God had given them the land for their possession, and that the natives were the Canaanites who must be exterminated. They were fain to call their New England Canaan, and the war against the Indians was in their eyes a holy war, a prelude to the tragic history of the dealing of the white man with his red brother: first Puritanism sanctioned war against the Indians by a religious motive drawn from the Old Testament, then the most naked self-seeking legitimised it in the name of modern civilisation. Little, however, as this dark side of the intercourse of the old Puritans with the Indians may be concealed or palliated, it would be one-sided to forget that after and alongside of the conflict there went forward a true missionary work of peace, which, especially in the persons of Eliot and his friends, discovers the most refreshing points of light in the history of the Indians.

31. Even before the supreme judicature of Massachusetts passed in 1646 the resolution to entrust two of the oldest ordained ministers of the church with the preaching of the Gospel among the Indians, John Eliot, the pastor of Roxbury, in New England, who was 42 years of age, and who had acquired a thorough scientific education at Cambridge, had of his own personal motive attempted the first missionary enterprise among them. This noble man has the honour of being the first Evangelical missionary who, not only from the sincerest motives and amid the greatest toils and hardships, devoted his life to the conversion of the heathen, but who also made use of truly apostolic methods in this work. What led him to become a missionary to the Indians was (1) the glory of God in the conversion of some of these poor, comfortless souls; (2) a heartfelt compassion and ardent love for them as blind and ignorant men; and (3) the sense of duty, so far as in him lay, to fulfil the promise given in the royal charter: the people of New England shall colonise America with the aim also of imparting the Gospel to the native Indians. With utmost diligence he applied himself to learn the difficult Indian language, that he might be able to use it freely in preaching and teaching, and translate into it the Bible and other good books. Baptism, which he was slow to dispense, he made dependent on a real change of mind, and, as his old biographer says, he would sooner have shed his heart's blood than have given the cup of the Lord to such as did not bear

3

1 The general counter-assertions of Thompson (78) cannot weaken the evidence carefully furnished from the original sources by Fritschel.

2 Thompson, as cited, 53 ff., and Fritschel, 35 ff., give the original sources. The New Testament was published in 1661, the Old Testament in 1663; twenty years later a second edition appeared. But the tribe to which that Bible was given is extinct, and now there is scarcely any one who can read it.

the marks of a disciple of Christ. Those who were won to faith he gathered into well-ordered communities, bound together by good rules, and these he sought also as far as possible to civilise and elevate. Besides, he strove to train wellproved Christian Indians of blameless repute to become capable helpers. All this, indeed, did not speed smoothly; along with untold toils there was also much hostility on the part both of the white people and the red. Yet the labour of Eliot was blessed. Not alone that the number of Christians (1100), of congregations (13), and of native helpers (24) grew, though they afterwards declined under the unfavourable conditions of war, but the example of the devoted apostolic man found followers. Specially eminent amongst these was Thomas Mayhew, whose family through five generations gave to the Indians missionaries who were blessed in their work. Almost at the same time evangelical missionary efforts were undertaken amongst the Indians by the Swedish settlers in the colony on the Delaware, which was established by Oxenstierna in 1637, and these were still continued after the colony became an English possession.

32. The missionary work of Eliot, our knowledge of which is derived mainly from the so-called "Eliot Tracts," roused attention in England, especially in London, and soon drew thence financial support. About seventy English and Scotch clergymen, mostly Presbyterian, united in a petition to the "Long Parliament," praying that something might be done "for the extension of the Gospel in America and the West Indies." This elicited from Parliament, in the year 1648, a manifesto in favour of missions, which was to be read in all churches of the land, and which called for contributious to missions. Hence in 149 arose the Corporation or Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, the first of the three organisations designated by the initials S.P.G., whose activity, however, seems to have been restricted to the gathering of contributions for the mission to the Indians; at least, nothing further is known to have been the case. Under the presidency of the philosopher Robert Boyle, the Society was reorganised, so that it may be looked upon as the second S.P.G. It exists to-day as the New England Company, and expends its funds in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Boyle also bore the cost of translating Hugo Grotius's De veritate religionis christianae into Arabic, and a portion of the New Testament into Malayese. About half a century later two more Societies were founded within the Church of England, mainly by the zeal and energy of Dr. Thomas Bray; in 1698 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which aided the Danish-Halle mission in

India, and then Indian missions in general;1 and in 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the third, and to-day the only Society passing under the designation S.P.G. Its object was the maintenance of clergymen in the plantations, colonies, and factories of Great Britain, and for the propagation of the Gospel in these parts. Accordingly it laboured only occasionally among the Indians and negroes of North America, and not until the second century of its existence did it begin to carry on a widespread missionary work among the heathen. These two Societies are not organisations of the church as such, but free associations.3

In connection probably with the resolution of Parliament already referred to, Cromwell brought forward a comprehensive scheme of missions. For the defence and furtherance of Protestant doctrine there was to be instituted a "Congregatio de propaganda fide," with seven directors and four secretaries, who were to draw their salaries from the state. The whole earth was divided into four mission provinces, of which the first two embraced Europe, the third and fourth the rest of the world. But the death of Cromwell and the Restoration prevented even the beginning of the carrying out of this scheme.

33. In 1660, Joseph Alleine published An Alarm to the Unconverted, and about the same time another preacher, John Oxenbridge, issued from Boston, whither he had betaken him

1 Allen and M'Clure, Two Hundred Years: the History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698-1898, London, 1898.

2 A Handbook of Foreign Missions, containing an Account of the Principal Protestant Missionary Societies in Great Britain, London, 1888, 18, 22, 24; and Classified Digest of the Records of the S. P.G., 1701-1892, 5th ed., London, 1896.

3 [This paragraph requires supplementing. The threefold application of the letters S. P.G. does not describe a historical use of these letters, but a modern and inaccurate generalisation. The original New England Corporation (never named a Society) had an administrative board in New England, which employed itinerant missionaries and teachers. The reorganisation of the Company was rendered necessary by the Restoration, and was effected through a new charter obtained from Charles II. by the efforts of Robert Boyle. The present income of the Society, derived wholly from its endowments, is applied also to work amongst the Indians in Canada.-ED.]

[It need hardly be said that Alleine's book was not a missionary treatise, but a personal appeal to the unsaved; but Alleine was a man of missionary spirit, and when, like Oxenbridge, ejected from his living by the Act of Uniformity, he proposed to carry the Gospel to some heathen country; the proposal, however, was never realised. Among others animated by a missionary spirit, mention should be made of Dr. Hyde, who superintended the translation of the Gospels and Acts into Malayese, and who proposed that Christ Church, Oxford, should be used as a training college for missionary candidates. Nor should George Fox, the founder of the Quakers (1643), be overlooked. He had - a clear perception of the missionary duty of Christians, which not only inspired some of his immediate followers to noble, if isolated, endeavours, but through William Penn and otherwise contributed to a true understanding of the duty of Christians towards the heathen.-ED.]

self after a short stay in Surinam and Barbadoes, A Proposition of Propagation of the Gospel by Christian Colonies in the Continent of Guiana. But all these missionary incitements did not lead to any missionary action in England itself. Neither did the earnest appeal which in 1695 the Dean of Norwich, Humphrey Prideaux, addressed to Dr. Tennison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he showed the grave responsibility of England for the souls of the heathen living in her East Indian possessions. The new possession of lands beyond the sea awakened the missionary conscience only in single men, but was far from so doing in the case of the English nation. The powerful East India Company, which in 1600 received its famous charter from Queen Elizabeth, was very far from entertaining any idea of missionary undertakings or even of supporting such undertakings, even at the time when, in 1698, the sending out at least of colonial clergymen was imposed upon it as a duty by King William III. To this, however, we return later on.

34. From 1620 Denmark had colonial possessions in the East Indies, and from 1672 also in the West Indies and on the Gold Coast. But with all zeal for the orthodox doctrine, no clergyman thought of bearing the "pure" Gospel even to the heathen living in these colonies until towards the close of the seventeenth century. It was King Frederick IV. who fostered the first effective missionary ideas. That Lütkens, who was appointed court preacher at Copenhagen in 1704, who had lived with Spener in Berlin, and had not remained untouched by the influences of Pietism, was not the originator but only an agent of the missionary ideas of the King, may now be regarded as settled. Already, when only Crown Prince, Frederick IV. had concerned himself with thoughts about missions; yet it is scarcely to be inferred that these thoughts originated in purely religious motives; for the Prince in question by no means merits the high praise of piety which has been lavished upon him in certain quarters. Probably it was his conviction of his duty as ruler towards his heathen subjects which led him to missionary projects. But whether that came to pass through an impulse received from some particular person, or as a consequence of the theory of the church at the time with respect to the missionary duty of colonial rulers, or as the result of quite independent reflection, cannot be decided. The fact is that, in 1705, the King commissioned the court preacher Lütkens to seek out missionaries for the Danish colonies, after he had given the same charge in vain to two other Copenhagen court preachers. When Lütkens found no men in Denmark both willing and suitable, he turned to his earlier colleagues in

Berlin, and this led, through the medium of Joach. Lange, a friend of Spener and Francke, the rector of the Werder Gymnasium, to the call in 1705 of two German Pietist probationers (candidates for ordination), Barth. Ziegenbalg and Heinr. Plütschau.1 Both, after many petty vexations on the part of the orthodox Danish church authorities, not merely because they were Germans but mainly because they were Pietists, and that the whole enterprise was regarded as fanatical and quixotic, and after a repeated vigorous examination, were ordained at last by express command of the King, and in the end of November 1705 were designated, providentially not to the West Indies, as had at first been intended, but to the East Indies (Tranquebar). But notwithstanding its Danish head, notwithstanding the royal annual subsidy, at first of 6000 marks, later of 9000, notwithstanding the foundation at Copenhagen in 1714 of a "Collegium de cursu evangelii promovendo," by which the mission was made (not an official concern of the Danish church, but) a state institution, the furtherance and the strictly spiritual direction of the mission lay really in Germany, and, in fact, in Halle. Aug. Herm. Francke was the real leader in the matter. Pietism united itself with missions, and this union. alone enabled missions to live. True, it was the Lutheran church within which the first German mission arose; not Lutheran orthodoxy, however, but Lutheran Pietism was its spring and its support.

1 It is an unhistoric legend, that Francke proposed these two first missionaries. They were, indeed, his spiritual sons, but Francke had no part in their appointment. As to the beginning of this Danish-German mission, cf. Germann, Die Gründungsjahre der Trankebarschen Mission, Erlangen, 1868, 41; and Kramer, Aug. Herm. Francke, ii. 87.