INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY IN INDIA.
IN not a few Hindu families as many as fifty souls are dependent on the earnings of a single member. I happened to be present at a railway station sometime ago when a Hindu friend of mine, a government official, was moving his family from one town to another to which he had been transferred, and he had actually to charter two compartments, at a cost of thirty tickets, to move his numerous family, consisting of wife and children, uncles and aunts, grandparents and grandchildren, and other relations, any one of whom would curse him and his posterity to their latest day if he failed in his duty to them as members of a family of which he was the constituted head. But this system will pass away. Already a bill has been introduced into the legislature, called the "Gains of Learning Bill," by an orthodox Hindu, whereby an educated man can claim exclusive right to ownership of all properties acquired by him through his education. The bill has met with great opposition, as it is a serious blow to the joint family system, and what will be its fate we can not predict; but it is interesting, as showing the tendency of the times. But greater than any other influence—and this is what I want especially to emphasize—that is being brought against the Hindu-family system is the Christian home that is being reproduced in India. All over the land, in the cities and towns and villages, are ideal homes being founded by native converts. Marrying at suitable age, the wife educated as well as the husband, the young people go to their own home, and the children, as they appear, are nurtured in Christian truth, while the voice of family prayer and sweet Christian hymns of praise show that God the Father and His eternal Son are honored beneath the roof. We can appreciate the remark made by a Telugu mother whose son had become a Christian: "My Christian son's home is heaven, and I would never wish to see a better heaven; but my Hindu son's home is a dunghill—yea, hell itself!" Not that every Christian family erects the family altar, nor that every Christian home is what it should be, but every year shows the number of such homes increasing, and shedding their fragrance, not only on the inmates of the family, but also on the heathen neighbors around. The influence of this new factor in the life of India can not be overestimated. And what with the rapid advance of female education among the native Christian community, have we not the most sanguine hope that this result will, in an increasing measure, be realized?—Missionary Review.