The Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D
In Two Volumes, with Portraits by Jeens

A two-volume, 1879 biography of an early Scottish Presbyterian missionary who influenced educational reform in colonial India.

George Smith (Author)

9781108008297, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 March 2010

496 pages, 1 b/w illus. 1 map
21.6 x 14 x 2.8 cm, 0.63 kg

George Smith (1833–1919) spent many years in India as an educator and editor of the Calcutta Review. He was a great supporter of missionary work and became secretary of the foreign mission committee of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870. He also wrote popular books of missionary biography including this two-volume Life of Alexander Duff (1879). Duff (1806–1878) was the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland and a leading figure in promoting Christian education in India. Duff pioneered what he called 'downward filter theory' which centred on educating India's upper caste through English in the hope that this elite group would then take responsibility for the evangelisation and modernisation of South Asia. Volume 1 describes Duff's life until 1843, covering his education in Scotland, his arrival in Calcutta and the founding of his school, the General Assembly Institution.

1. The boy and the student
2. The first missionary of the Church of Scotland
3. The two shipwrecks
4. Calcutta as it was
5. The mine prepared
6. The first explosion and the four converts
7. The renaissance in India - the English language and the church
8. The renaissance in India - science and letters
9. Work for Europeans, Eurasians and native Christians
10. The invalid and the orator
11. Dr Duff organising
12. Fishers of men
13. Egypt-Sinai-Bombay-Madras
14. Fighting the Governor-General
15. The college and its spiritual fruit.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2]