perfect confidence that formerly held the workers in India and in England together.

After years of painful and wearisome controversy, a separation was agreed upon, and only the Missions which centred in Calcutta were managed by the Society at home. Serampore and Calcutta, however, worked side by side, with pleasant interchange of services. But the men of apostolic labours and self-denials, who had led the modern world into missionary ways, were held for years, by many in their own denomination, to be hardly the men to be trusted with money! It is amazing that distrust in England should have survived the simple luminous letters of Carey and the visits home of Ward and Marshman.

Meanwhile the magnificent College at Serampore was built out of their earnings and became the pole-star around which all their missionary labours turned. There they hoped to see a well-instructed native ministry trained, first for their own stations and then for the regions beyond. That work they set for ever first.

The conflict of the first quarter of a century yielded a series of victories; the controversy of the second quarter, though both sides were zealous for God, squandered a part of the strength of the strongest, and saddened the hearts of the three noblest workers of the century. It was doubtless to Ward and Marshman, as Carey said it was to him, "a greater trial than all his many sorrows." To forget the Serampore controversy altogether is to close the book on one of the most profitable warnings in modern church history. The brightest page of the story is that which tells how Mack and John Marshman cheered the closing years of the two older men by their noble service of Serampore and its Missions; and to them belongs a large share of the honour of the peace in which that long controversy closed.

DEATH OF THE FIRST THREE.

Ward was the first of the three elder men to die. Cholera suddenly removed him on March 7th, 1823; but not till he had gained an imperishable name, and attained his ambition, which was, he said, "to die, leaving the Mission as much in my debt as possible, so that I may die poor, having received nothing of the Mission but food and raiment. Hitherto I have spent my private property to do this, and none shall stop my boasting in all Asia." Yet no man boasted less. His clear sense, fervent zeal, and gentle fearless spirit blessed his colleagues and pervaded the Mission.

Carey died eleven years later, on June 9th, 1834, after a slow bodily decay, but in full possession of mental powers, and with a grateful heart whose joyous serenity was unbroken by the difficulty of sustaining the Mission, or by his own diminished income, or by those disastrous financial storms that swept over him and the Mission and all India in his last years. He had received praise from every Governor-General of India, in proportion to the Governor's greatness. In his old age, Lady Hastings was his frequent visitor, and Bishop Wilson sought his blessing, and Duff had a memorable interview with him, charmingly described in Dr. Culross's "Life of Carey." Almost to the last he was taken into his garden, which had become nearly as famous as his learning, where the finest collection of plants in Asia was found, and where many of his plans and sermons were considered as he tended his flowers. The man who did so much for India in agriculture and horticulture and education; who as professor helped to train some of our noblest administrators, and as translator of Scripture removed more difficulties out of the way of his successors than any other man of modern times; who anticipated and successfully adopted all missionary methods, and led the Protestant nations into the heathen world-this man, whose varied greatness as philanthropist, scholar, missionary, and saint is likely to become conspicuous in proportion as his era recedes, died as humble as a little child, having all his life conceived and steadily pursued aims far greater than Alexander's, and probably as varied and beneficent as the aims of any man of whom we read in modern times.

Marshman, the last remaining strand of the three-fold cord, lingered on till December 5th, 1837. His last trial, from which he never fully rallied, was a terrible suspense about the life of his youngest daughter, then Mrs., afterward Lady, Havelock. After almost incredible labours and controversies, this stern, strong man rejoined his friends. The day after his burial in Serampore, two influential Committees met in London to arrange for a re-union of the Missions: as though this controversy were to be buried in his grave."

THE VICTORIAN ERA.

He had lived on into the first year of the reign of our present Queen, which reaches back to the days of the men of Serampore, and embracing the Jubilee will, we hope, extend to the Centenary of our

* John Marshman.

Society; and, if God will, outlast the nineteenth century. The historian of her reign will surely reckon among the chief splendours of the Victorian age the expansion of Foreign Missions, and the measureless advance of our Indian Empire. In the past half-century there have been a wider diffusion of Christianity through the world, and a greater extension of material advantages to hundreds of millions of mankind, than in any similar period in the past. But India has witnessed the most wonderful advances of all. The changes there are stupendous and all pervading.

V. THE NEW INDIA.

The India which Carey saw a hundred years ago, and even the India which young Mr. Angus, the secretary, and Mr. Underhill considered at our Jubilee meetings in 1842, has passed away. It is a New India that Dr. Angus and Dr. Underhill see on the eve of the Centenary. All writers on India proclaim this. It is not merely that there are more missionary societies, missionaries, and native Christians there, but that the atmosphere, the thought, the social life, of India are changed, and are charged with larger changes still. Christ is saying, "Behold! I make all things new."

THE JUBILEE STATISTICS.

The Jubilee meetings at Kettering, fifty years ago, were full of hope. The Serampore controversy was happily closed, and the Missions connected with Serampore were taken over by the Society. The statistics for the Jubilee year in the Report of 1843 were, for India, 40 stations and sub-stations, 31 missionaries, 42 native preachers, and 850 members, with 1,445 scholars in day schools.

For 1890-91 the statistics show 152 stations and sub-stations, 54 missionaries, 100 native evangelists, and a native membership of 4,081, with a Christian community of over 10,000 persons; 3,866 week-day, and 2,147 Sunday scholars; and 176 Sunday-school teachers.

For Ceylon the 1843 Report gives 4 missionaries, 44 native preachers and teachers, 17 stations, about 500 members, and 1,137 scholars. The Report for 1890-91 gives 3 missionaries, 78 evangelists and teachers, 107 stations and sub-stations, with 924 native members, 3,370 week-day, and 1,605 Sunday scholars, and 104 Sunday-school teachers. At the Jubilee there was no

return of Sunday-school work in either India or Ceylon; little attention was paid to it from Carey's day till 1870; though, since that time, Sunday-schools have spread fast and far. Our native church members in Ceylon, as compared with India, are as 1 to 4; our Sunday-school children as 16 to 21; our Sunday-school teachers as 10 to 17; and our missionaries as 3 to 54. Now although the number of our native Christians has nearly doubled in Ceylon, and more than quadrupled in India, since the Jubilee year, who can be satisfied with a native membership of 5,000 after a century's work, or with a present missionary staff of fifty-seven? Indeed, the most successful Missions in India, as among the Kols and Santals of Pengal, the Telegus of Madras, or the Missions of Tinnevelly and Travancore in the extreme South, show but little flocks of converts, as compared with the multiplying millions as yet untouched by the Gospel. India is not yet New because of regenerated millions. Even if the next Decennial Missionary Statistics, unhappily not yet available, shou'd show the amazing proportionate advance in the Christian population which other decades have shown, and bring the number of Protestant native Christians to over three-quarters of a million, what are these for a century's work, when compared with nearly two hundred and ninety millions?

WONDER AND HOPE: WHY?

If, then, these direct results, with which no lover of Christ and his fellow-men can be content, are comparatively so few, why are the friends of Missions yet full of wonder and of hope? How is it that even those missionaries who have no roseate reports to send are amazed at the present opportunity, and that the Committees at home are not one whit less confident? They think they see that He who has long been shining over India as the Morning Star is now rising there as the Sun of Righteousness. Rammohun Roy in Carey's day saw the Star; Keshub Chunder Sen in our day at least foresaw the Sun. Many realise that God was never more visible than to-day, except in Palestine in the first century; and nowhere more visible to-day than in India. The hand of God is seen resting on the world's helm, and the world is answering to the helm. This century's history is full of God.

Shrewd observers who mourn over the scanty statistics of Missions yet see an unmatched opportunity for more mission work. Mr. Caine says, "There never was a heathen nation more ripe for Chris