Importance connected with a purely evangelistic Mission; but it is my conof educational viction based upon experience, and this conviction has now been work. strengthened, that our higher educational institutions are doing a good work, and it appears to me that the whole gist of this meeting has been to answer our first question in the affirmative. Should The third question is answered by the very name of our Colleges and Schools, when we call them Christian institutions. For the rest, the responsibility rests on the parents who send their sons to us knowing our institutions to be what they are. We do not tamper with youth. The great question is that of possible improvements. As a boy I attended the Free Church Institution at Madras under Dr. Anderson, and the impression then made on my mind has never connection been effaced to this day. There appears to have been a falling off with State in the spirit of our religious teaching, and the chief reason of it seems to be our connection with the State system of education. Can we not sever this and cease taking Government money, getting the necessary funds from home, and thereby freeing our Missionary education from all hampering restrictions? education be maintained? Religious teaching should be voluntary. THE REV. J. S. WOODSIDE, A. P. M., Fatehgurh, N. W. P., said:-My friend Dr. Valentine, while speaking apparently against voluntary religious instruction, supplied us with one of the most powerful arguments he could possibly urge in its favour. Referring to the College at Jeypore, where for obvious reasons there could be no Christian religious instruction, he informed us that so anxious were some of the youths attending the College to receive such instruction, that several applied to him, and that in response to their request he formed a Bible class which they attended. He also dwelt on the fact that so far from the natives of the country objecting to such instruction, it was necessary for the prosecution of their other studies that they should study the Bible, and that this of itself would reconcile them to compulsory religious instruction. I must confess to some astonishment at the conclusion Dr. Valentine drew from his premises. Surely if from a desire for religious instruction or from a desire for help in their secular studies, the students of a secular College under native management in a native State should spontaneously request Christian instruction-this is a powerful argument against creating a prejudice against Christian teaching by making it compulsory. Dr. Murray Mitchell too surprised me by what appeared to me to be a singularly fallacious argument. He was urging the necessity of keeping up the Free Church Arts College at Bombay, and argued that unless this were done the youth of Western India would either be handed over to the Agnostic or Atheistic influences of the Government College, or else be won over to Roman Catholicism in St. Xavier's College-a strange argument in favour of compulsory religious instruction, since at St. Xavier's the attendance of all but Roman Catholics at religious instruction is purely voluntary. If then such indirect influences, coupled in the case of the Roman Catholic College with voluntary religious instruction, are sufficient to win non-Christian students over to irreligion or Roman Catholicism, why should the same methods be regarded as altogether inadequate, if not powerless, in the case of our Protestant Missionary Schools and Colleges ? A crisis The question is, how shall we best bring Gospel influences to bear on the people of India? One most potent agency is undoubtedly educational effort. But what many fear is, that by compelling attendance at Christian religious instruction you will defeat your own object by emptying our Schools and Colleges. We are evidently approaching, if we have not already entered upon, a great educational crisis in this country, and it is absolute- approaching. ly necessary, if we are to work successfully, that we should carefully consider our position. Private educational enterprise is sure to be greatly extended, and we shall have to compete with it in the future, as well as with Government and Municipal Institutions. It is, however, the opinion of some that if Missionary bodies acted considerately and judiciously at this time, they might retain much of the higher education of the country in their own hands. I speak from experience, I know that in Western India we have lost much of our former hold on the education of the country through our insisting on compulsory religious instruction. I am not a little surprised to hear that some do not profess to understand what the term compulsory religious instruction means, and that some even go so far as to affirm that the thing itself does not exist. I should have thought that the meaning of the term was perfectly obvious, and that to dispute about such a point Meaning of was mere logomachy and quibbling. Of course it is not meant "compulsory" that any are forced by physical compulsion into our Schools and teaching. Colleges-what is obviously meant is that after being admitted to the Missionary School or College, which worldly interests in some sense compel them to attend, attendance at Christian religious instruction is obligatory. As I said before, I do not profess that my own mind is perfectly made up on the subject; but still I do know that in the case, not only of non-Christian natives, but also of many Europeans of high character and personal merit, serious moral objections are felt to our present system. In private life Christian charity requires that the strong should take no unfair advantage which their position gives them over the weak, and I cannot see why the observance of this principle should be less imperative in the matter we are discussing. I remember calling on the American Revivalist William Taylor when he was first in Bombay; and as he knew I was in charge of a large Missionary Educational Institution, he candidly informed me that he and his fellow workers did not come out to India to tamper with the young [cries of No! No!]. I am not expressing my own opinion, I am simply relating a fact. I know too, that the opinion Mr. Condemned by many. Taylor then held (whether he has changed it or not since then I do not stop to enquire) is shared by many others whose opinions we are bound to respect. If then the world and some Christian men join in condemning our present system, my own strong impression is, that our object would be far more effectively and rapidly accomplished by trusting to other and higher influences than mere compulsion for securing attendance at religious instruction. Dr. Valentine has rightly pointed out that self-interest in some cases, the spirit of enquiry in others, will co-operate powerfully with the higher influences of Christian precept and example in bringing under direct religious instruction those whom we wish to reach. The present system does undoubtedly create intense, and I think, needless irritation. We should gain better all we now obtain, and I firmly believe, far more by adopting a different method. Another objection is that very often, I fear, by compulsory religious instruction, is understood one thing here and quite another thing in the Committees and on the Boards of our respective Societies at home. And the consequence is, that room is left open for unreality and misunderstanding, lectures and merely moral teaching being substituted for direct Scriptural instruction; or else some out here have to act in this matter against their own highest convictions. Why then fetter our efforts by a rule that is unnecessary, and that yet gives opportunity to those hostile to Christianity to oppose and thwart our labours? As I often say, better trust to the stone and sling than make use in our Missionary warfare of any unwarranted weapons. The Gospel stands in need of no questionable means, no doubtful expedients for its advocacy. The great Father of all is so patient-why should we not be so? We are working not for to-day nor for to-morrow only, but for the coming ages. It is for no compromise of principle, no slight on Gospel truth that we contend. Only this, we wish to bring that Gospel to bear on the people of this land, and especially on its youth, in such a way as shall best gain their willing, and therefore their most effective hearing. One thing, however, we cannot contentedly acquiesce in, and that is, that by any unworthy measures and short sighted policy we should alienate from our influence those who might otherwise be won for Christ. SIXTH DAY. WEDNESDAY, January 5th, 1883. Morning Session. Opening religious services were conducted by the Rev. G. The Press as a Missionary Agency. PRODUCTION OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE. FIRST PAPER BY THE REV. J. HEWLETT, L. M. S., Benares. Indian The question given to me to treat for this Conference is the Production of Vernacular Literature, as a branch of the wider subject of the Press as a Missionary Agency. None of the great questions which affect the moral and spiritual welfare of the many millions of inhabitants of this vast country seem to me more opportune. The mind of thought, past India, which owes its great distinction in the world to and present. the wonderful love of theosophic literature displayed by it through past centuries coeval with the greater part of the history of mankind, has, after a period of comparative repose and apathy, received from the combined influence of the British administration, of English education, of commerce with various nations, and of Christian Missions, a powerful awakening, to find before itself a new career of life, thought, and activity stretching far away into the unseen future. In this new awakening the press Power of the plays such a vigorous part, in shaping and guiding the press to guido thought of the country by the circulation of foreign and vernacular literature, as to promise to become in India, what Napoleon said it was in Europe, the fifth great it. done. The work monarchy. Has the Church of Christ met this sublime crisis in her history by flooding the newly awakened world of Indian mind with her life-giving light? What vernacular literature has she already given to the people? What is she required to produce to meet their growing needs? How can such requirements be best fulfilled by her? Vernacular literature of both a direct and indirect evangelistic aim is hardly likely to be complained of as deficient in either quantity or variety by any reasonable critic, however much he may be dissatisfied with it in other respects. The Reports of the several Bible and Book and Tract Societies reveal an enormous amount of literary production, on almost every conceivable variety of subject calculated to bring Christianity before the different classes of native mind, in all the well known languages Bible of the country. In the great share which books must Translation. take in the Christianisation of India, the crowning place must ever be occupied by the Bible, the record of God's gracious plan for the salvation of the world, those holy writings which have made believers of every country and age wise unto salvation through Christ Jesus, and which remain the one fresh and never-failing fountain of our preaching and teaching as ambassadors of Christ to a perishing world. Translations of the Old and New Testaments have happily long proved to be spiritual powers in the chief languages of the country. The Tamil and the Bengali versions are said by those capable of judging, to be works of great excellence. In speaking, however, of particular books I must confine myself to those in the two vernaculars known to me. The Urdu and Hindi Scriptures, the only vernacular versions with which I am personally acquainted, though necessarily capable of improvement both in more exactly representing the original and in approaching more nearly to such beauty and sweetness of expression as characterise the English Authorised Version, have yet attained by the combined labours of many devout and learned Missionaries to perhaps a higher degree of clearness of rendering and correctness of idiom than could have been expected in this early stage of the work. To bring the truths of the Bible home to the people, books and tracts on almost every conceivable subject have been printed in the vernaculars, some translations, some adaptations, some imitations, and some |