History of Protestant Missions in India, 1706-1882. By the Rev.
M. A. Skerring. Revised by the Rev. E. Storrow. (Religions Tract Society).—This book was first published ten years ago. Ten years are a long period in the history of Indian Missions, and have brought, we are glad to know, a great advance. It is, of course, in Southern India that the success of the Mission continues to be most marked. In Madras the communicants (who bear, as might be expected, a large proportion to the total number of persons registered as Christian), have more than doubled in these ten years, increasing from 33,320 to 70,607 (it would require a large population in England, or, indeed, in any country reckoned as Christian, to furnish 70,000 communicants, though we should take all the Christian communities into account). In 1857 there were but few more than 10,000. Bengal furnishes 28,689, the remainder of India about 14,000. These numbers, con- siderable in themselves, seem but insignificant in comparison with the vast population of India, a population reckoned here at 254,899,516. But the hopeful part of it is the rapid increase in thirty years from fourteen thousand to one hundred and thirteen thousand. At the same rate of increase half the population of India would be Christians before A.D. 2000. And even then the Protestant Missions would not be 300 years old. (Of Catholic Missions we say nothing, not as underrating them, but because they do not come within the subject of this book).
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