n with this we need to emphasize the various forms of progress
which are an essential part of British blessing to India. We have seen
that India was a stagnant land, that its people were preeminently
unprogressive and ultra-conservative. England has helped her to break down
many of these barriers of the past. Though India is obstinately slow in
her acceptance of the spirit and blessings of progress, England has thrust
upon her many of the conditions, and compelled her to enter into some of
the paths of progress which will bring inestimable benefits into her life.

In like manner, the mission of England has been and is a religious one.
Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, upon assuming authority in the land, issued a
proclamation to the effect that under her reign all the inhabitants of
India should enjoy perfect right to worship as they please and whom they
please. It is true that too many of the representatives of the British
Government in India today are so impressed with the importance of a
government that is absolutely neutral in religious matters, that they have
both ceased themselves to manifest any religious preference in their life
and are scrupulously careful to see to it that Christians get just a
little less of right and of protection than the adherents of other faiths.
This they consider to be true altruism added to breadth of religious
sentiment!

Notwithstanding this, nothing is more manifest in India today than that
the very fact of the rulers of the land being nominally Christians adds to
the prestige of Christianity in the land. The people naturally come to
regard it as the State religion. What is more significant, however, is the
fact that, at the basis of modern laws in that land and of the multiplying
institutions of the country, distinctively Christian principles are
universally recognized. Should the government of India resolve to be
_absolutely_ neutral in all religious matters, it would have to renounce
those laws and institutions which have furnished it with all its success
in the land and which today crown its efforts with largest usefulness. To
the government, and unconsciously to the masses of the people, Christian
thought and truth and method necessarily characterize most of the laws,
institutions and processes of India. They are all a part of the work of
Great Britain in that land and such a part as she could not dispense with
if she would. It is a part of her unconscious Christian heritage.

Thus