CHAPTER VIII.

Statement of the labours and success of Missionaries of the Protestant persuasion.

In the preceding chapter, the Abbé's objection to the continuation of missionary efforts in India, on the ground of ill success, was considered, so far as relates to the efforts of missionaries connected with the church of Rome: the present chapter will be devoted to a review of the same objection, as applying to missionaries of the Protestant persuasion.

In the following quotation, the Abbé enters into a specification of different denominations of Protestant missionaries, and insinuates the failure of them all: "Behold the Lutheran mission, established in India more than a century ago! Interrogate its missionaries, ask them what were their successes during so long a period, and through what means were gained over the few proselytes they made? Ask them whether the

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interests of their sect are improving, or whether they are gaining ground, or whether their small numbers are not rather dwindling away? Behold the truly industrious, the unaffected, and unassuming Moravian brethren! Ask them how many converts they have made in India, during a stay of about seventy years, by preaching the gospel in all its naked simplicity?-They will candidly answer, 'Not one! not a single man!'

"Behold the Nestorians in Travancore! Interrogate them; ask them for an account of their success in the work of proselytism, in these modern times? Ask them whether they are gaining ground, and whether the interests of their ancient mode of worship is improving? They will reply, that so far from this being the case, their congregations, once so flourishing, and amounting (according to Gibbon's account) to 200,000 souls, are now reduced to less than an eighth of this number, and are daily diminishing.

"Behold the Baptist missionaries at Serampore! Inquire what are their spiritual successes on the shores of the Ganges? Ask them whether they have the well-founded hope that their indefatigable labours, in endeavouring to get the Holy Scriptures translated into all the idioms of India, will increase their successes? Ask them whether those extremely incorrect versions, already obtained at an immense expense, have produced

the sincere conversion of a single pagan? And I am persuaded that, if they are asked an answer upon their honour and conscience, they will all reply in the negative." (pp. 25, 26.)

In a further part of his book, the Abbé, in a sweeping clause, pronounces total failure to have followed the labours of all Protestant missionaries, without exception. The passage is as follows: "The concerns of the Christian religion are in a quite desperate state; from a long period, all missionaries who are come to India for the purpose of making proselytes, have found themselves deceived on their arrival in the country, have experienced nothing but the most distressing disappointments in all their pursuits, and all their labours have terminated in nothing.” (p. 133.)

To meet the Abbé's objection, as it affects Protestants, all that is requisite is a correct statement of facts. These facts are detailed in many volumes, the greater part of which have appeared within the last twenty or thirty years. Before that period, the Protestant missions of India were almost exclusively confined to the south-eastern coast of the Peninsula. The authors who have narrated the earlier proceedings in the ancient Danish mission at Tranquebar, and the other Protestant missions on the coast, are enumerated in Fabricius's "Lux Evangelii." Of that part of these missions which is connected

with the venerable Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, a detailed account, up to the latest period, is given in its annual reports; an abstract of which was compiled, a few years since, by the present Archdeacon of London, in a very interesting octavo volume.

Within the last twenty or thirty years, the annual reports, and other official publications of the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, the American Board of Missions, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, all now amounting to a great number of volumes, contain a great mass of information relative to the condition of the natives, the duty of attempting their rescue from that state, the means to be pursued, the effects already produced, the good in progress, and the happy prospects of the future.

To the above publications may be added, as being to a great extent corroborative of their contents, the writings of Buchanan, the lives of that eminent man, of Brown, and of Martyn; Ward's History of the Hindoos; not forgetting an affecting quarto, by the Abbé Dubois himself, together with a great number and variety of works of a similar description.

The substantial truth (so far as relates to the point under consideration) of all these various

volumes, the Abbé has the hardihood virtually to call in question; and to attempt, in effect, to overthrow. Volumes, many of them vouched for and issued by large and respectable bodies of Christians in Europe and America; and all of them having their origin in the testimony of eye-witnesses. These witnesses comprising a multitude of devoted missionaries of various denominations, and of impartial spectators in India, friends to the cause of the missions in question, from what they themselves have heard and seen. A celebrated sceptic is reported to have said, that what twelve men (meaning the apostles) have built up, one man (meaning himself) would pull down. But it was vox et preterea nihil, and the rash saying came to nought. The Abbé's bold attack upon the impregnable accumulation of evidence, which has been amassed from all classes and quarters, in favour of Christian missions to Hindostan, must in like manner prove abortive. Magna est

veritus et prevalebit.

Before I proceed to add my mite of testimony to the general fund, it may be necessary, for the information of such as are not particularly conversant with the subject, to premise, that a missionary's labour in India has a two-fold object, namely, Europeans and Natives. The well-informed friends to missions are aware of the importance of nominal Christians in India being