ontact with Christian workers,
but have been led simply through a study of God's Word, under the guidance
of God's Spirit, unto Christ the Saviour of the world.

It is one of the most encouraging facts connected with Christian influence
in India that one so often and unexpectedly meets its manifestations in
individual life and institutions. Suddenly he comes across little streams
of influence whose source may be unknown, but which do a great deal
towards fertilizing thought and producing a harvest of religious results
throughout the land.

The general subject of the influence of the West upon the East has been
recently raised in the very interesting and thought-provoking book on
"Asia and Europe" by the English writer, Meredith Townsend. He stiffly
maintains that the West never has, and, probably, never will, seriously
and permanently influence the East in thought and life. While there is a
semblance, yea an element, of truth in his contention, so far as the past
is concerned, it fails to apply to the India of the present and must fall
far wide of the mark in the future. Many years have elapsed since the
author of "Asia and Europe" left India; and he is not conversant, at first
hand, with the mighty revolution which is taking place there at present.
He fails, for one thing, to appreciate the wonderful influence of modern
scientific discovery as a unifier of all peoples and as the handmaid of
western life and thought and of Christian conquest. I need refer only to
one of these modern agencies--the telegraph. The election of Mr. McKinley
as president of the United States was known to me in India before it was
known to nine-tenths of the population of this land.

The calamity which recently befell Galveston, Texas, was not only known to
Hindus, the very next day; the price of cotton went up in South India
villages as a consequence of that sad event. The generous offerings
recently contributed in America for the famine sufferers in India were
actually distributed to them in food the next day after they were offered!
Can these things, and a thousand like them, which enter into the every-day
transactions of East and West, have no permanent influence upon the
relations of these once remote but now neighbouring people? Isolation has
everywhere given way to intercourse and mutual dependence; and that means
community of life and thought which produces fundamental action and
reaction.

Under these new and marvellous conditions