Soom. . a 
 SlaaAcas F e, 
 
 Working With Christ for India 
 
 Oscar MacMillan Buck 
 
To 
 My Indian Friends 
 Whose Composite Picture 
 Appears in the 
 Fazl Masth 
 of These Pages 
 
 Copyright, 1922, by Arthur F. Stevens 
 
 The Bible text printed in this volume is taken from the American Standard Edition of the Revised Bible, 
 Copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and is used by permission 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Lue eMrtaopisr Boor —Goncrmrn 
 ( Founded 178g ) RE 
 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
 BOSTON PITTSBURGH LGNINIGYANS (CIMOE DETROIT ‘ SAN FRANCISCO 
 PORTLAND, OREGON 
 
WORKING WITH CHRIST FOR INDI 
 
 Oscar MacMillan Buck 
 
 A course of twelve studies 
 
 I 
 
 a ee 8 ne 
 
 India’s Place in the World 
 
 Scripture References: Luke 14. 25-27; 10. 38-42; Mark 6. 34-44 
 
 It WAS EASTER MORNING — 
 Easter of 1922—that I discovered my 
 good friend and neighbor Thomas Gray 
 in trouble. I stepped into his home 
 after the sunrise service to bid him 
 Easter cheer and felt at once the storm 
 raging in that family circle, so closely 
 knit together in pride and joy and deep 
 affection. It was more than a storm: 
 it was an earthquake; and even an out- 
 sider like myself could from his distance, 
 as on a seismograph, detect clearly the 
 upheaval as it rose and fell and rose 
 again. Not that anything was said— 
 just then. It was all too deep and 
 fundamental for any words. I sensed 
 it and I left. 
 
 Thomas Gray’s two hobbies were his 
 family and his country. As he loved 
 one so he loved the other. As he served 
 one so he served the other. America 
 and home were the two great pillars 
 that upheld his life. If any great Sam- 
 son of circumstance should lean against 
 them too heavily, his life was ruined. 
 This passion for America was the spirit 
 of his ancestors living again in him— 
 noble men and women who had shown 
 their patriotism in true sacrifice and 
 suffering. This passion for home was 
 the gentle work of Hannah Gray, his 
 wife, and of John and Eleanor, their 
 children, upon a life capable of deep 
 emotions. In the laboratory of his 
 soul, year after year, the chemistry of 
 their love worked wonders. To keep 
 his home unbroken and to keep Amer- 
 ica unsullied by the outer world, per- 
 fect and self-sustaining within her own 
 borders,—these were the Master lights 
 of all his seeing. 
 
 And now from the depths he cried 
 out in pain. 
 
 A Letter That Troubled 
 
 My telephone rang, and Thomas 
 Gray called me back. When I reached 
 his home, he segted me and then in 
 silence laid a letter on my lap. I 
 picked it up and read: 
 
 “DEAREST FATHER: 
 
 “TI am strangely moved to-night and 
 cannot sleep. One of the fellows 
 brought to the college dormitory a 
 
 friend of his—a young Christian Indian, 
 from India, who is a student in another 
 
 college. His name is Fazl Masih (I had 
 
 him write it down for me), which means > 
 
 ‘the grace of Christ.’ He sat down 
 among us, a little group of seven in my 
 room, and just talked. It was not his 
 words alone but his whole person that 
 glowed with some strange power. Our 
 hearts burned within us as he talked. 
 He is strangely quiet, and we grew 
 strangely quiet too. He has only two 
 topics on which he loves to talk, and 
 by the hour he talks on either or on 
 both. Frequently he puts the two to- 
 gether. I never saw a man who could 
 talk of Christ by the hour as he does and 
 all the while hold us rapt in wonder. 
 He spoke long of troubled India and 
 then of Christ and India. At the end 
 he said, very quietly and very simply 
 but just as if the Christ were speaking: 
 “Will not some of you come out and, in 
 this troubled land of mine, live the 
 Christ life before my people?’ And, 
 father, I laid my hand in his and prom- 
 ised to _Prepare myself for this great 
 service.’ 
 
 “Tom,” I said as I handed the letter 
 back to Mr. Gray, “I know Faz] Masih. 
 We were boys together—he in the mis- 
 sion school and I in the missionary’s 
 home. He is coming this week to see 
 
 me. Before you answer John’s letter 
 talk with him.” 
 
 And that is how the whole thing 
 started. | f 
 
 The Grace of Christ’’ 
 
 It was only three days later that 
 Thomas Gray met Fazl Masih, tall 
 and slender, his face a walnut brown, 
 his hair black and shining, dressed as we 
 dress except for the Indian turban, 
 which, in accordance with our custom, 
 he removed on entering the house. 
 Mr. Gray looked into his eyes and felt 
 the subtle power of a radiant personality. 
 
 Seated in the home of Thomas Gray, 
 we came right to the point. 
 
 “T have only one son, Mr. — what 
 shall I call you?” 
 
 “Fazl Masih—the grace of Christ,” 
 answered the man of India. “The 
 two words cannot be separated even in 
 America.” 
 
 ““Fazl Masih, I have one son, on 
 whom my affections and my hopes are 
 focused. I have planned large things 
 for him. He is to be wealthy, famous, a 
 power 1n the church and the community, 
 a true patriot serving America joyfully, 
 ungrudgingly in these years when 
 America, if ever, needs loyal sons and 
 daughters, when American institutions 
 and ideals are in such imminent danger 
 of disintegration. And you have won 
 
 his heart for India—a land far off, filled 
 
 India’s snow-capped mountains 
 
with countless heathen people who can 
 _ neither read nor write, a land of really 
 small significance to the world. I mean 
 this: it makes little difference to the rest 
 of the world whether India is prosperous 
 or not, whether its people are ignorant, 
 superstitious, poor, or not. So they 
 have been through the ages. Why not 
 let them remain so—at least as far as 
 the rest of the world is concerned? And 
 what is India to America—is it not 
 England’s concern rather than ours? 
 England does not send missionaries to 
 the Philippines. That is our business. 
 Why should America, then, assume 
 the responsibility of the British 
 churches? You take John from us and 
 what do you do? You break up our 
 home, you bring shadows and darkness 
 over our lives in these years when chil- 
 dren are a comfort and blessing to 
 parents, you ruin the career of a bril- 
 liant young man. You deprive Amer- 
 ica of one who has been nourished in the 
 ideals of Washington and Franklin and 
 Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt. 
 You waste his ability and fineness of 
 temper on crude material, on people 
 who, for the present time at least, have 
 a very small part in the world’s affairs. 
 I am speaking frankly—perhaps of- 
 fensively.” 
 
 Fazl Masih Tells a Parable 
 
 Fazl Masih smiled sadly ere he re- 
 plied: 
 
 “Once there was a king whose king- 
 dom was very great; and his servants 
 built him, out of the oak and walnut, 
 the cherry and maple, which grew in 
 great forests in one part of his kingdom, 
 wonderful palaces and cities. But there 
 lay in another corner of his kingdom 
 a great forest, where the trees grew 
 thick and uncut. When the king spoke 
 of that forest, his servants ever replied: 
 ‘Lord, the forest is distant, and the 
 trees are strange. Nothing can be made 
 there worth the trouble and expense. 
 Are not these palaces of thine numer- 
 ous and beautiful enough to please 
 thee? We will build more and larger!’ 
 But the king was unsatisfied and called 
 his son, who was trained in woodcraft 
 (many called him the carpenter) and 
 sent him without noise and with a few 
 loyal and skilled workmen into that 
 great southern forest. There they 
 found strange woods indeed—ebony 
 and mahogany, teak and sandal, sal 
 and rose—; and there in that distant 
 region went up a temple that to those 
 who entered it seemed so richly filled 
 with the glory and praise of God as to 
 cause them great wonder why the 
 temple had not been built long before. 
 And the king found great delight in it, 
 
 I—India’s Place in the World | 
 
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 A map of India 
 
 especially so because it was the wood- 
 craft of his own son and those who went 
 with him.” 
 
 “That is only a parable,” said Mr. 
 Gray. 
 
 “Did not our Christ use parables to 
 teach us truths that otherwise we should 
 not have learned?” 
 
 “Yes, but this age wants facts, not 
 parables; knowledge, not sentiment,” 
 answered Mr. Gray, I thought rather 
 sharply. 
 
 “It thinks it does,” answered Fazl 
 Masih; “but the human heart does not 
 change. Deep down its intellectual 
 creed of the survival of the fittest, in 
 which all its striving and competitions 
 express themselves so naturally, gives 
 way to the ineradicable belief in the 
 value of individuality. “To seek and to 
 save that which was lost’ is not, even 
 to this materialistic age, the last ab- 
 surdity; it is a part of the eternal fitness 
 of things. To seek and to save India is, 
 strange to say, not mocked at any 
 longer, but, as never before, seems the 
 proper thing to do. So does the hu- 
 man heart belie the human head even 
 in our age.” 
 
 2 
 
 Eleanor had come in. 
 “You folks are getting: beyond me,” 
 she said, laughing. 
 
 Practical Matters 
 
 “Well, let us be practical, then,” 
 said Fazl Masih, smiling. “And let me 
 introduce you to my country and its 
 place in the world. I would much 
 rather talk of three hundred and nine- 
 teen millions of people and what would 
 take place if Jesus, the risen Christ, 
 should lay his hand on each of them in 
 turn and bid him look up and see, rise 
 and walk, and sin no more, and come, 
 and abide, and go, and do all the other 
 blessed things he gave folks to do when 
 living in the flesh. But this is the twen- 
 tieth century, and Christians like other 
 reasons—reasons purged of all senti- 
 ment. The Shepherd to-day must ex- 
 plain in psychology and economics and 
 world politics why he left the ninety and 
 nine and went after the one. And to his 
 friends in his home he must interpret 
 the strategy of the rescue and give 
 adequate reasons for "his joy. Am I 
 speaking offensively now, Mr. Gray?” 
 
 “We are quits, Faz! Masih. Go on.” 
 
“Did you ever think, Mr. Gray, how 
 closely tied together the nations of the 
 new world find themselves? Telegraphs 
 and cables, railroads and steamship 
 lines, the airplane, wireless, and now 
 the radio, commerce, literature, travel, 
 conferences, labor movements and 
 unions, the Christian missionary enter- 
 prise, war, peace, politics and diplo- 
 macy, health and disease, science, art,— 
 the lines of all of these are gone out to 
 the ends of the earth. These are the 
 threads that weave our human life into 
 one garment. As was the Christ’s robe, 
 so will this robe soon become—one, 
 woven from top to bottom without 
 seam. And in this woven garment 
 India holds an important place. With- 
 out India the world would suffer lack. 
 Its size, geographical location, large 
 population, ancient history and achieve- 
 ments, products, spirit,—all these stand 
 ready to enrich our common humanity. 
 India comes no beggar to the banquet 
 hall of the association of nations, hold- 
 ing out her hands and asking in God’s 
 mercy an alms; she comes with a long 
 train of servants bearing rich viands. 
 Yet in all her wealth she lacks the one 
 thing needful, lacking which all else is 
 poverty: she lacks the living Christ.” 
 
 India’s Commercial Position 
 
 Could you have seen the face of Fazl 
 Masih—it was the face of Him who, see- 
 ing the multitudes, “had compassion 
 on them, because they were as sheep 
 not having a shepherd.” The man of 
 India continued: 
 
 “Take India’s size—as large as the 
 United States east of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, or forty times the size of the 
 State of Ohio. In geographical position 
 India is Asia abutting on the southern 
 ocean, where Europe is Asia thrown 
 into the Atlantic, and China Asia pro- 
 jecting into the Pacific. All the vessels 
 plying the Indian Ocean, going from 
 Europe to the Far East, pass its doors. 
 Many are drawn in to carry off its jute 
 and wheat, cotton and sugar, hides and 
 tea, in exchange for manufactured ar- 
 ticles of various sorts. 
 
 “India’s contribution is twofold—the 
 things of the farm and the things of the 
 spirit. Food for the body and food for 
 the soul does India offer to receive in 
 turn the manufactured articles of civil- 
 ization. Yet even here there is a change; 
 for India, since the war, is rapidly de- 
 veloping its industries, but not to the 
 diminution of its greatest interests— 
 agriculture and religion. 
 
 “And India, Mr. Gray, is now a link 
 in the give-and-take of international 
 dealing. India’s poverty lowers the 
 prosperity of the world; India’s present 
 
 I—India’s Place in the World 
 
 unrest adds to the general confusion 
 and distress; India’s fever of ignorance 
 and superstition and disease affects the 
 health of the world.” 
 
 Interdependent 
 
 “Yes,” I interrupted, “take this from 
 a recent magazine: “The chairman of 
 the greatest British banking institution 
 —the Right Honorable Reginald Mc- 
 Kenna—at the annual meeting of the 
 stockholders of that institution a few 
 weeks ago, illustrating how the influ- 
 ence of depression in one country ex- 
 tends to another country, called atten- 
 tion to the fact that the falling off of 
 sales of tea in Russia had depressed the 
 tea industry in India, and that this loss 
 of buying power in the chief market for 
 British cotton goods had caused unem- 
 ployment in Manchester, which in turn 
 had affected the prosperity of the cot- 
 ton growers in the United States. We 
 know that the effects did not end with 
 the cotton growers, for their loss of 
 income was reflected in unemployment 
 throughout the industries.’ ! 
 
 “T am a student of this country,” 
 continued Faz] Masih after a pause, 
 “come to your shores to study from this 
 side our common world. The West sees 
 with one eye, the East with another; 
 and the two must focus ere we can have 
 true vision. Is it not so? India has for 
 long centuries looked at life from the 
 viewpoint of the spiritual and the eter- 
 nal, and you have been looking at it 
 with an eye to the material and tempo- 
 ral. Are your desires not for your son, 
 John, as you have just now expressed 
 them, desires that have to do with 
 success and prosperity in the things of 
 this life? Is that the extent of your 
 ambition for your son? India would 
 correct—or, rather, complete—the am- 
 bition. It would be to the rich nations 
 of the West the apostle of spiritual 
 wealth and power, and they in turn 
 might teach it to value more the good 
 things of the here and now. So, hand 
 in hand, they will enjoy God’s time and 
 God’s eternity, God’s things of sense and 
 his things of spirit, with the Christ, who 
 sums them all up in himself as the center 
 and inspiration of their common life.” 
 
 An Apt Analogy 
 
 “You mean,” said Mr. Gray,—and I 
 was amazed at his insight—‘“‘that India 
 is Mary, who sits to listen and to learn 
 and to worship; while America is Mar- 
 tha, busied about many things and 
 troubled oe 
 
 “Put it that way if you will,” said 
 Faz] Masih. “What I mean is this: 
 Each sister has her place, and both to- 
 gether make for Lazarus and for Jesus 
 
 1 Our World, April, 1922. 
 
 3 
 
 the home. If we despise Martha, then 
 there is no eating; and if Mary has no 
 recognition, then there is no spiritual 
 insight or inspiration at the common 
 meal.” 
 
 “You are again getting too deep for 
 me,” said Eleanor, rising. 
 
 India in World Politics 
 
 “Sit down, Miss Eleanor, and we will 
 come back to something more simple. 
 How about world politics? I suppose 
 you know that India for a hundred 
 years or more has been making and re- 
 making the maps of the world. Is India 
 of little consequence to the world out- 
 side her borders, of little consequence 
 to America? Did you never realize 
 how central the place of India is in 
 world politics? 
 
 “No, I never did,” said Mr. Gray. 
 “I doubt if you can make your point.” 
 
 “Then listen, sir,” said Fazl Masih. 
 “India has been and still is the rudder 
 of British foreign policy. Great Britain 
 has steered its course consistently, with 
 all its consequences, according to the 
 safety of India. 
 
 “The British occupation of South 
 Africa and East Africa; the Russian 
 pressure to the east for a warm-water 
 harbor, with its effects on Japan; the 
 opening of China to trade; the British 
 taking over of Egypt and the Sudan; 
 the preservation of the Ottoman Em- 
 pire; British policies in Afghanistan, 
 Tibet, and Persia; the Anglo-Japanese 
 alliance; the British mandates in Meso- 
 potamia and Palestine; the attempts 
 to come to terms with the Bolsheviki of 
 Russia,—all these more or less directly 
 are due to India. 
 
 “But it is not this that concerns me,” 
 Faz] Masih added quickly. ‘“T¢ is far 
 more important that India find its place 
 in the empire of Christ than be the corner 
 stone in the structure of the British Em- 
 pire.” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 WHY should America assume responsi- 
 bility for the religious welfare of a de- 
 pendency of Great Britain? 
 
 What is the meaning of the parable 
 told by Fazl Masih? 
 
 What strategic place in the family of 
 nations does India occupy? 
 
 Name some geographical and material 
 factors that make India one of the 
 world’s greatest countries. 
 
 How big is India? (Compare with 
 the United States.) 
 
 Is India solely an agricultural nation? 
 
 What special contribution has India 
 to offer Western civilization? 
 
 To what extent do conditions in India 
 control world politics? Explain. 
 
II 
 
 Can Any Good Thing Come Out of 
 
 K hairpur? 
 
 Scripture References: John 1. 43-46; Mark 16. 14, 15; Matt. 18. 10-14 
 
 THE NEXT FRIDAY John came 
 home for the spring vacation, and I 
 persuaded Faz] Masih to spend some 
 days with us. I shall always remember 
 the morning when we rode back in Mr. 
 Gray’s big car from an inspection of the 
 modern dairy in which he had a con- 
 trolling interest. Fazl Masih had been 
 greatly impressed, and the reason I 
 partly understood even before he him- 
 self declared it: “Kindness to animals 
 is part of my Hindu heritage. There is 
 no country in the world in which ani- 
 mals and birds are so fearless. Even 
 animals that destroy human life go un- 
 harmed because we do not like to kill. 
 Kindness to insects and reptiles, to birds 
 and beasts, and cruelty to living men 
 and women and little children! That 
 is the way of India—and of the 
 world.” 
 
 We sat in silence, and Fazl Masih 
 went on: “It is that which hurt the 
 Christ, but fails to hurt us as it should. 
 We continue in his name to lift sheep 
 out of the pit while we allow a man’s 
 arm to remain withered, to loose the 
 ox and the ass from the stall and lead 
 them to watering from sanitary pumps 
 while women are kept in bondage. We 
 keep modern d:iri s and at the same 
 time, without a thought, let little chil- 
 dren perish like flies on sticky fly 
 paper.” 
 
 “When did I ever do such a thing?” 
 asked Mr. Gray rather warmly. 
 
 “Mr. Gray, you are near-sighted, as 
 
 are most men and women, and your 
 hearing is not acute.” 
 
 “Father sees and hears perfectly.” 
 It was Eleanor who interrupted almost 
 savagely, taking her father’s part. 
 
 Near-Sightedness 
 
 “Yes, Miss Eleanor, his immediate 
 surroundings he sees perfectly; his 
 home, his dairy, his community, his 
 friends. He is a good father, a good 
 citizen, an asset to his town. But, Miss 
 Eleanor,—but, Mr. Gray, the multi- 
 tudes of earth are strangcrs to you and 
 outside your ken. Somehow to those 
 who company much with Jesus they 
 appear. Out of the distant places they 
 come, not in massed battalions but as 
 scattered sheep, not having a shepherd. 
 The heart melts with pity at the sight; 
 it is ‘moved with compassion’—moved 
 to do something. “Then saith he’— 
 do you remember the “words?— pray 
 
 and he sent and he went.’ 
 
 “Mr. Gray, the multitudes of earth 
 have never thronged you by day nor 
 filled your dreams by night. They have 
 never been your agony in prayer nor 
 your cross in sacrifice. You have 
 struggled up no mountain of effort, 
 
 crying: “My God! My God! Earth’s 
 hungry! Earth’s ignorant! Earth’s 
 sinful! Earth’s diseased!’ The lepers, 
 
 the lame, the blind, the poor, the pal- 
 sied, the dead, have never called you 
 forth at evening, weary and exhausted, 
 to further effort, to more healing. No 
 
 A typical village courtyard and house 
 
 city has ever dropped its sick and its 
 possessed-with-devils at your door, 
 My village, Khairpur, is nothing to you; 
 yet there children grow up, if they do 
 grow up at all, in filth and ignorance 
 and sin. Even if I tear up the roof of 
 your ignorance and let them down to 
 you, as men did with the Teacher, you 
 will not heal them, you will not heal the 
 palsy of their souls or their minds or 
 their bodies. And there are 740,000 
 such villages in India alone. And what 
 of China and Africa and Europe and the 
 many places in America which IJ have 
 seen?” 
 
 “It is just that,” answered Mr. Gray. 
 “One cannot heal all, you know. It is 
 hopeless. Therefore, why heal any? 
 It cannot be done in one generation. 
 Slowly, as the new ideas and methods 
 spread through the earth, the sorrows 
 of earth will be healed, its injustices 
 righted. As in the healing of any sore 
 nature must be given time, so for the 
 healing of mankind it is a matter for 
 time, and time will do it.” 
 
 “Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for 
 to-morrow /¢hey die,” added Faz] Masih. 
 “Did you ever hear, John, the sequel to 
 the parable of the lost sheep?” 
 
 “T didn’t know there was a sequel,” 
 answered John. 
 
 A Parable’s Sequel 
 
 “All the parables of Jesus have se- 
 quels. Listen to one: One day, after 
 the one lost sheep had been restored, 
 the shepherd was called to a wedding 
 and left the fold with his servants. 
 Very soon after that, by their stupid 
 carelessness, the ninety and nine be- 
 came lost in the wilderness, and only 
 the one remained. Someone suggested 
 they leave the one and go after the 
 ninety and nine that were lost until 
 they find them. ‘Too many,’ an- 
 swered the servants. ‘Give them time, 
 and they will.return of their own ac- 
 cord. .4 
 
 Eleanor broke in, laughing. “Leave 
 them alone, and they’ll come home, 
 dragging their tails behind them.” 
 
 Fazl Masih was delighted. “Thank 
 you, Miss Eleanor, for that. Bo Peep 
 and Jesus—the two ways of dealing 
 with lost sheep and lost men. When 
 the shepherd returned from the wed- 
 ding, what did he do to those Bo Peeps 
 of his? Having none of his spirit, they 
 had no further place in his employ.” 
 
II—Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Khairpur ? 
 
 “You are much too emotional and 
 sentimental for me,” remarked Mr. 
 Gray in a cold manner. “I am a busi- 
 ness man, practical and looking to 
 profits. Suppose I do scatter my gifts 
 and my children over the world: what 
 results do I see? Here a little, there a 
 little—like fireflies in the darkness. 
 On the other hand, I confine my efforts 
 to a smaller elds co my family, to my 
 church, to my town, to my nation: 
 how fuch greater the effect of my life! 
 If America is rendered great and beau- 
 tiful and good, other nations will of 
 themselves follow her. Let us lead and 
 not drive the world into the kingdom 
 of God. Besides, is it not better to let 
 an Indian village—your unpronounce- 
 able village—rest in its simplicity, even 
 in its poverty and ignorance and super- 
 stition, than to rouse it to our foreign 
 and Western complexities in which 
 even we are not freed from those self- 
 same evils? The Indian villager is far 
 happier and better off than the in- 
 dustrial worker, underpaid and poorly 
 housed and morally disintegrating, who 
 is the symbol and product of our 
 
 boasted ‘civilization’ of Europe and 
 America.” 
 Salt Without Savor 
 “Mr. Gray,” replied Fazl Masih, 
 
 “when the Teacher said, ‘Go ye into all 
 the world’ did he not mean a// the 
 world? Is not America part of that all? 
 And is not India a part too? A Chris- 
 tian civilization—not Western, mind 
 you—which is satisfied with less than 
 universality is by that very fact not the 
 best civilization, and we must look 
 hastily for another. To leave out a 
 single American town or a single Indian 
 village from the Christian program is 
 to take out the ferment from the yeast 
 or the savor from the salt, and salt 
 that has lost savor 
 
 “Ts fit only for the garbage can,” 
 added John. 
 
 Fazl Masih nodded approval and 
 looked out of the window. For a mile 
 or more nobody spoke, and all that 
 could be heard was the purring of the 
 big engine. 
 
 When he turned toward us again, 'a 
 sadness was in his eyes. ‘Mr. Gray, 
 John, Miss Eleanor, have you ever 
 been afraid? Have you ever been terri- 
 fied?” 
 
 “Yes,” laughed Eleanor. “When 
 father was learning to drive a car, we 
 were all stiff with fright, weren’t we, 
 father?” 
 
 Mr. Gray smiled. 
 
 tease me, Faz] Masih.” 
 
 “They like to 
 
 The Paralysis of Fear 
 “That is just the point, Mr. Gray. 
 
 In America you laugh at fear, you joke 
 about it. But if this were the dead of 
 night, and footpads and cutthroats were 
 all about us, lurking behind every tree 
 and fence post, and watching their 
 
 chance to shoot and rob and maim and 
 outrage, then would fear settle in the 
 heart, and look out through the eyes, 
 and chill and paralyze the whole body. 
 
 A group of Hindu priests 
 
 Even a Six would cease to be 
 a car of comfort.” 
 
 “What horrible things you suggest!” 
 answered Eleanor, looking around sus- 
 piciously even in the broad daylight. 
 
 “T was thinking of Khairpur, where I 
 was born,” continued Fazl Masih, 
 “where men and women and little 
 children journey through life with fear 
 as their constant companion. From 
 childhood to old age they walk in the 
 valley of the shadow of death, and they 
 fear all evil.” 
 
 “What are they afraid of?” 
 John. 
 
 “Of footpads and cutthroats,” an- 
 swered Fazl Masih, “who rob and beat 
 and maim and outrage. They swarm 
 in the fields and in the narrow alleys, 
 they infest the roads and the tree tops, 
 they climb the roofs and jump the 
 walls and enter the courtyards. When 
 doors are open and not heavily pro- 
 tected, they slip inside the mud houses 
 and there do their deadly work. Of in- 
 fants they are especially fond, and 
 mothers have no peace of mind. The 
 sick they torture. The dying they ter- 
 rify. They have no mercy on the poor 
 
 ws) 
 
 asked 
 
 and unfortunate. Mr. Gray, the 
 simplicity of an Indian village may be 
 really restful after the complexity of 
 your life; but fear, which rules in every 
 Indian village, poisons the air and 
 makes life pale and sickly. Condemn 
 the natives to simplicity—you have 
 passed a light sentence—; condemn 
 them to life-l you load them 
 with heavy chains and bind them in 
 slavery.” 
 
 “T thought India was ruled by the 
 British. Do the British permit such 
 disorder?” asked Eleanor, mystified. 
 
 . Unseen Assailants 
 
 “The British have nothing to do with 
 the disorder and fear,” answered Fazl 
 Masih. “It is not human hands the 
 villagers fear but evi/ spirits—troops of 
 them, unseen, invisible. In this land of 
 yours, because of centuries of Christian 
 teaching, men do not fear the super- 
 natural. Consequently, in spite of 
 much ignorance and poverty, life re- 
 mains worth living. On the whole it is 
 good; and where life is good, there 
 civilization develops. But in Khairpur, 
 Wittnitonbhrce-—qrenters—-ofe—nrtt ire n 
 people, the supernatural is unfriendly, 
 and life is a slavery of fear. Did slaves 
 ever build for themselves a civilization? 
 Can any good thing come out of Khair- 
 pur?” 
 
 “You came out of Khairpur,” 
 John, smiling. 
 
 “Not came out, John, but drawn out. 
 Would you hear my story—the story of 
 an Indian village boy?” 
 
 “T’d Jove to.’ Eleanor was so ve- 
 hement that Fazl Masih was thrown 
 into confusion. 
 
 Fazl Masih’s Life Story 
 
 “Tt is not so wonderful as that, Miss 
 Eleanor; yet it is wonderful. God 
 works his miracles in India too. Our 
 parched, brown soil, dried and cracked 
 and blistered for months by a pitiless 
 sun and hot winds that blow unceas- 
 ingly from some huge, unseen furnace, 
 looks most unpromising. You would 
 say 1t was desert country. Yet give it 
 one soaking rain, and overnight, as if 
 the rain were some magic wand waved 
 over it and laid upon it, it literally 
 flings aside its dress of brown and 
 adorns itself in loudest colors. India is 
 Cinderella: every year it enacts the 
 play—sits in the ashes and then goes to 
 the party. So is the Indian villager. 
 His life is the color of the soil he works, 
 and over which his half-starved cattle 
 feed; but give him a chance, a real 
 chance, and out of Khairpur even can 
 come : 
 
 “Fazl Masih,” broke in Eleanor once 
 more. 
 
 said 
 
II—Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Khairpur ? 
 
 “Only, Miss Eleanor, the chance 
 rarely comes to Indian boys and girls. 
 They sit by ashes all their lives, and 
 very, very few go to the party. The 
 mice and pumpkin-shell coach rarely 
 travel the rough dirt roads that hold 
 the Indian villages together.” 
 
 “But you have been Cinderella, Fazl 
 Masih. Who waved a wand over you 
 and brought you out?” 
 
 “T was born in Khairpur in a little 
 mud hut with a grass thatch, all set in a 
 little. mud courtyard with mud walls.” 
 
 “Rather muddy, I should say,” said 
 Mr. Gray. 
 
 “Yes, Mr. Gray,—mud and brown 
 thatch and cow-dung plaster and cow- 
 dung fuel; brown bamboo cots strung 
 with brown hemp rope; baked-mud 
 cooking vessels and eating vessels; a 
 mud stove; brown children; brown 
 mother and father wearing brown 
 clothes (our muddy village ponds never 
 wash white); two light-brown goats; a 
 black pig covered with dried slime; a 
 broom of twigs; no chairs; no spoons, 
 no forks, no table knives; brown- 
 leather (for my father worked in hides) 
 lamps of baked clay with mustard oil 
 and a cotton wick; brown millstones 
 grinding bajra and juar and, very 
 rarely, a little wheat; a brown stone and 
 brown pestle for the grinding of the 
 spices; no chimney (the smoke had 
 blackened the inside of the hut); one 
 room for the whole family and the 
 animals as well.” 
 
 “How large?” asked Eleanor. 
 
 “About twice the size of this car,” 
 answered Fazl Masih. 
 
 “Whew!” Eleanor almost whistled. 
 
 Everyday Life in India 
 “One meal a day; hard, hard work 
 
 IT CAN SCARCELY BE too often 
 repeated to all who are interested 
 in the religion of India that in 
 daily experience the ordinary dis- 
 trict missionary sees a great deal 
 more of devil worship than of what 
 is known as ‘‘the higher Hindu- 
 
 ism.”’ . The pariah lives in 
 dread of the supernatural. He is 
 afraid even to yawn for fear some 
 hateful being will gain entrance 
 to his body. He dare not pass one 
 street corner at noonday and an- 
 other at night for the unseen ter- 
 rors that lurk there. There is no 
 safety for him anywhere, for even 
 if out of his hard-earned wage he 
 has spent money on a sacrifice to 
 the demon or deity of one local 
 shrine, he may by that very pious 
 act have slighted and offended 
 some other supernatural being 
 near by, and there is no knowing 
 what the consequences will be.— 
 
 The Outcastes’ Hope, Brigés. 
 Phillies 
 
 all day at leather and in the fields; a 
 brown-clay tobacco pipe with black 
 tobacco the sole refreshment for the 
 men; no refreshment for the women 
 except their chatter, and the singing 
 at weddings, and the mourning at 
 funerals, and early marriage, and the 
 bearing and burying of many infants 
 
 JS cal, Bie SRM 
 
 The Hindu goddess Kali 
 
 (they lose half of their babies), and an 
 occasional journey to the me/a fair and 
 the holy places of pilgrimage, and the 
 bathing festivals, where they laughed 
 and wondered and saw and_ heard 
 things too often not good for them; and 
 then the cholera and the smallpox and, 
 later, the bubonic plague and other 
 horrible diseases of eyes and lungs and 
 spleen; and in it all and through it all 
 fear of the 4huts—the evil spirits—and 
 all kinds of other spirits. 
 
 “Into this I was born. From birth I 
 was protected by heavy chains and 
 amulets. My name was a secret name, 
 like the Greek letters on your pin, 
 John fi 
 
 “Why?” asked John. 
 
 “Lest the evil spirits learn my name 
 and, by my name, get possession of me. 
 A man’s name is his self. No one likes 
 an evil spirit to get his self, so my 
 parents would not tell me my real name 
 but gave me a nickname. I learned to 
 fear. I was afraid of being left alone, I 
 was afraid of the dark, I was afraid of 
 strange faces, I was afraid of many ani- 
 mals and birds and insects. I was 
 afraid of the well, I was afraid of high- 
 caste men and especially the Brahman 
 priests. I ran and shouted and laughed 
 now and then, as any boy does; but I 
 never got away from fear, as one never 
 quite gets away from his shadow in the 
 sunlight.” 
 
 6 
 
 Home Minus Fear 
 
 “There is home,” said Mr. Gray sud- 
 denly. 
 
 “Home!” echoed Faz] Masih; “your 
 home, where fear never opens the door 
 and slips in to take possession.” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 HOW DO THE PEOPLE of India look 
 
 upon and treat animals? Is this atti- 
 tude worthy of emulation? Is it car- 
 ried to an extreme? 
 
 Apply Fazl Masih’s sequel to the 
 parable of the lost sheep to the attitude 
 of many Americans toward missions. 
 
 What are the arguments for world- 
 wide missionary effort? 
 
 Describe the climate of India. 
 
 Describe a typical Indian village. 
 
 Would you like to live under condi- 
 tions such as Faz] Masih describes? 
 
 Do women in India have much chance 
 at life? 
 
 Why is fear prevalent in India? 
 
 Show how superstition and fear gain 
 possession of outcastes in early infancy. 
 
 Contrast these conditions with normal 
 home life in America. 
 
 THE EXPERIENCES OF LIFE are 
 referred to invisible spirit forces. 
 To rude men the ups and downs of 
 life seem to be dependent upon the 
 mere caprice of this invisible host, 
 and this shadowy company of un- 
 known powers is responsible for 
 
 calamity, fever, cholera, small- 
 pox, and other untoward events. 
 These fickle, treacherous inhabi- 
 tants of the unseen world—the 
 demons and the godlings of dis- 
 ease—must be conciliated; and the 
 godlings, the sainted dead, and 
 other well-disposed spirits must 
 be enlisted against the forces of 
 calamity and disease. The super- 
 stitious man, of necessity, is al- 
 ways on the alert to outwit evil 
 and malignant spirits and to cir- 
 cumvent their undertakings. . . . 
 The chief of: demons is described 
 variously as wheat-colored, white, 
 or green. He rides on a green 
 horse. The churel (a female 
 demon) is described as having 
 pendent breasts, large, projecting 
 teeth, thick lips, unkempt hair, 
 and a black tongue, and as of 
 dreadful appearance. Her feet, 
 like those of most evil spirits, are 
 turned around. Some say that 
 she is black behind and white in 
 front. She is especially malignant 
 toward her own family. . An- 
 other much-dreaded demon (ma- 
 san) is especially  ill-disposed 
 toward children, whom he often 
 changes to yellow, red, or green 
 color. He also causes them to 
 waste away and die by casting his 
 shadow upon them. He is known 
 only by his works and, because of 
 his invisibility, is most dreaded. 
 —The Chamars, Briggs. 
 
III 
 
 The Education of Fazl Masih 
 
 Scripture References: Matt. 11. 28-30; Isa. 9. 1-7; Luke 4. 1-13 
 
 THAT SAME EVENING, shortly after 
 supper, the Grays came over to “con- 
 tinue the continued story,” as Eleanor 
 put it. Fazl Masih had retired to his 
 room, as was his custom, for an hour 
 or more of quiet meditation. It is the 
 habit of India to think of God much 
 during the day but very much at the 
 evening hour. The Moslem spreads his 
 prayer rug at sunset and lifts his heart 
 and bends his body before the majesty 
 of Allah. The Hindu makes his way 
 to the temple with offerings in his hands 
 and yearnings in his heart as the shrill 
 conch screeches out its call to worship 
 when the brief twilight sets in. So Fazl 
 Masih, Indian and Christian, made 
 each evening hour a time for thought 
 and gratitude and praise. 
 
 We waited. He came down the 
 stairs, his face a great calm. All the 
 wrinkles of worry had been smoothed 
 out. A young man he was, yet in his 
 countenance and carriage were ma- 
 turity and dignity and power. This 
 quiet smile somehow shed restfulness 
 upon our hurried, distracted spirits. 
 We understood more clearly the words 
 of the Teacher: ““Learn of me; . . . and 
 ye shall find rest unto your souls.” 
 
 I looked at John. He was deeply 
 affected. Even Eleanor was subdued 
 and did not pounce upon the Indian as 
 she had come prepared to do. There 
 was no embarrassment, for there was 
 about Fazl Masih no cold reserve, no 
 sense of far-away-ness. It was only 
 that we entered upon the evening’s 
 conversation more quietly, with a con- 
 sciousness that life is composed not of 
 mere events and incidents but of some- 
 thing far deeper and more funda- 
 mental. 
 
 Alike Yet Different 
 
 It was John who really started us off: 
 
 “Fazl Masih, why are you so like us 
 yet so different from us?” 
 
 The Indian smiled as he replied: 
 
 “That is very easily answered. Why 
 are any two men alike and unlike? 
 Do not a common humanity and a 
 similar training make them alike, while 
 a separate individuality and a different 
 environment—either or both—make 
 them unlike? My environment has 
 been different, but my training has 
 been similar to yours. Therefore, at 
 one and the same time I feel a stranger 
 and I feel at home among you. In fact, 
 does not every man feel thus toward 
 every other man?” 
 
 “Tt is very strange,’ 
 
 ’ said Mr. Gray,’ 
 
 “that we should be able to talk to- 
 @ether, at all.’ 
 
 “Tt is indeed,” answered Fazl Masih. 
 “Tt is visible proof of our common 
 training and our common humanity. 
 The same roads of knowledge to-day 
 traverse all the lands of earth, and men 
 of all colors and breeds Ad religions 
 keep company together—spiritual if 
 not physical company—along these 
 roads. It is the great wonder of our 
 age. The road builders are abroad— 
 and in my boyhood they ‘brought the 
 road to Khairpur.” 
 
 “Tell us about that.” Eleanor saw 
 now her chance for the story she had 
 come to hear. 
 
 Building Roads 
 
 “Miss Eleanor, many are the ene- 
 mies of the Christian missionary enter- 
 prise, but let this be said to its credit: 
 It is preéminent in road building. You 
 know what I mean: Into our divided 
 separated world, each region living 
 from time immemorial its own life, have 
 come the men and women whose task 
 it is to link the whole together into one 
 common life—one education, one com- 
 mercial financial and economic struc- 
 ture, one type of government, one re- 
 ligion, one ‘civilization,’ even one dress 
 and etiquette, and perhaps some day 
 one common language.” 
 
 “English?” asked John. 
 
 “Who knows? English certainly has 
 the advantage now over others. These 
 are the roads that bring the peoples to- 
 gether. And in the building of these 
 roads the Christian missionary enter- 
 prise stands among the first both in time 
 and importance. So it was the mission- 
 
 aries that brought the road, with its 
 traffic, to Khairpur; and I, a small boy, 
 was first in my village to step upon it. 
 That same road, after many mileposts 
 have been passed, has brought me here 
 and carries me hence.” 
 
 “There is something wrong in that,” 
 said Mr. Gray suddenly. 
 
 “Father,” said Eleanor, “please don’t 
 interrupt him. You see he is coming to 
 pea g 
 the story. 
 
 But Fazl Masih was taken aback: 
 
 “Wrong in what, Mr. Gray? Was it 
 wrong for the read of the world’s know]- 
 edge to come to Khairpur? Would you 
 keep Khairpur a thousand years be- 
 hind America? ‘The people that 
 walked in darkness have seen a great 
 light: they that dwelt in the land of 
 the shadow of death, upon them hath 
 the light shined’; but is it all wrong that 
 it should be so—all wrong?” 
 
 “Not so fast, Faz] Masih,” answered 
 Mr. Gray. “All wrong, not that the 
 knowledge came to your village, but 
 that the Christian churches of America 
 should have to bring it there. Edu- 
 cating the millions of any nation is an 
 affair of the state, as it is in America, 
 and not of the church. Let the govern- 
 ment of India build the roads of knowl- 
 edge as they build the highroads and 
 the railroads. Let the Christian mis- 
 sionary enterprise give itself to preach- 
 ing and organizing churches. Any 
 other system is wrong from the start 
 and has evil results. Why should I 
 give a cent for education in India when 
 the government should provide it for 
 the people? Base education on taxes, 
 not on charity, if you want it to suc- 
 ceed. That is my opinion.” 
 
 Lucknow Christian College 
 
IIlI—The Education of Fazl Masth 
 
 Hockey at a Christian boys’ boarding school 
 
 An Outcaste Boy 
 
 “Mr. ‘Gray,’ replied Faz! Masih, 
 “perhaps if you hear my story you will 
 understand a little better. As I said 
 this morning I was born one of the 
 fifty or sixty million outcastes—one of 
 the untouchables—and brought up in 
 poverty and ignorance and fear of evil 
 spirits. What chance was there for my 
 life?. Weakened in body, stunted in mind 
 and soul, I would have lived as had my 
 forefathers for a thousand centuries. I 
 was in a pit, and there was no outlet. I 
 was in a dungeon, and there were no win- 
 dows. Socially enslaved, economically 
 
 enslaved, spiritually enslaved,—it was 
 all hopeless, and not less so because, 
 boylike, I laughed a bit and played 
 jokes on my fellows and had many 
 merry times at weddings and fairs and 
 funeral feasts. That one laughs in a 
 dungeon does not do away with the 
 dungeon. 
 
 “There was a school, not in my vil- 
 lage, but in a village four miles away. 
 I discovered it when once I went on an 
 errand for my father. The government 
 of India no doubt partially subsidized 
 it—paid part of its expenses and super- 
 vised it. But it was not for outcaste 
 
 boys; only for the boys who style them- 
 selves ‘twice-born.” The three highest 
 castes, who wear the sacred thread, are 
 twice-born (once into life and once into 
 caste); the low-castes are once-born. 
 As for outcastes we are, as far as hu- 
 man rights are concerned, as if not born 
 at all. If, therefore, before the coming 
 of the English rule I had sat down with 
 those boys to learn with them, the 
 high-caste people would have poured 
 melted lead into my ears. If I had that 
 day sat down in the courtyard, even on 
 the edge of the group, and repeated the 
 seven-times multiplication table along 
 with the rest, they would have beaten 
 me with their shoes and burned my 
 father’s hut and taken his ox. 
 
 “No teacher of any caste would have 
 taught me, even though the govern- 
 ment paid his salary; and teachers from 
 the outcastes—who shall furnish them 
 unless it be the church of Him who 
 touched the untouchable when, in his 
 pitiful state, the leper kneeled and said, 
 ‘Lord, you are high caste, and if you are 
 willing to overlook your high caste for a 
 moment you can make me clean’? So 
 no government taxation could help my 
 case: I was to be saved by charity or not 
 at all. Or, rather let us say, I was to be 
 saved by the taxes the kingdom of 
 Christ imposes on its citizens, and not 
 by the taxes which the government of 
 India requires the people of India to 
 pay.” 
 
 “You don’t like the word ‘“benevo- 
 
 INDIA is the great Christian wedge 
 in Asia. Geographically it is cen- 
 tral, reaching out to China and 
 Malaysia on the east; to Arabia and 
 Egypt on the west; to Mesopo- 
 tamia, Asia Minor, and Persia on 
 the northwest; and to Central 
 Asia on the north. What is done 
 in India must ultimately touch all 
 Asia. 
 
 In religion India has always been 
 Asia’s spiritual leader—andé still is. 
 India is the land where the su- 
 preme contest between the great 
 religions of the world must take 
 place. These religions are Hindu- 
 ism, Mohammedanism, and Chris- 
 tianity; and in no other land or 
 continent are they all represented; 
 the contact comes only in India. 
 
 India has 217,000,000 Hindus, 
 66,000,000 Mohammedans, and 4,- 
 000,000 Christians. The supreme 
 question is: Which of these is to 
 rule the destiny of this great land? 
 As goes India, so goes Asia. ... 
 
 Under the tuition of the British, 
 with their educational system and 
 the free institutions of a Christian 
 civilization, India has enjoyed ad- 
 vantages that no other land of 
 Asia ever had. The natural result 
 
 of Western ideals and Christian 
 
 progress is a new national spirit, 
 striving for untramelled, inde- 
 pendent expression. With this 
 spirit pervading the land India’s 
 people have entered upon a new 
 era, in which the foundations of 
 home rule are being laid. The 
 nation is plastic; the hour of 
 change has come. This is the su- 
 preme opportunity for truth; there- 
 fore for Christianity. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago the Hindu 
 father was still asking whether a 
 girl was worth education; he has 
 ceased to ask that question. Ten 
 years ago the caste system seemed 
 to have yielded very little to the 
 pressure of Christian teaching and 
 Western civilization; to-day many 
 of the strongest opponents to caste 
 are found among the Hindus 
 themselves. It is still compara- 
 tively rare for a Hindu widow to be 
 remarried; but the exceptions are 
 becoming more frequent and at- 
 tracting less attention. India’s 
 widows will yet be liberated; noth- 
 ing else is possible in new Ind a. 
 
 India is also the supreme meet- 
 ing place of the West and East. 
 Nowhere else has this been on such 
 a scale, for so many centuries, or 
 at such close quarters. Europe 
 
 and America have sent some of 
 their strongest sons and noblest 
 daughters to India, and here they 
 have met and mingled with India 
 at her best. This has brought 
 about a new international situa- 
 tion. India has become the great 
 interpreter of the West to the East, 
 and the East to the West. It is 
 God’s school for the continents. 
 When the course is completed, the 
 East will have been brought to her 
 best, and the West will have been 
 immeasurably enriched. Then 
 shall we have the brotherhood that 
 Christ has held before the world 
 for nineteen centuries—in India, 
 the first home of the Christian 
 brotherhood! 
 
 This is why the eyes of the world 
 are on India. This is why every 
 missionary is glad to be here; why 
 no missionary is willing to remain 
 away. This is the reason for the 
 awakening among Indian Chris- 
 tian men and women, who are not 
 only working for a pure and power- 
 filled Indian church, alert to the 
 opportunities of the new era, but 
 looking also for the supreme na- 
 tional movement that will make 
 India a Christian nation.—B. T. B. 
 in the Indian Witness. 
 
 ae 
 
 pete 
 
 P 
 
lences’ for our missionary offerings?” 
 asked John. 
 
 “Not at-all,’ answered Fazl Masih. 
 “Mere wishing well (which, as you 
 know, is the meaning of this word) will 
 never bring the kingdom of Christ to 
 every Khairpur and every boy and girl 
 therein. Wishes breed alms of copper 
 and nickel and small silver, but de- 
 termination and duty bring into play 
 prayer and sacrifice and the giving of 
 life itself.” f 
 
 Fazl Masih’s Chance 
 
 “Well, one day,” continued Fazl 
 Masih, “my father met a distant 
 relative who had become Christian and 
 heard of the escape from the pit—of a 
 chance for his son. 
 
 “He was more than a well-wisher as 
 he thought of his son. He was willing 
 to pay the price of becoming a Chris- 
 tian. In it my mother joined for the 
 sake of the boy. The price was very 
 heavy—social ostracism and nagging 
 persecution. My father and mother 
 suddenly became strangers to their own 
 relatives and fellow outcastes. They 
 were outcast from the outcaste state: 
 they fell from the bottom into the bot- 
 tomless. They became Issi (Jesus 
 folk) and for Jesus’ sake were literally 
 ‘hated of all men.’ But in the darker 
 hour of being despised and rejected 
 even by those who were themselves 
 despised and rejected, a light began to 
 kindle and to burn—a strange light for 
 an Indian village. The evil spirits took 
 fright at that light, a new look came on 
 my parents’ faces (it was the light 
 forcing its way outward as well as in- 
 ward), and, strangest of all, a small boy 
 began to wonder in the shining of that 
 light what a village boy, of outcaste 
 birth, might become if he learned his 
 letters. Never in all his life before had 
 he dreamed a dream or seen a vision; 
 
 YOUR STATE EDUCATION is pro- 
 ducing a revolt against three prin- 
 ciples which, although they were 
 pushed too far in ancient India, 
 represent the deepest wants of hu- 
 man nature—the principle of dis- 
 cipline, the principle of religion, 
 the principle of contentment. 
 
 . . . In due time you will have on 
 your hands an overgrown clerkly 
 generation, whom you have trained 
 
 in their youth to depend on govern- 
 ment allowances and to look to 
 government service, but whose 
 adult ambitions not all the offices 
 of government would satisfy. What 
 are you to do with this great clever 
 class forced up under a foreign 
 system without discipline, without 
 contentment, and without a God? 
 —Sir William Wilson Hunter in 
 The Old Missionary. 
 
 III—The Education of Fazl Masih 
 
 now something was loose inside him 
 that made him restless. A shining 
 gleam was urging him to ‘follow the 
 gleam’!” 
 
 “Tennyson in an Indian village,” 
 said John. 
 
 “Christ in an Indian village,” an- 
 swered Faz] Masih, laughing aloud and 
 quite excited. 
 
 “When the Christian village school 
 was established, I was the first to enroll. 
 There I learned my letters and to count 
 —to read a little and to add and sub- 
 tract.” 
 
 From Boarding School to College 
 
 “From the village school I was sent 
 to the Christian boarding school, where, 
 under Christian teachers and a Chris- 
 tian missionary (who in this case loved 
 
 An Indian Christian schoolboy 
 
 me as his own child), I prepared for the 
 Christian high school. In those years 
 I learned what you learn here in the 
 grades; but, more than that, I learned 
 to company with Christ. I could al- 
 most see him on the cricket field, in the 
 classroom, and in the dormitory. Not 
 to all of us but to a little group of us he 
 became most real. This American mis- 
 sionary talked to me much about him— 
 his life, his program, his world. The 
 little light that began to shine in the 
 heart of the village boy became a steady 
 flame, consuming yet not destroying 
 all his energies. The bush burned with 
 fire but was not burned up. 
 
 “From the boarding school to the 
 Christian high school; from the Chris- 
 tian high school to the Christian college. 
 The Christian college was both mount 
 of vision and mount of temptation to 
 me. I said to myself: ‘Let me show 
 what a village boy can do—outcaste- 
 born and Christian-trained—in _ this 
 new India! It will be an object lesson 
 of much value. I will rise to comfort, 
 fame, and power. It will be achieve- 
 ment for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.’ 
 As with the Teacher, so with me: the 
 
 9 
 
 same temptations but dressed in Indian 
 garb. Only, I had the Teacher by my 
 side, whispering ever, ‘Service, not 
 achievement; service, not achievement’; 
 and with this word feeding the flame 
 within me I turned my steps to the 
 Christian theological school, where I 
 spent three years.” 
 
 “Which must have been very dreary 
 and dry after college,” said Eleanor. 
 
 The Light of India’s New Day 
 
 “Which was rather,” said Fazl Masih, 
 “the Delectable Mountains, from which 
 I saw the Celestial City of my lifework; 
 making the Christ the light of India’s 
 new day; fo take the flame in my life and 
 with it set fire to other lives. ‘ 
 
 “When enough of us have done that, 
 and the Christ light shines out strongly 
 in the land, then shall India see her 
 path clearly and walk safely in it.” 
 
 Fazl Masih stopped speaking, but 
 John took up the word: 
 
 “And then become missionary to the 
 rest of the world.” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 IN WHAT SENSE can we think of the 
 
 Christian missionary as a road builder? 
 Illustrate from the lives of mission- 
 aries with whose life stories you are fa- 
 miliar. 
 
 Does Christianity tend to link the 
 whole world together? How? Is this 
 a good thing? Why? 
 
 Should we place all responsibility for 
 the education of the outcastes of India 
 upon the British government? 
 
 Characterize the life of an outcaste 
 boy. Can he go to school? 
 
 What is meant by “twice-born” in 
 India? 
 
 Do you think the word ‘“benevo- 
 lences” accurately describes missionary 
 giving? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 What is the one sure way for an out- 
 caste to gain ostracism and become 
 “hated of all men’’? 
 
 To what extent does Christ pervade 
 the instruction in Christian boarding 
 schools and colleges in India? 5 
 
 How do Christian schools inspire 
 native Christians to “take the flame 
 and set fire to other lives”? 
 
 INDIAN OPINION is all but unani- 
 mous that education is a religious 
 work, should be imparted by re- 
 ligious persons, and should have 
 
 religion as its center. . . The 
 failure of government education 
 in India to command respect or to 
 attract the hearts of students is 
 due mainly to the fact that it is 
 secular.—Bishop of Bombay in 
 International Review of Missions. 
 
IV 
 
 The Christian Message in the Soil of 
 
 Hinduism 
 
 Scripture References: Acts 17. 22-31; John 3. 16; Luke 4. 18, 19 
 
 THE NEXT AFTERNOON | Fazl 
 Masih and I walked around our little 
 town of three thousand inhabitants. 
 He was very much interested in the 
 names of our eight churches—denomi- 
 national, numerical, having to do with 
 Christian saints or graces, or merely the 
 names of streets and avenues. I ex- 
 pected him to be impatient, for to me 
 eight churches in one town, like eight 
 people in one small room, make for 
 close air unless special precautions are 
 taken to keep the windows open. But 
 he was not impatient. After laughing 
 at the names, which to him were odd, he 
 merely remarked: 
 
 “Your business section is all together 
 and makes a massed attack on the com- 
 munity life; your churches seem scat- 
 tered all over the town.” 
 
 “They certainly are,” I answered. 
 “They are in fine position for sniping, 
 which they do, but in poor position for 
 firing volleys. Sometimes they even 
 fire at one another.” 
 
 He smiled but said no more. 
 
 On the way home we passed the Gray 
 home and found the Grays sitting on 
 the porch. They called to us: 
 
 “We have the porch furniture out 
 for the first time this year. We want 
 Faz] Masih to try our new porch 
 swing.” 
 
 So we went up, and Fazl Masih en- 
 joyed a new experience—talking to 
 eager listeners from a swing, which he 
 kept in slow motion. It reminded me 
 of the Teacher, who told some of his 
 best stories from a rocking boat. 
 
 The. 
 
 easy motion took the tenseness out and 
 left the grace and beauty in. 
 
 A City of Homes and Churches 
 
 “What do you think of our little 
 town?” asked Mrs. Gray. 
 
 “Tt is very wonderful,” he answered. 
 “A city of homes is always wonderful. 
 No wonder America is great—a country 
 built on the principle of “to each family 
 a home’—a home separated from other 
 homes by lawns and gardens. The 
 streets and schools and churches and 
 business places serve the homes.” 
 
 Mr. Gray was pleased, for civic pride 
 was one of his well-known characteris- 
 tics. “My only criticism,” he said: 
 “too many churches.” 
 
 Fazl Masih smiled again and said: 
 “One born a Hindu would never say, 
 ‘Too many churches,’ but ‘Too many 
 strange names applied to Christ’s 
 people.’ If the twelve disciples of Jesus 
 came to this town, where would they 
 go to church? How would they divide 
 themselves among those strange names? 
 The Hindus have their many, many 
 sects, they have their schools and orders 
 and brotherhoods, they have their 
 private domestic worships; but when it 
 comes to the temples, they are only 
 Hindu temples and open to all men— 
 and women too—of the four castes. 
 Public worship, like the rain or the sun 
 or the sky or the air, is for all men ex- 
 cepting of course the outcastes, the un- 
 touchables. These have their own re- 
 ligious worship. Besides the temple 
 worship the places of pilgrimage and the 
 
 Two Christian preachers—father and son 
 
 river bathing are for all—men and 
 women and children of the four castes.” 
 
 Tribal Religion 
 
 .““To each according to his bent,” an- 
 swered Mr. Gray. ‘We Americans 
 must divide. It is our instinct to do 
 so.” 
 
 “Perhaps it is heredity,’ remarked 
 John, “‘perhaps it is the tribal spirit of 
 our forefathers which enters into all our 
 social and political and economic and 
 religious organization. We go in tribes. 
 Our very nation is a confederation of 
 great tribes. We have tribes within 
 tribes, called by various names— 
 churches, unions, brotherhoods, etc. 
 Perhaps it is not Christianity that is to 
 blame but our instinctive habit of 
 Seer everything that comes to us, 
 of applying the group instincts with 
 group loyalties. Hinduism may teach 
 us a lesson here.” 
 
 “No,” said Fazl Masih; “Hinduism 
 is at one and the same time the most 
 intolerant and most tolerant of all re- 
 ligions; in certain aspects broad as the 
 sky and in other aspects narrow and 
 divided as a foot rule. I have been 
 speaking of the broader aspects, and 
 there are other facts I might mention 
 along with those. I have said nothing 
 about the narrow aspects. Hinduism, 
 like a great boa constrictor, seizes a life 
 and squeezes and cramps it until the 
 bones of effort and ambition are broken, 
 and the life falls into lifeless conformity 
 with ancient custom.” 
 
 Patching Up Hinduism 
 
 “There is much of the boa con- 
 strictor in our American Christianity, 
 Fazl Masih,” answered Mr. Gray. 
 “Really I am inclined to believe what 
 we men downtown say to one another— 
 that every men’s religion is true and 
 good and will carry him through life if 
 he only lives up to it. Hinduism is 
 fitted to India, has been fitted by gen- 
 eration after generation to meet India’s 
 need in the way best suited to the In- 
 dian temperament and mind. It may 
 take a little repairing, a little repatch- 
 ing here and there; but it is foolish to 
 think or try to replace it with a brand- 
 new religion, especially one that comes 
 from us. We are so different from you, 
 our religion would never quite suit or 
 fit you. We shall tell you, give you 
 what we have. That perhaps will help 
 
IV—The Christian Message in the Soil of Hinduism 
 
 you to repair and repatch; and when 
 you have done that, we won’t either of 
 us be so very far wrong. The name of 
 the religion doesn’t really matter—call 
 it Christianity, call it Hinduism,—just 
 so it helps a man lead a decent life, 
 teaches him something about God, and 
 fixes him up for the next life.” 
 
 “Thomas,” gasped Mrs. Gray, for she 
 had never heard him speak so openly 
 along this line, “you are surrendering 
 the uniqueness of Christianity.” 
 
 BvVnyenote replied’ Mr.Gray.” “It 
 Christianity teaches the fatherhood of 
 God and the brotherhood of man, and 
 Hinduism does the same, what differ- 
 ence does it make about the other things 
 and whether you worship in a church or 
 temple? May not Hinduism become 
 another ‘ism,’ like Methodism and Pres- 
 byterianism,—one more denomination 
 in God’s religion and one more suited 
 to India than any of our eight?” 
 
 Bursting the Bubble 
 
 There Eleanor broke in. “‘Fazl Masih, 
 what is Hinduism?” 
 
 Fazl Masih stopped swinging. ‘‘Miss 
 Eleanor, that question is the pin that 
 bursts the fine bubble your father has 
 been blowing. Bubbles are made by 
 taking a small amount of soapy water 
 and enlarging it by a great amount of 
 air. A small amount of truth may be 
 blown into a great amount of nonsense 
 by air.” 
 
 “Hot air,” commented Mrs. Gray. 
 
 Fazl Masih missed the full significance 
 of an Americanism as he went on: 
 
 “There is some truth in what your 
 father started out with.’ Hinduism has 
 been fitted by generation to Indian life 
 and temperament. Hinduism has many 
 great truths that find their fulfillment 
 in Christ. Hinduism needs repair and 
 repatching very badly in many places. 
 But to talk of substituting Hinduism 
 for Christ, of making Hinduism an 
 ‘ism’ in Christianity, is to blow quanti- 
 ties of air into truth until someone, Miss 
 Eleanor, comes along and pokes a perti- 
 nent question into it: “What is Hindu- 
 ism? 
 
 “Mr. Gray, I take it that your “men 
 downtown’ don’t know what Hinduism 
 ie 
 
 “T can’t say that they do,” answered 
 Mr. Gray. “I should hate to take an 
 examination myself.” 
 
 “They are trying to be broad-minded 
 —emphasis on broad and not on mind,” 
 commented Mrs. Gray once more. 
 
 Hunger for the Bread of Life 
 
 “When I left the theological school,” 
 said Fazl Masih, taking up the thread 
 of his story once more, “I was sent to be 
 
 Official members of a village church 
 
 a Christian preacher and teacher in 
 twelve villages along the Jumna River. 
 I was going to my own people with the 
 bread of life. To me they were already 
 seated and hungrily awaiting the food 
 for their starved condition. I had seen 
 the Teacher break the bread, and he had 
 filled the basket of my life full to over- 
 flowing. I would go down the line 
 passing the bread to eager hands and 
 mouths. Alas! I found the multitudes, 
 not seated in companies on the green 
 grass, as in Galilee, but everywhere dis- 
 tressed and scattered. Only here and 
 
 INDIA is the spiritual mother of 
 half mankind. That is her su- 
 preme significance. That is her 
 meaning, her importance, her fas- 
 cination for the world to-day. 
 
 Here is a nation to whom pain 
 and privation simply do not count 
 if a spiritual aim is to be realized.- 
 
 That which makes one so wroth 
 with Hinduism is that it has per- 
 verted and turned to barrenness so 
 rich a soil. 
 
 India needs saving from its re- 
 ligion not because it is all bad— 
 far from it—but because it is 
 mixed and can’t unmix itself. 
 
 India’s spiritual history is the 
 world’s tragedy of religion—a na- 
 tion that for so many centuries 
 has sought God with unmeasured 
 sacrifice and is still unsatisfied. 
 
 It is tragic that the religious soul 
 of India, with its measureless ca- 
 pacity for sacrifice and devotion, 
 should be sterilized by the obses- 
 sion of a single idea—the passion- 
 ate longing for a merging in the 
 Absolute, which is indistinguish- 
 able from personal annihilation. 
 
 Brahma (the Absolute) is a great, 
 passionless lake, whose surface is 
 unstirred by any desires, unruffled 
 by any breath that comes from the 
 world of men’s affairs.—The Goal 
 of India, Holland. 
 
 if 
 
 ‘effort. 
 
 there I found one, two, or more ready 
 to hear and to receive. What was the 
 trouble? Hinduism had both fitted and 
 unfitted them for what I had to tell 
 them. Hinduism had created the 
 hunger for bread but prejudiced them 
 against the kind of bread I held in my 
 hands. As slowly I overcame the preju- 
 dice and the hunger alone gnawed at 
 their hearts, they became ravenous 
 for the ‘bread come down from Heaven,’ 
 for the Christ as we see him in the Gos- 
 pels and know him in our hearts.” 
 “How did Hinduism prejudice them 
 against you?” asked John. : 
 
 Hindu Prejudice 
 
 “In this way,” said Fazl Masih: 
 “Hinduism is at heart conformity to 
 caste rules. Hindus are divided into 
 almost three thousand separate com- 
 partments, and only in one’s own com- 
 partment can one eat or drink or be 
 married. Caste has much to say also 
 regarding occupation and travel. It 
 hampers freedom of movement and 
 It is a divine institution, the 
 product of the great universal law of 
 cause and effect. It has all the sanc- 
 tions of time and religion. Within the 
 caste group it supports and helps a man 
 but, at the same time, keeps him in that 
 group. Each caste has all the privacy 
 and prejudices of its own life—a garden 
 with high walls, within which men live 
 their intimate life. Now, Christianity 
 breaks down the walls of partition, 
 levels all the distinctions; which is to 
 the Hindu against all reason, custom, 
 and liking. It drives him out of his’ 
 garden, breaks all the supports and as- 
 surances of his life, sends him into a 
 cold world, where he is to eat and marry 
 indiscriminately, and where his life is 
 to become common and unclean, and 
 
IV—The Christian Message in the Soil of Hinduism 
 
 forever bars him from returning to his 
 garden; for once out of the garden of 
 caste, the flaming sword of caste rules 
 makes return almost impossible.” 
 
 The Unknowable 
 
 “And there are other barriers. To 
 the Hindu, God is ultimately unknow- 
 able: “beyond the reach of thought and 
 prayer, beyond personality and even 
 morality. Of him nothing can be af- 
 firmed except that He is. Not only that, 
 but in the final analysis he alone is, he is 
 all, everybody, everything. There are 
 many gods in Hinduism, gods great and 
 small, gods kind and cruel, gods more or 
 less holy, and gods unholy. These are to 
 be worshiped, feared, and even (some 
 of them) loved. Yet they are all less 
 than the Infinite, all belong to the 
 temporary and changing universe, all 
 are only manifestations, phases, of the 
 great, universal All, to whom men can 
 never reach, yet of which he too is a 
 
 art.” 
 
 “What a terribly deep idea! One 
 can easily drown in it,” remarked 
 Eleanor. “How can ignorant people 
 think such thoughts?” 
 
 “It lies in the background of their 
 consciousness — the changing, unreal 
 world. Every man passes from life to 
 life, each life with its new body and new 
 environment, driven by the wind of his 
 past deeds. As he has done in the past 
 so is he now. He sows and reaps con- 
 stantly, and no one can break the suc- 
 cession of cause and effect. Each act 
 is a reaping of previous deeds, each act 
 is a sowing of deeds to come. Caught 
 in sorrow—unescapable sorrow (unes- 
 capable because no one can break the 
 links of this chain), sorrow he has made 
 for himself in far-away, past existences, 
 sorrow that creates sorrow for the mor- 
 row and the day after,—he longs for 
 release. 
 
 “Release is the great hunger of the 
 Hindu heart. 
 seeks, he knocks at many doors. He 
 tries release by knowledge (intuitive 
 knowledge), he tries release by works 
 (ceremonial works), he tries release by 
 faith (devotion to God as personal and 
 gracious). Hinduism is very tolerant 
 as to doctrinal belief.” 
 
 The Gospel and the Hindu 
 
 “Now comes the Christian preacher, 
 telling of God, who ‘so loved the world 
 that he gave’-—a God personal, right- 
 eous, loving. But behind him the 
 Hindu still sees the Unknowable, who 
 alone is real, and in whose reality all 
 else becomes unreal. The Christian 
 God is only the Hindu /shwar with an- 
 other name. 
 
 For release he asks, he - 
 
 “Again, the Christian preacher tells 
 of the Saviour, ‘that whosoever believeth 
 on him should not perish. But how can 
 any Saviour break the chain of cause 
 and effect? The sorrows I suffer now 
 I cannot escape. I have my own cross 
 and carried it myself, myself drove the 
 nails and set it up for my own torture 
 and perishing. No ‘believing’ can shift 
 crosses. Help fortthe future—yes. 
 Help for the present—I cannot con- 
 sistently believe in. 
 
 “Again the Christian preacher tells 
 of release: ‘but have eternal life. But it 
 is not life that Hinduism seeks, but es- 
 cape from life—not release from sin 
 that cramps and blasts life, but escape 
 from birth and action and rebirth, es- 
 cape from the sorrows that necessarily 
 attend all living. Sorrow has set all the 
 chords of the Hindu heart into the minor 
 keys. To cure sorrow he would bring 
 life itself—life as it runs through count- 
 less births—to an end. So different is 
 the Christian release from the Hindu! 
 
 “Yet listen, Mr. Gray. Hold the 
 Hindu to the Christ healing sorrow, 
 keep his gaze on that perfect one who 
 came to share our sorrows (and while 
 he shares to heal them), and the Hindu 
 heart, breaking all barriers of his logic 
 and long traditions, will fly to the 
 Christ as steel to the magnet. Christ, 
 the Man of sorrows, who came to release 
 from sorrows, is irresistible to India. 
 If Christian lives will not deny and give 
 the lie to his words, when He stands and 
 says to India, “The Spirit of the Lord 
 
 . anointed me to preach good tidings 
 to your poor, to proclaim release 
 to your captives, to recover the sight 
 of your blind, to set at liberty those 
 among you that are bruised, and to 
 proclaim a new and better period for 
 your ancient land,’ India, prepared in a 
 measure by her own religions, will not 
 cast him from the brow of the hill but 
 will rather, as is her way, cast herself 
 at his feet in a paroxysm of loving de- 
 votion, saying over and over, ‘My Lord 
 and my God!’ ” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 WHY IS HINDUISM at once the most 
 
 intolerant and most tolerant of all re- 
 ligions? 
 
 In what respects is Hinduism fitted 
 to Indian life and temperament? Has 
 it made the most of the opportunity af- 
 forded by this fact? 
 
 What is the danger of ““broad-minded- 
 ness” toward other religions than Chris- 
 tianity? 
 
 How does Hinduism unfit natives for 
 the reception of Christianity? How do 
 its adherents prejudice the natives 
 against Christian missionaries? 
 
 Show how Hinduism is a caste re- 
 ligion. In this respect has it anything 
 in common with Christianity? 
 
 Name other barriers between Hin- 
 duism and Christianity. 
 
 What is the Hindu conception of 
 God? How does this influence the 
 thought and action of its adherents? 
 
 Fundamental Conceptions of 
 
 Hinduism 
 GOD 
 - The all-pervading essence of the 
 universe 
 THE WORLD 
 Unreal; 
 the visible, an illusion 
 HUMAN LIFE 
 
 by cessation from desire 
 
 SALVATION 
 Release from the chain 
 of individual existence 
 
 THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 Stratified by caste; 
 each man’s place unalterably 
 fixed by birth 
 
 THE PAST 
 Irrevocable; must be 
 expiated by man himself 
 
 THE GOAL 
 Identity with Brahma; 
 
 Essentially evil; to be escaped 
 Nirvana 
 
 Christianity 
 GOD 
 
 The one eternal Father revealed 
 in Jesus Christ 
 
 THE WORLD . 
 A battleground; 
 the visible, a sacrament 
 
 HUMAN LIFE 
 Essentially good; an ever-increas- 
 ing opportunity of loving service 
 
 SALVATION 
 
 Fogiveness of past sins and 
 new life unto righteousness 
 
 THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 A brotherhood including all 
 men as children of the one 
 Father 
 
 THE PAST 
 Redeemed by the infinite 
 sacrifice of divine love 
 
 THE GOAL 
 Communion with God; ‘‘the 
 measure of. the stature of 
 the fulness of Christ.’’ 
 
 —The Renaissance in India, Andrews. 
 
The Mass Movement 
 
 Scripture Reference: Matt. 14. 13-21 
 
 MRS. GRAY begged us to stay for 
 supper. The supper table was un- 
 usually attractive with its fine linen, 
 silver, and china. In the center rose a 
 cut-glass vase filled with hybrid tea 
 roses. The meal was simple but pre- 
 pared with all the skill of a culinary 
 artist. Fazl Masih, asking the blessing, 
 took a hot roll from his side plate and, 
 lifting his face in a prayer of gratitude, 
 broke the roll in two pieces. Eleanor, 
 slyly watching him, remembered the 
 practice of the Teacher as recorded in 
 the Gospels. 
 
 Feasting 
 
 “T have come a long way,” said Fazl 
 Masih with some feeling “from the 
 meager food of the outcaste to these 
 daily feasts of Christian homes in 
 America.” 
 
 “This is no feast,” said Mrs. Gray 
 in protest. “This is only a simple 
 Sunday-evening supper.” 
 
 “That is it,” replied the Indian. “In 
 your plenty a feast has become a simple 
 supper. Oh, how much you have! 
 And this water—I never drank water 
 such as this when I was a boy.” 
 
 “Why, this is just plain water,” said 
 Eleanor in surprise. Fazl Masih lifted 
 his glass and looked at it. ‘“‘Never call 
 this ‘just plain water’—so clear and 
 cold. We draw from shallow wells and 
 carry it long distances. Ours is just 
 plain water, and not much of it at that. 
 We are ever hungry and ever thirsty, 
 and you never know hunger or thirst. 
 Surely the Teacher has fulfilled his 
 promise—that those who follow him 
 and are called by his name shall never 
 hunger or thirst. Christian America 
 sits down to a feast of rich food and ot 
 living water three times a day and 
 oftener.” 
 
 “But we have many hungry in our 
 country,” said Mr. Gray. 
 
 “Not in Christian homes, Mr. Gray,” 
 replied Fazl Masih. ‘Where Christ 
 goes in, hunger goes out. He 7s bread— 
 he gives bread.” 
 
 Slaves of Hunger 
 
 “Body and soul, he feeds his own. Is 
 not that the wonder of the Christ? 
 
 Bread bread bread— 
 the Gospels are full of bread, because 
 he is come to feed men, For the sake 
 of the loaves and fishes we all follow 
 him: he satisfies our hunger. Hunger is 
 all through us—hunger for knowledge, 
 hunger for peace, hunger for joy, 
 hunger for bread.” 
 
 Suddenly he grew very sober and 
 laid down his knife and fork. “Through 
 India’s villages is going the rumor of a 
 Bread Giver, and India’s villages are 
 trampled by hunger. As a boy I never 
 knew a full stomach. Hungry I grew 
 up. Physical hunger—yes. Fifty mil- 
 lion outcastes lorded over by hunger! 
 Famine is chronic in my land. Not even 
 simple Sunday suppers for fifty millions 
 of us. Thin we grow; our bones pro- 
 trude. We carry heavy loads and do 
 hard work with legs and arms pitifully 
 thin. Hunger goes to bed with us and 
 wakes us in the night. We are all of 
 us slaves of hunger. Hunger breaks 
 our spirit and keeps us submissive— 
 hunger for food, hunger for more and 
 better things in life, hunger for that 
 which fills the soul. We. may not 
 express it in words, but it looks out of 
 our eyes—every one of us. 
 
 “Now to the world, nineteen centuries 
 ago, came the Bread Giver. Many he 
 fed, his disciples he fed, and he sent 
 them out to feed: “Feed my sheep’ 
 ‘Feed my lambs.’ But with full stomachs 
 you sat down, satisfied. Nineteen 
 hundred years have passed, and India 
 still waits in its villages, where ninety 
 per cent of Indians live. 
 
 HLet ramor hassitethaguehere are 
 bread and better living in the world, 
 that the name of Yishu (Jesus) 1s 
 somehow connected with it, that even 
 outcastes with that Name laid on their 
 heads in baptism may without fear have 
 some of it.” 
 
 The Masses of India 
 
 “So, Mr. Gray, the villages of India 
 are stirring. A mighty host of out- 
 castes and lowcastes is preparing for the 
 exodus. They have no Moses, no Aaron, 
 to lead them. In their caste groups 
 they are assembling, and men, women, 
 and children are beginning to gird them: 
 selves for a strange journey out of their 
 land of bondage. Their advance 
 groups are already on the way. These 
 have looked to Christianity first for 
 help and guidance, and Christianity 
 
 A baptismal service at Phapunda, India 
 
 LS; 
 
has baptized hundreds of thousands of 
 them.” 
 
 “Are you speaking of the mass move- 
 ment?” asked Mr. Gray. 
 
 “Yes, *-said Faz] Masih’ “It is the 
 proletariat of India moving out and up 
 and giving Christianity the first chance 
 of finding and determining their line of 
 march. It is a phase of a universal 
 movement in all lands—the lowly and 
 the oppressed seeking better conditions 
 for life and labor. It is a strange sight 
 in India and one that thrills the blood; 
 for India, in all its long history, has 
 never seen mass movements on this 
 order.” 
 
 “Why has Christianity the first 
 chance?” asked John. 
 “Because,” answered Fazl Masih, 
 
 “Christianity is to a great extent re- 
 sponsible for the restlessness of these 
 masses. Christianity is ever  pro- 
 claiming a better life and better living. 
 The brighter future is ever dangled 
 before the unhappy present.  Chris- 
 tianity, like a mother with candy, ever 
 lures them on. Christianity encourages 
 them to start and, having started, 
 sympathizes with them and _ speaks 
 kindly to them.” 
 
 A Growing Movement 
 
 “Are they really coming in masses?” 
 asked Eleanor. 
 
 “Yes, Miss Eleanor, a whole caste 
 from this village, a whole caste from 
 that,—all the representatives of some 
 particular caste from a group of vil- 
 lages. Whole regions, north and south, 
 are distinctly affected. The movement 
 is bound to grow.” 
 
 “Fazl Masih,’—and Mrs. Gray’s 
 face was sober—“‘they do not come with 
 really Christian motives, do they? 
 They are not thinking of their sins and 
 fleeing from them; they are not asking 
 for salvation, are they?” 
 
 “No, Mrs. Gray, except in some in- 
 stances. They are fleeing from a con- 
 dition of bondage—social bondage, 
 economic bondage, spiritual bondage. 
 They do not fully comprehend just 
 what they are fleeing from or fleeing to. 
 They know they are moving out to 
 something better. Would you thrust 
 them back into bondage just because 
 they do not speak in the language of 
 prayer meetings and revival services? 
 They are hungry in every department 
 of their lives, and the Bread Giver can 
 satisfy every hunger. Shall we keep 
 them from the Christ because their re- 
 quests are not always framed in terms 
 of morality and religion? 
 
 “Yet,” he continued, “you will be 
 surprised to know that their most 
 frequent requests are for Christian 
 teachers and for protection from unjust 
 
 V—The Mass Movement 
 
 persecution that would disrupt their life 
 and throw them into jail on false 
 
 charges. They say to us: ‘In our line of - 
 
 march give us guides and keep us from 
 those who rob and beat us, and the rest 
 
 THE PEOPLE are not allsaints, but 
 neither are we. They come to us 
 from mixed motives, I grant you. 
 Yes, friends, their motives are 
 mixed; but until you can stand in 
 the shoes of a bare-footed Chamar 
 or Bhangi, neither you nor I are in 
 a position to sit in judgment. 
 Were I a Bhangi, with all that goes 
 with that, and with only the vista 
 of a broom under my arm and a 
 basket (with its contents) on my 
 head, I would seek a way out and, 
 seeing it, even were it by way of the 
 church, I would go that way. 
 Would not you? Were Ia Chamar, 
 with nothing else to bequeath to 
 posterity but the odium of ‘‘un- 
 touchability’’ and the malodorous 
 work over a tan pit in a village, and 
 someone came along and told me 
 of a way out, even were that via the 
 church, I would go. Would not 
 you? Yes, I would go, even if men 
 that should know better stood 
 crying, ‘‘Mixed motives!”’ 
 
 After a study of these same 
 mixed motives, extending over 
 some years, I have come to the 
 conclusion that they have three 
 main ones: first, they want their 
 children educated; second, they 
 wanta social uplift; and, third, they 
 want a religion. Now, not one of 
 these motives in itself is bad. The 
 man among us who would not 
 strive, until he felt the pinch, that 
 his sons and daughters should be 
 well educated is not worthy of the 
 parenthood that God has given 
 him. Then, too, we all believe in 
 a social uplift in the homelands for 
 all who are down: then why not in 
 this land? and why not by means of 
 the church of Christ if a social 
 uplift is good for a man? Those 
 who know conditions as they are 
 know that no son of an ‘‘untouch- 
 able’ can get into the schools that 
 now exist; not that there is any 
 law against it, but that the sons of 
 the ‘‘touchables’’ would see that 
 no ‘“‘untouchable”’ getsin. If they 
 are to be educated, it must be in 
 special schools for them.—J. T. 
 Robertson in the Indian Witness. 
 
 [eae ry 
 
 we shall do ourselves.’ Could you 
 improve on these requests?” 
 
 si edownot sknowsthatelecan, @aan= 
 swered Mrs. Gray. 
 
 Mr. Gray Objects 
 
 “But I have a serious objection to all 
 these mass movements,” suddenly put 
 in Mr. Gray. “If the Christian church 
 is as yet small in India and if it opens its 
 doors to these ignorant village out- 
 castes, will you not destroy your Chris- 
 tian church—swamp it—with an over- 
 load of superstition? Will they not 
 render the church poor and feeble for a 
 
 14 
 
 i a 
 
 long time to come? How can you havea 
 strong church if you fill it with these 
 folk? Does not Christianity become a 
 thin veneeer covering a lot of paganism? 
 I have read of such a condition in other 
 lands, caused by overrapid Christian- 
 ization. My program would be: build 
 up a small, strong, intelligent, educated 
 Christian community, a model to the 
 Indian people, a true example of Chris- 
 tian culture, a light shining in a dark 
 place; and let these masses go for the 
 present. Get them further on: fifty or 
 a hundred years from now. Which 
 will have benefited India more in 
 the end—immediate response to and 
 baptism of these moving millions of 
 outcastes, thereby diluting your Chris- 
 tian spirit and power at the very 
 moment when India needs that spirit 
 and power in full strength, or letting the 
 movement go past you and overtaking 
 it gradually and in time with Indian 
 Christian leaders carefully trained and 
 ready to handle the situation so that 
 neither the literacy nor the purity of 
 the Christian church shall suffer any 
 shock or diminution? I am a business 
 man, and to me it is poor business to 
 herd this stampeding herd of dumb 
 cattle—for that is really what they are 
 —into the narrow and small pen of the 
 Indian Christian Church. I know they 
 are hungry and confused and eager for 
 Christian teaching, but sentiment too 
 often spoils the best strategy of a 
 campaign. Let us, as Christ, limit our- 
 selves in India to the smaller group— 
 ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’— 
 before we go to the uttermost. man in 
 the uttermost part of the land. First in 
 Jerusalem,- then in Judea, then in 
 Samaria, and finally in the uttermost 
 parts: it is the strategy of Jesus and 
 wise in every respect. In other words, 
 Fazl Masih, hard-hearted as I may seem, 
 it is folly and ruin to try to make Chris- 
 tians in masses. Let the mass move- 
 ment work itself out in its own way. 
 Pick a few stragglers or individuals— 
 as yourself—from the line of march, 
 train them in your Christian institu- 
 tions, and send them back as Moseses 
 and Aarons to lead their own people as 
 best they can in their own way. I am 
 certain it is the wiser policy.” 
 
 Mr. Gray did seem convinced, and 
 his conviction registered itself in the 
 ringing of the carving knife upon the 
 steel as he prepared to carve the cold 
 roast beef. 
 
 Shall the Door Be Shut? 
 
 Eleanor and John looked eagerly to 
 Faz] Masih to get his answer. It came 
 without long delay: 
 
 “Mr. Gray, there is much, very much 
 in what you say. The literacy of the 
 
Indian Christian Church has already 
 been very seriously, even dangerously, 
 lowered by the influx of outcastes, in- 
 adequately prepared and trained. In 
 our own church sixty thousand baptized 
 boys and girls are without any provision 
 for education. The Indian Christian 
 Church often resents this flooding of 
 its life on the part of overzealous mis- 
 sionaries and Indian agents in the mis- 
 sionaries’ employ, by superstitious and 
 poverty-stricken masses. It may be, 
 humanly speaking, better strategy to go 
 more slowly, yet they are human lives 
 and of infinite value accordingly. Who 
 inquires into the education and social 
 position of men and.women caught in a 
 burning building and crying for help? 
 Does not every American city count 
 one life as valuable as any other life and 
 make provision for rescue and assistance 
 on that basis? 
 
 “And then, Mr. Gray, is it not the 
 very spirit of Christ—and, therefore, 
 of true Christianity—to refuse help to 
 no one? To refuse help is by that very 
 act to deny the common fatherhood of 
 God, the brotherhood of man, and the 
 universality of the kingdom of God. 
 Jesus was not sent only ‘to the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel,’ but the 
 other sheep, who ‘are not of this fold,’ 
 were his also. The little dogs may eat 
 the crumbs that fall from the children’s 
 table; the Samaritan and the Greek who 
 seek him do find him; the men of 
 Cornelius, who knock at the house of 
 Simon the tanner for one Simon Peter, 
 do find and get him; the man of Mace- 
 donia does upset Paul’s strategic tour 
 through Asia Minor. Christianity, by 
 its very spirit and fundamental proposi- 
 tion, is never quite able to shut the door 
 of good strategy On a mass movement 
 pressing toward Christ. It is never 
 quite able to keep the multitudes from 
 thronging him and receiving his healing 
 touch.” 
 
 Breaking the Caste System 
 
 “More than that, Mr. Gray, I am not 
 convinced that it is better strategy to 
 let the mass movement sweep past us 
 into some phase of reformed Hinduism 
 or into Islam and not meet it head-on 
 with the Christian deputations and 
 agents of welcome; not merely because 
 it will be more difficult to reach them 
 as Hindus, accepted from outcastehood 
 into lowcastehood, or as Moslems, than 
 it is now to reach them as outcastes, but 
 of much greater significance is this: that 
 the mass movement, met and by 
 enormous efforts turned into an edu- 
 cated and vital Christian community, 
 would do more to break and stultify the 
 caste system (which is not only the 
 
 V—The Mass Movement 
 
 Chaudri telling his experience at a meeting of lay readers at Meerut, India 
 
 body but the soul of Hinduism as well) ° 
 
 than any other possible thing that 
 might happen. Caste holds us up— 
 the Hindenburg Line of Hinduism. 
 Caste implies social distinction, re- 
 ligious heritage, and, to some extent, 
 intellectual training. To take whole 
 castes of outcastes—just as they come 
 to us—and render them in body, mind, 
 and soul the equals of highcastes and 
 put their feet on equal levels of achieve- 
 ment would render the whole of 
 Hinduism an Alice’s Wonderland, where 
 sense and reason no longer prevail. The 
 last would become first, and the first 
 would be no longer first; which is what 
 usually happens in Jesus’ Wonderland 
 —or, as he calls it, his kingdom of 
 heaven on earth. In this way, more 
 quickly than any other, shall we over- 
 come the old and make the new triumph 
 in India. The mass movement, in 
 other words, is the long crowbar by 
 which the caste system of India may be 
 toppled from its secure and age-long 
 foundations. Shall we refuse to take 
 hold when God and the Christ are 
 thrusting it into our hands?” 
 
 Outcastes as Christians 
 
 “Can these outcastes be made into 
 real Christians, into living churches 
 that will not disgrace the name of 
 Christian?” asked John. 
 
 LUbat isp amlone estory, ecsalds Laz. 
 Masih, “‘and our hostess has folded her 
 
 15 
 
 napkin. It happens that I am going 
 to speak to the young people to-night 
 in the church on that very subject— 
 n ‘The Indian Christian Church.’ ” 
 
 “Why can’t we all go?” asked Mr. 
 Gray. 
 
 “We can,” 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 answered Mrs. Gray with 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 WHAT IS the mass movement? 
 
 Is it inspired by a desire for physical 
 nourishment? 
 
 Does it involve a yearning for spirit- 
 ual as well as material refreshment? 
 
 How does India respond to the appeal 
 of the great Bread Giver? 
 
 To what social class do persons in the 
 
 ‘mass movement generally belong? 
 
 What does Christianity do for them? 
 
 Has the movement reached its apex? 
 
 Is Mr. Gray’s objection to respond- 
 ing to the mass movement a yalid one? 
 Why or why not? 
 
 Is it enough to “pick a few stragglers 
 from the line of march” and give them 
 a Christian education and the oppor- 
 tunities of civilization? What is Fazl 
 Masih’s reply to Mr. Gray’s argument? 
 
 What is the Scriptural answer to the 
 plea that Jesus was sent only “to the 
 lost sheep of the house of Israel’’? 
 
 In what sense is Christianity in 
 India like a crowbar? 
 
 Can caste in India be destroyed? 
 
VI 
 
 The Indian Christian Church 
 
 Scripture References: John 13. 12-17; Acts 11. 15-18 
 
 WHEN FAZL MASIH spoke | that 
 night in the main auditorium of the 
 church, the service was unique. It 
 was in charge of the young people. 
 With characteristic energy and ingenu- 
 ity they had decorated the church to 
 represent India. Striking pictures of 
 India were on the walls, the pulpit had 
 been removed, and the platform taste- 
 fully arranged with palms and mari- 
 golds (the so-called African variety 
 that is so common in India), and 
 Oriental rugs and cushions.  Fazl 
 Masih was dressed in Indian costume 
 and wore a garland of marigolds about 
 his neck. With his help the service had 
 
 been planned. 
 A Significant Pageant 
 
 To show the proportion of adherents 
 of each religion in India, as the organ 
 ceased playing, in came forty-eight 
 young men and women under a banner 
 marked Hinduism and singing in 
 English, to its own Indian tune, a song 
 in praise of Vishnu, the god of light and 
 grace. They passed into the vacant 
 seats reserved for the young people. 
 They were followed by thirteen carry- 
 ing the standard of Islam (Moham- 
 medanism). These chanted the great 
 “verse of the throne” from the Koran, 
 where Allah is “high and lifted up.” 
 Then came two primitive animists, 
 looking about in fear and _ intoning 
 magical formule that protect from evil 
 spirits. Finally, after a pause, came a 
 lone bearer of a cross, singing “Jesus 
 Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” and 
 taking his place in the middle of the 
 other groups. As he reached his seat 
 he ceased singing, and immediately 
 the same great hymn was taken up 
 
 AT ONE EXTREME in the Indian 
 Church are the educated leaders, 
 whose capacity seems equal to that 
 of the ablest foreign missionaries, 
 and whose claim to have a voice in 
 the evangelization of India is fully 
 justified. At the other extreme, 
 and vastly preponderating in num- 
 bers, are the simple and unde- 
 veloped congregations drawn from 
 the depressed classes. Owing to 
 their poverty and ignorance they 
 cannot bear heavy responsibilities. 
 Their place of Christian worship 
 may be a mud-walled building, 
 larger and better built than their 
 own village houses; or it may be 
 merely a raised, level, shaded place 
 for prayer out in the open. Such 
 congregations will naturally re- 
 quire a great deal of training, nur- 
 ture, and discipline before they can 
 be built up into useful citizens and 
 can take an adequate place in the 
 life of the church and the nation. 
 —D. J. Fleming in Building With 
 India. 
 
 from inside the vestry. Low it’sounded 
 at first, then increased in strength. 
 Soon the vestry door opened, and Fazl 
 Masih stepped forth. He made his 
 way to the place prepared for him, 
 finished the song (singing in Hindi), 
 then lifted his face in prayer. Not a 
 person there but was stirred as the 
 Indian talked to the Christ—as if he 
 saw him and would share with him all 
 that was light and heavy in his heart. 
 
 The Leaven at Work 
 
 Then he arose to speak. His theme 
 was “The One in the Sixty-One’— 
 the Indian Christian Church embedded 
 in the life of non-Christian peoples. 
 It was the small amount of leaven hid 
 in the “three measures” of meal. The 
 
 The Hindustani Church in Naini Tal, India 
 
 16 
 
 non-Christians—more than three hun- 
 dred millions of them—constituted a 
 great handicap, a great responsibility, 
 and a great opportunity for the five 
 million Christians. 
 
 The Christians were divided into 
 many churches and sects and as yet had 
 not achieved, except on a small scale, 
 the power that comes from a conscious- 
 ness of unity. Their non-Christian 
 neighbors and relatives were constantly 
 dragging down, as by some _ hidden 
 natural force of gravitation, the Chris- 
 tian morale to the level of the common 
 life of India. It was a constant struggle 
 to keep the purity of the Christian 
 spirit and practice unimpaired by non- 
 Christian associations. 
 
 Caste within the church furnished an 
 enormous problem; for the spirit of 
 caste is never cast forth merely by the 
 application of baptismal water. The 
 caste spirit is for India its anti-Christ. 
 Many a -prosperous Christian com- 
 munity in the long centuries since the 
 Christian preachers and teachers first 
 came to India, beginning with Thomas 
 himself, that disciple of Jesus whose 
 surname was Didymus, has _ been 
 rendered eftete and innocuous, as far 
 as its task to non-Christians was con- 
 cerned, by this spirit of caste. Caste 
 causes an Indian Christian church to 
 decay at the heart—the core, the 
 center. 
 
 An Invisible Process 
 
 The non-Christian peoples not only 
 are a handicap and a source of in- 
 fection but, far more, and more posi- 
 tively, are the responsibility and the 
 opportunity of the Indian Christian 
 Church. A vital Indian Christianity 
 will assume the responsibility and press 
 forward along all lines of opportunity. 
 No active leaven will fear the three 
 measures of meal; with every atom of 
 leaven active the meal is, by God’s own 
 natural laws, doomed to leavening. 
 The process is not visible to any large 
 extent; invisibly the forces of Chris- 
 tianity are exerting their greatest in- 
 fluence and power. No man in India 
 can say, “Lo here! Lo there!” for the 
 kingdom of Christ comes chiefly with- 
 out observation. Like white ants that 
 grind out with their small, powerful 
 jaws the interior of a structure before 
 much sign is given on the outside of 
 their destructive presence, so the in- 
 fluences of the Christ are eating out the 
 hearts of the great social and religious 
 systems of India. And the Indian 
 
e 
 
 Christian Church is, of course, called 
 upon to furnish the agents and the 
 proof of this power of Christ. The 
 Indian Christian Church must speed up, 
 and not delay the process. 
 
 To do so the Indian Christian Church 
 must discipline itself, bring together all 
 its branches into closer and more com- 
 pact form, have far more control over 
 its own affairs than in the past, and give 
 the supreme place in its life not to 
 organization but to communion with 
 
 the living Christ. 
 | A Self-Imposed Discipline 
 
 Then Fazl Masih stopped and drew 
 from his pocket a recent letter that told 
 of the self-imposed discipline of a little 
 village community of Christians in one 
 of the new mass-movement . areas. 
 Unable to write their names, they had 
 given their thumb-mark signatures to 
 the following decisions: 
 
 “1. Observance of the Sabbath—We 
 will attend worship both morning and 
 evening. If we are prevented from 
 doing so by causes beyond our control 
 we will inform the evangelist of our 
 village. If we absent outselves for no 
 satisfactory reason we agree to be fined 
 four annas. We also agree to do as 
 little work as possible on the Lord’s 
 Day. 
 
 “9, Total abstinence—We agree to 
 abstain from toddy, arrack, and other 
 intoxicating drinks, or, if any member 
 of our families indulges in the use of 
 them, we agree to the imposition of a 
 fine of Rs. 5 for each individual. 
 
 “3. From eating forbidden things.— 
 We agree to abstain from eating the 
 flesh of animals that have died of them- 
 selves, the flesh of animals offered as 
 sacrifices to idols, and all fruit that has 
 been so offered. A breach of this rule 
 will involve each offender in a fine of 
 Rs... 
 
 “4. Each must be ready to perform any 
 necessary work connected with the church. 
 If any member refuses to come when 
 called, we agree that a fine of eight 
 annas be imposed. 
 
 “s. All disputes that arise among 
 members of the church shall be heard and 
 settled by the church court. Those who 
 break this rule shall be dealt with as the 
 church court decides. 
 
 “6. No Christian shall take part in 
 Hindu festivals or give any assistance 
 therein; they shall not contribute any 
 of their cattle or any other things to 
 help such festivals. Any breach of this 
 rule shall be punished according to the 
 decision of the church court. 
 
 “7, All children of a schoolgoing age 
 shall be sent regularly to school. ‘Those 
 who keep their children from school 
 
 VI—The Indian Christian Church 
 
 WHILE WE HAVE BEEN BUSY 
 with the children, the adults have 
 one by one been quietly coming in 
 and seating themselves on the 
 floor, the men on one side, and the 
 women on the other; and soon we 
 are ready to begin the service. 
 
 Praise, prayer, and preaching— 
 these are essentially the same in the 
 pariah’s shed or the Gothic cathe- 
 
 dral; but the external features of — 
 
 our service appear strange to the 
 visitor. Not only are the language 
 and the music Indian, but the 
 whole of the worship has been so 
 simplified as to bring it within the 
 range of the understanding of the 
 worshipers—those babes in re- 
 ligious experience. The sermon, 
 for example, is more a kindergarten 
 Scripture lesson than a discourse. 
 Its subject is laid down in the 
 mission syllabus, which is ar- 
 ranged so as to give the hearers a 
 regular graded course of instruc- 
 tion in the life of Christ and in 
 certain other portions of the Bible. 
 We begin by asking the congre- 
 gation what was the subject of last 
 week’s lesson; there is an awkward 
 pause until some brilliant person 
 recollects it, whereupon we link 
 to-day’s subject with it. Suppos- 
 ing that to-day’s subject is a par- 
 able, we tell the story with question 
 and answer and much repetition, 
 not hesitating to rebuke by name 
 individuals whose attention wan- 
 ders or to waken others who are 
 overtaken by slumber. As _ the 
 people live constantly in the open 
 air, doing hard manual work, they 
 are naturally liable to fall asleep 
 when they sit still, so that often 
 someone has to be waked up during 
 a service. We reach the point in 
 
 the lessons at which the text must 
 
 be introduced, and make the whole 
 congregation repeat it after us 
 fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five 
 times. Then we point the plain 
 moral of the story, and it is one of 
 the privileges of doing mission 
 work to find how those words, 
 spoken to Jews so long ago, are 
 marvelously adapted to the cir- 
 cumstances of an Indian village 
 to-day. 
 
 So ends the sermon, which is 
 followed by the collection, con- 
 sisting mainly of little offerings of 
 grain saved from each family’s 
 meals during the week. The house- 
 wife has a special little basket for 
 
 ‘the purpose, into which, at cook- 
 
 ing time, she places, when she can 
 spare it, a handful of grain; and 
 the whole basket is brought on 
 Sunday to church for the collec- 
 tion. The congregation’s total 
 amount of grain is thus put to- 
 gether and ultimately sold by 
 auction for church expenses. After 
 the benediction we mark the 
 register, for in most village congre- 
 gations of this type the attendance 
 at church services is carefully 
 recorded. We ask why Mary has 
 been away for three weeks, and why 
 for the last six months Methu- 
 selah’s attendance at Christian 
 worship has: been so intermittent. 
 We ask many impertinent ques- 
 tions about the life and conduct of 
 various individuals and _ scatter 
 plentiful words of exhortation. In 
 fact, recognizing that we have to 
 do with children in _ spiritual 
 things, we treat them as such, 
 looking forward all the time to the 
 day when they will grow up and 
 cease to need our constant paternal 
 supervision.— Godfrey R. Phillips 
 in The Outcastes’ Hope. 
 
 without satisfactory reasons shall be 
 fined one anna for each child absent. 
 
 “8. Every three or six months the 
 members of the church court shall be 
 changed. The evangelist of each place 
 shall be present at all inquiries that are 
 made under each rule. 
 
 “9, All fines shall be devoted to the 
 work of the church. 
 
 “to, No one shall have authority to 
 excommunicate from the church except 
 the Indian minister and the superin- 
 tendent missionary.” 
 
 AS THE FIRST APOSTLE of the 
 Gentiles declares more than once, 
 where Christ is all in all, ‘‘there 
 cannot be Greek and Jew [the 
 caste that springs from race], cir- 
 cumcision and uncircumcision [the 
 caste that rests on forms of wor- 
 ship], barbarian, Scythian [the 
 caste of culture], bondman, free- 
 man [the caste of social position]; 
 for ye all are one man in Christ 
 Jesus’’ (Col. 3. 11; Gal. 3. 28).— 
 Graves Lectures on Missions, Hill. 
 
 IG 
 
 Weakness and Strength 
 
 “T was in that church,” said the 
 speaker, “and know something of its 
 works and its patience, its tribulation 
 and its poverty, its love and faith and 
 ministry—are not these the words used 
 of the seven churches of Asia in Revela- 
 tion? This little Indian village church 
 and many like it have their candle- 
 sticks secure. Of course, there is much 
 that might be said against them. ‘I 
 have this against thee’ is spoken of five 
 of the seven, and the proportion still 
 holds in India—and in America too, for 
 that matter. There is relapse into the 
 old custom, especially at weddings and 
 funeral feasts; there is the chill of a low 
 ethical and spiritual pulse; there is a 
 continuous and distracting fight with 
 starvation and cold and disease; there 
 is the darkness of ignorance and il- 
 literacy (no pillar of fire by night or 
 cloud by day but, rather, the reverse: 
 the clouds by night and the pillars of 
 fire by day); there is the numbing ac- 
 quiescence in propagation of the Chris- 
 
’ INDIA, CEYLON AND 
 AFGHANISTAN 
 
 HINDU POPULATION 
 
 “~s (1911 CENSUS) 
 ¢’ INDIA, CEYLON AND 
 AFGHANISTAN 
 
 _o>~“t, BUDDHIST POPULATION 
 "4 fener (gil CENSUS) 
 ¢’ INDIA, CEYLON AND 
 AFGHANISTAN 
 
 From the World Survey 
 
 The 1911 census showed approximately 5,000,000 Christians as compared with 234,000,000 Hindus and 71,000,000 Buddhists 
 
 tian faith by missionaries and paid 
 agents rather than self-propagation. 
 To all these our village churches would 
 plead guilty and throw themselves on 
 the mercy of the court. Yet’—and here 
 Fazl Masih’s eyes burned with light— 
 Vl haves seen sthenmam them utcs sor 
 persecution, whence they come forth 
 purified, not denying their Lord by 
 word or act; I have seen them in their 
 poverty bring in their flour and grain 
 and cloth and eggs and chickens and 
 goats and calves and rings (finger rings, 
 nose rings, earrings) and anklets and lay 
 them joyfully with the Christian offer- 
 ings. I have seen them sing their songs 
 of gladness until the veins in their 
 foreheads swelled to bursting, and their 
 mouths were stretched by the sing- 
 ing. I have seen their hospitality— 
 golden hospitality—woven out of the 
 threads of poverty; and their care of the 
 sick and the bereaved. I have seen 
 them coming into the Christian mela 
 (fair) with drums and cymbals and 
 banners saying proudly, “We are Isai’ 
 (Jesus folk); I have heard their simple 
 prayers, full of the imagery of their 
 daily lives, of swooping hawks and 
 little chicks, of washermen standing in 
 the river cleaning dirty clothes, of 
 patient oxen pulling the huge leather 
 bags filled with water out of the shallow 
 wells,—and in answer the Holy Spirit 
 came settling down upon them. as some 
 dove of peace or fire that burns. (Do 
 you remember how Peter defended 
 himself: “The Holy Spirit fell on them, 
 even as on us’?) I have seen hundreds 
 of their young men and women go out 
 of the village life into training schools, 
 and out of these again to become the 
 paid evangelists and pastor-teachers of 
 their own people. I have seen the zeal 
 and heard the wisdom of these babes in 
 Christ and know that from ‘the mouth 
 of babes and sucklings’ praise is brought 
 to its perfect expression. In a word, 
 the Christian Church in the villages of 
 India is being built out of the lives of the 
 plainest sort of men and women. Sun- 
 
 baked clay bricks they are rather than 
 
 stones; yet, with the Christ as the head 
 of their corner, as that which gives their 
 lives their true relationships and mean- 
 ings, even a sun-baked-brick structure 
 may become a place for the praise of 
 God and for the blessing of men.” 
 
 A Nationalistic Church 
 
 “But if you pass to the cities where 
 Indian Christianity is really strongest 
 and most developed—where there are 
 real churches and schools and Christian 
 institutions—you will see perhaps more 
 clearly the Indian Church that is to be. 
 City Christianity is to-day intensely 
 and increasingly nationalistic. It will 
 henceforth add to rather than subtract 
 from the indigenous elements in its life. 
 Things that are Indian and may be 
 
 safely made Christian will be preserved. 
 
 The whole past of India is pouring its 
 pent-up waters into the Indian Church. 
 The flood may be dangerous in certain 
 respects, yet floods in India always 
 enrich the soil by leaving their silt. 
 The Indian will no longer apologize for 
 the past but take pride in much of it. 
 The Indian Christian Church will make 
 its connections with India’s past, 
 attach itself to the movements of the 
 ages, bring a new power and force into 
 the ordered lives of an ancient people, 
 see the Christ in Indian dress speaking 
 Indian tongues, worship in churches 
 that are Indian in appearance and not 
 poor imitations of this church, use an 
 Indian Christian ritual and order of 
 service (perhaps garland its preachers, 
 as you have done, and do away with the 
 pulpit, with the standing to preach in- 
 stead of sitting on the floor to teach), 
 elect all its own officers and admin- 
 istrators, control its own finances, 
 put much more emphasis on meditation 
 and mystic communion, more emphasis 
 on congregational singing with noisy 
 instruments (drum and cymbal), and 
 play a larger part in all the political and 
 national life of India. So shall any 
 Indian entering a Christian church feel 
 himself still in India, and not in some 
 strange land half-Indian, half-foreign. 
 18 
 
 “When will this come?” asked Fazl 
 Masih. “When sufficient Indian leader- 
 ship is developed to ‘take over’ from 
 the missionaries, who in God’s provi- 
 dence have dug foundations, laid the 
 first stones, and started the building 
 well on its way. We rejoice in them 
 and what they have accomplished; we 
 would have them rejoice in us as the 
 responsibility for building the Indian 
 Church falls increasingly on our hearts 
 and hands.” 
 
 When Fazl Masih ceased speaking, 
 the organ again took up the hymn 
 “Jesus Shall Reign.” This time all 
 
 ‘sang, even. the forty-eight and the 
 
 thirteen, as, on the last stanza, they 
 marched out 1n one dense column under 
 the banner of the cross. 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 IN WHAT RESPECTS is the Indian 
 Christian Church like a little leaven hid 
 in three measures of meal (Luke 13. 21)? 
 
 Are the Christians in India unified? 
 
 To what extent is their morale broken 
 down by non-Christian associations? 
 
 What is the outstanding problem of 
 the Christian Church in India? 
 
 How does caste militate against the 
 native churches? 
 
 What do you think of the self- 
 imposed discipline quoted by Fazl 
 Masih? Compare it with the “rules” 
 of our own church. 
 
 Name some weaknesses of the Indian 
 Christian churches. Do similar weak- 
 nesses prevail in American churches? 
 
 Name some of the admirable qualities 
 of the Christians in India. Can we 
 match them in this country? 
 
 Where is the Indian Christian Church 
 strongest? 
 
 What is the present tendency in these 
 churches? 
 F Do you think it well that the Indian 
 Church should take pride in developing 
 its Own customs and ideas of church 
 life and work? Why or why not? 
 
VII 
 
 Indian Christian Leadership 
 
 Scripture References: Luke 6. 12-19; Acts 1. 6-14 
 
 THAT NIGHT after the service the 
 young people thronged around Fazl 
 Masih, most eager to see and hear more. 
 He was to them an object of intense 
 curiosity and admiration. They had 
 heard much of missions, but it was all 
 vague and unreal. Here, however, was 
 the missionary enterprise on legs and 
 alive. The poor janitor, hat on, stand- 
 ing impatiently at the switchboard, 
 began to turn off the lights one by one. 
 A wild scramble ensued which landed 
 the young people outside the building. 
 The full moon was shining. 
 
 “Let’s all see him home,” shouted one. 
 The rest shouted approval. 
 
 “That would be a long walk,” 
 laughed Fazl Masih. “This full moon 
 would go and another take its place 
 before home appeared even though we 
 traveled by fastest trains and steamers. 
 Yet”—his voice saddened—“‘I have no 
 home even there. My father and 
 mother are dead. I am unmarried. 
 Like the Teacher I am homeless; like 
 him every home that receives me be- 
 comes my home. You were right: 
 you may see me home to-night.” 
 
 What the Moon Saw 
 
 As we passed the public park, gayly 
 chattering, he spoke again: 
 
 “Why not sit down here on these 
 benches in this beautiful moonlit place? 
 Here let us talk ourselves out.” 
 
 Never was there a suggestion more 
 enthusiastically recetved. Those of us 
 who were there that night have a new 
 
 idea of what this world is to be when 
 the fellowships between men of differ- 
 ent races are perfected in Christian un- 
 derstanding and appreciation. The 
 round moon, which for so many ages 
 has looked on men of all races sundered 
 and kept apart by ignorance and 
 prejudice, a whole world of shadows, 
 saw that night the new India and the 
 new America strangely interesting and 
 strangely sympathetic one to the other. 
 
 Of course, the conversation soon 
 turned to what all young people are 
 most interested in—the investment of 
 life and the dividends accruing from 
 such investment. “Leadership” is often 
 used as another name for this science of 
 life investment, and it was of leadership 
 
 that Faz] Masih spoke. 
 Leaders and the Led 
 
 “Did you ever think,” said Fazl 
 Masih, looking up at the moon which 
 filled his eyes with light, “that no man 
 ever leads who does not follow? Leader- 
 ship means not only that you are a 
 leader but that you follow a leader. 
 Leadership is always a game of tag— 
 you are chasing one while another 
 chases you. That one you chase may 
 be a person or a purpose or ambition 
 to which you are utterly committed— 
 body, mind, and spirit, or, rather, in 
 your time and energy. If there is no 
 such person or ambition that you follow 
 ardently, persistently, then none will 
 follow you, and there is no leadership. 
 Life’s tag becomes then a mere blind- 
 
 man’s buff, which the Teacher perhaps 
 had in mind when he spoke of ‘blind 
 leaders of the blind.’”’ 
 
 “But what has all this to do with 
 India?” asked Eleanor, who was in the 
 group that sat nearest to him. 
 
 “Everything, Miss Eleanor,” an- 
 swered Fazl Masih. “It is the whole 
 problem of Indian Christian leader- 
 ship, as it is of American Christian 
 leadership. ‘What are the leaders 
 following?’—though it sounds like— 
 what do you call it? an Irish bull?— 
 is really the most important question 
 that can be asked—much more im- 
 portant than ‘Whom are the leaders 
 leading?’ For, you see, “Whom are the 
 leaders following?’ determines the direc- 
 tion of the running—whether toward 
 the ditch or toward the open spaces of 
 the park.” 
 
 He stopped and we all were silent with 
 him. When he spoke again, it was of 
 India: 
 
 India on the March 
 
 “India is talking to-night of leader- 
 ship just as we are. Our Indian Chris- 
 tian Church talks much about it. We 
 use such words as ‘self-government,’ 
 ‘autonomy,’ ‘self-determination,’ “free- 
 dom’; but what we really mean is the 
 privilege of leading our own people 
 rather than having them follow English- 
 men, Americans, foreigners. It is of 
 course the would-be leaders who are 
 talking it, not the people who are being 
 led and are to continue to be led. 
 
 LET US TAKE FIRST one whom I 
 shall not hesitate to describe as 
 the greatest Indian Christian of 
 
 this generation. I mean Pandita 
 Ramabai. Her history is, I think, 
 at once an extraordinary revela- 
 tion of the passion and the impo- 
 tence of Hinduism, of the depth 
 and riches of the Indian soul, and, 
 supremely, of the power of Christ. 
 In the long, toilsome, fruitless 
 pilgrimages of her parents and her- 
 self, their sufferings from famine, 
 cold, and weariness, borne in the 
 hope of an unseen good; in her 
 mental labors, no less arduous, her 
 study of the gropings after truth of 
 her people’s ancient sages; in her 
 devotion and in her learning 
 Pandita Ramabai was and is the 
 fine flower of India’s quest for God. 
 And she is no less so when her 
 seeking has been crowned by find- 
 ing. The same passion that drove 
 her and her parents, as it drives so 
 many, with hungry hearts across 
 the plains of India—from the 
 
 FS 
 
 frozen sources of the sacred rivers 
 to the hot, fever-haunted swamps 
 of the farthest south—the same 
 passion, no longer now athirst for 
 itself alone but for others whose 
 thirst is not, as hers is, satisfied, 
 glows and burns within her still. 
 The love of Christ constraineth her. 
 If we desire any reassurance as to 
 what the Indian soul is capable of 
 when possessed by Christ we have 
 but to look at Pandita Ramabai— 
 not mainly at what she has done in 
 her great home at Mukti, much as 
 that has been, but at what she 
 is. 
 There have always been those in 
 the Christian church in all lands 
 and in all times whom the vision 
 of the unseen has made blind to 
 the things of time. They have al- 
 ways been in the church and they 
 will, we believe, be found especially 
 in days to come within the Indian 
 Church. There will be those who 
 will be ready to count the world 
 well lost for the sake of spiritual 
 
 19 
 
 gain, for whom the things of eter- 
 nity are so overwhelmingly real 
 that the things of time matter 
 nothing at all. For these men and 
 women are not citizens of a state 
 or members of a nation but simply 
 souls for whom Christ died. Pan- 
 dita Ramabai is of that company. 
 She has not been denationalized 
 by any influence from the West. 
 Her desires are set upon other 
 things; her citizenship is in heaven. 
 She is, I think we may say, Indian 
 in every fiber of her being, and 
 none the less so because racial or 
 national or personal claims mean 
 nothing at all to her beside the 
 claims of God and of the things of 
 the spirit. She is ‘‘an apostle, not 
 from men, neither through man.”’ 
 Methodism has perhaps influenced 
 her theology, but God and India 
 have made her the great, humble, 
 devoted servant of Christ that, 
 first and last, she is.—Nicol Mac- 
 nicolin the International Review of 
 Missions. 
 
VII—Indian Christian Leadership 
 
 The Rev. J. R. Chitambar and family. Mr. Chitambar was recently elected principal of 
 Lucknow Christian College 
 
 “And what a time to talk of leader- 
 ship when India is on the march! 
 Peoples, like people; nations, like in- 
 dividuals, have their periods of mi- 
 gration. They leave the old landmarks 
 behind and set out to lay new ones. 
 Whole nations, peoples, races, changing 
 their manner of life in one generation— 
 it is a marvelous sight and it is taking 
 place in every continent to-day. The 
 human race itself is on the march, 
 moving no man knows whither. Some 
 nations, like Russia, have pushed too 
 far and too fast and have left their 
 dying and dead pitilessly along their 
 route of march. India, in spite of its 
 great numbers, is well under way. And 
 when these great periods of migration 
 come, then it is that strong men are 
 given such opportunities for leadership 
 and control as are offered only seldom 
 and to few, such opportunities as men 
 of all centuries covet but cannot know. 
 The Teacher came, you remember, in 
 such an age. To his followers, who 
 were being given this opportunity of 
 leadership, he spoke these words: 
 “Blessed are your eyes, for they see; 
 and your ears, for they hear. For 
 verily I say unto you, that many 
 prophets and righteous men desired to 
 see the things which ye see, and saw 
 them not; and to hear the things which 
 ye hear, and heard them not.’ To-day 
 the Teacher once more is speaking in 
 every continent these very words, and 
 our young Indian Christians, of trained 
 mind and some experience, are mightily 
 stirred. They are no longer willing to 
 be the ‘noncoms’—the noncommis- 
 sioned officers—in the Christian armies 
 
 .made it. 
 
 but would march in front and give the 
 words of command.” 
 “Why shouldn’t they?” asked John. 
 “Why not?” chimed in the rest. 
 
 Our Investment in India 
 
 Faz] Masih laughed. “You are all of 
 you Americans, sure enough, brought 
 up on the traditions and principles of 
 liberty. You even carry the word on 
 your coins along with ‘God’ and ‘na- 
 tion.” Liberty! Theoretically, yes. 
 Indian Christians should lead the Indian 
 Church in this day and—let me whisper 
 
 it—wi/l. But practically it is not so 
 easy. It is a very difficult adjustment 
 to make.” 
 
 “Why? asked John. “It looks 
 
 simple to me. The Indian Church 
 wants this or that: let them have it!” 
 
 “John, the Indian Church is not its 
 Own; it represents the investments of 
 others. American, British, German, 
 Scandinavian Christians have put their 
 men and money and prayers and efforts 
 into it, and to a great extent it is to-day 
 what they, working through their mis- 
 sionaries and mission boards, have 
 We have not built our own 
 churches or schools or colleges or 
 hospitals or printing presses; for the 
 most part they have been built for us 
 and represent millions of dollars and 
 tens of thousands of lives freely given. 
 Nor do we in most places support our 
 own pastors and teachers. We do what 
 we can, and the ‘mission’ makes up the 
 rest. Now, all this investment is at 
 
 stake in any transfer of authority from’ 
 
 the- missionaries and the mission to 
 Indian leaders and the Indian Church. 
 20 
 
 “And remember,” he went on, “we 
 Indians have not been trained for 
 centuries, as have you, in matters of 
 administration. We have no special 
 talent for that. Control by majorities 
 or by representatives of the majority is 
 a new thing-in the East, which has 
 known for centuries only one-man 
 control—one man surrounded by a 
 favored group. What happened in 
 Russia may very easily happen in 
 India—even in the Indian Christian 
 Church—namely, disintegration of all 
 organization on a large scale. What 
 then would become of your investment? 
 
 “I am being perfectly frank, you see. 
 Nor are we certain to preserve the 
 Christian doctrines you have implanted 
 in our lives. We are given to much 
 thinking along the lines of the nature of 
 God, the whence and whither of life, the 
 achievement of salvation; and by the 
 constant bending of centuries our 
 thoughts go easily in directions strange 
 to your ways of thinking. You start us 
 along a road that to your judgment and 
 experience is perfectly safe, and we get 
 off that road on to strange roads, which 
 to your thinking lead to the lands of 
 falsehood and error. Then what be- 
 comes of your investment? 
 
 “And then, again, the wolves of caste 
 may any day overwhelm the Indian 
 Christian Church if the missionary 
 shepherds are weakened in their author- 
 ity over us or withdrawn in any num- 
 bers. We have been too much com- 
 mitted to caste in the past easily to 
 deny or to defy it. The spirit of caste is 
 everywhere i in the air, and we breathe 
 it into our lungs as easily as you 
 breathe the spirit of enterprise in this 
 country. Caste is a poison gas to the 
 Christian life. It burns out its lungs 
 and numbs its heartbeats. How can 
 our Indian leaders control the at- 
 mosphere and keep the church breathing 
 the fresh clean air of perfect brother- 
 hood? With caste reducing the Indian 
 Church to cliques what becomes of your 
 investment of life and effort and prayer 
 and money? Have you toiled and 
 sacrificed just to set up the spirit of 
 Antichrist in Christian churches in 
 India?” 
 
 An Adolescent Church 
 
 Eleanor it was who spoke. 
 
 “Then, Fazl Masih, perhaps it is 
 better for the Indians to wait and let the 
 missionaries have their way a little 
 longer. You know what birdie and baby 
 said and the answer they got: 
 
 “ “Baby says, like little birdie, 
 “Let me rise and fly away.” 
 “Baby sleep a little longer 
 Till the little limbs are stronger. 
 
If she sleeps a little longer, 
 Baby too shall fly away.”’” 
 
 It was almost too much for Fazl 
 Masih, who laughed heartily. 
 
 “Miss Eleanor, you should serve on 
 all the committees that are now making 
 the readjustments to keep them laugh- 
 ing. Mother Goose zs 
 
 “That is Lord Tennyson,” Eleanor 
 corrected. 
 
 “Well, Mother Goose and Lord 
 Tennyson and all others who wrote for 
 children are marvelous correctives for 
 overstrain of mind and temper. That 
 is one reason why the Teacher loved the 
 children’s singing in the Temple and 
 why he took children in his arms: they 
 eased the tension of his high-strung life. 
 
 “To go back, Miss Eleanor, I am 
 afraid the birdie-baby answer is no 
 longer possible. The Indian Church is 
 not an infant but an adolescent. The 
 Indians are set on control and they w// 
 control and they should control. The 
 transfer from the mission to the church, 
 from the missionaries to the Indian 
 leaders, is not far off. In fact, it has 
 begun. Nothing can prevent it now. 
 What we must strive for is to make it 
 safe. All our energies must be bent to 
 save us from disaster as Indian leaders 
 come increasingly into positions of 
 power and authority.” 
 
 The 
 
 Teacher-Missionary’s Method 
 
 “How will you do it?” asked John. 
 
 “There is only one way, John,—the 
 way of the Teacher. He was a mis- 
 sionary and he was building a church. 
 He was making a heavy investment in 
 that church. For it to break down 
 would be a terrible loss of his labors and 
 sacrifice. He was to turn over his 
 church to twelve men—its organization 
 and administration and doctrines and 
 practice. They might very easily ruin 
 all. But he had faith in them, for he 
 had trained them; and in the church, for 
 it was the church of God’s love and 
 sacrifice and power as well as his own. 
 So before he handed over authority he 
 did two things—he, the missionary. 
 He assured them that though he was no 
 longer to be seen he was not leaving 
 them. Lo, I am with you even unto the 
 end of the task. His presence, his 
 counsel, his comradeship, were still to 
 be theirs. He would continue to invest 
 in them and to aid them though no 
 longer seen at the head of the group. So 
 with the missionary to-day: he is needed 
 as never before, but now at the side of 
 rather than at the front of the proces- 
 sion, and more unseen than formerly. 
 His it is to cheer, inspire, counsel,—a 
 glorious, new function of international 
 Christian brotherhood. 
 
 VII—Indian Christian Leadership 
 
 “And then the Teacher-Missionary 
 gave to his disciples, now about to be- 
 come apostles (for in those two words 
 you have the same transfer in Judea 
 which now is on in India), the gift of 
 his own spirit. He breathed on them 
 all inside the closed doors and said, 
 
 “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.’ They 
 
 were to tarry in Jerusalem until they 
 had received in power his spirit—the 
 spirit of love and wisdom and power. 
 With the spirit of Christ within them 
 any leaders are safe, and we need not 
 worry about the organization, admin- 
 
 Professor James Devadasan, a.leader in Chris- 
 tian education 
 
 istration, doctrines, or practice. They 
 will fall into line behind. If the leaders 
 are in consonance with his spirit they 
 are for him, and not against him. 
 
 “So we come back to where we began. 
 Indian Christian leadership must be 
 made to follow the Christ, and not its 
 own self-glorification or aggrandize- 
 ment. Discipleship must be the other 
 side of the banner of apostleship. 
 Indian leaders must follow before they 
 
 lead, and ever follow while they lead. 
 The Christ must be ever in their eyes 
 and thoughts. They must be men who, 
 having seen him, never cease to see him. 
 They must be men who, having heard 
 once his fourfold call, ‘Come : 
 abidemuva gO feed,’ hear 
 that same call daily and obey. And 
 there are such men in India—men of 
 my color and race. We need many. 
 more. With such Indian Christian 
 leaders, together with their missionary 
 associates of the same mind and vision, 
 there is no fear but that the Church of 
 Christ in India will have its victories 
 and be found worthy to stand beside the 
 other churches who honor the Christ 
 and toil for him in other countries of 
 our world.” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 WHAT GREAT PROBLEM confronts 
 the future development of the Indian 
 Christian Church? 
 
 Do the native Christians want their 
 own leadership? Why? 
 
 What stands in the way of a develop- 
 ment of native leadership? 
 
 Does the influence of caste enter into 
 the problem? 
 
 Is it an easy matter to transfer 
 authority and control from the mis- 
 sionaries to Indian leaders? 
 
 From our point of view what hinders 
 this transfer? 
 
 To what extent is the movement for 
 a self-controlled church under way? 
 
 Is it correct to think of the Indian 
 Christians as babes in Christ? 
 
 Compare the present situation as to 
 native leadership with the training of 
 the apostles in the first Christian 
 century. 
 
 Was the task of the apostles harder 
 then than that which confronts Indian 
 leadership to-day? 
 
 By what means is Christ training 
 Indian leaders for their increasingly 
 responsible duties? 
 
 NARAYAN VAMAN TILAK was a 
 sadhu— one of those whose thought 
 is always to express their own 
 private souls and their own private 
 needs in passionate poetic utter- 
 ance and to find solace in the love 
 of a divine companion. His in- 
 fluence is personal but it is not 
 therefore limited in its range. It 
 remains in his songs, which will be 
 sung, we may be sure, for genera- 
 tions. While Mr. Tilak’s influence 
 is so intensely personal and in- 
 ward, yet it is true at the same 
 time that it is strongly nationalist, 
 though not in any sectional inter- 
 pretation of that word. One of the 
 influences that drew him to Chris- 
 
 tianity was the hope that there he 
 would find a power that could re- 
 store his people to strength and 
 self-respect. He was unwearied in 
 impressing upon his fellow coun- 
 trymen that every member of the 
 Indian Christian Church is an 
 Indian, and that the Christian re- 
 ligion should be a great means of 
 service to Mother India. He also 
 recovered for the church the gift, 
 specially precious in India, of 
 music and of singing, giving them 
 songs that were not foreign echoes 
 but voices from the deepest places 
 in their own Indian hearts.— Nicol 
 Macnicol in the International Re- 
 view of Missions. 
 
VIII 
 
 Types of Christian Effort in India 
 
 THE NEXT MORNING Fazl Masih 
 returned to his work at the university, 
 but not before the Grays had got his 
 promise to return as their guest for a 
 fortnight ‘“‘as soon as school was out.” 
 John rode with him for a hundred miles 
 ‘or so. Evidently their talk on the 
 journey was very satisfactory, for Fazl 
 Masih wrote me that John had taken 
 him “on a pilgrimage through his soul 
 and especially through the uplands, 
 where I found all fresh and wholesome, 
 with here and there many a_ hidden 
 sanctuary in which he _ worshiped. 
 Secretly I worshiped with him and re- 
 joiced in all the beauty and wonder of a 
 young life conscious of God and its 
 duty to its fellows.” 
 
 The months went fast, .and soon 
 “school was out.” John returned, and 
 then came Faz] Masih. It was one of 
 those June days when nature seeks and 
 achieves perfection of form and color 
 and warmth with freshness—one of 
 those “rare”? June days of which the 
 poet sings: 
 
 “Then heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
 And over it softly her warm ear lays.” 
 
 In God’s Out-of-Doors 
 
 Fazl Masih was almost beside him- 
 self with the sheer delight in the beauty 
 of it all and laughed like a child. Like 
 Francis of Assisi, whose life was an 
 inspiration to him, he spoke all that day 
 of his little sisters the flowers and his 
 little brothers the birds. Strange that 
 one born and reared in the mud and 
 dust of an Indian village should so love 
 beauty. 
 
 “Tt is not the Chamar in me but the , 
 
 Christ,” he added apologetically when 
 we looked strangely at him. “He has 
 taught me to love the lilies of the field, 
 the sparrows who fly with God’s eye 
 ever on them, the mustard bushes that 
 grow tiny seeds, the clouds red at sunset, 
 the very early morning when every- 
 thing wakes with joy and prayer, the 
 mountains and the lakes. Not the rare 
 flowers and birds and trees but those 
 most common were his constant delight. 
 In complaining of the weather or even 
 in approving the weather how often we 
 fail to see the wonder of these com- 
 mon things and to make them the texts 
 of our life sermons for that day!” 
 
 We were sitting in an open meadow 
 beside a little stream—a “‘creek” they 
 called it—, getting ready for a picnic 
 supper. Faz] Masih’s “little sisters the 
 daisies and buttercups” and his “little 
 brothers the birds and butterflies and 
 
 Scripture Reference: Luke 4. 31-44 
 
 grasshoppers” furnished the decorations 
 and the music in rich abundance. Rugs 
 and books were there for those that 
 wanted them. 
 
 Mr. Gray came back after an un- 
 successful attempt at fishing and sat 
 down beside him. 
 
 “Well, Fazl Masih, what here reminds 
 you of India? Any fishing there?” 
 Fazl Masih laughed. “Yes, 
 
 catch them there.” 
 
 Mr. Gray began to stammer excuses, 
 but Fazl Masih stopped him: “Catch 
 them in nets. Professional fishermen 
 only—the class the Teacher was so in- 
 terested in when he was looking for men 
 to train, because fishing develops hardi- 
 hood, skill, patience, character.” 
 
 “You’re right there,” answered Mr. 
 Gray, laughing, “even if you don’t 
 catch a fish.” 
 
 “His fishermen disciples sometimes 
 fished all night and caught nothing; 
 that too was good training for what he 
 had in view.” 
 
 The Need for Health 
 
 they 
 
 Then Faz! Masih shifted quickly: 
 “What India needs as much as books is 
 fishing and picnic suppers—all the 
 things that make for health of body. 
 You can’t build the kingdom of heaven 
 
 INDIA’S GREAT NEED for medical 
 and sanitary assistance has from 
 the first enlisted mission effort. 
 To-day in more than five hundred 
 centers, mission doctors and nurses 
 in hospital and dispensary show 
 forth the love of Christ. Pain is 
 relieved, the sick are healed, the 
 lepers cared for. Every cure is an 
 object lesson. When a Christian 
 village is inoculated for plague, so 
 that death passes by on either side 
 leaving this village immune, a blow 
 is given to ingrained fatalism. 
 When death rates are manifestly 
 lowered, a more optimistic faith 
 begins to take the place of pessi- 
 mism. It will belong before govern- 
 ment effort will overtake the wide- 
 spread needs in this field; hence, 
 the help of missions is still urgently 
 required. 
 
 One out of every seventy women 
 dies in childbirth in India. The ap- 
 palling mortality of mothers and 
 infants is mentioned in almost 
 every health officer’s report. 
 Especially is there a call to- day in 
 India for the relief of the suffer- 
 ings of women and of the terrible 
 wastage of infant life. ‘‘Ah,’’ 
 said a Hindu woman, ‘‘your God 
 must be a very good God to send a 
 doctor to the women. None of our 
 gods ever sent us a doctor.—D. J. 
 
 Fleming in Building With India. 
 
 a2 
 
 in India on meager bodies. The Teacher 
 wanted the spirit of children in fisher- 
 men’s bodies. “Except ye become as 
 little children,’ not in body but in tem- 
 per and attitude; and, on the other 
 hand, ‘Come ye after me,’ he said, not 
 to children but to strong men who 
 could endure with him all the rigors of 
 physical strain in marching and, at 
 night, of having no place to lay one’s 
 head. The Teacher was the Physician, 
 a medical missionary, using hands to 
 heal while with his voice he bade men 
 and women cease to do the things that 
 provoke and induce disease. Health he 
 delighted in and came to make men 
 healthy. India must have his good 
 news of health.” 
 
 “How many kinds of missionaries are 
 you going to make me pay for and 
 furnish?” asked Mr. Gray, laughing. 
 “Preach to them and educate them. 
 That will stop disease at its twofold 
 source—sin and ignorance. Those who 
 need healing should then go to the 
 doctors, not to the Christian preachers 
 and teachers. In seeking to do every- 
 thing, Fazl Masih, you will end by doing 
 nothing.” 
 
 Why Medical Missions? 
 
 “India is desperately in need of 
 healing,” replied Fazl Masih. “Its 
 women have scarcely any attention. 
 Only a few of her men have medical 
 privileges. In hordes they come into 
 the world; in hordes they sicken— 
 cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, ma- 
 laria, skin diseases, blindness, leprosy, 
 enlarged spleen, tuberculosis, child- 
 birth without any sanitary protection—; 
 in hordes they helplessly and hopelessly 
 die. Can the Christ spirit in any man, 
 seeing such infirmities and diseases, 
 keep from taking and bearing them? 
 Does not the Christ idea of itself 
 germinate into hospitals and dispen- 
 saries, sanitariums and leper asylums, 
 when planted like a seed in such soil? 
 Would the Christ message among such 
 people have any value whatsoever if 
 the reverse side of ‘As ye go preach’ 
 were not ‘As ye go heal’? Along with 
 the sacramental cup of the Lord’s blood 
 shed for us must go the cup of cold 
 water given for kindness’ sake. A 
 body broken by wicked men may be a 
 sacrifice unto God, but God takes no 
 delight in millions of bodies broken by 
 disease.” 
 
 “That is all very well in theory,” said 
 Mr. Gray, “but suppose you do stop 
 disease and lessen the mortality by a 
 
VIII—Types of Christian Effort in India 
 
 great combined effort of Christian 
 agencies and governmental agencies: 
 what then will happen? You will so 
 everpopulate India that it could not 
 possibly support its population; the 
 economic level would be depressed even 
 more; and, through lack of food and 
 clothing and housing space, disease 
 would again carry off its myriads.” 
 
 Emigrate—Where? 
 
 “But emigration might solve that,” 
 said John, anxious to come to Fazl 
 Masih’s relief. “India could send her 
 surplus population elsewhere.” 
 
 “No,” answered Fazl Masih, unable 
 to receive John’s aid, “emigration is not 
 the solution for Mr. Gray’s problem.” 
 
 “Why?” asked John. 
 
 “Because Indian immigrants are 
 welcome nowhere except in the East 
 Indies, which are filling up more rapidly 
 with Chinese from China’s overflow. 
 No ‘white man’s land’ wants Indian 
 immigrants, and other lands are already 
 supporting, for the most part, their full 
 quota of population. This problem ot 
 overpopulation—and it is a real prob- 
 lem, all tied up with health and eco- 
 nomic betterment—must be solved 
 from within. The solution does not lie, 
 Mr, Gray, in the continued prodigious 
 slaughter of infants by ignorance and 
 neglect nor in the continued heavy 
 mortality of adults by preventable 
 diseases. Any civilization that would 
 condemn India to such a state in order 
 to keep down increase in population has 
 no right to one single letter of the word 
 ‘Christian.’”’ 
 
 “Except the ‘h,’’’? commented Mrs. 
 Gray, who was quietly arranging the 
 picnic supper on the white tablecloth, 
 “which begins a certain word that 
 might describe it.” 
 
 Fazl Masih smiled. 
 
 “You are right,” he said and then 
 went on: “India must, by Christian 
 help and private help and state help, 
 bring down its heavy casualty list in the 
 war with death and disease, and then, 
 by intensive farming, by manufacturing, 
 by opening up with irrigation large 
 areas lying infertile, and by more men 
 in the professions, support its own in- 
 creasing population until in time, as 
 usually happens, the birth rate is 
 lowered in proportion to the death rate. 
 Then you have reached your goal, and 
 your solution has been Christian 
 throughout.” 
 
 More Giants to Slay 
 
 “So you believe in Christian hospitals 
 in India?” asked Mr. Gray. 
 
 “The new India must have them,” 
 answered Fazl Masih, “or the Giants of 
 Ill Health, Ignorance, and Superstition, 
 
 Dr. H. W. Knight examining a patient in a wayside clinic in Calcutta 
 
 finding her on their land, will throw her 
 into some Castle of Despair and keep 
 her there. Let your Evangelistic 
 Christianity help in slaying Giant 
 Superstition, your Educational Chris- 
 tianity help in slaying Giant Ignorance, 
 and your Medical Christianity help in 
 slaying Giant Ill Health: then the 
 new India can run its course, while the 
 Christ once more can say: ‘He hath 
 sent me to proclaim release to the 
 Captivesig ss), 9) 1 o-dayehaththis 
 scripture been fulfilled in your ears.’” 
 
 Here Eleanor broke in: 
 
 “T am going to be a doctor.” 
 
 “Not in India,” snapped Mr. Gray 
 as if heading off by instant protest some 
 terrible calamity. 
 
 “Why not, father?” 
 
 “Because I have not yet given my 
 consent to John’s going and I am not 
 going to have both my children on the 
 other side of the world.” The state- 
 ment was not altogether logical, spoken, 
 as it was, in excitement. 
 
 NOT MORE than three million 
 of the one hundred and fifty mil- 
 lion women of India are within 
 reach of competent medical aid. 
 . . . The tragic need of Indian 
 women for more adequate medical 
 care has resulted in the rapid 
 growth of medical missions, and 
 the woman doctor paves the way 
 for the zenana teacher and other 
 liberal influences.—F. B. Fisher in 
 India’s Silent Revolution. 
 
 Fazl Masih intervened. “If I were 
 seeking for that life which alleviates 
 more human suffering than any other 
 and which more than any other is a 
 burst of sunlight in darkness I should 
 find it, I think, in a Christian woman 
 doctor in a non-Christian land.” 
 
 “Thank you for that,” said Eleanor, 
 smiling. 
 
 “Supper is ready,” called Mrs. Gray 
 hastily, brushing off a tear or two with 
 her napkin. “Now let’s sit down and 
 enjoy hee 
 
 The Ministry of Books 
 
 At the table the company fell to dis- 
 cussing literature—seemingly a per- 
 fectly safe subject. The whole Gray 
 family loved reading and did a great 
 deal of it, much of it aloud at evening. 
 “Outdoors and books” was a common 
 family motto. The Grays had de- 
 veloped a taste for good literature— 
 books with the substance of an ice-cream 
 sundae rather than books with the 
 thinness of an ice-cream soda. Fazl 
 Masih had not read as many but had 
 read more thoughtfully. 
 
 Mr. Gray himself brought the con- 
 versation back to India. The subject 
 fascinated him even while he feared it 
 for its possible consequences on his 
 home. 
 
 “Why don’t you propose a new kind 
 of missionary for India—missionaries 
 of good literature?” 
 
 “What would they do?” asked Fazl 
 Masih with a sly smile, drawing Mr. 
 
VIII—Types of Christian Effort in India 
 
 Gray on, or, rather, SES ely what was 
 in him out. 
 
 “They would translate good books 
 2 ” 
 into the Indian languages 
 
 “Father is improving,” 
 
 interrupted 
 
 Eleanor, “Listen to him say ‘Indian 
 languages’ rather than ‘the Hindu 
 language.’ He will soon be a walking 
 
 encyclopedia and answer all questions 
 on India without an error.” 
 
 “Don’t interrupt, Eleanor. I have 
 got the scent of a brilliant idea and am, 
 bloodhound fashion, on its trail. Don’t 
 throw any false scents around here,” 
 
 “Go on,” said Eleanor. 
 
 “Translate good books, even write 
 good books, not on religion only but on 
 politics and law and the social sciences.’ 
 
 “And raising poultry,” interrupted 
 Eleanor again. 
 
 “Why not?—and household hygiene 
 and gardening 
 
 “And thrilling fiction— —— 
 
 “Wait a minute, Eleanor,—not too 
 fast,” said her father, still after the 
 idea. 
 
 Fazl Masih sat there smiling, then 
 unfolded a paper from his pocket: 
 
 A Challenge in Print 
 
 ”» 
 
 “This is the latest issue of this 
 weekly. It came to me this morning 
 as I was leaving. Here is your idea, 
 caught, Mr. Gray, by other blood- 
 hounds too.” He began to read: 
 “What ought we to say on the subject 
 of Christian literature in this great 
 seething, anxious, 
 
 to-day? We need far more Christian 
 literature than we now have. In order 
 to appeal adequately to educated 
 
 Indians the Christian church needs to 
 produce more literature than we have 
 yet done. There is great opportunity 
 for high-class literature in English for 
 the educated classes. There is a 
 perfectly limitless field open to us for 
 vernacular literature. Surely the 
 Church of Christ in India, leaning on 
 the resources of Europe and America, 
 ought to be able to deluge the Indian 
 masses with healthy and trustworthy 
 Christian literature in the vernaculars. 
 Such a flood of excellent booklets and 
 pamphlets would do inestimable service 
 to the Kingdom. So far,as I can see, 
 the average Indian villager, whether 
 man or woman, has a great liking for 
 books, especially for religious books, 
 and above all for religious poems. 
 Those who cannot read are not only 
 ready but infinitely eager to listen 
 while another reads, recites, or sings 
 some moving piece of religious verse or 
 prose. Think of the limitless success of 
 kathas, kirtans, jatras, and_ public 
 recitations in every part of India. Any 
 one who has witnessed these gather- 
 
 troubled India of 
 
 ings knows their limitless appeal to the 
 Indian heart. Thus, there is an 
 audience which no man can number, 
 ready to listen to the story of Christ 
 in vernacular verse, as soon as we are 
 able to offer it. 
 
 “Tf then, the Christian cause needs a 
 great advance in literature, both in 
 English and vernacular, we can at 
 once proceed to the simple inference: 
 the church needs far more writers than 
 she has to-day. Yor each one of us this 
 is a serious thought. Have I thus far 
 
 done all my duty in this matter? Ought 
 
 Operating a band saw in the Industrial School 
 at Nadiad, India 
 
 I to train myself to be a writer? Anda 
 still more important question: Have I 
 done all that is possible to find Indian 
 Christians to write? For, given two 
 writers of equal capacity—one a mis- 
 sionary and one an Indian Christian—, 
 the Indian Christian will be of far more 
 value than the missionary.’! 
 
 “So you see, Mr. Gray, philanthropic 
 —or, rather, missionary—Christianity 
 has to do wick the writer’s pen and 
 printer’s ink as well as the surgeon’s 
 knife and the teacher’s blackboard and 
 the preacher’s sermon. 
 
 “And that is not all. Have you ever 
 thought of the place of the Bible in our 
 civilization? The Christian’s task in 
 India is to translate the Bible, have it 
 printed, and then see to its distribution 
 and sale. For that purpose both mis- 
 sionaries and Indian agents are con- 
 
 1J, N. Farquliar in the Indian Witness. 
 
 24 
 
 stantly at work. Sometime you shall 
 hear of India’s new interest in our 
 Bible.” 
 
 “You are forgetting to eat,” 
 Gray gently reminded the Indian. 
 
 Mrs. 
 
 The Industrial Missionary 
 
 “Just a moment, Mrs. Gray, and I 
 shall be finished. We are speaking of 
 the great variety of Christian activity 
 in India. We must not forget the in- 
 dustrial missionary and his Indian 
 helpers, who sanctify and hallow the 
 plow, the silo, the chicken farm, the 
 machine shop, the shoemaker’s tools, 
 and all the various activities of the hand 
 for the purposes of bettering the life and 
 lifting the economic capacity of our 
 Christian people, that they may be self- 
 respecting and able to support all their 
 own religious activities. Industrial 
 training is not only a jack for boosting 
 the economic level of the Christian com- 
 munity but an object lesson of the 
 attitude of Christianity toward manual 
 labor. The religion of the Carpenter 
 must not be allowed in any country to 
 get too far from the Carpenter’s shop or 
 the instruments of labor. So we need 
 industrial missionaries to show that in 
 the Christian New Testament, as in the 
 so-called New Testament of the Hindus 
 —the ancient Bhagavad-Gita—, there 
 is a gospel for workers. 
 
 “And so you see, Mr. Gray, as the 
 young Carpenter of Nazareth, teaching 
 by tools before he began to teach by 
 parables, drew for his purpose this tool 
 and that from his bag until the yoke or 
 the plcw or the doorpost was fashioned, 
 so his representatives in India to-day, 
 following his lead, now preach, now 
 teach, now heal, now write, now print, 
 now labor skillfully with the hand, that 
 in each and all the spirit of their 
 Teacher may be made manifest, and 
 so his design for the new India come to 
 glorious completion.” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 COMPARE India with America as to 
 the state of public health. 
 
 Name some diseases prevalent in 
 India. 
 
 What do you think of Mr. Gray’s 
 suggestion that medical missions have 
 no valid place in the missionary enter- 
 prise? 
 
 What part, if any, has Christian 
 literature in the remaking of India? 
 
 Would books written by mission- 
 aries and translated into the vernac- 
 ulars be as helpful as books written by 
 educated Indian Christians? 
 
 Describe the work of an industrial 
 missionary. Can _ he properly’ be 
 called a missionary? Why? 
 
IX 
 
 India’s History—Before 1914 
 
 ONE EVENING Mr. Gray took Fazl 
 Masih down to the men’s club, which 
 met every other week in the hall over 
 the largest grocery. Frequently there 
 was a speaker, political or otherwise; 
 more often it was an informal get-to- 
 gether, with some games and more so- 
 called discussion, in which local topics, 
 as well as topics more general in 
 interest, received due consideration to 
 the accompaniment of much smoking 
 and loud expression of unalterable 
 opinions on the part of those whose 
 minds were no longer open, and who 
 were determined to fasten their opinions 
 on others whether with or against their 
 will. 
 
 It was interesting to see how quickly 
 the Indian, stranger though he was, 
 fitted into the situation. Without 
 losing his fineness of reserve, his dignity 
 clad in humility, he entered into the 
 thoughts and attitudes of these men 
 who represented every trade and pro- 
 fession of that town. 
 
 Of course, they were most eager to 
 know about the political situation in 
 India, reading as ae did this and that 
 in the newspapers but being unable to 
 
 Scripture Reference: Psa. 96 
 
 THE HISTORY OF INDIA falls 
 into three main divisions: the 
 Hindu period, the Mohammedan 
 period, and the period of the 
 establishment of European do- 
 minion. 
 
 These are rough divisions, as the 
 periods overlap, and it is not 
 possible to define them sharply or 
 to assign dates to their beginning 
 or ending. But they serve as a 
 framework and they broadly in- 
 dicate the current of the story of 
 India. 
 
 Each period marks the invasion 
 of India by fresh races from colder 
 climes and the transfer of the 
 country in whole or in part to new 
 masters. Some persons may see 
 in this the tragedy of India. But 
 a more hopeful and a better view 
 is to regard the past as the passage 
 to and preparation for a higher 
 system than would have otherwise 
 been attainable.—Sir T. W. Hol- 
 derness in Peoples and Problems of 
 India. 
 
 put this and that together in order to 
 arrive at comprehension. The news- 
 paper paragraphs were only parts of a 
 jig-saw puzzle, and they were glad to 
 have someone, especially an Indian, 
 
 show them the general design of modern 
 Indian history. 
 
 “English Tyranny’”’ 
 
 Even those with the short-circuited 
 minds—those, as Eleanor put it, who 
 flew high on their opinions—were willing 
 listeners, though most eager that he 
 should dwell on the “English tyranny” 
 and justify their dislike of British im- 
 perialism. They started him off with: 
 
 “Why are the British in India? What 
 right have they there any more than 
 we have? India should be free. Don’t 
 be afraid, Mr. , Mr. Friend: you 
 can speak frankly and fully here of the 
 English tyranny.” 
 
 Faz] Masih smiled and _ replied: 
 “Gentlemen, I am an Indian, and it 
 pleases me much to see your interest 
 in my country. India loves America, 
 looks to her with great enthusiasm and 
 reverence. When America turns her 
 head and acknowledges India’s saluta- 
 tion, it pleases us much; for America 
 has the reputation of being very great 
 but very near-sighted—and India, as 
 you know, is far away.” 
 
 The men laughed, and Fazl Masih 
 
 THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT has 
 to meet the needs of a modern 
 state with the slender resources of 
 
 an Oriental community. More- 
 over, it has to bear the blame not 
 only for its own faults but also for 
 plagues and badly managed mon- 
 soons, just as American adminis- 
 trations are blamed for bad har- 
 vests and the influenza. When all 
 is duly considered, there is much 
 truth in the British assertion: 
 “We have labored untiringly to 
 reconcile Hindu and Moslem. Our 
 schools and our railroads have 
 shaken the exclusiveness of caste; 
 ancient privileges are disappearing 
 before justice and reform laws; by 
 the universal spread of the English 
 language we have furnished all 
 educated Indians with a common 
 medium for exchanging their 
 thoughts. We found India under 
 an inefficient despotism and we 
 banished it.’’ At the Darbar in 
 
 Delhi the thought came to me that 
 only the British rule made it pos- 
 sible for all the forty Indian princes 
 to meet peacefully under one 
 GAanopy. uae 
 
 With those who only carp at 
 what England has done in India I 
 have no patience. They belong 
 with those who, as Sydney Smith 
 said, curse the solar system, be- 
 cause under it has come all our 
 woe. 
 
 As for me the marvel of British 
 rule in India never ceased to ap- 
 peal to my imagination. In 
 Bombay or Madras or Calcutta 
 the British society, with its British 
 statues, British churches, British 
 conventions, and red post boxes, 
 goes serenely on as if there were no 
 brown waves of humanity beating 
 ever upon the shores of this island 
 of English life. In India there is 
 one ruler to two hundred thousand 
 ruled. No wonder that Horace 
 
 Walpole cried: ‘‘The Romans were 
 triflers to us.’’ 
 
 If the British should leave sud- 
 denly, without preparing the In- 
 dians through a long period to 
 assume the burden of government, 
 there might easily be realized the 
 prophecy which a governor of one 
 of the great Indian provinces made 
 to me. ‘‘There would be at once 
 riot, murder, rapine, in the great 
 cities,’ he _ said. “All money 
 lenders would stop business, all 
 stores close, there would be no 
 food. Within three weeks or a 
 month the Afghans would pour in 
 from the Northwest for pillage, 
 plunder, and rapine. The Parsees 
 would be wiped out of Bombay, 
 the Marwari from Calcutta. Mo- 
 hammedan would be _ arrayed 
 against Hindu, Hindu against Mos- 
 lem. Millions would pay the forfeit; 
 anarchy would reign.’’—C. H. Van 
 Tyne in the AtlanticMonthly. 
 
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 IX—India’s History—Before 1914 
 
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 From The Centenary Surveys 
 
 Our publishing houses in Lucknow and Madras reach seven language areas containing 173,000,- 
 
 000 people. 
 
 Although only a small per cent of the people of India are literate, even in the ver- 
 
 nacular, nevertheless the printed page reaches practically every village 
 
 continued: “During the war America 
 went to the oculist and was fitted with 
 glasses, “which helped her myopia. 
 She was able to see clearly and see far. 
 Then somebody knocked them off her 
 nose and stepped on them, and she 
 hasn’t as yet been refitted.” 
 
 “No politics here, or you will have an 
 uproar,” laughed the men. 
 
 “Tt isn’t politics but calamities that I 
 am speaking of. But it is no calamity 
 to have your interest. And, to be per- 
 fectly fair, up to the present it has been 
 no calamity to have had the British 
 control over India. All my country- 
 men acknowledge the debt of India to 
 England 
 
 In the Days of Conquest 
 
 The opinionated winced a bit at that, 
 and Fazl Masih saw it and went on: 
 “You see, the British are only the last 
 
 wave of invasion in India’s long history. 
 There have been many previous con- 
 quests—tides of invasion flowing from 
 the northwest through the broken 
 mountain passes on to the fertile plains 
 
 of the five rivers—the Punjab—and 
 then down through historic Hindustan, 
 which lies in the lap of the Jumna- 
 Ganges system, and so into steamy 
 Bengal, with its teeming population. 
 When North India, from northwest to 
 southeast, has been conquered, the 
 invaders turn south and make their way 
 slowly and with difficulty, through the 
 rough-tangled Central India country, 
 into the rocky plateau of the southland 
 —the Deccan—, which is always the 
 last to yield—if it has really yielded at 
 all. These successive invaders and their 
 partial admixture with those that have 
 preceded them have given rise to the 
 many races and languages of India. 
 Why should I worry you with names? 
 India is one of the ancient lands, and 
 through the centuries—drip, drip, drip 
 —her roof has leaked. If I had a map I 
 could show you just where the holes in 
 the mountain roof that covers India 
 are found—Khyber Pass, Bolan Pass, 
 etc. A country that has a leaky roof 
 always has its troubles.” 
 “America is too leaky also,” 
 26 
 
 com- 
 
 mented Mr. Gray. “Our home is being 
 
 spoiled by this everlasting rain of im- 
 migrants that we can’t or don’t shut 
 out. Just look at the front rooms—the 
 Atlantic States. They are almost 
 ruined.” 
 
 “Let’s get back to India’s troubles 
 before we start a discussion of our own,” 
 pleaded one. 
 
 “Well, India’s troubles are troubles of 
 unassimilated races, tribes, peoples, all 
 separated from one another and kept 
 from unity by distinctions of race, 
 language, religion, caste, dress, and 
 custom. The result has been disunion 
 and chaos. Every little prince or tribal 
 chieftain has fought with his neighbors 
 until some new invading conqueror, 
 coming from the north, has swept them 
 all into submission. ‘Then, when the 
 conqueror’s strength has waned from 
 overexertion, either some new invader or 
 the little princes and tribal chieftains, 
 recovering, drag him from power and 
 fall to fighting among themselves until 
 some new overlord swoops on them. 
 So, unchanged (except for the actors), 
 the old drama of conquest and chaos 
 has gone on through the long centuries. 
 No country could ever be formed under 
 such circumstances, and India has never 
 known nationhood.” 
 
 The Coming of British Rule 
 
 “The last series of invasions, however, 
 came from the sea—a leak in the wall 
 rather than the roof. In the sixteenth 
 century came the Portuguese; in the 
 seventeenth the Dutch had their great 
 chance; in the eighteenth the French 
 and English fought for supremacy. 
 The French lost India just as they lost 
 Canada—from lack of support at home. 
 
 “Now, what the English have done 
 in India—and every reasonable Indian 
 recognizes it—is to make _ possible 
 nationhood. They have laid the founda- 
 tion on which we Indians must build a 
 nation. They have done the prelimi- 
 nary work, cleaning the ground, remov- 
 ing the obstacles on which the structure 
 must rise. And for that we give them 
 credit. The problem now between 
 Indians and English is simply this: 
 whether now, with the foundations laid, 
 Indians are to be permitted to plan and 
 put up the building of their national life 
 or whether the English will continue to 
 supervise, with some Indian advice and 
 assistance, the affairs of my land. Both 
 English and Indians are divided, and 
 the solution is most difficult. 
 
 “But let me get back to the early 
 work of the British before I go into the 
 modern problem. The English came to 
 India solely for purposes of trade. The 
 Mohammedan Mogul Empire was at 
 its zenith, and no one dreamed of a 
 
British Empire which should supersede 
 it. So the English established their 
 little trading posts on the coast, the 
 three principal ones having since then 
 grown into the three great commercial 
 cities of India—Calcutta, Bombay, 
 and Madras.” 
 
 The British Empire in India 
 
 “Soon after their arrival the break-up 
 began, and India once more passed from 
 conquest to chaos. The British, to 
 protect their trading posts, kept ex- 
 tending the fences around them until 
 the three settlements had become the 
 three great ‘presidencies’ of Bengal, 
 Bombay, and Madras. So the British 
 protected their trade by continuous 
 enlargement of their territories and by 
 entering into alliances with this and that 
 small Indian potentate—for a considera- 
 tion. It was a clever game and it helped 
 considerably in a policy of expanding 
 trade and power. Finally, in the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century, came 
 the man! who saw the drift of events 
 and deliberately and openly began to 
 bring all India under British control— 
 in other words, to establish a British 
 Empire in India. So the real conquest 
 of India began. 
 
 “For fifty years it went on. One 
 Indian prince after another, one king- 
 dom after another, for one excuse or 
 another, with war or without war, fell 
 into the British lap. There was some 
 hard fighting, but who could resist 
 British arms and discipline? By 1857 
 two thirds of India was actually colored 
 red on the map, under direct British 
 rule, the original rulers deposed and 
 pensioned. The other one third was 
 headed for the same fate when the so- 
 called Indian mutiny broke out. This 
 stopped the process and left the re- 
 maining Indian princes on_ their 
 cushions of authority under British 
 guaranties but also under British sur- 
 veillance. The English crown took over 
 from the trading company, and British 
 India became a charge and a responsi- 
 bility of the British people in their 
 Parliament.” 
 
 The Birth of a National Spirit 
 
 “Now, what ‘has been the British 
 record? I speak as an Indian. 
 
 “In the beginning—the days of 
 chaos, the days of the trading com- 
 pany,—the record is dark with duplicity, 
 cruelty, intmorality, greed, and godless- 
 ness; but increasingly shot through with 
 light from the lives of sincere and well- 
 intentioned governors and administra- 
 tors sent out by the British Parliament. 
 Since the crown took over in 1858, the 
 
 1Marquis of Wellesley, Governor-General 
 
 1798-1805. 
 
 IX—India’s History—Before 1914 
 
 record is light, with here and there 
 streaks of darkness. In the spirit of a 
 paternal despotism has India been ruled 
 up to the present by British crown and 
 Parliament and ‘Government of India.’ 
 It was perhaps well for a period of con- 
 fusion and for the infancy of a nation— 
 and India is grateful for the many 
 benefits conferred by British rule—; 
 but now, as you well know, adolescence 
 and paternal despotism do not mix well 
 in any home. Try it in your homes and 
 ae, 
 
 “We have tried it,” said two or three 
 of the men, laughing, more ruefully 
 than boisterously. 
 
 “Well, the British are themselves re- 
 sponsible for the birth, infancy, and 
 adolescence of the Indian national 
 spirit. They gave India the peace with- 
 out which there could have been no 
 coming together whatsoever of the 
 various races. No one religion was 
 allowed to dominate the others, arous- 
 ing fanatical hatred and_ bitterness. 
 Justice was offered in the courts, and 
 lessons in good government and honest 
 administration were given in the sight ot 
 all the people. A common language for 
 all higher education—the English, which 
 is your language too and binds India to 
 
 An Indian soldier in the World War helping a 
 wounded comrade to a dressing station in 
 Mesopotamia 
 
 America also—since 1834 has made it 
 
 possible for educated Indians to ex- 
 
 change ideas and formulate programs. 
 “if 
 
 It has also steeped the new India in the 
 ideals of democracy and constitutional 
 government found in English literature. 
 A great system of railroads, wonderful 
 highroads, telegraphs, post offices, uni- 
 versities, and newspapers has bound 
 India together in a manner never 
 thought of in her past history. India 
 began to come together not around the 
 central government, around the con- 
 queror’s throne, but around the ideas 
 and ideals the conqueror instilled by the 
 spirit and methods of his. rule and by 
 the education he offered to India’s 
 young men. These used the railroads 
 to come together, and when they came 
 together they spoke in English the words 
 used by all English-speaking peoples: 
 ‘responsible government,’ ‘suffrage,’ 
 ‘self-determination,’ ‘constitutional’ 
 methods,’ ‘taxation with representa- 
 tion’—the words you have heard since 
 childhood, but strange words and new 
 words in Indian history. 
 
 “There were of course the more 
 violent phases—from 1905 to I9gI1 
 especially—when extremists brought 
 into play the bomb and bullet; but, on 
 the whole, Indian nationalism before 
 the war was for reasonable progress in 
 cooperation with the English. The most 
 influential Indian leaders were men con- 
 structive in tendency—neither light- 
 headed visionaries nor  hot-headed 
 revolutionists. Those were anxious 
 days, but British rule weathered them, 
 and Englishmen slowly came to realize 
 that some adjustment was necessary 1n 
 the machinery of paternal despotism 
 to meet the oncoming national spirit. 
 Then came the war!” 
 
 Fazl Masih stopped. Waiters were 
 beginning to serve refreshments, and 
 the attention of some of the men was 
 drawn that way. Noticing their dis- 
 traction, he proposed that he take the 
 siding and let the ice cream have right 
 of way over Indian politics. 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 DOES INDIA owe a debt to England? 
 For what? 
 
 From India’s standpoint what was 
 the result of the successive conquests 
 by tribal chieftain, ? 
 
 How did the British conquer India? 
 
 Was British occupation of India 
 essential to the development of India’s 
 nationhood? Why? 
 
 From the first conquest what has 
 been England’s record in the control of 
 India? 
 
 Specify some of the services rendered 
 to India by its conquerors. 
 
 Before the World War what was the 
 general attitude of the people of India 
 toward Great Britain? 
 
India’s 
 
 AFTER ENJOYING the simple re- 
 freshments the men gathered quickly 
 once more about Fazl Masih, eager to 
 get what to them was more interesting— 
 the story and significance of recent 
 events in India. 
 
 Fazl Masih spoke briefly and with 
 considerable feeling of India’s great 
 part in the combined effort of many 
 continents and races to block the 
 German-Austrian-Turkish designs; to 
 restore Belgium, which was to India the 
 type and representative of all the 
 weaker nations in a world of military 
 power and spirit; and to make possible 
 a new and better world purged of those 
 principles and_ policies which had 
 brought about all this bloodshed and 
 
 universal ruin. 
 India in the War 
 
 “We responded almost to a man to 
 Britain’s dire extremity. All that 
 Great Britain has done in a spirit of 
 unselfishness and for the good of India 
 bore its rich fruitage that August day 
 in 1914 when India loyally came to her 
 help. Not only because she feared a 
 victorious Germany but more because 
 she saw in Britain her true friend 
 and guardian did India thus respond. 
 Never has a colonial power received a 
 finer tribute of gratitude and con- 
 fidence.” 
 
 Those afflicted with Anglophobia in 
 the group of men did not like this way 
 
 Xx 
 
 History—Since 1914 
 
 Scripture Reference: Psa. 91 
 
 of putting it and spoke of the armies of 
 Englishmen in India. 
 
 “Let us be fair all round in the 
 spirit of our Teacher,’ said Fazl 
 Masih. “I ama Christian Indian rather 
 than an Indian Christian and am no 
 apologist for all of Britain’s policies; 
 but let this be said—that India was to a 
 very serious extent denuded of British 
 troops in the early days, yet India re- 
 mained notably peaceful and quiet. 
 An Indian division heroically held the 
 lines in France until Kitchener’s armies 
 were ready. Almost a million and a 
 half Indians volunteered for combatant 
 service—nearly all of them married 
 men with families, for India marries 
 young—, many of them Hindus leaving 
 India in the face of custom and re- 
 ligious sanction, and others of them— 
 Moslems—fighting their own  core- 
 ligionists. On eleven battle fronts they 
 fought, winning6, 500 medals for bravery. 
 All this, not to speak of the large sums 
 of money (almost a billion rupees) lent 
 and given out of her poverty to the 
 government of India for war purposes. 
 It was the first time in all India’s long 
 history that her peoples acted as a 
 people in the performance of a common 
 task. 
 
 “Of course, with such an effort the 
 national spirit grew rapidly. Action 
 creates sentiment even more than 
 sentiment action. Sentiment may die 
 
 a sickly death, giving birth to nothing, 
 
 but action is the most powerful thing 
 on earth. The Buddhist and Hindu 
 philosophies recognize that and build 
 their theses around that axiom of life. 
 The Western peoples also constantly 
 proclaim it by their type of civilization. 
 In action the national spirit thrived as 
 Jack’s bean stalk in the soil outside his 
 window.” 
 
 The British Promise 
 
 “Great Britain, under a_ threefold 
 motive—perhaps considerably mixed 
 together—, made India a great promise. 
 She was grateful for Indian help, she 
 was allied with other nations under 
 banners inscribed ‘Making democracy 
 safe for the world’ and ‘Self-determina- 
 tion of small peoples’ and felt the com- 
 pulsion of consistency; and she sensed 
 the rising tide of national sentiment 
 with all its implications. So she made 
 her promise to India on the fateful 
 twentieth of August, 1917.” 
 
 “What was it?” asked one. “I 
 didn’t know there was any promise in- 
 volved, any pledge given.” 
 
 “It was to give India her freedom, 
 and England has failed to live up to 
 it,” answered one of the wise men. 
 
 “It was very carefully worded,” an- 
 swered Fazl Masih, “and many did not 
 understand its full meaning or sig- 
 nificance because they did not look at 
 every word. It was not a promise of 
 freedom at all but a pledge that India 
 
 | 
 
 I HAVE WATCHED with under- 
 standing and sympathy the grow- 
 ing desire of my Indian people for 
 representative institutions. Start- 
 ing from small beginnings, this 
 ambition has steadily strength- 
 ened its hold upon the intelligence 
 of the country. It has pursued its 
 course along constitutional chan- 
 nels with sincerity and courage. It 
 has survived the discredit which 
 at times and in places lawless men 
 sought to cast upon it by acts of 
 violence committed under the 
 guise of patriotism. It has been 
 stirred to more vigorous life by the 
 ideals for which the British com- 
 monwealth fought in the Great 
 War and it claims support in the 
 part which India has taken in our 
 common struggles, anxiety, and 
 victories. In truth, the desire 
 after political responsibility has its 
 source at the roots of the British 
 connection with India. It has 
 sprung inevitable from the deeper 
 and wider studies of human 
 
 thought and history, which jthat 
 
 connection has opened to the 
 Indian people. Without it the 
 work of the British in India would 
 have been incomplete. It was 
 therefore with a wise judgment 
 that the beginnings of representa- 
 tive institutions were laid many 
 years ago. Their scope has been 
 extended stage by stage until 
 there now lies before us a definite 
 step on the road to responsible 
 government. 
 
 With the same sympathy and 
 with redoubled interest I shall 
 watch the progress along this road. 
 The path will not be easy, and in 
 the march toward the goal there 
 will be need of perseverance and of 
 mutual forebearance between all 
 sections and races of my people in 
 India. I am confident that those 
 high qualities will be forthcoming. 
 I rely on the new popular as- 
 semblies to interpret wisely the 
 wishes of those whom they repre- 
 sent, and not to forget the interests 
 of the masses who cannot yet be 
 admitted to franchise. I rely on 
 
 leaders of the people, the ministers 
 of the future, to face responsibility 
 and endure misrepresentation, to 
 sacrifice much for the common 
 interest of the state, remembering 
 that true patriotism transcends 
 party and communal boundaries, 
 and, while retaining the confidence 
 of the legislatures, to cooperate 
 with my officers for the common 
 good in sinking unessential differ- 
 ences and in maintaining the 
 essential standards of a just and 
 generous government. Equally do 
 I rely upon my officers to respect 
 their new colleagues and to work 
 with them in harmony and kindli- 
 ness; to assist the people and their 
 representatives in an orderly ad- 
 vance towards free institutions; 
 and to find in these new tasks a 
 fresh opportunity to fulfill, as in 
 the past, their highest purpose of 
 faithful service to my people.— 
 From “A Royal Proclamation’’ 
 by the King-Emperor George V, 
 December, 1919. 
 
was to begin now, in all seriousness, to 
 become a self-governing unit in the 
 British Empire. That is, British 
 demobilization was promised, was in 
 fact to begin as soon as the necessary 
 legislation could be effected, but was 
 to be only gradual and in accordance 
 with India’s ability to take over from 
 Great Britain. In other words, Eng- 
 land was to let go on the ropes only as 
 India was able to take up the slack. 
 By a slow, gradual process, beginning 
 now, India was to become progressively 
 self-governing until, after the necessary 
 period of training and preparation had 
 elapsed, she should find herself in full 
 control. Two things were made clear: 
 The length of the period of preparation 
 was not defined, it was to depend on the 
 sincerity and capacity of the Indians 
 themselves; and, secondly, when India 
 had passed from increasing self-govern- 
 ment to complete self-government she 
 was still to remain in association with 
 the other members of the British com- 
 monwealth: to be brown sister to 
 Canada, Australia, South Africa, New 
 Zealand, and the British Isles in the 
 family of nations called the British 
 Empire. She could not leave home 
 when grown-up.” 
 
 Two in the Driver’s Seat 
 
 “At first India (British India, of 
 course, for native India is already self- 
 governed under its own princes) was to 
 be allowed to sit in the front seat of the 
 car of government while England gave 
 her driving lessons. She could at first 
 watch the gauges and honk the horn and 
 give the signal for a turn while England 
 held the steering wheel and fed it gas 
 and chose the route. Then India was 
 to take over one after another of the 
 
 THE OATH of the Noncooperation | 
 
 Volunteers, representing the Ex- 
 tremist Party in India: ‘‘With 
 God as witness I solemnly declare 
 that (1) I wish to be a member of 
 the National Voiunteer Corps; (2) 
 so long as I remain a member of 
 the corps I shall remain nonviolent 
 in word and deed, and shall earn- 
 estly endeavor to be nonviolent in 
 intent, since I believe that, as 
 India is circumstanced, nonvio- 
 lence alone can help the Khilafat 
 and the Punjab and result in the 
 attainment of Swaraj [home rule] 
 and consolidation of unity among 
 all the races and communities of 
 India, whether Hindu, Mussul- 
 man, Sikh, Parsi, Christian, or 
 Jew; (3) I believe in and shall en- 
 deavor always to promote such 
 unity; (4) I believe in Swadeshi as 
 essential for India’s economic, 
 political, and moral salvation and 
 
 X—India’s History—Since 1914 
 
 A native potter at work 
 
 controls until at last after miles of 
 practice and close watching India could 
 safely take the driver’s seat. The car, 
 you see, could not stop, and all had to 
 be learned while in motion—a difficult 
 process.” 
 
 “That sounds fair,” answered one of 
 the men. “That is the way I am 
 teaching my thirteen-year-old son to 
 drive without going off the road and 
 over the precipice, without smashing 
 the engine or running over the neighbors’ 
 chickens and children.” 
 
 Fazl Masih smiled. “Yes, it sounds 
 reasonable enough, but two drivers with 
 divided functions are never as good as 
 one, especially when one—the adoles- 
 cent—feels he owns the car, that he 
 already knows enough to run it, and that 
 
 shall use handspun and hand- 
 woven khaddar to the exclusion of 
 every other cloth; (5) as a Hindu I 
 believe in the justice and necessity 
 of removing the evil of untouch- 
 ability and shall on all possible 
 occasions seek personal contact 
 with and endeavor to render service 
 to the submerged classes; (6) I 
 shall carry out the instructions of 
 my superior officer and all the 
 regulations not inconsistent with 
 the spirit of this pledge prescribed 
 by the Volunteer Boards or the 
 Working Committee or any other 
 
 (7) I am prepared to suffer im- 
 prisonment, assault, or even death 
 for the sake of my religion and my 
 country without resentment; (8) 
 in the event of my imprisonment [ 
 shall not claim from the Congress 
 any support for my family or de- 
 pendents.’’ 
 
 29 
 
 agency established by Congress; 
 
 in any case the best way to learn is to 
 sit at the wheel with the instructor 
 beside you, where he can always grab 
 the brakes before you go over the 
 precipice. That is all the trouble in 
 India to-day: India trying to learn to 
 drive her own car while England insists 
 on sitting in the driver’s seat. The great 
 promise, put in the simplest words, was 
 this: You shall now learn to drive your 
 own car, you shall sit in the front seat 
 beside me, and we shall both of us do 
 the driving until you are able to do it 
 alone.c. ii 
 
 Gandhi 
 
 “Where does Mr. Gandhi come in?” 
 asked Mr. Gray. “We have heard of 
 him as the great deliverer of India.” 
 
 “Unfortunately,” continued Fazl 
 Masih, “the promise of August 20, 
 1917, was followed by long delay in 
 passing the necessary legislation that 
 was to carry it into effect. 
 tinued to sit in the back seat. The 
 high prices followings the war, the 
 Spanish influenza, famine in parts, 
 failure to negotiate quickly a treaty 
 with Turkey, whose Sultan is the 
 Caliph of all orthodox Moslems, dis- 
 affection over the treatment given to 
 Indian immigrants in other parts of the 
 British Empire, Russian agents with 
 their wild doctrines, the rapid growth of 
 the home-rule movement (which de- 
 manded immediate and complete British 
 demobilization),—all these stirred up 
 bitterness and trouble to take the place 
 of Indian loyalty and codperation. 
 The British countered by certain 
 measures that amounted to a continua- 
 tion in times of troubled peace of certain 
 
 India con. ° 
 
powers granted to them for wartime 
 only. All Indians _ protested, Mr. 
 Gandhi coming forward as their most 
 prominent spokesman. All over India 
 was organized a _ nonviolent oppo- 
 sition to British policy, which in one 
 corner—the Northwest—got out of 
 control and became violent. The 
 British suppressed what amounted to a 
 revolt with great vigor, culminating in 
 a horrible massacre of an unarmed 
 crowd gathered in a grove outside the 
 city of Amritsar. The British officer 
 in command also commanded or per- 
 mitted certain indignities to be per- 
 formed on the persons of Indians, 
 adding to the resentment already at 
 flood tide. All India felt the reper- 
 cussion of these tragic events. The 
 extremists, headed by Mr. Gandhi, 
 leaped into control of the nationalist 
 forces; while the more conservative, 
 more reasonable moderates were hushed 
 and put to silence, finding no words 
 with which to express their feelings or 
 to urge their policies. They continued 
 to codperate with the British but 
 without enthusiasm.” 
 
 The Noncooperation Movement 
 
 “Meanwhile the new legislation was 
 carefully prepared and passed 1 in fulfill- 
 ment of the great promise of August, 
 1917. A political system called diarchy 
 was installed in the provincial govern- 
 ments on the principle of the double 
 driving I have spoken of. The moder- 
 ates help the British in working it out: 
 certain departments of government 
 ‘reserved’ for British control and the 
 other departments ‘transferred’ to In- 
 dian ministers responsible to a Provin- 
 cial Legislative Assembly composed for 
 the most part of elected members, the 
 electorate of course representing only a 
 fraction of the Indian people. It is 
 only a beginning, but if it is really a 
 beginning, and the British are sincere 
 in all their declarations, in spite of its 
 many structural weaknesses and the 
 clumsiness of a joint rule it may in the 
 end prove a boan to my people. 
 
 “But Mr. Gandhi and his followers, 
 joined by the dissatisfied Moslem 
 element, will have none of it. He 
 shouted ‘nonviolence’ in the previous 
 movement of opposition to the British; 
 now he shouts ‘noncodperation’ with 
 the British in working out the new 
 scheme. The noncodperators are on 
 strike, refusing to vote, to hold office, 
 to countenance in any form the British 
 rule, even proposing in certain regions 
 the nonpayment of taxes and what they 
 call ‘civil disobedience.’ A campaign 
 was organized to carry their propa- 
 ganda down through the three-quarter 
 million villages, where ninety per cent 
 
 X—India’s History—Since 1914 
 
 of our people dwell, unconcerned and 
 unmindful for the most part of the 
 storms that sweep the surface of Indian 
 politics; and the air of India was 
 poisoned by the noxious fumes of race 
 hatred and suspicion. Volunteers were 
 enrolled—‘National Volunteers’ they 
 
 Gandhi 
 
 SAYINGS OF MR. GANDHI: 
 
 1. ‘‘India is being ground down, 
 not under the English heel, but 
 under that of modern civilization.’’ 
 
 2. ‘“‘There is no end to the 
 victims destroyed in the fire of 
 civilization. It is like a mouse 
 gnawing while it is soothing us. 
 It is railways, lawyers, and doctors 
 that have impoverished India.”’ 
 
 were styled—to carry forward the 
 policies of the noncoéperationists. Along 
 with political freedom economic inde- 
 pendence was also urged in the name of 
 patriotic nationalism. India was to do 
 away, in large measure, with Western 
 machinery and its products and to 
 return, for example, to the hand loom, 
 thus helping to build up once more 
 ancient Indian industries destroyed by 
 competition with Western machinery.” 
 
 The Leaders Imprisoned 
 
 “The British were tolerant at first, 
 hoping the storm, with its destructive 
 possibilities, Would pass without burst- 
 ing on their heads, and were, to some 
 extent, confused as to the wise course to 
 pursue in the thickening darkness. 
 Finally, they came to a decision and 
 proceeded to arrest and, after trial, to 
 convict Mr. Gandhi and his associates. 
 Thousands of them are in jail to-day, 
 and no man knows the future. On 
 entering his six-year prison term Mr. 
 
 30 
 
 Gandhi urged quiet and _ self-control; 
 and his followers, being to a certain 
 extent without leadership, are obeying 
 his commands. Yet no dangerous 
 movement is permanently headed off 
 by the method of wholesale imprison- 
 ment. Out of the jails the followers of 
 Mr. Gandhi will come, or others will 
 take their places, and the curtain will 
 rise on another act of the drama that so 
 easily may become a tragedy rather 
 than an epic. Meantime more moderate 
 leaders are rising in influence and 
 prominence and these may get control 
 of the nationalist movement, in which 
 case there is a possibility of peaceful 
 evolution rather than destructive revolu- 
 tion; for, sincere and high-souled as Mr. 
 Gandhi is, yet to any man with vision 
 and understanding the two policies of 
 nonviolence and race hatred cannot 
 dwell long together. The one will 
 soften the other or be destroyed by it.” 
 
 The Outcome 
 
 “What is the end to be?” asked Mr. 
 Gray, drawing out his watch. 
 
 Fazl Masih arose, sensitive to the 
 signal. “It all depends on the British. 
 If they are wholly sincere in their 
 pledges, my country may be saved the 
 awful calamity of being thrown once 
 again into the old chaos; if the British 
 are using words to camouflage their 
 real desires and purposes, then this 
 century is full of woe for India. 
 
 “But, gentlemen” —and Faz] Masih’s 
 face was almost drawn with his earnest- 
 ness—, “never was the spirit and 
 program of our Teacher so necessary to 
 the peace ‘of India and, with it, the 
 peace of all the world. My hope for 
 my troubled country is anchored not 
 
 in the British motives nor in moderates © 
 
 or extremists but solely in my con- 
 fidence in the power of the Christ to 
 win men’s hearts to his way of living.”’ 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 WHAT PART had India in the World 
 War? 
 
 Did India’s participation in the 
 struggle stimulate her national spirit? 
 
 How was this spirit manifested? 
 
 How did Great Britain respond? 
 
 Was the agreement of August, 1917, 
 a promise of freedom? 
 
 According to this plan what was to be 
 India’s share in the government? 
 Illustrate. 
 
 Who is Gandhi? 
 
 What led to the revolt of which he 
 became leader? 
 
 What is meant by the noncodpera- 
 tion movement? 
 
 Has it succeeded? 
 
 What is likely to be the outcome? 
 
era ee 
 
 XI 
 
 How the Methodists 
 “Brought the Good News” to India 
 
 Scripture References: Acts 13. 1-3; 1 Thess. 1. 1-10 
 
 ONE MORNING Fazl Masih was 
 sitting on my porch with my recent 
 Indian papers in a pile before him. 
 He was particularly interested in the 
 illustrated booklet issued for India and 
 Burma by the Centenary Commission 
 of the Methodist Epsicopal Church. 
 It was entitled India Making and For- 
 saking Gods. ¥azl Masih called my 
 attention to some of its pages when I 
 returned from downtown bringing John 
 and Eleanor with me. 
 
 “How dramatically the beginnings of 
 Methodism are told! Did ever a 
 church lay its foundations in such 
 troubled times, amid such stirring in- 
 cidents, and turn them all to great 
 advantage? The commanding place 
 that Methodism holds in the Christian- 
 ization of India is due to a great extent 
 to the spirit of its founders, who while 
 the ground was soft in the great up- 
 heaval of the Indian mutiny of 1857, 
 dug rapidly and deeply foundations 
 of considerable extent. Smaller- 
 minded men would have hesit&ted and 
 shown timidity in their modified pro- 
 gram, but not so these imperial- 
 minded pioneers. 
 
 “From the beginning Methodism has 
 been noted, even criticized, for its 
 gigantic energy, its failure to make 
 haste slowly. In the spirit of youth it 
 has ‘attempted great things for God 
 and expected great things from God’ 
 (to quote William Carey) and not been 
 disappointed. In the lifetime of some 
 of its own missionaries it has seen its 
 membership grow from none at all to 
 more than four hundred thousand, and 
 its churches spread from Bareilly, the 
 center of the obscure division of 
 Rohilkhand, to every province of India, 
 to Burma, Malaysia, the Dutch East 
 Indies, British Borneo, and the Philip- 
 pines. ‘According to your faith be it 
 done unto you’ is still the eternal 
 miracle in the providence of God.” 
 
 “Did you say ‘dramatic,’ Fazl 
 Masih?” asked Eleanor, ever on the 
 alert for stories of India. 
 
 A Dramatic Story 
 
 “Yes,” answered the Indian, lifting 
 the booklet and opening it. “Here it 
 is. It begins with a flight and a mas- 
 sacre: the missionary William Butler 
 fleeing to the mountains, the Indian 
 pastor Joel. Janvier, a Presbyterian 
 lent to the Methodists to help them get 
 their start but never sent back, preach- 
 
 ing fearlessly from the text ‘Fear not, 
 little flock; for it is your Father’s good 
 pleasure to give you the kingdom’ even 
 while the mutiny was brewing just out- 
 
 Boys in Lucknow Christian College who have 
 been helped by the Centenary fund 
 
 side the door. It burst upon them, one 
 woman was beheaded, and the others 
 scattered and fled. The first martyr 
 of our church ‘was buried by a com- 
 passionate Indian woman where she 
 
 BEGINNING with Miss Thoburn 
 as its only teacher, the school 
 (now the Isabella Thoburn College, 
 Lucknow) advanced steadily each 
 year until by the time it was fifteen 
 years old#it had become a high 
 school and was spoken of in the 
 annual educational report of the 
 government as taking the highest 
 place among the native girls’ 
 schools in upper India. In 1887 
 college classes were begun. Years 
 afterward, when asked whether she 
 did not think that she had opened 
 the college prematurely, she re- 
 plied: ‘‘When you girls asked for a 
 college education, and I tried to get 
 rid of you and did not succeed, I 
 shut myself up to know God’s will 
 about the matter, and I have never 
 doubted my commission in spite of 
 all the difficulties.’’ She once 
 wrote: ‘‘Part of our work is to 
 educate and train the character 
 that can lead, and it is to accom- 
 plish this that we formed our first 
 women’s college in the Eastern 
 world.’’—Mary Stearns Badley in 
 God’s Heroes. 
 
 a 
 
 Sill 
 
 fell—under the rose hedge that had been 
 the delight of Mrs. Butler.’ 
 
 “Fleeing to Naini Tal, the mountain 
 station, until the storm was over, 
 William Butler and the associates who 
 joined him proceeded to ‘occupy’ it and 
 succeeded in turning it into one of our 
 most important stations. I have 
 worshiped in our church there—the 
 first house of worship used by our 
 church in India—and remembered that 
 originally it was an old sheepfold. But 
 somehow Christ and sheepfolds do go 
 fittingly together. 
 
 “From Naini Tal, Lucknow, the very 
 heart of the mutiny, was occupied. 
 Lucknow was a Mohammedan city and 
 capital of the old kingdom of Oudh. 
 Where before the mutiny entrance was 
 impossible, now there was a welcome. 
 Thus was answered the dying request 
 of Sir Henry Lawrence, who, wounded 
 to death in the besieged residency, 
 among his last words gave this charge 
 to those about his bedside: ‘Let a 
 Christian mission be established in 
 Lucknow.’ Here are now found our 
 colleges for men and women, and our 
 publishing interests, as well as large 
 Indian and English churches. The 
 publishing house now pours out forty 
 tons of Christian literature each year.” 
 
 From Bareilly to the Himalayas 
 
 “Bareilly was almost immediately re- 
 occupied. It was the spirit of Doctor 
 Butler to acknowledge no defeat. 
 ‘Give up Bareilly?’ he once exclaimed. 
 ‘Never! It is ours by right divine, and 
 the gates of hell are not strong enough 
 to wrest it from us.’ It was from 
 Bareilly that our first convert came— 
 a fine-looking, most intelligent Moham- 
 medan, who became also the first Indian 
 Methodist preacher (not counting the 
 borrowed Presbyterian) and the first 
 Indian presiding elder. His name 
 signifies in English ‘appearance of the 
 truth,’ and his life was not untrue to 
 his name. He gave his life, and after 
 him his sons followed him into the 
 Christian ministry. 
 
 “Tt was at Bareilly that the Girls’ 
 Orphanage was founded chiefly from 
 the pickings of a famine. The first 
 girl to come was one found in the 
 bazaar by Doctor Butler—a little 
 girl ‘unkempt, pock-marked, and blind 
 in one eye’—, yet under Christian in- 
 fluences she became a Christian worker 
 and the wife of a preacher. In two 
 
 - 
 
XI—How the Methodists “Brought the Good News” to India 
 
 years thirteen others were added, but 
 the great famine brought cartloads of 
 them until the institution was filled. 
 Still it pours out a tide of finely trained 
 young women, who go out to establish 
 Christian homes in the surrounding 
 darkness—the greatest witness that 
 Christianity can produce of its power 
 in human life and society. 
 
 “In Bareilly, where the first night the 
 missionaries, sleeping in a ruined palace, 
 disputed the place with ‘a pack of 
 jackals that roamed through the rooms,’ 
 Doctor Butler built the first mission 
 house. Others now stand beside it. 
 Across the road from it is the Theo- 
 logical Seminary, where the Indian 
 ministry for our North Indian work is 
 trained. Behind it are the grounds of 
 the Woman’s Hospital, given by one of 
 the most bigoted Mohammedan princes 
 in India freely and gladly to Christian 
 missionaries for medical work among 
 women. “Take it, take it. I give it 
 most gladly for that purpose!’ he ex- 
 claimed. Thus the first woman’s 
 hospital in all Asia was established. 
 
 “So from Naini Tal and Lucknow 
 and Bareilly out and out the work 
 spread through what is now the United 
 Provinces, in the level plains of the 
 Ganges- Jumna river system, and up 
 into the mountain ranges of the Hima- 
 layas. In twenty years was occupied a 
 country 350 miles long and 150 broad, 
 an area of forty-six thousand square 
 miles (slightly larger than the State of 
 Ohio), with an average population of 
 more than 450 to the square mile. 
 
 “In 1870 the Woman’s Foreign Mis- 
 sionary Society, founded the previous 
 year, began its long procession of cap- 
 able and devoted women with the two 
 pioneers Isabella Thoburn, who founded 
 for Asia, as well as India, its first college 
 for women; and Clara Swain, who 
 founded for Asia, as well as India, its 
 first woman’s hospital.” 
 
 Thoburn, Parker, Taylor 
 
 “Those were great men—American 
 and Indian—who laid the foundations. 
 Preéminent stand out two men as the 
 acknowledged leaders — James Mills 
 Thoburn of Ohio and Edwin Wallace 
 Parker of Vermont. Together they 
 sailed from America (1859), together 
 they landed in India, and together they 
 labored in utmost harmony during long 
 lifetimes of service. In our North 
 Indian Church they still date chronol- 
 ogy from Parker; in the rest of India 
 from Taylor; and Thoburn joins the 
 two together.” 
 
 “Who was Taylor?” asked John. 
 
 Fazl Masih went on: “The rapid 
 spread from Oudh and Rohilkhand to 
 the other great regions of India was 
 
 brought about in a strange manner. 
 Our pioneers saw in it signs of divine 
 
 Dr. William Butler 
 
 BISHOP SIMPSON had written 
 
 Doctor Butler: ‘‘Lay broad and 
 deep the foundations for Metho- 
 dism in India.’’ So the journey to 
 the Northwest was undertaken to 
 consider the opening in Oudh and 
 Rohilkhand. The best available 
 method proved to be the buying of 
 a small wagon which could be 
 drawn by men. . . . As they 
 passed through Allahabad, the 
 Presbyterians very generously gave 
 the new work a promising young 
 student—Joel T. Janvier—to act 
 as interpreter. Doctor Butler de- 
 cided upon Bareilly for the start. 
 With the assistance of Colonel 
 Troup and Lieutenant Gowan and 
 Judge Robertson a fairly good piece 
 of property was secured. .. . 
 Scarcely had the missionaries set- 
 tled to work when ominous mutter- 
 ings presaged the terrible storm 
 so soon to break. On May 11 the 
 uprising began with the slaughter 
 at Meerut. Three days later the 
 news came to Bareilly. Doctor 
 Butler broke it to his wife, and they 
 prayed together. In his notebook 
 we read in the entry for that day: 
 “Thy will be done. Remember my 
 mission; let it not die.’ : 
 
 Returning to Bareilly as soon as 
 matters quieted down enough to 
 allow it, Doctor Butler began the 
 process of ‘‘laying broad and deep 
 foundations.’’ Details may not be 
 given here,lbut those who look at the 
 mission properties, located in the 
 most advantageous sections of the 
 most strategic cities, are amazed at 
 his practical genius for affairs and 
 his accurate provision for future 
 needs. . Orphanages for boys 
 and girls, schools, a_ press, 
 
 churches, zenana work, evangel- 
 istic preaching,—all were included 
 in his plans and provisions, and 
 initiated._C. H. Monroe in Cen- 
 tenary Bulletin (India). 
 
 leading and consented to hold the cities 
 thus strangely connected with Metho- 
 dism. There came to India in 1870, by 
 invitation of James M. Thoburn, an 
 American evangelist whom many call 
 ‘the Saint Paul of Methodism.’ His 
 ministry was to the seven seas, and his 
 methods were most successful. His 
 name was William Taylor. India had 
 four years of his great career—years in 
 which he labored incessantly. His work 
 among the Indians was to him disap- 
 pointing, for he was using methods we 
 could not fully understand or appre- 
 ciate. But he was at his best among 
 
 Europeans, and to them he went where-_ 
 
 ever he could find them in the larger 
 cities of India—north, south, east, 
 west. In Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, 
 and many other cities he opened up 
 ‘English’ churches and recruited from 
 America and India a ministry for them. 
 These English churches began to do 
 missionary work among the Indians, 
 and centers of Methodism sprang up 
 all over India which had only to be 
 connected up to make an India-wide 
 church. Out of these have come the 
 nine conferences of India. 
 
 ““Nor did the movement stop with 
 the boundary line of India.’ From 
 India, under Thoburn, Burma was 
 entered, 4nd then Singapore. All over 
 Malaysia it spread, to the Dutch East 
 Indies (Sumatra, Java, Borneo, etc.), 
 and finally to the Philippines. ‘“To- 
 day,’ says this booklet, ‘six Methodist 
 bishops superintend this work, residing 
 at Lucknow, Bombay, Calcutta, Banga- 
 lore, Singapore, and Manila.’ 
 
 “You remember the text of Joel 
 Janvier’s sermon when a lodgment was 
 first being effected in Rohilkhand: 
 ‘Fear not, little flock; for it sis your 
 Father’s good pleasure to give you the 
 kingdom.’ Thus has the Teacher ful- 
 filled his word spoken that day to the 
 little group. This church of which we 
 are members has been signally favored. 
 While we stand rejoicing let us re- 
 member the attendant responsibility: 
 ‘to whomsoever much is given, of him 
 shall much be required.’ You re- 
 member the fool who rejoiced over his 
 possessions and lost his soul: ‘this night 
 is thy soul required of thee.’”’ 
 
 A Forward Movement 
 
 “And now this church is planning a 
 still greater advance—a forward move- 
 ment along all lines. The Indian 
 
 Centenary Movement was projected 
 
 in 1917, begun in 1918, and organized 
 in 1919. It is not a celebration, for the 
 time has not come to celebrate, but a 
 serious effort to reach new levels of 
 Christian life and activity. Missionaries 
 and Indians are codperating heartily in 
 
XAI—How the Methodists “Brought the Good News” to India 
 
 the movement. Here are some of the 
 more interesting objectives: 
 
 “To make intercession vital through- 
 out the church. 
 
 “To make effective throughout our 
 work the principles of Christian steward- 
 ship. 
 
 “To hasten the day of complete self- 
 support for our churches. 
 
 “To lift the entire spiritual level of 
 our Christian community. 
 
 “To secure the full sympathy and co- 
 operation of our young people in the 
 enterprises of the church. 
 
 “To educate the church as to our 
 missionary obligations and opportu- 
 nities. 
 
 “To discover and prepare an adequate 
 indigenous leadership. 
 
 “To double the number of our full 
 membership. 
 
 “To reach a total baptized Methodist 
 community of half a million. 
 
 “To double the number of workers 
 receiving instruction in our theological 
 and Bible-training schools. 
 
 “To enroll a time legion of ten thou- 
 sand persons, each of whom is pledged 
 to give a minimum of two hours of 
 voluntary service to evangelistic effort 
 every week. 
 
 “To triple the number of Christian 
 students studying in our colleges and 
 high schools. 
 
 “To establish five hundred additional 
 village primary schools and double the 
 present attendance of Christian chil- 
 dren. 
 
 “To make high school and college a 
 recruiting ground for Christian service 
 through effective students’ volunteer 
 bands. 
 
 “To sell five million Scripture portions 
 in the various vernaculars. 
 
 “To raise a Centenary fund of five 
 million rupees, which is equal in ex- 
 change to one and two thirds million 
 dollars. In purchase value it would be 
 greater than that. . 
 
 “For almost three years the Cente 
 nary campaign has gone on, and the 
 results have been striking. ‘In the face 
 of unprecedented political complica- 
 tions, despite the disappointment of 
 curtailed support from the home base, 
 and notwithstanding the difficulties 
 that hard times, partial famine condi- 
 tions, and the unsettled state of the 
 country in recent months have brought 
 upon us we have maintained the stride of 
 victory and kept our morale.’ ” 
 
 Fazl Masih closed the booklet and 
 laid it down. “Have I tired you with 
 history?” he said. “I thought you 
 might be interested in the results of 
 your own efforts.” 
 
 Finish the Building 
 
 It was Eleanor who answered: “It is 
 all confusing to me—those names of 
 men and women and places. How is 
 Methodist work any different from any 
 other?” 
 
 Faz] Masih answered: “I have been 
 speaking to-day according to your ways 
 of estimating results. To me_ all 
 churches and missions are laborers in 
 the vineyard, some arriving late and 
 some earlier, some emphasizing this 
 method and some that. To-day, for 
 
 your sake, I have been a Methodist in 
 
 Bishop James Mills Thoburn 
 
 THE PART AND PLACE Bishop 
 Asbury had in making the early 
 history of American Methodism, 
 Bishop Thoburn has had in mak- 
 ing the early history of our church 
 in Southern Asia. . . . Both 
 Asbury and Thoburn were ac- 
 knowledged leaders, each in his 
 own field, before being made 
 bishops. In each field there were 
 about fifteen thousand Christians 
 when these men were elected. 
 Asbury lived to see two hundred 
 thousand members of the Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church in America, 
 and Thoburn remained effective 
 long enough to see a Methodist 
 Christian community of about two 
 hundred thousand in Southern 
 Asia. (In the years of his retire- 
 ment this number has doubled.) 
 . . . The American branch of 
 Methodism was planted in India, 
 as truly as was the apostolic 
 church, by divinely called and 
 spiritually equipped men and 
 women. A story of these founders 
 and their work, unsurpassed in 
 Methodist history, is yet to be 
 written. James Mills Thoburn 
 early became the recognized leader 
 of these pioneers.—Bishop Frank 
 ree ae in Thoburn—Called of 
 od. 
 
 33 
 
 my way of speaking. It was this church 
 that drew me from the village, and I 
 have been grateful. To tell the truth 
 there is no church to which the mass 
 movement offers itself in greater volume 
 than to this church. It has the all- 
 round missionary equipment, using all 
 types of work fully and successfully. 
 It has spread itself so widely that it 
 has both national and _ international 
 significance in the affairs of the Southern 
 Asiatic world. It has a strong force of 
 rare men and women—Americans, In- 
 dians, English, Anglo-Indians, Cana- 
 dians,—that man its ranks. To it has 
 been assigned to build an important 
 section of the Christian structure in 
 India. It has accordingly laid large 
 foundations and proceeded to build 
 upon them. But do you remember the 
 Teacher’s story of the man who began 
 to build a tower and was unable to 
 finish, and all made fun of him: “This 
 man began to build, and was not able 
 to finish’? That is the parable for ¥ 
 But Eleanor took it out of his mouth: 
 “That was the Teacher talking to the 
 Methodists of his time, wasn’t it?” 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 WHEN was the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church planned in India? 
 
 What is the approximate member- 
 ship of the church in India to-day? 
 
 Tell the dramatic story of the be- 
 ginning of Methodism in India. 
 
 What .did William Butler do for 
 India? 
 
 Why are Lucknow and Bareilly im- 
 portant Methodist centers? 
 
 What territory is now occupied by 
 the church? 
 
 When and through whom did the 
 Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society 
 begin its work in India? 
 
 What three great names are as- 
 sociated with the development of 
 Christian missions in India? 
 
 Who was William Taylor and what 
 special work did he accomplish in India? 
 
 How many Methodist bishops now . 
 superintend the work in India? 
 
 Who are they and where are they 
 stationed? 
 
 What part is India taking in the 
 Centenary movement? Name some of 
 the objectives of the Indian Church. 
 
 Have results from the Centenary so 
 far been promising? 
 
 How may they be made more so? 
 
 Is there a danger of being compla- 
 cently satisfied with past accomplish- 
 ments in India, of failing to enlarge 
 and to develop the work? Discuss. 
 
XII 
 
 The Present Opportunity 
 
 Scripture References: Matt. 2. 10, 11; John 12. 20-32; Rev. 11. 15 
 
 THE LAST NIGHT of the fortnight 
 was a memorable one for the Grays. 
 They had asked me to come in after 
 supper, and it was past midnight when 
 I reached home once more. 
 
 During the fourteen days spent so 
 delightfully as their guest Fazl Masih 
 had got very intimately into the family 
 life of the Grays. His own heart like- 
 wise opened wide to these new friends. 
 His whole being was suffused with 
 gratitude and tenderness. Once that 
 evening he spoke of it, saying that he 
 could better understand the Teacher’s 
 willingness to accept invitations to 
 dine (when he came “eating and drink- 
 ing’), because every meal was an 
 opportunity to make that home in 
 some measure his own home. Jesus 
 was homeless, and nothing on earth 
 was so attractive to him as the home. 
 
 The Homeless One 
 
 “Why do you say that?” asked Mrs. 
 Gray. 
 
 “Because he made home his ideal of 
 the perfected world order, where other 
 teachers had made the state. Others 
 have spoken of God as King or Creator 
 or Judge, but the Teacher spoke of him 
 as Father and of men as brothers in his 
 home. You remember, too, how old he 
 was before he left his childhood home. 
 He clung to it as long as he could. His 
 greatest miracles were the restoration of 
 broken homes: the daughter at Caper- 
 naum; the son at Nain; the brother at 
 Bethany. To make the whole world a 
 home he denied himself a home; for the 
 fatherhood of God he surrendered 
 fatherhood for himself. Only the 
 homeless, like myself, can appreciate 
 the measure of his sacrifice. What the 
 foxes and the birds of the air enjoy is 
 not given to those men who would enjoy 
 it most. ‘Who is my mother, and who are 
 my brethren?’ we say with a pang, and 
 the smile goes out from our lives; then, 
 when we are welcomed into such circles 
 as this, the smile comes back, and we 
 say gratefully, “Behold, my mother and 
 my brethren!” 
 
 A strange smile indeed came over the 
 Indian’s face; then he said abruptly: 
 
 “Mrs. Gray, what India needs to- 
 day is home life.” 
 
 “T can understand that,” answered 
 Mrs. Gray. “The seclusion of women 
 for a lifetime within four walls, child 
 marriage, the abuse of widows,—there 
 can never be home life as lone as these 
 continue.” ‘ 
 
 The Unity of Home Life 
 
 “T was not thinking of it in that 
 way,” said Fazl Masih. “That, of 
 course, is taken for granted even by 
 multitudes who still tolerate such 
 things, because they are part and 
 parcel of the ancient social system, 
 which they are-unable to change in a 
 single lifetime. These evils must go, 
 they say, but it is not given to us to 
 make the effort of casting them out. 
 The evils of seclusion (the zenana), 
 
 ‘““Holy men’’ in procession at a mela (fair) 
 
 WE OFTEN HEAR IT SAID that 
 modern civilization—the impact 
 of the West upon India—will be 
 
 the undoing of the caste. In the 
 railway carriages, the public 
 schools, the government offices, 
 
 the courts of justice, caste is not 
 recognized: the Brahman and the 
 pariah must sit side by side. A 
 few decades of this experience and 
 the example of the Europeans, so 
 it is argued, will be the death blow 
 to caste. One might just as well 
 argue that through the daily use 
 of the subway New York will speed- 
 ily have all its social, racial, and 
 religious distinctions obliterated, 
 black man and white man, Italian 
 and Irishman,’ Catholic and Prot- 
 estant, mingling freely in all re- 
 lations because they have to rub 
 shoulders on crowded platforms. 
 Caste is a matter of the spirit; the 
 laws and form are only its outward 
 manifestation. They may change 
 without any inward change. Asa 
 matter of fact the regulations 
 about eating and drinking and 
 touching are less rigid than form- 
 erly, yet caste is stronger than 
 ever.—W. B. Hill in the Mission- 
 ary Review of the World. 
 
 34 
 
 child marriage, and enforced widow- 
 hood will pass from India in an ava- 
 lanche when the soil has been sufficiently 
 loosened, and all can move out at once. 
 And on all sides is going on that loosen- 
 ing. Some day there will be a roar, and 
 a great chasm will appear in the 
 ancient social system. 
 
 “But that is not the home life I was 
 thinking of. I was thinking that ere 
 there can be peace in India, the differ- 
 ent races, the different religions, the 
 different castes, must become brothers 
 together in a national homeland. You 
 are Grays of different ages and sexes 
 and education and experience, yet you 
 sit about the family board; and home is 
 ever in the background of your con- 
 sciousness. You do not quarrel self- 
 ishly; the good of all Grays is that 
 which composes all divergence of opinion 
 or desire. When one is ill, the others rush 
 to aid and tend. When Miss Eleanor 
 gives a party, the others help in the 
 preparations. You are not all alike in 
 thoughts or looks or aspirations, but in 
 all the variety there is unity. And that 
 unity is called home; these walls simply 
 house it.” 
 
 A Diverse People 
 
 “Now, India—my land—has been no 
 unity but always a great diversity. 
 No race of all the Indian races, no 
 people of all the Indian peoples there, 
 has ever had the good of India at heart. 
 But now comes the home longing in 
 their hearts. “They desire a better 
 country.’ They long for a unity in 
 diversity, for the e pluribus unum that 
 you are so proud of that you stamp it 
 on your coins. Bengali, Punjabi, 
 Maratha, Tamil, Hindustani, <a 
 Ke “All the unpronounceables,” added 
 
 ‘Eleanor. 
 
 “Yes, all the unpronounceables’— 
 and Faz] Masih laughed aloud. “All 
 my unpronounceable fellow Indians are 
 feeling simultaneously the pull of some 
 strange gravitation—nationalism, pa- 
 triotism, motherland they call it— 
 which is drawing them together, mak- 
 ing a solar system out of wandering 
 planets. They are no longer content 
 with the home life of their caste, their 
 religion, their tribe or language. The 
 larger home—India—is opening its 
 doors and bidding them enter. And 
 they are entering, John; from all sides, 
 all doors, they are going in. 
 
 “But—and here is the calamity in it 
 all—they are going in with all their old 
 customs and prejudices. The unity of 
 
THE INQUIRY has established the 
 propositions that the institution 
 of caste is at least three thousand 
 years old; that it is universally be- 
 lieved to be of divine origin; that it 
 concerns two hundred and fifty 
 millions of people, more or less; 
 that it involves the division of the 
 whole Hindu population and a 
 large part of the Moslem and 
 Christian minority into about 
 three thousand distinct hereditary 
 castes without reckoning sub- 
 castes; that no Hindu can escape 
 from the dominion of caste; that, 
 Hinduism and caste being one and 
 and indivisible, the institution 
 cannot be abolished, and will still 
 last for centuries; that the su- 
 premacy of the Brahman will con- 
 tinue to be acknowledged; that 
 superficial modifications in the 
 details of practice do not affect the 
 caste spirit, which has_ been 
 strengthened by the Hindu re- 
 
 the home is not in the new India; the 
 great diversity continues. Two thirds 
 of them (the Hindus) are split into 
 castes, and between the castes there is 
 little codperation. There are still the 
 untouchables—one out of every six of 
 the population. Suspicion exists be- 
 tween lowcastes and highcastes, be- 
 tween all other castes and the scheming 
 Brahmans, highest of all. Not only 
 Hindus among themselves, but Hindus 
 and Moslems are divided in the pro- 
 portion of some three to one. One 
 third has all the pride of conquerors and 
 former rulers, of monotheists and 
 iconoclasts, of the chosen people of 
 the supreme and only God (Allah); the 
 two thirds, on the other hand, know 
 that Moslem power has always broken 
 under Hindu reaction and counter- 
 attack, that numerical preponderance 
 counts for much in this world, that their 
 philosophies and religious literatures 
 are more subtle and profound than the 
 Moslem, and that, brain for brain, the 
 Hindu can outmatch his rival. So the 
 age-long strife between the two re- 
 ligions, so vastly different from each 
 other in all their attitudes and propo- 
 sitions, goes on—below the surface or 
 above. What home life can there be in 
 my country when my fellow Indians 
 do not and cannot sit down long as 
 brothers, when there is no unity that all 
 acknowledge, and that acknowledges 
 all2”’ 
 
 “Why not keep religion out of it, as 
 we try to do in this country?” asked 
 Mr. Gray. “We do not ask when we 
 vote for our congressmen, senators, or 
 even President which church he at- 
 tends: why let caste or religion enter in 
 at all into the matter of national unity? 
 Has not America provided a solution for 
 
 XII—The Present Opportunity 
 
 vival; that the doctrine of the 
 equality of all men before the law 
 is opposed to the Hindu scriptures 
 and the practice of Hindu govern- 
 ments; that caste animosities, 
 which are most bitter in the South, 
 dating back for a thousand years or 
 more, are as virulent as ever at this 
 day; and that, consequently, peace 
 and order require for their: preser- 
 vation a strong and impartial 
 executive. 
 
 Those propositions state condi- 
 tions which underlie all projects of 
 constitutional reform and, for that 
 reason, deserve the earnest at- 
 tention of reformers and of Parlia- 
 ment. No legislation can change 
 them, and their gradual automatic 
 relaxation must be deferred to a 
 time so distant as to be beyond the 
 vision of practical politics.—Vin- 
 cent A. Smith in Indian Constitu- 
 
 tional Reform. 
 
 India, and the only solution possible for 
 any democracy, which, I take vit, is 
 what you mean by unity?” 
 
 THE DEMOCRACY which the 
 British seek to set up, the Mahara- 
 jah of Alwar declared, would de- 
 stroy all the foundations of caste 
 and, with them, the Hindu re- 
 ligion. Ina word, if caste remains, 
 democracy will fail; if democracy 
 succeeds, caste falls and, with it, 
 the Hindu religion. Such a po- 
 litical system would fail because it 
 would have no basis in religion, 
 the only firm foundation of any 
 civilization. One could not sub- 
 stitute, within a generation, a new 
 basis of civilization, a new re- 
 ligion.—C. H. Van Tyne in the 
 Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 “T have a better solution,” suggested 
 John. “Let the Indian people make 
 patriotism the lever by which the 
 dividing caste system is toppled over 
 and brought crashing to the ground. 
 For India’s sake we will have no caste. 
 For India’s sake we will reform our 
 social organism so as to leave abundant 
 room for codperation, For patriotism 
 men will make heavier sacrifices than 
 for anything else on earth, throwing 
 comfort, ambition, wealth, youth, home, 
 evens rencion- Vellind a theme. lon it 
 not so?” 
 
 Religion First in India 
 
 Faz] Masih looked at them, then 
 answered: “You remember what the 
 Teacher said when he would reprimand 
 without causing hurt. So I would say, 
 ‘Have I been so long time with you, and 
 dost thou not know me’—or my 
 people? Your solutions are practicable 
 for your people, not for mine. My 
 people have always put religion first; 
 they are religious before they are any- 
 thing else. Where your heroes have 
 suffered in the name of patriotism— 
 Washington, Lincoln, and others—, 
 mine have suffered in the name of 
 religion. Your national heroes are 
 patriots; our heroes are religious teachers 
 or demigods. Caste is religion; there- 
 fore, caste abides until some other re- 
 ligion takes the place of Hinduism. 
 The Hindu-Moslem schism is primarily 
 religious; therefore, 1t remains until 
 both come together in some new and 
 common religious relationship. But 
 who shall work such miracles for India? 
 Who can form a new caste within 
 caste into which all castes may enter? 
 
 Touching the ‘‘untouchable”’ 
 
 35 
 
INDIA is awakening in every sense 
 of the word, but unfortunately 
 there is no one to guide her foot- 
 steps at the present time. She isin 
 asad plight. The situation is slip- 
 ping into the hands of the ex- 
 tremists, who may precipitate a 
 violent revolution unless the rest 
 of the sections succeed in quickly 
 making up their minds as to the 
 course of action and sticking to it. 
 But, strangely, the influence of 
 Christ in the situation is indubi- 
 tably supreme. Almost every po- 
 litical leader, of whatever shade of 
 opinion, while he may ignore the 
 existence of Christians or even 
 condemn Christian propaganda in 
 the land, is loud in quoting Christ’s 
 teachings and referring to his life 
 in his public utterances. The 
 greatest man of the hour is un- 
 doubtedly Gandhi, and it is being 
 claimed by his followers that in all 
 his activities he merely practices 
 what Christ taught. This we may 
 take to be a triumph for Christi- 
 anity. Itcertainlyis.— A quotation 
 from a personal letter from an 
 Indian Christian. 
 
 ——— 
 ee 
 
 | SHEDEvevedeey 
 
 Who can bring the Hindu and Moslem 
 roads together into a road that has the 
 best of Hinduism and the best of Islam?” 
 
 How shall I describe the glowing 
 earnestness of the young Christian 
 Indian as he sat there in the light of the 
 electric lamps, like a musician whose 
 fingers at last have found the theme 
 and the chords of some stirring march 
 that drives his soul forward to grips 
 with reality. We dared not interrupt 
 him. 
 
 Seeking a King 
 
 “Who can furnish the rallying center 
 of our new Indian national life? Who 
 can make democracy really possible in 
 India? Who can be the great sun in 
 our confused system that can hold the 
 various languages and races in their 
 proper orbits by drawing them round 
 and round himself in utter devotion to 
 his spirit and purpose? Our center 
 must be religious or it can-be no center 
 for us, being constituted as we are. 
 Our new center must come from 
 without our national life, for thirty- 
 five centuries have failed to reveal any- 
 thing within our own borders which will 
 change our centrifugal tendencies into 
 centripetal, which will transform us 
 from flying apart into flying together. 
 It cannot come from you of the West 
 as you are, because there is so much in 
 your lives and practices which is ir- 
 religious, materialistic, practical. Your 
 civilization cannot unify us, for at heart 
 we are suspicious of it and unfriendly 
 to it. There is. too much of matter in 
 it, and not enough of spirit. 
 
 “So to-day, Mr. Gray, the wise men 
 
 XII—The Present Opportunity 
 
 of the East are once more bound on their 
 mission. India to-day rides with its 
 thinking men—its sincere earnest, In- 
 dian minds—, rides hither and thither 
 seeking him who is born King of their 
 new national life, around whom all can 
 rally—all the ‘unpronounceables’ of 
 Miss Eleanor. They came into your 
 West and they found him not; only 
 Herods and their mighty civilizations— 
 Herods who live in great palaces, build 
 great temples, make their capitals 
 wonders of the world, but slaughter 
 prophets and children. Discouraged, 
 they were about to turn back, thinking 
 that the morning star of their new day, 
 which hung low in the west, had de- 
 ceived them, and that in India itself lay 
 their King newborn. For you must 
 know there have been many rumors in 
 Indian history and literature, even as in 
 Jewish history and literature, of a 
 Messiah who was to come from their 
 own villages, as one rumor has it, to be 
 born in obscure Sambhal, as in obscure 
 Bethlehem. So the Indian prophets 
 have sung in their way: ‘And thou, 
 Sambhal, land of Rohilkhand, art in 
 no wise least among the cities of India; 
 for out of thee shall come forth a 
 governor, who shall be shepherd of my 
 peoples.’ Back to their own river 
 valleys they would turn, trying this and 
 that phase of Swaraj (home rule) for a 
 national center.” 
 
 The Universal Christ 
 
 “But to-day the eyes of many of 
 India’s thinking men are on Him who 
 was neither of you nor of us but came 
 from the middle land, halfway between; 
 who was neither fair as you nor dark as 
 we are but of a color in between; who 
 was in spirit both European and 
 Asiatic. He lived at one time in a 
 world of matter and in a world of spirit 
 and was at home in both. In his 
 Sermon on the Mount just now India is 
 finding him whom it seeks. His words 
 are on the lips of our national leaders; 
 his story they read and reread in the 
 quiet of their homes. The Sermon on 
 the Mount, however, is only his manger; 
 within it is his person—a person of 
 religious significance and power. When 
 India finds that and opens her treasures 
 to him—those rich treasures of soul 
 which she has been accumulating 
 through the centuries of her history—, 
 then will the new India go on her way 
 rejoicing, for it has found the King 
 who unifies and glorifies her life.” 
 
 He stopped speaking. Ere we could 
 add a word to this, a fresh light came 
 into his face, and he spoke on: 
 
 “Not only for India’s unity—for 
 India’s home life—but for the unity 
 and home life of all races on our planet 
 
 36 
 
 has the Christ come. Is not the human 
 race passing from diversity to unity? 
 Does it not need a new center? Who 
 but the Teacher himself can make 
 disciples of all nations and races? Who 
 but he can overlay all their prejudices— 
 racial, national, social, intellectual, re- 
 ligious,—with a coating of his own 
 spirit of mutual recognition and co- 
 operation? So I see him to-day passing 
 along, calling some nations from their 
 more complex ways of living—from the 
 ‘seats of custom’ of trade and tariff and 
 taxes—and other nations from their 
 simpler life—from the fisherman’s boat 
 —but calling all in order to disciple 
 them, that all together may build on 
 earth a kingdom of heaven, which is to 
 his way of thinking a family circle of 
 God and men. 
 
 “India to-day hears his voice and 
 listens. To her, boats and nets, hired 
 men and parents, are as nothing if the 
 Voice and the Face are not a mask of 
 some Western, materialistic, selfish 
 civilization but are indeed the light and 
 life of the world.” 
 
 The Gift of a Life 
 
 It was Mr. Gray who broke the 
 silence—broke it with these strange 
 words: 
 
 “John, you may go with him to India. 
 Eleanor, you are too young to decide 
 anything. You belong right here. 
 Fazl Masih, not India speaking in facts 
 and figures but India speaking in you 
 has won me. Mother, isn’t it about 
 time to send them all to bed?” 
 
 That was all he said; but the feeble, 
 
 forced smile at the close betrayed to | 
 
 me how heavy had been the conflict 
 and how hard-won the victory. 
 
 Discussion Questions 
 
 WHAT ABOVE ALL does India need 
 to-day? Why? 
 
 In what sense does India lack home 
 life? Explain. 
 
 If the American people were as 
 diversified as are the people of India, 
 could we have a democracy? 
 
 What is to bring about the needed 
 unity in India’s national existence? 
 
 Can patriotism alone do it? 
 
 If India’s point of view is essen- 
 tially religious, what is the logical solu- 
 tion? 
 
 In what sense is India like the Wise 
 Men of old—seeking the newborn 
 King? Are we in America playing the 
 part of Herod? ; 
 
 What might Christ mean to India, 
 with its peculiar spiritual possessions? 
 
 Have we, like Mr. Gray, young lives 
 to give to India? 
 
A monthly magazine for teachers of religious education 
 who have a world vision of Christianity 
 
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