departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief; for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith, as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth

not out but by prayer and fasting."

Here the Apostles were instructed not to quit their work, but to do their work in a better manner. Instead of missionaries abandoning the Hindoos because of the peculiar difficulties in effecting their conversion, it would be a much more Christian method for the missionary to chide his own unbelief, and seek an increase of the peculiar qualifications requisite for the right discharge of his arduous and important office.

CHAPTER VII.

Examination of the Author's Argument against Missions to India, founded on the ill success of the Missionaries connected with the Church of Rome.

Ir is now proper to notice the author's representation of the ill success which has attended the efforts of Roman Catholic missionaries in India, and the inference he deduces from such failure to the prejudice of Protestant missionaries also. The question as to the extent of actual success on the part of missionaries of the Protestant persuasion, will be considered in the following chapter.

Upon the subject now before us, the author writes as follows:-" I will conclude, and sum up the first part of this account," he says, "by repeating what I have already stated, that if any form of Christianity were to make an impression and gain ground in the country, it is undoubtedly

the catholic mode of worship, whose external pomp and shew appear so well suited to the genius and dispositions of the natives; and that when the catholic religion has failed to produce its effects, and its interests are become quite desperate, no other sect can flatter itself even with the remotest hopes of establishing its system." (pp. 23-4.)

In the above paragraph the author intimates a total failure of the Roman Catholic religion in India; a failure so complete, that its interests. in that part of the world are become quite desperate. In another part of his book the author however gives a statement which seems of a very opposite complexion.

"The Jesuits," he remarks, began their work under these favourable auspices, and made a great number of converts among all castes of Hindoos, in those countries where they were allowed the free exercise of their religious functions. It appears from authentic lists, made up about seventy years ago, which I have seen, that the number of native Christians in these countries was as follows: viz. in the Marawa, about 30,000; in the Madura, above 100,000; in the Carnatic, 80,000; in Mysore, 35,000: at the present time hardly a third of this number is to be found in these districts respectively. I have heard that the number of converts was still

much more considerable on the other coast, from Goa to Cape Comorin, but of these I never saw authentic lists." (p. 7.)

"These apostolic vicars, holding their religious authority from the congregation De Propaganda, are three in number in this peninsula. One is settled at Bombay, another at Verapoly, near Cochin, and the third at Pondicherry; each of them has a small body of missionaries, both Europeans and natives, to visit and attend the congregations under their control. The European Missionaries are at present few in number, and all old or infirm, as the distracted state of Europe during these past twenty-five years, did not allow new supplies of persons of this description being sent to Asia. On this account the missions are threatened with a speedy extinction, the native clergy being altogether unqualified to preserve them if left to their own resources, and deprived of the countenance of the European Missionaries.” (p. 54.)

"The Mission under the control of the apostolic vicar of Verapoly, near Cochin, is also attended by Italian Carmelites, and is the most flourishing of the three. It chiefly extends in the Travancore country. This mission reckons 120,000 Christian natives, immediately attended by about a hundred native priests, educated by the Carmelites, now three or four in number, in

the seminary at Verapoly. It has under its jurisdiction Syriac and Latin priests to officiate in the congregations of both rites, settled in the Travancore country. It is at present the only mission in which converts are still made among the heathen inhabitants. I have it from good authority, that between three and four hundred pagans are yearly christened in it, and that this number might be increased, were the missionaries to possess adequate means for the purpose. The principal cause of such extraordinary success, which is not to be met with elsewhere in India, is the following," &c. (pp. 56, 57.)

In the above paragraph, the author exhibits the Roman Catholic missionaries as having, so long since as seventy years ago, made 30,000 converts in the Marawa, above 100,000 in the Madura, 80,000 in the Carnatic, 35,000 in Mysore, and a number still much more considerable, that is, greatly above 245,000, from Goa to Cape Comorin, making (independently of conversions during the last seventy years) above 490,000, or about half a million altogether. He states further, that there are between three · and four hundred pagans yearly christened in one of the Romish missions, and that this number might be increased, were the missionaries possessed of adequate means for the purpose. It is for the Abbé to reconcile with this the represen