( 106 ) 
Year 
Extent 
of pur- purchased 
chase 
Name of Amount 
Parchaser. paid, 
1858 14 0 llj Charles Ambrose 
Lorenz, Esq. £2,500 
1874 14 0 llj Sampson de Abrew 
Wijegooneratne 
Rajapaksa Esq. JR33,C0O 
1889 14 0 l\i Tudor Raj .,paksa, 
Esq. R30,000 (deed of 
gift) 
1902 14 0 llj Ceylon Government Rl6O,O0O 
^ . 
ARE INDIAN MISSIONS A FAILURE ? 
{By Hon. and Rev. Dr. Miller, CI E.) 
The titst point in any profitable discussion of such 
a subject is to determine what is meant by failure. 
Dr OlJfield appears to think that, if it were not for 
the faults of Missions and of Missionaries, ' the 
Master Jesus would at once be followed by His 
millions' in India, and that ' the Missionary saint 
of the'Gentiles would be as powerful to transform 
men's minds in the East as he was to sway the 
thought of the Western world in liis day.' Now, if 
everything' that fails short of this standard of suc- 
cess is to be reckoned failure, it must be admitted 
that Missions to India, as well as to other countries 
which possess an ancient civilisation and ancient 
faiths, have failed. Dr Oldfield's article, or the 
visit to the East which has produced it, was hardly 
needed to bring home the failure of Missions in 
this sense to those who take any interest in them. 
But this is hardly the sense in which the word is 
ordinarily used. Most people understand by it that 
either absolutely nothing,or nothing at all commen- 
surate with the efforts put forth, is being done 
towards the end in view, and that such effort ought 
at once to be given up. Dr Oldfield appears to 
accept this meaning when he urges, in summing up, 
that in place of the varied instrumentalities used 
at present by the different churches and societies, 
' it would be better to send a dozen spiritual men, 
who would, living at one place, emulate the saintly 
lives and ascetic practices of the early fathers of 
the Christian Church, 
It is only in this ordinary meaning of the words 
that I undertake to show that Indian Missions have 
not failed. That Indian Missions, in spite of errors 
and imperfections, have effected much — and much 
that lend to the attainment of their object— that 
they ought neither to be given up nor continued in 
some wholly revolutionised fashion, but ought to 
be increasingly sympathised with and upheld by 
evety one who is in any sense a Christian — this it 
will not be difficult to show. 
It de<erves to be remarked at the outset that 
the standard of success set up by Dr Oldfield is not 
wananted by anything in the history of the Chris- 
tian Church, certainly not by its earliest and most 
rapid triumphs. It is admitted on all hai;ds that 
there was special preparation for those triumphs 
in the condition of the Roman world when Chris- 
tian Missionaries were first sent out from Antioch. 
In spite of this there is nothing to show, but much 
to disprove, that the Master was in those days 
"followed by His millions.' The evidence is 
ample that Paul's letters were addressed to but 
small companies of believing men and women in 
Corinth or Philippi, in Thessalonica or Ephesus, 
and that the general life, even of those cities, 
where the Gospel had taken firmest hold was 
fc)Oingt)n, when the Apostle >Yrote, very much as 
it had done before his visits. In the main it wa.s 
upon what Dr Oldfield would regard ks mo^ 
unpromising materials, that Paul and his fellow- 
missionaries laid the foundations of the Church. 
Moreover, the Apocalypse is a proof that the lapse 
of a generation had not brought unqualified 
success even within the limits of those small 
companies. 
It is true, no doubt, that Paul ' swayed the 
thought of the S\ estern world :' but the question 
IS pertinent whether he did so, as Dr Oldfield 
thinks, in his own day. Paul's missionary life 
began, one may roughly say, in A D 50. Half a 
century thereafter the slight acquaintance of 
Tacitus with what he regarded as a new sect 
among the Jews shows how little the thoaght of 
Rome was swayed at that date by the me-^saae 
which the Apostle had long before sealed by his 
blood. And It Phny, writing a few years later, 
shows a better a^cquaintance with the "workings of 
Christianity lu Bitliynia, still to him. as plainly as 
to lacitus. It would have appeared a mere ab- 
surdity that ^Vestern thought would ever be 
influenced by what any Christian might speak 
""'^''u - ,1* '"""^ two centuries Ind more 
after Paul began the work of Foreign Missions 
before he could be said in any real sense 'to 
sway the thought of the Western world.' 
Mow, what are the corresponding facts in India' 
Missions have been at work there for about a 
century. I refer to Protestant Missions only 
because It IS these alone that Dr Oldfield has in 
view and because they were nob based upon and 
did not in any sense arise out of the work of the 
Roman Church, which dates from the fifteenth 
century, or that of the Syrian Church which 
dates at latest from the sixth. Now the number 
ot avowed Christians connected with tho«e Mis 
sions, .according to the Census taken two veai^s 
ago, IS 964,000 ; and the number is steadily 
incTeasing. While the growth of the population 
o India in the last ten years has been at the rate 
of l-.'52 per cent, that of the Christians connected 
with Protestant Missions has been at the rate of 
between 50 and 51 per cent. To my mind 
qfi4 nnn"°^,f rJ""""" f^^P . significance that 
964 000 of the people of India are now 
within the Protestant churches, whereas a 
hundred years ago there was practically 
not even one, and that the change has 
been effected through the efforts of men who, at 
the beginning, had (everything to learn, and who 
accordingly tnade blunder alter blunder in their 
methods Now that experience has brought more 
wisdom to the workers, there is reason to hope 
that the work will go on at an accelerated pace 
But even as things stand, the result is in everv 
way encouraging. If all the circumstances be 
taken fairly into account, I doubt whether any- 
thing more encouraging has taken place on so 
large a scale in the history of the Christian Church. 
It would be hard to prove that the number of 
inifl?^ C'u-istians bore a greater proportion to the 
inhabitants of the Roman world in A D 1,50-- 
that IS, a century after missionary work bepan- 
than the fruits of Protestant Missions do to the 
inhabitants of India today. If the signs of the 
times are not wholly deceptive, the fifty years 
immediately ahead will see a mmerieal develop- 
?w f" 1 ■ ^^a^t as great as 
that of the Church m the Roman Empire in 4ha 
time that elapsed between Justin and TertuUiaa 
