EVANGELISING INDIA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 468, 31 March 1882, Page 7

EVANGELISING INDIA.

A strange scene occurred at a meeting held at Pcona on Saturday, Jan. 21, for ths purpose of hearing a Icctme by Mr. Cook, the American gentleman who wn,s last week delivering addresses at the Framjee Cowasjeed Institute in Bombay. The Deccan Herald states :—: — "On Saturday, at 4 p.m., Mr. Cook delivered a lecture at the Poona Town Hall (Hirabag). The hall was crowded to suffocation and numbers could not even find standing room. The lecturer spoke of the growing scepticism of educated young India, and said that its grasp upon the educated men of: Europe was growing weaker every diy, that the rationalistic schools of Germany were almost all deserted and the evangelic il schools in that country were again growing in power. Science thus defeated, little remained to come into the field with Christianity. That Deism and Theism were void of all hope and effect on creeds, and India, having cast off her superstition and her dry meaningless rituals, and having seen the futility of Deism, must become Christian. The lecturer tried to prove by statistics th\t in fifty years more India shall lay down the crown of glory at the feet of the Saviour (applause). The lecturer then asked the natives to join in a prayer with him (cries of No ! No !) The lecturer then asked the Hindus to join him ia the Lord's prayer in the name of their false gods (cries of Shame 1 Shame !) Here Mr. Luke Rivington got up and said : " The Lord's prayer is a very sacred and solemn prayer, and no one t-hould be asked to join in it, unless he has received holy baptism. It is no use casting pearls before swine." (cries of " Who are the swine ?") Mr. Small then got up and paid that be bad lived for eighteen years among the Brahmins, and he never had to call any of them swine. The President, Major Rowlandson, here interposed and said that he disagreed with the lecturer in insisting upon offering up the Prayer, as the audience consisted of varied creeds, and he ruled that the meeting should disperse without the Pray er being said. Mr. Cook got very much excited, and paid that, without meaning any disrespect to the President, he would not be bound by the President or the committee and said he would offer up a Salect? (silent) prayer. The meeting then dispersed amidst hisses and applause-