RESULTS OF THE FAMINE IN INDIA.
The census of India, taken last March, shows, in its increased death-rate, the awful work of the famine. And yet, notwithstanding this check, the population has increased in ten years from 287,000,000 to 294,000,000. Mr. Hume, a missionary of the American Board, thinks that, as “India has a surprising way of recovering from a famine,” the “economic effects of an evil sort will soon be overcome.” As to the after-effects as affecting mission work, he is most hopeful:— Religiously the results are already great, and will be greater as the months go by. The social system, which is based upon the Hindu religion, has been broken into, Hindu rites have been neglected, there have been no pilgrimages, the people have lost faith in their gods, and their religious leaders showed so little sympathy, in contrast with the willing serving on the part of the Christian missionaries, that they are not esteemed even as before, while the missionaries are more highly regarded, even by out-and-out heathen. Almost all of the $1,100,000 from America has been administered by the missionaries. The people have an added testimony of the power of Christianity to prompt to unselfish giving and doing. This testimony to the unselfish love of the Christian religion is still being borne, in the care of widows and orphaned children, who are the famine’s legacy to the missionaries. Efforts are being made to give these children an industrial training that will fit them for lives of self-supporting usefulness. As noticed in these columns a few weeks ago, two gentlemen, one a graduate from an agricultural college, and the other from a school of technology, recently went from this country to aid in this good work.