The “Madras Native Christian Association” is perhaps the strongest organization of the community. It unites hundreds of the best members and gives them a corporate existence and furnishes opportunity to render articulate the ideals, ambitions and needs of the Christian community. It has recently undertaken several enterprises of importance, such as The Twentieth Century Enterprise and the Indian Christian Industrial Exhibition. It discusses, with much sanity, the most serious problems of the community and creates a worthy sentiment which will increasingly spread until it reaches the remotest parts of the country.
All this tends to show that the community is growing conscious both of its strength, its responsibility and its opportunity.
Rev. S. Sattianatha, LL.D.
Mrs. S. Kruba Sattianatha.
For the furtherance of this purpose weekly and monthly magazines, both in the English language and in the vernaculars, are being conducted by them. The Christian Patriot, the best organ of the community, is published in Madras, is conducted with much ability and represents the best sentiments of its constituents. It has done much to develop the consciousness of life and power in the community and has always urged worthy ideals upon its readers.
The seriousness with which all the native Christians of India regard their calling and the gratitude with which they enjoy their faith is clearly attested by their offerings.
Perhaps nothing can render more satisfactory reply to those who charge the native Christians with worldly motives than to show how far they deny themselves in behalf of their faith. In other words the benevolence and offerings of the native Christians may be taken as a fair test of their sincerity and of their spiritual appreciation. It is a good test in any land. I have said that they are very poor. A few years ago I investigated carefully the economic conditions of the most prosperous and largest village congregation of the Madura Mission. I discovered that five rupees (that is $1.66) was the average monthly income of each family of that congregation. And that meant only thirty-three cents a month for the support of each member of a family! We have congregations whose income is less than this. And yet, the Christians of that mission contributed over two rupees (seventy-five cents) per church member as their offering for 1900. For all the Protestant Missions of South India the average offering per church member during [pg 326] 1900 was one rupee and nine annas (fifty-two cents). For South India this represented an aggregate sum of R 248,852 ($85,000) or about seven and one-half per cent, of the total sum expended in the missions during that year. An American can easily realize how much this offering is as an absolute gift; but he cannot realize how much of self-denial it means to that very poor people; nor how large an offering it is as related to the best offerings of our home churches today. If our American Christians contributed for the cause of Christ a percentage of their income equal to that of the native Christians of India they would quadruple their benevolence. And if, in relation to their income, the Christians of India contribute four times as much as the Christians of America, in relation to their real ability, after supplying the most primitive needs of their bodies, they contribute a hundred times more than do their brothers and sisters in this great land of luxury and abundance. Who in America, today, in contributing to the cause of Christ, denies himself a convenience or a comfort; yea more, who on that account fails to meet the craving of bodily appetite? And yet there are many Christians in India who suffer in both these respects in order that they may add the widow's mite to the treasury of the Church and their loving offering to advance the Kingdom of the Lord.
In this way the infant Christian Church of India, in its poverty of this world's goods, is revealing a wealth of spirit and a richness of purpose such as are worthy of emulation in Christian lands today.