"INARTICULATE RELIGION."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."'
Sin,—Your correspondent "M." may like to know that an odd sympathy with the sorrows and perplexities of war is felt by non-Christians in India, and often leads them to use words that have a Christian ring in them. Here, for instance, is an extract copied verbatim u from a letter received by the last mail from a Hindu friend :—
"This is an evil time for all the world. Everywhere we see suffering, anxiety, mental strain. The sin of humanity, we are tempted to say, is full, and the Divine Scourge is on all our backs. But we must simply cling to our Father, who still loves His children, even when they sin and go astray. He knows our pangs, the weary hours of waiting anxiety, the grief we endure. We must go to him for comfort, .as the hurt child runs to its mother."
In itself, the quotation is not remarkable to any one who knows Hindus. But as a sample of the religious impulse created in India by a growing intimacy with Western minds, it may have its interest. India resists the specific doctrines of Western Churches, but the spirit of Christianity is undoubtedly working
like leaven in Indian minds, and, oddly enough, just when to us our faith seems to have undergone a sort of bankruptcy, there is a type of Hindu, sedentary and unenterprising, who is im- pressed by thedevotion and self-sacrifice manifested by Christian manhood, and, perhaps especially, by the courage and kindness of Christian women.—I am, Sir, &c., J. D. A.
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