Page:The Aristocracy of Southern India.djvu/181

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S. R. J. R. V. Ettappa Nayakar Bahadur.
141

education in Church of England schools, awaited the arrival of H. R. H. The Prince of Wales, the Rev. Dr. Caldwell, the able and learned Missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Rev. Dr. Sargent, a veteran representative of the Church Missionary Society, surrounded by a considerable staff of English clergy, stood on the platform side by side typifying the perfect unanimity with which our two great Church societies are laboring for the evangelisation of India. When H. R. H. alighted from his carriage, the Missionaries were presented to him by Mr. Robinson and Canon Duckworth. Dr. Caldwell, read an address of welcome from the Church of Tinnevelly expressing the devoted loyalty of its members and their deep sense of the special blessings they enjoyed as the Christian subjects of a Christian sovereign. The progress of the Church of England Mission in this region was sketched, and it was shown how the good seed conveyed from Tanjore by Schwartz about the end of the last century and that which was sown broadcast from 1820 onwards by Rhenius, both German Missionaries in the employ of English Societies, had been nurtured by Missionaries since 1840, until the Native Christian community in Tinnevelly is the most numerous in India. Christian congregations have been formed in about 900 towns, villages, and hamlets composed exclusively of converts. The total number of Native Christians in the District was stated to be sixty thousand, who are under the charge of 54 Native clergy and 590 catechists, and teachers of various grades; and the number of communicants is 10,878. The schools are attended by about 13,000 boys and girls. It is worthy of note that the Christians in Tinnevelly contributed last year Rs. 32,488 for the support of their own church equivalent in the