Muhammadans.

non connected with our work in all lands. Such men are awakened and converted to God, but the task of reaching them is difficult, and their subsequent life is often less satisfactory than others. We should distinguish between an ordinary Hindu who fails to respect the truth, and a deliberate liar who has learned his vice in defiance of Christian teaching; but after making all allowances, we will find just here one of our most serious difficulties. Aside from all other short-comings, in this one respect we find the Hindu mind so far warped as to be ill prepared to receive

our message.

5. Thus far I have treated the difficulties of our work as if they arose exclusively from the Hindu community, and many who have battled in earnest, but wearisome and not very profitable, controversy with Muhammadan opponents, may wonder why so little account is made of foes so hostile and so uncompromising. It cannot be denied that Muhammadanism in India is a great power, and it is a power which is wielded with great energy in opposition to Christianity. All that makes this faith a most formidable obstacle to the missionary in other Asiatic countries, belongs to it in India also, with some additional weapons which it has borrowed from Hinduism. My reason for giving it little prominence in this discussion, is not that it is of littlo importance, but because it acts as a supporting wing of Hinduism. Hostile as the Hindu and Muhammadan may be to each other, they are nevertheless found side by side in trying to oppose active proselytism. So long as a mere argument is at stake, they are often like the Pharisees and Sadducees of old, ready to turn away from a Christian opponent to quarrel with one another; but whenever active proselytism begins, they are a unit in opposing the missionary. In this opposition, however, the numerical superiority of the Hindus, their more perfect drill, the traditions and customs of the country, all combine to thrust the Muhammadan into the background, although he may be in many cases the most active agent in the contest. Convert the Hindus and India is converted. The Muhammadans are diametrically opposed in faith to Hinduism; but in the contest with Christianity they are powerfully supported by the presence of the teeming millions of Hindu fellow countrymen, and are forced into alliance with them by the presence of a common danger. Make all the Hindus Christians, and Muhammadanism, impervious and immoveable as it seems, would soon melt away.

among co

6. It is time to turn now to other hindrances, found not Hindrances among the natives of the country, but among those who religionists. are our co-religionists in India. Here, too, the necessary brevity of this paper will make it impossible for me to notice all the points which present themselves, and I must confine myself to two or three only. Among these, our position as members of a conquering race, if not a serious difficulty, is certainly not an advantage. It is a hindrance, however, which can be overcome. In primitive times the most successful Missionaries belonged to a race obnoxious to the whole world, but they surmounted this disadvantage. If we come among the people with the mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, if we become partakers of that divine charity which makes its possessor, like his Master, the brother of every human being, we will be lifted above the influence of national prejudices, and make every one feel that he stands in a near relation to us.

7. It will be expected that I say something about the Influences of Christian com immoral lives of the soldiers who are sent to India. The munities. drunken soldier who disgraces his supposed religion in the bazars of India, has become a traditional character in many circles. He is made to carry enormous burdens, and at his door is laid the guilt of thousands no more righteous than himself. I am not prepared to join in this outcry against the wicked soldier. He is a stumbling-block, no doubt, to many; but his influence is less than that of any other class of Christians in the country. Natives do not look upon soldiers as ordinary Christians, and could easily be made to understand that they were exceptional characters, if they were exceptional. But are they? What is the standard of Christianity which the ordinary Christian communities of India set before the natives? In almost every city a Christian community is found, made of Europeans, Eurasians, and Natives. Taking these people as a whole, what is their moral character? What idea will a Hindu naturally form of the true influence of Christianity upon human character from the examples furnished by these communities? These are very delicate questions, but they cannot be evaded, and ought to have been asked and answered a generation ago. I would gladly avoid a definite reply, but fidelity to our cause will not permit silence. It is my sad conviction, and I would to God that I could be proved in error, that in many of our larger cities the standard of morals in the Christian community is scarcely higher than that of the Hindus. In cach of these communities some

Infinences of
Churches.

good Christian men may be found, better men than can be found in the Hindu community, but these exceptions are too few. The natives naturally see the worst side of the community most clearly, and where heathen and Christian live side by side, the former rarely is edified by the godly example of the latter. None but those who have carefully investigated this matter, will be prepared to believe the stories that might be told of the immorality of these communities. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans we have a frighful portraiture of the sins of heathenism, and we very frequently hear this referred to as a faithful delineation of the worst phase of human character ever known. Nearly all the sins in that horrible list are practised to some extent among the Christians of India, and both Hindus and Muhammadans are aware of this, and form their ideas of Christian morality accordingly. It may be said that these sins are known only among the very lowest classes, but how is an ordinary Hindu to know this? In almost every community some conspicuous examples of shameless profligacy are seen by all natives, and the inference too often is that all are alike. A native of ordinary intelligence cannot be expected to make nice moral discriminations of character, and so long as the mass of professing Christians illustrate by their lives the very reverse of Christianity, we must expect the influence of the community to be unfavorable to our work.

8. But if we select the very best of the Christian community from the mass, and look at them in their organic capacity as a Church, is the spectacle just what we need in India? We are Missionaries, pioneers of a new work, trying to evangelize a heathen community, and we need the support of churches of like character. Every thing that is distinctively Christian in India should be consistent with the Missionary character of Christianity itself. In the days of Paul every church was a missionary church, and we cannot in our age, without obvious inconsistency, maintain churches in the midst of heathen communities, in which no element of direct, aggressive evangelism is found. A Missionary goes forth with his grand commission and preaches what he calls the good news of salvation. He speaks of eternal things, pleads for the highest interests, insists that immortal souls will live or perish as they receive or reject his message, and proclaims in every street and village that Christians are men entrusted with the solemn duty of rescuing a fallen world from the powers of evil. For this the

Church exists, and for this her agencies are carried on. The Hindus or Muhammadans who hear this kind of preaching would be dull indeed if they did not perceive that the churches of India were paying no attention to any such commission, were in fact unconscious of any responsibility resting upon them. What is there that is peculiarly evangelistic in an ordinary Indian church? A collection is sometimes taken, money is given freely for the cause by some members, and occasionally an effort is made to do some good among the poor and neglected; but where is the church that can be compared for a moment in point of glowing missionary zeal, with the believers of Thessalonica or Ephesus?

required.

I have no wish to inveigh against the religious character High standard of the churches of India. They are as good as the corresponding churches of Europe, and many noble Christians support them. But the situation in India is peculiar, and we need better churches here than elsewhere. The missionary and the churches must be one in purpose and action. The natives must be familiarized with the spectacle of working Christians, and must learn what no one needed to be told in the days of Paul, that every Christian is, from the very nature of his faith, an untiring propagandist. That the present inconsistent attitude of the Church in India is a serious hindrance to us, can hardly be doubted. Again and again I have heard the objection urged that none but the Missionaries hold the kind of faith which is preached, and often the charge is directly made that one Gospel is preached in the bazaar, and quite a different one in the station church. "A city set upon a hill cannot be hid." The Indian Church, it is greatly to be feared, is hid, and hence there must be something wrong about its situation.

9. While speaking of the Christian Church in India, I Intemperance. must not omit to mention a gigantic evil which is making sad havoc among her children. I need hardly say that I allude to intemperance. We have come to a temperate people with a Gospel which ranks drunkenness among the sins that exclude one from the kingdom of God, and yet the startling fact confronts us that we are building up a Church in which intemperance is alarmingly prevalent. I have no wish to state the case too strongly; but admitting all that is claimed by those who put a lower estimate upon the magnitude of this evil, we are forced to the sad conclusion that Indian Christians are less temperate by far than Hindus or Muhammadans. My own observation has convinced me

that in some communities drunkenness is disgracefully prevalent. My dear brethren, we must face this question. If idol-worship, if Mahommedanism, if Brahmoism, if any heresy, appeared among our people, how quickly we would fly to the point of danger to rescue those in peril! And yet here is a sin which God has written down in the same catalogue with idolatry, adultery, and murder, spreading all through our Churches, and we look on almost unconcerned ! We see the anniversary of our Saviour's birth celebrated by shameful drunkenness, and the ever blessed name thus profaned among the heathen, and yet we lift no voice and stir no finger against the sin. God is not mocked. He does not wink at this iniquity, and He will not bless us by giving us the heathen while we continue to keep this pit-fall for their feet. Better that a man remain a Hindu than perish by this stalking vice. A sober Hindu is a better man than a drunken Christian, and I would infinitely rather see a heathen bowing down before his idol, than a Christian intoxicated with strong drink, Bear with me if I speak warmly on this question, but speak I must. I have had a painful experience in contending against this vice. For three years past I have been almost daily engaged in trying to rescue Christian men and women from the jaws of this destroying monster, and I have learned, I trust, to hate it "with a perfect hatred." I have pointed out this sad hindrance to our work, and now I beg to be allowed to express my conviction that we, the Missionaries of India, have it in our power to arrest the further progress of the evil. If we wholly avoid even the appearance of complicity with it, if we show our people that we truly regard this sin as a sin, if we learn one more exceedingly simple lesson of selfdenial, and wholly abstain from the use of that which destroys our brethren for whom Christ died, we may soon have an Indian Church into which the weakest heathen may be brought without danger to both his body and soul. 10. Another hindrance may be found in the distance ary and Native. that separates the Missionary from the Native. We cannot exert much influence upon men until we get near to them, and in India more than any other country in the world, we find missionary labor carried on across a gaping social and religious chasm. Caste and social usages largely account for this; but perhaps the unconscious influence of the ruling race to which we belong has more to do with it than we suspect. How are we to get nearer to the people? How are we to place ourselves upon the same plane with them,

Distance botween Mission