her than to the ethical transformation and
the spiritual regeneration, of the people. It has always been a much
easier thing, in India, to gather the people for the reception of the
mystical ordinances of our faith than it has been to prepare them, by
patient teaching and guidance, to exemplify its precepts by their lives.

After Xavier came the accomplished and wily Jesuit, Robert de
Nobilibus--the nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine. A believer in the Jesuitical
principle that the end justifies the means, and ardently desiring to bring
the Brahmans over to his faith he proclaimed himself, and in every way
assumed the role of, "the Western Brahman." He lived scrupulously as a
member of that haughty caste and, until recalled by the Pope on account of
his deception, wielded much influence over the Brahmanical hierarchy in
Madura.

Men of great power and supreme devotion to their faith followed as
representatives of that great Church in India. Such names as de Britto,
Beschi, the Abbe du Bois are a crown of honour to that community. Many
like them spent lives of great self-denial for the cause of Christ and
faithfully wrought for the redemption of the people; so that at present
the power of the Romish Church and the devoted energy of its leaders are
known in every section of the Peninsula. After nearly six centuries of
effort its community in India has reached the total of 1,524,000 souls.
For a long time, it has not enjoyed much increase in its membership. In
many places it finds numerous accessions; but not a few of its people
backslide and return to their ancestral faith. The marked defects of
Romanism in that land have been its concessions to, and compromise with,
the religion of the land both on the side of idolatrous worship and of
caste observance. I have discussed the subject with Indian Roman Catholics
in the villages and find that to them the worship of saints, through their
many obtrusive images, is practically the same as the idolatry of the
Hindus--the only marked difference being in the greater size of the Romish
images! In like manner the Jesuit has adopted and incorporated into his
religion, for the people of that land, the Hindu caste system with all its
hideous unchristian divisions. All this makes the bridge which separates
Hinduism from Roman Catholic Christianity a very narrow one; and it
reduces to a minimum the process of "conversion" from the former faith to
the latter. But an easy path from Hinduism to