mmorality,
the hollow ceremonialism, the all-pervasive ignorance and superstition
which rest, like a mighty pall, upon that people and which make life mean
and render noble manhood impossible. The situation in India reminds one of
the legendary house built upon the banks of Newfoundland. The foundation
was completed when a dense fog swept over the place and rested upon all.
After the superstructure was built and finished the fog lifted and it was
found, alas, that the building was erected some two hundred yards away
from the foundation, and rested upon nothing! Whatever one may say about
Hindu thought and philosophy as a basis of conduct, that people have been
living for many centuries in the dense fog of ignorance, superstition and
ceremonialism; and their life has been unworthy and debased because it
rested upon nothing.

[Illustration: A Brahman Gentleman.]

[Illustration: Swami Vivekananda.]

But there is another form of this awakened Eastern thought which invites
our attention and which concerns the missionary work not a little. It
appears there in a reactionary form among men of culture and leads many of
them to turn away in hearty disapproval from our faith. They are
wonderfully drawn towards Christ, our Lord. His praises are in their
mouths, and they eagerly study his example and life. They claim him as one
of the East and, therefore, as one of themselves. But these same men will
have none of Christianity, because it is, as they say, of the West,
Western. One of their number recently wrote an article under the following
caption:--"Why do We Hindus Accept Christ and Reject Christianity?" He
claims that they reject our faith because it is "not Christianity but
Churchianity"; that is, it savours of the Western Church more than it does
of Christ. There is a great deal that is false and foolish in this
contention; and yet it has an element of truth in it. We, of the West,
have not realized, perhaps we never can fully realize, the great width of
the gulf which, in thought and life, separates the Occident from the
Orient. Hence we have in part failed in the duty of adapting our faith, in
thought and ritual, to the taste and inherited bias of that people. We
forget that they and we usually approach things temporal and spiritual
from opposite sides. They are deeply mystical and poetic, while we are
obtrusively practical and meanly prosaic. Thus the Western colouring and
emphasis w