ent.

The chair now served as a text. "When your Bishop comes round your
churches, does he not sit in a chair like that, himself apart from the
people? And in like manner our Guru sits. There is much similarity. Also
do not your Christians stand"--and he imitated the peculiarly
deferential attitude adopted on such occasions by some--"just in the
fashion that we stand? And do not your people feel themselves blessed
by the presence of the Great? Oh, there is much similarity!"

I explained that all this, though foolish, was not intended for more
than respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled.
Then he went on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our
churches (probably while on duty as Government servant): the display, as
it seemed to him, so like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine,
like this; the bowing and prostrating, and even on the part of those who
did not do these things, the evident participation in the whole grand
show. And the other men, who apparently had looked in through the open
windows and doors, agreed with him.

He is not the first who has been stumbled in the same way; and I
remembered, as he talked, what a Mohammedan woman said to a friend of
mine about one of our English churches, seen through her husband's eyes.
"You have idols in your church," she said, "to which you bow in
worship." She referred to the things on or above the Communion table. My
friend explained the things were not idols. "Then why do your people bow
to them?" Was there nothing in the question?

Often we wonder whether the rapid but insidious increase of ritual in
India is understood at home. In England it is bad enough, but in a
heathen and Mohammedan land it is, if possible, worse; and the worst is,
the spirit of it, or the spirit of tolerance toward it, which is on the
increase even in missionary circles. Some of our Tamil people attend the
English service in these "advanced" churches after their own service is
over, and thus become familiarised with and gradually acclimatised to
an ecclesiastical atmosphere foreign to them as members of a Protestant
Society.

I remember spending a Sunday afternoon with a worthy pastor and his
wife, stationed in the place where the church is in which the "idols are
worshipped" according to the Mohammedans. When the bell rang for evening
service he began to shuffle rather as if he wanted me to go. But he was
too polite to say so, and the reason never struck me