As an illustration of what I mean in reference to the influence of Eastern thought upon the West I would prophesy that ere long the Indian Christian Church will formulate for itself and enunciate to the world an advanced and helpful doctrine of the Holy Ghost beyond anything that the West has enunciated. India, which for these many centuries has been the home of an all-prevalent spiritual pantheism, when it comes to elaborate the doctrine of God, from a Christian standpoint, will give as much emphasis to His immanence as the West has given to His transcendence. God with us and in us and working in all creation, even the Holy Spirit of God,—this is the conception which the Indian Christian will elaborate and illuminate beyond anything that the West has thus far attempted.
There is danger, today, and it is inevitable, that [pg 142] missionaries from the West be too ambitious to occidentalize the native Christian community, ignorant of, or indifferent to, the grand possibilities of thought and of life which lie in Eastern character and teaching. It is much easier to thrust upon them everything Western than it is to appreciate and to conserve many things Eastern. The future missionary will learn wisdom from the past and will enter upon his work with less depreciation of things Oriental and with a larger desire to conserve to the utmost Eastern habits of thought and social customs, so long as, and so far as, they can be made the vehicles of Christian thought and the channels of Christian life. Herein must lie the best means for a speedy coming of the Kingdom of Christ in India.
Chapter V.
The Women Of India.
The condition of its women is the truest test of a people's civilization. Her status is her country's barometer.
The one hundred million women of India admirably reflect the whole social and religious condition of that land. There are more nations in India than are found in all Europe; they also present a greater diversity of type. Between the aboriginal tribes which treat the weaker sex only as a beast of burden, and the Parsee community which holds its women in the highest consideration and furnishes them with a liberal education and large opportunity, there are many intermediate tribes and nations which regard their women with varying degrees of consideration and of contempt.
Of all Scriptures the Zend Avesta of the Parsees is the only one which furnishes woman, from the beginning, with absolute equality with man; and that position she has never lost among the Parsees. But the Parsees in India are a mere handful.
The Hindu woman constitutes four-fifths of the total number of her sex in India; and her condition is fairly uniform everywhere and conforms, in varying degrees, to a type whose characteristics are easily recognized. She has come down from earliest history. We recognize her everywhere in the pages of [pg 144] their ancient literature, in their laws and legends; and we behold her in all the manifold walks of modern life. For nearly a quarter of a century the writer has lived as her neighbour, gazed daily upon her life, wondered at and admired her many noble traits which have been preserved under the most adverse circumstances, and grieved over her weakness and her many disabilities.