Among the higher class of native Christians, which is annually increasing in number, there is marked improvement in character. Especially among mission agents do we have opportunity to witness this development. They are growing in sincerity and reliability. The missionary is learning, with increasing pleasure, to place confidence in their veracity. And yet, we must mourn that moral progress among our people, both high and low, is not more rapid and satisfying.
Social immorality, as we have seen, is very prevalent in that tropical country. It is natural that this should annoy and worry us greatly among our native Christians. It is a sad fact that more of our mission agents are dismissed on account of this sin than any other. Hindu society is not only largely demoralized by this evil, there is also no public sentiment against it. But, under the influence of a growing sentiment in behalf of chastity and purity, the evil is gradually diminishing among our native Christians.
One source of moral depravity in Hindu society is the prevalent belief among them that there is no necessary connection between piety and morality. Their faith maintains that a man may be an ardent and worthy devotee, and at the same time trample under foot every part of the decalogue. Indeed the immorality of their religious ascetics is as noticeable as their profession of piety. Nobody there questions their lofty faith, their deep piety, their supreme devotion to their gods; nor will any one hesitate for one moment to charge them with every vice and sin in the human catalogue. Such is the Hindu mind that it can and does believe that these, to us, inseparable elements of a noble life, can be severed and found absolutely apart. In India, today, the moral people are largely the non-religious; while the ostentatiously religious are the publicly immoral ones.
It will take a long time for this fundamental and universally prevailing error to lose its grip upon our Christian people in that land. We find, not infrequently, in the Christian community, men and women living in unrighteousness and at the same time believing that it will be overlooked in the Divine account because of their zeal in Christian advocacy or their offering for the Christian cause. Perhaps this land of the West also is not free from such a delusion! We endeavour to teach them, in the language of the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 3:9), “to hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience”; and we emphasize the supreme truth that faith and conscience, piety and morality are one and inseparable.