accompanied with a laugh. On the second occasion, when the lady was having trouble with a slow pupil, one of the women present, sympathising with the teacher, said, "Do not trouble with her; perhaps next time when she comes back she will be cleverer." The general conclusion, therefore, I repeat: Transmigration is no longer a living part of the belief of educated India; the Christian conception of the Hereafter is as yet only partially taking its place.
CHAPTER XIX
THE IDEAS OF SIN AND SALVATION
Recapitulation.
The new Theism.
In the new India, as fish out of the water die, many things cannot survive. We have seen the educated Hindu dropping polytheism, forgetting pantheism, and adopting or readopting monotheism as the basis of his religious thinking and feeling. For modern enlightenment and Indian polytheism are incongruous; there is a like incongruity between Indian pantheism and the modern demand for practical reality. Likewise, both polytheism and pantheism are inconsistent with Christian thought, which is no minor factor in the education of modern India. Further, the theism that the educated Hindu is adopting as the basis of his religion approaches to Christian Theism. The doctrines of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man have become commonplaces in his mouth.
Likewise, the educated Hindu is strongly attracted to the person of Jesus Christ, in spite of His alien birth and His association with Great Britain. There is a sweet savour in His presence, and the man of any spirituality finds it grateful to sit at His feet. That familiar oriental expression, hyperbolical to our ears, but ever upon the lips in India to express the relationship of student to trusted professor, or of disciple to religious teacher, expresses exactly the relationship to Jesus Christ of the educated man who is possessed of any religious instinct. To such a man the miracles, the superhuman claims, the highest titles of Jesus Christ, present no difficulty until they are formulated for his subscription in some hard dogmatic mould. Then he must question and discuss.
Transmigration forgotten.
Again, the educated Hindu finds himself employing about the dead and the hereafter not the language of transmigration, but words that convey the idea of a continuation of our present consciousness in the presence of a personal God. For life is becoming worth living, and the thought of life continuing and progressing is acceptable. This present life also has become a reality; a devotee renouncing the world may