insisting on the universality and objectivity of truth. For in spite of
new and strange environment, in spite of that prevailing notion that
religion is a racial thing, of the natural disinclination to change, of
modern agnosticism and materialism when the old ideas do give way--in
spite of these things, some of the cardinal features of Christianity are
commending themselves to educated India. Far from religion being racial,
the recent religious evolution of India suggests that in respect of the
religious instinct and the religious faculty, mankind are one, not
divided. _A priori_, therefore, we might anticipate that the elements of
Christianity which have proved dynamical with new India will be the same
that have proved their dynamic with educated men at home. So far as the
situation in India has been created by the destructive influence of
modern education, and by what may be called the modern spirit, the same
influences are telling both in Europe and in India; they have come from
Europe to India. There is the same unwillingness to believe in the
supernatural, and the same demand that religion shall satisfy ethical
and utilitarian tests. One difference, however, we may note. The
educated men of India may not be living so entirely in the modern
atmosphere as the men of Europe and America; but in India the modern
spirit finds usages and systems of thought more inconsistent with modern
ideas. As a consequence, where in India the modern spirit _has_ come, it
has stripped men barer of belief. Listen to the following curious
conglomeration, showing the influences at work, constructive and
destructive. It is a passage from the pamphlet already referred to, _The
Future of India_; the author is arguing for what he calls "practical
recognition of the Fatherhood of God"--one new positive idea. That idea
he takes to mean that "God is the Father of all nations and religions,"
and that _therefore_ "it does not matter much to what religion a man
belongs, so far as the future of his soul is concerned." Does not that
signify that he himself is stripped bare of belief? From which modern
notion, that religion does not matter much, he next argues that a man
ought to deny himself the luxury and "satisfaction of breaking his
religious fetters," _i.e._ of seceding from his own faith and joining
another. He ought to stick to his community, says this writer, and "have
the satisfaction of working for the elevation of his countrymen." There
we h