Anglo-Indians from religious and social progress in India. Thrice at
least did one of the most distinguished viceroys, when addressing native
audiences, advise them to stick to their own beliefs, using these or
very similar words. He was addressing Mahomedans at one place, Hindus at
the second place, and Buddhists at the third, and we leave his advice at
one place to contradict his advice at another. Certainly let us allow
for variation in local usage, and in subjective opinion, while we are
insisting on the universality and objectivity of truth. For in spite of
new and strange environment, in spite of that prevailing notion that
religion is a racial thing, of the natural disinclination to change, of
modern agnosticism and materialism when the old ideas do give way--in
spite of these things, some of the cardinal features of Christianity are
commending themselves to educated India. Far from religion being racial,
the recent religious evolution of India suggests that in respect of the
religious instinct and the religious faculty, mankind are one, not
divided. _A priori_, therefore, we might anticipate that the elements of
Christianity which have proved dynamical with new India will be the same
that have proved their dynamic with educated men at home. So far as the
situation in India has been created by the destructive influence of
modern education, and by what may be called the modern spirit, the same
influences are telling both in Europe and in India; they have come from
Europe to India. There is the same unwillingness to believe in the
supernatural, and the same demand that religion shall satisfy ethical
and utilitarian tests. One difference, however, we may note. The
educated men of India may not be living so entirely in the modern
atmosphere as the men of Europe and America; but in India the modern
spirit finds usages and systems of thought more inconsistent with modern
ideas. As a consequence, where in India the modern spirit _has_ come, it
has stripped men barer of belief. Listen to the following curious
conglomeration, showing the influences at work, constructive and