OTHER BRITISH DEPENDENCIES. 449 W ΧΙΧ. ITH the history and condition of the vast number of the other British Dependencies, there is neither necessity nor space for dealing. The following careful Table has been Great Britain, affords much interesting information in regard to the different missions now in operation in India. In the conclusion of his book he speaks with great encouragement of the prospects of missionary labor in India for the future, based upon the progress, which he has so carefully indicated through his work, made in the past ten years. The missionary enterprise has realized substantial progress in the number of its agents and converts, the improved character of the native churches and clergymen, and spread of the native ministry; the number and efficiency of its catechists and teachers; in the enlargement of its education; the improvement of all its Christian literature; the occupation of new fields; the ripened experience of its bands of laborers and their more efficient application to the mighty sphere they seek to occupy. An expenditure of more than thirteen millions dollars, contributed by the churches of Europe and America, and the local church, both native and European, in India, has maintained through this period of ten years a staff of more than 500 missionaries; a staff of native pastors and missionaries which has risen to 183, with 1776 catechists, and hundreds of native school-teachers; 51,000 boys are taught in its vernacular schools, and 24,000 others study English in addition to their own tongue, and 21,000 girls enjoy the benefits of Christian female educa tion under its care. That expenditure, besides paying the salaries of numerous and experienced agents, has provided them residences, maintained school-houses, built and repaired churches, provided facilities for preaching journeys, brought out large numbers of new missionaries, carried away the exhausted invalids, produced and scattered with liberal hand a vastly improved Christian literature, in fourteen languages, including and thoroughly based on improved translations of the Bible. That agency has, during the decade, rescued thousands of souls from death, witnessed an elevation of the tone, knowledge and temper of native Christian life, and seen a large increase in the number of native converts. On the immense improvement in the government system of education in India, Dr. Mullens also dwells with great cheerfulness. That system annually expends a sum equal to all the money spent on Indian missions; but he frankly states that its results are not for a moment to be compared with the agencies and the fruits which these missions obtain. They are now commencing in its best governed provinces to promote vernacular education among the many. It has for a long series of years, especially in Bengal, chosen a few from the middle and higher classes of native society, stimulated to a high degree their intellectual activity, but leaving their moral nature to a great extent untrained and 450 MISSIONARY AGENCY IN INDIA. prepared with great care, from the latest authentic British sources, and it will probably be found correct: uninformed, and has sent them forth into the world more able for good or evil, often full of intellectual pride, and not seldom disloyal in their hearts. The missionary agency has not despised the wealthy or the middle classes; and in many schools founded among them it has trained the pupils in their whole nature as moral beings. But it has wrought and found its fruits most largely among the poor. The peasantry, often despised and oppressed, have found no greater friends in the land than missionaries and other Christian men; and in the mission churches more than two hundred thousand worshipers offer, each Sabbath, the earnest aspirations of loyal hearts to the living and true God, in the name of the one Mediator, that the truth that they themselves have embraced may be accepted by their fellow-countrymen throughout the empire. That truth-seeing Missionary Agency is, in spite of almost insuperable obstacles and disheartening drawbacks, spreading more widely, impressing more deeply, and molding a kind of opinion throughout native society. Neither of the false religions of India is making any headway. Each is more active at times for Christianity, has compelled them to activity in self-defense, but each new effort shows their character more clearly and adds to previous defects. Everywhere in the empire,-in Ceylon, in Burmalı, in North India and in the South,-in the great cities and in the open country,—in the cities of commerce, the seats of government, the centres of native opinion,—it is Christianity alone which makes real advance. Its agency was never more compact, more judiciously located, more steady in its working, more calm and quiet in its tone. Dr. Mullens closes his work by saying: "The husbandmen have gone forth to their toil bearing the precious seed, and often sowing it in tears. The forest has been cleared, the soil reclaimed, and everywhere the fields are green with budding blade and tender ear. In sheltered valleys where the sunbeams lie, smiling sheaves have been gathered in; the pine tree has replaced the thorn; the myrtle grows where the brier flourished, and the garden of God is preparing to offer to its Master all fruits and flavors of immortal beauty and undecaying bloom. 'Behold the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.' Well may the church of God present the sacred prayer: 'Wake, Oh North wind, and come thou South, blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out, and my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits.'" |