idol-worship in India was felt at home as a continual grievance. The Church, to say the least, has not been favoured. At this day the number of English bishops in India and Ceylon is but eleven, among three hundred millions of souls; less than half the number of Roman Catholic bishops in the same regions.

1812.

C.M.S.

In 1812 a fresh effort for the evangelisation of India was made, beginning with a meeting held on April 24, at which Wilberforce spoke with acceptance,' and A fresh effort, the S.P.C.K. followed with a meeting to the same end. Another important meeting of the Church Missionary Society was held at the New London Tavern in May 1813, six months after the death of Henry Martyn, at which Wilberforce, Simeon, and Dean meeting, Ryder spoke, and hopes were expressed that some May 1813. recognition of the Christian religion in India might be made by Lord Liverpool's Government, which was then considering its Indian Charter Bill. A number of petitions from all parts of the country were presented to Parliament in favour of the introduction of Christianity into India. A Committee of the House of Commons sat and examined witnesses, among them Warren Hastings and Lord Teignmouth. The fear was expressed that if the Indian Government should show any favour to Christian missions, some compulsion would be put upon the conscience of the natives. In deference to public opinion Lord Castlereagh, on June 22, brought forward among other resolutions one which Lord stated that it is the duty of this country to promote Castlereagh's Resolutions, the interest and happiness of the native inhabitants June 22. of the British dominions in India, and that such measures ought to be adopted as may tend to the introduction among them of useful knowledge and of religious and moral improvement,' and that facilities to this end should be afforded by law. 'Wilberforce rose at midnight, and spoke for two hours; and at three o'clock in the morning the victory was won. Good men, he heard afterwards, were The resolution was passed by 53 votes in a House of 125. After the abolition of the slave trade this was the second great triumph of the evangelical party.

East India praying all night.'

Bill, 1813.

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The discussion was repeated in Committee, and it was observed that the opposers of the scheme for christianising India were for the most part men who had resided in the country, and the promoters 'those at home who are distinguished by the name of the evangelical party.' clause in the bill provided for the appointment of a bishop and three archdeacons. This bill received the Royal Assent on July 21, 1813. 'I am persuaded,' wrote Wilberforce, 'that we have laid the foundation stone of the grandest edifice that ever was raised in Asia.'

1814.

Notwithstanding these successes, the Society made way but slowly. The bishops disapproved of the setting up of an evangelical association within the borders of the Church, and showed little favour to the young to C.M.S. Opposition Society, liable as it was to the imputation of Methodism and innovation. The methods of the Society, itinerancy, collections, meetings, special services with singing of hymns, such as 'Jesus shall reign,' 'From all that dwell beneath the skies,' 'All hail the power of Deputations Jesus' name,' gave an evangelical character to the instituted, movement. The system of deputations, begun by Josiah Pratt in 1814, gave offence. At a meeting held on St. Andrew's Day, 1817, at Bath, a Church C.M.S. Missionary Association was inaugurated with a meeting at service at which Bishop Ryder preached the Bath, 1817. sermon. Notwithstanding this, at a meeting held the next day at the Octagon Chapel, Pratt was interrupted by a formal protest from Archdeacon Thomas against 'factious interference' with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. This incident led to a correspondence between Pratt and the Archdeacon, and in the event caused a public discussion and a meeting of the bishops, and roused the dormant energy of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel into something like rivalry with the younger Society. Pratt revenged himself by bidding the S.P.G. 'most heartily God speed,' and rejoiced when a Royal Letter brought that Society the sum of £45,000. He did more, for he gathered from its reports for a hundred years an account of the good deeds of the elder Society, and published it under the title Propaganda. The book had a large sale,

and contributed no little to the success of the Royal Letter.

E. I. Charter

The East India Charter Act (53 George III. c. 155) as passed (21 July 1813), contained provision for the appointment of a bishop for the whole of the British Act passed, territories in the East Indies. His salary, £5000 1813. a year, was to be paid by the East India Directors, and his jurisdiction was limited by the letters patent which appointed him. Three archdeacons, whose salary was to be £2000 a year each, were nominated to Fort William, Fort George, and Bombay. Letters patent were issued in the course of the year appointing Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822) Bishop of Calcutta. Middleton was educated

at Christ's Hospital with Coleridge and Lamb, who describes him as 'a scholar and a gentleman in his teens.' He went to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, but did not greatly distinguish himself, being rather a scholar than a mathematician: his work on the Greek Article, which appeared in 1808, is a landmark in the history of Greek Testament criticism. Middleton was consecrated at Lambeth on May 8, 1814, and reached Calcutta in November. In the same year four C.M.S. missionaries were sent out to India, missionaries two of whom, Greenwood and Norton, were clergysent to India, men of the Church of England; among the first so

C.M.S.

1814. qualified who were directly appointed to mission

work, for hitherto the missionaries sent out by the three Missionary Societies had been in Lutheran orders. Greenwood had been a Yorkshire blanket manufacturer; Thomas Norton was a shoemaker, and self-taught.

The commencement of the new system was unpromising. The new Bishop went to India against the voice of public opinion, and without the full confidence of the Church. He was consecrated and sent out almost by stealth, so great was the fear of rousing the fanatical suspicion of the natives. He obeyed perhaps too faithfully the injunction of Archbishop Manners Sutton, 'No enthusiasm!' for he would have no dealings with the Bible Society, and did not well agree with the Presbyterian ministers whom the Company maintained in their service. Nor did he actively support missions to the heathen; his mission was principally to Europeans; he con

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sidered it to be his duty not to make converts, but to organise a church and to establish his own position in it.

Middleton's wish was to train up a native clergy, and with a view to this he founded Bishop's College in 1820.

1820.

He

devoted to the purpose a sum of £5000 presented Foundation to him by the Society for the Propagation of the of Bishop's Gospel. The S.P.C.K., the C.M.S., and the Bible College, Society did the like 'in the same great and common cause,' and these four benefactions made the foundation of Bishop's College possible. The College was built on too large a scale, and was never successful; but money may be well wasted in such experiments.

Bishop Middleton died in 1822, at the age of fifty-four. It was something to have established the episcopate with dignity, and to have made a beginning of church organisation in a diocese which comprised the whole of India, and to which, not long after, Ceylon, Mauritius, Australia, and New Zealand were at various times added. Middleton's work has been far outgrown, but his foundation remains, and the Church Societies are still building upon it with unwearied diligence.

AUTHORITIES.-As Chap. I. (p. 34); Owen, The Origin of the Brit. and For. Bible Society; Stock, History of the C.M.S.; Allen and M'Clure, 200 Years (Hist. of S. P. C. K.); Pascoe, 200 Years of the S.P. G.; Tucker, Under His Banner. BIOGRAPHIES: Daniel Corrie, by Corrie; T. F. Middleton, by Le Bas; Reginald Heber, by Mrs. Heber; Josiah Pratt, by Pratt; Henry Martyn, by Bell; Claudius Buchanan, by Pearson; Wm. Carey, by Carey.

CHAPTER III

THE OLD HIGH CHURCH PARTY

Religious

THE fortunes of the Church of England, closely allied as she is to the State for good or evil, have always been affected by political events. As a national church and bound by somewhat indefinite formulas, she cannot but reflect the opinions of the day; and it is an imputation often cast upon her that she is, at most, no more than the church of a majority. We have only to pronounce the names of our sovereigns, from Henry VIII. to the present day, to see how the complexion of the Church has varied with the times. The high orthodoxy of Queen Anne's reign, combining with the latitudipolitics of the narian tendency of Whig politics, produced a tertium eighteenth quid which faithfully reproduced in the ecclesiastical century. region the political quietism of Walpole's school. 'No enthusiasm' corresponds to 'quieta non movere.' The practice of the Georgian clergy was to work with what lay ready to their hand, and distrust all enterprise beyond safe lines; their theology was not deliberately evolved from study, as that of their predecessors the Caroline divines, nor from emotion and experience working on a biblical ground, as that of the Reformers and the Evangelicals; but traditional, and rather theoretical than vital. The terms 'High' and 'Low' have changed their meaning from time to time. During the eighteenth century 'Low Church' included latitudinarians and Evangelicals, High Church' nonjurors and Romanisers, and a large proportion of the 'orthodox'; which term was applied to Churchmen who accepted the Reformation as a cardinal fact in the history of Christianity, and

High and Low Church.