affected by the new influences that were abroad, as to CHAP. VII. consent to swim with a current whose force they could no longer stem. Dead, indeed, must that heart have been that did not thrill with strong emotion while the eloquent and devoted missionary, fresh from those scenes of moral and spiritual desolation which overspread the vast continent of India, thundered in the ears of the assembly this trumpet call to come to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. "Ah, long, too long has India been a theme for the visions of poets and the dreams of romance. Too long has it been enshrined in the sparkling bubbles of a vapoury sentimentalism. One's heart is, indeed, sickened with the eternal song of its balmy skies and voluptuous gales,-its golden dews and pageantry of blossoms, its fields of paradise and bowers Intwining amaranthine flowers, One's The Rev. Dr. Duff's speech in the 1835. its blaze of suns and torrents of eternal light. heart is sickened with this eternal song, when above we behold nought but the spiritual gloom of a gathering tempest relieved by the lightning glance of the Almighty's indignation,―around a waste moral wilderness, where all life dies and death lives,'-and underneath one vast catacomb of immortal souls perishing for lack of knowledge. Let us arise and His appeal on resolve that henceforward these 'climes of the sun shall not be viewed merely as a storehouse of flowers for poetry, and figures for rhetoric, and bold strokes for oratory; but shall become the climes of a better sun, even the Sun of Righteousness, the nursery of plants of renown that shall bloom and blossom in the behalf of India. CHAP. VII. regions of immortality. Let us arise and revive the genius of the olden time; let us revive the spirit of our forefathers. Like them let us unsheath the sword of the Spirit-unfurl the banner of the cross-sound the gospel trump of jubilee. Like them let us enter into a solemn league and covenant before our God, in behalf of that benighted land, that we shall not rest till the voice of praise and thanksgiving arise in daily orisons from its coral strands-roll over its fertile plains-resound from its smiling valleys—and re-echo from its everlasting hills. Thus shall it be proven, The amount that the church of Scotland, though 'poor, can make of Scotland, many rich,' being herself replenished from the fulness may confer of the Godhead,'-that the church of Scotland, though of blessing the Church though poor, on India. powerless as regards carnal designs and worldly policies, has got the divine power of bringing many sons unto glory, of calling a spiritual progeny from afar, numerous as the drops of dew in the morning, and resplendent with the shining of the Sun of Righteousness,--a noble company of ransomed multitudes that shall hail you in the realms of day, and crown you with the spoils of victory, and sit on thrones, and live and reign with you amid the splendours of an unclouded universe." When the pale, exhausted, but still burning impassioned missionary, concluding with these words an address of unexampled pathos and power, added this solemn prayer: "May God hasten the day and put it into the heart of every one present, to engage in the glorious work of realizing it," the heart, if not the lips, of the entire assembly uttered a fervent amen! It is difficult to refer now, at this distance of time, of given in the Presbyterian Review of of the immade by Dr. July 1835, pression Duff's speech. to the impression which that address produced, with- CHAP. VII. out using what may seem like the language of exaggeration. A sentence from one of the periodicals of the year when it occurred will not be liable to the same suspicion. "During this intensely interesting and Account eloquent address," says the Presbyterian Review July, 1835," the whole house was absorbed in one feeling exquisite even to pain, tears ran down almost every cheek, and with a grateful sense of the blessings bestowed on the exertions of our mission and a fervent hope of the glorious triumphs that seemed to await it, was mingled an ardent outpouring of love and admiration towards the noble missionary who seemed rushing to spend and to be spent in the great cause in which his labours had formed a new era, and who now, with scarce recovered strength, so eloquently strove to inspire his countrymen with somewhat of his own devoted enthusiasm.' Duff-the one pleading for the heathen at home, the the heathen other for abroad. It was indeed a token that better days had come Chalmers and for the church of Scotland when Chalmers and Duff were contemporaneously making the whole country resound with their noble pleadings,—the one for the heathen at home, the other for the heathen abroad. And the fact that the outburst of christian liberality with which their appeals were responded to and their efforts sustained, was ushered in and accompanied by those ecclesiastical reforms which have been already described, cannot fail to lend force to a conclusion which the whole history of the Scottish church confirms, that the evangelical and the reforming spirit were essentially one. The examples that have been already adduced of the church's practical efficiency, adopted by bly of 1836, for promot gious interests of Scottish settlers in colonies. CHAP. VII. under evangelical management, are not the only ones that might be given. There was no part of the wide field of duty which it belongs to a church of Christ to cultivate that did not now receive anxious and attentive consideration. What had been in progress before was prosecuted with augmented resources and energy, while much that had been hitherto neglected was taken up and cared for in a spirit altogether new. In 1836, The measures measures were adopted for promoting, on a large scale, the Assem the religious interests of the presbyterian settlers in ing the reli- the colonies, by making the raising of funds and the providing of ministers for that work, a regular and the British permanent department of the business of the church. The church had thus her hand at work in great and strictly missionary enterprises among the outfield population of her own home territory, among her expatriated sons in the various colonial possessions of the empire, and among the multitudinous and idolatrous tribes of the east. The field of the church of Christ is the world, and the only section of that field on which it yet remained for the Scottish church to enter was that which is occupied by the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Up till this time no one christian church, in its corporate character, had undertaken a mission to the Jews; but in the year 1838, the general originated assembly of the church of Scotland was enabled, by the grace of God, to take this reproach away. The mission to the Jews in 1838. In that year, the venerable Dr. Keith, the modern apostle of the circumcision, accompanied by the heavenly-minded M'Cheyne, and his other estimable colleagues, were sent forth to gather tidings of God's ancient people, and to bear to them the unwonted news that the national christian church of an ancient CHAP. VII. kingdom had turned her heart towards them. The immediate result was the founding of that mission to the Jews, which God has since so greatly honoured, and which continues in connection with the Free church of Scotland, in undiminished, or rather in growing, vigour and prosperity, at this hour. The efforts cause of education. In addition to these great evangelistic movements, made in the it would be improper to omit an allusion to what was doing at the same time in another kindred department, -that of the education of the people. In the system. of the great men who founded the church of Scotland, the school was all along designed to have its place side by side with the church. To their enlightened representations and remonstrances upon this subject, incessantly and earnestly continued by their successors, is undoubtedly and exclusively to be ascribed the institution of the parochial schools of Scotland. Valuable as that institution was, the population had much outgrown it, and school extension was as urgently needed as the extension of the church. It is due to the moderate party to state, that under their auspices, and a good many years before they ceased to have the direction of the church's affairs, they had originated a scheme for increasing the means of education, particularly in the highlands and islands. Over that Principal scheme the late Rev. Dr. Baird, principal of the services university of Edinburgh-a man of great kindness of heart-long and usefully presided; and to his great exertions in its behalf, it was largely indebted for that measure of success which it then enjoyed. It was not, however, the quantity merely, but the quality of Baird's valu in this cause. |