crime, they are registered and watched; and absconders are punished.

Very encouraging results have been already won. An extension of the work is now contemplated; but the question is being considered whether, in order to obtain the necessary moral influence, some of the Settlements should not be controlled by voluntary agencies.

The independent experience so gained fully corroborates the conclusions which Salvation Army Officers have reached as to the possibility of reclaiming these people and the methods to be employed. The provision of regular work for a considerable period of time under strict discipline, and the placing of them under the guidance of people of high character, who will treat them at once with the utmost kindness and the utmost firmness, and will use all possible moral suasion to change them, seem to be the principles which will lead to success. Government alone can bring to bear the pressure necessary to secure discipline, and private philanthropic effort alone can supply in a satisfactory way the men and women needed for the moral side of the work of reclamation.

The work is still mostly of an experimental nature, but the experiments now being carried on in different parts of India are leading to such definite conclusions that it is highly probable that the near future will see a very wide extension of the work.

There are thirteen Salvation Army Settlements in the United Provinces, five in the Panjab, five in the Madras Presidency and two in Bihar and Orissa. The American Baptists in the Telugu country have one Settlement, and one is under the control of the Manager of a Mica mine. The Wesleyans in Benares are working among the Doms, a semi-criminal tribe.

Arrangements are being made for the opening of more

Settlements under private management. Hitherto only Christian bodies have been willing and able to undertake the task, and until quite recently the Salvation Army alone has had Settlements; but long-established Missions, with their communities, Churches, Industrial Schools and Industries, and their knowledge of the local conditions, are in many respects in a position of great advantage for dealing with the problem, though at present they have not the experience of the Salvation Army. It may also be noted that the Panjab Government recently invited several of the leading Hindu and Muḥammadan societies to take a share in the work. The problem is so large that there would appear to be ample scope for all suitable voluntary agencies to aid in its solution.

CHAPTER VII

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOVEMENTS

I. The most prominent characteristic of the long series of religious movements we have dealt with is the steady advance of the ancient faiths. The earlier organizations ✓ were very radical indeed in the treatment they proposed for the troubles of the time, and adopted great masses of Christian thought and practice. But as the years passed, men found courage to defend an ever larger amount of the old theology, until a number undertook to prove every scrap of the ancient structure good. Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism each leaped up into new vigorous activity, every prominent sect experiencing a mysterious awakening. Finally, under the impulse of national feeling, the tables were completely turned not only the religions but everything Oriental was glorified as spiritual and ennobling, while everything ✓ Western received condemnation as hideously materialistic and degrading. An immense quantity of literature pours from the press, and considerable sums of money are subscribed for defence purposes, above all for sectarian education.

Hence the Hindu, the Jain, the Buddhist, the Parsee and the Muslim are to-day filled with overflowing con✓fidence each in his own religion; a confidence which

tends to be hostile to spiritual life as well as to a reasonable estimate of the old faiths. Many a man has a pride in his tone, and shews an arrogance towards outsiders, which are scarcely characteristic of health, whether religious

or intellectual. The Modern Review, perhaps the best and most representative of the monthlies at present, frequently contains a good deal of bombast; and the youthful graduates who speak and write on Hinduism have usually far too much of Vivekananda's swagger about them. Hundreds of men of the student class, under Dayananda's influence, believe that the ancient Hindus were as far advanced in the natural sciences1 as modern Europeans are, and that they had invented not only firearms and locomotives but telegraphs and aeroplanes as well.

Yet the arrival of the new spirit was necessary for the health of the country. The long decades during which not only the European but the cultured Hindu looked down upon the religion, philosophy and art of India effectually opened the door to the influence of the West, without which the Awakening would have been impossible; but they as effectually depressed the Indian spirit to a point at which the doing of the best work was impossible. Hence ⚫ the return of self-respect was sorely needed; and that has come since the twentieth century opened.

II. But there is another aspect of the situation which requires to be clearly realized. The triumphant revival of the old religions, with their growing body-guard of defence organizations, has been accompanied by continuous and steadily increasing inner decay. This most significant of all facts in the history of these movements seems to be scarcely perceived by the leaders. They believe that the danger is past. This blindness arises largely from the fact that they draw their apologetic and their inspiration almost entirely from Rāmakrishṇa, Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, Dayananda and Mrs. Besant; and it is clear that neither capable thinking nor clear-eyed perception can be bred on such teaching as theirs.

1 P. 116, above.

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We shall here attempt only a very brief statement of the evidence for this inner decay in the case of Hinduism. While the apologists have been busy building their defences these last forty years, Western influence has been steadily moulding the educated Hindu mind and rendering it altogether incapable of holding the ideas which form the foundation of the religion. Hence we have many defences of idolatry but no faith in it. In spite of all that has been said in favour of the Hindu family, no educated Hindu has found any religious basis for pre-puberty marriage, for widow-celibacy, for polygamy, for the zenana. The modern man simply cannot believe that his dead father's spirit comes and eats the rice-cake offered at the śrāddha, far less that his place in heaven is dependent on it. Much has been said to make caste seem a most reasonable form of social organization; yet thinking Hindus no longer hold that which is the foundation of the system, the doctrine that each man's caste is an infallible index of the stage of spiritual progress his soul has reached in its transmigrational journey. The Depressed Classes Mission is clear proof that Hindus no longer believe that the Outcaste is a soul whose past record is so foul that physical contact with him is spiritually dangerous to the caste Hindu. What student believes that that is true of the European Principal and Professors of his college? Yet, if these things are incredible, caste has no religious basis left. Then the Vedic Schools are dying. Asceticism is clearly dying. The great Sankaracharya founded four monasteries, at Sringeri in Mysore, at Dvārikā in Kathiawar, at Badrinārāyaṇa in the Himalayas, and at Puri. In February last, at Rajkot, Kathiawar, I had a personal interview with the Sankara who is the head of the Dvārikā monastery. stead of a fine company of intelligent men studying the Vedanta, he has only some half a dozen boys of six or seven

In