China, who, up to recent years, have been cut off almost entirely from direct Christian influences. The decade has been notable in the development of work for women students. Marked progress has also been made in work for school boys. There has been a great enlargement in the material equipment of student Christian Associations. While ten years ago there were only 21 buildings valued at £80,000, devoted to Christian Association work among students in four different countries, there are now 46 such buildings valued at not less than £270,000, and located in seven countries. The student movement of North America has made the most generous provision in this respect. The student conferences are both a source and an indication of the vitality and efficiency of the student movements. In 1895 there were held 10 national student conferences, which were attended that year by 2,600 delegates. Last year the national student movements conducted 55 conferences, which had in attendance over 8,000 delegates. It is estimated that during the past year the leaders of over five-sixths of the religious societies at work among students attended such conferences. The spiritual value of the movement gives it its exalted rank, making it one of the greatest factors in the development of modern religious life, especially in its influence upon the college life of the whole world. It puts the salvation and service of Christ before young men in the formative period of life, and before that class of young men whose advantages of position and culture make them doubly capacitated to be useful in the Master's service. College-bred men naturally as a class lead and mould thought and action in the immediate future. In all schools of secular learning, therefore, the imperative claims of the spiritual demand fitting statement and practical manifestation, so that we may be saved from the curse of a Godless intellectualism. No other organization known to us can do this so readily and thoroughly as this movement. The foreign missionary cause owes to this movement a debt it can never pay. A band of students who "volunteered" for work in the mission field, gave it its name; and true to its origin, it has sent out thousands of "student volunteers" into that harvest field which is so plenteous, while the laborers are so few. What has done more to call attention to the high dignity of the Christian ministry and the exalted qualities of character and culture demanded by it than this student volunteer movement, both as to the ministry at home and in the foreign field. An observing writer says: It is not too much to say that this movement has been the most powerful agency in missions, not merely for recruiting the forces in the field, but more especially in changing the mission cause from "a mere wrecking expedition" to "a war of conquest." The early prayer of the Church was that the heathen lands might be opened to the missionary. The later prayer was that men might be found to go. Both these prayers have been answered, but a far greater problem now confronts these young men. It is the question, "Who will send us?" The world is wide open, hundreds of young men are waiting the call, but the prayer for means still remains to be answered. Here is a great present-day opportunity, and problem of the Church. Student Literature Ten years ago there were six national student periodicals and less than 50 pamphlets and books published by the various student movements of the world. Now there are 20 periodicals, and the various student movements have issued at least 450 different pamphlets and books, all bearing upon the promotion of Christian life and work among and by students. There are few better indications of the power of the student movement than this expanding literature. Taking the world as a whole, the general attitude of students toward Christianity is unquestionably more favorable than it was 10 years ago. In nearly every country the universities and colleges constitute the most religious communities. As centers of spiritual life and influence they are in advance of the Christian community in general. Reports from all the nations show that with few exceptions there is less indifference concerning Christ and Christianity than at the beginning of the decade, and that Christian truth is being given a far wider hearing. The decade just closed has been a most notable period in evangelistic work and results among students. Among the most fruitful spiritual awakenings ever experienced in the West have taken place during the past five years at Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Virginia, Michigan, McGill and Toronto universities. and results during the decade has been without a parallel in the history of the religious life of the universities and colleges. In 1895 there were Organized Student Missionary Movements only in North America and Great Britain. Ten years ago in all the world there were not more than 2,000 students enrolled in mission study classes. During the past year there have been over 11,000. Prior to 1895 about 960 student volunteers had gone out to the foreign mission fields under the regular missionary societies, and most of these had gone from the United States. Since that time the number of sailed volunteers from North America and Europe has increased to 3,500. Equally encouraging is the fact that an even greater number of students who are not volunteers and who are planning to spend their lives in Christian countries have been led by the student movements to feel a like burden of responsibility for promoting the success of the foreign missionary movement. The old antithesis between the claims of the home and foreign fields is rapidly disappearing under the influence of the work and example of the Federation, which regards and treats the world as a unit. Among all the encouragements of recent years none have been greater than the growth of missionary spirit among the students in non-Christian countries. The students of Asia and Africa within 10 years have changed from being mere spectators of the sending of missionaries from older Christian lands into direct participants in the evangelization of their own and of other peoples. A Forecast Every effort should be made by the Federation to enter the lands which do not have Christian student movements. Chief among these stands Russia. In that vast field are tens of thousands of students. There probably are no students in the world, un less it be those of South America, who are more cut off from the influences of pure and aggressive Christianity. There is certainly no country where a wisely conducted student movement would be of more real service to the nation. So far as the eye of man can see the difficulties standing in the way of entering and cultivating the student centers of Russia seem insuperable. Still, these should not be permitted to stagger our faith. Barriers fully as great, which, in the not distant past blocked the entrance of the work of Christ to other fields, have been thrown down. Spain and Portugal in Southwestern Europe, and Greece and the Balkan States in Southeastern Europe, also constitute unoccupied fields which for every reason it is very desirable we should enter in the near future. They, too, present their difficulties, but none of these are sufficient to completely block the way. The students of Latin America, by which is meant the republics of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the West Indies, are a vast flock without a shepherd. In China the Church is confronted by a crisis the like of which this world has never known. At no time in the past have such vast multitudes of people been open to the aggressive influences of the Christian religion. For the first time in the history of that proud people is her official class, the literati, turning from her past to look to other lands for light to help them in this time of readjustment and transformation. Within five years this class, numbering fully a million students, from whose ranks come the real leaders of the nation, has become accessible to special Christian effort. The remarkable events in the Far East during the past two years have magnified more than ever the important and responsible place of the Japanese student movement not only in the life of the brilliant Japanese na tion, but also with reference to the Christianization of Asia. As we, the representatives of the World's Student Christian Federation, enter upon our second decade, with all its inspiring opportunities and possibilities, let us, even more than in the past, give Jesus Christ His rightful place of pre-eminence. Our brotherhood bears His namethe only Name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved the Name at which some day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. He constitutes the Corner Stone of our basis; and the experiences of student religious societies have convincingly shown that any other foundation is but shifting sand. Christ is the mighty unifying force who alone has been able to bind together all our nations and races; the nearer we keep to Him, the closer shall we be drawn together. It is into His Kingdom that students are streaming from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South. He is the great Magnet; if He continually be lifted up by the different movements, all classes of students will be inevitably drawn unto Him. Christ is our message; for He only can satisfy the consciences, the hearts and the minds of men. Only in Him and His Cross let our glory be. To Him must we go to learn those principles and methods which, no matter what our national and racial conditions, will be found to have universal adaptation. To carry out His programme is the only sufficient reason for the exist ence of the Federation and the only adequate goal of our effort. From Him we derive our life and power; and we do well to heed the lesson of history that every Christian organization which has ceased to preserve a vital relation to Him has soon become formal and lifeless. Therefore, related to Jesus Christ the Federation and its work will abide, for "He is the same yesterday, to-day, yea, and forever." BY REV. J. J. LUCAS, AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION, ALLAHABAD Every year, in January, Hindus by the thousands come from all parts of India to Allahabad to bathe in the Ganges at its junction with the Jumna. Thus they hope to wash away the stains of sin. Every twelfth year is the Kumbh Mela, which brings not thousands and tens of thousands as in other years, but hundreds of thousands, so that, on the big day of the Mela, this year the 24th of January, the bathers were estimated to be anywhere from a million and a half to over two millions. They came, even from Ceylon, as well as from the north-west frontier. From the parapet of the fort, one side fronting the Ganges, and the other the Jumna, could be seen a sea of heads bent toward the river junction, from long before daylight until near night. The crush was so great at one point that ten were trampled to death, not withstanding the careful provision made by the government to prevent accident of any kind. A thousand policemen were on the grounds, working under the eye of experienced English officers. These officers had the delicate and difficult task of assigning places in the procession to the various orders of Fakirs, each order wishing a place near the front so as to be among the first to bathe after the rising of the sun. Long ago many a pitched battle had been fought here by these Hindu sects, each claiming precedence and each ready to fight to secure it. Now order after order, each preceded by its spiritual leaders. on elephants or in palanquins, with English officers on horses leading the way and keeping it open, march from their encampments near by to the junction of the rivers. A sight of these processions on the big days of the Mela is one never to be forgotten, and one to fill the heart with shame, sorrow and pity. Procession after procession of Fakirs, wholly unclothed, their bodies smeared with a coating of ashes and their heads heavy with great coils of hair, passed slowly down the avenue, kept open for them by the police, lined not by trees, but by a sea of faces-men, women, and children, looking at them with eyes full of awe and reverence, while they seemed all unconscious of it. These men claim. to have reached that state when nothing affects them, neither cold nor heat, pain nor pleasure, praise nor reproach. When I remonstrated with an intelligent Hindu, on the shameful sight, he replied: "Can you not appreciate the power these men have attained that they endure this nakedness without pain or shame. Why you, sir, wear a hat to protect your head. Where is your power as compared with theirs?" Thus the common people look upon them as having power over the elements of nature and with the gods, far beyond that of other men. Hence they worship them, holding the hands clasped as they pass on in the procession and running after them to gather up the dust on which they have trod, placing it reverently on their foreheads. I spent a morning visiting the encampments of these men, half a mile distant from the river junction. Here is a peep into one of them. From a pole a hundred feet high, a great flag flying, showing the order of Fakirs, Nagas, Paramhanses, Bairagis, or Sadhus, to which the encampment belongs. Within, a row of grass huts on each side, into which I take it most of them creep at night to find some shelter from the cold, the thermometer showing about 40° these nights. In the day they sit in the sun without clothing. Here is a little group of eight seated, nude, their bodies covered with a coating of ashes, giving their skin a whitish look, with a line of red paint or powder drawn down the forehead, while their hair, uncombed for years, is wrapped in a great coil on the top of their heads. These eight men are sitting in a circle on a platform made of earth, about a foot above the ground, while in the center of the circle are two or three small logs of wood slowly burning. Men, women, and children approach this platform, some prostrating themselves before these men, kissing their feet, while others kneel and touch their feet reverently with the hand, usually making some offering of copper coin. Upon this the Faqir takes up ashes from near where he is sitting and puts them into the hand. of the worshiper, who reverently places some on his own forehead or in his mouth, while not a few also receive a small portion, wrapping it up carefully to take home to the far away village, to be used in time of sickness or need. The heart as it looks on cries out: Poor, poor India, how low has she fallen and how sad her state when she looks to such men for help and comfort. But are not some of these men sincere and true seekers after God, even tho by sitting naked in the ashes, their faces disfigured by paint and powders? I tried to look beneath these things, but not a face among these Nagas or Paramhanses, which looked as tho it had any fellowship with the pure and good and noble. I fear that they have done much to pull poor India down into the dust, and so long as the people look to them for light and uplifting, they will look in vain. Some of these orders of naked Fakirs have great estates and much wealth, increasing this from time to time. In one of their processions were twenty-one elephants, some of them their own property, I was told, and the others sent for their use by Rajahs and rich men. Is there nothing else to see at this great Mela save these Gymnosophists? Yes, much more. There is the preaching tent of the Christians, to which not a few come and sit quietly listening to the Gospel. Some come with the questions which trouble them. One would not let me go or hear anything, until I answered the question of how God, a pure and holy Spirit, could create matter so full of defilement and imperfection. His theory was that matter is eternal, even as God is. Another claimed to be sinless, and to the question whether he loved others as himself, he claimed that he did, and then and there was ready to strip himself of his clothing to give to any one who needed it. Not far from the Christian tent was the preaching place of the Arya Samaj, and alongside of it the tent of the "Defenders of the Cow," who, from morning till night, declaimed against the sin of taking the life of this animal. A little farther on is a building, made largely of bamboos, with a grass roof, over the entrance of which is written, "Sanatan Dharm Ka Maha Sabha," which might be translated, "The Great Assembly of the Ancient Religion." Sanatan means eternal, without beginning or end. There is yet another assembly of Hindus on the Mela ground, whose leader is the Maharaja of Durbhanga. On their camping ground are, perhaps, twenty tents pitched, in the center of which is a large tent, open at the sides, where the assembly meets. This gathering, like that of the "Maha Sabha," has for its end to prop up the tottering walls of old Hinduism. The sad refrain in nearly every address was that India has fallen from her high estate. Once she led the nations of the earth, and now she is far in the rear. Two chief causes were given: First, she has neglected Sanscrit and the sacred books. Sanscrit is now a dead language and the Vedas, and Shastras are studied by a few here and there. The remedy to be found is a Hindu university, in which the study of Sanscrit and the sacred books shall be given. the first place. A letter was read from the leader of the Mohammedan community in Bombay, His Highness, Aga Khan, giving Rs. 5,000 toward the founding of a Hindu university at Benares, expressing the hope that one day a Mohammedan university at Aligash, and a Hindu one at Benares, would be to India what Oxford and Cambridge had been to England. The speakers were not slow to make an ap |