ious
character. I know a well-educated native Christian who applied for a
Government situation. He had good certificates; they were sent in, and
when the official to whom he applied came to know he was a Christian--he
knew nothing more about him--he threw them aside with the word
"_namunzoor_," "not accepted"--the technical term for "rejected." One
result of this English dislike to native Christians is that natives have
told me that none but missionaries and a few associated with them wished
them to become Christians; that English people generally wished them to
remain Hindus. It can be conceived how great is the stumbling-block thus
put in our way. A Church of England missionary of great experience once
said to me, "Would that there were no Europeans near us! We might then
hope for progress." I am not to vindicate the remark. I mention it to
show the effect on the mind of a devoted missionary by English hostility
to the conversion of natives. On every side, from European as well as
from native society, there is every worldly obstacle to their embracing
the Gospel.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION TO THE GOSPEL.]

At one time there were obstacles to the profession of Christianity which
do not now exist. When India was being brought under the sway of
England, our rulers regarded the Gospel as a disturbing and threatening
element, which ought to be carefully excluded. Long after the Christian
feeling at home had forced open the door, the Gospel was treated as an
intruder to be in every possible way thwarted and disgraced. In
illustration of the opposition the Gospel had to encounter, I quote a
few sentences from a recently-published volume, "Asiatic Studies,
Religious and Social," by Sir Alfred C. Lyall, K.C.B., the present
Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces:--"We disbursed
impartially to Hindus, Mussulmans, and Parsees, to heterodox and
orthodox, to Juggarnath's Car, and to the shrine of a Muhammadan who had
died fighting against infidels, perhaps against ourselves." "The chief
officers of the Company in India were so cautious to disown any
political connexion with Christianity that they were occasionally
reported to have no religion at all." "Up to the year 1831 native
Christians had been placed under the strongest civil disabilities by our
regulations.... Converts were liable to be deprived not only of
property, but of their wives and children; and they seem to have been
generally treated as unlucky out