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e to bring the boy up in the Church would have destroyed all chance of his obtaining the provinces, and probably have deprived him of the protection of the Company, who dreaded the suspicion of proselytizing. Still it is very disappointing, and requires all our trust in Swartz's judgment and excellence to be satisfied that he was right in leaving this child, who had been confided to him, all his life a heathen. Serfojee learnt the theory of Christianity, was deeply attached to Mr. Swartz, and lived a life very superior to that of most Hindoo princes of his time. His faith in his hereditary paganism was probably only political, but he never made the desperate, and no doubt perilous, plunge of giving up all the world to save his own soul. Was it his fault, or was it any shortcoming in the teaching that was laid before him, and was that human honour a want of faith? It puzzles us! Here was Swartz, from early youth to hoary hairs unwavering in the work of the Gospel, gathering in multitudes to the Church, often at great peril to himself, yet holding back from bringing into the fold the child who had been committed to him, and, as far as we can see, without any stipulation to the contrary. Probably he thought it right to leave Serfojee's decision uninfluenced until his education should be complete, and was disappointed that the force of old custom and the danger of change were then too strong for him; and thus it was that Serfojee was only one of the many half-reclaimed Indian princes who have lived out their dreary, useless lives under English protection, without accepting the one pearl of great price which could alone have made them gainers. It is just possible that there may have been too much of a certain sort of acquiescence in Swartz's mind, missionary as he was. He did not attack the system of caste, with its multitudinous separations and distinctions. Of course he wished it to be abolished, but he accepted converts without requiring its renunciation, allowed high-caste persons to sit apart in the churches, and to communicate before Pariahs, and did not interfere with their habits of touching no food that the very finger of a person of a different caste had defiled. He no doubt thought these things would wither away of themselves, but his having permitted them, left a world of difficulty to his successors. He lived, however, the life of a saint, nearly that of an ascetic. His almost unfurnished house was
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