the
decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as
noticeable as their profession of piety. Nobody there questions their
lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their gods; nor
will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and
sin in the human catalogue. Such is the Hindu mind that it can and does
believe that these, to us, inseparable elements of a noble life, can be
severed and found absolutely apart. In India, today, the moral people are
largely the non-religious; while the ostentatiously religious are the
publicly immoral ones.

It will take a long time for this fundamental and universally prevailing
error to lose its grip upon our Christian people in that land. We find,
not infrequently, in the Christian community, men and women living in
unrighteousness and at the same time believing that it will be overlooked
in the Divine account because of their zeal in Christian advocacy or their
offering for the Christian cause. Perhaps this land of the West also is
not free from such a delusion! We endeavour to teach them, in the language
of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:9), "to hold the mystery of the faith in a
pure conscience"; and we emphasize the supreme truth that faith and
conscience, piety and morality are one and inseparable.

(_c_) _Religiously_, the native Christian is slowly shaking off the
clinging brood of superstitions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most
recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of
those childish superstitions and charms which were largely their main stay
in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith
so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second nature to
them. Idolatry may be abandoned, belief in Hinduism as a saving faith may
be thrown to the winds, Hindu ritual may lose its charm; but the many
little superstitions which are connected with private life and social
customs have still a quiet influence and a lingering power over them.
These largely belong to the life of those who have _recently_ accepted the
Christian faith. It may be that some of them will never make that progress
in life which will lift them entirely above some of these Hindu
superstitions. But the great majority of native Christians today have
religiously had no connection whatever with Hinduism and have entirely
substituted Christian rites and observances for those of the Hindu
religion.