The Hindus exerted themselves to the utmost to ruin the work of Christian education. Their efforts at first seemed to have great success. The number of Dr. Duff's pupils had risen to above a thousand in daily attendance, but he lost three hundred youths in one week! Nor was this all that tried the Missionary. More baptisms fanned the flame of bigotry into farther fury. Four more Koolin Brahmans had confessed the Saviour. A violent anti-Christian meeting was held. Actually a plot was formed to get rid altogether of the great opponent of idolatry, Dr. Duff. If his eloquent persuasive tongue could be silenced in no other way, it could be silenced in death. How easy to hire ruffians to waylay and attack him. Dr. Duff received kindly warnings of his danger. One person wrote, "There is, I hear, a conspiracy amongst the wealthy Baboos to hire some ruffians to maltreat you. If you treat it (the report) with contempt, you will go on us usual; on the contrary if you think the report to be true, you will avoid going out at night, or rather never go the same road twice together." Another wrote, "I have been credibly and seriously informed this day that there is, or is to be, a plot by which some ruffians of the baser sorts are hired to assault you . . . pray do not at least go out by night &c." The brave soul of Dr. Duff was not to be moved by personal fear. He published a paper headed "A word of faithful and firm yet kindly admonition to some of the Calcutta Baboos." This paper is too long to be inserted in full, but an extract will show the writer's spirit. "As to the rumour of threats regarding myself, I shall continue to regard them as an idle tale. Amongst the Calcutta Baboos there are those whom I respect and esteem, and to whose keeping I would at any time entrust my life, in the most perfect confidence of friendship and protection. If others, who do not know me personally, should in ignorance of my principles and motives, entertain unkindly or hostile feelings towards me, the fact would be in no way surprising. Even if the alleged threats were real, and not the progeny of lying fiction, I should not be in the least moved by them. My trust is in God." And towards the end of his paper, Dr. Duff alluding to the well-known saying that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church," thus shows his calm confidence that even his murder could do no real injury to the cause of God and His truth. "The first actual missionary martyrdom that shall be enacted in this heavenly cause may do more, under the over-ruling Providence of God to precipitate the inevitable doom of Hinduism, and speed on the chariot of Gospel triumph, than would the establishment of a thousand additional Christian schools, or the delivery of ten thousand additional Christian addresses throughout the towns and villages of this mighty empire." ———————— CHAPTER XI. GLIMPSES OF INNER LIFE.