5
nothing but name, and yet it must be remembered in name Christians, and as such representing to the rest of the people of Delhi, high and low, rich and poor, the Church of Christ in this great city. Things being thus, could we have taken any other line of action than that we did? Would it have been, I will not say natural under the circumstances, but even possible or in any way morally justifiable for us to decline to assist Mr Winter in the tremendously difficult task which lay before him, and at which he set to work with might and main on his return from England in 1879, of raising the whole spiritual position of these poor people and bringing home to them the glory and dignity of the privileges to which they had been admitted as well as the responsibility of the duties they had assumed? Nay, simply from the point of view of our own more special work such a course would have been suicidal: for as I have said the true state of things was well understood and widely known throughout the city: and while it may no doubt be and in fact is a question, on which a good deal of difference of opinion exists as to exactly how far the Mahommedans and high class Hindoos could be influenced, either for better or worse, by the spiritual condition of a people whom they look upon as separated from themselves almost as widely as the brute creation itself, yet there can be no doubt whatever that it lent a ready and all too powerful handle to any antagonist, who wished in the Bazar or elsewhere to laugh at Christian work, while it must have influenced others exactly in proportion as they came within the circle, and felt the influence of Christian teaching, affording them an ever present test of the truth of its claims, and of its power to raise those who accepted it to a higher, purer life. It was this conviction, the conviction of the crucial importance, for the sake of all future Christian work among whatever class in Delhi, of removing from the outset a stumblingblock and scandal which could not but most grievously affect any efforts which might hereafter be made, which more perhaps than anything else decided us—and would I am sure have decided you—to devote some portion of our time to this task. I say some portion of our time advisedly, for on this point too there seems to exist some misunderstanding, and many seem to think that we have for better or worse thrown ourselves almost wholly into this work and made it our special sphere. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. In point of fact we each devote two evenings in the week, one Sunday and one week-day, to visiting and preaching in these little district congregations, and, so far as actual working time is concerned.
