MORE FAILURES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 48, 22 March 1889, Page 11

MORE FAILURES.

It seems that the Church of Scotland Mission in India has been a oomplete failure. This we leain from a brochure entitled • A Few Facts About our Foreign Missions," publishei by the Rev. W. A Liston, a retired chaplain of her Majesty's Kcclwiastical Establishment, Madras. The chief point to which Mr. Liston directs attention ia the educational metnods pursuel by the Mission at the three Presidency towns, and he admits that after fifty years of the Limner educatioaal campaign against heithenistn, the (Jnurch of fccciland could number only 343 members and adherents in all Southern India. The reason he gives for this failure is that the mission has devote i its energies to the education rather than to the evengplisation of the heathen, and that, " while it has been successfully adding numerous graduates to the Madras and other universities." it has "signally failed to add converts to the Church of Christ." He adds : " As to the missionary character of these institutions (Church of Scotland Mission collegis). if this is not a misnomer, they are certainly practical failures in this relationship. Daring the whole of my twemy yeaTb' service in the Madras Presidency I am not aware of a single direst convert who has been gained to the cause of Cbei^t, or the Church of. Scotland, from all our Kbours in the institutions" "Yet the 'Bible hour' ia never missed in ihesi institutions by the missionary ; but with what result? Here is Mr. Listou'a answer : '■ Ihe students attend our colleges to stu iy and pass for a degice, not to read the Bible. Ani when the ' Bible h>ur' comes on. ilusj Hindus get up the facts of the Bible very much ia thi same fashio-i that Christians, in our school dayrf, got up our lijmaa An lquities or our Grecian Mythology. These Hindus can tell you to a cieety bow many concubines Solomon had ; they can tell yon the exact date of. tue deluge according to U-hcr's Chronology, and t.iey have the tacts of the Bible at their fingers' cuds ; but, to my mint!, they are no nearer Christ by this metnod than are those studen's who attend what we Indians call ' pucka ' Uovernm>nt colleges." This is how Protestant missions are progressing in India. Ami here in Ceylon do they make greater progi ess I VVe ask our Protestaut friend, in Jaffna, who have educated thoua inds ot Hindus ia their high schools, unfettered by Government regulations, and free to teach whatever they like, whether the lesults have been much superior to those obtained by the Scotch Mission colleges ? We ask them to deduct from their members all Catholic perveits and all native paid agents and their families, and then show us now many Hue and sincere Chrisnaus remain on their list-, / — Jajtna Catholic Guardian.