He worships in strange houses and in a strange way. He
kneels in American-style churches and is taught by men full of
American ideas. Christianity will never be the religion of India
until it comes there imbued with the spirit of the day. In time
there must come forth an Indian Christianity, rich, full of power
and goodness. The missionaries want this, and are perfectly aware
it must come. The influence that now goes to India carries with it
the curse as well as the blessing. Let the divisions of church
creeds be kept at home, and _let the Indian religion be
developed from within_."
We visited several mosques, but they are such poor affairs
compared to those of India that we took little interest in them.
While the other countries we have thus far visited have all
appeared stranger than expected, this is not so with Egypt.
Everything seems to be just as I had imagined it. We know too much
about the land of the Pharaohs to be taken thoroughly by surprise.
Perhaps there is something in our having seen so much that our
perceptions are no longer as keen as when we landed in Japan. The
appetite for sight-seeing becomes sated, like any other, and I
fear we are not as impressionable as before. So we decide not to
visit Turkey and Greece upon this trip but to take these when
fresh. The crowds of squalid wretches who surround us at every
turn, clamoring for backsheesh; the mud hovels in which they
manage to live, and the coarse food upon which they exist; the
mass of greasy, unwashed rags which hang loosely upon them--such
things no longer excite our wonder, or even our pity.
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