Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/139

Rh “There has been enormous growth in your various fields?”

“Yes; take the case of India. Henry Martyn, who was a Government chaplain, was not connected with our Society; but it is due to him to say that it was very much his influence on Charles Simeon which led to the energy the latter threw into this Society. Martyn's friends were our friends. The Baptists were among the first English missionaries in India. The political policy in India,—which our Government, as I think unhappily, are adopting in Egypt,—was to exclude all evangelistic effort, and so much was this the case that one prominent man declared that they might just as well fire a pistol into a powder magazine as preach the Gospel to the Hindoos. Those restrictions were relaxed only just before the Mutiny. The C.M.S. sent representatives to India about 1814, and the work has largely developed there. The early missionaries limited themselves almost entirely to itinerating and educational work. Two typical missionaries, for example, went out in the year 1841; my father was one and Robert Noble the other. My father threw himself into the evangelistic work, but died within seven years. Robert Noble lived on for twenty-four years, and with remarkable foresight devoted himself to the education of the upper-class natives. Noble lived in a very simple style, and won over the confidence of his students in a most remarkable way. His work has had more permanent effect,