ster this rite under such
circumstances.

9. Another problem is connected with the revival of thought among the
people of India whom we seek to bring to Christ.

This revival is really the result of western influence--largely the product
of Christian teaching and activity in that land. In its last analysis it
is therefore not to be deplored, but rather to be welcomed. At the same
time this new awakening seems to be, for the present, connected with a
reactionary and a militant spirit. It speaks in the interest of a new
nationalism and a false patriotism which extols everything Eastern simply
because it _is_ Oriental. Its aggressiveness is manifest even in America.
We are becoming familiar, in this country, with the yellow-robed Hindu
monk who has probably been trained in a Christian mission college and who
talks Hinduism with a strong Christian accent. Though he has violated a
peremptory command of his ancestral faith in crossing the seas; and
though, of necessity, he daily tramples in this land the whole decalogue
of Hindu life and ritual, he feels competent to champion Hindu philosophy
here! And he seems to find a coterie of admirers and quasi disciples in
this land of light and privilege! Recently an old classmate of mine
informed me, with all solemnity, that Eastern thought is now invading the
West; and that he himself had become a theosophist! I have, since hearing
this statement, travelled considerably over this country and confess that
his statement does not seem so absurd as at first I thought. For, I have
seen the recent phenomenal spread of Christian Science and of other
vagaries with which we are too familiar in this land. What is Christian
Science but the subtle, evasive idealism of India unequally yoked to a
form of Christian truth and ritual. What is theosophy, but the stupefying
philosophy and the benumbing metaphysics of the East, clothed in its own
garb of Oriental mysticism and senseless, spurious occultism. It is a sad
reflection upon our Western life that so many people who fail to find rest
in the divinely inspiring teachings of Christ, sink into the depths of a
credulity which will accept the inanities of Madame Blavatsky and the wild
assumptions of Mrs. Eddy. Let these people go out to India and live there
for years to see how Hindu thought and teachings have, for three
millenniums, worked out their legitimate results in the life of the
teeming millions of that land. Let them observe the debasing i