Native Life in South India. By Rev. Henry Rice. (Religious
Tract Society.)—As the author says, there have been so many books written about India, that one almost feels another to be superfluous ; but he intends this, which summarises the experience of eighteen years in the southern part of that vast country, to be a short, popular account. Very short it is, considering the valuable information therein contained ; more popular it would have been had it been possible to avoid the catalogue style, which can hardly be done in so small a space. This is very much made up for by the fact that the illustrations are all taken from native drawings. The last chapter, which is thrown into the form of an answer to the question, "Are missions a failure P" deserves to be read attentively by all who really care to know the truth about the spread of the Christian faith. One paragraph we must quote on the general influence of Christian teaching, a part of the benefit too much overlooked :—
"We are not to consider the numerical insignificance of Christianity as compared with the population, but its vastness as compared with what the number of Christians was less than a hundred years ago. Far beyond the numerical strength of Christianity in South India as indicated above, is the strength of the Christian position itself. Indeed, the comparatively small proportion of the Christian population to the whole, makes it almost difficult to speak of it as one of the great religions of India, if it were not just for this fact, that it is evidently a living re- ligion amidst the dead and dying, and unless we recognise the fact that it must increase and they must decrease. The religious fraternities, such as the Brahmo Samaj, &c., which are springing up on all hands, are due to the elevating power of Christian prin- ciple. Just as the Gnostic heresies were among the factors of early Christianity, so we must reckon the Brahmos among the factors of modern Indian Christianity. These societies are un- conscious forerunners clearing the ground which Christianity is to occupy."
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