But our treatment of the _Sepoys_ has been worse still. In them we have had a body of men entirely under our orders, separated very much from the rest of society, living in lines completely under our own control. Now, what has been the case with them? I believe it is an admitted fact that no missionary work has been permitted amongst them. The gentleman who was here a short time ago for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel stated that he had laboured for more than twenty years in the neighbourhood of military cantonments, but had never been allowed to labour among the Sepoys. Who can wonder, in such a case, that those Sepoys are utterly ignorant of the true character of Christianity, and are therefore ready to believe that the use of a greased cartridge could make them Christians? But more than this. There has been in our treatment of these Sepoys the most complete departure from even our boasted principles of neutrality; for, although it seems a strong statement, I believe it to be a true one, that in many eases idolatry has been encouraged in these regiments, while Christianity was dishonoured, if not put down. If a Brahmin raised objections on the ground of his idols or his caste, he was humoured in his folly, and regimental discipline was set aside in his favour. But if a Christian spoke of conscience, and if he objected on Christian grounds to fire a salute to some horrid idol, in former days he was cashiered. The Brahmin’s folly was respected, the Christian’s conscience outraged. But in one case it went further, for in 1819 there was a devoted chaplain labouring at Meerut of the name of Fisher, when a Sepoy who had been for years inquiring, applied to him for baptism, and was baptized. The man was highly respected in his regiment, a fine soldier, bearing the best of characters. But the fact of his baptism was reported to the Governor-General: and, to the shame of our Indian Government be it spoken; to the lasting shame of all that had a hand in that guilty act,—without any fault being laid to his charge, on the contrary, with the highest testimony being borne to his character, for the one act of becoming a Christian, that Sepoy was dismissed the Service. Verily it seems as though that guilty act had been hid in the soil of Meerut as the seed of the present mutiny. There it was that a professedly Christian Government cast its Christianity out of a Sepoy regiment, and there, on that very spot, did the Sepoys shed the first Christian blood, in their efforts to cast us out of India.