CHAP VIL to ascertain the means which a Christian Government may legitimately employ in promoting the emancipation of India from its superstitions by means of Christian influence. Doubtless some points of detail may seem questionable to those far better acquainted than we can ever pretend to be with the actual wants of the country. But the principle of the thing is the main point after all. Here, as in everything else, if there be the will, there will be found a way. Only let us take care in what spirit we set about this delicate task. Everything depends on our own views of Christianity, and the reasons why we seek its diffusion. If we seek it, because it is our Creed, or the faith of the all-conquering AngloSaxon race, or the opinion of a party, then it is well if difficulties are thrown in our way. But if we regard it as, and have found it ourselves to be, God's answer to the perplexing enigmas of our mysterious existence, His response to the yearnings of the human soul, then all will be well. Coercion is a thing impossible if we regard Christianity aright, if we look upon Christ's kingdom as a kingdom of Truth; it is an expedient we shall be perpetually in danger of adopting, if we regard it as the Creed of a race, a sect, or a party. On this point let us be real and honest with ourselves. Let us break through the trammels of listless apathy, and selfsatisfied indifference, and know whether we are living in a world of dreams, and taken up with a few floating notions, or have passed through all these into the inner sanctuary of Reality and Truth. If we have, then we shall see that the satisfaction of our deepest wants which

Christianity alone supplies, lies at the bottom of all CHAP. VII. social, moral, and religious progress.

And this we have special reason to remember, for we have lived so long under the influence of Christian civilization, that we are apt to forget that which differences it from all other civilizations. And, just as it has been observed by a distinguished writer', that many men of high mathematical and scientific reputations have rested in the laws of nature as ultimate and all-sufficient principles, without seeing in them any evidence of their having been selected and ordained, and thus, without ascending from the contemplation of the universe to the thought of an intelligent Ruler,' have come to 'substitute for the Deity certain axioms and first principles as the cause of all,' so, surrounded as we are with the signs of material and moral progress, living, moving, and having our very being amidst the countless blessings of modern civilization, we are apt to overlook entirely the Fountainhead whence all these blessings take their rise; to neglect to extend our views beyond material laws and causes to a First Cause, from whom alone the first vitalizing principles of social and moral progress originate. For how can there be such progress, where, as in India (and as was the case with our forefathers years ago), the mind is distracted with the awful problem whether it is a Vishnu or a Siva, a Preserver or a Destroyer, who is

1 Dr Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise. Compare the language of St Augustine on the same subject, 'Si est in nobis Spiritus ipsius, sic nobis placent (opera ejus) ut Artifex laudetur: non ut ad opera conversi ab Artifice avertamur, et faciem quodammodo ponentes ad ea quæ fecit, dorsum ponamus ad eum qui fecit.-In Joan. Evang. Tract. viii.

M. M. E.

10

CHAP. VII. the rightful Sovereign of the universe? Blot out the

revelations of Scripture concerning God, man, and immortality, blot out the truth that God is our Father, that we are His children, that life is the childhood of a future manhood, and the fear-created, terror-engendered gods of heathendom, with their ritual of blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke, cannot but regain their dread ascendancy over our hearts. On the other hand, proclaim these blessings in the remotest haunt of suffering humanity, as realized and sealed to us in the blood of a Redeemer, and you attract with a potent magnet the heart of the most savage and the most uncivilized, you set up within them that which no coercion, or legislative enactments, or pains and penalties, can establish—a Kingdom of Truth, and Gratitude, and Love.

APPENDIX.

A. p. 1.

FOR an amusing instance of the change in our position from that which we occupied in 1712, see the letter sent on the 15th of September in that year to the 'Grand Mogul,' and to his Vizir,' quoted in Taylor and Mackenna's Compendium, p. 556.

'Governor John Russell, England.

"The supplication of John Russell, who is as the minutest grain of sand, and whose forehead is the tip of his footstool, who is absolute monarch and prop of the universe, whose throne may be compared to that of Solomon's, and whose renown is equal to that of Cyrus, the conqueror of the World, and the hereditary support of justice, eradicating oppression.

'The Englishmen having traded hitherto in Bengal, Orissa and Behar, custom free (except in Surat), are your Majesty's most obedient slaves, always intent upon your commands. We have readily observed your most sacred orders, and have found favour; we have, as becomes Servants, a diligent regard to your part of the sea. The present designed for your Majesty, from the Company, is at Calcutta, near Hoogley. We hope to send it after the rains, and likewise to procure a Firman for free trade. We crave to have Your Majesty's protection in the above-mentioned places, as before, and to follow our business without molestation.

"Calcutta, Sept. 15, 1712."

B. p. 13.

'There are obvious reasons' (observes Dr Whewell, in his Elements of Morality, Vol. II. p. 219) 'why states should thus recognize as a Duty the general moral and intellectual culture of their citizens. The moral and intellectual culture of men (including in this, as we cannot avoid doing, their religious culture also) is the highest object at which men can aim; and one which they cannot be content to neglect or have neglected. They require to have their moral, intellectual, and religious sympathies gratified, as well as to have their persons and properties protected. And many modes of conducting this culture, and gratifying these sympathies, are such as naturally draw men into associations which exercise a great sway over their actions. In some respects, the convictions and feelings which bind together such associations, may be said to exercise the supreme sway over men's actions. For, so far as men do act, their actions are, in the long run, determined by their conviction of what is right on moral and religious grounds: and a government which they hold to be wrong on such grounds, must tend to be destroyed, so far as its subjects are free to act. And though men may for a long time be subjugated by a government which they think contrary to morality and religion, a society in which this is the general condition of the subjects cannot be considered as one in which the State attains its objects. The State, the supreme authority, must, in a sound polity, have on its side the convictions and feelings which exercise the supreme sway. It must, therefore, have on its side, the convictions and feelings which tend to bind men into associations for moral, intellectual, and religious purposes. If this be not so, the State has objects in which it fails, and which are higher than those in which it succeeds; and a portion of the Sovereignty passes, from it, into