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LECTURE VI.

THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA, THE SPECIAL DUTY OF THE BRITISH CHURCHES.

CYRUS, King of Persia, knew not Jehovah,-yet

was he his " servant." As a conqueror, his course

was under the direction and control of the Almighty; and he accomplished the Divine purposes as fully as though he had done all in the conscious fulfilment of a commission. Jehovah raised him up in righteousness, and directed all his ways. He girded him. He held his right hand. He subdued nations before him. He loosed the loins of kings. He opened the two-leaved gates of Babylon. He broke in pieces the gates of brass, he broke the bars of iron. He gave to him the treasures of darkness, and the hidden riches of secret places. And all this Jehovah did with the ultimate purpose of restoring the outcasts of Israel. He was the instrument of God's will to perform all his pleasure, "saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation

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shall be laid." Nothing of the Divine mission of Cyrus is hinted at in profane history, or would ever be now surmised by one ignorant of the Jewish Scriptures. Jehovah himself revealed it.

The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus can be accounted for on general human principles, his own military skill, and his army's prowess, his enemies' unguardedness and licentiousness. No miracle was wrought in his favour by the Almighty. Notwithstanding, it is no less true that Cyrus was the Lord's servant, "called" and "surnamed" by him; and his conquests resulted from his directions by the "Lord of Hosts."

Now, guided by the analogy of the conquest of Cyrus, with its attendant results, in the light reflected on it from the pages of Isaiah, are we not warranted to say that the Lord, "wondrous in counsel, and excellent in working," has surrendered India into the hands of the British for his own purposes of gracethe evangelization of the land? May we not assume that the East India Company has been God's servant, relatively to his gracious design of converting the Eastern world, as Cyrus was, relatively to the emancipation of the captive Jews?

Were there the mere fact of the conquest of India, this analogical argument might be sound; but it derives increased force from the wondrous and unprecedented circumstances under which it was effected. Whether we contemplate the conquests in India, as to the agents employed, the principles professed, or the

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HUMAN PRINCIPLES.

measures adopted,-whether we regard their extensive scale, or the short period of their accomplishment,— they stand out, in isolation, from all past and modern history, and find solution only in the admission of a special Providence. Such an admission has not only been made by Europeans far from prone to recognise Divine agency in the events of history, but by the natives of India themselves.

If we are called on to account for the conquests of India on natural principles, and trace effects to their proximate causes, we may say, with regard to the agents themselves, employed by the British merchants who constituted the East India Company, that they were men of extraordinary enterprise and genius,that they were actuated to great attempts and bold measures by the lust of gain,—that they were impelled by ambition, and freed from ordinary moral restraints; -with regard to the political and religious circumstances of India, we may say that the masses of the people (the Hindus) were ready to shake off the burden of despotism, under which they had been crushed for centuries,—that the great Muhammadan empire was on the eve of dissolution, as the British power was about to rise, that the several principalities were distracted by mutual jealousies, and mighty powers had degenerated into petty chiefdoms, with all their conflicting interests, that the divisions of the people into religious parties and castes precluded a common cause, and a mutual defence, that wandering hordes and warlike bands traversed the country,

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defying all checks, and reducing all organized power; —and lastly, we may take into consideration the fact, that the partisanship and jealousies of European powers, leading them to intermeddle in the counsels and affairs of the native princes, hastened on the great crisis.

Now these and other circumstances are acknowledged as having been the occasions of the progress of British conquests; but Jehovah turned these occasions to the issue which his own wisdom contemplated. Human agents were marshalled on the field,-but it was to do what the Lord had determined before should be done. Human motives came into play, but there was an invisible Mover presiding over them. Human measures were adopted, but there was One who directed them to his own ends. God was altogether excluded,—yet He was in all, and pervaded all. At home, merchants sat in Leadenhall Street, and British senators were convened in Parliament. Mandates were sent out-now urging-and now restraining. Agents were commissioned-now for peace-and now for war. Troops were sent out-now for defence-and now for offence. Abroad, there was the determinate valour in the field, and the far penetration in council, of a Clive,-there was the unbending will and indomitable perseverance of Hastings, whom neither the opposition of his own council, nor fears of the authority of his merchant-masters, nor sense of responsibility to the British people, ever made to swerve from measures he had once adopted, and could carry

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CONQUESTS UNDESIGNED.

out, there was the consummate generalship of a Lake and a Wellesley,—there was the valour of disciplined troops, whose hundreds met and defeated their thousands in the field; but the Lord was above them all, and ruled them all. Amid the complex and distracted counsels of the Government, there was an unerring Counsellor, over the martial prowess of warriors, European and Asiatic, presided "the Lord of Hosts." The council-chamber and the "tented field" were alike the spheres in which moved a special Providence.

Let us take a hasty glance at the extraordinary circumstances of the conquest of India, and observe how they bear on our argument.

1. There is one striking fact connected with Indian conquests, which makes it stand out in contrast with all others recorded in history,-they were originally undesigned. The Macedonian conqueror, when, crossing desert regions, he approached the Indus, looked on India as a land to be conquered. The East India Company, when it sent its vessels of a few hundred tons' burden round the African promontory, contemplated India as a sphere of lucrative commerce,—they sent out clerks and factors, rather than soldiers and generals. The subsequent conquests were not the results of deep-laid plans and well-matured measures: they were not even contemplated as probabilities, and prepared for accordingly. The East India Company was at first a purely mercantile body. If, in any early stages of its wondrous career, it sought political power