CHAP. reason to believe them to be sincere Christians. Were it otherwise; if truth obliged us to receive this appalling description of the native Christians without limitation; we should close this account of their missions, mourning over the blank they would present in the History of Christianity in India. But we hope, we believe better things of some of their proselytes. Deeply as we deplore the error that obscures the light, and the superstition that distorts the beauty of the Gospel under every modification of Christianity inculcated by the church of Rome; yet sometimes light enough is seen to beam through the darkness to conduct the sinner to his Redeemer. There are in India, as in Europe, some members of the Roman communion who renounce all dependence on the Virgin and other saints; rely solely on the meritorious death and passion of the Lord Jesus Christ for pardon of sin and peace with God; abhor the pretended sacrifice of the mass; seek, in daily prayer, the Holy Spirit's inspiration, to teach their ignorance, to preserve their waywardness, to heal their infirmities and guide them in all their ways. Though we concede that such characters form a very small minority of the native romanists in India; yet are they sufficiently numerous to encourage the belief, that the Saviour has a little flock even in that dark and idolatrous church. Their 9 See especially the spirited letter of the Rev. Michael Crotty, R. C. parish priest of Birr, in Ireland, to the romish Archbishop, Dr. Murray, published in 1836. No consistent protestant could hesitate to acknowledge as brethren in Christ, men holding the faith therein avowed, and engaging in the labours it describes for the moral and religious improvement of the church.-An extract from this letter is given in the Author's VINDICATION of Protestant missions, in reply to Dr. Wiseman's aspersions, pp. 110-112. numbers are known only to Him whose grace has given them the will to believe and to obey:1 but, however small a remnant, they are enough to prove, that even the romish missions have not entirely failed to promote Christianity in India. A. D. 1815. 1 Phil. ii. 12, 13. CHAPTER V." A Jesuit missionary's assertion, from the failure of their mis sions, that the conversion of the Hin CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE PROSPECTS OF doos is im- an practicable. 1. In concluding this history of the Romish missions in India, it is important to consider the inference that has been drawn from their avowed failure; which is, that the conversion of Hindoos is impracticable. The writer who has advanced this bold assumption, after giving what he calls an" abridged history of the rise, the progress, and the decline of the Christian religion in India," adds, "the low state to which it is now reduced, and the contempt in which it is held, cannot be surpassed. There is not at present in the country (as mentioned before) more than a third of the Christians who were to be found in it eighty years ago, and this number diminishes every day by frequent apostasy. It will dwindle to nothing in a short period; and if things continue as they are now going on, within less than fifty years there will, I fear, remain no vestige of Christianity among the natives." 1 After much more to the same effect, enlarging on the obstacles that Hindoos must encounter on embracing Christianity, which he thinks 1 Abbé Dubois' Letters, pp. 12, 13. HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. insurmountable, he reiterates the assertion, that 2 "the Christian religion is an object of universal opprobrium all over the country; and" that "no means whatever remain of getting from the pagans a further hearing on the subject, either through native catechists or otherwise.' "Warned by long experience, I repeat it, with feelings of the deepest sorrow, that there remain, in the present circumstances, no human means of improving Christian knowledge among the natives of India. The concerns of the Christian religion are in a quite desperate state; from a long period, all missionaries who are come to India for the purpose of making proselytes, have found themselves deceived on their arrival in the country, have experienced nothing but the most distressing disappointments in all their pursuits, and all their labours have terminated in nothing." "For my part, I have, until now, struggled, though in vain, with the numberless difficulties stated in these letters, and exerted myself to the utmost not to sink under so many disadvantages. If a great many persons of my profession have discharged their duties with more ability, I believe that I may boast that few have done it with more patience and perseverance than myself; and in spite of every kind of disgust and contradiction, in spite of the inutility of my pursuits, I am determined, after having embraced the profession of a missionary, to continue the desperate struggle, and persevere in it to the last."2 ? About five or six years after this was written, the author's determination here avowed sank under the pressure of the circumstances he describes, and he quitted India in despair. Not however, we do him the justice to say, without painful feelings. For we have it from a friend, who accompanied 495 A. D. 1815. CHAP. V. His reasons for this assertion. "In fact, the conversion of the Hindoos, under existing circumstances, is so hopeless a thing, and their prejudices against it are so deeply rooted, and so decidedly declared, that I am firmly persuaded, that if (what has never been the case) the Hindoo brahmins were animated by a spirit of proselytism, and sent to Europe missionaries of their own faith, to propagate their monstrous religion, and make converts to the worship of Seeva and Vishnoo, they would have much more chance of success among certain classes of society, than we have to make among them true converts to the faith in Christ."3 2. Anticipating, probably, the objection that might reasonably be expected to be made to all this, that before settling down in a conclusion so ruinous to the souls of millions of our fellowcreatures, every means ought to be used, and every effort made, for their conversion; he asserts, that all this the Roman Church has done already, and that in a manner the most likely to succeed. "If any of the several modes of Christian worship were calculated to make an impression and gain ground in the country, it is no doubt the catholic form, which protestants call an idolatry in disguise: it has a Pooga, or sacrifice; (the mass is termed by the Hindoos Pooga, literally, sacrifice;) it has processions, images, statues, tirtan or holy water, fasts, tittys. or feasts, and prayers for the dead, invocation him on ship-board, that as the vessel lay in the Madras roads, he cast his eyes back on the shores he had left, and said, apparently with emotion, That he hoped one day to return. This hope he has not yet realized; nor can he be expected, while retaining the sentiments he has published, ever to think of resuming what, to him, appears to be so impracticable a task. |