waxed
strong. Ignorant faith does not help us much. Some years ago, when the
first girl-convert came, friends wrote rejoicing that now the wall of
Caste must give way; they expected soon to hear it had. As if a grain of
dust falling from one of the bricks in that wall would in anywise shake
the wall itself! Such faith is kind, but there it ends. It talks of what
it knows not.

Then, as to the people themselves, there are certain fallacies which die
hard. We read, the other day, in a home paper, that it was a well-known
fact that "Indian women never smile." We were surprised to hear it. We
had not noticed it. Perhaps, if they were one and all so abnormally
depressed, we should find them less unwilling to welcome the Glad
Tidings. Again, we read that you can distinguish between heathen and
Christian by the wonderful light on the Christians' faces, as compared
with "the sad expression on the faces of the poor benighted heathen." It
is true that some Christians are really illuminated, but, as a whole,
the heathen are so remarkably cheerful that the difference is not so
defined as one might think. Then, again, we read in descriptive articles
on India that the weary, hopeless longing of the people is most
touching. But we find that our chief difficulty is to get them to
believe that there is anything to long for. Rather we would describe
them as those who think they have need of nothing, knowing not that they
have need of everything. And again and again we read thrilling
descriptions of India's women standing with their hands stretched out
towards God. They may do this in visions; in reality they do not. And it
is the utter absence of all this sort of thing which makes your help a
necessity to us.

But none of you can pray in the way we want you to pray, unless the mind
is convinced that the thing concerning which such prayer is asked is
wholly just and right; and it seems to us that many of those who have
followed the Story of this War may have doubts about the right of
it--the right, for example, of converts leaving their homes for Christ's
sake and His Gospel's. All will be in sympathy with us when we try to
save little children, but perhaps some are out of sympathy when we do
what results in sorrow and misunderstanding--"not peace, but a sword."
So we purpose now to gather up into three, some of the many objections
which are often urged upon those engaged in this sort of work, because
we feel that they ought to be faced