They moved again to another town; it followed him there, for a temple was there, and a temple means that.

Then the devil of cruelty seized upon him; he would drink, a disgraceful thing in his Caste, and then hold his little wife down on the floor, and stuff a bit of cloth into her mouth, and beat her, and kick her, and trample upon her, and tear the jewels out of her ears. The neighbours saw it, and told.

Then he refused to bring money to her, and she slowly starved, quite silent still, till at last hunger broke down her resolute will, and she begged the neighbours for rice. And he did more, but it cannot be told. How often one stops in writing home-letters. The whole truth can never be told.

She is only a girl yet, in years at least; in suffering, oh, how old she is! Not half is known, for she never speaks; loyal and true to him through it all. We only know what the neighbours know, and what her silent dark eyes tell, and the little thin face and hands.

She was very weary and ill to-day, but she would not own. it, brave little soul! I could see that neuralgia was racking her head, and every limb trembled when she stood up; but what made it so pathetic to me was the silence with which she bore it all. I have only seen her once before, and now she is going far away with her husband to another town, and I may not see her again. She was too tired to listen much, and she knows so little, not nearly enough to rest her soul upon. She cannot read, so it is useless to write to her. She is going away quite out of our reach; thank God, not out of His.

We watched them drive off in the bullock cart, a servant walking behind. The little pale face of the elder girl looked out at the open end of the cart; she salaamed as they drove away. Such a sweet face in its silent strength, so wondrously gentle, yet so strong, strong to endure.

Do you wonder I call this sort of thing a look deep down into hell ? Do you wonder we burn as we think of such things going on in the Name of God ? For they think of their god as God. In His Name the temples are built and endowed, and provided with " Servants " to do devil's work. Yes, sin is deified here.

And the shame of shames is that some Englishmen patronise and in measure support the iniquity. They attend entertainments at which these girls are present to

sing and dance, and see nothing disgraceful in so doing. As lately as 1893, when the Indian Social Keformers of this Presidency petitioned two notable Englishmen to discountenance " this pernicious practice " (the institution of Slaves of the gods) " by declining to attend any enter tainment at which they are invited to be present," these two distinguished men, representatives of our Queen, refused to take action in the matter. Surely this is a strange misuse of our position as rulers of India. 1

There are so many needs everywhere that I hardly like to speak of our own, but we do need someone to work among these temple women and girls. There is practically nothing being done for them; because it is impossible for any of us to work among them and others at the same time. The nearest Home to which we could send such a one is four hundred miles away. Someone is needed, old enough to have had experience of this kind of work, and yet young enough to learn the language.

Many of these Slaves of the gods were bought, or in some other way obtained, when they were little innocent girls, and they cannot be held responsible for the terrible life to which they are doomed by the law of the Hindu religion. Many of them have hardened past any desire to be other than they are; but sometimes we see the face of a girl who looks as if she might have desire, if only she had a chance to know there is something better for her.

Can it be that, out of the many at home, God has one,

1 For details, see Tlu Wrongs of Indian Womanhood, by Mrs. Fuller.

or better, two, who can come with Him to this South Indian District to do what must always be awful work, along the course of that crack ? If she comes, or if they come, let them come in the power of the Holy Ghost, baptised with the love that endures!

This, then, is one look into Hinduism, this ghastly whitened sepulchre, within which are dead men's bones.

CHAPTER XXII Behind the Door

"When any person is known to be considering: the new Religion, all his relations and acquaintances rise en masse; so that to get a new convert is like pulling out the eye-tooth of a Hue tiger" Adoniram Judson, Burmah.

EVERY missionary who has despaired of hitting upon an illustration vivid enough to show you what the work is really like among Mohammedans and Caste Hindus will appreciate this simile. After our return from Dohnavur we found that the long-closed villages of this eastern countryside had opened again, and the people were willing to allow us to teach the girls and women. For two months this lasted, and then three boys, belonging to three different Castes, became known as inquirers. Instantly the news spread through all the villages. It was in vain we told them we (women-workers) had never once even seen the boys, had in no way influenced them; the people held to it that, personally responsible or not, the Book we taught to the girls was the same those boys had read (an un deniable fact); that its poison entered through the eyes, ascended to the brain, descended to the heart, and then drew the reader out of his Caste and his religion; and that therefore we could not be tolerated in the

streets or in the houses any more, and so we were turned out.

In one village where many of the relations of one of these three lads live, the tiger growled considerably. One furious old dame called us "jC^d^snatchers^and Powder-mongers," and white snakes of the cobra species, and a particular genus of lizard, which when stamped upon merely wriggles, and cannot be persuaded to die (this applied to our persistence in evil), and a great many other things. The women stood out in the street in defiant groups and would not let us near enough to explain. The men sat on the verandah fronts and smiled, blandly superior to the childish nonsense the women talked, but they did not interfere.

Villages like this—and Old India is made up of such villages—are far removed from the influence of the few enlightened centres which exist. Madras is only a name to them, distant four hundred miles or so, a place where Caste notions are very lax and people are mixed up and jumjilexl-togettier in a most unbecoming way.

(Education, ,or " Learning/' as they call it, they consider an excellent thing for boys who want to come to the front and earn money and grow rich. But for girls, what po^sible_ use^js^,itJ Can they pass examinations and get into Government employ ? If you answered this question you would only disgust them. Then there is a latent feeling common enough in these old Caste families, that it is rather infra, dig. for their women to know too much. It may be all very well for those who have no pretensions to greatness, they may need a ladder by which to climb up the social scale, but we who are

already at the top, what do we want with it ? " Have not our daughters got their Caste ?" This feeling is pass ing away in the towns, but the villages hold out longer.

In that particular village we had some dear little girls who were getting very keen, and it was so hard to move out, and leave the field to the devil as undisputed victor thereon, and I sent one of our workers to try again. She is a plucky little soul, but even she had to beat a retreat. They will have none of us.

We went on that day to a village where they had listened splendidly only a week before. They had no time, it was the busy season. Then to a town, farther on, but it was quite impracticable. So we went to our friend the dear old Evangelist there, the blind old man. He and his wife are lights in that dark town. It is so refreshing to spend half an hour with two genuine good old Christians after a tug of war with the heathen; they have no idea they are helping you, but they are, and you return home ever so much the happier for the sight of them.

As we came home we were almost mobbed. In the old days mobs there were of common occurrence. It is a rough market town, and the people, after the first converts came, used to hoot us through the streets, and throw handfuls of sand at us, and shower ashes on our ham In theory I like this very much, but in practice not at all. The yellings of the crowd, men chiefly, are not polite; the yelpings of the dogs, set on by sympathetic spectators; the sickening blaze of the sun and the reflected glare from the houses; the blinding dust in your eyes, and the queer feel of ashes down

your neck; above all, the sense that this sort of thing does no manner of good—for it is not persecution (nothing so heroic), and it will not end in martyrdom (no such honours come our way)—all this row, and all these feelings, one on the top of the other, combine to make mobbing less interesting than might be expected. You hold on, and look up for patience and good nature and such like common graces, and you pray that you may not be down with fever to-morrow—for fever has a way of stopping work—and you get out of it all, as quickly as you can, without showing undue hurry. And then, though little they know it, you go and get a fresh baptism of love for them all.

But how delighted one would be to go through such unromantic trifles every hour of every day, if only at the end one could get into the hearts and the homes of the people. As it is, just now, our grief is that we cannot. We know of several who want us, and we are shut out from them.

One is a young wife, who saw us one day by the waterside, and asked us to come and teach her. For doing this she was publicly beaten that evening in the open street, by a man, before men; so, for fear of what they would do to her, we dare not go near the house. Another is a widow who has spent all her fortune in building a rest-house for the Brahmans, and who has not found Best. She listened once, too earnestly; she has not been allowed to listen again. Oh, how that tiger bites !

Next door to her is a child we have prayed for for three years. She was a loving, clinging child when I knew her then, little Gold, with the earnest eyes. That

last day I saw her, she put her hands into mine, caring nothing for defilement; " Are we not one Caste ?" she said. I did not know it was the last time I should see her; that the next time when I spoke to her I should only see her shadow in the dark; and one wishes now one had known—how much one would have said! But the house was open then, and all the houses were. Then the first girl convert, after bravely witnessing at home, took her stand as a Christian. Her Caste people burned down the little Mission school—a boys' school—and chalked up their sentiments on the charred walls. They burned down the Bible-woman's house and a school sixteen miles away; and the countryside closed, every town and village in it, as if the whole were a single door, with the devil on the other side of it.

But some of the girls behind the door managed to send us messages. Gold was one of these. She wanted so much to see us again, she begged us to come and try. We tried ; we met the mother outside, and asked her to let us come. She is a hard old woman, with eyes like bits of black ice, set deep in her head. She froze us, and refused.

Afterwards we heard what the child's punishment was. They took her down to the water, and led her in. She stood trembling, waist deep, not knowing what they meant to do. Then they held her head under the water till she made some sign to show she would give in. They released her then, rubbed ashes on her brow, sign of recantation, and they led her back sobbing—poor little girl. She is not made of martyr stuff; she was only miserable. For some months we saw nothing of her.

We used to go to the next house and persuade the people to let us sing to them. We sang for Gold; but we never knew if she heard.

One evening, as two of us came home late from work, a woman passed us and said hurriedly to me, " Come, come quickly, and alone. It is Gold who calls you! Come!" I followed her to the house. " I am Gold's married sister," she explained. " Sit down outside in the verandah near the door and wait till the child comes out." Then she went in, and I sat still and waited.

Those minutes were like heart-beats. What was happen ing inside ? But apparently the mother was away, for soon the door opened softly, and a shadow flitted out, and I knew it must be Gold. She dropped on her knees on the little narrow verandah on the other side of the door and crept along to its farther end, and then I could only distinguish a dark shape in the dark. For perhaps five minutes no one came except the sister, who stood at the door and watched. And for those five minutes one was free to speak as freely as one could speak to a shape which one could barely see, and which showed no sign, and spoke no word. Five whole minutes! How one valued every moment of them! Then a man came and sat down on the verandah. He must have been a relative, for he did not mean to go. I wished he would. It was impossible to talk past him to her, without letting him know she was there; so one had to talk to him, but for her, and even this could not last long. Dusk here soon is dark; we had to go. As we went, we looked back and saw him still keeping his unconscious guard over the child in her hiding-place.

There are no secrets in India. It was known that we had been there, and that stern old mother punished her child; but how, we never knew.

If any blame us for going at all, let it be remembered that one of Christ's little ones was thirsty, and she held out her hand for a cup of cold water. We could not have left that hand empty, I think.

After that we heard nothing for a year; then an old man whom we had helped, and who hoped we intended to help him more, came one evening to tell us he meant to set Gold free. It was all to be secretly done, and it was to be done that night. We told him we could have nothing to do with his plan, and we explained to him why. " But," he objected, " what folly is this ? I thought you Christians helped poor girls, and this one certainly wants to come. She is of age. This is the time. If you wait you will never get her at all." We knew this was more than probable; to refuse his help was like turning the key and locking her body and soul into prison—an awful thought to me, as I remembered Treasure. But there was nothing else to be done; and afterwards, when we heard who he was, and what his real intentions were, we were thankful we had done it. He looked at us curiously as he went, as if our view of things struck him as strange; and he begged us never to breathe a word of what he had said. We never did, but it somehow oozed out, and soon after that he sickened and very suddenly died. His body was burnt within two hours. Post-mortems are rare in India.

Another year passed in silence as to Gold. How often we went down the street and looked across at her home,

with its door almost always shut, and that icy-eyed mother on guard. We used to see her going about, never far from the house. When we saw her we salaamed; then she would glare at us grimly, and turn her back on us. Once the whole family went to a festival; but the girl of course was bundled in and out of a covered cart, and seen by no one, not even the next-door neighbours. There was talk of a marriage for her. Most girls of her Caste are married much younger; but to our relief this fell through, and once one of us saw her for a moment, and she still seemed to care to hear, though she was far too cowed by this time to show it.

Then we heard a rumour that a girl from the Lake Village had been seen by some of our Christians in a wood near a village five miles distant. These Christians are very out-and-out and keen about converts, and they managed to discover that the girl in the wood had some thought of being a Christian, and that her being there had some connection with this, so they told us at once. The description fitted Gold. But we could not account for a girl of her Caste being seen in a wood; she was always kept in seclusion. At last we found out the truth. She had shown some sign of a lingering love for Christ, and her mother had taken her to a famous Brahman ascetic who lived in that wood; and there together, mother and daughter stayed in a hut near the hermit's hut, and for three days he had devoted himself to confuse and confound her, and finally he succeeded, and reported her convinced.

We heard all this, and sorrowed, and wondered how it was done. We never heard all, but we heard one

delusion they practised upon her, appealing as they so often do to the Oriental imagination, which finds such solid satisfaction in the supernatural. Nothing is so convincing as a vision or a dream; so a vision appeared before her, an incarnation, they told her, of Siva, in the form of Christ. Siva and Christ, then, were one, as they had so often assured her, one identity under two names. Hinduism is crammed with incarnations; this presented no difficulty. Like the old monk, the bewildered child looked for the print of the nails and the spear. Yes, they were there, marked in hands and foot and side. It must be hard to distrust one's own mother. Gold still trusted hers. " Listen !" said the mother, and the vision spoke. " If the speech of the Christians is true, I will return within twenty-four days; if the speech of the Hindus is true, I will not return." Then hour by hour for those twenty-four days they wove their webs about her, webs of wonderful sophistry which have entangled keener brains than hers. She was entangled. The twenty-four days did their work. She yielded her will on the twenty-fifth. So the mother and the Brahman won.

These letters are written, as you know, with a definite purpose. We try to show you what goes on behind the door, the very door of the photograph, type of all the doors, that seeing behind you may understand how fiercely the tiger bites.

This is the tangible brass-bossed door out side of which we so often stand on the stone step and knock, and hear voices from within call, "Everyone is out." The hand-marks are the hand-prints of the Power that keeps the door shut. Once a year, every door and the lintel of every window, and sometimes

the walls, are marked like this. That even ing, just before dark, the god comes round, they say, and looks for his mark on the door, and, seeing it, blesses all in the house. If there is no mark he'leaves a curse. This is the devil's South Indian parody on the Passover,

CHAPTER XXIII "Pan, Pan is Dead"

" If there is one thing that refreshes my soul above all others, it is that I shall behold the Redeemer gloriously triumphant at the winding up of all things." Henry Martyn, N. India.

«T)ARTLY founded upon a well-known tradition,

JL mentioned by Plutarch, according to which, at

the hour of the Saviour's Agony, a cry of, ' Great

Pan is dead,' swept across the waves in the hearing of

certain mariners, and the oracles ceased." So reads the

head-note to one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems.

We look up a classical dictionary, and find the legend

there. " This was readily believed by the Emperor, and

the astrologers were consulted, but they were unable to

explain the meaning of so supernatural a voice."

Pan, and with him all the false gods of the old world, die in the day of the death of our Saviour,—this accord ing to the poem—

"Gods, we vainly do adjure you,—

Ye return nor voice nor signl Not a votary could secure you

Even a grave for your Divine; Not a grave, to show thereby, Here these grey old gods do lie. Pan, Pan is dead."

And yet—is he dead ? quite dead ?

Night, moonless and hot. Our camp is pitched on the west bank of the river; we are asleep. Suddenly there is what sounds like an explosion just outside. Then another and another,—such a bursting bang,—then a s-s-swish, and I am out of bed, standing out on the sand; and for a moment I am sure the kitchen tent is on fire. Then it dawns on me, in the slow way things dawn in the middle of the night: it is only fireworks being let off by the festival people—only fireworks!

But I stand and look, and in the darkness everything seems much bigger than it is and much more awful. There is the gleaming of water, lit by the fires of the crowd on the eastern bank of the river. There are torches waving uncertainly in and out of the vast black mass—black even in the black of night—where the people are. There is the sudden burst and s-s-swish of the rockets as they rush up into the night, and fall in showers of colours on the black mass and the water; and there is the hoarse roar of many voices, mingled with the bleat of many goats. I stand and look, and know what is going on. They are killing those goats— thirty thousand of them—killing them now.

Is Pan dead ? . . .

Morning, blazing sun, relentless sun, showing up all that is going on. We are crossing the river-bed in our cart. " Don't look ! " says my comrade, and I look the other way. Then we separate. She goes among the crowds in the river bed, where the sun is hottest and the air most polluted and the scenes on every side most sickening, and I go up the bank among the people. We have each a Tamil Sister with us, and farther down the

stream another little group of three is at work. In all seven, to tens of thousands. But we hope more will come later on.

We have arranged to meet at the cart at about ten o'clock. The bandy-man is directed to work his way up to a big banyan tree near the temple. He struggles up through a tangle of carts, and finds a slanting stand ing-ground on the edge of the shade of the tree.

All the way up the bank they are killing and skinning their goats. You look to the right, and put your hands over your eyes. You look to the left, and do it again. You look straight in front, and see an extended skinned victim hung from the branch of a tree. Every hanging rootlet of the great banyan tree is hung with horrors— all dead, most mercifully, but horrible still.

We had thought the killing over, or we should hardly have ventured to come; but these who are busy are late arrivals. One tells oneself over and over again that a headless creature cannot possibly feel, but it looks as if it felt ... it goes on moving. We look away, and we go on, trying to get out of it,—but thirty thousand goats! It takes a long time to get out of it.

We see groups of little children watching the process delightedly. There is no intentional cruelty, for the god will not accept the sacrifice unless the head is severed by a single stroke—a great relief to me. But it is most disgusting and demoralising. And to think that these children are being taught to connect it with religion!

With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted the fowls' heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown hands, such loving

little hands, and I can hardly believe it. " You— you do such a thing!" I say. And she says, " Yes ; when the day came round to sacrifice to our family divinity, my little brother held the goat's head while my father struck it off, and I twisted the chickens' heads. It was my pleasure! "

We go up along the bank; still those crowds, and those goats killed or being killed. We cannot get away from them.

At last we reach a tree partly unoccupied, but it is leafless, alas ! On one side of it a family party is cheer fully feeding behind a shelter of mats. A little lower down some Pariahs are haggling over less polite portions of the goat's economy. They wrap up the stringy things in leaves and tuck them into a fold of their seeleys. At our feet a small boy plays with the head. We sit down in the band of shade cast by the trunk of the tree, and, grateful for so much shelter, invite the passers-by to listen while we sing. Some listen. An old hag who is chaperoning a bright young wife draws the girl towards us, and sits down. She has never heard a word of our Doctrine before, and neither has the girl. Then some boys come, full of mischief and fun, and threaten an upset. So we pick out the rowdiest of them and suggest he should keep order, which he does with great alacrity, swinging a switch most vigorously at anyone likely to interfere with the welfare of the meeting.

My little companion speaks to them, as only one who was once where they are ever can. I listen to her, and long for the flow at her command. " Do you not do

this and this ?" she says, naming the very things they do; " and don't you say so and so ?" They stare, and then, " Oh, she was once one of us ! What is her Caste ? When did she come ? Where are her father and mother ? What is her village ? Is she not married ? Why is she not ? And where are her jewels ?" Above all, every one asks it at once, " What is her Caste ?" And they guess it, and probably guess right.

You can have no idea, unless you have worked among them, how difficult it is to get a heathen woman to listen with full attention for ten consecutive minutes. They are easily distracted, and to-day there are so many things to distract them, they don't listen very well. They are tired, too, they say; the wild, rough night has done its work. Yesterday it was different; we got good listeners.

Being women, and alone in such a crowd of idolaters, we do not attempt an open-air meeting, but just sit quietly where we can, and talk to any we can persuade to sit down beside us. Hindus are safer far than Mohammedans; they are very seldom rude; but to-day we know enough of what is going on to make us keep clear of all men, if we can. They would not say any thing much to us, but they might say a good deal to each other which is better left unsaid.

By the time we have gathered, and held, and then had to let go, three or four of such little groups, it is breakfast time, and we want our breakfast badly. So we press through the crowd, diving under mat sheds and among unspeakable messes, heaps of skins on either side, and one hardly knows what under every foot of innocent-look ing sand ; for the people bury the debris lightly, throwing

a handful of sand on the worst, and the sun does the rest of the sanitation. It is rather horrible.

At last we reach the cart, tilted sideways on the bank, and get through our breakfast somehow, and rest for a few blissful minutes, in most uncomfortable positions, before plunging again into that sea of sun and sand and animals, human and otherwise; and then we part, arrang ing to meet when we cannot go on any more.

Is Pan dead ? . . .

Noon, and hotter, far hotter, than ever. Oh, how the people throng and push, and kill and eat, and bury re mains ! How can they enjoy it so ? What can be the pleasure in it ?

We find our way back to that ribbon of shade. It is a narrower ribbon now, because the sun, riding overhead, throws the shadow of a single bough, instead of the broader trunk. But such as it is, we are glad of it, and again we gather little groups, and talk to them, and sing.

Some beautiful girls pass us close, the only girls to be seen anywhere. Only little children and wives come here; no good unmarried girls. One of the group is dressed in white, but most are in vivid purples and crimsons. The girl in white has a weary look, the work of the night again. But most of the sisterhood are in doors ; in the evening we shall see more of them, scattered among the people, doing their terrible master's work. These pass us without speaking, and mingle in the crowd.

After an hour in the band of shade, we slowly climb the bank again, and find ourselves among the potters,

hundreds and hundreds of them. Every family buys a pot, and perhaps two or three of different sizes; so the potters drive a brisk trade to-day, and have no leisure to listen to us.

It is getting very much hotter now, for the burning sand and the thousands of fires radiate heat-waves up through the air, heated already stiningly. We think of our comrades down in the river bed, reeking with odours of killing and cooking, a combination of abominations un-imagined by me before.

We look down upon a collection of cart tops. The palm-woven mat covers are massed in brown patches all over the sand, and the moving crowds are between. We do not see the others. Have they found it as difficult as we find it, we wonder, to get any disengaged enough to want to listen ? At last we reach the long stone aisle leading to the temple. On either side there are lines of booths, open to the air but shaded from the sun, and we persuade a friendly stall-keeper to let us creep into her shelter. She is cooking cakes on the ground. She lets us into an empty corner, facing the passing crowds, and one or two, and then two or three, and so on till we have quite a group, stop as they pass, and squat down in the shade and listen for a little. Then an old lady, with a keen old face, buys a Gospel portion at half price, and folds it carefully in a corner of her seeley. Two or three others buy Gospels, and all of them want tracts. The shop-woman gets a bit restive at this rivalry of wares. We spend our farthings, proceeds of our sales, on her cakes, and she is mollified. But some new attraction in the gallery leading to the temple disperses our little audience, M

to collect it round itself. The old woman explains that the Gospel she has bought is for her grandson, a scholar, she tells us, aged five, and moves off to see the new show, and we move off with her.

There, in the first stall, between the double row of pillars, a man is standing on a form, whirling a sort of crackling rattle high above his head. In the next, another is yelling to call attention to his clocks. There they are, ranged tier upon tier, regular " English " busy-bee clocks, ticking away, as a small child remarks, as if they were alive. Then come sweet-stalls, clothes-stalls, lamp-stalls, fruit-stalls, book-stalls, stalls of pottery, and brass vessels, and jewellery, and basket work, and cutlery, and bangles in wheelbarrow loads, and medicines, and mats, and money boxes, and anything and everything of every description obtainable here. In each stall is a stall-keeper. Occasion ally one, like the clock-stall man, exerts himself to sell his goods; more often he lazes in true Oriental fashion, and sells or not as fortune decides for him, equally satis fied with either decree. How Indian shopkeepers live at all is always a puzzle to me. They hardly ever seem to do anything but moon.

On and on, in disorderly but perfectly good-natured streams, the people are passing up to the temple, or coming down from worship there. All who come down have their foreheads smeared with white ashes. Even here there are goats; they are being pulled, poor reluctant beasts, right to the steps of the shrine, there to be dedi cated to the god within. Then they will be dragged, still reluctant, round the temple walls outside, then de capitated.

I watch a baby tug a goat by a rope tied round its neck. The goat has horns, and I expect every moment to see the baby gored. But it never seems to enter into the goat's head to do anything so aggressive. It tugs, however, and the baby tugs, till a grown-up comes to the baby's assistance, and all three struggle up to the shrine.

We are standing now in an empty stall, just a little out of the crush. Next door is an assortment of small Tamil booklets in marvellous colours, orange and green predominating. There is an empty barrel rolled into the corner, and we sit down on it, and begin to read from our Book. This causes a diversion in the flow of the stream, and we get another chance.

But it grows hotter and hotter, and we get so thirsty, and long for a drink of cocoanut water. It is always safe to drink that. No cocoanuts are available, though, and we have no money. Then a man selling native butter milk comes working his way in and out of the press, and we become conscious that of all things in the world the thing we yearn for most is a drink of butter-milk. The man stops in front of our stall, pours out a cupful of that precious liquid, and seeing the thirst in our eyes, I suppose, beseeches us to drink. We explain our penni less plight. " Buy our books, and we'll buy your butter milk," but he does not want our books. Then we wish we had not squandered our farthings on those impossible cakes. The butter-milk man proposes he should trust us for the money; he is sure to come across us again. He is a kind-hearted man; but debt is a sin; it is not likely we shall see him again. The butter-milk man considers.

He is poor, but we are thirsty. To give drink to the thirsty is an act of merit. Acts of merit come in useful, both in this world and the next. He pours out a cupful of butter-milk (he had poured the first one back when we showed our empty hands). We hesitate; he is poor, but we are so very thirsty. The next stall-keeper reads our hearts, throws a halfpenny to the butter-milk man. " There ! " he says, " drink to the limit of your capacity ! " and we drink. It is a comical feeling, to be beholden to a seller of small Tamil literature of questionable descrip tion ; but we really are past drawing nice distinctions. Never was butter-milk so good; we get through three brass tumbler-fuls between us, and feel life worth living again. We give the good bookseller plenty of books to cover his halfpenny, and to gratify us he accepts them; but as he does not really require them, doubtless the merit he has acquired is counted as undiminished, and we part most excellent friends.

And now the crowd streaming up to the temple gets denser every moment. Every conceivable phase of devotion is represented here, every conceivable type of worshipper too. Some are reverent, some are rampant, some are earnest, some are careless, awestruck, excited, but more usually perfectly frivolous; on and on they stream.

I leave my Tamil Sister safely with two others at the cart. But the comrade whom I am to meet again at that same cart some time to-day has not turned up. So I go off alone for another try, drawn by the sight of that stream, and I let myself drift along with it, and am caught in it and carried up—up, till I am within the

temple wall, one of a stream of men and women stream ing up to the shrine. We reach it at last. It is dark; I can just see an iron grating set in darkness, with a light somewhere behind, and there, standing on the very steps of Satan's seat, there is a single minute's chance to witness for Christ. The people are all on their faces in the dust and the crush, and for that single minute they listen, amazed at hearing any such voice in here; but it would not do to stay, and, before they have time to make up their minds what to make of it, I am caught in another stream flowing round to the right, and find myself in a quieter place, a sort of eddy on the outer edge of the whirlpool, where the worship is less intense, and very many women are sitting gossiping.

There, sitting on the ground beside one of the smaller shrines which cluster round the greater, I have such a chance as I never expected to get; for the women and children are so astonished to see a white face in here that they throw all restraint to the winds, and crowd round me, asking questions about how I got in. For Indian temples are sacred to Indians; no alien may pass within the walls to the centre of the tihrine; moreover, we never go to the temples to see the parts that are open to view, because we know the stumbling-block such sight-seeing is to the Hindus. All this the women know, for everything a missionary does or does not do is ob served by these observant people, and commented on in private. Now, as they gather round me, I tell them why I have come (how I got in I cannot explain, unless it was, as the women declared, that, being in a seeley, one

was not conspicuous), and they take rue into confidence, and tell ine the truth about themselves, which is the last thing they usually tell, and strikes me as strange; and they listen splendidly, and would listen as long as I would stay. But it is not wise to stay too long, and I get into the stream again, which all this time has been pour ing round the inner block of the temple, and am carried round with it as it pours back and out.

And as I pass out, still in that stream, I notice that the temple area is crowded with all kinds of merchandise, stalls of all sorts, just as outside. Vendors of everything, from mud pots up to jewels, are roaming over the place crying their wares, as if they had been in a market; and right in the middle of them the worship goes on at the different shrines and before the different idols. There it is, market and temple, as in the days of our Lord; neither seems to interfere with the other. No one seems to see anything incongruous in the sight of a man prostrated before a stone set at the back of a heap of glass bangles. And when someone drops suddenly, and sometimes reverently, in front of a stall of coils of oily cakes, no one sees anything extraordinary in it; they know there is a god somewhere on the other side of the cakes.

On and out, through the aisle with its hundred pillars, all stone—stone paving, pillars, roof; on and out, into the glare and the sight of the goats again. But one hardly sees them now, for between them and one's eyes seem to come the things one saw inside—those men and women, hundreds of them, worshipping that which is not God.

Is Pan dead ? . . .

Pan is dead! Oh, Pan is dead! For, clearer than the sight of that idolatrous crowd, I saw this —I had seen it inside those temple walls:—a pile of old, dead gods. They were bundled away in a corner, behind the central shrine—stone gods, mere headless stumps; wooden gods with limbs lopped off; clay gods, mere lumps of mud; mutilated and neglected, worn-out old gods. Oh, the worship once offered to those broken, battered things! No one worships them now! For full five minutes I had sat and looked at them—

" Gods bereaved, gods belated,

With your purples rent asunder! Gods discrowned and desecrated, Disinherited of thunder ! "

There were withered wreaths lying at the feet of some of the idols near; there were fresh wreaths round the necks of others. There were no wreaths in this corner of dead gods. I looked, and looked, and looked again. Oh, there was prophecy in it!

And as I came out among the living people, the sight of that graveyard of dead gods was ever with me, and the triumph-song God's prophetess sang, sang itself through and through me—Pan is dead! Quite dead !

"'Twas the hour when One in Sion Hung for love's sake on a cross; When His brow was chill with dying,

And His soul was faint with loss; When His priestly blood dropped downward, And His kingly eyes looked throne ward— Then, Pan was dead.

"By the love He stood alone in,

His sole Godhead rose complete, And the false gods fell down moaning,

Each from off his golden seat; All the false gods with a cry Rendered up their deity— Pan, Pan was dead."

CHAPTER XXIV " Married to the God "

"One thing 1 one notices very much as a 'freshman'—that is, the unconscious influence which Christianity has over a nation. Go to the most depraved wretch you can find in Eng land, and he has probably got a conscience, if only one can get at it. But here the result of heathenism seems to be to destroy men's consciences. They never feel sin as such."

Rev. E. S. Carr, India.

"I have heard people say they enjoyed hearing about missions. I often wonder if they would enjoy watching a shipwreck." Mrs. Robert Stewart, China.

T EAVE this chapter if you want " something interest-JLJ ing to read "; hold your finger in the flame of a candle if you want to know what it is like to write it. If you do this, then you will know something of the burning at heart every missionary goes through who has to see the sort of thing I have to write about. Such things do not make interesting reading. Fire is an uncompromising thing, its characteristic is that it burns; and one writes with a hot heart sometimes. There are things like flames of fire. But perhaps one cares too much; it is only about a little girl.

I was coming home from work a few evenings ago when I met two men and a child. They were Caste men in flowing white scarves—dignified, educated men. But the child ? She glanced up at me, smiled, and

salaamed. Then I remembered her; I had seen her before in her own home. These men belonged to her village. What were they doing with her ?

Then a sudden fear shot through me, and I looked at the men, and they laughed. " We are taking her to the temple there," and they pointed across through the trees, " to marry her to the god."

It all passed in a moment. One of them caught her

hand, and they went on. I stood looking after them

just looking. The child turned once and waved her little hand to me. Then the trees came between.

The men's faces haunted me all night. I slept, and saw them in my dreams; I woke, and saw them in the dark. And that little girl—oh, poor little girl!—always I saw her, one hand in theirs, and the other waving to me!

And now it is over, the diabolical farce is over, and she is " tied/' as their idiom has it, "lied to thp.pf-.nnp.." Oh, she is tied indeed, tied with ropes Satan twisted in his cruellest hour in hell!

We had to drive through the village a night or two later, and it was all ablaze. There was a crowd, and it broke to let our bullock carts pass, then it closed round two palanquins.

There were many men there, and girls. In the palanquins were two idols, god and goddess, out on view. It was their wedding night. We saw it all as we passed: the gorgeous decorations, gaudy tinsels, flowers fading in the heat and glare; saw, long after we had passed, the gleaming of the coloured lights, as they moved among the trees; heard for a mile and more along the road the

sound of that heathen revelry; and every thud of the tom-tom was a thud upon one's heart. Our little girl was there, as one " married " to that god.

I had seen her only once before. She belonged to an interesting high-caste village, one of those so lately closed; and because there they have a story about the magic powder which, say what we will, they imagine I dust upon children's faces, I had not gone often lest it should shut the doors. But that last time I went, this child came up to me, and, with all the confidingness of a child, asked me to take her home with me. " Do let me come !" she said.

There were eyes upon me in a moment and heads shaken knowingly, and there were whispers at once among the women. The magic dust had been at work ! I had " drawn" the little girl's heart to myself. Who could doubt it now? And one mother gathered her child in her arms and disappeared into the house. So I had to answer carefully, so that everyone could hear. Of course I knew they would not give her to me, and I thought no more of it.

I was talking to her grandmother then, a very remark able old lady. She could repeat page after page from their beloved classics, and rather than let me sing Christian stanzas to her and explain them, she preferred to sing Hindu stanzas to me and explain them. " Con sider the age of our great Eeligion, consider its litera ture — millions of stanzas! What can you have to compare with it? These ignorant people about us do not appreciate things. They know nothing of the classics ; as for the language, the depths of Tamil are beyond

them—is it not a shoreless sea ?" And so she held the conversation.

It was just at this point the child reappeared, and, standing by the verandah upon which we were sitting, her little head on a level with our feet, she joined in the stanza her grandmother was chanting, and, to my astonishment, continued through the next and the next, while I listened wondering. Then jumping up and down, first on one foot, then on the other, with her little face full of delight at my evident surprise, she told me she was learning much poetry now; and then, with the merriest little laugh, she ran off again to play.

And this was the child. All that brightness, all that intelligence, " married to a god."

Now I understood the question she had asked me. She was an orphan, as we afterwards heard, living in charge of an old aunt, who had some connection with the temple. She must have heard her future being discussed, and not understanding it, and being frightened, had wondered if she might come to us. But they had taken their own way of reconciling her to it; a few sweets, a cake or two, and a promise of more, a vision of the g<.Vy time the magic word marriage conjures up, and the child was content to go with them, to be led to the temple— and left there.

But her people were so thoroughly refined and nice, so educated too,—could it be, can it be, possibly true ? Yes, it is true ; this is Hinduism—not in theory of course, but in practice. Think of it; it is done to-day.

A moment ago I looked up from my writing and saw the little Elf running towards me, charmed to find me all

This is vile enough to look at, but nothing the pillar lest we should defile him. Lock

to the reality. If the outer form is this, at the shadowy shapes behind ; they might

what must the soul within it be? Yet this be spirits of darkness. It is he, and such

is a "holy Brahman;" and if we sat down as he, who have power over little temple

on that stone verandah he would shuffle past flowers.

alone, and quite at leisure for her. And now I watch her as she runs, dancing gleefully down the path, turning again—for she knows I am watching—to throw kisses to me. And I think of her and her childish ways, naughty ways so often, too, but in their very naughtiness only childish and small, and I shiver as I think of her, and a thousand thousand as small as she, being trained to be devil's toys. They brought one here a few days ago to act as decoy to get the Elf back. She was a beautiful child of five. Think of the shame of it!

We are told to modify things, not to write too vividly, never to harrow sensitive hearts. Friends, we cannot modify truth, we cannot write half vividly enough; and as for harrowing hearts, oh that we could do it! That we could tear them up, that they might pour out like water! that we could see hands lifted up towards God for the life of these young children ! Oh, to care, and oh for power to make others care, not less but far, far more! care till our eyes do fail with tears for the de struction of the daughters of our people!

This photo is from death in life; a carcass, moving, breathing, sinning—such a one sits by that child to-day.

I saw him once. There is a monastery near the temple. He is " the holiest man in it"; the people worship him. The day I saw him they had wreathed him with fresh-cut flowers; white flowers crowned that hideous head, hung round his neck and down his breast; a servant in front carried flowers. Was there ever such desecration ? That vileness crowned with flowers!

I knew something about the man. His life is simply unthinkable. Talk of beasts in human shape! It is

"MARRIED TO THE GOD"

slandering the good animals to compare bad men to beasts. Safer far a tiger's den than that man's monastery

But he is a temple saint, wise in the wisdom of his creed; earthly, sensual, devilish. Look at him till you feel as if you had seen him. Let the photo do its work. It is loathsome—yes, but true.

Now, put a flower in his hand—a human flower this

time. Now put beside him, if you can, a little girl

your own little girl—and leave her there— yes, leave Jier there in his hand.

CHAPTER XXV Skirting the Abyss

"The first thing for us all is to see and feel the great need, and to create a sentiment among Christian people on this subject. One of the characteristics of this great system is its secrecy—its subtlety. So few know of the evils of child-marriagCgjit is so hidden away in the secluded lives

"tod prison homes of the people* And thn«A nf na who pntey beyond tnese veils, and go jdownJntQ^ these homes, are SQ^

«aot to feel that it is a case of the inevitable, and nothing can be done." Mrs. Lee, India.

I HAVE been to the Great Lake Village to-day trying again to find out something about our little girl. I went to the Hindu school near the temple. The schoolmaster is a friend of ours, one of the honourable men of the village from which they took that flower-He was drilling the little Brahman boys as they stood in a row chanting the poem they were learning off by heart; but he made them stop when he saw us coming, and called us in.

I asked him about the child. It was true. She was in the temple, "married to the stone." Yes, it was true they had taken her there that day.

I asked if the family were poor; but he said, " Do not for a moment think that poverty was the cause. Cer tainly not. Our village is not poor!" And he looked quite offended at the thought. I knew the village was

rich enough, but had thought perhaps that particular family might be poor, and so tempted to sell the little one; but he exclaimed with great warmth, Certainly not The child was a relative of his own; there was no ques tion of poverty!

We had left the school, and were talking out in the street facing the temple house. I looked at it, he looked at it. " From hence a passage broad, smooth, easy, inoffen sive, down to hell"; he knew it well. " Yes, she is a relative of my own," he continued, and explained minutely the degree of relationship. "Her grandmother, whom you doubtless remember, is not like the ignorant women of these parts. She has learning." And again he re peated, as if desirous of thoroughly convincing me as to the satisfactory nature of the transaction, " Certainly she was not sold. She is a relative of my own."

A relative of his own ! And he could teach his school outside those walls, and know what was going on inside, and never raise a finger to stop it, educated Hindu though he is. I could not understand it.

He seemed quite concerned at my concern, but ex plained that for generations one of that particular house hold had always been devoted to the gods. The practice could not be defended; it was the custom. That was all. " Our custom."

A stone's-throw from his door is another child who is living a strangely unnatural life, which strikes no one as unnatural because it is " our custom." She is quite a little girl, and as playful as a kitten. Her soft round arms and little dimpled hands looked fit for no harder work than play, but she was pounding rice

when I saw her, and looked tired, and as if she wanted her mother.

While I was with her a very old man hobbled in. He was crippled, and leaned full weight with both hands on his stick. He seemed asthmatic too, and coughed and panted woefully. A withered, decrepit old ghoul. The child stood up when he came in and touched her neck where the marriage symbol lay. Then I knew he was her husband.

" What,

No blush at the avowal—you dared to buy A girl of age beseems your grand-daughter, like ox or ass ? Are flesh and Uood ware? are heart and soul a chattel?"

Yes! like chattels they are sold to the highest bidder. In that auction Caste comes first, then wealth and posi tion. And the chattel is bought, the bit of breathing flesh and blood is converted into property; and the living, throbbing heart of the child may be trampled and stamped down under foot in the mire and the mud of that market-place, for all anyone cares.

It is not long since a young wife came for refuge to our house. Three times she had tried to kill herself; at last she fled to us. Her husband came. " Get up, slave," he said, as she crouched on the floor. She would not stir or speak. Then he got her own people to come, and then it was as if a pent-up torrent was bursting out of an over full heart. " You gave me to him. You gave me to him." The words came over and over again; she reminded them in a passion of reproach how, knowing what his character was, they had handed her over to him. But we could hardly follow her, the words poured

forth with such fierce emotion, as with streaming eyes, and hands that showed everything in gestures, she be sought them not to force her back. They promised, and believing them, she returned with them. The other day when I passed the house someone said, "Beautiful is there. He keeps her locked up in the back room now." So they had broken their word to her, and given her back, body and soul, to the power of a man whose cruelty is so well known that even the heathen call him a " demon." What must he be to his wife ?

And if that poor wife, nerved by the misery of her life, dared all, and appealed to the Government, the law would do as her people did —force her back again to him, to fulfil a contract she never made. Is it not a shame ? Oh, when will the day come when this merchandise in children's souls shall cease ? We know that many hus bands are kind, and many wives perfectly content, but sometimes we see those who are not, and there is no redress.

Another of our children sold by auction in the Village of the Lake is one who used to be such a pretty little thing, with a tangle of curls, and mischievous, merry brown eyes. But that was five years ago. Then a fiend in a man's shape saw her, and offered inducements to her parents which ended in his marrying her. She was nine years old.

One year afterwards she was sent to her husband's home. His motives in marrying her were wholly evil, but the child knew something of right and wrong, and she resisted him. Then he dragged her into an inner room, and he held her down, and smothered her

shrieks, and pressed a plantain into her mouth. It was poisoned. She knew it, and did not swallow it all. But what she was forced to take made her ill, and she lay for days so dizzy and sick that when her husband kicked her as she lay she did not care. At last she escaped, and ran to her mother's house. But the law was on her owner's side; what could she prove of all this, poor child ? And she had to go back to him. After that he succeeded in his devil's work, and to-day that child is dead to all sense of sin.

Oh, there are worse things far than seeing a little child die! It is worse to see it change. To see the innocence pass from the eyes, and the childishness grow into wicked ness, and to know, without being able to stop it, just what is going on.

I am thinking of one such now. She was four years old when I first began to visit in her grandmother's house. She is six now—only six—but her demoralisation is almost complete. It is as if you saw a hand pull a rosebud off its stem, crumple and crush it, rub the pink loveliness into pulp, drop it then—and you pick it up. But it is not a rosebud now. Oh, these things, the knowledge of them, is as a fire shut up in one's bones! shut up, for one cannot let it all out—it must stay in and burn.

Those who know nothing of the facts will be sure to criticise. " It is not an unknown thing for persons to act as critics, even though supremely ignorant of the sub ject criticised." But those who know the truth of these things well know that we have understated it, carefully

toned it down perforce, because it cannot be written in full. It could neither be published nor read.

It cannot be written or published or read, but oh, it has to be lived! And what you may not even hear, must be endured by little girls. There are child-wives in India to-day, of twelve, ten, nine, and even eight years old. " Oh, you mean betrothed ! Another instance of missionary exaggeration !" We mean married.

"But of course the law interferes!" Perhaps you have heard of the law which makes wifehood illegal under twelve. With reference to this law the Hon. Manomoham Ghose of the High Court of Calcutta writes :

« If the Government thinks that the country is not

yet prepared for such legislation " (by which he means drastic legislation) " as I suggest, I can only express my regret that by introducing the present Bill it has in definitely postponed the introduction of a substantial measure of reform, which is urgently called for."

There are men and women in India to whom many a day is a nightmare, and this fair land an Inferno, because of what they know of the wrong that is going on. For that is the dreadful part of it. It is not like the burning alive of the widows, it is not a horror passed. It is going on steadily day and night. Sunlight, moonlight, and dark ness pass, the one changing into the other; but all the time they are passing, this Wrong holds the hours with firm and strong hands, and uses them for its purpose — the murder of little girls. Meanwhile, what can be done by you and by me to hasten the day of its ending? Those who know can tell what they know, or so much as will bear the telling; and those who do not know can

believe it is true, and if they have influence anywhere, use it; and all can care and pray ! Praying alone is not enough, but oh for more real praying ! We are playing at praying, and caring, and coming; playing at doing— if doing costs—playing at everything but play. We are earnest enough about that. God open our eyes and convict us of our insincerity ! burn out the superficial in us, make us intensely in earnest! And may God quicken our sympathy, and touch our heart, and nerve our arm for what will prove a desperate fight against " leagued fiends " in bad men's shapes, who do the devil's work to-day, branding on little innocent souls the very brand of hell.

I have told of one—that little child who is now as evil-minded as a little child can be; she is only one of so many. Let a medical missionary speak.

" A few days ago we had a little child-wife here as a patient. She was ten or eleven, I think, just a scrap of a creature, playing with a doll, and yet degraded un-mentionably in mind. . . . But oh, to think of the hundreds of little girls! ... It makes me feel literally sick. We do what we can. . . . But what can we do ? What a drop in the ocean it is !"

Where the dotted lines come, there was written what cannot be printed. But it had to be lived through, every bit of it, by a " scrap of a creature of ten or eleven."

Another—these are from a friend who, even in writing a private letter, cannot say one-tenth of the thing she really means.

" A few days ago the little mother (a child of thirteen) was crying bitterly in the ward. ' Why are you crying ?'

' Because he says I am too old for him now; he will get another wife, he says.' ' He ' was her husband, ' quite a lad/ who had come to the hospital to see her."

The end of that story which cannot be told is being lived through this very day by that little wife of thirteen. And remember that thirteen in India means barely eleven at home.

" She was fourteen years old," they said, " but such a tiny thing, she looked about nine years old in size and development. . . . The little mother was so hurt, she can never be well again all her life. The husband then married again ... as the child was ruined in health . . ." And, as before, the dots must cover all the long-drawn-out misery of that little child who " looked about nine."

" There is an old, old man living near here, with a little wife of ten or eleven. . . . Our present cook's little girl, nine years old, has lately been married to a man who already has had two wives." In each of these cases, as in each I have mentioned, marriage means marriage, not just betrothal, as so many fondly imagine. Only to-day I heard of one who died in what the nurse who attended her described as "simple agony." She had been married a week before. She was barely twelve years old.

We do not say this is universal. There are many exceptions; but we do say the workings of this custom should be exposed and not suppressed. Question our facts; we can prove them. To-day as I write it, to-day as you read it, hundreds and thousands of little wives are going through what we have described. But " described " is not the word to use—indicated, I should say, with the

faintest wash of sepia where the thing meant is pitch black.

Think of it, then—do not try to escape from the thought—English women know too little, care too little —too little by far. Think of it. Stop and think of it. If it is " trying " to think of it, and you would prefer to turn the page over, and get to something nicer to read, what must it be to live through it ? What must it be to those little girls, so little, so pitifully little, and unequal to it all ? What must it be to these childish things to live on through it day by day, with, in some cases, nothing to hope for till kindly death comes and opens the door, the one dread door of escape they know, and the tortured little body dies ? And someone says, "The girl is dead, take the corpse out to the burning-ground." Then they take it up, gently perhaps. But oh, the relief of remembering it! It does not matter now. Nothing matters any more. Little dead wives cannot feel.

• ••«•»•

I wonder whether it touches you ? I know I cannot tell it well. But oh, one lives through it all with them! —I have stopped writing again and again, and felt I could not go on.

Mother, happy mother ! When you tuck up your little girl in her cot, and feel her arms cling round your neck and her kisses on your cheek, will you think of these other little girls ? Will you try to conceive what you would feel if your little girl were here ?

Oh, you clasp her tight, so tight in your arms! The thought is a scorpion's sting in your soul. You would

kill her, smother her dead in your arms, before you would give her to— that.

Turn the light down, and come away. Thank God she is safe in her little cot, she will wake up to-morrow safe. Now think for a moment steadily of those who are somebody's little girls, just as dear to them and sweet, needing as much the tenderest care as this your own little girl.

Think of them. Try to think of them as if they were your very own. They are just like your own, in so many ways—only their future is different.

Oh, dear mothers, do you care ? Do you care very much, I ask ?

We passed the temple on our way home from the Village of the Lake. The great gate was open, and the Brahmans and their friends were lounging in and out, or sitting in the porch talking and laughing together. They were talking about us as we passed. They were quite aware of our object in coming, and were pleased that we had failed.

Government officials, English-speaking graduates, edu cated Hindus like our old friend the schoolmaster, all would admit in private that to take a child to the temple and " marry her " there was wrong. But very few have much desire to right the shameful wrong.

There are thousands of recognised Slaves of the gods in this Presidency. Under other names they exist all over India. There are thousands of little child-wives; fewer here than elsewhere, we know, but many every where. I do not for a moment suggest that all child-

wives are cruelly handled, any more than I would have it thought that all little girls are available for the service of the gods. Nor would I have it supposed that we see down this hell-crack every day. We may live for years in the country and know very little about it. The medical workers—God help them!—are those who are most frequently forced to look down, and I, not being a medical, know infinitely less of its depths than they. But this I do know, and do mean, and I mean it with an intensity I know not how to express, that this custom of infant marriage and child marriage, whether to gods or men, is an infamous custom; that it holds possibilities of wrong, such unutterable wrong, that descriptive words con cerning it can only " skirt the abyss" and that in the name of all that is just and all that is merciful it should be swept out of the land without a day's delay.

We look to our Indian brothers. India is so immense that a voice crying in the North is hardly heard in the South. Thank God for the one or two voices crying in the wilderness. But many voices are needed, not only one or two. Let the many voices cry! Every man with a heart and a voice to cry, should cry. Then all the cries crying over the land will force the deaf ears to hear, and force the dull brains to think and the hands of the law to act, and something at last will be done.

But " crying " is not nearly enough. We look to you, brothers of India, to do. Get convictions upon this subject which will compel you to do. Many can talk and many can write, and more will do both, as the years pass, but the crux is contained in the doing.

God alone can strengthen you for it. He who set His face as a flint, can make you steadfast and brave enough to set your faces as flints, till the bands of wickedness are loosed, and the heavy burdens are un done, and every yoke is broken, and the oppressed go free.

It will cost. It is bound to cost. Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood. It is only sham battles that cost something less than blood. Everything worth anything costs Uood. " Keproach hath broken My heart." A broken heart bleeds. Is it the reproach of the battle you fear ? This fear will conquer you until you hear the voice of your God saying, " Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings. . . . Who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and the son of man that shall be made as grass, and forgettest the Lord thy Maker ?"

This book is meant for our comrades at home, but it may come back to India, and so we have spoken straight from our hearts to our Indian brothers here. Oh, brothers, rise, and in God's Name fight; in His power fight till you win, for these, your own land's little girls, who never can fight for themselves!

And now we look to you at home. Will all who pity the little wives pray for the men of India ? Pray for those who are honestly striving to rid the land of this shameful curse. Pray that they may be nerved for the fight by the power of God's right arm. Pray for all the irresolute. " A sound of battle is in the land, , . . the Lord hath opened His armoury." " Cursed be

he that keepeth back his sword from blood." Pray for resolution and the courage of conviction. It is needed.

And to this end pray that the Spirit of Life may come upon our Mission Colleges, and mightily energise the Missionary Educational Movement, that Hindu students may be won to out-and-out allegiance to Christ while they are students, before they become entangled in the social mesh of Hinduism. And pray, we earnestly plead with you, that the Christian students may meet God at college, and come out strong to fight this fiend which trades in " slaves and souls of men "—and in the souls of little girls.

CHAPTER XXVI From a Hindu Point of View

" The Lord preserve us from innovations foreign to the true principles of the Protestant Church, and foreign to the prin ciples of the C.M.S. Pictures, crosses, and banners, with processions, would do great harm. The Mohammedan natives would say, 'Wah! you worship idols as the Hindus do, and have taziyas (processions) as well as the Mohammedans 1' And our Christians would mourn over such things."

Rev. C. B. Leupolt, India.

I AM sitting in the north-west corner of the verandah of a little mission bungalow, on the outskirts of a town sixteen miles south of our Eastern head quarters. This is the town where they set fire to the schoolroom when Victory came. So far does Caste feeling fly. As you sit in the corner of this verandah you see a little temple fitted between two white washed pillars, roughly built and rudely decorated, but in this early morning light it looks like a picture set in a frame. It is just outside the compound, so near that you see it in all its detail of colour; the sun striking across it touches the colours and makes them beautiful.

There is the usual striped wall, red and white; the red is a fine terra-cotta, the colour of the sand. The central block, the shrine itself, has inlays of green, red, and blue; there is more terra-cotta in the roof, some

yellow too, and white. Beyond on either side there are houses, and beyond the houses, trees and sky.

It is all very pretty and peaceful. Smoke is curling up in the still air from some early lighted fire out of doors; there are voices of people going and coming, softened by distance. There is the musical jingle of bullock bells here in the compound and out on the road, and there is the twitter of birds.

In front of that temple there are three altars, and in front of the altars a pillar. I can see it from where I am sitting now, rough grey stone. Upon it, there is what I thought at first was a sun-dial, and I wondered what it was doing there. Then I saw it had not a dial plate; only a strong cross-bar of wood, and the index finger, so to speak, was longer than one would expect, a sharp wooden spike. As I was wondering what it was a passer-by explained it. It is not a sun dial, it is an impaling instrument. On that spike they used to impale alive goats and kids and fowls as offer ings to the god Siva and his two wives, the deities to whose honour the three altars stand before the little shrine. The pillar on which stands this infernal spike has three circles scored into it, sign of the three divinities.

" The impaling has stopped," say the people, greatly amused at one's horror and distress, for at first I thought perhaps they still did it. " Now we do not impale alive ; the Government has stopped it." Thank God for that! But oh, let all lovers of God's creatures pray for and hasten the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ! Govern ment may step in and stop the public clubbing to death of buffaloes, and the impaling of goats and fowls in

238 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

sacrifice, but it cannot stop the private cruelty, and the still wider-spread indifference on the part of those who are not themselves cruel; only the coming of Christ the Compassionate can do that.

There was the sound of voices just then, as I wrote, many voices, coming nearer, shrill women's voices, cutting through one's thoughts, and I went out to see what was going on.

On the other side of the road, opposite our gate, there is a huge old double tree, the sacred fig tree of India, intertwined with another—a religious symbol to this symbol-loving people. Underneath is a stone platform, and on it the hideous elephant-god. On the same side is a little house. A group of women were gathered under the shade near the house, evidently waiting for something or someone. They were delighted to talk.

We spent half an hour under the tree, and they listened; but we were interrupted by some well-dressed Government officials with their coats, sashes, and badges, and one not strictly Governmental got up in a marvellous fashion, and they joined the group and monopolised the conversation. I waited, hoping they would soon go away, and I listened to what they were saying.

" Yes ! she actually appeared ! She was a goddess." (" A goddess ! Oh ! " from the women.) " She came for ward, moving without walking, and she stood as a tree stands, and she stretched out her arms and blessed the people, and vanished."

A woman pointed to me. " Like her ? Was she like her ?"

" Like her!" and the Government official was a little contemptuous. " Did I not say she was a goddess ? Is this Missie Ammal a goddess ? Is she not a mere woman like yourselves, only white ?"

"She also came from the bungalow," objected the woman rather feebly, feeling public opinion against her.

" You oyster!" said the official politely, " because a Missie Ammal comes from the bungalow, does it prove that the goddess was a Missie Ammal ?" The other women agreed with him, and snubbed the ignoramus, who retired from the controversy.

The story was repeated with variations, such a mixture of the probable with the improbable, not to say impossible, that one got tangled up in it before he had got half through.

Just then an ancient Christian appeared on the scene and quavered in, in the middle of the marvel, with words to the effect that our God was the true God, and they ought to have faith in Him. It was not exactly a propos of anything they were discussing, but he seemed to think it the right thing to say, and they accepted it as a customary remark, and went on with their conversation. I asked the old worthy if he knew anything about the story, and at first he denied it indignantly as savouring too much of idolatry to be connected with the bungalow, but finally admitted that once in the dim past he had heard that an Ammal in the bungalow, who was ill and disturbed by the tom-toms at night, got up and went out and tried to speak to the people. And the men, listening now to the old man, threw in a word which illumined the whole, " It was a great festival." I remembered that impaling stake, and understood it all. And in a

240 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

flash I saw it —the poor live beast—and heard its cries. They would wring her heart as she heard them in the pauses of the tom-tom. She was ill, but she got up and struggled out, and tried to stop it, I am sure—tried, and failed.

Seven thousand miles away these things may seem trivial. Here, with that grey stone pillar full in view, they are real.

I came back to the present. The women were still there, and more people were gathering. Something was going to happen. Then a sudden burst of tom-toms, and a banging and clanging of all manner of noise-producers, and then a bullock coach drove up, a great gilded thing. It stopped in front of the little house; someone got out ; the people shouted, " Guru ! Great Guru ! Lord Guru !" with wild enthusiasm.

The Guru was not poor. He had two carts laden with luggage—one item, a green parrot in a cage. Close to the cage a small boy was thundering away on a tom tom, but it did not disturb the parrot. The people seemed to think this display of wealth demanded an apology. " It is not his, it belongs to his followers; he, being what he is, requires none of these things/' they said.

I had to go then, and we started soon afterwards on our day's round, and I do not know what happened next; but I had never had the chance of a talk with a celebrity of this description, and in the evening, on my homeward way, I stopped before the little house and asked if I might see him, the famous Guru of one of the greatest of South Indian Castes.

The Government officials of the morning were there, but the officialism was gone. No coats and sashes and badges now, only the simple national dress, a scarf of white muslin. The one who in the morning had been an illustration of the possible effect of the mixture of East and West, stood in a dignity he had not then, a fine manly form.

The door was open, and they were sentry, for their Guru was resting, they said. " Then he is very human, just like yourselves ?" But the strong, sensible faces looked almost frightened at the words. " Hush," they answered all in a breath, " no such thoughts may be even thought here. He is not just like us." And as if to divert us from the expression of such sentiments, they moved a little from the door, and said, " You may look, if you do not speak," and knowing such looks are not often allowed, I looked with interest, and saw all there was to see.

The Guru was in the far corner resting; a rich purple silk, with gold interwoven in borders and bands, was flung over his ascetic's dress. At the far end, too, was a sort of altar, covered with red cloth, and on it were numerous brass candlesticks and vessels, and on a little shelf above, a row of little divinities, some brass ornaments, and flowers.

To the left of this altar there was a high-backed chair covered by a deer skin; there were pictures of gods and goddesses round the room, especially near the altar, and there were the usual censers, rosaries, and musical in struments, and there was the parrot.

The Government official pointed in, and said, with an 16

242 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

air of pride in the whole, and a certainty of sympathy too, " There, you see how closely it resembles your churches; there is not so much difference between you and us after all!"

Not so much difference! There is a very great differ ence, I told him; and I asked him where he had seen a Christian church like this. He mentioned two. One was a Koman Catholic chapel, the other an English church.

What could I say ? They bear our name; how could he understand the divisions that rend us asunder ?— Romanists, Eitualists, and Protestants—are we not all called Christians ?

I looked again, and I could not help being struck with the resemblance. The altar with its brasses and flowers and candlesticks, and the little shelf above; the pictures on the walls; the chair, so like a Bishop's chair of state; the whole air of the place heavy with incense, was redolent of Rome.

He went on to explain, while I stood there ashamed. " Look, have you not got that ?" and he pointed to the altar-like erection, with the red cloth and the flowers.

" We have nothing of the sort in our church. Come and see; we have only a table," I said; but he laughed and declared he had seen it in other churches, and it was just like ours, " only yours has a cross above it, and ours has images ; but you bow to your cross, so it must re present a divinity," and, without waiting for any reply, he pointed next to the pictures.

"They are very like yours, I think," he said, "only yours show your God on a cross, stretched out and dying

—so "— And he stretched out his arms, and drooped his head, and said something which cannot be translated ; and I could not look or listen, but broke in earnestly:

" Indeed, we have no such pictures—at least we here have not; but even if some show such a picture, do they ever call it a picture of God ? They only say it is a picture of "— But he interrupted impatiently:

" Do not I know what they say ? " And then, with a touch of scorn at what he thought was an empty excuse on my part, he added, " We also say the same " (which is true; no intelligent Hindu admits that he worships idols or pictures ; he worships what these things represent). " Your people show your symbols," he continued, in the tone of one who is sure of his ground, " exactly as we show ours. I have seen your God on a great sheet at night; it was shown by means of a magic lamp; and sometimes you make it of wood or brass, as we make ours of stone. The name may change and the manner of making, but the thing's essence is the same."

" The Mohammedans do not show their God's symbol; but we do, and so do the Christians. Therefore between us and the Christians there is more in common than between the Mohammedans and us." This was another Hindu's contribution to the argument.

The chair now served as a text. " When your Bishop comes round your churches, does he not sit in a chair like that, himself apart from the people ? And in like manner our Guru sits. There is much similarity. Also do not your Christians stand"—and he imitated the peculiarly deferential attitude adopted on such occasions by some—" just in the fashion that we stand ? And do

244 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

not your people feel themselves blessed by the presence of the Great ? Oh, there is much similarity !"

I explained that all this, though foolish, was not in tended for more than respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled. Then he went on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our churches (probably while on duty as Government servant): the display, as it seemed to him, so like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine, like this; the bowing and pros trating, and even on the part of those who did not do these things, the evident participation in the whole grand show. And the other men, who apparently had looked in through the open windows and doors, agreed with him.

He is not the first who has been stumbled in the same way; and I remembered, as he talked, what a Mohammedan woman said to a friend of mine about one of our English churches, seen through her husband's eyes. " You have idols in your church," she said, " to which you bow in worship." She referred to the things on or above the Communion table. My friend explained the things were not idols. " Then why do your people bow to them ? " Was there nothing in the question ?

Often we wonder whether the rapid but insidious increase of ritual in India is understood at home. In England it is bad enough, but in a heathen and Moham medan land it is, if possible, worse; and the worst is, the spirit of it, or the spirit of tolerance toward it, which is on the increase even in missionary circles. Some of our Tamil people attend the English service in these " advanced " churches after their own service is over, and thus become familiarised with and gradually acclimatised

to an ecclesiastical atmosphere foreign to them as members of a Protestant Society.

I remember spending a Sunday afternoon with a worthy pastor and his wife, stationed in the place where the church is in which the "idols are worshipped" according to the Mohammedans. When the bell rang for evening service he began to shuffle rather as if he wanted me to go. But he was too polite to say so, and the reason never struck me till his son came in with an English Bible and Prayer-Book. The old man put up his hand to his mouth in the apologetic manner of the Tamils. " We do not notice the foolish parts of the service. We like to hear the English. For the sake of the English we go."

" He did not turn to the East, but he did not keep quite straight ; he just half turned." This from a pastor's wife, about one whom she had been observing during an ordination ceremony in the English cathedral. " He just half turned! 1 It describes the nebulous attitude of mind of many a one to-day. India has not our historical background. It has no Foxe's Book of Martyrs yet. Perhaps that is why its people are so indifferent upon points which seem of importance to us. They have not had to fight for their freedom, in the sense at least our forefathers fought; there is no Puritan blood in their veins; and so they are willing to follow the lead of almost anyone, provided that lead is given steadily and persistently; which surely should make those in authority careful as to those in whose hands that lead is placed.

But the natural instinct of the converted idolater is dead against complexity in worship, and for simplicity.

246 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

He does not want something as like his own old religion as possible, but as different as possible from it ; and so we have good building material ready to hand, and a founda tion ready laid. " But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon."

I hope this does not sound unkind. We give those who hold different views full credit for sincerity, and a right to their own opinions; but convictions are con victions, and, without judging others who differ, these are ours, and we want those at home who are with us in these things to unite to help to stem the tide that has already risen in India far higher than perhaps they know. Brave men are needed, men with a fuller development of spiritual vertebrae than is common in these easy-going days, and we need such men in our Native Church. God create them; they are not the product of theological colleges. And may God save His Missions in India from wasting His time, and money, and men, on the cultivation of what may evolve into something of no more use to creation than a new genus of jelly-fish.

The Government official and his friends were still talking among themselves : "Do we not know what the Christians do ? Have we not ears ? Have we not eyes ? They do it in their way, we do it in ours. The thing itself is really the same. Yes, their religion is just like ours."

They could not see the vital difference between even the most vitiated forms of Christianity and their own Hinduism; there were so many resemblances, and these filled their mental vision at the moment. One could hardly wonder they could not.

They turned to me again, and with all the vigour of language at my command I told them that neither we nor those with us ever went to any church where we had reason to think there would be an exhibition of ecclesiastical paraphernalia. We did not believe it was in accordance with the simplicity of the Gospel; and I told them how simple the Truth really was, but they would not believe me. Those sights they had seen had struck them much as they struck the convert who described the Confirmation service thus: " We went up and knelt down before a stick" (the Bishop's pastoral staff). They had observed the immense attention paid to all these sacred trifles, and naturally they appeared to them as essential to the whole; part of it, nearly all of it, in fact; and even where the service was in the vernacular, their attention had been entirely diverted from the thing heard by the things seen.

Then I thought of the description of a primitive Christianity service as given in 1 Corinthians. There the idea evidently was that if an outsider came in, or looked in, as Hindus and Mohammedans so often look in here, he should understand what was going on; and being convicted of his sin and need, should be " con vinced "; " and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth." Compare the effect produced upon the minds of these Hindu men by what they saw of our services, with the effect intended to be produced by the Holy Ghost. Can we say we have improved upon His pattern ?

Oh for a return to the simplicity and power of the

248 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

Gospel of Christ ! Then we should not roll stumbling-blocks like these in our Indian brother's way. Oh for a return to the days of the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, to obscurity, and poverty, and suffering, and shame, and the utter absence of all earthly glory, and the winning of souls of a different make to the type thought sufficiently spiritual now ! Oh for more of the signs of Apostleship— scars, and the cross— the real cross— the reproach of Christ the Crucified,—no mitre here, but there the crowii !

CHAPTER XXVII Though ye know Him not

" I have known cases of young ministers dissuaded from fac ing the missionary call by those who posed as friends of Foreign Missions, and yet presumed to argue: 'Your spiritual power and intellectual attainments are needed by the Church at home ; they would be wasted in the Foreign Field.' * Spiritual power wasted' in a land like India! Where is it so sorely needed as in a continent where Satan has constructed his strongest fortresses and displayed the choicest masterpieces of his skill ? ' Intellectual ability wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by flimsy subter fuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for men of approved spiritual power and for intellectual giants. And so I repeat, // Clod is calling you, buckle on your sword, come to the fight, and win your spurs among the cultured sons of India."

Rev. T. Walker, India.

THE sensation you experience is curious when you rise from the study of Sir Monier Williams' Brah-manism and Hinduism and go out to your work, and meet in that work someone who seems to be quoting that same book, not in paragraphs only, but in pages. He is talking Tamil, and the book is written in English; that is all the difference. He was standing by the wayside when I saw him: we got into con versation.

250 THOUGH YE KNOW HIM NOT

At first he reminded me of a sea anemone, with all its tentacles drawn inside, but gradually one by one they came. out, and I saw what he really was; and I think the great Christian scholar, who laboured so hard to understand and translate into words the intricacies and mysteries of Indian thought, would have felt a little repaid had he known how his work would help in the practical business of a missionary's life. Part of our business is to meet the mind with which we are dealing half-way with quick comprehension. It is in this Sir Monier Williams helps.

When once this man felt himself understood, his whole attitude changed. At first, expecting, I suppose, that he was being mistaken for " an ignorant heathen " and worshipper of stocks and stones, he hardly took the trouble to do more than answer, as he thought, a fool according to his folly. The tentacles were all in then.

But that passed soon, and he pointed to the shed be hind him, where two or three life-size idol horses stood and said how childish he knew it was, foolish and vain. But then, what else could be done ? Idols are not ob jects of worship, and never were intended so to be; their only use is to help the uninitiated to worship Something. If nothing were shown them, they would worship nothing ; and a non-worshipping human being is an animal, not a man.

He went on to answer the objections to this means of quickening intelligent worship by explaining how, in higher and purer ways, the thinkers of Hinduism had tried to make the unthinking think. " Look at our

temples," he said. " There is a central shrine, with only one light in it. The darkness of the shrine symbolises the darkness of the world, of life and death and being. For life is a darkness, a whirlpool of dark waters. We stand on its edge, but we do not under stand it. It is dark, but- light there must be; one great light. So we show this certainty by the symbol of the one light in the shrine, in the very heart of our temples."

This led on to quotations from his own books, question ing the validity of such lights, which he finished the moment one began them, and this again led to our Lord's words,—how strong they sounded, and how direct—" 1 am the Light of the World" But he could not accept them in their simplicity, and here it was that the book I had been reading came in so helpfully. He spoke rapidly and eagerly, and such a mixture of Sanscrit and Tamil that if I had not had the clue I am not sure I could have followed him, and to have misunderstood him then might have driven all the tentacles in, and made it harder for the next one whom the Spirit may send to win his confidence.

He told me that, after much study of many religions, he held the eternal existence of one, Brahma. The human spirit, he said, is not really distinct from the Divine Spirit, but identical with it; the apparent distinction arises from our illusory view of things : there is absolutely no distinction in spirit. Mind is distinct, he admitted, and body is distinct, but spirit is identical; so that, " in a definitely defined sense, I am God, God is I. The so-called two are one, in all essentials of being." And he

252 THOUGH YE KNOW HIM NOT

touched himself and said, " I am Brahma. I myself, my real I, am God."

It sounds terribly irreverent, but he did not for a moment mean it so. Go back to Gen. ii. 7, and try to define the meaning of the words, " the breath of life," and you will, if you think enough, find yourself in a position to understand how the Hindu, without revelation, ends as he does in delusion.

But, intertwined with this central fibre of his faith, there were strands of a strange philosophy; he held strongly the doctrine of Illusion, by which the one im personal Spirit, " in the illusion which overspreads it, is to the external world what yarn is to cloth, what milk is to curds, what clay is to a jar, but only in that illusion," that is, " he is not the actual material cause of the world, as clay of a jar, but the illusory material cause, as a rope might be of a snake "; and the spirit of man " is that Spirit, personalised and limited by the power of illusion; and the life of every living spirit is nothing but an infinitesimal arc of the one endless circle of infinite existence."

Of course there are answers to this sort of reasoning which are perfectly convincing to the Western, but they fail to appeal to the Eastern mind. You suggest a practical test as to the reality or otherwise of this " Illusion "—touch something, run a pin into yourself, do anything to prove to yourself your own actuality, and he has his answer ready. Though theoretically he holds that there is one, and only one, Spirit, he " virtually believes in three conditions of being—the real, the practical, and the illusory; for while he affirms

that the one Spirit, Brahma, alone has a real exist ence, he allows a practical separate existence to human spirits, to the world, and to the personal God or gods, as well as an illusory existence. Hence every object is to be dealt with practically, as if it were really what it appears to be."

This is only the end of a long and very confusing argument, which I expect I did not half understand, and he concluded it by quoting a stanza, thus translated by Dr. Pope, from an ancient Tamil classic—

" 0 Being hard to reach,

0 Splendour infinite, unknown, in sooth

1 know not what to do !"

" He is far away from me," he said, " a distant God to reach," and when I quoted from St. Augustine, " To Him who is everywhere, men come not by travelling, but by loving," and showed him the words, which in Tamil are splendidly negative, " He is NOT far from every one of us," he eluded the comfort and went back to the old question, " What is Truth ? How can one prove what is Truth ?"

There is an Indian story of a queen who " proved the truth by tasting the food." The story tells how her husband, who dearly loved her, and whom she dearly loved, lost his kingdom, wandered away with his queen into the forest, left her there as she slept, hoping she would fare better without him, and followed her long afterwards to her father's court, deformed, disguised, a servant among servants, a cook. Then her maidens came to her, told her of the wonderful cooking, magical in manner, marvellous in flavour and in fragrance. They are

254 THOUGH YE KNOW HIM NOT

sure it is the long-lost king come back to her, and they bid her believe and rejoice. But the queen fears it may not be true. She must prove it, she must taste the food. They bring her some. She tastes, and knows. And the story ends in joy. " Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good." " If any man will do His Will, he shall know."

We got closer in thought after this. For the Oriental, a story is an illuminating thing. " I have sought for the way of truth," he said, " and sought for the way of light and life. Behind me, as I look, there is darkness. Be fore me there is only the Unknown." And then, with an earnestness I cannot describe, he said, " I worship Him I know not, the Unknown God" "Whom, therefore, ye worship, though ye know Him not, Him declare I unto you." One could only press home God's own answer to his words.

One other verse held him in its power before 1 went: " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." With those two verses I left him.

It was evening, and he stood in the shadow, looking into it. There was a tangle of undergrowth, and a heavy grove of palms. It was all dark as you looked in. Be hind was the shrine of the demon steeds, the god and his wife who ride out at night to chase evil spirits away. Near by was an old tree, also in shade, with an idol under it. It was all in shadow, and full of shadowy nothings, all dark.

But just outside, when I went, there was light; the soft light of the after-glow, which comes soon after the sun has set, as a sign that there is a sun somewhere, and shining. And I thought of his very last words to me,

but I cannot describe the earnestness of them, " / worship the Unknown God"

Friends, who worship a God whom you know, whose joy in life is to know Him, will you remember and pray for that one, who to-day is seeking, I think in truth, to find the Unknown God ?

CHAPTER XXVIII How Long?

" I shivered as if standing in the neighbourhood of hell."

Henry Martyn, India.

I HAVE come home from vainly trying to help another child. She had heard of the children's Saviour, and I think she would have come to Him, but they suffered her not. She was, when I first saw her, sweet and innocent, with eyes full of light, great glancing, dancing eyes, which grew wistful for a moment sometimes, and then filled with a laugh again. She told me her mother lived very near, and asked me to come and see her; so I went.

The mother startled me. Such a face, or such a want of a face. One was looking at what had once been a face, but was now a strange spoiled thing, with strange hard eyes, so unlike the child's. There was no other feature fully shaped; it was one dreadful blank. She listened that day, with almost eagerness. She understood so quickly, too, one felt she must have heard before. But she told us nothing about herself, and we only knew that there was something very wrong. Her surroundings told us that.

Before we went again we heard who she was; a relative of one of our most honoured pastors, himself a convert years ago. Then a great longing possessed us to try to save her from a life for which she had not been trained, and especially we longed to save her little girl, and we went to try. This time the mother wel comed us, and told us how our words had brought back things she had heard when she was young. " But now it is all different, for I am different," and she told us her story. ..." So I took poison, but it acted not as I intended. It only destroyed my face" and she touched the poor remnant with her hand, and went on with her terrible tale. There were people listening outside, and she spoke in a hoarse whisper. We could hardly believe she meant what she said, as she told of the fate proposed for her child. And oh, how we besought her then and there to give up the life, and let us help her, and that dear little one. She seemed moved. Something awoke within her and strove. Tears filled those hard eyes and rolled down her cheeks as we pleaded with her, in the name of all that was motherly, not to doom her little innocent girl, not to push her with her own hands down to hell. At last she yielded, promised that if in one week's time we would come again she would give her up to us, and as for herself, she would think of it, and per haps she also would give up the life; she hated it, she said.

There was another girl there, a fair, quiet girl of fifteen. She was ill and very suffering, and we tried for her too; but there seemed no hope. "Take the little one; you are not too late for her," the mother said, and

we went with the promise, " One more week and she is yours."

The week passed, and every day we prayed for that little one. Then when the time came, we went. Hope and fear alternated within us. One felt sick with dread lest anything had happened to break the mother's word, and yet one hoped. The house door was open. The people in the street smiled as we stopped our bandy, got out, and went in. I remembered their smiles afterwards, and understood. The mother was there: in a corner, crouching in pain, was the girl; on the floor asleep, drugged, lay the child with her little arms stretched out. The mother's eyes were hard.

It was no use. Outside in the street the people sat on their verandahs and laughed. "Offer twenty thousand rupees, and see if her mother will give her to you !" shouted one. Inside we sat beside that mother, not knowing what to say.

The child stirred in her sleep, and turned. " Will you go ?" said the mother very roughly in her ear. She opened listless, senseless eyes. She had no wish to go. " She wanted to come last week," we said. The mother hardened, and pushed the child, and rolled her over with her foot. " She will not go now" she said.

Oh, it did seem pitiful ! One of those pitiful, pitiful things which never grow less pitiful because they are common everywhere. That little girl, and this!

We took the mother's hands in ours, and pleaded once again. And then words failed us. They sometimes do. There are things that stifle words.

At last they asked us to go. The girl in the corner

would not speak—could not, perhaps—she only moaned; we passed her and went out. The mother followed us, half sorry for us,—there is something of the woman left in her,—half sullen, with a lowering sullenness. " You will never see her again," she said, and she named the town, one of the Sodoms of this Province, to which the child was soon to be sent; and then, just a little ashamed of her broken promise, she added, " I would have let her go, but he would not, no, never ; and she does not belong to me now, so what could I do ?" We did not ask her who " he" was. We knew. Nor did we ask the price he had paid. We knew; fifty rupees, about three pounds, was the price paid down for a younger child bought for the same purpose not long ago. This one's price might be a little higher. That is all.

We stood by the bullock cart ready to get in. The people were watching. The mother had gone back into the house. Then a great wave of longing for that child swept over us again. We turned and looked at the little form as it lay on the floor, dead, as it seemed, to all outward things. Oh that it had been dead! And we pleaded once more with all our heart, and once more failed.

We drove away. We could see them crowding to look after us, and we shut our eyes to shut out the sight of their smiles. The bullock bells jingled too gladly, it seemed, and we shut our ears to shut out the sound. And then we shut ourselves in with God, who knew all about it, and cared, How long, 0 God, how long ?

And now we have heard that she has gone, and we

know, from watching what happened before, just what will happen now. How day by day they will sear that child's soul with red-hot irons, till it does not feel or care any more. And a child's seared soul is an awful thing.

Forgive us for words which may hurt and shock; we are telling the day's life-story. Hurt or not, shocked or not, should you not know the truth ? How can you pray as you ought if you only know fragments of truth ? Truth is a loaf; you may cut it up nicely, like thin bread and butter, with all the crusts carefully trimmed. No one objects to it then. Or you can cut it as it comes, crust and all.

Think of that child to-night as you gather your children about you, and look in their innocent faces and their clear, frank eyes. Our very last news of her was that she had been in some way influenced to spread a lie about the place, first sign of the searing begun. I think of her as I saw her that first day, bright as a bird; and then of her as I saw her last, drugged on the floor; I think of her as she must be now, bright again, but with a different brightness—not the little girl I knew— never to be quite that little girl again.

Oh, comrades, do you wonder that we care ? Do you wonder that we plead with you to care ? Do you wonder that we have no words sometimes, and fall back into silence, or break out into words wrung from one more gifted with expression, who knew what it was to feel!

With such words, then, we close ; looking back once more at that child on the floor, with the hands stretched

out and the heavy eyes shut—and we know what it was they saw when they opened from that sleep—

" My God! can such things be ? Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one, Is even done to Thee?

Hoarse, horrible; and strong, Rises to heaven that agonising cry, Filling the arches of the hollow sky,

HOW LONG, 0 GOD, HOW LONG ? '

CHAPTER XXIX What do we count them worth?

" If we are simply to pray to the extent of a simple and pleasant and enjoyable exercise, and know nothing of watching in prayer, and of weariness in prayer, we shall not draw down the blessing that we may. We shall not sustain our mission aries who are overwhelmed with the appalling darkness of heathenism. . . . We must serve God even to the point of suffering, and each one ask himself, In what degree, in what point am I extending, by personal suffering, by personal self-denial, to the point of pain, the kingdom of Christ ? ... It is ever true that what costs little is worth little."

Reu. J. Hudson Taylor, China.

SHE picked up her water-vessel, and stood surveying us somewhat curiously. The ways of Picture-catching Missie Animals were beyond her. Afterwards she sat down comfortably and talked. That was a year ago.

Then in the evening she and all her neighbours gathered in the market square for the open-air meeting. Sinning of Life spoke for the first time. " I was a Hindu a year ago. I worshipped the gods you worship. Did they hear me when I prayed ? No ! They are dead gods. God is the living God ! Come to the living God ! " One after the other the boys all witnessed that evening. Their clear boyish voices rang out round the ring. And some listened, and some laughed.

She picked up her water-vessel, and stood surveying us somewhat curiously.

Behind us there was a little demon temple. It had a verandah barred down with heavy bars. Within these bars you could see the form of an idol. Beside us there was a shrine. Someone had put our lanterns on the top of this pyramid shrine. Before us there was the mass of dark faces. Behind us, then, black walls, black bars, a black shape; before us the black meeting, black losing itself in black. Around us light, light shining into the black. That was as it was a year ago. Now we are back at Dohnavur, and almost the first place we went to was this village, where we had taken the light and set it up in the heart of the dark. An earnest young school master had been sent to keep that light burning there, and we went expectantly. Had the light spread ? We went straight to our old friend's house. She was as friendly as ever in her queer, rough, country way, but her heart had not been set alight. " Tell me what is the good of your Way ? Will it fill the cavity within me ? " and she struck herself a resounding smack in the region where food is supposed to go. " Will it stock my paddy-pots, or nourish my bulls, or cause my palms to bear good juice ? If it will not do all these good things, what is the use of it ?"

" If it is so important, why did you not come before ? " The dear old woman who asked that lived here, and we searched through the labyrinthic courtyards to find her, but failed. The girl who listened in her pain is well now, but she says the desire she had has cooled. We found two or three who seem lighting up; may God's wind blow the flame to a blaze! But we came back feeling that we must learn more of the power of prayer

264 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

ourselves if these cold souls are to catch fire. We remembered how, when we were children, we caught the sunlight, and focussed it, and set bits of paper on fire; and we longed that our prayers might be a lens to focus the Love-light of our God, and set their souls on fire.

Just one little bit of encouragement may be told by way of cheer. Blessing went off one day to see if the Village of the Warrior were more friendlily inclined, and Golden went to the Petra where they vowed they would never let us in. Before Blessing entered the village she knelt down under a banyan tree, and, remembering Abraham's servant, prayed for a sign to strengthen her faith that God would work in the place. While she prayed a child came and looked at her ; then seeing her pray, she said, " Has that Missie Ammal sent you who came here more than a year ago ? " Blessing said " Yes." Then the child repeated the chorus we had taught the children that first day. " None of us forget," she said ; and told Blessing how the parents had agreed to allow us to teach if ever we should return. The village had been opened. He goeth before.

Golden's experience was equally strengthening to our faith. In the very street where they held a public demonstration to cleanse the road defiled by our " low-caste " presence, twenty houses have opened, where she is a welcome visitor. But all this is only for Love's sake, they say. They do not yet want Christ; so let us focus the light!

Then there is need for the fire of God to burn the cords that hold souls down. There is one with whom the Spirit strove last year when we were here. But a cord

of sin was twined round her soul. She has a wicked brother-in-law, and a still more wicked sister, and together they plotted so evil a plot that, heathen though she is, she recoiled, and indignantly refused. So they quietly drugged her food, and did as they chose with her. And now the knot she did not tie, and which she wholly detested at first, seems doubly knotted by her own will. Oh, to know better how to use the burning-glass of prayer!

There may be a certain amount of sentiment, theoretic ally at least, in breaking up new ground. The un known holds possibilities, and it allures one on. But in retracing the track there is nothing whatever of this. The broad daylight of bare truth shows you everything just as it is. Will you look once more at things just as they are, though it is not an interesting look.

A courtyard where the women have often heard. May we come in ? Oh yes, come in ! But with us in comes an old fakeer of a specially villainous type. His body is plastered all over with mud; he has nothing on but mud. His hair is matted and powdered with ashes, his face is daubed with vermilion and yellow, his wicked old eyes squint viciously, and he shows all his teeth, crimson with betel, and snarls his various wants. The women say " Ghee !" Then he rolls in the dust, and squirms, and wriggles, and howls; and he pours out such unclean vials of wrath that the women, coerced, give him all he demands, and he rolls off elsewhere.

Now may we read to the women ? No! Many salaams, but they have no time. Last night there was a royal row between two friends in adjoining courtyards,

266 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

and family histories were laid bare, and pedigrees discovered. They are discussing these things to-day, and having heard it all before, they have no time to read.

Another courtyard, more refined ; here the fakeer's opposite, a dignified ascetic, sits in silent meditation. "We know it all! You told us before!" But the women are friendly, and we go in; and after a long and earnest talk the white-haired grandmother touches her rosary. " This is my ladder to heaven." The berries are fine and set in chased gold, but they are only solidified tears, tears shed in wrath by their god, they say, which resolved themselves into theso berries. How can tears make ladders to heaven ? She does not know. She does not care. And a laugh runs round, but one's heart does not laugh. Such ladders are dangerous.

Another house; here the men are kind, and freely let us in and out. The Way, they say, is very good ; they have heard the Iyer preach. But one day there is a stir in the house. One of the sons is very ill. He has been suffering for some time ; now he is sud denly getting worse, and suspicions are aroused. Then the women whisper the truth: the father and he are at daggers drawn, and the father is slowly poisoning him— small doses of strychnine are doing the work. The stir is not very violent, but quite sufficient to make an excuse for not wanting to listen well. This sort of thing throws us back upon God. Lord, teach us to pray! Teach us the real secret of fiery fervency in prayer. We know so little of it. Lord, teach us to pray !

" Oil, Amma ! Amma ! do not pray ! Your prayers are troubling me I"

We all looked up in astonishment. We had just had our Band Prayer Meeting, when a woman came rushing into the room, and began to exclaim like this. She was the mother of one of our girls, of whom I told you once before. She is still in the Terrible's den. Now the mother was all excitement, and poured out a curious story.

" When you went away last year I prayed. I prayed and prayed, and prayed again to my god to dispel your work. My daughter's heart was impressed with your words. I cried to my god to wash the words out. Has he washed them out ? Oh no! And I prayed for a bridegroom, and one came; and the cart was ready to take her away, and a hindrance occurred; the marriage fell through. And I wept till my eyes well - nigh dissolved. And again another bridegroom came, and again an obstacle occurred. And yet again did a bridegroom come, and yet again an obstacle; and I cannot get my daughter ' tied/ and the neighbours mock, and my Caste is disgraced"—and the poor old mother cried, just sobbed in her shame and confusion of face. " Then I went to my god again, and said, ' What more can I offer you ? Have I not given you all I have ? And you reject my prayer !' Then in a dream my god appeared, and he said, ' Tell the Christians not to pray. I can do nothing against their prayers. Their prayers are hindering me! ' And so, I beseech you, stop your prayers for fourteen days — only fourteen days — till I get my daughter tied!"

268 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

" And after she is tied ? " we asked. " Oh, then she may freely follow your God ! I will hinder her no more ! "

Poor old mother ! All lies are allowed where such things are concerned. We knew the proposed bride groom came from a place three hundred miles distant, and the idea was to carry the poor girl off by force, as soon as she was " tied." We have been praying night and day to God to hinder this. And He is hindering ! But there is need to go on. That mother is a devotee. She has received the afflatus. Sometimes at night it falls upon her, and she dances the wild, wicked dance, and tries to seize the girl, who shrinks into the farthest corner of the little house ; and she dances round her, and chants the chant which even in daylight has power in it, but which at night appeals unspeakably. Once the girl almost gave way, and then in her desperation, hardly knowing the sin of it, ran to the place where poison was kept, drank enough to kill two, straight off, then lay down on the floor to die. Better die than do what they wanted her to do, she thought. But they found out what she had done, and drastic means were immediately used, and the poison only made her ill, and caused her days of violent pain. So there is need for the hindering prayer. Lord, teach us how to pray!

Is India crammed with the horrible ? " Picturesque," they call it, who have " done it" in a month or two, and written a book to describe it. And the most picturesque part, they agree, is connected with the temples.

India ends off in a pointed rock ; you can stand at the very point of the rock, with only ocean before you, and almost all Asia behind. A temple is set at the end of

the point, as if claiming the land for its own. We took our convert boys and girls to the Cape for the Christmas holidays, and one morning some of us spent an hour under an old wall near the temple, which wall, being full of hermit crabs, is very interesting. We were watching the entertaining ways of these degenerate creatures when, through the soft sea sounds, we heard the sound of a Brahman's voice, and looking up, saw this:

A little group of five, sitting between the rocks and the sea, giving a touch of life to the scene, and making the picture perfect. There were two men, a woman, a child, and the priest. They were all marked with the V-shaped Vishnu mark. The priest twined the sacred Kusa grass round the fingers of his right hand, and gave each a handful of grass, and they did as he had done. Then they strewed the grass on the sand, to purify it from taint of earth, and then they began. The priest chanted names of God, then stopped, and drew signs on the sand. They followed him exactly. Then they bathed, bowing to the East between each dip, and worshipping; then returned and repeated it all. But before repeating it, they carefully painted the marks on their foreheads, using white and red pigment, and consulting a small English hand mirror—the one incongruous bit of West in this East, but symbolical of the times. The child followed it all, as a child will, in its pretty way. She was a dainty little thing in a crimson seeley and many gold jewels. The elder woman was dressed in dark green; the colouring was a joy to the eye, crimson and green, and the brown of the rock, against the blue of the

270 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

It was one of those exquisite mornings we often have in the Tropics, when everything everywhere shows you God ; shines the word out like a word illumined ; sings it out in the Universe Song; and here in this South niche of Nature's cathedral, under the sky's transparency, these five, in the only way they knew, acknowledged the Presence of one great God, and worshipped Him. There was nothing revolting here, no hint of repulsive idola try. They worshipped the Unseen. Very stately the Sanscrit sounded in which they chanted their adoration. " King of Immensity ! King of Eternity! Boundless, Endless, Infinite One !" It might have been the echo of some ancient Christian hymn. It might have been, but it was not.

They are not worshipping God the Lord. They might be, but they are not. Whose is the responsibility ? Is it partly yours and mine ? The beauty of the scene has passed from us; the blue of the blue sky is blotted out—

" Only like souls I see the folk thereunder,

Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings ; Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, Sadly contented with a show of things.

Then with a rush the intolerable craving Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call :

Oh to save these! To perish for their saving, Die for their life, be offered for them all! "

The picture is made of souls—souls to be saved. " Oh to save these! To perish for their saving!" That is what the picture says Picture! There is no picture. In the place where it was, there is simply a pain—God's world, and God dishonoured in it! Oh to see these

people as souls! Kefined or vulgar, beautiful or horrible, or just dull, oh to see them " only as souls," and to yearn over them, and pray for them as souls who must live eternally somewhere, and for whom each of us, in our measure, is responsible to God. Do you say we are not responsible for those particular souls ? Who said that sort of thing first ? " Where we disavow being keeper to our brother we're his Cain." If we are not respon sible, why do we take the responsibility of appealing to them in impassioned poetry ?

"Let every kindred, every tribe,

On tins terrestrial ball, To Him all majesty ascribe, And crown Him Lord of all!"

What is the point of telling people to do a certain thing if we have no concern in whether they do it or not ? The angels and the martyrs and the saints, to whom we appealed before, have crowned Him long ago. Our sing ing to them on the subject will make no difference either way; but when we turn to every kindred and tribe, the case alters. How can they crown Him Lord of all when they do not know about Him ? Why do they not know about Him ? Because we have not told them. It is true that many whom we have told heard " their one hope with an empty wonder" ; but, on the other hand, it is true that the everlasting song rises fuller to-day because of those who, out in this dark heathendom, heard, and responded, and crowned Him King.

But singing hymns from a distance will never save souls. By God's grace, coming and giving and praying will. Are we prepared for this ? Or would we rather

272 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

sing ? Searcher of hearts, turn Thy search-light upon us ! Are we coming, giving, praying till it hurts ? Are we praying, yea agonising in prayer ? or is prayer but " a pleasant exercise "—a holy relief for our feelings ?

We have sat together under the wall by the Southern sea. We have looked at the five as they worshipped Another, and not our God. Now let this little South window be like a little clear pane of glass, through which you may look up far to the North, over the border countries and the mountains to Tibet, over Tibet and away through the vastness of Central Asia, on to China, Mongolia, Manchuria; and even then you have only seen a few of the great dark Northern lands, which wait and wait—for you.

And this is only Asia, only a part of Asia. God looks down on all the world; and for every one of the millions who have never crowned Him King, Christ wore the crown of thorns. What do we count these millions worth ? Do we count them worth the rearrangement of our day, that we may have more time to pray ? Do we count them worth the laying down of a single ambition, the loosening of our hold on a single child or friend ? Do we count them worth the yielding up of anything we care for very much ? Let us be still for a moment and think. Christ counted souls worth Calvary. What do we count them worth ?

CHAPTER XXX Two Safe

"God has given me the hunger and thirst for souls ; will He leave me unsatisfied ? No verily."

James Gilmour, Mongolia.

"That one soul has been brought to Christ in the midst of such hostile influences is so entirely and marvellously the Holy Spirit's work, that I am sometimes overjoyed to have been in any degree instrumental in effecting the emancipation of one."

Robert Noble, India.

FT1WO of our boys are safe. They left us very suddenly J- We can hardly realise they are gone. The younger one was our special boy, the first of the boys to come, a very dear lad. I think of him as I saw him the last evening we all spent together, standing out on a wave-washed rock, the wind in his hair and his face wet with spray, rejoicing in it all. Not another boy dare go and stand in the midst of that seething foam, but the spice of danger drew him. He was such a thorough boy!

The call to leave his home for Christ came to him in an open-air meeting held in his village two years ago. Then there was bitterest shame to endure. His father and mother, aghast and distressed, did all they could to prevent the disgrace incurred by his open confession of

Christ. He was an only son, heir to considerable 18

property, so the matter was most serious. The father loved him dearly; but he nerved himself to flog the boy, and twice he was tied up and flogged. But they say he never wavered; only his mother's tears he found hardest to withstand.

Weeks passed of steadfast confession, and then it came to the place of choice between Christ and home. He chose Christ, and early one morning left all to follow Him. Do you think it was easy ? He was a loving boy. Could it have been easy to stab his mother's heart ?

When the household woke that morning he was on his way to us. The father gathered his clansmen, and they came in a crowd to the bungalow.

They sat on the floor in a circle, with the boy in their midst, and they pleaded. I remember the throb of that moment now. A single pulse seemed to beat in the room, so tense was the tension, until he spoke out bravely. " I will not go back," he said.

They promised everything—a house, lands, his inherit ance to be given at once, a wife " with a rich dowry of jewels "—all a Tamil boy most desires they offered him. And they promised him freedom to worship God; " only come back and save your Caste, and do not break your mother's heart and disgrace your family."

Day after day they came, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, but the mother never came. They described her in heart-moving language. She neither ate nor slept, they said, but sat with her hair undone, and wept and wailed the death-wail for her son.

At last they gave up coming, and we were relieved,

for the long-continued strain was severe; and though he never wavered, we knew the boy felt it. We used to hear him praying for his people, pouring out his heart when he thought no one was near, sobbing sometimes as he named their names. The entreaty in the tone would make our eyes wet. If only he could have lived at home and been a Christian there ! But we knew what had happened to others, and we dare not send him back.

Then a year or so afterward we all went to the water together, and he and three others were baptised. The first to go down into the water was the elder boy, Shining of Victory. Shining of Life was second. A few weeks of bright life—those happy days by the sea—and then in the same order, and called by the same messenger— the swift Indian messenger, cholera—they both went down into the other water, and crossed over to the other side.

Shining of Life was well in the morning, dead in the evening. When first the pain seized him he was startled. Then, understanding, he lay down in peace. The heathen crowded in. They could not be kept out. They taunted him as he lay. " This is your reward for breaking your Caste!" they said. The agony of cholera was on him. He could not say much, but he pointed up, " Do not trouble me; this is the way by which I am going to Jesus," and he tried to sing a line from one of our choruses, " My Strength and my Eedeemer, my Kefuge— Jesus!"

His parents had been sent for as soon as it was known that he was ill. They hurried over, the poor despairing mother crying aloud imploringly to the gods who did

not hear. He pointed up again; he was almost past speech then, but he tried to say " Jesus " and " Come."

Then, while the heathen stood and mocked, and the mother beat her breast and wailed, and the father, silent in his grief, just stood and looked at his son, the boy passed quietly away. They hardly believed him dead.

Oh, we miss him so much! And our hearts ache for his people, for they mourn as those who have no hope. But God knows why He took him ; we know it is all right.

Every memory of him is good. When the first sharp strain was over we found what a thorough boy he was, and in that week by the sea all the life and fun in him came out, and he revelled in the bathing and boating, and threw his whole heart into the holiday. We had many hopes for him; he was so full of promise and the energy of life.

And now it is all over for both. Was it worth the pain it cost ? Such a short time to witness, was it worth while ?

It is true it was very short. Most of the little space between their coming and their going was filled with preparation for a future of service here. And yet in that little time each of the two found one other boy who, perhaps, would never have been found if the cost had been counted too great. And I think, if you could ask them now, they would tell you Jesus' welcome made it far more than worth while.

CHAPTER XXXI Three Objections

" May I have grace to live above every human motive; simply with God and to God, and not swayed, especially in missionary work, by the opinions of people not acquainted with the state of things, whose judgment may be contrary to my own." Henry Martyn, India.

THESE letters have been put together to help our comrades at home to realise something of the nature of the forces ranged against us, that they may bring the Superhuman to bear upon the super human, and pray with an intelligence and intensity impossible to uninformed faith. We have long enough under-estimated the might of the Actual. We need more of Abraham's type of faith, which, without being weakened, considered the facts, and then, looking unto the promise, wavered not, but waxed strong. Ig norant faith does not help us much. Some years ago, when the first girl-convert came, friends wrote rejoicing that now the wall of Caste must give way; they ex pected soon to hear it had. As if a grain of dust falling from one of the bricks in that wall would in anywise shake the wall itself! Such faith is kind, but there it ends. It talks of what it knows not.

Then, as to the people themselves, there are certain fallacies which die hard. We read the other day, in a

home paper, that it was a well-known fact that " Indian women never smile." We were surprised to hear it. We had not noticed it. Perhaps, if they were one and all so abnormally depressed, we should find them less unwilling to welcome the Glad Tidings. Again, we read that you can distinguish between heathen and Christian by the wonderful light on the Christians' faces, as com pared with " the sad expression on the faces of the poor benighted heathen." It is true that some Christians are really illuminated, but, as a whole, the heathen are so remarkably cheerful that the difference is not so defined as one might think. Then, again, we read in descriptive articles on India that the weary, hopeless longing of the people is most touching. But we find that our chief difficulty is to get them to believe that there is anything to long for. Rather we would describe them as those who think they have need of nothing, knowing not that they have need of everything. And again and again we read thrilling descriptions of India's women standing with their hands stretched out towards God. They may do this in visions ; in reality they do not. And it is the utter absence of all this sort of thing which makes your help a necessity to us.

But none of you can pray in the way we want you to pray, unless the mind is convinced that the thing concerning which such prayer is asked is wholly just and right; and it seems to us that many of those who have followed the Story of this War may have doubts about the right of it— the right, for example, of converts leaving their homes for Christ's sake and His Gospel's. All will be in sympathy with us when we try to save

little children, but perhaps some are out of sympathy when we do what results in sorrow and misunderstanding —"not peace, but a sword." So we purpose now to gather up into three, some of the many objections which are often urged upon those engaged in this sort of work, because we feel that they ought to be faced and answered if possible, lest we lose someone's prevailing prayer.

The first set of objections may be condensed into a question as to the right or otherwise of our " forcing our religion" upon those who do not want it. We are reminded that the work is most discouraging, conversions are rare, and when they occur they seem to create the greatest confusion. It is evident enough that neither we nor our Gospel are desired; and no wonder, when the conditions of discipleship involve so much. " We should not like strangers to come and interfere with our religion," write the friends who object, "and draw our children away from us; we should greatly resent it. No wonder the Hindus do !" And one reader of the letters wrote that she wondered how the girls who came out ever could be happy for a moment after having done such a wrong and heartless thing as to disobey their parents. " They richly deserve all they suffer," she wrote. " It is a perfect shame and disgrace for a girl to desert her own people!"

One turns from the reading of the letter, and looks at the faces of those who have done it; and knowing how they need every bit of prayer-help one can win for them, one feels it will be worth while trying to show those who blame them why they do it, and how it is

they cannot do otherwise if they would be true to Christ.

This objection as to the right or wrong of the work as a whole, leads to another relating to baptism. It is a serious thing to think of families divided upon questions of religion; surely it would be better that a convert should live a consistent Christian life at home, even without baptism, than that she should break up the peace of the household by leaving her home altogether ? Or, having been baptised, should she not return home and live there as a Christian ?

Lastly—and this comes in letters from those who, more than any, are in sympathy with us—why not devote our energies to work of a more fruitful character ? We are reminded of the mass-movement type of work, in which "nations are born in a day"; and often, too, of the nominal Christians who sorely need more enlightenment. Why not work along the line of least resistance, where conversion to God does not of necessity mean fire and sword, and where in a week we could win more souls than in years of this unresultful work ?

We frankly admit that these objections and proposals are naturally reasonable, and that what they state is perfectly true. It is true that work among high-caste Hindus all over India (as among Moslems all over the world) is very difficult. It is true that open confession of Christ creates disastrous division in families. It is true there is other work to be done.

Especially we feel the force of the second objection raised. We fully recognise that the right thing is for the convert to live among her own people, and let her

light shine in her own home; and we deplore the terrible wrench involved in what is known as " coming out." To a people so tenacious of custom as the Indians are, to a nature so affectionate as the Indian nature is, this cutting across of all home ties is a very cruel thing.

And now, only that we may not miss your prayer, we set ourselves to try to answer you. And, first of all, let us grasp this fact: it is not fair, nor is it wise, to compare work, and success in work, between one set of people and another, because the conditions under which that work is carried on are different, and the unseen forces brought to bear against it differ in character and in power. There is sometimes more " result" written down in a single column of a religious weekly than is to be found in the 646 pages of one of the noblest missionary books of modern days, On the Threshold of Central Africa. Or take two typical opposite lives, Moody's and Gilmour's. Moody saw more soul-winning in a day than Gilmour in his twenty-one years. It was not that the men differed. Both knew the Baptism of Power, both lived in Christ and loved. But these are extremes in comparison; take two, both missionaries, twin brothers in spirit, Brainerd of North America and Henry Martyn of India. Brainerd saw many coming to Jesus; Martyn hardly one. Each was a pioneer missionary, each was a flame of fire. " Now let me burn out for God," wrote Henry Martyn, and he did it. But the conditions under which each worked varied as widely spiritually as they varied climatically. Can we compare their work, or measure it by its visible results ? Did God ? Let us leave off comparing this with that—

we do not know enough to compare. Let us leave off weighing eternal things and balancing souls in earthly scales. Only God's scales are sufficiently sensitive for such delicate work as that.

We take up the objections one by one. First, " Why do you go where you are not wanted ? "

We go because we believe our Master told us to go. He said, " all the world," and " every creature." Our marching orders are very familiar. " Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." " All the world" means everywhere in it, " every creature" means everyone in it. These orders are so explicit that there is no room to question what they mean.

All missionaries in all ages have so understood these words " all" and " every." Nearly seven hundred years ago the first missionary to the Moslems found no welcome, only a prison; but he never doubted he was sent to them. " God wills it," he said, and went again. They stoned him then, and he died—died, but never doubted he was sent.

Our Master Himself went not only to the common people, who heard Him gladly, but to the priestly and political classes, who had no desire for the truth. " Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life," He said, and yet He gave them the chance to come by going to them. The words, " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink," were spoken to an audience which was not thirsting for the Gospel.

St. Paul would willingly have spent his strength preaching the Word in Asia, especially in Galatia, where the people loved him well; but he was under orders, and

he went to Europe, to Philippi, where he was put in prison; to Thessalonica, where the opposition was so strong that he had to flee away by night; to Athens, where he was the butt of the philosophers. But God gave souls in each of these places; only a few in com parison to the great indifferent crowd, but he would tell you those few were worth going for. You would not have had him miss a Lydia, a Damaris ? Above all, you would not have had him disobey his Lord's command ?

So whether our message is welcomed or not, the fact remains we must go to all; and the worse they are and the harder they are, the more evident is it that, wanted or not, it is needed by them.

M. Coillard was robbed by the people he had travelled far to find. " You see we made no mistake," he writes, " in bringing the Gospel to the Zambesi."

The second objection is, " Why break up families ly insisting on baptism as a sine qua" non of discipleship ? "

And again we answer, Because we believe our Master tells us to. He said, " Baptising them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." What right have we, His servants, to stop short of full obedience ? Did He not know the conditions of high-caste Hindu life in India when He gave this command ? Was He ignorant of the breaking up of families which obedience to it would involve ? " Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you nay, but rather division." And then come words which we have seen lived out literally in the case of every high-caste convert who has come. " For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two,

and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." These are truly awful verses; no one knows better than the missionary how awful they are. There are times when we can hardly bear the pain caused by the sight of this division. But are we more tender than the Tender One ? Is our sympathy truer than His ? Can we look up into His eyes and say, " It costs them too much, Lord; it costs us too much, to fully obey Thee in this " ?

But granted the command holds, why should not the baptised convert return home and live there ? Because he is not wanted there, as a Christian. Exceptions to this rule are rare (we are speaking of Caste Hindus), and can usually be explained by some extenuating cir cumstance.

The high-caste woman who said to us, " I cannot live here and break my Caste; if I break it I must go," spoke the truth. Keeping Caste includes within itself the observance of certain customs which by their very nature are idolatrous. Breaking Caste means breaking through these customs; and one who habitually disre garded and disobeyed rules, considered binding and authoritative by all the rest of the household, would not be tolerated in an orthodox Hindu home. It is not a question of persecution or death, or of wanting or not wanting to be there; it is a question of not being wanted there, unless, indeed, she will compromise. Compromise

is the one open door back into the old home, and God only knows what it costs when the choice is made and that one door is shut.

This ever-recurring reiteration of the power and the bondage of Caste may seem almost wearisome, but the word, and what lies behind it, is the one great answer to a thousand questions, and so it comes again and again. In Southern India especially, and still more so in this little fraction of it, and in the adjoining kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin, Caste feeling is so strong that sometimes it is said that Caste is the religion of South India. But everywhere all over India it is, to every orthodox Hindu, part of his very self. Get his Caste out of him ? Can you ? You would have to drain him of his life-blood first.

It is the strength of this Caste spirit which in South India causes it to take the form of a determination to get the convert back. Promises are given that they may live as Christians at home. " We will send you in a bandy to church every Sunday !"—promises given to be broken. If the convert is a boy, he may possibly reappear. If a girl—I was going to say never ; but I remember hearing of one who did reappear, after seventeen years imprisonment—a wreck. Send them back, do you say ? Think of the dotted lines in some chapters you have read; ponder the things they cover; then send them back if you can.

The third objection divides into two halves. The first half is, " Why do you not go to the Christians?" To which we answer, we do, and for exactly the same reason as that which we have given twice before, because our

Master told us to do so. Our marching orders are three fold, one order concerning each form of service touched by the three objections. The third order touches this, " Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." So we go, and try to teach them the " all things "; and some of them learn them, and go to teach others, and so the message of a full Gospel spreads, and the Bride gets ready for the Bridegroom.

The second half of this last objection is, " Why not do easier work ? There are so many who are more access ible, why not go to them ?" And there does seem to be point in the suggestion that if there are open doors, it might be better to enter into them, rather than keep on knocking at closed ones.

We do seek to enter the so-called open doors, but we never find they are so very wide open when it is known that we bring nothing tangible with us. Spiritual things are not considered anything by most. Still, work among such is infinitely easier, and many, comparatively speak ing, are doing it.

The larger number here are working among the Chris tians, the next larger number among the Masses, and the fewest always, everywhere, among the Classes, where conversion involves such terrible conflicts with the Evil One, that all that is human in one faints and fails as it confronts the cost of every victory.

But real conversion anywhere costs. By conversion we mean something more than reformation; that raises fewer storms. The kind of work, however, which more than any other seems to fascinate friends at home is what is known as the " mass movement," and though we have

touched upon it before, perhaps we had better explain more fully what it really is. This movement, or rather the visible result thereof, is often dilated upon most rapturously. I quote from a Winter Visitor : " Christian churches counted by the thousand, their members by the million; whole districts are Christian, entire communi ties are transformed." And we look at one another, and ask each other, " Where ?"

But to that question certain would answer joyously, " Here !" There are missions in India where the avowed policy is to baptise people " at the outset, not on evidence of what is popularly called conversion. . . . We baptise them ' unto' the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and not because we have reason to believe that they have received the Spirit's baptism,"—we quote a leader in the move ment, and he goes on to say, if it is insisted " that we should wait until this change (conversion) is effected before baptising them, we reply that in most cases we would have to wait for a long time, and often see the poor creatures die without the change."

Of course every effort is made by revival services and camp meetings to bring these baptised Christians to a true knowledge of Christ, and it is considered that this policy yields more fruit than the other, which puts con version first and baptism second. It is certainly richer in " results," for among the depressed classes and certain of the middle Castes, among whom alone the scheme can be carried out, there is no doubt that many are found ready to embrace Christianity, as the phrase goes, some times genuinely feeling it is the true religion, and desiring to understand it, sometimes for what they can get.

It must be admitted —for we want to state the case fairly—that a mass movement gives one a splendid chance to preach Christ, and teach His Gospel day by day. And the power in it does lay hold of some; we have earnest men and women working and winning others to-day, fruit of the mass movement of many years ago.

But on the whole, we fear it, and do not encourage it here. The dead weight of heathenism is heavy enough, but when you pile on the top of that the incubus of a dead Christianity—for a nominal thing is dead—then you are terribly weighted down and handicapped, as you try to go forward to break up new ground.

So, though we sympathise with everything that tends towards life and light in India, and rejoice with our brothers who bind sheaves, believing that though all is not genuine corn, some is, yet we feel compelled to give ourselves mainly to work of a character which, by its very nature, can never be popular, and possibly never successful from a statistical point of view, never, till the King comes, Whose Coming is our hope.

CHAPTER XXXII " Show me Thy Glory!"

" Yesterday I was called to see a patient, a young woman who had been suffering terribly for three days. It was the saddest case I ever saw in my life. ... I had to leave her to die. . . . The experience was such a terrible one that, old and accustomed surgeon as I am, I have been quite upset by it ever since. As long as I live the memory of that scene will cling to me." A Chinese Missionary.

"If we refuse to be corns of wheat falling into the ground and dying; if we will neither sacrifice prospects nor risk character and property and health, nor, when we are called, relinquish home and break family ties, for Christ's sake and His Gospel, then we shall abide alone."

Thomas Gajetan Rag/and, India.

" Not mere pity for dead souls, but a passion for the Glory of God, is what we need to hold us on to Victory."

Miss Lilias Trotter, Africa.

WE are all familiar with the facts and figures which stand for so much more than we realise. We can repeat glibly enough that there are nearly one thousand five hundred million people in the world, and that of these nearly one thousand million are heathen or Mohammedan. Perhaps we can divide this unthinkable mass into comprehensible figures. We can tell everyone who is interested in hearing it, that of this one thousand million, two hundred million are Mohammedans; two hundred million more are Hindus; four hundred and thirty million are Buddhists and

Coiifucianists; and more than one hundred and fifty million are Pagans.

But have we ever stopped and let the awfulness of these statements bear down upon us ? Do we take in, that we are talking about immortal souls ?

We quote someone's computation that every day ninety-six thousand people die without Christ. Have we ever for one hour sat and thought about it ? Have we thought of it for half an hour, for a quarter of an hour, for five unbroken minutes ? I go further, and I ask you, have you ever sat still for one whole minute and counted by the ticking of your watch, while soul after soul passes out alone into eternity ?