a fact that should be remembered, that whilst Heathen books-the Shasters and the Koran of Mohammed-have been allowed to be taught in your Indian Government schools, the Bible is strictly and positively forbidden by the East India Company. Allow me to say, my Lord, it is a fact, and one that we should not forget, that men like Nana Sahib and his crew might at this moment, if they were here, say, "There has not been committed an act of atrocity in Cawnpore, in Delhi, in Lucknow, or wherever you please, that has not been taught to me, Nana Sahib, at your Government cost and charge, by these very books purchased with your money, and by your paid Schoolmasters. The institutions of the religion you have taught, never sufficiently counteracted by the institutions of the religion which you yourselves at home profess, have instructed us in these atrocities, and have declared that our present honour and our eternal salvation will be promoted by their commission." I believe, my Lord, it is a monstrous and great mistake that the Government of a vast empire like India should ever be in the hands of a trading Company. It has passed into a proverb, half of which I may quote, and the other half of which may be imagined or recollected, "that Corporations have no conscience." There may be, and there ought to be, considerations of pecuniary profit; but in the government of a vast and mighty empire, there are other interests far higher and more important than the payment of an additional one or two per cent. on the stock of the Company; and when it is said, that there should be some justice done to the Company, let it be remembered that all these good things which have been done under the government of that Company have been done in spite of its resolutions. Great and good men still fresh in our memories have argued from year to year in Leadenhall-street for the abolition of suttee and infanticide, and those dark and idolatrous practices which were patronized by the Company. Let the Company pass quietly away into the oblivion for which they have so amply provided themselves; but in a spirit of courtesy and kindness we cannot forget facts which should be admonitory as they are humiliating, and which should guide us in reference to the future. I am not at all disposed to prescribe, what I am incompetent to understand or dictate, the political measures which, in the shape of Bills or Resolutions, or anything of that kind, should be adopted in reference to the Government.

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But the Christian churches of this country should demand, in reference to Indiaand if they cannot get it embodied in the Resolutions or in the Bills, should never cease to agitate for it; and I, for one, while I live, will never cease to agitate for it the most entire and absolute freedom of religious opinion and religious teaching in that land. We do not want to persecute these men into our faith. Is it to be thought that I, belonging to a sect that is everywhere spoken against, and that has been hunted by persecutions for above one hundred years in this land -a sect against which persecution is practised even to this very day in parts of the agricultural portions of our country-is it to be supposed that I should advocate any measures by which should compel and constrain these men against their will to adopt our religion? By no means! But let us have a fair chance of setting the Book of God before them, and of showing what are the principles upon which the greatness of this empire has been founded, and by which alone the greatness of this or any other empire can be sustained. Let us send them the Book which we believe to be the book from which our constitution and all our eminence are deriveda book upon the reception of which India would cease to be what it has been, and would rise in the scale of society, and of being. I believe that we are fully competent to do that which we are this day met to do. I have no sympathy at all with the notion of those who say, the means you are bringing to bear to remedy this monstrous and world-wide evil are totally inadequate, and will be for ever inadequate to the accomplishment of the purpose. I hold to the principle which cannot be controverted,-that that which God commands the church, or an individual, to do, that the church or individual can do. The possibility of obedience is of necessity involved in the Divine command. I believe that there is a power in the Christian church to do all that which is requisite for the Christian church to do for the accomplishment of the great purpose of the world's conversion. Sometimes we are calculating on the proportion between the means that are used, and the success which follows. All such calculations are utterly vain. I have sometimes listened myself to calculations in arithmetical or geometrical progression most accurately brought out, and it is said that figures cannot deceive. There is nothing in the world so deceptive. Figures of speech, as they are poetically called, are hardly so deceptive

as mere figures, when they are put forward in certain circumstances. I have seen calculations which would show that in one hundred and fifty years the whole world would be Church-of-England men, the whole world would be Methodists, the whole world would be Independents. I have seen others which would go to show that if the Christian church go on at the present rate of its progression, ages and ages unnumbered and untold must elapse before there could be any very material approximation to that final conversion of mankind to God, which we are encouraged to believe will take place, and for which we are encouraged to pray.

All these calculations are entirely vain. There never will be the slightest proportion, arithmetical, or geometrical, or any other, between the means which are used, and the results which shall follow. The means must be always so utterly disproportionate to the success, that "the excellency of the power" may appear to be of God, and not of man. There never was in the world any organization or any Christian principle or Christian church which, to the mind of a rational man, will appear sufficient to have accomplished the purpose which they have effected. Never! never! What can the Christian church do? I do not think that in the present state of the circumstances of this country, your Missionary income can be very enormously augmented. I believe something more will be obtained. I believe that the £123,000, of which we have heard, will go on. I am not at all inclined to doubt that by and by we shall reach the £150,000 which has been spoken of somewhat hopefully. Well, you may go on. You may raise another £100,000 at the end of that in the process of time; but there are other duties and obligations. You have your local charities to attend to; you have the maintenance and support of your own ministry, and your own places of worship. You have a thousand things coming upon you that do not come upon other churches. You must regard the claims of other Societies; and, with all deference to other churches, I am prepared, I think, to show, at all events I am prepared heartily to believe, that our churches contribute proportionately more than any other churches: considering that many of our people are not wealthy, the proportion which they contribute is equal to, if not greater than, that contributed by other branches of the Christian church; and I believe that a very much larger principle of Christian benevolence must

be universally adopted before the contributions of our people can be augmented very considerably beyond the present point. It may be asked, “What can you do with these means?" We can do all that God requires us to do, and we will do that which we are in our consciences convinced God has demanded. The very moment that the Christian church in its heart and conscience can say, "I have given to God's cause all I believe in my heart I ought to give; I have devoted as much time, as much labour, and as much money as I believe, before God, I ought to devote," then the great work will be accomplished. Look to former times. Who does not perceive that it was necessary that Gideon should go forth unarmed as he was, and that he should do as God commanded him, not increasing his instrumentality, but diminishing that instrumentality till it came to a minimum altogether hopeless for the accomplishment of any purpose? The people had the very weapons which you might have expected among them taken away, and the lamp and the pitcher were given to them as the only warlike instruments they were to carry ; and God designed to save His people by these. Who does not perceive that Moses must strike the rock with his wand? shall we say that that smiting of the rock was the mechanical instrumentality creating the fissure from which the water should flow for the refreshing of the people? Suppose he had refused to do this. I do not believe that the great multitudes would have been allowed to perish; but I believe they would have been saved by some other means. There was a necessity for that amount of human instrumentality; there was no necessity for more. There is a necessity that there should be an amount of instrumentality in our case. The church has something more to do; and when it has given all it can give, and done all that it can do, it will be like the small dust in the balance

it will be nothing as compared with the great and weighty results to be accomplished. But it will be the church's sacrifice of its whole heart and affections to God; it will be all that God requires and needs to send forth the power and agency of that Spirit by which "a nation shall be born in a day." I have much pleasure in seconding the Resolution.

MR. JAMES HEALD said,-My Lord, I do not know that, under any circumstances, I could feel justified in occupying this place upon an occasion like the present; but when this Resolution was put into my hand, I could not

deny myself the gratification of attempting to express to your Lordship the grateful joy with which I see you occupying the honourable position which you now fill. My memory takes me back to eight years ago; and it is also with grateful joy that I regard the altered circumstances under which we meet on the present occasion. That was a day of considerable anxiety, and some little agitation; but these have passed away. In the presence of this great and glorious cause, all these difficulties and obstacles have vanished, like the snow melting before the direct beams of the sun; and my hope in God is, that they may never return; that the tide which has set in may wax more mighty until all our dwellings shall be habitations of peace, and, according to the statement of our respected President, all the palaces of our Zion be prosperity. I feel too much exhausted by the excitement with which I have listened to the address of the last speaker, to offer multiplied observations on this occasion. Without swearing allegiance to every word he uttered, or to every point that he advanced, my feeling is, and I believe it is that of the Meeting, that he has laid us under a mighty obligation by the eminently comprehensive and statesmanlike address to which we have listened. With him, I can join issue, that the sooner the ground which he has pointed out is clearly defined, and all artificial coverings are removed from it, and Christians take their proper place throughout the length and breadth of the land, the sooner we shall be in a position -with greater advantages, and with greater successes, I doubt not to prosecute these Christian operations. My Lord, I am glad that, to-day, India has had its proper share of the attention of this Meeting; and I am specially grateful to the Secretaries for the admirable manner in which they have brought it before this assembly. It is a cause which vibrates powerfully in the breasts of many of our best friends,-for we have many friends besides the friends present, and some of them are looking with considerable anxiety to our answer to the question which your Lordship put at the commencement of the Meeting-not only what the Committee were prepared to state they had done, but-(and I looked for something more)-what they were prepared to lay before us as their plan for the future. In Parliament, my Lord, we always hear a great deal said about the forthcoming Budget; and in these days our attention and eyes are naturally directed to

every word of utterance which comes from the Secretaries; and I should like to have heard to-day a little more of what was in their minds, and to what their judgment directed itself, with reference to the future and more enlarged operations of this Society. I think they have done well in what they have already projected, and I am thankful that they have so happily succeeded with reference to the enlargement of our operations in India. I feel that we have arrived at a crisis in regard to the spread of Christianity throughout the world; and that it would be a dangerous thing to allow the present impression, as to the necessity of further and more extended operations in connexion with India, to go to sleep. It will be more difficult to revive it than if it had never existed, if it be allowed to die away, or if the outlines of that impression to any extent become effaced. This is the time! This people, my Lord, feel a kind of kindred feeling with your people; there are so many circumstances in common connected with the history of both sections of the church and I believe the people called Wesleyan Methodists were, since I have had the honour of membership amongst them, never better prepared-never in a state of mind more ready to listen to wise counsels, and to follow them up by glorious doings, than at the present day. I remember, when I was a much younger man than I am, attending one of the early Meetings of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in the Freemasons' Hall. For three or four years I came to London, a very young man, to listen to the weighty deliverances which took place at all the Christian anniversaries held in that hall, from time to time; and most of the valuable lodgments that I have found since in my own breast, I have traced to attendances upon those Meetings. His Royal Highness the late Duke of Gloucester, in moving or seconding a Resolution at one of those Meetings, after reviewing the extensive colonial possessions of this empire, and coming to India, remarked,

loudly and extensively responded to as any sentiment which has found utterance here to-day," My honest conviction, yea, my full belief, is, that if England does not treat India as a trust committed to her by the providence of God to spread its Christianity, and to supply its institutions, as certainly as it is given it will be taken away." My Lord, we have been reminded of this lesson during the past year. Many of our friends have had, and still have, this feeling; and as some expression of it, my Lord, I have had entrusted to me for presentation to the Society to-day,-by a lady who does not feel justified in setting up her own judgment as superior to that of the Missionary Committee, but who wishes its appropriation to take place under their direction, and having the advantage of their judgment exercised upon it, still venturing to suggest that it may be employed in reference to British India,-I have had entrusted to me, I say, the honour of presenting to you a cheque for £500. I am not at liberty to mention the lady's name; but she is a member of the Missionary Society, as well as a Wesleyan. I have thought it a fitting mode of showing my approval of the spirit of this Resolution, and to encourage the Secretaries to entertain the hope that the finances will not retrograde. I wish them to take courage, and I pray that the Lord's blessing may attend your united efforts.

The Resolution passed unanimously. The REV. JAMES SMITH (Baptist Missionary from Agra) said,-My Lord, I am requested to move the following Resolution :

"That the present circumstances of India and China give those countries a peculiar claim on the benevolent attention of the friends of the human race; that the Missions in those countries ought at once, if possible, to be increased, and to be supplied with enlarged means of promoting Christian knowledge and educa tion; and that Africa, the islands of the South Seas, and other partially evangelized regions, should also be embraced in the sympathies and immediate efforts of this Society."

I have got three very large and extensive subjects in the Resolution that I have read to you, no less than China, Africa, and India; and if I should pass by the two former in order to make a few remarks regarding the latter, you must not for a moment suppose that I am at all wanting in appreciation of the importance of the former of those places. India is the

place where I have for many years laboured, and hence India is the place towards which my sympathies more extensively flow. At the present hour of the day I should not be disposed to detain you at all, were it not that I am anxious to confirm and increase the impression that has been made with regard to the importance of our future political connexion with India. I have been delighted with the remarks that were made by the Rev. gentleman who has preceded me, regarding the connexion of our Government with Indian idolatry. I have preached hundreds of times in Agra, Cawnpore, and Delhi, and in most of the districts; and the principal and most common arguments brought against Christianity were arguments drawn by the Heathen from the fact that our Government sustains and supports their idolatry. I feel anxious just to say this, because you must be in the field, you must labour there, you must meet the dangers, ere you can at all understand the immense importance attached to this subject. My Lord, permit me also to say, that a responsibility attaches to the English governors of India for the past ; but to England herself the responsibility of every act must in future attach. Then I just ask, are we going to continue with one hand to send our Missionaries, to spend large sums of money for the evangelization of British India, while, with the other, we are sustaining the most abominable system that ever existed on God's earth? We want nothing but simple equality; we want to have precisely the same opportunity of expressing our convictions as to that which is necessary for the welfare of British India-w? want the same religious liberty in India

that we are perfectly willing to grant to every class of Her Majesty's subjects in this land. I have been astonished to find many attempts made of late in England to disprove, or at least to deny, the facts that, from time to time, have been brought before the British public regarding this subject. It was stated by Colonel Sykes, some little time ago, that it was not true that we had ignored Christians in the servants employed by the Government in India, and that to become one was to become incapacitated for the service of the Government in any capacity whatever. The proof that he brought forward was this-We have in the Bengal army many native Christians. With all due deference to Colonel Sykes, I beg to state that in the whole of my travels during many years in the north of India, and in

the Bengal provinces, I never heard of a native Christian being permitted to remain in the ranks. There may be some Portuguese in the Bengal army, but not one converted Hindu or Mohammedan; and these are looked upon as a distinct body, living separate from the Sepoys, not permitted to eat with them, or to have any close or intimate connexion with them whatever. I am not aware of the fact being denied or disputed that the East India Company's Government has not permitted a native Christian in the Bengal army to remain in its ranks; and I feel confident, my Lord, that had one single Christian native been in those ranks, had there been but the least of such leaven in it, we never should have had the dreadful mutiny of which we have heard, and over which we have had so much to lament. We denuded the army of Christian elements, and hence there was no one to represent our feelings; there was no one to stand forth when the Mohammedans came with their falsehoods, telling the Sepoys that they were going to be made Christians by force, and that the cartridges were intended to break their caste. There was no man to stand up for that Christianity, which is the spiritual leaven, making holy the spiritual body. Had we been represented by the smallest amount of Christianity, it would have been sufficient to counteract and destroy the influence of the Mohammedans, by whom the army in the Bengal provinces was deceived. As a Missionary, who hopes within a few weeks to be again on his way to the Bengal provinces, I beg the Christians of Great Britain not to rest until the last link connecting the British Government with idolatry has been once and for ever severed. My Lord, there is another danger to which I would call attention:-It is much to be feared, that in severing the connexion of Government with idolatry in India, the matter will not be properly and entirely done. We have already had an instance in the case of Juggernaut, where we find that, instead of the Government leaving that monstrous system of falsehood to support itself, they have endowed it by giving enough of landed property to produce, I believe, £7,000 a year. I will just submit to this assembly, that if we are going thus to sever our connexion, if we are going to endow in perpetuity every temple and every mosque in India, it were far better that we allowed it to remain as it is; because we believe that Christianity, having already made tremendous inroads into all those systems,

will ere long destroy all the abominations of Heathenism throughout the length and breadth of British India. Are we thus to endow all these temples? I will tell you what I think would be a just mode of settling this question. We are not, nor should we be willing to be, robbers of temples. We would not seize a single shilling that has been left to these temples by private individuals from their own private resources; we would leave them to manage their own affairs, and not have the Government officers administering the funds of Heathen temples. We want none of the money; but where former Kings and Rajahs in India have from the revenues of the country, from the regular income of the country, assigned certain sums of money or certain pieces of ground, not their own, for the sustenance of these temples, we say it ought, in every single instance, to be confiscated without the slightest hesitation. And I think it

might be done in such a way at the present time, as would convey a very strong and salutary impression on the minds of the people of India, as I trust that vast empire will now be transferred to the Crown of Great Britain, as I trust we shall soon be called upon to sing the last funeral dirge of the East India Company, and that our beloved Queen will soon be known in India as the Governor of that country. The present appears to me to be a time when a proclamation may with great effect be made to the people, stating what our future position shall be, and telling them that all shall have religious liberty to its fullest extent; but that from henceforth not a shilling, no influence, no support or aid whatever, from the British Government or the British treasury, should be given to sustain these abominable institutions. I believe that never was the British name in a more humiliating position than when used to sustain and support systems that are destructive of the best interests of man, as well as dishonouring to the God who made us, and sustains us, and from whom we receive "every good and perfect gift." There is just one thing more, my Lord. It is this,-from my own experience in India, I have come to the conclusion, that nothing less than Christianity will meet the wants of the millions of people there. Give them what you please of civilization; there is not innate power enough in civilization to sustain itself. Give Christianity, then civilization and education will follow : the world cannot stop them. That will be a civilization that will realize the best in