INDIA.

Commenced 1856.

BISHOPS JANES AND SIMPSON HAVE EPISCOPAL JURIS

DICTION.

REV. WILLIAM BUTLER, D. D., Superintendent.
(EXTRACTED FROM HIS ANNUAL REPORT.)

Brother Butler opens his report with an allusion to the sudden decease of our late Brother Downey, shortly after his arrival in India.

We owe it to our heavenly Father to acknowledge his care and mercy over us during the past twelve months. In his infinite

Admitted on trial in India. Missionary Report.

3

In charge of orphan boys.

wisdom he saw fit to take from us, ere the first week of this year had passed, one of our most promising and beloved brethren. That mysterious dispensation has produced upon our entire mission an effect which will last for "many days" to come. It has deepened the thoughtfulness and seriousness of the brethren, and I trust, also, has increased their devotion to the work given us to do.

Sister Downey is nobly redeeming her promise to her dying husband, and our orphan boys, we are grateful to say, are showing the effect of her faithful training. Their improvement is both decided and satisfactory.

Of our mission in general, it may be said that it is taking form, and beginning to develop its power. More cannot and ought not to be said of it in its present standing.

The committee and the Church will not forget that this mission is very young, and but partially manned. It is not yet four years since the first agent of it landed in India. Half a year was spent in selecting the field and getting a home ready. The mutiny broke up all our arrangements, and twelve months more were thus consumed. Two brethren joined the superintendent, and our mission work proper commenced in May, 1858. The six brethren sent to us have been only ten months in the field, and thus it is manifest that the expectations of the Church in regard to our progress ought, in all justice, to be very moderate indeed. Had it not been for the native help that God so wonderfully raised up for us, we could not have reported even the feeble beginnings that it is my duty now to lay before the committee.

Even under the best circumstances, every new mission has to spend a large portion of its first energies and time in mere secularities; in finding a home and furniture, and gaining a knowledge of the new modes of life into which they are thrown. None but those who have experience of these things can understand how largely such matters absorb the strength, and use up the time of a missionary during the time of his first half year's residence. Then comes the study of the language, with its slow and anxious progress, and this is followed by the first experiments of its use, those experiments usually sending a man back to his books with a stronger conviction than he had before that he needs to study harder still before he is really fit for his work.

With one or two exceptions, this is about the stage to which the members of our mission have progressed, and, in fairness to them, it ought also to be borne in mind under what untoward circumstances they have managed to push through thus far.

They landed in India on the eve of a terrible revolution, and came to occupy a field from which it is not yet two years since the British power swept the last of the rebels that had destroyed every thing European within its limits.

In the midst of this desolation they were set down, and for them homes and furniture and the means of life had to be provided. It is but one year and seven months since we purchased our first house in the plains, and had to wait long and anxiously ere the rest could be obtained.

These facts are mentioned, not in any wise to extenuate our brethren, for, so far as I know, they need no apology, being faithful, zealous, and laborious men of God; but to show how manifestly God has aided us from the very first, and how he has enabled us to achieve a substantial progress notwithstanding the unpromising circumstances in which we were necessarily placed.

Comfortable homes have now been provided, chapels built, schools organized, native teachers and preachers found and trained, orphans collected, the confidence and sympathy and princely aid of the English community secured, native congregations collected at all our seven stations, and small native Churches organized, with each of our means of grace in operation.

Besides all this, several of our brethren have pushed out beyond their centers into the country around, by a system of itinerancy now regularly organized, so that this year not less than two hundred and fifty cities and villages have been visited, (some of them even two or three times,) and there, where the Saviour of mankind had never been heard of, have our brethren and their native helpers preached Christ, and scattered those "leaves of the tree of life" which "are for the healing of the nations."

My heart is filled with gratitude to God when I survey what has been achieved; and when I reflect that it still wants ten days of two years since the day when Brother Pierce and I left our refuge in the mountains to enter Rohilcund, in the rear of the English army, to examine our field and commence this work, well may we exclaim, "What has God wrought!" I beg now to lay before the committee

I. THE STATISTICS.

1. AGENTS.

Ordained Ministers.-W. Butler, R. Pierce, J. L. Humphrey, J. W. Waugh, J. Baume, C. W. Judd, J. M. Thoburn, and E. W. Parker.

Preacher on Trial.-Samuel Knowles.

English Local Preacher.-J. A. Cadwell.

Native Local Preachers.-Joel, Stephen, Joseph, Thomas, Enoch, Daniel, Zoor-ool Huck, William, Samuel, and Isa Dass. Native Exhorters.-Cornelius, Robert, Mooassee Singh, and Badoo Singh.

Native School Teachers.-Jacob, Isaac, Benjamin Chimman, Lokh Mauni, Benjamin, Lydia, and Peggy.

Besides which, several of our exhorters and local preachers, indeed, nearly all of them, teach in the schools.

Being Ordained Ministers, 8; decrease in the year, 1; Preacher on trial, 1; decrease in the year, 1; English Local Preacher, 1; Native Preachers, 10; Increase in the year, 6; Native Exhorters, 4; Native School Teachers, 8; Being in all, agents, 32; increase in the year, 4.

2. MEMBERSHIP IN OUR HINDOSTANEE WORK.

8. CONGREGATIONS OF A REGULAR KIND In our Native Work.

The number of our membership, congregations, and regular at tendants on public worship in our Hindostanee work have trebled during the year.