of the awful truths which give eternal importance to the questions of life and death.' After the service was over, he lingered to discuss some ecclesiastical arrangements with the very few residents of the small station, and twilight was fast passing into darkness when he reached the river-bank. Owing to currents, churs (sandbanks), and the precipitous nature of the bank, it was impossible to bring any vessel up close. The 'Rhotas' was lying in the full stream; an intervening flat was at anchor between it and the shore, and this flat the Bishop prepared to reach. But, between himself and all to which he was looking forward as perhaps still to be permitted to him in this world-unfinished work and fresh formed plans; active labour yet for a space in India; dawning hopes of England and English friends-between himself and all except the Master he had striven faithfully to serve, there lay many yards of the rapid rolling river. Somewhere on the perilous causeway of planks bridging the waters his foot slipped; he fell, and was never more seen. The increasing darkness, an unsteady platform, his near sight, the weariness of a frame enfeebled for the time by fever, had all doubtless a share, humanly speaking, in the great calamity foreknown in the counsels of Him who moves in a mysterious way.' Every effort was made to rescue, to recover him: all who are acquainted with the current of an Indian river will know how infinitely slight would be the chance of success in the one endeavour or the other.

6

There were those to whose lips, on hearing the mournful tidings, the simple Bible words arose- And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.'

553

CONCLUSION.

THUS he passed away, at a time, when, beyond dispute, his powers were at their highest. It was only in the somewhat bent figure, in the hair flaked with white, that signs of age, almost prematurely revealing themselves, testified to the effects of sojourn in a tropical climate. His strength continued equal to the demands of a life involving frequently much bodily exertion and fatigue. His constitution had shown an unexpected degree of elasticity in India; for though illness overtook him from time to time, his power of rallying seemed to increase, and he could throw off an attack of fever better in 1866 than in 1860. His mental energies, far from suffering any abatement, had for long appeared to expand under the demands laid upon them, to rise year by year to a higher level, and to become continually more fitted to deal adequately and comprehensively with the numerous matters that came within their range.

Any brief and general summary of the Bishop's work in India will naturally first take note of that work in connexion with the intellectual movement among educated Hindus. It is a movement which, dealing in its spiritual aspect with the inner life, stands wholly apart from the civil polity of the country, and yet appears to contain the germ of a sway over the national heart, deeper and more extensive than that attained by many other regenerating influences. Among those who in these days watch with keen interest the development of this remarkable product of European rule and civilization, the

position assumed towards it by a leader in the English Church justly challenges scrutiny and criticism. The Bishop assuredly never underrated the vast importance of this movement, nor of the responsibilities of the Christian Church towards it; but results, great or tangible, were scarcely to be hoped from it in the work of establishing Christianity as the all-sufficient solution of moral and spiritual perplexities. Many influences now contend for mastery over minds roused from the torpor of centuries into an activity of intellect which the free thought of an inquiring age is constantly stimulating. Christianity is only one amongst these influences, and the Bishop, like any other observer of the tendencies of modern views, knew well how long and arduous must be her contest for supremacy. There are many, doubtless, for whom the interchange of argument with subtle, though often superficial, thinkers, would have a peculiar fascination; but the Bishop, whose mind was far more practical than metaphysical, had no taste for controversy for its own sake, and, capable as he was of large-hearted sympathy with doubts and difficulties, he never cared to encourage transcendental speculations which have so much attraction for the dreamy and imaginative Oriental. Moreover, the points at issue between himself, as an upholder of Christianity in its integrity, and those who inclined towards intuitive philosophical systems, were too vitally important to be handled simply as disputed intellectual problems. He would have been utterly untrue to himself had he ever sought to win the native mind through any surrender of the fundamental tenets of revelation. In the course of this memoir it has been plainly indicated how alien to his own convictions were those views current in modern theology which, professing to expand the Christian system, tended, in his estimation, to lower it. It would have been at the cost of harsh inconsistency if, in the interests of an all-comprehensive

toleration, he had lent his sanction to those partial approximations towards Christian faith which clearly reveal their Western origin; for one remarkable feature in the higher religious thought of the East at the present day is the outward form and coherence which it has rapidly and quite recently acquired, keeping pace, as it were, and assimilating itself with the latest developments of liberal theology in Europe. When the Bishop went to India in 1859, a small band of disciples, now known as the Brahmo Somaj, the highest and purest of those sects which have discarded heathenism, were, for the first time, giving an outward expression to a theistic faith in an organized devotional worship of great purity and simplicity. It was not until 1866 that the famous lecture of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, on the character of our Lord, brought that teacher into wider prominence as the leader of the sect, and stamped the creed of the Brahmo Somaj with a conception of Christianity plainly reflecting the teaching of a modern school of European writers. That the lofty sentiments and inspiring religious enthusiasm which distinguish some of these writers should find a quick response in cultivated Oriental minds, no one could more entirely understand and acknowledge than the Bishop. But so far as the tendency of such teaching was to substitute an eclectic theism or æsthetic morality for the evangelical truth of the New Testament, he was at issue with it. Varied are the portraits now drawn by sentiment or philosophy of the Son of Man; but it was the Christ as portrayed and apprehended by St. Paul, by Augustine, by Luther, by Arnold, whom alone the Bishop could offer for the acceptance and refuge of Eastern minds thirsting for the Water of Life. It may perhaps be safely and correctly said that the Bishop found his most congenial and satisfactory point of contact with Hindus through the sure and firm paths which a liberal education had opened. He ever

cherished the sound and solid intellectual training involved in the theory of that higher education which has now full play in India, as the main instrument for bracing and invigorating the native mind, and securing that mental discipline which must be preparatory to an impartial and reasoning acceptance either of the truths of science or of the facts of history, and among such facts he of course classed those which belong to Christianity and its history in the world. In his fearless advocacy of all broad educational measures; in his efforts to expand and invigorate the education administered by missionaries; and to influence, from a Christian standpoint, that education which is in the hands of the State, the strength of his position in reference to the native community is mainly to be found. But the more indirect influence exercised by the force of a character so steadfast and so true, cannot be overlooked. As Bishop Heber's name is to this day remembered and venerated by Christians in India outside the pale of the Anglican communion, so it is certain that Bishop Cotton's name will be handed on through many generations of Asiatics, whether Christians or not, as one who desired that, in default of higher grounds of union, forbearance, charity and goodwill should be the bonds of connexion between men of different races, nationalities and religions. The highest hopes entertained in 1858 by friends in behalf of the Bishop pointed to his fitness, at a peculiar crisis, 'to heal the wounds and assuage the strifes' caused by the recent mutiny, and to exhibit a large-hearted philanthropy, bounded by no distinctions of race or creed.' After he was gone, the verdict alike of English laymen, missionaries, and natives, testified how fully a brief career had fulfilled those hopes.

It is in the domain occupied by the European portion of the Church in India that the labours of the late episcopate were truly and substantially fruitful. The mark left by the Bishop on Asiatic intellectualism may have