The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-01-31
RELIGIOUS NEWS; WHAT CHURCH
 PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT
ndia's Ferment and Its Causes "A Striking Pictur of One Phase of Missionary Work Com
 nlent on Christian Endeavor Topics.

India is coming into the worlds eye. The cables are carrying steadily tn- krsasing number of news despatches from that troubled land, Sedition, assassination, uprest revolt and reJ form are making news rapidly. The missionary messages from this country ieu up-to- date political and social inte- rest. He who does not know anything later about India than the time of iCarey, or even of the time of the 'Mutiny, needs enlightenment.
 Evefything that India is to-day ask ing the United States and Canada to- day have, thanks to q Christian herit- age.
 After little more than hundred years, there are now more than thousand ordained male Protestant missionaries in India. and q native lchurch with q membership or more than a million. The ratio ef .Christian increase moreover. Is four times as rapid as that of the population at large,
 Some of the heroes of missions in India are Christians who never left their fomeIands but whose interest and devotion has borne unreckoned fruit in < that distant country.
 One day visited the icper station at Allahabad with the missionary. Mir. samuel Higginbothanl. who has 1t in charge his Is not the place to re- cord the sights Of that memorable day We stayed out of doors untirA past noon and the temperature was one hundred and fifty degrees. Tn conse- quence came seriously i'll. But the only time Mir. HlggInbothafn gets for 1aiis leper asylum work Is these sbet- ween hours- when he should be rest ing in the shelter of lsis horne. My own little experience, hazardous as 1t was, taught me the price that some they are doing: and am inclined to include many of these undistinguished missionaries of the present. day In the role of heroes.
 The tremendous increase of convlcts an some parts of India. and especially in the Methodist Episcopal fields. has laid gigantic burdens--greater. In a way, than Carey ever knew--upon the shoulders of leading missionaries; such as Bishop Warne he of the statesman- like. vision and ctild-like heart.
 India has throughout her history been the scene of religious conflict. One faith has succeeded another Only to-day the newspaper reported armed fighting between Mohammedans and Hindus in Bengal. Buddhism has been crowded out into the fringes of che country, making it's last stand in CeyIon. Now the greatest struggle of all, the final one, Is on. with Christ aanky arrayed against all non-chris- tian faiths The progress of the battle is increasingly dramatic; the issue will mean not only the redemption 7 Rrom ignorance. superaitltion and mis- cry of one fifth of the human race. but 1t will also mark the conquest of lthe greatest stronghold of heathen- l21om
 The people of. India, like those of kAthens, are tt6o religious." as Paul ssaid The whole life of the nation Is Hrnpregnated with the religious ieda, kwith the religious practices and re- kigfous beliefs. to degree nowhere Ielse to be paralleled. Yet lower level fof immortality and degradation iE .reached in connection with the religl. lous rites of India than I have been table to discover anywhere else in the world. &
 Muliform Hinduism, with its million idefties and its blight of caste, is the Eprincipal faith of India. Then come lMohammedanism Christianity. Zoro- lustrianism or re-worship, and vari- lOus smaller sects.
 For every man. woman and child on the great North American continent there are three in the smaller land of India. ~a
 Somehow. the shining names of Carey Judson, Dun and Martyr will not flow from pen. as I contemplate India's missionary heroes. For l can. not help thinking of Hume. and Ewing, and Forman. and Robertson, and Jones, and Cook, and whole company of present successors to the high once Of these famous one who have gone tc their grave. Inequalities of statesnan- ship, devotion, efficieny-not to be mentioned results-these latter are fully the peer of their predecessors.
 If I had the power to paint the picture of Miss Moulton, of the Ameri- can Board Mission, as I one day saw her at the veranda of the hospital in Ahmedagor, comforting a native Chris E tian teache err whose wife was being brought in. sick unto death. would have penned a sufficient answer to all criticism of woman's work in missions. Or could I rescribe the clinic which U one 0dy witnessed m LHc LSuCRnOW hospital of pr. Cook. of the Reformed Episcopal Mission, would start such a tide of support for all India medl- cal missions as would never abate un- til this sorely -smttten land has found the great healing ct the hands of the Great Physician. There would be a new figure in the realm of woman'S education. to rank with Mary Lyon and Alice Freeman Palmer If I, or some- one else, could adequoately represent Forman, of the Wanamaker, 0irrs School in Allahabad as I saw her amid rher girls, and heard. up and down .the land, of her work. in that same city also met two Michigan girls. Misses Wishard and Bertseh of the ewoman's Union Zenana Mission, whose 'slmplenarrated achievements among .their drak- skinned sisters who live be- ka1ind the Purdah would satisfy the ,most ambitious college birl's eomcsp- ttion of a career.
 All of India's needs are compre- hended within her need of the new life which is in Jesus Christ.
 SEVEN SENTENCE SERMONS,
 Let thy discontents be thy secrets-- Benjamin Franklin.
 The people who have bad notion of God have also bad State, bad gov ernment, bad laws.-Hegel.