage in the mass of their subjects all growth in knowledge and intellectual activity. For these are obviously unmanageable elements under any purely autocratic system. There ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 55 was a strong inhuman logic in the provision, which made it a crime in some slave-holding communities to teach a slave to read and write. If the principle of government is to treat its subjects as machines, made to work out the decrees of absolute authority, it is, no doubt, dangerous to teach them to know and to think for themselves. But we in India are pursuing a diametrically opposite policy, because, I suppose, we have confidence in something higher than " the superiority of force and cunning" because, while we need obedience, we desire a free and intelligent obedience because we hold that power is a trust for the enlightenment of mankind. Accordingly, we are doing our very best to inform and to educate the millions of our Indian subjects. It should be again remembered that, from an intellectual point of view, we have to do with a singularly heterogeneous population. It includes, on the one hand, races intelligent and cultured, inheriting literatures of a high order, and ancient civilizations ; it includes, at the other extreme, especially among the non-Aryan races, tribes hardly raised above mere barbarism, whom their conquerors in old 56 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA days looked upon as mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. To this variety of condition corresponds, of course, a variety in our in tellectual mission. In the one case, we have first to try to understand native thought and capacity ; to study the literature political, philosophical, religious which has grown up through the centuries of the past ; to estimate, as best we may, its strange mixture of truth and falsehood, of high speculation and base superstition; and so, on the one hand, to learn from it what we have need to learn, and to consider what it is within our power and our duty to teach. The result must be to discern that our mission here is to breathe new intellectual life into what is old and decaying with age, and to infuse, not so much keenness and subtlety (for of these there is abundance), but rather the vigour, reality, and simplicity, on which progressive- ness and strong vitality depend. In the other case, we have to create the very rudiments of intellectual knowledge and culture, and so raise men out of barbarism to a true humanity. Between these two extremes there is naturally an infinite gradation in intellectual conditions, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 57 which requires discrimination at every step. Moreover, even from this point of view, account has to be taken of the character and the receptivity of Aryan and Semitic and Dravidian races, if our effort is to be fruitful in satisfactory results. Still to all alike in different degrees the intellectual effect of our English rule is incalculable ; it is the creation or the revival of a new intellectual life. (I) In some sense this effect is independent of our own conscious labours in the cause. For under all conditions it is obvious that our very presence in India as a dominant people is fraught with infinite intellectual force. We bring with us our language, our literature, our religion, and our science : these are being gradually diffused through the native races, and are telling in different degrees and ways upon them all. Our language is clearly destined to be the one language of intercommunication between the races, speaking among themselves scores or hundreds of languages which, indeed, re present the three great families of human speech but all united under one common English rule and English civilization. Already 58 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA it is largely read and spoken, especially in Southern India. Even the uneducated classes are beginning to know something of it collo quially ; and we see that in some cases it is actually the medium of communication between different native races, who do not know, and do not care to learn, each other s language \ But it is hard to exaggerate the importance from an intellectual point of view of the fact, that the higher education of the country in all its branches is carried on through the English language at the cost, no doubt, of much additional labour, and of some loss of vigour and originality, but with the effect that (as I know from my own ex perience) men of the educated classes are able not only to read and write English fluently, but to enter into it as a living spoken language, and to follow intelligently addresses in it on abstruse and difficult sub jects 2 . Even in itself that language must tell 1 This is, for example, the case between the Singhalese and Tamil inhabitants of Ceylon. 2 The use of English in the higher education was established in 1854, after much discussion and some con troversy. The alternative must have been the use, not of one vernacular language, but of several, with a necessary ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 59 powerfully on the native mind ; for the most elementary study of words shows that it em bodies ideas, both abstract and historical, which are as a new revelation to Eastern thought. The language of England is, in fact, the concrete expression of the English mind and character, and therefore of the general influence which they are fitted to exercise. But it is, of course, as a key to Western literature and science, primarily our own, and secondarily that of other European nations, that it exercises even more directly a mani fold intellectual influence. It is true, indeed, that here the giving is not all on one side. We have to learn as well as to teach ; and breach of unity, and an imperfect adaptation to the chief purposes of the work itself. There are some inter esting and unanswerable remarks by Mr. Satthianadhan, Assistant Director of Public Instruction in Madras, in an address on Intellectual results in India, dwelling on the effect of this method of higher education, as tending to diminish the originality of independent literary and scientific work much as would be the case in England if Latin or Greek were made the medium of all such education. But he adds that he " would not for a moment advocate the return to a system of education through Oriental languages." 60 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA certainly we have learnt much. In what claim to be among ourselves the last results of modern thought we can often trace the influence of time-honoured Eastern ideas ; and there are those who exalt them, or what is supposed to be derived from them, above all that we have inherited from our own past centuries. But still, few will doubt that in large degree to the higher races and abso lutely to the lower the West is giving in finitely more than she receives. In Physical Science and in the forms of thought which it fosters, all is new light to the Eastern mind, dispelling many ancient fancies and superstitions, revealing a grand and effective order in the world and in human life itself, hitherto undreamt of in its philosophy. In Metaphysical Science, if there is reciprocity, yet in clearness, vitality, fruitfulness of idea, the influence of Western thought is a do minant power. It is by European study that the immense mass of native religious and philosophical speculations is made orderly and intelligible. Some conceptions, originally Eastern, start at once under its influence into a new vigour and life ; others are so modified ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 6 1 that under old names they become practically new creations. And as to literature how ever venerable and interesting are those ancient Eastern literatures, which European scholarship delights to reproduce and inter pret, they cannot come into comparison with the richness, variety, and strength of our English literature, with its capacity of growth and development, with its power to deal with every variety of human life, and to strike forcibly on every key of human thought and emotion. Its simple diffusion must be itself an intellectual education. Our very presence in India thus tells with manifold influence upon the understanding of the people. I may remark that, as usual, Christian energy has been a principal factor perhaps often the leading factor in the diffusion of language and idea. It is mainly through it that thousands have been taught to understand and speak English ; and to them the English Bible itself a complete human literature, touched by a Divine inspiration has been, even from an intellectual point of view, the one great medium, through which we have enlightened and quickened the minds of our 62 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA subjects 1 . To the uncivilized races as indeed to the uneducated mass of humanity every where it is through the religious teaching of Christianity that spiritual ideas, in the true sense of the word, are brought home to the understanding. Even when we have to deal with the higher races, who have been and are under the influence of great religions, it is hard to overestimate the intellectual influence of the simplicity and coherence of Christianity, in strong con trast with the strange heterogeneous com plication of Hindu mythology and ritual and philosophy ; of its vivid realization of personality human and Divine, in face of Buddhist negation and agnosticism ; of its recognition of a true image of God in hu manity, with unlimited capacity of freedom and progress, for which the grand sterile monotheism of Islam finds no place. The very presentation to the native mind of our 1 There is something very striking and significant, even from this point of view, in the extraordinary increase of late years in the diffusion of our Scriptures among the educated classes in India, which the records of the Bible Society disclose. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 63 language, our literature, and our religion is itself a mental education perhaps all the more effective, because it is indirect and un consciously assimilated. (II) But we are rightly not content with this indirect, though powerful, form of intellectual service ; we are doing our very best directly to educate the native races. We have not, of course, been so foolish as to destroy or ignore the educational organization which we found already existing. " At no period of its history" (says Sir W. Hunter) " has India been without a system of popular education, independent of State organization and aid. From the earliest times the Brahman caste preserved, first by oral tradition, and then in manuscript, a literature unrivalled in its antiquity and for the intellectual subtlety of its contents." Nor was this education alto gether limited to a small class of the learned. " Through every change of dynasty, ver nacular instruction has been given at least to the children of respectable classes in every large village ; " and " the tols, or seminaries for teaching Sanskrit philosophy at Benares and Nadeya, recall the schools of Athens or 64 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA Alexandria. Even at the present day a know ledge of reading and writing, taught by the Buddhist monks, is as widely diffused through out Burmah as in many countries of Europe. . . . Our own efforts to stimulate education have been most successful, when based upon the existing indigenous institutions V Still the work which we have initiated is virtually new, as a general and thorough system of education, recognizing no limitations of race or caste or station. Here also, in India as in Europe, the first effort was due to the sense of religious duty and the inspira tion of religious sympathy. " Discouraged by the authorities, and under the Company liable to deportation . . . the Christian missionaries made the field of vernacular education their own; they were the first Europeans to study the vernacular dialects spoken by the people." Long before the State began its work, the Church of Christ in its various branches had her schools and colleges ; and even at the present time these stand in the front rank of educational agen- 1 Sir William Hunter s Indian Empire, Third Edition, pp. 560, 561. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 65 cies 1 . But now by combined action the educational work is being pushed rapidly on sometimes by the direct action of the State, always under its control and en couragement. At one end of the scale stand the five Universities established at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and Allahabad, examining every year many thousands of native students, and conferring many thousands of degrees in all branches of literature, science, and art 2 . To these are affiliated great teaching Colleges. Some of these are Government colleges, and, as such, purely secular ; others, at least equally efficient, are established by religious bodies the Church of England, the Roman Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, and others 1 It is not a little significant that the Rev. Dr. Miller (of the Free Church of Scotland), the head of the " Christian College " at Madras, has recently been elected by the University as its representative on the Legislative Council. The Presbyterian Missions have taken the lead in the establishment of these colleges. 2 These Universities are generally mere examining bpdies, like the present University of London ; but of late years there has been a movement towards the introduc tion of a teaching element. E 66 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA and these in various degrees unite Christian teaching with the secular instruction preparing for the University examinations; a few, set up especially of late years, and probably in rivalry to these, belong to non-Christian re ligious bodies, Hindu or Mohammedan, and are designed to give the teaching peculiar to each. Many of these (as I have myself seen), in their buildings and educational appliances, and in the high qualifications of their teaching staff (European and native), might bear com parison with our best English colleges. The great mass of the students attend them only in the day ; but in some cases halls for resident students are attached to them, as efficient for their purpose as our own, although the simpler requirements of native life are satisfied by simpler equipment. This University and Collegiate system has already a great and far-reaching development, and is enlarging and deepening its influence every day 1 . 1 In 1892 I found it stated by Mr. S. Satthianadhan, M.A. Camb., assistant to the Director of Public Instruction in Madras (in a paper read to the Decennial Missionary Conference at Bombay), that there were 105 Arts colleges in India preparing for the Universities, containing 12,165 scholars, and that about 900 graduated every year. In ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 67 Through it a very strong intellectual force is brought to bear on those who are, or will be, leaders of the native community. Already it has trained a considerable body of native teachers, who will, in their turn, diffuse its influence over the younger generation. Its power, I may add, is supplemented by the fact that many of its leading alumni, and other young natives of education and rank, come over to our English Universities and Colleges and Inns of Court as students, and naturally carry back with them a still stronger impregnation of Western idea and life. But our view of higher education in India would not be complete without some reference to the organization, more or less complete in the larger towns, of those subsidiary institu tions, which indirectly but most powerfully minister to its development. Museums Southern India, he adds, one out of twelve graduates is a native Christian, although the native Christians form only one-fortieth of the population; and in the Madras Presidency more than a third of the students in the Arts course are in Mission institutions. Sir W. Hunter (Indian Empire, p. 564) gives the number of those who entered the five Universities in the ten years ending 1890-91 as 41,467- E 2 68 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA (physical and archaeological), galleries of art, science, and manufacture, botanical gardens of extraordinary richness and beauty all these we see rising up not only in our own cities, but, as notably at Jeypore, in the capi tals of the more enlightened native princes. These, moreover, are largely frequented by the natives. To the thoughtful student they become, of course, treasure-houses of interest and knowledge. Even on the mass of mere sightseers they cannot fail to produce some stimulating and humanizing effect. In India, as indeed in England, we are beginning to understand better how well w r orth while it is to spend public resources on providing insti tutions, which not only minister to intelligent public amusement, but are indispensable adjuncts of public education. The visible fruit of the intellectual activity thus fostered is seen in the extraordinary development of literature in all its branches in the native community. The number of vernacular newspapers in India (exclusive of Burmah) is now returned as 463, written chiefly in Bengali, Hindustani, Marathi, Gu- jerati, and Tamil. In 1890 there were regis- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 69 tered 668 publications in English or Euro pean languages, 5,566 in vernacular languages, 647 in the classical languages of India, and 1,004 in more than one language; and " of these the works on language, poetry, and religion were far the most numer ous, amounting in the aggregate to 3,923V Whatever may be the intrinsic value of these publications whatever may be thought of the character and influence of the vernacular Press, especially the Newspaper Press this prolific development of literature testifies plainly to the success of the efforts made to stimulate intellectual energy, and to diffuse general education. It is hardly necessary to add that the edu cational influence, thus directly or indirectly fostered, cannot be purely intellectual. The subtle power of idea must necessarily affect human nature as a whole, throwing light, as it does, on that nature itself, and on all the realities, around and above it, by which it is ruled and educated. Certainly to open our English literature to native minds 1 See Sir William Hunter s Indian Empire, pp. 569- 574- 70 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA is to bring to bear on them the complex variety of ideas, not only scientific and philo sophical, but social, political, moral, religious, with which that literature is saturated ; and these cannot but affect the whole tone of native thought and character. Under all these aspects it must suggest and enforce conceptions both of individual and of social life, of which native civilization knows nothing, and induce comparison, or contrast, of these with ideals inherited by tradition from the centuries of the past. The effects are manifold and far-reaching. One chief im mediate effect, as is well known, is to tell powerfully on the religious beliefs of India sometimes to illuminate and purify them, sometimes simply to destroy, sometimes to prepare for the adoption of Christian idea, if not of Christian faith. In other directions it may be making way more slowly, but never theless it is gradually telling, for good and for evil, in the political and social spheres. But over and above these direct effects, it is clear enough that the invitation to all classes alike to come under one teach ing and discipline, and the equal opening ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA JI thus given to intellectual ability in all, must tend to break down in some degree the barriers which divide Indian society by hard and fast lines. As yet that fusion is imperfect. For, although there is no exclusion, yet by a kind of natural selection the higher education among the Hindus is practically confined to the higher castes, more especially the Brahmans. It is stated on authority that " in the Arts colleges of the Madras Presidency the Brahman pupils form nearly seventy per cent, of the whole V But the native Christian community is there rapidly asserting itself in a proportion far above that which would correspond to its actual numbers, and begin ning to compete successfully with the Brahman community in the intellectual field. " One of the highest Government officials has given it as his opinion that, owing to the rapid educational progress of the native Christian community, in the course of 1 In one College this predominance was amusingly shown by the existence of some dark cells, in which the Brahman students hid themselves to eat their midday meal, lest the polluting shadow of some European or low- caste presence should fall upon it. 72 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA a generation, it will have secured a pre ponderating position in all the great pro fessions, and possibly too in the industrial enterprise of the country 1 ." In any case an aristocracy of intellect and culture necessarily militates against all other aristocracies of birth and wealth and privilege ; and, although it may have a hard battle to fight, its progress is tolerably certain 2 . Thus the higher academic education tells in many ways, and its influence (be it observed) is far wider in scope than that which it exercises directly on the members of the Universities and Colleges. For these neces sarily carry on that influence, primarily to members of their own family and class, but indirectly to all with whom they come in contact. 1 See the report of the Director of Public Instruction in the Madras Presidency for 1890, quoted in Dr. Miller s interesting address, given at Chicago in 1893, on " Educational Agencies in Missions." 2 An able article on Indian affairs in the Times of January 29, 1894, says, "The new leaders . . . win their way to the front, not by hereditary claims or the power of wealth or the influence of caste, but by the force of education." ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 73 It is true, indeed, that here, as elsewhere, this influence, so long as it lacks a strong moral and religious enthusiasm, is but too apt to remain practically barren, or at any rate to assert itself very imperfectly and inconsistently, against the enormous power of traditional custom and superstition strong everywhere, but especially strong through the domestic influence of the women, who, as yet, have been but little affected by educational advance. That the video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor has seldom had a more signal exempli fication than in the class of educated Hinduism of the present day is confessed, frankly and seriously, by those who themselves belong to that class T . Still it must in time under- 1 I quote from Mr. Satthianadhan s paper already referred to, this confession from a Hindu gentleman of high position and capacity, one of the best representatives of modern India " The broad barrier that separates the public, the outer life of the educated Hindu t. e., his life as an officer of State or a teacher or a lawyer, from his private or inner life has often reminded me of the double life led by the somnambulist, with this essential difference in favour of the somnambulist, that, whereas the somnam bulist is unconscious during one of his two lives of what he does in the other, the educated Hindu carries with 74 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA mine the imposing fortress of tradition and religious caste, which is the one chief stronghold of Hinduism, and so prepare for the day, when it shall be stormed him from his place of business into his home and from his home to his place of business a clear and painful con sciousness of both his lives. This want of harmony in the conduct of the educated Hindu as a public man and as a private individual shows itself in a variety of ways. As a teacher he may expound excellent principles of morality and instil into the minds of his pupils liberal and just views of men and things; but see him in the midst of his domestic surroundings, and you catch him doing the very things he denounced elsewhere with such fervid zeal. As a Judge or a Vakeel he may be able to sit and weigh evidence ; but when he is at home he, like the other people, believes without evidence, and sometimes arrives at conclusions opposed to obvious facts. To speak in the first person, I may have no faith in judicial astrology ; and yet, whatever important work I do, I must do on an auspicious day determined for me by an astrological charlatan. I may feel sincerely that the way in which religious ceremonies are performed and mantras uttered by my family priest is a mockery of things solemn, a profanation of things sacred ; and yet this solemn mockery, this sacred profanity, must be en dured, or I run the risk of being reviled as an apostate. I may feel that the best thing I can do for my stupid son is to keep him single, until such time at least as he is able to shift for himself, and earns enough to maintain a ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 75 victoriously by strong moral and religious energy. At the other end of the scale the country is being covered with a network of schools, extending from the primary schools through systems of higher and middle schools up to the Colleges and Universities. Of the higher schools established at the cities and at the headquarters station of each district there were in 1882 about 530, of which only thirty- eight were for females, and they were at tended by 68,434 boys as against 1,165 girls. Of the middle schools, placed in the smaller wife and children with ; but such is the tyranny of custom that he must be married as soon as he arrives at man s estate, even though I have to bear the burden of sup porting it may be to the last day of my life my worthless son and his wife and all the creatures that they may bring into existence. . . . But why multiply instances? That there is this glaring incongruity between thoughts and deeds, between public profession and private practices, is felt by none more keenly than by the educated Hindus themselves; and lest it should be thought that I feel a malicious pleasure in drawing up an indictment against others, I acknowledge with shame and compunction that I am myself as much at fault as those others. I pretend to no higher wisdom and no higher virtue than belong to the majority of my educated countrymen." 76 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA towns and larger villages, there were at the same date 3,796, with an attendance (chiefly of boys) of 170,642. It is a sign of the rapid progress of education, that by 1890, the number of higher and middle schools taken together was 5,005, of which 460 were for girls, and the attendance was of 436,980 boys, and of 35,908 girls. For the great mass of the population living in the villages a vast system of primary schools is provided. This system appears to vary greatly in different regions, as to fullness and efficiency, method of administration, and the amount of support given, and direction assumed, by Government. " In Burmah " (says Sir W. Hunter), " primary education is still left to a great extent in the hands of the Buddhist monks. ... In some localities of the Madras Presidency the Christian Missionaries possess a practical monopoly of primary education at the present day." Even now it appears that little more than a fifth of the boys of school- going age are in schools of any kind, and the proportion of girls is infinitely less. But within the last twenty years the schools have increased from 85,000 to 133,350; the ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 77 number of scholars has more than doubled, and now amounts to 3,698,361 in inspected schools of all classes ; there is no doubt, more over, that this growth is only the beginning of a far greater future, and is likely to advance in a constantly accelerated ratio. It may well do so. For it appears that, as yet, the average is of one inspected school to seven square miles, and one pupil to every fifty-nine of the population. In the mean while thanks largely to the development of the higher education the supply of native teachers is increasing both in quantity and in quality ; and the thoroughness of super intendence and inspection advances steadily. There is growing up also a system of normal, industrial, technical, and Art schools, as yet but comparatively few in number and of recent institution, but promising a rapid development. The education in these grades of schools varies very greatly. In the lower schools the instruction is vernacular and rudimen tary; it is only in the higher schools that English is taught, and preparation made for the teaching of the College and the 78 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA University. The instruction on the whole would seem to us elementary ; the educa tional appliances of the scholars still more elementary. But all things have to be measured by an Eastern standard ; and, so measured, there is no reason to be dissatisfied with their efficiency. It is beyond question that, gradually and not slowly, these schools are leavening intellectually the whole mass of the native population ; and, like the higher education, their intellectual influence must tell also on the social and moral life. Of course, the effect is not entirely for good, if it be left without higher guidance. Three years ago the Government issued a memorandum on moral training and discipline in the schools, and noted, as a reason for earnest attention to it, " the growth of tendencies unfavourable to discipline, arid favourable to irreverence, in the rising generation." But, for evil or for good according as it is left to itself as if it were all-sufficient, or made subsidiary to higher influences this intellectual movement sweeps irresistibly on, transforming the whole face of Indian society. As will have been already seen, the great ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 79 defect is still in female education. Till lately the entirely subordinate position assigned to women, and the seclusion enforced upon them in the Hindu, and perhaps even more in the Mohammedan, population, put all thought of their education out of the question. Now, indeed, something has been done, both by schools and by visitation of the zenanas, towards remedying this cruel error and in justice, fatal as it must be to the intellectual progress of the native society as a whole ; for an uneducated womanhood, through its do mestic influence, cannot but react on the youth and manhood also. Between 1882 and 1890 the schools increased from 3,487 to 6,447, and the scholars from 162,317 to 316,313; and this progress is due mainly to Christian effort ; for it is Christianity alone which, in defiance of an enormous pressure of antago nism, positive and negative, dares to raise woman to her true freedom and dignity. In this respect the experience of Europe in the past ages is being reproduced slowly indeed, and against an almost immeasurable dead weight of prejudice in India. In 1881 I find that the Missions had at work, besides English 8o ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA women and Eurasians, nearly two thousand native Christian teachers ; about i o,ooozenanas were open to them, and their pupils numbered above 70,000. Since that time these numbers have, no doubt, increased. But still, " what are they among so many ? " Those who can read and write, in school and out of school, are hardly six in a thousand of the female population. Generally speaking, in the upper classes the women are im measurably behind the men in intellectual development. Often where the husband is highly educated, and quite able to hold his own with Europeans, the wife, although sweet and refined in manner, is like a child in mind, delighting in the mere adornments and toys of life, or dulled utterly by the apathetical monotony of an uneducated and secluded life. To pass from the men s part of the house to the women s apartments is like passing to another country or to another century. On the miserable effect of such division it is unnecessary to dwell. Nor is it difficult to understand that this female ignorance, mostly superstitious, is a serious hindrance to intellectual and moral advance ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 81 in Indian society generally. Indian re formers themselves are painfully alive to the evils of this utterly unnatural state of things. "Here we are" (they say) "the pride and flower of modern India Judges in the high courts, Collectors, members of the Legislative C9uncil while our women are sunk in the lowest depths of ignorance, un able even to spell their way through a book written in their own vernacular." But, as yet, they have done but little for themselves ; it is the testimony of the Indian Education Commission of 1883 that all the most suc cessful attempts yet made to educate Indian women after leaving school have been con ducted by missionaries l . Till the educated men of India awake as a body to their duty in this respect, and venture to face in doing it the strong antagonism of social prejudice and religious tradition, this all-important work will not be adequately done. Still it will be evident, even from this brief 1 "In a few exceptional cases female education has made real progress ; for in these localities the missionaries have sufficient influence to overcome the prejudices of the people" (Indian Empire, p. 568). F 82 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA survey of the present condition of things, that we have no reason to be ashamed of the energy, with which we are endeavouring to fulfil our intellectual Mission to India. As yet the fulfilment is only the beginning of a stupendous work. But it must be remem bered that any serious attempt to carry it out is but a recent thing ; and certainly it is advancing now with an extraordinary and increasing rapidity. Every step in that ad vance shows us more clearly that, like all other forms of progress, it must be wrought out mainly by native instrumentality. We must teach, as best we can, those who w T ill be the teachers of their fellow-countrymen. In this method of advance there is clearly the promise at once of present vitality and of almost infinite expansiveness. It is our task to inspire, control, and direct the in tellectual capacity of the native races ; and then, without insisting on an exact following of English methods, to leave it as far as possible to work out its own development. For each nation, like each generation, has simply to pass on the torch of truth, and leave it to be carried further by other hands. CHAPTER IV. THE ADVANCE OF MORAL CIVILIZATION. The difficulty of estimating moral influence. The moral influence of the English Government, by substantial justice, by unifying authority, by direct legal amelioration. The moral influence of individuals for good and for evil ; the importance of strengthen ing and exalting English character; the transitional condition of the time. General conclusion. IN the consideration of our mission to the subject races of our empire we now pass from the material and intellectual to the supreme moral element of civilization, distinct although having necessary relation to both. That they should subserve it, and that they do in some degree subserve it, is obvious enough. The moral condition of the people must, of course, necessarily be affected by improvement in the material environment of life ; although perhaps F 2 84 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA this effect is less visible and less vital, than in the case of our own European civilization, where material needs are so far greater. That it is even more directly affected by the dissemination of intellectual idea and intellectual culture has been already shown. But all true progress, whether of an individual or of a community, requires, not only that all its various elements shall be combined, but that they shall be combined in right proportion. Accordingly, in any attempt to estimate the reality of such progress in India, two distinct questions present them selves. The first, to which I shall here refer, is this How far has our English rule tended to promote the moral improvement of the people, and in so doing to recognise the right supremacy of the moral element of civilization ? The next which will be dealt with in subsequent chapters How far has it acknowledged the vital connexion, which both theory and history establish, between the moral and the spiritual, between conduct and belief ? Now it is, from the nature of the case, far more difficult to estimate the moral in- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 85 fluence exercised, than the services rendered to material and intellectual civilization. For it cannot, of course, exhibit visible results, or be expressed in statistical returns. It lies below the surface ; it has to be inferred from a variety of evidences of tone and tendency ; it is therefore singularly unfit to be disposed of by rough and sweeping judg ment. Accordingly, as to its reality and its character there will be much larger room for difference of opinion ; and indeed any attempt to pronounce opinion ought to be made with caution and reserve. In attempting, however, to form even a pro visional judgment, it is clearly necessary to distinguish between the influence exercised by the English Government, and that which is due to the deeds and lives of individuals. (I) With regard to the former, it is com paratively easy to speak with some confidence. For it is almost impossible to exaggerate the moral influence especially over races accustomed to look to the supreme authority for guidance and help and inspiration in all things of a Government, which, at least, endeavours to act in truth and justice, to rule 86 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA for the common good, and to extend its pro tection and encouragement to all classes alike. It is true only too true that in the his tory of the acquisition of our Empire in India there are many chapters, from which, even after every allowance for the tremendous diffi culties of our position, we turn with sorrow and shame. It is true still, if we may trust almost universal testimony, that our Govern ment is not free from many errors and some faults, especially where it is not left to expe rienced Indian officials, but is interfered with, honestly perhaps but inconsiderately, by public opinion in England. Partly through ignorance and error in administration, and, occasionally, though rarely, some sacrifice to English party-spirit and commercial interest- partly through European negligence or super ciliousness, and native corruption among our officials partly through many inherent diffi culties and some virtual impossibilities in the task itself our Government often fails in effectively carrying out its right intentions, and, where it does fail, becomes oppressive, just in proportion to its strength and unswerv ing regularity of action. There are perhaps ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 87 cases, in which it may be plausibly accused of acquiescing in conditions of things which are morally dangerous, through anxiety for revenue or fear of offence. For the declama tions of the National Congress, and the virulent denunciations of the vernacular press, there may be some ground, even if their grievances be exaggerated and misrepresented. But yet the great fact remains incontrover tible, that the native population of India, even if they do not love British Government, trust it, as, on the whole, guided by desire to rule for the benefit of the people, and really to be (to use their common phrase of compliment) the " protector of the poor." Accordingly they look to it and to its representatives the local Judge and Collector, and the Supreme Court and Central Executive as their one security, not only for even-handed justice, both between races and between individuals, but for the paternal direction and authority which they need. And this fact tells with power not only, as has been already said, on their material condition and their political allegiance, but on their own moral ideas and moral character. Law, especially in the 88 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA simpler stages of social progress, is always largely didactic, as well as coercive. Our law in India shows the people that truth and justice are not mere names, but living and effective realities ; it favours, by the security of life and property which it gives, the growth of freedom and responsibility ; it justifies that trust in the word and the action of ruling authority, which is everywhere a moral need in the great mass of human society, but which is a principal need among the Eastern races. Of course, this respect and trust could not be maintained, if there was not a sense of strong material force behind authority, and a wholesome fear of provoking it to assert itself. But it would be impossible for us with some 80,000 English troops to dominate 280,000,000 of people some of them enterprising and warlike races if our reliance were purely, or even chiefly, on physical force. Moral ascendency, with the reverence and trust which it generates, is, after all, the greatest of all factors in human history. It has been well said that faith, even where it rests on man, is in great measure "the victory that overcometh the world." Among ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 89 races, as among individuals, the few lead, while the many have to believe and follow. Never has this moral power been more signally exemplified than in the strength of our Indian Government. Nor should we omit to notice that, just in proportion as we are able to grant some self-governing power to the native races, to exercise our authority through members of these races, and so to give opportunity for the diffusion through them of the great principles on which it rests, will this moral influence over the Indian character be at once widened and deepened. The policy, bold and even hazardous, which of late we have tried to follow in this respect, should, if wisely guided and gradually carried out, have its value, not only as a satisfaction of natural aspirations, but as a moral education of the subject races. We can see that this has been the case in the greater enlightenment and more righteous government of the feudatory kingdoms ; and we may fairly infer that the same effect is in various degrees realized through the growth of the native element in our own administration. In this aspect of the subject, moreover, 9O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA we must not put out of consideration the harmonizing and unifying effect of a great central authority, enforcing order and peace upon all, bringing all races together as fellow- subjects, sternly forbidding those internecine struggles political, social, and religious which have been, and but for our power would again be, the curse of India, and so teaching them that they have relations and duties one to another. Such an authority India has never before known, except when, for a short time and with much imperfection, it was realized under the Mughal Empire l . It cannot but tell powerfully, if gradually, on the social and moral relations of the com munity. As yet it is plain enough that under this authority, if actual strife between the various races and religions is prevented or punished, yet the natural jealousies and antagonisms of feeling are so strong, that men are inclined to chafe under the bene- 1 Only indeed by Akbar the Great was there any serious attempt made to deal, justly and impartially, with all the various races under the Imperial sway. In this, as in many other things, he was far in advance of his time and his religion. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 9 1 ficent coercion of the law, which is really their preservation. In fact, the existence of these internal divisions is so great a security to our empire, that a cynical policy would desire their continuance. But, as in respect of the promotion of education and freedom, it is, I trust, our honest endeavour to rise above such policy, and to consider mainly, not our own ease and safety in government, but the true welfare of the people. In proportion as we have, and show that we have, this leading principle of action, our Government will really promote some true unity among the rival races. If civilization be, as its name implies, mainly the practical realization of our citizenship in the commonwealth of humanity, it must be a moral education to widen out the sense of unity, always strong in the family, and to some extent in the race, till it em braces what is to our native subjects in India virtually the whole world. It is indeed true that to do this perfectly is far beyond the power of law. It must depend ultimately on spiritual influences ; it is, after all, the second " great Commandment " of Christianity Q2 ENGLANDS MISSION TO INDIA itself. But yet, especially under the con ditions of Oriental government, law can do much in this direction ; and we may fairly hope that something at least of this moraliz ing influence is exercised by our British law in India. But, over and above these influences, which just because they are indirect, are deep and far-reaching, the action of our Government tends in many points to raise directly the moral tone of the people. It is not merely that it sternly puts down crime and lawless ness, with a resolute completeness, absolutely unknown in the earlier days of India ; even when (as in the case of Thuggee) it has the support of formidable secret associations, and dares to cloke itself under religious sanctions. But it ventures to do much positively, both by regulation and by legislation, for the moral well-being of the people. It would, no doubt, do far more, but for the difficulties created by the religious prejudices and superstitions of the native races. There is always the danger of exciting disaffection, if not re bellion, among the uneducated masses, even by the most beneficent interference with ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 93 ancient customs ; there is an obvious in- utility, or worse than inutility, in passing laws, which do not secure the support of the public opinion of the governed, and which native ingenuity is singularly clever in evading. Not without hesitation and anxiety has any progress in this direction been made already as by the abolition of Suttee, the prohibition of religious infanticide and human sacrifice, the refusal to support the tyranny of caste by law, or to recognise it in appointments to office. Even in our own days, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to amend some cruel native laws of marriage and widowhood, although all educated native opinion cries out for their amendment. Still in spite of much real difficulty and some excessive fear of interference with personal liberty felt perhaps not so much by Indian officials, as by public opinion at home, which is apt to judge the native Indian by English standards there is slow, but steady, progress in this directly moralizing effect of English law. It is at least not improbable that here, as in other matters, we shall find in the future that a firm and well-considered policy 94 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA is the safest one. Even in England we are learning how great is the folly of supposing that, because law cannot do everything for the moral good of the community, therefore it ought to do nothing. The lesson is far more applicable to the condition of society with which we have to do in India. Looking, therefore, to the action of our Government as a whole, with all allowance for human imperfections, we may, with some confidence, claim that it has done much, and is doing more every day, for the moral civilization of its subjects. It has virtually reorganized Indian society on higher and sounder principles. The moral effect of such reorganization is immense, and it brings its own reward. Under all the difficulties of maintaining and advancing the standard of this moral usefulness, our rulers are finding out the truth of the words of the great Impe rial Proclamation of 1858. In proportion as the Queen s Government is administered for the benefit of all her subjects, it will be true that " in their prosperity will be our strength ; in their contentment our security ; and in their gratitude our best reward." ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 95 (II) But it is a far harder task to consider, under this general tendency of Governmental authority, what is the nature of that subtler and more living influence, which individual Englishmen, holding as they do in India a commanding position, and telling power fully by their example upon the native mind, must exercise for good or for evil. If that influence were always for good, it is hard to exaggerate the moral force, which through this almost unexampled opportunity it would by this time have brought to bear on the Indian people. Our Indian Service, military and civil, has produced some of the purest and noblest characters in English history. Such characters exercise, of course, everywhere inestimable influence upon the moral well-being of the community. But in India their power has been unique for good. It is difficult to conceive any position in the world, which could have given to such men a grander and deeper influence for good over the lives of thousands and tens of thousands of their fellow-creatures. They have been simply worshipped in their life time ; and cases have been known in which 96 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA a literal worship has been paid to their memory. From such worship there must result a moral inspiration, and at least some shadow of imitation. Nor can we doubt that in some degree this same moral influence has been exercised by Englishmen and Englishwomen of less heroic type, unknown to fame, who have lived and tried to do good in India. Thus, for example, even putting out of the question all consideration of direct religious evangelism, it is certain that the moral influence of the lives and labours of our clergy, and especially our missionary clergy and lay-workers, in India, has been im mense. No doubt the old maxim, "Corruptio optimi pessima," applies here with special force ; vice, indolence, selfishness, self-indul gence, shaming a high religious profession, are beyond all conception morally destructive. But, happily, these things always have been, and are nowadays increasingly, exceptional. By the very nature of the case, the great bulk of those who take up this profession even if they do not rise to saintly heroism and self-sacrifice must, in various degrees, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 97 bear the witness of a life, not only pure and honest and kindly, but devoted to the service of God, and through it to the moral and social good of those to whom they minister ; and such witness, borne by members of the dominant race, cannot but tell powerfully on the native character. When we go on to examine the far larger question of the moral influence exercised by Englishmen generally almost always placed (be it remembered) in positions of some as cendency- the result will be, necessarily, a very mixed result, on which it would be more than presumptuous to pronounce. It is, of course, obvious that their extraordinary position of influence must tell for evil as for good. But experience seems to reverse the cynical reflection which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of his Mark Antony. It is, on the whole, the good " that men do " which " lives after them/ and the evil which " is interred with their bones." So far as this mixed result can be judged from the testimony of those who know - putting aside popular caricatures of Anglo- Indian society and some familiar stories, G 98 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA mostly, I suspect, imaginative, and certainly exceptional in their character it would be safe to assert that there are certain direc tions, in which it has been obviously and strikingly for good. If we may venture to distinguish between the various elements combined in it, it will, I think, appear plainly, that, in the right harmony of the " godly, righteous, and sober life," it is in respect of the second element, that this effect for good has been striking and unmistakable. In all that belongs to the true manliness of courage, unselfish devotion to duty and energy in work in the higher qualities of honesty, righteousness, and truthfulness in that spirit of disinterested kindness and generosity, in which it is, we read, hard to make the native mind believe the example of the great majority of Englishmen has been a new moral revelation to the Indian mind. Its first result has been to draw out in response that spirit of trustfulness and faithfulness in service, familiar to all Indian experience, which is in itself no unimportant moral education. But beyond this it cannot but ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 99 tell in some degree, by force of example, against the characteristic want of truthfulness and honesty and straightforwardness, of which we rightly complain in the native mind, while yet we have to remember that it is the natural result of centuries of subservience to many masters. The effect may be, as yet, slight ; it must be slow and gradual. But it can hardly be altogether unreal ; and, so far as it is real, it is an undoubted force of moral elevation. The effect for good would be far greater, but for the tendency to supercilious contempt of the natives " niggers," as it is too much the fashion to call them looking down on all, as if all were alike, from a fancied superiority, which is not only galling but demoralizing to them, whether they accept it tamely or resent it. There is obvious folly in the want of insight and discrimination, which it implies ; there is in it an equally obvious danger, both social and political. But, looked at from a moral point of view, it is a sin against true humanity, and, therefore, puts to shame all claim of Christian profession. When we look, on the other hand, to the G 2 TOO ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA element of self-restraint and self-discipline, and the principle of " sound-mindedness " which it subserves, the conclusion forced upon us is less obviously satisfactory. Living as we do among races, whose material wants are few, and whose daily life is singularly simple and abstemious, our European habits and needs must, even of themselves, wear the appearance of luxury and self-indulgence ; although perhaps they may expect such things in a dominant race. So Tar as they themselves are led to imitate them, they will necessarily be tempted to do so in excess, and without many of the safeguards which save us from evil results. But beyond this, it is but too plain that we have introduced some of our own national vices, before unknown to the Oriental charac ter. Notably, for example, has this most unhappy result been visible in the growth of intemperance through English examples, especially the examples of Englishmen of lower station, both in the military service and in the service of great public works. In spite of old Hindu abstemiousness, in spite of direct Mohammedan prohibition, the consumption of ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA IOI strong drink, infinitely destructive, both phy sically and morally, under an Eastern climate, is one of those demoralizing lessons which we have taught our Indian subjects. It is hard to say how far it has been learnt in practice by the people at large. Certainly it is very far from being in its effects as fatal here, as among the native races of Africa. Yet, if we may judge from statements publicly put forward, it is producing no inconsiderable effect for evil ; and that effect must be far more deadly than the excessive consumption of opium, which has recently been thought sufficiently serious to be the subject of official inquiry 1 . 1 On this subject I observe that Canon Ellison in a recent work quotes some strong expressions from the report of a Colonial Temperance Conference, that in India " drunkenness is spreading with the rapidity of an epidemic " ; that " when through caste influence, the prohibition of the Shastras and the usages of Hindu society, the vice had disappeared, it has been reintroduced by the British " ; and that nothing is being done to check it by legislative means (Sermons and Addresses on Church Temperance Subjects, 1894). I have had no opportunity of testing these statements, and must be content simply to refer to them as having been publicly advanced. iO2 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA In regard again to sins of sensuality, fos tered by many influences of an Eastern life, while English life in India is, of course, far from sinking to an Oriental standard, it may not always do as much as, under a Christian profession, it ought to do, towards raising that standard to a higher level. To take an extreme case, it is painful indeed to read that the ravages, which such sins in their grosser forms are making among our English soldiers in India, have been so formidable as to excite grave anxiety in our military authorities, and to demand stringent measures of prevention or repression. But, speaking generally, it is clear that our countrymen are exposed to temptations in this direction, of which we know little at home, and lose many restraining influences, supported by public opinion and social custom in England. Hence it follows naturally that Indian life brings out in sharper contrast the opposing principles of good and evil the good in greater purity and higher moral influence, the evil in more flagrant and demoralizing power. Both must tell strongly, as antagonistic principles, on the moral tone of native society. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 03 But what shall we say of the " godliness," which our Christian profession demands. We must not forget that obvious want of reality in that profession is more than a merely negative evil. We are told that the time was although we hope that it has passed away when both the action of the Government and the lives of individuals taught the natives to believe that " the English had no religion/ and so outraged that strong, if somewhat vague, religiousness, which is, at least in the mass of the people, characteristic both of the Hindu and the Mohammedan. Now (thank God!) we may hope that this con dition of things has passed by for ever. We shall see that even the attitude of the civil power has greatly changed. We shall see also that the Church of Christ has been awakened to a new sense of her sacred responsibility, and new exertions to meet it. But clearly, even from a moral point of view, that responsibility is great. The effect of our Western knowledge and education is necessarily breaking up the old religions. It will be demoralizing in the worst sense, if our influence, by word or by deed, not 1O4 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA only fails to fill up the infinite void so created, but tempts our pupils to think that they and we may be content to accept it, as the natural condition of humanity. The result, therefore, of examination of this phase of English moral influence is, as might be expected, a chequered result. Looking as best we may to both sides of the question, we see that we are simply reproducing in India the natural excellences and defects of our English character at home, without many of the restraints of cus tom and convention which tell upon it here, and under the responsibility of an influence for good and for evil, of which ordinary experience in England knows nothing. We may be allowed to hope, with some confi dence, that the predominant effect is largely for good. Were it not so, we should hardly hold the ascendency, which we actually hold, or be trusted, as on the whole we are trusted, by the natives with whom we come in con tact. One thing, however, is undoubtedly clear, that the exaltation and purification of that English character are all-important, not only to ourselves, but to those whom we rule. EN GLANDS MISSION TO INDIA 105 All influences that tend to strengthen its good, and destroy or weaken its evil, must be hailed thankfully, even if they fall short of the highest spiritual force. But no one can doubt, that, just as Christian faith strengthens or loses its mastery over those who profess it, the higher or the lower qualities will predominate in their moral effect upon Indian thought and life. It is this consideration be it remarked in passing which gives such infinite value to the efforts made by our authorities in India almost invariably in alliance with religious influences to foster temperance and to mitigate temp tations to impurity among our soldiers, and to their anxiety to maintain a high tone of character in the ranks of our Civil Service. It is this, which makes it infinitely impor tant to maintain and strengthen the efficiency of the religious ministration of our Church to our own countrymen in India both through the chaplains to those who are in the Govern ment service, and (as through the Indian Church Aid Fund 1 ) to the many Englishmen 1 This Fund is, I may remark, but little known and slightly supported in England. But the Indian Bishops io6 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA outside the pale of official employment, and to the Eurasian population. In relation, moreover, to this moral in fluence, it is important to remember that in Indian experience, as in our experience at home, the extension of greater freedom and education among the mass of the people is bringing with it mixed results of good and evil diminishing the power of law and cus tom, and throwing us more and more upon spiritual forces. I see that Lord Lansdowne, in an address delivered on the eve of his departure, said " Education is spreading, and with it restlessness, en gendered by superficial and imperfect knowledge, and by vague aspirations and ambitions, is becoming more potent among the educated." The period is apparently a transitional one. Old restraints are being weakened or removed, while the higher law of liberty is imperfectly recognised. Even the weakening of the iron tyranny of caste greatly as it is testify with one voice to its immense value, as supplying the missing link in our Christian organization in India, and ministering to those who are in many respects in a position of special temptation and moral disadvantage. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 07 to be desired, so far as caste distinctions are religious and not merely economical or social is not without some tendency to licence and presumptuousness, in those who have not yet learnt to use freedom rightly. Much of the reproach, it may be remarked, which is so freely thrown upon native Christianity, arises from the fact that the profession of it is often taken up by those who simply desire to break loose from caste restrictions, or have already lost caste by misconduct and lawlessness. This present condition of Indian society, on the one hand, gives increased importance to the exercise of our moral influence, and, on the other hand, obliges us to remember that, if it is to work deeply and permanently, it must be content to work slowly. There is always, when men are eager and zealous, a danger of " putting new wine into old bottles"; and this danger is increased by the deference which the Indian Government, subordinate as it is to the British Parlia ment, is obliged to show to public opinion at home, honest enough and right-minded in principle, but altogether ignorant of io8 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA the practical conditions of many Indian problems, and of the impossibility of judging by a Western standard of the needs and capacities of Oriental life. Nowhere is the maxim of Festina lente more plainly applicable. If we forget that we ourselves have required the education of centuries to teach us the political and social principles, which are now to us as matters of course if we forget that the educated India, which speaks for itself so loudly and even clamor ously, is but a small fraction of the great mass of the people- we shall run a most serious risk, not merely of political and social difficulty, but of moral disaster. (1 1 1) The conclusion to which it would seem that all these considerations lead us is this that, while our moral duty in India has never been forgotten, and is now, as we trust, in creasingly realized, it is infinitely to be desired that the supremacy of this moral element of our extraordinary influence in India should be still more clearly acknowledged, both by the Government and by individuals. In the minds of those, who are the re presentatives of the Government, both ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA in central and local agencies, the plainer and easier work of material and intellectual improvement, and the pressing need of securing at all costs order and contentment and peace, are naturally apt to obscure the higher moral considerations. There has been also an ever-present fear often, as events have proved, an exaggerated fear lest at tempt at moral improvement, even of the most obvious and urgent kind, should awaken the terrible force of superstition and religious fanaticism. The Government, moreover, must act mainly, if not exclusively, through law ; and moral action by law is proverbially difficult. But officials in India are apt to see the limitation of this moral power of law so clearly that they forget its reality ; although under the conditions of Indian society that power is great, beyond what we in England, accustomed to rely to so great an extent on individual freedom, can well con ceive. They are inclined to brand with the name of " faddists " those who, perhaps with imperfect knowledge, are yet simply anxious to give to that power its full scope and its due supremacy. They are apt to look with 110 ENGLANDS MISSION TO INDIA jealousy on missionary influence and activity, which must necessarily subordinate all other considerations to the demands of morality. Probably, in this respect, as in relation to direct religious influences, a change has passed over the rulers of India since the terrible lessons of the great Mutiny of 1858, and in the new era inaugurated by the direct rule of the Imperial power. But in many cases, at least, much is still to be desired. What is really wanted is not so much change of law and system, as the growth of a higher tone and spirit : and this depends simply on that education of public opinion which is, we may hope, going on both in England and in India. It needs some penetration to see that, in spite of immediate difficulties, zeal for righteous ness is, after all, the best policy. It needs a strong faith in the moral government of the world to act resolutely on righteous grounds, when it is impossible to see the end. But even more important is the supremacy of a sense of moral duty towards the subject races, in the freer action of individuals. It is, no doubt, very difficult to realize it under the ordinary conditions of Indian life. The ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA III ready subserviency of the natives to the Sahib is somewhat demoralizing to those who receive it, and who are tempted to look upon all who pay it as mere instruments of service. The sense of a certain unreality and deceitful- ness, underlying it, may tend to beget a spirit of constant suspicion and antagonism between master and servant. The fundamental differences, again, between English and native character, in idea, in practice, and in spirit, make it hard to recognise and reverence our common humanity. Besides all this, the un happy barrier set up by caste between servants and masters is a terrible hindrance to sym pathy, and to the sense of mutual relations of a moral kind. Beyond a rough and ready justice, and a patronizing kindliness, it seems to many that it is very hard to go. But it is not found impossible by men really in earnest, to whom the moral element in their own life is supreme, and who recognise it as an enlistment in the service of truth and love, to all over whom God s Providence gives us influence. Whatever may intervene to hinder and obscure the light of a pure and noble example, it will shine in various degrees I 1 2 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA before all men. The moral power simply of such example, provided always that it is backed by some resolution and sagacity, is inestimable, even if it be not directly visible. But if the Englishman openly acknowledges his mission of service to God and man in his generation if he really thinks of and cares for those under his influence, as having in them a true humanity, as weaker children of the one Father, more or less com mitted to his charge if he considers how he can do them not only material but moral good then, in spite of all difficulties, and in spite, moreover, of the mistakes he is sure to make, the will must somehow find the way. Even if he fails, he will have " delivered his soul ; " but he will not fail, if he is content to work and to persevere, without asking too hastily for visible results. One thing, at any rate, is clear beyond all contradiction that whether officially or per sonally, he best promotes even the strength of our Empire, who labours for the higher morality, both of our own people and of the vast population under our sway. But it is hardly necessary to add that, if he is to labour ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 113 effectively, it must be by the consciousness that he is serving a far greater cause. Any service which he can render, although it may seem to be short-lived and narrowly limited in scope, really tells upon the moral civiliza tion of humanity. For our Indian Empire affects directly and indirectly no inconsiderable proportion of mankind ; and in all that concerns the higher life there is, even beyond the sphere of visible dominion, a solidarity which " makes the whole world kin." As in the material and intellectual, so far more in this moral civilization, England is called under God s Providence to be a people so working with Him, that in her " all families of the earth shall be blessed." ii CHAPTER V. THE ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION THE ATTITUDE OF THE CIVIL POWER. The early Christianity in India ; the Syrian Church ; the Roman Catholic Missions. The professed neutrality of the civil power. The earlier opposition and discouragement of Christianization gradually miti gated or removed. The Imperial Proclamation of 1858; the change to the present attitude of civil authority. The duties of the civil government. WE come now to the final question. How far have we in India vindicated our character as, at least in profession, a Chris tian people ? How far (that is) have we crowned the work of material, intellectual, and moral civilization, by diffusing the light and grace of true Christianity, which is in different ways the inspiration of them all? (I) There is, be it remembered, much of ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 15 Christianity in India, with which we English men have had nothing to do. We are apt to forget that the knowledge of the Gospel and the planting of the Church of Christ in that country are of very ancient date. The deeply interesting " Church of St. Thomas " on the Malabar coast traces itself back, if not to an Apostolic, at least to an early age 1 . There seems no doubt that Pantaenus, the famous head of the great Catechetical School at Alexandria a man, like A polios," mighty in the Scriptures " went out to preach " among the Brahmans" at the close of the second century; and we are told by St. Jerome that he found Christianity already existing, and 1 Its own tradition of foundation by St. Thomas the Apostle rests on no sufficient evidence, and is generally rejected. But it is not in itself impossible ; for early Roman coins found in the country show a communication with Rome and the West in the first centuries. The settlement of the curious colony of the " White Jews " at Cochin in the same locality claims for itself an origin "after the destruction of the Second Temple" (A.D. 70). The other tradition (referred to hereafter in the text), tracing the Christianity found in the second century to another Apostle, is notable. Possibly, after all, the Gospel may have been preached there in the first century. H 2 n6 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA discovered a Hebrew original of St. Matthew s Gospel, left there by the Apostle Bartholomew. It is most probable that the scene of his labour was this ancient seat of Christianity. Certainly in the later centuries missions from the Church of East Syria, commonly known as Nestorian, established in India (as also in China and other lands of the East) a vigorous native Christianity. But for some reason there was in India little power of expansive- ness in this ancient Christian faith. Of what might have been the seed of an extensive evangelization of India, the only fruit is now the old Malabar Church, numbering some 200,000 souls, besides about the same number, who have been drawn from its inde pendent life to the Roman obedience. The Roman Catholic Church, in some rivalry of the older Nestorian Missions,entered upon the field in the fourteenth century, working mainly through the Dominican and Franciscan Orders. But the great impulse to its work was given under the Portuguese dominion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, chiefly through the splendid Jesuit missions of Xavier and his successors, sup- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA I I 7 ported, even to compulsion, by the Portuguese Government, and absorbing for a time, not without persecution, the older Syrian Church. These missions were evidently full of vitality and power. They may have carried to excess the adaptation of Christianity to native thoughts and habits, and even native super stitions. Certainly they relied far too much on the secular arm, and did not shrink from direct persecution ; and accordingly they may have been satisfied too often with merely external conversions l . Still, in spite of all defects and errors, they did a great work ; and they have left behind, especially in the Portuguese and French territories, a strong Roman Catholic Church, numbering about two-thirds of the 2,600,000 native Christians in India. In relation to this work, it would seem that English influence, even through the Roman Catholic Communion here, occupies only a very secondary place. 1 Bishop Cotton did not hesitate to say in 1864 of Xavier himself, " While he deserves the title of the Apostle of India for his energy, self-sacrifice, and pL-iy, I consider his whole method thoroughly wrong, and its results in India and Ceylon deplorable." 1 1 8 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA Once more under the Dutch ascendency an effort at evangelization was made by the Dutch Reformed Church, again supported by strong pressure from the Government ; and this also has left its traces in the native Christianity, especially of Ceylon l . On all these works for God we look with interest and sympathy ; we rejoice in their successes ; we learn by their failures ; with the ancient Syrian Church we have close and friendly relations. But they have not, of course, any bearing on our discharge of the mission which God has laid upon us in India. They show us, indeed, its greatness and its difficulty. For we see that we are not bringing in a spiritual power absolutely new; we are attempting a work in which other Churches of Christ have so far failed, that the Christianity planted has had only a local and exceptional success, and made but little impression on the mass of the vast Indian population. It seems to us strange that the expansive force of Christianity, which has 1 For a very interesting account of these earlier attempts see Dr. George Smith s Conversion of India, cc. ii, iii, iv. (Murray, 1893.) ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 119 spread its power so widely and so deeply over the Aryan races of Europe, should have for so many centuries failed to lay hold of the cognate races of India, or to make head effectively against the religion of Islam. One thing, indeed, we have learnt from the experience of the past to repudiate all material and political force in our religious warfare, and to rely for spiritual effect upon spiritual weapons only. But, if we are to succeed where other Christian efforts have failed, we certainly have need to call out all our religious energies, to find guidance for their exercise in the Divine Wisdom, and to throw ourselves on the Divine strength, made perfect in weakness. (II) Now, when we put all aside which God has wrought through other hands, and consider what has been actually done through the English rule in India towards the Chris- tianization of the people, we have, of course, to distinguish between the action of civil authority, and the action of the English Church, and of English Christianity in general, through the various Communions into which that Christianity is unhappily divided. I 2O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA The civil authority, unlike the Portuguese and Dutch Governments preceding it, has at all times professed an absolute neutrality in relation to all missionary effort. From the beginning some provision has been made, more or less completely, for the spiritual needs of those, who, whether as soldiers or as civilians, are engaged in the public service ; and this provision has extended indirectly to the English settlers who have gathered round them, and in some slight degree also to the Eurasian population, which stands in a position of peculiar difficulty and disadvantage between the dominant and the subject races. Even here the provision at first was scanty enough. Although the earliest Charter to an East India Company was granted in 1600, yet it was not till 1681 that the first English church was begun in India, and not till 1 708 were the services of chap lains and schoolmasters put on a regular ecclesiastical footing. It was, indeed, ordered that the chaplains should learn the vernacular languages, " to enable them to instruct the Gentoos, that shall be servants or slaves of the Company, in the Protestant religion." ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA I 2 I But towards the natives generally, partly on principle, even more through policy, the English Government not only declined to recognise or favour any direct attempt at Christianization, but abstained as far as possible from all social action bearing, how ever remotely, upon religious belief and practice. Had our dominion in India grown up at an earlier period, this attitude of absolute neutrality would hardly have been taken up. In our first efforts at colonization in the sixteenth century, the extension of the English dominion was always united in idea with the promotion of Christian religion among the subject-races. Nor "ould it then have been thought out of place to use our national power and resources for this religious purpose. But our early settlements in India date from late in the seventeenth century, when the old English idea of the virtual identity of the Church and the nation had been broken up ; and the real beginning of our political power and our Imperial aspirations belongs to the close of the eighteenth century, when religious toleration 122 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA and religious liberty were jealously guarded from all shadow of interference by secular authority, and men were inclined to take a narrow view of the function of government, and the duty of the nation as such. In itself this attitude is what both theory and experience would show us to be, under all the circumstances, not only natural but desirable. The history of the earlier attempts at Christianization plainly teaches us how fatal it would be to true spiritual interest, that the civil authority especially in an Eastern community, which can hardly understand any action from it which is not compulsory should bring any legal or material force to bear on the religious work. Immediate and apparent advantage would be dearly pur chased by that which is ultimately injurious to reality and permanence. We are told that even now our missionaries often find it hard to convince their native hearers that they are not simply servants of the British Govern ment, engaged in furthering its political ends. The more the spiritual work is left to its own intrinsic power the more clearly mere English ascendency is distinguished from the ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 123 higher enthusiasm of Christian brotherhood the better will it be for the advance of Indian Christianity. But there are two kinds of neutrality a jealous and suspicious neutrality, ostenta tiously disdaining all sympathy with religious profession ; and a friendly neutrality, which frankly extends that sympathy, although it rightly declines to support it by the strong arm of the law. No one who reads Indian history can doubt that in days gone by it Was the former kind of neutrality, which was almost avowedly taken up by our English Government. No one who studies the Im perial Proclamation of 1858 can fail to see in it an unmistakable sign of transition to the latter. The sole considerations of those who guided our Indian Government in the earlier days were, first, commercial peace and prosperity, and, next, the advance of political power. Both depended on friendly relations with the native races, Hindu and Moham medan, in which we were at first content with a subordination almost servile, but gradually assumed equality and superiority. All modes I 24 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA of action which could imperil these friendly relations were sternly prohibited or dis couraged ; and among these religious aggres sion, or even religious self-assertion, was thought to be the most dangerous. It is, moreover, notable that this hostility increased with our advance in power. In 1750 the great missionary Schwartz was allowed to work freely, and even honoured by the authorities in part, perhaps, on account of his extraordinary influence over native princes. But in 1774 we find Warren Hastings one chief founder of our Indian Empire laying it down as a fundamental rule of policy " to discourage all missionary efforts " among races so strongly attached to their religious beliefs. In 1793 the remarkable Baptist Mission actually had to take refuge under the Danish flag at Serampur. It was not without much opposition and some appre hension, that superstitious practices plainly criminal such as Suttee, religious infanticide, and human sacrifices were forbidden by au thority, and Christian officials relieved from compulsory attendance at idolatrous cere monies. At every point so much was con- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 125 ceded to the fear of kindling inadvertently the flame of religious fanaticism, that our subjects not unnaturally believed that we designed to pay homage to their religious systems, and that we had no religion of our own. When it was proposed to extend our Episcopate to India, the extension, plainly right and necessary as it was, yet met with steady opposition and obstruction from directors of the old school, and by their influence was fenced about, as far as might be, by jealous limitations. For the op ponents, wise in their generation, clearly saw that, in spite of these limitations, increased vitality and improved organization of our Church would necessarily overflow into some missionary enterprise. In 1793 Wilberforce s proposed clauses in the renewed charter of the Company, venturing on the modest declaration, that our duty required us " to promote the religious and moral improve ment " of the native peoples, were sneered at as " the pious clauses," and dropped by the timidity of the Government. Even activity in respect of vernacular education was mostly looked upon with an unfavourable eye at 126 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA headquarters, lest it should indirectly shock religious prejudice, or associate itself with direct Christian teaching. To this rule there were, of course, noble exceptions of men in the highest spheres of authority and influence, who were not ashamed to confess Christ, and that with a singularly earnest and enthusiastic confession. But the general drift of the policy of the Government was but too ob vious. Under the profession of neutrality it threw the cold shade of discouragement on all efforts for Christianization. Step by step, however, public opinion in England was being educated to a higher conception of national policy and national duty. The chief force which wrought upon it in this direction is undoubtedly to be traced to the great Evangelical Revival. It was to such men as William Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, and Charles Grant at home, that the forward steps were due ; as it was by men trained in the same school and sent to chaplaincies in India David Brown, Claudius Buchanan, Daniel Corrie, Thomas Thomason, Henry Martin that conventional limitations were broken down, and, while ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 127 their ministration to the English population was earnest and devoted, yet a beginning at least was made of a wider evangelization. At each renewal of the Company s charter, the progress was plainly marked ; what was scorned and rejected in 1793 was accepted as a matter of course twenty years later. The growing force of evangelistic energy, marked by the creation of missionary societies, and especially the Church Missionary Society, gradually forced some recognition from the civil authority. The very foundation of the older bishoprics Calcutta in 1814, Madras in 1835, an d Bombay in 1837 was an evidence of this new attitude of our Govern ment. As far as might be, it sought to confine the ministrations of the Church to the English population ; but, happily, such limitation is practically impossible, wherever men are themselves earnest in faith and devotion to the Master, Whose kingdom is by its very nature a kingdom of all peoples, nations, and languages. The whole period up to the end of the Company s rule was, as we shall see, marked by the steady growth of great voluntary religious activity ; and 128 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA gradually, sometimes almost grudgingly, the civil authorities, both at home and in India, were brought to a more favourable recog nition of its strength and usefulness. But it was the great storm of the Indian Mutiny of 1858, which finally cleared the air. It is true that the incident of the "greased cartridges " showed how terrible and how blindly unreasonable was the violence of Hindu fanaticism. But the union against us of Hindu and Mohammedan, in spite of their mutual religious hatred, at once showed that the rising was not properly a religious rising, and yet made it clear that, in respect of both, our policy of timid religious neutrality had utterly failed to conciliate, and had left untouched the elements of alienation and antagonism towards English and Christian civilization. Men began to inquire whether, after all, the religious bond is not the only bond, which can really unite alien races, differing in all else from one another. They saw that, so far as native Christianity had spread, it proved itself in the hour of trial to be such a bond of sympathy and loyalty; they asked themselves what would have been ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA I 2Q the effect, even from a secular point of view, if that native Christianity had been, as it might have been, extended far and wide. When the rule, moreover, of the old East India Company was brought to an end by the direct assumption of Imperial power, it was but natural that the dominance of merely commercial and political ideas should give way to some higher conceptions of national duty and responsibility. The effect was seen in the celebrated proclamation of November, 1858, in which Her Majesty, speaking, as " Victoria by the grace of God . . . Queen, Defender of the Faith," thus addressed her Indian subjects : " Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity and acknowledging with gratitude the solace of religion, we disclaim alike the right and the desire to impose our convictions on any of our subjects. We declare it to be our Royal Will and Pleasure, that none be in any wise favoured, none molested or disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or observances, but that all alike shall enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law. . . It is our earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful industry of India, to promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer its government for the benefit of all our subjects resident therein. In their prosperity will be our strength; in their contentment our security; and in their I I3O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA gratitude our best reward. And may the God of all power grant to us, and to those in authority under us, strength to carry out our wishes for the good of our people ! " It is not a little remarkable, that the draft of this Proclamation, as submitted to the Queen by the Secretary of State, simply contained the declaration of complete re ligious toleration and impartiality, and of desire to rule for the benefit of the whole people. We owe to the Queen herself the addition by her own hand of the opening confession of Christian faith, and the closing prayer for God s blessing l . So wisely and nobly completed, it is clearly all that the most earnest Christianity could desire from the civil authority. It asserts as is but wise and right the principle of unreserved toleration, and forbids all intervention of material force or favour. But the avowal of Christian faith, and the prayer to the One true God for His blessing on labour for the good of all the people, native and English alike, under the imperial sway, mark, as it seems to me, 1 See Life of the Prince Consort, vol. iv. pp. 281, 335. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 131 a wholly new departure on the part of the civil power. It was said truly at the time, " It is the principle of our Government, not its external form, which has been changed. ... A century hence men will date the history of progress from the Proclamation of the Queen." It bears just that witness for Christ, telling strongly on the native mind, which alone can be rightly demanded, and really needed. Beyond the moral effect of this witness it cannot rightly go. Even recent experience, as notably in the religious conflict between Hindu and Mohammedan at Bombay, shows how needful it is for the Government to show a firm and obvious impartiality. It is by spiritual forces alone that the battle is to be waged ; all that these forces ask is fair scope and opportunity. How far local authorities follow the policy laid down at headquarters may perhaps be matter of question. The " official mind " is apt to be impatient of zeal, and doubtful of all results, which are not plainly visible and capable of being tabulated. Probably it will take time before it can be generally converted from suspicion and indifference to a deeper I 2 132 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA insight and a warmer sympathy. But that con version is, I believe, in progress. Many of its great leaders in the official world have taken a far bolder and wiser line than was once ventured upon. They have spoken warmly, as will be seen hereafter, of the value and the victorious power of Christian evangelization. It is evident, that indepen dently of their own religious earnestness, they have seen what our true policy is. The time will come, when, in this matter as in others, the general body will adopt the tone of its natural leaders. From the civil power no more can be desired. Probably, as Christian ideas tell upon the educated native mind, some more decided action in dealing with native customs and superstitions, with a view to the moral and social well-being of the people, will be ac cepted, or even demanded. But such action must be kept clear both of the reality and of the appearance of State proselytism. The two duties in this respect, which re main for the Government of India, are clearly marked out in the Imperial Proclamation. For the English population, engaged mainly ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 133 in the Government service, and included (so to speak) under the public profession of adherence to the Christian faith, it is ob viously right to give effect to this profession, by securing to them in all fullness the re ligious ministrations, which they would enjoy at home. This cannot be done without some religious " establishment " ; and, not for the sake of the English only, but in view of the effect on the native mind, it is earnestly to be desired that nothing should be done under a mistaken view of what is required by the promise of religious impartiality to destroy or impair or starve such establish ment. The Government is responsible for the presence of its English servants in India ; it is plainly bound to provide for their spiritual, as for their physical and moral welfare. In regard to the religions of India them selves, all that is necessary is to see that the promise of impartial protection and security shall not be made to carry with it, even in appearance, any authoritative recog nition or adhesion. This matter, as experi ence has proved, is one of considerable 134 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA importance and no inconsiderable difficulty. But, besides this, it is necessary to carry out the principle of strict religious impartiality, by protecting converts to Christianity more completely against injury on the ground of their change of faith. As Sir Henry Maine said in 1866: "We will not force any man to be a Christian ; we will not tempt any man to be a Christian ; but, if he chooses to become a Christian, it would be shameful if we did not protect him and his in those rights of conscience, which we have been the first to introduce V Yet it needs, we are told, continual vigilance and some boldness, to secure effectively this obviously equitable policy. If these two duties be performed resolutely and ungrudgingly, the civil power will have done all that it can do, or ought to do, in a matter which bears powerfully on the highest welfare of its subjects. The course of the world will then be so " peaceably ordered," that the Church of Christ may 1 See Dr. G. Smith s Conversion of India, p. 125. This matter attracted special attention at the late Missionary Conference. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 135 serve God without hindrance. For the rest all must depend on the voluntary energy of the Church, having thus the free scope, which alone she needs. How far, under conditions past and present, she has used the opportunity, it remains now to inquire. CHAPTER VI. THE ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION THE WORK OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. The early neglect of missionary work. The revival of Christian enterprise in the nineteenth century. The progress of our own Church the development of organization and growth of missionary energy. The hindrances of antagonism from without, and of division and failure from within. The need of greater resource and enthusiasm. Encouragement from the history of the past. Testimonies as to the present, WE come now to the supreme questions. First, how far has the Church of Christ striven to enter by her own spiritual power upon the vast field of missionary enterprise ? Next, how far has the Church of England, as a National Church, taken her right place of leadership in this sacred work ? The answer to these questions in relation to the past is, as is well known, a sad and ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 137 humiliating answer. The missionary energy of our English Christianity was not strong enough to undertake so great a work, and to overcome the discouragement and opposition, which, as we have seen, it would have had to encounter from the civil authority. For a time, indeed, it seemed almost dead. Set ting aside the older Syrian and Roman Catholic Christianity, the first missions appear to have been the Danish Lutheran Missions in 1705. Our Church was, as yet, contented to help them through the old S.P.C.K., and this aid was continued till 1824. Then followed in 1750 the great missionary work of Schwartz, under the guidance and with the support of the S.P.C.K. and S.P.G.- still, as it would seem, unable to find English Churchmen ready to enter upon the work of evangelization. It was by his hand that the Tinnevelly Missions were founded in 1 750. His labour was earnest and unwearied, and his influence in South India over the native races and the native princes extraordinary. For forty-three years he wrought for his Master in faith, sowing the seed of which future times were to reap the harvest, and his 138 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA farewell words to the old Society in England were full of hope. Meanwhile it was the zeal of English Non conformists, stirred by the religious revival of the close of the eighteenth century, and able to move without legal hindrance and difficulty, which led the way in evangelization, out stripping the direct action of the Church herself. In 1790 Marshman and Carey, in spite of the open hostility of the East Indian Directors, founded the famous Baptist Mission at Serampur, which, over and above its active missionary work, translated and printed the Bible in more than thirty native languages, and began in 1818 the work of Higher Education, by founding a college for " the Instruction of Youth in Eastern Literature and European Science." The London Missionary Society entered upon the field in i 798, with energy and success. From that time onward there has been a continually and rapidly increasing develop ment of missionary activity from all sections of our British Christianity. Outside the pale of our own Church, we see missions Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Wes- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 139 leyan both from our own country and from the United States of America, working mainly through Voluntary Societies, with great earnestness and self-sacrifice, and often with abundant blessing. It is said that at this moment there are no less than twenty-nine British and seventeen American Societies at work in India 1 . The spectacle, indeed, of religious division thus afforded is sad enough in itself, and disastrous in its effect, however that effect may be in practice mitigated. Yet " notwithstanding every way Christ is preached ; " and in this we rejoice with St. Paul ; for, where He is preached, He must draw all men to Him, and there can be no doubt that even these divided efforts for Him have been accepted and blessed. But to survey the whole field of this mission work would be a hopeless task. I confine myself, therefore, almost entirely to the missions of our own Church, which alone I had much opportunity of seeing in India. I do not for a moment forget or undervalue the extensive and noble Christian work done 1 See Dr. George Smith s Conversion of India, pp. 161, 162. I4O ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA by others. But it is with the duty of our own Church that we are here most closely con cerned. Nor is it presumptuous to believe, that, if she rises adequately to that duty, her work is carried on with singular advantage, under that constitution of Evangelical truth and Apostolical order, which God has been pleased to preserve to her, and ought to be able to move with unequalled power all sections of our English society. Now up to the beginning of this century the Church herself, except by indirect aid, was satisfied with the provision for the European population through the chaplains, who, of course, when they were earnest and enthusiastic, could not but do something for the natives around them. A splendid example in this extension of evangelistic influence was set by the " five chaplains " Brown, Buchanan, Corrie, Thomason, Martyn to whom reference has already been made. Although they were not properly missionaries, it has been said that "few men have had so important a share in establishing Christianity as these five. Brown by his personal influence in Calcutta and faithful preaching to the elite of English ENGLANDS MISSION TO INDIA 14! society there for twenty-five years; Buchanan by his published books on the Syrian Church and the need of an Indian Episcopate ; Corrie and Thomason by their quiet and untiring labours for the spiritual good of officers and civilians, and afterwards in the direct cause of missions ; Martyn by the example of zeal and devotion which he set to succeeding generations V But earnest and fruitful as this work for Christ was, yet it was necessarily quite inadequate to fulfil our missionary duty and opportunity. It was simply a preparation for better .things to come. The creation of the see of Calcutta in 1814, both in itself and in its significance as a victory over the vehement opposition of the older school of the East India Directors, marked the opening of a new era, as in Church organization, so in evangelistic spirit and activity. For it was the entrance of the Church of England, as a body, upon the great field now opened to her. In the same year the Church Missionary Society one of the chief fruits of the overflowing energy of the Evangelical revival founded espe cially for Africa and the East," began active 1 See the excellent Church Missionary Atlas of India, published by the C.M.S. in 1887. 142 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA operations in India, and was followed by the older Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1820 Since that time there has been a remarkable progress, and that pro gress, moreover, grows with a continually increasing rapidity. On the one hand, the right organization of the Church has advanced, although it has had to overcome many legal obstacles, much timidity, and some active discouragement. The sees of Madras and Bombay were founded in 1835 and 1837, with the same authority as the older see of Calcutta ; and, after a long interval, followed the creation of other bishoprics, founded without aid from the State, and all plainly stamped with a missionary character the see of Rangoon in 1877, of Lahore in 1877, of Travancore in 1879, of Chota Nagpore in 1890, of Lucknow in 1893. I n tne vast diocese of Madras, where native Christianity is strongest, Bishops Caldwell and Sargent were appointed in 1877 as Assistant-Bishops over the native Christian communities, sustained and directed by the great Missionary Societies ; and, now that they have passed away, it is to be hoped ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 143 that legal obstacles may be overcome or boldly disregarded, so that an independent see of Tinnevelly may be at once established. All these bishoprics are subject to the authority of the Metropolitan see of Calcutta. It is only to be desired that their number should be considerably multiplied, and that, so far as possible, synodical action should be established. For the task assigned to an Indian bishop is a singularly important and and complex task to sustain through the chaplaincies the Christianity of our own people in India to provide for the poorer English, unattached to the public service, and the Eurasian class, which is placed under peculiar disadvantage and to direct and stimulate the missionary activity of our great Societies. Happily that activity has enormously in creased, studding British India with mission stations, churches, schools, colleges, as centres from which the light and grace of Christianity may be propagated. Side by side with them, partly in connexion, partly in independence, there have grown up such Missions as the Oxford Mission at Calcutta 144 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA (now closely united with the old " Bishop s College"), the Cambridge Mission at Delhi, the Mission from Trinity College, Dublin, in Chota Nagpore, and the Cowley Mission at Bombay and Poona. The Indian Church Aid Society is endeavouring, although with in adequate resources, to meet the needs of the Eurasian population, which has hitherto been greatly overlooked. The Zenana and Medical Missions, in connexion with the two great Societies, are taking up to some extent the work of female education, both in the zenanas and in schools. Every year now sees the initiation of some new enterprise. Late as our efforts are, and still quite inadequate to the need and hopefulness of the work, they have, indeed, been signally blessed already, and under that blessing they show not only sustained vitality, but a very remarkable growth. Yet, as usual, every step of achieve ment only makes it more evident that, as yet, we have but made a slight beginning of an almost infinite work. From all quarters there comes the cry that "a great door and effectual is opened," although " there are many adver saries." What is needed is that the Church ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 145 should rise to the great occasion, and with greater resources, material and spiritual, be ready to enter in. It is, unfortunately, but too easy to discern the strong force of the many adver saries. There is for the mass of the people a deep- seated power in the ancient religions. The grosser forms of superstition and devil-wor ship among the non-Aryan races give way at once before the advance of Christian light, although they may perhaps lurk un acknowledged in the minds and lives of con verts. But Hinduism has an almost Protean variety of development, assimilating, without much thought of congruity, many forms of be lief and practice, from sceptical and shadowy philosophies of a Buddhistic type, down to the grossest superstitions of the non-Aryan races. Like one of its own many-headed idols, it puts out its spiritual tentacles on ,_ every side ; and its fatal grasp is strengthened by the tremendous force of religious caste, so bound up with the social organization of the native races, that it is very difficult to dis entangle it, and deal with it in its essential K 146 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA character as a religious despotism, holding its sway even over those who have long given up the faith on which it rests. The social ostracism with which it visits any profession of Christianity, and even any adoption of Christian usage, is a terrible force of anta gonism, hardly less formidable than the direct persecution, which only the fear of the English Government restrains. Bud dhism, driven from its original home in India, has established itself firmly in Ceylon and Burmah ; and, while for the educated mind it offers a transcendental and ascetic morality, and a vague agnosticism as to personality human and divine, yet for the mass of men it fills up the spiritual void thus created, either by " taking refuge " in the memory of Buddha, or by the strangest superstitions of demon-worship and devil-dancing, of magic and mechanical devotion. Mohammedanism, again, holds its own with a characteristic tenacity all the firmer perhaps because, strong in its grand and sterile Monotheism, it has assimilated, in the form of a kind of saint-worship, some elements from the Hindu Polytheism, and because it condescends in ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 147 its practical morality to Oriental voluptuous ness. But little has been done here in the way of direct conversion, and the ex perience of the Mission of Delhi shows that every advance of Christianity brings out an energetic and resolute antagonism l . It is true that with the advance of our Western education these old faiths are losing their hold on the classes of higher _J culture relatively small, but absolutely great in number, and greater still in influence. But the blank Agnosticism which too often succeeds, and which is largely fed by ac quaintance with the higher forms of English scepticism, is at least as difficult to overcome by any vital religious faith 2 . When it is not simply secularist, substituting a worship of the world or of humanity for a worship of God, it glides into a vague kind of Deism, or 1 I observe, however, in the last Report of the S. P. G. that of the eighteen native clergy in the diocese of Lahore eight are converts from Mohammedanism. 2 Dr. Needham Cust, in his Difficulties of Missions , does not hesitate to speak of " the transmission of European literature of a sceptical, immoral, and atheistic type " as "rendering the intellectual and spiritual position of the people worse than it was before/ K 2 148 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA possibly into the Pantheism, which can claim for itself the venerable authority of the ancient Vedas. In relation to Christianity, its dream not unlike some dreams entertained among ourselves is to appropriate Christian morality without Christian truth, and Christian light without Christian grace. Yet the higher forms of a philosophic Theism, such as are exhibited by the Brahma Samaj, have failed to make way with the masses of the people, or to win much more than a languid and unenthusiastic adhesion even from the edu cated Hindu mind. They are too bare and cold to kindle any widespread religious fervour. No one doubts that, if India is to embrace any vital religion at all, that religion must be Christianity. But as yet the educated class has opposed to all such religion a vague, negative resistance, half complacent, half be wildered, which is at least as difficult to over come as the fiercest religious antagonism. To deal rightly and wisely with these strong forces of opposition is a task of no slight difficulty calling not only for sincerity and self-devotion, but for "the spirit of wisdom and understanding " presenting a problem of ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 149 great complexity, and demanding accordingly a corresponding variety of method and of power in those who have to solve it in the name of Christianity. Where the ground is comparatively clear- where the Christian missionary has to deal with half-barbarian races and worships of a low and carnal type the work is compara tively easy. There the vacant spiritual soil " has simply to be occupied by plain and positive teaching, when the weeds of gross idolatry and superstition have been cleared away. The work needs only earnestness and simplicity in word, the witness of a pure and self- sacrificing life, and a loving care for souls. There is room in it for all grades of ability and culture, and for all workers, native and English, alike. But where the preaching of Christ has to be brought to bear on the higher races, Aryan or Semitic, and is, therefore, face to face with the higher religions, then we especially need our Lord s caution to be ware " lest, while we pluck up the tares, we root up also the wheat with them." There has been, we cannot doubt, much error here I 50 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA in the past which has borne evil fruit, both in failure and in dangerous success committed by men ignorant and earnest, so possessed by the truth of Christ as to be incapable of seeing any truth, or appreciating any religious force, outside the pale of Chris tianity. The danger, moreover, of this error is enhanced, when it is connected with the natural temptation to identify Christianity with the special forms, religious and social, with which we are ourselves familiar at home T . But this error is, at least with our leading missionaries, rapidly giving way, before our increasing knowledge of the religions them selves in their history and in their sacred literature, our larger conception of God s revelation of Himself to His creatures and of the witness of His Holy Spirit, and the general 1 " The contemptuous way, in which the missionary talks, and writes, about the religious conceptions of a great people of more than a hundred millions for twenty cen turies, and attempts to Europeanize, as well as to convert to Christianity, Asiatic, African, Oceanic, and American races, leads to a national antipathy of the foreigner, which seems likely to bring forth sad consequences in the twentieth century " (Difficulties of Missions, by Dr. Needham Cust). ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 15! drift of our own thought and feeling towards an almost extreme liberality and dread of fanaticism. Such utterances as the Bishop of Colombo s Buddhism, Bishop Caldwell s Relation of Christianity to Hinduism, and Mr. Lefroy s Mohammedanism show plainly the willingness to appreciate whatever is good in these great religions, and to lay .hold of it, instead of ignoring or destroying it. That same willingness has been exemplified again and again in the valuable manuals of non- Christian religions published by the old S. P. C. K. ; and was perhaps even more strikingly brought out in the papers on the relation of Christianity to other religions read at the late Missionary Conference. Perhaps at this moment, at home if not abroad, the tendency is rather to an excess in this direction, which is at least equally fatal, making our preaching of Christianity timid and almost apologetic, seeming in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of those to whom we preach, to obscure its claims as the absolute religion, and so to take away the main justi fication of our preaching it at all. Our missionaries in India often find that utter- 152 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA ances on this subject by leading men in England, exaggerated and misunderstood, are pleaded against their earnest attempts to claim the heathen world for Christ. The true ideal we all recognise in St. Paul s preaching at Athens on the one hand, the acknowledgement with reverence of the uni versal feeling after the God, who is " not far from any ot us," expressed in the ignorant and yet sincere worship of One unknown or dimly seen ; on the other hand, the clear, unhesitating declaration of God, revealed plainly and certainly in the Lord Jesus Christ, drawing all men unto Him, and pro claiming to all "the mystery hidden from the foundation of the world." But that ideal is hard to preserve without excess in either direction, while yet it must be kept always before us, if we are to do the work of God aright. Nor is the task less difficult when we have to face ^the^educated Agnosticism, fed partly by vague indigenous philosophies, partly by the reproduction in India of our own agnostic speculation and scientific scepticism. There is need here, no doubt, of large know- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 153 ledge of various forms of native thought, of a frank recognition of whatever truth they may contain, and of sympathy with the diffi culties which press on the intelligent enquirer. But there is still more need of the thoughtful confidence, which is not presumption, in the truth and in the claims of our Christianity ; of clear insight into the essentials of our own faith, as distinct from accretions and secondary developments which have gathered round them ; and of that bold simplicity in the preaching of a living Christ, which comes from depth and not from shallowness of knowledge, and which has both seen diffi culties and seen through them. All these things are hard to secure, and they call for our best men. But they must be in some measure secured, if we are to win our way onward. It is at least something that the need of them is now so clearly discerned. But, in spite of all these formidable diffi culties from without, the advance of our Christianity would be far more rapid, if it were not hindered by our own faults. Its worst enemies, now as always, are " they of its own household." The hindrance most 154 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA painfully obvious from within lies, of course, in those religious divisions to which I have already alluded, obscuring, as usual, what is common to us all by the prominence of re ligious diversity. Perhaps this hindrance is especially fatal in the presence of the acute Hindu mind, which is keen to observe, and skilful to exaggerate, any internal contradic tions and inconsistencies in our Christianity ; while, at the same time, it delights to quote triumphantly, on this subject as on others, anti-Christian utterances in our English literature, as a proof that the educated mind of the West is surrendering that very religious faith, which aims at the spiritual conquest of the East. Even if these divisions do not degenerate into mutual suspicions and antagonisms, their very existence is a con tinual stumbling-block. Nowhere is the reality of free Christian unity more necessary, than where it has to oppose the despotic unity of caste law, and to offer the support of one living society to those who, by the very fact of conversion, become outcasts from the old society into which they were born. When, moreover, these divisions associate them- ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 155 selves with forms of Christian faith and organization of a purely European type having in the West a historic root and growth, but to the East absolutely exotic the sense of whatever is arbitrary and artificial in them is painfully increased. No doubt there, as at home, there is, especially in the most earnest minds, the con sciousness of a deep spiritual unity in Christ underlying these divisions ; and that con sciousness ought to be immensely strength ened by the constant sense of the infinite gulf, which separates the heathendom around from even the lowest and narrowest forms of Christianity. In Lord Macaulay s well-known words, it is hard to realize the importance of differences between Christians, in a land where the question is whether men shall bow down to idols and worship cows. Moreover, in some cases at least, there is agreement between different Christian Com munions to occupy, so to speak, separate territories, and to abstain from crossing and hindering one another s work. It is the testimony of those who know that except perhaps in the attitude of Roman Catholic 156 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA Missions towards others there is, on the whole, a considerable bond of mutual respect and sympathy between those who are in their own various ways engaged in the one great work evinced by friendly con ference, by common action in many points, and a willingness to give help to one another in times of emergency. But these things, while they mitigate the evil, are far from removing it \ Even the best men are not perfectly reasonable in religious matters ; the want of a sense of due propor tion in faith and life is as common as it is both intellectually and morally dangerous ; the temptation to religious rivalry is strong, in proportion to earnestness and strength of conviction. Even within our own Church the division of parties, emphasized by the separate existence of our two great Mission ary Societies, is obvious to the native mind. A heathen judge in one of our courts is said to have asked a witness, who professed Christianity, whether he was "a S.P. G. 1 On this subject some remarkable testimony was given at the Missionary Conference, especially in a paper by the Bishop of Lahore (see Report, pp. 166-182). ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 157 Christian or a C.M.S. Christian." The question was probably sarcastic rather than serious ; but it was, nevertheless, painfully significant. Were it only possible, even in any considerable degree, to realize some thing of " Home Reunion" in our English Christianity, its evangelistic power in India would be multiplied a hundredfold. But worse than even this hindrance is the defect, here as at home, of the practical witness of true Christian life in those who bear the Christian name. Every Englishman there, especially if in authority, is in a very true sense as " a city set on a hill which cannot be hid." If the natives around him see that his Christianity sits very lightly upon him, as regards religious faith and religious observance if he makes it clear that he regards all missionary enterprise with indifference or dislike if, worst of all, his life sins openly against Christian morality and duty the harm done is simply incalculable. Yet hardly less is the scandal often created by the lives of professed native Christians. Among these there are (thank God !) thou sands, whose examples of piety and self- 158 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA sacrifice might put us to shame, and who in the native ministry and native lay agency are rendering admirable service to the Master. But there are also those who, having for. some reason, social or moral, lost their caste, take refuge in a mere outward profession of Christianity ; there are those also who, under some strong influence, embrace it hastily, and at the first temptation fall away. Naturally these men sink even below the level of their heathen compeers ; and are quoted both by Englishmen and by natives, as proofs of the hollow worthlessness of Indian Christianity. If, again, among those actually engaged in missionary work, there is the reality, or even the suspicion, of a self-seek ing and self-indulgent life, the inconsistency tells most seriously on the minds of those who are accustomed to the appearance of an extreme austerity in the priests and teachers of their native religions. In this aspect of the subject there is much to be urged in favour of Missionary communities and Brotherhoods, especially in breaking up fresh ground, and where there may be for any reason need of greater endurance and hardship and danger ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 159 than usual. It is probably doubtful whether, as a rule, our missionaries should adopt the native dress and habits of life, sacrificing thereby to a great extent the ascendency of the dominant race. But there can be no doubt that any defect in the example of true Christian self-denial and self-sacrifice keenly scrutinized, and, as usual, largely exaggerated is a continual scandal. In all these ways the old experience is renewed. The lives of Christians, as they may be the best witnesses for Christ, so may also bear the saddest witness against Him. But, while all these hindrances in India are sadly confessed, the cry, which comes to us from all quarters of the insufficiency of men and of means for the missionary work, throws the responsibility very largely on the Church at home. Happily there has been, as noticed above, a vast increase of late years in both. The number of Missions and of Mission- workers, English and native, has grown rapidly, and is growing still. All the various movements of our Church revival at home reproduce themselves in the Mission- field in greater enthusiasm, deeper thought, 160 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA larger acquaintance with native religions, better Church organization, higher spiritual life. At this moment we have, under our various Missionary Societies, and otherwise, hundreds of European missionaries, and some thousands of native clergy and lay-preachers 1 . But still, " What are they among so many ? " Men complain sometimes of our wasting spiritual energy in foreign parts, forgetting that the advance of our commerce and dominion makes them no longer foreign to the English-speaking race, and shutting their eyes to the plain experience, which tells them that missionary achievement abroad reacts upon spiritual vitality at home. But the slightest examination of the facts shows 1 The returns of the Church Missionary Society alone show in India no less than 89 stations, 126 English clergy and lay teachers, 132 native clergy and 2,107 native lay teachers, 10 divinity schools, 7 training institutions, 20 high schools - and colleges, 150 Anglo-vernacular schools, and 1,040 vernacular schools. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, although later in the field in India, and unable to concentrate all its energies on the purely missionary sphere, has at work an organization on much the same scale. Its whole expenditure in the cause has been but little under two millions. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 161 that we bestow only a mere fraction of our resources in men and treasure on the vast field which is open to us. The English clergy of our own Church in India are, I suppose, hardly more than one-fiftieth of those who labour at home. Till English Churchmen generally not the few, but the many gain an adequate conception of their serious responsibility, and give to the work some greater support in resource, in sym pathy, and in prayer, it is vain to expect adequate results. It is, of course, true that we cannot attempt, and ought not to attempt, to sustain the vast work of God in India by English agency. We must be content to raise up a native Christianity, and leave it to work on the native mind and to leaven native society. But, in ecclesiastical matters as in civil, we cannot put from us the duty which our ascendency in India lays upon us the duty of inspiration and direction in what is still only the beginning of the work. For the thorough discharge of this duty is the only security for progress, and for something like unity between races otherwise divided or even L 1 62 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA antagonistic. To do even this certainly needs from England a far larger measure of universal Missionary interest, with its natural fruits of sacrifice. It is natural, perhaps, to cry out " Lord, how long?" It is impossible not to feel longing and to utter prayer for more speedy victory. But, as we have been rightly warned by high authority again and again, it ought to be a source of wonder and thankfulness that our inadequate efforts have been so largely blessed. Bishop Lightfoot, in his re markable paper written for the meeting of the S. P. G. in 1873, has instituted a striking comparison between ancient and modern missions : " It will be found, if I mistake not, that the resemblances of early and recent missions are far greater than their con trasts; that both alike have had to surmount the same difficulties, and been chequered by the same vicissitudes ; that both alike exhibit the same inequalities of progress, the same alternations of success and failure, periods of acceleration followed by periods of retardation, when the surging wave has been sucked back in the retiring current, while yet the flood has been rising steadily all along, though the unobservant eye might fail to mark it, advancing towards that final consummation, when the earth shall be ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 163 covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. History is an excellent cordial for the drooping courage. To history therefore I make my appeal." In the light of history accordingly he ex amines various features of apparent dis couragement in our modern Missions ; and he comes at last to the conclusion, expressed, as usual, with characteristic soberness and modesty of statement : " In this comparison of the present with the past, I have attempted to show that the Missions of the nineteenth century are in no sense a failure. But I seem to see the advent of a more glorious future, if we will only nerve ourselves to renewed efforts. During the past half-century we have only been learning our work, as a missionary Church. At length experience is beginning to tell. India is our special charge, as a Christian nation ; India is our hardest problem, as a missionary Church. Hitherto we have kept too exclusively to beaten paths. Our mode of dealing with the Indian has been too conventional, too English. Indian Christianity can never be cast in the same mould as English Christianity. We must make up our minds to this. . . . We must become Indians to the Indians, if we would win India to Christ." The lesson thus drawn from past history is abundantly confirmed by the witness of L 2 1 64 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA present observation and experience. For that, in spite of all hindrances, Christianity in India is rapidly advancing, both in achieve ment and in promise, is happily beyond question. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has published certain " Lay men s opinions of the value of Missions in India" from men in high official authority, such as Lord Lawrence, Sir Bartle Frere, Lord Napier and Ettrick, Sir Richard Temple, and even from the official Blue- books, which prove this unmistakably. They all agree in this, that, while the present visible results of missionary work are con siderable, they are as nothing compared with the indirect and preparatory influence, which is pervading and stirring Indian society as a whole. Sir Bartle Frere, speaking of the work among the lower races in South India, says : " Most prominently are these results visible amongst the Shanars and other devil-worshipping races of Southern India; the Kols and Gonds of Central India; the Bhils and Coolies, Mhars, Mangs, and Chunars of Western and Central India. Of all these races, it may be truly said ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 165 that Christianity, as far as its effects have been tried, has proved its possession of the promises of this life as well as of the next." But he adds : "I speak simply as to matters of experience and observation and not of opinion, just as a Roman prefect might have reported to Trajan or the Antonines; and I assure you, that, whatever you may be told to the contrary, the teaching of Christianity among 160 millions of civilized, industrious Hindus and Mohammedans in India, is effecting changes, moral, social, and political, which, for extent and rapidity of effect, are far more extraordinary than anything that you or your fathers have witnessed in modern Europe." In the same sense Lord Lawrence tells us, that " there are thousands of persons scattered over India who, from the knowledge which they have acquired, either directly or indirectly, from the dissemination of Christian truth, of Christian principles, have lost all belief in Hinduism and Mahommedanism, and are in their conduct influenced by higher motives, who yet fear to make an open profession of the change in them, lest they should be looked on as outcasts and lepers by their own people. Such social circumstances must go on influencing converts, until the time comes when their numbers are sufficiently large to enable them to stand forth and show their faith, without ruin to their position in life." 166 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA Perhaps of all these testimonies the most striking is that of Sir Richard Temple, who, with characteristic candour and thoroughness, takes up all the stock objections to Indian Missions and demolishes them one by one. Speaking in 1881 of the present position and the actual machinery at work, he says : " We have 400,000 of annual expenditure, 432 mission stations, 500 European missionaries, and 8 mis sionary bishops, 4,500 native assistants, 300 native or dained clergy, 85 training schools, and 4 normal institutions, from which are turned out 3,000 students annually. We raise 20,000 a year from poor native Christians. We have 24 mission presses, from which there issue three- quarters of a million of religious books annually, which are sold to the native public for a sum of 3,800 a year. We have 400,000 native Christians, and 200,000 boys and girls at school, of whom 1,700 have at different times entered the Universities established by law in India, and of whom again 700 have passed on to the taking of degrees. There are 40,000 girls at school and 1,300 classes for the Zenana Missions in the apartments of the native ladies, and those classes are attended by 3,000 lady students V But looking forward he adds : " I have shown you that success has already been vouchsafed. I wonder whether our forefathers foresaw 1 These figures would now need to be very largely increased. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 167 the greatness of the success which a hundred years would produce. And you will remember that the result has been attained by an increase of .50 per cent, in each decade during the last thirty years, or one generation of man, and if a similar result goes on, and we prosper equally during the generation upon which we are now entering, then the present number of converts will have increased by the end of that generation from 400,000 to 1,350,000, and the scholars to 625,000, total, 1,945,000, or, in round numbers, two millions. And during the coming generation the result is likely to be even greater, because the work is now backed up, not only by European energy and the zeal of the English Church, but also by the influence which education on the part of the State is producing throughout the land and amongst all classes of the people. Thus India is like a mighty bastion which is being battered by heavy artillery. We have given blow after blow, and thud after thud, and the effect is not at first very remark able ; but at last with a crash the mighty structure will come toppling down, and it is our hope that some fine day the heathen religions of India will in like manner succumb." In view even of the religious divisions, which are our great hindrance and shame, it is satisfactory to read from Lord Napier and Ettrick the following testimony : " The reverend agents of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, those of the Church Missionary Society, those of the London Mission, the Wesleyan ministers, the i68 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA Lutheran ministers, the Americans, the Jesuit Fathers all have given me the same welcome. I have seen them all engaged in the same task, though under various impulses, and in some respects with different secondary aims. I have seen them engaged in drawing human souls to the same God and the same Saviour, in teaching the same learning, in healing the same diseases with the same science, in making men happier and better subjects of the same Sovereign/ Even the official Blue-book of 1871 says of the Missionary agency as a whole (ex clusive of the Roman Catholic Mission) : " This large body of European and American mission aries, settled in India, bring their various moral influences to bear upon the country with the greater force, because they act together with a compactness which is but little understood. Though belonging to various denominations of Christians, yet from the nature of their work, their isolated position, and their long experience, they have been led to think rather of the numerous questions on which they agree, than of those on which they differ ; and they co-operate heartily together. Localities are divided among them by friendly arrangements, and with few exceptions it is a fixed rule among them that they will not interfere with each other s converts and each other s spheres of duty. School-books, translations of the Scrip tures and religious works, prepared by various missions, are used in common; and helps and improvements secured by one mission are freely placed at the command ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 169 of all. The large body of missionaries resident in each of the Presidency towns, form missionary conferences, hold periodic meetings, and act together on public matters."* ~"l But the simple fact speaks for itself that in nineteen years, from 1872 to 1891, the number of native Christians has increased in British India by 66 per cent., and in India, ,. J including the feudatory States, by more than 50 per cent. As yet it is but a beginning; I we have even now not more than one in a hundred of the inhabitants of India. But the advance is steady and swift. Even if it . be simply maintained, each decade will see a marvellous rise. But such advance, once begun, is likely to go on, as in the past it has gone on, with increasing rapidity. The view, moreover, of those who should know best is, as we have seen, that the strength of heathen antagonism is being gradually undermined, and that its fall, when it comes, will come suddenly ; and this view, it should be added, is held by foes as well as friends. CHAPTER VII. THE ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION- CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. I. The direct Missionary work. Palamcottah. Naza reth. Growth of native Christianity and native Ministry. II. The general educational work in the great Colleges. Its difficulties and its promise. III. The need of a more universal sense of Mis sionary vocation. The relation of the Church to Voluntary Societies. The problems to be solved. AFTER thus tracing in outline the past history and the present position of our Mis sionary enterprise in India, it may be well in conclusion to endeavour to form some estimate of the chief forms of Christian influence, which it brings to bear upon -its gigantic work. That influence is by the nature of the case one of infinite variety, both in itself and through its indissoluble connexion with the other influences material, ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA I 7 1 intellectual, and social at which we have already glanced. It is, indeed, of the greatest importance that the complexity of the problem should be better understood by public opinion at home, which is but too apt to draw hasty and summary conclusions, in regard both to the problem itself, and to the attempts now being earnestly made for its solution. . But of the Christian work now undoubtedly advancing, there stand out two chief phases, distinct although bearing upon one another, each having, as it seems to me, an interest and hopefulness of its own, but the one im mediate, the other only prospective, as to results. I. There is, first, the direct Missionary work, rapidly forming native Christian com munities, and organizing them into native Christian Churches. It is clear that this branch of the work has advanced most suc cessfully among the non- Aryan races in Southern India, in Chota Nagpore, in Bur- mah, in Borneo, and elsewhere l . 1 The Historical Sketches, published by the S. P. G., of various fields of missionary work, are well worth careful study. TJ2 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA The old Missions in the Tinnevelly district, established by Schwartz more than a century ago, but of late years blessed with a new out burst of religious and evangelistic vitality, are, perhaps, the best illustrations of this advance. With these may be classed the remarkable Mission in Chota Nagpore, now going on with such signal success, under the direction of the Bishop of that new diocese, and with the aid of a third " University Mission " from Trinity College, Dublin. But I confine my self to the Tinnevelly Missions, of which I was able to see something, although far less than I should have liked to see. The two Missions, however, which I was allowed to visit were eminently typical and character istic. In both even a brief personal observa tion brought home at once a strong sense of the vitality and reality of the Mission work. At Palamcottah, the head-quarters of the Church Missionary Society, I found a strong central organization with some twenty Euro pean and fifty -eight native missionaries, besides twelve English ladies engaged in the Zenana Mission with its great Church, its Training College, its schools for boys and ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 173 girls, its dispensaries, its orphanages. Round this centre are gathered in the adjacent country districts dependent missionary sta tions, served partly by local ministers, partly by missionaries from Palamcottah itself. There are nearly a thousand villages con taining native Christians; some are com pletely Christian villages; there are more than 600 native catechists, evangelists, and schoolmasters ; and the whole number of native Christians is about 56,000 l . Each little native Christian community has its native pastor and Church council ; and all are being gradually organized into something of independent life. They have thus their native ministry, largely increasing every day ; they are being gradually trained to self- government by councils, clerical and lay, of native Christians and Church officers, having limited, but definite and effective powers ; 1 Under the S.P.G. Missions in the Tinnevelly district so arranged as not in any way to cross those of the C.M.S. there are somewhere about the same number of native Christians. Remembering how large a majority of the native inhabitants belong to the villages, it is especially satisfactory that Christianity should be thus spreading through this village society. 174 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA in some degree they are becoming self-sup porting, in money as well as in men. Clearly the right principle is here being followed. European direction and inspiration are being freely and ably given. In the present con dition of native Christianity, as of native life generally, it is impossible to dispense with them ; and, although they may be diminished hereafter in the regions of the more settled Christianity, and transferred to those of newer evangelism, it will be long, very long, before they can be withdrawn. But the whole stress of the work is rightly laid upon native agency, by which alone there can be any hope of winning the native races to Christ ; and the native Christians are being raised to religious independence, and religious equal ity with their English brethren. The old paternal relation is thus gradually passing into a kind of elder brotherhood in Christ. Nor is there, I believe, any serious difficulty in this enterprise, although it naturally needs both caution and deliberation. Growth which is to be deep-seated and permanent, must, of course, be gradual ; and there will be, moreover, from time to time some errors ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 175 and vagaries in the newness of native Chris tianity and native Ministry. But, on the whole, it is the testimony of all that, by God s grace, the native converts are rising to their privileges and responsibilities. As education advances, the native Ministry is becoming more effective, better trained for the work, and developing considerable ability and earnestness. It is, as has been said, an undoubted fact, that in the Southern Presidency the native Christians are ad vancing more rapidly than any other class of the community, as in numbers, so in edu cation, and, therefore, in influence. They are, and they know that they are, on the progressive side. If only the advance con tinues and of this, humanly speaking, there can be little doubt it must necessarily create, at no distant time, a vast expansion of Chris tian influence. At Palamcottah I had the opportunity of attending a striking Tamil Service. In the early morning for what is called in Madras " the cold weather," is hot enough according to a European standard the great church was thronged by at least 1,200 native worship- 1 76 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA pers 1 . The Service, like the church itself, was of extreme simplicity, but of great heartiness and apparent devoutness. With knowledge of the Prayer-book, I could follow it through out, although it appeared to me that the Tamil translation was more diffuse than the English original ; and in the native hymns, well sung to our English tunes, there was a curious mingling of strangeness and fami liarity. I preached to the people an Advent sermon, " Rejoice in the Lord alway," speak ing (as I had done in former days to the Chinese in Sydney) through a fluent inter preter. It is rather a trying process; for a sermon has to be broken up into sentences or periods, with intervals between them for the interpretation, by a process rather fatal to coherency and warmth. But, so far as could be judged by appearances, I have seldom had a more attentive and interested audience ; and, after all, the Gospel in its simple and fundamental utterances, must be the same everywhere and to all races. Then 1 When Bishop Sargent first came to Palamcottah, there were, I was told, less than a hundred Christians in it. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 177 followed the Service of Holy Communion in Tamil. But I said the Prayer of Consecration in English, and ministered in English to the Europeans and to some of the native mis sionaries, who understand and speak it well- then giving place to the Tamil ministration to above two hundred communicants, quiet and reverent, as in our best churches in England, and closing all by the Benediction. There was an unmistakable air of reality about -the whole Service, in which I felt it a high privilege to take part. After the Service, and on the next day, I had the opportunity of seeing something of the various institutions gathered round the church, of holding much conversation with both the English and the native clergy, and of studying some of the records of what has been and is being done. The tone of the whole work is eminently vigorous and hopeful. Not only does its direct sphere of conversion extend rapidly, but beyond this there is a still larger circle of indirect in fluence, in which lies much promise for the hereafter. Clearly the work of God was being done and blessed. In it it was M 178 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA impossible not "to thank God and take courage." The other experience, which followed next day, was a remarkable contrast to this. I started in a little bullock -carriage for a drive of some five hours along a well- shaded Indian road to one of the S.P.G. Missions a city of God in the wilder ness bearing the time-honoured name of " Nazareth," and containing (as I was told) with some dependent villages about 8,000 converts. As we approached, there came out to meet us a bright, many-coloured procession of native Christians, men and boys, under the banners of the Cross, and with hymns and songs of welcome. So we entered the village a large village of purely Christian type, with a fine church as its centre, and, gathered round it in a great square, schools of all kinds, an admirable dispensary, a gymnasium, various workshops, and the residences, plain and simple enough, of the missionary staff. It was obvious at once that all the social influences, elsewhere so fatally antagonistic, were here enlisted in t the service of Christianity ; and that ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 179 all the agencies of civilization were inspired and harmonized under the supreme spiritual force. The very sight was infinitely re freshing, in its contrast with the continual oppressiveness of the heathenism around. Nor could I fail to understand that it was the one right method of evangelizing a race, which needed to be raised out of a low intellectual condition and a debasing devil- worship, at once to true humanity and true faith. Over all, with a kind of patriarchal autho rity, presided one English missionary, the Rev. A. Margoschis, single-handed in respect of European companionship, although with admirable native coadjutors able under God s grace to be the mainspring of all the various agencies for good exercising, as was evident, an unquestioned and unforced supremacy of pastoral influence through a living Church membership. Hospitably received by him in his plain bungalow, I went, after a short rest, into the broad verandah ; and there I had to receive, and answer through an interpreter, addresses from the native teachers and church-workers. It was easy to speak M 2 i8o ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA to them in the name of the old Society, which is to them a household word, and to tell them of the warm sympathy felt everywhere in England for the Tinnevelly Churches. When the sun was low for even in mid-winter the passing away of the midday heat is welcome we visited the girls school, saw the boys at their gymnastic exercises, and spent much time over the various institutions. The Tamil Service was at about seven o clock in the church a handsome interior, with a good chancel ecclesiastically arranged, a native surpliced choir singing well and heartily, and a large congregation, mostly sitting or kneel ing on the floor, and joining heartily in the service. Again I had to preach through interpretation ; and both the Advent season, and the tone of the Christian life around, suggested preaching on " righteousness, peace, and joy " as " the fruits of the Spirit." Once more a little time for rest ; and then in the evening we were called into the verandah to see by torchlight a dramatic kind of dance and singing by some of the native youths, rather graceful in itself, and diversified by the intervention of a clown in a grotesque ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 181 costume, who caricatured the dancers, and poured out criticisms and jokes highly ap preciated by his audience. In fact the occasion was the only one, so far as I can remember, on which I ever heard a native audience laugh and applaud with anything like real merriment ; and, indeed, it was impossible not to be struck everywhere by the characteristic brightness and confidence of all the faces round, clearly indicating that the burden of superstitious fear and sub serviency had been lifted from their souls. Now at last we could go to bed, after rather a tiring but most interesting day. In the early morning we had another Ser vice in the church, but this time only for the native clergy and teachers, who understood English, and to whom I could speak without an interpreter, as to " ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." Then I went with Mr. Margoschis to his admirable " Dispensary of St. Luke," frequented with unhesitating confidence from all the villages round by heathen and Christian alike. He is able to direct it himself; for he passed his medical course, of some three or four years, 1 82 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA at St. George s Hospital in London. There he sat, seeing and prescribing for those who came to him, with all the quickness and decision of a physician in one of our out patient departments ; and meanwhile some intelligent native assistants prepared the necessary medicines. From the Dispensary we went on to the Industrial and Art schools, for which I learnt that Nazareth was one of the most famous stations of the Presidency ; and saw lace-making and weaving, carpentry and smith s work, drawing, wood-cutting and wood-carving all, so far as I could judge, admirably carried out, even if judged by a European standard. The whole was a hive of intelligent Christian industry, and a home of manifold civilization, guided by the supreme inspiration of the light and the grace of God in Christ. Not, indeed, without some struggle against material difficulties, especially at the time of my visit ; for the want of rain had produced scarcity and sent up the price of rice, and thus severely taxed the resources of the Mission for the maintenance of its busy workers. But, in spite of this, there was a bright hopefulness of energy in the whole ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 183 tone of the community, which told of life and progress under the blessing of God. These two Missions were but typical speci mens of the directly evangelistic work going on everywhere, especially in Southern India, mainly under the auspices of our two great Missionary Societies. In respect of this work generally, the old Apostolic experience is repeated. " Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." By it Christianity is drawing in, and welcoming, in the name of its Master, the poor and the simple, of lower class and lower race ; it is admitting to the Brother hood, where there is " neither barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free," those whom the earlier civilizations of India treated simply as subjects, almost as slaves. It need hardly be added that here, as in other similar experiences, those whom the wisdom of the world despises are found able to receive the simplicity of the wisdom of God, and to be so raised by it to a higher humanity, as to become capable not only of true Christian member ship, but of efficient Christian ministry. The work for God has its vicissitudes of rapid 184 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA advance, and of occasional stagnation and apparent retrogression ; it has its experience of the instability and failure, especially attaching to work on uncivilized races. But there is (thank God !) no doubt whatever either of its general advance at this moment, or of its future promise. Just in proportion as it assumes a true indigenous character, it will lay hold of that vast Indian population which lies far from the busy life of the great towns, and is comparatively untouched by mere intellectual culture. II. But side by side with this simple evan gelistic work, there is going on by the hands of our missionaries a less direct, but not less important, advance through educational agencies. Of the former work indeed, as we have seen, a large school system always forms an integral part ; and of the Mission schools some are entirely for Christian children, while others admit both heathen and Christian, and bring all in different degrees, unless objection is made by parents, under religious teaching. As has already been shown, the work of primary vernacular education in India was ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 185 begun by Christian agency; and Lord Napier and Ettrick declared, even in 1871 in view especially of the difficulties created by the caste-system that in Southern India, " in spite of all Governmental provisions, mis sionary agency is in my judgment the only agency, that can at present bring the benefits of teaching home to the humblest orders of the population." This educational work is carried on in schools of all grades ; and it is necessarily affecting, morally and religiously, the whole mass of the rising generation. From early times, moreover, our Church in India, true to its old traditions, has taken the greatest care for Christian education of a higher type. The first Bishop of Calcutta (Bishop Middleton) founded "Bishop s Col lege" in 1820, on a splendid scale. It was designed for education of Christians, native as well as European, for various grades of the Ministry ; for general instruction of non- Christian students; for translation of Holy Scripture and the Prayer-book ; for the recep tion and training of missionaries sent out from England. From that time onward educational work of this comprehensive 1 86 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA character has always been carried on in various Colleges and High Schools, uniting in different proportions general education with distinct Christian and ministerial training. But in later years, with the advance of the University system in India, this work has assumed larger dimensions, and has deve loped especially the element of general education. It affects accordingly the higher castes and the higher culture of India. As a religious work, it is less direct than the regular Mission agency ; it appeals less obviously to Christian sympathy ; but yet it is, as I trust, likely to tell very powerfully on a future Indian Christianity. In great Colleges affiliated to the Uni versities there is now being given under avowedly Christian auspices a general educa tion of the highest order, of which systematic instruction in Holy Scripture and in the fundamental truths of the Gospel forms an integral part. This instruction is given to all alike, to native Christians and to those students, Hindu or Mohammedan, who do not profess to be even catechumens or inquirers after the faith. As yet it has ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 187 yielded but little visible fruit of conversion- less, as it appears to me, than might reason ably have been hoped for although such converts as have been made are naturally men of high education and position. Nor is it hard to see that in itself it is liable to some rather serious dangers. It has to break the old Church order, by necessarily separating Christian truth from Christian grace, and disclosing the mysteries of the faith to those without ; it may help the idea, to which the subtle Indian mind is sufficiently inclined, that Christianity is simply a philo sophy or a moral system, to be studied, as one among many, with a purely speculative interest, and without acknowledgement of any unique moral claim to allegiance ; it induces men, who, after such examination, are con vinced of its intellectual and moral superiority, to say that by such acceptance they have become " Christians at heart," while they shrink from open conversion, and seek no place in the Church of Christ ; it may to some degree lend itself to the vain hope of being able to appropriate Christian morality without accepting Christian doctrine, 1 88 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA weaving it, perhaps, into some vague, eclectic religious system, or even into a negative agnosticism. All these objections are obvious and important ; it is not surprising that they have induced some thoughtful and earnest men to doubt the wisdom of the whole method, and to doubt still more its right to absorb the resources of men and money, which might be given to direct missionary work. But, on the whole, the balance of opinion and experience is decidedly in its favour provided always that the Colleges are really Christian Colleges, not only refusing to allow religious teaching to become vague and colourless, or to be crowded out by the pressure of secular subjects, but maintaining in all teaching and government a true Chris tian tone. For this end it seems clear that their teachers should be, wholly or predomi nantly, Christian teachers ; and thanks to the growth of higher education in the native Christian community this would now seem to be attainable, although perhaps at greater cost and with a more restricted choice of men. After all, a school is what its teachers make it. If the Christian tone is really kept ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 189 up, in living force, the value of this work will be infinite l . It deals, perhaps in the only way as yet possible, with the higher castes, and what is as yet much the same the leaders of the higher culture, rapidly extending itself in India ; it lays hold of the great movement for education, and moulds it by Christian hands and through Christian influences; and thus it is rapidly saturating the educated classes everywhere with Christian idea and with Christian morality. The effect on the future cannot but be great 2 . If India is ever to be won for Christ, no one doubts that it must be through native agency. We may, and indeed we must, direct and inspire ; but we cannot ourselves do the actual work, and we must not expect to impose upon the future 1 On this subject, see an admirable pamphlet by the Rev. S. S. Allnutt, of the Cambridge Mission at Delhi. 2 "Nothing can be more disastrous to the cause of Christianity in India than the relaxation of Christian effort in the matter of Higher Education. If our Mission schools go, then our Missionaries will have no hold whatever on the educated classes. ... It is an admitted fact that Christianity has an immense influence outside the circle of the two million Christians " ( Work among the Educated Classes in India, by S. Satthianadhan, M.A.). ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA Oriental Christianity the details of Western theology and Western Church organization. Clearly it is through the free development of the great fundamental principles of Gospel truth and Church life, that success must be achieved in God s appointed time. For that consummation, so devoutly to be wished, the work now going on is doubly a preparation. It has a general preparatory influence on the whole native mind, moving it, as by a great undercurrent, towards a future anchorage on the Christian shore. Perhaps in the union of direct visible evangelism among the simpler and poorer classes, and this indirect influence over the intellectual and social leaders of the community, the condition is not wholly unlike that of the early Christianity ; when it began to confront, as a victorious force, the power of heathen religions and philosophies in the old Roman Empire, and to force them to pass from contempt and indifference to inquiry, and from inquiry to adhesion. But besides this general influence, it is more definitely and decisively preparing for the future, by educating the native Christians ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA to become the teaehers of their countrymen, both in the ordained Ministry of the Church and as lay Evangelists. This effect, more over, is rapidly advancing. It is stated that in the great " Christian College " at Madras, the number of Christians among the students is nine times as great now as it was twenty years ago, and that at this moment one-sixth of those who have graduated from it are professed Christians 1 . In this respect it evidently leads up to the higher work of the regular training Colleges for native clergy, of which I had the opportunity of seeing a splendid specimen in the S.P.G. College at Madras, under the Rev. A. Westcott, holding its own most successfully in the " Preliminary Universities Examination," in friendly com petition with our own Colleges at home, and sending out teachers not only to India, but to Madagascar, Penang, and Mauritius. Both classes of Colleges are now being in great degree officered by their former students ; 1 See Rev. Dr. Miller s paper, read at Chicago in 1893, on Educational Agencies in Missions. There is an excel lent hostel for resident Christian students attached to the College. 1 92 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA and it was impossible not to be struck with the high standard of education and ability in many of the native teachers to whom I was introduced. In spite, therefore, of the slow ness and the indirect character of this branch of the work, and of those dangers to which I have adverted, it is, I believe, by a true instinct that it has been thought worthy of much labour and sacrifice, by those who can look onward beyond the immediate results of the present. Of course it must not be allowed so to absorb our energy and our resources, as to interfere with the direct evangelistic work, and with the Christian education of the poor. But in its own proper sphere it is invaluable. If the great change, for which we pray, does come, it will probably come with sudden and widespread influence, after much disappointment and in face of bitter hostility and reproaches of failure. It has passed into a proverb, that Diocletian struck his medal of triumph over the extinction of Christianity, on the eve of the vision of Con- stantine and the conversion of the Empire. This work is going on in many quarters. It began, I believe, with the leaders of the ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 93 Presbyterian Missions in India ; and in their hands are still some of its finest develop ments such as the great "Christian College" at Madras, with its really splendid buildings, and its immense educational influence. But it is being taken up energetically by our own Church. I had myself the opportunity of seeing the flourishing Colleges of the S.P.G. at Trichinopoly and Tanjore, the C.M.S. College at Agra, the Colleges of the Oxford Mission at Calcutta and the Cambridge Mission at Delhi. In different degrees, and in the last two Missions in a high degree, the educational work in the Colleges and their affiliated schools is connected with direct missionary enterprise mainly in Calcutta towards the Hindu, and in Delhi towards the Mohammedan population. Most of all per haps in Calcutta where the revived Bishop s College and the Oxford Mission are most happily united under the Rev. H. Whitehead the more general work of education is being merged in ministry to Christian students, in evangelistic work in the villages of the Sun- derbunds district, and in direct missionary training. In Delhi, while the St. Stephen s N IQ4 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA College flourishes under the Rev. S. S. All- nutt, the preaching to the educated Moham medans in the lecture-hall of the native quarter, and even in the precincts of the mosques, is carried on by the Rev. G. A. Lefroy, with splendid ability and earnestness, and with that clear understanding of the strength and weakness of Mohammedanism, by which alone the work can be rightly directed. To these Missions we send our best men. Too few they are for the greatness of the work, and sorely hampered too often by want of means and want of adequate buildings 1 . But even so, the service which they render is noble service ; and their work, arduous as it undoubtedly is, especially in face of the antagonism which their success has roused, is of the deepest interest and the greatest promise. Even from my own brief expe rience I could not doubt the receptivity of the educated native mind. At Trichinopoly, 1 At Trichinopoly, for example, I was especially struck with the contrast between the buildings of the S.P.G. College, and the splendid Jesuit College and Church imme diately facing them. Since 1892 I am glad to know that these buildings have been greatly improved. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 95 both in the hall of the College and under the shadow of the gigantic temple of Shrirangam, at Madras in the Christian College, at Calcutta in the house of the Oxford Mission, at Agra in the C.M.S. College, hallowed by the memory of the saintly Bishop French, and at Delhi, in the fine hall of St. Stephen s College, I was allowed to address large audiences, varying from about 100 to 800 or 900, of educated natives, mostly members, present or future, of the Universities. I chose subjects of directly Christian witness, in view of some of what seemed the greatest needs the " Thirst for God," satisfied in the Lord Jesus Christ, the witness of the Spirit to " Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment," and the inseparability of Christian morality from Christian truth. In every case I had, as it seemed, intelligent and most attentive au diences, well able to understand English, and to follow in it subjects of no slight difficulty, and ready to listen to a treatment which, while it was, of course, not directly contro versial, certainly did not shrink from the most definite Christian doctrine, and the most earnest pleading against mere speculative N 2 196 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA curiosity and indifference. On a spiritual soil, which even a stranger could see to be thus receptive, the seed sown day by day, by the witness both of word and of life, must in God s good time bear some glorious harvest. The (( bread cast on the waters " must be found, even if it be " after many days." III. Such, as it appeared to me partly from my own cursory examination, partly by study of authoritative documents and by inquiries from those who had intimate knowledge is the present position of our Mis sionary advance in India. As of the Indian problem generally, so of this special phase of it, I think that we at home have but little idea of its greatness and its complexity, of its urgency and its hopefulness. But one thing is certain that the present moment is one of critical importance. Even if the great work for Christ is not felt to be a privilege and a glory, it is now plainer than ever that " necessity " a moral and spiritual necessity " is laid upon us, and that it is woe to us if we preach not the Gospel " to these millions of God s wandering children, so wonderfully committed to our charge. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA The last half-century has been one of decided revival and advance, for which we thank God. All the various movements, which, by His grace, have passed in this century over our Church as they are, we believe, being absorbed into its life at home, and by their combined effect renewing it to greater strength than ever so are repro ducing ihemselves in effect on its Missionary work, and certainly creating in it a greater earnestness, a stronger organization, and a larger comprehensiveness. The civil authority, as we have seen, is coming to regard the problem of the Christianization of India as one which concerns intimately the welfare and progress of our Empire. Its attitude is now, on the whole, one of respect and sympathy. Moreover, if the work of the Church is sometimes trammelled by legal hindrances arising from Church Establish ment (or rather, as at home, from abuses of it), yet it is to a far greater extent, I believe, furthered by it, both by its direct support, and by its effect upon the native mind. The field is open to us by God s Providence. Wherever we have faithfully sown the Divine 198 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA seed, the harvest has been granted in due course. From the recent past we may con ceive the hope of a far greater future. But yet we cannot hide from ourselves the truth that our English Christianity is as yet very far from having adequately used its splendid opportunity. Its religious service has lagged behind the progress of the lower elements of our civilization. After so long a period of ever-increasing national power, it must be to us a source of sorrow and shame that, as Christians, we have hardly entered upon the edge of the almost infinite field. Nor can we, I think, say that our own Church has sufficiently assumed the spiritual leadership, to which, as the National Church, she is undoubtedly called in all that belongs to the religious Mission of England. It is, of course, true that she has duties and responsi bilities at home, which no other religious Communion has to bear ; it is true also that similar duties and responsibilities grow upon her abroad with bewildering rapidity, as the Greater Britain of dominion or influence grows by an irresistible expansion. But yet the resources, material and spiritual, which ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 1 99 God has given her, are vast, and these also advance by a corresponding growth. They might be, and ought to be, by God s blessing adequate to the glorious task, to which He calls her. It would be, no doubt, an impos sible task, if the Church at home sought to extend in a literal expansion over the vast Oriental population of India, or even to sus tain the whole burden of its evangelization. But this, as I have urged again and again, is not her real duty. That duty is, as the name of our oldest Missionary Society reminds us, to propagate the Divine life, which she has received, with its twofold gift of light and grace to plant, and for a time to train and water, the seed of that life ; and then to leave it to grow in the new spiritual soil, as God shall see fit to give the increase. Great as even this duty is, it can be done, it ought to be done, and it must be done. If as yet it has failed of adequate develop ment, the cause is to be sought, not in want of faith and desire for the extension of the Kingdom of God, but in a too narrow con ception of what that extension ought to be. Perhaps it is not unnatural for those who 2OO ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA realize painfully the arduous and almost over whelming work which has to be done at home, always growing both in its scope and in its difficulty, to be almost impatient of what seems to them a diversion of energy to more distant fields of enterprise. But, after all, our duty is already marked out for us by the Providence of God. What is needed is a more general understanding that, for our Church and in this century, Missionary interest is not a matter of individual taste and choice, which one may take up and another pass by, but a duty which belongs to the Church as a Church, and therefore to all her members, without exception, in virtue of their member ship. As in the political, so in the religious sphere, we need to realize better the solidarity of our work over the whole area of English power, and to understand that in the world there are now very few parts which are really " foreign parts " to our opportunity and duty. It is just this conviction which is needed, in order to supply to the great Mission work its right vigour arid fullness. For it must beget, first, a far more universal interest and sym pathy ; next, as flowing from this, a stronger ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2OI support both in resources and in men, who will be able to take up with various qualifications the various kinds of work to be done ; then a greater power of harmonizing, under a general Church influence, the efforts of individuals and Societies in the Missionary work ; and, lastly, a freer and more varied organization of our evangelistic agencies, especially in the direction of the formation of Missionary communities, Brotherhoods, Sisterhoods, and the like ; and, perhaps through them, the better provision of a social Christian life for those, who by their con version have lost caste and with it their social ties. It would be idle to contend that this great conviction has as yet rooted itself in the minds of Churchmen generally. While there are still more than two thousand of our parishes, and tens of thousands even of our richer and more educated people, who do absolutely nothing to support the work of Missions in any shape, it is plain that we have not yet outgrown our insularity of re ligious idea and sympathy. In spite of the continual witness of those who are in earnest 202 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA in the cause in spite of the appeals so constantly made, even to weariness, by those whose lives are given to it in spite of the experience which tells us that expansive energy abroad reacts for good upon spiritual vitality at home Missionary enthusiasm is still too often looked upon as an exceptional development of Christian earnestness, if not as a mere " pious imagination," visionary in itself, and likely to distract us from closer duties and more effective works in England. But there seem to be (thank God!) signs of awaking to a wider and more generous conception of our Christian vocation. We may trace these in the increasing support given to our great Missionary Societies, and the multiplication, almost to excess, of lesser organizations for special departments of the work. The origination of the various Uni versity Missions is especially significant here. Nor can we fail to see that in the leaders of public opinion, there is not only a growing respect for Mission work in itself, but also a far clearer idea of its dominant influence on the advance of civilization, and even on the extension and consolidation of our ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2O3 national power. The whole story of Uganda is singularly instructive in this direction. The time is coming as it came in relation to the crusade against the Slave-trade when even the world will see that " the foolishness of God is wiser than men." But above all else, the remarkable Mis sionary Conference of last year seems to have opened, as was said more than once, an epoch in this new and promising development. It was not merely that, almost for the first time, the great subject was publicly treated in all its aspects, with some approach to thoroughness and completeness raised out of the merely popular and emotional atmo sphere of the ordinary Missionary meeting to the calmer air of thoughtful consideration. It was, indeed, much to be taught by those who had the wisdom of experience, what was the practical relation of our Christianity to the religions of the world ; how its charac teristic points, theological and ecclesiastical, were to be presented ; what were the chief problems to be solved by it in India and China and Japan, in Africa and Australasia ; what were the methods to be employed and 2O4 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA to be avoided ; and what were the different phases of ecclesiastical expansion in the colonial and purely Missionary spheres. The Report l , which was so promptly published, ought to be, and, I think, will be, a hand book of permanent value, especially if taken in conjunction with the reports of the Boards of Missions, under whose auspices the Con ference was held. But the keynote of the real significance of the Conference was struck in the President s opening address, and re peated again and again not without some slight janglings of discord in the subsequent discussions. It was the appeal to the whole body of Churchmen to consider whether the Church, as such, should not act by authority to stimulate and to organize, to direct and control, all the Missionary action which is taken in its name. This is already done by our sister Church in America, by some of the colonial Churches, and, I believe, by the two great Presbyterian Communions the Estab lished and the Free Church of Scotland. The question is whether it can also be 1 Report of Missionary Conference of the Anglican Communion, S.P.C.K., 1894. ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 205 carried out in the larger variety and compre hensiveness of the Church of England, under the disadvantage, moreover, of having no complete representative assembly, which can legislate in respect of corporate Church action. The idea is, of course, not a new one. Some steps have been taken towards it gradually and tentatively, after our English manner. The institution by authority of a Day of Intercession for Missions in the whole Anglican Communion, and the custom, which has grown up in several dioceses, of holding, at this time or at some other, Mis sionary festivals unconnected with any special Society, indicate a sense that the work concerns the whole Church as a body. But a far more important and decisive step was the formation by the Convocations of the Boards of Missions, to act authoritatively in the collection and digestion of information, in suggesting modes of thought and action, in forming, so far as may be, a complete survey of all the isolated works which are going on, with a view to prevent overlapping in one sphere, and comparative neglect of 2o6 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA another. Their function is one of teaching and inspiration, not of practical action ; the authority with which they speak is simply a moral authority ; their action needs to be carried out with wisdom and delicacy, lest it should provoke the jealousy of the great Societies, which have hitherto borne the burden and heat of the day. Of course, it will be made light of by shallow common sense, because " it is all talk," as if the power of idea and word was not a dominant and increasing power. But the Boards have already proved their usefulness by the in fluence they have exerted, and the invaluable information which they have collected. The Conference was the public completion of their work hitherto done, and at the same time probably a starting-point for more ex tended work hereafter. The subject presented itself there under the form of " the relation of the Church to Voluntary Mission Societies." No one, of course, in his senses would dream of ignoring the history of the past. The Church at this day inherits a condition of things under which the Societies have become its accredited representatives ; they ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2O7 have grown up to dignity and rights, as well as to practical efficiency and systematic organization ; they have justified the con fidence placed in them by splendid work. It was made plain enough at the Conference that their leaders felt a natural and honourable jealousy on their behalf; they not only pointed to what had been done, and is being done now, but dwelt on the advantages, which we in England know so well, of voluntary as compared with official action its greater celerity and freedom and variety of operation its more glowing enthusiasm its larger capacity of risk and enterprise, because its ventures do not necessarily commit the Church as a whole. As in our political, so in our ecclesiastical constitution, they urged that a certain free irregularity was the sign at once of natural growth, and of capacity for future enlargement and adaptation to new conditions. All this was felt to be plainly true. But the fact still remained, that, since even the younger of the two great Societies was created, the conditions under which evange lization has to go on have very greatly 208 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA changed. The field, then almost entirely open, is now covered everywhere with a regular Church organization abroad ; the Church at home is rapidly feeling its way towards corporate action ; the Lambeth Conference is the symbol and the organ of a larger unity of the whole Anglican Com munion. On the other hand, the growth of a multiplicity of Missionary interests is pro ducing a development of isolated Missionary Societies, which our older and greater Societies themselves regard with some apprehension and perplexity. If all these Societies followed the line of the old Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, subordinating their action, both at home and abroad, to constituted Church authority, there might be some waste of energy, but there would be no friction or difficulty. But it is not so ; the great bulk of these Societies claim a large measure of self- government and direction of their agents, which it is difficult to harmonize completely with obedience to official Church authority ; and, indeed, their supporters often tell us that this claim is essential, if they are to have enthusiasm and fullness of support. Nor is ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2OQ it to be doubted that most of them represent, more or less, special schools of opinion and practice in the Church; and in this there is, of course, some additional danger of collision with Church authority abroad. Under these circumstances it seems clear that the time is come, when, in some way, there should be created a central influence, to prevent spiritual waste and spiritual friction, to give some greater unity to the variety of Missionary agencies, and, above all, to make Churchmen feel that the work itself concerns not a few, but all. That influence can only come from some true representation of the Church as a whole. For, while it is clearly a matter of option whether Churchmen shall join this or that Voluntary Society, it is not a matter of option, but of solemn obligation, to obey the Missionary call of the Church herself in the Name of her Master. How this Church action shall be originated and developed how it shall deal with the existing conditions how it shall shape the development of the future it would be dangerous to pronounce. Things that are to be deep-rooted and per manent must grow naturally. But it is o 2IO ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA something that the idea itself is conceived and enunciated. In the words of the Arch bishop of Canterbury, "At present the Societies are the Mission-conscience of the Church." But we " look forward to the great time, when the Church in its thoughts and ideas will be widened to a fuller sense of re sponsibility." It is to be hoped that this great subject may be in some way dealt with by the next Lambeth Conference. For few subjects could be more appropriate, or of deeper interest, to that great representative assembly of the whole Anglican Communion. What is true of the Mission field generally is perhaps especially true of that Mission in India which has here been briefly described. The one thing really needful is that to which these pages desire to make some humble contribution the universal sense of the extraordinary greatness and complexity of our Mission to India, and of the urgent need that its lower elements should be crowned by the realization of our universal Christian responsibility. What form the future Christianity of India will take, and by what means it will work for ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2 I I the conversion of that vast population in what way it will deal with the tremendous hindrance of caste, and harmonize with the supreme truth of Christ the philosophies and the forms of practice congenial to the Indian mind how it will unite together the dis cordant elements of race and religion, which present to our statesmanship so difficult a problem all this is as yet hidden from us. But if Christianity is to spread as we believe that it will spread, perhaps with what men call suddenness, when the time comes no one, I think, doubts that it must be in large degree an independent native Chris tianity, moving, of course, along the old Catholic lines, having the closest communion with our own Church, paying due deference to it as really the Mother Church, but not modelled in details on the English pattern. Under the shadow of the great Catholic Creeds, this modified independence will show itself in expressions of faith, as the un changeable truths of the Gospel are brought into relation with Eastern thoughts and philosophies and traditions in so many points utterly unlike those of the West. So, o 2 212 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA under the great principles of Catholic ministry and order, it must show itself even more in development of organization and discipline. The time may come, when these Churches will stand alone, in a complete corporate independence, as allied, rather than united, with our own Church. How in either aspect this shall come to pass ; what will be the time and method of transition to the new condition of things ; how we, who are bound to maintain our own traditions, shall stand related to it God only knows. But, in the meanwhile, I cannot but think that we ought to have it continually before us as the ideal of the future, to lead up to it, if we may, but at any rate to abstain from any action which would preclude or hinder it ; and accordingly, as in teaching, so in organization, to preserve the simplicity which comes from depth of knowledge and experience, and understands that there is a time, as for creative energy, so for masterly inaction, in things not of the essence of our Christianity. Meanwhile we have to advance step by step, solving, as best we may, in detail and in practice, the great problems of which the ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA 2 I 3 complete ideal solution is still in the dimness of the future. Our witness for Christ must with such wise reservation as has been sug gested be borne in our own way, under that Church constitution which has been by God s blessing transmitted to us, and which, as we trust, in its essential principles harmonizes with the right growth of humanity at large. But at the same time it must be our chief endeavour more and more to foster in every way the development of a vigorous native Christianity, supplying (as has been said) the guidance and the inspiration, which we alone can give and are bound to give, but abstaining from all action which may hamper free growth, and leaving all in the hand of God, to be de veloped as He wills and in His own good time. How far this has been as yet adequately done is matter of opinion. One speaker at the Missionary Conference expressed his fear, that, unless our policy was changed, there would not be at the close of this century " a single independent, self-supporting native Church, governed by its native bishops, priests, and deacons." To other speakers this view appeared to be an exaggerated 214 ENGLAND S MISSION TO INDIA one. But on all hands, such independence was recognised as the true ideal. The only questions, especially as to the Episcopate, were simply two. The first, How far are the native Churches prepared for it ? the answer to which must vary greatly in different races and under different conditions. The second, What steps can be, and ought to be, taken towards it at the present time ? and to answer this rightly needs much thought and wisdom. 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