In the extreme South there have been, for many years past, signs of an awakening among the Christians whose forefathers were almost the earliest converts to Christianity in India, and who are still in direct communication with the Syrian Churches. Sometimes the Reformers within these Churches seemed inclined to seek more intimate communion with the English Church, and I have seen a Syrian Bishop admitted to assist the late Bishops Wilson and Carr at an ordination in one of our own cathedrals.

It would be interesting to know more of what is actually passing within these ancient Indian Churches which trace their descent from the converts of St. Thomas and St. James. At present we know but little, and that only relates to their external history, from which it is, however, clear that they have not been insensible to the impulses which have of late years stirred every Church in Indian Christendom.

Space does not admit of more than the briefest possible allusion to the work of the Bible Society and of numerous Societies for providing books and tracts and Christian literature of every kind, which have sprung up and become active in Western India during the past thirty or forty years. Good translations of the entire Bible have been made into the three principal languages, through which the Scriptures are accessible in print to at least twenty-five millions of people. The more important books of the Bible, and many Christian tracts, are now procurable in most of the dialects spoken within the portion of Western India to which we are more immediately referring, and the number of such publications is daily increasing.

shown for Mr. Bowen by crowds who acknowledge none of the truths he preaches, can fail to be struck by the deep impression his conduct, if not his words, has made.

It is not easy to estimate the exact effect produced by the general cheap circulation of the Christian canonical books and other literature, apart from the preaching and viva-voce explanations of the Missionaries. But any one

who is at the pains to inquire, will speedily be satisfied that the effect is so considerable as almost to justify the expressions of those who talk as if nations could be evangelized simply by the circulation of the printed Scriptures.

Missionaries and others are sometimes startled by discovering persons, and even communities, who have hardly ever seen and perhaps never heard an ordained Missionary, and who have nevertheless made considerable progress in Christian knowledge, obtained through the medium of an almost haphazard circulation of tracts and portions of Scripture.

In one instance, which I know was carefully investigated, all the inhabitants of a remote village in the Deccan had abjured idolatry and caste, removed from their temples the idols which had been worshipped there time out of mind, and agreed to profess a form of Christianity which they had deduced for themselves from a careful perusal of a single Gospel and a few tracts. These books had not been given by any Missionary, but had been casually left with some clothes and other cast-off property by a merchant, whose name even had been forgotten, and who, as far as could be ascertained, had never spoken of Christianity to his servant, to whom he gave at parting these things with others of which he had then no further need.

That an inquisitive and intelligent though very simple people, who have few books of their own, and whose recognised indigenous teachers rarely attempt any very earnest instruction in their own religion, should readily read anything that came in their way regarding the

religion of their rulers, is not more than might be naturally expected. But we must go to countries in the condition of India and China at this moment to see at work the process of elaborating from a few tracts so read, a system of Theology powerful enough to set aside an ancient and well-established creed. The process is no new one; but it is only rarely, and at a special crisis in the intellectual life of a nation, that such a phenomenon is to be observed.

From the bare statistical facts above given, a notion may be formed of the increase which took place in the agency employed by Christian Missions in Western India between 1834 and 1868, and some sort of estimate of the work they are doing. I have generally spoken only of Bombay and the neighbouring provinces, and of what I have myself seen and heard. If these figures and results were multiplied six or seven times, they would give a general idea of the increase which has taken place during the same period in all India.*

But in every one of the great divisions of the empire there have appeared phenomena connected with the growth of Missions which are peculiar or exceptional, either from their character or magnitude.

Thus, in Madras, active Missions to the Heathen had been commenced by Protestant Missionaries at the beginning of the 18th century-many years earlier than in any other part of India. After more than one generation of labour by very devoted men, the impression made seemed so small as almost to drive the Missionaries to despair of

* Since these pages were first published a partial enumeration of the greater part of India has been effected, and the results which have been officially laid before Parliament strikingly illustrate the growth of Christian communities. Extracts from the official report will be found in the Appendix.

success in the apparently ungenial soil selected for their labours. Yet, after a while, a great movement took place; the natives were converted, in the course of a few years, by tens of thousands, and native churches, almost independent of further aid from without, have grown up not singly but by tens and scores.

In Bengal, where the work commenced a little later, but on a larger scale and with a better organization, the results of the labours of men like Carey, Marshman, Ward, Duff, and Mullens, have been equally great in other ways, and, from their proximity to the capital of India, they have told on more influential classes, and over a wider area.

To Dr. Duff's energetic, eloquent, and most persistent advocacy of the system of offering to the natives the best possible education in English, is more particularly due that singular movement which, under one form or another, as Vedantism or Brahmoism, has completely changed the relations of the best educated youth of Bengal towards the religion of their ancestors as well as towards that of their present rulers. Nor is it easy to overestimate the importance of labours like those of the Rev. J. Long in addressing the popular mind of the Bengalees through their own vernacular language.

Close to Bengal the German Missions to the Koles of Chota Nagpoor have numbered their converts by tens of thousands within a single generation after the Mission was first planted, and in no part of India does the process of conversion appear to have had so marked and general a good effect on the moral and material prosperity of the people-nowhere has the adoption of Christianity had so much the appearance of a national movement.

We ought, perhaps, hardly to except even Burma, where the American Missions seem to have effected the

conversion of the Karens and other tribes by whole villages and tribes at once.

In Bombay and Western India the efforts of the Scotch Free Kirk Missions, under Dr. John Wilson, to bring the results of Western civilization to bear on the intellectual leaders of native thought, through the means of a thoroughly sound English education, have had an effect as great as the labours of Dr. Duff and his fellowmissionaries in Bengal; and there have been peculiarities in the work of Dr. Wilson which render it especially interesting. Among the classes to whom he has addressed himself are the energetic, liberal-minded, and practical Parsees the various classes of Maharatta and Guzeratti Brahmans and Purvoes, all specially important from their diverse intellectual capabilities, besides communities of Jews whose future history promises to be full of interest for their Christian brethren. He has also paid special attention to more than one of the numerous jungle tribes of the Western coast. His colleague, the late Mr. James Mitchell, was the first to open a female school for Maharattas in Poona. I was taken to see his school in 1835, almost by stealth, and with many injunctions to keep what I saw to myself, lest I should expose to persecution the Brahman who lent his house for such a purpose to Missionaries. These at the time were by no means unnecessary precautions; but there are now few large towns where such schools do not exist, and their number is continually increasing, without any open opposition from the Brahmans, and often with their entire concurrence.

The history of the American Missions in Bombay presents many features of the highest importance. The Missionaries have, of late years, abandoned general secular education as a missionary work; they have concentrated their efforts on a limited tract of country, and have addressed themselves to the lower rather than to the