that he made converts who were in reality no converts-that he had an overweening faith, not peculiar to the sixteenth century, in the efficacy of infant baptism, are facts which all history records, but no true history in a grudging spirit. The more insufficient his means, the greater the faith that sustained him. When Francis Xavier went about the streets of Goa, or traversed the villages on the western coast, bell in hand, its clear sounds inviting all who heard to gather round him and accept from his lips the first rudiments of Christian truth; and when, with inalienable European accent, he enunciated a rude translation of the Apostles' Creed, and then of the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, he did not believe that he, so unworthy an agent, so weak a vessel, could convert thousands of wondering heathens to the faith as it is in Christ; but he believed that even a weaker vessel, even a more unworthy agent, might, in God's hands, become a human medium for the conversion of tens of thousands, and he did his best, knowing how little it was in itself, but how great it might become, if the Holy Ghost descended upon him as a dove, and birdlike accompanied him in his wanderings. How far the Divine Spirit may have worked in him, and for him, it is not for us in these days to determine. It was said that a miraculous gift of tongues was vouchsafed to him, that he raised the dead, and performed other prodigies; but he was too truthful, too real a man, to favour the growth of errors which the whole Catholic world was only too willing to accept; and it would be the vilest injustice to fix upon the first Jesuit missionary the charge of dishonesty and insincerity, because among his followers have been liars and hypocrites of the worst class. "The proselytes of Francis Xavier are numbered by his followers, not by tens, but by hundreds of thousands. He is said to have converted seven hundred thousand unbelievers to the Christian faith. His converts were drawn from all classes, from princes to pariahs. That the dishonesty or credulity of his biographers has greatly magnified his successes is not to be denied; but, making large deductions on this score, there still remains a formidable balance of nominal Christianity to be carried to the account of the apostle. His superhuman energies seem to have been attended with almost miraculous results. Idols fell at his approach; churches rose at his bidding; and the sign of the cross became the recoguised symbol of fellowship among the inmates of entire villages. From Goa he travelled southward to the pearl-fisheries of Cape Comorin, and after succouring the poor people who had been driven thence to the shores of the Straits of Manaar, returned to the western coast, and commenced his labours with extraordinary energy and success in Travancore. According to his own account he baptised ten thousand heathens in a single month; carrying on the holy work till he could no longer articulate the words of the formula, or raise his hand to perform the office. Then he took ship for the Eastern isles, visited Malacca, Amboyna, Ternate, Java; and, after a while, returned to visit his churches in Southern India, and to prepare himself for a great crusade against the Bonzes of Japan. More than two years were spent in this holy war; many strange adventures he encountered, many converts he made, and many churches he established; but his career was now drawing to a close. He returned to Goa, and there in council with one Iago Pereira, captain of the vessel which had carried the apostle on his strange and perilous voyage from Japan, formed the magnificent design of converting the Chinese empire. But he never reached the flowery land. Difficulties beset the enterprise. The apostle of the Jesuits was landed at the island of Sancian; and there, as he was about to join, full of heart and hope, a Siamese embassy of which he had gained tidings, and thus aided to penetrate into the interior of the celestial empire, the hand of God was put forth to stay his triumphant career; the Divine mandate, 'thus far shalt thou go, and no further,' was issued to that lowly, well-prepared servant of God: he met the summons with rapture, and on the bare beach, or beneath a miserable shed, which sheltered him neither from the heat by day nor from the cold by night, he closed a life of agony and bliss, of humiliation and of triumph, with scarcely a parallel in the history of the world." After this glowing tribute to the apostle of the Indies, we are not surprised that Mr Kaye comes to the conclusion that, in the history of the Jesuit missions to Hindostan, Francis Xavier stands out in solitary grandeur as the one apostolic man. Beside him all his successors were but mountebanks and impostors. Strengthened by many nominal adhesions to the Romish form, the papal priesthood became insufferably arrogant and presumptuous. Don Al exis de Menezes, the Archbishop of Goa, blew the trumpet in the good old knightly style, and rode at the head of his retainers to exterminate the schismatics of the south, terrifying their archdeacon into apparent compliance, and marshalling all his forces: the missionary archbishop cursed his foes, and struck them with excommunication-pronounced the head of their church, the Patriarch of Babylon, a heretic and impostor, and by dint of amazing perseverance, by bribery and bullying skilfully applied, by claiming the assisttance of the native princes, and undermining the confidence of all the churches, he finally attained his object, and the Syrian congregations professed themselves the liegemen of the Pope. It was a matter, however, with which real Christianity had very little to do. The conversions were in few cases sincere, and the doctrines of the church were limited to its ceremonies and discipline. As if to prove the unsubstantial nature of Hindoo conformity under the teachings of Rome, there came a fresh band of Jesuit missionaries at the beginning of the seventeenth century. These men despised the example of Francis Xavier, who kept up the distinctive forms of his church, and preached openly the peculiarities of his faith; they pursued an opposite course. They turned aside from the practice of no deceit, from the exercise of no hypocrisy. They lied in word, and they lied in action. They called themselves Western Brahmans, and in the disguise of Brahmans they mixed themselves with the people; talking their language, following their customs, and countenancing their superstitions." The success of these missionaries was proved by the number of converts they persuaded to go through the ceremony of baptism; but in all other respects the convert continued as deeply heathen as before. Jesuits, missionaries, catechists, and converts, all vied with each other in the ostentatious idolatry of their religious services. The processions which had taken place in honour of Vishnu, were now marshalled in worship of the Virgin. There en same noise of trumpets and kettle-drums; there were the same dancers, with the same marks of vermilion and sandal-wood on their naked bodies. To break down the barriers of caste would have been a great achievement, but the Jesuits did not attempt it. They went among the people with great parade of caste, and declared that they were sprung from the head of Brahma himself. As falsehood and imposture are sure, sooner or later, to meet their just reward, it will not surprise us to be told that the new Brahmans were detected, and driven forth with ignominy and contempt. It certainly is with no feeling of regret or commiseration that we read, that the dawn of the eighteenth century found the authority of the Church of Rome reduced to the narrowest limits, and the Jesuits nowhere visible on the Indian coast. The first establishment of an English East India Company dates from 1599. The objects of the Company were simply commercial; and yet it was no long time before the religious element began to be introduced. Chaplains were appointed to all the ships, and each voyage was inaugurated with solemn prayer and supplication in presence of the Governor and his colleagues. The lives of the private adventurers were not very striking models of Christian conduct, and for the first century of the Company's existence the original institution only was kept in view, and in its official capacity the Company was not a proselytising body. We cannot help thinking that a great deal too much is made of the supposed immorality of the English people, and the lukewarmness on religious matters displayed by the Corporation of Merchants trading to the East. Mr Kaye extends his indictment against our predecessors from the beginning of the seventeenth century to very recent times. He dwells upon the dissolution of manners attendant on the Restoration, but he forgets the strong under-current of Puritanic asceticism that flowed beneath the glittering surface on which floated the revellers of Whitel were men also, all through of Charles and James shouted, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" at Marston Moor, and were ready to draw the sword again. There were modest country manors, in which the equals and companions of the Hutchinsons were still to be found, but who never presented themselves at Court; and the alarmists who seem to take a pride, after the deluding example of Lord Macaulay, in blackening the moral character of the men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, may take comfort from the reflection that, if one half their lamentations were true,there would have been no restoration possible a people once thoroughly demoralised can never rise again. But the heart of middle-class England was always sound its mobs might be riotous and brutal, its Charles the Second lordlings and Walpole politicians might be unprincipled and licentious; but the mass of the educated population feared God and were charitable to man. A mistake is made between coarseness of manner and wickedness of heart. Squire Western would scarcely be tolerated in a society of labourers at the present day, and Commodore Trunnion would certainly make his appearance at Bow Street, and be fined for improper language; but the foundations were firm. Both those estimable and foul-mouthed gentlemen would have felt themselves insulted if you had proposed anything mean, or dishonourable, or irreligious for them to do; and the whole difference between that time and this seems to be, that the public standard of decorum in those days was lower, and the individual was more lax in formal observances; but at both periods there was, as an essential portion of the national character, the same reverence for goodness, and respect for holy things. Mr Kaye is surely too exacting when he sneers at the dilatoriness of the merchant adventurers in not building a church for the first eighty years of their connection with the East. They were years of struggle for the bare life; they were persecuted by the Portuguese and the Dutch; their position was not secure for a single day; they were fain to be contented with prayers in a private room, and sermons delivered in temporary buildings, as the Israelites contented themselves with a tent in the wilderness. "Old John Mandelslo," says Mr Kaye himself, "who wrote in 1640, tells us that at the chief factory prayers were said at the President's house. The respect and reverence which the other merchants had for the President was very remarkable, as also the order which was there observed in all things, especially at divine service, which was said twice a-day-in the morning at six, and at eight at night, and on Sundays thrice." If on "Fridayes, after prayers," the governor relaxed a little, and invited his colleagues to join him in drinking their wives' healths; and if, on those festive occasions, it sometimes happened, as old John Mandelslo confesses, that "some made advantage of this meeting to get more than they could well carry away," we are to make allowance for the occasion; for it is said Friday which was thus celebrated was the day on which they had left England on their outward voyage; and we are not to visit the excesses of 1640 with the harshness which they might deserve in this period of teetotal abstinence and compulsory sobriety. The drink which produced these exhilarating and consolatory effects was composed, we are told, of aqua-vitæ, rose-water, juice of citrons, and sugar; and as the Indian tree-juice has furnished the Scotch with the name for their national " toddy," it is only right, in the Hindoo appellation of the above savory compound, "Pale puntz," to recognise the English "punch." It was the Factory of Madras which had the honour of building the first Protestant church in India. Under the presidency of the excellent Sir George Oxenden and his successor Gerald Aungier, a devout and charitable man of the name of Streynsham Master had worked to this good end. In the year 1681 a building of solid stone was set apart for the worship of God; and we regret that Mr Kaye descends to the remark that " many persons may still consider it no better than a barn or a riding-school, because it was not episcopally consecrated, and probably was not placed in accurate relation Calcutta also were not without witnesses of the faith, though Mr Kaye gives a miserable description of the state of morals among the settlers on the Hooghly. They had sufficient Protestantism, however, if not Christianity, to resist the aggressions of the Papists, who established an influence in many of their houses by having gained the spiritual management of the native women whom the adventurers had married. The first thing, accordingly, we hear of in the history of the young community at Chuttanutty (Calcutta), is that a gallant governor of the name of Sir John Gouldsborough, finding that a padre has succeeded in getting himself appointed heir to a foolish person of the name of Messenger-by the wheedling of his black wife, who had turned a Papist takes vigorous measures to vindicate the law, and disappoint the hostile faith. He turns the priests bodily out of his domain of Chuttanutty, and, to show them how terribly in earnest he is, he pulls down their "mass-house," and levels the ground it occupied for an enlargement of his factory. to the points of the compass." In the presence of the woeful fact that this was the one building in all India devoted to the public worship of the English settlers, it seems a little below the sacredness of the occasion to allude sarcastically to the absence of a Form which to the Episcopalians might have invested it with a dearer interest, as reminding them of the village church at home, and could not possibly have lessened its claim to consideration on the part of the other worshippers, to whom all ceremonial dedications and all ecclesiastic architecture were matters of no moment. But a church, whether episcopally blest or not, was now among the most precious of the buildings of Madras. How to get it supplied with fitting ministers was the next question. Chaplains were sent in numbers sufficient for the inhabitants of the respective factories. In a short time the Crown gave its countenance to the proceedings of those distant subjects so far as to make it a part of the duty of those chaplains to convert the Gentoos. The charter of a new Company in 1698 contained a clause enacting that the Company should constantly maintain one minister in every garrison and superior factory, and that they should in such garrisons or factories provide or set apart a decent and convenient place for divine service only. Quarrels, however, of the most brutal violence, broke out between the rival companies and the chief persons in authority, to the great scandal of the English name. Fights took place in the councilchamber. If the President was strong," and they were content with no conhe so mauled the dissentient councillor that he had to be taken to bed. If the councillor bore malice, he tried to revenge himself by poisoning or otherwise murdering his superior. When peace, however, was brought about by the union of the two Companies under one charter in 1708, the thoughts of the belligerents reverted to the church. Madras made good use of her new building, and the merchants created admiration among the natives by th mnity of their demeanour as ed in procession to the es, preand But a surer method of pulling down mass-houses was pursued by the Danish missionaries Ziegenbalg and Plutscho, who arrived at Tranquebar in the year 1705. In spite of the enmity of Romish priests, and the apathy, if not active opposition, of the chaplains on the Establishment, the word of God mightily grew and prevailed under the administration of these two men. "They did not expect to work miracles of genuine conversion," says Mr Kaye, version that was not genuine." They was lent to them for their services in German, and a wealthy native was only deterred by the hostility of his countrymen from building a church for them at his own expense. A church, however, was furnished by contributions from the European settlers at Tranquebar,and the two young missionaries preached in Tamul and in Portuguese to crowds of Papists and Protestants, Mohammedans and Hindoos. Conversion from the two last-named communities had the additional obstruction of being the certain source of ruin to the convert. The new Christian had to surrender friendship and society, and finally maintenance itself; for nobody would consort with him, or furnish him with employment. Ziegenbalg was ready with a remedy, and taught them useful manufactures, which made them independent of their countrymen. "With all their spiritual enthusiasm," remarks Mr Kaye," these young Danish missionaries were eminently practical men; and I am not sure that we should not have done better in India, if we had imitated them in this good practice of providing work for our heathen converts." For the farther proceedings of these excellent men for their successes and disappointments, for their gradual overcoming of difficulties between them and the other clergy in Hindostan, till finally they were received with the right hand of fellowship by the chaplains in Madras-we must refer to the volume itself. We shall also pass over the labours and triumphs of the famous missionary Schwartz at Tanjore. No nation has ever sorrowed over the grave of warrior or politician with truer prouder regret than the Christian public of England did over the death of this pure-hearted apostle of the faith. Statues were raised in his honour (the works of Bacon and Flaxman); sermons in commemoration of his merits were ordered to be preached; and an inscription for his tomb sent out from England, recording that he had been employed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for fifty years; that during all that time he had gone about doing good; that he had built a Christian church, and established or Christian seminaries; and that the East India Company were anxious to perpetuate the memory of such transcendant worth, and were gratefully sensible of the public benefits which resulted from its influence. Perhaps the greatest benefit which resulted from his influence was the example he set of caution and moderation. Giving way to no impulses of rash and dangerous zeal, he laid the sure foundations of future progress, by disarming the suspicions of the native chiefs. A simple individual, personally powerless, was no object of fear to the most jealous of rajahs; and as the result of the early labours of Schwartz, and the continued efforts of his followers, Gericke, Kohlof, and Kiernander, it is stated that, at the present day, and in Tinnevelly alone, there is a Christian population of forty thousand souls. The transactions in Bengal bring one of this Tinnevelly band more prominently forward; and due honour is done to the labours and virtues of John Kiernander. A very deprecatory and hostile view is again taken of the general state of morals in Calcutta in the early part of last century. The total absence of the religious element in English society, as we are told, made itself doubly manifest among the settlers on the Hooghly; yet the existence and activity of the two great societies which are so often commemorated in these pages-the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Christian Knowledge Society-are themselves some proof that the disease had not penetrated to the core. "In 1715," says Mr Kaye, "the settlers built God a church,' and adds, for the sake of the quotation, "but laughed His word to scorn for many years afterwards." Yet we are informed in the succeeding paragraph, that "when the church was built, the Reverend Samuel Brereton, seemingly (why seemingly?) a devout man, was chaplain to the Factory at Calcutta ; and we may be sure it rejoiced his heart to see the President and all the chief servants of the Company walking every Sabbath in solemn procession to the house of God." But troubled times came on, and the settlers were reminded of the unsub |