A HISTORY 
 
 OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA.
 
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 A HISTORY OF THE 
 
 OXFORD MISSION TO 
 
 CALCUTTA. 
 
 BY GEORGE (. LONGRIDGE, 
 
 OF THE COMMUNITY OF THfi-RJtftWftRECTION, 
 SOMETIME VICAR OF GROVE, WANTAGE. 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. EDWARD STUART TALBOT, D.D., 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 1900.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEV, LD. 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
 
 TO 
 THE BRETHREN OF THE EPIPHANY 
 
 WHO HAVE THE COURAGE 
 
 NOT ONLY TO WORK 
 
 BUT TO WAIT.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 ~*HIS book is an endeavour to give a simple 
 account of the work of the Oxford Mission 
 to Calcutta, in the hope that it may not only 
 stimulate the zeal of those who already know and 
 are working for the Mission, but that it may also 
 help to quicken the interest of Churchmen in 
 general in what is, or ought to be, to the English 
 Church the all important subject of the conversion 
 of India. To the fact of the immense responsi- 
 bility which rests upon England in this matter 
 the Bishop of Rochester has drawn attention, 
 clearly and powerfully, in the preface which he 
 has most kindly written, and for which I desire 
 to offer to him my respectful thanks. 
 
 I wish also to thank two friends who have helped 
 vii
 
 viii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 me much by their kindly criticism and advice, 
 and my colleague, the Rev. Hugh Benson, who has 
 been good enough to correct the proofs. 
 
 G. LONGRIDGE. 
 
 HOUSE or THE RESURRECTION, MIRFIELD. 
 Epiphany, 1900.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 1" EARNESTLY desire for this little book a 
 large audience and a thoughtful reception ; 
 for it sets out in brief but sufficient outline one 
 of the problems of England's Christian Empire, 
 and tells of a tiny but invaluable effort towards 
 its solution. The moment is timely for such 
 matters. The voice of God through events and 
 history is teaching Englishmen, as no words could 
 ever teach, the lessons of Imperial responsibility. 
 It drives home the questions why and for how 
 long that Empire is given, what are its tasks, and 
 what its true foundations and resources. The scope 
 of such questions goes far beyond the particular 
 case which suggests them. The lessons of Africa, 
 and whatever quickening of national conscientious- 
 ness is gained there through sorrow and suffering, 
 may show their effect in India. For India's 
 is certainly the " leading case " in the list of 
 
 ix
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 English responsibilities. Nowhere else does the 
 future rest, under God, so absolutely upon us, 
 or seem charged with possibilities for good and 
 evil so enormous. Nowhere is the appeal to the 
 stronger nation and more robust civilisation for 
 parental care more urgent and pathetic. 
 
 Calcutta is but one corner of India, but, educa- 
 tionally as much as politically, it is a centre. Its 
 educated class is but a fraction of India's enormous 
 populations, but it is the fraction which is most 
 directly susceptible of English influence, and which 
 exercises the largest share of the power that be- 
 longs to speech and writing. 
 
 The case between us and this section of Indian 
 life may be put into a nutshell : we must destroy ; 
 shall we help to build up ? In view of our great 
 administrative constructions, especially the educa- 
 tional organisation, this way of putting the case 
 may seem a paradox ; but it is not so to those 
 who reflect that the first result of an inrush of 
 foreign ideas, even if they were not the ideas of 
 an advanced and critical civilisation, would be to 
 undermine and discredit and destroy many of the 
 institutions and forces which have been the support 
 and strength of a people's life. We have to
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 recognise that " knowledge is power " only when 
 it is wielded by a force greater than itself, that 
 force is life, the higher or spiritual life of a people. 
 In this sense, as in others, it is true that " the 
 letter killeth, the Spirit giveth life." The strength 
 of a nation's life comes from the faith that is in 
 it. Now we must, by our education, do much to 
 destroy India's faiths. As Christian Englishmen 
 we believe that we have a better faith to give, a 
 faith which, to speak only of its social influence, 
 is of incomparably higher bonding power and 
 wholesome effect. Shall we do this second and 
 higher part of our work ? Shall we, I repeat, 
 help to build up ? The Government cannot do 
 this ; it can only give the indirect testimony 
 which is indeed invaluable of a lofty and 
 incorruptible justice and a humane and moral 
 administration in system and in personnel. But 
 the Church which speaks in the English tongue 
 can bear witness whence it was that England 
 received these great national blessings to impart 
 to her dependencies. The Church can speak freely 
 and without reserve of that faith in the true God 
 and in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, that 
 faith in the stooping of God and the lifting of
 
 Xli PREFACE. 
 
 man through Him, to which England owes all 
 that makes her English best not indeed its raw 
 material, but its moulding and building and 
 preserving. 
 
 All this is set out, but far better and with the 
 convincing effect of concrete experience and expert 
 testimony, in what follows (see, eg., p. 116). The 
 upshot from the mouth of an Indian is expressed 
 (p. 119) in the words, "The destiny of a nation is 
 at stake. Mere let-aloneist attitude will not do." 
 
 But the book also contains a sketch of an 
 attempt, vigorous, faithful, and practical, to meet 
 the problem with an answer, and to turn these 
 reflections into action. The characteristic of the 
 moment for England and her Church seems to be 
 that the confronting problems, at home and abroad, 
 everywhere outmatch and overmaster by their scale 
 and area and variety the resources for meeting 
 them. The proportionate size of this little island 
 on the map of the world is extraordinarily sym- 
 bolical. But the courage of Englishmen and, one 
 would hope, in a far deeper sense the faith of 
 English Christians, do not stop at difficulties. To 
 have done what we could must be everywhere 
 the aim which animates our efforts. A little com-
 
 PREFACE. xiil 
 
 munity, originating in the prayerful self-sacrifice 
 of two or three men, though claiming with happy 
 audacity representative relation with the greatest 
 of English universities, is after all but a drop 
 in India's ocean of life. But there are drops, 
 spiritual as well as physical, of rare potency, and 
 I cannot but believe that this has been, and will 
 be, such an one. Faith and self-sacrifice, worship 
 and sympathy, keen and active respect for all the 
 parts and kinds of human faculty and knowledge, 
 the union and freedom of a fellowship or brother- 
 hood whose tie has been one of constraining reality 
 while always voluntary these, which have been 
 the everyday equipment of the Oxford Mission to 
 Calcutta, would certainly seem to give promise of 
 the truest kind of work. Those to whom some forms 
 of missionary work have not appealed may find here 
 credentials which they can accept of first class work. 
 They will notice the thorough belief in light (" It 
 is not the high, but the low standard of education 
 which is the danger," p. 211), the clear recognition 
 that moral and religious work are in the end one 
 (p. 145), the readiness, accordingly, to work patiently 
 through the one for a future harvest of the other 
 (as in the case of the Hostel for non-Christian
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 students an oasis of pure life amidst corrupt 
 surroundings, pp. 121-132), the largeness of heart 
 with which men of strong dogmatic and ecclesi- 
 astical conviction cordially invoke the Christian 
 work of others on their right and on their left 
 to independent co-operation in the same field 
 (p. 126). They will certainly recognise the fine 
 and magic touch of personal sympathy, the strength 
 and still more the patience of its compassion and 
 desire to help ; and they will hardly miss the 
 springs of this in an inner life of communion 
 with God. 
 
 We speak best of what we know and to those 
 by whom we are known. My own reverence for the 
 work of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta is largely of 
 the grateful sort. We Oxford men of those days 
 felt that its start worked with the words of our most 
 ' prophetic ' teacher (for such we felt ' Dr. King ' 
 to be) to enlarge our horizon of intellectual and 
 religious responsibility. Among surroundings of 
 academical debate it taught us the reality, modern 
 as ever, of spiritual power. Willis and Argles 
 showed us fresh examples of simplicity in respond- 
 ing to inward vocation from God ; and the life of 
 Philip Smith was to some of us in Oxford, as to
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 many not themselves Christians in Calcutta, a 
 glimpse of the hem of the garment of Jesus Christ 
 as He moved in the pure charm of Divine sim- 
 plicity and compassion among the sons of men, 
 and the little children came to Him. 
 
 God grant that whoever else neglects its quiet 
 witness and its moving appeal, the voice of Oxford's 
 own Mission in India may reach with gathering 
 and constraining power some of Oxford's best 
 sons in each succeeding generation of her life ! 
 One would like to hope that many a man whom 
 Oxford has taught ambitions or ideals of noble 
 living, and furnished with keen instruments for 
 high work, without being able to show him how 
 and when to realise the one and use the other, 
 may find what he lacks at that little centre of 
 Christian life and love in the capital of the great 
 land of many nations which God has given to 
 England, and may do work greater than can be 
 reckoned for England's Empire and England's 
 Church. 
 
 How long shall the call to shed their blood 
 under England's flag, whatever the issue, or even 
 to give their lives to English enterprise and 
 administration, be heard so much more readily
 
 XVi PREFACE. 
 
 by her sons than the call to swell the first battalion 
 (surely it is England's !) in the bloodless crusade 
 of Christ, or to quicken, under God, the life of 
 coming generations with the old germinant, fruitful 
 seed of the Word of His Truth? 
 
 EDW. ROFFEN. 
 
 FALCONHURST, EDEN BRIDGE. 
 St. John's Day, 1899.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION (18791885) . . . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 TROUBLED TIMES (18861889) 2/ 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS ... 54 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE . 82 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY 98 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AND VISITS TO PATNA . 135 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BARISAL MISSIONS 155 
 
 xvii d
 
 xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ANNUS INFAUSTUS . . . . . . .183 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 CONVERTS ......... 2O7 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 HINDUISM AS IT IS . . . . . . 222 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 THE BRAHMO SOMAJ . . . . . . . 257 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 STAFF OF THE MISSION .... . 262 
 
 INDEX .... 269
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 THE MOST REV. .EDWARD RALPH JOHNSON, LORD BISHOP OF 
 
 CALCUTTA (Photogravure) Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 
 
 THE OXFORD MISSION HOUSE, BOW BAZAAR 5 
 
 THE REV. E. F. WILLIS I 
 
 THE OXFORD MISSION HOUSE, MUKTARAM BABU STREET . . 33 
 INTERIOR OF THE MISSION HOUSE IN MUKTARAM BABU STREET, 
 WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE OXFORD MISSION AND BOYS OF 
 
 THE OXFORD MISSION HIGH SCHOOL 43 
 
 THE REV. HENRY WHITEHEAD (NOW BISHOP OF MADRAS) . . 55 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL'S HOUSE, BISHOP'S COLLEGE 61 
 
 THE STUDENTS' QUARTERS, BISHOP'S COLLEGE .... 63 
 
 FISHING IN THE SUNDERBANS 69 
 
 THE OXFORD MISSION SHALTI -J\ 
 
 NATIVE BRIDGE OVER A CANAL 79 
 
 THE NEW OXFORD MISSION HOUSE, CORNWALLIS STREET . . 8$ 
 
 STREET IN THE NATIVE PART OF CALCUTTA IO3 
 
 A COUNTRY FAMILY GROUP 1 09 
 
 THE HOSTEL: EXTERIOR 127 
 
 THE INTERIOR OF THE HOSTEL 133 
 
 THE REV. M. L. GHOSE AND STAFF OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 135 
 
 xix
 
 XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Pacing pagt 
 BOYS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AT WORK . . . .139 
 
 THE OXFORD MISSION INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL : THE NEW BUILDINGS 14! 
 
 RIVER SCENE, EASTERN BENGAL l6l 
 
 VILLAGE SCENE WITH SHALTIS 165 
 
 AN INDIAN VILLAGE 173 
 
 ONE OF THE OXFORD MISSION COUNTRY CHAPELS . . -179 
 
 THE STAFF OF THE OXFORD MISSION, 1897 183 
 
 CHAPEL ON THE ROOF OF THE HOSTEL 195 
 
 VILLAGE SCENE AT BARRIDORE IN THE SUNDERBANS . . '99
 
 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA. 
 
 FROM 18801898. 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. 
 IS/9 1885. 
 
 "Men of action these! 
 Who, seeing just as little as you please, 
 Yet turn that little to account, engage 
 With, do not gaze at, carry on, a stage, 
 The work of the world, not merely make report" 
 
 T N the spring of 1 879 one of the Cowley Fathers, 
 -*- who was holding a mission in Calcutta, was 
 impressed with the great readiness which he found 
 among the young educated Bengalis to discuss 
 religious questions, and even to attend services at 
 which he was able to preach to them. Many of 
 them were members of the Brahmo Somaj,* a 
 
 * See Appendix A. 
 
 I I
 
 2 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [Cu. 1. 
 
 theistic sect of the Hindus, which at that time 
 was attracting a good deal of attention in Calcutta ; 
 and there appeared to him to exist among them 
 a strong sense of unsettlement and dissatisfaction 
 with their own system of belief. This feeling and 
 the evident religious susceptibilities of these young 
 men seemed to him to offer a real opportunity 
 for Christian missionary work among them. So 
 strongly did Bishop Johnson, the Metropolitan, 
 share this impression that he then and there wrote 
 off to Oxford and entreated that an effort might 
 be made, analogous to that of Cambridge in their 
 hopeful Delhi Mission, to send out university men 
 with the special object of working among the 
 students of the University of Calcutta. Such was 
 the origin of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta ; 
 and it must ever be a matter of deep thankfulness 
 that it began its work in the Episcopate and under 
 the encouragement of Bishop Johnson, whose wise 
 and unfailing sympathy guided it through many 
 difficulties, whose truly catholic mind was able 
 to conceive a great idea of what such a mission 
 could do, and who watched over it with a most 
 generous and ungrudging love. 
 
 It is worthy of note that the idea of the special 
 character of the Mission that of a brotherhood 
 living under a definite but simple rule of life was
 
 1879] INFLUENCE OF BISHOP DOUGLASS. 3 
 
 largely due to an influence which came from India. 
 Bishop Douglass, of Bombay, had, not long before, 
 published his famous charge, urging the need of 
 men and women organised in some form of the 
 religious life for the work of Indian missions. This 
 charge had moved many in England very deeply ; 
 and when the idea of an Oxford Mission to 
 Calcutta took shape, it was determined that it 
 should go as a community of men, bound indeed 
 by no life vows, but united by devotion to a 
 common work and obedience to a common rule 
 of life, with the special aim of setting an example 
 of regular Christian devotion by the maintenance of 
 frequent common services. From the first, two main 
 principles have been kept in view : 
 
 1. That the Mission should be free to develop 
 
 its work as experience and circumstances 
 might direct. 
 
 2. That the members of the Mission should 
 
 form a religious brotherhood under a rule 
 definite enough to give real strength and 
 support to the spiritual life, and yet suffi- 
 ciently elastic to enable the community to 
 undertake work of very various kinds. 
 On these two principles the Mission has rested 
 from the first, and experience has amply proved the 
 wisdom of the course which has been adopted.
 
 4 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. t 
 
 There Was one other influence at work, which was 
 alluded to by Bishop King in a speech which he 
 made at the annual meeting of the Oxford Mission 
 in 1885. " I think," he said, " one of the strongest 
 influences which urged this Mission forward was 
 the intellectual pressure and trouble which were 
 round about us at Oxford at that time, when men 
 were comparing different kinds of religion, and 
 almost feeling bound in freedom of thought to say, 
 ' Let us look it fairly in the face. If these old 
 Indian philosophic religions are better than we 
 thought, let us be brave, let us admit the truth." " 
 It was this intellectual pressure, this desire to in- 
 vestigate the great Indian religious systems, and to 
 place them in their right relation to the Christian 
 faith, which the bishop states were among the 
 motives which led the first members of the Mission 
 to offer themselves for the work. 
 
 The four graduates who formed the first members 
 of the Oxford Mission were the Rev. Edward 
 Francis Willis, M.A., of Balliol College, and Vice- 
 Principal of Cuddesden Theological College ; the 
 Rev. Ernest Faulkner Brown, M. A., scholar of Trinity 
 College, and the Rev. Wilfrid Bird Hornby, M.A., of 
 Brasenose College, both curates of St. Margaret's, 
 Anfield, Liverpool ; and the Rev. Marsham Frederick 
 Argles, Fellow of St. John's College, and Principal
 
 i88o] ARRIVAL IN CALCUTTA. 5 
 
 of St. Stephen's House, Oxford. Of these, the 
 first three, after a farewell service in the cathedral 
 at Christ Church, at which the Bishop of Oxford 
 gave them his benediction, sailed from Liverpool 
 on October 3<Dth, 1880, in the s.s. Vega a vessel 
 belonging to the Star Line running between 
 Liverpool and Calcutta. With them went also a 
 young layman, Edwin Berryman, who had been 
 a page-boy at Cuddesden, and now as a printer 
 offered his services for a time to the Mission, to take 
 charge of the printing-press which Mr. Willis took 
 out with him. While he was with the Mission he 
 proved himself a most valuable helper, especially 
 at the time of Mr. Willis' illness, during which the 
 entire management and responsibility of the work 
 connected with the press rested upon him. Mr. 
 Argles, the fourth priest who had offered for the 
 work, was unable to leave Oxford at this time, and 
 it was arranged that he should join them in the 
 October of the following year. They reached 
 Calcutta on December 2nd, and received a very 
 hearty welcome from the Bishop and from the 
 clergy generally, as well as an address of welcome 
 from the members of the Brahmo Somaj. A house 
 had been provided for them by the Bishop in 
 Bow Bazaar, a street which practically divides 
 the English and the native portion of Calcutta,
 
 6 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [Cn. I. 
 
 and which was within fairly easy access of 
 both. 
 
 First impressions are not always very trust- 
 worthy, but they are sometimes interesting, and the 
 following is an extract from a letter written by one 
 of the members of the Mission just after they had 
 arrived : 
 
 " I should need to be a very clever sketcher 
 to give you any idea of the strangeness of the 
 sights which meet your eyes at every turn. They 
 began as the Vega steamed slowly up the river 
 Hoogli, when a crowd of little boats made for us 
 from the shore, and we were soon boarded by 
 swarms of dark red figures most of them with 
 the very smallest amount of clothing on, merely a 
 cloth round their loins. It was five o'clock when 
 we landed, and there was an hour before sunset, 
 during which we were driven to our respective 
 sleeping-places, for our house was not quite ready 
 for us. It was a wonderful drive to my fresh eyes. 
 Of course, I wanted to know the names of all the 
 places Government House, the post office, the 
 cathedral, the Bishop's palace, etc. But far more 
 interesting than the places were the people. The 
 streets were crowded, but there was hardly a white 
 face to be seen. There was John Chinaman, 
 looking as though he had just stepped off his
 
 i88o] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 7 
 
 tea-caddie ; there were Parsees, with a wonderful 
 sort of tin-can arrangement on their heads ; there 
 were the ' bheesties,' as the men are called who 
 carry water in whole pig-skins, which look, when 
 full, unpleasantly like the live animal ; there were 
 men in all directions, (hardly any women,) sitting 
 down comfortably on their heels, which is their 
 favourite position ; there were weary and hot-look- 
 ing ' coolies ' i.e. workmen ; there were spruce- 
 looking young ' Babus,' clerks and natives with some 
 education, who generally had some light floating 
 muslin kind of stuff over their shoulders ; there 
 were some fine, stately looking fellows, with blankets 
 thrown over one shoulder, like the Italians ; there 
 were policemen in clean white suits, black belts, 
 bright buckles, and with red turbans on their heads ; 
 there were little white boys coming home from 
 school, in charge of brown ' bearers ' only a little 
 bigger than themselves ; and lastly, there were the 
 Englishmen's carriages rolling proudly by, with their 
 masters and mistresses sitting inside, dressed in the 
 height of European fashion. In a few minutes over 
 all this busy scene came down the darkness, leaving 
 us to our own thoughts, to wonder when these 
 thronging souls would come to see the truth and 
 accept the gift which our Master has sent us forth 
 to bring to them. How long, O Lord, how long ? "
 
 8 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. I. 
 
 The Mission House was formally opened on the 
 festival of the Epiphany (January 6th, 1881). There 
 was a special benedictory service, followed by a 
 celebration of the Holy Eucharist, at which the 
 Metropolitan was the celebrant, and at which the 
 Rev. E. F. Willis, Rev. E. F. Brown, and Rev. 
 W. B. Hornby were admitted members of the Oxford 
 Brotherhood of St. Paul, and the Rev. E. F. Willis 
 was installed as Superior. Thus, with the blessing 
 of the Bishop, and with the sympathy and in the 
 presence of a large number of clergy, the Mission 
 began its work. 
 
 From the nature of the case this had to be at first 
 somewhat tentative ; the Mission had to feel its 
 way, to see in what directions openings were offered, 
 and to learn by experience the best methods of 
 making use of them. The learning of Bengali took 
 up, of course, at first, a good deal of their time ; for 
 though it is true that nearly all the educated men 
 speak English, yet it is obvious that a knowledge 
 of the native language is of the greatest importance 
 for gaining any real insight into the difficulties and 
 needs of the students, while the circumstances of 
 the Mission were sure to bring it into contact with 
 a large number of non-English-speaking people. 
 Lectures, individual interviews, and an occasional " At 
 Home " were among the ways in which the Mission
 
 i88i] HELP TO THE NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 9 
 
 first began to get into touch with the educated 
 Bengalis. A certain amount of printing, in the way 
 of tracts and translations of books, was done by 
 means of the printing-press. But the first per- 
 manent bit of work, curiously enough, sprang out of 
 the relation of the Mission to the native Christians 
 in Calcutta. These had for various reasons been 
 left with very inadequate supervision, and it was 
 evident from the first that any appeal to the 
 non-Christians would be much weakened if those who 
 were already baptised and belonged to the Church 
 were presenting a very imperfect picture of Christian 
 life. This the Bishop felt very strongly, and urged 
 the Oxford Mission to undertake the charge of 
 the native Christian congregation known as the 
 " Cathedral Mission," and, by holding good native 
 services and generally supervising the pastoral work 
 among them, to raise the level of native Christian 
 life. Though the native Christian congregations 
 jn Calcutta have always been in close touch with 
 the Oxford Mission, and have received much help 
 from it, yet they have not, with the exception of 
 some brief periods, been actually under the charge 
 of the Mission. But it was out of this connection 
 that there grew the very important work of the 
 establishment of a high-school for the sons of native 
 Christian parents.
 
 IO ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [Cn. I. 
 
 The arrival of the Rev. M. F. Argles in December, 
 1 88 1, by increasing the number of the staff of the 
 Mission to four, made it easier to undertake this 
 work ; and the school was opened early in 1882 as 
 a boarding-school for native Christian boys, with a 
 view to educating them up to the entrance exam- 
 ination of the Calcutta University. The fees 
 charged were only ten rupees a month ; but even 
 that proved too great an expense for many of the 
 parents, more especially the pastors, whose sons 
 it was particularly desired to attract. Mr. Willis 
 therefore made an appeal to friends at home to form 
 a scholarship fund to pay the fees of deserving boys. 
 This appeal was cordially taken up, and the fund 
 so established has been maintained ever since. 
 
 The opening of a school for native Christian boys 
 might seem at first sight somewhat of a departure 
 from the primary aim of the Mission namely 
 direct missionary work among the students ; but the 
 members of the Mission, and others who had had 
 considerable experience of the mission field in India, 
 all agreed that not only did the school not interfere 
 with missionary work, but was, on the contrary, a 
 very real help to it : and this for two reasons first, 
 because a sound and thoroughly Christian education 
 would materially raise the standard of Christian 
 life in Calcutta ; and secondly, because the school
 
 i882] THE HIGH SCHOOL. II 
 
 afforded the means of laying the foundation of one 
 of the greatest wants of the Church in India a 
 well-trained native ministry. There was not, it 
 must be remembered, at this time a single Christian 
 boarding-school for boys in Calcutta, and the want 
 of such a school was seen in the comparison of the 
 influence of native Christianity in Calcutta and in 
 south India. A Hindu critic in Calcutta, who was 
 not unfriendly to the Christian religion, said that 
 " the native Christians raised no ripple on the surface 
 of Hindu society " ; whereas in southern India, 
 where scarcely any mission is without its boarding- 
 school for boys and girls, it is the evidence of 
 the Hindus themselves that the native Christians, 
 belonging for the most part to low castes, are 
 winning their way to a leading position in the 
 community, equal, if not superior, to that of the 
 Brahmans. 
 
 Here, perhaps, is the place to mention an effort 
 which, at the suggestion of Mr. Hornby, (now Bishop 
 Hornby,) the Mission made in another direction that 
 of promoting Christian unity. Arrangements were 
 made for holding periodical meetings, at the Oxford 
 Mission House, of Nonconformist ministers and 
 others, for the discussion of " burning questions." 
 These meetings did not perhaps realise all that was 
 hoped, but at least they afforded an opportunity
 
 12 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. I. 
 
 for remedying misconceptions, and were an attempt 
 on the part of the members of the Mission to do 
 what they could to promote the great object of 
 unity. 
 
 Thus at the end of 1882, in rather less than two 
 years after the arrival of the first brethren, the work 
 of the Mission was beginning to assume definite 
 shape, and the Superior and his fellow-workers were 
 beginning to see something of the lines on which 
 they might hope to develop the work in the future, 
 and were already turning their minds to the ques- 
 tion of permanent and enlarged buildings. In fact, 
 the growth of the school necessitated the hiring of 
 another house close by that which was occupied 
 by the Mission, the rent of which the Bishop of 
 Calcutta still continued very generously to pay. 
 
 All that had hitherto been done with regard 
 to the constitution of the Brotherhood had been 
 provisional. But the experience of two years had 
 shown that the rule and constitution had worked 
 satisfactorily ; and it was therefore with a good hope 
 and glad heart that the community was formally 
 constituted by the Bishop on the festival of the 
 Epiphany, 1883. Only one change was made, and 
 that was in respect of the name, which was altered 
 from that of St. Paul to that of the Epiphany 
 a name which, for obvious reasons, seemed especially
 
 1883] DEATH OF THE REV. M. F. ARGLES. 1$ 
 
 appropriate ; and from this date the Mission has 
 been known as the Brotherhood of the Epiphany. 
 
 But the year which had begun so hopefully was 
 soon to bring a heavy cloud over the Mission. 
 Mr. Argles had scarcely been twelve months in 
 Calcutta when his health gave way, and he was 
 ordered home for what, it was hoped, would be 
 only a few months. But the illness was more 
 serious than was supposed, and he died within a 
 fortnight of his arrival in England. His loss was 
 a very heavy one. His special gifts, the saintliness 
 of his life, his keen enthusiasm for the work, took 
 away from the Mission one who could ill be spared. 
 
 Mr. Gore, in an article in the Guardian, speaking 
 of his death said : 
 
 " The Church of England, from the point 
 of view of her own apparent needs, has reason 
 to deplore deeply the untimely loss of the Rev. 
 Marsham Frederick Argles. We have not too 
 many men who combine with intelligence and 
 ability an unwavering and persistent strength of 
 conviction and purpose. The words from the 
 lesson in the Burial Office, ' stedfast, unmoveable, 
 always abounding in the work of the Lord,' are 
 the best description of his character. He was pre- 
 eminently simple, gentle, truthful, and at all times 
 rigorously obedient to conscience. In faith and
 
 14 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [Cn. I. 
 
 practice wholly catholic, he seemed to give himself, 
 specially among Christian duties, to the cultivation 
 of prayer and fasting. Wherever he was, he was 
 for ever diffusing around him an atmosphere of 
 steadiness, patience, and happiness ; he was in- 
 tolerant of nothing but sin, and indolence or 
 unhopefulness in Christians. He was full of an 
 affection, strong and deep rather than demonstrative. 
 Such he was, and so he grew without check from 
 his first coming up to Oxford ; and so there was 
 steadily developed and matured in him that temper 
 of cheerful discipline which made a ' religious ' life 
 seem natural to him, and that vocation to missionary 
 work, the first consciousness of which dated from 
 his boyhood. To this vocation he responded so 
 loyally that it would have been, as he said just 
 before he left England, ' a greater self-denial to 
 him to stay at home than to go to India ' ; and to 
 it he finally sacrificed his life. His friends would 
 agree that they have never known a character which 
 it is more easy to think of in the tranquil waiting 
 state of Paradise." 
 
 Hardly had this blow fallen, coming as it did so 
 unexpectedly, than the Mission received another. 
 In the summer of the same year the health of the 
 Superior broke down. He, too, had to return home, 
 and, though he lived till 1898, his illness was such
 
 REV. E. F. WILLIS. \Tofacep. 15. 
 
 (First Superior of the Oxford Mission.)
 
 1883] ILLNESS OF THE SUPERIOR. 15 
 
 that he was unable to return to India, and, indeed, 
 was incapacitated for further work of any kind. It 
 was the old story, the story of overwork ; of one 
 who, with untiring energy and ceaseless enthusiasm, 
 overrated his physical strength and simply wore 
 himself out. 
 
 Writing shortly after his death, Bishop Hornby 
 said : 
 
 " At this moment it almost startles me to think 
 of that marvellous capacity for work, that ceaseless 
 activity, until the delicate machinery of the mind 
 at last gave way. Let me think of soma of the 
 occupations of his daily life in the short two and 
 a half years that limited his period of work. The 
 management of a large Indian household, every 
 detail of which was submitted to himself ; the 
 preparation of lectures to educated Hindus ; the 
 preaching to European or native congregations ; 
 the learning of the Bengali language, in which he 
 was able to preach more or less intelligibly at 
 the end of a year, and that a language which 
 the Bengalis themselves would not allow that 
 any European had really mastered. Then came 
 the daily superintendence of the boys' boarding- 
 school, some thirty little boys, children of the 
 Bengali Christian parents. To all this were 
 added the ceaseless interruptions visits from native
 
 1 6 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. I. 
 
 Christian gentlemen, visits from native students at 
 the University of Calcutta, and, as if this were 
 not enough, the editing of the Indian Churchman 
 and superintendence of the printing-press, which 
 employed some sixteen native printers, with an 
 English boy called Berryman as acting sub-manager, 
 and the revising of all proofs, which he did himself. 
 
 " Why did we not relieve him of some of his 
 work ? He was a difficult man to relieve. He 
 himself was unconscious of the necessity for any 
 relief. He resigned, indeed, the direct control of 
 the school, towards the end of the second year, to 
 Ernest Brown, but I never recollect his asking for 
 help in any of his own special work till the week 
 before his actual breakdown. The impression on 
 my own mind is that Willis had the misfortune 
 to be able to do everything better than ordinary 
 people could do any one thing. Contemporaries 
 at Cuddesden will recall hours in the chapel, the 
 lecture-room, and the fives court \ It always, 
 therefore, seemed useless to ask to do for him what 
 we knew he could do better himself. 
 
 " As one looks back to the early years of the 
 Oxford Mission life in Calcutta, one concludes that 
 Willis was unfitted by the very variety of his own 
 attainments to be the Superior of a great under- 
 taking. He would have done better work himself,
 
 1883] ARRIVAL OF REV. P. S. SMITH. I? 
 
 and better work would have been got out of the 
 other members of the Mission, if we had been 
 under the control of a man who had a truer 
 understanding of the limits of human endurance 
 in a climate like Calcutta, where for three months 
 of the year the thermometer stands at 102 degrees 
 in the shade. But wherever his weakness lay, 
 Willis set to all Cuddesden men a noble example 
 of what can be done in a short time ; possibly, 
 too, of what can not be done for the bow was 
 stretched till at last it broke." 
 
 The loss of Mr. Willis and of Mr. Argles would 
 have been serious at any time ; they were specially 
 so when the Mission was, as it were, still in its 
 childhood, and when the development of the work 
 required an increasing and not a diminishing staff. 
 One great encouragement had been the arrival of 
 the Rev. Philip Samuel Smith, Fellow of St. 
 Augustine's College, Canterbury, and late scholar 
 of University College, Oxford. Of Mr. Smith's 
 work something will be said later on ; it will be 
 enough here to say that with an enthusiasm which 
 nothing could quench he brought to the service 
 of the Mission unique gifts for dealing with the 
 students of the University those, that is, towards 
 whom the aim of the Mission was specially directed. 
 
 But even with the accession of Mr. Smith the 
 
 2
 
 1 8 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. I. 
 
 Mission was very much under-manned, and it was 
 therefore with a real sense of thankfulness that they 
 received the news that the Rev. Charles Gore, who 
 had succeeded Mr. Willis as Vice-Principal of 
 Cuddesden, had offered to spend the first nine 
 months of 1894 with the Mission in Calcutta. He 
 arrived in January, accompanied by Mr. Peach, 
 who also came as a visitor. Their arrival, in the 
 words of Mr. Hornby, was like " a relief of a 
 garrison," so great had been the strain upon the 
 staff. Another event which took place in this year, 
 and which was eventually to have the greatest 
 influence on the work of the Mission, was the 
 appointment of the Rev. Henry Whitehead, 1 Fellow 
 of Trinity College, Oxford, to the post of Principal 
 of Bishop's College, Calcutta. 
 
 Meantime the general work of the Mission had 
 been maintained. The school continued to increase, 
 and in April, 1883, had reached a total of twenty-five. 
 Lectures, interviews, and visits kept up and widened 
 the influence of the Mission among the students 
 and educated Bengalis ; and a good deal of inter- 
 course took place at this time between the members 
 of the Mission and the Brahmo Somaj, whose leader 
 was Keshub Chunder Sen. But perhaps one of the 
 most important developments of the work in this 
 1 Consecrated Bishop of Madras June, 1899.
 
 1883] THE EPIPHANY. 19 
 
 year was the starting of the Epiphany a weekly 
 paper, edited by the members of the Mission, for 
 the discussion of religious, literary, and social topics, 
 and written specially for the university students. 
 It was in the days when the Mission was feeling 
 most keenly the loss of Mr. Willis and Mr. Argles, 
 that Mr. Smith, with characteristic hopefulness, 
 suggested the starting of something new, and the 
 Epiphany was the result. It has been carried on 
 continuously since its first publication, and has 
 proved an instrument of increasing usefulness. It 
 has obtained a recognised place in Calcutta, and 
 is frequently referred to by the native press ; while 
 by means of the " Answers to enquirers " which it 
 gives, it affords an opportunity for spreading an 
 immense amount of information about Christianity, 
 and, what is not less important, for correcting 
 a still greater amount of misconception. It was 
 at first published at the nominal price of a farthing, 
 but has since been made free, and has now a 
 circulation of about five thousand copies a week. 
 As most of the copies are each read by two 
 or three people at least, this means that the 
 paper is read every week by about ten or twelve 
 thousand non-Christians. Nor is its influence con- 
 fined to Calcutta ; it goes to many other parts of 
 India, as well as to Burmah and Ceylon, and the
 
 20 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. I. 
 
 Mission is constantly receiving testimonies from 
 various sources as to its usefulness for missionary 
 work. " It is certainly," wrote the Superior of the 
 Mission, in 1897, "now a most valuable organ, and 
 enables the Mission to influence a large number of 
 educated Hindus in different parts of India more 
 effectually than could be done by isolated lectures. 
 For a lecture must of necessity be more or less an 
 effort by itself ; but the value of the Epiphany lies 
 in the steady persistence with which it teaches week 
 by week." As Mr. Nitya Gopal Mukerji, a Bengali 
 Christian gentleman, said at the annual meeting of 
 1885, "The Epiphany is about the only Christian 
 periodical known to non-Christians, and it is much 
 appreciated on account of its tone of earnestness, 
 its fairness of criticism, the regard it manifests for 
 non-Christian religious systems, and its spirit of 
 toleration, as well as its very able editorship." 
 
 But perhaps the most striking testimony to its 
 influence was an article published last year (1898) 
 in the Statesman, one of the leading daily papers 
 in Calcutta. " The correspondence columns of 
 the Epiphany? says the writer, " from week to 
 week reveal all manner of religious speculation, of 
 anxious enquiry, of bewildered thought. Some may 
 regard it as too large a pretension for that journal 
 to undertake to ' answer all questions respecting
 
 1883] TESTIMONY TO ITS VALUE. 21 
 
 religion ' ; but doubtless the limitation is implied 
 to the extent of the light afforded by the Christian 
 revelation. However that may be, it is impossible 
 not to admire the fearlessness with which objections 
 are met and the most difficult problems faced. 
 Whether one can always agree with the editor or not, 
 it is undeniable that he burkes nothing. And amid 
 a perfect babel of voices, which the correspondence 
 columns echo, often involving questions which are 
 silly or impertinent, the editor preserves unfailing 
 tact and courtesy ; his patience is unwearied, and 
 he presents an example of the Christian spirit 
 which the missionary body as a whole might well 
 emulate in dealing with * the youth of India. Of 
 course the Epiphany is in touch with the modern 
 scientific spirit of enquiry, and abreast of the 
 historical problems which start up everywhere in 
 connection with the old religions and the new forms 
 of defence put forth on behalf of Hinduism and 
 Buddhism. The Oxford Brothers are well versed 
 in Hindu literature and philosophy, and not 
 appalled by the Buddhist remains so diligently , 
 raked up everywhere. Every missionary society, 
 we believe, has desired, at different times and in 
 divers ways, to meet the religious wants of the 
 educated youth of India, and has attempted to do 
 so with more or less result. But the conspicuous
 
 22 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [CH. I. 
 
 success of the Oxford Mission in this respect 
 is evidenced by the regular appearance of the 
 Epiphany which has now reached its fifteenth year 
 of publication and by the unfailing interest which 
 English-speaking natives take in it, as its columns 
 clearly show." 
 
 The year 1884 was one of considerable anxiety. 
 Mr. Hornby, who had originally joined the Mission 
 for three years, and who had stayed longer than that 
 time, was compelled to return to England in 
 February, leaving Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith alone ; 
 and in consequence of Mr. Willis' illness, the 
 Mission was without a Superior. Mr. Gore's 
 presence for the first nine months of the year 
 was an enormous help and encouragement ; and 
 in Mr. Whitehead, the new Principal of Bishop's. 
 College, the Mission found a very warm friend and 
 helper. When it became certain that Mr. Willis 
 would never be able to return, the Brethren begged 
 the Bishop of Calcutta to sanction his resignation, 
 and to grant a dispensation for the election of a 
 new Superior, without the year's probation required 
 by the constitution. This the Bishop did, and the 
 Brethren anxiously awaited the arrival of Mr. 
 Townsend, who had been chosen for that post. 
 Meantime the work was carried on, and indeed in 
 one way extended, by lectures which were given at
 
 1884] LECTURES AT PATNA AND DACCA. 23 
 
 Patna and Dacca, at both of which towns there 
 are a large number of students. From time to 
 time since then the Mission has paid occasional 
 visits to these two places ; and in Patna, especially, 
 it would wish to establish a permanent branch 
 house, if ever the numbers of the stafT would allow 
 of its so doing. Out of Calcutta the students are 
 much less affected by the many influences, especially 
 political, which militate against Christianity ; they 
 are, too, in some ways, more simple-minded and 
 open to conviction. 
 
 The character of the work, and the conditions 
 under which it is done, preclude any great event- 
 fulness, and a year of valuable and most real work 
 often affords little or no material for the chronicler. 
 This is true about the year 1884 ; but some idea 
 as to the effect the Mission was already producing 
 is shown by the following extract from a letter 
 written by Mr. Gore after his arrival in Calcutta : 
 
 " I have been," he says, " a good deal impressed 
 with manifold testimonies to the value of their 
 work, specially the great work of edification among 
 the native Christians. ' They have put a new 
 spirit in us,' they say. They are deeply impressed 
 with their simple love, their utter absence of 
 superiority, and their genuine brotherliness. They 
 have wonderfully prepared the way for Whitehead
 
 24 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [Cn. t. 
 
 at Bishop's College ; and you would have gone into 
 ecstasies over a guild of native Christians that I 
 talked to this morning at the college. Then they 
 have done excellent good work in opening out 
 towards the native Babus : they feel them such 
 friends. This is over and above the actual con- 
 versions they have helped in. This latter work 
 has been mainly that of Argles and Philip Smith. 
 Brown is full of courage, zeal, and love. The native 
 Christians talk much about Hornby. So far, then, 
 there is a wonderful deal to encourage. It would 
 be the joy of my heart to stay, in a way. We 
 must get some men. It wants love much more 
 than great ability. There is splendid work for 
 anybody who will come." 
 
 And again, on his return to England, at the 
 annual meeting at Oxford, in February, 1885, he 
 said : 
 
 " The work has been successful. The impres- 
 sion of brotherhood which the Oxford Mission has 
 created is most remarkable. You cannot talk to 
 the native Christians without feeling this, that even 
 if the Oxford Mission had done nothing else than 
 create, for the first time, a sense of brotherhood 
 and fellow-feeling amongst them, they would have 
 done an immense thing ; and I do not think you 
 can exaggerate how much they have done to raise
 
 1885] INFLUENCE OF THE MISSION. 2 
 
 the tone amongst the best native Christians, and 
 not least among the native Christian clergy." 
 
 Mr. N. G. Mukerji, whose witness as regards 
 the influence of the Epiphany has been already 
 mentioned, and who spoke at the same meeting, 
 also bore eloquent testimony to the value of the 
 Mission. He drew special attention to the re- 
 markable way in which the Brethren of the Mission 
 had made themselves known to non-Christians in 
 Calcutta, and how they had been largely in- 
 strumental in drawing out the sympathy of the 
 European community for missionary work. He 
 also warmly corroborated all that Mr. Gore had 
 said as to what the Mission had done for the native 
 Christian community. We mention this because, 
 as we have said, the character of the work 
 deprives it often of any special incidents, and 
 so the very great importance and value of what is 
 being done is apt to be overlooked. 
 
 But the strain of the past year had been 
 a heavy one, and the Oxford committee, in their 
 annual report, expressed their great thankfulness 
 to Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith for the unflinching 
 courage and devotion with which they had carried 
 on the work. The friends of the Mission in 
 Calcutta also took the opportunity of the annual 
 festival of the Brotherhood, which was held as
 
 26 ORIGIN OF THE MISSION. [Cn. I. 
 
 usual at the feast of the Epiphany, to manifest 
 their sympathy and interest by coming in much 
 larger numbers than usual. A further and still 
 greater encouragement came in the arrival of the 
 Rev. Charles William Townsend, of Keble College, 
 Oxford, and Vice-Principal of Salisbury Theological 
 College ; and the Rev. Charles Henley Walker, 
 of Oriel College, Oxford, and curate of Dorchester, 
 Oxon, who had offered themselves for the work 
 of the Mission. They had left England in October, 
 and reached Calcutta on November I4th, 1885, 
 where they received a very warm and hearty 
 welcome, the boys of the school especially decorating 
 the house for the occasion.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 TROU BLED TIMES. 
 
 1886 1889. 
 
 " One of the chief lessons of my life has been, that what seems most 
 hindering is most helpful" 
 
 \J[ TITH the year 1886 began what may be 
 * * termed the second period of the work of 
 the Mission. This was marked in Calcutta by the 
 removal of the centre of the Mission from Bow 
 Bazaar to the more immediate neighbourhood of 
 the students' quarter of the city ; and at home 
 by the appointment of Miss Murray as General 
 Secretary, a work at the service of which she placed, 
 for the next ten years, her unrivalled energy and 
 self-devotion. It is to her more than any one that 
 the Mission owes the large and enthusiastic organ- 
 isation at home, without which means could not, 
 humanly speaking, have been found for supporting 
 and extending the work in Calcutta, which was soon 
 to grow so largely. To a zeal which never tired 
 Miss Murray added a hope and faith which knew 
 
 no discouragement ; and it is not too much to say 
 
 27
 
 28 TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 that to her, more than to any one, except perhaps 
 the Bishop of Lincoln, Mr. Whitehead, and Mr. 
 Brown, does the Mission owe the position and 
 prosperity which it has to-day. 
 
 Mr. Townsend, who, as we have said, had come 
 out to take the place of Mr. Willis, was installed 
 as Superior on the festival of the Epiphany by the 
 Bishop of Calcutta, and the next few months were 
 mainly occupied with the negotiations for the new 
 house. For some time it had been felt that the 
 house in Bow Bazaar was practically too far from 
 where the students lived to enable the Mission to 
 have that close touch with them which they desired, 
 and they had consequently been hoping for an op- 
 portunity of getting a house nearer to the students' 
 quarter, . which lies, roughly speaking, within the 
 square formed by Machooa Bazaar Street, .A mherst 
 Street, Beadon Street, and Chitpore Road. 
 
 Hitherto, one difficulty with regard to the move 
 had been the High School. This could not well be 
 left at Bow Bazaar, and it was impossible to find a 
 suitable house with a playground in the native 
 quarter of the city. But just at this time the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which 
 wished to have a similar school in connection 
 with its work at Bishop's College, offered to build 
 a house in the college compound, and to allow
 
 1886] LIFE AT THE HIGH SCHOOL. 29 
 
 the Mission to use it for its school. This offer 
 was gladly accepted, and the boys of the Oxford 
 Mission High School migrated to the new house at 
 Bishop's College, where they have remained ever 
 since. The school-house remained the property of 
 the Society, the head-master and the expenses of 
 the school being provided by the Mission. Mr. 
 Brown, whose child the school had practically been 
 from the first, continued in charge when they moved 
 into their new home. In a letter written for the 
 Quarterly Paper of the Mission he gives an account 
 of the ordinary routine of the school life and work : 
 
 " We begin the day at the High School with 
 prime at six, in Bengali, after which the boys go 
 to preparation till half-past eight, and then, after a 
 short interval, they have breakfast. Their dining- 
 room is not very luxurious or aesthetic. It is a 
 detached building, consisting of one hall, about thirty 
 feet by ten, quite innocent of furniture for the boys 
 do not eat sitting on chairs and at tables ; they 
 simply sit on strips of matting which are laid on 
 the floor, and eat with their plates on the ground 
 before them. After breakfast comes a short interval, 
 and then they go into school at ten minutes past 
 ten, and in school they stay till four, except for 
 an interval of one hour, from one to two. At four 
 we have Bengali evensong for the smaller boys
 
 3O TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 in the college chapel, together with the boys of 
 the S.P.G. Boarding-School. This is followed at 
 half-past four by evensong for the college students 
 and the elder boys of the school. Then comes foot- 
 ball or gymnastics till half-past six, when they dine. 
 After dinner they have preparation till compline, 
 at a quarter to nine, and then bed. The little boys 
 go to bed at eight. We have fixed days for foot- 
 ball, Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, when all 
 boys must turn out, unless disabled. On Tuesdays 
 and Fridays they get lessons in gymnastics for a 
 part of the evening. The boys have lately de- 
 veloped a fondness for tennis, and indeed some 
 of them have made considerable progress in the 
 game. 
 
 " As to holidays, we have the usual vacations 
 every year, and we have half-holidays on all saints' 
 days and Saturdays, when we close work at one 
 and have no preparation at night. On Sundays 
 the boys attend an English service in the college 
 chapel, and a Bengali one in the cathedral in the 
 morning ; i.e. they go to Holy Communion and 
 mattins every Sunday in the chapel and cathedral 
 alternately. On Sunday afternoons they attend 
 Bengali evensong at the cathedral at four. Besides 
 these services, the elder boys go to the celebration 
 of the Holy Eucharist on saints' days in the college
 
 1886] IMPORTANCE OF THE SCHOOL. 3! 
 
 chapel, and we have Bengali mattins for all after- 
 wards at ten : on these days and on Sundays prime 
 is not said. 
 
 " This is the picture of the regular routine of 
 the school. Of course now and then we have 
 little incidents which emerge from the ordinary 
 monotonous round ; such a one has just taken place, 
 namely the holding of the University examination, in 
 which we take a great interest this year, for we have 
 sent in two boys for the entrance or matriculation 
 examination. The boys themselves are confident 
 of their success ; the teachers entertain doubts. 
 Let us hope that the scholars may prove the more 
 competent judges of their own cases. After matri- 
 culating from the school, a boy, if he wishes to 
 continue his studies, would probably go on to 
 Bishop's College. We gave the college two boys 
 last year, and will probably give them these two if 
 they get through their examination." 
 
 Of the value of the school Mr. Townsend wrote 
 soon after his arrival, " I am fully convinced that 
 it is among the most solid work that the Mission 
 is doing " ; and the Bishop, who still continued his 
 munificent contributions to the funds of the Mission, 
 was equally warm in his praise of the influence 
 which the school was exerting. It is perhaps a 
 small but a satisfactory incident that during the
 
 32 TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 year 1886 the boys of the school subscribed or 
 collected more than fifty rupees for the support 
 of an orphan in one of the orphanages in southern 
 India. 
 
 Two benefactions have been given to the school, 
 one by some Bengali friends of Mr. Argles, who 
 presented to the Mission, through Mr. M. L. Sandel, 
 the sum of one hundred and thirty rupees to found 
 an " Argles memorial prize " ; and the other was 
 received in 1888, when, on the retirement of Arch- 
 deacon Atlay, his numerous friends in Calcutta, 
 desirous to preserve some memorial of him, sub- 
 scribed a sum of four thousand three hundred rupees 
 for that purpose ; and he, with the generosity which 
 always characterised him, desired that the memorial 
 should be nothing personal, but should form a fund 
 for maintaining a scholar at the High School. 
 
 Having thus provided for the school, the Mission 
 was free to move as soon as a house could be found. 
 The one finally decided upon was at 99, Muktaram 
 Babu Street, which as to situation and size seemed 
 to be fairly suitable. The purchase always a 
 long and difficult business in India was completed 
 with the help of Mr. Sandel, and the necessary 
 funds were advanced for the time by the liberality 
 of the Archdeacon of Calcutta. The formal entry 
 into the new quarters was made early on the
 
 1886] MOVE TO MUKTARAM BABU STREET. 33 
 
 morning of June lyth, 1886, when the clergy and 
 choir went round the house in procession ; prayers 
 were said in the principal rooms, and the first 
 Holy Eucharist was offered, in Bengali, in the 
 chapel. 
 
 The house was the ordinary house of a well-to-do 
 Hindu gentleman, built round two quadrangles, the 
 inner one of which had been used as the Zenana or 
 ladies' part of the house. Though covering a good 
 deal of ground and containing a large number of 
 rooms, the rooms themselves were small and low, 
 conditions which made them trying for a European 
 to live in. The one large central room was used 
 for the chapel, and made as bright and devotional 
 as possible by means of the gifts of many kind 
 friends. The neighbourhood was of course very 
 different from that of Bow Bazaar, being entirely 
 in the native part of the city, where the dirt, the 
 smells, and the noise of native life make life for 
 the European very trying, not only during the day, 
 but often at night as well. 
 
 " Our street," writes a member of the Mission " is 
 an odd jumble of squalor and splendour. There 
 are two towering mansions just opposite us, in- 
 habitated by some very wealthy Babus and their 
 joint families, all living together in the Indian style. 
 The garden in front of the larger is decorated with 
 
 3
 
 34 TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 ridiculous stucco statues in the Greek style, and is 
 full of cranes, emus, and other queer bipeds. On 
 two sides our Mission House is surrounded with 
 ' Busti,' or native huts mud and straw shanties 
 roofed with tiles. One is directly under my 
 bedroom ; and the family who inhabit it are rather 
 amusing, especially when they have 'jars,' which 
 is not unfrequently. To hear a Bengali woman 
 vociferate in voluble Billingsgate, at about one 
 hundred words in a breath is astonishing. Occa- 
 sionally they are ' at home with music,' which is 
 rather trying, as they keep it up till long after 
 midnight. The instrumental part is of the tom-tom 
 order, and the vocal very nasal, with long shakes. 
 The songs are generally religious hymns to Rama 
 and Krishna. One likes it for a little, but it is 
 apt to get monotonous." 
 
 It was here then in June, 1886, that the Mission 
 cheerfully established itself, and the following extract 
 from a letter written soon after by Mr. Townsend 
 shows that they were very well satisfied with their 
 choice : 
 
 " We have now been here long enough to 
 confirm the hope with which we came into this 
 part of Calcutta. We come into increasingly 
 frequent contact with people like the leaders of the 
 Brahmo Somaj, whom we reached only with diffi-
 
 1886] DEATH OF THE REV. PHILIP SMITH. 35 
 
 culty from Bow Bazaar, and students can visit us 
 without the long walk which in many instances was 
 the condition of an interview. In fact, we get as 
 much individual intercourse as we have time for. I 
 much wish it were possible to spend more time in 
 visits to Hindu houses. Our acquaintance with the 
 neighbours is extending, and might go on more 
 rapidly if it were possible to get one's feet outside 
 the door more frequently. But indeed we may 
 well consider that the establishment of a Christian 
 mission in this quarter, in a Hindu house, is itself 
 an encouraging and significant achievement." 
 
 The central event of this year, and one which 
 brought a heavy sorrow and loss upon the Mission, 
 was the death of Mr. Philip Smith. Never very 
 strong, he knew when he offered himself for the 
 work of the Mission that he had not many years 
 to live ; but as he characteristically said, India was 
 as good a country to die in as any other. It was, 
 then, with this knowledge, that he went to India to 
 give what years were granted to him to a work, 
 the call to which had been steadily growing and 
 deepening within him. Once at Calcutta he never 
 spared himself, but threw his whole energy and soul 
 into the work before him, devoting himself with a 
 special zeal, and with a unique power, to the service 
 of the University students, and by his sympathy,
 
 36 TROUBLED TIMES. [CH. II. 
 
 self-devotion, and love for them winning in the 
 short space of little more than three years a wonder- 
 ful position among them. Nor was it the students 
 alone who felt the influence of his character. 
 Every one who came in contact with him was drawn 
 towards him ; and the large and reverent crowd 
 which attended his funeral, composed of English 
 and Bengalis, Christians and non-Christians, of all 
 shades of opinion, testified to the regard in which 
 he was held. When the present writer was in 
 Calcutta in 1893 ms name was still remembered 
 among the students with affection and respect. 
 It was largely with money lent by Mr. Smith that 
 the house in Muktaram Babu Street was bought, 
 and in accordance with his expressed desire his 
 brother at his death made over the property to the 
 Mission. But perhaps a still greater gift was his 
 grave, which, as Mr. Townsend wrote, is an abiding 
 pledge of the continuance of the work of the 
 Mission. 
 
 Of the many tributes which were paid to Mr. 
 Smith's work, none was more true or happy 
 than that of Sir William Hunter, K.C.S.I., Vice- 
 Chancellor of the Calcutta University, who spoke 
 of what Mr. Smith's life and influence had been, 
 at the annual meeting of the Mission, at Oxford, 
 in May, 1888:
 
 1886] THE POWER OF HIS LIFE. 37 
 
 " I should like here to say a few words about 
 one of the Oxford brethren lately deceased. Some 
 of you here knew Philip Smith. He was a man, 
 although he died at thirty-three, whose influence will 
 last for many years. Many of his friends have 
 regretted his early decease. But if you adopt the 
 principle which he adopted, the principle of renuncia- 
 tion of this world, you will rather rejoice in a death 
 which carried out the purpose for which he lived. 
 There has been no event in the history of the 
 Mission which so powerfully impressed the native 
 mind as the calm ending of this one young Oxford 
 scholar, who gave up his life to his duty. If you 
 will allow me, I should like to read a few com- 
 ments made at the time of his death by native 
 newspapers newspapers written and edited by 
 non-Christians of various Indian beliefs. One of 
 them says : ' We knew him not only as a preacher 
 of Christianity, but also as a fellow-worker in every 
 noble cause calculated to uplift the people. To 
 our young men he was a friend and counsellor in 
 all their needs.' Another of them, the editor of a 
 Bengali political paper, writes : ' His courtesy to 
 all men, high and low, his attention to boys and 
 children, his sympathy with the distressed, his 
 active charity, will be remembered by all who 
 knew him.'
 
 38 TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 " The following sentences, which are translated 
 from a journal written in the Bengali language, bear 
 a still stronger testimony to his worth : ' Uncom- 
 promising Christian though he was, he mixed freely 
 with all sorts of people, conversed with them on 
 religious topics, whatever might be their colour or 
 their creed. Crowds oi ragged and dirty boys 
 would gather round him in the streets, and pull 
 his clothes or plague him in other ways, but he 
 would kindly take them up and kiss them.' Now 
 think what this means. A white man walks through 
 the Calcutta streets, a scholar and a gentleman, 
 and poor boys of different religion and race have 
 such confidence in him that they press round him 
 and cling to the skirts of his garment, and ask 
 him to kiss them. Is there not a similar picture 
 handed down from old times ? Philip Smith really 
 made the Hindus in Calcutta understand that the 
 old narrative was a true narrative, and that 
 Christianity is as living to-day as it was in 
 Palestine eighteen centuries ago." 
 
 As some compensation for this heavy loss, the 
 year 1888 brought a welcome accession to the staff 
 of the Mission, in the person of the Rev. Maurice 
 Bell, of Hertford College, Oxford, who left England 
 in December, 1887, and reached Calcutta on the 
 eve of the festival of the Epiphany, thus adding
 
 i888] ADDITIONS TO THE STAFF. 39 
 
 an extra element of gladness to what is always a 
 day of great happiness to the Mission. Unfor- 
 tunately, a few months showed that the climate of 
 Calcutta was hopeless for Mr. Bell, and to his own 
 and the Brethren's great regret he was ordered by 
 the doctor to return to England. 
 
 Two other priests had meanwhile offered them- 
 selves to the Mission : the Rev. James Legard 
 Peach, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, it will 
 be remembered, had, while a layman, come out as 
 a visitor to Calcutta with Mr. Gore in 1884; and 
 the Rev. Halhed Sydney Moore, of Keble College, 
 Oxford, curate to Mr. Hornby, Vicar of St. Columba, 
 Sunderland, one of the first members of the Mission. 
 They both arrived in November, 1888. The close 
 of the year therefore saw the Mission with a staff of 
 five priests, and with the promise of a sixth in 1889 
 in the person of the Rev. Walter Paul Grey Field, 
 formerly scholar of Keble College, Oxford, and 
 curate of St. John the Divine, Kennington, who 
 offered to take Mr. Bell's place. This was a larger 
 number than had been reached before, but was yet 
 none too large for the work which was ready to 
 be done. 
 
 Of the daily life at the Mission House at this 
 time the following account, written by Mr. Brown 
 in 1889, gives a very good idea ; and we may add
 
 4O TROUBLED TIMES. [CH. II. 
 
 that in its main features it represents the ordinary 
 daily life of the Mission as it is to-day : 
 
 " One day is indeed very like another at the Mission 
 House, and to describe an average day will be to 
 set before you a very large part of our life. Well 
 then, the day begins with prime at six ; and in the 
 tropics the variation between the hours of sunrise 
 and of sunset in different parts of the year is so 
 small that we find it most convenient to keep to 
 the same time-table all the year round. Prime 
 is followed by the Holy Communion (daily), and 
 most days of the week one of us goes to celebrate 
 for the Sisters at the Canning Home. This is 
 followed by that cup of tea which goes by the 
 name of chota hazari, ' the little breakfast,' 
 which is so essential to one's life that without it 
 we are flabby, nerveless organisms, useless for any 
 task either spiritual or bodily. It is humiliating 
 to be such a victim to external conditions ; but 
 though I think I may count myself as strong as 
 most Anglo-Indians, I can never forego my 
 chota hazari without paying for the omission by 
 a headache for the rest of the day. Meditation, 
 matins, and terce then occupy us till breakfast, at 
 9.30. At breakfast a book is read ; and as a general 
 rule during the earlier part of the day, till sext, 
 silence is observed, except in so far as our work
 
 1889] A DAY'S ROUTINE. 41 
 
 . requires it to be broken. After breakfast there are 
 household duties to be attended to and letters to 
 be answered. One has to go to teach at the school 
 of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 at Howrah, another probably to visit the school 
 for poor boys which a Hindu Pundit has estab- 
 lished in our lecture-room. Our Rule requires an 
 hour's study of the Bible every day ; and if after 
 this has been done there is any part of the morning 
 remaining, it is devoted to private reading or to 
 Bengali lessons. Sext is said at twelve. Tiffin is 
 at one, a book being read as at breakfast. The 
 interval till none, at 2.45, is a time of recreation, 
 and is spent in talk, reading the papers, and possibly 
 (if it be very hot) in a little gentle and refreshing 
 slumber. 
 
 " After none the Babus begin to come. The 
 house is open to them at all times ; but they consult 
 both their own convenience and ours by coming 
 in the afternoon and evening. They are mostly of 
 the student class, or are young clerks in offices ; 
 but here and there a grey head may be seen 
 amongst them. Most afternoons there is a pretty 
 constant stream of them coming in to use the 
 reading-room, to borrow books, to talk, or to ' read 
 Bible,' as they express it ; and our aim is to draft 
 them off to our own rooms by ones or twos seldom
 
 42 TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 more at a time and then learn from them their 
 thoughts, their difficulties, their doubts ; to teach 
 them the great truths of the faith, and to press 
 home to their consciences those moral and spiritual 
 facts which they are generally willing enough to 
 recognise intellectually. This is our main work ; 
 and we look upon all our classes, lectures, debates, 
 ' at homes,' and mission services into all of which 
 we launch out occasionally as leading up to this. 
 One would think that one or two such interview's, 
 when one gets a man face to face, and can speak 
 to him heart to heart and soul to soul, would make 
 a great impression ; but that is just where the 
 difference comes in between a Bengali and an 
 Englishman. An Englishman will not readily open 
 his mouth on a religious subject, but if he does he 
 means it. The Bengali is always ready to talk 
 about religion nothing is easier than to get him 
 onto a religious subject ; but then one discovers, 
 to one's great disappointment, that his interest in 
 it is merely intellectual and superficial, and that 
 nothing is further from his thoughts than to accept 
 any responsibility for such truth as he is led to 
 acknowledge. There are those that have gone on 
 visiting us actually from the time when the Mission 
 was first started, and yet it would be hard to affirm 
 that they had made the smallest progress towards
 
 1889] DIFFICULTIES OF THE WORK. 43 
 
 the truth. However, the usual course is for these 
 to drop off after a time. Of course, there are others 
 who make real advance ; some whose consciences 
 are aroused, whose hearts are touched, and who 
 emerge at last from the stage of enquirers into that 
 of catechumens. There are more, in whom the seed 
 has really taken root, but its fruit will not be visible 
 for many years. There have been several instances 
 lately in Calcutta of old men being baptised whose 
 knowledge of Christianity began in their boyhood. 
 There are more still who will never come to Holy 
 Baptism at all, but whose lives will have been elevated 
 by what they have learnt at the Mission House, 
 and who will help to secure that recognition of 
 duty and conscience which more than anything 
 else is required as the ' Prceparatio Evangelica ' in 
 India. 
 
 " Our Babus generally depart to their own evening 
 meal as it grows dark, and we then have evensong 
 and dinner. After dinner there is often some 
 meeting, which it is useful to attend ; otherwise we 
 go to bask in the air, which by this time has begun 
 to blow cool, upon the roof ' to eat the wind,' 
 according to the expressive Bengali idiom. Com- 
 pline is at nine, and after it we generally find our 
 way pretty quickly to bed. The great difficulty 
 in India is to do an honest day's work, for without
 
 44 TROUBLED TIMES. [CH. II. 
 
 having done very much I have often in the hot 
 weather found myself so tired by night-time that 
 I could not take the trouble to wind up my watch." 
 
 Outside the Mission House the Brethren occa- 
 sionally preached in one of the many squares which 
 were in the neighbourhood. That out-door preach- 
 ing was not a method they very often used was 
 not from any disparagement of that form of 
 missionary work, for if rightly done it cannot be 
 too highly spoken of. But Calcutta was well 
 supplied with bazaar preachers ; and the members 
 of the Mission felt that the more individual work 
 of lectures and interviews, of which they had as 
 much as they could manage, was the special 
 kind of work for which they were best fitted. 
 Yet from time to time out-door preaching was 
 undertaken, and the method was as follows : two 
 would enter a square at 6 or 8.30 p.m., and after 
 a private prayer together would walk slowly forward 
 to the centre of the square, one of the two singing 
 a hymn in his own language, Bengali or English. 
 All kinds of people would gather round, including 
 young boys and others whose knowledge of English 
 was very limited ; but a good number of educated 
 men who take the air at that time would assemble. 
 Sometimes there were a hundred or more of these, 
 sometimes only twenty or a dozen, in which case
 
 1889] OUTDOOR PREACHING. 45 
 
 it was found best simply to converse. The address 
 ended, there generally followed an invitation to 
 visit the Mission House for enquiry, of which a few 
 a very few availed themselves. At other times 
 it was found a good thing to sit down in a public 
 place and wait for some one to come and talk ; 
 the Brother so doing had seldom to wait long. 
 There is no shyness in talking about religion 
 in an Eastern, nor is there any difficulty in quickly 
 getting into conversation with a complete stranger. 
 As it was in the days of St. Paul at Athens, so 
 it is very much to-day in Calcutta. The Bengali 
 Babu, like the Athenian of old, is always ready to 
 hear some new thing and to discuss all the problems 
 of philosophy and religion with any one who will 
 talk with him. 
 
 Another method of contact with the students, 
 and one to which at this time the Mission devoted 
 a good deal of attention, was attending, either as 
 visitor -or president, some of the various clubs, in 
 the formation of which the Calcutta student seems 
 to take so much delight. They are established in 
 great numbers and for various purposes, mostly 
 literary, moral, or religious. Athletics have not 
 at present gained sufficient ground to be the basis 
 of a club. Football, however, has latterly been 
 taken up, and in 1894 there were one or two student
 
 46 TROUBLED TIMES. [CH. II. 
 
 clubs, which if they did not produce very many 
 players compared with the whole number of 
 students, at least called forth a considerable and 
 increasing interest among the young Bengalis. 
 We do not remember any similar club for cricket 
 probably the game is too expensive for the large 
 majority of the students, whose means are very 
 limited. But athletics or games in any form are 
 a new idea to the Calcutta student ; and his 
 conception of recreation still runs in the form 
 of a debating and literary club for what he terms 
 " religious and moral improvement." 
 
 Such a club was the " Home Club," which met 
 once a week to read the Bible and discuss religious 
 subjects. They invited Mr. Smith to preside at 
 their meetings, and after his death one or other 
 of the members of the Mission went in his stead. 
 Another was named the " Society for the study of 
 Christ," and was formed by some of the members 
 of a much larger club, known as the " Concord Club," 
 but was entirely independent of it. The Mission 
 also organised a debating club, with the aim of 
 discussing social and literary problems in a healthy 
 moral atmosphere, and thus influencing for good 
 the minds of those who might attend the debates. 
 It reached one hundred and forty members, and 
 had Sir W. W. Hunter as its patron.
 
 1889] THE STUDENTS' CLUBS. 47 
 
 But the clubs were chiefly useful as a means 
 of contact with the students, and of getting to know 
 them with a view to closer personal intercourse. 
 It is here that the real work is mostly done, and 
 here too that the difficulty of the work mainly 
 lies. For the Western and Eastern minds are 
 widely different. For many centuries they have 
 been moving in different directions, until time seems 
 to have raised an inexplicable barrier between them. 
 Pantheism, which for ages has been the prevailing 
 influence under which successive generations of 
 Hindus have lived, has coloured every mental 
 movement, has stamped itself deep upon their 
 religious conviction, has dominated and affected 
 almost every department of their daily life. We 
 are apt to consider Pantheism as an extinct philo- 
 sophy, revived in a modified form from time to 
 time in some few European minds ; and it is well 
 to remember that in India it is a living thing, the 
 influence under which more than two hundred 
 millions of men and women to-day direct their 
 religious, mental, and social life. 
 
 We have spoken of it as a living thing, but a 
 " dead thing " would be a truer phrase. Whatever 
 attraction Pantheism may have to a mind which 
 accepts it in a society permeated and dominated 
 by Christianity, it is a very different thing when
 
 48 TROUBLED TIMES. [CH. II. 
 
 seen in its effects in a society wholly under its 
 influence. Death and not life, the darkening not 
 the enlightening of the human conscience, the 
 enslavement not the freedom of the human mind and 
 will, are the unmistakable results. In the deep- 
 rooted Pantheism of the Hindu, and the issues 
 which it involves, lies one of the great difficulties of 
 missionary work in India. 1 Wholly inconceivable 
 to a Western mind is such a statement as the 
 following, which was made in all seriousness by an 
 educated Hindu. At a religious discussion at the 
 Mission House on the " Life and Resurrection of 
 our Lord," a distinguished member of the University 
 of Oxford, who was staying with the Mission, had 
 stated the arguments for believing that Jesus 
 Christ was a real person, with a clearness and 
 power of logic which seemed incontrovertible. A 
 Hindu gentleman who was present rose at the 
 close of the address and said : " It is not of the 
 least consequence to me whether Jesus Christ was 
 a real person or not. So long as I have the vision 
 of the moral beauty which He sets before me, I 
 do not care whether He lived or not ! " It is this 
 attitude of mind which is so bewildering, and which 
 calls for such infinite patience. We go to them 
 
 1 Some more detailed account of what modern Hinduism 
 practically is will be found in the last chapter of this book.
 
 1889] RESULTS OF PANTHEISM. 49 
 
 with our Western training and our Western methods 
 of reasoning, and we expect to carry all before 
 us, but we find we cannot produce the slightest 
 spark of conviction. It is only very slowly and 
 by degrees that we learn the things which do 
 make some sort of impression upon them, and find 
 that they lie not so much in logical argument, or 
 in historical reasoning, as in startling paradoxes and 
 telling illustrations. 
 
 But beyond and behind this difficulty of mental 
 attitude lies another and a deeper one one which 
 is above all else the result of Pantheism namely, 
 that absence of the deep moral sense which we 
 know as conscience, and which in some form or other 
 asserts itself in every European. A man within the 
 sphere of Christendom may be ignorant of religion, 
 ignorant even of Christianity, he may be sunk in 
 every kind of degradation and vice, yet deep down 
 in his soul there is a clear and strong conviction of 
 the difference between right and wrong. But this is 
 very weak and sadly confused in the Hindu. The 
 work, then, which the Mission has to do is largely 
 the work of re-creating the moral sense, of recover- 
 ing the idea of conscience, which for centuries has 
 been buried beneath the deadening mass of Pantheism. 
 This must be a slow work and an individual work ; 
 and though converts have from time to time been 
 
 4
 
 50 TROUBLED TIMES. [CH. II. 
 
 baptised, the Mission has never been disheartened 
 because they have as yet been few. It has realised 
 the conditions under which alone any real and 
 permanent results can be attained, and it is content 
 to work and to wait. 
 
 The annual festival on the feast of the Epiphany, 
 1889, had found, as we have seen, the Mission 
 fully established in Muktaram Babu Street, in 
 a position better adapted for frequent and close 
 intercourse with the students, and increased, by 
 the arrival of Mr. Peach and Mr. Moore, to a 
 greater strength than had been reached before : 
 but this strength as regards the work at the 
 Mission House was more apparent than real. In 
 the spring of 1889 Mr. Brown started for a visit 
 to England, after nine years of continuous and 
 anxious work. This necessitated Mr. Peach taking 
 up his residence at the High School, of which he 
 took over the charge during Mr. Brown's absence ; 
 while Mr. Whitehead, who wished to bring Bishop's 
 College into closer touch with the Mission, had 
 asked that Mr. Walker might be lent to the college 
 for a time to lecture to the students. This left 
 practically only two resident members at the 
 Mission House, the Superior (Mr. Townsend) and 
 Mr. Moore. 
 
 It was soon after these arrangements were com-
 
 1889] RESIGNATION OF THE REV. C. W. TOWNSEND. 51 
 
 pleted, and when the Mission seemed to be looking 
 forward to a year of quiet and steady work, that 
 a blow, heavier than any it had received before, 
 fell upon it. Mr. Townsend felt obliged to resign 
 his position as Superior, and to make his submission 
 to the Church of Rome. As far as he could, he 
 did everything which was possible to minimise the 
 result of his action upon the Mission ; but such 
 a step on the part of the Superior could not fail 
 to create, at least for a time, widespread and deep 
 anxiety. It laid the Mission open to the charge 
 that its teaching encouraged disloyalty to the 
 English Church. But what appeared to be at the 
 moment a grave disaster was turned into a victory 
 by the courage and hopefulness, as well as by the 
 unfaltering charity and faith, of those who remained. 
 " We have lost," says Mr. Brown, speaking when 
 the weight of the blow was still heavy upon them, 
 " we have lost one who was the very best of 
 Superiors one who, by his own patience and per- 
 severing work, and by his humility and gentleness, 
 not only ruled our community well, but endeared 
 himself to the people amongst whom he worked, 
 and was gaining a very great influence over them." 
 " Surely," writes another member of this Mission, 
 " we may look upon it as a great privilege to go 
 through such a testing crisis ; it will just show of
 
 52 TROUBLED TIMES. [Cn. II. 
 
 what stuff we are made, and whether the Divine 
 blessing is on us or not. I think our existence 
 as a Mission seems a miracle after all the losses 
 we have had ; but the analogy of our past is hopeful. 
 .... Please let all our friends know that every- 
 thing here will go on just exactly as before. Of 
 course we are crippled, but absolutely nothing we 
 can keep up is to be dropped." " As far as the band 
 left without its head is concerned," wrote the Bishop, 
 "all are brave, and feel that it is only a call to 
 more devoted work." It was, as was well said in 
 the annual report for that year, a time of anxiety, 
 ready to verge towards discouragement, but it was 
 checked from that and wholesomely rebuked by the 
 courage and hopefulness of those who were working 
 in Calcutta and who might most pardonably have 
 been downhearted. 
 
 That the step which Mr. Townsend felt himseli 
 compelled to take was in no way the outcome of 
 the teaching of the Oxford Mission was fully 
 proved by Mr. Brown in the following statement, 
 which he made at the annual festival of the Mission 
 in 1890, and for which he had Mr. Townsend's own 
 authority : 
 
 "In leaving the English Church, he (Mr. 
 Townsend) adopted an entirely new principle. 
 It has often been said, and it will often be said
 
 1889] VINDICATION OF THE MISSION. 53 
 
 again, that the principles of the Oxford Mission 
 lead to Rome. I can only say Townsend himself 
 did not think so. He gave up the Anglican 
 principle of the preservation of truth, and took in 
 its stead the Roman principle of the development 
 of truth. The one principle did not grow out of 
 the other ; it was a new plant from a new root. 
 The one had to be uprooted before the other could 
 take its place ; and he went so far as to say, in 
 the last conversation I had with him here, that he 
 thought it would in some respects have been easier 
 for him to reach his present conclusions if he had 
 been brought up on a different system altogether 
 if he had been brought up, for instance, in the 
 strictest Calvinism." 
 
 It was thus, then, that the crisis was met ; and 
 because it was thus met it was soon seen that 
 what might, humanly speaking, have thrown back 
 and largely wrecked the work, only left the Mission 
 with stronger grounds of sober hope, with wider 
 views for the future, and with more quiet confidence 
 as to its place and course in the life of India, than 
 perhaps at any previous time of its career.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. 
 
 "All the place 
 
 Seemed less a cultivation than a waste. 
 Men work here only, scarce begin to live." 
 
 / "T"*HE record of the year we have now reached 
 shows that the hope with which the Mission 
 met the troubles of 1889 was not an unfounded 
 one. If that year seemed at the moment to threaten 
 a check, it was soon apparent that it was in reality 
 only a period of preparation for a large extension 
 of the work of the Mission in many directions. 
 
 On New Year's Day, 1890, Mr. Field, whom we 
 have mentioned before as having offered himself 
 for the work of the Mission, arrived in Calcutta. 
 Mr. Brown had returned from his well-earned 
 holiday a few weeks before, and during the last 
 months of 1889 Mr. Lloyd, a layman, had come 
 to work with Mr. Whitehead at Bishop's College. 
 Mr. Lloyd did not actually join the Mission till 
 some years later ; but as an associate he took an 
 active share in much of its work, and by his ability 
 
 54
 
 HENRY WHITEHEAD. [To face p. 55. 
 
 (Superior of the Oxford Mission 18901899. Now the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Madras.)
 
 1890] THE NEW SUPERIOR. 55 
 
 and gentleness, his insight into native character, 
 and his great sympathy, became one of the most 
 valuable and helpful supporters of the work. 
 
 The New Year, then, saw the Mission with its 
 forces re-collected and reinforced, and, what was a 
 still greater fact, with a new Superior. It had been 
 an open secret for some time that Mr. Whitehead 
 had originally intended to offer himself for work 
 with the Oxford Mission, but for the time the 
 call to the management of Bishop's College appeared 
 to be one which could not be put aside. As so 
 often happens, what seemed at first a hindrance to 
 his hopes was in the end the means to their fuller 
 realisation. For when the proposal was made that 
 he should become Superior of the Oxford Mission, 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 raised no objection to his retaining the post of 
 Principal of the college as well. And thus, without 
 being united by any formal act, the works which 
 had grown up round the Oxford Mission, and those 
 which belonged to the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel in Calcutta and the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood, became closely connected, and were 
 directed practically by one head. 
 
 The benefit of a connection of this kind had 
 become apparent for some time, and, in fact, ever 
 since Mr. Whitehead's arrival the Mission and
 
 $6 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [On. III. 
 
 the college had tended more and more to work 
 together. It will be remembered that the Mission 
 High School had been lodged in a house in the 
 college compound ever since the Mission had 
 moved from Bow Bazaar in 1886, and with the 
 school had gone Mr. Brown ; while latterly Mr. 
 Walker had lived at the college in order to lecture 
 to the students. It was, of course, to the college 
 that the boys of the Mission High School passed 
 when they entered the University. For these 
 reasons a single aim and mind directing the 
 two works would naturally be a help to both. 
 This was effectually secured by the appointment of 
 Mr. Whitehead as Superior of the Mission, an 
 appointment the wisdom and success of which has 
 been abundantly and increasingly manifested in 
 every succeeding year. 
 
 As Mr. Whitehead had long had the confidence 
 of the members of the Mission, it was with a deep 
 sense of thankfulness and joy that they welcomed 
 him as their leader. But in accordance with the 
 constitution he could not formally join the Brother- 
 hood of the Epiphany until after a year's probation, 
 so that the appointment had for the present to be 
 provisional, the public and final installation being 
 deferred till the Epiphany of 1891. 
 
 Another event which made the festival of 1890
 
 1890] SECOND VISIT OF THE REV. C. GORE. 57 
 
 noteworthy was the presence of Mr. Gore, who 
 again visited the Mission, this time accompanied 
 by Mr. Wakeman, Fellow of All Souls' College, 
 Oxford, and treasurer of the Mission. 1 This second 
 visit was much shorter than the first, but coming, 
 as it did, after a period of such great anxiety, was 
 doubly welcome, and the brethren had the additional 
 help of Mr. Gore as the conductor of their annual 
 retreat. 
 
 It is now time to turn more especially to the 
 work of the Mission, which, as we have said, began 
 to show signs of expansion in various directions, 
 and which, from this date, begins to be more in- 
 timately connected with the various works belonging 
 to Bishop's College. 
 
 The Mission had been now for four years in 
 Muktaram Babu Street ; and although the position 
 was a better one for the purposes of the work 
 than Bow Bazaar, the street in which it was situated 
 presented many drawbacks ; and the house itself 
 proved far from convenient, owing to the smallness 
 of the rooms. The one big room being used for 
 the chapel, there was no other of sufficient size for 
 
 1 On the death of Dr. Wilson, late Warden of Keble, in 1897, 
 Mr. Wakeman accepted the office of Vice-Chairman of the 
 committee at home. His sudden death in the present year 
 has been a very heavy loss to the Mission, which from the first 
 received his most generous and ungrudging support.
 
 58 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 lectures or any large gatherings, for which purposes 
 a room had to be awkwardly extemporised in a 
 kind of back garden. No ground was to be had 
 adjoining the house for building ; and though in the 
 quarter where the students lived, it was not in a 
 position readily seen, and therefore not as much 
 en Evidence as was desirable. It seemed well, then, 
 to try to make another move, and it was resolved 
 this time to build a house especially for the Mission. 
 The idea was taken up eagerly by the committee 
 at home ; and the indefatigable secretary, Miss 
 Murray, undismayed with having ,3000 to raise 
 for an endowment fund for the school, set to work 
 and with incredible rapidity collected the necessary 
 funds for the new building. 
 
 The choice and acquisition of a site was a more 
 lengthy and difficult task. One in every way 
 suitable was at last found by Mr. Peach, to whom 
 the matter had been entrusted, facing Cornwallis 
 Street, the main central thoroughfare of Calcutta, 
 and negotiations for its purchase were begun in 
 September, 1889 ; but it took a whole year to bring 
 the business to a conclusion, and it was not till 
 September I7th, 1890, that the foundation-stone 
 was laid by the Metropolitan. Once started, the 
 actual work of building, which was put into the 
 hands of Messrs. Mackintosh & Burn, a firm of
 
 1890] REORGANISATION OF THE SCHOOLS. 59 
 
 builders in Calcutta, went on rapidly, and the house 
 was ready for use about the middle of 1891. 
 
 We have alluded to the advantage which was 
 gained by the closer connection between the Mission 
 and Bishop's College. The first happy result of 
 this was seen in the improved organisation of the 
 two schools connected with the college. Besides 
 the High School, which belonged to the Oxford 
 Mission, there was a lower or Industrial School 
 belonging to the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel. This school, by a somewhat strange co- 
 incidence, was lodged in property belonging to the 
 Oxford Mission. The boys, who were all Christians, 
 came principally from the Christian families who 
 lived in the missions of the Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel in the Sunderbans a country 
 district south of Calcutta, of which we shall very 
 shortly have occasion to speak. Hitherto the two 
 schools had been taught apart, but in this year 
 Mr. Brown built a new set of class-rooms, and 
 arranged for both the schools, which were mostly 
 doing the same work, to be taught together. This 
 brought up the different classes to a much more 
 satisfactory size, and enabled one staff ot teachers 
 to do what had formerly been the work of two. 
 
 The printing-press which had been bought by 
 Mr. Willis was at this time brought into the college
 
 60 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 compound, and several of the elder boys in the 
 Industrial School were taught the work of com- 
 positors. This Industrial School was under the 
 charge of the Rev. M. L. Ghose, who had himself 
 been trained at Bishop's College. He had already 
 held the post of head master for several years, 
 and has continued in the same responsible position 
 ever since, fulfilling the duties of his charge with 
 admirable sympathy, ability, and zeal. 
 
 Of the college itself we need only say that under 
 Mr. Whitehead it had reached a state of efficiency 
 greater than in any other period. It was in this 
 year quite full, with several applicants waiting for 
 admission. It contained a small theological class 
 beyond the ordinary classes which were studying 
 for the university examinations, and thus enabled 
 those students who were preparing for holy orders 
 to remain under the teaching and influence of the 
 college up to their ordination. 
 
 It must be remembered that Bishop's College 
 was, and still is, the only college in Calcutta at 
 which students are resident, and that all the 
 students are Christians. From it, year by year, 
 men are sent out well educated, and with a real 
 training in Christian Faith and life, and thus 
 should be, in their different spheres of work, living 
 centres of Christian influence to others. That
 
 1 8go] BISHOP'S COLLEGE. 6 1 
 
 the large majority of the past students are doing 
 good work for the Church is shown by the 
 evidence of many independent witnesses from 
 whom Mr. Whitehead hears from time to time ; 
 and the fact that it is much more through personal 
 influence and example than by intellectual argu- 
 ments that Christianity is spread, shows what an 
 important work Bishop's College is doing for the 
 conversion of India. A writer in the Epiphany, 
 speaking of the college in 1895, says : 
 
 " In Bishop's College, Calcutta, Christianity has 
 welded into one representatives of almost every 
 caste, creed, and race which is to be found in 
 India. Here, and here only, as far as we know, 
 are such diverse elements to be found dwelling 
 together in harmony, and we do not know how 
 under any other conditions than those of Chris- 
 tianity such union is possible. That here, too, 
 ' union is strength,' at least in some departments 
 of effort, is shown by the fact that during the past 
 season the college has won the Elliott shield for 
 football, the Lansdown shield for cricket, and the 
 Viceroy's medal for athletic sports the three 
 highest prizes open to native competition." 
 
 Here, then, in the schools and the college there 
 existed as early as 1890 a system of education 
 which as a framework was fairly complete. Down
 
 62 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS, [Cn. III. 
 
 in the villages in the Sunderbans were a number 
 of village schools, very primitive perhaps, but suited 
 to the wants of the people. From there the more 
 intelligent boys are often sent to the Industrial 
 school at Calcutta, and the girls to a somewhat 
 similar school, established by the Clewer Sisters, 
 not far from Bishop's College. Those boys, again, 
 who show special ability pass from the Industrial 
 School to the High School, and in due course 
 to the college and to the university examinations. 
 Thus the Mission can carry a boy through all the 
 stages of his education, from the village school to 
 the B.A degree of the Calcutta University, keeping 
 him the whole time in its own schools and under 
 Christian discipline and teaching. Writing of the 
 results of this system in 1891, when it had reached 
 a far less efficient state than that to which it has 
 now attained, Mr. Whitehead said : 
 
 " The whole of this branch of our work is a 
 thoroughly satisfactory one. It is capable, no 
 doubt, of very great improvement and extension ; 
 but even now, after seven years of more or less 
 preparatory work in laying the foundation of a 
 system of education for native Christians, I can 
 see the beneficial effects of what has already been 
 done, in the life of the native Church. We are 
 gradually gathering round us a body of young
 
 1890] ITS WORK FOR THE CHURCH. 63 
 
 men whom we have trained ourselves, and who 
 are becoming themselves most valuable fellow- 
 helpers. Indeed, it would be impossible to carry 
 on our present work were it not for their aid 
 and co-operation. The most influential and most 
 important native congregation in Calcutta is entirely 
 in the hands of a Bengali priest, who was ordained 
 straight from Bishop's College five years ago. 
 The Tamil congregation at St. Saviour's Church, 
 Calcutta, is looked after by one of my old students, 
 who will, I hope, soon be ordained. Another of my 
 students is in charge of an important station in 
 the Madras Diocese ; and another who was ordained 
 last year has been sent by the Bishop of Calcutta 
 to take charge of a mission at Coweigunge, in the 
 North-West Provinces. Besides these, we have a 
 native priest, who was ordained from the college 
 about five years ago, working in the Sunderbans 
 Mission, and a young graduate of the Calcutta 
 University, who was educated at the High School 
 and this college, now working with us as a teacher 
 in the school and college ; while two or three of 
 the boys who have been trained at the lower 
 school are now to be prepared for work in the 
 Sunderbans, and seem full of earnestness and zeal : 
 and when we add to these a considerable number 
 who have gone out to lay-work with a good
 
 64 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 religious training and a far higher moral tone than 
 they would otherwise have acquired, I feel that 
 we may look back upon the results of the last 
 seven years' educational work with the most sincere 
 gratitude to God for the blessing He has allowed 
 to rest upon it." 
 
 In October of this same year another important 
 educational work was undertaken by the Mission 
 at the earnest request of the Diocesan Board of 
 Education namely the charge of St. James' School. 
 This is a school for Eurasians in Calcutta, and 
 is situated in the Circular Road, close to St. 
 James' Church. It has fairly good buildings 
 and a good-sized playing-field ; but it is poorly 
 endowed, and the school fees are low and cannot 
 well be raised. This has crippled the school in 
 many ways, and among others has made it difficult 
 to provide a really competent staff. It was this 
 difficulty which led the Diocesan Board of Educa- 
 tion to ask the Oxford Mission to undertake the 
 management of the school. The Mission was not 
 very desirous of acceding to the request ; but at 
 the time it seemed as if the school would collapse 
 unless they came to the rescue. Mr. Peach there- 
 fore accepted the post of Rector, which he held till 
 his return to England in 1896. During his tenure 
 of office the numbers of the school increased
 
 1890] St. JAMES* SCHOOL. 65 
 
 considerably, and a good deal was done by way 
 of improvement to the playing-ground and build- 
 ings, as well as to the general organisation of the 
 school. Three laymen came to work with him 
 Mr. Con way and Mr. Franklin in 1891, and 
 Mr. Woodward in 1892, all of whom have since 
 been ordained. Mr. Woodward, to the great 
 regret of his fellow-workers, was forbidden by 
 the doctors to remain in India, and after his 
 return home in 1895 offered himself for work 
 in Newfoundland, where he has been placed in 
 charge of an important mission by the Bishop. 
 In 1897 the Bishop of Calcutta secured a new 
 Rector for the school, who, being a married man, 
 was unable to join the Brotherhood ; and it was 
 thought best, in the interest of the school and the 
 Mission alike, that the connection between the two 
 should be severed. St. James' School was then 
 somewhat of an episode in the history of the 
 Mission. It is the only real Church of England 
 school of that class in Calcutta, and is therefore an 
 important work important not only as a means 
 of giving a good Church education to the class of 
 boys for whom it is meant, but also from a 
 missionary point of view ; for the Eurasians, being 
 connected by their mixed parentage with both 
 Europeans and natives, ought, if properly trained 
 
 5
 
 66 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [H. III. 
 
 and embued with real missionary zeal, to display 
 qualities and sympathies which might form a 
 valuable link between the two races. 
 
 A much larger work was the charge of the 
 Sunderbans Mission, which was also taken over 
 by the Oxford Mission in this year at the request 
 of the Bishop. The district to which this name, 
 meaning the " forest of the Sunder tree," is 
 given, extends fifty miles south of Calcutta, 
 and is about fifty miles broad. Nearly the 
 whole of it is occupied by rice-fields, and is 
 thickly studded with small villages at distances 
 of about a mile apart. The country is absolutely 
 flat and very swampy, intersected in all directions 
 by innumerable small canals, which take the place 
 of roads, and are the chief means of communica- 
 tion. For about five months in the year it is 
 entirely flooded a physical condition well suited 
 to the cultivation of rice, which is the staple product 
 of the district. Scattered over this area there are 
 some three thousand Christians belonging to our 
 own Church, and there are five or six thousand 
 more belonging to the Roman Catholics, Baptists, 
 and Congregationalists. Nowhere do the divisions 
 of Christendom produce more disastrous results 
 than among these poor and ignorant villagers ; and 
 one among the many evils which the Mission found
 
 1890] THE SUNDERBANS MISSION. 67 
 
 arising from these unhappy divisions was the con- 
 stant passing of the native Christians from one 
 religious body to another. 
 
 The people are, as might be expected, very 
 dull and slow, what energy they have being 
 absorbed in the struggle with debt and malaria. 
 The one thing which seems to awaken their intel- 
 lectual powers is a law-suit, which has an extraor- 
 dinary attraction for them. The difficulties of the 
 situation had been much increased by the continued 
 ill-health of the one S.P.G. missionary who was 
 available for the district, and who had consequently 
 been unable to superintend the work of the catechists, 
 and of the schools and native teachers, with the result 
 that the machinery of the Mission had got into 
 great disorder. When the Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel withdrew this, their last available 
 missionary, the Oxford Brotherhood felt they could 
 not refuse the request of the Bishop to undertake 
 the superintendence of the district. Mr. Brown 
 was accordingly appointed to give a general 
 supervision to the whole, while Mr. Moore under- 
 took the work of itinerating among the villages, 
 holding services, inspecting the schools, and generally 
 promoting the spiritual and temporal welfare of 
 the people. To this work he devoted himself till 
 April, 1894, when he was suddenly ordered home by
 
 68 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERfiANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 the doctor, on account of trouble with his eyesight 
 which was largely due to the unselfish way in which 
 he had given himself to the exposure and hardships 
 incident to the work of a missionary in such a 
 country. By far the larger part of his time was 
 spent travelling from village to village when there 
 was sufficient water, by boats of various kinds and 
 sizes ; at other times walking across the half-dried 
 fields which the flood had left, in the blazing heat 
 of the sun. The food and lodging in the district 
 were often of the roughest ; and as the present 
 writer can vouch from his own observation, the 
 travelling equipage which Mr. Moore considered 
 sufficient was of the most rudimentary kind an 
 article which was broken or which no one else 
 thought good enough to use being appropriated 
 by him with enthusiasm. But if his camp-baggage 
 would have shocked the sense of propriety of a 
 third-class native servant, his work was of the 
 first quality ; and it was his persistent self-devotion 
 and self-denial, his deep and earnest religiousness 
 and conception of duty, which were mainly the 
 means of raising the missions out of the miserable 
 condition into which they had fallen, and which 
 encouraged and inspired all who worked with him. 
 It was a matter of deep regret that the doctors 
 held out no hopes of his being able to return to
 
 1890] THE WORK OF MISS HOARE. 69 
 
 the work ; but it gave him the opportunity for 
 fulfilling a wish which had been for some time 
 in his heart, namely of offering himself to the 
 Society of St. John the Evangelist at Cowley. 
 Since then he has been professed and his health 
 sufficiently restored for him to be able to work 
 again in India, in the Fathers' admirable mission 
 at Poona. 
 
 One other reason which led the Oxford Mission 
 to take up this work was the fact that Miss Hoare, 
 who for many years had spent and been spent 
 in the cause of the Sunderban Christians, had at 
 last laid down her life for their sake. If the 
 life and work in the country were rough and hard 
 for a man, they were in every sense far more so for 
 a lady; yet year after year Miss Hoare never 
 shrunk back from, or wearied of, the ministry she 
 had undertaken for the people of the district. 
 If she had not been irresistibly drawn out to 
 India by her love for them, in all human proba- 
 bility her life would have been spared. The 
 Oxford Mission therefore felt that they could not 
 allow a work which had been so nobly done to drop. 
 It is also true to add that though the effort 
 was undoubtedly a strain on the Mission staff, 
 yet in some ways it afforded a wholesome change 
 from the somewhat trying work among the Calcutta
 
 70 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 students, and, moreover, was a means of bringing 
 the Mission into touch with what are in many 
 respects the main problems of missionary work in 
 India namely, work in the country districts ; for 
 it must be remembered that more than ninety 
 per cent, of the population live in the country, 
 the town population being a mere fraction of the 
 whole. 
 
 A good idea of the life and character of this 
 district is given in the following account, written by 
 Mr. Brown in 1891 : 
 
 " ' The Sunderbans ' is the name given to the 
 district of the Ganges delta south of Calcutta. 
 The whole district, and, indeed, the ground on 
 which Calcutta itself stands, is simply a theft 
 from the Himalaya mountains, the thieves being 
 the two great rivers Ganges and Brahmapfttra. 
 Suppose a fleet of thirteen thousand ships starting 
 every morning from the base of the mountains 
 and each ship discharging a daily burden of 
 fourteen hundred tons of earth into the Bay of 
 Bengal, and you have a picture of what is going 
 on here throughout the rainy season. And this 
 work, it has been calculated, must have been in 
 progress for thirteen thousand six hundred years 
 to build up the present delta three hundred feet 
 from the bottom of the sea. Land formed in
 
 1890] CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT. 71 
 
 such a way has many engaging qualities. In 
 the first place it is not so much land as mud, 
 caked over by the sun, no doubt, at certain seasons 
 of the year, but with a natural tendency to revert 
 to its original consistency whenever a fall of rain 
 (and the rain does fall !) gives it an excuse. Then 
 also it has a way of disappearing rather more 
 rapidly than it came. For instance, at a place 
 called Goalanda, in 1875, the railway station stood 
 near the river, protected by massive embankments, 
 on which 130,000 had been spent. In the August 
 of that year, however, the river took a fancy to 
 that railway station, and deep water now covers 
 its site. Another characteristic of the country is 
 that it is absolutely flat, and is everywhere inter- 
 sected by large and small canals. The natural 
 features of the Sunderbans therefore present rather 
 serious obstacles to getting about. There are 
 hardly any roads ; the substitutes for them are 
 ridges of mud banked up between the rice-fields, 
 and these have a habit of breaking down and 
 leaving a vast slough to wade through before you 
 can land on the next ridge. Of course, the natives 
 find little difficulty about it, for with their scanty 
 clothing it does not much matter to them whether 
 their path is through wet or dry ; but the European 
 finds himself terribly discounted by his civilisation.
 
 72 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 As long as the rains last he gets on well enough 
 in his shalti, something like a narrowed and 
 elongated punt, specially adapted for these small and 
 narrow canals, but towards the end of October he 
 finds the canals begin to dry up. ' Capital ! ' thinks 
 he ; ' now I shall be able to walk.' But the fields 
 which are too dry for punting may still be a good 
 deal too wet for walking. If, casting away his 
 civilisation, he adopts the manners and customs 
 of the natives, and plunges barefooted into the 
 mud, the result is probably a sore foot, possibly 
 a snake bite, and almost certainly a fever. If in 
 despair he betakes himself to a horse, the rains 
 are upon him again, and the horse has to be 
 consigned to the stable, where it will eat its head 
 off for the next four or five months. 
 
 " Another difficulty consists in the fact that every 
 single thing which you want must be taken with 
 you. This difficulty does not occur to people at 
 home, who naturally say, ' Put up at an inn.' But 
 there are no inns. And the condition of the 
 country as regards means of accommodation can 
 be gathered from the following description of the 
 life of an Indian peasant, which is evidently that 
 of an eye-witness : 
 
 " ' A fairly contented Indian peasant or artisan 
 usually seems to Western eyes to possess no comforts
 
 1890] A COUNTRY PEASANT'S LIFE. 73 
 
 at all. His cottage, or rather hut, consists practically 
 of a single room, often (always in our district) 
 built of dried mud instead of brick, with no floor, 
 no attempt at a chimney, the fuel used being char- 
 coal, and no furniture except sometimes a charpoy 
 or two i.e. the simplest form of trestle-bed, two 
 or three brass lotahs, and some unglazed earthen 
 cooking-pots. There are no chairs, no carpets, 
 no tables for eating, no bedding in the English 
 sense, nothing whatever on which a British pawn- 
 broker would in an hour of expansiveness advance 
 three shillings. The owner's clothing may be 
 worth five shillings if he has a winter garment, 
 and his wife's perhaps ten shillings more, her 
 festival robe having a distinct value. The children 
 wear nothing at all. The man never sees or 
 thinks about meat of any kind. He never dreams 
 of buying alcohol in any shape. The food of the 
 household costs about six shillings a month, and 
 consists of roasted rice or unleavened cakes, fish 
 if procurable, vegetables, milk, and a little clarified 
 butter, the whole being made tasteful with cheap 
 country spices ; and his only luxury is sugar, made 
 up sometimes cleverly, sometimes horribly, accord- 
 ing to the cing of each district into sweetmeats.' 
 
 " Two things, and two things only, can usually be 
 bought in the villages rice and kerosene oil ; two
 
 74 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERbANS. [CH. III. 
 
 other things you can generally borrow a roof over 
 your head and a grass mat to place under you. 
 There are also generally one or two houses in each 
 village which can produce a kerosene oil box for 
 a seat. For everything else you are dependent 
 on what you bring with you your bed, your 
 bedding, your food, your cooking-vessels, your 
 fuel, even your water, for though there is ' water, 
 water everywhere,' there is not a drop that is 
 wholesome to drink. 
 
 " The Lieutenant-Governor of the North- West 
 Provinces has lately been preaching the gospel of 
 material comfort for India ; but one could not 
 willingly see this simple village life broken up, 
 a life so absolutely free in its independence of 
 external wants. Would that it were equally free 
 in its independence of superstitious terrors ! At 
 the entrance of every village, somewhere under 
 the trees, there is sure to be a row of hideous 
 idols wretched pieces of earthenware pottery, 
 painted over with grinning faces, all of whom have 
 to be propitiated if the earth is to bring forth 
 its fruits and the seasons to bring their due 
 succession of sunshine and moisture. 
 
 " In some thirty of these villages, scattered over 
 an area which measures about fifty miles each 
 way, are to be found between two and three
 
 1890] ITS DEPRESSING INFLUENCE. 75 
 
 thousand Christians of our Church, besides Roman 
 Catholics, Baptists, and Methodists. A lady who 
 has worked in the district, triumphing over all its 
 difficulties, for fifteen years, describes her work as 
 turning mud images into human beings. And 
 that is about what it is. Though so near to 
 Calcutta, their existence is hardly recognised by 
 the dwellers in the metropolis. A sportsman comes 
 down now and then in search of a tiger, and the 
 Government has made some small beginnings of 
 education ; but for the most part they are both 
 literally and metaphorically in the mud, out of 
 which they have neither power nor courage to 
 help themselves. The missionaries have done more 
 for them than anybody, and yet after forty years 
 of Christianity it seems as if there were still almost 
 everything to do. To say that, however, is not 
 quite fair. They have their own virtues, the virtues 
 of simple and very dependent country people. 
 
 " Speaking now of our Christians : one of the 
 first things that struck me about them was a 
 freedom from gross vice which would compare 
 very favourably with most country parishes in 
 England. And along with this though I should 
 scarcely like to take it by itself as a sign of 
 religious progress is the fact that there is scarcely 
 a man or woman in the whole district who
 
 76 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [CH. III. 
 
 is of age to be a communicant that is not so. 
 Most communicate whenever they have an oppor- 
 tunity ; all at the great festivals of the Church. 
 
 " Ignorance is our great enemy. Not more than 
 one or two in a village know how to read and 
 write. At the Church services there is painful 
 silence where the responses ought to come. I have 
 called up a lad working in the fields, ascertained 
 that he was a Christian, and then asked whether 
 he could say the Lord's Prayer. He did not even 
 know what I meant. As a rule the girls know 
 more than the boys, thanks to the noble work of 
 Miss Hoare, whom I have already mentioned. But 
 then the girls have a peculiar difficulty nothing 
 will induce them to open their lips in the presence 
 of a man, not even in church. ' I suffer not a 
 woman to speak,' is interpreted by them in its 
 strictest literal significance. Our boys' schools 
 are in a most backward state, and it will be our 
 chief work, for many years to come, to get them 
 into a state of efficiency. Fortunately the founda- 
 tion has been laid, for in the boarding-school which 
 has now been going on for some years in Calcutta 
 there is a large proportion of these Sunderbin 
 boys who, when they leave school, will be far more 
 competent teachers than any we have had yet. 
 
 " Another effect of their ignorance is, that they
 
 1890] THE EFFECT OF "CASTE." 77 
 
 pass almost without a thought from one Christian 
 body to another. The Roman priest comes at 
 a time of want and offers to lend them money, 
 and immediately they become Roman Catholics. 
 They have a quarrel with the reader, and they 
 pass over to the Baptists. So little individuality 
 have they that if one member of the family goes 
 to another body, all the members of the family, 
 whether children or adults, go with him. The fact 
 is, that the traditions of Hindu caste still cling to 
 them. The whole effect of caste is to destroy 
 individuality, to take away the capacity of thinking 
 for oneself, to substitute a body of external rules 
 for the inner voice of conscience, to make all the 
 members of the caste move like the serried ranks 
 of an army without the possibility of any one 
 asserting an opinion of his own. What wonder 
 if the age-long influence of this system is still felt 
 after a generation or two of Christianity ! The 
 Christians themselves tend to become a separate 
 caste, with rules a little different, no doubt, from 
 those of the Hindus, but enforced by the same 
 sanctions of fine and excommunication ; and when 
 once this deadly spirit creeps in, the work of the 
 conversion of the heathen is entirely forgotten, and 
 it gets to be looked upon almost as a thing im- 
 possible that a Hindu should forsake his own caste
 
 78 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [Cn. III. 
 
 and enter the Christian Church. This is the most 
 striking defect in the Christianity of these people : 
 they scarcely even dream of making converts ; 
 the missionary spirit is entirely dead. 
 
 " Education, then, and the rekindling of a 
 missionary spirit is what we chiefly want. My 
 great hope is that we shall be able to reorganise 
 our village schools, to establish boarding-schools 
 for boys and girls in their midst, to train the 
 native readers and pastors until they become leaders 
 in the cause of aggressive Christianity. All this is 
 the work of time, not of just one or two years. 
 One can scarcely hope to see it accomplished in 
 one's own lifetime ; but we can now be working 
 towards it and making it easier for our successors 
 to bring it about. ' Show Thy servants Thy work, 
 and their children Thy glory,' must be our motto 
 as well as our prayer. 
 
 " Our work amongst the Christians is very like 
 parish work at home, visiting the people, getting 
 them to send their children to school, inspecting 
 the schools, and holding services. But in every 
 village there is sure to be a greater or less pro- 
 portion of Hindus and Musalmans. For them a 
 magic lantern has been immensely useful. When 
 due notice has been given, the people flock to 
 see it, and in this way we have had audiences of
 
 1890] USE OF A MAGIC LANTERN. 79 
 
 some three thousand in all, in about fifteen different 
 places, during the cold weather. We always show 
 the life of Christ, and I generally take with me 
 a student of Bishop's College, named Okhil Sinjh, 
 formerly in our school, who preaches most excellently 
 on the various scenes, and accompanies his preaching 
 with the singing of Bengali hymns to the tune of 
 his violin, which is intensely appreciated. In this 
 way I hope that much good is being done, though 
 we have not as yet seen any definite fruit in the 
 way of conversion. I cannot speak too highly of 
 the qualities of the lantern : it packs into a very 
 small space, and yet gives a disc of some eight feet, 
 which is quite large enough for all our purposes. 
 The people quickly rig up a framework of bamboos 
 in the open air, on which we hang our sheet. At 
 one place we set it up in this way between the 
 church and a road one of the few roads of the 
 district ; and when all the people of the village 
 had settled themselves on one side, under the 
 shadow of the church, the pictures could also be 
 seen on the other by people passing along the road. 
 It happened to be a market day, and the people 
 going home from market invariably stopped to look, 
 so that in this way we got an attendance of some 
 four hundred. 
 
 " On another occasion a Hindu station-master
 
 80 THE SCHOOLS AND THE SUNDERBANS. [CH. III. 
 
 asked us to give an exhibition at his station, and 
 promised us a large attendance, ' six hundred, at 
 least,' he said. We fixed the day, and went at 
 the time appointed, and there we found indeed 
 the station-master himself and his family, but not 
 the ' six hundred.' His excuse was characteristic : 
 ' Oh, I never thought you would come when you said 
 you would.' However, by ringing the railway bell 
 and sending messengers right and left, he managed 
 to muster a respectable audience in about an hour, 
 and we had a very successful exhibition. When it 
 was all over and it was nearly midnight, a few 
 laggards arrived, and suggested that we should 
 begin it again ! We could only promise to return 
 at some future time." 
 
 In both the pastoral and evangelistic work in 
 this district Mr. Brown and Mr. Moore were helped 
 by the Rev. B. C. Chowdry, an old S.P.G. missionary 
 who gave his services voluntarily, and by the Rev. 
 M. L. Ghose and other Bengali fellow-workers. 
 There were, as will have been seen, many difficulties 
 in connection with the mission some arising from 
 the character and climate of the country, others 
 much more serious, coming from the past rivalry 
 of the various religious bodies at work in the district, 
 and from the poverty, ignorance, and spiritual 
 deadness of so many of the Christians. But, under
 
 1890] IMPROVEMENT IN THE WORK. 8l 
 
 the firm and wise discipline exercised by the 
 Oxford Mission, every year saw steady and real 
 improvement, and in 1893, out of 3,345 baptised 
 persons, 1,442 were communicants. These were 
 distributed in ninety-three villages, for the use of 
 which were three churches, twenty-nine chapels, and 
 twenty-five schools, which were served, in addition 
 to the two members of the Oxford Mission and 
 three or four Bengali priests, by eleven readers and 
 twenty-five schoolmasters. It is a work which 
 needs patient and continuous toil, but one which 
 will repay the labour bestowed upon it.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. 
 
 " Not throned above the skies, 
 Not golden-walfd afar, 
 But where Chrisfs two or three 
 In His name gathered are. 
 Be in the midst of them 
 God's own Jerusalem ! " 
 
 TT will have been seen that the year 1890 was a 
 * year in which the sphere of the Mission was 
 considerably extended, and that it was now in a 
 position to offer a great variety of work to any one 
 who would join it. At the Mission House there 
 was the regular work among the students, consisting 
 principally of individual intercourse and visiting 
 them in their clubs and lodgings. Here, too, in 
 the cold weather was an opportunity for giving 
 lectures to non-Christians ; while the Epiphany 
 afforded scope for a considerable amount of literary 
 ability. The schools and Bishop's College offered 
 different grades of educational work, from the 
 teaching of elementary subjects up to lectures for 
 
 the University examinations ; while in the oversight 
 
 82
 
 1891] VARIED NATURE OF THE WORK. 83 
 
 of the native congregations in Calcutta and the 
 missions in the Sunderbans was to be found 
 abundance of ordinary pastoral work, besides that 
 of a direct missionary kind. 
 
 From time to time, as opportunity occurred, 
 lectures were given at Patna and at Dacca, and 
 requests also came for lectures from as far away 
 as Poona and Bombay. Their annual holiday 
 afforded the members of the Mission the opportunity 
 of visiting other parts of India and gaining fresh 
 experience by seeing missionary efforts of different 
 kinds. Thus in 1889 Mr. Walker visited Burmah, 
 and in 1890 Mr. Peach made a very interesting 
 tour among the flourishing Christian villages in 
 south India. We mention this because it is im- 
 portant that it should be understood that by means 
 of the variety of the work there is ample room 
 in the Mission for men of very different gifts and 
 capacities, and also that the wide extent of its 
 responsibilities and opportunities does very urgently 
 call for a much larger staff of men. 
 
 A glance at the list, in which is given the staff 
 of the Mission during each successive year, will 
 show that while the sphere of work and the 
 burden of responsibility have very largely increased 
 and is still increasing, the number of priests in 
 the Mission has never exceeded nine, and has only
 
 84 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [Cn. IV. 
 
 rarely reached that number, while it has frequently 
 fallen as low as four or five ; and even in those 
 years when the staff appears to be largest the 
 number does not always represent its effective 
 strength ; illness and necessary visits to England 
 constantly taking away one or more members from 
 active service. For instance, in 1895 tne staff, 
 which at the beginning of the year numbered 
 seven, from various unforeseen causes fell as 
 low as three towards the end. It is this 
 constant fluctuation in the numbers of the 
 Mission which is one of the great anxieties 
 connected with the work, and which imperatively 
 calls for a considerable increase in the permanent 
 number of men. There is, we believe, an im- 
 pression, still strong, that only men of great 
 intellectual ability are wanted. This is an entire 
 mistake. While the highest intellectual gifts 
 will find ample scope for their exercise, they 
 are not by any means the chief or only gifts 
 required. Such qualities as go to make an ordinary 
 good parish priest at home, backed by a real 
 vocation to missionary work, are what are really 
 needed. No one who has these qualifications need 
 be afraid of not finding plenty of work, and work 
 of as much interest as any at home. 
 
 The most important event of this year was
 
 1891] THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. 85 
 
 undoubtedly the opening of the new Mission House 
 in Cornwallis Street. We have already spoken of 
 the reasons which made it desirable for the Mission 
 to move from the house in Muktaram Babu Street 
 and also of the prolonged negotiations which 
 delayed the purchase of the site for the new 
 building. The foundation-stone was laid, as we saw, 
 in November, 1890, and the house was finished by 
 August, 1891. The Bishop was then away from 
 Calcutta, and as he wished to open the house in 
 person, and the Brethren of the Epiphany also 
 specially wished him to do so, it was resolved that 
 the formal opening should be deferred. This 
 eventually took place on Wednesday, November 25th, 
 1891, with a special service of blessing by the 
 Bishop and in the presence of a large company of 
 lay and clerical friends. 
 
 The house, which is a large, oblong building, 
 stands with its west end facing upon Cornwallis 
 Street a large street, which under various names 
 runs right through the centre of Calcutta. Its 
 situation is an ideal one for the special work of the 
 Mission. It is almost exactly in the centre of the 
 students' lodgings, and hundreds of students pass 
 and repass it every day on their way to and from 
 the colleges. The advantage of this more public 
 position was seen in the largely increased attendance
 
 86 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [CH. IV. 
 
 of students at the lectures. In the old house the 
 lecture-room was hidden away in a back garden, 
 and it was found impossible to get an audience for 
 any continuous course of lectures ; but in the new 
 house it was found practicable to maintain a course 
 of weekly lectures for ten weeks during the cold 
 weather, with a regular audience of from one 
 hundred and fifty to two hundred men. 
 
 Being planned especially for the Mission, the 
 house is, in all its arrangements, admirably adapted 
 for its purpose ; and the excellence of its construction 
 was shown in the fact that in the somewhat severe 
 shock of earthquake which caused so much damage 
 in Calcutta in 1897, the Mission House received no 
 injury whatever. It is, as will be seen from the 
 illustration, a large three-storied building, plain but 
 dignified, built, as are all Calcutta buildings of brick 
 and stucco. The floors throughout the house are 
 made of a kind of very smooth cement, which can be 
 easily washed over with water and which helps very 
 much in the way of cleanliness and coolness in 
 fact, it is quite one of the coolest houses in Calcutta. 
 The main entrance is under a porch at the west 
 end of the house, facing Cornwallis Street, which 
 leads into a large hall open to the top of the house, 
 from which a broad staircase leads up to the 
 different stories, from the ground floor to the roof.
 
 1891] THE LIDDON LECTURE HALL. 87 
 
 On the ground floor, besides two or three rooms, 
 one of which is sometimes used as a students' club- 
 room, there is the " Liddon Lecture Hall." This 
 was so called because it was built with a legacy of 
 250 which was left by Dr. Liddon to the Mission 
 at his death. Dr. Liddon had from the very first 
 taken the warmest interest in the Mission, and had 
 done much to help it on during its earlier stages 
 by his sympathy and advice. It was felt, therefore, 
 to be singularly appropriate that the room which 
 was to be devoted to lectures, the aim of which 
 was to bring home to the hearts of the young 
 educated Bengalis the claim of Jesus Christ, should 
 bear the name of one who for twenty years had, 
 with unrivalled eloquence and deepest devotion, 
 proclaimed that name from the pulpit of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral in the city of London. The lecture-room 
 is capable of holding nearly three hundred people, 
 and with the club-room, which can be added to it, 
 and the wide corridor into which it opens, could 
 accommodate some five hundred to hear a lecture. 
 At the east end is a small apse, which is screened 
 off from the main room, but which can be fitted 
 with an altar, and thus enables the room to be used 
 as a chapel on such occasions as the annual festival, 
 when the number of visitors is too great for the 
 ordinary chapel upstairs.
 
 88 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [Cn. IV. 
 
 On the first floor there are three rooms for the 
 use of the Brethren, and at the other end a very 
 fine room, as large as the lecture hall below, which 
 serves as library, common-room, and refectory in 
 one. It is absolutely plain, but lofty and well 
 proportioned, which, with its size, gives it a real 
 dignity. The walls are entirely lined with book- 
 cases, which contain the Mission House library ; and 
 some idea of the difference between the present 
 house and that in Muktaram Babu Street may be 
 gained from the fact that the bookcases which in 
 the old house used to touch the ceiling, now only 
 reach half-way up the walls. 
 
 The library is the result of a gradual accumula- 
 tion. A large proportion of the books formed the 
 private library of Mr. Willis, which on his de- 
 parture from Calcutta he very generously left to 
 the Mission. Other members on joining the 
 Brotherhood have brought their books with them, 
 and for the most part placed them in the library. 
 Many generous gifts have been made by members 
 of the Association at home, and the committee 
 makes an annual grant of money for the purchase 
 of new books, thus enabling the librarian to keep 
 the library up to date. The greater part of the 
 library is naturally given up to theology patristic, 
 biblical, dogmatic, and homiletic. There is a
 
 THE LIBRARY. 89 
 
 complete set of the Sacred Books of the East, and 
 other books bearing on Indian social, political, and 
 religious life, both ancient and modern. Philosophy, 
 history, and biography are also well represented, and 
 there are a good number of books of reference, such 
 as dictionaries, etc. On the whole, the library is a 
 very good one, and is perhaps the best theological 
 library in Bengal. It is catalogued and well cared 
 for, a boy being kept entirely for the continual 
 dusting of the books, a very necessary matter in 
 a country where damp and white ants are so 
 destructive. It need not be pointed out how 
 valuable a good library is to such a body as the 
 Brotherhood of the Epiphany, the members of 
 which have to be dealing continually with every 
 kind of intellectual problem, and to whom not only 
 enquirers, but clergy and others are constantly 
 referring on social and theological questions. It is, 
 then, very important that the library should be kept 
 efficient by a continual supply of new books, and 
 for this purpose a list of books which are wanted 
 is published in each quarterly paper, which can be 
 obtained of any of the local secretaries of the 
 Mission. 
 
 Between the library and the other rooms on this 
 floor is the chapel, the centre of the house as well 
 as of the life and work of the Brotherhood. It is in
 
 90 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [CH. IV. 
 
 a way unique of its kind, being, we believe, the first 
 specimen of Mr. Kempe's work which was seen in 
 India. All the woodwork, which is of teak, was 
 made in England under Mr. Kempe's own super- 
 vision, and sent out to Calcutta, where it was fitted 
 and placed in the chapel. It consists of panelling 
 for the entire walls up to the height of nine or ten 
 feet, of plain but handsome stalls, and a very 
 beautifully designed reredos, the pattern of which is 
 brought out with great effect by a few touches of 
 gilding. The whole gives a combination of good 
 taste and quiet solemnity, carrying one back in 
 thought to some chapel of an Oxford college, and 
 is a perpetual rest and spiritual refreshment. All 
 the woodwork was the generous gift of the late Mr. 
 Wakeman, then treasurer of the Mission, and forms 
 only one of his many benefactions to the Brother- 
 hood. Many other beautiful gifts, such as vestments, 
 altar frontals, silver sanctuary lamps, have been 
 given from time to time by members of the 
 Association. The chalice and paten were the gift 
 of Mrs. King, the mother of the Bishop of Lincoln. 1 
 Thus the chapel is full of memories of those who 
 have thought and prayed for the work ; but one 
 
 1 These were stolen in the early part of this year, 1899 a 
 great loss, both on account of the beauty of the vessels themselves 
 and of the associations which attached to them from the donor.
 
 ttyi} THE CHAPEt. t 
 
 memory pervades it above all, that of Marsham 
 Frederick Argles, of whom the chapel itself is a 
 memorial a memorial which is indeed fitting for 
 one in the life of whom prayer and worship formed 
 so great and real a part. Here the Brethren meet 
 throughout the day to recite the divine office and to 
 say " the hours " ; and here, above all, is offered each 
 day the Holy Eucharist the daily thanksgiving for 
 all God has given to, and done through, the Mission ; 
 and the daily pleading of the one all-sufficient and 
 all-prevailing Sacrifice, for the conversion of India. 
 In the larger and truer view which belongs to the 
 unseen world may it not be that this is recognised 
 as the most real and fruitful of all the work which 
 the Mission is doing ? Anyhow, in those times 
 which must come again and again in all missionary 
 efforts, when the sense of failure and disappoint- 
 ment lie heavy on the soul, and the long toil seems 
 to bring no result, hope rekindles and recovers 
 strength as morning by morning the great Sacrifice 
 is pleaded, the memorial of Him who said, " I, if I 
 be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me ; " carrying 
 with it the promise that the prayer shall indeed 
 be answered and that the hearts of the children 
 in India shall at last be turned to the Father 
 of all. 
 
 The top story is entirely occupied with rooms for
 
 92 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [Cn. IV. 
 
 the members of the Brotherhood. All the rooms 
 on each floor open onto a wide and lofty verandah, 
 which from its great length and width is quite 
 imposing. Facing south, the house gets the full 
 benefit of the south wind, which in the hot weather 
 blows most refreshingly all night. From the top 
 story a staircase leads up to the roof, which, like 
 that of all Eastern houses, is flat, and is in constant 
 use for a variety of purposes. This roof is, we 
 believe, large enough for a full -sized tennis-court, 
 it was, we know, at times used as a skating-rink 
 for roller skates ! Standing high above all the 
 surrounding buildings, it commands an extensive 
 view of almost the whole of Calcutta, and after a 
 hot day's work it is a refreshing place for sitting or 
 walking when the sun has set. Very wonderful it 
 is at night to stand there and to look up into the 
 clear sky, in which the great stars shine with a 
 brilliancy unknown in our heavier and damper 
 climate ; and then to look over the great heathen 
 city, so unconscious of, nay, as yet so indifferent 
 to, the real meaning of the heavens which night 
 after night declare to it the glory of God, that 
 city, in the middle of which the Mission House 
 stands like some point of vantage, from which is 
 to go forth the message which is to win it to 
 the Faith of Christ!
 
 1891] WELCOME VISITORS. 93 
 
 Writing of the house soon after the opening, the 
 Bishop says : 
 
 " The building is in every way suitable, and the 
 whole atmosphere seems to breathe of a calm and 
 earnest settling down to work for generations. I 
 hope it means that the Brotherhood is permanently 
 rooted." 
 
 As far as what is of this world can be called 
 permanent, the new house certainly gives the 
 promise of a settled and abiding home for the 
 Mission which ten years before first established 
 itself in the hired house in Bow Bazaar. Year 
 by year at the feast of the Epiphany an in- 
 creasing number of English and native Christian 
 friends meet at the Mission House to keep with the 
 Brethren their annual festival. Here, too, throughout 
 the year welcome visitors come from time to time 
 missionaries passing through Calcutta, apprentices 
 from the ships lying in the port, soldiers from Fort 
 William, members of the Civil Service, officers in 
 the Army, travellers who are spending the cold 
 weather in India. Many an English layman who 
 has taken the trouble to come down the somewhat 
 rough and unsavoury streets from the European end 
 of Calcutta to pay the Mission a visit has very 
 likely never thought of the encouragement and help 
 which his bright, cheery presence has been.
 
 94 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [CH. IV. 
 
 Not only did the move into the new house show 
 results in a largely increased and more regular 
 attendance at the weekly lectures, but it seemed to 
 bring to the Mission a different class of enquirers 
 from those with whom it had come in contact in 
 previous years. They were both intellectually more 
 able and also more in earnest, and the Superior 
 reported that they had more catechumens this year 
 than the Mission had had during the whole ten years 
 of its previous history. There did seem just at this 
 time a very apparent movement towards Christianity : 
 and in alluding to this in the annual report of 
 that year, Mr. Whitehead remarked, that taken in 
 connection with other years he thought it indicated 
 a real progress of Christian influence. Thoughtful 
 men were becoming more and more anxious as to 
 the subject of the moral training of the University 
 students, and were beginning to see that practically 
 Christianity was the 'only religion that held out any 
 hope of solving this problem. Another cause of 
 this movement lay, he thought, in the fact that the 
 Brahmo Somaj was beginning to lose its hold and 
 decline in numbers and spiritual power. Based as 
 it was on purely individual intuitions, it did not 
 satisfy men's needs, and it was, moreover, even more 
 unpopular among the orthodox Hindus than the 
 Christian Church. There was, then, he felt, a
 
 1891] NEED OF A LARGER STAFF. 95 
 
 greater ground of encouragement than at any former 
 time, and this with the ever-increasing sphere of 
 work made the need of a much larger staff a matter 
 of urgent importance. Such was the outlook at the 
 close of 1891 as it appeared to those in Calcutta, 
 though at the time Mr. Whitehead expressly said 
 that it would be rash to assert that it was more 
 than a passing wave of feeling. To gauge the 
 depth or reality of such movements is always very 
 difficult, and later events came to show that however 
 real it was at the time, it was not lasting ; and in a 
 few years it became evident that a strong reaction 
 antagonistic to Christianity was taking place. This 
 arose partly from a political feeling opposed to 
 anything English, and partly from an attempted 
 revival of orthodox Hinduism. But of this we 
 shall have to speak later on. 
 
 The large increase of work which had come to 
 the Mission during the last three years had put a 
 heavy burden on its resources, and in the earlier 
 months of this year the strain upon the staff was 
 very great. The numbers of the Mission, though 
 larger than they had been before, were not large 
 enough for the work, which was on all sides opening 
 out ; and at the end of 1891 and beginning of 1892 
 they were further reduced through the necessary 
 absence of Mr. Walker and Mr. Peach, and for the
 
 96 THE NEW MISSION HOUSE. [Cn. IV. 
 
 moment it did seem as if it might be necessary for 
 the Mission to retrace its steps. This is obviously 
 a condition in which no Mission ought ever to be. 
 If a work is a living work and is blest of God, it 
 must grow, and therefore must need a continual 
 increase both of funds and of men. The responsi- 
 bility for the supply of these needs lies with the 
 Church at home. We could wish that the Church 
 realised her responsibility more fully. Apart from 
 many other considerations, this ought to be promi- 
 nently brought before Churchmen : that the mortality 
 in missions, especially in such a mission as that of 
 the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, is very 
 largely due to over-pressure to the fact that every 
 man is overworked, and that, in that state, illnesses 
 which might otherwise have been easily thrown off 
 are constantly fatal. It is really the negligence 
 and apathy of the Church at home which is the 
 cause of so many deaths in the mission field. 
 Thanks to Miss Murray and the generosity of the 
 Association in England, the financial needs of the 
 Mission were always met. But for a time the weak- 
 ness of the staff caused very real anxiety. This 
 was especially so towards the end of 1891 and 
 the earlier part of 1892, when, as we have said, 
 Mr. Walker and Mr. Peach were both necessarily 
 away. However, relief came in time. Mr. Walker
 
 fcEW ARRIVALS, 9? 
 
 returned in July, and Mr. Peach, who had been 
 delayed in England through an attack of illness, 
 came out in November ; and what was more, three 
 new members arrived the same month the Rev. 
 Edward Manley, St. John's College, Cambridge ; 
 the Rev. Frederick Wingfield Douglass, Christ 
 Church, Oxford, and curate of St. Pancras ; and 
 the Rev. George Longridge. Mr. Manley and 
 Mr. Longridge were with the Mission for only 
 two years, but Mr. Douglass has been a permanent 
 addition to the staff. We shall have occasion to 
 speak of his work later on in connection with the 
 Hostel, and would only say now, that since the 
 death of Mr. Philip Smith no one has won such 
 a place in the hearts of the Calcutta students or 
 done so much among them. From the first he 
 threw himself into the work with a splendid courage 
 and with a cheerfulness and hope and faith which 
 has never faltered. It is largely owing to him and 
 Mr. Walker that the work among the students has 
 taken a new start, the results of which are already 
 beginning to be apparent.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 
 
 " For the worst of us, to say they have so seen ; 
 For the better what it was they saw ; the best 
 Impart the gift of seeing to the rest." 
 
 "~*HE present phase of education in India," writes 
 Canon Gore, " may be said to date from Lord 
 Macaulay's famous minute in 1835. Before his 
 arrival in India the Committee of Public Instruction 
 had been divided, five against five, on the question 
 whether the Government should continue to sub- 
 sidise, regulate, and extend the old Oriental 
 learning, in Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic, as they 
 had been doing hitherto, or whether all this should 
 be swept away in favour of English education. 
 
 " ' The advocates of the two systems,' Sir George 
 Trevelyan tells us in his Life of Lord Macaulay, 
 ' laid their opinions before the supreme council ; 
 and Macaulay, as a member of that council, 
 produced a minute in favour of the latter view 
 which set the question at rest at once and for ever.' 
 
 It said all that he was so well qualified to say 
 
 98
 
 LORD MACAULAY'S MINUTE. 99 
 
 on the greatness of English literature and science, 
 and heaped ridicule on the literature and science 
 of India on its ' medical doctrines, which would 
 disgrace an English farrier ; astronomy, which would 
 move laughter in the girls at an English boarding- 
 school ; history, abounding with kings thirty feet high, 
 and reigns thirty thousand years long ; and geography 
 made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.' He 
 pointed out with great richness of illustration how 
 in modern Europe at the Renaissance and in Russia, 
 within the last hundred and twenty years, we had 
 had numerous instances of a great impulse given 
 to the mind of a whole society, of prejudice over- 
 thrown, of knowledge diffused, of taste purified, of 
 arts and sciences planted in countries which had 
 recently been ignorant and barbarous, by the 
 propagation of a foreign literature in place of the 
 old national one. ' The language of Western 
 Europe civilised Russia ; I cannot doubt that they 
 will do for the Hindu what they have done for 
 the Tartar.' 
 
 " So it was decided. A thoughtful man might well 
 have had his doubts whether all the contempt that 
 Macaulay poured in this and other writings of his 
 on Oriental literature and religion was not a good 
 deal too much the contempt of utter unsympathy, 
 the unsympathy of a utilitarian disposition with the
 
 100 THE. CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [CH. V. 
 
 whole temper of the East. Since his days there 
 has been a reaction. But in any case such was 
 the decision, and Macaulay's biographer records the 
 splendid success, as measured by statistics, which 
 has attended the movement then inaugurated. 
 
 " What have been its results in the past fifty 
 years? We may, perhaps, summarise them in this 
 way : 
 
 " First, there has been an immense superficial 
 diffusion among the large classes who come under 
 the influence of the university education of the 
 ideas and terms of modern Europe. If you talk 
 to the students at the University in Calcutta, or if 
 you are called upon to preside over some of the 
 debates held in their clubs, you hear all the phrases 
 with which you are familiar in ' liberal ' England. 
 The ideas might have come straight from leading 
 articles in newspapers, or from Macaulay's Essays, 
 or from the 'tracts of Mr. Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant, 
 or Colonel Ingersoll. The names of Mill and 
 Herbert Spencer and Bain, of Leckey and Buckle, 
 of Coleridge and Carlyle are ' household words.' 
 
 " Secondly, this superficial acquaintance with modern 
 European ideas has had a destructive, but very 
 little intellectual or spiritual reconstructive effect. 
 The old idolatrous superstitions cannot live in their 
 atmosphere. They wither and lose force. It is
 
 EFFECT OF EUROPEAN IDEAS. IOI 
 
 equally destructive to the old brooding, speculative, 
 subtle, metaphysical, and pantheistic philosophy of 
 the Hindu. And if its 'enlightenment' and its 
 utilitarian modes of thought have undermined the 
 forces of superstitious worship and meditative philo- 
 sophy, scarcely less has its individualism acted as a 
 powerful solvent upon the strong ties and restraints 
 of the old social ' caste ' system of India. The 
 familiarity with modern ideas, then, has had a 
 destructive effect upon Hindu worship and meta- 
 physics and social obligations, but very little 
 reconstructive effect. The students are mostly 
 sceptical, without being much more. The Theistic 
 movement, of which a good deal was heard at 
 home in connection with the visit to England of 
 Keshub Chunder Sen, one of its founders, which is 
 eclectic that is, which is an attempt ' to take the 
 best out of all religious systems ' and which uses 
 a good deal of Christian language, and professes a 
 great deal of Christian belief excites among the 
 more earnest students a great deal of interest, 
 but not apparently any of the enthusiasm of 
 self-committal which would lead them to enrol 
 themselves as actual members of the ' Somaj ' 
 or association. So strongly has the Government 
 felt recently the disastrous effect on morals of 
 the merely secular education, that an educational
 
 102 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 committee has recently endeavoured to procure the 
 establishment of a text-book of moral principles 
 such as all good men would agree upon. But what 
 is wanted is not principle in the sense of ideas and 
 maxims but motives which should stimulate and 
 appeal to the will and conscience, such motives as 
 cannot come out of a text-book. 
 
 " Thirdly, the effect of European education has 
 been apparently to produce a great gulf between 
 the outer idea and language and the inner self of 
 the Hindu student. His outer language and stock- 
 in-trade is mostly modern, more or less blatant, 
 utilitarian scepticism or eclectic Theism. But 
 underneath far underneath the English-speaking 
 exterior sometimes, perhaps, almost unknown to 
 himself, there lives and works, silent and uncom- 
 municative, the old Hindu self, impenetrable, 
 reserved, inaccessible, unsatisfied in a world where 
 it cannot find its home, where God does not mean 
 it to find its home." 
 
 It is in this sort of world that some six thousand 
 students live in Calcutta. Outside the lecture-room 
 the staff of the University exercises no control what- 
 ever over them. There is no proctorial system, 
 no licensing of lodgings, no supervision of any 
 kind. It is true that many of the students live 
 in their own homes in Calcutta, but a large
 
 STREET IN THE NATIVE PART OF CALCUTTA. 
 
 [To face p. 103.
 
 HOW THE STUDENTS LIVE. 103 
 
 number are young men whose homes are away 
 in the country, and who are consequently thrown 
 among all the temptations of a great city, abso- 
 lutely uncared for, at an age when sympathy, with 
 guidance and proper discipline, are what they most 
 need. The wonder is that the tone of the students 
 is as good as it is. But the system is a miserable 
 one and thoroughly bad in its effects. 
 
 How, then, do the students live who have not 
 their home in Calcutta, or who do not board with 
 friends or relations ? They live in what are called 
 " messes " that is in houses holding sometimes as 
 many as forty students, sometimes as few as ten 
 or a dozen. As a rule the smaller messes are 
 the best. The houses which are utilised for this 
 purpose are in the close neighbourhood of the 
 colleges, and are to be found in College and 
 Cornwallis streets, and in the lanes running at all 
 angles out of those thoroughfares. 
 
 " A mess is formed on various principles 
 sometimes on the basis of common friendship, 
 sometimes on that of being at the same college, 
 or in the same year of their university course, or 
 because they belong to the same village or dis- 
 trict. But beyond this there is one thing which 
 regulates all else in the formation of a mess, 
 and that is financial capacity. The student as
 
 IO4 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [CH. V. 
 
 a rule is of very limited means, and he cannot 
 afford to live except with those whose income is 
 on the same scale as his own. Caste does not 
 so much enter into the matter : for the cook can 
 always be a Brahman, and therefore not only 
 prepares food fit for a Brahman student, but also 
 for every one else ; and if the Brahman student 
 commences to eat his food in the common dining- 
 room the infinitesimal fraction of a minute before 
 the non-Brahman students, the exigencies of caste 
 are preserved. A body of students, having agreed 
 to mess together, next proceed to secure a house. 
 A six or seven-roomed, two-storied house is the 
 average size, though some are much bigger. Seven 
 rooms represent accommodation for many more 
 than seven students, as two or three students 
 generally share a room. A house such as this 
 would be secured for between forty or fifty rupees 
 a month. On the lower floor the cooking is done, 
 and there, too, the dining-room is situated. A table, 
 with benches running round it, is the regulation 
 type in the more civilised abodes ; in others the 
 inmates sit on the floor, and eat out of dishes or 
 from leaves also placed on the floor. Up a wind- 
 ing, ruinous stair they go to their common room 
 and bedrooms. The common room is the most 
 distinctive part of the mess. Here they study,
 
 A STUDENT'S MESS. 105 
 
 converse, receive visitors, and smoke. A stray 
 chair or two, a table used only when writing has 
 to be done, a shelf running across one side of 
 the room, or an aristocratic bookcase, when funds 
 permit, to hold their books, complete the furniture 
 of the room. A rope hung across an angle of 
 the room acts as clothes-horse for their superfluous 
 garments ; for in the common room they wear only 
 the minimum of clothing. Here the weightiest 
 problems are discussed. Students of the same 
 college refresh their memory as to what was said 
 at the college lectures ; students of different colleges 
 compare professors' notes. Evidence is recorded 
 and never forgotten ; it may be erroneously con- 
 veyed, but it sticks. Peculiarities are mimicked 
 to perfection ; curious gestures, uncommon expres- 
 sions, occasional objurgations, a peculiar accent, 
 all are recorded by these critics, and coined into 
 history. It is not only European professors that 
 are weighed in the balance and found wanting ; 
 Bengali professors have also their peculiarities, 
 which are duly chronicled. The sleeping rooms 
 have even less furniture : a mat, or at best a 
 charpoy, with a rug or shawl or coarse blanket as 
 a covering in winter, are all they need. 
 
 " In students' English there is an expression, 
 ' fooding-expenses,' which nothing will induce them
 
 106 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Ca. V. 
 
 to part with. This forms a very important item 
 of the expenditure of the mess. The chief point 
 of agreement between all messes is quantity of 
 food ; quality differs in different cases. The cook 
 who caters for the mess makes ends meet at the 
 sacrifice of the students' health ; but that is hardly 
 his concern. His chief concern is dustooree ; and 
 that he may obtain this perquisite from students 
 who pay him five rupees a month for two full 
 meals a day it is necessary that he shall give them 
 the coarsest rice, rancid vegetables, and vile curry. 
 The monthly sum, which varies from five to fifteen 
 rupees, accounts for two meals a day one about 
 9.30 or 10 a.m., and the other at 8.30 or 9 p.m. 
 These consist of variations of rice, vegetables, curry, 
 and fish, as the case may be. But besides these 
 two meals, students provide themselves with tiffin 
 independently. 
 
 " The absolutely necessary clothing of a student 
 who is poor consists of a shirt, made in the English 
 pattern, which is almost de rigueur, a dkutee, a 
 chudder, and a pair of shoes, with the addition 
 in the cold weather of a shawl and a pair of 
 stockings. The shirt costs from one rupee eight 
 annas to two rupees, according to quality. Three 
 shirts are necessary, more are desirable. The 
 dhulees may be had for about twelve annas, and
 
 A STUDENT'S MESS. 107 
 
 the chudder for about the same rate. Shoes run 
 from two rupees eight annas to five rupees, or, if the 
 student prefers country slippers, only twelve annas. 
 The stockings, often of an alarming mixture of 
 colour yellow, purple, and scarlet being a favourite 
 combination cost about one rupee a pair. The 
 shawl, if of Birmingham manufacture, varies from 
 three to five rupees ; if true Indian, it costs 
 from fifteen to fifty rupees, or even more, but 
 this only the ' mashers ' wear. This genus is 
 not unknown among the Calcutta students. He 
 is redolent of vile perfumes, his fingers scintillate 
 with real or sham jewels, his massive body is 
 enswathed in costly raiment, and his empty face 
 expresses contempt for honest poverty and simple 
 gear. 
 
 " The house servants are two in number. The 
 cook attends to the bazaar, the cooking, and pur- 
 veying. He gets ten rupees a month as wages. 
 The other chief servant is a woman, who does all 
 the housework. She has her hands full, as, in 
 addition to washing and cleaning the house, she 
 has to get light refreshments for the members of 
 the mess and do odd jobs for them. She gets six 
 or seven rupees a month. Besides these two house- 
 servants, there is the everlasting dhobee, who pro- 
 bably has a hard time of it with men of limited
 
 IO8 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 wardrobes, as he has to make many journeys to 
 and fro. 
 
 " Text-books mentioned in the university calen- 
 dar, and note-books for taking down lectures, and 
 ' keys ' form an Indian student's library. If he 
 is poor, he cannot afford any more. If he is rich, 
 he does not care for any more, excepting in rare 
 cases." l 
 
 Such are the domestic arrangements of the 
 ordinary student, and a further light is thrown 
 upon his life by the following article on " Student 
 Life in Calcutta," which appeared in Truth in 
 India. It opens out a side of things with which 
 the Anglo-Indian, well as he knows the Babu 
 externally, is probably little familiar : 
 
 " How few people," says the writer, " reflect that 
 there is such a thing as student life in Calcutta, a 
 manufacture of Babudom, a process by which the 
 raw youth of Bengal are changed into the vastly 
 superior B.A's., ' entrance fails,' much-suffering 
 clerks, incipient orators, and embryo congress- 
 wallahs, who excite us to mirth, but ought to 
 wake our admiration if we only knew the extent 
 of the transformation and the toil by which it 
 is effected ! We are apt to assume that Babus 
 
 1 Taken from an article contributed to the O. M. C. Quarterly 
 Paper, July, 1894.
 
 I 
 
 fl
 
 THE GENESIS OF A BABU. 109 
 
 grow out of the ground and that Bengalis acquire 
 English from their mothers, a conclusion too 
 improbable to be warranted by the mere profusion 
 of the product. The fact is, Babus are made 
 out of very unpromising material, and Bengalis 
 acquire such English as they use by an amount of 
 patient labour that would make Englishmen better 
 linguists than they are generally known to be. 
 
 " Far away in the steamy plains of Bengal, amid 
 surroundings that inspire neither poetry nor chivalry, 
 the future Calcutta Babu grows up to a height 
 of three feet, loved by his mother and spoiled by 
 his father, and learns Bengali, arithmetic, and 
 mythology. Then an ambition to learn English 
 enters his small but swelling soul, and inflames 
 him till he sees no object in life without English. 
 He finds his father already prepared for the idea, 
 and steels his inner nature against the sobs and 
 tears of his mother. Ways and means are con- 
 sidered, a huge amount of advice is asked, and 
 the entrance examination is probably passed without 
 a sight of the great metropolis. But at the height 
 of five feet our youthful aspirant, far different in 
 both his outer and his inner man from what he 
 was at three feet high, yet still green and timid, 
 turns up in College street, as a student at the 
 University. There he enters on a course of from
 
 110 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [CH. V. 
 
 four to seven years' struggle with the physical and 
 mental, material and moral obstacles that stand 
 between him and a university degree, and may 
 develop into a candidate in London for the Indian 
 Civil Service, or settle into a stunted embodiment 
 of small pay and bad English. But he toils and 
 toils, in season and out of season, murmuring to 
 himself by the hour out of his books, sometimes 
 on foot as he paces up and down wherever he can 
 find room, and sometimes on his back as he lies 
 in a position as promotive of study in the East as 
 it is destructive of it in the West. He submits 
 to meagre food and worse privations, stoically resists 
 the attractions of Calcutta, writes pitiful letters 
 home for an extra four annas to get only once 
 inside one of the brilliantly lighted and fairyland- 
 like theatres of Beadon street. He begins to 
 criticise Europeans, and to realise that he may have 
 a share in public opinion ; he becomes a debater 
 and essayist, and adopts agnosticism instead of 
 mythology. His agonies of home-sickness he keeps 
 to himself, but utters aloud the despair which from 
 time to time creeps over him as he counts the 
 pages of his text-books and thinks how much he 
 must accomplish before he may face the dreaded 
 ordeal of examination ! He prays impartially to 
 all gods for success, but pins his firmest faith on
 
 INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION UPON HIM. in 
 
 luck. However, he never swerves from his purpose 
 or grudges his labour ; his degree he will get or 
 perish in the attempt. And thus is made the 
 Babu who swarms over India, voluble in indifferent 
 English and passing rich on fifty rupees a month ; 
 loyal in proportion as his means of subsistence 
 are threatened, and national in proportion as some 
 agitator appeals to his vanity ; but in the main 
 peace-loving and home-loving, mildly literary in 
 his tastes, and energetic only in avoiding the 
 expenditure of energy." 
 
 This may give our readers some idea of the 
 outward aspect of the Calcutta University, and of 
 the material conditions under which the students 
 live. But the influence of their material surround- 
 ings is only one among the many influences which 
 go to form their character, and by no means 
 most powerful. Behind and beneath these mere 
 outward things, as Canon Gore has pointed out, 
 lies the disintegrating force of the education which 
 is being given to them. Few, perhaps, except 
 those who have carefully watched what has been 
 going on underneath the surface of education in 
 India, have any conception of the tremendous 
 and far-reaching moral and religious issues which 
 are at stake, or of the change which Western 
 education is producing in that class of the
 
 112 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [CH. V. 
 
 Indian people which it touches. We cannot, we 
 think, put it more plainly than in the following 
 extracts. The first is from a speech made by 
 Sir Arthur Wilson at the annual meeting of the 
 Mission in 1892. Sir Arthur held a very high 
 position in the Indian Civil Service, and speaks out 
 of the large experience which that position gave him. 
 This is what he says of the result of the present 
 system of education on the young men of India : 
 " It teaches the young men Western science with 
 its accuracy, its criticism, its definitions, its careful 
 distinguishing between the province of one subject 
 and the province of another. It teaches them not 
 only Western science, but it teaches them Western 
 philosophy. It teaches them to read history through 
 the medium of Western books. It accustoms them 
 to read books story-books, books of selections, and 
 everything of that kind in which, in every page, 
 there are ideals of conduct, implied if not expressed, 
 utterly different from anything that Hinduism has 
 ever heard of before. It teaches young men the 
 habit of classifying and dividing, of carefully 
 separating that which really properly belongs to 
 religion and morals from that which belongs to 
 history or philosophy, or to questions of social 
 organisation or social science, and by so doing 
 it splits up, to the mind of any one who under-
 
 ITS DISINTERGRATING FORCE. 113 
 
 stands the principle, the whole of this great com- 
 plicated Hindu system into separate parts, and 
 thereby it destroys the whole. Then, again, English 
 education immediately brings to the minds which 
 come under its influence the habit of secularising 
 everything. The young Hindu has been accus- 
 tomed to regard the philosophy in which he has 
 been trained, and the history which he has been 
 taught, the social and the family systems in which 
 he has been brought up, as absolutely sacred and 
 divine, far too sacred for discussion or consideration. 
 But the moment that he gets into his first year 
 in English education he finds every one of these 
 subjects treated as purely secular matters, to be 
 discussed without fear or reverence or hesitation 
 of any kind. In the next place, he is brought 
 face to face with the historical criticism of the 
 West ; and the young man, if he has any thought 
 at all, will and does apply that criticism to the 
 mythology and to the history which he has been 
 taught in his childhood ; and so the whole is again 
 shaken. But further, not only is he taught this 
 secular philosophy and this critical method, but 
 he is promptly taught political economy as it is 
 understood in the West, and the various branches 
 of social and economical science. 
 
 " Now, reflect for a moment what all Western 
 
 8
 
 114 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cu. V. 
 
 economy is based on. It is based on one idea 
 a strict, hard, unflinching individualism. And 
 just think of what the effect of that is upon the 
 mind of a young man who has been brought up 
 in a joint family, where the family labour for 
 the joint benefit and the property is joint pro- 
 perty. He has been accustomed to say of their 
 possessions : ' This is ours. It is the property of 
 our family.' Teach that young man the habit 
 of saying, not, ' This is ours? but, ' This is mine,' 
 and you have worked a revolution. I have not 
 time to dwell upon this further. I might point 
 out to you many more ways in which English 
 education destroys what it finds there. The 
 effect of all this inevitably is, that in proportion 
 as these young men have been trained in English- 
 speaking schools and colleges, in that very pro- 
 portion their old faith and their old creed grow 
 weak ; in that very proportion their old worship 
 and their old ritual tend to lose their spiritual 
 meaning ; in that very proportion all the old 
 morality, based upon their old creeds, loses its 
 binding force ; and all those powerful ties based 
 on social organisation and family system which 
 are so tremendously powerful in maintaining them 
 within the limits of the recognised morality 
 begin to lose their efficacy.
 
 SERIOUSNESS OF THE SITUATION. 115 
 
 " That is surely an exceedingly serious state of 
 things. But the question comes next, what is 
 being given them by this English education in 
 exchange for all this morality and spiritual force, 
 and for all the influence which it takes away? 
 There is only one answer, it gives nothing. It 
 is absolutely true that, so far as the spiritual 
 and moral side of the young man's character is 
 concerned, English education is absolutely and 
 solely negative and destructive. It gives nothing 
 in return, there is no doubt about it. Although 
 we may be training up from year to year batches 
 of young men, intellectually better furnished than 
 their fathers were ; and though we may be turning 
 them out better fitted in some respects to fight 
 in the struggle for physical existence, we are turn- 
 ing them out morally poorer than they ever were 
 before. To my mind I must say that this is an 
 appalling state of things. To my mind it seems, 
 perhaps, the most depressing and discouraging 
 circumstance of any that now exist in connection 
 with the administration of India ; and I must say 
 that to my knowledge there are many of the best 
 friends of the people of India, and many of the 
 best friends of the spread of knowledge, who would 
 say without hesitation that it would have been far 
 better for the people of the country if English
 
 Il6 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 education had never come there at all, than that 
 it should have come, and such a price should be 
 paid for it as the moral declension which it has 
 brought with it. This is no new complaint that 
 I am making. I have not said a single thing that 
 has not been said over and over again. Every 
 native gentleman in Calcutta, the father of a family, 
 knows it, and laments it, and will speak freely 
 to you about it. The newspapers (native as well 
 as English) have written columns and columns 
 upon it. Police officers and magistrates and judges 
 cannot help noticing it. The departments who 
 have to do with education have written upon it. 
 The Government of India has recognised the evil 
 fully. It has published at least one resolution on 
 the subject, eminently virtuous and perfectly 
 infructuous." 
 
 The second extract which we will quote is from 
 an article written in 1896 by a Bengali gentleman, 
 Mr. Bishan Narayan Dar. He has been speaking 
 of the results of the present system of education 
 on the religious and social life of his fellow-country- 
 men, and he concludes his article with the following 
 words : 
 
 " Hence it is that we have a generation of young 
 men who have no landmark on earth and no lode- 
 star in heaven ; who have no religious convictions,
 
 COMPLAINT OF INDIAN PARENTS. 117 
 
 no fixed moral principles, no well-defined ideals of 
 conduct. There is no wonder, then, if Indian 
 parents, to whom the one-sided education of their 
 children has brought so much disappointment, turn 
 round in bitterness and indignation to the Govern- 
 ment and complain, as they are complaining now, 
 ' You have taught our children science and philosophy ; 
 you have unrolled before their eyes the ample page 
 of history, rich with the spoils of time not only 
 such as are recorded in the annals of mankind, 
 but such as are written in letters of flame above 
 and in the strata of the earth beneath. You call 
 this civilisation, and are proud of having communi- 
 cated its impact to India ; but are you aware 
 what mischief you are unwittingly doing us ? Your 
 scientific education has made our children irreligious, 
 atheistic, agnostic ; they are beginning to look upon 
 religion as (what one of your clever writers called 
 it the other day) " a dream of hysterical women 
 and half-starved men " ; they no longer believe in 
 the divine source of virtue, but think that it is a 
 proper balancing of profit and loss ; they have 
 become irreverent, disobedient, disloyal ; they have 
 lost all fixity of character ; they are too ready to 
 act on the first prompting of passion and interest 
 and call it independence ; they boast that they 
 have adopted the Epicurean precept, " Eat, drink,
 
 Il8 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [H. V. 
 
 and be merry, for to-morrow we die and become 
 carbonic acid, water, and ammonia " ; and they 
 laugh at us old men for what they mockingly call 
 our antediluvian notions. Surely the Iron Age has 
 come, for it has been said that when it comes 
 knowledge will be more and more, but wisdom will 
 be less and less. And that you Englishmen should 
 be the leaders of such an age is quite in accordance 
 with the fitness of things. You say you have given 
 us light, but your light is worse than darkness. 
 We do not thank you for it. Better far that our 
 children should remain ignorant of your sciences, 
 but retain the simple faith of their ancestors, 
 than that they should know all the ologies of the 
 day, but turn their back upon religion and morality 
 as mere rags and remnants of a superstitious age.' 
 
 " Whether we agree or not with this complaint, 
 which sounds ever and anon through the paeans 
 of joy sung over the diffusion of European civilisa- 
 tion in India, like a passing bell across a marriage 
 feast, it cannot fail to arouse in us a deep, tragic 
 interest in the death of the old rtgitne that must 
 cause disquietude, discomfort, and unhappiness to 
 millions on millions of men. There is no more 
 tragic event under the sun than the death of a 
 nation, and this consists in the destruction of the 
 beliefs, institutions, and national peculiarities that give
 
 "THE DYING OF A NATION." 119 
 
 it an individual character. This awful tragedy is 
 now going on in India. The old religion is dying ; 
 the old morality is dying ; the bonds of custom 
 and tradition which are the bones and sinews of 
 the social organism are dissolving ; there is death 
 and decomposition all around. For all this the 
 secular spirit of the educational system is respon- 
 sible. The crisis is serious ; the destiny of a nation 
 is at stake. Mere let-aloneist attitude will not 
 do ; something must be done to replace that which 
 is passing away. If an attempt is made to face 
 the crisis with boldness, with promptitude, and in 
 right earnest, well and good ; if not, matters will 
 soon become still more hopeless, the reins will 
 have been thrown upon the necks of the horses, 
 and the last hope of reform without revolution will 
 be gone." 
 
 These are grave and serious words, which surely 
 every Englishman who cares for the welfare of 
 India ought to lay to heart, for they reveal a 
 religious and social condition among the young 
 educated classes which is not only deplorable in 
 the present, but which has in it the elements of 
 very serious danger for the future. 
 
 And here it is natural to ask, Why does not the 
 Government of India take some steps to remedy 
 so serious an evil ? The real remedy lies, of course,
 
 ISO TttE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 in Christianity ; and there all who know India 
 best and who have the cause of missions most at 
 heart are agreed that the Government as a govern- 
 ment must be neutral ; and for this, among other 
 reasons, that an official recognition of Christianity 
 would, in the present state of India, produce a 
 vast number of utterly unreal conversions ; of men 
 confessing Christianity without any conviction of its 
 truth or any desire to live the Christian life. But 
 it may be asked again, Why, if this is impossible, 
 does not the Government insist on the University 
 adopting at least some plan for the better lodging 
 and care of the students ? This has indeed been 
 talked of from time to time, but no result has 
 as yet been arrived at. Nor do the following 
 words, taken from one of the Government reports, 
 hold out much hope of any remedy : 
 
 " Students who do not live with their parents or 
 constituted guardians are exposed out of class hours 
 to many dangerous influences, and are apt to con- 
 tract habits alike injurious to their morals, their 
 health, and their studies. It was proposed to have 
 rules for the regulation of boarding-houses connected 
 with the colleges affiliated to the University. The 
 subject was discussed at a meeting of the educational 
 authorities, who were also members of the senate 
 of the University. They decided that it was
 
 A GOVERNMENT REPORT. 121 
 
 impossible for the University to deal with the matter 
 so as to make and enforce rules which would prove 
 effective. They hoped, however, that the Govern- 
 ment might set an example in connection with its 
 own Presidency college ; but it was recognised that 
 the carrying of this into effect would be extremely 
 difficult? 
 
 The Government did indeed establish a hostel, 
 but whatever regulations were made were left to 
 be enforced by a Bengali gentleman who was put 
 in charge, and proved to be absolutely ineffective ; 
 and the house has a thoroughly bad reputation. 
 
 We have dwelt at length on this subject because 
 we feel that the real condition of things in Calcutta 
 is so little realised in England, and because it is 
 just this situation that such institutions as the 
 Oxford Mission can most effectively deal with. 
 Slowly and quietly the Brotherhood of the Epiphany 
 have been studying the question ; year by year they 
 have been gaining experience, getting to see below 
 the surface, and to grasp the terrible condition to 
 which the present system has brought the mass of 
 the students. This experience they embodied in 
 the following article, which appeared in the EpipJiany 
 in 1895, and which forms a most heavy and serious 
 indictment of the present conditions of University 
 education in Calcutta :
 
 122 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY [CH. V. 
 
 " Our educational system has invented a suffi- 
 ciently unnatural state of things as it is by congre- 
 gating in this metropolis and its environment a vast 
 swarm of youths and boys of all ages, of rudimentary 
 morals, and less than rudimentary religion, under 
 no system of supervision or discipline of any sort 
 or kind. That vice of every shade, nameless 
 and shameless, should abound is of course only 
 what is to be expected under the circumstances ; 
 and the results are constantly being brought before 
 us, sometimes in lamentable instances of wrecked 
 lives, shattered physique, and damaged minds, 
 though most of all, perhaps, in the strange and 
 utter opaqueness in all spiritual concerns which so 
 conspicuously characterises the student population, 
 and speaks all too clearly of the premature darkening 
 that comes by an early surrender to evil. 
 
 " Meanwhile an infatuated Government goes 
 blundering on, providing lecture-rooms and lectures 
 and examinations in the pathetic hope of developing 
 the talent of the country and rearing a morally 
 competent official class. Lately it has been even 
 so benevolent as to supply a large building for a 
 boarding establishment in Calcutta ; and though it 
 naturally declines to equip it with the European 
 supervision and organisation requisite for maintain- 
 ing something like discipline in a barrack of one
 
 ARTICLE IN THE EPIPHANY. 12$ 
 
 hundred students, it has condescended to erect a 
 third story, so as to lodge an additional hundred or 
 so to swell the existing disorder, concerning which 
 perhaps the less said the better. So we go drifting 
 on from bad to worse, the ever-increasing numbers 
 keeping pace with the growing degeneracy. It is a 
 million pities that the educational future of a great 
 country should be in the hands of the party of 
 shallow intellectualism whose only nostrum for all 
 the evils of mankind is bookish ' culture,' and who 
 seem scarcely in earnest even over that. When will 
 this pernicious superstition be outgrown ? Not, we 
 fear, till some appalling revelation opens our eyes 
 to our insanity. 
 
 " Those who know what evils are sometimes apt 
 to develop in public schools, even in England, under 
 more or less of Christian supervision, may guess 
 approximately what would be the result, if the 
 youths now boarded at Eton, Harrow, and Rugby, 
 as well as at the Universities, were sent for their 
 education to London, to live promiscuously in 
 lodgings as they pleased, with no obligations 
 imposed upon them beyond a certain percentage 
 of attendances at lectures ; the education, besides, 
 being regarded merely in the light of a step towards 
 employment, like that given at certain well-known 
 ' cramming ' establishments. Picture the said
 
 124 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Ca. V. 
 
 students, moreover, as armed morally with little 
 beyond a vague consciousness of a certain impropriety 
 or inexpediency in vice, with no definite principles 
 on the subject, and brought up, if with any religion 
 beyond a belief in the caste-system, in one which 
 canonises impurity in its gods and their votaries, 
 and has no disgrace or penalties for any but 
 ceremonial transgressions ! Imagine them, further, 
 with hardly any sort of healthy amusement, physical 
 or mental, to ease the strain of the crammer's 
 curriculum ; with no tastes, literary, artistic, or 
 scientific, to give zest to life ; residing in over- 
 crowded and unhealthy lodgings, with little or no 
 incitement or incentive to virtuous living, such as 
 the Church supplies in even the very worst districts 
 of London one or two filthy and tumbledown 
 temples being the only outward evidence of religion ! 
 Set them, lastly, in an environment such as we have 
 alluded to, with temptations brought to their very 
 doors, and then perhaps we may have some sort of 
 imaginable parallel to the condition of things which 
 we have been, through half a century of hopelessly mis- 
 directed educational activity, so assiduously creating 
 for ourselves ; though for an actual one we should 
 probably have to go back to the ancient world and 
 the Universities of Rome and Carthage, as portrayed 
 by Augustine in the fifth century of our era.
 
 APPEAL TO VOLUNTARY EFFORT. 125 
 
 " The Brahmo movement, all credit to it, has 
 endeavoured to do something to lift the tone of 
 morals and hold up a purer ideal ; but since the 
 death of its last great leader its influence has been 
 precarious, and the rival Somajes appear to be in 
 danger of dying, respectively, of sentimentalism and 
 metaphysics. The old conservative ' orthodoxy,' 
 whose practice was in some degree superior to its 
 principles, and which succeeded in enforcing a certain 
 amount of domestic restraint upon the members 
 of the family, has broken up, and the authority 
 of the overtaxed schoolmaster, intent chiefly upon 
 his ' passes ' and his grant, is obviously no practical 
 substitute. Christianity, though its influence is 
 more or less felt, is as yet too far off to be in 
 direct touch with the moral life of this generation ; 
 it has been banned by universal Hindu opinion 
 as a belief, the profession of which is criminal and 
 worthy of excommunication. 
 
 " What remedy can be suggested ? A tentative 
 scheme for the inspection of boarding-houses was 
 put forward some years back ; but it never came 
 to the birth, and at best it could but have scratched 
 the merest surface of the evil. We can see no 
 remedy but in an appeal to voluntary effort. This 
 is surely a fresh direction into which European 
 energy can be thrown ! Why do not our chief
 
 126 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 missionary colleges lay themselves out for a new 
 development? Any one opening a model lodging- 
 house for Hindu students, with the advantages of 
 supervision and discipline under a resident manager, 
 will find himself simply besieged with applications. 
 The experiment has indeed been tried, with success 
 beyond expectation. Hindu students have shown 
 themselves eager to take advantage of such privi- 
 leges when offered ; they do not now shrink from 
 living under the same roof with an Englishman. 
 What an outlet this offers for fresh workers ! We 
 appeal to all friends, lay and clerical, who may 
 be on the look-out for opportunities of missionary 
 work, to consider what scope there is here for their 
 talents. Young Oxford and Cambridge men are 
 now learning to work in East London among the 
 masses, and we know how much they have accom- 
 plished. There is a similar opening here ; and it 
 does not need an honour degree or a wranglership 
 to manage a boarding-house. 
 
 " We would also appeal to our friends of the 
 Church Missionary Society, of the General As- 
 sembly's and the Free Church colleges, the London 
 Mission, and also the Fathers of St. Xavier's, to 
 bestir themselves in this matter. They each have 
 a large body of devout supporters in Europe to 
 appeal to. Can they not put before their home
 
 - . fe v-
 
 1894.] THE HOSTEL. I2/ 
 
 committees the great need there is for work of 
 this kind, and the feasibility of it ? It would ' surely 
 offer a vocation for many a young layman seeking 
 for some work to do among non-Christian popu- 
 lations, and unable to find any suitable to his 
 particular talents ! It is no fanciful appeal we are 
 making, but one that is forced upon us by our 
 own experience. For the sake of the people of 
 India, for the sake of the British Empire, for the 
 sake of morality, for the sake of Christ and His 
 Father, these things imperatively demand to be 
 done before it is too late ! " 
 
 The Oxford Mission was ready to do more than 
 condemn it was prepared to act, and as far as 
 lay in its power to show the way towards at least 
 one line of reform. As far back as 1889, an d even 
 before that, the Mission had thought of opening 
 a boarding-house for students ; but it was not until 
 1894 that they were able to carry their wishes 
 into effect. It was Mr. Douglass who was the chief 
 leader in this enterprise, and to his wisdom and 
 self-sacrifice the success of the hostel, which has 
 now been open for four years, is largely due. 
 
 The first step was to find a suitable house, if 
 possible within easy reach of the Mission House. 
 After some search, just what was wanted was found 
 close at hand in a couple of newly built native
 
 128 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 houses, which had not been inhabited and which the 
 landlord agreed to throw into one. There was 
 considerable difficulty at first in getting the Hindu 
 landlord to put the sanitary arrangements in proper 
 order, and it will probably be a long time before 
 he forgets his first experience of having a " sahib " 
 for a tenant. But persistence and firmness pre- 
 vailed, and everything was, after some months, put 
 in a satisfactory condition. The building, as will 
 be seen from the picture, is just of the ordinary 
 native kind, with rooms surrounding an open 
 court in the middle of the house. On the lower 
 floor is the kitchen and students' dining-room. 
 Another room is kept as a common room for the 
 students. This is furnished with a divan running 
 round two sides of the room, with some small tables 
 and bookcases, which through the kindness of a 
 Bengali Christian lady and her brother have been 
 well filled with books. Another room upstairs was 
 set apart for Mr. Douglass, who is in charge of the 
 hostel and who lives there, coming over to the 
 Mission House for tiffin and dinner, and for the chapel 
 services. The other ten rooms are occupied by the 
 students, two of whom may be seen in the picture 
 standing at the window of one of the upstairs rooms, 
 while the figure in the lower window, which is the 
 window of the common room, is that of the Superior.
 
 I894-] ITS MANAGEMENT. 1 29 
 
 Mr. Douglass, being a Christ Church man, has termed 
 the hostel the " House," and the small bit of ground 
 by its side, enclosed by the palings, is somewhat 
 euphemistically entitled the " meadows," which, if 
 they cannot be measured in acres, are yet big 
 enough for playing Badminton. 
 
 With regard to the method on which the hostel 
 is conducted, it was made clear from the first that 
 the work was based on Christianity and on that 
 alone ; and every one who applied for a room was 
 given quite clearly to understand that though no 
 religious conditions were imposed, such as attending 
 a Bible-class, and no pressure would in any way be 
 put upon them, yet the aim of the Mission was 
 directly and definitely to promote Christianity. It 
 was wisely determined that no ground should be 
 given for the charge that the Mission was trying to 
 gain converts by secondary motives. Every student 
 has a room to himself, instead of sharing it with 
 two or three others, as is the custom in the messes ; 
 and none but bond-fide students are accepted. 
 They each pay twelve rupees a month, which is 
 what is paid in the average lodgings. Of this, nine 
 rupees are returned to them each month for their 
 mess expenses. A Brahman cook is engaged, and 
 the members of the Mission do not go into the 
 dining-room, and thus the rules of caste as regards 
 
 9
 
 130 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [CH. V. 
 
 food are observed. Each student takes it in turn 
 to manage the mess for a month. The " gate," to use 
 a familiar Oxford word, is closed at 9 p.m., and 
 every student is expected to be in by that time, 
 unless he has special leave of absence. As to 
 discipline, it is maintained not by a minute and 
 definite set of rules, but by personal influence and 
 by mutual consent. The rules, in fact, may be 
 summed up in one, which is that those living in the 
 house must behave as gentlemen. The result so far 
 has been quite satisfactory. Mr. Douglass does not 
 accept any applicant without first having a personal 
 interview with him, and he reserves to himself the 
 right of dismissing any student. All payments are 
 made monthly ; no debts are allowed, nor are 
 students admitted who cannot pay the full fees. 
 The servants are paid by the Mission, and all the 
 furniture is the property of the Mission. At 
 present it has to be subsidised by the committee 
 at home, but there is no reason why it should 
 not be in time self-supporting. 
 
 The hostel was opened in June, 1894. It was 
 felt to be a venture, as it was a very strong step 
 for a Hindu to live in the same house with a 
 European, and a still stronger step to live under 
 the immediate influence of a Christian mission. 
 However, all doubts were quickly removed when
 
 1894]- SUCCESS OF THE HOSTEL. 13! 
 
 some forty applications were made for the ten 
 rooms which were available ; and not only did 
 the students themselves apply, but fathers came 
 and entreated Mr. Douglass to take their sons. 
 So continuous has been the pressure of applications 
 for rooms that in 1896 the accommodation was 
 doubled by the building of another house adjoining 
 the hostel, which has now room for twenty-two 
 students instead of ten, and is quite full. 
 
 Thus the hostel, which was started as a venture of 
 faith, has become an established, and we may hope, a 
 permanent fact, and is an institution of sufficient 
 importance to have attracted the favourable notice of 
 the Government and to figure in an official report. 
 
 Writing of the influence of the hostel in 1895, 
 the Superior said : 
 
 " The hostel has given us a leverage and a 
 means of influence among the students which is 
 of the utmost value. We have always felt that 
 the first thing needed was to get thoroughly in 
 touch with the daily life of the students ; not only 
 to address them in lectures and meet them on 
 public occasions, or pay them periodical visits, but 
 to gather a certain number round us and try to 
 make the influence of the Mission felt upon all 
 the little details of their ordinary life. And this 
 is just what the hostel enables the Mission to do.
 
 132 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [CH. V. 
 
 Mr. Douglass spends most of his time there, and 
 always sleeps there, and the intercourse between 
 the students at the hostel and the members of 
 the Mission is perfectly free and unconstrained, 
 and in many cases affectionate. But the influence 
 of the hostel is not confined to the students who 
 live in it ; each one has his own friends, who 
 naturally come to visit him, and as naturally go 
 to see Mr. Douglass ; and many students who 
 would be very shy of going to the Mission House 
 have no hesitation about going to pay a visit to 
 the hostel. If a student goes to the Mission 
 House he compromises himself, and lays himself 
 open to the charge of wishing to become a Christian, 
 and so to a certain amount of petty persecution. 
 On the other hand, the hostel is neutral ground ; 
 and though it is known as a missionary institution, 
 and looked upon as having a distinctly missionary 
 aim, still it is also a lodging-house, and so affords 
 a certain amount of cover to the timid enquirer." 
 
 In 1896 a further enlargement was made, and 
 accommodation provided for thirty students. This 
 necessitated having two members of the Mission 
 resident at the hostel, and afforded the opportunity 
 for building a small oratory on the roof of the 
 house, where the daily offices are said and the 
 Holy Eucharist is celebrated.
 
 5
 
 1896.] INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIAN STUDENTS. 133 
 
 An experiment was tried in 1896 by introducing 
 into the hostel two Christian students, both of whom 
 were converts. This was perhaps a greater change 
 than was at first fully realised ; but the difficulties, 
 which for a moment threatened, were happily over- 
 come, and afforded an opportunity of teaching the 
 other students some useful lessons. What was felt 
 by the Hindu students at the time may be seen 
 from the following account, which was written by 
 Mr. Douglass : 
 
 " It was no sooner understood by the Hindu 
 students what we were doing than we were petitioned 
 against this innovation and violation of their rights. 
 They thought this to be a 'Hindu boarding,' and why 
 were we admitting Christians ? We said we looked 
 upon the hostel as a ' Hindu boarding,' and that 
 we should respect caste as hitherto (we've never 
 once set foot in their dining-room), and that the 
 Christian students would, of course, feed apart from 
 the Hindus. Yes, but the Christian students might 
 come into their rooms while they were eating 
 sweets or while the water-jars were there, or they 
 might bathe in their baths ! We explained that 
 we had always reserved to ourselves the right to 
 enter any room at any hour of the day or night ; 
 that we had bathed in their baths every morning 
 for two years, and that we were Christians. And
 
 134 THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. [Cn. V. 
 
 then they admitted that the Hindus make a very 
 great distinction between a European Christian and 
 a Bengali Christian, and what they are prepared 
 to endure in the former cannot be for one moment 
 tolerated in the latter. This will give you some 
 conception of what a Bengali must be prepared 
 to bear at the hands of his own people on his 
 baptism. It was then our turn to teach them 
 something of the brotherhood of man in Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. It's all quiet now, and we are 
 getting along happily. As far as we can tell at 
 present, the men seem to be a nice lot of fellows ; 
 they are certainly a nice-looking lot. 
 
 " To us the presence of the two Christians in 
 the hostel makes an enormous difference. That 
 sense of loneliness which but for the fellowship 
 of a very faithful Christian servant would have 
 been sometimes almost intolerable has been entirely 
 taken away. If ever you want to be thrilled 
 through and through, come and say prime or 
 compline with those two Christian students and 
 the two Christian servants on the roof of that 
 Hindu boarding-house, over the heads of those 
 Hindu students whose religion tries to teach them 
 to think themselves utterly defiled by so much 
 as the touch of a man who has confessed Jesus 
 Christ."
 
 .THE REV. M. L. GHOSE AND STAFF OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 
 
 [To face p. 135.
 
 I893-] 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AND VISITS TO PATNA. 
 
 " I count life just a stuff 
 To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 
 Who keeps one end in mind makes all things serve" 
 
 T N speaking of the Calcutta University and of 
 * the hostel, we have advanced somewhat beyond 
 the period we had reached in Chapter IV. ; but 
 it seemed best to complete the account of that 
 part of the Mission work before going on with 
 the chronological order of events. We must, how- 
 ever, now retrace our steps to the beginning of 
 the year 1893. 
 
 This year found the Mission with a staff of nine 
 priests, one deacon, and several laymen, European 
 and native. But large though the staff might seem 
 when compared with that of former years, the great 
 extension of the work made it none too big ; more- 
 over, it was at its full strength for only part of 
 the year. Mr. Field, who had come for three years, 
 but who had stayed a fourth in order to help the 
 
 135
 
 136 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [CH. VI. 
 
 Mission over a difficult time, returned in September. 
 Somewhat earlier Mr. Brown and Mr. Franklin 
 left, the former on a visit to England, while the 
 latter, who had just been ordained priest, went to 
 gain some experience in English parochial work 
 before settling down to the work of the Mission. 
 Mr. Conway also returned to England to read for 
 a year at the Theological College at Cuddesden 
 before his ordination. 
 
 Though all the work for which the Mission was 
 responsible could be maintained, it was maintained 
 under a sense of over-pressure, and there were 
 no means of taking advantage of new openings 
 whenever they offered themselves. Under these 
 circumstances the work of 1893 was one of quietly 
 carrying on all the various departments of the work, 
 literary, educational, pastoral, and evangelistic 
 which the Mission had on hand. Only one new 
 development, which was rather the revival of an 
 old part of the work, was undertaken namely 
 the forming of an Indian branch of the Oxford 
 Mission Association, which first under the secretary- 
 ship of Mrs. Cunliffe, and afterwards under that 
 of Mrs. Cable, has proved a very real help not only 
 in collecting funds for the work of the Mission in 
 India, but in drawing together those interested 
 in the Mission, and in gaining new associates.
 
 1894.] ARRIVAL OF THE REV. E. L. STRONG. 137 
 
 And here we cannot refrain from saying how much 
 the Mission owes, collectively and individually, to 
 the unfailing kindness and sympathy of friends of 
 both nationalities and of all classes, in India, who 
 from time to time have been associated with it. 
 
 In 1894 the Rev. Ernest Linwood Strong, of 
 St. John's College, Oxford, who for seven years 
 had been curate of St. John the Divine, Kennington, 
 joined the Mission, and has since been associated 
 with Mr. Douglass in the care of the hostel, and 
 seems to have very special gifts for work among 
 the students. Another priest, the Rev. R. D. 
 Ringrose, of Merton College, Oxford, and curate 
 of Wantage, also came with him ; but after a short 
 stay it was found that the climate of Calcutta was 
 quite unsuited to his constitution, and to his great 
 regret, as well as to the regret of all who knew 
 him, he had to return home. 
 
 A visit which took place this year must not 
 pass unrecorded, namely that of the Rev. Fr. 
 Congreve of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, 
 Cowley. He very kindly came from Bombay to 
 conduct the annual retreat for the Brethren of the 
 Epiphany, and he also gave a most attractive 
 lecture to the students on Tennyson's Palace of 
 Art, which was one of the text-books for the 
 University B.A. examination for that year.
 
 138 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [Cn. VL 
 
 The general work of the Mission each year 
 proceeds on its usual lines, and does not, as a 
 whole, offer any particular point for special remark. 
 It is work of that kind, which, because it is solid 
 and good, goes on for the most part with a quiet 
 and uneventful progressiveness. But every now 
 and again some part of the work reaches a point 
 at which a distinct advance becomes perceptible, 
 and shows itself either in new and enlarged 
 buildings or in some fresh development within 
 the work itself. Such a point had been reached 
 this year by the Industrial School, and an account 
 of this may well form the central point of interest 
 for 1894. In order to make the position of this 
 school clear some little historical retrospect is 
 necessary. 
 
 It may be remembered that we have had cause 
 to mention it before in connection with the Oxford 
 Mission High School. This school, which originally 
 belonged to the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel, was started as far back as 1854, 
 and so had, at the period we have now reached, 
 completed its fortieth year. It had been located 
 during its history in various places in or near 
 Calcutta ; but in 1 887 it at last found a home 
 in a compound and buildings belonging to the 
 Oxford Mission, which were situated just across
 
 1894.] THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. 139 
 
 the road which bounds the property of Bishop's 
 College. It had at that time about fifty boarders, 
 all of whom were Christians. The boys are 
 mostly the sons of Christian villagers living in 
 the Sunderbans, and have come to the Industrial 
 School from the village schools belonging to 
 the S.P.G. Mission in that district. A few of 
 the cleverer lads pass on to the High School at 
 Bishop's College, but the large majority of them 
 are given a good education in elementary subjects, 
 and are taught some useful trade. The current 
 expenses of the school are supplied from three 
 sources from a grant given by the Diocesan Board 
 of Missions, from the fees of the boys, and from 
 the donations and subscriptions (the latter chiefly in 
 the form of scholarships) of friends in India and 
 England. The industrial department of the school, 
 with the exception of a small monthly grant of 
 twenty-five rupees, is entirely self-supporting, and 
 has grown under the care of the headmaster, 
 Rev. M. L. Ghose, into quite a flourishing business, 
 turning out really first-class work. 
 
 The importance of such a school is very great, 
 for one of the chief difficulties for native converts 
 is to find employment such as will enable them to 
 earn their living. As a rule a native Christian 
 boy would be refused as an apprentice by any
 
 140 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [CH. VI. 
 
 Hindu tradesman or mechanic, and would find 
 it very difficult, even if he knew a trade, to obtain 
 employment under a Hindu master. Consequently 
 the question, " If I become a Christian, how shall 
 I support my family ? " is a very serious one ; 
 while native Christians who have no means of 
 earning their own living become often little more 
 than pensioners of some mission, and as a natural 
 result of such a condition frequently bring reproach 
 upon Christianity. There is, then, a very great 
 need of industrial schools, and of industrial busi- 
 nesses employing native Christians and managed on 
 really business principles. Printing, weaving, oil- 
 crushing, carpentering, blacksmith and engineering 
 work all offer suitable openings, provided they are 
 taken up and managed by men who really under- 
 stand the work. There is no reason that the 
 managers should be missionaries in the technical 
 sense of the word, but they should be really 
 Christian men, who would undertake such work in 
 the ordinary business way, but with the aim of 
 employing only Christian workmen. This has, in 
 fact, been tried by a printing firm in Bombay, 
 which is now largely an industry for native 
 Christians ; and it is worthy of note that when, 
 during the plague, many of the business houses 
 had to be closed because the workmen had fled,
 
 1894.] THE NEW BUILDINGS. . 14! 
 
 this firm was able to remain open, as not one 
 of the native Christian employee's left them. As 
 a step towards this, and a very important step, 
 the Industrial School claims a place, and each year 
 it gives increasing evidence of its great usefulness, 
 both as a school in the ordinary sense and as 
 a school of technical instruction. 
 
 Since 1887, when the school moved to its present 
 position close to Bishop's College, it has been 
 steadily growing in numbers, until from a total of 
 fifty boys in 1886 it had risen in 1894 to a hundred 
 and ten. This made it absolutely necessary to 
 provide new buildings, as the old buildings were 
 not only overcrowded, but were very inconveniently 
 placed, and many of them in very bad repair, the 
 property being already old when the Mission bought 
 it. It was resolved, therefore, to build an entirely new 
 school, with a chapel, dining-hall, large dormitories, 
 and masters' rooms. The work was begun in this 
 year, and finished in 1896, at a cost of ,2,000. A 
 considerable amount was saved by the care of 
 Rev. M. L. Ghose and the staff of the Industrial 
 School, who superintended the work and had the 
 woodwork made in the school itself. The new 
 building has not only provided an adequate and 
 commodious home for a hundred and sixty boys, 
 but it has enabled the old buildings which were
 
 142 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [CH. VI. 
 
 scattered about the compound to be pulled down, 
 and thus has given ample room for the erection of 
 new and better workshops. 
 
 In the beginning of 1895 tne industrial depart- 
 ment was affiliated to the Government Engineering 
 College at Seedpoor, near Calcutta, and three of 
 the boys attended the college as day scholars. 
 This was an important step, as it gave an oppor- 
 tunity to the boys of learning the higher branches 
 of engineering and carpenters' work, as well as the 
 making of models and framing estimates. It also 
 enabled the school to buy tools at cost price, and 
 has been the means of its adding instruction in 
 blacksmiths' and other ironwork to that of car- 
 pentering. Finally, by an arrangement the details 
 of which need not be explained, it was agreed that 
 the Oxford Mission should permanently take over 
 the Industrial School, for which it had, as we 
 have seen, provided entirely new buildings, and 
 should in exchange hand over to the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel the old Oxford 
 Mission High School, which since 1886 had been 
 housed in Bishop's College compound and in 
 buildings belonging to the Society. The Mission 
 thus possesses a school of which it may well be 
 proud, and which is a most valuable contribution 
 on the part of the Oxford Mission to that most
 
 1894.] PATNA AND DACCA. 143 
 
 important work of building up the native Christian 
 community. 
 
 The change just mentioned in the ownership of 
 the two schools was rather a legal than a real 
 change, inasmuch as while the office of Principal 
 of the college and Superior of the Mission are 
 vested in the same person, the interests and 
 sympathy of the Mission are naturally shown to 
 all the workers connected with the college as well 
 as to its own. And the close connection between 
 the two is shown in the fact that the present 
 headmaster of the High School, Mr. Isan Chowdry, 
 was one of the first boys who came under the 
 care of the Mission when it began its work in 
 Calcutta, and who, first as a pupil, then for some 
 years as a lay-brother, and finally as assistant master 
 at the school under Mr. Brown, has been in the 
 closest relations to the Mission all his life. 
 
 But, to return to the Mission House and the 
 work which flows more directly from it. It will 
 be remembered that we have alluded once or twice 
 to visits which were made by members of the 
 Mission from time to time to Patna and Dacca, 
 both large towns in the Bengal Presidency, in each 
 of which there are colleges with a considerable 
 number of students. It is much to be wished that 
 the Mission was strong enough to have a permanent
 
 144 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [Cn. VI. 
 
 branch house at least at Patna, but till the staff 
 is considerably increased that is impossible. That 
 the Brethren very much desire to take up this work 
 is shown in a letter written by a member of the 
 Mission in this year on this very point. He says : 
 
 " It is somewhat disheartening to be so often 
 prevented in doing work which needs very much 
 to be done, and which ought to be done by the 
 Oxford Mission. Calcutta is the centre to which 
 all students from the rest of the Presidency even- 
 tually come, and it would be a great advantage to 
 have had touch with them before they get absorbed 
 in a great mass of Calcutta students. The atmo- 
 sphere of Calcutta is not congenial to honest 
 enquiry, and seems, I believe, to get less so than 
 it was when the Mission first came here, twelve or 
 thirteen years ago. This is due, perhaps, partly 
 to a wave of anti-European feeling which seems to 
 be passing over Calcutta just now, and partly to 
 a revival of philosophic Hinduism. These difficul- 
 ties are less felt in the country districts ; and the 
 students in the country colleges are, I think, much 
 more open to the appeal of religion than those 
 here, in Calcutta. 
 
 " Also visits of the kind I am speaking of might 
 have another and very important result namely 
 the establishment of schools for Hindu boys,
 
 1894.] OPENING FOR MISSION SCHOOL. 145 
 
 managed by Christian masters. A good school 
 is almost certain to get abundance of pupils, and 
 very much might be done, if not in the way of 
 actual conversion (which in the case of boys still 
 under their parents' control would not be practicable 
 or desirable, except in very exceptional cases), yet 
 in the way of raising the boys to a higher moral 
 level and giving them a conception of moral 
 responsibility. If that could be done, as it might 
 be, through schools managed by Christian masters, 
 it would be making a very real preparation for 
 the acceptance of the Christian faith in later life ; 
 for where we are now so constantly baffled is in 
 the fact that with the greater number of enquirers 
 one has to go back to the very first principles, 
 and we constantly lose sight of them before we 
 have time to get any further. But, as I have said, 
 though all this work lies before us, we cannot 
 touch it, just because we are so few in number ; 
 if we could make sure of a staff of six or seven 
 men to be regularly at the Mission House, we 
 could do much in this way, and very interesting 
 work it would be." 
 
 Occasional visits are therefore all that, at present, 
 the Mission can manage. In February Mr. Brown 
 and the Superior went to Patna, the capital of 
 Behar and a large centre of education. They 
 
 10
 
 146 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [Cn. VI. 
 
 hired a small house in the bazaar, established them- 
 selves in the midst of the people, and then 
 announced that they were at home to visitors. They 
 began with some lectures in the hall of a Hindu 
 college, which was kindly lent to them by the 
 proprietor. These were attended by crowded 
 audiences and they served as a useful mode of 
 introduction to the people. At first visitors were 
 rather slow in coming, but after a time they con- 
 quered their shyness and came in a constant stream. 
 One incident is characteristic. Mr. Brown and 
 the Superior were sitting at breakfast one morning 
 after a lecture given on the previous evening by 
 Mr. Brown on "Ideals of Life." A.Hindu youth 
 of about sixteen years entered, abruptly remarking, 
 " I want some higher ideals of life." They asked 
 him to sit down in an adjoining room till breakfast 
 was over. Then Mr. Brown went to him, and 
 as a preliminary began to read and explain the 
 ten commandments, when the youthful idealist 
 interrupted him with the remark, " Oh, I have 
 written a book on the Ten Commandments, 
 and made ten more of my own ! " However, 
 other visitors were of a more promising kind, and 
 with some they had very interesting conversations. 
 After a few days the Superior had to go back to 
 Calcutta, and Mr. Ringrose came up to supply
 
 1894.] LECTURES AT PATNA. 147 
 
 his place. He and Mr. Brown stayed about a 
 fortnight, and ended their visit with a series of 
 magic-lantern lectures, on the life of our Lord, in 
 the courtyard of their house. Crowded audiences 
 came each night and seemed much interested. 
 
 In September Mr. Brown and Mr. Walker paid 
 another visit to Patna, and took a house in the 
 bazaar close to the former one. Mr. Ollenbach, 
 of the Patna opium factory, very kindly selected 
 the house for them and supplied them with 
 furniture. They stayed for over three weeks, 
 during which time two lectures, both very well 
 attended, were given by Mr. Walker at the college : 
 and at the close of their visit Mr. Brown again 
 gave some magic-lantern lectures at their house. 
 All the time that they were there a large number 
 of Hindu students came to see them, encouraging 
 them to hope that their visits had done good by 
 stirring up a spirit of enquiry, and so paving the 
 way for more definite work in the future. The 
 Behari students are not so clever as the Bengalis, 
 but they are a simpler race, and have not as yet 
 come to look on religious discussions as a form 
 of intellectual exercise. 
 
 In March Mr. Brown and Mr. Walker paid a visit 
 to Dacca, the largest educational centre in Bengal 
 next to Calcutta. The chaplain, Mr. Davids, kindly
 
 148 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA [CH. vi. 
 
 entertained them during their stay, and gave 
 them every possible help in their work. They had 
 a series of lectures, which were fairly successful ; 
 but on the whole they were not so favourably 
 impressed with the students at Dacca as with those 
 at Patna. Mr. Brown went afterwards to Jessore 
 to preside at a students' meeting, and was hospitably 
 entertained by the Baptist missionary. It was from 
 Jessore that they received the curious appeal from 
 some native Christians to establish a Mission there, 
 on the ground that " there are no Protestants here, 
 only Baptists and Roman Catholics." Mr. Walker 
 continued the tour, visiting Mymensingh andComillah, 
 giving lectures in each town, but at the former his 
 lecture was spoilt by a heavy thunderstorm. 
 
 That visits such as these were appreciated by 
 the students is shown by the following extract from 
 the Indian Churchman, giving an account, from an 
 independent source, of the work done by the 
 members of the Mission at Patna : 
 
 " A special interest attaches to the two visits 
 now to be noticed, in that the members of the 
 Brotherhood, like the apostle of the Gentiles, 
 ' dwelt in their own hired house ' in the city, 
 whence has radiated an influence reaching wider 
 and deeper than can be exercised by the more 
 formal public lectures which were given powerful
 
 1895.] APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCES. 149 
 
 and practical as they were. In the choice of 
 subjects for their lectures the special needs and 
 temptations of the large student audiences had 
 been evidently studied, and the crowded hall and 
 verandahs, and the silence and attention of a 
 body usually noisy, was the respectful response to 
 that thoughtfulness. 
 
 " There were in all four public lectures, and the 
 mention of their subjects ' Ideals of Life' ; ' Student 
 Life in India'; 'Conscience'; 'Life: Its Objects' 
 shows how appropriate they were. The two lectures 
 on ' Conscience ' and ' Life : Its Objects,' which 
 were not merely sustained oratorical utterances or 
 intellectual feasts, but a masterly combination of 
 philosophic reasoning, practical illustration, and deep, 
 stirring earnestness, held the large audiences at the 
 time of delivery, and have left deep impressions on 
 several. Exhausting as was the heat of the room, 
 the lecturers were not only willing to stew, but 
 most cheerfully forgot their own discomfort in the 
 cause of that discomfort the closely packed listeners. 
 It is therefore to be regretted that out of this general 
 harmony one jarring note should have been heard 
 after the lecture on ' Student Life.' This eminently 
 profitable study brought to his feet a Bengali 
 professor, who, in mellifluous tones, offered for the 
 consideration of the lecturer a long list of national
 
 1 50 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [Cn. VI. 
 
 grievances, possibly gathered out of the annually 
 swelling resolutions of the Congress reports, but 
 by no means a logical appendage to the suggestive 
 address of the Superior. However, it did no harm, 
 and the public lectures were followed up by three 
 given in the apostolic lodging no ' Events in 
 the Life of our Lord,' and illustrated by the magic 
 lantern. They were restricted by ticket to those 
 who especially manifested a real desire for more 
 definite instruction. Here, too, the attendances 
 were gratifying, while the daily stream of individual 
 visitors and enquirers at the temporary Mission 
 House, if not copious, was at least continuous. 
 
 " The tender sympathy which has marked every 
 step in their intercourse with the people is a matter 
 which has had a real influence upon educated 
 native minds ; while the cordial reception given 
 at Patna to the Oxford Mission seems to point 
 clearly to the duty of a permanent occupation of 
 a field which has yielded to their gentle plough. 
 Perhaps in this connection a word of farewell will 
 be permitted to one of the Brotherhood who was 
 amongst us in February, but whose enforced 
 departure soon after was a distinct loss to India. 
 His visit here emphasised the conviction that if 
 such constitutions were transplanted from Calcutta 
 to regions less cruel, the losses to the community
 
 1895.] THE REV, W. L. NANSON. I$I 
 
 might be minimised, for he said that the change 
 of three hundred miles had made him almost forget 
 his ailment ; and when brought onto our oasis 
 (the Maidan) for a game of cricket, he exultingly 
 exclaimed, ' I feel as if I were at the seaside.' He 
 loved the country, he loved its people, as that 
 too brief experience abundantly showed, and one 
 feels that he might have had his heart's desire 
 could he have worked in a climate which promised 
 more merciful treatment. We trust this personal 
 reference to the Rev. R. D. Ringrose will be 
 accepted as an affectionate remembrance from 
 those who met him here, and amongst whom there 
 is still a real hope that the separation is not final." 
 
 The close of 1895 brought a most welcome 
 addition to the staff at Bishop's college in the 
 person of the Rev. W. L. Nanson. It had for 
 some time been apparent that the burden of the 
 double responsibility of the college and the Oxford 
 Mission, not to mention a vast amount of diocesan 
 and other work which fell upon Mr. Whitehead, 
 was more than one man could rightly bear. This 
 was now becoming a still more pressing matter, 
 as not only was the work of the Oxford Mission 
 increasing, but there was a prospect of a new and 
 very heavy charge coming upon them in the 
 immediate future ; while the work of the college
 
 I$2 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [CH. VI. 
 
 had largely increased, and plans were being con- 
 sidered for practically doubling the number of 
 students. Fortunately, at this time Mr. Nanson, 
 who had for some years been in charge of the 
 Mission belonging to the Cowley Fathers, at Poona, 
 on account of the Fathers being able to increase 
 their staff in India, felt free to resign his charge 
 there and accept the post at Bishop's College 
 which Mr. Whitehead offered to him. In him the 
 college gained a missionary of tried experience 
 and of great capacity, and his appointment was 
 not only a real addition to the strength of the 
 college, but was a joy to the members of the Oxford 
 Mission, to many of whom he was personally known. 
 It will be remembered that at the end of 1893 
 Mr. Conway and Mr. Franklin had gone to England, 
 the former for his ordination, and the latter to gain 
 some experience of English parochial work. In 
 India, where every priest has to work single-handed, 
 it is practically impossible for a young priest to get 
 any real training in the ministry ; and yet, as was 
 said before, not only for the work of the Indian 
 chaplaincies, but also for a great part of the work 
 of the Oxford Mission, the general experience and 
 training which is only got in a good English parish 
 is of the greatest value. It was for this reason that 
 it was thought best for both Mr. Conway and Mr.
 
 1896.] ILLNESS OF THE REV. C. T. CAMPION. 153 
 
 Franklin to go to England for two or three years, to 
 work in some well-organised parish before settling 
 down to their work in India. We would wish 
 rather to emphasise this fact because we believe 
 that it is somewhat generally supposed that it is 
 only men of exceptional intellectual ability who are 
 wanted for the Mission. There is indeed ample 
 work for men with the highest intellectual gifts ; 
 but the men who are wanted for the largest 
 part of the work are men who are good parish 
 priests at home ; for experience shows that it is a 
 good English parochial training which is on the 
 whole the best preparation for the more specialised 
 work which they would meet with in Calcutta. 
 
 In December 1896 Mr. Conway and Mr. Franklin 
 both returned with the Superior, who had been on a 
 visit to England, and brought with them two new 
 members for the Mission the Rev. Charles Thomas 
 Campion, late scholar of Oriel College, Oxford, 
 curate of St. Ann's, Manchester, and Rev. John 
 Roper Cooke, late scholar of Wadham, curate of 
 Downham, in the diocese of Ely. Unfortunately 
 Mr. Campion was attacked with fever soon after his 
 arrival, which clung to him with such persistence 
 that he was obliged under the doctor's orders to 
 give up the hope of remaining in India, and thus 
 a very valuable addition to the strength of the
 
 1 54 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL. PATNA. [Cn. VI. 
 
 Mission was lost after little more than a year's 
 residence. 
 
 A third member who joined the Mission this year 
 was Mr. Barber, a layman. He was an old friend 
 of the Oxford Mission, and had been in business in 
 Calcutta. For some time he had been much drawn 
 to more direct missionary work, and in the early 
 part of 1896, he resigned his post in the firm in 
 which he was working, and offered himself as a 
 lay-brother to the Mission. His help was especially 
 valuable not only as affording a witness to the fact 
 that English laymen are keen in the cause of 
 missions, and because he brought his business 
 capacities to the service of the Mission, but chiefly 
 because through his past connection with the 
 business firms in Calcutta he brought the Mission 
 into touch with a class of educated Bengalis which 
 it had never reached before ; namely what are 
 known as the office Babus that is, clerks engaged 
 in mercantile and other offices. These are generally 
 men of maturer age and character than the average 
 student, and many of them being the parents of 
 lads who were at college, the link which was thus 
 formed between them and the Mission was a 
 valuable one.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. 
 
 " What, my soul! see thus far, no further, -when doors great and small, 
 Nine and ninety, flew ope at one touch, should the hundredth appal? 
 In least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all ? " 
 
 F T was well that this accession of strength came 
 when it did, for a new and very important 
 sphere of work came into view towards the end of 
 1895 under circumstances which made it impossible 
 for the Mission to refuse to accept it. This was 
 the care of the S.P.G. missions in a large country 
 district in Eastern Bengal, known as the district of 
 Barisal. The reasons which led to the acceptance 
 of this work by the Oxford Mission were given 
 by the Superior in the annual report of 1895, from 
 which we quote the following statement : 
 
 " More than fifty years ago a Baptist mission 
 was established there (i.e. in the district of Barisal) 
 and a considerable number of converts made. In 
 1848 one of the Baptist preachers separated from 
 them upon a question of discipline, and was followed 
 by a large number of his converts. In 1864, after
 
 I $6 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [Cn. VII. 
 
 repeated applications, the separatist body was 
 received into the Church of England by Bishop 
 Cotton, and in 1872 their leader, Mr. Bareiro, was 
 ordained deacon by Bishop Milman. In 1879 
 Mr. Bareiro died, and the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel decided not to carry on the work, 
 believing that Mr. Bareiro's following had practically 
 died out. This, however, was not the case, and 
 those of his followers who remained were absorbed 
 by the Baptists. One result was that many of 
 them were required to be re-baptised. This they 
 strongly objected to. Some resisted for three, 
 four, or five years, and some held out for fifteen 
 years till the Church of England came back to 
 them. Then the children were not baptised, and 
 this was a grievance which, apart from any 
 theological knowledge, wounded the feelings of 
 many who wished their children admitted into the 
 fold of Christ. 
 
 " However, it is probable that no movement 
 would have been made but for difficulties which 
 arose among the Baptists themselves. The result 
 was disorganisation and dissatisfaction all over the 
 district The pastoral work was made self-supporting 
 by being practically abolished. When travelling 
 in the district, I found large congregations of 
 some three or four hundred Christians under the
 
 PREVIOUS HISTORY OF THE MISSIONS. 157 
 
 pastoral charge of men who could hardly read 
 or write. This stirred up a feeling of opposition, 
 and led the former members of the Church of 
 England to claim once more their privileges as 
 Churchmen. In 1892 a petition was sent to the 
 Bishop of Calcutta, numerously signed, which stated 
 that a considerable number of Christians in the 
 district belonged to the Church of England, and 
 had been compelled to join the Baptists against 
 their will, and that they earnestly desired to have 
 their children baptised and have the services of their 
 own Church. This was followed by other similar 
 petitions, till at last, in 1894, the Bishop sent me 
 into the district to enquire into the matter, with 
 the result that at the beginning of this year (1895) it 
 was resolved by the Bishop, with the full consent of 
 the Board of Missions, to receive back these people 
 and establish schools and services for them in the 
 various villages. I visited the district myself in 
 March, and stayed there for about three weeks. 
 Mr. Brown spent nearly a month there in July, 
 and I was there again for five weeks in September 
 and October. As the result of a year's work there, 
 there are now about a thousand members of the 
 Church of England in the district. 
 
 " During my last visit I baptised over one hundred 
 and ninety persons of all ages, from eighty years
 
 158 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. tCn. VII. 
 
 to eight days, and received into the Church of 
 England over one hundred and sixty men and 
 women. What the movement will grow to it is 
 impossible to say. The strong opposition of the 
 Baptists from the very first has, unhappily, stirred 
 up a great deal of party feeling, but also an active 
 spirit of enquiry, especially on the question of 
 infant baptism. It is always difficult in such cases 
 to know what is going on beneath the surface ; but 
 it seems not improbable that next year, after the 
 Bishop has been in the district to hold confirma- 
 tions, we shall have to provide for very nearly 
 fifteen hundred people. The force of circumstances 
 has compelled the members of the Oxford Mission 
 to undertake the responsibility of organising and 
 supervising this work during the last year, and 
 it is not likely that they will be relieved of the 
 responsibility in 1896. We can only hope that 
 the staff of the Mission will prove sufficiently elastic 
 to meet this new and heavy demand upon its 
 time and energies." 
 
 The result of this deplorable desertion of her 
 children by the Church is touchingly shown in an 
 incident which came to the notice of Mr. Whitehead 
 in the course of his tour in the district, of which 
 he wrote as follows : 
 
 " The old reader of the Mission in Potihar, in
 
 PAST CARELESSNESS OF THE CHURCH. 1 59 
 
 spite of what might well seem irresistible tempta- 
 tions to abandon the Church of his baptism, was 
 more faithful to her than she was to him. For 
 fifteen years he has remained steadfast with his 
 family, and has kept two other men faithful with 
 him, one an old man of seventy-four years of age, 
 and another a man of about forty with his wife and 
 child. The old reader has a son of about thirty- 
 five with a wife and two children at Potihar, and 
 a younger son now studying medicine at Barisal. 
 It is a melancholy commentary on the slackness 
 with which the work was carried on twenty or 
 thirty years ago that with the exception of the 
 old reader himself and his wife, not a single one 
 of these believers in Christ and faithful adherents 
 of the Church had ever been baptised. By the 
 help of a tattered Prayer-Book and Bible the 
 old man has during these fifteen years kept alive 
 the seed of faith and hope in the hearts of this 
 small flock in the wilderness. But, apart from 
 his ministrations, they had been absolutely destitute 
 of all means of grace. He and his wife had not 
 received the Holy Communion for all those years, 
 and their children and grandchildren had grown 
 up untaught and unbaptised. It may well be 
 imagined that our coming was to them all like 
 the sight of a sail to shipwrecked sailors on a
 
 160 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [Ca. VII. 
 
 desert isle, and was felt as a direct answer to their 
 prayers and longings." 
 
 At another village, when Mr. Whitehead asked 
 the Christians there whether they wished to return 
 to the Church, they made the pertinent reply that 
 they had never left it ! They wanted, rather, the 
 Church to return to them. It is surely then a 
 cause of great thankfulness that it has been given 
 to the Oxford Mission to remove this reproach 
 from the Church in Bengal which has lain upon 
 her for fifteen years, and to bring again her faith, 
 her sacraments and discipline to the children she 
 has used so ill. But at the same time it is a 
 great work, and as it grows must be an increasing 
 responsibility, and therefore adds force to the cry 
 which again and again has come from Calcutta for 
 a large and steady increase in the Mission staff. 
 
 To one who is familiar with Church work in 
 English country districts the work in Barisal 
 presents, at least outwardly, a great contrast, but a 
 contrast which has its own special attractions. It 
 is a work which exerts over all who enter on it 
 a strange fascination, kindling in them a deep love 
 for the poor, simple, patient souls who, in their 
 poverty and loneliness, and in much ignorance, and 
 with many moral failings, are yet bearing witness, 
 sometimes with startling and beautiful fidelity, to
 
 1896.] THE DISTRICT OF BARISAL. l6l 
 
 the faith of Jesus Christ in the midst of a vast 
 heathen population. In the hope that it may 
 kindle the desire in the hearts of some who read 
 it to offer themselves to the Mission for this work, 
 we feel constrained to reprint the following deeply 
 interesting account by Mr. Brown of one of the 
 tours made in the district. 
 
 " A land of slow, sad rivers, an unfinished land, 
 which looks as though only yesterday the fiat had 
 gone forth; ' Let the waters under the heaven -be 
 gathered together unto one place, and let the 
 dry land appear.' A few miles further south, 1 
 indeed, it gives up the attempt to .call, itself 'dry 
 land at all, and confesses itself to be. mere" slimy, 
 muddy jungle, abandoned to the crocodile and- 
 the tiger. Further to the north, where I am 
 going, it is still the normal condition of the country- 
 to be under water for the greater part of the year-: 
 such is the nature of this vast delta of the Ganges 
 a triangle whose, base from -Chittagong on the' 
 east to Calcutta on the west covers some . two 
 hundred and fifty miles, and which only at its 
 northern apex reaches a consistency where you 
 can be sure of your footing all the year round. 
 
 " And yet it is a wonderful country, in .one 
 respect, and that is in the richness of its soil. It 
 is like Egypt after a full Nile. It supports ah. 
 
 ii
 
 1 62 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CH. VII. 
 
 immense semi-aquatic population. Here they come, 
 tumbling about amongst the rice-fields, all the 
 little children running to see the daily wonder of 
 the steamer, splashing and dancing with delight 
 in their mother-nakedness as it sends up a wave 
 for them to roll about in. Such sweet little wist- 
 ful faces ! At first I try to look at each one 
 and think of the life that lies before him the 
 long, patient labour of the fields, like those men 
 one sees yonder planting out their rice with the 
 water up above their waists the small modicum 
 of knowledge that will come to him, and then 
 his eternal destiny. One by one I look into their 
 faces ; but now they come crowding too thick for 
 me to do this any more. I am told that this 
 small division of the district contains two-and-a- 
 half millions of people. I seem to have seen 
 almost that number to-day, and one's brain sinks 
 back bewildered and fatigued at the thought of 
 them all, till I recall that beautiful saying, ' Only 
 the Infinite Pity is equal to the infinite pathos of 
 human life.' Perhaps such a day of idleness and 
 dreams is not the worst preparation for a spell 
 of missionary work. 
 
 " Arrived at Barisal, I was taken in by our good 
 friend the magistrate a faithful son of the Church, 
 whose spiritual eye is not dimmed by residence
 
 1896.] BEGINNING OF A TOUR. 163 
 
 amongst the heathen or by the fewness of his 
 opportunities for divine worship. There is always 
 something very touching in ministering to the ' two 
 or three ' who gather together in these out-of-the-way 
 Indian stations for their rare privilege of receiving 
 the Bread of Life, and the Sunday here was conse- 
 quently a bright one. On Monday we were to 
 plunge into the unknown. I found that a huge 
 house-boat, of something very like the well-known 
 Thames build, had been provided for me and my 
 expected companion ; but as he did not turn up, 
 I should have had it all to myself had not a 
 Christian named Jogendra Chandra Chakravarti 
 volunteered to accompany me ' faithful Jogen,' as 
 I soon learnt to call him, for he looked after all 
 my wants with the greatest kindness and care. 
 With us was a cook, an unkempt native of Barisal, 
 and the boat was manned by a manji and seven 
 mallahs all Musalmans with whom I became 
 very friendly in the course of the voyage. 
 
 " Barisal is the centre of a large district, and is 
 thronged with schoolboys and college students, and one 
 does not escape from them without a lecture. ' We 
 want to hear something for our moral improvement ' 
 is the form in which the request comes. So after 
 the inevitable lecture and dinner, I was ready about 
 9 p.m. to make a start in our comfortable boat it
 
 1 64 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CH. VII. 
 
 being arranged that we should travel all night. 
 That being the case, I was not surprised when I 
 awoke some time in the small hours of the morning 
 to find that the boat was at anchor, and we had come 
 only a mile or two. The manji of course had an 
 excellent excuse, and it was not till daylight that 
 we really got under way, thus reaching Wuzeerpore 
 at midday instead of in the early morning. Here 
 we had our first and only accident. The wind and 
 the current together caught the boat as it was trying 
 to get into a certain creek, and the huge monster 
 swung with considerable force against the bank. 
 A crash, a groan, a noise of broken glass, and I 
 rushed into the cabin to see what had happened. 
 There I saw a heap of things on the floor, sprinkled 
 here and there with dabs of blood, and amidst them 
 the poor cook curled up into a very forlorn-looking 
 bundle. However, on investigation things did not 
 prove so bad as they looked. The crash had only 
 meant the breaking of one small pane of glass ; 
 the blood was from the cook's nose, which had 
 come into contact with the glass, but had not 
 sustained any very serious injury ; and the net 
 result was only to give him rather more of a 
 brigandish appearance than before. He was, 
 however, very sorry for himself, and indulged in 
 fever for the next few days.
 
 1896.] DIFFICULTIES OF PROGRESS. 165 
 
 " From Wuzeerpore to Dhamsar, our first village, 
 is only about four miles, but those four miles were 
 not easy to accomplish, since the rains were late 
 this year, and the fields were too wet to walk over, 
 and yet not wet enough in all places for a boat. 
 So, leaving the big boat behind me, I got into a 
 smaller one, in which we accomplished about three- 
 quarters of the journey, and then were met by 
 Alok Sircar, the poet, with a still smaller boat, into 
 which I was transferred. It was propelled by his 
 son, Shitol, a nice, bright-looking lad of about 
 sixteen. In this boat it was necessary to sit tight 
 and not cough or sneeze, if you did not want to find 
 yourself struggling in the water amongst the long 
 stalks of the rice plants, through which we were 
 making our way. The water got more and 
 more shallow, and Shitol had sometimes to get 
 out and push the boat over a ridge, but they would 
 not hear of my doing the same. Soon we came 
 upon little Gopal, his brother, with eyes like a 
 startled fawn, plunging hip deep into the water to 
 get to school ; and at last the boat had to give up 
 the attempt to make any further progress, and the 
 journey had to be finished by all of us wading 
 through the mud. 
 
 " At Dhamsar we were received by Chandra, 
 the catechist of the whole district, and the chief
 
 1 66 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CH. VII. 
 
 leader of the movement which has compelled us 
 to take up this work. He is a most thoughtful, 
 earnest man, and as he accompanied me on the 
 journey every day I felt an increasing affection 
 and respect for him. For many years he has been 
 working his way towards the Church of England, 
 having been much helped by his great friend, the 
 French Roman Catholic priest, who lives at a 
 neighbouring village ; and this year, after instruction 
 from Mr. Whitehead, he was confirmed by the 
 Bishop. The story of the return of these people 
 to the Church has been already told, and I need 
 not allude to it any more, except to say that, 
 having started with the feeling that it is a great 
 pity, if it can possibly be avoided, for two bodies 
 of Christians to be working in the same field, I 
 came to the conclusion before the end, that we 
 should have been doing a great wrong if we had 
 refused to come to the aid of these members of 
 our Church. The Baptists are naturally rather 
 sore ; but, after all, the people are not ' their people ' 
 nor ' our people,' as missionaries are apt rather 
 unwarrantably to suppose, but have their own 
 conscientious convictions, which must be respected ; 
 and certainly there are many who feel that the 
 baptism of their children, and confirmation, are 
 privileges which they have a right to claim.
 
 1896.] SUNDAY AT DHAMSAR. 1 67 
 
 Enough, perhaps, has been said of the abandon- 
 ment fifteen years ago of some three thousand 
 members of our Church, leaving them no choice 
 between remaining without any Christian services 
 at all and joining the Baptists. Of these three 
 thousand, I heard in one place of two hundred and 
 fifty, and in another of three hundred, on whom 
 this policy had the effect of sending them back 
 to Hinduism, and probably one-fourth of the whole 
 number are in this condition. This is the saddest 
 part of the whole matter, and I have not hitherto 
 succeeded in tracing any of these people. 
 
 ' At Dhamsar we had services in the open 
 air, as the church is not yet built. One incon- 
 venience of this is that in the morning the sun 
 is apt to get hot before you have finished, and in 
 the evening it is necessary to seize the psycho- 
 logical moment between the heat of the afternoon 
 and the approach of darkness, while at this time 
 of the year the rain is always liable to disconcert 
 your arrangements. However, the people are 
 wonderfully patient and good-tempered, and all 
 these little difficulties are easily got over. On 
 this and subsequent visits I learnt greatly to love 
 many of these Dhamsar people. At Christmas 
 I spent a week with them the best house, made 
 of mud and mats, being given up to me ; and if
 
 168 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CM. VII. 
 
 I had been a king in his palace I could not have 
 been treated more royally. I brought a box full 
 of little presents for the children balls, knives, 
 dolls, etc. They had never seen such things, and 
 were lost in astonishment and delight. Amongst 
 other things was a Jack-in-the-box with a hideous 
 black face value about sixpence. The fame of 
 it spread far and wide, and a Hindu woman from 
 a neighbouring village made a journey, as she 
 said, ' to see Ketu.' Now Ketu is a monster of 
 Hindu mythology, who swallows up the sun and 
 the moon, and I should not be surprised to find 
 that Jack-in-the-box enshrined in a temple and 
 worshipped on my next visit. 
 
 " One effect of the moisture of the climate is 
 that the children begin to smoke almost from the 
 cradle. At a village called Narikelbari 'the 
 House of the Cocoa-nut' the following dialogue 
 took place between myself and a small urchin of 
 five : ' Have you had your morning pipe ? ' 'I 
 have.' ' How long have you been a smoker ? ' 
 ' Oh, for years ! ' 
 
 " Their occasional excursions into the Bible in 
 search of names for their children have often a 
 touch of genius about, them. A family of four boys 
 were called Samson, Jonah (pronounced Junus), 
 ' Paulus,' and then as though all Jewish and
 
 1896.] A JATRA. 169 
 
 Christian literature had been exhausted they fell 
 back on the Hindu Ganesh. This, however, is 
 outdone by a family in the Sunderbans, where 
 the boys are called Benjamin the eldest ! Reuben, 
 Judah, and Herod ! Others like to combine the 
 law, the prophets, and the gospel : thus three 
 brothers were called Paul, Gershom, and Micah, 
 and a boy of another family rejoiced in the names 
 of Seth Titus. As a rule, however, they are 
 satisfied with such names as are borne by Hindus, 
 in spite of their heathenish associations, and in 
 this, I think, they are justified by New Testament 
 precedent. 
 
 " At the evening service I gave an instruction 
 in Bengali. Here my pride received a great blow. 
 I asked Chandra whether the people had under- 
 stood me. ' Yes,' he said, ' they understood you 
 because the people here are accustomed to English- 
 men's Bengali.' After that I thought he had better 
 interpret for me. After service they entertained 
 us with the Pilgrim's Progress, a sort of ' oratorio ' 
 founded on Bunyan's great allegory. These jdtras, 
 as they are called, are very popular among the 
 people, being a form of religious entertainment 
 quite indigenous to Hinduism. A party will often 
 make a vow to sing through the whole of the 
 Ramayan or Mahabharata the great Hindu epics ;
 
 I/O THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [Cn. VII. 
 
 and the performance takes several weeks. The 
 Pilgrim's Progress did not take several weeks, but 
 it took a good many more hours than I could 
 keep awake for. By midnight they had only got 
 as far as the Slough of Despond, which ' Christian ' 
 thought a very good place in which to have a 
 quiet smoke of the favourite ' hubble-bubble ' or 
 hookah. The boys sang as though they would 
 split their throats. The whole composition has 
 been versified by Alok Sircar, one of our old Church 
 people, and his four sons are the chief musicians 
 Bihari, Shitol, Gopal, and Nipal. 
 
 " I must tell you a little story about Gopal, a 
 dear little boy of about ten. It will illustrate how 
 among these Christians of the second or third 
 generation the conscience can become tenderly 
 sensitive, whereas amongst Hindus, such is the 
 baneful effect of the caste system, that our great 
 difficulty is to discover whether they have any 
 conscience at all. On one of my visits I missed a 
 small toy from my box, and discovered that it had 
 been carried off by Gopal's youngest brother, an 
 infant too small to be responsible for the theft. 
 I sent Shitol to say that it must be given back, 
 and that he must teach his little brother not to 
 steal. Shitol, however, misunderstood me and gave 
 the message to Gopal. Presently there came back
 
 1896.] A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. I? I 
 
 to me not only the toy in question, but everything 
 I had ever given to Gopal a picture or two, a 
 knife, one or two toys precious things, which had 
 evidently been fondly treasured. Not knowing of 
 the mistake, I was at a loss to understand this, 
 and sent for Gopal to explain. For a long time 
 he stood by me silently weeping, unable to speak ; 
 at last it came out, amid many sobs, that he had 
 been accused of the theft, and, deeply wounded 
 by such a suspicion, had determined to surrender 
 all his treasures. Of course the matter was cleared 
 up, and with some difficulty I was able to restore 
 his peace of mind and persuade him to take back 
 his property. 
 
 " From Dhamsar we went to Morakhati, examined 
 the school, and held a service with the Christians. 
 A Hindu boy named Rojoni made great friends 
 with me, and his father, Fedoo, brought a very 
 acceptable offering of milk. We often get presents 
 from the Christians, but it is rare for Hindus to 
 bring us anything, and I appreciated the courtesy 
 accordingly. Thence, through a beautiful shaded 
 glen, where broad plantain leaves spread their 
 shade, undamaged by the wind which so often cuts 
 them into strips, to Potihar, where we found the old 
 reader, Mohan Modon, a full account of whom 
 appeared in Mr. Whitehead's first letter from
 
 172 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CH. VII. 
 
 Barisal. This is the only place where the Roman 
 Catholics are working alongside of us, they having, 
 with the greatest courtesy, yielded to the wish of 
 our own people to return to us. Potihar is a small 
 place, with but a few Christian families, only one of 
 whom is of our Church, and, but for the good old 
 reader, whom we cannot desert, we should hardly 
 think it necessary to keep up a station there. It is 
 a great comfort to me to feel that our coming has 
 not multiplied the divisions among the Christians in 
 the district, for, whereas before there were Roman 
 Catholics and Baptists, there are now practically 
 only the Baptists and ourselves. The Romanists 
 have never done very much here, and they will 
 now, I think, concentrate their work in one or two 
 places which lie quite out of our track. 
 
 " Dhandoba, the next place, is the old head- 
 quarters of the Mission. Here is a noble old 
 man, Dhononjoy, bent nearly double with age, who 
 for fifteen years resisted all solicitations to be 
 rebaptised, and has lived to welcome back his own 
 Church. On my first visit here I could only find 
 two children who could say the Lord's Prayer, but 
 when I went again at Easter, six months later, I 
 found a splendid school of eighty children, even the 
 tiniest of whom could repeat the Lord's Prayer and 
 the Creed, and many of them were well instructed
 
 1896.] THE WORK OF "FAITHFUL JOGEN." 173 
 
 in the Catechism, besides secular learning. There 
 were also some bright Musalman lads, who petitioned 
 me that they might be allowed to have some 
 Christian instruction given to them. All this is 
 the work of my ' faithful Jogen ' and another man, 
 named Hira Lai Sircar, who have worked here with 
 the greatest possible zeal and diligence. Our plan 
 is to let all who will come to the school, whether 
 Christians or not, but not to give religious instruction 
 to the non-Christians unless they ask for it. In 
 many cases they do ask for it, as here, and then I 
 feel sure it is received with a much better grace 
 than if it were forced down their throats. There 
 are many hopeful Hindu boys in the schools ; at 
 Shuagram one of them, fourteen years old, has 
 wrung from his reluctant parents their consent to 
 his being baptised, and I hope to baptise him on 
 my next visit. 
 
 " Near Dhandoba is the Hindu village or small 
 town of Goela, where our huge boat had to stay 
 while we went in a smaller boat to Dhandoba. 
 One day I was rather unwell, and had to stay at 
 home with the boat while Chandra went to the 
 Christians to prepare them for my coming the next 
 day. Here the manji (the Musalman boatman) 
 made a brilliant suggestion. He said : ' Sahib, 
 why should you trouble yourself to go all round the
 
 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [Cn. VII. 
 
 district in this way? Let us keep the boat here, 
 and you stay in it, and send the Babu (Chandra) to 
 do the work ' a suggestion very characteristic of 
 India. Our next halt was at a village called Torun 
 Sen. Here the good French father has sold his 
 chapel to us, and let his people depart with his 
 blessing. He appears to have solved for himself 
 in our favour the question which has so long been 
 agitating the authorities at Rome. 'The Church 
 of England ' so his words have been reported 
 to me by the people ' is not far from the truth. 
 They have fourteen annas to the rupee, whereas 
 the Baptists have only one anna. But we say,' 
 added my informants, ' that the Church of England 
 has sixteen annas and the Roman Church fourteen.' 
 At this place there was a Hindu to be baptised 
 three had been preparing, but two of them held 
 back at the last moment. On our way to the 
 place an old lady came up to us in a boat, and 
 asked whether we had seen her ' child,' who, she 
 had heard, was going to join the Christians. I 
 entered into a conversation with her, urging her 
 to come too, and offered her some fruit, which she 
 rejected with great disdain, thinking that I wanted 
 to bribe her. To my great amusement, the Musal- 
 man manji came to our assistance. His exhortation 
 was a very simple one : ' Give up worshipping
 
 1896.] A BAPTISM AT TORUN SEN. 175 
 
 Saitanl said he, ' and worship Christ.' This too, 
 however, failed in its effect. (When I asked the 
 manji afterwards whether he would worship Christ, 
 he wanted to know whether it would mean giving 
 up Mahomed.) Arrived at Torun Sen, the Chris- 
 tians collected, the old lady's ' child ' appeared 
 a strong-looking man of about thirty and I began 
 the baptismal service. In the middle of it there 
 was a whoop and a yell, and a figure threw itself 
 flat upon the ground in front of me, straight as a 
 tree falls, and began banging its head against the 
 floor. It was the old lady herself whom I had 
 seen in the boat. She was, I believe, trying to 
 kill herself ; but fortunately the mud floor was newly 
 made, and she did not do her head much harm. 
 She, however, made such a noise that it was impos- 
 sible to proceed with the service, so I suggested 
 that we should adjourn to the tank, where the 
 baptism was to take place. We both went down 
 into the water, but three times the old mother flung 
 her arms round her son's neck and succeeded by 
 main force in dragging him up the bank. It was 
 a singular scene, blended of tragedy and comedy. 
 Beneath her eccentric way of expressing herself was 
 the heart-breaking sorrow of a mother who felt that 
 her son was being lost to her for ever. The man 
 behaved with wonderful patience, and only at the
 
 i;6 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CH. VII. 
 
 last shook her off a little roughly. She lay moan- 
 ing on the ground ; and the Hindus present, who 
 mostly seemed to be on our side, prevented her 
 from interrupting the service any more. One of 
 them said to me aftenvards, ' We are all coming 
 soon.' We then went down into the water once 
 more, and I asked the man whether he was quite 
 firm in wishing to be baptised then. He said he 
 was, and answered the questions in the service 
 calmly and distinctly ; so I baptised him. I have 
 seen him several times since, and he remains steady. 
 He was married this year by Mr. Whitehead to a 
 Christian widow another blow, I fear, to his 
 mother, to whom, as a Hindu, widow marriage is 
 an abomination. She does not at present show 
 any sign of following his example, but I trust 
 we may yet see the fruit of the many prayers 
 which have been offered for her. 
 
 " With a fresh breeze and a glowing sky we 
 sailed away that evening over the apparently solid 
 land of the rice-fields into the northern division 
 of the district, which is under a different reader, 
 Shashadar Chakravarti by name. He is a much 
 younger man than Chandra, and has not the same 
 ripeness of judgment ; but he has an abundant 
 supply of energy, a quality which is not always 
 prominent in our Bengali Mission workers. Our
 
 1896.] VISIT TO SHUAGRAM. 177 
 
 first halt was at his own village, Shuagram, where 
 we found his gentle and courteous old father, so 
 graphically described in Mr. Whitehead's letter 
 The boat came to anchor in the garden, and in 
 the narrow space between it and the house we 
 had to have our service, no church having been 
 yet built. For baptism it was very convenient, as 
 we had only to go down a few steps into the water. 
 We always baptise by immersion, both to avoid 
 ' offence ' to the Baptists and because there really 
 seems no reason why in India this, the primary 
 intention of the Church, should not be observed. 
 This district is much more compact than the 
 southern one, there being twelve villages within a 
 radius of about six miles. Consequently the time 
 occupied in getting about with our lumbering old 
 house-boat was not so long, and I was able to 
 see more of the people. On my second visit, after 
 the Bishop had held his confirmation at the begin- 
 ning of this year, we had one hundred and thirty- 
 eight Communicants, which, with eighty-one in the 
 other district, makes two hundred and nineteen. 
 There must be nearly as many more waiting to 
 be confirmed, and the total number of Church 
 people is about two thousand. At one place where 
 I went I was told there were a number o r former 
 members of the Church who had not yet come back. 
 
 12
 
 178 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [Cn. VII. 
 
 When I asked them what they were going to do, 
 they said, with a charming frankness, ' We are going 
 to wait and see whether you will deceive us again.' 
 At Pakhor an old man died a few months ago, 
 saying he was very sorry he had not lived to see 
 his own Church re-established in the country. His 
 widow and children were among those whom I 
 baptised. 
 
 " Our present great want is that of churches and 
 schools. These are of very simple construction, in 
 most places being made only of mats ; but the 
 question is complicated by the fact that in this part 
 of the district if any one wants to build a house, he 
 first has to build an island to put it on. This about 
 doubles the expense. Also the number of villages 
 already occupied is very large thirty or more ; 
 and of course we must look forward to extension. 
 In five or six central places we must have ' cathedrals ' 
 of corrugated iron ; these, with the land required 
 for them, will cost from 60 to So each. I 
 calculate that at the present stage of the work 500 
 would supply the Mission with all the ' plant ' it 
 requires. Towards keeping up the work I am very 
 thankful to hear that the Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel has made a grant of ^400 per 
 annum, but I think about twice that sum will be 
 needed if we are to work the district efficiently.
 
 1896.] NEED OF CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS. 
 
 " The last place which I visited was Kolligrarri, 
 an outlying village which it took us one and a half 
 days to get to by boat. On our way we caught 
 a great number of tortoises. When I say 'we,' 
 my part consisted in looking on from the boat, 
 while one of the men, who was very clever at it, 
 ran along the bank, and whenever he saw a tortoise 
 sitting near the water made a jump for it. The 
 tortoise jumped at the same time ; but in two cases 
 out of three he would catch it in his hands before 
 it could dive to the bottom. They are eight or 
 ten inches in length, and are said to be very good 
 eating, but in common with the pig are abhorred 
 by Musalmans (Lev. xi. 29), though Hindus eat 
 them. Kolligram is a large place, where we have 
 some two hundred Christians. I found them 
 keeping school under a tree, and assembling for 
 worship in the very narrow space supplied by the 
 verandah of a mud house. At this distant village 
 only seven people have been confirmed, but they 
 all came to Holy Communion, after we had had 
 a searching preparatory service the day before. 
 This indeed was the chief object of my tour, 
 to admit those who had been confirmed to their 
 first communion ; and none were allowed to com- 
 municate unless they had gone through a preparation 
 as careful as it was possible to make it in the time,
 
 180 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [CH. VII. 
 
 including very full questions on the Ten Command- 
 ments. They were not expected to make answer 
 publicly, but many touching acknowledgments of 
 sin were made either to me or to the readers, and 
 some quarrels were composed. Altogether I do 
 earnestly hope that the reorganisation of the Church 
 here will be of real spiritual benefit to the people, 
 for that can be our only ultimate justification for 
 entering upon a field where so much Christian work 
 has been done before. It distresses me greatly 
 that for some time to come they must be without 
 a resident priest, while we at Calcutta are two or 
 three days' journey from them. 
 
 " I must tell you one more story which will 
 illustrate the simple character of this rural Church. 
 While I was at Dhamsar on my last visit, a man 
 came in from a distant village to say that when 
 the Bishop came for the confirmation in February 
 his steam-launch stuck on a mudbank just opposite 
 his (the speaker's) house, and he took that as a 
 providential indication that he ought to join the 
 Church of which the Bishop was the head ; that 
 he had also had several dreams bearing in the 
 same direction ; moreover, that when he went to 
 his own minister to ask him about it, the latter 
 only replied with a Bengali proverb, meaning that 
 where there is something original there will be
 
 1896.] A SIMPLE FAITH. l8l 
 
 imitation, and that, going home and thinking over 
 it, he had come to the conclusion that the Church 
 was the original and the Baptists the imitation. 
 Finally, what clinched the matter was that eight 
 persons were saved in the Ark, and his family 
 consisted of exactly eight persons. Of course he 
 could not be received on such grounds ; but I gave 
 him some instruction, and told him to wait and 
 pray, and it may be that when the Bishop comes 
 again he will be able to fulfil his wish, and receive 
 him into the Ark of Christ's Church. 
 
 "There are naturally many difficulties and 
 hindrances, some of which I have hinted at ; but 
 on the whole it is a great happiness to work 
 amongst people of such simple faith. Though one 
 can hardly expect them to see it in this light, I 
 feel that the present movement is largely the result 
 of the fidelity with which the Baptist missionaries 
 have done their work, and I pray that we may be 
 able to continue it in such a spirit as to hasten 
 the time when we shall be reunited under one Lord, 
 in one faith, by one baptism." 
 
 Surely an appeal such as this account makes 
 must meet with a response from the Church at 
 home, and lead at least some priests to offer them- 
 selves for a work which, under the charge of the 
 Oxford Mission, has been so blessed and has so
 
 1 82 THE BARISAL MISSIONS. [Cn. VII- 
 
 rapidly increased. Moreover, the desire which 
 Mr. Brown expressed for a house belonging to the 
 Mission, where a priest could permanently reside, 
 is now (1898) on the way to be fulfilled, the Mission 
 having decided to buy some land and to build a 
 house where three or four members of the Brother- 
 hood of the Epiphany will be able to live.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. 
 
 " Let one more attest 
 / have lined, seen God's hand through a life-time, and all for best." 
 
 ~"*HE year on which we are now entering was 
 one of losses in the organisation at home, 
 and of public anxiety and trouble in India which 
 more or less affected the Oxford Mission. At the 
 close of 1896 Miss Murray, who for ten years had 
 laboured with unremitting zeal on behalf of the 
 Mission, was obliged to resign the office of General 
 Secretary. At a meeting of the Committee held on 
 December roth a resolution was unanimously passed 
 in which the Committee expressed their high appre- 
 ciation of her devoted work and their deep regret 
 that she felt herself obliged to resign her charge. 
 Miss Murray's place was taken by Miss Edith 
 Argles. The early months of 1897 brought another 
 and a very heavy loss to the Mission in the sudden 
 and unexpected death of Dr. Wilson, Warden of 
 Keble College and Vice-Chairman of the Home 
 Committee. He had been elected to this office 
 
 183
 
 184 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 on the appointment of Dr. Talbot, now Bishop of 
 Rochester, to the Vicarage of Leeds. From that 
 time (1892) to the day of his death the affairs of 
 the Mission were the subject of his constant 
 thought, and the last public act of his life was to 
 preside at a meeting of the Finance committee. 
 Among the many works of religious and philan- 
 thropic activity in which he was interested there 
 were few to which he devoted more ungrudging 
 attention, few which he believed to be of more 
 importance to the Church and to the nation. His 
 tact, great judgment, and power of sympathy were 
 of the greatest value in solving many difficult and 
 important questions connected with the work of 
 the Mission, and his death was a heavy loss, 
 not only generally to the Church at home, but 
 to the Oxford Mission in particular. 
 
 In Calcutta, and indeed in all India, 1897 will 
 long be remembered as an Annus infaustus. It 
 opened with famine and pestilence; its central 
 months were marked by earthquake, murder, and 
 riot, and the cloud of war hung heavy on the north- 
 west frontier. Of the war, nearly two thousand 
 miles away, those in Calcutta only heard the echo, 
 much as we did in England, through the news- 
 papers. The famine, again, only touched Bengal 
 lightly, while the plague which was devastating
 
 1897.] MR. LLOYD AND THE PLAGUE. 185 
 
 other parts of India most unexpectedly avoided 
 Calcutta. But nevertheless the Mission in the 
 person of Mr. Lloyd had its share in contributing 
 help to the plague-stricken districts. When the 
 pestilence was at its height at Bombay, and con- 
 tinual reports came of the scarcity of nurses in 
 the hospitals, Mr. Lloyd volunteered to go and do 
 what he could to help the All Saints' Sisters in 
 their work. His offer was gladly accepted, and he 
 spent the greater part of the hot weather and rains 
 on plague duty of various kinds at Bombay itself 
 and at Kutch Mandvi. His work in Bombay 
 involved a great deal of night-nursing under con- 
 ditions of the most trying kind ; and when the 
 plague decreased there he was sent to Kutch 
 Mandvi, a town of about twenty thousand inhabi- 
 tants, in a native state, on search duty searching 
 for cases of plague in the native houses, accom- 
 panied by detachments of Sepoys and policemen. 
 It was hard work, but to the great joy of the 
 Mission Mr. Lloyd returned to Calcutta not only 
 safe and sound, but looking better and stronger 
 for his labours. 
 
 The earthquake and the riots came home to the 
 Mission more nearly, as they were both felt in 
 their full force in Calcutta. Of the earthquake a 
 member of the Mission writes as follows :
 
 1 86 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 " On that memorable Saturday afternoon, 
 June 1 2th, I was paying a call in the business part 
 of Calcutta when we heard a rumbling, which 
 might have been that of a very heavy waggon. 
 My host and I rushed out into the compound. 
 The sight which first struck us was that of 
 a large swinging lamp, swaying backwards and 
 forwards a yard or more in the verandah. Others 
 reported that a similar sight, though inverted, was 
 to be seen wherever there was a tall chimney. 
 ' The massy earth ' heaved beneath one's feet as 
 though it had been a ship's deck. This continued 
 for nearly five minutes by the clock. I don't think 
 any of us realised at the time how serious the 
 earthquake was ; but when on my way home I 
 passed through some of the principal streets of the 
 city, and saw how there was scarcely a house of 
 any size which had not received some damage, I 
 began to understand that we had undergone an 
 awful calamity. It is said that there are seventy 
 feet of thick mud, which forms a sort of spongy 
 foundation for the whole of Calcutta. This would 
 be a protection against any ordinary earthquake, 
 and no doubt was in great part a protection against 
 this. Nevertheless, that short five minutes had 
 plenty to show for itself. Nearly every church 
 in Calcutta lost a portion at least of its steeple.
 
 1897.] THE EARTHQUAKE IN CALCUTTA. 1 87 
 
 Very few three-storied houses retained their upper 
 floors intact ; houses that were old in nearly all 
 cases lost a part of their walls ; in some cases a 
 verandah or a front wall fell into the street bodily, 
 revealing the inner apartments. Yet it would be 
 a great exaggeration to say, as some of the local 
 papers did, that Calcutta was in ruins. Two days 
 after the earthquake one might pass along the 
 street, and except for a house or two under repair, 
 and the truncated condition of the church spires, 
 one could hardly notice any difference. Business 
 on the Monday, following that Saturday, was in 
 full swing as usual. 
 
 " The portions of the city which fared best were 
 the ' lowly cots ' of the poor. It is a curious 
 feature in all Indian cities that alongside the most 
 magnificent pukka houses of stone or brick you 
 may always find little huts, scarcely more than a 
 man's height, made of mud or matting. These 
 suffered by the earthquake not at all. And in all 
 this crowded city, with a population only second 
 to that of London, but three deaths were reported 
 from falling houses. This must certainly be looked 
 upon as a wonderful deliverance, especially when 
 we consider the many instances of hair-breadth 
 escapes which have since come to light. After 
 surveying the ruins in the city, you may imagine
 
 188 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [CH. VIII. 
 
 that I walked back in some anxiety to the Mission 
 House. On reaching a point where I thought I 
 could have seen it, my worst fears seemed to be 
 confirmed, but as I walked on a few steps our 
 lofty cross emerged from behind a house, and 
 I knew that all was safe. Indeed, our well- 
 built, iron-beamed house had not received a single 
 crack, and this in spite of the fact that it is the 
 highest building in this part of the city. Well 
 may we thank God for its preservation and our 
 own ! 
 
 " Those who have not been in an earthquake 
 can hardly imagine the utter feeling of helplessness 
 which comes over one at the time. There is 
 absolutely nothing to be done except get out of 
 the way of falling buildings, and wait till it is over. 
 I can fancy it leading to the conversion of an 
 atheist, for the man who has least trust in God 
 cannot help feeling at such a time that there is 
 none else to trust in. The Hindus fully appreciate 
 the religious aspect of such a" calamity. Unfor- 
 tunately the gods they call upon then are those 
 which they have been accustomed to call upon at 
 other times. Still, one cannot but hope that it 
 has brought home the solemnity of life to some 
 of us, and made us feel that we are not able ' to 
 make one hair white or black.' Anything which
 
 1897.] TWO ACTS OF HEROISM. 189 
 
 deepens the sense of responsibility must in the 
 end tell in favour of the true religion. 
 
 " Two instances of real heroism in connection with 
 the earthquake must not pass unnoticed. One was 
 that of the nurses at the hospitals, who, when the 
 buildings were rocking to and fro and were ex- 
 pected every moment to fall, stood by the patients 
 who were unable to leave their beds, encouraging 
 them and cheering them at the risk of their own 
 lives. The Eurasians are often spoken of as a 
 poor race, but we think the heroism of these 
 Eurasian women should not be forgotten. ' I am 
 so sorry I was not in the hospital myself at the 
 time,' was the comment of the Sister who told us 
 of this incident. The other was that of one of 
 the Clewer Sisters, in charge of the European 
 orphanage. All the girls had rushed out ; but 
 when they collected in the compound, it was found 
 that one of the teachers was absent, whereupon 
 the brave little Sister ran up all the way to the 
 top of the house, three storeys, amidst the crashing 
 of walls and timber, to look for her, only to find 
 that she had slipped out by another way. That, 
 it seems to us, was a deed that deserved the V.C." 
 
 The occasion of the riots which took place later 
 in the year, in which Mr. Nanson and Mr. Conway 
 were both injured, though fortunately not seriously
 
 190 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 so, was the decision of the courts against a man 
 who had squatted on some land which did not 
 belong to him and on which he had built a little 
 shed, which he called a mosque. The claim was 
 as bad in Mohammedan as it was in English law, 
 which was afterwards acknowledged by the leaders of 
 the Mohammedan community in Calcutta. Never- 
 theless, the masses of Mohammedans, who are 
 always excited by any religious question, became 
 roused, and there is much evidence to show that 
 the excitement was studiously fanned by a low class 
 of Mullahs, who are in immediate contact with 
 the people. The word went forth that no Hindu 
 was to be attacked, only Europeans and Christians, 
 and this in spite of the fact that the owner of 
 the land in question was a Hindu. Consequently, 
 at all street corners stood men with clubs and 
 stones, vowing that no European should pass that 
 way without receiving hurt. There is, however, no 
 proof that they meant deliberate murder ; probably 
 they did not wish to do more than was necessary 
 to intimidate the authorities, though of course no 
 one could foresee where things would stop when 
 once they began. Of what followed with regard 
 to the attack on Mr. Conway and Mr. Nanson 
 we will let Mr. Brown speak. 
 
 " On the evening of the first day a message
 
 1897.] THE CALCUTTA RIOTS. Ipl 
 
 was brought that Conway had been attacked and 
 left for dead in the street. We went out at once 
 to the place, about a mile from the Mission House, 
 and there could only learn that he had been seen 
 to be hit on the head and several other places with 
 stones. Our next visit was to the neighbouring 
 hospital, and we found our first grain of comfort 
 when we learnt from the Sister in charge that nothing 
 had been seen of him there. We then went back 
 to the Mission House, passing a second time through 
 the rioters, who for some reason or other did not 
 attack us. Our hope that he might have got back 
 in our absence was disappointed, and we made our 
 way through the crowd a third time to look for 
 him at St. James's School ; and there at last we found 
 him, not much the worse except for a black eye, 
 where he had been hit by a stone, and a sprained 
 knee, which was the result of an old football accident, 
 and had given way again in the tumult. A brick, 
 which had been thrown down upon him from a 
 house, had been warded off by his large pith hat ; 
 otherwise he might not have lived to tell the tale. 
 We then got him into our carriage and drove back 
 to the Mission House, being able to avoid the 
 places of danger owing to the advice of a friendly 
 Bengali Babu. Meanwhile, Nanson, at Bishop's 
 College, four miles away, had heard a highly
 
 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [CH. VIII. 
 
 coloured account of Conway's accident, and drove 
 over at once with a friend, hoping either to rescue 
 him or to give us warning. They were in an open 
 dog-cart, and, as they reached the place where we 
 had passed only a few minutes before, they were 
 saluted with a shower of stones, and arrived at the 
 Mission House bleeding in one or two places, but 
 not seriously hurt. Going back, they fared worse, 
 and for nearly a mile had to run the gauntlet of a 
 mob throwing large stones as hard as they could 
 at the cart, the pony, and themselves. At the end 
 of this they were a mass of cuts and bruises, which 
 laid them up for some days, but fortunately no 
 vital part was injured. The general result of two 
 days' rioting was that some dozen or twenty 
 Europeans were more or less seriously hurt, but 
 none killed. How many of the rioters were killed 
 will, I suppose, be never known. The officials were 
 judiciously reticent, and the bodies were so speedily 
 disposed of by their companions that probably those 
 who know most about it can only make a guess. 
 One estimate said seven persons, another fifteen 
 hundred. 
 
 " The worst effect of the whole has been the 
 bitter feeling it has left behind. The relation be- 
 tween natives and Europeans is never of the best, 
 and anything which serves to embitter it is a
 
 1898.] PAX BRITANNICA. 193 
 
 calamity to both. As for ourselves, I don't think 
 we have much to complain of. We scarcely realise 
 how much we owe to the protection of the English 
 Government except when that protection is for a 
 moment suspended. Missionaries in China and 
 some parts of Africa are face to face with death 
 every day of their lives. We, on the contrary, have 
 enjoyed the benefits of the Pax Britannica for 
 every day but two since the Mission was started. 
 Whether this state of things is as good for the 
 spiritual interests of our work and of ourselves as 
 a more precarious condition might be I can hardly 
 say ; certain it is that in temporal matters we could 
 scarcely be better off than we are." 
 
 However that may be, we who watch the work 
 of the Mission here in England cannot but pray 
 that the political and temporal course of events in 
 India may be so ordered in God's providence that 
 the Church may be enabled to continue her work 
 there in quietness and peace. 
 
 We have now reached the record of last year 
 (1898), and it is too soon to say what has been the 
 result of the year as a whole on the work of the 
 Mission. But from all accounts which have reached 
 us, it is apparent that the work has not suffered from 
 the disturbances and the anxieties of which mention 
 has been made above, and that in every department 
 
 13
 
 194 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [CH. VIII. 
 
 there is solid and steady progress. The Rev. Charles 
 McLaughlan, of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham, 
 who went out to join the Mission at the end of 
 1897, was a welcome addition to the staff, though 
 unfortunately it proved no gain numerically, as 
 Mr. Campion w,as in the early part of this year 
 invalided home. 
 
 One other departure remains to be chronicled 
 namely that of Bishop Johnson, who for twenty-two 
 years, as Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of 
 India, has done so much for the organisation of 
 the Indian Church on true Catholic principles. This 
 is not the place to dwell upon that work as it 
 affected the Church at large, or on the great and 
 important changes which the Bishop brought about 
 in the twenty-two years of his episcopate. It is 
 of his relation to the Oxford Mission that we have 
 to speak. That relation could not have been 
 happier. It was in response to his call that the 
 Mission was founded. He has looked upon it as 
 his child from the first, and has been its steady 
 friend and wise counsellor through evil report and 
 through good report. No serious step has ever 
 been taken by the Mission without his advice and 
 approval. " Do nothing without the Bishop," has been 
 its consistent policy ; and it may safely be said 
 that there is no institution in the Diocese, which
 
 1898.] RESIGNATION OF THE METROPOLITAN. 195 
 
 has been more intimately associated with the 
 episcopate, which came to an end in 1898, than 
 the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, and no institution 
 which has greater cause to mourn its termination. 
 Nor was this association between the Bishop and 
 the Mission a merely general one. It was born 
 of the personal interest which he took in every 
 individual member of the real and unfailing 
 fatherly care and affection with which he watched 
 over, not only their work, but their health, and 
 with which he shared in all their joys and sorrows. 
 This called out on their part a loyal devotion and 
 a reverence and love which were deep and true, 
 and which have made every one who has worked 
 in the Mission feel that, whatever else they may 
 have gained, one thing at least of permanent value 
 has become theirs, " that they have known the 
 Bishop." 
 
 Almost his last act before leaving Calcutta for 
 good was to pay a visit to the hostel, an account 
 of which we will give in an extract from a letter 
 of one of the members of the Mission who was 
 present : 
 
 " This (May loth) has been a sad day for 
 us. We have just been down to the river to 
 say good-bye to our dear Bishop, who sailed for 
 England this summer. Last Saturday he most
 
 196 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 kindly came to pay us a farewell visit at the hostel. 
 We were all there, of course. Soon after he arrived, 
 and before we could finish tea, which we had on 
 the roof, a heavy thunderstorm came on, so the 
 Bishop suggested that we should retire into our 
 little chapel and sing evensong. This we accord- 
 ingly did, and afterwards the Bishop gave us his 
 blessing. As he was getting into his carriage to 
 go away he said he should often think of that 
 ' dear little service on the roof.' It is quite certain 
 that we shall also. His going away leaves a very 
 large blank space ; how it is to be filled up we 
 cannot at present imagine. He has been like a 
 father to every one of us, as you know. He has 
 left us a big photograph of himself, framed for 
 the library, the leather medicine-case he had when 
 he first came out to India, and the old umbrella (!) 
 which he brought with him on Saturday. And 
 he has taken away with him to England a somewhat 
 large portion of the heart of each of us. It sounds 
 as though he had the better of the bargain ; but 
 perhaps that is not true, for we have, in addition 
 to the three presents, the remembrance of all that 
 he has been to us, and the inspiring influence of 
 the example of his life." 
 
 It is perhaps appropriate that this sketch of the 
 Oxford Mission should close with the episcopate
 
 1898.] THE MISSION IN 1 88 1 AND TO-DAY. 197 
 
 of Bishop Johnson, who under God called it into 
 being. Seventeen years is not a long time in the 
 life of an individual, it is still less in the life of an 
 institution ; and yet as we look back over those 
 seventeen years what a great work has been done ! 
 Compare the Oxford Mission as it began its work 
 in 1 88 1 and as it presents itself to us to-day. It 
 started in a hired house, with a staff of three priests, 
 strange to the work, to the language, to the country, 
 and to the people ; it has to-day a magnificent 
 house of its own, standing in the very centre of the 
 native and student quarter of the city, with a staff 
 of nine priests l and two laymen, numbering among 
 them men who have gained not only an intimate 
 knowledge of the chief missionary problems with 
 which the Church has to deal in Bengal, but also 
 a close and deep sympathy with the people among 
 whom they work, and a real grasp of the many 
 religious and philosophical problems which are 
 presented by modern Hinduism. 
 
 They have, again, gathered round them a large 
 and increasing band of loyal and devoted Bengali 
 priests, catechists, and schoolmasters, as well as 
 scholars and students ; not " agents," as some 
 
 1 This number, alas ! has through the recent appointment of 
 Mr. Whitehead to the See of Madras, the return of Mr. 
 McLaughlin to England, and the illness of Mr. Conway, been 
 practically reduced to six.
 
 198 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 missionary bodies so mistakenly term them, but 
 fellow-workers in the highest and truest sense, men 
 knit to the Mission and the college by the closest 
 ties of common worship, common sympathy and 
 aim, and common love. Through them and with 
 them the Oxford Mission has enormously raised 
 the standard of spiritual life among the native 
 Christian congregations in Calcutta. This alone 
 would have justified its existence when it is 
 remembered that, in the opinion of all competent 
 observers, the conversion of India as a whole will 
 depend much more upon the native ministry than 
 upon European missions ; though these for a long 
 time will be absolutely necessary to support and 
 organise the work of the native Church. They have, 
 further, established a complete system of educa- 
 tion, starting from the primitive village schools 
 in the country districts and mounting by succes- 
 sive and connected steps through the Industrial 
 School on the one hand to the higher branches 
 of the mechanical trades, and through the High 
 School on the other to the degrees of the Calcutta 
 University : while they have, in connection with 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, their 
 own boarding-schools, their college for resident 
 students, their theological class, all of which are 
 entirely filled with native Christians, and for the
 
 1898.] WHAT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED. 199 
 
 most part are housed in ample and well-equipped 
 buildings. 
 
 In the districts of the Sunderbans and Barisal 
 they have revived large missions which had been 
 only partially cared for, or altogether neglected, 
 and by persevering labour and firm discipline, and 
 above all by the faithful teaching of the full Catholic 
 Faith, have brought back real Church life to the 
 congregations under their care a life which is 
 showing itself in continuous growth. By their 
 lectures at the Mission House and by individual 
 intercourse they have year by year been patiently 
 preparing the ground and sowing the seed which, if 
 as yet it has not borne fruit in any large number 
 of conversions, has, it is acknowledged on all sides, 
 had a real influence upon the native society. In 
 the Epiphany they have made a paper by means 
 of which they reach a far wider circle than by 
 either lectures or interviews a paper which has 
 not only an acknowledged position in the eyes 
 of the European and native press of Calcutta, but 
 which is read in many other parts of India, and 
 which is appreciated by friend and foe alike for its 
 ability, its courtesy, and the courage and fairness 
 with which it deals with every question submitted 
 to it. In the hostel they have solved a problem 
 which has baffled the Government and the University
 
 200 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 of Calcutta ; and they have provided an object 
 lesson as to how the present lamentable condition 
 of the Calcutta students can be improved, as well 
 as creating an instrument for missionary work the 
 promise of which each year becomes more sure. 
 Lastly, we venture to say, and we think that many 
 in India would support us in saying it, that by 
 their life and devotion, their earnestness and zeal, 
 their theological and general intellectual ability, and 
 not least by their unswerving loyalty to Catholic 
 Faith and discipline, they have had no small influ- 
 ence on the development and deepening of the life 
 of the Church in India as a whole. 
 
 This we claim is a record of work of which 
 
 v 
 
 even the University of Oxford, with its immemorial 
 traditions and its splendid services to the Faith, 
 may well be proud. For the Oxford Mission, be 
 it remembered, if not officially, yet definitely and 
 distinctly represents Oxford to India. Through 
 it the University of Oxford ministers of her in- 
 tellectual and spiritual wealth to the deep poverty 
 of the University of Calcutta. 
 
 Through the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, and 
 through that heroic and splendid enterprise, the 
 Universities' Mission to Central Africa, Oxford is 
 pledged to pay her debt to two great continents. 
 Is that responsibility in any adequate sense
 
 SOURCES OF INFLUENCE. 2OI 
 
 realised ? Is that pledge in any adequate degree 
 being redeemed ? Can we think so when year after 
 year from both Missions comes the pleading cry, 
 often in vain, for more men a cry which comes 
 from hearts saddened by seeing opportunities lost 
 which only lack of numbers prevents them from 
 accepting. 
 
 We have spoken of the position which the Oxford 
 Mission holds in Calcutta and of its influence upon 
 the native society. To what, it may be asked, is 
 this influence to be chiefly attributed ? Not, we 
 feel sure, only or chiefly, to intellectual ability, 
 though the Mission contains, and always has con- 
 tained, men of the highest intellectual culture. Nor 
 again do we think that it is due to the fact that 
 they live under a definite if simple form of the 
 religious life though such a life has a great attrac- 
 tion for the Hindu, whose whole mind and nature 
 is profoundly religious. Nor once again is it because 
 they have spoken smooth things of the religious 
 and moral aspects of modern Hinduism ; for they 
 have never hesitated to speak their mind plainly 
 and openly about it. These things, not excluding 
 the last for the power of truthfulness is great even 
 when it goes against age-long conviction have no 
 doubt done much ; but what has given them their 
 real strength has been that from the first they have
 
 202 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [CH. VIII. 
 
 shown sympathy to those among whom they have 
 come to live. It is known now that every Bengali, 
 be he high caste or low caste, be he rich or poor, 
 will find a welcome at the Mission House, will be 
 received with courtesy and consideration, and will 
 always be sure of a sympathetic and patient 
 hearing. 
 
 The Mission has not fallen into the mistake of 
 thinking that the Bengali Babu is a paragon of 
 virtue, or is competent to be entrusted with all 
 and every form of political responsibility and power. 
 They have gauged his character much more truly. 
 But in forming their estimate of him they have 
 remembered his past history how he has ever been 
 the conquered and not the conqueror how in 
 order to maintain his own he has had to live by 
 his wits and how, as a result, flattery, deception, 
 dishonesty have been his training for centuries. 
 They have realised again that what he is to-day 
 half-educated, with all the faults which imperfect 
 education brings with it, without any definite belief, 
 and with the weakening of social and moral restraints 
 which comes from the breaking up of the old before 
 it is replaced by the new is largely the result 
 of circumstances outside his own control, and which 
 have been in a measure forced upon him forced 
 upon him by ourselves, who are now his severest
 
 OUR RESPONSIBILITY. 203 
 
 critics. For it is to the present system of education, 
 which has been created by the English Government, 
 that the Calcutta Babu owes his existence. This 
 fact alone lays upon England an enormous responsi- 
 bility towards the educated classes of India. 
 
 What has been and is the result of this system on 
 the young educated Bengali we have already shown. 
 It has engaged the anxious attention not only of 
 missionaries, but of every thoughtful administrator 
 in the Indian Government. Whatever the remedies 
 may be which may avert what is at present rapidly 
 becoming a moral disaster, this at least is certain, 
 that there is one essential qualification for all who 
 would successfully touch the problem, and that is 
 sympathy, and not merely criticism. It is just this 
 which in our mind makes the outlook, not only as 
 regards the educated native classes in Calcutta, but 
 as regards our relation to the whole people of India, 
 so anxious. 
 
 No one, we think, can have any real knowledge 
 of India without a deep sense of the splendid work 
 which is being done by the great Indian Civil 
 Service, the finest service, we venture to say, which 
 the world has ever seen. This work is recognised 
 by the Indian people ; they thoroughly appreciate 
 the benefit of our rule ; they are bound to us by 
 self-interest ; they would support us against any
 
 204 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 foreign invader ; but and the fact was admitted by 
 Lord Dufferin himself, than whom few have known 
 India better the people do not like us. The reason 
 is that with all our real desire to do what is right 
 towards them, with all our real wish and continuous 
 effort to benefit them, we have not shown sympathy. 
 As a rule the average Anglo-Indian treats the 
 native with a discourtesy, we had almost said a 
 rudeness, which, though it is never openly resented, 
 rankles in their heart. In the opinion of those 
 who have known India longest, the separation 
 between the two societies, English and Indian, grows 
 wider instead of narrower. There are, there must 
 be, many difficulties. There is always the under- 
 lying difficulty which comes from the relation of a 
 conquered people to its conquerors. There are, again, 
 all the difficulties which arise from differences of 
 creed and social customs, and from the enormous 
 dissimilarity between the mental attitude of the East 
 and of the West, the very virtues of the one race 
 appearing as irritating and annoying qualities in the 
 eyes of the other. 
 
 The increasing facilities, again, of intercourse 
 between England and India which might at first 
 sight seem to ensure a better understanding 
 between the two peoples are probaby producing 
 the exactly opposite result. Englishmen do not
 
 NEED OF SYMPATHY. 2O$ 
 
 live in India as they used to do. It is no longer, 
 as it once was, practically their home for thirty or 
 forty years. It is much more now their place of 
 business, from which they get away on every 
 available opportunity and as often as they can. 
 This is natural, and we cannot blame them. 
 Again, the exigencies of modern government 
 and the introduction of railways have led to a 
 much more continuous and rapid movement of 
 the government officials from one district to 
 another than in former days ; so that the close, 
 intimate, almost paternal relations which used 
 to exist between the rulers and the ruled, each 
 year tend to become less close and less personal. 
 No doubt in many ways the Anglo-Indian 
 has changed for the better, but the fact remains 
 that he is not so near to the people as he 
 formerly was. 
 
 It is this nearness, born of personal sympathy, 
 which has been a source of real power of the 
 Oxford Mission. Surely this is worth a great 
 deal, and is a matter which concerns not only the 
 missionary, but every Englishman ; for, after all, 
 the only strong foundation on which any rule can 
 permanently rest is that which is laid on the hearts 
 of the people. We do not minimise the difficulties ; 
 but the old saying still holds true, " Noblesse
 
 206 ANNUS INFAUSTUS. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 oblige" It is because in virtue of our Christian 
 Faith, in virtue of our past heritage, which has 
 made us what we are, we are the greater nation, 
 that we are bound by the very sense of our own 
 greatness to be patient, forbearing, and sympathetic 
 towards those over whom we rule.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONVERTS. 
 
 "a touch divine 
 
 And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod ; 
 Visibly through His garden -walketh God" 
 
 T T will probably have been noticed that in tracing 
 * the history of the Mission no mention has 
 been made of any conversions to Christianity from 
 among the students. This omission we have made 
 purposely, because it seemed best to put together in 
 one place what we desire to say upon this subject. 
 
 We will at the outset frankly admit that the 
 number of actual students who have been baptised 
 has been very few. But to any one who under- 
 stands the conditions of the work in Calcutta this 
 is neither surprising nor discouraging. 
 
 There is in the mind of many people at home 
 an impatience at what appears to them an undue 
 slowness in the result of foreign missionary work, 
 though, considering the miserably inadequate and 
 languid way in which the Church of England 
 
 missions are supported both as regards men and 
 
 207
 
 208 CONVERTS. [CH. IX, 
 
 money, the surprise is, not that they should seem 
 to do so little, but that they should achieve 
 anything at all. As a matter of fact, however, 
 Christianity is spreading in India at a far quicker 
 ratio as regards the population than it spread in 
 Europe in the early days of the Church. It must 
 be remembered also that any really systematic effort 
 at missionary work on the part of the Church 
 in India is scarcely one hundred years old it 
 would be truer to say, scarcely fifty or sixty years 
 old. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is, we believe, 
 also true to say that, to a certain extent, there 
 have been too many baptisms in India, instead 
 of too few. We are learning wiser ways now ; 
 but there was a time when it was thought right 
 for a missionary to preach for a few days in a 
 village, baptise any who would accept baptism on 
 the spot, and then leave the newly converted without 
 any instruction or any Christian support for five 
 or six months or longer. The result naturally 
 was that they relapsed into practical heathenism, 
 if indeed they had ever been really converted from 
 it. The work of conversion, if it is to last, cannot 
 be accomplished in that rough-and-ready fashion ; it 
 is a plant the soil for which needs much preparation, 
 and the after-growth long and anxious care. 
 
 Again, the difficulties connected with conversions
 
 A REVIVAL OF HINDUISM. 2OQ 
 
 to Christianity vary very greatly in different parts 
 of India and among the different peoples ; the 
 aboriginal tribes, for example, being far more open 
 to conviction than the races which have entered 
 India later. Again, the simple country people 
 are easier to deal with than the educated classes, 
 among whom at present there appear to be very 
 special difficulties which oppose the acceptance 
 of the Faith. 
 
 Though it may be only transitory, there does, for 
 example, seem in the last few years to have been 
 a distinct attempt to revive philosophic Hinduism. 
 That strange conglomerate known as the Chicago 
 Parliament of Religions undoubtedly did much, if 
 not to rekindle belief in Hinduism in the minds 
 of the students of Calcutta, at least to feed their 
 religious pride. The reports of the reception 
 accorded in America to their representative, the 
 Swami Vivekananda, was at the time in every 
 student's mouth. Hinduism, they said, was going 
 to convert the West, forgetful for the moment of 
 the fact that a Hindu can only be born, he cannot 
 become one by conversion from another faith. 
 
 When the Swami returned to Calcutta he was 
 given a most enthusiastic reception, and became 
 for the time a sort of Defender of the Faith. The 
 addresses which he gave on his return served as
 
 210 CONVERTS. [Cn. IX. 
 
 the subject of a critical lecture which was given 
 by Mr. Whitehead at the Mission House to a 
 crowded audience. As a rule the Bengali student 
 will listen with an apparent apathy which is at 
 times one of the trials of lecturing ; but on this 
 occasion so stirred were they that something like 
 a riot seemed for a few minutes to be imminent, 
 and an excited demonstration in support of 
 Vivekananda took place. Even this, hostile as it 
 was, was preferable to the usual tone of absolute 
 indifference to religious conviction of any kind which 
 so largely prevails among the educated young men 
 in Calcutta at the present time. For the revival 
 of which we have been speaking is not a revival 
 of belief, but a kind of pride in the Hindu religion 
 as a national thing, and an organised effort to resist 
 any weakening of its social laws. 
 
 Side by side with this exists at present another 
 difficulty namely, an increasing hostility to what 
 is European and English among the educated 
 classes. Whatever seriously affects the tone and 
 attitude of these classes towards the English has a 
 direct bearing on missionary work. For Christianity 
 and the English Government are very closely bound 
 up together in the minds of the people, even of the 
 educated people, and therefore a growing hostility 
 to the English means also a growing hostility to
 
 NEED OF A HIGHER EDUCATION. 211 
 
 Christianity. Many of the political events of the 
 last few years have, again, accentuated this hostile 
 feeling. To give a single example, it is probable 
 that the sympathy with Tilak, an editor of a 
 Bombay paper who was recently imprisoned for 
 sedition, is almost universal and that he is every- 
 where looked upon as a martyr. 
 
 A third difficulty springs from the present low 
 standard of education. What is wanted in India, 
 both from a political and religious point of view, 
 is a sounder and higher education. It is not the 
 high, but the low standard of education which is 
 the danger. A higher education and more accurate 
 habits of thought would soon render impossible 
 the attempted revival of Hinduism, and compel 
 educated men to face the questions raised by the 
 contradictions of Hindu philosophy and the absurdi- 
 ties of Hindu mythology. At present an educated 
 Hindu does not seriously consider what he believes 
 and why he believes it. He is content with a 
 vague adhesion to a conglomerate of contradictory 
 beliefs ; and one reason why he is content with 
 it is because he is not trained to think deeply and 
 probe questions to the bottom. His education trains 
 him to move upon the surface of things ; and so 
 he does not feel the need of a thorough enquiry 
 into first principles.
 
 212 CONVERTS. [CH. IX. 
 
 Writing in the report of the Mission in 1897, and 
 speaking of the effect of missionary work at present 
 among the educated classes, Mr. Whitehead wrote 
 as follows : 
 
 " There may be, and probably is, a great deal 
 going on beneath the surface which it is impossible 
 for us to know ; but so far as outward appearances 
 go it cannot be said that the general body of 
 educated Hindus are any nearer to Christianity 
 now than they appear to have been thirty or forty 
 years ago. Individuals, no doubt, here and there, 
 are being drawn to Christ, and there is certainly 
 'a remnant,' both in Calcutta and elsewhere, with 
 regard to whom there is every reason for hopeful- 
 ness. But there are scarcely any signs as yet that 
 the educated classes, as a whole, are moving in 
 the direction of Christianity. In many respects 
 they seem to be moving away from it. Political 
 causes have recently produced a more decided 
 antagonism to the English Government, and this 
 has naturally intensified the prejudice against 
 Christianity as the religion of the English. And 
 at the same time the influence of Western education 
 has been so far decidedly in the direction of 
 indifferentism. One marked characteristic of the 
 University students of India, as a body, is their 
 indifference to truth. All subjects ^are studied
 
 INDIFFERENCE TO TRUTH. 213 
 
 simply with the object of scoring marks at examina- 
 tions, and there is absolutely none of that movement 
 of thought and eager desire for truth that has been 
 characteristic of Western Universities from mediaeval 
 times. This is no doubt partly due to the fact 
 that Western modes of thought are unfamiliar to 
 the student, and a foreign language tends to cramp 
 his mind. But whatever the causes, the result is 
 disastrous to the moral earnestness of the students 
 as a class. They come to look upon truth as a 
 thing of no intrinsic importance, and to regard 
 contradictory systems of philosophy or religion as 
 equally useful to the examinee. Hence there is 
 much curiosity in Calcutta, but little desire for 
 what is true. And in such a society we must not 
 look for speedy results. It may be that in God's 
 providence it is necessary that this class should sink 
 yet deeper into the slough of unbelief, and experience 
 its bitter fruits in their moral and social life, before 
 it is possible for them to turn to their God and 
 Saviour. Meanwhile, we can only go on preaching 
 to them the truth, and pray for their conversion, 
 and feel thankful if we are allowed by any means 
 to save some." 
 
 But apart from these more general influences 
 which hinder at present the conversion of any large 
 number of students, it has always to be remembered
 
 214 CONVERTS. [CH. IX. 
 
 that every student who becomes a Christian does so 
 at an enormous personal sacrifice and often at the 
 risk of very real persecution. It is perhaps scarcely 
 realised what it means to a student when he asks 
 to be baptised, or the lengths to which at times 
 Hindu parents will go to prevent their sons accept- 
 ing Christianity. The present writer has known 
 a case of a parent giving his son money to be used 
 for immoral purposes in order that his sins might 
 prevent his baptism. Cases have been known in 
 which parents have drugged their sons and practically 
 made them idiots for the same purpose. It is not 
 infrequent for a mother to threaten to take her 
 own life if her child brings, as she considers, such 
 disgrace upon the family as that of becoming 
 a Christian. At the baptism of a married man 
 which took place at the Mission just before the 
 present writer arrived in Calcutta, his mother-in- 
 law did actually poison herself on the morning 
 of his baptism. 
 
 But short of these extreme acts, which, however, 
 are far from uncommon, a lad who wishes to become 
 a Christian knows that from the moment of his 
 baptism, as a rule, his home will be for ever 
 closed to him ; none of his relations or friends will 
 meet him or speak to him, or if they meet him will 
 speak to him only to taunt him with the disgrace
 
 WHAT A CONVERT HAS TO FACE. 
 
 which he has brought upon them and upon his 
 country. If he has any property it will be taken 
 from him ; if he is married and many of the 
 students are married men his wife and children 
 will probably leave him. He will have to part 
 with all that is familiar and known and dear to 
 him, and to cast in his lot among men of another 
 race and other modes of life and thought perhaps 
 among those who will rejoice over his conversion, 
 but who will think little of showing him any warmth 
 of brotherly love, or of giving him any real sub- 
 stitute for the traditions and affections of a lifetime 
 which he has given up. If we try to think what 
 this really means by translating it into the expe- 
 rience of our own life, and picturing ourselves face 
 to face with the same consequences, we may perhaps 
 understand what must be the moral and spiritual 
 effort required of a Calcutta student of one, not, 
 like ourselves, trained to act independently and to 
 take his own line, but accustomed from earliest 
 infancy to think of himself only as one of a family 
 and of a caste, and whose moral fibre, whose very 
 sense of personality has been sapped and weakened 
 by ages of inherited Pantheism. And yet from 
 time to time, at the rate at present of about one 
 or two a year, students do come forward to make a 
 public profession of the Christian Faith.
 
 2l6 CONVERTS. [CH. IX. 
 
 To give a picture, which is but a sample of 
 almost every case with which the Mission has 
 had to deal, we will quote the account given by 
 Mr. Strong of the baptism of a student in 1896 : 
 
 " There is some good news to tell, for another 
 of those events has happened which are to us as 
 flashes of lightning on a dark night sudden gleams 
 which illuminate our way, and show us for a moment 
 what this land will be like when the Light has fully 
 risen upon it. A student who had come regularly 
 to the hostel to read the Bible for nearly two years 
 was convinced of the truth of Christianity ; but, 
 like so many more, had not hitherto been brave 
 enough to profess before his relations his belief and 
 his desire for baptism. He felt that if he did so 
 his mother, of whom he was very fond, would 
 perhaps die of grief, and would certainly be almost 
 heart-broken. But a few weeks ago he had an 
 illness, and in the course of it he made a solemn 
 promise to God that he would be prepared definitely 
 for baptism when he got well. For some time 
 afterwards, however, he could not bear to face the 
 consequences, and put it off. At last, one Sunday 
 afternoon, when he was at the Mission House, he 
 determined to hesitate no longer, but to stay here 
 and write to his mother, to let her know why he 
 had done so. He did this, and the next day
 
 THE BAPTISM OF A STUDENT. 
 
 his eldest brother came in great distress to say 
 that his mother was going mad. He stayed where 
 he was, however, and soon afterwards his mother 
 herself came with her sons. Then ensued a scene 
 which we shall probably never forget. His mother 
 clung to him, howling and moaning in the strange 
 Indian way, for more than two hours, imploring 
 him to go back with her and not break her heart 
 His eldest brother also did all he could to per- 
 suade him to go. Elderly Babus from neighbouring 
 houses shouted to him not to be so foolish and 
 so cruel. An excited crowd collected at the gate, 
 awaiting the issue. And there he stood a member 
 of a race despised by most men for its weakness 
 allowing his mother to cling to him, knowing 
 that he was probably breaking her heart, feeling 
 that his fellow-countrymen all round would despise 
 and hate him, assured that he was giving up 
 all his worldly prospects, and yet able, through 
 God's grace, to keep to his resolution ! We all 
 felt it to be a time of intense struggle, but it ended 
 at last. His brother, seeing there was no hope 
 of moving him, took his mother away. He was 
 baptised the next day, and is now at Bishop's 
 College. I have written so much about this one 
 event because it illustrates so well the kind of 
 things which have to happen before Babus can
 
 2l8 CONVERTS. [Cn. IX. 
 
 become disciples of Christ. It shows, what it is not 
 so easy to realise in England, what great miracles 
 conversions are ; and it may therefore, I think, 
 help some of those who pray for us and our work 
 to offer up more of those earnest intercessions in 
 answer to which such miracles happen, and without 
 which they do not." 
 
 But the work of the Oxford Mission is not to 
 be gauged by the number of converts. These, as 
 we have tried to show, will probably at present 
 be very few ; but that fact need not necessarily 
 discourage us. There is a vast amount of work 
 to be done which does not appear on the surface, 
 but which is absolutely necessary as a foundation 
 on which the future Church of India is to be built. 
 All who know India agree in thinking that when 
 the time is ripe the conversion of India will take 
 place very rapidly, and there will be sudden and 
 large accessions to the Church. Then it will be 
 shown whether the Church in India has been 
 preparing herself for it. It is agreed on all hands 
 that great changes are taking place in that country. 
 Much that a few years ago seemed so permanent 
 and stable in the religious and social condition of 
 the people is breaking up. Western education 
 is destroying the old beliefs ; railways and other 
 results of Western civilisation are dealing hard blows
 
 THE OUTLOOK. 219 
 
 at the system of caste. Ten years ago Mr. Brown, 
 speaking at a meeting of the Oxford Mission in 
 London, said : 
 
 " We hear a great deal about the break-up of 
 Hinduism under the light of modern education, 
 and it is perfectly true that there is a very great 
 movement just now, and that we are passing through 
 a transition time. Many of the Hindus have adopted 
 ideas and imported infidel books from Europe, and 
 repeat glibly the phrases found in those books ; and 
 yet I am sure that they are a race whose long 
 tradition of centuries will never allow to become 
 an irreligious race. There will come, in a genera- 
 tion or two, a time of settling down, a time 
 which will be a settling down of India to some 
 form or other of religion ; and I do feel it depends 
 almost entirely upon the work which is being done 
 now whether, when that settling down comes, they 
 will become Christians or relapse into some form 
 of Hinduism. When I suffer myself at all to look 
 forward to the future with fear, the fear which most 
 occurs to me is the danger that Hinduism, with 
 that marvellous adaptability which it has shown to 
 circumstances in times past, may again absorb all 
 the elements of novelty and change which are now 
 floating in the air, and so modify itself that people 
 shall be able to accept it, at any rate as a social
 
 220 CONVERTS. [Cn. IX 
 
 system, even in spite of the new ideas which have 
 been flooding in upon them. And though that is 
 what in times of despondency I fear, it is also a 
 constant source of exhilaration and defence against 
 permanent despondency, because it makes one feel 
 that the work which one is doing now is foundation 
 work, that it must tell, if it is faithfully done, upon 
 the future, and that whatever is done now, however 
 little its results may appear upon the surface, is 
 needful, if the future is ever to show us the Christian 
 Church in India." 
 
 These words are as true to-day as they were 
 ten years ago. That great and silent revolution 
 in thought, in faith, in custom, which is going on 
 so steadily in India will one day make itself 
 articulate ; one after another the peoples of India 
 will have exhausted all those substitutes for God 
 wherewith men in their ignorance seek to satisfy 
 the needs of the human soul, and at last they will 
 cry for Him who alone can give them peace. It 
 is madness to say we will wait till the time comes, 
 and then make the effort to meet its demands. 
 When the crisis is upon us it will then be too late. 
 Now is the time to act ; now is the time to prepare 
 and equip our spiritual forces ; now is the time to 
 pour in our money, not in shillings and pence, but 
 in amounts proportionate to the needs, and to send
 
 THE CHURCH'S DUTY. 221 
 
 out men, not in ones and twos, but in hundreds ; 
 so that when the day arrives there may be the 
 Church, ready to minister to the spiritual hunger of 
 the vast multitudes which will look towards her ; 
 ready with the full teaching of the Christian Faith 
 which alone can satisfy the human intellect ; with all 
 the wealth of sacramental grace which alone can 
 supply true moral force ; with her ancient discipline, 
 her chastened yet splendid worship, her complete 
 organisation in the threefold ministry. Thus and 
 thus only shall we be able to pay our debt to 
 India ; thus and thus only shall we be able to 
 welcome into the Heavenly City the peoples of that 
 great land as they at last seek to bring their glory 
 into it, and to become fellow-citizens with the saints 
 and of the household of God.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HINDUISM AS IT IS. 1 
 
 "Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why, 
 For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel ' I am I ' ? 
 Glory about thee, without thee : and thou fulfillest thy doom, 
 Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom" 
 
 A NY history of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta 
 ** would be incomplete without some account, 
 however inadequate, of the present state of Hindu 
 religious thought as it is met with among the 
 educated classes. The present writer cannot do 
 more than put together very briefly an outline 
 of some aspects of modern Hinduism as they 
 presented themselves to him while he was in 
 Calcutta. But he does so in the hope that 
 it may help the readers of this history to realise 
 the difficulty of the work among the educated 
 Hindus, and so allay that impatience with which 
 the progress of Indian missions is so often judged, 
 as well as to dissipate the illusions of those who 
 
 1 In the following chapter free use has been made of articles 
 which have been published in the Epiphany and in the Oxford 
 Mission Quarterly Papers. 
 
 222
 
 VAGUENESS OF HINDUISM. 223 
 
 may have accepted the somewhat common idea that 
 Hinduism is a religion which, though inferior to 
 Christianity, possesses a fairly practical moral power. 
 For a really luminous and masterly account of 
 modern Hinduism the writer wishes to refer to the 
 first and second series of Sir Alfred Lyall's Asiatic 
 Studies, and more especially to the admirable 
 discussion of the subject in the first chapter of the 
 second series. 
 
 I. THE EXTREME VAGUENESS OF HINDUISM. 
 
 The first point on which we wish to dwell is 
 the extreme vagueness of Hinduism. Whatever 
 differences there may be on many questions among 
 Christians, they can all accept the Apostles' Creed 
 as the formula of their faith. In that concise 
 and nervous statement is found the outline of the 
 Christian belief. But no such formulary of belief 
 exists among Hindus ; at least, repeated challenges 
 to Hindu gentlemen to produce any such formula 
 have always failed to elicit any reply. But a 
 statement as to what Hinduism is was evoked 
 from a leading native paper in Calcutta in the 
 early part of 1894. It was published under the 
 following circumstances. In April of that year 
 the Banga Bashi, a native newspaper, in giving 
 the account of the suicide of a child-widow aged
 
 224 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 eleven, concluded with the words, " // is her fate" 
 The Epiphany, in commenting on these words, 
 asked to be enlightened as to the meaning attached 
 to the word " fate " by orthodox Hindus. It was 
 in answer to this question that the paragraph 
 which follows was published in the Indian Nation. 
 This is the ablest and best conducted of the 
 native papers in Calcutta, and its editor is a 
 gentleman who has been in England and has had 
 the advantages of both an Eastern and Western 
 education. He is himself a Hindu, and therefore 
 speaks from within Hindu society and religious 
 thought. This is his account of Hinduism as it 
 now is : 
 
 " We shall not undertake to answer the last 
 question in any direct or definite form. 1 But from 
 all the expositions of Hinduism that we have 
 recently been reading we should be justified in 
 saying that Hinduism does not believe in a 
 Father, does not believe in a personal God at all, 
 does not believe in any God who is not the 
 substance of a universe coeval with Himself, does not 
 therefore believe in responsibility to a supreme Being, 
 does not believe in any conscious award of reward 
 and punishment. All that happens to a man in this 
 
 1 1*, the meaning attached by orthodox Hindus to the word 
 " fate."
 
 A DEFINITION OF HINDUISM, 225 
 
 world is only the consequence necessarily arising from 
 his actions in a previous life in this world ; his 
 actions in this present life will determine his lot in 
 his next birth, and so on, until by sinlessness he 
 becomes absorbed in the divine essence and so saved 
 from future births. What sin or sinlessness can mean 
 in such a system we shall not take upon ourselves 
 to answer. Man's life is a chain of necessities ; 
 divine operations are necessities also. God does 
 not will to create ; the universe, always existent 
 in Him, is unfolded by a necessity. Not being a 
 person, He lays down no moral law which it would 
 be a sin to disobey. Obedience and disobedience 
 have, in fact, no meaning, as man is not a free 
 agent. That seems to be the interpretation of 
 Hinduism now prevalent in Bengal. How far it 
 is correct we shall not seek to discuss. Those 
 who offer the interpretation are so confident in its 
 correctness that they would treat as idiots all who 
 differed from them. A correspondent who often 
 addresses us on Hinduism in an authoritative way 
 informed us the other day that creation, a personal 
 God and free will were indefensible doctrines and 
 impossible conceptions." J 
 
 Surely the words we have just quoted throw 
 a significant light on the condition of modern 
 1 The Indian Nation, April aoth, 1894. 
 
 IS
 
 226 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 Hinduism, and the more significant in that, as we 
 have said, it comes from one not without, but within, 
 the Hindu religion. We say " religion," but the 
 word is a misnomer, for what place can there be 
 for religion, in any real sense of the word, if the 
 God towards whom man's religion is directed is 
 not a personal Being ? 
 
 This utterance of the Indian Nation was suc- 
 ceeded in the following May by an article in the 
 same journal entitled " Protean Hinduism," in which 
 the writer shows how various are the forms in 
 which Hinduism is held by different teachers. And 
 herein lies one of the chief difficulties which a 
 missionary experiences in dealing with it. What 
 is it he has to attack ? Where is he to begin ? 
 How is he to deal with a religion which one of 
 its own supporters thus describes as being mostly 
 a series of negations? 
 
 But this is not all. Hinduism, as it meets us 
 to-day among the educated classes in Calcutta, 
 not only baffles attack from its extreme vagueness, 
 and the rapidity and ease with which it is ever 
 adapting itself to new forms, and discovering new 
 authorities in its sacred books to sanction the 
 ever increasing demands of Western civilisation 
 and Western education, but it has an added diffi- 
 culty in its apparent capacity for holding what
 
 A STATEMENT OF HINDU BELIEF. 227 
 
 to a Western mind appear to be bewildering 
 contradictions. 
 
 A few weeks after the issue of the extract from 
 the Indian Nation to which we have just referred, 
 the editor of the same paper had occasion to criticise 
 a speech made by the Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Bengal at a missionary meeting at Darjeeling, 
 in which criticism were the following words : 
 
 " Hinduism is more an affair of life than of 
 doctrine. The Hindu will not ordinarily be con- 
 vinced of the superiority of a religion which permits 
 the slaughter of kine for food and of men for 
 conquest. He believes in a religion which incul- 
 cates physical purity and asceticism, which makes 
 a sin of killing, and which permits of no flagging 
 of spiritual interests. A religion which extends its 
 sanction to war, butchery, and diplomacy will not 
 appear to him spiritual enough ; and games, sports, 
 dancing, and such other Western accomplishments 
 will strike him as unpardonable levity in a minister 
 of religion. His admiration is reserved for the 
 Yogi ; and he has no appreciation of the clergyman 
 who wins a bride by courtship and dines and drives 
 in state. He is an hourly witness of miracles, and 
 will not limit his faith to those few recorded in 
 one sacred book. He believes in the capacity of 
 prayer to bring down the divine influence to human
 
 228 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [CH. X. 
 
 souls and even to clay images. Religion is to him, if 
 it is to anybody, ^/^r-worldliness absolute, absorb- 
 ing, all-comprehending and not a mere regulation 
 of Afor-worldliness. Let the missionary therefore 
 well understand his customer before he sets about 
 his business. If he is prepared with a more 
 spiritual and less worldly ideal than the Hindu, 
 he may do something. But he certainly will not 
 do anything if, instead of forgetting distinctions 
 of colour, he emphasises them and gives to the 
 1 heathen,' newly admitted into light, another caste 
 in place of the one he 'was made to renounce." ' 
 
 We think that any one who reads this and the 
 former extract together will not think we have 
 been unjust in speaking of the capacity of the 
 Hindu mind for holding statements which are 
 mutually contradictory. And to substantiate our 
 charge still further we will quote a criticism made 
 in the Epiphany on these same two passages : 
 
 " If inability to grasp the primary law of thought, 
 that a thing cannot at the same time be and not 
 be, exhibits a convincing proof of ' spirituality,' then 
 certainly the ideal Hindu, as depicted by the Indian 
 Nation, may lay claim to the possession of that 
 quality in a very high degree. According to our 
 contemporary, the primary article of the Hindu's 
 1 The Indian Nation, June nth, 1894.
 
 ITS CONTRADICTIONS. 229 
 
 ' creed ' (if we may be allowed the expression) is 
 that ' God, not being a person, lays down no moral 
 law which it would be a sin to disobey,' and he 
 proceeds to act upon this belief by ' making a sin 
 of killing even kine for food or of men for con- 
 quest ' ; while his chief ceremonial expression of 
 it is prayer, which ' brings down the divine influence 
 to human souls and even to clay images ! ' If 
 the ' spiritual ' is really equivalent to the irrational, 
 we must wish Godspeed to materialism. 
 
 " Other contradictions are involved, which are not 
 expressed. The true Hindu, we are told, believes 
 in the sinfulness of ' war, butchery, and diplomacy ' ; 
 and a religion which extends its sanction to these 
 is intolerable to him. But the most sacred hymns 
 of his religion consist largely of prayers for victory 
 over enemies in battle, while its epics deal, like all 
 epics, with war and bloodshed, in which the gods 
 themselves take part. Nay, more, he believes the 
 warrior caste to have had a divine origin second 
 only to the priestly. As to diplomacy, we can 
 only wish that we met more Hindus who dis- 
 approved of it. 
 
 " Again, we are told that ' games, sports, dancing, 
 and such other Western accomplishments strike 
 him as unpardonable levity in a minister of religion.' 
 In this we may agree with him ; but it seems
 
 230 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 slightly odd, to say the least of it, that the most 
 popular of all the deities should be celebrated for 
 precisely such accomplishments as well as others 
 less innocent ; and we can only wish the Brahman 
 caste the chief ' ministers of religion ' indulged 
 in no worse diversions. 
 
 " Again, if ' spirituality ' and ' other-worldliness ' 
 are chiefly betokened by the asceticism which 
 delights in finding impurities in the use of material 
 things, and in legislating for these with greater 
 emphasis and elaboration than for grave moral 
 trespasses, we may concede that the Hindu out- 
 shines all others in the possession of these virtues 
 even the Pharisees, whose bondage to physical and 
 ceremonial ideas of impurity brought them into such 
 violent collision with the teaching of Christ. ' Other- 
 worldliness ' we should take to^mean such an absorp- 
 tion in spiritual things as lifts a man's mind above 
 these trivial distinctions, rather than the spirit which 
 exhibits itself in their multiplication ' touch not, 
 taste not, handle not' a legalism which could not 
 be better described than as ' a system of regulated 
 this-worldliness,' and an aggravated type of it. The 
 teachings of Christ and of St. Paul are certainly 
 most ' worldly ' and ' unspiritual ' from this point 
 of view." 
 
 In July of the same year the editor of the
 
 THE INDIAN NATION AND PANTHEISM. 
 
 231 
 
 Epiphany was again in controversy with the Indian 
 Nation on the question of the contradictoriness of 
 its statements as to the belief of Pantheists in a 
 personal God. The Indian Nation, in an indignant 
 article, accused the EpipJiany of misrepresenting its 
 meaning, and it was in vindication of his assertion 
 that the editor printed the following extracts from 
 the Indian Nation in parallel columns : 
 
 "Pantheism is objected to 
 by our contemporary for the 
 reason that Pantheists elimi- 
 nate from the conception of 
 what they call the ' divine ' the 
 idea of personality. We are 
 afraid the Epiphany has again 
 missed the mark of distinction 
 between Theism and Pan- 
 theism. Pantheism, as far as 
 we understand it, by no means 
 eliminates or discards the idea 
 of a personal God, but the 
 idea of a separate personal 
 God. To the Pantheist God 
 is personified by the universe 
 at large. The Theist may 
 think otherwise : to him God 
 may be a personality distinct 
 from the universe ; but whether 
 distinct from or personified by 
 the universe, there is the con- 
 ception of a divine personality 
 in both systems." Indian 
 Nation, November I3th, 1893. 
 
 " He must have heard of the 
 Pantheists. Do they believe 
 in a personal God ? And yet 
 have they not felt it permissible 
 to speak of a moral God and 
 a divine influence ? " Indian 
 Nation, July 2nd, 1894. 
 
 "Our contemporary asserts 
 that some time last year 
 we maintained vigorously the 
 position that Pantheists do 
 believe in a personal God. It 
 is the simple truth that we 
 never maintained any such 
 position, either last year or at 
 any other period of our exist- 
 ence, vigorously or otherwise. 
 . . . We never declared that 
 Pantheists do believe in a 
 personal God. . . . The 
 Epiphany, of all papers, should 
 have been the last to fight a 
 battle with weapons no better 
 than limping logic and per- 
 versions of fact." Indian 
 Nation, July 9, 1894.
 
 232 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 It would be difficult, one would have thought, 
 even for the ' ideal Hindu,' to blink the contradic- 
 tions here exhibited ; but all that it evoked from 
 the Indian Nation was an angry and scornful 
 article on the gross dulness of the Western intellect. 
 
 II. HINDUISM A SOCIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Let us turn now to another exponent of modern 
 Hinduism, Mr. Guru Prasad Sen. According to 
 Mr. G. P. Sen, Hinduism is not a religion, but a 
 social system. We are bound to confess that to 
 one living in Calcutta the social side of Hinduism 
 is much more prominent than the religious side. It 
 is not, for example, the breach of the moral law, but 
 the transgression of caste rules, which really touches 
 what, for want of another word, we must call the 
 conscience of a Hindu. To tell a lie is nothing ; 
 to eat with a foreigner, or with a Hindu of a 
 lower caste, is a heavy sin, for which a definite 
 and elaborate purification must be undergone. 
 Again, while the mass of students would not, 
 openly at any rate, contravene the laws of their 
 caste, prayer is practically unknown among them. 
 But let us listen to Mr. Guru Prasad Sen as he 
 explains Hinduism to us in " An Introduction to 
 the Study of Hinduism " which appeared as an 
 article in the Calcutta Review :
 
 HINDUISM A SOCIAL SYSTEM. 233 
 
 " Hinduism is not, and never has been, a religious 
 organisation. It is a purely social system, which 
 insists for those who are Hindus on the observance 
 of certain social forms, and not on the profession 
 of any particular religious beliefs. It has not 
 even a religious creed or a common set of beliefs, 
 nor has it for its guide a particular book, though 
 popularly the Vedas and Shastras are credited with 
 being the books of the Hindus. So far as religious 
 beliefs are concerned, Hinduism embraces within 
 its fold all phases of belief and even of unbelief, 
 from the extreme agnosticism of the Nasties and 
 Charbaks to the popular polytheistic creed of the 
 believers in the myriads of Hindu gods and goddesses. 
 The Hindu Shastras are, to use a Hindu metaphor, 
 a vast ocean, which, so far as religion is concerned, 
 the votary, like the Hindu gods of old, has only 
 to churn to find the nectar of truth which is 
 exactly suited to the light that is in him. It is 
 perfectly optional with a Hindu to choose from 
 any one of the different religious creeds with which 
 the Shastras abound ; he may choose to have a 
 faith and creed, if he wants a creed, or to do 
 without one. He may be an atheist, a deist, a 
 monotheist, or a polytheist, a believer in the Vedas 
 or Shastras, or a sceptic as regards their authority ; 
 and his position as a Hindu cannot be questioned
 
 234 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [CH. X. 
 
 by anybody because of his beliefs or unbeliefs so 
 long as he conforms to social rules." 
 
 III. HINDUISM AND SIN. 
 
 Once again let us question Hinduism as to 
 its teaching on the all-important and universal 
 fact of sin. In answer we will quote from a speech 
 made at the Chicago Parliament of Religions by 
 Babu N. N. Dutt, known as the Swami Vivekananda, 
 who was the representative of the Hindu religion 
 at that extraordinary assemblage. In the course of 
 his speech he made use of the following words : 
 
 " Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet 
 name heirs of immortal bliss : yea, the Hindus 
 refuse to call you sinners. Ye are the children of 
 God, the sharers of immortal bliss. Ye, divinities 
 on earth, sinners ? It is a sin to call man so. 
 It is a standing libel on human nature. Come 
 up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that 
 you are sheep : you are souls immortal, spirits 
 free and blest and eternal. Ye are not matter, 
 ye are not bodies. Matter is your servant, not 
 you the servants of matter." 
 
 " According to Hindu philosophy, sin is a com- 
 plete delusion : there is really no such thing at 
 all, thus justifying Babu N. N. Dutt's statement. 
 Individual existence being an illusion a sort of
 
 SIN AN ILLUSION. 235 
 
 mysterious disease that has crept over the one 
 universal existence it follows that the offences and 
 faults for which the illusory individual conscience 
 blames itself are equally unreal. The supreme 
 essence is of course in itself sinless, only somehow 
 it dreams itself into individuality and sinfulness. 
 The real object of life in Hinduism is not a 
 moral one at all, but a purely intellectual one 
 i.e. not to get rid of sin, but to rid ourselves 
 of the idea that we are sinners. 
 
 " And yet, this being its philosophy, what do 
 we behold in practice ? There are few beliefs 
 so vitally held as that of Karma, which teaches 
 that sins bring terrible punishments that as men 
 sow, so must they reap, in this life and in future 
 lives. The laws of Manu and Vishnu contain 
 elaborately detailed lists of the fearful penalties 
 attaching in the next world to the chief sins against 
 Hindu morality, along with equally elaborate 
 prescriptions of the various expiations, penances, 
 tortures, self-macerations sometimes approaching 
 suicide by which alone these sins can be atoned 
 for in the present life. The Hindu apparently acts 
 upon the belief of the reality of sin, accepts the 
 verdict of his conscience, while yet he holds both 
 sin and conscience to be of the nature of illusion. 
 How the theory and practice are reconcilable is
 
 236 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 more than any Hindu has ever yet succeeded in 
 explaining, the only explanation being that 
 ' Hinduism ' is a mass of incoherent, inconsistent, 
 hopelessly irreconcilable beliefs, jumbled together 
 under a common name Theism, Pantheism, 
 Polytheism, Atheism, all alike sheltering themselves 
 under it." l 
 
 The members of the Brahmo Somaj have indeed 
 a more definite and clear conception of sin than 
 the orthodox Hindu, but they themselves acknow- 
 ledge that they have derived their sense of sin from 
 Christian teaching. They certainly could not have 
 got it from Hinduism, for according to Hinduism, as 
 expounded at least by Babu N. N. Dutt, the soul is 
 already perfectly blest, but it fails to recognise that 
 it is so. 
 
 Let us listen again to another Hindu, Babu 
 Gurudip Sing. In a letter written by him in the 
 Epiphany of July 5th, 1895, on the " Ideals of 
 Hinduism," he makes the following statements with 
 regard to the Hindu view of sin statements which 
 he quotes with approval as expressing the mind 
 of an orthodox Hindu : 
 
 " Shankaracharya 2 plainly says that the ideas, 
 
 1 Epiphany, May 3 1st, 1895. 
 
 f A great religious teacher and reviver of Brahmanism. He lived 
 about the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth 
 century.
 
 SIN AND VIRTUE MERELY IDEAS. 237 
 
 namely (i) that I am a sinful man, (2) that there 
 must be some supreme Being having power to free 
 me from my sins and to give me eternal heavenly life, 
 etc., etc., are emanations of an imperfect mind. He 
 who has obtained the light of true knowledge will 
 never entertain such ideas. . . . From what you (i.e. the 
 Epiphany} write, it seems that you think it impossible 
 to get rid of sin by the knowledge of Brahma. 1 No : 
 we do get rid of sin by its knowledge. You know 
 that ideas create ideas, and at the same time they 
 destroy each other. For example, the idea of some 
 serious illness results in the idea of death, which 
 again in its turn gives rise to the idea of sorrow, 
 and so on. But the idea of some successful remedy 
 or medicine at the same time counteracts the idea 
 of serious illness, and thus the man who should 
 have otherwise experienced sorrow now enjoys 
 peace of mind. In the same way, the idea of 
 Brahma destroys the idea of sin altogether. The 
 Hindu idea of sinfulness is just the same as the 
 Christian idea (!) ; and we want to get rid of the 
 idea of not sin only, but virtue a/so, because you 
 know they are co-relatives, and the retention of 
 either of them is equally fatal to the uniform and 
 undisturbed peace of mind. ..." 
 
 The italics in the above paragraph are our own. 
 1 The supreme Being
 
 238 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 The sentence illustrates a very prevalent idea in 
 Hindu thought namely that vice and virtue are 
 both equally illusions, and that the aim of the perfect 
 Hindu is to rise superior to both, to reach a state 
 in which he becomes alike indifferent to virtue 
 as well as to vice. , To show that we are not 
 misrepresenting Hinduism on this point, we will 
 quote the answer given to the following question, 
 to which the Epiphany asked for a reply from an 
 orthodox Hindu. The question was as follows : 
 
 " Is it the ideal of Hinduism to realise sinfulness 
 and obey the voice of conscience, or to get rid 
 of both ? " 
 
 To this the following reply was received : 
 
 " The Hindu considers it his duty to realise sinful- 
 ness and to obey the voice of conscience so long as 
 he has not practically realised that he is the absolute^ 
 or in other words, as long as he has not mingled 
 his consciousness with the spirit of nature. The 
 Yogi 1 has no attraction or repulsion either for 
 heaven or hell. The state of the Yogi is above 
 that in which there is longing for any object. 
 The wise never praises the good, nor does he hate 
 the bad. Equal in happiness and misery ', he thinks 
 himself above duty" 
 
 The italics are again our own ; and the whole 
 1 A Hindu ascetic.
 
 HINDU ASCETICISM. 239 
 
 answer illustrates what has to be constantly borne 
 in mind in studying Hinduism, that the great 
 object of life is an intellectual, not a moral one : 
 virtue and vice and conscience are all " illusion," 
 and the contemplation of the indifference of good 
 and evil is one of the means by which that object 
 is to be reached. The description of " the wise 
 man " as given in the above answer certainly affords 
 ground for the charge that the object of Hinduism 
 is to get rid of conscience. 
 
 IV. HINDU ASCETICISM. 
 
 The ascetic life is held in great veneration 
 among all Hindus, and appeals most strongly 
 to them a fact which it is very important for 
 missionaries working in India to bear in mind. 
 Grotesque and repulsive as are many of the 
 forms which it takes, no one, we think, can fail 
 to be impressed by the strength of will by which 
 a Hindu ascetic carries out his self-inflicted torture 
 or penance through long periods of years. There 
 have, without question, been wonderful examples 
 of self-denial and renunciation in India, from that 
 of the Buddha downwards ; and great emphasis has 
 often been laid on this aspect of Hinduism, Western 
 writers as well as Hindus contrasting it favourably 
 with the apparent absence of any similar effort
 
 240 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 in modern Christianity. But any real comparison 
 fails from the fact that Christian and Hindu 
 asceticism are based on totally different conceptions. 
 To the Christian, asceticism is the training and 
 disciplining of the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, 
 to reach his highest development, his greatest moral 
 and spiritual capacity. To the Hindu, asceticism 
 is the effort by which he endeavours to annihilate 
 the body, which he considers inherently evil, and 
 by every means in his power to sink back into 
 that unconscious state of absorption into the supreme 
 essence from which he believes that he has somehow 
 unfortunately emerged. The Christian ascetic again 
 aims at a life of self-discipline as a means of 
 gaining greater freedom for the service of mankind ; 
 the Hindu, on the other hand, with some few 
 exceptions, looks on his fellow-men only as a 
 hindrance to his own spiritual advancement, and 
 seeks as far as possible to free himself from any 
 connection with them. 
 
 Once again, Christian asceticism has a profoundly 
 moral aim, the subjugation (not annihilation) of 
 the flesh to the obedience of the spirit of the 
 lower and lawless impulses of our nature to the 
 rule of the divinely inspired and directed will. 
 In other words, it aims at enabling man to live 
 before God in the filial relation of loving and
 
 ITS PESSIMISM. 241 
 
 true sonship. But to the Hindu moral conceptions 
 are only part of that illusion from which he is 
 ever seeking to escape ; while any idea of a living 
 relation to a personal God is impossible, inasmuch 
 as the whole effort of the Hindu is to lose his 
 consciousness by re-absorption into the supreme 
 Being. 
 
 It is these fundamental differences in the idea 
 of the end of the ascetic life which must always 
 be borne in mind in instituting any comparison 
 between the asceticism of Hinduism and that of 
 Christianity. We would like to quote in connection 
 with this point the following extract from the 
 Epiphany, in which the subject of Hindu asceticism 
 is treated : 
 
 " The strong wave of pessimism which appears 
 to be submerging German philosophic thought is, we 
 gather, responsible for the sympathy with Oriental 
 systems which is now so prevalent. Between the 
 gloomy mind of Schopenhauer and the Indian 
 philosophies of despair there is evidently much 
 affinity. Existence, in the view of both, is an 
 unmixed evil : it were better for man if he had 
 not been born ; but as he has suffered that worst 
 of misfortunes, the only thing that remains is to 
 try to creep back somehow into the unconscious- 
 ness from which he emerged. If humanity could 
 
 16
 
 242 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 commit a corporate act of suicide, so much the 
 better : anyhow, the better part for each man 
 consists in resolutely setting to work to kill out 
 his consciousness, as the source of all evil. The 
 ideal sage is the self-macerating fakir, who, by a 
 ferocious exercise of the will, succeeds in torturing 
 his unhappy brain out of the so-called delusion 
 of individuality. 
 
 " The state sought to be reached by these 
 visionaries, that of trance or coma, is pretty much 
 that which comes naturally in a fainting-fit, or 
 from some undue physical depression. The late 
 John Addington Symonds, whose biography has 
 recently been published, describes himself as in 
 his youth subject to these strange lapses into the 
 sense of nothingness a kind of mental, without 
 the physical, swoon. It seems to have been con- 
 nected in his case with an exceedingly infirm and 
 consumptive constitution. If a physician were to 
 diagnose the physical symptoms of a fakir who 
 had brought himself to the state of belief in his 
 oneness with Brahma, he would no doubt find 
 that he had reduced his brain to a similarly morbid 
 condition. It is not really a high ideal to force 
 the body, and the mind with it, into the abnormal 
 state which both sometimes reach naturally by 
 disease : indeed, it is only a species of prolonged
 
 ITS PARALYSING RESULTS. 243 
 
 suicide ; and suicide, however painful, is always 
 an act of cowardice. The self-slayer, whether the 
 agony he inflicts upon himself be brief or pro- 
 longed, is equally a deserter from the ranks. The 
 short cut or the roundabout way are equally 
 illegitimate exits from life, and neither, in spite 
 of the fortitude exhibited, is really admirable. 
 Which, we would ask, exhibits the higher ideal 
 the life of the Yogi wasted in solitary self-torture 
 till unconsciousness is achieved, or that of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, who went about doing good, and 
 whose continuous sacrifice was for others, not 
 for Himself? 
 
 " Pessimism is always paralysing, both in the 
 East and the West. In India it has been largely 
 responsible for the present degradation of the people 
 by the hopeless passivity which it engenders. A 
 world and a life which are mere maya l are obviously 
 not worth reforming ; both may have to be endured 
 for a time, but that is all ; and in the long run 
 nothing, neither virtue nor vice, makes very much 
 difference. It is by the retention of this narcotic 
 *#tfjtf-creed as an integral feature of its system that 
 the Bhagavat-Gita 2 (perhaps the highest product 
 
 1 Illusion. 
 
 1 An eclectic system of Indian philosophy. Its author, who 
 is unknown, is supposed to have lived in India about the 
 second or third century A.D.
 
 244 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 of Hindu thought) succeeds so fatally in under- 
 mining its own ethical structure, and neutralises 
 its most exalted moral injunctions. Those who 
 are seeking to regenerate India by a reversion 
 to that which is responsible for her degeneration 
 are only seeking to rebuild a fallen house upon 
 the same sand. National and personal reformation 
 must proceed from a moral impulse ; and that 
 impulse no dreary illusion-philosophy is capable 
 of giving. 
 
 " We should be the very last to deny the value 
 of asceticism or of the contemplative life. Austerity, 
 self-subjugation, an intense conviction of the deceptive- 
 ness and transitoriness of the merely material life, 
 a piercing realisation of the spiritual universe and 
 of the divine, indwelling Presence, all these are the 
 true marks of sanctity, qualifying men and women 
 to be the religious benefactors of suffering humanity, 
 whether by fervent intercession or by direct outward 
 activity. But a course of continuous meditation 
 on the absolute identity and- nonentity of everything 
 and everybody, as enjoined by the teaching of 
 Hinduism, is the very worst possible training for 
 such a divine work. The more convinced a man is 
 of the non-existence of the world the less likely he 
 is to be a benefactor to it.
 
 FUTURE OF IDOLATRY IN INDIA. 245 
 
 V. IDOLATRY IN INDIA. 1 
 
 " To Christian eyes the most conspicuous part of 
 modern Hinduism is its idolatry ; and to Christian 
 sentiment no other sin can be more abhorrent and 
 revolting. Wherever Christianity comes into con- 
 tact with idolatry, she instinctively recognises in it 
 the first enemy to be overcome. In India she finds 
 herself face to face with idolatry in its grossest 
 forms ; and amongst educated people it would seem 
 that she has almost overcome it. There are very few 
 now of those who have come well within the reach 
 of Christian culture who would openly avow them- 
 selves idolaters. Idolatry is to all such, not perhaps 
 sinful always, but at all events exceedingly 
 irrational. 
 
 " With such a result, so far as it goes, Christians 
 cannot but be well pleased. Even granting that 
 those who have given up their idolatry are still 
 very far distant from the purity of the Christian 
 Faith, it is still something that God is not dis- 
 honoured before their eyes, as in former times, by 
 being likened to things which are the work of 
 men's hands. But how long will this better state 
 of things last ? that is a question which may well 
 trouble the thoughtful. One listens to some young 
 
 1 From article published in Oxford Mission Quarterly Paper 
 for July, 1898.
 
 246 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [CH. X. 
 
 student's contemptuous reflections on the absurdity 
 of idol worship, and one is inclined to think that 
 for him at least, and for all who may have the 
 advantage of a similar education, idolatry, even 
 though they should consciously seek to recover the 
 sentiment that inspired it, is an impossibility, and 
 that as education becomes more general it must 
 finally disappear from the country. This would be 
 a mistake ; for idolatry is not merely an error of 
 intellect, it is a sin. It is not due, primarily, to 
 any falseness of logic, but to a perversion of the 
 will. It is a result primarily of a moral defect, 
 and not an intellectual. It is, of course, an 
 intellectual absurdity as well ; but the darkened 
 intellect which can be guilty of such an absurdity 
 is itself the result of sin, and therefore no mere 
 intellectual culture will ever secure men permanently 
 against idolatry. And so the question remains, is 
 India being permanently rescued from idolatry or 
 not ? For our part, we certainly do not believe 
 that the mere education of the schools will ever 
 achieve such a result. For is it not a fact of 
 history, and a very striking fact, that amongst 
 non-Christian nations the most philosophical have 
 ever been the most idolatrous ? The wisdom of 
 the Egyptians in ancient times has become almost 
 proverbial ; their idolatry is no less famous nor
 
 IDOLATRY NOT AN ERROR, BUT A SIN 247 
 
 remarkable. In spite of twenty centuries of 
 study the world has not yet outgrown the 
 philosophy of the Greeks, yet it is recorded of 
 the most cultured city in all Greece that when St 
 Paul visited it ' his spirit was stirred in him when 
 he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.' And 
 to come nearer home, was ever people prouder of 
 its philosophy than the Hindus? and has any 
 country better cause to be ashamed of its idolatry ? 
 
 " These are but instances, we believe, of an almost 
 universal rule. It is not in the simplicity of a 
 primitive age that we find religion most degraded ; 
 it is when nations have deteriorated morally from 
 the primitive standard, when the darkened intellect 
 has given itself up to vain speculations that the 
 idea of God becomes gradually perverted, and 
 superstition takes the place of the simple reverence 
 of earlier days. 
 
 " It is not, we repeat, the result of mere ignorance 
 not, that is, of a natural, innocent, childlike 
 ignorance it is the result, first of all, of a perverted 
 will which refuses to recognise God, and then of 
 elaborate philosophies in which the natural idea 
 of God is left out. 
 
 " How well might this be illustrated by the history 
 of Hinduism in the past ! But our concern at 
 present is rather with the prospects of India in the
 
 248 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [CH. X. 
 
 future ; and we ask ourselves anxiously whether 
 the gradual disavowal of idolatry on the part of 
 the educated at the present day is likely to take 
 effect permanently ? Undoubtedly, in spite of all 
 the intellectual contempt which is now heaped on 
 idolatry, there is cause for much misgiving on this 
 point. For, to begin with, there are many who 
 repudiate idolatry in word, and who yet think it no 
 shame whatever to bow down before some monstrosity 
 in wood or stone, and who will defend themselves 
 by saying they do not worship the idol ; only they 
 see in it a visible manifestation of some attribute 
 of God. So they bow before the four-handed 
 Kali, that they may be enabled to realise the 
 power of God, as they will tell you, and before 
 Durga, in recognition of her kindness and bene- 
 volence. Here, then, is a large class of people who, 
 in spite of their disavowal, are yet idolaters pure and 
 simple. Then a large proportion, perhaps a majority 
 of those who discard idolatry themselves, never- 
 theless approve of it for the common people. Such 
 people at least have not acquired that abhorrence of 
 idolatry as a sin which Christians feel. To them 
 it is obviously nothing worse than an absurdity. 
 But the absurdity of one age, as one knows, is only 
 too liable to become the plausible philosophy of its 
 successor. Idolatry was furnished with a justifica-
 
 ATTITUDE OF EDUCATED HINDUS. 249 
 
 tion in old systems of philosophy, and may be 
 again in future schemes. The class of people we 
 are considering afford no guarantee that their de- 
 scendants, even, it may be, their logical descendants, 
 will not be idolaters like their fathers. 
 
 " And so the question becomes important : on 
 what grounds do the educated men of to-day (we 
 are not now speaking of converts to Christianity) 
 give up idolatry? The answer to that question 
 will show whether much real progress in true religion 
 is being made, or whether the apparent progress is 
 delusive. Much, for instance, of this modern con- 
 tempt for idolatry is no doubt due to mere scepticism, 
 to a disbelief in the supernatural altogether. So far 
 as this is the case, we can only look for a deeper 
 degradation than before. For scepticism, in which 
 the true idea of God is lost, is always succeeded 
 eventually by a grosser superstition. Witness, 
 for instance, the spiritualism of our own age. 
 Materialistic philosophy has not succeeded in banish- 
 ing the belief in the supernatural ; it has only tended 
 to substitute in the minds of those who follow it 
 a ridiculous spiritualism for the supernatural element 
 in true religion. Theosophy is the true counterpart 
 of the sceptical materialism of our century. Our 
 age, too, has to some extent fallen into idolatry, and 
 its idols are Mahatmas and the like.
 
 250 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [CH. X. 
 
 " We do not believe, however, that in India mere 
 scepticism has been the most potent influence in 
 discrediting idolatry. Rather we believe that this 
 result has been mainly due to a conscientious 
 effort to recover the truth. We recognise such 
 an effort, for instance, in Brahmoism, which, next 
 to Christianity, represents the most considerable 
 religious movement in India during this century. 
 We may ask, then, is Brahmoism, or Theism in any 
 of its various manifestations, likely to be a permanent 
 force working towards the final abolition of idolatry 
 in India? And we reply that unless Theism 
 advances much beyond its present point there is 
 no hope of such a result. The Theists of India 
 have won their way back by honest effort, at the 
 cost of considerable pain and some persecution, 
 to the standpoint of natural religion. They have 
 learnt once more the great truth of the Unity 
 of God, and have risen to a high conception of 
 His spirituality. But they cannot maintain them- 
 selves at this point without advancing or receding. 
 To rest in the simplicity of a primitive piety 
 though until Christianity appeared, this was the 
 highest aim possible for man is now impracticable ; 
 partly, as we may conclude, because no nation ever 
 yet has been able to maintain itself at this point, 
 even the Jews, whose ' genius ' for religion is
 
 FUTURE OF INDIAN THEISM. 251 
 
 recognised by all, lapsing again and again into 
 idolatry ; partly because of the atmosphere of 
 speculation in which men -live ; but chiefly because 
 the higher truth of Christianity is now kept con- 
 stantly before their eyes, and in the light of revelation 
 mere natural religion cannot exist in its purity. 
 Theism must either accept revelation or it must 
 pay the penalty of shutting its eyes to the truth, 
 and lapse from its own standard of truth. This is 
 at present the position of Indian Theism. And, 
 indeed, with all its profession of going back to the 
 religious purity of the Vedas, Indian Theism does 
 not really attempt the impossible work of resting 
 on a primitive type of piety. Surrounded by rival 
 philosophies and religions as it is, it too must have 
 its theology. Its rejection of idolatry must be 
 based on a principle of that theology, and that 
 principle will work itself out, however slowly, to 
 its logical issue. 
 
 " Let us try to see what this issue is likely to 
 be. On what principle does Indian Theism reject 
 idolatry? We should like to have that question 
 answered for us by some Theist, for we are not 
 ourselves quite sure of the right answer. One 
 answer we have heard more than once, however, 
 and we suppose it represents fairly accurately the 
 Theistic view of idolatry. It is said that God
 
 252 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 being a Spirit has no form. He is infinite, and 
 transcends all such limits as ' form ' implies. To 
 imagine Him under any form is to deny His 
 infinity. Hence, though (as we constantly hear 
 it said) ordinary uneducated people cannot help 
 conceiving of Him under some particular shape, 
 a higher and purer theology, which can look 
 reality in the face, will discard the image and 
 worship Him simply as He is. 
 
 " Now this, though it may be perfectly good 
 logic, is just one of those vain speculations which 
 St. Paul speaks of as the precursors of idolatry. 
 For if the argument be pressed, and unless it 
 be supplemented by what appears to be a con- 
 tradictory line of argument, it leads not to any 
 truer conception of God, but either back to 
 Pantheism, from which the Indian Theist is trying 
 to escape, or else to Atheism ; and it is from 
 Pantheism that all the polytheism and idolatry of 
 Hinduism start For we must remember that it 
 is just as much an infringement of God's infinity 
 (from a merely logical point of view) to suppose 
 that He is a person, as to conceive of Him under 
 any particular form ; and even character, and the 
 attributes which are component parts of character, 
 all imply limitation. The logical approach of 
 Pantheism has for its starting-point this ideal
 
 ITS TENDENCY TO PANTHEISM. 253 
 
 of the infinity of God unchecked by any other 
 consideration. The way lies through a negation 
 of all those qualities which seem to be inconsistent 
 with His infinity, and finally of His personality, until 
 at last a Being is reached, impersonal, characterless, 
 of whom nothing whatever can be predicated, not 
 even (Indian philosophy, in its logical consistency, 
 has not stopped short of this stultifying conclusion) 
 existence itself! Such a being is Brahma. But 
 being infinite, this being is, ex-hypotlusi t every- 
 where. He is everything and at the same time 
 nothing, and all we see in the world is simply 
 the manifestation of this nothingness, which is 
 God. Each thing in nature is as really God as 
 the nothingness which lies behind. Why should 
 it not be worshipped as God, seeing that God 
 does not exist except as manifested in it? 
 
 " Such, we conceive, is the logical basis of Indian 
 idolatry. It is Theism, which has taken a Pan- 
 theistic direction, logically developed. And this is 
 the great danger of the Indian Theism of to-day. 
 It always tends to Pantheism, and thus to drift into 
 the old line of vain speculation which has resulted 
 in the vast system of idolatry which is now the 
 disgrace of India. 
 
 " These considerations lead us to the conclusion 
 that if idolatry is to be banished, the work will
 
 254 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [CH. X. 
 
 not be done by the intellectual Theism of the 
 Indian Unitarian. Intellectual Theism must be 
 corrected by facts, such facts as Revelation alone 
 can supply. Just as science, if it trusts to d priori 
 reasoning, and does not constantly correct its 
 conclusions by the facts of nature, loses itself in 
 the vain dreams of magic, so religion, when once 
 it begins to reason at all, unless it constantly 
 checks its reasonings by reference to the facts of 
 Revelation, inevitably loses itself in degrading 
 superstition. And such facts Christianity supplies. 
 It tells us that man, being created in the image and 
 likeness of God, is himself the best revelation of 
 God ; and that God was revealed in all the 
 perfection of His nature, so far as man is able to 
 know Him, in the person of the one man Jesus 
 Christ. The character and Person of Jesus Christ 
 is the one fact by which all our religious specula- 
 tions as to the nature of God must be checked. 
 By a study of His Person we shall be able to see, 
 though not to understand, the great mystery of 
 the divine Personality without losing our sense 
 of the divine Infinity ; and summed up in Him 
 as its divine prototype, we shall learn to see the 
 whole universe of things before which, in this 
 their eternal presentment, it is no idolatry to bow 
 down."
 
 FAILURE OF PANTHEISM. 255 
 
 We have tried to give our readers some idea 
 of " Hinduism as it is " among educated Hindus. 
 The picture, we think, cannot be called either a 
 bright or a hopeful one ; and in spite of the present 
 effort in Calcutta towards a revival of Hinduism, 
 the more thoughtful men in educated Hindu society 
 acknowledge the hopelessness of the situation. 
 Pantheism has had a fair field in India and a long 
 possession, and this is its result a religion which, 
 when it ceases to be a series of negations, becomes 
 utterly fluid and vague ; which counts the possession 
 of any or of no creed a matter of indifference 
 so long as there is conformity to social rules ; which 
 shuts its eyes to the great fact of sin and repudiates 
 with scorn the name of " sinner " ; which denies 
 moral responsibility, in that it teaches that man 
 does not stand in any relation to a personal and 
 moral Being, but is controlled by fate ; which has 
 no desire whatever for making converts, but only 
 craves to receive the appreciation of the rest of 
 mankind, who must of necessity (for none can be 
 Hindus who are not born such) remain for ever 
 outside its sacred limits. 
 
 This, and not the " ideal " which is to be found 
 in the pages of some Western writers, is the real 
 Hinduism of educated India ; and it does not 
 require a very long experience of the condition
 
 256 HINDUISM AS IT IS. [Cn. X. 
 
 of Hindu society to recognise what the more 
 honest and thoughtful among the educated Hindus 
 are themselves ready to confess the absolute 
 inability of Hinduism to work out either the social, 
 moral, or religious regeneration of the country.
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 
 
 A SHORT account of the sect known as the Brahmo Somaj 
 may be interesting to some of our readers. This sect 
 of Indian Theists was originated by that very remarkable 
 man the Rajah Ram Mohun Roy, a Bengali Brahman, 
 who was born in 1774, and worked his way, partly by 
 help of the Baptist missionaries at Serampore, out of 
 idolatry and polytheism into an Unitarian Theistic belief. 
 The word Brahmo is an adjective formed from Brahman, 
 or God, and is equivalent to "Theistic." Somaj means 
 " society " or "community." In order to discover the truth, 
 he acquainted himself with the religious books of various 
 faiths, and is said even to have acquired Greek and 
 Hebrew. He also devoted himself to social reforms, and 
 his denunciations of the practice of suttee had considerable 
 weight with the British Government. But he never desired 
 to dissociate himself from Hinduism ; and he retained 
 his " sacred thread" the mark of a Brahman to the last 
 In 1830 he visited England the first to break the Hindu 
 rule that prohibits crossing the sea but succumbed to 
 the climate in 1833 at Bristol, where he is buried. 
 
 The Theistic community, after his death, found a leader 
 in Devendra Nath Tagore, a disciple of Ram Mohun 
 Roy, who organised the society still further. This gentle- 
 man, born in 1818, is still living, and is venerated as 
 a patriarch by all sections of the Somaj. It was he who 
 
 *57 17
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 first introduced the declaration of Theistic faith and 
 renunciation of idolatry which is required of one joining 
 the community. 
 
 The society continued to increase slowly, and in 1847 
 the important step was taken of giving up the Hindu 
 Vedas, which hitherto had been regarded as inspired 
 and infallible. The Somaj thus ranked itself as a ration- 
 alistic sect. The doctrine of transmigration was also 
 abandoned. 
 
 In 1858 the Somaj took a new lease of life under the 
 distinguished reformer, Keshub Chandra Sen. This gentle- 
 man, who had received an English education at the 
 Presidency College, brought a new element into the society, 
 and ardently devoted himself to the work of liberalising 
 and modernising it. Much of the old Hindu atmo- 
 sphere and customs were swept away. But his zeal, of 
 course, brought him into collision with the conservative 
 party, and in 1865 he found himself obliged to head a 
 secession from the original society. A creed was definitely 
 formulated, and the new community called itself the 
 Brahmo Somaj of India, the members who were left 
 being generally known by the title of the Adi (or ancient) 
 Somaj. Keshub, before his conversion to Brahmoism, 
 had belonged to the Vaishnava sect, or Vishnu worshippers, 
 and he brought much of the emotional fervour which 
 characterises these devotees into the society. Great stress 
 began now to be laid upon the emancipation and education 
 of women, and the services of the Brahmo meeting-house 
 were elaborated and improved. 
 
 In 1870 Keshub visited England, where he received a 
 warm welcome from the Unitarian " churches," and some 
 sanguine people thought from his great admiration for the 
 character of Christ that he was about to become a Christian. 
 On his return, however, he seems to have reacted in the 
 direction of Orientalism, and to have somewhat lost his
 
 THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 259 
 
 head. The claim to inspiration and autocracy was now 
 more definitely put forward, and led to a further disruption 
 in the society. Those who were unable to accept these 
 new developments after a prolonged contest finally 
 separated themselves from their leader, and formed them- 
 selves into a fresh body, upon a more democratic basis, 
 distinguishing themselves by the name of the Sadharan or 
 General Somaj. One very unfortunate cause of Keshub's 
 loss of popularity was his consenting to marry his 
 daughter to the Maharajah of Kuch Behar, at an age lower 
 than that which he himself had settled upon for the 
 Brahmo community a grave inconsistency which did 
 much to injure his influence. A very considerable follow- 
 ing, however, remained faithful to him, and the body over 
 which he presided designated itself by the name of the 
 "New Dispensation," and claimed to be the medium of 
 fresh doctrinal revelations. The type of worship prevailing 
 in this society was distinguished by its emotional and 
 ceremonial style, dancing, in the Hindu fashion, being 
 introduced as a divine solemnity. The seceding party, on 
 the other hand, modelled themselves on a more puritanical 
 basis, and, discarding the mysticism of the others, carried 
 on the rationalistic aspect of the movement, allying 
 themselves more and more to European and American 
 modes of thought. On January 8th, 1884, Keshub died, 
 and, to evidence the catholicity of the movement, was 
 first burnt and then buried, his tombstone being decorated 
 with a trident, crescent, and cross. A committee of twelve 
 "apostles" was appointed to carry on his work. 
 
 There are now, therefore, three Theistic sects in 
 Calcutta, with about two hundred "churches" scattered 
 throughout India: 
 
 The " Adi Somaj," which consists almost exclusively of 
 the large joint family of the patriarch Devendra Nath Tagore, 
 and has ceased to exert much interest or influence.
 
 260 APPENDIX A. 
 
 The " New Dispensation," which retains the " church " 
 erected by Keshub, but whose influence largely diminished at 
 his death, though many of his followers are men of consider- 
 able earnestness and devotion. They are still distinguished 
 by their mystical and emotional character. They have 
 suffered much from bitter internal dissensions, and most 
 unseemly broils have pccurred in their services. Their 
 most prominent adherent, Babu Protab Mozoomdar, has 
 practically severed his connection with them, and set up 
 for himself. 
 
 The third sect, the "Sadharan Somaj," has built itself a 
 place of worship, and is, perhaps, the most progressive of 
 the three. It appears to be the most attractive to the 
 Hindu students, and possesses some men of real ability. 
 Their chief leader at present is Pundit Sivanath Shastri, 
 who has considerable oratorical power. The services are 
 fairly well attended, especially at the yearly festival in 
 January. They, too, however, are suffering much from 
 internal dissensions and jealousies, especially between the 
 reactionary and progressive parties. Their theology also 
 fluctuates between Pantheism and Unitarianism. 
 
 All sects, however, are now distinguished by a strong 
 animus against Christianity. The hopes formed concerning 
 their progress towards the faith have not been justified, 
 though there have been individual conversions. At present 
 both mystics and rationalists, bitterly as they are opposed, 
 agree in repudiation of the Christian faith, though the 
 former party are fond of using its terminology in a fanciful 
 and sentimental fashion. The latter have largely moulded 
 their beliefs on Channing, Pember, Emerson, and Martineau, 
 and have strongly imbibed their " anti-dogmatic " sentiments. 
 Of late Professor Caird has had considerable influence on 
 their mode of thought. 
 
 But it is perhaps by their influence on Hindu thought 
 and practice that the Somaj has worked most effectually.
 
 THE BRAHMO SOMAJ. 261 
 
 Hindu thought has through its influence become far more 
 Theistic, and its practice far more liberal. There is no 
 doubt that it has held up a high ideal, both of religion 
 and morality, and popularised many social improvements. 
 Whatever be their ultimate destiny, the people of India 
 will have owed much to its regenerating influence. The 
 conceit and self-sufficiency which tends to make the society 
 unpopular have perhaps prevented it from receiving its 
 due meed of honour either from Hindus or Christians. 
 We must understand that whatever victories it has achieved 
 are really triumphs of Christianity, from which the Brahmo 
 community has originally derived its origin.
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 STAFF OF THE MISSION. 
 
 1880. 
 
 Priests : Edward Francis Willis (Superior). 
 Wilfrid Bird Hornby. 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 1881. 
 
 Priests : Edward Francis Willis (Superior). 
 Wilfrid Bird Hornby. 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 Marsham Frederick Argles. 
 
 1882. 
 
 Priests : Edward Francis Willis (Superior). 
 
 Wilfrid Bird Hornby. 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Marsham Frederick Argles. 
 
 Philip Samuel Smith. 
 Layman: Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1883. 
 
 Priests : Edward Francis Willis (Superior). 
 Wilfrid Bird Hornby. 
 262
 
 STAFF OF THE MISSION. 263 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 Philip Samuel Smith. 
 Layman: Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1884. 
 Priests: Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Philip Samuel Smith. 
 Layman: Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1885. 
 
 Priests : Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Philip Samuel Smith. 
 Layman: Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1886. 
 
 Priests : Charles William Townsend (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Philip Samuel Smith. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 Layman : Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1887. 
 
 Priests : Charles William Townsend (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 Maurice Frederick Bell. 
 Layman: Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1888. 
 
 Priests : Charles William Townsend (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Halhed Sydney Moore. 
 Layman: Ishan C. Chowdry.
 
 264 APPENDIX fc. 
 
 1889. 
 
 Priests: Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Halhed Sydney Moore. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1890. 
 
 Priests: Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Halhed Sydney Moore. 
 
 Walter Paul Gray Field. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1891. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Halhed Sydney Moore. 
 
 Walter Paul Gray Field. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 A. Edward Franklin. 
 
 Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 
 1892. 
 
 Priests: Henry Whitehead (Superior}. 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 Charles Henley Walker.
 
 StAFF OF tHE MISSION. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 Halhed Sydney Moore. 
 Walter Paul Gray Field. 
 A. Edward Franklin. 
 Laymen: Ishan C. Chowdry. 
 Oswald Lloyd. 
 Horace Conway. 
 Henry Woodward. 
 
 1893. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Halhed Sydney Moore. 
 
 A. Edward Franklin. 
 
 Frederick Wingfield Douglass. 
 
 Edward Manley. 
 
 George Longridge. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 Horace Conway. 
 
 Henry Woodward. 
 
 265 
 
 1894. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Frederick Wingfield Douglass. 
 
 Edward Manley. 
 
 George Longridge. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 Henry Woodward.
 
 266 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 1895. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 James Legard Peach. 
 
 Frederick Wingfield Douglass. 
 
 Ernest Linwood Strong. 
 
 Ronald Ringrose. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 James Cook. 
 
 1896. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 Frederick Wingfield Douglass. 
 
 Ernest Linwood Strong. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 James Cook. 
 
 1897. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 Frederick Wingfield Douglass. 
 
 Ernest Linwood Strong. 
 
 Charles Thomas Campion. 
 
 John Roper Cooke. 
 
 A. Edward Franklin. 
 
 Horace Conway. 
 Laymen : Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 F. W. Barber.
 
 STAFF OF THE MISSION. 267 
 
 1898. 
 
 Priests : Henry Whitehead (Superior). 
 
 Ernest Faulkner Brown. 
 
 Charles Henley Walker. 
 
 Frederick Wingfield Douglass. 
 
 Ernest Linwood Strong. 
 
 John Roper Cooke. 
 
 A. Edward Franklin. 
 
 Horace Conway. 
 
 Charles W. McLaughlan. 
 Laymen: Oswald Lloyd. 
 
 F. W. Barber.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ARGLES, REV. M. F., joins the 
 Mission, 4 ; arrives in Calcutta, 
 10 ; death of, 13; notice by 
 Canon Gore, ibid. ; memorial 
 prize, 32 ; Mission House 
 chapel, a memorial to, 91. 
 
 Argles, Miss Edith, accepts 
 the post of General Secretary, 
 183. 
 
 Atlay, Archdeacon, founds 
 High School Scholarship 
 Fund, 32. 
 
 BAPTISM, atTorun Sen, 174 f. ; 
 of a student, 216 f. 
 
 Barber, F. W., joins the Mis- 
 sion, 154. 
 
 Barisal missions, previous his- 
 tory, 155 f. ; visit of Mr. 
 Whitehead, 1 57 ; a tour in, 
 161 f . ; needs of, 178; Mis- 
 sion House in, 182. 
 
 Bell, Rev. Maurice, joins the 
 Mission, 38 ; invalided home, 
 
 39- 
 
 Berryman, Edwin, 5. 
 Bishop's College, 60, 6 1, 62 f. 
 Bow Bazaar, 5, 
 
 Brahmo Somaj, I ; welcomes 
 the Mission, 5 ; intercourse 
 with Mission, 18 ; loses in- 
 fluence, 94 ; see Appendix. 
 
 Brown, Rev. E. F., joins the 
 Mission, 4 ; arrives in Calcutta, 
 5 ; takes charge of the High 
 School, 1 6 ; lectures at 
 Patna, 146 ; at Dacca, 147 ; 
 tour in Barisal, 161 f. 
 
 CABLE, MRS., 136. 
 
 Campion, Rev. C. T., joins the 
 
 Mission, 153. 
 Chakravarti, Jogendra Chandra, 
 
 163, 173- 
 
 Chakravarti, Shashadar, 176. 
 Chowdry, Rev. B. C., 80. 
 Chowdry, Isan, 143. 
 Churches in Barisal, cost of, 
 
 178. 
 
 Clubs, Students', 45 f. 
 Congreve, Rev. Father, visits 
 
 the Mission, 137. 
 Conversions, difficulties in the 
 
 way of, 209 f. ; persecution, 
 
 214 f. 
 Conway, Rev. H., joins the 
 
 269
 
 270 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Mission as a layman, 65 ; goes 
 to England for ordination, 
 1 36 ; returns to Calcutta, 153; 
 injured in the riots, 191 f. 
 
 Cooke, Rev. J. R., joins the 
 Mission, 153. 
 
 Cunliffe, Mrs., 136. 
 
 DACCA, lectures at, 23, 147 f. 
 
 Dar, Bishan Narayan, on educa- 
 tion in India, 1 16 f. 
 
 Davids, Rev. J. L., 147. 
 
 Douglass, Bishop, Charge of, 3. 
 
 Douglass, Rev. F. W., joins the 
 Mission, 97; starts the hostel, 
 127. 
 
 EARTHQUAKE in Calcutta, 1 86 f. 
 Education in India, 98 f., 112 f., 
 
 Il6f., 122 f., 211. 
 
 Epiphany \ igf. 
 Euratians, 65, 189. 
 
 FIELD, REV. W. P. G., joins the 
 
 Mission, 54. 
 Franklin, Rev. A. E., 65, 136, 
 
 153- 
 
 GHOSE, REV. M. L., 60, 80, 139. 
 
 Gopal, i7of. 
 
 Gore, Canon, tribute to Rev. 
 M. F. Argles, 13 ; first visit 
 to Calcutta, 18 ; testimony 
 to the Mission, 23 f. ; second 
 visit, 57 ; on education in 
 India, 98 f. 
 
 HIGH SCHOOL opened, 10; 
 scholarship fund, ibid. ; en- 
 
 largement, 12; moves to 
 Bishop's College, 29 ; a day's 
 routine at, 29 f. ; given to the 
 Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel, 142. 
 
 Hinduism, its vagueness, 223 f.; 
 definition of, 225 ; its con- 
 tradictions, 228 f. ; a social 
 system, 232 f. ; estimate of 
 sin, 234 f. ; asceticism, 239 f. ; 
 idolatry, 245 f . ; attitude of 
 educated Hindus towards 
 idolatry, 249. 
 
 Hoare, Miss, 69. 
 
 Hornby, Bishop, joins the 
 Mission, 4 ; arrives in Cal- 
 cutta, 5 ; meetings for pro- 
 moting Christian unity, II ; 
 obliged to return to England, 
 22. 
 
 Hostel started by Mr. Douglass, 
 127; description of, I28f. ; 
 noticed by the Government, 
 131 ; enlarged, 132; Christian 
 students introduced, 133. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, 59 ; im- 
 portance of, i39f. ; rebuilt, 
 141 ; given to Oxford Mission, 
 142. 
 
 JAMES, ST., SCHOOL, 64. 
 
 Johnson, Bishop, appeals to 
 Oxford, 2 ; welcomes the 
 Mission, 5 ; opens the Mis- 
 sion House, 8; urges the 
 care of the native Christians, 
 9; sanctions resignation of 
 Mr. Willis, 22; opens the
 
 INDEX. 
 
 271 
 
 new Mission House, 85 ; 
 resignation, 194; last visit 
 to the Mission, 195 f. 
 
 KING, BISHOP, speechin 1885, 4. 
 King, Mrs., 90. 
 
 LIDDON LECTURE HALL, 87. 
 Lloyd, Oswald, 54; helps 
 
 during the plague at Bombay, 
 
 185. 
 
 MACAULAY, LORD, minute on 
 education, 98 f. 
 
 McLaughlan, Rev. C., 194. 
 
 Manley, Rev. E., joins the 
 Mission, 97. 
 
 Messes, students', description 
 of, 103 f. 
 
 Moore, Rev. Father, joins the 
 Mission, 39 ; work in the 
 Sunderbans, 68 ; joins the 
 Covvley Fathers, 69. 
 
 Mukerji, N. G., on the value 
 of the Epiphany, 20 ; testi- 
 mony to the Mission, 25. 
 
 Murray, Miss, General Secre- 
 tary, 27, 58, 183. 
 
 NANSON, REV. W. L., Vice- 
 Principal of Bishop's College, 
 151 ; injured in the riots, 192. 
 
 Nurses' brave conduct during 
 the earthquake, 189. 
 
 OLLENBACH, J., 147. 
 
 Oxford Mission, two main 
 principles, 3 ; starts in Bow 
 Bazaar, 8 ; title of Brother- 
 
 hood changed, 12 ; moves to 
 Muktaram Babu Street, 32 ; 
 daily life of, 40 f. ; new Mis- 
 sion House, 58 ; opened by 
 the Bishop, 85 ; description 
 of, 85 f. ; what the Mission 
 has done, 197 f. ; secret of 
 its influence, 201. 
 
 PANTHEISM, 47, 49, 231, 255. 
 
 Patna, lectures at, 23, 145 f. 
 
 Peach, Rev. J. L., first visit to 
 Calcutta, 1 8 ; joins the Mis- 
 sion, 39 ; takes charge of the 
 High School, 50; Rector of 
 St. James' School, 64. 
 
 RINGROSE, REV. R. D., 137. 
 Riots in Calcutta, 
 
 SIRCAR, ALOK, 165, 170. 
 
 Sircar, Hira Lai, 173. 
 
 Smith, Rev. P. S., joins the 
 Mission, 17 ; death, 35 ; his 
 influence, 37 f. 
 
 Street-preaching, 44. 
 
 Strong, Rev. E. L., joins the 
 Mission, 137. 
 
 SunderbSns missions, 66 ; 
 taken charge of by Oxford 
 Mission, 67 ; character of the 
 district, 70 f. ; peasant life 
 ii 73 I ignorance, 76 f. 
 
 TOWNSEND, REV. C. W., 22, 26, 
 
 28, 51. 
 
 VlVEKANANDA, the SWAMI, 
 209.
 
 272 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 WAKEMAN, H. O., visits the 
 Mission, 57 ; gift to O.M.C. 
 chapel, 90. 
 
 Walker, Rev. C. H., joins the 
 Mission, 26; at Bishop's Col- 
 lege, 50 ; lectures at Patna 
 and Dacca, 147. 
 
 Whitehead, Bishop, appointed 
 to Bishop's College, 18; 
 elected Superior of the 
 Mission, 55 ; on the work of 
 Bishop's College, 62 f. ; on 
 the progress of Christianity, 
 94 f. ; on value of hostel, 131 ; 
 
 visits to Patna, 146; visits to 
 Barisal missions, 157; lec- 
 ture on Svvami Vivekananda, 
 210; on religious condition 
 of the students, 213. 
 
 Willis, Rev. E. F., joins the 
 Mission, 4 ; arrives in Cal- 
 cutta, 5 ; installed asSuperior, 
 8 ; illness, 14 ; power of 
 work, 15. 
 
 Wilson, Dr., death of, 183. 
 
 Wilson, Sir Arthur, on educa- 
 tion in India, 112 f. 
 
 Woodward, Rev. H. K., 65, 
 
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