The result of our survey is only to confirm the saying of Christ, "Ye have the poor always with you," which is true of all lands, even those where wealth abounds and the best civilization which the world has yet known is found. The pertinence of placing this subject among the social evils of the non-Christian world arises from the severity and extent of the poverty which exists, the misery it causes, the social depression it produces, and the pathetic appeal it makes for the introduction of such remedies as Christianity and civilization can offer to alleviate the sorrows of the poor.

An impersonal despot on an invincible throne.

10. THE TYRanny of Custoм.—Customs are conventional methods of living and acting according to established precedents, which have the power of habit and are generally recognized and observed throughout the community. These laws of life include social manners, political methods, economic habits, and religious observances. They exert their control not only in the sphere of practical living, but extend their influence to the realm of thought and feeling. They arise spontaneously, follow the leadings of instinct in their development, and become the accepted, cherished, often revered, rules and methods of social, civil, and religious habit. They control conduct with varying power. In some cases they rule with despotic sway; in others their demands may be somewhat relaxed. In all Oriental lands they exert a wide, exacting, and even fatalistic power. They wield the sceptre of arbitrary dominion over all life. They tyrannize with an imperious and resistless sway, and hold their supreme authority from one generation to another with undiminished rigor. They assume over the life and thought of the East a governing and proscriptive power which is most impressive in its mastery, so that they must be

1 "The authority of customs is found, in the first instance, in the feelings which they express and gratify. They are a spontaneous product of the feelings. They shortly, however, acquire an additional authority in the good order they establish, the interests they sustain, the calculable terms of action which they offer. They thus gather to themselves in a most imposing and imperious form all the motives and sentiments which unite men to one another. Any extensive dissolution of customs is a breaking down of the affinities by which men are bound to each other-is social chaos.

"Customs are most potent with the ignorant. They in part take the place of those moral motives which bind together the more thoughtful. Men of the widest intelligence hold them in high consideration, but they do so because of the impossi bility of supplying their place with the uncultivated. They act in the absence of higher motives. Boys are abjectly subject to the opinions and ways of their play

reckoned with as a mighty, conservative, and determining force in all efforts to introduce social changes or religious reforms. They exercise a function which seems to combine constitutional, legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one comprehensive control of all phases of life and all points of contact between man and man, and even between man and the material universe around him, or the Supreme Power above him.

The East has so learned this lesson of reverence for and obedience to customs that those which are evil and detrimental have just as firm a hold upon men as those which are good and useful. An established custom becomes, therefore, the open sesame of every otherwise closed door. It is the arbiter of dispute; it gives the word of command; it pronounces a verdict from which there is no appeal; it surmounts difficulty and it settles destiny; it deals kindly with all who submit to its decree, but it subdues and crushes all who venture to call in question its wisdom or defy its authority.

The mysterious sway of custom.

It is evident that a social force of such binding and decisive power may be of great benefit, or it may work untold injury. Unfortunately, in the non-Christian world custom is at many crucial points the greatest hindrance to social progress. It sanctions, establishes, and enforces that which is to the infinite injury of society, and has the power to oppose itself strenuously to all reform, and to stay the progress of all change for the better. The tyranny of custom is therefore a fact of immense social import. It weighs heavily against Christianity, against civilization, against all social reform and useful progress, and is usually bitterly hostile to the entrance of liberal views and enlightened methods, opposing with singular tenacity the establishment of more cleanly, refined, and in every respect sane standards of living. It is exceedingly difficult for those who are accustomed to Occidental independence of thought and action to realize the smiting and tyrannizing power of custom in the conservative, restricted social life of the East.1

mates. They secure no sufficient ground in reason from which to take up the labor of resistance.

"Young men, journeymen, college students, show this disposition to submit to prevalent irrational customs. The governing sentiments of these little worlds rest on tradition. Their members oppose the unreasoned ways of the past to the better methods that are coming to prevail in the wider world which encloses them. Customs are thus the instinctive methods of restraint which overtake those otherwise ungovernable-an anticipation of reason and an organic substitute for its deficiencies."Bascom, Social Theory," pp. 33, 34.

"

1 Sir Richard Burton once spent two months with the King of Dahomey, and in conversation with Mr. James Anthony Froude spoke in favorable terms of the king

It is especially difficult to understand the irrepressible sway of customs in themselves narrowing, retarding, dehumanizing, and detrimental in their tendencies. The giant system of caste in India is an illustration. The customs of child marriage, of enforced widowhood, of sati, of ascetic barbarities, of degrading superstitions, of inane ceremonies, and of many other objectionable features of Indian life, are all of a kind which one would think easy to overthrow when a better way was shown; but, on the contrary, the observance of the whole inflexible routine of custom is the very point of strenuous insistence. It is the breach, not the observance, of the custom which brings ignominy, sorrow, and social ostracism.1

So in the vast social organization of conservative China, from the state functions of the Emperor to the binding of the tender feet of some child victim, this dominance of customs is manifest. They cluster around birth, marriage,

China's homage to

established precedent. and death; they determine the downsitting and uprising of all China; they regulate the eating, drinking, and visiting; they dictate domestic, social, commercial, industrial, political, and religious manners and observances. A Chinese must even be ill according to custom, and when he sins he must at least avoid the crowning and unpardonable impertinence of presuming to sin in some unusual way. Finally, when he dies custom seizes him in its iron grip, and he goes to his ancestors with the conventional funeral ceremonies which have been the torment and sorrow of the living for centuries.

It would be impossible and altogether unnecessary to undertake to review in detail the innumerable predilections and practices which hold

as a benevolent and, on the whole, enlightened savage. Mr. Froude inquired why, if the king was so benevolent, did he not alter the customs. Burton looked at him in amazement and consternation, and said: "Alter the customs! Would you have the Archbishop of Canterbury alter the liturgy?" See Froude," English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century," p. 37.

"The evils which afflict heathen society are found established in those very customs and habits which are like chains of iron fast bound round the bodies of those who have blindly followed them for centuries.”—Miss Emily H. Payne (A. B. M. U.), Pegu, Burma.

1 'I am not without my apprehensions that many among you at the very sound of the word 'custom' will consider it sinful even to enquire if the change should take place. There are others, again, who, though in their hearts they agree to the measure, have not the courage even to say that it should be adopted, only because it is opposed to the customs of their country. Oh, what a miserable state of things is this! Custom is the supreme ruler in this country; custom is the supreme instructor; the rule of custom is the paramount rule; the precept of custom is the paramount

sway in non-Christian society, to its detriment and degradation, since they have already occupied a large share of our attention in the present lecture. There are customs, to be sure, which are excellent and deserve to be perpetuated; but in many cases, usually where the tyranny is most exacting, they are a heritage of sorrow and misery, bringing with them burdens heavy to bear, and hindrances to progress difficult to overcome. What we are concerned to note just here is the tyrannical sway of their influence in society, their power to shut out the guiding light of truth and to stay the transforming entrance of a higher and nobler civilization. We shall have something to say elsewhere of missions as a power singularly effective in the gradual disintegration and final overthrow of the despotic authority of evil customs.

Caste versus social distinctions.

II. CASTE.-The social system known as caste, a word supposed to be derived from casta, the Portuguese term for race, is so prominent and important a feature of Hindu society that its consideration fixes our attention almost exclusively upon India. Social distinctions have existed more or less among all races. They are found in classic and medieval society, where they are the outcome either of family rank or political station, or are based upon the grade and character of occupation. Trade guilds were known in the Roman Empire, and also in medieval Europe.1 Such social distinctions, if based upon qualities which deserve recognition and respect, are inevitable, and do not necessarily involve injustice, extinguish brotherhood, or destroy the natural and friendly intercourse of man with man. The peculiarity of the

Inexpressible in words!

precept. What a mighty influence is thine, O custom! With what absolute sway dost thou rule over thy votaries! Thou hast trampled upon the Sastras, triumphed over virtue, and crushed the power of discriminating right from wrong and good from evil.”—Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, in a pamphlet on The Marriage of Hindu Widows."

"The grand characteristic of Hindu society is just its despotic character; its customs and ordinances are so rigid and unbending that no freedom is allowed to the individual. On every side he is hedged in by regulations and prescriptions, so that he can only walk in the narrow rut which these lay down for him. As a necessary consequence, the grand characteristic of the individual Hindu is his want of individuality-his want of a sense of personal responsibility and capability for independent thought and action. The family, the community, the whole social organism, is so prominent, so exacting, so absolute, that the individual in comparison is nothing." -Rev. William Stevenson (F. C. S.), formerly of Madras, India.

1 Inge, "Society in Rome under the Cæsars." See chapter on Grades of Society," pp. 119-175.

Hindu system, however, is that it creates and insists upon mutually exclusive orders or ranks of humanity, involving an inexorable status of "repulsion between man and man," and that this conception is carried to an extreme which produces among the higher castes an estimate of the lower-and especially of all outcastes-which accords them a position hardly superior, if indeed equal, to that of the brutes. The whole system thus becomes simply an artificial and arbitrary device for exalting one social class and degrading another, upon the basis of purely imaginary distinctions so far as our common humanity is concerned.

The origin of caste, and its social significance.

The origin of caste is involved in some obscurity. It is the opinion of Dr. John Muir, a distinguished student of Sanscrit literature, and of Professor Max Müller, that in its remote origin it is based upon differences of race, color, and occupation. The fact that the vernacular names by which the caste system is known in the various languages of India are those which signify race, color, and occupation, and are usually fatalistic in their meaning, goes to support this view. While this may be the true view of the remoter origin, it seems certain that the caste system as developed in India is the creation of Hinduism at the hands of the Brahmans 1 or their immediate predecessors known by the similar title of Rishas. It is thus a product of Brahmanical legislation, and in its developed form may be regarded as an evolution culminating in a giant system of ranks and orders, in which humanity is separated and labelled, and to each is given a fixed place in the social organism.2 These distinctions are, for the most

1 "The whole caste system as it has come down to us bears unmistakable evidence of Brahmanical origin." See" Madras Census Report for 1871," pp. 122, 123. 2 "Hinduism is a social organization and a religious confederacy. As a social organization it rests upon caste, with its roots deep down in the ethnical elements of the Indian people. As a religious confederacy it represents the coalition of the old Vedic faith of the Brahmans with Buddhism on the one hand, and with the ruder rites of the pre-Aryan and Indo-Scythic races on the other.

"The ethnical basis of caste is disclosed in the twofold division of the people into the 'twice-born' Aryan castes, including the Brahmans, Kshattriyas (Rajputs), and Vaisyas; and the once-born' non-Aryan Sudras. The Census proves that this classification remains the fundamental one to the present day. The three 'twice-born' castes still wear the sacred thread, and claim a joint, although an unequal, inheritance in the holy books of the Veda. The once-born' castes are still denied the sacred thread, and their initiation into the old religious literature of the Indo-Aryans has only been effected by the secular teaching of our Anglo-Indian schools. But while caste has thus its foundations deep in the distinctions of race, its superstructure is regulated by another system of division, based on the occupations of the people. The