"What horrid rites!" exclaimed Mr. Roscoe. "I fear they have been too long practised to be easily destroyed. I think Christianity ought to be established in India, for the moral benefit of our countrymen. Many of them go out when young—when their passions are strong—and when they have but very faint conceptions of the nature or the importance of religion; and as there are no Sabbaths—no religious ordinances or instruction—they must be in great spiritual danger from the contagion of evil by which they are surrounded."
"I was intimately acquainted," said Mr. Guion, "with a very amiable young man, the son of a pious solicitor, who went to India, where he remained ten years, and then returned. He called on me some time ago, and I derived much information from him; but I was grieved to find, by his own confession, that he had become a deist. I asked him if his deism was the result of any fair and earnest investigation; and he very honestly said, 'No, I found my belief in the Divine origin of Christianity becoming weaker and weaker when I was separated from its ministry and institutions, till at length it became extinct; and though I have sometimes made an effort to recover it, yet I have not been able to do so.'"
"But," said Mr. Roscoe, "though the establishment of Christianity in India might preserve our countrymen from infidelity, yet I do not think we can calculate on bringing over the natives to embrace it."
"Why not? Is the conversion of a modern pagan to the faith of Christ more difficult than the conversion of an ancient one? If Greece and Rome were subdued by the preaching of the gospel, who can despair of India?"
"If we had the same miraculous powers as those with which the apostles were endowed, we might anticipate similar results; but we have not; and I confess that, though I approve of the motive which originates and supports missionary institutions, yet I do not think they will ever prove successful."
"By what means, then, did Paul convert the heathen? Was it by the exhibition of miracles? Certainly not. A miracle may make some impressions on the judgment, by demonstrating the power of a present Deity, and of his direct agency in its production, but it cannot renew the heart, and inspire the soul with the love of God, with a hatred of sin, and a hope of glory. The miracles of the first ages were merely the credentials of the teachers, and were given as a solemn confirmation, once for all, of the divinity of the new dispensation, which they were commissioned to establish; but they were not the ordained means of conversion. The apostle Paul performed miracles but seldom; and when he did perform them, they had not always a salutary effect on those that beheld them. When he wrought a miracle in Lyconia, the people first worshipped him, and afterwards would have put him to death. What, then, were the ordained means of conversion? The same that are ordained now—the preaching of the cross; as the Scripture hath declared, 'Faith cometh by hearing.'"
"If we admit," said Mr. Roscoe, "the concurrence of a supernatural power with the agency of man in teaching and in preaching, we ought not to doubt the possibility of converting the whole population of India to the belief of Christianity."
"Certainly not; and is not this supernatural concurrence promised by Jesus Christ, to his ministers of every age? 'Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'"
"My heart often aches," said Miss Roscoe, "when I reflect on the degradation and wretchedness of women in India—where, if they escape an untimely grave in the days of childhood, they are doomed to a state of perpetual ignorance, excluded from all the accomplishments of society, treated as the refuse of the human family, and are often burned along with the body of their deceased husbands. I think every woman ought to make some effort to raise her own sex from this most appalling condition; and as nothing will prove successful but the principles of Christianity, we ought all to become the advocates and supporters of missionary and Bible societies."[10]