preaching among them and the spread of the printed word.. Numbers possess and are able to read that word for themselves. They have much less faith in prayers for the dead than formerly; and many priests have in consequence been obliged to give up their work in the church in order to get a livelihood by other means: some are employing themselves in so undignified a pursuit, as the making of embroidered fans. The mind of the people has been greatly unsettled by the disputes concerning the office of the Metran: three or four rivals have claimed authority together for years: and they look all the more to the quiet and prosperous missions of the Church Society for true help and guidance. The heathen too are coming nearer. Several cases have occurred in which high brahmins, nairs and sudras, have come forward to profess Christ and a remarkable progress has been made among the wild hill people, especially the Chogans and Araans, living in the jungles near the ghauts. Thus is the wilderness made glad: thus the parched desert becomes like the garden of the Lord.

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LECTURE FOURTH: PART SECOND.

THE JESUIT MISSIONS

IN

SOUTH INDIA.

When the Portuguese first arrived in India, they obtained possession of the town and territory of Goa. As became good catholics, they soon had an archbishop appointed by the king with numerous clergy: but they did little for the heathen for many years: the scandalous lives of the Europeans high and low, giving their native subjects the lowest idea of their moral and religious character. The first really missionary efforts were made by Xavier, who landed at Goa in 1542, now three hundred years ago. Directing his attention to the state of his own countrymen, he set his face against their shameless wickedness, and it is said by his instructions and personal influence, produced a considerable reformation in Goa. He next went and visited the fishing villages farther down the west coast, especially in the southwest of Travancore; and coming as both their political deliverer and religious instructor, enrolled thousands as disciples of Christ. Passing onward and round Cape Comorin to the gulf of Manaar and the Pearl Fishery coast, he baptized thousands more of the same class, remaining among them for five or six years. His chief church is still at Kotar, a mile from Nagercoil; and is celebrated for the miracles wrought within its walls. An annual festival in his name is maintained to the present time. The fishing villages to which he went, are situated all along the two coasts of India, at intervals of two or three miles. They are not very large and are inhabited by people of the lowest kind. On the west coast they are termed Mukúas; on the east, ParaTo this day thousands of these people call themselves christians. As the traveller passes through their village on the sandy beach, he sees a large cross or two, and a very common hut, very like one of the Shánár devil-sheds, but of considerable size. This is the church. I remember especially a village and church of this kind close to Cape Comorin.

vers.

In Tinnevelly all the Paravers are catholics, and hundreds are found in different localities all up the east coast as far as Pulicat. They are in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation. The very morning that I left Madras, I had a painful illustration of this fact. In going on board the Hindostan in the Madras roads, we had to pass through a very rough and wild surf, which now and then broke right over the boat. In all their difficulties and dangers, the boatmen uttered but one cry "San Javier;" "San Javier." During the many pitchings and rollings of our stormy trip, they had but one talisman to trust to, the name and intercession of their patron saint, "San Javier !"

When Xavier left the country other Jesuit missionaries entered on his work. The most celebrated among his successors were the missionaries of Madura. Their head and founder was Robert de Nobili, the nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine, who began a new mission entirely on a new plan. The energy, the self-denial, the hardship and privations endured by his followers were very great: but according to their own account the results correspond to their efforts; the mission being vaunted as the most successful in all modern times. With a view to overcome the repugnance of the natives to familiar intercourse with Europeans, Robert de Nobili after a successful study of the Tamil language, disguised himself as a brahmin, and before brahmins in Madura swore on oath, that like them he was descended from the God Brahma, and had obtained a revelation of the true divine law. After a time many came to him fully believing that he was not a European, but a genuine brahmin from another part of India: his successors kept up the same system and maintained it against all opposition for a hundred and fifty years. They assert that they never baptized till after careful examination of their candidates; that their converts were christians of the most spiritual views and the most holy lives; that for weeks together they might hear their confessions without finding one guilty of mortal sin: that their disciples had a perfect horror of idolatry and all its accompanying rites : that they were even desirous of persecution and under it upheld their faith most nobly: that even the devil acknowledged the excellence of their mission and could injure none of its weakest members; while the fear of the devil so drove converts into the church, that he might be termed the best catechist in the mission; that tigers also refused to injure christians passing through their jungles; that numerous miracles were continually wrought especially in Xavier's church at Kotar: and that their people were on the whole a most excellent and angelic body of

converts. Such is their own account: but there is evidence of the clearest kind from their own pens and from Papal records, that the whole plan was a LIE; that it began in lies and perjury: that in perjury and lies it was maintained; and by lying and deception was utterly ruined in the end. From the outset Robert de Nobili and the others denied with oaths that they were Feringis or Europeans, asserting boldly that they were real brahmins; they dressed, bathed and ate like brahmins, wore the sacred thread, put ashes on their breast and forehead; wore the native wooden shoes; and slept upon a tiger's skin. Themselves assert that their whole attention was given to concealing the fact that they were Feringis, since they augured the complete destruction of the mission from its discovery. Yet after all they failed to bring in the brahmin class for whose conversion their system was adopted. Sudras came; but the majority of their people were Pariás. Thousands on thousands of this class were baptized: but they were never elevated, and the missionaries kept up as great a distinction between them and the higher castes after their profession as before it. They also baptized by stealth thousands of dying heathen children; their catechists and christians would go to the sick under pretence of giving medicine, and knowing the baptismal formula, administer the rite unknown to the parties themselves. In this way, they boast of immense numbers of converts. In managing their converts, they kept up the same system of deception and compromise. They allowed them the same cars and idolatrous processions as before, the Virgin Mary taking the place of the Hindu god the christians too in certain cases joined the heathen in their idolatrous ceremonies. In their marriages the heathen emblems, the heathen rites and customs as to food, were all kept up still: in their bathings they still repeated the same formulas as before, uttering the name of some god as they touched each successive limb. In fact, except as to name they were, exactly and in every respect, the same heathen Pariás as they were before. Hence as a matter of course in the Tanjore persecutions in 1701, thousands at once apostatized and in later years in the Mysore, under Tippoo, of 60,000 catholics, says the Abbe Dubois, not one had the courage to die for his religion.

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As soon as Pope Gregory heard of these proceedings, he commanded the priests to desist from them. They received his command in silence and went on as before. The Cardinal de Tournon was despatched to India to examine into the matter; and after ascertaining every particular from the confessions of two leading missionaries, passed a decree forbid

ding the continuance of all or any of these practices. They remonstrated and took oath that to deprive their converts of any of their customs in marriage, bathing, processions or feasts, would be to endanger their souls' salvation! What an awful confession from these blinded men; that to give them the pure gospel would ruin their souls; while to continue their heathen practices would ensure their salvation! Yet these men called themselves ministers, not of heathenism, but of Christ. Failing in Europe to get the decree reversed, they yet in one of their churches, "called the body and blood of Christ to witness" that it had been annulled and the forbidden practices allowed. "Obstinate and impudent" (as Pope Clement styles them,) they would not obey the papal decrees sent to them again and again. At length according to the Brief of 1734, they vowed and swore on the holy gospels, that they would obey; and at once without delay they perjured themselves by persisting in their former contumacy. As a last resource, Pope Benedict ordered that any one of the missionaries who should refuse to carry out his oath, should be transmitted to Rome immediately. They were compelled to stop, beaten at every turn, and in 1773 the Society was dissolved.* Of all misrepresentations of missionary labour, theirs was the most awful: of all deliberate rejection of the gospel, for heathen rules in preference, theirs was the most voluntary: of all the lying and perjury, which have been committed by men of knowledge and education, theirs were the most deliberate, most unblushing, most continued, that the world ever saw. Such was in deed and in truth the system of the famous Madura Mission: a mission full of scandalous wickedness from its beginning to its end.

For nearly sixty years, i. e. from 1773 to 1830, scarcely any care was taken of the catholic missions and of their numerous converts. The older missionaries gradually died out, while none arrived from Europe to fill their place. The Paris Seminary for Foreign Missions was destroyed in the revolution of 1793: and thus in 1802 the whole of the French Missions in India had but one Bishop and fifteen European priests, several of whom were old men. So great was the disproportion between them and their flocks that many congregations could not be visited even once a year. In 1807, the priests were reduced to five. In 1830 some Roman Catholics went over to the Protestant Missions, and as the number of Protestant Missionaries was greatly increasing, an appeal was made to the Society for the propagation of the faith *Calcutta Review, II. pp. 77-115.