into closer contact than any others with Europeans in their missionaries
and teachers, their minds have been open to all the new ideas. We know
in fact that Indian Christians are often charged, by persons who do not
appreciate the situation, with being over-Europeanised. It may be so in
certain ways, but, irrespective of Christianity or Hinduism, the
adoption of European ways results from contact with Europeans, and in
certain respects is almost a condition of intercourse with Europeans.
Let those, for example, who talk glibly about Indians sticking to their
own dress, know that gentlemen in actual native dress are not allowed to
walk on that side of the bandstand promenade in Calcutta where Europeans
sit--a scandal crying for removal. With regard to the new national
consciousness, it may be repeated that the Indian Christian community is
almost as alive with the national feeling as the educated Hindu
community. As the Indian Church becomes at once more indigenous and more
thoroughly educated in Western learning, as it becomes less identified
with European denominations, and less dependent upon stimulus from
without, it will no doubt become still more national in every sense, be
more recognised as one of India's institutions, and become a powerful
educator in India. Once within the environment of the national feeling,
the seed of Christian thought and modern ideas will spring up and
spontaneously flourish. The future progress of the Indian Church may be
said to depend upon the growth of that national consciousness within it.
The sense of independence and the duty of self-support and union are,
properly, being fostered in the native churches. But one of the dangers
ahead undoubtedly is that, like one of the other religious movements of
the past century, or like the Ethiopian Church in South Africa, the
Indian Church may become infected with the political rather than the
religious aspect of the idea.

[Sidenote: The Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j.]