return to this form of literature, he may have yet greater gifts to give us.1

It is indeed his promise, not less than his performance, that makes M. Maeterlinck an interesting subject of study to the lover of letters. We do not regard him as a writer of phenomenal genius, nor, if his work were to be closed at the point which he has now reached, would he leave a permanent mark on the literature of his generation. But at a time like the present, when the impetus of one age of literary productiveness has spent itself, while its successor is not yet visible, one looks with eagerness for the coming of a writer with a new message, or at least with a new voice. M. Maeterlinck's message, so far as we can yet read it, is not new, but there is much that is new in his method of delivering it; while the message itself seems to be acquiring a greater loftiness of tone, and to be rising from the somewhat dreary and commonplace depths of pessimism and fatalism to a truer conception of the dignity of the human soul and of the mission that is laid upon it. He is at least free from the materialism which, not so much as a definite philosophical creed as in the form of an excessive devotion to the interests and pleasures of a worldly life, is so marked and dangerous a characteristic of the present day. Whether we go the whole way with M. Maeterlinck or not, it is good to be reminded that, after all, it is the spiritual part of our nature that counts, and that it depends greatly on ourselves whether we give it fair play or stunt its development by neglect. It is easier, perhaps, to read M. Maeterlinck in the quiet of a country retreat than in the turmoil of daily work in great cities; but that is just because his thoughts partake

1 Since this was written M. Maeterlinck has produced another drama, Monna Vanna, of which representations would already have been given in this country but for the unexpected intervention of the Censor. Considering the tone and the subjects of the plays which appear on our stage without hindrance, it is surprising (to say the least) to find the line drawn at a drama which, whatever objections may be made to it, at least does not depend for its interest either on the idealisation of vice or on the realistic presentation of it. It is impossible to discuss the work at length here, but it may be briefly said that it is more of a drama and less of a poem or a philosophy than any of its predecessors, and that it shows that M. Maeterlinck is still capable of striking out fresh lines and of attracting the interest of those who care for imaginative literature.

of the softening and refreshing character of the country, and provide an antidote to over-absorption in material ideas and

cares.

If we were wise, we should all make a point of refreshing the spiritual side of our nature, not only by the aid of religion, but by the deliberate maintenance of the practice of reading imaginative literature. Most of us have known that practice at one time or another, generally at the stage when life and literature are alike new, and the glories of the great creative masters of literature are unfolding themselves before us for the first time; but as other interests and professional cares and duties increase, the study of literature is apt to be set aside, and the taste for it is in danger of becoming atrophied. It is not enough to read contemporary fiction, which is, as a rule, merely a form of mental relaxation; nor is it enough to read books of information, such as histories and biographies, or treatises on social and economic science. Least of all is it enough to attempt to assimilate the miscellaneous condensed food offered by magazines at the almost inevitable cost of mental indigestion. What is necessary is to turn to the masters of imaginative literature, whose thoughts move on the higher planes of the eternal verities, who lead us away from the small interests of daily life to the spiritual truths which alone make daily life worth living. Some people can dwell among these spiritual truths without external assistance; but the majority of mankind need such assistance, and can find it in the words of these prophets of our race. Every lover of literature has his own special masters, to whom he can have recourse without fear of disappointment; but while we have, in our own language alone, Shakespeare and Bacon, Milton and Bunyan, George Herbert and Sir Thomas Browne, Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats, Carlyle and Emerson, Ruskin and Pater, Browning and Matthew Arnold, all tastes can surely find something to help and satisfy them. We do not class M. Maeterlinck yet with this company of immortals; but it is because he, like them, is 'on the side of the angels,' that we find his writings stimulative and refreshing, and look forward with hope to the work which he may yet have in store for us in the future.

VOL. LIV.NO. CVIII.

DD

ART. VIII.—MISSIONS TO HINDUS.

No. I. THE PROBLEMS

1. Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G. An Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701-1900. By C. F. PASCOE, Keeper of the Records. (London: Published at the Society's Office, 19 Delahay Street, Westminster, S.W., 1901.)

2. Brahmanism, or Religious Life and Thought in India as based on the Veda. Vol. I. 8vo. By SIR M. MONIERWILLIAMS. (London: Murray [1883] 1887.)

3. Indian Wisdom. 8vo. By SIR M. MONIER-WILLIAMS. (London: Allen [1875] 1876. 4th Ed. Luzac in 1893.)

THE bicentenary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the centenary of the Church Missionary Society, the attention bestowed upon our imperial and commercial duties, the widespread interest in foreign lands and peoples, have all helped to put more prominently before the eyes of the world both the reality and importance of missions. The book that we have placed at the head of this article, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G., a reissue of the Digest of the society's proceedings published in 1892, and reviewed at that time in The Church Quarterly Review, is a wonderful record of continuous and increasing work. To review the whole field in a single article would be an undertaking of doubtful advantage. We propose, as occasion offers or opportunity occurs, to devote articles to the more prominent centres of missionary work, embracing as far as we are able those of other churches besides our own; and first in obligation, as in importance, comes India.

For the study of Missions to Hindus presents, we are encouraged to think, a pre-eminently suitable subject for treatment in a Quarterly Review. They have outgrown their empirical stage. Three centuries and a half have passed over them since Xavier and the Society of Jesus made the first grand, devoted attempt to carry the Gospel to the Indies.

The work of the Danish Missions, whose greatest hero was Schwartz, may be described, for practical purposes, as synchronous with the century before last. And in the meantime we have not been idle. The grand, enthusiastic mistakes which baffled the noblest efforts of all the earliest missionaries have been marked and turned to account. Their failures, no less than their successes, have formed the fruitful seed out of which new methods have developed. Carey, Martyn, Duff, and French did their work in Northern India on a totally different footing because Xavier and Schwartz in the south had worked, and succeeded, and failed, and died. We have seen many types of missions inaugurated, and worked at, and modified. We understand the conditions of the work, the character of the people of the country, the genius of their National Religion, the system of Caste, which is its putcome so far as it can ever be said that Europeans understand Orientals.

And now the time has come when the subject can be studied scientifically; when the results of this hard-won experience can be ordered under general principles; when facts can be tabulated and arranged; when methods can be generalized from details; when the historical failures and successes of those who have sacrificed themselves in the cause can be traced to their ultimate sources; when principles can be surely laid out, on conformity to which in the past it can be shown that success has depended; when it is possible for the workers of the future to be dismissed to the task which lies before them, no longer to struggle for themselves, through the discipline of manifold failures, towards adequate conceptions of method, but to enter on their work from the first furnished forth with the lessons of experience. Our object in this series of articles is to furnish a practical contribution towards this so desirable consummation.

For indeed the subject is such that its strictly scientific treatment can be turned to practical account. A marvellous unity and solidarity pervades the Hindu mind throughout its most various developments, moral, social, religious, and philosophical. And it is by remembering and allowing for this, for a homogeneity of character unequalled perhaps else

where, that the task of evangelizing the country must be faced by all practical workers.

We are struggling to evangelize a people whose characters, in their personal development, are the outcome of social conditions more disastrously enervating and cramping than any which prevail elsewhere among a nation equally civilized. These social conditions, again, are the outcome of the National Religion; they embody most faithfully, if unconsciously, the Pantheistic conceptions of the Deity, and of the relations of man with the Supernatural, which constitute Hindu theology. This theology, again, in its turn, is the outcome, the absolute counterpart of a system of ontological speculation which is ruthlessly and uncompromisingly consistent; which may be described as a Spiritual Monism, carried out to its logical conclusions at any cost, intellectual or moral. Not a point in the Hindu character, on its moral or personal side, but can be shown to have its absolute counterpart in the intellectual development of the race; not a feature in the Social System but can be traced to the abstract principles presupposed in their theological speculations; not one of the well-known three stages, through which their Religion has passed, but reflects, and that very faithfully, the Metaphysical System which lies behind it.

We are to try, then, to bring before our readers a problem eminently practical, but a problem which can only be apprehended by studying in a great deal of detail, and grouping under general principles, the whole of the manifold conditions under which this world has to be faced by perhaps one sixth of its inhabitants.

The problem is virtually as follows: The Hindu being what he is in the actual conditions of his life-in personal character, in social surroundings, in religious convictions, in philosophical principles, what type of Mission, we have to ask, what methods of missionary work, are most likely to win him to Christ, and to establish him in worthiness of discipleship if haply, by God's grace, he be won ?

The problem presenting itself to us under these four general aspects, we propose to present it to our readers, so far as our space will permit, by a method correspondingly