mbers and in its want
of firm discipline and the preservation of purity rather than in the
fewness of accessions from heathenism. Hence the importance of the work of
shepherding Christ's feeble flock in that land. The training of suitable
native agents for this work is a duty of paramount importance; and the
training must be continued through their life by the presence of the
missionary to guide, restrain and inspire.

(_c_) The Educational Department.

In large, well-organized missions, the educational department is now
perhaps the most important and all-pervasive. As a mission grows, this
department usually develops more rapidly than any other of its organized
activities. This work is divided into three classes:

Schools for Non-Christians.

These are especially established with a view to reaching and affecting the
non-Christian community. They have developed wonderfully during the last
half-century and hold an important place in the economy of missions. They
represent the leaven of Christianity in India. They are preeminently an
evangelistic agency. They furnish excellent opportunity to present Christ
and His Gospel of salvation to a large host of young people under very
favorable circumstances. These institutions are of two classes--primary
schools in villages and high schools and colleges at centres of influence
and culture.

They have been the object of attack from men of narrow missionary sympathy
and of limited horizon. These men claim that money expended on such
institutions is a waste of mission funds. But they have failed to
recognize the significant fact, which I have already mentioned, that these
institutions undoubtedly furnish the best opportunity for missionary
evangelistic work. And I fearlessly maintain that more conversions take
place, and more accessions are made, through these schools than through
any other agency, apart from the Christian Church itself. Not a few of the
village primary schools become _nuclei_ to Christian congregations, which
flourish and develop into Christian churches. And through the higher
institutions some of the best and strongest members of the Christian
community have been won from Hinduism. All this, apart from the fact that
these institutions perform an unspeakably important function in the
dissemination of light throughout the whole Hindu community and in the
leavening of the whole mass of Hindu thought and institutions. The good
done by this class of