of the
carpentry instructor in the Poona City Mission, who was a convert from
Hinduism. He received the name of Bhumya at his baptism--his full name
being Bhumya Virappa Chondikar. The second name was that of his
father, which, according to Hindu custom, is always borne by the son,
and the last was his family or surname. He did not improve his
financial status by becoming a Christian. He was carpenter-master
before, and continued to be so for many years afterwards. But his
change of religion cut him off from any possibility of inheritance
from Hindu relations, of whom he had several in rather prosperous
circumstances. It also made such a ferment in his own household, where
he had a wife and mother-in-law and little son, that he had to leave
his home and lodge elsewhere so that he might not "pollute" them, as
they would express it, by eating with them. Two years after his own
baptism, however, he had the joy of seeing his wife and now _two_
little children, baptized, and the home life was happily resumed.
Eventually even his mother-in-law became a Christian.

But in spite of his own undoubted earnestness, his devout use of the
sacraments, his constant attendance at all the services of the church,
a sort of taint of Hinduism clung to him all through life and to some
extent dimmed his Christian joy, and prevented his example, in many
ways so edifying, from bearing the fruit that might otherwise have
been the case. None of his numerous Hindu friends were led to
Christianity through his influence, and none of his own relations
followed his example, nor was it possible to use him much in
evangelistic work, in spite of his readiness to help. He had a theory
that Christianity had somehow been evolved out of Hinduism, and though
even his intimate friends could never get to the bottom of his strange
ideas, his preaching was sufficiently unorthodox to make it necessary
that he should be a silent member of the preaching party in the
streets of the city.

The retention of Hindu ideas which thus warped his Christian life, and
prevented it from influencing his fellow-countrymen as it otherwise
might have done, may partly be accounted for by the fact that he not
only retained in every particular after his baptism the outward garb
of a Hindu and wore no Christian symbol, but his partially shaved
head, and rather long pigtail which he continued to wear, were so
definitely the outward tokens of Hinduism that he was often taken for
a H