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APPEAL TO INDIA.

dential gifts bestowed in richest profusion; yet thou are without thy God. Thou art rich in all grains, and dyes, and minerals, in spices and perfumes; but thou art not rich unto God. Thou displayest on thy unbounded surface all physical beauty and grace; but thou art unto God a dreary wilderness. Thy sun scatters its vivid beams, and makes thy day one of surpassing glory; but thou art covered with the shroud of spiritual night. Thy people possess intellect and imagination; but in the things of God thy wise men are fools-thy learned are dotards-thine aged men grope as the blind. Misery and destruction are in thy ways. The way of peace thou knowest not. There is no fear of God before thine eyes. Oh! land of error, and of guilt unparalleled in human annalsstained by the blood of human sacrifice, black with the ashes of the Indian female, defiled by infant murder and parents' destruction-repent, and turn unto thy God, and He will have mercy on thee; and to our Lord, for He will abundantly pardon thee.

LECTURE IV.

INDIA DESCRIBED AS A BATTLE-FIELD OF

EVANGELISTIC WARFARE.

In the previous lecture, we described a people who have solved the mystery of the universe, without the creative power of God; established a system without his providence; and set up a government without his rule. They have constituted an eternity, without the administration of the Eternal; and devised a system of retribution, without the intervention of the Judge of quick and dead. The being, character, and government of Jehovah, are repulsive to their tastes, and abhorrent to their natures.

The servant of Jehovah, the missionary of Christ, appears among them. He pleads for the authority of the true God, from whom they have so long been apostates. A contest ensues. The heathen mind and the Christian, charged with elements of mutual repulsiveness, come into direct collision. What is the issue? Can it be doubtful? The hatred to the good,

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THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY.

and just, and holy, which was concentred in the bosom of the Jew, found an appropriate object on which it might discharge itself, in the person of the Son of God; and in like manner, though in a fainter degree, the hatred of the heathen of India to the good, and just, and holy, which has been operating for ages to the production and sustentation of ungodly systems and iniquitous practices, finds a most urgent occasion of exercise, when the apostle of Christ lifts up his voice among them. His presence is the signal of warfare. His voice rouses into action every jarring element of discord. His doctrines lash into fury the storm of Hindu passion. His movements are often viewed as those of a foe. His life appears to many as a bitter curse, and his death is accounted by them a blessing.

Endeavour to estimate the position of a missionary among the Hindus. It meets with no parallel elsewhere. Every prejudice that might be gathered from the ends of the earth confronts him at the very onset. First, there is prejudice against him in the Hindu mind, on the score of his radical and hereditary uncleanness. The fair European, with all his personal cleanliness and purity of manners, is in their apprehension more unclean than the filthiest outcast of India. He is of a caste, named Maléch, the lowest in the scale of human being. The Brahmans are forbidden by the Shastras to serve a Maléch; but the love of gold has overcome the authority of scripture, and they willingly engage in the service of Europeans.

HINDU PREJUDICE.

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The prejudice of caste, however, extensively prevails among the masses of the people. Some reputed holy men affect to avoid the European's touch; and some will refuse a book-passed to them by direct contactfrom his hand. The pure Hindu would be defiled, were a drop of water to be sprinkled on him by the missionary; and were he to drink "a cup of cold water," received from his hand, he would be excluded from caste.

There is prejudice against the missionary in all his personal and social habits. He is ceremonially unclean in all he does. His food is unlawful; his mode of eating it is unclean. His minutest actions lack ceremonial purity; he contracts defilement in all he does. Nor does his moral purity remove this powerful prejudice. So much is the moral sense of the Hindu paralyzed by the superstitious part of his nature, that he is little able, and less willing, to perceive the beauties of moral excellence. A defect in the false standard of purity and righteousness, which Hinduism sets up, would not be compensated by a more than angelic fulfilment of moral obligations.

He

He

Again, the missionary is destitute of the usual signs and accompaniments of a religious character. comes "eating and drinking," like other men. enters on the same domestic relations. The symbols of religion are in his case absent. He is invested with no sacred insignia. No paintings are on his body,no sacred cord is suspended from his neck. There is

nothing, in fact, to sustain his profession of being a devotee a worshipper of God. He worships no object palpable to the senses; he performs no visible prostrations. His spiritual exercises are far beyond their cognizance.

The missionary is also considered as belonging to a country thoroughly ignorant of all true religion. This sentiment is natural to the Hindus, who confine the knowledge of all truth to the country bounded by the Himalehs and Comorin. It has also been considerably strengthened by the actual ungodliness which they witnessed in the first European residents, who, in the neglect of all religious exercises, and the violation of all moral duties, afforded the best evidence that they did not believe in a God. I have frequently witnessed the astonishment of the natives at my propounding religious truth. as an act of presumption. "We had thought that ignorant of religion; but now speaketh this man wisely, as though he were a real Shastri." The Brahmans, in their attempts to rouse the animosity of the people, fail not to urge the folly of resorting to a missionary, who, by his caste and nation, must perforce be ignorant of the holy truths of Brahma.

It has appeared to them They have frequently said, these Europeans had been

Again, the missionary is viewed by many with peculiar prejudice, arising from the idea that he is an agent of Government, commissioned to destroy the people's faith. Such misapprehensions are scarcely entertained at the Presidencies; but they are found in