swer to all he has said respecting the complete failure of all the Protestant missions, even supposing that he has neither mistaken nor misrepresented their state; for it is God alone who giveth the increase, and since in doing this he acts as a sovereign both as to time and degree, and no man or body of men can so make him their debtor by any exertions, that he should be bound to crown them with success; he may have refused it to all who have yet occupied the field, that he may crown those who may next enter thereon with success more abundantly;—or he may have withheld it from these hitherto, to try their faith, to correct their pride and self-dependance, and convince them that success cannot be merited, that they may humble and purify themselves before him, and thus be prepared to receive the blessing when he shall be pleased to pour it down. But if our Author HAS been mistaken in the account he has given, as we suspect, and they HAVE NOT completely failed, no answer is necessary. God has blessed according to his own will, those who have sought to give the heathen his Holy word, without suiting Christianity to the taste of "a quite sensual people;" and though this should have been by giving them only ten genuine converts possessing real personal picty, no answer is needed. God has already given an increase according as it hath pleased Him; and in his own time he who has converted ten Hindoos, can with equal ease convert ten millions, or even the whole of India; for, "Is any thing too hard for Jehovah ?"

We have also replied to all our author has said respecting Translations. It has been fully shewn, that while the word of God was the grand means of conversion even in apostolic times, it was the word of God exhibited in a written translation in Greek, and orally translated by the Apostles into the idioms of the various coun

H

tries whither they went; and that with the exception of Greece, the same means have been since used in every other country which has embraced the gospel;-that while the Abbé and his predecessors have given it in the idioms of India, (if they ever gave the Hindoos a sentence of the Divine word,) their verbal translation rendered it completely inefficient, and as their example proves that a verbal translation does nothing, to render the Divine word efficient a written translation of it into the lan

guages India, is absolutely necessary. All that remains now is, to account for if we can, and to lament if we cannot, the wonderful stupidity and incapacity of those "new missionaries,"-"at Serampore," which have caused them to give such "low and vulgar" and "anintelligible" translations of the Scriptures, "that the natives will never be prevailed upon to peruse them," (in our author's opinion,) and if they could, "these low translations, will, by exposing the Christian religion and its followers to the ridicule of the public, soon stagger the wavering faith of many hundreds of those now professing Christianity, hasten the epoch of their apostacy and accelerate the downfal of the tottering edifice of Christianity." Granting all this to be true however, this does not alter the state of the question. A WRITTEN translation of the Scripture MUST BE GIVEN in the idioms of the country as the means of fulfiling these predictions which are as "the ordinances of heaven" to God "who cannot lie;" and if their translations be so vulgar, and low, and spurious; nothing remains but that they immediately set about improving them, unless their incapacity be such that the longer they live in the country the more ignorant they grow of its idioms and languages; and if this be the case, that abler men set about the work without the least delay.

1.

This complete absence of common capacity is the more to be lamented, however, because it is combined with just and correct ideas respecting the propagation of the gospel in India. In thinking that this can be

done only by means of the Divine word, we have seen that these missionaries are perfectly correct. In supposing too that the Scriptures must be read before they can convert the soul, and be printed before they can be extensively read, they are not greatly mistaken. Nay in supposing that they must be translated into the idioms of a country before they can be printed, there seems to be a glimmering of common sense. How unhappy that they should not at the same time have had the common discernment to perceive, that the language ought at least to have been commonly decent! This is the more melancholy because of the opportunities these missionaries en..joyed in being connected with the College of Fort William, and conversant with its pundits who spoke and wrote the dialects of India in the purest and most elegant manner;as they might have had their assistance continually in revising and correcting the translations in the principal dialects of India; and these might have served as a model for the translation of the New Testament into those languages which are as yet less cultivated. All these advantages however, by the testimony of our author, were completely lost through their unaccountable stupidity and incapacity. Hence while nothing but common intellect and common sense were needed to make these translations as good as the present state of the Indian languages will admit, they are really so "low" and "vulgar" and "spurious," that they threaten "to accelerate the downfal of the tottering edifice of Christianity in India!"

This fact, (for who can doubt it after the Abbé has said

it?) is rendered still more singular by these missionaries being said not be deficient in diligence. Some say that, endowed with a strength of constitution seldom enjoyed in India for any great length of time, they have manifested for a fourth of a century a degree of application seldom exceeded even in Europe; so that the utmost exertions of the natives bear no comparison with theirs from year's end to year's end. This however only renders their stupidity and want of capacity the more lamentable; for had they possessed the least share of ability, with their opportunities and diligence steadily exerted for a fourth of a century by one, and a still longer period by another, these "five or six individuals," might have done every thing ascribed to them in translating the Scriptures, in as neat, perspicuous, and accurate a manner as the present state of the Indian dialects would admit. Our Author himself informs us p. 278, of his "Description of the Character, Manners and Customs of the people of India," printed in London in 1817; that " notwithstanding the diversity of the written characters in the several dialects, there is such an affinity between the languages themselves, that a person who has learned one, may easily understand those of the contiguous districts; and that it is very common to meet with Hindoos who speak fluently seven or eight of these languages, or more." Now as these missionaries have only given the New Testament in twenty of these dialects, (not Twenty-six as our author so accurately asserts!) had it not been for the absence of all natural talent, five or six individuals, in the space of these twenty-five years, might easily have acquired such a knowledge of these dialects, since it is so common for one native to speak fluently seven or eight of them, as for each to have judged with accuracy of the merits of

several translations. And this indeed would have been all that would have been absolutely requisite, for unless they had chosen to write every word with their own hand from their mere love of labor; when it is so common for one native to speak so many of them fluently, it was only for them to have finished an accurate version of the New Testament in three or four of the leading languages, and particularly in the parent Sungskrita, which, "more accurate in its grammatical structure than the Greek," according to Sir William Jones, might have been made to receive the original text of the New Testament, as a mould receives the precious metal, with scarcely the variation of the mood or tense of a verb, or the case of a noun ;-and these might have formed the basis and model of all the rest.

Thus amidst the confluence of learned natives drawn to the Capital of India by the College of Fort William, particularly in its first years, when it concentrated in itself all the students of the three Presidencies, these missionaries would only have had to select from these numerous natives such as included the parent Sungskrita among the seven or eight languages they spoke so fluently, and request them to turn the Sungskrita version each into his own idiom. Their translation of this might have been incorrect and wide of the original, unless constantly examined and corrected by those well acquainted with the original; but instead of being low and vulgar, the version would have been likely to be the most neat and elegant the Indian dialects are now capable of affording, since nothing but mere doltishness could have prevented their selecting the ablest scholars in these different dialects, amidst such a number as were then to be obtained. And had these missionaries sat down with these pundits from day to day, and exa