doubt of the necessity of some such regulation, and Missionary managers everywhere are making provision for their teachers to meet it. I have now given as briefly and yet as fully as possible Principles i n Agents. a brief sketch of our position in Ceylon as Christian selection of educators. On what principles than do we elect our Agents. 1st. We demand that all our Trained Students shall be Christians. 2nd. We refuse to admit any to the privilege of the Training Institution, who do not manifest average ability, conspicuous shortcoming in this disqualifies any student from further instruction. 3rd. We give preference to students from the higher castes. The reason of this is obvious. 4th. We demand that every trained student shall go where his services are needed by the Mission. 5th. That every student shall give preference to the Mission that has trained him, and serve when asked for at least three years. By these means we hope to introduce gradually a superior class of Teachers free from the common vices of the ordinary village schoolmaster, and in whom both the Missionary and the Government can repose a good degree of confidence. Teachers. Of course this system will surely and steadily raise the Salaries of market value of a teacher, but that is not necessarily an evil, inasmuch as we may hope as the years go on to get the people who now contribute nothing to a Vernacular Mission School, either in the shape of gifts or fees, to see the reasonableness of giving something for the benefits of education. Salaries of teachers in Vernacular Schools differ very much in different Missions. In our Mission they range from Rs. 7.50 to Rs. 12.50 a month. In Anglo-Vernacular Schools from Rs. 12.50 to Rs. 20. In English schools which are altogether of a superior class they are much higher, ranging from Rs. 10 to Rs. 70 per month. Having said thus much on Educational Agency, it is necessary for me to say something on Evangelistic Agency. In our Mission, north and east Ceylon, we employ two kinds of Agents the Catechist and the Native Minister or Pastor. I need say nothing as to the necessity for such an Agency; we all admit it and we all believe (cæteris pari Evangelistic Native Ministry. bus), that a Native Evangelistic Agency is the main instrument by which a heathen country, such as India, must be converted. The habits, thoughts, ways of life and general mode of access to the Hindu mind are incomparably better known and appreciated by the Hindu himself than by any European, however, learned or experienced he may be. For many years our Tamil Mission was weak beyond measure, in the matter of Native Ministers. Though their usefulness and necessity were long recognised, and efforts made to develop such a ministry, yet it was not till 1861-65 that any organised plan was put in operation for the development of this Agency, and to the Rev. John Kilner many years Chairman of the North Ceylon District and now one of the General Secretaries, belongs the honour of having successfully grappled with the difficulty and overcome it. Mr. Kilner commenced by first selecting a dozen or so of the ablest and most respectable of the Christian students of our English schools and forming them into a class which the Missionary taught himself in several of their subjects. As they advanced in knowledge and in strength of character, he sent them forth as tract distributors and street preachers to the different quarters of the town and adjoining villages. But it was not a success straight off, more than once his finest youths left him, unable to stand the tests brought to bear on them, or seduced by the offers of what appeared to them more advantageous terms. Nothing discouraged, however, Mr. Kilner held on and in 1868 had the satisfaction and honour of ordaining his first Native Minister after several years of trial. From that time we have never lacked candidates for the Ministry, and our difficulty at present is not that we cannot get candidates to offer for the Ministry, but that we have too many. It Conditions may be thought by some perhaps that our conditions of of admission entrance to the Ministry are too easy. I will mention to Native what they are and then ask you to judge. Ministry. 1st. No man is admitted as a candidate to the Native Ministry who is not, so far as we can judge, soundly converted. Then many tests are applied; first, he is examined by a company of lay preachers, called local preachers, or failing them by the Missionary and the Native Ministers who watch his daily life, hear him give addresses and examine him in his knowledge of Christian principles. 2nd. He is then examined by all the Missionaries in the field assembled in their annual District Meeting where he has to give an account of his conversion and state his present experience and his reasons for offering himself as a candidate for the ministry. 3rd. He is examined by a board of Ministers with a view to ascertain his acquirements in the ordinary branches of knowledge and Scripture. 4th. He is required to signify his assent to all the rules, regulations and discipline of the Methodist Church and particularly to the rule requiring him to labour wherever the Mission may see proper to appoint him, and for as long a period as may be required, and non-observance of caste. If he satisfies the District on these points he is then required to go through a series of annual examinations extending over twelve years, viz. : 4 preliminary to his being received as a probationer, 4 after ordination. If he passes these twelve years' examination satisfactorily he is then accounted a brother worthy of all honour and receives the maximum of pay allowed from Mission Funds. Every candidate and probationer is required to pass creditably in the year's subjects before he can proceed to the next year, and failure in any one year means the entire loss of that year in the reckoning of his official standing amongst us. Should an ordained Minister relax his studious habits and fail to pass his year's examination, his case is met by deferring his maximum salary a year. Twelve annual examinations. It seems to me that no young man will subject himself Twelve years' to such repeated tests for so long a series of years without curriculum. being very much in earnest, and these are the men we want. Native Ministers. The number of Native Ministers now in connection Number of with our Mission are: Ordained Ministers 11, unordained or probationers 7, candidates for the Ministry who act as catechists 8. The salaries of native agents has always presented a difficulty to Missionaries, and we have been no exception to this rule. Taking as a principle to guide us in fixing the payment of a Native Minister, the salary which Tamil educated men receive in similar positions of life, we have adopted the following scale. Let me state, however, first that all Native Ministers with us have in addition to their salary the following allowances :— Salaries. Need for Native Agency admitted. Must be started by 1st. A house, rent and taxes, 2nd. The education of their sons and daughters, and 3rd. An allowance or annuity when forced to retire from active work proportionate to their terms of service but never to exceed half their salary at the time of retirement. 1st and 2nd years of Probation Rs. 30 a month 3rd and 4th years of Probation 35 دو 40 "" After this as long as in full work,, 50 وو N. B.-When a native Church is able to give more than the above rates, it is at liberty to do so, but no church has power to say what a native Minister ought to receive until it raises the whole amount of the Native Minister's salary. This rate we judge reasonable and not beyond what the churches can pay. SECOND PAPER BY THE REV. W. HOOPER, M. A., It has happily become an axiomatic truth in all Missions, that the work, though begun by foreigners, must be carried on by natives; and that therefore, after the first introduction of the Gospel into a new country, the next great duty of the foreigner is, to set agoing that succession of native workers for God, which must before long take the whole work in their own country into their own hands. Peculiar circumstances in this country have indeed delayed the commencement of this task, and even now retard its realization, beyond what is the case where the people have been less long accustomed to dependence, and where the foreign missionaries have not had the misfortune of belonging, in the eyes of the unthinking mass, to the foreign government; but it is now, God be thanked, taken up on all sides with an energy and a determination which ensure success; and what is of still better augury, our native brethren are learning, and have in some cases thoroughly learnt, to discard the "má-báp" system, and to gird up their loins for the task which is above all theirs, and which may be solely theirs sooner than any of us think. But the starting of the system of native agency must oreigners. be, from the necessities of the case, mainly if not entirely the work of foreigners; and it is, as I have observed, the most important of the various tasks which are imposed upon them at the present time. For on the manner in which it is started, and the direction given to it at starting, will very greatly depend, under God, the usefulness or uselessness (and if uselessness, then, surely, positive harmfulness) of the ever-increasing native Christian agency in the land. The river is now a tiny stream, high up in the bosom of the mountain; on us mainly depends whether it will flow down on the one side, and after causing ruin and devastation by its headlong course soon lose itself in the sea, or whether it will gently descend on the other side in ever-increasing volume, and fertilize a whole continent with life-giving influence, before it is received into the bosom of eternity. Head. There is, indeed, one respect in which it is not given Constitution us to determine the course which native agency in this of Native country will take. Most of us, no doubt, honestly believe Church to be evolved hy that it would be best for India, if its Church could be the Diviue formed, if not exactly, yet essentially, on the lines of those European and American churches to which we severally belong. But God has ordained it otherwise, and our meeting here in this Conference is a proof that we have accepted the facts which He has brought about; and not only resignedly accept them, but, knowing the inability of our own several churches to cope with the mighty task before the whole church in this country, we rejoice that what we, severally, could not do, is being done by others: and thus we leave to our Divine Head, who has the interests of His body at heart infinitely more than we can have them, to evolve the constitution of His Indian church as He will; meanwhile believing, that we are best hastening forward whatever may be His gracious design, by strenuously, and yet charitably, urging on the development of native agency on those lines which we severally believe to be best, best for the people of this land and not only for us Occidentals. But though we must differ on these points, we may come indefinitely near to agreement on many others; and it is, I imagine, to promote such an agreement, that the subject is being handled by this Conference. Let me make, therefore, a few remarks on the selection and training of native agency, which may by the divine blessing be profitable to us all. Its development I must leave to other hands to deal with. |