sting the blessedness, and the native Christian will increasingly
illustrate, the beauty and potency, of the passive virtues--of the
spiritual element of endurance and non-resistance. He will show to us that
a true and perfected character--a character molded after that of the divine
Exemplar--must have also, and with equal emphasis, the sweet and feminine
passive graces of life as an essential element. In India today the
Anglo-Saxon is wont to speak with contempt of "The mild Hindu." That
mildness which we are too apt to despise contains the germs of that half
of Christian character which is too largely wanting in the spiritual life
of the Anglo-Saxon and which the Christian Church of India will
increasingly illustrate and gradually seek to respect, honour, and
ultimately, to adopt.

Thus, speaking broadly of the native Christian of India today we find him
almost as much a product of heredity and environment as he is of
Christianity. He holds out Christ before himself as his ideal of life, and
His words as the all-satisfying truth. He seeks in His redeeming work rest
and salvation of soul; but many of the deepest yearnings of his heart come
to him through old channels worn out by his ancestral faith. Hinduism
gives more or less of colouring to his religious thought and aspirations;
and not a few of its forms and ceremonies are retained, but filled with a
new Christian content, and are utilized to aid in the development of
Christian life. Even as the Jews of old entered into possession and
appreciation of Christian life through Jewish rites and ceremonies, so do
native converts enter Christian life through Hindu forms today. From the
necessity of their thought and being they utilize not a few of the
processes of the old, in order to acquire and enjoy the blessings of the
new, faith. This cannot be avoided nor do we desire that it should be
avoided.

[Illustration: House Of A Missionary In India.]

[Illustration: A Village Christian Church.]

The study of the Indian Christian character in its peculiarities and
tendencies is of importance, because, as I have said above, I believe it
is to affect our conceptions of life in the West. At the present time not
a few of the religious vagaries which infest our land such as Christian
Science and Theosophy, have chiefly come to us from India. At least,
whatever of philosophy they may possess, and all of the occultism and
mysticism which they court and