he best thought and
highest wisdom of many choice spirits during the last century. These
schools constantly furnish to the Christian Church in India, for
intellectual upbuilding, for moral guidance and for spiritual
regeneration, nearly a half million of the brightest youths of the land.
These institutions are the product of a century of endeavour; and it can
be truly said that without them the Protestant mission of India would be
shorn of much of their power and more of their promise.

In the present organized activity of missions there stands nothing in
higher esteem than these institutions for what they have done in the life
both of non-Christians and of Christians alike.

(_d_) In connection with missionary activity in that land one of the most
encouraging, as it is also the most monumental, of results, is the large
army of well-educated and thoroughly equipped men and women who have been
taken from among the people and have been trained and placed as their
leaders and guides.

Perhaps 20,000 such (there are 10,550 in South India alone) are at present
giving all their time and strength to the spiritual training of the
Christian community, to preaching to non-Christians and to the instruction
of the young in the schools.

India is to be brought to Christ and his religion, not through the efforts
of the foreigner, so much as through the life and activity of men and
women of the soil. They are to be the essential factor in the future
prevalence and in the character of our faith in India. Therefore it stirs
one to deepest emotion to behold this mighty army of native workers, who
are praying and working daily in that land for the conversion of their own
people and for the upbuilding of the Christian community in all that is
characteristic of our faith. As I have been permitted, for years, to train
and to send forth into that great harvest field young men to preach the
gospel of Christ and to guide the churches and congregations into
spiritual truth and life, I have felt that it was the highest and best
opportunity that could be granted to any missionary worker in that land.
This work of training an adequate spiritual agency is occupying the
serious thought of all missions. There are 110 theological seminaries and
normal training schools in the country; in these, 4,305 students, of both
sexes, are undergoing training.

Many of the agents now employed are men and women qualified to clearly
expound the truths of our fa