led the way in all education, and many of their day schools receive the Government grant. But how comparatively few children are taught the Scriptures in proportion even to those taught by the State! If we want India to evangelise India we must turn our attention more than ever to the young, that they may supply the Christian teachers of the next generation. There ought to be a vast extension of Sunday-school work and of children's services in India. Missionaries tell us that multitudes of heathen parents will gladly send their children, even where Christian instruction is given. Possibly it might be a great national gain if one service on Sunday were specially adapted to the little ones; the adults, in numberless places, would profit by the extreme simplicity of the talk, as well as from the questions addressed to the young. Is there any other land in the world where God so clearly calls us to a vast, constant, systematic effort to teach the children the Gospel? And yet our Sunday-school teachers number at present only 176; and it is said that in all India less than 200,000 children are under Christian instruction; that is, only one out of twenty taught by the State, or one in two hundred of the children of British India. Christ's lambs are not being fed there.

Then the New India shows us ten or perhaps twenty thousand young people rising up every year who have English enough to sit for examination at the five universities. More than 17,000 sat for matriculation in 1890; are these to be neglected? True, much is done in missionary colleges affiliated to the universities; but it is possible, without taxing ourselves with secular instruction, to get the ear of the students as we are doing for example at Dacca. What an opportunity the educated and English-speaking youth give us if we are looking for an Indian Church with native teachers, preachers, and evangelists! Such men as these Dr. Duff trained and won. Oxford and Cambridge are wise in sending young scholars on missions to India, and happy is the man who can attract and win to Christ the students and future leaders of that land in such a day as ours. A nobler work is hardly conceivable. With what eager joy would Carey and Duff look upon the opportunity which spreading knowledge affords us of preaching Christ to the children and youth of India. The State is thus creating an ever-increasing opportunity for the Church.

ENGLISH-SPEAKING NATIVES.

But these students are only a part of a vast English-speaking

native community, so that in all great centres of population large audiences of natives can be found who know English and delight to hear it spoken. Here, too, is an opportunity that would look great if it were not familiar. English is spreading abroad in India to-day as Greek was spread abroad in the Mediterranean lands in early Christian times, and ought to be, as that was, for the furtherance of the Gospel. Every branch of Christ's Church which has a teacher whose voice fills the land, either in Great Britain or Greater Britain or the United States, should send that man, if possible, to work a while in India. And every great Christian teacher of our race should consider whether the English-speaking audiences of natives in India do not call him, as with the voice of God, for the consecration of at least one winter season to work within a door so miraculously opened of God, there to sow the seed of the Kingdom in a field with such a soil as sowers rarely find in long ages. A few men might by a few months' work leave their mark upon Indian Christianity for ever; for it is now like the rock when it takes the dint of a raindrop, to show it for ages. What if Canon Liddon had spent a winter in India? What an impetus would have been given to his ideal of Christianity! Members of Parliament go there in increasing numbers, for the cold season, to study Indian questions. The Church of Christ might well send her wisest teachers to speak of Christ to the New India. Paul never had a greater opportunity, and a greater is not likely to appear.

HILL TRIBES AND OUTCASTS.

But another great opportunity at the other extreme of Indian society belongs to to-day. The new India shows us at least fifty million hill men and outcasts who will be absorbed by Hinduism or Islam in fifty years,* unless Christianity win them. These men, the poorest in the land and with little light, are, with exceptions, the readiest of all men in India to receive the Gospel. But the opportunity is passing away. Every decade there will be fewer of them left to win, or at least it will be harder work to win them when they are Hindus and Muslims. Here, then, is a work for to-day. Delay is fatal to full success.

But over and above hill tribes and outcasts there are as many millions more of low castes and all castes who cannot possibly long retain their present creeds, which must vanish in the growing light.

* Sir W. W. Hunter.

They may accept Christ, or abandon all religion, or Brahmanism may remould Hinduism; but the one thing certain even to a sceptic is that India cannot retain her present gross Polytheism. Vast religious changes impend; and they create unequalled and unreturning opportunities that mean great glory or great shame for us.

The above, however, are but suggestions for the new time; the great need is for all time and for all the people; for the children and the students, the cultured and the poor; the hill tribes and outcasts; for Mussulman, Buddhist and Hindu. The Master sent the word to And the greatness of the task, in India alone, seems appalling, till we remember who set it; then it becomes majestic.

"every creature."

HELP INDIA TO HELP HERSELF.

Our work just now is to help India to help herself. And this she may soon be able to do if we are faithful. For India is a religious land. Two great religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism have arisen, and a third, Islam, has won great victories there. Even an atheist might own that neither faith holds such potentialities as those that radiate from the Cross which now everywhere invades the East. Christianity, too, will spread and triumph there. Native Christians in ever multiplying numbers are spreading their new faith. Not many months ago ten thousand converts, won by the zeal of native evangelists, were reported amongst the Telegus. Some of the most eloquent and useful preachers and manliest leaders of India to-day were formerly Dr. Duff's students. All down the centuries India has had a succession of great religious reformers who have had millions of followers; and now in the day of glad tidings Indian apostles of Jesus Christ will arise, and with them strong Indian churches; simple, scriptural, Evangelical, we may hope. There are even signs of it already. Any race may soon be trusted to supply its own evangelists, for God's Spirit casts out the dumb spirit. Certainly the Indian races both can and will supply them. Natural gifts are God's gifts, and the Indian peoples are rich in them. Their literature, philosophy and art show great intellectual qualities; and the less intellectual peoples show courage and faithfulness, unsurpassed in Holland or ancient Greece. Great Christian movements are not unlikely to arise when such women as welcomed death by fire, as a sacrifice pleasing to their gods, realise their redemption and enfranchisement by Christ, and teach their children the duty of serving Him with not less ardour than false gods claimed. Christ is even now entering into the Indian