variance with what would appear to be the
right verdict.

There is another reason why the Panchayat, as applied to Christian
congregations, is not altogether wholesome. The true spirit of charity
is a difficult virtue to acquire. When two people quarrel, unless they
quickly forgive, they are generally anxious to air their grievance.
Indians in particular wish the whole matter gone into with
elaboration, so that, as they say, justice may be done. The Panchayat
gives exactly the opening which they crave. A quarrel between two
neighbours, which ought to have been quickly adjusted by mutual
forgiveness, becomes a subject of endless discussion. Many others get
dragged into it; and the spirit of discord, instead of being laid to
rest by the proceedings of the Panchayat, often finds a greatly
enlarged scope for mischief.

In bringing a case of immorality before this tribunal the evil is
intensified. The matter is gone into minutely, with much freedom of
expression. Nor does it end there. The members of the Panchayat return
to their homes, and, with the fullest detail, repeat to wife and
children the incidents that the inquiry has disclosed. For days it is
the all-engrossing subject of conversation. "There is no reserve
amongst us in the sense that you English people have it," said a
leading Indian Christian to me; "there is nothing which our children
do not know." Consulting an intelligent Christian Indian on the
difficult question as to how much might be said with safety when
warning the young on the subject of purity, he replied: "It is
impossible to teach them anything which they do not know already.
Other people talk to them, and the youngest know all that there is to
be known."

It should be added, that although with very few exceptions this is
certainly true, the knowledge of evil does not, as a matter of course,
produce evil, and there are many Indian Christian lads who, sustained
by the power of sacramental grace, are leading lives of exemplary
self-control, while living in circumstances of great temptation.

Whatever may have been the case in years gone by, the out-caste people
of a village are not now the downtrodden, servile folk such as they
are commonly supposed to be, although there are still instances of
individual oppression. Most of them are leading more wholesome lives
than those of the richer, self-indulgent men, and this is evidenced
by their more vigorous and manly frame. They are, to some extent, at