Lectures on the Tinnevelly Missions. Robert Granville Caldwell
cipated in the improvement. Some improvements (especially that very important one, the severance of the connexion between the Government and the idolatries of the country,) were effected by a pr< i ;—sure from without; but the greater number of improvements, including all that have taken place within the last fifteen years, have originated with the Government itself, which now comprises a considerable number of right-minded Christian men. The Indian Government has always professed to observe a strict neu trality between Christianity and heathenism, and to allow every religion professed by its subjects "a fair field and no favour;" but whatever may have been its professions, for a long period the only neutrality it observed was a one-sided neutrality, which showed itself in the encouragement of heathenism, and in oppo sition to the propagation of Christianity. This unfair, unright eous course has been almost entirely abandoned ; the Government no longer actively befriends heathenism, it no longer guards against the progress of Christianity as a source of danger. It still, indeed, professes to stand in a neutral position, but this neutrality has for some time been verging (perhaps as rapidly as is compatible with the circumstances of India) into an enlightened, prudent solicitude for the peaceful diffusion of the blessings of Christian education and morals. The burning of widows and female infanticide have been put down, slavery has been abolished, in connexion with all Government business and public works, Sunday has been made a day of rest, converts to Christianity have been protected, by a special enactment, in the possession of their property and rights, the re-marriage of widows has been legalized, female education has been encouraged, a comprehensive scheme of national edu cation has been set on foot, in connexion with which the Grant- in-Aid system has been introduced, and Missionary schools are no longer excluded from the benefit of Government Grants.
The Indian Government moves forward slowly, but it keeps constantly moving it takes no step backwards and hence, notwithstanding its characteristic caution, perhaps there is no government in the world which has made greater progress, within the time specified, in moral and social reforms. Undoubtedly much remains for the Government to do before it can be admitted that it is doing its duty to God and to India ; but I hope and believe that the unparalleled trials through which it has been called upon to pass will end, not in deterring it from its duty, but in urging it forward in the course of pimrovement.
Whilst we are thankful that the Indian Government, as such, has improved so considerably, we have also much reason to be thankful for the improvement which has taken place in the lives of so many members of the Anglo-Indian community. It is true that many members of that community are far, very far, from being what they ought to be, but at the same time it will be difficult to discover anywhere more Christian piety, in proportion to the numbers of the community, than amongst the English in India. In every district, in every station, with which I am acquainted, there has been a succession of men who have distin guished themselves, not only by their gentlemanly honour and by the purity of their lives, but by their Christian benevolence and zeal ; and such persons render most important aid to the cause of Missions, not only by their sympathy and contributions, but still more by the influence of their example. Whilst the Missionary is preaching Christianity to the Hindus, many an English layman is exemplifying to the Hindus what Christianity means : without abandoning " the calling wherein he was called," or violating any principle of official propriety, he is proving to a regiment or to an entire province that the teaching of the Missionaries is true, that Christianity is only another name for a holy and useful life, that it must have come from God, because it makes men godly, and that is an argument which every man can understand and appre ciate, and which no man can gainsay. Now that teachers of Christianity have free access to every part of India, the old assertion that the conversion of the Hindus is impossible has been proved to be a fable. In many instances the impossibility has been accomplished. It is quite true that in many extensive districts the work has not yet been begun, and that in no district have all the results that have been aimed at been accom plished ; but enough has been accomplished to prove to us that the work is of God, and to encourage us to go forward in it with vigour.
We cannot expect in India or anywhere, to " reap where we have not sown, or to gather where we have not strawed :" desultory efforts in too wide a sphere cannot be expected to produce the same results as systematic persevering labours within manageable limits j but when we find, wherever we look in India, a propor tion existing between labour and the results of labour, when it is evident that there is most success where there is most labour, and least success where there is least labour, 1 think we have every reason to thank God and take courage.
A comparison of the spiritual condition of the three Indian Presidencies will illustrate the proportion existing between efforts and results. In the Presidency of Bombay least has been done : the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has not a single missionary labourer there, and other missionary Societies have but a small handful of men; and in that Presidency I am sorry to say that there are not a thousand native Protestant Christians from Goa to the Indus. In the Presidency of Bengal the number of Missionaries is more considerable ; and there, not only are the Christian converts seventeen or eighteen times more numerous than in Bombay, but in many parts of that vast Presidency the Hindu mind has been stirred to its inmost depths by the progress of Christian education and Christian civilization.
It is in the Presidency of Madras, however, that there has been the largest amount of missionary effort. Missionaries have been labouring in several parts of that Presidency for a considerable period ; their number bears some proportion to the work which they are endeavouring to accomplish, and is such as to render it possible for them to work in combination. What progress, then, has been made in that Presidency ? Not all the progress, indeed, which we wish for and hope to see, but still an amount of progress which is very encouraging. In the Presidency of Madras there are at least 80,000 native converts from heathenism, in connexion with the different Protestant Missionary Societies at work in various parts of the field, and of that number about 58,000 are connected with the Missions of the Church of England. Doubt less, many of the native Christian converts are not what we should wish them to be ; and much, very much, remains to be done before Christianity is diffused throughout the Presidency ; but it would be most ungrateful, as well as unreasonable, to ignore the fact that much has been done already, and that we have received encouragement to attempt, and to expect to accomplish much more.
Indian Missions may be divided into two classes : viz. the educational, or those which endeavour to reach the higher classes by means of superior English schools ; and the popular, if I may use the expression, or those which endeavour to reach the com munity at large (though practically, in most instances, they reach the lower classes alone) by means of vernacular preaching and vernacular education. The great English schools, or colleges, established in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, by the Scotch Presbyterians, stand at the head of the former class ; at the head of the latter, which includes almost all other missionary efforts, we may safely place the Missions of the Church of England in Tinnevelly.
It cannot be doubted that the endeavour to diffuse Christianity amongst the higher classes of the Hindus is one of very great importance, for the institution of caste gives the higher classes greater influence in India than in any other country ; but from Swartz's time till very recently, nothing was done for them by any missionary Society. They could not be reached, at all events they were not reached, by any of the agencies formerly at work ; and up to the present time it is only by means of an English educa tion of so high an order as to be an attraction to them, that those classes have, in any degree, been brought within the range of Christian influences. This plan originated with Dr. Duff and the Scotch Presbyterians ; and in the great schools which have been established by them, and more recently by some other Missionary Societies in some of the principal Indian cities, not only the science and literature of the western nations, but also the truths of the Christian religion, are daily taught by men of the highest ability to thousands of the most intelligent of the Hindu youth. This educational system had only just been introduced into Madras when I arrived, in 1838, and had not yet borne fruit ; but about a hundred persons belonging to the higher ranks of Hindu society have now been brought by it into the Christian fold. It is true that this number is very small, compared with that of the converts connected with the other system of Missions ; but it is to be borne in mind that they belong to a very influential class, a class in which no other system of means has borne any fruit whatever ; and that, as the converts of this class have had to fight their way to Christ through many persecutions, many of them