later, apt to be carried by them to the older
members of the congregation or church. The hope of the Church in India
lies in the young people; and that missionary, or native agent, who can
best organize the young into useful forms of outgoing Christian activity,
will do most for the Church of the present and future. And, while so
excellent an agency as the Christian Endeavor Society is available for use
in this line of work, the missionary need not be discouraged, but may feel
confident that he has within his power an organization rich in promise of
blessing to his whole community.

(_h_) Organizations for the Special Activities of the Native Christian
Community.

Every mission should encourage all forms of wise and necessary
organization for the furtherance of the highest life of the community
itself. And this chiefly with a view to developing self-dependence in the
community. These organizations will be naturally divided into two classes.

_Those Which Promote Self-Government._

The Christian Church in the mission field should be organized
ecclesiastically and administratively in such a way that it may
ultimately, and as speedily as may seem wise, become entirely
self-governing. Every mission should aim to so teach the people that they
may control and conduct successfully their own affairs. It should
establish a Church which sends its roots deep into the soil of the land
and which will become, in the highest sense, indigenous. One of the
necessary evils of missionary life is the early Western control and
guidance of everything. I should like to see the day, when the native
Church can establish that polity which is most congenial to its taste and
run its affairs independently and on Oriental lines, in such a way as to
win more effectively the people of India to Christ. The question is
sometimes asked,--"Must our Congregational missions bind, to our
Congregational form of ecclesiastical government, the people whom they
bring over from heathenism? Must our church polity, in the mission field,
be Congregational, or Presbyterian, etc., regardless of its adaptation, or
want of adaptation, to the people?" The affirmative answer has usually
been given by all societies (and wrongly I think) to this inquiry; and
thus every denomination transplants into heathen lands, with renewed
emphasis, not only its own peculiar shibboleths of doctrine; it also
exalts to a heavenly command the government and ritual which it
repr