of the local society to submit themselves to voluntary examination in various branches of useful knowledge, of which examination it takes the charge and arranges the details, and invites the successful candidates to come to Manchester to receive the prizes and certificates of merit which it impartially awards. The most successful of the competitors in the list of these examinations are now among us, and these little marks of recognition and encouragement I shall have the honour presently of giving them, as they come before you, one by one, for that purpose.

I have looked over a few of those examination papers, which have comprised history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, bookkeeping, decimal coinage, mensuration, mathematics, social economy, the French language-in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all the locks of knowledge. I felt most devoutly gratified, as to many of them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for I am perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had mighty little to bestow upon myself to-night. And yet it is always to be observed and seriously remembered that these examinations are undergone by people whose lives have been passed in a continual fight for bread, and whose whole existence has been a constant wrestle with

"Those twin gaolers of the daring heart-
Low birth and iron fortune."

I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, that these questions have been replied to, not by men like myself, the business of whose life is with writing and with books, but by men, the business of whose life is with tools and with machinery.

Let me endeavour to recall, as well as my memory will serve me, from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and certificategainers who will appear before you, some two or three of the most conspicuous examples. There are two poor brothers from near Chorley, who work from morning to night in a coal pit, and who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which they have gained distinction. There are two poor boys from Bollington, who began life as piecers at one shilling or eighteenpence a week, and the father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in which this son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys will appear before you to-night, to take the second-class prize in chemistry. There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen years of age, who took a third-class certificate last year at the hands of Lord Brougham; he is this year again successful in a competition three times as severe. There is a waggon-maker from the same place, who knew little or absolutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who has learned all he knows, which is a great

deal, in the local institution. There is a chainmaker, in very humble circumstances, and working hard all day, who walks six miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a place. There is a moulder in an iron foundry, who, whilst he was working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at four o'clock in the morning to learn drawing. "The thought of my lads," he writes in his modest account of himself, "in their peaceful slumbers above me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might in. struct them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty machines and engines which have made our country-England-preeminent in the world's history." There is a piecer at mule frames, who could not read at eighteen, who is now a man of little more than thirty, who is the sole support of an aged mother, who is arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself was taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it with such an astonishing will that he is now well versed in Euclid and algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The drawing classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working blacksmith; and the pupils of that working blacksmith will receive the highest honours of to-night. Well may it be said of that good blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the American poet:

"Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,

Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begun,
Each evening sees its close.
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose."

To pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from local societies now before me, and to content myself with one instance from amongst them. There is among their number a most remarkable man, whose history I have read with feelings that I could not adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom weaving until he dropped from fatigue: who began to teach himself as soon as he could earn five shillings a week: who is now a botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire valley: who is a naturalist, and has made and preserved a collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds: who is now a conchologist, with a very curious, and in some respects an original collection of fresh-water shells, and has also preserved and collected the mosses of fresh water and of the sea: who is worthily the president of his own local literary institution, and who was at his work this time last night as foreman in a mill.

So stimulating has been the influence of these

bright examples, and many more, that I notice among the applications from Blackburn for preliminary test examination papers, one from an applicant who gravely fills up the printed form by describing himself as ten years of age, and who, with equal gravity, describes his occupation as "nursing a little child." Nor are these things confined to the men. The women employed in factories, milliners' work, and domestic service, have begun to show, as it is fitting they should, a most decided determination not to be outdone by the men; and the women of Preston in particular, have so honourably distinguished themselves, and shown in their examination papers such an admirable knowledge of the science of household management and household economy, that if I were a working bachelor of Lancashire or Cheshire, and if I had not cast my eye or set my heart upon any lass in particular, I should positively get up at four o'clock in the morning with the determination of the iron moulder himself, and should go to Preston in search of a wife.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, these instances, and many more, daily occurring, always accumulating, are surely better testimony to the working of this association, than any number of speakers could possibly present to you. Surely the presence among us of these indefatigable people is the association's best and most effective triumph in the present and the past, and is its noblest stimulus to effort in the future. As its temporary mouthpiece, I would beg to say to that portion of the company who attend to receive the prizes, that the institution can never hold itself apart from them-can never set itself above them; that their distinction and success must be its distinction and success; and that there can be but one heart beating between them and it. In particular, I would most especially entreat them to observe that nothing will ever be further from this association's mind than the impertinence of patronage. The prizes that it gives, and the certificates that it gives, are mere admiring assurances of sympathy with so many striving brothers and sisters, and are only valuable for the spirit in which they are given, and in which they are received. The prizes are money prizes, simply because the institution does not presume to doubt that persons who have so well governed themselves, know best how to make a little money serviceable-because it would be a shame to treat them like grown-up babies by laying it out for them, and because it knows it is given, and knows it is taken, in perfect clearness of purpose, perfect trustfulness, and, above all, perfect independence.

Ladies and gentlemen, reverting once more to the whole collective audience before me, I will, in another two minutes, release the hold which your favour has given me on your attention. Of the advantages of knowledge I have said, and I shall say nothing. Of the certainty with

which the man who grasps it under difficulties rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the community, I have said, and I shall say nothing. In the city of Manchester, in the county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for selftaught men, that were superfluous indeed. For the same reason I rigidly abstain from putting together any of the shattered fragments of that poor clay image of a parrot, which was once always saying, without knowing why, or what it meant, that knowledge was a dangerous thing. I should as soon think of piecing together the mutilated remains of any wretched Hindoo who has been blown from an English gun. Both, creatures of the past, have been-as my friend Mr Carlyle vigorously has it-"blasted into space;" and there, as to this world, is an end of them.

So I desire, in conclusion, only to sound two strings. In the first place, let me congratulate you upon the progress which real mutual improvement societies are making at this time in your neighbourhood, through the noble agency of individual employers and their families. whom you can never too much delight to honour. Elsewhere, through the agency of the great railway companies, some of which are bestirring themselves in this matter with a gallantry and generosity deserving of all praise. Secondly and lastly, let me say one word out of my own personal heart, which is always very near to it in this connection. Do not let us, in the midst of the visible objects of nature, whose workings we can tell of in figures, surrounded by machines that can be made to the thousandth part of an inch, acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved upon a slate or demonstrated by a microscope-do not let us, in the laudable pursuit of the facts that surround us, neglect the fancy and the imagination which equally surround us as a part of the great scheme. Let the child have its fables; let the man or woman into which it changes, always remember those fables tenderly. Let numerous graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured, and that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their places about us, be we never so wise. The hardest head may co-exist with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to mankind. The Divine teacher was as gentle and considerate as He was powerful and wise. You all know how He could still the raging of the sea, and could hush a little child. As the utmost results of the wisdom of men can only be at last to help to raise this earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the blindnesses and passions of men, would have exalted it long ago; so let us always remember that He set us the example of blending the understanding and the imagination, and that, following it ourselves, we tread in His steps, and help our race on to

its better and best days. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know, has a very limited power indeed, when it informs the head alone;

but when it informs the head and the heart too, it has a power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.

MISSIONS TO INDIA,

I.

[THE conclusion of an address given before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1868, on his return from India.]

I might use stronger language, and assert that it ought not to be tolerated by any reasonable man, unless proved to be unavoidable, that our several Churches should reproduce, in order to perpetuate in the new world of a Christianised India, those forms and symbols which in the old world have become marks, not of our union as Christians, but of our disunion as sects. We may not, indeed, be responsible for these divisions in the Church which have come down to us from the past. We did not make them, nor can we now, perhaps, unmake them. We find ourselves born into some one of them, and so we accept of it, and make the most of it as the best we can get in the whole circumstances in which we are placed. But must we establish these different organisations in India? Is each part to be made to represent the whole? Is the grand army to remain broken up into separate divisions, each to recruit to its own standard, and to invite the Hindoos to wear our respective uniforms, adopt our respective Shibboleths, learn and repeat our respective warcries, and even make caste marks of our wounds and scars, which to us are but the sad mementoes of old battles? Or, to drop all metaphors, shall Christian converts in India be necessarily grouped and stereotyped into Episcopal Churches, Presbyterian Churches, Lutheran Churches, Methodist Churches, Baptist Churches, or Independent Churches, and adopt as their respective creeds the Confession of Faith, the Thirty-nine Articles, or some other formula approved of by our forefathers, and the separating sign of some British or American sect? Whether any Church seriously entertains this design I know not, though I suspect it of some, and I feel assured that it will be realised in part, as conversions increase by means of foreign missions, and be at last perpetuated, unless it is now carefully guarded against by every opportunity being watched and taken advantage of to propagate a different

idea, and to rear up an independent and allinclusive native Indian Church. By such a Church I mean one which shall be organised and governed by the natives themselves, as far We could of as possible, independently of us. course claim, as Christians and fellow-subjects, to be recognised as brethren, and to be received among its members, or, if it should so please both parties, serve among its ministers, and rejoice always to be its best friends and generous supporters. In all this we would only have them to do to us as we should feel bound to do to them. Such a Church might, as taught by experience, mould its outward form of government and worship according to its inner wants and outward circumstances, guided by history and by the teaching and spirit of Christianity. Its creed-for no Christian society can exist without some known and professed beliefs-would include those truths which had been confessed by the Catholic Church of Christ since the first; and, as necessary to its very existence as a Church it would recognise the supreme authority of Jesus Christ and His apostles. It would also have, like the whole Church, its Lord's Day for public worship, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Thus might a new temple be reared on the plains of India unlike perhaps any to be seen in our western lands, yet with all our goodly stones built up in its fabric, and with all our spiritual worship within its walls of the one living and true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A Church like this would, from its very nationality, attract many a man who does not wish to be ranked among the adherents of mission Churches. It would dispose, also, of many difficulties inseparable from our position, whether regarding baptism or the selection and support of a native ministry. And, finally, it would give ample scope, for many a year to come, for all the aid and efforts which our home churches and missionaries could afford by schools and colleges, personal labour, and also by money contributions, to establish, strengthen, and extend it.

Moreover, it seems to me that India affords varied and remarkable elements for contributing many varied gifts and talents to such a Church as this. The simple peasant and scholarly pun

much astonished they did not make the sacrifice! But suppose the Hindoos, who were observing and intelligent, were to turn on themselves and say, "You are sending us Christianity, to believe which implies enormous sacrifices on our part, but what are your own clergy doing? You are asking us to sacrifice all our traditions, but you won't sacrifice the custom in your parishes that has been brought in by your venerable predecessors! What do you give for the salvation of souls? A pound or a penny, or, as is the case in one hundred and seventy of your churches, nothing at all? You call us deceivers; but we take you by appearances, and ask you to let us see what Christianity is in yourselves before you come to us.'

. . He had yet to learn that it was the work of the foreign mission to make converts. He had always understood that the conversion of souls was in the hand of God. He was not speaking lightly of conversion-far from it; but their responsibility as a Church was to use the best means for converting, and to implore God's grace on the means. But he would ask those who judge the mission by the number of converts, to find out how many conversions had taken place in their own parishes during the same time. Let them go down to the village, and entering a house, say they will not leave it till they bring the men and women to Christ. Let them go to the man of science, who had mastered many of the questions of the day; let them not call him proud, or sneer at him as a "natural man," for he may be most earnest, and may be sweating a more bloody sweat in seeking to come to the truth than they had done; let them go to that man and satisfy his doubts, meet him fairly before God, and when they returned from such a visitation as that, they would have more sympathy with missionaries dealing with educated heathens.

["The chief purpose of his speech, however, took wider ground. He desired all Churches to consider whether the forms in which they were presenting truth, and the ecclesiastical differences they were exporting to India, were the best means for Christianising that country. Was it right that the divisions which separated Churches in this country, and which were the growth of their special histories, should not only be continued, but be made as great matters of principle in India as in England or Scotland?"] |

When these Hindoos heard an Anglican bishop declare that he did not recognise as belonging to Christ's Church congregations of faithful men holding a pure Gospel and observing the sacraments of the Lord; when they met others who said, "You must accept all these Calvinistic doctrines ;" and when the Wesleyans came next and said, "God forbid! don't bring these things in;" and the Baptist came with with his idola

try of sacrament, saying, "You must be a Baptist, you must be dipped again ;" and when the Roman Catholic came and said, "You are all wrong together;" is it any wonder that the Hindoo, pressed on every side by different forms of Western Christianity, should say, "Gentlemen, I thank you for the good you have done me, but as I am sore perplexed by you all, take yourselves off, leave me alone with God, then I will be fairly dealt with." It was a positive shame-it was a disgrace-that they should take with them to India the differences that separated them a few yards from their brethren in this country. Is it not monstrous to make the man they ordained on the banks of the Ganges sign the Westminster Confession of the Church of Scotland, or the Deed of Demission and Protest of the Free Church? Was that the wisest, was it the Christian way of dealing with Hindoos?

And were they presenting the truth to the native mind in the form best fitted for his requirements? The doctrines of their confessions might be true in themselves, but the Confession was a document closely connected with the historical development and with the metaphysical temperament of the people who had accepted it, and might not be equally suitable for those who had not the same traditions and tendencies. Was it necessary to give these minute and abstract statements to Orientals whose habits of mind and spiritual affinities might lay better hold on other aspects of divine truth, and who might mould a theology for themselves, not less Christian, but which would be Indian, and not English or Scotch? The block of ice, clear and cold, the beautiful product of our northern climes, will at the slightest touch freeze the warm lips of the Hindoo. Why insist that he must take that or nothing? Would it not be better to let the stream flow freely that the Eastern may quench his thirst at will from God's own water of life? Would it not be possible for the Evangelical Churches to drop their peculiarities, and in the unselfishness of the common faith construct a primer or make the Apostles' Creed their symbol, and say: "This is not all you are going to learn, but if you receive this truth and be strong in the faith, we will receive you so walking, but not to doubtful disputations; and, if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God will reveal even this unto you?'" And they should make known the truth not only by books but by living men. Send them the missionary. Let him be a man who embodies Christianity; and if he were asked, "What is a Christian?" he could answer, "I am; I know and love Christ, and wish you to know Him and love Him too." That man in his justice, generosity, love, selfsacrifice, would make the Hindoo feel that he had a brother given him by a common Father. Let them prepare the Hindoos to form a Church for themselves. Give them the gunpowder, and they will make their own cannon.