agency so abundant and efficient help in arriving at truth, in learning to live a life of usefulness and service, in reaching moral convictions, in building character, in attaining to a reasonable and satisfying trust, and in entering into the deepest and the highest relationship with men and with God, as in

in India

SADHU SUNDAR SINGH, to whom we referred in a previous issue, has been a speaker at many of the May meetings, and made a profound spiritual impression. His baptizing of the Sanyasi ideal into the spirit of Christ is a momentous factor in Indian Christianity. For 3000 years the ascetics of India have stood forth as a witness to the supremacy of the spiritual, but to-day, the larger part of the five million sadhus are degenerates, and nothing but the reinterpretation of the ideal in terms of Christianity can redeem a movement that means so much to India. In his wanderings, the Sadhu came upon the Sanyasi Mission-one of the miracles of the gospel in India. For a long time past, the late Rev. J. J. Johnson of the Church Missionary Society had stated his conviction that great numbers of high-caste Indians were waiting to become Christians. Sundar Singh proved the truth of this statement when, toward the end of 1912, he visited Sarnath (the scene of Buddha's first preaching) and met some men drest as Sanyasis. He found that they belonged to a secret Christian organization numbering some 24,000 members scattered all over India. They are divided into two two classes, the Shishyas or Companions, who live the normal life of men in the world, and the Swamis or Heralds who number about 700 and are Sanyasis. These secret believers observe baptism and communion, the

Bible is read and expounded at their services, and Christian papers are circulated. Among them are sadhus and hermits of recognized holiness, and a large proportion of the members are educated and wealthy men of the upper classes who subscribe liberally toward the maintenance of the organization. The password of this secret brotherhood is "Victory to Jesus, Lord of Nazareth !"

A Christian Hermit of the
Himalayas

One of the most thrilling experiences of Sadhu Sundar Singh was his encounter with the so-called Maharashi of Kailash, a Christian hermit who has for years lived on the snowy Himalayas of Western Tibet, spending his time in interceding for the world. His abode is a cave, about 13,000 feet above sea level, near a deserted Buddhist temple rarely visited by any human being. The Sadhu, in traveling over the Kailash range in 1912, was stricken with snowblindness, lost his balance, and fell. After lying stunned for a while, he awoke to find himself at the mouth of a cave, within which sat the Maharashi rapped in meditation. The sight caused the Sadhu to faint almost. At first he did not realize what the object before him was, for the Maharashi was so old and so completely covered with long hair as to appear at first glance like an animal. Presently the Sadhu addrest him and the aged saint responded with "Let us pray!" whereupon he broke into earnest Christian

prayer, ending in the name of Jesus. He then unrolled a ponderous copy of the gospels in Greek which has come down to him from St. Francis Xavier. He told the Sadhu that he was born in Alexandria of the Moslem family and had entered a Mohammedan monastery. Dissatisfied with his spiritual life, he visited a Christian saint, a member of the Sanyasi Mis⚫sion, who had come from India to preach the gospel. He was converted and left the monastery to accompany his teacher on his missionary journeys. Subsequently he started out alone on an evangelistic campaign extending over many years. It was only when utterly worn out by his strenuous labors that he decided to spend his remaining years in intercession amid the Himalayan snows. One is tempted to say that if India is to be converted to Christianity it will be through the development of the Christian Sanyasi movement with its unerring appeal to indigenous spiritual instincts.

The Old Evangelism and the New

It is a commonplace in certain quarters to say that modern theology has failed to generate evangelistic passion and that any attempts at evangelism on the part of those who are imbued with modern conceptions have proved weak and ineffectual beside the compelling power of the old evangelism. In the current number of the Hibbert Journal, Dr. A. T. Cadoux reexamines this well-worn assertion. He does not deny that presentday evangelism is difficult, lacks urgency, and does not produce the same tangible results as the evangelism of a by-gone generation; but this indubitable fact does not in any way prove the superiority of the older presentation.

"If the older evangelism had an easier road to urgency it may be found that the immediate advantage was more than

counterbalanced by concomitant evils. A business man may create an artificial demand for his wares, do a profitable trade for a time, and then bequeath lean years to his successors, and it is conceivable that the same thing may happen in religion and that the older evangelism's forcing of results may have discounted the growing spirituality of the race and anticipated the resources of the present generation

The very source of its urgency tended to compromise the ethical purity and sublimity, and so to vitiate the effect, of the gospel."

There is surely something to ponder in this, for the protagonists of the new, as well as for the defenders of the old. We constantly speak of the field's being white unto harvest, but in one sense that is not so. There are departments of the gospel field in which the harvest is scanty because those who went before sowed seed that sprang up quickly but left the soil barren. The appalling non-effect of a generation of Sunday-school teaching, the revolt of honest minds from dogmas which overrode the conscience and made God's power and justice arbitrary-these and many other features of present-day religious life may well give us pause, and make us resolve to take "long views."

Was There a Hellenist Group of Apostles

We have long been in the habit of grouping Peter, James, and John together as an inner circle among the Twelve a habit which of course, is based upon the gospel narrative itself.

Rev. George Farmer, writing in the current Expository Times, suggests another group of at least four apostles which might fairly be called Hellenist, the connecting link being the use of Greek names. This group would include Bartholomew (a name which, Dr. Burkitt suggests, is a popular distortion of the Greek Ptolemy), Philip, his close companion, Thomas called Didymus, and possibly Andrew. Mr. Farmer identifies Bartholomew and Nathaniel, and reminds us that it was Philip and Andrew who told

Jesus of the Greeks who wished to see him. Of course, if Andrew had Greek connections, his brother Simon would share in them (unless they were connections by marriage), and Mr. Farmer thinks that the Greek equivalent, Peter, was in use before the days of Cornelius. If his theory of a Greekspeaking element among the Twelve is correct, it follows that Jesus was probably bilingual. We are reminded that St. Peter did not need an interpreter in conversing with Cornelius. The use of Greek names as an alternative or an addition to Semitic ones seems to favor the bilingual hypothesis.

France and the Vatican

It is not easy for American readers to understand the opposition of the French Senate to the proposal to establish a French embassy at Rome to deal directly with the pope. In countries where there is no connection. between Church and State, the appointment of a diplomatic representative to the Vatican is merely a matter of political expediency. In France, however, where for many years a fierce struggle regarding the power of the Church in political life tore the nation in two, such a step is open to another interpretation. The struggle between the Clericals and the Liberals came to a head through the Dreyfus case. The fact that the Jews were alleged to inspire the anti-Clerical policy of the government caused the priests to throw the weight of their influence against Dreyfus. Their action recoiled terribly on their own heads, for the government immediately began to take disciplinary measures against Clericalism and the religious orders. This policy issued fifteen years ago in the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church, the dissolution of religious orders, and the secularization of the schools. Naturally many radicals imagine that

the appointment of a representative at the Vatican spells a Clerical reaction. But that is not so. The French Church no longer regrets its severance from the State, realizing that freedom from State connection means spiritual power and influence. The real motives for appointing a delegate to the pope are to be looked for in the fact that France has many interests in Roman Catholic countries, and these, she thinks, can best be safeguarded by dealing directly with the Vatican.

Apostle or "Church-Nurse"

One of the hopeful features of English church-life to-day is the growing revolt of young ministers in every denomination against a tradition which makes the average minister a "Churchnurse" rather than a prophet. He is expected to foster and supervise endless social and recreational agencies. which do not represent a broadening of the Church's appeal, but are merely a device to keep pew-loungers and

slackers amused. Did these institutions constitute a genuine social crusade and stand for the application of the Christian message to the whole of human life, these virile young ministers would be the first to welcome them. But they are organized in the interests of selfish church coteries

whose one idea is to get, not to give; to be entertained, and not to serve. They dissipate a minister's time and strength. He is "melted down for the tallow trade" and has no energy left for his central vocation. A young minister, writing in the Methodist Times, goes so far as to say that he would like to scrap every Church organization except the preaching services, until the hundreds and thousands of religious camp-followers who want to share the victory without taking the risks of war are choked off.

"If I had my way," he writes, "I would refuse to act as a sort of evangelical foster

father to men and women who make no attempt to grow up. I 'joined up' as a preacher of the gospel. As a schedulekeeper, bazaar-organizer, and the churchnurse my one present ambition is to be known as Methodism's greatest failure!"

There is little doubt that the trouble in all churches is the slacker- the person who expects to be cajoled, entertained, and deferred to in everything. There is much talk of sacrifice and services, but so far the average churchgoer hasn't become inoculated with the thing itself, and unless a minister is very strong he is apt to end as a kind of ecclesiastical "tame cat."

"That Paralyzing Sermon
Tradition"

Yet another sign of ministerial revolt against tradition, from an entirely different standpoint, is the appeal of an anonymous theological student writing in the Christian World against the two-sermons-a-week convention. The writer does not undervalue preaching; he wants more of it rather than less; but not in church. He pleads for time and opportunity to take the Christian message to the outsider who does not care a rap for sermons and can not be induced to sit through a church service. One message a week to churchgoers is enough, he contends; why devote so much energy to the upholstered pew when half the churches are made up of empty benches? "The sermon tradition," he declares, "has developed a sermon-audience in place of a congregation, as well as a sermon-machine in place of a minister." Popular preachers may attract outsiders in some cases but more often than not they merely deplete the congregations of men less brilliant than themselves. The question raised by this student is one of the most difficult problems of church

life to-day-the problem of reconciling the requirements of the unchurched and heathenized, who can not appreciate either sermons or conventional worship, with the needs of a Christian congregation. It seems impossible nowadays for the two classes to mix. The preacher who gets the "outsider" into his church can neither keep him, as a rule, nor his regular congregation. There is only one solution: to inspire the congregation with a passion for true evangelism. Only a congregation of apostles can secure the ingathering of those outside. The minister alone can not do it, without raising a storm that does not even clear the air. Convert your pew-loungers and sermontasters first, or else leave them and go into the highways and hedges. A compromise is impossible.

Cost of Improved Land
in Palestine

In view of the fact that Zionism is much to the fore at present, and that Great Britian is guarding Palestine, some curiosity has been felt as to the effects on values and prospects there.

An item of interest and information in this direction appears in the advertising pages of a recent number of The Maccabean, a Zionist monthly. It describes a farm for sale in the Jewish colony of Kinereth, not far from a station on the HaifaDamascus railway, located near the hot baths of Tiberias and on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. The farm contains 269 dunam (about 67 acres), about 50 of which are planted with orange and lemon trees. There are stables, workmen's quarters, live stock and implements (numbers, quality, and quantity not stated), private residence shaded with palms and pines and containing eleven rooms furnished, and a twelvehorse-power irrigating motor. The lake furnishes a splendid outlook and "Snowy Hermon" is in sight. The price asked is $70,000.