when, in his last edition of his “Indian Empire,” (4 vols, octavo,) dedicated by permission to the British Queen, he so distinctly declares to his Government and countrymen their high accountability before God and man in this respect, when he asks, “On what principle is the future government of India to be based? Are we simply to do what is right, or what seems expedient? If the former, we may confidently ask the Divine blessing on our efforts for the moral and material welfare of the people of India, and we may strive, by a steady course of kind and righteous dealing, to win their alienated affections for ourselves as individuals, and their respect and interest for the religion which inculcates justice, mercy, and humility as equally indispensable to national as to individual Christianity.”
Those who know India best, know that I speak the truth when I assert, that these words are represented by deeds as honorable in the lives, and devotion to India's welfare, of many of the men who represent Great Britain there. I do not know a community of public men where you can find a greater number of “the excellent of the earth,” than among the civil and military officers of England in India; men who have stood up for Jesus and for humanity, loving the poor, degraded race whom they ruled, and pleading, coiling, and giving munificently for their elevation to a better condition. Such names as Bentinck, Lawrence, Herbert Edwards, Havelock, Muir, Tucker, Ramsay, Gowan, Durand, and scores of others, amply justify this statement. The Annual Missionary Reports of the Methodist Episcopal Church (and this is equally true of the other missions as well) bear witness to this fact for many years past. During that time, such was the sympathy for the work which we attempted, in helping them to educate and enlighten the people of our own mission field, that noble-hearted Englishmen in all stations of life, from the Governor-General down to the private soldier, have aided us as freely as though we were of their own nation or Church, so that their contributions since 1857 will be found to aggregate over $150,000 in gold to our mission alone; while this assistance is all the time increasing, and is
