and will be done.
Thou, who alone doest wondrous things, work on.
'So will we sing and praise Thy power.'"
_Rev. T. Walker, India._

PERHAPS it would help towards the better understanding of these letters
if we stopped and explained things a little. Some may have been
wondering, as they read, how it is that while the South Indian fields
are constantly quoted as among the most fruitful in the world, we seem
to be dealing with a class where fruit is very rare, and so subject to
blighting influences after it has appeared, that we hardly like to speak
of it till it is ripe and reaped and safe in the heavenly garner. I
think it will be easier to understand all this if we view Hindu Tamil
South India (with which alone this book deals) from the outside, and let
it fall into two divisions the Classes and the Masses. There is, of
course, the border line between, crossed over on either side by some who
belong to the Classes but are almost of the Masses, and by some who
belong to the Masses but are almost of the Classes. Broadly speaking,
however, there is a distinct difference between the two. As to their
attitude towards the Gospel, the Classes and the Masses unite; they are
wholly indifferent to it.

In a paper read at the Student Volunteers' Conference in 1900, a South
Indian missionary summed up the matter in a comprehensive sentence:
"Shut in for millenniums by the gigantic wall of the Himalayas on the
North, and by the impassable ocean on the South, they have lived in
seclusion from the rest of the world, and have developed social
institutions and conceptions of the universe, and of right and wrong,
quite their own. Their own religion and traditionary customs are
accepted as sufficiently meeting their needs, and they are not conscious
of needing any teaching from foreigners. They will always listen
courteously to what we say, and this constitutes an open door for the
Gospel, but of conscious need and hungering for the Gospel there is
little or none. So long as it is only a matter of preaching, there are
in the world no more patient listeners than the Hindus. But as soon as a
case arises of one of their number abandoning the Caste customs and
traditionary worship, all their hostility is aroused, and the whole
community feels it a duty of patriotism to do its utmost to deprive that
individual of liberty of action, and to defend the vested rights of
Hinduism."

For th