On the whole it is difficult to feel that any action is contemplated which is comparable with the magnitude of the need .sx From the point of view of the Christian college an improvement in the high schools is essential , for it is in the high school that the material for the college is prepared .sx From the point of view of the Church as a whole the need is still more conspicuous , for it is in the impressionable school stage that much of young Indian Christian manhood is made or marred .sx 3 .sx Christian Literature :sx Medical Work :sx Colleges .sx Another aspect of work in which too little progress is recorded is Christian literature .sx Here again the need is obvious .sx Whether we think of the preservation of that literacy which we so ardently seek to create in the children ; or of the needs of the pastors and Christian workers whose available literary resources are so tiny ; or of the presentation of the Gospel through printed books and pamphlets to that growing mass of people who can read the need for more and better Christian literature is impossible to exaggerate .sx Though we have in the Indian Literature Fund a simple and easily worked plan for the co-operative use of such funds as are available for Christian literature , it has been poorly supported .sx It may be that methods of production and distribution require to be overhauled , and a small commission appointed by the National Christian Council is now investigating this subject .sx That there is a welcome , and an economic market , for the right books is .sx shown by the occasional instances which come to our knowledge of books on Christianity published by ordinary commercial presses .sx I understand that in Travancore a Hindu .sx press has published a verse translation of St Matthew's .sx Gospel as an ordinary commercial venture .sx The diocese of Dornakal has shown what can be done to distribute literature through a well-organized system of local bookshops .sx Nevertheless , if all were done that can be done in this way , it would still be necessary to subsidize a good deal of literature if it is to be bought by the very poor Christians in the villages , or if the needed theological and homilectic material is to be available for the pastors .sx What better or more economical use of money can be found than the subsidizing of the pamphlets published in Tamil and Telugu for the mass movement Christians , costing d. and less per copy , .sx on which the publishers lose Rs .sx 30 on a sale of 10,000 ?sx There are many other sides of work in India on which one longs to say something .sx The greatly increased co. operation among medical missionaries , and the closer link between their work and the rest of missionary work seemed to me a most happy circumstance .sx More will be heard in the future , as plans develop , of the scheme for a Christian Medical College for men students , and I need not deal with it here except to say that the doctors appear to have a strong case in holding that , if the Christian Church in India is to perform in any worthy way the ministry of healing in the years to come , it will be necessary for a larger number of well-qualified Indian Christian doctors to be produced .sx Again , on the question of the colleges , I need say but little , as the report of the special commission headed by .sx the Master of Balliol will shortly be published , and will be discussed al ; length in ) the Review .sx I may , however , mention .sx two considerations which are of first importance in this regard .sx In the first place , it is almost universally agreed that the Christian colleges have lost the initiative which they once possessed .sx They have been caught up in a system which has proved to be too strong for many of them , and .sx they now find themselves following plans and obeying .sx standards which are not really their own .sx It is hard to say .sx whose the plans and standards are , for everywhere among educators in India one finds a kind of fatalistic attitude .sx towards the entire educational system , as if effective return ) were impossible .sx If the Lindsay Commission can show us the way to recover an initiative of our own in higher Christian .sx education it will have struck at the very heart of the problem .sx Secondly , it is a remarkable fact that many of the most significant developments and new experiments in missionary work in India have owed remarkably little to the Christian colleges .sx The far-reaching changes in village teacher-training , or an enterprise such as the Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies at Lahore , are proofs of the spirit of alert adaptation to changing need which is as strong as ever in the missionary and Christian forces .sx But they have been developed almost apart from the colleges .sx One would hope that in the future the Christian colleges would , among other things , supply as never before to the Christian forces in India the trained minds that are needed for their great and varied tasks , and that the link between the Christian colleges and the work and life of the Christian Church would become far closer .sx 4 .sx The Preaching of the Gospel .sx I come now to what is the fundamental consideration of all , namely , evangelism .sx In a sense it is a remarkable thing , and yet there are many precedents for it , that in a time of great national upheaval there should have been no hindrance to evangelistic work , and in some places an enhanced receptivity , to it .sx I understand that the lectures and conferences held by Dr Stanley Jones up and down India have been quite unhindered .sx I learned from the Bible Society in Bombay that while in some parts of the Presidency there had been a decrease in the sale of Bibles , there had actually been an increase in Gujarat , which is the part of India in which , by common consent , the civil disobedience movement has been most widely operative .sx I heard , especially in the north , glowing accounts of the spiritual power shed abroad in the Christian students' camps , specially in that held at Hardwar , and in this connexion I ought to mention the visit of the evangelistic band of Burmese Christian students who visited India and left much blessingin their train .sx Such action as this is , one hopes , only a fore-taste of that evangelistic and spiritual initiative which will follow as the Christian life of the Church grows deeper .sx Moreover , I cannot but feel that the steady progress of the desire for union among the Christian denominations has as its most powerful stimulating force the desire to preach the Gospel to India .sx It has been said again and again but how true it is that a divided Church is aImost fatally handicapped in presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ .sx One must not forget that in great areas of India the people of the village or small town often know only one church or mission , and the spectacle of division is not apparent .sx In the larger towns and cities , however , this is not so ; it is not so in the minds of those multitudinous Indians who have travelled enough to know what goes on beyond their .sx own borders ; it is not so with the educated Indian Chi is .sx tians themselves , who are fully conscious of the handicap which this foreign born division imposes upon them .sx It is easy to speak as though differences could be swept away , and it is certain that if they were abolished by a tour de force much that is spiritually real would go with them .sx Nevertheless , the case for pressing on with organic unity , by which I mean a unity sufficiently effective to make a man conscious all the time of the common Christianity which he shares with other Christians , is just about as strong as it can be .sx It is deeply impressive to hear , from those who were present in the October meeting of the Joint Committee in South India , of how difficulties were faced and overcome , or from those who were present in the Delhi conference , of how the zeal for union is finding expression in North India more .sx rapidly than anyone had believed possible .sx I suppose that in all India the most significant evangelistic development and there are few movements anywhere in the world that have greater potentialities of good is the movement among the caste people in Southern India .sx A full treatment of this important movement will be given in the Review by the Bishop of Dornakal .sx It seems to have .sx begun in the outcaste work conducted by the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in the Telugu country , and , significantly enough , it was begun by an Indian Christian minister , himself a high-caste convert , who though engaged in outcaste work never omitted to speak to the caste people in the villages as he moved about , and wherever he could to pray with them .sx Just as the beginnings of the mass movement were accompanied by great persecution , so that nothing could be more false than to imagine that an outcaste convert has no difficulties to face in becoming a Christian , so with the caste converts there has been a truly apostolic endurance of shame and suffering .sx The stories that one hears of the endurance of persecution on the part of these caste people , of their whole-hearted repudiation of caste , and their public alliance with their outcaste brethren , are deeply moving .sx It seems clear that the greatest influence at work has been nothing more or less than the spectacle of the changed lives of the outcaste Christians , and the obvious work of God done in their villages and in their whole life .sx The movement is now to be found in all parts of the Telugu country , and already it is presenting the missions with the happy anxiety of having to find a better educated type of pastor and teacher to deal with the new converts .sx These are men who can read , know something of the Hindu books , practise respectable handicrafts and possess land , and their incoming will gradually change entirely the economic aspect of the life of the Church .sx I rejoiced to find the deep interest displayed by the National Christian Council at its December meeting in the whole range of evangelistic work .sx Definite plans are being laid for the furthering of evangelism throughout the whole country , through special meetings , through literature , through the study of methods found successful in different places , and , most of all , through the bidding to prayer of groups of faithful people in all parts of India .sx I believe that this sphere of evangelism is one of the most obvious places for close co-operation between the Christian churchesin the East .sx It should be possible for the Christian forces .sx in India to profit by what is being done in China in the .sx Five-Years' Movement under Dr Cheng's leadership , and in Japan in the Kingdom of Cod Movement under Dr Kagawa's leadership .sx If our vaunted international and interdenominational co-operation is worth anything , it is not least here that it should be obvious , and we must see to it that we do not miss that spiritual power and guidance which God may be meaning to give us through this method , .sx I believe that in India to-day the inner reality of a truly evangelistic Christianity is to be tested in many subtle and difficult ways , but I believe too that there is before it an opportunity not surpassed in any part of the world .sx My deepest reason for believing this can be quite simply stated .sx It is certain , I think , that within a short space of time .sx the .sx burden of Indian government will fall upon Indians .sx That will mean that in the whole educated class minds will be turned from the task of criticism and protestation in which they have legitimately , and indeed inevitably , been engaged , to the task of construction .sx There will be very heavy burdens to be shouldered by Indians of all the great communities , and it is at such a time that men look with some real intensity of enquiry for the sources of spiritual and moral reality .sx