orthodox brahman surveying the moral and material changes that English
rule is producing in India, he says: "We are parting rapidly under ...
this Public Instruction with our religious beliefs." The old brahman
warns the British Government that the old deities are being dethroned,
and that the responsibility for famines, formerly imputed to the gods,
is being cast upon the British Government. Another official witness
speaks still more plainly. _The Bengal Government Report_ upon the
publications of the year 1899 asserts: "All this revolution in the
religious belief of the educated Hindu has been brought about as much by
the dissemination of Christian thought by missionaries as by the study
of Hindu scriptures; for Christian influence is detectable in many of
the Hindu publications of the year." The writer of the _Report_ is a
Hindu gentleman. The _Report of the Census of India_, 1901, declares
that "the influence of Christian teaching is ... far reaching, and that
there are many whose acts and opinions have been greatly modified
thereby." After these statements from secular and official writers, we
may refrain from quoting from Mission authorities more than the
statement of the Decennial Conference of representative missionaries
from all India in 1902. The statement refers to South India.
"Christianity," we are told, "is in the air. The higher classes are
assimilating its ideas."[48] Thus from East and North and South, from
officials and non-officials, from Europeans and natives, comes
concurrent testimony. There is no declared Reformation, but Christian
and Western religious ideas are leavening India.

[Sidenote: Variety of religious ideas in India.]

To the student of Comparative Religion, or of Christianity, or of the
general progress of nations, that testimony from India is particularly
interesting. To the student of Comparative Religion, India presents a