f is really the same. Yes, their religion is just like ours."

They could not see the vital difference between even the most vitiated
forms of Christianity and their own Hinduism; there were so many
resemblances, and these filled their mental vision at the moment. One
could hardly wonder they could not.

They turned to me again, and with all the vigour of language at my
command I told them that neither we nor those with us ever went to any
church where we had reason to think there would be an exhibition of
ecclesiastical paraphernalia. We did not believe it was in accordance
with the simplicity of the Gospel; and I told them how simple the Truth
really was, but they would not believe me. Those sights they had seen
had struck them much as they struck the convert who described the
Confirmation service thus: "We went up and knelt down before a stick"
(the Bishop's pastoral staff). They had observed the immense attention
paid to all these sacred trifles, and naturally they appeared to them as
essential to the whole; part of it, nearly all of it, in fact; and even
where the service was in the vernacular, their attention had been
entirely diverted from the thing heard by the things seen.

Then I thought of the description of a primitive Christianity service as
given in 1 Corinthians. There the idea evidently was that if an outsider
came in, or looked in, as Hindus and Mohammedans so often look in here,
he should understand what was going on; and being convicted of his sin
and need, should be "convinced"; "and so, falling down on his face, he
will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth." Compare the
effect produced upon the minds of these Hindu men by what they saw of
our services, with the effect intended to be produced by the Holy Ghost.
Can we say we have improved upon His pattern?

Oh for a return to the simplicity and power of the Gospel of Christ!
Then we should not roll stumbling-blocks like these in our Indian
brother's way. Oh for a return to the days of the beginning of the Acts
of the Apostles, to obscurity, and poverty, and suffering, and shame,
and the utter absence of all earthly glory, and the winning of souls of
a different make to the type thought sufficiently spiritual now! Oh for
more of the signs of Apostleship--scars, and the cross--the real
cross--the reproach of Christ the Crucified,--no mitre here, but there
the crown!

CHAPTER XXVII

Though ye know Him not

"I hav