What Julian said of Damascus we may say of Lucknow: "Surpassing every [Indian] city both in the beauty of its temples and the magnitude of its shrines, as well as the timeliness of its seasons, the limpidness of its fountains," if not the volume of its waters, and the richness of its soil.

The plain statement of facts and estimates given in these papers is deemed due both to the missions and the Church. The facts may at first sight seem uninteresting, but they throw light upon the condition and character of the country. The estimates, it should be borne in mind, are upon a gold basis, and the property having been built in a land where wages are exceedingly low, is far superior to what the mere figures might indicate.

On the whole, it will be seen that our India missions deserve the confidence of the Church, and the more fully they are understood the more strong will that confidence be. No one could have been a more pleasant companion than Dr. Butler. Had I been a son he could not have treated me with more kindness.

VI.

INDIA CONFERENCE.

HE following is the address which I deliv

THE

ered at the opening of the first session of the India Mission Annual Conference:

Before we proceed to organize I beg to submit a few remarks which our unusual circumstances suggest.

I come from your native land, bearing from your brethren greeting and love. The country and Church which sent you hither remember you. Identified as you are with the cause of God in this great and populous peninsula, it is natural that we should bear you up in our prayers. Nor are we unmindful of your trials. It is no small matter to bid farewell to home and native lands; to settle in a climate which is pretty sure to disturb our health, if it do not abridge our life; to rear our children under influences and institutions which we disapprove, and forfeit for them literary, social, and political

privileges, to which, in our own land, they would have fallen heirs; to move amid foes, and to be regarded as intruders. It is a still greater trial, far from a land of Sabbath bells, separated from the watch-care of the Church, and deprived of the communion of the saints, to be subjected, through every sense, to pagan influences. He who moves amid the temples of idolatry moves. in a great moral pest-house. Nothing but open, perpetual, prayerful resistance to the forces that play upon him can keep him safe. The human mind, unsustained by grace, gravitates to religious error. The Mohammedans entered India enemies both to idolatry and caste, but instead of destroying them they gradually adopted them. Christianity, too, on its first introduction into this land, compromised its principles. Even the primitive Church, when she relaxed her war upon idolatry, became polluted by it.

You do not, however, ask our sympathy. Penetrated with your high calling, you are ready to deny yourselves, endure afflictions, make full proof of your ministry, and through perils either by sea or land, by robbers or false brethren, remain unmoved; willing, if need be, to die for the Lord Jesus, and when you do, to commend to your children the battle you fought, committing them confidently to the care of your Father,

and their Father, to whom you ascend through the grace of his Son.

We know, indeed, that no lower standard is set before us. We, too, have learned to bear the reproach of Christ. But we discern that in you the Christian conflict is more than ordinarily severe, and we inquire what more can we do for you, what new comforts, auxiliaries, and supports can we send you? Engaged as we are in a war for the national life, against an unprovoked, wanton, and wicked rebellion-I say unprovoked, for no encroachment on the rights of the South was either inflicted or threatened; wanton, for the insurgents controlled all branches of the Government when they rebelled, and might have held them to this day wicked, for what more so than to sever States

“Which mutual league,

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in all glorious enterprises,"

had joined, and plunged them into war, even to the verge of ruin? Yet we have never once thought of withholding support from our missions, or even slacking the combat which we carry on through the earth against the powers of darkness. Saying this, we say much, for our war is one of awful magnitude, counting its battles by the hundred, its dead and wounded by

the million, and its expenditures by figures like those in which we compute the celestial spaces. Yet we say to you, stand to your post; we will not only supply but re-enforce you. You can not do our Church justice without considering that she has poured out more blood and suffered more losses for her country than any other.

"Many a bleeding father hath borne his valiant sons
In coffins from the field."

The tears of orphans, and the sighs of widows, and the lamentations of weeping Rachels that will not be comforted, make the whole Church like a funeral procession. But I need not tell you, for the crape is upon you also. Do you ask why this expenditure of life? Because there are things dearer than life. The Church regards the war, terrible as it is, as, on the part of the Government, unavoidable and righteous, arising out of the existence in some of the States of an institution incompatible alike with the genius of our republic, the spirit of our age, and the principles of our religion; an institution toward which, in former days, she was tolerant and hopeful, but which she has now placed under unequivocal ban. Seeing that law, liberty, and light are on one side of this conflict, and rebellion, slavery, and darkness on the other, we can but hope concerning the issue. Men, indeed,