GIVING BY HINDU CHRISTIANS.
By John Peter Jones
A FEW years ago I investigated carefully the economic conditions of the most prosperous and largest village congregation of the Madura mission. I discovered that 5 rupees (that is, $1.66) was the average monthly income of each family of that congregation. And that meant only 33 cents a month for the support of each member of a family! We have congregations whose income is less than this. And yet the Christians of that mission contributed over 2 rupees (75 cents) per church-member as their offering for 1900. For all the Protestant missions of South India the average offering per church-member during 1900 was 1 rupee and 9 annas (52 cents). For South India this represented an aggregate sum of 248,852 rupees ($83,000), or about seven and one-half per cent of the total sum expended in the missions during that year. An American can easily realize how much this offering is as an absolute gift; but he can not realize how much of self-denial it means to that very poor people, nor how large an offering it is as related to the best offerings of our home churches to-day.—Rev. J. P. Jones.