kindred but non-magnetised bodies lying loosely around. In the presence,
simply, of these dynamical elements, or in contact with them, Indian
religious thought is becoming polarised. Towards and away from the same
great points, Indian religious thought is setting. These dynamical
elements of Christianity, and the illustration of their power, will be
considered in the following chapters.

Of the elements of Christianity that have proved themselves dynamical,
we may note the natural order in which they have come. The order in
which I have stated them is the order in which they asserted themselves,
first "God Our Father," then "Jesus Christ Himself." First, of this
world in which we find ourselves, when our _minds_ awake, we must have
some satisfying conception. The belief in one God, in Him for whom we
can find no better name than "Our Father," approved itself to awakened
India, to the _intellectually_ enlightened, and in the first place to
small groups of enlightened men in the large towns, the centres of
modern education and Christian influence. Then came an advance of a
different nature altogether. To those spiritually minded and more
intense men who needed a religious master, a hero, to whom their
_hearts_ might go out, there came, after certain obstacles had been
broken down, some knowledge of the actual historical Jesus Christ. The
first stage satisfied the _mind_ of modern educated India; the second
stage concerns the highest affections and the lives. We know the step,
when in the Apostles' Creed we pass from "I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," to the words "and in Jesus
Christ." Thereat we have brought theology down from heaven to earth; or
rather, in these days we would say, in Jesus Christ we have obtained on
earth, in actual history, in our affections, a foundation on which to
rear our system of actual and motive-giving belief.