MISSIONS THE CHIEF END

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH;

ALSO,

THE QUALIFICATIONS, DUTIES, AND TRIALS,

OF AN INDIAN MISSIONARY:

BEING

THE SUBSTANCE OF SERVICES HELD AT THE ORDINATION

OF

THE REV. THOMAS SMITH,

AS ONE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND'S MISSIONARIES TO INDIA.

BY THE

REV. ALEXANDER DUFF, D. D.,

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MISSION, CALCUTTA.

EDINBURGH:

JOHN JOHNSTONE, HUNTER SQUARE,

SUCCESSOR TO WAUGH AND INNES;

WHITTAKER & CO., AND NISBET & CO., LONDON.

MDCCCXXXIX.

141.

Printed by J. JOHNSTONE, 104, High Street, Edinburgh.

TO THE

STUDENTS OF DIVINITY

IN THE

Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and

Edinburgh,

WITH MANY OF WHOM THE AUTHOR HAS ENJOYED

MUCH GENIAL CONVERSE,

THE FOLLOWING PUBLICATION

IS DEDICATED

WITH EARNEST PRAYER FOR THE DIVINE BLESSING

ON ALL THEIR THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

AND

MISSIONARY INQUIRIES.

VARIOUS reasons, with which it is needless to trouble the reader, have necessitated the publication of the following Discourse and Address.

The Discourse is given, as nearly as possible, in the

very

form in which it was publicly delivered. The Charge and Address, on account of the length to which they extended, were greatly abridged in the delivery. They now appear without curtailment, as originally prepared. The sole design of both was utility. When, at the suggestion and request of the respected Convener of the General Assembly's Foreign Mission Committee, the author consented to preside at the ordination of a new Missionary to India, he felt himself called upon to pen, as it were, a plain letter of instructions, which might prove really useful to a young and inexperienced, but beloved, brother. And if he has, in any measure, succeeded in conveying some general conception of the qualifications, duties, trials, and encouragements, not of a missionary at large, but of one sent to occupy a specific sphere in the heathen metropolis of British India, all that he contemplated will have been fully, though it may be, feebly accomplished.

At the end of the concluding Address, the author endeavoured to point out the facility with which many a congregation might support a missionary to the heathen, while he somewhat expatiated on a few