strictly a missionary object, the two latter are intimately connected with the progress of the good cause. The preparation of missionaries in the country was not so much recommended as enforced by the great expense which attends the despatch of missionaries from Europe. That the number of labourers in this country must be greatly augmented, before the work of evangelising the heathen can be said to have effectively commenced, can admit of no doubt. But the prospect of adequately supplying the missionary exigencies of the country from Europe, is altogether hopeless. Nearly every European missionary has, on an average, cost the public in his education, outfit, and passage, £700. The first eighteen months of his residence are necessarily devoted to the acquisition of the language. If we estimate the expense of that period at £300, a charge of £1000 is incurred before he can be said to have commenced his missionary career. After such an expenditure, it will not be found in the records of any society, that more than half the number of missionaries sent out are to be found at their post, at the close of ten years; so hostile is this climate to European constitutions. 66 The expense of Asiatic missionaries educated at Serampore College, during the four years of study, amounts to nearly £200 each, including their clothes, etc., and their board through the whole year. Their intuitive knowledge of the language enables them to enter on their duty without delay; their widows fall back into the society of their relatives, and require but a slender support. If attacked with disease, no long sea voyages are required to restore them to health; and if inefficient as missionaries, they may be severed from the body with little expense. Their constitutions are moreover so assimilated to the climate, that, of ten missionaries thus employed by us, during the last fifteen years (some of course for a shorter period), we have 1827 IDEAL OF NATIVE CHRISTIAN MINISTERS. 397 lost only one by disease. All that is required to fit them for labour is the grace of God, and an adequate education, and we were therefore led to think that we could not render a more acceptable service to the cause than to assemble in the college every facility for their tuition. No "The education of the increasing body of Native Christians likewise, necessarily became a matter of anxiety. thing could be more distressing than the prospect of their being more backward in mental pursuits than their heathen neighbours. The planting of the gospel in India is not likely to be accomplished by the exertions of a few missionaries in solitary and barren spots in the country, without the aid of some well-digested plan which may consolidate the missionary enterprise, and provide for the mental and religious cultivation of the converts. If the body of native Christians required an educational system, native ministers, who must gradually take the spiritual conduct of that body, demanded pre-eminent attention. They require a knowledge of the ingenious system they will have to combat, of the scheme of Christian theology they are to teach, and a familiarity with the lights of modern science. We cannot discharge the duty we owe as Christians to India, without some plan for combining in the converts of the new religion, and more especially in its ministers, the highest moral refinement of the Christian character, and the highest attainable progress in the pursuits of the mind. Subsequently to the adoption of this plan, it appeared desirable to attach the superintendence of the stations to the college; the reasons which recommended this arrangement were two. First, pre-supposing the zeal and piety of the professors, we thought that no individuals could be better adapted to conduct the work of the mission than those whose daily employment was so intimately associated with it; and that, as the body of the missionaries in our connec tion would gradually be formed out of those who had pursued their studies at the college, no men could be better fitted to direct their future labours than their former tutors, who must necessarily possess a more distinct knowledge of their several capacities and deficiencies than any other men. The second reason for taking this step was, our anxious wish to consolidate and perpetuate the missionary undertaking we had begun. The peculiar circumstances under which our union, partly missionary, partly secular, arose, are not likely again to occur. We were therefore desirous of placing our missionary undertaking during our own lifetime, on a more permanent basis, by separating it from the risk which must inevitably have attended its being entwined with the transactions of secular business. We wished that the missionary nndertaking, which was the great object, should in no respect be dependent on the secular undertakings, the minor object. No plan seemed more likely to secure this result, than to associate the professors of the college with ourselves in our missionary exertions, and gradually to devolve on them, with the lapse of our lives, the responsibility and management of the stations. By the charter the college has acquired that perpetuity which could never be given to a union in which an aptitude for secular business must be an essential qualification. By this arrangement we hoped to secure the object nearest to our hearts, the perpetuity and enlargement of the missionary plan, which has formed the chief business of our lives. 'The plan proposed by the Committee, of severing the stations from the college, by bestowing the management of them on the body of resident missionaries in Bengal, or by leaving them with us only during the lifetime of the two elder missionaries, would completely have subverted our design. The Committee will forgive our objecting to the proposal partly on this ground. We cannot bring ourselves |