elf and family will be improved.
There is nothing intrinsically evil in any of these ambitions nor in
seeking Christian affiliation largely with a view to obtaining these,
provided always that there is also a conviction of the moral and spiritual
excellence of our faith and of its ability to satisfy the soul's need. And
this we may generally assume in a man who voluntarily severs his
connection with the faith of his ancestors, and from a religion which was
a part of his own deepest life.

Nor should the deep ignorance of many of those who become Christians lead
us hastily to conclude that, because they know so little about our faith,
they therefore are unable to appreciate or enjoy any of its spiritual
blessings. I have often been surprised to see how many very ignorant
Christians, and those who greatly try our patience at times, both by their
stupidity and their crooked lives, nevertheless often reveal beautiful
touches of a genuine faith and of a most direct and simple trust; and they
stand nobly firm under the most trying and worrying persecution which
Hinduism knows too well how to inflict upon those who desert and deny it.

It has often been charged, with a view to discredit missionary effort in
India, that the converts gathered into the Christian fold have been from
the lowest social stratum, and not from the higher and ruling classes of
society. Even if this charge were entirely true, I can see in it nothing
reflecting upon the success of our cause in that land.

It has, indeed, in all ages and lands, been the normal process of
Christian conquest, to gather in the lower classes first. It is not by
filtering downward but by leavening upward that Christianity has been wont
to enter and to transform nations. As this was the initial method in
apostolic days, so has it continued through all the history of the Church.
It has been by the weak and despised things of the world that our Lord has
brought to nought and then won the mighty. It is so in India. Perhaps
three-fourths of the native Christians of that land are from the non-Aryan
community--from the aboriginal classes over whom the sway of Hinduism is
less complete than it is over the Aryan races. This is doubtless one
reason why two-thirds of all the Christians of India are found in Southern
India--among the Dravidians, who, as we have seen, are more the children of
Demonolatry than they are of Brahmanism. And yet, let it not be supposed
that the Turanians of the