Chapter X.

MISSIONARY RESULTS.

We are occasionally compelled to read and to hear detailed and emphatic statements about “the failure of missions.” An increasing number of our countrymen spend their vacation days in hurried trips through mission fields. They are so impressed by glimpses of the strange life and institutions of the Orient that they have neither time nor inclination to study and appreciate the missionary work and organization which everywhere invites their attention. They return home absolutely ignorant of the work whose power, prevalence and progress they might easily have learned on their travels, and they are wont to hide that ignorance behind the emphatic assurance that “there was nothing to be seen” of missions; and they soon convince themselves, and not a few others, that what they did not see was not worth seeing or was, perchance, non-existent. I have long lived on one of the great lines of travel in India and have sorrowed over the fact that hardly one in ten of our travelling countrymen (and many of them members of our home churches too) turn aside for a moment from gazing upon Hindu temples to study the important work which our mission is carrying forward in that city and district.

Even the friends of missions should learn what constitutes missionary success.

In South India there is found a mission which counts its converts only by the hundreds. It is known in Christian lands only through the severe criticisms which have been heaped upon it by some good Christian men because it is an educational mission.

And yet I sincerely believe that that abused mission is doing a work not inferior to that of any other mission in India for the permanent growth and highest achievement of the Kingdom of God in that land. Its leavening influence upon Hindu thought and institutions is hardly surpassed by that of any other mission. In the wonderful turning of the educated classes of India towards Christ, and the acceptance of him as their Ideal of life, that mission has a position of power. Many of the native Christians of greatest influence, culture and character in South India trace their conversion or highest efficiency to the work and influence of that educational mission. The best educated pastor in the Madura district came from and was trained by that mission; as also its highest and best Christian teachers received their final course of training and discipline there.

That mission is largely ignored and even despised by the too common statistical reckoning of results and success. And yet the illustrious name of Dr. Miller, the leader of that mission, will be cherished in India and in the world a century hence as a chief among those who were instrumental in bringing that great people to Christ.

The mighty and unparalleled revolution which is going on in India at present, as a result of missionary work, is not to be tabulated in our statistical reports. The deepest currents of those great moral and spiritual forces of the India of today are not found within the realm of figures. They defy tabulation; and yet they bring to the keen Christian observer in that land more encouragement, because they have more significance, than all the facts and figures usually found within the covers of an ordinary mission report.

A great deal of the discouragement and pessimism about missions today is born of this statistical craze.

Let us therefore take a broad view of the work of our missions and study some of the results achieved—results which are almost entirely the harvest of the labours of the last century.

These results are threefold.

1. PRESENT MISSIONARY APPLIANCES.

(_a_) Protestant missions in India have created a plant and have developed appliances which are not only an assurance and a prolific source of encouragement for the future; they are also monuments of the industry and wisdom of those who have passed on, and definite signs of God’s guidance of, and blessing to, the work.

In the first place, consider the buildings and other property erected and owned by the missionary societies and utilized for the maintenance and furtherance of their work in that land.

Few people realize the enormous store of wealth which is thus treasured in this elaborate mission plant. Nor can they appreciate the equivalent of this in terms of moral efficiency and spiritual power in the regeneration of India.

The thousands of acres of land and the many thousands of substantial edifices erected and dedicated to the cause of Christ in connection with these missions represent an investment of at least ten million dollars; and this money not only represents the generosity of Christians in the West, it also includes the self-denying offerings of Indian Christians, who from their poverty have given liberally to build up the cause which is dear to their hearts.

Mission educational institutions are housed in a legion of substantial and beautiful buildings ranging, from the massive imposing structures of the Madras Christian College, downward; churches there are of all sizes and architectural design, from the magnificent and beautiful stone edifice which accommodates its thousands and which was erected by the Church Missionary Society in Megnanapuram, Tinnevelly, down to the unpretentious prayer-house of a small village congregation. A host of suitable buildings for hospitals, presses and publishing houses, residences for missionaries and native agents, school dormitories, gymnasia and lecture halls; Y. M. C. A. and other societies’ buildings—all these represent that power for service, incarnate in brick and mortar, which is invaluable and even indispensable to the great missionary enterprise in that land.

(_b_) Nor must we overlook or fail to estimate adequately the results achieved in the form of a Christian literature. Though our Protestant missions have not cultivated, as extensively as they should, the press and the publishing house as a missionary agency, they have not been insensible to their power and have utilized extensively the printed page.

In the first place a translated and a well-circulated Bible has been the aim and pride of our missions from the beginning. The humblest native of that land can find, in his own vernacular, the Word of God, and read for himself the message of God in Christ Jesus to his sin-burdened soul. Who can realize the work involved in all this, or the achievement which it represents?

Then the Christian hymnology of India is already a rapidly growing power. Every important vernacular has one or more Protestant Christian hymn books, which reveal to what a large extent our faith has inspired and made vocal the praises of Zion in that land. Nearly all of these Christian hymns in South India and many in North India are the compositions of native Christians and manifest considerable poetic power and high sentiment. Though many of them are worthy of translation, only two have thus far found place in our American hymn books. One is a Tamil hymn composed by Yesuthasan, catechist, and translated as below by Rev. E. Webb,—

1. Whither with this crushing load Over Salem’s dismal road, All thy body suffering so, O, my God where dost thou go?

CHORUS:—

Whither Jesus goest thou, Son of God what doest thou, On this City’s dolorous way, With that cross, O, Sufferer say?

2. Tell me fainting, dying Lord, Dost thou of Thine own accord Bear that cross, or did thy foes ’Gainst thy will, that load impose.—CHO.

3. Patient Sufferer how can I See thee faint and fall and die, Pressed and peeled and crushed and ground By that cross upon thee bound?—CHO.

4. Weary arm and staggering limb, Visage marred, eyes growing dim, Tongue all parched, faint at heart, Bruised and sore in every part!—CHO.

5. Dost thou up to Calvary go, On that cross in shame and woe, Malefactors either side To be nailed and crucified?—CHO.

6. Is it demon thrones to shake, Death to kill, sin’s power to break, All our ills to put away, Life to give and endless day?—CHO.

Besides this there is an ever-growing mass of Christian literature in all the vernaculars used by our missions; and this is becoming increasingly available as a power for the uplifting of the people who are, in growing numbers, learning to read. Beyond almost every other appliance for the Christianization of that people there stand high in usefulness and pervasive influence these books, tracts and magazines of the missions; and the aid which they furnish to all Christian workers in that land is beyond computation. Missionaries may go and come, and mission policy may change, but this Christian literature will quietly and mightily work out its own benign results throughout the land, enlightening the people and appealing to the best that is in them.

(_c_) In like manner the missionary educational institutions, which cover the whole land as a great network, are a noble product of missionary ideals and efforts in the land. They are in themselves an achievement which not only has cost millions of rupees for its creation and maintenance, but is also the product of some of the best thought and highest wisdom of many choice spirits during the last century. These schools constantly furnish to the Christian Church in India, for intellectual upbuilding, for moral guidance and for spiritual regeneration, nearly a half million of the brightest youths of the land. These institutions are the product of a century of endeavour; and it can be truly said that without them the Protestant mission of India would be shorn of much of their power and more of their promise.

In the present organized activity of missions there stands nothing in higher esteem than these institutions for what they have done in the life both of non-Christians and of Christians alike.

(_d_) In connection with missionary activity in that land one of the most encouraging, as it is also the most monumental, of results, is the large army of well-educated and thoroughly equipped men and women who have been taken from among the people and have been trained and placed as their leaders and guides.

Perhaps 20,000 such (there are 10,550 in South India alone) are at present giving all their time and strength to the spiritual training of the Christian community, to preaching to non-Christians and to the instruction of the young in the schools.

India is to be brought to Christ and his religion, not through the efforts of the foreigner, so much as through the life and activity of men and women of the soil. They are to be the essential factor in the future prevalence and in the character of our faith in India. Therefore it stirs one to deepest emotion to behold this mighty army of native workers, who are praying and working daily in that land for the conversion of their own people and for the upbuilding of the Christian community in all that is characteristic of our faith. As I have been permitted, for years, to train and to send forth into that great harvest field young men to preach the gospel of Christ and to guide the churches and congregations into spiritual truth and life, I have felt that it was the highest and best opportunity that could be granted to any missionary worker in that land. This work of training an adequate spiritual agency is occupying the serious thought of all missions. There are 110 theological seminaries and normal training schools in the country; in these, 4,305 students, of both sexes, are undergoing training.

Many of the agents now employed are men and women qualified to clearly expound the truths of our faith to believers and unbelievers. They are well fortified against attack as rational defenders of Christianity and are prepared to remove doubts which may arise in the minds of sincere inquirers and wavering believers. Not all of them are such as we could wish in intellectual equipment or in strength of character. But the poorest of them are gradually being replaced by better ones; and the intellectual, moral and spiritual tone of the whole force is constantly improving. The ordained native clergy are a body of men who are rapidly growing in efficiency and power. There are 406 of them in South India alone—nearly as many as there are ordained missionaries in the same area.

A comparison, in South India, between this force of 406 native pastors and the 585 native priests of the Romish Church shows how well, relatively, the Protestant Church of South India is supplied; there being one native pastor to every 1,500 of the Protestant community, while the Romish priests are only one to every 2,000 of their community.

Some of these pastors are university graduates, and all are men of good professional training. They are faithful workers and are increasingly worthy, and enjoy the confidence, of their missionary associates. Among the native agents of our Protestant missions in South India alone there are about 100 university graduates, 200 First in Arts (the degree granted after two years of college work) and 600 university matriculates. This thorough utilization of a strong, cultured, native agency is one of the most striking results of the last century’s work in that land. And it is the more remarkable in the case of the women, since a generation ago hardly any of the weaker sex were in mission employ, while today the missions of South India alone employ 3,000 of them. It is practically the creation of a mighty and most faithful and devoted agency in one generation.

What may we not expect from this great army of native brethren and sisters, as they shall continue to grow in numbers and in general equipment, and as they shall be filled with the Spirit of God and be fully used by our Lord in the redemption of their own people!

2. THE NATIVE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.

Recent statistics give the total number of Christians in British India as 2,923,349. This is a growth of about 640,000 in ten years, four times more than the rate of growth of the whole population. And yet there are people who tell us that the kingdom of our Lord is not coming in that land!

CENSUS OF CHRISTIANS IN INDIA, MAY 2, 1901.(12)

Total of all denominations 2,923,349 European and other races 258,990 Natives 2,664,359

_Total Returned._ _Natives._

Anglican 453,612 305,907 Baptist 220,863 216,743 Congregationalist 37,876 37,313 Lutheran and allied denominations 155,455 153,768 Methodist 76,869 68,451 Presbyterian 53,829 42,799 Friends 1,309 1,275 Roman Catholic 1,202,039 1,122,378 Salvationist 18,960 18,847 Syrian 571,327 571,320 Scattering 131,210 125,558

Of the above number of Christians 2,664,359 are natives of India. This is an increase of over 630,000, or about thirty-one per cent, of Indian Christians during the last decade. And during this time the general population of India has increased only about two and one-half per cent.! Analyzing this aggregate of all Christians we find that 970,000 of them are native Protestant Christians. This represents an advance of sixty-four per cent, during the last ten years in that community; while the Romish and Syrian native Christian communities have gained hardly three per cent, in the same time. Thus it will be seen that the rapid progress of our faith in that land of the East depends almost entirely upon the remarkable advance of Protestantism among the people of India. This is certainly a result most encouraging to Protestant Christian workers in that land. That this decade’s growth is not abnormal is attested by the fact that the native Protestant Christians of India are more than ten times what they were fifty years ago.

In view of the fact that the whole Christian community of India is only one per cent, of the total population, one may be inclined to feel discouraged. And yet if the relative growth of the whole population and, say, of the Protestant Christian community for the last decade be maintained for one hundred and thirty years more, the whole population will be found Christian of the Protestant type.

These figures indicate the magnificent development of our work in that land. And when we remember the splendid equipment and wonderful modern appliances of the missionary organizations of today we can easily believe that, even within another century, Christianity will become the prevailing faith of India.

A large number, in our Christian community, has been gathered through mass movements, where certain castes and classes have, in large bodies, sought the blessings of our faith. In Tinnevelly, for instance, the Shanar caste was early influenced by Christian workers; and, as they are a very clannish community, many thousands of them have embraced the Christian faith and have been wonderfully transformed and elevated through their contact with it.

One of the most marvellous manifestations of the power of the Gospel is presented today in that district by this people, who, under missionary influence and Christian training, have risen from great depths of ignorance and social degradation until they stand among the highest of that land in intelligence and in the spirit of progress. Most of the Christians of Tinnevelly belong to this once despised class and are, in many respects, full of vigour and enterprise.

In the famous Telegu Baptist Mission we find a similar movement. That American Mission laboured for twenty-five years without much encouragement. After those years the outcastes of the community began to appreciate the advantages of our faith and to apply for admission into its congregations. It gathered them in by thousands until it has become by far the largest mission in the country. It represents nearly one quarter of the whole Protestant Christian community of India.

During the last few years a similar movement has overtaken the American Methodist, and other missions in North India. Many thousands of the depressed classes, within its area, have sought a refuge from their ills and a Saviour for their souls in the Christian fold; so that it taxes all the energies and resources of the mission to keep pace with the movement and to instruct adequately, in Christian truth, these ignorant masses who flock unto it. Bishop Thoburn says that more than 100,000 of this class are now waiting to be received into their community; but that their mission has not the men or means to instruct them.

In other missions, also, reports are being received of similar movements now going forward on a smaller scale. Some missionaries of these fields have written to me stating that the only limit to the growth and development of their missions is that of men and money wherewith to instruct and properly direct the people who come seeking for light and help.(13)

In the great majority of missions, however, growth has been general and normal; people have come as individuals and as families, separating themselves, after much thought and prayer, from those who are dearest to them upon earth, and passing through a sea of tribulation and persecution into the Christian life.

It has been claimed by Hindus, and by some others, that Hinduism is a tolerant faith—that it does not resort to persecution. In one respect this is true. As we have before seen, it will permit its members to hold any doctrine and to accept any teaching that they please. It has no punishment nor even a voice of disapprobation to its member who is a rationalist, an atheist, or a Christian so far as acceptance of such belief or non-belief is concerned. And, so far as conduct is concerned, a man may be a libertine, a robber or a murderer, and yet maintain his religious status. But when it comes to the violation of caste rules it is very different. Hinduism will tolerate anything but caste insubordination. So that when a man, in becoming a Christian, severs his connection with his caste and becomes, socially, an alien to his people, then Hinduism steps in and brings to bear upon him all the bitter penalties of caste infliction, and persecutes him in a thousand social ways such as make life a burden unto him. The engine of caste is the most complete and mighty instrument of religious persecution the world has known, as many thousands of our native Christians have learned to their bitter cost.

When a man decides to become a Christian there is very little opposition to this purpose among his people so long as his decision involves only his belief, conviction and private devotion and prayer. But when it leads him to a public confession of Christ and to baptism, which is regarded as his renunciation of caste rules, affinities and obligations, then all the spite of caste tyranny is showered upon him. He is boycotted thoroughly. None of his caste people, not even his own Hindu family, will eat with him. The family and caste washerman is no longer permitted to serve him; their barber will not shave him, and the blacksmith, carpenter, mason and other village servants decline to render him their wonted service. So that he is absolutely helpless. It requires a very strong man to face all this kind of annoyance and deprivation, and to stand firm in the new life upon which he has entered and continue loyal to the new faith which he has embraced.

It must be admitted that such rigours of persecution are not carried out in all cases at present. Though this is the spirit and method of caste, yet the influence of home ties and family affection and the social position and influence of a new convert may be such as to mitigate this public opposition to his Christian decision. But the engine of persecution is there, always ready for use.

The question has often been asked as to the motives which animated those of our Christian community who denied their ancestral faith in order to become Christians. In this land many have an idea, in some cases expressed but in many unexpressed, that most of the Christian converts in India are what are denominated “rice Christians.” This charge against the adherents of our faith in that land is as unworthy as it is untrue. That some embrace our religion and take upon them the name of Christ from unworthy motives we know—perhaps this is a thing not confined to India. But it has always been a surprise to me, not that so many, but that so few, join our missions from worldly or unworthy motives. For they soon learn that the missionary of their district is a friend of the poor and the oppressed; and they are constantly suffering from the injustice and the rapacity of Brahmans and of other members of their own faith who are above them. Outside of slavery there are few people who are subject to grosser injustice at the hand of men of wealth and of power than are the poor, down-trodden people of India.

Most of them are also groaning in the deepest pit of poverty. Poverty is a relative term. As compared with India, America knows absolutely no poverty. The poverty of India is crushing, over-whelming. When we remember that according to government statistics, the average income of a man for the support of his family in India is less than $1.50 a month we get a glimpse of what abject poverty means.

And when we further remember that, during many months and seasons of his life, even this is partly denied him, owing to frequent droughts and other unpreventable evils, we know in part how an unsatisfied craving, and pinching distress overwhelm a large proportion of that population. Government statistics show that one-fifth of the population are in a chronic state of hunger.

And yet I heartily bear testimony that comparatively few of our people have become Christians in order that they might receive physical and temporal blessings. We dare not say that this motive does not exist; but we are confident that in three-fourths of our converts it is not the prevailing or the dominant motive. There is a soul-hungering and a heart-thirsting in India such as are not in any way satisfied by their ancestral faith. And Christianity appeals to the people increasingly as a soul-satisfier and as a power of God unto salvation; and they more and more realize this fact and are impelled more by that motive than by any other in transferring their allegiance from Krishna to Christ.

And even when some do come with prevailingly low and sordid motives and seek to be enrolled as members of the Christian community, we dare not discourage or deny them; because we hope soon, after they have united with our community and have placed themselves under Christian instruction, to impart to them loftier conceptions of life and of truth. And even should we fail to reform them and to give them worthy views of our religion and of their relationship to it, we entertain the hope that their children will become worthy and genuine Christians. Many of the best and most honoured members of our community, today, are the children and grandchildren of very unsatisfactory Christians of the past.

I might say here that missionaries are being frightened less and less by the charges so frequently made, by those who know the situation least, concerning the unworthy motives of those who become Christians. Indeed, to be frank, the question of motives is, in my opinion, one of very little consequence, save as it may involve down-right hypocrisy or gross deception.

Ordinarily we do not expect, from a people who have been brought up in so selfish and so debasing and sordid an atmosphere as that of the common Hindu of today, a highly spiritual, or a purely ethical motive in becoming Christians. If such be the prevailing motive, or even if we are convinced that it is not absent, we are satisfied. Nor can there be anything wrong if a man in India seeks alliance with Christianity in order to better his earthly circumstances. This may mean a purpose to secure an education and the blessings of civilization and culture for his children; or it may reveal a desire for relief from injustice, or protection from gross tyranny; it may signify merely a vague hope that, by becoming a Christian, the general circumstances both of himself and family will be improved. There is nothing intrinsically evil in any of these ambitions nor in seeking Christian affiliation largely with a view to obtaining these, provided always that there is also a conviction of the moral and spiritual excellence of our faith and of its ability to satisfy the soul’s need. And this we may generally assume in a man who voluntarily severs his connection with the faith of his ancestors, and from a religion which was a part of his own deepest life.

Nor should the deep ignorance of many of those who become Christians lead us hastily to conclude that, because they know so little about our faith, they therefore are unable to appreciate or enjoy any of its spiritual blessings. I have often been surprised to see how many very ignorant Christians, and those who greatly try our patience at times, both by their stupidity and their crooked lives, nevertheless often reveal beautiful touches of a genuine faith and of a most direct and simple trust; and they stand nobly firm under the most trying and worrying persecution which Hinduism knows too well how to inflict upon those who desert and deny it.

It has often been charged, with a view to discredit missionary effort in India, that the converts gathered into the Christian fold have been from the lowest social stratum, and not from the higher and ruling classes of society. Even if this charge were entirely true, I can see in it nothing reflecting upon the success of our cause in that land.

It has, indeed, in all ages and lands, been the normal process of Christian conquest, to gather in the lower classes first. It is not by filtering downward but by leavening upward that Christianity has been wont to enter and to transform nations. As this was the initial method in apostolic days, so has it continued through all the history of the Church. It has been by the weak and despised things of the world that our Lord has brought to nought and then won the mighty. It is so in India. Perhaps three-fourths of the native Christians of that land are from the non-Aryan community—from the aboriginal classes over whom the sway of Hinduism is less complete than it is over the Aryan races. This is doubtless one reason why two-thirds of all the Christians of India are found in Southern India—among the Dravidians, who, as we have seen, are more the children of Demonolatry than they are of Brahmanism. And yet, let it not be supposed that the Turanians of the South are far inferior to the Aryans of the North; or that the salvation of the so-called “aborigines” of India, of whom there are more than sixty millions, is unworthy of our highest ambition.

Neither let it be thought that Christianity has not made glorious inroad upon the middle classes and even upon the highest class in that land—the Brahmans. It is true that, thus far, not very many of that high and haughty caste have openly professed Christ. It is equally true, however, that some of the best members of our Christian community are converted Brahmans. The Indian Christian community is proud of such men as the Hon. Kali Churn Bannerjee, Dr. K. M. Bannerjee, Rev. K. C. Chatterjee, Rae Maya Das and the Hon. N. Subramanien, not because they were Brahmans, but because they have consecrated to the Lord all their distinguished ability, and because they excel in their possession of Christian graces.

These names, and many others like them, reveal the growing power that our faith is wielding over men of position in that land. At the coronation of King Edward, in London, twenty representatives of the Indian Christian Church were present. Of these, six are ruling princes; perhaps the most distinguished of them is Sir Harnam Singh Ahluwalia, K. C. I. E. He is a man of culture—“a true representative of educated India.”

He was entrusted by the Indian Christians to convey their address to the king upon the occasion of his coronation. Sir Harnam Singh’s usefulness and success largely depend upon the support, which he receives, in all good things, from his wife, Lady Singh, who is the daughter of Rev. Golak Nath.

The devout Henry Martyn, nearly a century ago, with mingled discouragement and yearning, declared that to see one Hindu a real believer in Jesus would be something more nearly approaching the resurrection of a dead body than anything he had yet seen. The illustrious Jesuit missionary, the Abbe Du Bois, mourned that, even after a long period of faithful work, he believed he had seen no genuine convert to Christianity in that land. How would those two great friends of India rejoice today were they to see the glorious harvest which Christianity has been permitted to gather during the last century from that great people! And among the best of them are to be seen not a few representatives of the haughty Brahman caste and also members of the crushed and despised outcaste Pariah community.

It is well to remember that it has been the ambition of missionaries in India, not so much to gather in numerous accessions from the social and intellectual aristocracy of the land, as to create out of the Indian Christian community, however degraded may have been its origin, an aristocracy of character and of true culture. And in this they have achieved remarkable success. For the native Christian community is being most rapidly transformed in these respects. Remember, please, the condition, previous to their embracing our faith, of those outcaste people who now constitute three-fourths of the Christian community. They were not only socially ostracized, and therefore wanting in all traits of manly assertion, of independence and of self-respect. They were also in deepest ignorance. Not five per cent, of them could either read or write. Moreover they were under serious religious disability. Though nominal Hindus, they had no right to enter purely Hindu temples nor to approach in worship any strictly Hindu deity. The most sacred of Hindu religious books were denied them, and the most cherished of Hindu rites and ceremonies they were deemed totally unfit to observe.

All that they could claim was permission to appease the demons of their ancestral worship. I have seen these outcastes, who, while absorbed into Hinduism, nevertheless live constantly under its ban. They erect fine halls and shrines in Brahmanical temples, but are not permitted to enter them after the day of their dedication to Hindu worship. Hinduism has never declined any pecuniary offerings from these despised ones; and yet it has never deemed it its province or duty to impart its religious blessings to them. It has denied to them instruction, comfort and salvation. Is it a wonder that most of the people were almost on a level with brutes so far as thoughts of the highest interests of the soul are concerned? These are the people whom Christianity has delighted to rescue from their thralldom and to build up in religious thought, ambition and spiritual blessings.

It has applied itself to the task of raising them from their low estate. It has erected buildings for their instruction. In most cases its prayer-houses have been daily used as schoolhouses where the young have been instructed; so that today this community stands distinguished among the other communities in the land for its intelligence.

For example, the total number of Christian youth in mission schools in South India is 62,000—two-thirds of them being boys and one-third girls, which represents a percentage to the total of school-going-age of 68.7 for boys and 33.7 for girls; and this while, in the general community, only twelve per cent, of those who are of an age to be at school are attending school. Among the Brahmans only is literacy more common than among Indian Christians. And even that caste, which has for thirty centuries represented the cultured aristocracy of India, must look to its laurels; for, though their males are preëminent in culture, the females are as illiterate as any class in India, only six in 1,000 being able to read. In the Christian community, on the other hand, the women are not far behind the men in the race for culture. It is therefore not difficult to prophesy that the day is not far off when the Indian Christians, among whom both sexes find equal opportunity and inducement to study in the schoo