THE

COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE

AND

Missionary Journal.

JANUARY, 1859.

SOME OF OUR ISLAND MISSIONS IN THE EAST.

CEYLON.

(Continued from p. 408.)

"HARDLY anything in India is so interesting as Ceylon." So wrote Bishop Middleton to Joshua Watson, November, 1816, after his first Visitation of the island.' 66 Christianity there is making a slow, but, I think, a sure progress. The Governor devotes his whole time and attention to the happiness and improvement of the people committed to his care. He is building churches, and founding schools, and providing for converts who make any sacrifices by the conversion, as ought to be done everywhere. To a person who has lived some time on the continent of India, it is quite surprising to hear people talking publicly of promoting Christianity, just as you do in England. ... It is high time that Ceylon should have a bishop.” He addressed two other correspondents at the same time to the same effect; "It is a spot of great interest in a Christian point of view. Christianity has there the countenance and encouragement of the Government; and though its progress will not be rapid, it is, I think, certain. The conduct of the Governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, is above all praise. A succession of four or five such governors would make Ceylon a happy island, and do honour to the British Crown. The Christianity of Ceylon," he writes to Mr. Courtenay, Secretary to the India Board, "is certainly made up of very discordant materials. There are teachers there sent out by almost every sect; yet, most of the converts, with the exception of those of the Romish faith, would,

I believe, very readily range themselves under the Episcopal authority. No government which has not some analogy to monarchy is suited to the habits and tempers of the people of this quarter of the globe." Bishop Middleton, engaged at the time in the first Visitation of the lately formed Diocese of Calcutta, could only stay ten days at Colombo, but he was in communication there with Christian teachers of almost every denomination, and with converts from all sorts of superstition. I visited the schools, as I have done everywhere, and I found time to write and to preach a sermon with a particular application to Ceylon.'

دو

That sermon is one of the few which have been spared to us by the gifted author. It is a weighty discourse, characterised by the sound learning, and the far-sighted wisdom, and deep earnestness which so marked the man. The text is in exact harmony with the stirring thoughts which the Visitation of Ceylon had suggested, and the application of it made at the "church in the Fort" in Colombo, now forty-and-two years ago, may be a word of hope and encouragement to our brethren there, who are gathering now the firstfruits of that plenteous harvest which Middleton, in his day of small things, still dared 'to prophesy, and for which he so fervently prayed.

"For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth."-Isaiah lxii. 1.

"With these precautions," said the preacher, in concluding, "the cause of your Redeemer will prosper in your hands; all things manifestly conspire to its success; zeal, exertion, liberality and (what I cannot allow myself to suppress) the sanction of the highest authority, and the encouragement of a bright example. May the Almighty bless these means, which He alone could have supplied, and make you instruments of revealing to those who are still in a state of darkness, the glory of our Zion, that so it may radiate from this favoured spot, and be visible throughout the Eastern world!"

We trust our readers will not complain of these extracts, or of a detailed reference to the hopes and auguries of the first, and, if we may express our own conviction, the greatest, of all our Indian prelates. We have already, in a former paper, pointed out some of the circumstances which make Ceylon peculiarly interesting, and peculiarly important, in the progress of the Gospel. In resuming this subject now, we very gladly avail ourselves of this strong testimony from one who was in our fathers' days a chief restorer of Catholic truth and of Catholic hope and love in the Church of England.

It is no unsuitable beginning, if we mistake not, for a New Year's work, to try to enlist fresh sympathy and heartier support in behalf of the Diocese of Colombo. We have described, however feebly and imperfectly, the past reproaches, and the past losses, of Christendom in that island of the East. Now we have before us a more cheering task. It is due to the hard and most conscientious work of an excellent bishop, and some admirable clergy, that the story of a Mission in the tropics, carried on faithfully and perseveringly now for thirteen years, should be simply and honestly told. It is due to our brethren there; but it is still more necessary for ourselves at home to ponder it well. We have still to wait for any increase of our bishops in the continent of India. Governments are still immovable. Missionary societies are still divided one against another upon this vital and organic question. The bishops of the Church of England have not spoken, as we trust they yet will speak, unitedly, and in a body, upon the necessity of this proved support, to strengthen all other Christian efforts.

It is something to be able to oppose to the indifference of Governments and the sectarianism of popular religion, the largehearted wisdom and the saintly yearnings of spirit of a Middleton and a Heber; it is something to know that in working for Ceylon, English Churchmen are working for that spot of chosen ground, on which such men, with prescient and assured hope and faith, instinctively fastened as the future centre of a great diffusion of the Truth. We need to be reminded of the prayers and the labours of those who are asleep. We have great need to look away from the discouragements of the present to the bold ardour of those who stood almost alone on the watch-tower of Hope, and who toiled on and on without seeing the breaking of the light. But we are bound also to own with thankfulness God's good hand upon us, whenever, we trust with humility, we are permitted to discern it. We invite our readers, then, to the study of the mission work in Ceylon since the foundation of the See in 1845. We have, we regret to say, no special information about that work: we have not the means, if we had the ability, to describe it fully and with vividness. We have gleaned our information here and there from letters, and journals, and reports, already accessible to all. We know neither the good Bishop nor any of the clergy of the diocese. Perhaps that very deficiency of personal acquaintance may make our testimony of more use with some. With all sincerity, then, we venture to express the conviction, which plain facts have impressed upon us, that nowhere in the East are Christian missions so vigorously conducted, in proportion to the means at the disposal of the Church; and nowhere, considering the hindrances of the past,

and the peculiar difficulties besetting the work, has such progress been made, in the same time, in a real and sound evangelizing of the heathen, as in the diocese of Colombo, since the appointment of its first bishop. If Tinnevelly is, for the duration and the abundant fruits of its missions, the bright spot of Christianity in India, Ceylon is the diocese, and as yet the only diocese, where the heathenism of India is actually encountered by something really like the faith, and the energy, and the unity, and the love of the Church of Christ; the Bishop, foremost in every good work, and his missionary clergy, for the most part, at least, by their cordial co-operation and efficient labours, doubling their numerical strength, and laying deep the foundations of real Christian life.

The first Bishop of Colombo reached his diocese on All Saints' Day, 1845. "We landed," he says, "in the afternoon, and went direct from the ship to the church." What was the religious condition of the island, in respect to its missions, at that date, which is obviously the fittest period at which our retrospect should commence? The Christian Knowledge Society had extended its useful labours to Ceylon for many years, having been established at Colombo by Bishop Middleton in 1816; the Church Missionary Society entered upon its work in 1818; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel only in 1840. We can only state the general results of the labours of these various bodies. In 1840 the first of these associations made a grant of 500l. towards a Church-building Fund in Ceylon; in 1844 a colonial chaplain, the district secretary at Point de Galle, "thanks the Society heartily for their assistance to his colonial labours which was readily afforded, and was, at the same time, very material to their efficiency during a period of twenty years." In another most important branch of Christian labour, the translation of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, we do not find exactly how much the Society had been able hitherto to effect. In the report of the Foreign Translation Committee for 1844, it is stated, "more than a century ago the Society's zealous and indefatigable missionary Ziegenbalg put forth a complete translation of the New Testament in Tamul. But it may not be irrelevant to mention here, that much has even recently been done in the diocese [of Madras and Ceylon] in the way of translation into the Tamul and Teloogoo languages, with the aid of means placed by the Society at the disposal of the Bishop." Tamul, our readers will recollect, is one of the languages spoken by a large portion of the population of Ceylon. Bishop Middleton, with his usual far-sightedness and vigour, had begun this great work in 1816. "I shall probably avail myself of my credit with the Society in printing a Singhalese Prayer-book. It is much wanted. I have