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ening abhorrence of Hinduism, with all its follies and tyranny. The Enquirer newspaper, edited in English by a Kulin Brahman, Krishna Mohan Banerji, was one of the boldest of the newspapers. "We sail in quest of truth and happiness," said he in his first number. Then soon after, "The rage of persecution is vehement. Excommunication is the cry of the fanatic." The atmosphere was electric. The news of the introduction of the Reform Bill into the House of Commons in 1831 almost caused an explosion that would have shattered Hindu society into fragments. Tyrants, aristocrats, and priests, all the world over, let them howl; for their day was over. In August, 1831, several of the more excitable spirits were in the house of the editor of the Enquirer, although in his absence; and they determined to give a demonstration that none could question of their superiority to hereditary prejudice. They would eat beef! In the estimation of all orthodox Hindus this is worse than cannibalism, seeing a man is but a man and the cow is a goddess. They sent to the bazaar, got the beef, ate most of it, and threw the remnant of the unhallowed feast into the court of an adjoining house with loud shouts of "Beef! there is beef!" This latter act was of course utterly indefensible; it was a grievous outrage deserving of sharp punishment. The Brahman, for he was a man of high caste, who occupied the house thus polluted, rushed in rage and horror into the apartment from which the beef had been thrown, and there and then violently assaulted the culprits. The editor of the Enquirer, though not personally chargeable with the horrible offence, was regarded as the real fons et origo mali; and the members of his own family, under the influence of the priests, called on him either formally to profess belief in Hinduism, or forthwith leave family and home, and become an outcast. It was a fearful trial; but he was firm to his convictions. He left-compelled to leave-his father's house at midnight, not knowing whither he went.

We have gone into this somewhat minute detail in the hope of giving the reader a clear conception of the very remarkable condition of Calcutta at that critical time. It was a position fitted to call up every power of Mr. Duff's nature. He asked the editor of the Enquirer to visit him. The result was the appointment of weekly meetings at the missionary's house for religious inquiry and discussion. The rage of the orthodox waxed more furious; no native in

Calcutta would allow the obnoxious Enquirer to enter his house. But the religious discussions continued for months. Very patiently did Mr. Duff listen to every infidel and atheistic argument the young men employed; and step by step several of them drew nearer to the truth. This continued for several months; till, in August, 1832, Baboo Mohesh Chunder Ghose was publicly baptized. The next candidate for admission into the Christian Church was the editor of the Enquirer-a man of the highest rank in the Brahmanical caste. A third case of baptism soon followed. Others who were not baptized were brought at all events into a totally new position. The unblushing avowal of atheism entirely ceased; even the secret belief of it seemed to expire. Some who would not accept orthodox Christianity sought refuge in Socinianism. Mr. Duff entered into all their difficulties, and met them at every point. No wonder if even his Herculean frame began to give way under such unremitting toil. After some months of fluctuating health, he was compelled to leave India in July, 1834.

It would not be possible, and it is not needful, to dwell on the rest of his career so fully as we have done on the first years he spent in India. When intelligence of the arrival of the vessel conveying Mr. Duff reached the committee in Edinburgh, the exclamation of some of them was, "That is an end of the India mission." On the contrary, his enforced visit to Scotland was to impart new vigour to it. He addressed the General Assembly on the subject so dear to his heart, in May, 1835. The speech, as it reads now, is truly a noble speech; but, as heard in the Assembly, when the ardent missionary was fresh from the field so little known to most, and pleading as one who felt that the very existence of the mission was imperilled unless he could carry with him the minds and hearts of his audienceit must have been altogether overpowering. Great orators like Dr. Guthrie have said it was the most eloquent speech they ever heard. Thereafter he delivered addresses all over the country; and as McCheyne said, after hearing him some time later, "vires acquirit eundo; he pleads the cause of missions more powerfully than ever." The heart of Scotland was roused as from a deep lethargy. Tens of thousands who had hardly reflected on the great commission before, were led to recognise the grandeur of the missionary enterprise, and the imperative duty of evangelizing the world.

Towards the end of 1835, Mr. Duff received the honorary degree of D.D. from Marischal College and University, Aberdeen. When at home he wrote his largest work, entitled "India and Indian Missions," a work extending to eight hundred and sixtyfour pages. He also published a small volume entitled "Missions, the great end of the Christian Church," which is as characteristic of the man and as powerful in pleading, as anything that ever proceeded from his pen.

He left Britain for the East towards the end of 1839, reaching Bombay in February 1840. On arriving in Calcutta he found the Institution in a flourishing state; and, as sisted by a remarkable band of colleagues of whom Dr. T. Smith is the sole survivor, he proceeded to develop it still farther. He threw himself with characteristic energy into most of his former employments and the varied requirements of his position. He wrote largely for the press; particularly for the monthly Calcutta Christian Observer, of which indeed he had been co-editor from 1830 to 1834, and for the quarterly Calcutta Review, which was started in 1844 by a young officer afterwards well known as Sir John William Kaye. Of the review, Dr. Duff soon became editor-in-chief. When the disruption of the Church of Scotland took place in 1843, Dr. Duff vindicated with great power of argument, and with all the fervour of his eloquence, the position assumed by the Free Church. But it is only fair, in this connection, to add that although conscientiously and firmly a Presbyterian and a Free Churchman, he was a man of most expansive sympathies, ever ready to cooperate in active usefulness with all that loved the Lord Jesus Christ. He had all along exhibited this spirit as a member of the Committees of the Bible Society, the Tract Society, and other institutions in Calcutta.

short visit to Scotland and seek to stimulate the zeal of the Church on the great cause of Missions. The offer was gladly accepted. Mr. Duff then visited a great part of India for the purpose of inspecting the missions of his own and other Churches; and then came home in 1849. In the next six years he travelled over nearly the whole of Scotland, everywhere pleading the cause so dear to his heart. Instead of gathering funds by an annual collection in each congregation, he pressed the necessity of setting up a Missionary Association in each congregation, the funds to be taken up by collectors every quarter, very much as is done every month in the great Sustentation Fund of the Free Church. The plan proposed has been pretty fully carried out, and with the happiest results.

Dr. Duff was elected Moderator of the General Assembly in 1851. Pressing solicitations had reached him that he should visit America. Accordingly early in 1854 he proceeded to the United States and afterwards to Canada. He preached by invitation before the President and both Houses of Congress. His addresses were everywhere listened to with rapt attention. The Mission buildings in Calcutta having been lost at the Disruption, he was presented by his American friends with a sum of £5,000 to aid in the erection of new ones. The University of New York gave him the degree of LL.D.

By February, 1856, he had returned to Calcutta, and resumed the post which had now become conspicuous in the eyes of the whole Church of Christ. His engagements soon became as numerous and weighty as they had ever been. Almost immediately on his arrival he established a Hindu Girls' School. The restrictions to which females are subjected in Bengal are far greater than those which prevail in Bombay and Madras. An earnest attempt had been made by Mr. Drinkwater Bethune to provide a good school On the death of Dr. Chalmers, in 1847, he for girls of the middle and higher classes; was invited to fill his place as Principal and but the element of religious teaching was Professor of Divinity in the New College, intentionally, and, as the benevolent ori-the Theological seminary that had been ginator of the school believed, necessarily, established at the Disruption. He declined excluded. In Dr. Duff's school, of course, the distinguished honour, partly from attach- every effort was made to convey moral and ment to his Indian work and partly because, religious truth to the minds of the pupils. as he expressed it, a mind like his own that The school has been kept up ever since; it had been "compelled to expatiate over all has generally about a hundred pupils; and a manner of subjects," was not so well fitted very pretty sight it is. Considering the to train students in Theology as others must enormous difficulties with which female edube who had been able to concentrate their cation has to contend in Calcutta, it has houghts on that noblest of the sciences. | been a decided success. For the reader will He indicated, however, his readiness to pay a easily apprehend that it is infinitely easier to

find pupils in native houses, when ladies visit these, than to bring the girls out from their own homes to a Christian school. In the latter case the mountain has to be brought to Mahomet.

When at home, in 1853, Dr. Duff had been examined before a Committee of the House of Lords on the practical working of law and police in Bengal, and on the whole subject of Indian education. Important steps were about to be taken in regard to the latter subject. Dr. Duff was appointed member of a committee charged with the weighty duty of suggesting a draft constitution for three great universities that were to be set up, namely, at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. He was appointed one of the fellows of the Calcutta University, and held office in the Syndicate while he was in India. His influence, along with that of Bishop Cotton, induced the University to include Butler's "Analogy" and Paley's" Evidences" as subjects of the examination for honours. It must not, however, be supposed that Dr. Duff overlooked the necessity of primary education-the training of the darkened, toiling masses. Of recent years much has been achieved in this direction; and no one rejoiced over the progress more heartily than the missionary of whom it has been some times said-but most erroneously-that his one idea of education was that it should be conducted through English.

In 1863 Dr. Duff's health began again to give way. He was invited to return home, for the purpose of becoming Convener of the Committee on Foreign Missions; a request with which he felt it his duty to comply, although till then he had always wished and hoped that he might work and be buried in the land he loved so well. To qualify himself for his important office he visited the missions of South Africa; and on his arrival in Scotland entered at once on his duties as Convener.

By his exertions a sufficient sum of money was raised to endow a new chair-a professorship of Evangelistic Theology. The duty of the professor is to lecture every winter on the subject of missions in each of the three theological halls of the Free Church. In this connection a remarkable fact must be mentioned. Year after year the salary due to him as professor was handed over to a fund which he wished to see raised for the establishment of a Missionary Institute. This, if it can be established in harmony with the views he took of its character and function, will yet prove of great and lasting service to

the cause of Home and Foreign Missions. In a letter from a gifted minister of the Free Church, I find these words regarding the impression made by Dr. Duff as a professor: "The first year of my attendance on Dr. Duff seemed one in which his work had peculiar power over the students. He appeared to stand consciously as if with one foot in the grave; and to me at least he seemed like one sent on a hurried visit from the spirit-world to warn us how trivial all other objects were in comparison with the cause of Christ in the souls of men."

In 1873 he received the all but unexampled honour of filling a second time the chair of the Moderator of the General Assembly.

Much might be said of the way in which he discharged his duties as Convener of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Free Church. In that rare combination of gifts of which we spoke in the beginning of this paper, there were several that qualified him in a remarkable degree to guide the affairs of the missions. Almost to the end one saw little or no abatement in his quickness and clearness of perception-no abatement in his industry even when strength had begun perceptibly to fail. Some of us pleaded with him to take rest, and let younger men relieve him at least of harassing details of business. It was of no use; he could not but work on till he dropped.

The old fire flashed forth at times so brightly that those who were not much in contact with him could not believe that it. would soon be extinguished. He wrote a striking paper in connection with the Queen's assumption of the title of Empress of India. Still more powerful, very earnest and nobly eloquent, was a letter written last autumn when he was in Germany vainly seeking health, in connection with the famine that desolated so much of India.

Successive attacks of illness drove him in November last year from the bleak north. He rested at Sidmouth, Devonshire, hoping to proceed to the south of Europe; but increasing weakness rendered this impossible. To all around him it soon became evident that the end was drawing nigh. Some of us who had been associated with him in India or Scotland would earnestly have desired to be with him at the last and help to smooth his dying pillow. But this was not permitted us; and indeed it was not needed; for he was tenderly watched over by his son and daughter, and others of his nearest and dearest on earth. There was less of physical suffering assigned him than many had sorrow

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fully anticipated. Almost to the last his mind was clear and strong. And there was largely ministered unto him "the peace that passeth all understanding." "I see," said he, "the whole scheme of redemption from eternity more clear and glorious than I ever did." "I never said with more calmness in my life than I now do continually day and night, 'Thy will, my God, my God, be done.'" "I am in my Father's hands." We will not quote more; for the sanctuary in which earthly suffering is about to be transfigured into celestial glory is almost too sacred for common men to linger in. Alexander Duff quietly passed to his eternal rest on Tuesday, February 12th.

A public funeral in Edinburgh, largely attended by all classes of the community, showed the profound respect in which Dr. Duff was held. Representatives of the Church Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society came from London to attend on the solemn occasion. Very beautiful, very touching, have been the expressions of admiration for the man, and of sorrow over his grave, that have been heard from every quarter. Space does not allow us to insert any of these; we merely say that from missionary societies, from pulpits throughout the whole land, and from men of all shades of opinion who are connected with the public press, there has been one harmonious utterance of the feeling of which all hearts are full. America and

India-the distant West, the distant East— have still to speak; and we know that they will mourn as deeply as we do ourselves. Not merely to the Christian Churches of India, but to multitudes of Hindus and Mohammadans, it will be a great shock to hear that he whom, above all living men, they regarded as the special embodiment of Christian zeal and love-one of whom it might be said that India was written on his heart-has been removed from earth; and that none in India or in Europe can now hear that voice, with all its impassioned eloquence and all its earnest pleadings-a voice that was often so strangely touching in its very tones.

We dwell sorrowfully on our exceeding loss-a loss not only to the Free Church of Scotland, but to all missions and all Churches. Let us, however, remember not only that our loss is his gain, but that there is that which is not lost. He has left much behind him ; much that is imperishable. The prophets die, but their work remains; and their great example, also, never dies; it remains a tower of strength and a source of spiritual power to coming generations. They live then-live with an intenser life, when all that is mortal of them is committed to the tomb. The holy dead, as we may call them, are only raised out of the mists and fogs of earth into the pure firmament of heaven, that thence they may shine upon us, "like the stars, for ever and ever."

LIFE AND DEATH.

BY MRS. CHARLES GARNETT, AUTHOR OF "LITTLE RAINBOW."

IN gazing on the sea a subdued awe creeps over the heart. We never grow familiar with the wonderful ocean. We may sail over its waters, the sunlight sparkling on the surrounding waves; we may dredge up lovely trifles with a fisherman's drag, or spend long happy hours on the shelly beach, and yet the sea is a friend with whom familiarity breeds no contempt; for what mysteries are hid in its depths!

Unknown creatures dwell there, plants such as no mortal eye has seen grow there, and a world of life is hidden beneath its salt waters.

But these things do not make up to us all the mysteries of the ocean. The unknown is ever the mysterious; and that which conveys to us the most mysterious of ideas, because the most unknown, is death. It

may be because the sea and death are so joined in our consciousness that we never grow thoroughly at our ease in its presence. Down in those unknown depths lie the dead -our dead.

A weather-beaten stone church, a rude little edifice surrounded by a graveyard, stands on a high bluff on the cliff overlooking the Northern Ocean.

One sunshiny afternoon we stood there and read the inscriptions on the humble headstones. Ah! how sad they were! "Lost at Sea;" "Lost on board the brig Betsy in the Baltic Sea, with all hands ;" "Lost in the Bay of Biscay," and so on. Every grave told of one at least claimed by the ocean. But many, many of the loved ones were lying far away in its depths, and all the fisher folk at home could do to show their love was to

have the well-remembered names cut on the headstones in the windy churchyard. "And the sea shall give up the dead that are in it." We look away from the sea, yet how seldom | we feel that the earth, sparkling with flowers, dressed in a many-coloured robe, with its swelling hills, its fruit-trees, its snow-tipped mountains and green fields-the earth whose breezes are musical with the song of bird, the lowing of cattle, and the laughter of waterfalls, is, in fact, far more mysterious because of its hidden dead than the restless ocean we turn from with a sigh.

How seldom we think of this as we enjoy a country walk on a soft summer's evening! How much less does the thought strike us as we hurry along our crowded London streets with the blazing shops on either side, and the rush of traffic rolling past us! And yet it is true the dead are with us everywhere. They who loved once as we love now, who had their interests and their lives very much like those we have, Britons, Romans, Saxons, Normans, were men and women like our selves.

This remembrance came strongly over us at the sea-side once. A high green hill rose above the sea and there we used to climb on the sweet afternoons, and the air laden with the scent of clover blew softly over our faces as we watched the white-winged ships sailing up the Channel. The grass was growing scantily, in some spots indeed the white glitter of bits of spar caught the eye. Rough grass-grown hillocks were scattered about. Here once stood a British village. Long years ago bright eyes looked for the incoming of the leather-covered fishing boats from this height, and old women bade children drive the kine to pasturage in the green valley below; and two miles away are the Barrows. One day careful hands removed their green turf, and this was what they found a husband and wife-face to face they lay, and with their hands still clasped tight. Ah! how they loved. All in all to each other; death could not divide them, and there quietly they rest together.

The next was this: a mother with her little child. Poor little thing! did it waste away in her faithful arms? or did a swift disease mercifully spare her that agony and take her away with that little one?

Another time we spent our summer holiday at a village embosomed within northern hills, where keen air brings invigoration to weary work-worn folk, and straying idly down a country road to the river's bank we paused surprised. A Roman altar was placed at the

turning of the road, and this was its inscription

"Verbeiæ sacrum Clodius fronto Præf. Coh. II. Lingon."

More than fourteen hundred years ago, the memorial was raised near the swift river from whose angry waters the Roman soldier had been saved, and a brave heart turned in gratitude to a power above its own—a power which had loved him and whom he longed to thank. Where is the warm heart now? Probably its dust forms part of the old encampment upon which we sat to copy out his words. Or as we wander through the aisles of this old cathedral and listen to the organ, as its notes rise jubilant in the high roof, and watch the sunshine fall in coloured patches through the painted windows on pillar and pavement, who dreams that down in the oldest foundations a strange secret is built in? Not long ago these foundations had to be examined for repairs, and an enormous stone, nine feet long, was found to be in truth a coffin, and there the skeletons of four girls were found packed tightly together; their long hair still perfect, and for a moment the outline of their forms could be seen. Why were they thus hidden far away, so carefully cemented in one grave, and so built up that none would guess human bones were hidden behind the rough stone wall?

These secrets of life and death we shall never unravel. No more than the internal life of our brothers and sisters, or our dearest friends. But death does not horrify us on the dry land, perhaps because we come as it were constantly face to face with it. It is known. Everything we see lives and dies; the flowers blossom then fade, the leaves come out then fall. Our friends leave us, but we know all which dies around us will live again. They are of the present-so are we. They are passing away with us, and as we move onward together we also pass to a higher life—a fairer and a brighter. Reader! let the thought that we are but units in a mighty host which has for ages been marching gravewards implant in our souls also the recollection that life and death are not quite bound up in us— the children of to-day-but that others have felt and suffered and joyed as we do. us cultivate a wider sympathy for our fellowunits, a more vivid interest in their concerns, a more tender compassion for their faults, remembering that their day and ours will soon be past, and so grow to think less of ourselves and our own little selfish interests, thus becoming somewhat more fit for the eternal life, and for that land where there shall be no more sea.

Let

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