In thirty years the workers multiplied nearly twofold, the boarding-school pupils over fourfold, the number of open zenanas over sevenfold, and zenana pupils about fivefold, and total number taught, threefold. But as yet this work is but begun. The walls of age-long prejudice are but just giving way; and what astonishing results may now begin to appear!

In such a stronghold of Satan as India, results cannot be estimated by the number of professed converts. Within the Madras Presidency, in the thirty years from 1851 to 1881, churches multiplied eighteenfold, Christian adherents fourfold, communicants sevenfold, and lay preachers fivefold; but the Indian Witness, in 1889, makes the public confession: "Secret believers are rapidly multiplying. For every convert avowing faith are hundreds withholding confession for fear of their kin and caste. Thousands are ready when a break shall come."

We, who live amid Christian institutions, cannot understand the almost impenetrable barriers through which a convert in India must force his way. Here are 260,000,000 of people, sunk in poverty so deep that a hungry man will pray for tigers because they do not completely devour their victims, and he may, from what they leave, appease his hunger; and in idolatry so low that a human being will pray to a hole in a rock; and these millions are bound together in the iron bonds

of a caste system which is a

cellular structure of

society, with isolation so complete that the cells never interpenetrate," and yet to break through whose arbitrary restraints is to meet a penalty worse than death. What chance for woman in a land where two propositions form the unit on which all sects and classes agree: "The cow is a holy animal, and entitled to divine honors; 'Woman is a wicked animal, entitled to no respect!"

A native Hindu paper thus summarizes the work of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, at Serampore: "They created a prose vernacular literature for Bengal; they established the modern method of popular education; they gave the first great impulse to the native press; they set up the first steam-engine in India; in ten years they translated and printed the Bible, or parts thereof, in thirtyone languages."

come

Hear another witness: 'Missionaries from Britain at a great cost, and tell us that we are in heathen darkness, and that a bundle of fables, called the Bible, is the true Vedanta, which alone can enlighten us. They have cast their net over our children by teaching them in their schools, and they have already MADE THOUSANDS OF CHRISTIANS, AND ARE CONTINUING TO DO so. They have penetrated into the most out-of-the-way villages and built churches there. If we continue to sleep as we have done in the past, not one will

be found worshipping in our temples in a very short time; why, the temples themselves will be converted into Christian churches! Do you not

know that the number of Christians IS INCREASING, and the number of the Hindu religionists DECREASING every day? How long will water remain in a well which continually lets out, but receives none in? If our religion is incessantly drained by Christianity without receiving any accessions, how can it last? When our country is turned into the wilderness of Christianity, will the herb of Hinduism grow? We must not fear the missionaries because they have white faces, or because they belong to the ruling class. There is no connection between the Government and Christianity, for the Queen Empress proclaimed neutrality in all religious matters in 1858. We must, therefore, oppose the missionaries with all our might. Wherever they stand up to preach, let Hindu preachers stand up and start rival preaching at a distance of forty feet from them, and they will soon flee away. Let caste and sectarian differences be forgotten, and let all the people join as one man to banish Christianity from our land. All possible efforts should be made to win back those who have embraced Christianity, and all children should be withdrawn from mission schools."-From a Tamil Hindu Tract.

"At a recent missionary meeting in Bombay, Sir Charles Elliot, fearing they might be forgotten,

restated the interesting facts presented two years ago, as to the numerical progress made by Christianity in Hindustan from 1870 to 1881, which showed that, while the general population of India increased by eight per cent. during the ten years closing with the year 1881, there was an increase of thirty per cent. during the same period in the number of Christians. In some portions of India there was a still larger relative increase. In the province of Bengal, while the increase in the number of Hindus in ten years was thirteen per cent., and that of the Mohammedans eleven per cent., that of native Christians was sixty-four per cent. In the province of Assam, in the extreme northeast of India, while during the decade already mentioned the general increase of population was eighteen per cent., there was an increase of one hundred and fifty per cent. in the number of Christians in the eight valley districts, and in the Khasia hills, where a devoted band of Welsh missionaries are doing a grand work, the increase had been at the rate of two hundred and fifty per cent. What may have been the comparative ! results of missionary labors during the decade just closed, and according to the census recently taken, will be known in due time. It will undoubtedly present a greater relative percentage in the increase of native Christians in the sections now named, and also in others. In the face of such facts, he who assumes to say that missions are failure,

only shows his own ignorance or a perverse determination not to recognize the truth.” *

Eighty-five years ago, says the Missionary Herald, the Directors of the East India Company placed on solemn record: "The sending of Christian missionaries into our Eastern possessions is the maddest, most expensive, most unwarranted project that was ever proposed by a lunatic enthusiast." A few months since, Sir Rivers Thompson, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, said: "In my judgment, Christian missionaries have done more real and lasting good to the people of India than all other agencies combined."

And yet there are some who persist in belittling the work of evangelization. The London Times, of 1863, accounted for "prevailing apathy as to the propagation of the Gospel by the lack of satisfactory results"; and yet, already in 1863, missions had left on record some of the most apostolic biographies and histories ever written. Already the new book of the Acts of the Apostles had recorded the modern miracles wrought under William Carey, Robert Morrison, and Robert Moffat, William Johnson and Adoniram Judson, John Hunt and John Williams, Justin Perkins and Peter Parker, Latimer Neville and Dr. Krapf, John Geddie and Charles Gutzlaff, William Goodell and Charles Wheeler, Jonas King and Eli Smith, Henry Martyn and David Brainerd, Eliza Agnew * Correspondent of New York Evangelist.