a different manner from any other. His plan was to open an English school, which should by-and-by develope into a college, this to become the headquarters of a great campaign against Hinduism. The Bible was to be the great centre and heart of all his work, and the leading aim of the mission would be to impress its truths. But along with this there would be taught every form of useful knowledge, from the A B C up to the subjects of the most advanced university studies. The use of the English language in his school was a great innovation, and brought down on him much unfavourable criticism. But he was firmly persuaded, and the result has justified his belief, that the English language was destined to be the great instrument of upper education in India, and he had the immovable conviction that nothing was better fitted than our western knowledge to undermine the superstitions of the country and open its mind to the gospel. It was a leading feature of his plan from among the converts of the mission to train up native preachers of the gospel, it being his decided conviction that only through native teachers and preachers could India become christian.
From the beginning his school was highly successful. Some very decided conversions took place in its earliest years, bringing on it a fearful storm, but openly stamping it with the character of a mission school, while it began to expand into a missionary college, that soon after obtained unprecedented renown. Duff was cheered by the co-operation of Sir Charles Trevelyan, who arrived at Calcutta soon after himself, and by the friendship of the governor-general, Lord William Bentinck [q. v.] His plan received an extraordinary impulse from a minute of the governor-general in council on 7 March 1835, in which it was laid down that in the higher education the great object of the British government ought to be the promotion of European science and literature among the natives of India, and that all the funds appropriated for the purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone. A pamphlet of Duff's, entitled ‘New Era of the English Language and Literature in India,’ showed the immense importance which he attached to this minute. He confessed, however, that the enactment had a defect in treating the spread of christianity in India as a matter of worldly expediency.
Broken down in health by ceaseless and enthusiastic activity, Duff visited his native country in 1834. Here his enthusiasm did not at first receive a very flattering response; but when he was called to address the general assembly, and when, in response to this call, the young man of twenty-nine was able to hold the whole audience as by a spell for nearly three hours, in a speech which for combined exposition, reasoning, and impassioned appeal was almost without a parallel, his triumph was complete. For some years afterwards he went through the country expounding his plan, and not only secured general approval, but on the part of many awakened a new interest in the work of missions generally and cordial devotion to his own mission in particular.
Duff returned to India in 1840. Ever since the issue of Lord William Bentinck's minute, a vehement controversy had been going on between the ‘Orientalists,’ as the party was called who were opposed to it, and the friends of European education. In 1839 Lord Auckland, governor-general, adopting a reactionary policy, passed a minute, the object of which was to effect a compromise between the two parties. Duff took up his pen, and in a series of letters which appeared in the ‘Christian Observer’ endeavoured to show the mischief and the folly of supporting at one and the same time the absurdities of the east and the science of the west. All his life Duff fought hard for a more reasonable and consistent policy, but without the complete success which he longed for. On revisiting India at this time, he found many proofs of the progress of western ideas. His own institution was now accommodated in a structure that had cost between 5,000l. and 6,000l., and was attended by between six and seven hundred pupils, and the college department was in full and high efficiency. In 1843 the disruption of the Scottish church took place, and as Duff, with all the other foreign missionaries of the church, adhered to the Free church, all the buildings, books, and apparatus of every description that had been collected for his mission had to be surrendered. Once more he found himself in the same state of destitution in which he had been after his shipwrecks, on his first arrival in the country. But his spirit rose to the occasion, and being very cordially encouraged by the church at home, which determined, notwithstanding its other difficulties, to support all its missionaries, he proceeded with his work. By-and-by a new institution was provided, more suited to the enlarged operations now carried on. He was cheered by the hearty support of men like Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Lawrence, and by the accession of a new band of converts which included several young men of high caste and of equally high attainments. The success of the mission caused a great crusade by the supporters of the native religions against it,
