Dupleix may not have contributed to the result which he deplores. Since they identified themselves in great measure with the individual who at one time seemed destined to put the French in possession of India, while the ultimate effect of his measures was to lay the foundation of the English power; might it not have been expected that his friends would share his overthrow? The Abbé admits that the missions began to decline at this precise period; that is to say, immediately after the invasion of the southern part of India. It was during the European invasions that Dupleix flourished and fell; and it is at least highly probable that his fate had some effect upon the fortunes of his missionary allies.

Such is the result of an examination into the conduct of the French Jesuits in India, as exhibited in their own correspondence. We have not discussed the many serious charges urged against them by their adversaries, but have confined ourselves to their own well-considered statements. We have not gathered up all the suspicious circumstances which are to be found even in their own statements, and which it would have been our duty to weigh and explain, if any doubt could be entertained respecting the real merits of the case. We have endeavoured to bring those merits fairly before the reader; and to canvass them by considering the general practice, and the pervading spirit of the missionaries. In the parts of their letters which we have not noticed, there is much to admire. The diligence with which they applied themselves, each in his different department, to study the arts, the philosophy, and the languages of India, is worthy of all commendation. Many of their descriptions, those, for instance, of the pearl fishery, and of the calico manufacture in its various branches, are good specimens of that species of composition. Their knowledge of Indian philosophy was extraordinary for the age in which they wrote; and even now it deserves to be mentioned with respect. Their geographical observations also must have proved extremely useful; and the universal tendency of their communications was to make India better known to Europe, to facilitate the business of the merchant, to awaken the curiosity of speculative men, and to extend the fame and power of their own country.

Nor do we see any reason to doubt that they submitted, for the most part, to those privations and sufferings which are detailed, somewhat ostentatiously, in their letters. The missionaries were selected by experienced judges of human character; who avowed their determination to send out none but highly endowed and properly qualified men. It may be supposed, therefore, that their power of struggling against difficulties

and enduring pain, was pretty well ascertained before they left home. Neither do we in any degree deny that they were desirous of extending the Christian religion, and believed that their proceedings were calculated to produce such an effect. The system, rather than the workers of it, was radically wrong, and it became worse through the zeal, and talent, and obstinacy with which it was pursued. When the failure of the Portuguese attempts at conversion was acknowledged, the French Jesuits ought to have endeavoured to exhibit, in their own colonies, conduct exactly opposite to that which had been pursued at Goa. With the liberal support of their king, with a great ecclesiastical body at home to supply them with missionaries, and with many munificent private patrons, they ought to have founded colleges and schools; taught science, morals, natural history, and all European arts and learning; and the native mind would thus have been gradually prepared for understanding and receiving the Gospel. Instead of this prudent and Christian course, the Jesuits taught a spurious religion, which, from its great external resemblance to the Indian superstition, was at first professed by numbers, but was firmly embraced by none. Instead of exposing false miracles, diminishing the authority of the priesthood, rejecting idle ceremonies, and proving the emptiness of mere outward forms, they brought forward miracles of their own, they jealously maintained the priestly power, they invented new ceremonies from day to day, and substituted baptism and absolution for the washings of the selfrighteous Brahmin, and for the mantrams and other spells of the common people. They trusted, in short, to image-worship and to saint-worship, to false and contemptible wonders, to disguise and deceit respecting their own origin and characters, rather than to explanations of the true character of God, to the communication of sound and practical knowledge, and to the gradual translation and circulation of the scriptures. They preferred the serpentine paths of Loyola to the majestic simplicity of Jesus Christ; and what right can they have to tell Protestant Christians that the failure of such a system demonstrates the impracticability of converting the Hindoos? They had recourse to devices of their own for propagating the religion of Jesus. Their cunning was confounded; their disguises were seen through; and a solemn warning has been put upon record against presuming to tread in their steps. The blessing of God has not rested upon the craftiness of these extraordinary men: they went forth in their own strength; and they returned with discomfiture and defeat. Such a result, of such an undertaking, is no proof that the Hindoos are reprobate; nor ought it even to discourage other attempts for their conversion.

There is one point, however, in which Protestants will do well to imitate the supporters of the Jesuit Missions. Those Missions were openly patronized, and liberally supported by the Roman Catholic princes of the countries from which they proceeded. When we turn to the Protestant Missions in India, and ask what encouragement they have received from Protestant kings, governments, statesmen or parliaments, the answer is not honourable to the friends or children of the Reformation. The Dutch effected a nominal conversion in Ceylon; the Danes did a little at Tranquebar; and the English have done, and are still doing, a very little in different corners of their immense empire. But while Portugal, and Spain, and France bestowed every encouragement and assistance which power and wealth could afford on the missionary efforts of a corrupted Church, the great, the moral, the religious, the Protestant empire of Great Britain, makes no adequate provision for the spiritual wants of the European residents in Hindostan, leaves the instruction of thousands of native Christians to the casual alms and fluctuating energies of private individuals, and while it contributes directly and liberally to the support of Heathen temples, can hardly be persuaded to bestow a single rupee upon the impoverished Christians of Trichinopoly and Tanjore. It is true that things are mending; that some provision has been recently made for the education of the natives; and that the dangers which were formerly put forward as a bugbear to frighten our rulers, are no longer regarded as an unanswerable argument for neglecting the Indian Church. Still the number of chaplains actually employed is inadequate to the wants of the Europeans. His Majesty's government has refused to take the necessary steps for securing a proper superintendence, control, and support, to the handful of clergymen who are scattered over India; and the individual efforts which are making to propagate the Christian faith obtain a scanty measure of encouragement from the temporal authorities at home and abroad.

If Mr. Dubois had adverted to these lamentable facts, he might have justly censured the lukewarmness and indifference of Protestant Europe. He might have said that these were the most formidable obstacles to the conversion of India; he might have shown that while we boast of our purer faith, we ought to be ashamed of our less religious behaviour; he might have said that Roman Catholics, whether right or wrong, had earnestly laboured to propagate what they believed to be the Gospel, while Protestants, priding themselves upon their superior knowledge of spiritual things, were satisfied with enjoying that knowledge themselves, and left the rest of the world in darkness. We should rejoice to hear M. Dubois's sentiments on these topics. By making us ac

quainted with Hindostan, with the particulars of its superstitions, with the effects of its institutions, and with the miserable state of its dense population, he has done much to excite the sympathy, and direct the energies of a benevolent and a Christian people. Let him persevere in this part of his undertaking, and he will be esteemed and thanked by all good men. But we trust that he will not return to his wire-drawn worthless arguments against the extension of Christianity in the East. Never will he be able to prove that the Jesuits took proper steps for the conversion of the heathen. Their deceitfulness, their intolerance, their pride, their superstitious rites and ceremonies, their idolatry, their political intrigues, and their absurd pretension to miraculous powers, account for the signal discomfiture which attended all their mighty efforts, and afford, when duly examined, no trifling encouragement to those who shall renew the enterprize upon other principles, and trust to other help for

success.

ART. IX.-1. A Sermon preached at Bombay, on Whitsunday, May 22d; at Colombo, September 18th; and at Calcutta, on Advent Sunday, November 27th, 1825, in Aid of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. By the Right Reverend Reginald Heber, D. D, Lord Bishop of Calcutta. Calcutta. 1826. 25.

2. The Glory of the Church in its Extension to Heathen Lands: a Sermon preached in Aid of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at St. George's Church, Madras, on Whitsunday, May 14th, 1826. By Thomas Robinson, M.A. Domestic Chaplain to the late Lord Bishop of Calcutta. London. Rivingtons. 1827. 2s. 6d. ATTEMPTS are still made in different parts of the world to undervalue the labours of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The charges which have been put forth against its schools in Newfoundland, and the prompt and decisive answer which those charges have received, will be found in another part of this journal. Similar accusations are understood to be in circulation respecting the Society's Progress in India, and especially respecting the present state and future prospects of its principal work in that quarter, Bishop's College, Calcutta. The two sermons now before us, excellent and valuable in every point of view, are peculiarly calculated to silence the whispers to which we allude. Bishop Heber, and his chaplain Mr. Robinson, are, at least, as well-informed and as impartial as any other witnesses that can be produced. Their testimony is unsolicited and uncontradicted;

and it is not too much to expect that it will be believed, Without further comment, we extract the statements of these distinguished persons upon the subject under consideration.

The Bishop concludes his eloquent sermon with the following notice of the Propagation Society.

"Having been encouraged by recent events, and by an increase of funds derived from the contributions of a liberal public, it has extended, within the last ten years, the range of its labours into Bengal, where it now maintains three episcopally ordained missionaries, (one more is on his way hither,) and is the chief contributor to au institution in which all the three Presidencies are equally interested, the establishment of Bishop's College, Calcutta,―of which the avowed and appropriate objects are to superintend and forward the translation and publication of the Scriptures in the languages of India, the education of youth, both Native and European, (and selected in equal proportions from Bengal, Madras, Ceylon, and Bombay,) in such a manner as to qualify them, as schoolmasters, for the diffusion of general knowledge among the natives, and, as missionaries, to impart that saving knowledge without which the value of human acquirements is small indeed. It is on these grounds, and with a more immediate view to the present unfinished state of this establishment especially, (as an institution of no foreign or distant interest to those whom I am addressing, but which only wants your bounty to enable its conductors to do that which they are most desirous of, and extend its operations to this very neighbourhood, and to every part of the Western as well as the Eastern coast of this vast peninsula,) that I respectfully, but with confidence, appeal to a bounty, to which appeal has never yet been made in vain.

"And, as you desire the glory of God, and that the truth of His Son should be made known to every creature under heaven; as you covet the happiness of mankind, and that innocent blood should be no longer shed amongst us; as you long for the salvation of souls, and that those who serve and love you here should feel a yet purer and stronger affection for you in paradise; as you love your own souls, and would manifest the sincerity of your grateful faith in that Saviour by whom you are redeemed, I exhort, I advise, I entreat, yea, in the name of my master and yours, in the name of Jesus, Son of God Most High, I demand, in this cause, your assistance and your offerings."-p. 25-27.

Mr. Robinson enters into more detail:

"It is hard to conceive, (because it is an anomaly in the moral government of God) that the dominion of this vast continent should have devolved upon a little island of the west, for the sole purpose of aggrandizing her children, without some ulterior design of moral and religious good, of which she might thus become the ready and efficient instrument. And why should we not be permitted to indulge the delightful hopesuggested not less by the probability of events than by an affectionate love for the communion to which we belong,-that our Church, by holding forth the word of life, may be not the least among the honoured instruments of gathering within the fold of Christ the scattered millions of India?