THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY FOUNDED. ЗІ

mustard seed; and, in less than a century, it has carried 'the unsearchable riches of Christ' to Africa and New Zealand, to India, to Ceylon and the West Indies, to the wild Indian in North-West Canada; and has extended its holy efforts to the vast field among the countless multitudes of China and Japan." Grant's dream was about to be fulfilled; and, although a solid foundation for its labours in Bengal was not laid for some years, he lived to see it begun. Though he was not actually present at the formation of the Society, he was, almost from the beginning, one of its Vice-Presidents; but, if there is one person more than any other who can be called the founder of the Church Missionary Society, it is Charles Grant.

After the very favourable way in which Lord Cornwallis had written regarding Grant to Henry Dundas, the President of the Board of Control, it is not surprising that this minister was prepared to consult him on Indian affairs. It seems that he had several interviews with Grant; and, when the time came for him to send a reply to the Governor-General's recommendations on the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, which important measure was the principal feature in the administration of that eminent statesman, Dundas induced the Prime Minister, William Pitt, to spend ten days with him at Wimbledon, where the two statesmen secluded themselves, and devoted their attention exclusively to that one subject. Most of the time Grant was with them, and gave them the benefit of his experience and counsel. He also wrote the draft of the reply which was sent to India in the name of the Court of Directors. The responsibility for the policy adopted was thus fully divided be

tween Dundas and Pitt. Nothing that we have said is to be interpreted as approval of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal. It has been generally condemned after the experience of more than a hundred years; but it was most carefully and deliberately discussed at the time of its adoption, and it was a great honour for Grant to be consulted on such a subject by the Prime Minister and the President of the Board of Control.

The greater part of the year 1792 was spent by Grant in writing a very elaborate and a very able paper, into which he poured out the accumulated knowledge and information which he had acquired during his residence in India. It was entitled, "Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain." It remained in manuscript for many years, and was at first shown only to his most intimate friends, of whom Wilberforce was one; but after he had been in the Direction of the East India Company for three years, he placed it before the Court as, to use his own words, one of those many papers of business' with which the records of your Governments have been furnished by the observation and experience of men whose time and thought have been chiefly employed in the concerns of active life." This pamphlet is, even at the present time, well worth reading. After a brief sketch of the previous history of India, Grant sought to impress on his fellowcountrymen a sense of the enormous power and the consequent responsibility which they were incurring. He then drew a very dark, and, perhaps, in some respects, too dark, a picture of the moral condition of Hindu society at that time, which he attributed almost entirely to their religion. His object was, he said, "to

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engage compassion, and to make apparent that what speculation may have ascribed to physical and unchangeable causes, springs from moral sources capable of correction." The last chapter, in which he described what he considered the right remedy for this evil, is the most remarkable and the most worthy of study of all this notable pamphlet. "The true cure of darkness," he said, "is light"; and then he anticipated with almost prophetic insight, what has been done, however imperfectly, during the hundred years that have elapsed since he wrote. He advocated the teaching of the English language, which, he remarked, "is a key which will open to the people a world of new ideas, and policy alone might have impelled us, long since, to put it into their hands."

He foretold the advantages which would flow from the knowledge of English literature, European mechanical science, and improvement in agriculture; but, above and beyond every thing else, the true exhibition. of the Christian religion. "Undoubtedly," he said, "the most important communication which the Hindus. could receive through the medium of our language would be the knowledge of our religion. It is not asserted that great effects would be immediate or universal; but, admitting them to be progressive and partial only, yet how great would the change be, and how happy at length for the outward prosperity and internal peace of society among the Hindus. Men would be restored to the use of their reason; all the advantages of happy soil, climate, and situation would. be observed and improved; the comforts and conveniences of life would be increased; the cultivation of

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the mind and rational intercourse valued; the people would rise in the scale of human beings; and, as they found their character, their state, and their comforts improved, they would prize more highly the security and the happiness of a well-ordered society."

Grant foresaw even the great danger which has made itself too sadly apparent in the present generation, of the more intelligent among the people being “loosened from their own religious prejudices, not by the previous reception of another system in their stead, but by becoming indifferent to every system." Yet, with all the earnestness and the fervour of his heart, he advocated the inculcation of Christianity. "Do we wish to correct, to raise, to sweeten the social state of our Indian subjects?" he pleaded. he pleaded. "Would we at little cost impart to them a boon, far more valuable than all the advantages we have derived from them? The Gospel brings this within our power. Of the effects which it would produce in civil society, if men acted according to its principles, we may, in the words of Bishop Horne, say that, in superiors it would be equity and moderation, courtesy, and affability, benignity and condescension; in inferiors, sincerity and fidelity, respect and diligence; in princes, justice, gentleness, and solicitude for the welfare of their subjects; in subjects, loyalty, submission, obedience, quietness, peace, patience, and cheerfulness; in all men, upon all occasions, a readiness to assist, relieve, and comfort one another-whatsoever, in a word, that is pure, lovely, and good.' And is this the religion we hesitate to communicate to those whose welfare it is alike our duty and our interest to consult ? He concluded with these emphatic words: "The writer

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35 will not allow himself to believe that, when so many noble and beneficial ends may be served by our possession of an Empire in the East, we shall content ourselves with the meanest and the least; and, for the sake of this, frustrate all the rest. He trusts we shall dare to do justice, liberal justice, and be persuaded that this principle will carry us to greater heights of prosperity than the precautions of a selfish policy. Future events are inscrutable to the keenest speculation; but the path of duty is open, the time present is ours. By planting our language, our knowledge, our opinions, and our religion in our Asiatic territories, we shall put a great work beyond the reach of contingencies; we shall probably have wedded the inhabitants of those territories to this country; but, at any rate, we shall have done an act of strict duty to them and of lasting service to mankind." It must be borne in mind that these words were written more than a century ago, when there was the most bitter opposition to every sentiment contained in them.

This pamphlet was printed by order of the House of Commons in 1813, when Grant was himself a member of the House, and when it did good service in influencing the discussions on the renewal of the East India Company's Charter in that year. Meanwhile, its author helped Wilberforce very greatly in his earnest endeavours, when the Charter was renewed in 1793, to introduce into the Act of Parliament confirming the Charter certain clauses which would have ensured religious liberty in India twenty years earlier than was the case. In this vigorous attempt Grant was his right-hand man, as Henry Thornton was in the anti-slavery contest.