future exertions. The nature of the objects to which those exertions are directed will, we are assured, of itself constitute, in your estimation, a sufficient title to your support. Yet we cannot but indulge the hope, that you will be induced to regard them with an eye of especial favour by the consideration that they proceed from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Though you have been precluded by the distance of your residence from the metropolis, and by more pressing avocations, from attending the meetings and taking an active part in the business of the Society, still ample proofs have not been wanting of your friendly disposition towards them. Your name has long been enrolled in the list of their members; and they feel both pleasure and gratitude, when they reflect that you condescended to close your ministerial labours in this country by a discourse delivered at their request, and, if they may be allowed to use the expression, in their service.

It now only remains to assure your Lordship, if such an assurance is indeed necessary, that in quitting your native land you bear with you the esteem and the regret of the Society. Though removed to a distant quarter of the globe, you will still be present to our thoughts. Every event which befalls you will be to us a subject of the liveliest interest and with our prayers for the success of your public labours we shall mingle our petitions for your personal safety and welfare; humbly beseeching the Giver of all good gifts, that He will be

pleased to shower his choicest earthly blessings on your head, till He shall at length call you, in the fulness of age and honour, to receive that eternal reward which He has reserved in His heavenly kingdom for those, who are the instruments of “turning many unto righteousness."

To this Address the Lord Bishop of Calcutta made the following Reply:

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE AND MY LORDS, PARTICULARLY MY LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL.

It may be easily supposed that the present is to IT me a very aweful moment-both when I consider the persons, in whose presence I stand; the occasion, on which we have been called together; the charge, which I have just received; and the Society, on whose part those admirable and affectionate counsels have been addressed to me. I cannot recollect without very solemn and mingled feelings of gratitude for the trust which has been reposed in me, and of alarm for the responsibility which I have incurred, how much I have been honoured by the kindness and confidence of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the remarkable and most honourable interest, which this Society has always evinced in the welfare of the Indian Church. I cannot forget, that it was this Society which administered the wants, and directed the energies of the first protestant missionaries to Hindostan; that, under

its auspices, at a later period, Schwartz, and Gerickè, and Kolhoff, went forth to sow the seeds of light and happiness in that benighted country; and that, still more recently, within these sacred walls, (for sacred I will venture to call them, when I consider the purposes, to which they are devoted, and the prayers, by which they are hallowed) Bishop Middleton bade adieu to that country, which he loved, and to that Church, of which he was one of the brightest ornaments. With such examples of learning and holiness around me, with such models of Christian zeal before me, I may well be acquitted of assumed humility, when I profess a deep and painful sense of my own insufficiency; and feel, that where so much has been done, and where so much remains to do, far greater energies and talents than mine will be necessary either to fulfil the reasonable expectations of the Christian world, or to avoid falling short, far short, of the achievements of my admirable Predecessor.

With such difficulties, and under such a responsibility my hope must be, and is, in the counsels and countenance of your Grace, and of the other distinguished Rulers of the English Church, whom I see around me; and it is therefore, that I could almost feel disposed to lament as a deficiency in the eloquent and pathetic Address of the Right Reverend Prelate, to whose kind notice of me I am so deeply indebted, that he has professedly waved all detailed explanation of his ideas respect

ing that line of conduct, which, in my situation, is most likely to conduce to, and accelerate the triumph of the Gospel among the Heathen. I regret this the more, since, in a recent admirable sermon by the same distinguished person, he has shown us, how remarkably he is qualified to offer counsels of such a nature. Most gladly, I am convinced, we should all, and most gladly, above all, should I have become his scholar in the art of feeding the flock of Christ, and teaching and persuading the things, which belong to the kingdom of God. But, though his modesty has withheld him from the task, I will still hope to profit by his assistance in private, for the execution of that awful and overpowering enterprize, which, (if I know my own heart) I can truly say, I undertake not in my own strength, but in an humble reliance on the prayers and counsels of the good and the wise, and on that assistance, above all, which, whosoever seeks it faithfully, shall never fail of receiving.

ble

Nor, my Lord Archbishop, will I seek to dissem

my conviction, that, slow as the growth of truth must be in a soil so strange and hitherto so spiritually barren; distant as the period may be when any very considerable proportion of the natives of India shall lift up their hands to the Lord of Hosts, yet, in the degree of progress which has been made, enough of promise is given to remove all despondency as to the eventual issue of our labours. When we recollect, that one hundred years have scarcely passed away, since the first missionaries

of this Society essayed, under every imaginable circumstance of difficulty and discouragement, to plant their grain of mustard-seed in the Carnatic; when we look back to those apostolic men with few resources, save what this Society supplied to them; without encouragement, without support; compelled to commit themselves, not to the casual hospitality, but to the systematic and bigoted inhospitality, of the natives; seated in the street, because no house would receive them; acquiring a new and difficult language, at the doors of the schools, from the children tracing their letters on the sand; can we refrain not only from admiring the faith and patience of those eminent Saints, but from comparing their situation with the port which Christianity now assumes in the East, and indulging the hope that, one century more, and the thousands of converts which our missionaries already number, may be extended into a mighty multitude, who will look back with gratitude to this Society as the first dispenser of those sacred truths which will then be their guide and their consolation? What would have been the feelings of Schwartz, (" clarum et venerabile nomen Gentibus ;" to whom even the heathen, whom he failed to convince, looked up as something more than mortal,) what would have been his feeling had he lived to witness Christianity in India established under the protection of the ruling power, by whom four-fifths of that vast continent is held in willing subjection? What, if he had seen her adorned and strengthened by

с