hin
Fathers are working at the subject and hope to elucidate it. From the
_A.S. Progress Rep. N. Circle, Muhammadan Monuments_, for 1911-12, p.
21, it appears that arrangements for the proper maintenance of the
Old Catholic cemetery are in hand.

The author's observations concerning the official relations of
Christianity in India do not apply at all to the very ancient
churches of the South (See _E.H.I._, 3rd ed., 1914, App. M, pp. 245-
7). Even in the north, the modern missionary operations may claim to
be 'independent of office'.

CHAPTER 53

Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India--
Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages.

Father Gregory, the Roman Catholic priest, dined with us one evening,
and Major Godby took occasion to ask him at table, 'What progress our
religion was making among the people?'

'Progress!' said he; 'why, what progress can we ever hope to make
among a people who, the moment we begin to talk to them about the
miracles performed by Christ, begin to tell us of those infinitely
more wonderful performed by Krishna, who lifted a mountain upon his
little finger, as an umbrella, to defend his shepherdesses at
Govardhan from a shower of rain.[1] The Hindoos never doubt any part
of the miracles and prophecies of our scripture--they believe every
word of them; and the only thing that surprises them is that they
should be so much less wonderful than those of their own scriptures,
in which also they implicitly believe. Men who believe that the
histories of the wars and amours of Ram and Krishna, two of the
incarnations of Vishnu, were written some fifty thousand years before
these wars and amours actually took place upon the earth, would of
course easily believe in the fulfilment of any prophecy that might be
related to them out of any other book;[2] and, as to miracles, there
is absolutely nothing too extraordinary for their belief. If a
Christian of respectability were to tell a Hindoo that, to satisfy
some scruples of the Corinthians, St. Paul had brought the sun and
moon down upon the earth, and made them rebound off again into their
places, like tennis balls, without the slightest injury to any of the
three planets [_sic_], I do not think he would feel the slightest
doubt of the truth of it; but he would immediately be put in mind of
something still more extraordinary that Krishna did to amuse the
milkmaids, or to satisfy some sceptics of his day, and