which the monopolist Government of the East India Company might confound with politics!

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Alexander Duff was not only in the citadel of Hindooism; he had already dug his mine and laid the powder. The fire from heaven was about to fall, as he invoked it in the prayer of Lord Bacon: -" To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour most humble and hearty supplications; that He, remembering the calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open unto us new refreshments out of the fountains of His goodness for the alleviation of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that, from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather that, by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given up unto faith the things which are faith's.-Amen."

* Quoted in India and India Missions as the "appropriate con clusion" of the book.

CHAPTER VI.

1831-1833.

THE FIRST EXPLOSION AND THE FOUR CONVERTS.

Eagerness of the Bengalee Youth to learn English.-Self-evidencing Power of Christ's Teaching.-The Pharisees of Brahmanism. -The Disintegrating Effect of true Science.-The Cry raised of "Hindooism in Danger."-Projected Course of Lectures.— Derozio and the Atheists of the Hindoo College.-Tom Paine the favourite Author.-The first and only Lecture.-The City in an Uproar.-The Governor-General privately Encourages the Missionary.-Duff studying Bengalee.-First propounds national system of Female Education.-The Debating Societies.-Robert Burns on the banks of the Ganges.-The Native Press, English and Vernacular.-Krishna Mohun Banerjea-Second Course of Lectures.-Mohesh Chunder Ghose, the First Convert, brings his Brother to Christ.-Confessions of Krishna Mohun and his Baptism.-The Third or Martyr Convert. -The Fourth Convert at last Surrendered by his Father to Duff.- Origin of the Calcutta Missionary Conference.-Duff's great scheme of a United Christian College foiled by sectarian controversy in England.-A Bombay Civilian's Picture of the Revolution in Bengalee society. -Duff's private estimate of his Success and faith in his Policy. -The English Language and British Administration required to do their part.

THROUGHOUT the whole progress of these preparatory arrangements," Mr. Duff afterwards wrote, "the excitement among the natives continued unabated. They pursued us along the streets. They threw open the very doors of our palankeen, and poured in their supplications with a pitiful earnestness of countenance that might have softened a heart of stone. In the most plaintive and pathetic strains they deplored their ignorance. They craved for English reading' -English knowledge.'

They constantly appealed to

the compassion of an 'Ingraji' or Englishman, addressing us in the style of Oriental hyperbole, as 'the great and fathomless ocean of all imaginable excellences,' for having come so far to teach poor ignorant Bengalees. And then, in broken English, some would say, Me good boy, oh take me;' others, Me poor boy, oh take me ;'-some, 'Me want read your good books, oh take me;' others, 'Me know your commandments, Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,-oh take me ;'-and many, by way of final appeal, Oh take me, and I pray for you.' And even after the final choice was made, such was the continued press of new candidates that it was found absolutely necessary to issue small written tickets for those who had succeeded; and to station two men at the outer door to admit only those who were of the selected number."

Payment for class-books, and the formal signature by parents and guardians of an agreement to secure punctual and regular attendance, struck at the root of two evils which marked all the other schools and

colleges in Calcutta. The more severe test of steady attention to the Bible studies was no less cheerfully submitted to, parents also being invited to listen to the hour's preaching to the young every day, and to satisfy themselves that Christianity did not act as a spell, although it might in time persuade as a divine force co-operating with the truth-seeking soul; and was in any case a perfect system of moral principles and practice. The Lord's Prayer was succeeded by the master parable of the Prodigal Son, and then came the apostolic teaching to the Corinthians on what our fathers called charity.

"Throughout, all were attentive; and the minds of a few became intensely riveted, which the glistening eye and changeful countenance, reflecting as in a

Æt. 25. SELF-EVIDENCING LIGHT OF THE SCRIPTURES. 139

mirror the inward thought and varying emotion, most clearly indicated. At last, when to the picture of charity the concluding stroke was given by the pencil of inspiration in the emphatic words 'endureth all things,' one of the young men, the very Brahman who but a few days before had risen up to oppose the reading of the Bible, now started from his seat exclaiming aloud, 'Oh, sir, that is too good for us. Who can act up to that? who can act up to that?' A finer exemplification, taking into view all the circumstances of the case, could not well be imagined of the self-evidencing light of God's holy word. It was an almost unconscious testimony to the superior excellence of Christianity, extorted from the lips of an idolatrous Brahman by the simple manifestation of its own divine spirit. It was a sudden burst of spontaneous homage to the beauty and power and holiness of the truth, in its own naked and unadorned simplicity, at a moment when the mind was wholly untrammelled and unbiassed by prejudice, or party interest, or sect."

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Then followed the Sermon on the Mount, which drove home to a people more enslaved by the letter that killeth than even those to whom it was originally addressed, the lesson of the Spirit. When, on one occasion, the question was put, What do you mean by Pharisee?' a boy of inferior caste, looking significantly at a young Brahman in the same class and then pointing to him, archly replied, He is one of our Pharisees!'-while the Brahman simply retorted in great good humour, True, my caste is like that of the Pharisees, or worse; but you know I am not to be

like my caste." "

Nor was this all. From the simple reading of the words that promise blessedness to him who loves and prays for his enemy, one youth was turned to the feet of the Divine Speaker and became the fourth convert

of the mission.

Hindoo

For days and weeks the young could not help crying out, "Love your enemies! bless them that curse you!' How beautiful! how divine surely this is the truth!" And in the more directly secular lessons science came to carry on what grace had begun in the morning and was yet to complete. The explanation of the word "rain" on the Scoto-Socratic method in a junior class, led to the discovery by the lads of its true nature, as neither Indra-born nor from a celestial elephant, according to the Shasters, but the result of natural laws. "Then what becomes of our Shaster, if your account is true," remarked a young Brahman. "The Shaster is true, Brahma is true, and your Gooroo's account must be false and yet it looks so like the truth."

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This was but a slight shock compared with that given on the next eclipse. Mr. Duff was himself as much surprised by the effect of his teaching as his pupils. He wrote of this time :-" Though we were previously acquainted in a general way with the fact, that modern literature and science were as much opposed as Christianity itself to certain fundamental tenets of Hindooism, our own conception on the subject was vague and indeterminate. It floated in the horizon as an intangible abstraction. Now this incident, by reducing the abstract into the concrete, by giving the vague generality a substantial form, by converting the loosely theoretical into the practically experimental,-at once arrested, fixed and defined it. A vivid glimpse was opened, not only of the effect of true knowledge when brought in contact with Hindooism, but of the modus operandi, the precise mode in which it operated in producing the effect."

The effect of the first year's teaching, Biblical, scientific, and literary, through English and through Bengalee, on even the young Hindoos, was to lead