a Native should be all the more an object of his compassion and tender regards; and surely pity from a Christian heart he has every reason to expect. I cherish great respect for the Europeans, not for any secular considerations, but for the sake of Jesus Christ, whom they profess to follow, and whom, I believe, it is their mission to make known to us in words as well as deeds. It is the bounden duty of all Europeans in India so to prove their fidelity to him in all the avocations of their private and public life, that through the influence of their example the spirit of true Christian_ righteousness may leaven Native society. I regard every European settler in India as a missionary of Christ, and I have a right to demand that he should always remember and act up to his high responsibilities. (Applause.) But alas! owing to the reckless conduct of a number of pseudo-Christians, Christianity has failed to produce any wholsome moral influence on my countrymen. (Hear, hear,-"They are nominal Christians.") Yea, their muscular Christianity has led many a Native to identify the religion of Jesus with the power and privilege of inflicting blows and kicks with impunity! (Deafening cheers.) And thus Jesus has been dishonoured in India, and thus, alas! the true spirit of his religion has been lost upon the Natives through the recklessness of a host of nominal Christians. Behold Christ's Church in danger! Behold Christ crucified in the lives of those who profess to be his followers! Had it not been for them, the name of Jesus Christ would have been ten times more glorified than it seems to have been. (Hear, hear.) I hope that, for India's sake, for Christ's sake, for truth's sake, the Christians in India will always conscientiously strive to realize in their lives the high morality of the Gospel. Here,

in this hall and elsewhere, the Native character has been most severely denounced and vilified, and the foulest aspersions cast upon it with unjustifiable partiality. (Cheers.) From such one-sided and sweeping condemnation it is my duty to vindicate our national character. When it is clear that each of the two communities has certain peculiar and grave defects which it is impossible to justify, why should the one be systematically maligned, and that for faults by no means natural or national, but accidental and exceptional? If there are foxes among the Natives, there are wolves among the Europeans; if the former are narrow-minded and selfish, the latter are rough and implacable; if the former are led by selfishness to commit forgery, the latter are driven by anger to perpetrate murder; if the former have no integrity, the latter have no mercy; if the former have no regard for truth, neither have the latterif truth be taken in its highest sense, even as it is in the Holy God. We have on the one side a perverted Europeanism, and on the other a perverted Indianism, but there are acknowledged excellences on both sides. I hope, therefore, that the European and Native communities will understand aright their respective defects and shortcomings, and the good qualities of each other, that they may with humility and mutual respect cultivate fellowship with, and do good to, each other. No one can deny that recrimination only serves to widen the gulf between them, and render antagonism more inveterate, and for the good of both parties it should be avoided. Europeans and Natives are both the children of God, and the ties of brotherhood should bind them together. Extend, then, to us, O ye Europeans in India, the right hand of fellowship, to which we are fairly entitled. If, however, our Christian friends persist

in traducing our nationality and national character, and in distrusting and hating Orientalism, let me assure them that I do not in the least feel dishonoured by such imputations. On the contrary, I rejoice, yea, I am proud, that I am an Asiatic. And was not Jesus Christ an Asiatic? (Deafening applause.) Yes, and his disciples were Asiatics, and all the agencies primarily employed for the propagation of the Gospel were Asiatic. In fact, Christianity was founded and developed by Asiatics, and in Asia. When I reflect on this, my love for Jesus becomes a hundred fold intensified ; I feel him nearer my heart, and deeper in my national sympathies. Why should I then feel ashamed to acknowledge that nationality which he acknowledged? Shall I not rather say he is more congenial and akin to my Oriental nature, more agreeable to my Oriental habits of thought and feeling? And is it not true that an Asiatic can read the imageries and allegories of the Gospel, and its descriptions of natural sceneries, of customs, and manners, with greater interest, and a fuller perception of their force and beauty, than Europeans? (Cheers.) In Christ we see not only the exaltedness of humanity, but also the grandeur of which Asiatic nature is susceptible. To us, Asiatics, therefore, Christ is doubly interesting, and his religion is entitled to. our peculiar regard as an altogether Oriental affair. The more this great fact is pondered, the less I hope will be the antipathy and hatred of European Christians against Oriental nationalities, and the greater the interest of the Asiatics in the teachings. of Christ. And thus in Christ, Europe and Asia, the East and the West, may learn to find harmony and unity. (Deafening applause.)

I must therefore protest against that denationaliza

for

tion which is so general among Native converts to Christianity. (Cheers.) With the religion of their heathen forefathers, they generally abandon the manners and customs of their country, and with Christianity they embrace the usages of Europeans; even in dress and diet they assume an affected air of outlandishness, which estranges them from their own countrymen They deliberately aud voluntarily cut themselves off from Native society as soon as they are baptized, and, as an inevitable consequence, come to contract a sort of repugnance to everything Oriental, and an enthusiastic admiration everything European. (Hear, hear.) They seem to be ashamed of their country and their nationality. They forget that Christ, their master, was an Asia. tic, and that it is not necessary in following him to make themselves alien to their country or race. sincerely beseech them not to confound the spirit of Christianity with the fashions of Western civilization. May they aspire to the glory of following the example of their great master, who, though he inculcated catholic truth for all mankind, was not ashamed to live and die a simple and poor Asiatic. (Cheers.)

I

I believe you will readily admit that, in contrasting the national character of the European and Native races, I have been guided by no local or arbitrary criterion, but by that high and universally acknowledged standard of ethics which is above the accidents of time and place, and is applicable to all men and nations alike. I have not judged the Asiatics from a European point of view, nor have I judged the Europeans according to the peculiar notions of an Asiatic. I have freely pronounced the imperfections of the two races, so far as I have found them to fall short of the requirements of

are

God's law. These imperfections may, in each case, be, and often are, justified, or at least palliated and tolerated, in an estimate formed on local and national considerations. The European, guided by European notions, may vindicate all the traits in his national character, and declare the Natives a perverted race, because their ideas and practices are at variance with his own; and the Native may do the same in return. But He who judgeth both Europeans and Natives according to His supreme law, findeth abundant transgressions in each. And certainly it is our interest and duty, in estimating. our own or our neighbour's character, to refer, not to human opinion, but to the absolute standard of perfection as it is in God; as it is thus only that we can hope to reform ourselves and each other, without being inflated by pride or biassed by malice. I address you, brethren, not as men who merely amenable to a court of justice, or the tribunal of society, and whose highest merit consists in avoiding crime or securing a few worldly virtues, but as beings destined for immortality, whose object should be to follow strictly the absolute standard of truth, and whose best interests are the interests of eternity. I speak to you as to those who have immortal souls to care for, and whose highest concern is to secure the approbation of conscience here, and a blessed eternity hereafter. I would ask you, brethren, to forget time in eternity, all local traditions in uni versal principles, nationality in humanity, and the varying conventionalism of different countries in the immutable standard of duty. I would ask you to appeal to your own consciences, that you may see and confess how far you stand convicted before the throne of the Holy God as men however much you may find reason to gratify your national pride as