In the West the national evolutionist says to us, "Let the people of India alone, that they may evolve their own faith. It is not by cataclysmic change, but by growth, that they will ultimately find their true redemption." Others, who have listened perhaps to the pleasing words of a clever, yellow-robed Hindu Swami, ask the question, "Why should we spend our money in sending the Gospel to these wonderfully bright people of the East; are they not able to take care of themselves; and is not their faith adequate to their needs?"

To this we simply say: "Come with us to India and see for yourselves. Live, as some of us have, for a third of a century in this land, and see, hear, feel, and understand what this Hinduism is. And, having understood the situation, ask yourselves whether this ancestral faith of India has in itself real saving power and redeeming efficacy for any one." I maintain that, to know Hinduism, is to feel a deep sympathy with the people who have inherited it as their faith, and to desire to bring to them the Gospel of life and of salvation in Christ Jesus. The people of India are, perhaps, the most religious upon earth. In this respect they are very unlike the Japanese and Chinese, who are worldly, prosaic, practical. Hindus are poetic, other-worldly, and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. It has for them a separate department, a small corner, in the life. In the East, on the other hand, religion enters into every detail of life. There is hardly a department or an interest in life which is not subsidized by faith and which has not to be conducted religiously.

Moreover, the people of India thought out and elaborated most profound systems of theosophic thought in the far, remote past. When our ancestors were in the depths of savagery, Indian sages were indulging in metaphysical disquisitions which are even to-day the admiration of western sages. And there were many among those ancient Hindu rishis whose self-propelled flight toward God and divine things, and whose spiritual aspirations and yearnings were so beautiful that we can but speak with profound respect and entertain the highest admiration of them. Religion is not merely a philosophy, or even an aspiration; it is something vastly more than this.

The Hindu Swami will visit the West and discourse sweetly, in persuasive English, upon Hindu philosophy. But he will not practise his religious rites or reveal his idolatrous habits and his bondage of caste to those western people who admire him. These things would at once create a revulsion of feeling against him and his philosophy. And yet these are much more an essential part of his faith than all his moral platitudes and eloquent disquisitions.

And it should not be forgotten that this same Swami, in the very act of crossing the oceans to visit the West, violates one of the most prominent commands of his faith.