years and tested ministerial character could such an enterprise be intrusted. Accordingly, after some delay and much correspondence, choice was made of Rev. William Butler, of New England Conference, an Irishman by birth, educated at Didsbury College, and formerly a traveling minister of the Wesleyan Connection. He sailed from Boston in April, 1856, and in September following was in Calcutta. After a full and brotherly consultation with some of the chief missionary workers in India, it was determined to select the north-western provinces-Oude, Rohilcund, and Gurhwal-lying between the Ganges and the Himalayas, as the places to be occupied. Having canvassed the territory and estimated its requirements, Mr. Butler concluded that to effectively operate the proposed work twenty-five missionaries would be necessary, and for these he asked. Of course this requisition could not be at once complied with, and very soon other events demanded the attention of all in India. The very next year the Sepoy Rebellion swept over India like a tornado, and for the time all other interests were in abeyance. In the spring of 1858 two additional missionaries-Messrs. Humphrey and Pierce-having arrived, and also a resident Englishman, Mr. Josiah Parsons, a local preacher, having been accepted as an assistant, work was actually begun at Bareilly, in the far north-west, learning languages, arranging for homes, opening schools, and preaching to the European residents. These were the beginnings; the history of the years that have followed, their labors and trials, and, above all else, their successes, would require volumes for their full statement. It has been specifically a working mission, with every thing to be accomplished by steady and persistent efforts. It is chiefly a mission among heathen idolaters, but also in the presence of a dominant nominal Christian civilization, and under the protection of a Christian government. In the larger towns and along the lines of travel are found, in considerable numbers, English residents and their mixed-race descendants, called Eurasians, and all through the land are a large number of Mohammedans, the descendants of earlier conquerors, proud, bigoted, and fierce, and restrained from violence only by their later conquerors, the English. But the great body of the people, numerically, and their multitude seems like the "leaves in Vallombrosa," are Hindus, the an

cient people of the land, of many castes, each separated from all others by impassable barriers, most of them very poor, ignorant, superstitious, and both mentally and morally degraded, with only the fewest present sources of enjoyment, and utterly without hope. The attempt to Christianize such a people must be a labor of love, to be sustained only by the most unbounded faith in the saving power of the Gospel; and yet, that it is a hopeful work is demonstrated by substantial results.

The India Mission has been prosecuted on a broad and liberal scale from the beginning. About fifty missionaries, proper, have been employed, with more than as many women, either wives of missionaries or else teachers under the care of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. No doubt some mistakes have been made in its affairs, in the appointment of missionaries and in the internal administration; for those who have made the former are not infallible, and those who have been charged with the latter have all along justified their claim to be human. And yet it stands forth to-day, after the experiences and tests of a quarter of a century, a model mission; eminently such on account of the devotion of its members to the one great work of saving souls, for the steady persistence of the missionaries in their appropriate work in the face of great difficulties and discouragements, and of the broad and enlightened statesmanship of their plans and purposes. And in all this the work has been liberally sustained by the home office. Nearly one and a half millions of dollars have been given to it, and all its interests have been cared for and demands responded to with a truly parental liberality; and after all requisite deductions have been made, it may still be claimed that the results achieved abundantly justify all the outlay that has been made in money and labor. These are now embodied in an Annual Conference, after the home model, containing 21 American ministers, 10 Anglo-Indians, 11 ordained and 40 unordained native preachers, 400 native helpers of various kinds and degrees, with 3,200 Church members, 8,000 children in day-schools and 12,000 in Sunday-schools, 22 houses of worship, and church and school property valued at considerably more than $300,000. These churches, made up for the most part of the very poorest of the poor, are also beginning to contrib ute a considerable per centage of their own church expenses.

SOUTHERN INDIA-WILLIAM TAYLOR.

While in India, though a little out of the order of time, we may pause to notice the work in the southern portion of that vast and populous country. It was an old mission field long before the agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church had entered that country; but still there was, and there still is, an abundance of unoccupied room in every portion of that immense field. Near the end of 1870 Rev. William Taylor, in the course of his seven years' evangelistic tour round the world, came to India, and during the next year labored chiefly among our missions in Northern India, preaching in English wherever he could get hearers, and through an interpreter to the natives, not without good results, but not entirely to his own satisfaction. In November of that year he was in Bombay preaching in English, at first in the chapel of the American Board's Mission, and afterward in a large hall. He had now struck the right vein— had found a people to whom to deliver his message. It is estimated that there are in India, chiefly in the sea-port towns and along the principal lines of travel, not less than 150,000 Europeans, or the children of such, (Eurasians,) English-speaking, nominally Christians; many of them somewhat educated, often men of very positive characters, but socially outcasts, and for the most part entirely godless. These were just the men to appreciate the street-preaching apostle of San Francisco, and toward them Mr. Taylor especially directed his evangelistic efforts; and, like the publicans and sinners of the times of Christ, they heard him gladly, believed, and were converted. Afterward the work spread to Poona, Kurrachee, Madras, and Calcutta; and in all these places souls were converted. And now came the more difficult question, What shall be done with them? for they must have spiritual nurture or they will perish, and their last case be worse than the first. The first expedient was to organize them into "fellowship bands," each with its appropriate leader, not unlike Mr. Wesley's "Societies;" but later, yielding to the requirements of the case, Mr. Taylor gave them a virtually complete Church organization. The work also called for additional ministerial labor, and such was supplied partly by old residents of India, now quickened into new religious activity, and partly by new-comers from

America, drawn thither, without any formal appointment, by the fame of Mr. Taylor's work, and some, a little later, by episcopal appointment; but in all cases they were to depend upon those among whom they labored for their maintenance. In December, 1873, Bishop Harris having gone thus far around the world, from east to west, came to India, and with the hearty concurrence of all parties erected Mr. Taylor's churches into an integral portion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, constituting them a district of the India Conference. In 1876 these were given a separate organization of their own, as the South India Conference, a mission of the highest type in respect to its evangelistic aggressiveness, and eminently Pauline, in that it is built upon no man's previous labors; but, unlike almost every other mission, it has been from the beginning self-supporting, never having received a dollar from any missionary organization, beyond its own bounds, for either the maintenance of its laborers, or for building its houses of worship, its schools, or its dwellings. Its success and the growth attained are the vindication of its policy, and though its conditions may have been exceptionally favorable to such an undertaking, still it has demonstrated the possibility of missions. among non-Christian peoples without outside support. That work, as it stands forth to-day, is Mr. Taylor's vindication, made effective, however, by a most noble band of his fellow-laborers in the Gospel.

BULGARIA.

Among the favorite schemes that engaged Dr. Durbin's attention during the early years of his administration was the mission in Bulgaria. When Kossuth was in this country, in 1851, he called attention to the openings in European Turkey for Protestant missions. The officers of the American Board considered the case, but decided that they could do no more in that region than they were already doing; but suggested that the Methodist Episcopal Church should be invited to consider the case. The subject was accordingly referred to the General Committee by the Corresponding Secretary, in November, 1852, with a decided expression in its favor, and the sum of $5,000 was placed at the disposal of the Bishop in charge of foreign missions for the commencement of the work. Bulgaria was selected, as an unoccupied field, at the suggestion

of Dr. Riggs, of the American Board, at Constantinople; but nothing was actually done till more than two years later, and it was not till 1857 that missionaries were sent forward, when Revs. W. Prettyman and A. L. Long began their work at Shumla, on the Black Sea. In November, 1858, Rev. F. W. Flocken, who spoke both Russian and German, was added to the missionary force. In 1859 Mr. Long removed to Tirnova, where, near the close of that year, he began preaching in his own house to such companies as he could collect, which quite naturally awoke the opposition of the priests of the Greek Church, though some of a better class showed him great favor; among them was Gabriel Etieff, who had before been in the employ of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and who now became Mr. Long's assistant and colporteur. At the same time Messrs. Prettyman and Flocken continued their studies of the Bulgarian language at Shumla, the former preaching in English and the latter in German to the resident foreigners. The next year Mr. Flocken began work at Tultcha, on the Danube, preaching and distributing tracts, as opportunity offered, in Bulgarian, Russian, German, and English, and a little later he opened a school in his study, which was soon attended by more than fifty children, and most of these were also induced to attend the Sunday-school for religious instruction. Here three or four Russians were baptized, and the beginnings of a real evangelistic work appeared. But the whole country was rocked by both political and religious controversies; the Bulgarian Church laity, especially, desired to be separated from the authority of the Greek Patriach; the Papists were intriguing to have them united to Rome, and the political state of the country was on the borders of revolution. All hope of reviving and using, as an evangelistical agency, any of the churches of the country was at length abandoned, and, in utter despair of accomplishing any thing, Mr. Prettyman resolved to abandon the mission and come home, and Mr. Long removed to Constantinople in order to make that city the base of his further operations. Here (1863) he was associated with Dr. Riggs in the revisal and publication of the Bulgarian Testament for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He also issued, during 1864, a small paper, "The Morning Star," which had a considerably extensive circulation among the FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXV.-21