THE Religious Education of Unbelievers. SEVEN LETTERS BY THE LATE RIGHT REV. HENRY DOUGLAS, D.D., BISHOP OF BOMBAY. WITH PREFACE BY THE REV. E. S. TALBOT, M.A., PREFACE. A LAYMAN, whose published writing has proved his ability and right to deal with the subject,1 has asked me to set a few words of Preface at the head of these letters.2 I am not qualified to do this by familiarity with the subject: and the name of the author of the letters would seem to make it almost needless that it should be done, were it not that their publication without comment might be construed into a hostile attack upon the working of Societies who have earned undying honour by their bold and patient pioneering in the Indian Mission field. It is well, therefore, that some one should extract and replace at the head of the letters the Bishop's own words (p. 5.): "If we criticize, we criticize in sympathy, and because we heartily desire the object which they have in view :" and on his behalf should beg even those whose own methods of work are touched by his frank and outspoken criticism to say whether every page of the following letters does not prove that the motive which prompts them is as far as possible from being one of a polemical kind. The danger which he apprehends to certain great principles of 1 See a pamphlet entitled Missions in India, by Lieut.-General Tremenheere, C.B., London, Henry S. King and Co., 1876. 2 Published originally, without the Bishop's name, in a Church periodical at Calcutta in 1872. |