denote: Christ reverenced; Christians disliked.]

In the first part of the nineteenth century, along with the great
development of modern missions, and of modern education, we may say that
Christ came again to India. The national and anti-British feeling had
not then arisen to interpose in His path, but, coming as an alien, His
name evoked great hostility. The popular mood was _Christianos ad
leones,_ as many incidents and witnesses testify. Now, in spite of the
old anti-foreign hostility and the new currents of feeling, a remarkable
attitude to Christianity--far short of conversion, no doubt--is almost
everywhere manifest. There is a profound homage to its Founder, coupled
with that strong resentment towards His Indian disciples. Christ Himself
is acknowledged; His church is still foreign and British. Resentfully
ruled by a Christian nation, but subdued by Christ Himself, is the state
of educated India to-day. In spite of His alien birth and in spite of
anti-British bias, Christ has passed within the pale of Indian
recognition. Indian eyes, focused at last, are fastened upon Him, and
men wonder at His gracious words. Again I direct attention to a
significant event in Indian history--the incoming of an influence that
will not stale, as mere ideas may. "Is there a single soul in this
audience," said the Brahmo leader, the late Keshub Chunder Sen,[96] to
the educated Indians of Calcutta, mostly Hindus, "who would scruple to
ascribe extraordinary greatness and supernatural moral heroism to Jesus
Christ and Him crucified?"

"That incarnation of the Divine Love, the lowly Son of man," writes
another, even while he is rejoicing over the revival of Hinduism.[97]

CHAPTER XVI

JESUS CHRIST THE LODESTONE

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto myself."

--ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL, xii. 32.

[Sidenote: Instances of Indian homage to Christ, and dislike of His
Church.]

[Sidenote: Bengal.]

[Sidenote: Bombay.]

[Sidenote: Madras.]

Interesting phases of that divided mind--homage to Christ, resentment
towards His disciples--may be found on opposite sides of the great
continent of India. In Bengal, a not-infrequent standpoint of Br[=a]hmas
in reference to Christ is that _they_ are the true exponents of Christ's
spirit and His teaching. Western Christian teachers, they say, are
hidebound by tradition; and the ready-made rigidity of the creeds of the
Churches is no doubt a factor in