THE EMPIRE OF CHRIST.*
"OUR altered religions thought in the West, and our altered knowledge of the East, not only necessitate a re-statement of the ease for Missions, they make such a re-statement possible," writes Mr. Bernard Lucas in an interesting little book he has lately published upon missionary enterprise. It is commonly said that foreign missions have failed; and, indeed, in spite of the signal successes made by individuals, no appreciable portion of the East has adopted Christianity. Mr. Lucas believes that the task of Christianising Asia may yet be accomplished, but we must set about it on new lines. Christian opinion in the West has undergone a change, and that change will, in Mr. Lucas's opinion, prove in the end favourable to the' conversion, for instance, of India. Most Christians would now admit that "the mission of Christianity is not to destroy but to fulfil the religious aspirations of men." By those who agree to this doctrine India must be religiously regarded, not as a sinking ship from which a few souls may be saved by the heroic efforts of devoted missionaries, but as a ship aground to be brought into port with all on board. Christianity, he argues, came from the East, and it may be taken back to its original soil, but it will never spread there till it is spread by dark men. The object of the missionary should be the foundation of a native Church, and it is hopeless that such a Church should be founded until European missionaries give their energies to understanding the religious climate of India. They must know the native mind before they can change it, and they must know upon what spiritual food it has been hitherto fed before they can decide upon the form in which to offer a better and more satisfying nourishment. They must be anxiously careful to destroy no good thing in the old religions, lest in their efforts to give men a new theology they leave them with no • The Empire of Christ. By Bernard Lucas. London: Nacmillan and Co. Ob. 6d.] religion at all. Mr. Lucas's advice seems to our mind to be, as a rule, excellent; how difficult it may be to take, it is probable that only, those who have given the work of their lives to missionary enterprise can know.
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