e of their work? Here and there in the book
there is just a suggestion that they are wrong in doing so. But how can
they help it? What does a clergyman or an evangelist in England tell of?
Does he tell of his many daily disappointments, or of his occasional
encouraging cases? The latter are the events of his life, and he
naturally tells of them. The former he comprises in some general
statement. How can he do otherwise? And what can the modern missionary
do in the short reports he is able to write? Fifty years ago missionary
journals of immense length came home, and were duly published; and then
the details of Hindu idolatry and cruelty and impurity, and the
tremendous obstacles to the Gospel, were better known by the few regular
readers. Much that Miss Carmichael tells was then told over and over
again, though not perhaps with a skilful pen like hers. But the work has
so greatly developed in each mission, and the missions are so far more
numerous and extended, that neither can missionaries now write as their
predecessors did, nor, if they did, could all the missionary periodicals
together find space for their journals.

The fault of incorrect impressions lies mainly in the want of knowledge
and want of thought of home speakers and preachers. I remember, thirty
years ago, an eloquent Bishop in Exeter Hall triumphantly flinging in
the face of critics of missions the question, "Is Tinnevelly a
fiction?"--as if Tinnevelly had become a Christian country, which
apparently some people still suppose it to be, notwithstanding the
warning words to the contrary which the C.M.S. publications have again
and again uttered. Even now, there are in Tinnevelly about twenty
heathen to every one Christian; and of what sort the twenty are this
book tells. Tinnevelly is indeed "no fiction," but in a very different
sense from that of the good Bishop's speech. Again, a few months ago, I
heard a preacher, not very favourable to the C.M.S., say that the
C.M.S., despite its shortcomings, deserved well of the Church because it
had "converted a nation" in Uganda!--as if the nation comprised only
30,000 souls. Some day the "Actual" of Uganda will be better understood,
and the inevitable shortcomings of even its Christian population
realised, and then we shall be told that we deceived the
public--although we have warned them over and over again.

But the larger part of this book is a revelation--so far as is
possible--of the "Actual" of Hinduism an