India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

The organized effort of the Indian Church for self-extension is rapidly multiplying. Every endeavour [pg 327] is put forth to train them out of that spirit of dependence which is one of the necessary evils incident to modern missions.

In nearly all well organized missions in India are found, as we have already seen, Home Missionary Societies, which are conducted and maintained by the people, and which constantly direct their thoughts to their privilege to further the cause of Christ in their own land and among their own people.

Work by the young for the young, also, is being conducted with increasing prevalence, zeal and success throughout the land.

Indeed, all departments of a healthful, normal life and activity are vigorously prosecuted on mission territory with a view to imparting to the Christians, not only a knowledge of the highest type of Christian altruism, but also for the purpose of making them partakers of the same.

And the Indian Christian community at present, notwithstanding all its faults and weaknesses, which I would not conceal, furnishes us much encouragement as a product of past effort and as a growing power which is to be used by God in the speedy upbuilding of his Kingdom in that great land of the East.

There are, indeed, not many forms of organized Christian activity conducted by Indian Christians themselves—apart from Western missions. There are some, however, which are worthy of note and commendation. Such are Pandita Ramabai's Mukti Mission for Widows; Miss Chuckerbutty's flourishing Orphanages; Mrs. Sorabji's High School for Women; the Gopalgange Mission started by the Rev. [pg 328] M. N. Bose, and Dr. P. B. Keskar's Orphanage and Industrial School at Sholapur.

Recently a novel enterprise was inaugurated in the American Mission, Jaffna, Ceylon, in the form of a Foreign Missionary Society, which sends forth, to a region in Southern India, its missionaries to carry the gospel of Christ to the non-Christians of that place. It is chiefly conducted and supported by the young people of the mission and is prophetic of a movement which will, ere long, spring up throughout India as a result of a growing sense of responsibility and opportunity among the Christians of that land.

It is with no spirit of boasting that I wish to dwell upon the share which America has had in producing these results. Other people have done in some respects, better than we. But there is no doubt that India is much influenced by our land. America has, for a century, lavishly given her sons and daughters and expended her wealth for the salvation of India. Her sacrifices have not been in vain. None have found more hearty response among that people than the American Missions. Among the many Protestant Missions now at work in that Peninsula less than one-fourth are American; and, yet in connection with these missions have been gathered and are found nearly one-half of all of the Protestant Christians of that land. In South India the mission which has found much the largest success in gathering converts is an American Mission. In North India, again, one of our missions stands preëminent in the multitude of its Christians, and another, in the excellence of its educational power and leavening influence. In Western India, also, America stands first in the acknowledged [pg 329] power and preëminence of one of its missions.

In the organized movements for the young, America again stands conspicuous in that land. As we study the wonderful activity exercised by Protestant Christianity in behalf of India's youth, we are at once impressed by the leadership of American workers as we are by the American methods used.

The finest Y. M. C. A. building in the Orient is mostly American, both in conception and in the organized energy and princely offering which made it possible. It stands today in the city of Madras, as one of the noblest and the most beautiful tributes of western Christian enterprise to that great land.