Passing to a very different period, the latter half of the eighteenth century, the period of the rise of Methodism and the revival of religion in England, the period of new interest in the inmates of prisons, of agitation for the abolition of slavery, of the foundation of all the great missionary societies, the period of the French Revolution and the demand at home for extension of the franchise, all outcome of the same inspiration,—­what was the strong epidemic thought?  Reading the religious history of the time, we feel that the power that passed from soul to soul was a tremulously intense realisation of the family of God and the love of God for men, represented in Christ’s voluntary death upon the cross, love for the neglected and the enslaved in their sins and their sorrows.  And again in our own day, when we are tempted to say that the consciousness of God and the eternal, the primary religious instincts, are fading, what by common consent is really dynamical among educated men?  Assuredly not the shibboleths of High or Low Church.  It is the person of Jesus Christ that is dynamical; what He was on earth, what He has been ever since in the hearts of individuals and in the Church.  In a real sense we are starting again from and with Himself.  Anticipating, let us say that these two elements most recently dynamical in Britain have had force likewise in India.

[Sidenote:  India a new touch-stone of Christianity.]

India in the nineteenth century has been indeed a new touchstone to the Christian religion; and, in brief, to make plain how far Christianity has proved its force and its fitness to survive will occupy the remaining chapters of this book.  What has been the nature and extent of the impact of Christian and modern thought upon India, and particularly upon Hinduism?  Of course I am thinking particularly of the educated native Hindu community that has sprung up during the century just closed.  The dynamic of Christianity, which it is our task to test, implies a measure of conscious and intelligent approval.  Japan is another such testing ground.  Indeed the only large fields where Christianity is presented to bodies of non-Christian men able to yield approval or refuse it on intelligent grounds, of which they are conscious, are India and Japan.  In China also there are no doubt large bodies of literati, but as a class they have not yet come into the modern world and into contact with Christianity.  Even down to the Boxer rising of 1900, the wall of conservative patriotism shut off the literati in China from the outer civilisation and religions.

[Sidenote:  Indians themselves to be our witnesses.]

Fortunately for students of India, her new literati are not merely in touch with the modern world, but express their minds readily in public meetings and in print.  From themselves we shall chiefly quote in justifying the statements that will be made regarding the former or the modern religious opinions of India.  To non-Christian or secular writers, also, we shall chiefly go, that the bias may rather be against than for the acknowledgment of change and progress.  Our plan is to pronounce as little as possible upon either the Christian or the Hindu positions.  We are observers of the religious ideas of modern India, and desire our readers to come into touch with modern Indians and to see for themselves.