igion which is not founded upon Christ, the Rock.

VII

LUCKNOW, AGRA, AND DELHI

At last we are on Mohammedan ground--at least on ground where
Mohammedanism has a powerful, and perhaps a controlling, influence. This
northwest part of India was the scene of Moslem conquest in the ninth
century. Mohammedans have always proudly contemned idolatry, and they
have often been iconoclasts, as many headless Hindu images can witness.
Northwest India saw the rise and the strength of the great mutiny of
half a century ago, but it was Moslem rajas and faithful Moslem troops
who helped to put it down.

Mohammedan faith in the unity and personality of God might at first
sight seem to render its adherents more accessible than are Hindus to
the gospel of Christ. As a matter of fact, however, the very elements of
truth in their belief make them too often stout opponents of
Christianity. They are religious bigots, as the Hindus are not. The
Hindu has a pantheon to which he can, with some show of consistency,
invite Christ. The Mohammedan declares that there is but one God, and
that Mohammed is his prophet. So he denies Christ's claim to be either
God or Saviour.

Lucknow was deeply interesting, for here was exhibited one of the most
heroic and thrilling defenses ever made in history. More than two
hundred women and children spent three months of agony in the cellars
of the British residency, while husbands and fathers and friends, to the
number of seventeen hundred, were exposed to the besieging force and the
murderous fire of fifty thousand mutineers. The headquarters of the
defenders were riddled with shot and shell, and the residency is now a
ruin. But only one shot penetrated the retreat of the women and children
below, and of these only one woman lost her life. Crowded together in
the heat of the summer, tormented by flies, half famished for lack of
food, these brave women held out themselves and encouraged the
protecting garrison, though of the seventeen hundred men only seven
hundred at the end of the siege remained alive. Sir Henry Lawrence died
of a cannon-shot, exhorting his soldiers to the last man to die, rather
than to surrender. We were glad to pay reverence to his bravery, by a
visit to his tomb. Although he died, the flag of England flew over the
fortress, in spite of innumerable efforts of the enemy to bring it down.
And to-day, in memory of that fact, it is the only flag in the British
Empire that is not l