PROTESTANT AND RITUALISTIC OPINION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 196, 5 January 1877, Page 7

PROTESTANT AND RITUALISTIC OPINION.

The ' Church Times ' says : The remarks we had occasion to make recently as to the faulty working of the Church Missionary Society, and the very doxibtful character of its alleged labours, lead on to another branch of the missionary question, to which we invite the attention of our readers. The Church of Borne, as is sufficiently well known, woke up far earlier than any Protestant communion to the duty of foreign missions, not merely carried on, as has been done all along, by single volunteers in the field, but by the corporate action of a great Church society, undertaking the task of collecting and administering funds, and of training and sending out missionaries. The great Institute of the Propaganda was established by Pope Gregory XV. in 1622, and its College or seminary in 1G27 by Urban VIII. ; and it was in IG3I that St. Vincent do Paul founded the Priests of the Missions, or Lazarists, who originally designed for the home field, have since added foreign work to their scheme,- while volunteer Roman Catholic missions to the East Indies began in 1522 ; to Japan in 1529 ; to Brazil and Ethiopia (under the Jesuits) in 1556 ; Paraguay in 1(510 ; Central Africa, under the Capuchins, in 1655 ; and the French College of Missions, chiefly for China, was founded in 1663. On the other side, the earliest missionary effort amongst Protestants was by t'.ie Genevan Calvinists in 1570, when they sent agents to North America. Next came the English Independents and Presbyterians, about 1(527, to the same place, whose efforts are chiefly remembered by the name of Eliot, called the "Apostle of the Indians;" Sweden and Denmark began missions to Lapland about 1630; Dutch missionaries attempted Brazil and Ceylon in 16 iO; while it was not till Kill > that the Church of England, began to wake up by founding the Society for Promoting Clr/istian Knowledge, and that in 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was begun, both of them, however, being at first only incidentally and indirectly missionary, having been designed at their beginning mainly for home and colonial purposes. And it was not until 1721 that the most successful Protestant missions, those of the Moravians, bean by the voyage of Hans Egede to Greenland. These dates, and "the list of countries referred to under them, show very plainly that the Roman Church was not only much earlier and more active in the mission field than any other Western Communion, but that heopei'ations were far more general, and were not guided by the colonial view of the question which seems to have influenced most of the others. And after all ded nctions for exaggeration, for ultimate failure, and for a very imperfect Christianity taught in some places, as by Robert de' Nobili, there seems little doubt that tho Roman Catholic missions were incomparably more successful than the Protestant ones. Nor is this difference altogether obsolete now. The invai-iable testimony of dispassionate travellers who have no bias either way, is that where Roman Catholic and Anglican or Protestant missionaries are found working side by side in the same country, the former are all but invariably superier in personal intelligence and culture, and consequent fitness for the work ; in, simplicity and self-denial of life j in accessibility and courtesy ; in diligence; in their relations with the native converts; and in the measure of their success. And the more professedly Evangelical and Protestant any competing mission may be, the lower do its agents commonly stand in ability, in learning, in manners, in selfdenial, in labor, and in converts. These are not our own inferences, but the simple restatement in brief of allegations to bo found in abundant books of voyages and travels, and of private information given to ourselves by lay non-Roman Catholics. So far the account is all in favour of the Roman Church, It trains its missionaries far better, it sends a better stamp of men out — would never, indeed, think of trusting the ignorant louts, who too often satisfy the C. M. S., to argue with a learned Brahmin or a shrewd Chinese — it organizes its missions incomparably better, and works them not only far more successfully, but at an inconceivably smaller cost, The salary of one ordinary Protestant missionary would keep a whole station, with its two or three priests, catechists, and schools going, on the scale of the Propaganda's outlay. To be sure, it does not allow for wives and families, and that makes a difference. For domestic life and mission life are not moro compatible now than they were in the days of the Apostles.