ion.

With such profound ignorance of the essential qualities of the faiths
which are to be harmonized, and with a placid assumption that these
religions are of the same efficacy, only to different peoples, it is
impossible to see how Theosophy can ever render a service to any of
the faiths or to the people who are their adherents which will not
ultimately prove a disservice to all. Peace without truth, like peace
without honour, will not ultimately redound to the promotion of
religion or to the salvation of men.

Whatever Theosophy may render toward the development of an Oriental
literature will depend largely upon its attitude toward truth and
religion in general, and toward Hinduism and Christianity in
particular. Its bitter attitude toward Christianity in the past does
not encourage one to believe that hereafter the literature fostered by
it will be either very impartial or very sane. And yet we shall be
thankful for anything it may accomplish in the preservation of
Sanskrit manuscripts and in the development of a wholesome literature
of any kind on lines purely Oriental.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA

I

For at least seventeen centuries Christianity has found a home in
India. The Syrian Church was the first to gather converts, and it
still exists as a separate sect of 300,000 souls in a small part of
Malabar. Roman Catholicism, also, has had here its six centuries of
struggles and varied fortunes, and now claims its 1,500,000 followers.
On July 9, 1906, the Protestants celebrated the bicentenary of the
landing of their first two missionaries at Tranquebar, on the
Coromandel coast. Ziegenbalg and Plutscho were truly men of God, and
inaugurated a work which to-day has its ramifications in every part of
this vast peninsula.

They introduced a new era of missionary effort for India. Former
endeavours were ecclesiastical. Great men, indeed, had wrought for
Christ in this land; but their chief aim had been to establish a
religion of forms and ceremonies. In the matter of ritual in
religion, Hinduism has little to learn from, and has much to suggest
to, western ecclesiastics. The early failure of our faith to secure
marked and permanent success in this land finds its chief cause here.

Ziegenbalg began in the right way. He identified himself with the
people; he studied well their language, and hastened to incarnate his
faith in vernacular literature; and, above all, he proceeded at