t population.
In the North-Western Provinces and Punjab alone there is a population
twice as large as that of Great Britain and Ireland. Those of this
population who may be said to be educated in a high degree are the
merest handful. You travel hundreds of miles through regions full of
towns, villages, and hamlets, where you find that the partially educated
are very few compared with the wholly uneducated many. Even most of the
shopkeepers who can keep accounts well are unable to read a book with
ease, as the written and printed characters are very different. All know
that their English rulers are called Christians; those who live near the
great lines of road hear an occasional address from a passing
missionary, many frequenters of melas have come under the sound of the
Gospel, but the vast majority have not the slightest conception of its
meaning. When Christianity had spread to a considerable extent in the
Roman Empire, country districts were so little affected by it that
_pagani_ (villagers) became soon synonymous with "heathen," the only
meaning which attaches to the word as it is now used by us. A vast work
has to be done before the villagers of Northern India cease to be pagans
in our sense of the word. The work of evangelization is only in its
initial stage. It is yet with us the day of small things--but it is the
day, not the night. The morning has dawned; over a great part of
Northern India we can only see the faint streaks of the coming day, but
the light will spread, the darkness will vanish, and the millions of
that great country will yet be gladdened by the beams of the Sun of
Righteousness.

I mention, and merely mention, help which India gives for the solution
of some great questions:--

(1) _The immobility of the Eastern mind._ In manner of life, in
salutations, in offerings of inferiors to superiors, in many customs,
the far East, like the nearer East, continually reminds us of the East
as presented in the records of antiquity--above all as presented to us
in the Bible. He must be a very careless observer who has not been
struck with the resemblance. The restless changing West furnishes in
this respect a striking contrast to the staid, unchanging East. There
has been no such immobility as to religious opinion and practice. There,
as elsewhere, it holds true that man's mind never remains in one stay.
The Hindus of the present day speak of their Vedic ancestors with
profound reverence, but if they were