year, during which their congregations, unless there happens to be a resident missionary, have only lay services.

When again a chaplain takes temporary leave, or is compelled suddenly to quit his station through sickness, the bishop is frequently unable to send another chaplain to take his place at once, and it may happen that for two or three months the chaplain of the nearest station, as often as not from 50 to 100 miles distant, must take this charge in addition to his own.

The case is much the same with the additional clergy in the smaller stations and the planting districts. Each of them has to serve from three to seven out-stations. The evil, however, in their case is less, because, and only because, the congregations which they leave for out-station duty are smaller than those of the chaplain's.

It must appear from this statement (1) that the smaller and more remote congregations are practically without an ordained ministry; (2) that in the larger stations clerical ministrations are necessarily irregular and intermittent; and (3) that continuous and watchful pastoral care and efficient parochial work, as understood in England, are both in the smaller and larger stations most difficult, and in very many altogether impossible.

And the evil tendency of this is no less apparent. The compulsory disuse and interruption grow into a voluntary habit and a general carelessness of the outward ordinances of Christianity, even when they can be had. Sunday is treated as a common day. Religion loses its hold over life and conduct. A low standard of morality prevails, and in the general life of the more neglected communities there is little or nothing that would mark them as distinctively Christian. The children have no religious teaching and but little moral discipline; they are left much with native servants and companions, and grow up with almost less knowledge of Christian than of Hindu and Mohamedan religious customs and observances, and with very little of Christian principle instilled into them. The Church in India will never be able to effect any improvement in the religious and moral condition of the European communities unless it can add to the number of its clergy, and provide(1) For a much more frequent and systematic visitation of smaller stations.

(2) For the appointment of a resident clergyman at every station large enough to require one, but now only periodically visited.

(3) For the appointment of assistant clergy in all stations where the work cannot be done efficiently by one.

(4) For the more complete pastoral charge and parochial organisation of all stations. But no increase can be made in the number of clergy proportionate to the need by the unaided efforts of Indian churchmen. They are fully as willing to spend on good works as churchmen in England, but the wealthy among them are few, while the work to be done is very great in proportion. The increase of the European population has already far outstripped the ability of the Indian Church to provide for it, and every year makes additional demands upon its resources. No increase of the Government establishment can be expected, although this is insufficient even for those to whom a responsibility is acknowledged, and the addition to the number of clergy

so urgently needed for all classes, official and non-official, is only possible with the aid of the Home Church.

Hitherto that aid has not been given, either individually or collectively; for although to European settlers in other parts of our colonial dominions the Church of England, through the S. P. G., has given help, yet that help has never been extended to European settlers in India.

If it be still withheld in every form, these, as they continue to increase in the land, will, in its neglected portions, be paganised in everything but the name. And the aid which the Church in India asks from the Church at home is in men as well as in money. I will illustrate the difficulty of obtaining fit men for the Indian ministry by only one example. Within the last few months six clergy have been required for the Diocese of Calcutta alone, to fill vacant European appointments. The work is important and interesting, money has been lodged in England for their passage and outfit, stipends are awaiting them in India, but the men are not forthcoming. A clergyman has as yet been found for only one appointment, for a second, a layman has been engaged, the other four are still vacant.

I must now turn from the spiritual to the educational needs.

Education is a first necessity to every European boy in India, without which he must beg, steal, or starve; for owing to the cheaper labour of the natives on the one hand, and the necessarily greater cost of the European mode of life on the other, the only employments affording him a competent maintenance are such as demand a good education.

A census of 1874 showed a total of 27,000 European children of school-going years, exclusive of all soldiers' children attending regimental schools, and those of the wealthier classes sent to schools in Europe. Of these 27,000, only 15,000 were on the roll of a school.

The total of 1885 must be somewhat larger, but judging from an educational census of the Bengal Presidency very carefully taken in 1881, the proportion on school rolls is about the same. The number in daily average attendance is about 10 per cent. less than that on the rolls, and many of those in attendance are in very inferior schools. It may safely be said that one-half of the European boys in India do not receive an education which will enable them to get their living.

The causes of this are:

(1) Want of schools of any kind in the stations where they live.

(2) Want of schools suitable to them, on account of distance from their home, difference of religion, or standard of education.

(3) Frequent sickness during the hot and rainy seasons, i.e., from April to October.

(4) Poverty and indifference of parents.

The classes of children for whose education help is especially needed

are:

(1) Paupers-children of the unemployed and orphans. These are abnormally numerous in India, and no state provision is made for their education or maintenance, either by poor-law or education rate.

(2) Poor children-that is of wage earning parents, or of small pensioners, with incomes from 15s. to 30s. a week.

(3) With moderate means, i.e., of parents with a gross income of from £80 to £200 a year.

The kinds of schools required are:

(1) For classes 1 and 2, central orphanages and boarding schools, teaching up to Standard VII., entirely free to pauper, and with low fees to poor children. There are very few such schools in India, and how much they are needed is shown by the fact that at every election for admission into existing schools of this kind for every candidate admitted seven or eight equally helpless are rejected. The Roman Catholics have established more orphanages than the Church of England, and receive many of our children, who are brought up members of the Roman Church.

(2) Small elementary schools in many of the smaller stations teaching up to Standard IV. Larger schools in the larger stations teaching to Standard VII.

(3) The enlargement and cheapening of boarding-schools, especially in the hills. There are many stations in India in which no school at all can be established for want of the requisite number of children of school-going years, and as many, in which the only possible school is an elementary one, suitable only for children under 10 or 12, there being too few children above that age to maintain a more advanced school. For this reason a very larger proportion, nearly one-half of European children, must be educated in boarding schools several hundreds of miles away from their homes. And it is most desirable that these should be in the hills. A good constitution is no less necessary for employment to the European than a good education. But almost the whole European population live in the plains, which are most unfavourable to the healthy growth of the children. Those of them who are not carried off by dysentery, fever, and other prevalent diseases, reach maturity with an enfeebled constitution, are thrown out of employment by frequent and long-continued sicknesses, and die prematurely. This is the chief cause of the abnormally large number of orphan and pauper children in India. Good boarding schools are, therefore, a prime necessity for European children. But they are costly, and, although their cost is reduced to the lowest point compatible with self support, are beyond the means of the classes referred to, by an average of from £10 to £15 a year for every child. Few persons can afford to send more than one of their children at a time, and very many can send none at all. The enlargement of the existing hill boarding schools and the reduction of their cost would be of the greatest possible benefit for all European children.

(4) Another most pressing need is that of a Training College for European teachers in European schools. Such an institution does not exist in the whole of India, and for want of trained teachers in small schools, and the lower classes of large schools, the education given is of a very inferior quality, and European children in India are, in this respect, two or three years behind English children of an equal age.

The Government of India in its code for European schools of 1883 has aimed at supplying the wants just mentioned by very liberal provisions, but they demand a very large increase in the amount raised by private sources to make them effectual. That the wealthier churchmen in India have not been backward in this cause is proved by the many schools established by their liberality since 1858, and now maintained by them. Were there time, I could show this in fuller detail, and, also, that the cost of raising the supply of suitable schools to a level with the

largely increased and still increasing demand is practically impossible to them, unless they have the co-operation of churchmen at home. But I can now do no more than state the fact, that without this every year must turn out some hundreds of European youths uneducated and half educated, untrained to thrift and industry, and of a physique weakened by a residence during the years of growth in the plains of India, who can never earn their living, and will swell the already large number of European paupers, loafers and criminals, even now the shame of our religion and our race.

This result was predicted so far back as 1860, by Lord Canning, then Governor-General, who, with Bishop Cotton, was most anxious to avert it. "If measures for educating them," he wrote, "are not promptly and vigorously encouraged and aided by Government, we shall find ourselves embarrassed with a floating population of Indianized English, loosely brought up and exhibiting most of the worst qualities of both races; whilst the Eurasian population, already so numerous that the means of education afforded to it are quite inadequate, will increase more rapidly I can hardly imagine a more profitless and unmanageable community than one so composed; but a very few years will make it, if neglected, a glaring reproach to the Government, and to the faith which it will, however ignorant and vicious, nominally profess."

This prediction has already been fulfilled to a great extent, notwithstanding the great efforts made by the Church in India, and it will receive still a larger measure of fulfilment if those efforts are not continued and increased in India, strengthened and aided from home. For in 1885 the danger is at least fully as great as it was in 1860 that for want of education, a community that might be industrious and independent will sink into hopeless pauperism, and that for want of Christian teaching and means of grace a Christian community may become paganised.

So evil a result will be nothing less than a disaster, for it must be remembered that it is these who come into the closest social contact with the native population, and are the representatives to them both of the race that governs them and of the faith that would convert them.

Double the amount now raised from private sources would not be too much, would not even suffice to supply adequately the religious and educational needs of Europeans in India, and avert the evils foreseen and foretold by Lord Canning.

During the past quarter of a century the Church of England has sent to India many hundred thousands of pounds for the conversion of its natives, but, with the exception of the liberal grants made by the S.P.C.K. in favour of European schools, for the rescue of its European population from practical heathenism and from an ignorance which ends in pauperism, it has sent almost nothing. The missions of rescue are necessary to the success of the missions of conversion, and what is spared on the one, works against what is spent on the other; for the natives test the doctrine by the life, and are slow to be converted to Christianity when it is illustrated by the evil and degraded condition of Christians.

That churchmen in England may know how to co-operate in Church work among Europeans in India, the Indian Church Aid

Association, of which I am honorary secretary, was formed five years ago, and serves now as a means of communication between those who can and will help in England, and those who need to be helped in India. Any further information about it I shall be most ready to give,* but I must now end by saying that all that has been stated in this paper is based on my own actual knowledge and experience gained by an intimate acquaintance extending over many years with the condition of nearly every European community in the Presidency of Bengal, and that nothing has been exaggerated, though much has necessarily been omitted.

The REV. J. C. WHITLEY, How Caple, Ross.

It would, of course, be quite impossible to compress within the limits of a short paper any general account of the Church in India with reference to the native races. We cannot rightly regard India as a single country, it is in reality a continent containing many different races, the languages, religions, manners and customs, natural character and surrounding circumstances of which vary much more widely than do those of the natives of Europe.

Probably very few men are competent to deal fully with the subject of the Church among the native races of India. I certainly could not attempt to do so, as my own experience has been limited to a very narrow sphere. I have therefore selected the single part of the subject on which alone I possess any special knowledge, i.e., "The Church among the aboriginal tribes of Chota Nagpore, in the Diocese of Calcutta."

For the information of some who are present it may, perhaps, be well to state that Chota Nagpore is a country situated on the Eastern extremity of the Vindhya hills, which stretch across India from East to West. It is inhabited chiefly by two aboriginal tribes which are usually included under the one name Kolh. They are, however, totally distinct races, called respectively Mundas and Uraons, both of which are so far uncivilised that they have no alphabet. The only books in the languages of these tribes are those which have been written within the last few years by missionaries.

Their religion needs but little description. I have always found them ready to acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being, but practically their religion consists in endeavouring to propitiate, by means of animal sacrifices, the numerous demons by whom they believe themselves to be surrounded, and to whose malignity they attribute disease, death, and misfortune of every kind.

Having no religious books, and no elaborate system of religion to hold on to, they are not specially prejudiced against Christianity, although they are naturally unwilling to submit to its restraints, and, of course, feel no aspirations after what it offers to supply.

In matters relating to eating and drinking and marriages, these tribes have, to some extent, adopted the caste customs of the Hindus; but

* Address-Kew Gardens, S.W.