accommodated according to what they pay, without distinction of caste or rank, and all arrive at the same time! It is the same with their courts of justice; if you have only money enough you may sue anybody you please, and get a decree too, sometimes, and have it executed against the wealthiest banker in the county town (though that is a dangerous experiment, by no means to be recommended, for, after all, Lukshmi, the goddess of wealth, has it all her way in this world, and bankers are her special favourites). Then, this 'Lightning-post,' what a wonderful invention it is! It beats even the railway as a manifestation of benevolence, justice, and equality; for every one's message goes in turn, and all for the same price per dozen words."*

Now, this equalizing and levelling policy, which at first was a great puzzle to the villagers, seems explained by what this Dhurm Padre says. "He tells of One God over all of one Saviour for all-and insists that this God made of one blood all mankind-and there is no distinction before Him of Brahman or 'outsider ;' that all will be equal in death, and all be judged by one rule after death."

'If the Sahibs really believe this, no wonder all their doings and inventions have such a levelling tendency.” The oldest of the community of outsiders have never heard anything of the kind before, and some of them resolve "To inquire more about what the Padre says, and, if possible, make their children attend some school where they may learn to read these books, which the Padre gives so freely, and which tell such wonderful things, not only of London, and railways, and the electric telegraph; but of

* These are not imaginary conversations, but taken from remarks which anyone who talks to this class of people may hear almost any day in their common conversation.

the New Heavens and New Earth, in which dwelleth righteousness."

Perhaps the profoundest impression, though he says least about it, is made on the young Brahman, the village schoolmaster, it may be, or vaccinator, or postmaster. He has listened almost in silence to the discussion among the village Elders. He was born in the village, and had been taught a little Sanskrit by his father in boyhood; he has received a good education in his own language, and learnt enough of English to wish to learn more, at a Government school in the provincial capital. The course of study was carefully secular; and when, as was constantly the case, the scholar's inquiries wandered into fields of discussion more or less connected with religion, the subject was avoided in a manner rather calculated to pique the inquirer's curiosity. But there was so much to be learnt about the world and its history and affairs that the scholar deferred further inquiry, and at length returned to his village as a Government employé in some department, on a salary superior to all the hereditary allowances of the village magnates put together, and paid punctually in cash monthly. He is a rich, and would be an influential man, but he has got quite out of joint with his old playfellows and their parents; he has in his heart the most profound contempt for all that his father, the bigoted old Shastri, and his friends, go on talking about their gods, and the silly and licentious tales of what their gods did, which seem to him fit only to amuse vicious children; he is pained at their open worship of their hideous stone and metal idols, whose legendary acts and attributes appear to his awakened moral sense even more debased than their outward forms.

But this he is forced to keep to himself. He would not willingly vex his father or his kind old mother, and woe be to him if they or their friends suspected half the

thoughts that rise in his heart! So he works at his official duties; has a talk now and then with a former class-fellow, who visits the village as a surveyor, taxassessor, or in some other public "Department," and who, he finds, is as unsettled as himself; and muses often on the inexplicable tangle of human affairs.

He has never been in the way of knowing much directly about the religion of these Sahibs, and is rather glad when he hears that the "Dhurm Padre" has come to the village. He goes to listen, and, may be, is at first inclined to treat with contempt some apparent want of school learning. "The Padre' is evidently not as profound a Shastri as his own father, nor as great at the differential calculus as the Cambridge professor from whom he heard lectures at the Government College; but as he listens, one social or moral problem after another, which he had been used to ponder over, and found so difficult to solve, receives new light, and a history of the world, its past and its future, is revealed to him so simple, so consistent, and so fully explaining many of his doubts and difficulties, that, if he could but believe it, he feels that a great weight would be removed from his mind, and he would be a happier man.

But it is not only with regard to his own personal relations to God and his fellow-men that the young Brahman feels a new light has broken in on him. He is a patriot, after his way, though his way is different from patriots French or English, Germans or Fenians, in Europe. He has dreams of his own about his own people and country which he hardly dares breathe to himself, as he mourns over the hopeless internal divisions of India, and feels that heavy as may be the yoke of the most benevolent foreign ruler, it must be borne as long as the children of India are so obviously unable to combine for the common good, and rule themselves.

In the simple truths which the "Dhurm Padre urges so earnestly, with no object but the personal salvation of his hearers, the young Brahman thinks he sees the secret of that wonderful power which has enabled the people of a remote islet in the Northern Seas to subjugate the hundred millions of Hindostan, with all its ancient arts, civilization, and elements of wealth and power.

The few short sentences regarding the unity and brotherhood of mankind-the responsibility of all, Emperor as well as peasant, to One God, of infinite power, justice, and mercy-seem to him to form the talisman of that mysterious success which is daily working such miracles before his eyes. If his own race, so rich in the accumulated intellectual power of many nations and many centuries, could only believe and learn this wonderful secret, what a future might yet be in store for India and her children!

And so, as he watches the good Padre mount his pony to leave the village, in doubt whether his day's preaching has produced the slightest permanent effect, the young Brahman feels that he at least has caught a glimpse of truths which may not only change his own future but the future of India. It is but one step on a toilsome and thorny path, but he has resolved to take it, and to inquire further, to get a Bible and read the books which the Padre says contain all the whole secret of his own faith, and to learn more from some friend who has attended a Mission school. And if the Truth has not lost its virtue during the many centuries since it was first proclaimed among the mountains of Judea, who shall set limits to its energy when preached in their own tongues and by their own countrymen among the myriads of India?

I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to give the English reader some idea of a great moral and intellectual revolution which is going on in India, promoted by a

hundred unconnected and unconscious agencies, and affecting alike the crowds in populous cities and-what is far more important-the rural population.

Not the least remarkable part of the revolution seems to me to be the general unconsciousness of the agents employed as to the extent, if not the character, of the great changes they are working out. Of the many Missionaries I have met who seemed to me very influential in working the changes I have been describing I have hardly known one who appeared to me fully to recognize the great effects his work was producing.

Space only admits of a very brief reference to one or two questions immediately concerning our own Church. I. What has our English Church had to do with all this great work?

Less, it must be confessed, in some ways than other Churches which are not so much bound by apparent ties of duty to preach the Gospel in Hindostan.

We may justly boast that we built the first Protestant church in India, and that the first Mission of the Reformed Western Churches was established by our venerable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, at a time when it was the only Missionary Society in Protestant Europe.

But many generations elapsed before we did anything effectually or decidedly to follow up these first steps. And, when the work was resumed, nearly a century after its first commencement, several Nonconformist Societies, and even foreign nations, for a time were more active than the Church of England.

During the past fifty years much has been done by our two Church Societies, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the Church Missionary Society, to remove this reproach from us. Their work will now bear comparison, in extent as well as in quality,