Henry Grattan Guinness

“ There is an overwhelming impression of almost countless multitudes, with needs and destinies as important as our own. One is stirred to compassion, for they are still as sheep without a shepherd. India contains one fifth of humanity, and the bulk are still utterly unevangelized.
5. Similarity of race. Unlike many others, the people of India belong to the same race as those of England, America, and Europe. ”

“ In Asia you seem to enter a new world. The tropical strength of the sun, the dark skins and foreign dress of the people, their languages, shops, trades, houses, and ways, all impress you as utterly different from anything in Europe or America.
3. Its vastness. India is nineteen hundred miles in length, and also in its greatest breadth. It is itself a continent. England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, put together, would scarcely make so large a country. ”

“ Scarce one Christian in a thousand has the heart to help them. Mammon is too mighty for our pity and piety. Our small home interests hide from us the immeasurable interests of a perishing world. The millions of the heathen to most of us are as though they had no existence whatever. ”

“ What right have the churches to delegate this tremendous work of raising up the entire heathen world to a few overburdened societies? Let every church arise and do its share directly for the salvation of mankind, and the problem of the world's evangelization will soon be solved. ”

“ Hindus exhibit an amount of suavity, docility, and submissiveness never seen in the natives of England and America, with a remarkable absence of strong, self-reliant assertiveness. Their gentleness attracts and awakens sympathy, for it is largely due to prolonged oppression. ”

“ In the home the wife is a servant, and often little better than a slave. The treatment of widows is infamous. Woman is crushed here, and knows not how to raise herself out of ignorance, oppression, and degradation. ”

“ The effect of this on family life must be tremendous. The inmates swarm like bees in a hive, or ants in an anthill. Virtue and morality are thus loosened at their foundations, and independence and self-respect must suffer in proportion. ”

“ Oppression of women. They are treated as beasts of burden. They pass by thousands, carrying fuel, fruits, manure, and loads of grass, or other vegetable produce, on their heads. They are mostly short, thin, worn looking, lightly clothed, with bare arms and legs, brown as a berry, walking with short, quick steps and upright carriage. ”

“ It is no easy thing to get three hundred millions of people, who have lived without proper drains, to mend their ways. The country is hot and dry, or the results would be much worse. Still, under English rule, a better state of things is gradually being brought about.
12. Signs of progress. Magnificent buildings, good shops, railways, post offices, telegraph stations, hospitals, libraries, schools, colleges, abound as evidences of immense progress. English rule in India is rapidly transforming social habits and civilization. ”

“ They wait, with their meek eyes looking out for the advent of the messenger of saving truth. A change has come over their thoughts. They have begun to scorn their priests and suspect their idols. They are willing to hear God's word when it is brought to them. ”

“ For the majority of the people the houses are all open to the street. The rooms are rude in construction, often of unpainted boards, without ornament, with scarce any furniture, mere eating and sleeping places. The people sit in the streets. Privacy can hardly be said to exist, except in the dwellings of the rich. ”

“ The people breathe a free air, live under just laws, are protected from civil wars and cruel massacres; education is spreading; and, altogether, a new nation is being born.
13. Presence of idolatry. This vast people is wholly given to idolatry. Temples, small, dark, dirty, ugly, and repulsive, stand open everywhere. ”