1813

1813 is the turning point in the book’s account of missionary restrictions in India: the East India Company’s charter was altered during its passage through Parliament to secure toleration for missionary efforts. The author contrasts that opening with the expulsion of American missionaries in 1812, and interprets both the obstruction and its eventual relaxation as events within Divine Providence. The year also belongs to a wider argument that institutions, inventions, and human decisions—often intended for other ends—can become means through which the Gospel is carried forward.

The Charter Revision

The East India Company charter, renewed in 1813, was changed through the efforts of William Wilberforce, Smith, Thornton, Fuller, and other supporters of Christian missions in Great Britain. In the author’s account, the revision secured toleration for missionary work in India, where government resistance had previously made missionaries’ presence precarious. The change represents a shift in the conditions under which they could pursue their work, not simply a change in religious sentiment.

The author also describes a new ecclesiastical arrangement in the British possessions in the East: they were constituted an Episcopal see under a bishop and three archdeacons. The Rev. Doctor Middleton was the first bishop, followed by Bishop Heber, who had died by the time of the author’s account. The Rev. Dr. Wilson, then the bishop, is presented as a zealous supporter of the Gospel and of London religious societies. The text further reports a broader change in feeling among government officers and European residents in India: fears about missionary operations had subsided, and these groups were now disposed to support them.

The Earlier Exclusion and Its Reversal

The revision gains its significance from the episode that precedes it. In 1812, American missionaries including Judson and Newel were ordered to leave India and return to America. After about ten days in Calcutta, they were summoned and given an order requiring their immediate departure. The account describes the government as resolutely opposed to missions and records that a petty officer accompanied Hill and Judson to their residence and asked them not to leave without permission. The missionaries were watched and their departure pressed, rather than being allowed to remain and continue their work in Bengal.

That exclusion did not, in the author’s telling, end the mission. The missionaries were sent to the Burman empire, where the work subsequently prospered. The contrast is central to his interpretation of the sequence: a government’s attempt to close one route was followed by the opening of another, while the later charter revision changed the situation in India itself. The reversal therefore consists both in a new legal allowance and in the unexpected continuation of missionary work beyond the territory from which its agents had been expelled.

Providence and the Spread of the Gospel

The author places 1813 within a history in which outcomes emerge through ordinary political decisions and circumstances, rather than only through spectacular interventions. His account of the Book of Esther supplies the governing model: apparently separate events can combine to deliver the Jews, and what seems accidental in isolation can, in retrospect, appear directed toward a larger end. Applied to missionary history, this view makes even resistance potentially consequential, without treating the resistance itself as benevolent.

This interpretation belongs to a broader account of how the Gospel could reach more people. The author connects its diffusion to material and intellectual conditions: the invention of Paper, the later development of printing, and the gradual spread of reading made Scripture less scarce and more accessible. He notes that when books had to be copied by hand, even a Bible could cost as much to produce as an ordinary country church, while print eventually made it possible for families to possess copies. The charter revision is thus one political moment within a much longer account of the means by which Scripture and missionary work might reach wider populations.

The author also treats the transmission of the Bible through the Church of Rome as an instance of providential reversal. He argues that Scripture survived through an institution whose interests, in his view, should have led it to suppress or corrupt the text. These examples share a pattern: the spread of Christian teaching depends on historical channels that are imperfect, contested, or initially obstructive, yet may still serve ends their participants did not intend.

The Limits of Religious Expediency

The author does not infer that a useful outcome makes every means acceptable. He criticizes Christians who depart from what they understand as Christ’s institutions on the grounds that compromise may increase influence, raise funds, or extend access to the Gospel. In his view, God’s ability to bring good from ignorance or disobedience does not make the conduct itself right. The same distinction governs his treatment of the missionaries’ political setting: providential use of an exclusion does not amount to approval of the policy that imposed it.

He develops the point through his reading of Esther. He suggests that Mordecai’s desire for his kinswoman’s advancement may have been driven more by concern for the captive Jews than by personal ambition, while also arguing that Esther’s concealment of her religion and marriage to Ahasuerus exemplify the danger of seeking protection through worldly accommodation. He acknowledges that such a union may have produced some benefit for God’s people, but insists that benefit cannot justify a departure from divine command. Set beside the account of 1813, this argument gives the year a double significance: political change can provide an opening for missionary work, but success remains no warrant for treating expediency as a religious rule.