labour in Ceylon, 66 was one of the ablest and most estimable of my missionary clergy. A high wrangler at Cambridge, he had come out to devote himself to missionary work with a wholeness of heart, a singleness of mind, and meekness of spirit, which attached us all to him in no common way. His patience and calmness, combined with his advanced knowledge of Singhalese, peculiarly fitted him for the task of revising the Liturgy, which, in a troublous and critical period, he had at my request undertaken; he was one with whom it had long been my happiness 'to take sweet counsel together, and walk in the house of God as friends."",

But in another most essential respect this same Society had set an excellent example, which the Bishop has eagerly followed. The education of girls in boarding-schools, apart from their heathen parents, is of most urgent importance everywhere; and we can hardly do better than show how it was regarded in 1842, by one who may be called the patriarch of the Church in Ceylon-Christian David, who has a peculiar interest attaching to him. A pupil of the venerable Schwartz, and baptized by him, he was admitted into holy orders by Bishop Heber at Calcutta, the first native of Ceylon, we believe, who became a minister in our Church. At a very advanced age, but in full possession of his faculties, he occasionally assisted the chaplain at Jaffna as late as 1846. A few years before, he came into Mrs. Adley's boarding-school at Nellore; that lady, the foundress of the school, was questioning the girls on Scripture history; there were twenty-five there at that time; the number was thirty-five on the Bishop's inspection a few years later. "When we had read," he said to me, "this may seem nothing to you, who have come from a country where women are educated as well as men; but to me, to hear rational answers and Scripture history from the mouths of little girls, is music to my ears. I always used to say that nothing would be done for my country people till females were taught. And when I think how children learn their religion at their mother's knee, and what changes a few years may bring about by means of pious women, my eyes are filled with tears of joy, and I am ready to say with Simeon, Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” ”

How have both these great divisions of the work been extended since! Witness the College of St. Thomas, projected in 1849, and opened in 1851, with eighty pupils, under a warden and four tutors, and of which the Bishop can report, October 15, 1857, "that all is prospering, thank God! At the close of last Michaelmas term, 210 were in regular attendance at the Collegiate School [not more, we believe, than twenty of these of

English parentage], fourteen in the higher branch of the Institution, besides fifteen native orphan boys in the Asylum within the College precincts, and fifty-two in a humbler school just beyond them." He does not speak of the extensive library in the Students' Hall, which he himself presented to the College; or of the active part he has himself taken at certain times in the regular duty of instruction; but we may not refrain from specially congratulating him on the greatest result of all, which he has already been permitted to witness. In March, 1857, he ordained the first Divinity student from St. Thomas' College, "a very worthy Singhalese deacon, son of a converted Buddhist priest!" We are not surprised to hear that the Institution is almost self-supporting, and that it has secured the good-will of all ranks and races in the colony; and this could be said in 1856, after only five years. The good Bishop may well thank God, and take courage.

We can only note a very few further particulars about the progress of female education. Batticaloa, on the eastern coast, has been one of the neglected spots of Ceylon, as far as the English Church is concerned. The Wesleyans have mainly occupied it. But even here, in 1850, a remarkable work was in progress. Mrs. Hannah, the catechist's wife, had opened gratuitously a native girls' school, and taught it herself. "It is a most creditable effort," writes the Bishop, "and, as made by a native lady, marks an intelligence and Christian spirit quite in advance of the people. Were not my whole time and resources required for the maintenance of the proposed College, there is no branch of missionary work to which I would more gladly give all possible encouragement and assistance. There were thirty-six girls present; they read the Tamul Testament; two said the Catechism in English. . . . . It is one of the best girls' schools out of Colombo." It will be enough to mention, further, that some of the latest letters report the satisfactory progress of the female school for the higher classes of native children at Colombo. About forty are under daily Christian instruction.

But the chief triumph of all in the field of Education has perhaps been achieved by Mr. Thurstan, the excellent missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. We must refer those who may be interested in the subject to this clergyman's very interesting report, published in 1855, in the series of "Missions to the Heathen." It was about five years before that he introduced into Ceylon his system of an industrial school. In this, forty Singhalese boys (boarders) are taught to read and write their own language first, and are then promoted to English classes. "We endeavour to prepare them to act as village schoolmasters, or industrious Christian peasants. In the indus

trial training we teach them such employments as they may, with advantage both to themselves and the public, introduce into their villages on leaving school." 1

Our volume for 1857 contained the remarks of one who, after eight years' wanderings in Ceylon," may be supposed to have had some knowledge of the people. At the same time that he does not spare his criticisms upon ordinary missionary work, he reports that the results of Mr. Thurstan's school have been most beneficial. 66 Here," he says, "is a lesson for the Government, which, if carried out on an extensive scale, would work a greater change in the colony within twenty years, than all the preaching of the last fifty. By this means, in the course of a few years, we should secure an educated and useful population, in lieu of the present indolent and degraded race, an improved system of cultivation, new products, a variety of trades. Heathenism could not last in such a state of affairs; it would die out."

We know not what the Colonial Government has done since, but we hope our traveller in Ceylon will lay to heart the fact that the Church sometimes succeeds where the State fails. The Bishop reports, in 1854, "that the success of Mr. Thurstan's Industrial School has induced me to attempt a second in the central province, at Kandy, under your late missionary, the Colonial Chaplain, Mr. Wise. The failure of the Government, in several similar attempts, renders the success of your missionary, with the few resources at command, more remarkable.” 2

And now briefly to touch upon the last topic, but the most important of all in the planting of the Church of Christ in this great diocese. Are these works, which we have thus imperfectly noticed, and the general labours of the missions conducted solely or chiefly by English zeal and English talent, or has it been one result of the residence of a bishop, that while the Church at home has at last been roused to some sense of her duty to the colony, "the firstfruits" of Ceylon, too, have been gathered in, so as to "set themselves to the ministry of the saints"? In one word, is the Church in Ceylon merely a pensioner for men and money on England, or is it rooting itself into its own soil, and yielding up from within itself the fruit of willing hearts and active minds, which can yearn and labour for this deeply interesting country, as with the love of children to their own fatherland? The answer has already been given partially; but, probably,

1 In the month of June, 1855, there were fifty boarders; see the last very interesting report of the work carried on in this school, in the Report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for 1856.

2 Other Industrial Schools have since been established by Missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Nuwara Eliya and Badulla; the former, at least, is now (1858) "bearing good fruit."

only a few persons are aware how large a number there is already in Ceylon of native clergy. Out of the fifteen on the list of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for this diocese in the Report of 1858, eleven, if we mistake not, are natives of the island. Nor are these ordinary men, or without special fitness for their work. The standard of Church efficiency in Ceylon is not now, at any rate, low and unsatisfactory. We have mentioned one of the clergy of the Church Missionary Society, and the deserved respect in which he was held for his piety and learning. The first missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the late Rev. H. Von Dadelszen, was no less zealous and able. He was educated in King's College, London, on the Worsley Foundation, specially for missionary duty, and he was preferred, under circumstances of peculiar trial to the Church, to the Colonial Chaplaincy at Kandy, one of the most important positions in the diocese. The example of such men has helped the Bishop to maintain a high mark in his ordinations. At the first which he held, he ordained a native who had just returned from Bishop's College, Calcutta, after a residence there of five years; "his qualifications are worthy of the place from which he comes." Another student from the same College has had a pastoral charge at Kandy since 1846. Of the good sense and practical ability of another, we believe a Malabar, in his missionary work at Matura, there is full proof in a very intelligent report from him, published in 1853; ' and the Bishop's journal of 1850 should be consulted for the thoroughly skilful management and great devotedness of another in his school at Trincomalie. At a subsequent ordination the Bishop was enabled to admit to Deacons' Orders at once three tried and faithful native teachers; two of whom, Tamils, had been employed for more than eight years, and the other, a Singhalese, for five years, as catechists among the native Christians. We have already alluded to the ordination of the first student of St. Thomas' College, the worthy son of a converted Buddhist priest. Another native Deacon was ordained on the following Trinity Sunday, 1857.2

1

We have written at length, and yet we fear presented a very imperfect account of the Church work of Ceylon; but we think we have said enough to justify our assertion of the extraordinary impulse which the Bishop of Colombo has been permitted to give to every branch of that work, either by his own personal exertions, or through the agency of well-chosen and most faithful fellow-labourers. We almost forget, in the report of this mani

1 See Quarterly Paper of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, No. 72.

2 All the Missionaries here mentioned are on the list of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, except one.

fold activity, that we are writing of men working under a tropical sun, and in a country where there are many hindrances from a subtle superstition, from the indolence and apathy of the population, and not least, perhaps, from the perplexity not unfrequently introduced into the action of Government by the prevalence of religious differences and contending parties.'

But the true spirit of Christian life is, beyond all doubt, manifesting itself in the Diocese of Colombo, and the Church's work is as certainly proceeding in the Church's way. Daily, each morning and evening, the incense of prayer is rising up in that beautiful Mother-Church of the Diocese. Every Sunday, two full services in English and one in Singhalese unite together as in one the teachers from the far-off island of the West with brethren gathered in from this long-oppressed and deeplydegraded land. What may not be expected, with the blessing of God, from such a beginning? What a future of hope is indeed opened, if the work so begun is carried on with the same moderation, and the same self-denial, and the same love! Who will doubt that that work is real which is supported by one of our Societies, that for the propagation of the Gospel, with a grant only of 1,000l. a-year, but which has made natives, high and low, forward, ay, and munificent in almsdeeds? Who will not confess that some power is struggling, and effectually struggling, in Ceylon, when he hears that Buddhist priests are rising up in unusual activity against it, and that Buddhist priests, just one or two as yet, have been won to see that in the Gospel only is there the true rest of the soul, and that Christ alone can give the blessing of peace? We are writing on the Eve of S. Thomas' Day, whose name the Bishop of Colombo fitly chose for his college. Most heartily do we acknowledge the great service which the Church in Ceylon is now rendering to the evangelizing of the heathen. A great problem is working out there its slow but, we believe, its sure solution. Brahminical fanaticism and Buddhist apathy are still hanging like clouds of pestilence over India and China. Men talk and speculate in England how these evils can be corrected. What, if the Church in Ceylon be acting while we are raising questions? What, if it be given by a merciful God to such true-hearted labourers, as are now praying and toiling in the Diocese of Colombo, to find the secret of apostolic power, and to be preparing His way who is even now the desire of the nations? What, if from the College of S. Thomas, in

1 We would especially invite attention to the Reports of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel on this Diocese for the three last years. The present state of Buddhism in Ceylon would require a separate paper.