The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-12 00:00:00

OUR HUMILIATION.

(From, the Examiner.)
"An old maiden gentlewoman," says Addison
in one of his Saturday papers in the Spectator,
" whom I shall conceal under the name of Neme-
sis, is the greatest discoverer of judgments that I
ever met with. She can tell you what sin it was
that set such a man's home on fire, or blew down
his barns. She has a crime for every misfortune
that can befal any of her acquaintance, and when
she hears of a robbery or a murder, enlarges more
on the guilt of the suffering person than on that of
the thief or assassin. In short, she is so good a
Christian, that whatever happens to herself is a
trial, and whatever happens to her neighbours is a
judgment."
The leading domestic event of the week has for-
cibly reminded us of Addison's old maiden gentle-
woman. Last Wednesday might not improperly
be called the day of judgments.
Many eloquent sermons were, of course, deli-
vered, and we could select some good and striking
passages from several of them ; but we must lament
that the majority of the discourses were ever
preached. It was surely no necessary part of the
solemn occasion that so many rash tongues should
have been unloosed. Was all that hubbub from
the pulpit indispensable to the prostration of the
public heart ? Would not silence have been meeter
homage, where there was so little mature thought
to be clothed in words, and so little discretion to
govern their utterance ? Is prayer impossible
without the sequel of such perilous preaching ? It
would seem to be so settled in the Church of Eng-
land, and what the result is we have now before us
in the effusions of too many of our metropolitan
pastors. Such a Babel of conflicting opinions, such
a wilderness of ill-weaved speculations, such arro-
gant assumption of intimacy with the plans of
Omnipotence, such daring attempts to lift the cur-
tain that Providence has hung between the present
and the future, such a rushing in of divines where
diviner beings fear to tread—this was our mortifica-
tion upon mortification, and an aggravation of our
national sins and follies. Were we to take a leaf out
of almost any one of the sermons before us, we should
announce the precise measure of Divine wrath incur-
red by the license of reverend tongues, and so much
abuse of faculties and functions. We might even
be led to count the presumption of spiritual men,
and the vanity of preaching, among the transgres-
sions for which we have been delivered over for a
season in India to the tormentors.

Were the proper authorities to appoint a second
day of humiliation for the country to humble itself
before Heaven for all the cant and extravagance
uttered upon the first, we should not say that it
was ill done. We are not a little disposed, in
truth, to be humiliated by our humiliation, and
are anything but proud of the simultaneous ser-
mons of last Wednesday, either as the speculations
of an intellectual order of men, or as proofs of the
prevalence of rational and sound theology among
our English clergy.
We did not want the pulpits to tell the country
or the Government that the first duty of the crisis
is to suppress the rebellion, and visit with meet
retribution its unheard-of crimes and enormities.
It is satisfactory, no.doubt, to find that the clergy
are nearly unanimous on those points ; but they
only echo the public determination. Moreover, we
must observe, that in dwelling to the degree that
many of them dwelt upon the duty of discriminat-
ing justice from vengeance, in deprecating promis-
cuous carnage, and the imitation by our troops of
the nameless cruelties of the Sepoys, these holy
men did the public a wrong, and a wrong also to
our troops in India, for we have not heard such re-
taliatory excesses recommended in any quarter de-
serving of respect ; and we believe our English
soldiery, under the command of Englishmen, inca-
pable of committing them.
The sermon of Dr. Cumming, the eloquent mi-
nister of the Scotch Church in Covent-garden, is
noticeable as being entirely free from maudlin sen-
timent and mistimed pleas for mercy. He spoke
the truth, and spoke it boldly, on this important
point ; upon the whole, we consider Dr. Cum-
ming's sermon the best of all that we have seen re-
ported.
"We had no time or heart to enter on animated discus.
aims, as to how far all this might have been foreseen,
or who are the parties guilty of culpable blindness and
neglect. This is not the time for such inquisition. Nor
have we any disposition to discuss. at this crisis what
should be the future government of India. This great
question will come up in due time. It is our present duty
to enlist, on behalf of the powers that be, all the dispos-
able might and resources of the empire, it possible, in
order to enable them to crush this sanguinary insurrec-
tion—this murderous crusade against helpless babes and
unoffending women. We are not demanding vengeance;
but, surely, just and due retribution is mercy as well as
justice. We invoke not the sword against a single Hin-
doo or Mahommedan woman or child, but is it unjust to
require that every Sepoy found armed against our Queen
and her authority in India should meet the traitors' and
the murderers' doom ? This is not mere justice to the
guilty, it is mercy to the rest of the empire. Here the
highest political expediency and the purest justice are
one."

But with the exception of this, and a few passages
in the same strain, we do not see what useful lesson
the preachers ou the day of humiliation have taught
the public, or those who administer its affairs,. If
the Go►ernment sanctified Wednesday in the ex-
pectation of being directed by the clergy in the path
of a wise Indian policy, they have been certainly
disappointed. Dr. Croly would raze Delhi to the
ground ; Dr. Trench would suppress the opium
trade ; another send out a fresh band of missionaries;
another introduce the Bible, the whole Bible, and
nothing but the Bible, into the Hindoo schools ; a
fifth, in his wisdom and moderation, would put
down all the rites and ceremonies of the Hindoo re-

ligion, and including the Mahonimedans in the
aline sentence, would found his hopes of a peaceful,
permanent Indian empire upon open war with the
faith of a population of sixty millions of souls thrice
counted. History is so full of encouraging examples
of the conflicts of Governments with creeds ! Chris-
tianity is so consonant with intolerance of human
errors ! The policy thus devoutly recommended is
se agreeable to the liberty and genius of the people
of England !

The idea that seems to have been uppermost in
the generality of the outpourings of Wednesday is
that England has incurred the wrath of heaven in
India by sinking her Christianity and neglecting
what are called her missionary duties. Nine-tenths
of the preachers were as confident on this head as
if it had been sent down to them out of the clouds
written by the divine finger. Dr. Cumming, how-
ever, took a different and much juster view of the
matter, which for its singularity alone deserves to
be quoted :
"As if providentially meant to enable us to respond to
this appeal for India, we have had a bounteous harvest,
a lightening of taxation, and plenty of employment. As
to the causes of this terrible outbreak, I believe they are
not owing to the crimes, nor the avarice, or the mis-
government of our country in India—the causes are
deeper far. It is the maturity of deep-seated and long-
ripening elements. The Mussulinan and the Brahmin
have seen light breaking in every day and dissipating
their respective superstitions—and all kinda of know-
ledge secular and sacred have equally this effect—and
dreading the ebb of their deluded victims and the loss
of their own power, they have got up pretended reasons
for combining the masses against Christians in India. I
see in the horizon the circling dawn of light. With all
our sins we have been too gigantic a blessing to the
heathen to lose the field for yet greater benefits. Inci-
dents and interpositions obviously providential have oc-
curred so often in rapid succession since the first out-
burst at Meerut, that I cannot help regarding them as
prophecies of succeis ; and, taught a lesson from the
past, we may, by God's blessing, commence a course of
policy in India that will sow broadcast on its sunny
plains the seeds of golden harvests of religion, social
order, happiness; and peace."
According to Dr. Cumming, we have not been
such bad Christians among our subjects in India,
but with all our shortcomings " a gigantic blessing
to them ;" nay, it is to the very extent of our reli-
gious influence, imperfect as it is, that he traces
the gathering together and raging of the heathen
against us. Ile considers the rebellion as a rising
against Christianity. We cannot adopt that opt
nion ; but as far as he dissents from the doctrine

that Yana Sahib was sent by heaven to punish our
backwardness as missionaries by the massacre of
our innocent women and children, we are entirely
of Dr. Cum.ming's way of thinking.
Dr. Cumming, however, we are glad to find, is
not alone in bearing witness to the value of our
presence in India, at least as far as civil govern-
ment is concerned. We find the following con-
current testimonies among the fragments of ser-
mons before ua. The preacher at St. Margaret's;
Westminster,
- -

" Deprecated the presumption which cluld venture to
pronounce upon the present state of theland as a Divine
Punishment for our misrule in India. With all its
faults, the British tale in India had conferred greater
benefits upon that country than it had Ever enjoyed befure.
Irrespective of any other considerations, it was the duty
of the Britian nation to quell the rebellion, in order to
save the quiet and peaceful inhabitants of India from
the dreadful miseries and atrocities which they would
b
erle
asanfladli earns who
horrid a d
crimes shown their
which
trheeayl
inevitably suffer if they-were delivered to the absolute
controld
haracteorf btyhathreebd
had committed."
Another divine, at the Royal Military Chapel,
St. James's, spoke much the same lanugage :
“We have thought more of bringing home wealth than
of leaving beneficial traces of our footsteps among the
people who have created that wealth and enriched us ; of
providing for the members of our families than of Bowing
broadcast the seeds of civilization and education, and of
morality and religion. Bat still we have done something
--God has allowed them this comfort, in 11 coking back
upon the past centary we have not governed as the ra-
tive princes did with tyranny, opproatioa and extcrticn