and undreamed of during the hours of darkness and repose, now appear to threaten the position, and many of them are formidable enough to appal even the most Many waverers are still in doubt which side

confident.

to choose.

Many discords exist among the most faithful divisions of the champions of the Cross-many jealousies among their leaders, which may give fatal openings to the foe. But all are alert, and few seek to shun the shock of battle.

No human eye can foresee the result, nor judge whether it will be more or less decisive than that of any previous conflict during thousands of years past; but there is no apparent falling off in the numbers or energy of those who have, for their watchword, the cause of God and His Christ.

In the East the same spirit is manifested, with the same varying characteristics, by the different bodies of Missionaries who have been sent forth by all the Western Churches. It is everywhere an active, advancing spirit, urging those who are animated by it to go on conquering and to conquer. Whatever its difficulties and discouragements, it shows no disposition to retreat or act on the defensive, and the measure of its success has in the last generation been neither small nor doubtful.

Let us look more narrowly at the effect produced on the various divisions of those who are arrayed on the other side in opposition to Christianity.

As already stated, the effect varies so much, according to the race, creed, the profession in life, and the residence of those to whom the Missionaries address themselves, that it is almost impossible to generalise.

It is necessary to select a few typical instances; and one of the most prominent in many ways, and for many reasons, as relating to the effect on urban Hindoos, is presented by the Brahmoism of Bengal. This sect—if

may

the professors of Brahmoism can be called a sect be regarded as an example of the effect of Christian teaching on those classes which have for ages monopolized the learned professions in India, and which, till within the last generation, had almost exclusive possession of the keys of learning, and of all but the barest rudiments of education.

Brahmoism is of very modern growth.

We have hardly yet got out of the habit of regarding Hindooism, the most protean and varying of religions, as something stereotyped and unchangeable. But general readers about India will know that the Archaic Hindooism of the Vedas was something very different from that of the Hindoos who lived in the days when Buddhism and Brahmanism contended for supremacy. They also know that the Brahmanism which obtained the mastery, and almost annihilated Buddhism in Hindostan some eight or ten centuries ago, was again very different from that Brahmanism which our ancestors found existing in Bengal, modified as that had been, in the interval, by the more modern Puranic additions, and by the influence of several ages of Muhammedan rule.

This form of Brahmanism had, less than a century ago, every prospect of a prolonged tenure of power in Bengal. It was hedged round with restrictions of caste, and with monopolies in all the principal professions and means of employment known in Bengal, from the highest to the lowest, which went far to stereotype and fossilise all social life.

The English Government and the commercial community of those early days seemed equally indisposed to disturb a condition of things which rendered foreign rule almost an inevitable necessity, and which did not, at first sight, appear unfavourable to commerce.

It was not in the nature of things that a community,

which represented, however imperfectly, the laws and constitution, the religion and civilisation, of England in the 18th century, should be placed in the midst of Bengal, without powerfully affecting the intellectual and moral condition of the Bengalees, who yield to no people of the ancient or modern civilised world in their natural fondness and aptitude for the discussion of theology, morals, and all that relates to the theory of social government.

But the change, which might have been long deferred, had the British Government or mercantile community of that day alone been consulted, was precipitated by two knots of men, with whose action neither statesmen nor merchants had much to do.

A Northamptonshire Baptist shoemaker, joined by a few men as earnest as himself, but not much richer in worldly goods than the fishermen of Galilee, succeeded in establishing themselves as Christian Missionaries close to the British capital of Bengal; and there, in spite of very active opposition from the British Government, and very serious discouragements of every kind, they set up printing presses, translated the Christian Scriptures into many Indian languages, printed and distributed them, and sent forth from their presses English and native newspapers and periodicals, which, if they were not the first of their kind published in India, speedily surpassed all others in excellence in their several departments.

These men were not actually the first Protestant Missionaries who preached in India, for they had been preceded by Danes, Germans, and Englishmen, who however few in number, had from the beginning of the last century never left India without some witness of Christian truth, as taught by the Protestant Churches of Europe; but to Carey, Marshman, and Ward, and their fellow-labourers, belongs, beyond all question, the honour of establishing the first Missions, after the pattern of which such a mul

titude have since overspread India, and they in no small degree contributed to that wonderful revival of the Missionary spirit in modern Europe dating from the same era as the French Revolution.

About the time that these men began to make themselves heard in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, a great internal movement was taking place within the strictest sect of Bengal Brahmanism.

The movement was led by Rajah Ramahoun Roy, a man who would have been remarkable in any age and in any country for intellectual power and wise patriotism, joined to an unusual gift of clear practical common sense: perhaps the rarest of all qualities in men who habitually see far in advance of their contemporaries.

He speedily became the leader of a small but influential band of the best educated and most intellectual of his countrymen, who were all more or less affected by the influence which Christianity was already beginning to exert; though often feebly and in a manner rather indicating repulsion from than attraction to the religion of the Western races.

These Hindoo reformers generally began with an attack on some part of Christianity or its adjuncts; but the more they discussed, the less they seemed satisfied with the position of the great body of their fellow-countrymen, and the result was that they gradually built up for themselves new forms of Hindooism, which to bystanders appeared totally unlike anything that had ever been derived from Hindoo sources before, and which the reformers vainly hoped might prove permanent as well as orthodox.

First, they attempted, by rejecting all modern additions and developments, to revert to those pure precepts of monotheistic Hindooism which they imagined were to be found in the Vedas, and most ancient of their own Scriptures.

Few possessed, and fewer still could read or understand, these ancient writings; and, for a while, the early Hindoo reformers of the present century seemed to have convinced themselves that everything commending itself to their own reason and conscience would be found in their Vedas.

But they speedily became aware that those Ancient Hymns, whatever they might contain of sublime poetry, or of mythology very different from modern Hindooism, were, in no sense, monotheistic-that they contained no theory either of morals adapted to this life, or of theology relating to another, which could in any way satisfy the wants of modern Hindoos who had once got adrift from the anchorage of blind obedience to their family priests.

Ramahoun Roy himself seems to have found rest for his soul in a belief which differed little from that of a philosophical Unitarian of this century; but few of his followers got so far, and of the few who did, the major part went further, and became, openly or in secret, believers in Christianity as taught by one or other of the Missions established in Bengal.

But the major part elaborated for themselves another form of Hindooism-called by them Brahmoism, after their name for the Great Spirit-which comes nearer to the Christian's conception of the One Eternal God than any other Being recognised by the generality of Hindoos.

It is difficult to give any definite description of a creed which seems to change from year to year, and of which it has been truly said,* that at one time its votaries assert that Sacred Writings alone contain Truth, at another that the Works of Nature alone give Light; that at one time

Vide "Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society" for 1868-69.