INDIA’S EMANCIPATION.

Evening Star, Issue 11661, 16 December 1902, Page 4

INDIA’S EMANCIPATION.

NO LONGER A DREAM, BUT A WORK IN PROGRESS. AS SHOWN BY OFFICIAL RECORDS. Thia morning, thanks to the courtesy of Mr T. A. Maitland, one of our reporters was permitted to visit at that gentleman’s residence the Rev. Alfred North, who has come back from India. In the course of conversation the rev. gentleman said : . I went to India with a double object. I was made pastor of an English-speaking church in Calcutta. I was also appointed ,the Indian secretary of the Victorian, Queensland, and New Zealand Baptist Missionary Societies. My hope 1736 to further mission work in that land; my desire, to learn on the spot by personal observation the facts about the missions and to inquire into the condition of the people religiously, especially about modern popular Eindooism. I wanted to find ont what the people believe in, for, after all, what concerns ns is the religion of the people, not the professions as to religion of a select few who are leaders. I had plenty of opportunities. I moved about the country a good deal, especially in the Province of Bengal, and saw the people in the towns as well as in the country. During my jonmeyings I visited Benares and other sacred places, and at certain temples found startling evidences of degrading forms of worship that, can only be compared to the indescribable rites of the ancient Casaanites. The outside world at large has no conception of these sonl-de-stroying horrors. I found, also, the influence of caste rearing itself stall as a strong barrier to reform.

Rut I also found much to rejoice the missionary’s heart. Chiefly through the philanthropic aspects of mission work, the people at large are becoming increasingly accessible. They are learning to regard the missionaries as friends, and wherever medical missions are established—and nearly every missionary does more or less in that way to afford help in physical troubles—the accessibility of the people is increasing largely. As an example I may quote the experience of my son, Dr Charles North, at Chandpur, in East. Bengal. The New Zealand Baptists have erected a hospital there, and during the first eleven 'months he had patients from over 500 villages in that district. The official returns of the 1901 census are also most encouraging in regard to mission work. I have by mo several of the Government reports. Hero is the Assam xe--1 ort. It states that the Christian population has in thh last ten years risen from 14.762 to 33,592. That means an increase of 128 per cent., and this progress is entirely .due to missionary agency. Evangelistic work has been carried on in Bengal for more than 100 years, yet here, to the great astonishment of all concerned, the records show a gain of 45 per cent, in the ten years. In Madras, where the real pioneers ox Protestant missions began, the increase of native Christians is 19 per cent. I have not the figures for Bombay, hut they are highly satisfactory, and the results in the north-west provinces surprised everyone. The tofal number of Christians of all kinds in India now is 2,923,349, an increase in ten years of 638.969. Of the total, 170,000 are Europeans, 90,000 are Eurasians, and 2,644,359 are native Christians.

Those figures are official. Now, let me give yon a statement which is not official, but given on the authority of an established newspaper. The ‘ Madras Times ’ says: “Assuming the increase of the general population and the Christian community in this country to continue in the same proportion, the whole of India will become Christian soon after the middle of next century.”