Sudra bowing down to the proud Brahmin whom in his heart he hat as covetous and licentious; and to incur a Brahmin's curse is r garded as one of the greatest of calamities.

The two intermediate castes have now almost ceased to exist-ever Hindoo is either a Brahmin or a Sudra. But, through intermarriag a number of mixed castes have arisen; so that in India now eve trade forms a separate caste. The barber, the smith, the carpenter, th gardener, the washerman, the weaver, and so forth-each trade form a caste of its own. We are to regard the hundred and fifty million of Hindoos, therefore, as divided into a very large number of separat strata, as it were: the members of one trade, or caste, mingling to a certain extent with those of another caste, but their intercours being hindered at every step by certain stereotyped regulations. Thes regulations may be summed up in the three following laws:man must follow the trade of his caste; he must eat only with men his own caste; he must marry only in his caste.

The first rule is, that a man must follow the trade of his caste: gardener's son must be a gardener, a potter's son must be a potter, weaver's son must be a weaver. This, of course, as far as it is carrie out, tends to produce great social stagnation. Whatever genius o natural aptitude a lad may have, he must do what his father did, an be what his father was. But at the present time this rule is not s stringently enforced as it used to be. The contact with English civilization has taught the people in large towns, and even in the country, a little sense, and has opened up to the people posts emolument which eighty years ago were not thought of. hundreds of cases a low-caste Sudra boy has by diligence an ability risen to a respectable position as a clerk or assistant magi trate with £100 or £200 a year; while his neighbour, the "twie born" Brahmin, has to trudge on through life in the old rut on t shillings a month. All this is tending rapidly to break up the cas system; and so many other elements combine to produce the sam effect, that, as the writer's pundit once said in conversation, "As fa as the rules of the shasters [sacred books] in reference to caste ar concerned, there is not a single Brahmin all over India, that has no broken caste." The fact is, that caste is, in some respects, most rigid in others, lax. Where the worldly interests of the people are no advanced, as by the profession of Christianity, caste is almost omn potent; people do not care to become Christians, and therefore the do not relax the rule that the profession of Christianity implies th loss of caste with all its terrible consequences. But, where caste it terferes with worldly prosperity or comfort, it is in many points quiet! dispensed with. Hence people of all classes strive to rise above th occupation and social position of their caste; everybody travels railway, the Brahmin and Sudra jostling one another in the crowde third-class carriage. In this and other ways first one bond of cast is broken and then another; until at length, some years hence, the people will perhaps suddenly awake to the fact that there is nothing

f it left, and this mighty instrument of Satan will be numbered with e superstitions of the past.

The second rule is, that people shall eat only with those of their own. aste. The evil effect of this rule is to foster a spirit of pride in the igher castes, and of servility in the lower, and of selfish indifference all. Few things tend to bind men together in friendship so much s the social meal; and this common bond is unknown except between men of the same caste. In India there is hardly any brotherhood of nan-there is only the brotherhood of caste. A stranger comes into village he falls down exhausted with hunger-no one will give him grain of rice, for fear he is not of their caste. A traveller parched ith thirst in the burning sun, begs a native for a drink of water; is request is refused, because he does not belong to the same caste. The third rule of caste relates to marriage. Every man must marry a woman, or rather a child, of his own caste. Personal affection in India has nothing whatever to do with marriage. There are professional "match-makers," whose business it is to arrange matrimonial lliances between lads of fifteen or sixteen, and girls of seven or eight, who have never seen one another. The evil result of such a system may be easily conceived. The Christian preacher, in secking to produce conviction of sin, may safely charge almost any assembly of Hindoos in Bengal with breaches of the seventh commandment; and hardly a man that hears him will venture to deny the charge.

Such, very briefly stated, is caste. Now what shall be the bearing of he Christian missionary towards it? It is partly religious and partly ocial. Shall a man be required to give up caste on becoming a Christian? or, shall it be treated as a social evil, just as slavery was by the apostles, and left to die out by the gradual pervading influence of Christianity? The first missionaries to India held the latter view. For more than a century caste was tolerated in the Churches of Southern India, where missionaries first laboured, and this must be taken into consideration when estimating the success of early missionary labour in that part of the country. Even such a man as Schwartz found caste existing in the native Church, and was unable to eradicate it. It was hoped that in course of time Christian teaching and example would so modify the system as to destroy its objectionable features. Instead of that, as a matter of fact, the toleration of caste was found to encourage the prejudice it was intended to conciliate. About forty years ago, the late Bishop Wilson of Calcutta, after a thorough examination on the spot of the results of this toleration, came to the conclusion that it must be given up "altogether, at once, and for ever." And since that time caste has not been tolerated in most of the Churches of Southern India.

In Northern India caste has never been tolerated in the Christian Church. Those wonderful men of Scrampore, as in other matters, so n this, showed the wisdom which God had given them. From the ery first they said that every one who wished to confess the Lord Jesus by baptism must break caste.

66

Now this caste system is one of the greatest obstacles to the spread of the truth in India; and it alone would suffice to make India one of the most difficult fields of evangelistic labour on the face of the earth. Its evil effect is mainly threefold.

for

hated

In the first place, it makes the profession of Christianity_such a terrible ordeal, that many sincere believers in Christ, even to the last, shrink from the open avowal of Him by baptism. When the caste system was in full vigour eighty years ago, at the time when Dr. Carey first landed in India, to break caste was indeed a terrible trial of faith. It implied all that to a Roman Catholic is involved in the word excommunication." The convert came under the curse of the Brahmins, and it must have required a large amount of Divine courage a Hindoo to face that. It involved the loss of all earthly things; the man who had lost caste was driven from his home and his village. If an agricultural labourer, he was persecuted in every way possible under British law. If an artisan, a carpenter, a barber, a shopkeeper, nobody would employ him or buy from him. If possessed of property, the law itself took it away from him; and his relations and friends, father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children, drove him away, him, cursed him, and only regretted that English law prevented their killing him. Or, if his family did join him, the convert found it extremely difficult to get any one to do anything for him, or to get employment for his sons; or, what to a Hindoo would seem as great a calamity as any, to obtain husbands for his daughters. Such were the consequences of confessing Christ at first; and such, with some modification, owing to the relaxing of the bonds of caste and the growing spirit of friendliness entertained by the natives towards Chris tians, has been the consequence to the present day. It may easily be conceived what an enormous obstacle at the very outset of the Chris tian life was presented, and is still presented, by the necessity of breaking caste. Nor does the evil effect end here. When the convert thus lost everything on becoming a Christian, his European fellow-Christian could not leave him to starve, but was forced to help him, and thus the native Christians gradually came to expect help from and to depend upon the missionaries; and in this way a spirit of depend ence has characterized the native Church from the first. The great problem now claiming the attention of all missionary Societies is How to make the native Church independent and self-supporting? And it is a problem of which it is extremely difficult to find the right solution, so as not to "quench the smoking flax" in the weak native Christian community.

The second way in which caste hinders the spread of the gospel is this: it prevents the exercise of home influence by the converts on their unconverted relations. In other lands, when a man is led to Christ, he will live at home, and his Christian spirit and holy life will often win those whom he loves to the Saviour. Perhaps the gospel spreads as much by this means as by the direct preaching of it, more; but this home influence is, in almost all cases, necessarily want

or even

ng in India. When a man is converted, except in very rare cases, he cannot live at home. If he is married, perhaps his wife and children will come and live with him,-and perhaps not; but certainly no other relatives will live with him; most likely, they will not speak to him or have anything to do with such a wretch as they deem him, who had brought such reproach upon their family and disgraced them all. When Matthew was converted, he made a feast to his brother-publicans, and invited Jesus to come and speak to them. Christian people in England and elsewhere often invite the outcast and degraded to a riendly tea, and then preach the gospel to them; but nothing of the ort can be done in India because of the rules of caste.

Caste hinders the progress of the gospel in India in yet another way, as it prevents the home influence of the converts, so it restricts the Christian preacher, whether European or native, in his endeavours to draw close to the people in order to win them to Christ. He cannot drop in and have a friendly meal with a native, or invite him to come in like manner to his own house. The Hindoo is always watchful lest in some way the preacher should pollute him; and the preacher himself has to be careful lest he should unwittingly do something which would break the man's caste. Hence caste very much hinders that close and free communion of heart with heart which is so important for the successful preaching of the gospel. Still, this caste system, with all its evils, has one good effect; the ordeal involved in the loss of caste prevents the native Church from being deluged with hypocrites; and this strong tendency of the Hindoos to go together and act as others do, will hereafter, if we do our duty in preaching the gospel to them, cause the people who now in a mass reject Christianity, afterwards in a mass to profess it. The sun may shine day by day upon the mountain-snows, and but little effect is produced; until at length, as it were in a moment, the avalanche is loosened, and carries everything before it. So Christian influence is brought to bear upon Hindooism'; and it seems as if but little in the way of conversion is being done; but let that influence be more and more fully exerted, and some day we, or our descendants, will be amazed to hear of thousands, it may be millions, all at once professing their faith in Jesus

Christ.

"THAT YE LOVE ONE ANOTHER.”

It was the last Wednesday in December, and to-morrow would be Christmas-day.

It was late in the afternoon when Emily Morris descended the steps of a handsome house in the fashionble part of the town of ——, and turned homeward. Evidently her errand, or its result, had not been

agreeable, for her face was flushed, and in her eyes was a look at once baffled and defiant. It was a long walk to the humble street whither her way led; and, though she walked fast, impelled by her restless mood of mind and by the cold, it was nearly dark when she reached home.

"Home" to Emily meant two small