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Marriage and Intemperance.

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not want an Act of Parliament framed to legislate in this matter, but we do want men to be taught to act with a little more circumspection.

"Falling in love being much a matter of propinquity, they can keep out of the way of dangerous attraction, or if they have fallen in love, they may surely pause before, in order to avoid the temporary suffering of an act of sharp self-renunciation, they resolve to run the almost certain risk of bringing untold miseries upon one or more of the offspring of an illadvised union.'

Marriage must be taught to be something nobler and higher than mere 'falling in love; ' that morbid sentimentality inculcated in novels should be most strongly condemned. Men must learn that a nation's future welfare depends on the manner in which they enter the marriage state. They must also be taught to wait till they have earned sufficient to keep a wife and family. Much of the insanity is due to the miseries of a home where there is a constant struggle to get sufficient to live on, as well as to the want of proper nourishment and clothing. The constant strain on the parents' minds is often too great, and they at last break down, whilst the children are doubly cursed from the want of proper instruction and need of sufficient nourishment.

Another physical cause of insanity is intemperance, and this is a most powerful factor. It is certainly one of the most frequent exciting causes, inducing insanity in a mind already weakened by hereditary predisposition or other depressing causes. An habitual drunkard is to a certain extent a constant maniac, and liable to furious outbreaks. It may not be right to say that more danger is to be apprehended from a constant moderate consumption of alcoholic liquors, than from an occasional drunken bout, and yet it may be so, for if instead of resting the brain, when we feel it fatigued by overwork, we stimulate it to activity by alcohol, much harm must surely be done.

....

'Like the pawnbroker or the usurer, it is a present help at the cost of a frightful interest; and if the habit of recurring to it be formed, the end must be a bankruptcy of health. . . . . If men took careful thought of the best use which they could make of their bodies, they would probably never take alcohol except as they would take a dose of medicine, to serve some special purpose. It is idle to say that there is any real necessity for persons who are in good health to indulge in any kind of alcoholic liquor. At the best, it is an indulgence which is unnecessary; at the

worst, it is a vice which occasions infinite misery, sin, crime, madness, and disease.'

But it is also probable, though Dr. Maudsley does not mention it, that other excesses besides drinking are favourable to the development of insanity; over-eating, too rich and too highly-cooked food, irregularity at meals, &c. We know how often these cause violent headaches, at least in some people, showing that some cerebral mischief has been done.

There are other excesses which we can but hint at, certain sins which specially war against the flesh, all most seriously affecting the mind.

'Were men with one consent to give up alcohol and other excesseswere they to live temperately, soberly, and chastely, or, what is fundamentally the same thing, holily, that is healthily-there can be no doubt that there would soon be a vast diminution in the amount of insanity in the world.'

Such is the testimony of one who has had many opportunities for strict observation, and it is endorsed by others pursuing the same branch of investigation. Though we may not entirely agree with him, we cannot but acknowledge there is much that is worthy of most serious consideration in what he says. We have not entered on the purely moral causes of insanity, nor the influence that religion and education have either for good or evil: we leave that for others, or for some future time.

The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be, that men must be taught to live less selfishly; they must give up many animal pleasures, and exercise forbearance and self-abnegation for the sake of others. In fact, they must learn the constant exercise of pure Christianity and philanthropy. Men must look upon their lives as part of a great social system, in which each, forming a part, does not merely exist himself, but exerts an influence, to a great extent irresistible, either for good or evil, both morally and physically, on those around him, and those who succeed him even for several generations. By God's holy law the sins of the father are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations: how true this is, none but the physician can fully understand; not only sins of commission, but sins of omission; not sins from neglect of worship, of prayer, but sins from neglect of living healthily.

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ART.V.-Church and State in India.

(1.) The History of Christianity in India. By J. W. KAYE.

London: 1859.

(2.) Orissa.

By W. W. HUNTER, LL.D. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. - 1872.

(3.) The Church Missionary Intelligencer. 1857-9.

(4.) Hansard's Parliamentary Debates.

WE are told that, from the days of St. Thomas to the days of Ziegenbalg, the truths of Christianity have, from time to time, been proclaimed in India; but at the period of the British conquest they seemed, with a few isolated exceptions, to have made little impression upon the superstitious religious systems of its inhabitants. Neither were the first years of our occupation signalized by any energetic missionary efforts. It is not difficult to trace the causes of this inaction. The singular circumstances under which the conquest of India was effected had much to do with it. If the ministers of the British Crown had determined that it was expedient to attempt the annexation of India; if they had sent the British army to drive the Mughul from the throne of Delhi, and to proclaim King George the Second Emperor in his stead; and if their purpose had been successfully accomplished, it is not impossible that our administrators, in addressing themselves to the task of governing Hindústan, would have made the spiritual condition of their subjects one of their earliest considerations. It is needless to observe that the actual circumstances were far otherwise. A company of merchants, holding a few trading stations on the coast, carrying on a precarious commerce in the fabrics of native industry, found it necessary to employ troops in order to protect themselves from the extortionate subordinates of the Mughul and the fiery raids of the Mahratta. Their jealousy of foreign rivals induced them to interfere in the disputes of native chiefs; principally through the genius of one young soldier the partizans of the French were defeated in the south, and the influence of the Company gradually extended in the province of Madras; while the treachery and crimes of Surajah Dowlah led to the battle of Plassey and the

subsequent fall of the house of Tamerlane. It was not, however, till nine years after that victory, that our authority was formally admitted, when the titular sovereign of Hindústan, at the instance of Lord Clive, empowered the Company to collect and administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. As time went on, it appeared to be necessary to annex other parts of the country, until at length the whole Indian empire became at least nominally under the control of the Company, while that body itself held its possessions under charter from the king. It was hardly likely that such a society as this would view its responsibilities in the same light as the government of the crown. But while a private enterprise was winning for us the East, the government of the crown was fully occupied in losing for us the West. The Company's officers, therefore, for the most part regarding their new possessions only as an unexpected extension of a commercial undertaking, affording new facilities for trade and new opportunities for enrichment, did not, as a body, feel bound to apply themselves to the task of enlightening the native population. Many of them indeed regarded India only as a field for amassing private fortunes in the briefest possible time, and they were not always particularly scrupulous as to the means they employed in order to attain this object. Stories of oppression were rife; it was asserted that while Europeans made immense fortunes, the native population was often starving; the Nabobs became the most unpopular class in England, and the general dissatisfaction culminated in the impeachment of Lord Clive. Warren Hastings was destined some years afterwards to share the same fate, perhaps with greater cause.

But the apathy of the Company on the subject was not the only reason for the absence of missionary enterprise. The truth is, that in the eighteenth century British Christianity had very little surplus vitality. There was an absolute lack of earnest religion in the country, which it is extremely difficult even to realize at the present day. Thus the attention of the Church was very little directed towards foreign missions, and the little that was done in India was mostly the work of Danish and German Lutheran agencies, sometimes supported by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. It was

The Company and its Chaplains.

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not until 1795 that the London Missionary Society was founded; it was shortly followed by the great Church 'Missionary Society for Africa and the East,' which was in fact a development of the former society, though differing from it in so much that it was exclusively supported by members of the Church of England: it was long, however, before it received any episcopal sanction. The Gospel Propagation Society, though an older foundation, scems to have been generally anticipated on the field of Indian missions by the younger body.

While, however, during the first half century of our rule, India was, as we shall see, practically closed to the missionaries; and while their efforts met with little sympathy or encouragement at home, the Company, in one important particular, maintained a consistent policy which could not fail to commend itself to the attention and respect of the natives. Chaplains, on a scale generally sufficient for the purpose, were always provided for the British soldiers of the Company, although they were not encouraged to extend their ministrations to the heathen population around them: indeed, they could not well have done so without neglect of their proper duties. This practice may be deemed only a matter of course, as at the present day it certainly would be; but its importance cannot be over-estimated, as it was, in fact, the one visible sign of our national religion which we maintained in the sight of our Indian subjects. We may be sure that they did not think the worse of us because of our chaplains; on the contrary, it was probably the general opinion that we owed our success to the superior power of our gods; and if we had appeared to repudiate their influence ourselves, while we declined to impart our religious system to others, the Hindú and the Muhammadan alike would have regarded us as fiends, not men. At the present day infidelity is unquestionably very prevalent among the educated natives: it is perhaps an inevitable consequence of the flood of European enlightenment which has been poured on the dark superstitions of the East; it is perhaps a necessary stepping-stone in the emancipation of the people from the thraldom of centuries of error, but assuredly it is no natural product of the Indian intellect. It has been the general opinion of thinking men that it was

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