We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
The Peculiar Claims of India as a Field of Missionary Enterprise
Reverend John Wilson, Church of Scotland missionary in Bombay and Honorary President of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, lectured in 1844 on the ‘Peculiar Claims of India as a Field of Missionary Enterprise’. India should attract missionary attention because of its ‘magnitude as a country, and the great extent of its population’, he proposed. As a predominantly British colony, it is ‘wholly accessible as a field of missionary operations’, so that ‘Through the whole of this vast country, the shield of Britain is held over the missionary for his protection’. Additionally, Wilson argues, ‘we are placed as a nation under very great obligations to India’, as a result of wars there. India also provides profitable employment for British men in both military and civil service; and commerce with India is the most advantageous in Asia: the ‘conversion of India will be attended with great advantages to Britain, nay the whole of the civilized world’. More theologically, he suggests that ‘there is a great deal of available Christian influence and co-operation in India, to be secured and directed in behalf of the cause of Christian missions’, and, because ‘India is either the fatherland or the asylum of the greatest systems of religious error and delusion, which now exist, or have ever existed, in the world’, Britain should feel an evangelical duty to eradicate such religious systems.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
