owed
to sit apart; and to this, as one great object was to obtain their
attention, the Bishop consented, with a reservation that it was only for
that once. The church was thronged, and after a Tamul service, the
Bishop preached, pausing after every sentence that a catechist might
render his words into Tamul. The text was, "Walk in love, as Christ also
loved us," and the latter part of his discourse was on the lesson from
the Good Samaritan, as to "who is my neighbour." There was at the end a
long pause of breathless silence, and then he called on everyone present
to offer up the following prayer: "Lord, give me a broken heart to
receive the love of Christ, and obey His commands." The whole
congregation repeated the words aloud in Tamul, and then he gave the
blessing and dismissed them.

After this there were a great number of private conferences. People came
and owned that they had been very unhappy; religion had died in their
hearts, and they had had no peace; but their wives were the great
objectors--they feared whether they should marry their daughters, &c. &c.
The two priests especially saw the badness of their standing-ground, but
they should lose respect, they said. No Pariah seems to have been in
holy orders, but if a Pariah catechist visited a sick person, he was not
allowed to come under the roof, and the patient was carried out into the
verandah. And then came a rather stormy conference with about 150
Soodras, which occupied two days, since every sentence had to pass
through an interpreter. The objections were various, but as a body the
resistance continued, and it was only individuals that came over; some of
these, however, did, and it was so clear from all that had passed that to
permit the distinctions was but a truckling to heathenism, that the
Bishop was more than ever resolved on firmness. Two of the priests had
conformed, and the Christianity of those who would not do so was plainly
not worth having.

There was some polite intercourse with Serfojee's son, whose taste was
visible in the alteration of a fine statue of his father by Flaxman, from
which the white marble turban had been removed to substitute a coloured
one, with black feathers and tassels. In him the family has become
extinct, since he only left a daughter, and the adoption of a son, after
the old Hindoo fashion, has not been permitted by Government.

Thence, Bishop Wilson proceeded towards Trichinopoly. He encamped, by
the way