CHRISTIAN HERE AND HEREAFTER 223

XIX. THE IDEAS OF SIN AND SALVATION 239

XX. THE IDEA OF SALVATION 254

XXI. CONCLUSION 269

NEW IDEAS IN INDIA

CHAPTER I

THE NEW ERA--SOME LEADING WITNESSES

"The epoch ends, the world is still,
The age has talked and worked its fill;

The famous men of war have fought,
The famous speculators thought.

See on the cumbered plain,
Clearing a stage,
Scattering the past about,
Comes the New Age.
Bards make new poems;
Thinkers, new schools;
Statesmen, new systems;
Critics, new rules."

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

India is a land of manifold interest. For the visitors who crowd thither
every cold season, and for the still larger number who will never see
India, but have felt the glamour of the ancient land whose destiny is
now so strangely linked to that of our far-off and latter-day islands,
India has not one but many interests. There is the interest of the
architectural glories of the Moghul emperors, in whose grand halls of
audience, now deserted and merely places of show, a solitary British
soldier stands sentry over a visitors' book. For the great capitals of
India have moved from Delhi and Agra, the old strategic points in the
centre of the great northern plain, to Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and
Rangoon, new cities on the sea, to suit the later over-sea rulers of
India. There is the interest of the grand organisation of the British
Government, holding in its strong paternal grasp that vast continent of
three hundred million souls. Sometimes the sight of the letters V.R.I,
or E.R.I. (Edwardus Rex Imperator) makes one think of the imperial
S.P.Q.R.[1] once not unfamiliar in Britain. But this interest rather I
would emphasise--the penetration into the remotest jungle of the great
organisation of the British Government is a wonderful thing. By the
coinage, the post-office, the railways, the administration of justice,
the encouragement of education, the relief of famine,--by such ways the
great organisation has penetrated everywhere,--in spite of faults, the
greatest blessing that has come to India in her long history. Travelling
by rail from Calcutta to Benares, the metropolis of Hinduism, situated
upon the north bank of the sacred Ganges, we see the British rule, in
symbol, in the great railway bri