RELIGIOUS AND

SOCIAL REFORMATION.

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN AND FRIENDS,

FOUR years have elapsed since I first visited your great city, and did myself the honour of addressing you in this large hall. I am glad I am able to be once more amongst you as your friend, well-wisher, and servant, anxious to serve you in the matter of your country's reformation. Several very important changes have transpired during these four years, here as well as elsewhere. The most important change which strikes me in Bombay is that in commercial and money matters. Very great commercial disasters have befallen your city recently, and the change is indeed very striking. When I first came here I felt it very difficult to pass through your streets with anything like convenience, so very crowded they were; and I could hardly find time to converse with my friends here, so busy they were. If ever I could get time to converse with them for fifteen minutes, there were sure to be two or three interruptions. But now Bombay is far more quiet-there is less of business, less of pressure, less of anxiety,-

people seem now to be gliding on smoothly as it were. So we had in Bengal a very dreadful cyclone. It came on roaring and howling, and prostrated many a house, many a man, pulled down dilapidated edifices, and caused prodigious havoc amongst the shipping. It opened the eyes of the people to the insecure foundations upon which they had built their 'houses; and so we drew some lessons from the great cyclone,-improved architecture, improvements in the shipping, and a more careful and scientific meteorological phenomena. Now, my friends, as you have been overtaken here by a commercial cyclone, as disastrous in its consequences as the great cyclone in Lower Bengal, I hope you will endeavour to draw certain lessons from such disasters. Those who did not build their houses and farms on the secure foundations of honesty have seen, to their great sorrow and mortification, how these houses and farms have given way;-carelessness, dishonesty, want of foresight, have all been punished as they deserved to be, for the laws which govern God's moral world are as immutable and as unchangeable as those which govern His physical universe. What, then, are the lessons which you ought to draw from the commercial crash which has happened here? That you should have less of that Mammonworship,-less of that worship and adoration

of the world which you had formerly,―more of honesty and truthfulness,-more of care and circumspection and foresight in the management of your secular affairs-and a heart full of faith in the great God, His holiness, His power, His wisdom, and His mercy. If you do not interpret the recent commercial disaster in Bombay in this way,-if you do not draw these lessons from that disaster,-I do not know how you can regard such an event as providential; for I do verily believe that a visitation like this, or like the late cyclone in Bengal, may be made productive of blessings to the land. God always brings good out of evil. When He sends an affliction, His great object is to chasten us and humble Were it not for this, perhaps Bombay would have still gone on carelessly and madly in the pursuit of gold that perisheth-perhaps the eyes of Bombay would not up to this time have been opened to the necessity of reforming the soul, of laying up provisions for immortality. As it is I thank God. I thank Him for all the calamitous visitations which He sends down to individuals and to nations; for ultimately good does flow from these. It is only necessary, therefore, on your part, that you should rightly interpret such a disaster, and draw from it those lessons which it is designed by Providence to offer to you

us.

for your guidance. I say, we have had too much of Mammon-worship here. What is it, then, that should engage your attention now? You will perhaps say you will only learn honesty, you will only try to acquire a habit of veracity, straightforwardness and prudence, -you will no longer place absolute confidence in those who deserve it not. Ah, my friends, you are mistaken if you think so! You ought to give yourselves up entirely to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, for He has spoken to you to that effect in a manner in which He very seldom speaks to nations. This commercial disaster I look upon as a special dispensation and a special revelation to the people of Bombay-something that has been delivered to you as an eloquent sermon pointing out the evils of Mammon-worship, and the necessity of recognizing the worship of the True God. Read that sermon-be holierbe nobler--and try to become collectively a mightier, a more righteous nation. I do not bring an indiscriminate and sweeping charge against you, my brethren, for I very well know that some very honest, some innocent men have suffered, simply because they put too much trust in men who had no honesty in them. But such is the case all the world over. This disaster is a warning not merely to those who were dishonest, but also

to those men who were innocent, and who suffered from the dishonesty of others:—it is a warning to all inhabitants of Bombay, in this sense, that it preaches to us the great truth, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Those who have sustained losses ought to make amends by trying to conduct themselves in a more honest, manly style; and those who have not suffered ought also to be equally religious, pious, and honest. Then shall the purpose of God's dispensation be realized fully, I trust and hope, in this part of the country. What is the great subject which you should now be prepared to receive, attend to, discuss, and carry out into practice?-the subject of reformation. Methinks, God by this eloquent, this most eloquent and impressive sermon tells us all,— “Think of the true interests of your souls, and of the souls of millions of your fellowcountrymen and countrywomen." Adversity, I hope, has humbled you sufficiently to see the uncertainty and hollowness of earthly prosperity, and feel the necessity of directing your early attention to the subject of individual and national reformation. Patiently, my brethren, hear me, therefore, while I endeavour to expound in my humble manner what I conceive to be the true principles of Indian regeneration as it refers to individuals and to communities.