ssed it blast the prospects of Christian congregations dooming
them to stagnation and death. I have known it to palsy the arm and deaden
the heart of more than one Christian worker.

All this is inevitable when we remember the mighty influence and the long
continued dominance of caste in that land. But even at this point, where
the missionary finds the greatest discouragement, there are marked signs
of progress. So long as the missionary fought this evil alone there was
little hope of success. But, during the last few years, the conscience of
the native Christian Church itself has been roused on this question. The
Indian Christian today, as never before, has the conviction that this
caste evil saps the spiritual life of every member and of every church
which entertains it, and that it is his supreme duty to fight it steadily
in his own heart, home and church. And there is an increasing number,
especially of the young Christians, who are pledging themselves to an
unceasing warfare against the demon caste. Christians are also organizing
themselves into Caste Suppression Societies. All this is highly
encouraging, but needs large furtherance and development before the native
Christian can be said to be freed from this most subtle curse of the
ancestral faith.

The old Hindu Joint Family System is the foster-mother of the caste idea,
and it is cheering to see native Christians increasingly abandoning that
system for the Western idea of home which encourages thrift, independence
and liberty among the various members of a family and clan.

In India, for many years to come, this blight of social narrowness,
exclusiveness and divisiveness will affect more or less the native
Christian character and give colour to the native Christian Church. For
centuries it may prove the weak spot of Indian Christianity.

(_b_) _Morally_, the native Christian develops slowly. One writer has
recently claimed that the Christian of India manifests little, if any,
preeminence over the Hindu, in this respect. This is not true. He is
certainly moving forward and upward morally. But it should be remembered
that moral character is not one of the first results of Christian conquest
among such a people. It is rather the highest and last fruit upon the tree
of Christian life. It should not be forgotten that what we regard in the
West as the high moral traits of a Christian gentleman are the product of
more than 1,000 years of Christian living.

The nat