the world. The Scriptures always speak of mankind, whether heathen, or Jews, or nominal Christians, as having natural capacity to understand the Divine commands and to feel their obligations to obey them. The Hindus, though their minds are darkened by their pantheism and mysticism, and their moral sense obscured by their false philosophy, which often confounds natural appetites with moral qualities, and substitutes rites and ceremonies for moral duties, yet still retain power to understand the gospel and to feel its suitableness to their state and character. They can see and understand enough of the works of God in creation and providence, if they would only use their reason and obey the dictates of conscience, to convince them of the sin and folly of worshipping such beings as their deities are described to be in their sacred books. And further, they are conscious of being sinners, of deserving the divine displeasure, and of needing mercy, and so they can perceive the suitableness of the way of salvation through a Mediator.

Some have supposed that the Hindu religion with its pantheism, its polytheism, its mysticism, and its atheism, its cruel and horrid rites under the name of virtue, and its almost endless and absurdly significant ceremonies, must annihilate the natural perception of right and wrong, and leave people destitute of conscience till it could be supplied or resuscitated by instruction. But such is not the state of the Hindus, as I know from long residence among them and much intercourse with them. Nor is such the opinion of any missionary I have ever known, who had acquired their language and lived among them enough to form any opinion of their moral state or sense from his own observation and experience. If they cannot understand the evidences, the doctrines, and the duties of Christianity so well in their present state as they could if well educated, yet they can understand enough to become wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. There is therefore encouragement to preach the gospel to them as soon and as far as possible, and the question in each mission is how far its members shall devote their time to this work, and how far to preparing a native agency to do it.

The opinion I have sometimes heard expressed in this country that it must be useless, or nearly so, to try to make the peo

ple of India understand the nature of Christianity, the force of moral obligation, and their need of divine mercy, this opinion is not founded upon facts. If any system of error, superstition, and false philosophy, could reduce people to a state of mind in which they would become incapable of understanding the gospel, that system appears to be Hinduism. But constituted as man is, with the capacities and powers of a moral agent, and conscious as he is of being a sinner of having done many things which he ought not to have done, and of not having done many things which he ought to have done, and of often seeing and approving the better course, and yet following the worse, he will retain, in all the possible states and circumstances where he has the free and voluntary exercise of his intellectual and moral faculties, the capacity to understand the gospel enough to feel its suitableness to his spiritual wants, and to experience its quickening power. In no part of the world is any portion of the human family so ignorant, so degraded, so debased, so mystified by error and superstition, as to exclude them from the "all nations" and the "every creature" contained in the last command of our Saviour to his disciples. Matt. 28:19, and Mark 16: 15.

The very singular political state of India and the circumstances of the English, the governing power in the country, have often made it apparently the duty of missionaries to engage in labors and duties not contemplated in their original object, and not making a part of their prescribed operations. The number of government chaplains would be sufficient for the spiritual instruction and pastoral care of all the European population in India, if they were so situated that they could attend regular services and stated ordinances. But the English population is so scattered over the country that many of them are to a great extent unsupplied with the regular ministration of the chaplains. There is also the class of people called Indo-Britons, who are much dispersed, and yet more imperfectly supplied with religious instruction than the scattered English population. Nominal Christians thus destitute of preaching and of the ordinances of the gospel, surrounded with a heathen population, and often setting a bad example before them, have appeared to have urgent claims upon missionaries. The immoral conduct

of nominal Christians early produced in many places very unhappy prejudices against the doctrines and morality of Christianity; for the people of India regard all who come from Christian countries as Christians, and their conduct and character as exhibiting the doctrines and spirit of Christianity, just as we look upon all Turks as Mohammedans, and their conduct and character as exhibiting the principles and spirit of the Mohammedan religion. So strong and unhappy were these prejudices against Christianity that some of the early missionaries often expressed the opinion in their journals and correspondence that little success could be reasonably expected from efforts to convert the native population to Christianity so long as they had before them the unhappy conduct of so many professing Christians, and that the first duty of missionaries appeared to be to labor for the reformation of their own countrymen in India.

Motives of this character have induced missionaries in many places to engage in undertaking religious services in the English language for Europeans and Indo-Britons, sometimes only once and sometimes twice on the Sabbath. In a few instances preaching in English has become their principal work, and in such cases those for whose spiritual good they labored, assumed their support. These labors in many different places in the English language have been very useful, and have contributed largely to the improved state of religious principle and moral character now existing among these classes of people. American missionaries have engaged less in labors of this kind than English missionaries, partly because they have not been in places so much requiring such labors, and in part probably because such labors appeared to involve more departure from the object of their mission in the country.

At the time I left India in 1853, religious services were performed in the English language in more than 70 chapels by missionaries, on the Sabbath. In this way they haye done and are doing a great and good work; a work apparently necessary to be done before the native population of India can be converted to Christianity. And a work in respect to its importance and magnitude which cannot be estimated by any who are not personally acquainted with the circumstances and character of Europeans in India, and their great power for good or evil over the inhabitants of the country.

TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES.

The Roman Catholic missionaries made no translations of the Scriptures in any of the languages of India. They wrote a work which they called Ezour Veda,* and then attempted to obtain for it the honor, the confidence, the currency, and the authority of a genuine Hindu work of this name. They expended money freely in erecting churches, colleges, and convents, but they made no versions of the Scriptures in any of the vernacular languages, and if any one of the 1,000,000 Roman Catholics in India and Ceylon has a copy of the word of God, he is indebted to the Protestants for it. To Protestants the ignorance and superstition of this class of people (so great that in some places they appear to be only one of the Hindu castes) do not appear strange in view of the circumstances in which they assumed the Christian profession, and in which they have always been kept by their spiritual guides. Their bishops and missionaries in India still pursue the same course. They will not supply their people with the Scriptures, and forbid them to receive copies from the Protestants.

The Dutch missionaries, wherever they introduced Christianity, translated the Scriptures into the vernacular language of the people. They appear to have relied more on catechetical and less on biblical instruction than English and American missionaries do. But the Scriptures were not withheld, nor concealed, nor sparingly and reluctantly supplied to the converts. In this respect the Dutch exhibited the genuine spirit of Protestantism.

In the Danish and German missions, which were the first Protestant missions on the continent in India, the translation of the Scriptures in Tamul was commenced as soon as the missionaries had sufficient knowledge of the language, and in a few years the native Christians had the whole Bible in their own tongue. All the different Protestant missions in India have felt it to be their duty to furnish the people of all classes, Hindus and Mohammedans as well as Christians, with the Scriptures in their own language. To make an intelligible and faithful trans

* See p. 514.

lation of the Scriptures into any language, is a work of great difficulty and requiring much labor. The history of our English version clearly shows this fact. And this version was made into the language of a nation who had professed the Christian religion for many centuries, in the course of which their language had been acquiring the words, terms, and phrases which are necessary for describing the attributes and perfections of Jehovah, the doctrines and duties contained in his word, and the views of mind and affections of heart which constitute the experience and character of his sincere worshippers. No one who has not carefully examined our English version, especially the sacrifices, rites, and ceremonies of the Pentateuch, the symbols and figures of the prophets, and the condensed statements and description of doctrines and Christian affections in the epistles, can be aware how all the powers of the language were brought into requisition, and even then sometimes it became necessary to coin new terms and to use some already current in new senses to convey the meaning required. What then must be the difficulties of making an intelligible and faithful version of the Scriptures into the language of a heathen and idolatrous nation, a language comparatively destitute of religious words and phrases, and in which the few words and terms it may have, have senses and uses in accordance with their superstition and false religion. The words which suggest one meaning or idea to a Christian, will often suggest a very different one to a heathen; and language, used in describing the actions and perfections of Jehovah, is often referred to some heathen god, the most odious perhaps among all their deities.

The difficulties of making intelligible and faithful versions of the Scriptures into the languages of heathen nations, can be known only from experience. When missionaries and others living in India see how the meaning of language apparently plain and intelligible to every Christian, is yet often misunderstood by heathens, on account of their erroneous religious views, it becomes obvious that the language of heathen nations, especially if they are idolaters and polytheists, as really requires to be Christianized before it can become a proper medium for describing Christian doctrines, duties, and affections, as their conduct requires to be reformed, their minds to be enlightened, and