SIR, —The extracts which you make from Swami Dharmv,- nanda's lectures
on Christianity should bring home to the English reader with fresh force the extreme difficulty of the task which the Churches have set before themselves in attempting the conversion of India.
One point in the Swami's references to Christian missionaries is worthy of notice, as being highly typical of the Hindoo atti- tude towards Christian propagandism. Although a professed follower of Christ, Dharmananda blames the missionaries for addressing themselves so largely to the lowest castes. The terms in which ho speaks of the butchers, sweepers, Chamars, and the like who are embracing Christianity are characteristics of the attitude of the high-born Hindoo. The intellectual Indian can admire everything in Christ except His association with publicans and sinners. The Gospel has many charms for him, but they are sadly impaired by the fact that the common people hear it gladly. The feeling is not merely one of disapproval. It frequently rises to bitter resentment, as in the case of an Indian acquaintance of mine, who could never speak on the subject of native Christians without anger. His mild face would fire and his deferential voice deepen with indignation as he said : " I hate them ! I hate them !" This, too, from one who was a diligent student of the New Testament, particularly of the Fourth Gospel, and who avowed belief in the divinity of Jesus.
Another stumbling-block to Hindoos is the manner of life of Christian teachers. They cannot understand a spiritual life which may be independent alike of the fewness or of the abund- ance of the things amidst which it is lived. One of them once said to me : " I am told that many of your padres shave twice a day !" Shaving for mere cleanliness' sake seemed to him a most unworthy indulgence of the " comfort-seeking body." Missionaries' houses, their clothes, their use of conveyances, and their participa- tion in what Englishmen consider necessary recreation, are all causes of offence to a people with whom asceticism is an indispen- sable condition of religious enlightenment.
Interesting and important as are such cases as that of Swami Dharmananda, they would be much more encouraging to the Christian worker if they bore proof that the convert had appre- hended what, in these days at least, seems to the majority of Western minds to be an essential truth of the Christian Revela- tion,—the equality of all human souls before God. It may prove true that India will only be converted by some movement towards Christianity from within. But will the issue of such a movement be a Christianised Hindooism, or merely a Hindooised Christianity Of the latter an example already exists in the Brahmo Samaj ; but such pale reflections of the Light cannot satisfy the ardent hopes of the great missionary public in this country and America. An esoteric Christian mysticism may have attractions for a small number of intellectual Brahmins, but it can be of little use to the ignorant and helpless millions.
—I am, Sir, &c., ARTHUR SAWTELL.
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