petitions he has to bring before the throne of God, and he will be convinced by his work that he can not get on without the daily help of God. He is finally obliged to watch closer over his own life, because a contradiction between his preaching and his life would injure the efficiency of the former. a great work to do in this matter. Better The The dangers of lay preaching are generally very much exaggerated. It is possible that this privilege may also be claimed for preaching infidelity. But does not the same thing happen in our pulpits? And yet, because some clergymen preach errors and unbelief, we do not abolish the clergy. Practically, only those who really love the Lord will offer themselves for a work which, like this, involves sacrifice. Neither infidelity nor a dead faith creates such a desire. Perhaps there is greater danger that the teach-involuntarily rouses opposition against himing will be unsound; but this danger can surely be diminished very much, if the pastors and the appointed office-bearers of the Church give their attention to the matter. It will hardly be necessary to say that we do not want to interfere with the work of the minister. Whether religious services, with participation of the congregation, may be arranged here and there, as in the time of the apostles, must be decided in each individual case. At all events, the pastor remains the spiritual leader. His special work is not abolished or lessened by the priesthood of all believers. But there is, besides, an immense work to do, which the clergy can not do alone. Sunday-schools are, perhaps, the best place to accustom and train young people to labor with the Word of God. Then we have the numerous works of home mission. The preaching, properly speaking, of laymen ought especially to have two objects in view. 1. The evangelization of unbelievers. A Christian who, perhaps, does not yet feel himself able to exhort and strengthen by his word a congregation of living Christians, and to lead them deeper into the knowledge of the ways of God, can at least bear testimony to the unconverted of the faith that is in him. The Church must go out to seek those who do not come to her. For those who hesitate to enter into a church occasion must be given to hear the Word of God at other places of all descriptions. This is particularly a work for laymen. 2. Meetings of believers, besides the public services. These are of particular blessing. They strengthen believers, and bring them into closer communion with each other. Such meetings for prayer and exhortation are best put into the hands of laymen. For a salutary development of this work, it is of the utmost value to have the greatest possible harmony between the pastor of the congregation and its active members. The more this is the case, the smaller the dangers will be. The minister himself has self. A judicious minister will not lay unnecessary fetters on the lay evangelists, and not try to limit their freedom of movement. Even if one thing or the other does not quite agree with his own views, he will nevertheless rejoice at the blessing that accompanies the work. On the other side, the lay preachers should consider it their duty to work, as far as possible, in accordance with the pastor of the church; they should especially work with perfect openness and loyalty, and listen as far as possible to the advice of the minister. If in this way, self-abnegation is practiced on both sides, the Lord's kingdom will be built up; and that is the desire of us all! I condense what I have said into the following THESES: 1. The preaching of the Word of God by laymen, who have the necessary ability, is in accordance with the doctrines of Holy Scripture. 2. It accords with the practice of the first Christian churches. 3. It is a consequence of the principle of the Reformation concerning the priesthood of believers. 4. It has received its divine sanction by the blessing which the Lord has laid upon it in the present century. 5. Its general introduction would strongly contribute to the increase of religious life. 6. It must not interfere with the public ministry, but seek its object chiefly in small gatherings of believers and in the evangelization of the unbelieving masses. 7. It is desirable that the ministers should favor and encourage it, and not uselessly fetter the evangelists in their work. On the other hand, lay preachers should work in harmony with the pastor and gladly listen to his advice.* [In the absence of Count Bernstorff, who could not leave the Foreign Office in Berlin, an abridgment of his essay was read before the Conference by the editor.] SECOND SECTION-PARTICULAR MISSIONARY FIELDS. CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HINDOOS. BY THE REV. NARAYAN SHESHADRI, OF BOMBAY, INDIA. [The Rev. N. Sheshadri, a converted Brahmin, is the first native ordained minister from India that has ever visited our country. He was so much in demand during his brief sojourn in the United States, that he had no time to elaborate an essay, but could only furnish us with corrected newspaper reports of several addresses delivered by him. From these, and especially from the report of his speech on "Christianity in India," delivered before the Conference on the 10th of October, the following paper has been prepared. The presence of this brother at the Conference, clothed in his native dress, and telling with unaffected simplicity, but in the purest English, and with great intelligence and eloquence, the good old story of our own spiritual experience in repentance, faith, love, and hope, was one of the most interesting facts connected with this remarkable assembly. He stood before us a living proof of the adaptation of Christianity to all races and conditions of men, and a practical refutation of the objections to foreign missions. His influence in promoting missionary zeal will long be felt. In him, too, we witnessed the beneficial effects of the higher education given in India by the Scotch Missionaries, and also to some extent by our own. America is placed under great obligation to Dr. Duff, for kindly consenting to allow Mr. Sheshadri to leave an important engagement in Scotland, in order to come to this side of the Atlantic; to Dr. Hugh Miller, who so kindly and at considerable sacrifice accompanied him, and to our own Mr. George H. Stuart, through whose indomitable enterprise the whole matter was successfully arranged. We congratulate our Scotch brethren on the possession of such a Missionary, and trust he may long be spared to labor among his countrymen. He has now been a Christian for thirty years, and for over twenty years a preacher of that faith which in the days of his youth he had been taught as a Brahmin to despise. The perusal of his views on missions, as now presented, will show what may be expected from men of his class and country.-Ed.] IF Manu, the old Lawgiver of the Hindoos, could be supposed as rising from his ashes and listening to the expression "Christianity among the Hindoos," he would be horrified, for the idea of his law was that from North to South and from East to West there should be nothing but Hindooism, Hindooism, Hindooism, to the absolute exclusion of every other system. But here we have a new theology, a new code of morals, and a new civilization of which Manu never heard. tem taught in the sacred books composed by these Brahmins. THE SACRED BOOKS. These are known as the Veds [or Vedas], the Shasters, and the Purans. Of the first there are four, of the second six, and of the third eighteen books. The Veds are the most ancient. They were written about 1400 years before the Christian era. The religion inculcated in these earlier books differs entirely from that taught in the later works. The deities mentioned in them are different. Indra, Agni, and Surya, with numerous goddesses, are everywhere invoked. These are merely personifications of the elements, fire, the sun, the air, etc. The Hindoo TriadBrahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh, or Shiv- -is a revelation of the later Shasters, and the names of Durga, Káli, Ram, Krishna, Ganesh, and other popular deities of the present day were then entirely unknown. The mention of Hindooism leads me to speak of the Brahmins, for they are the very soul of Hindooism. They form the highest class in Hindoo society. They are the only authorized interpreters of the Shasters and other holy books. Each Brahmin is a much more infallible dignitary than the Pope of Rome. In his right hand he holds fire, with which he can burn up the entire universe. In his right ear is the river Ganges, one drop of whose waters is sufficient to wash away The worship prevalent at the time the the sins of ten generations of transgressors. Veds were composed seems to have been In his big toe he carries the entire ocean. that of the sun, moon, stars, fire, air, water, He is the Lord of the lower world, and as etc. These all had their representative desuch might appropriate to his own use what-ities, to whom offerings were made, whose ever he pleases. His law is infallible; his interpretation of the sacred books must be implicitly believed; and he has taken special care to conserve his system by prohibiting its votaries from ever crossing the seas, the river Indus, or visiting foreign lands. praises were sung, and whose anger was deprecated. The blessings prayed for were, for the most part, of a temporal characterwealth, food, life, posterity, cattle, horses, domestic felicity, protection against enemies, victory over them, particularly where these I must now give a brief view of the sys- are of a religion differing from their own, pro tection against evil spirits, and the attain- | den transition presents no difficulty to the ment of happiness of a purely sensual character-while very little reference was made to moral and spiritual benefits. The offerings prescribed were chiefly libations and oblations-clarified butter poured on fire, and the fermented juice of the Soma plant thrown into the fire, sprinkled on the floors of their dwellings, or on the ground outside, and largely drunk by the officiating priests! Worship was confined chiefly to the houses of the worshipers. There is little reference to a future state, and even the immortality of the gods themselves is but faintly indicated. VEDANTISM. This mind of the orthodox Hindoo. To his mind They ride on elephants, buffaloes, lions, ti- The form of religion which succeeded this was of a more philosophical and speculative character, and seems to have been an out-eyed, many-handed, many-footed monsters. growth of that contained in the Veds. Its underlying sentiment was, "God is every thing, and every thing is God." It embodied the substantial principles of modern Pantheism. The legitimate consequence of such doctrine was the complete destruction of all free-will, and the denial of even personal identity. Moral responsibility under such a system was impossible, and the multiplication of the objects of worship paved the way for the introduction of the great idolatrous system which was subsequently fully developed in the Shasters and Purans. The original centre of Modern Hindooism was Bramh. This may be defined to have been the primary and pervading principle of all being, which from all eternity remained in a state of absolute unconsciousness, or complete deprivation of all attributes. It had existence without any of the attributes of such a condition. To the Hindoo mind there is no difficulty in this conception. The Nirgun of the Hindoo mythology was something in which reposed the elements of all being, all life, all power, all extension, all truth, all holiness, all that we can possibly conceive of God, and yet devoid of any manifestations of these qualities. It was neither masculine nor feminine, but a purely neutral thing. THE NIRGUN BECOMES SARGUN. In process of time this inanimate neutrality manifests signs of life and activity. From its state of profound repose it suddenly begins to put forth developments of character that show it to be possessed of every conceivable attribute necessary to the Supreme Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things. The term "Sar-gun" means possessed of "all attributes," or, in other words, this Being now appears as the universal centre of all forces, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. It has become endowed with the power of creating, preserving, and destroying, and in each of these capacities it soon proceeds to manifest itself in a tangible form. This sud The people who worship them have become like them. Having such examples before them in the character of their gods, what can we expect the people themselves to be? LITERATURE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. These sacred books not only treat of the character of their gods, but also professedly contain vast stores of Hindoo literature. They treat of chronology, astronomy, geography, and science, and various other branches of knowledge. Their chronology reaches back 4,000,000 of years; their astronomy divides the universe into fourteen great worlds or systems of worlds, seven below our own, and seven, including ours, above. Our own earth is declared to be flat. It consists of seven circular islands, each surrounded by a separate ocean. The central portion is called Jambu-Dwip, outside of which is the great salt water sea; outside of that comes the second portion of land, and around this flows an ocean of sugar-cane juice; then the third, around which we have the sea of spirituous liquors; then the fourth, and its sea of clarified butter; the fifth, with its sea of curds; next, the sixth, and its ocean of milk; and, lastly, the seventh, with its sea of fresh water. Beyond this last ocean we have a country of pure gold and of prodigious magnitude, whose virgin soil has never yet been trodden by the foot of man. was the starting-point. It set me to thinkThe diameter of this world is 500,000,000 of ing about religion. Then a great many othjojans in extent (the jojan being eight miles). er stories passed in review through my mind. In the very centre of Jambu-Dwip rises One of these was the story related of HanuMount Sumeru, to the height of 600,000 miles, man, or the Monkey-god. He is represented in the form of an inverted pyramid. At its as carrying in one hand a monstrous club base it is 128,000 miles in circumference, at with which he can destroy all his foes, and its top it is 356,000 miles, and around its in another hand a mountain which he can base rise little hills, the trees on which reach take up and hurl, as a man would a pebble, the modest altitude of 8800 miles in height. into the midst of his enemies. Not only Time will not allow me to speak of the oth- can he carry a mountain on one hand, but it er worlds, the distances of which from ours is said that he, on one occasion, carried a and from each other are all distinctly speci- mountain on each hair of his body. Then fied. These are all destined to be the abodes it is said that this same Monkey-god had a of spirits, terrestrial and celestial. In the very long tail, and he used this tail for the highest of these is the chief residence of destruction of the island of Ceylon. He Brahma, the glory of which we are told wrapped a cloth around the end of his tail, could not be described by the most eloquent dipped it into oil, set this on fire, and with tongue or scribe in 200 years! Of the same this torch ignited the entire island, which, extravagant character is most of the teach- we are told, still continues to blaze to the ing of the Shasters, and when we come to present time. When he found his tail beexamine the Purans in the light of Chris-coming too hot, he plunged into the Indian tian morality they are found to be simply | Ocean, and there extinguished the flame. revolting. MY CONVERSION. There was a time when I believed in these things. I was born and brought up as a Brahmin, and as a Brahmin I was taught to believe that I myself was a god upon earththat God became incarnate in me when I was born-and with this belief I grew up. I thought it my right to claim divine honors, and these were freely accorded to me. It was a life of the highest pretensions and the meanest realities. This punishment was inflicted on Ceylon because its king, Ráwan, had stolen the beautiful Sita, the wife of Ram Chandar, King of Oude, in Northern India, who would never have been able to recover her but for the assistance of this Monkey-god. I began to think that surely these things could not be revelations from God. Then I was told that there were two kinds of religion, one for the wise and learned, and another for the ignorant and foolish; that as yet I had only learned the latter, and that I must now become acquainted with the former. I It may interest you to know how I came was told that in the new faith there was to abandon this system, and to embrace the enough to satisfy the wisest and greatest religion of the Christian. At first I despised philosophers. We have had, and still have, the Bible. I did not wish to know any a great deal of this so-called philosophy in thing about it, for I had an idea that its India, more, perhaps, than you have in this teachings were subversive of my belief and Western World, or exists among the people position as a Brahmin. But the Lord, who of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Ithought is most wonderful in his ways of working, perhaps there might be something in that used this very system of religion in which philosophical system which had been recomI was brought up to empty me of myself, mended to me. I began to study it, and just free me from the trammels of idolatry, and about this time the scholarship of the West bring me to himself. One day, standing on came to my assistance. The sacred books the beach at Bombay, and looking out upon of the Hindoos had begun to be translated the mighty waves of the ocean, lashed into into English, and I was enabled to read them fury by the storms of the monsoon, I began in that language, and hear the commentaries to think of a legend that is recorded in the upon their contents by those learned men Hindoo Scriptures, regarding a man who is under whom I was pursuing my studies. I esteemed by them a mighty sage, and who, found innumerable prayers addressed to the on account of his good deeds, the austeri- god of the sea, the gods of the firmament, ties he had undergone, and his remarkable and the god of the winds; but there was holiness, has obtained a seat in a constel-nothing very remarkable that struck me in lation in one of those heavens I have re- those prayers, nothing to satisfy the longings ferred to. This wonderful man, known as of an earnest soul, nothing to take away my Agastya Rishi, is said to have drunk up sense of sin and guilt; for about that time I the entire ocean-the Atlantic, the Pacific, began to be very much afraid of death, and the Indian, and the Northern and Southern I longed for something that could give me Oceans—all with only three sips. Credulous peace. Bombay was very badly drained in as I was at that time, this was too much for those days, and we had cholera almost evmy credulity, and I began to doubt the cor-ery year, and I used to fear that I would be rectness of the story thus recorded. This taken away in one of these visitations. I found that the prayers of the Veds could not satisfy my soul at such a time. Such a prayer, for instance, as the following: "Oh thou who ridest in a car drawn by two milk-white horses, come to our sacrificial feast, and drink of the moon-plant juice, and be drunk, and eat of the viands we have prepared for thee." There were whisky-drinking gods in those days. There was nothing in such prayers that could satisfy me. Then there was still a third system of faith, which professed to be even more philosophical, viz., Vedantism, which I have already shown to be pure pantheism, a system which annihilates man's identity and destroys all idea of moral responsibility; which teaches that man may commit the greatest sins imaginable, and escape from the consequences under the plea that it is not he that commits them, but God himself. Reflection showed me that such a system was blasphemous. None of the systems set forth among the Hindoos could satisfy me. elapsed since first this thought took possession of my heart, it is still as fresh as ever. The facts of the Gospel there presented remain the same to-day as they were 1800 years ago, and must remain unchangeably the same to the latest age; and I resolved to embrace the religion that teaches them. Having made up my mind to become a Christian, I was baptized on the 13th of September, 1843, and then commenced to study for the ministry. I was licensed to preach in 1851, and in 1854 was ordained to the work of an evangelist, or missionary to my own countrymen. MISSIONARY LABOR. I labored for a long time in Bombay, and afterward I went into the interior of the country, and for the last ten years have been laboring there. We have now a net-work of railroads throughout many parts of the country of some 5000 miles in extent, and more in procIn this state of mind my thoughts turned ess of construction. We can get on one of to Christianity, and I remembered the teach- our railroads and perform the circuit of the ings of those eminent men under whom I country in a very few days; and as evwas then prosecuting my studies. Dr. Wil-ery class of people is very anxious to take son, who, by-the-way, was regarded as a great advantage of this mode of communication, sorcerer by the ignorant Hindoos, on account I thought we missionaries ought not to be of the number of people that, through his in- behind others, and that we ought to avail strumentality, had embraced the Gospel, had ourselves of this means of carrying the Gostold me to read the Twenty-second Psalm pel to remote regions. With this idea in and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and view I founded several stations along the then turn to the writings of the Evangelists, North-eastern line of the Great Indian Penand compare the former with the latter, stat- insular railroad, and the South-western line ing that, if I did so, he was sure I could not of the same company. I have one station remain a Hindoo. I had ceased to consider on this line that requires special notice. In Dr. Wilson a sorcerer, as he had never prac- 1864 I went there to pay a visit to two naticed any such arts upon me. I concluded tive Christians who were baptized by my to read the passages he had pointed out. I friend, Dr. Murray Mitchell, and whose work did so, and, as I considered them, the whole I found to be taking effect on a certain class field of prophecy opened up before me. I of people. I stopped there a few weeks, and became convinced that the Bible was no instructed them in the Word of God, and bapcunningly devised fable, but that the holy tized thirteen or fourteen individuals. In men who wrote it did so as they were moved that station, in the year 1864, there were by the Holy Ghost. Ever since that time only two Christians, but in 1873 there are the Bible became my constant companion. upward of 500, young and old. In Jalna we I took great delight in attending the classes have no fewer than 6 full catechists, 10 asof our blessed missionaries. There was one sistant catechists, 3 colporteurs, and 6 Bible missionary* to whom I am under special ob- women. In 1864 we had not a single reader ligation, as it was he who made me thorough- of God's Word, but now we have 125 readers ly acquainted with the doctrines of justifi- of God's Word in our Christian Church, and cation by faith in Christ, and sanctification it is a delightful and gratifying fact to through the Spirit. The doctrine of the hear the voice of praise and thanksgiving Cross presented a sublimity to my mind that proceeding from the lips which never benothing else could equal, and I asked, Was fore uttered any thing consistent with God's it possible that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and praise. Then we have from among the John, these illiterate fishermen of Galilee, heathen 1400 children and youth under could have of themselves invented these Christian instruction in our schools. These facts and doctrines, which to me seemed far scholars are taught after the most approved more sublime than any thing ever conceived systems of your own land. Our schools of by Socrates and Plato? I concluded that are carried on on Biblical principles, and these writers must have been led by God the Bible rules all our studies, and the efhimself; and now that thirty years have fect is there, as it has been here, most gratifying. * The Rev. Robert Nesbit. I may mention here that I recently re |