from the atmosphere of evil. It has been almost impossible hitherto to cope with this even in a single small

town.

I will give one more instance. While I was living in Perambur, among the mill-labourers in Madras, seeking for some means to settle a great labour strike, I made enquiry into the proportion of men to women and the moral conditions in this over-crowded quarter. I found that the proportion was even lower than the proportion in Fiji. The men out-numbered the women in a proportion of more than three to one. When I asked one man why he walked in from his own village six miles every morning and went back six miles every evening, he told me that it was not "safe" to bring his wife to Perambur; and I fully understood what he meant by that word "safe," owing to my previous experiences of evil in Fiji.

Here, then, is one vital factor for investigation, and also for remedy. People talk glibly about the coming industrial expansion in India. Do they realize at what a cost that expansion is already being carried out in many of our great cities? They tell us that by this means India will become prosperous. Have they never heard the words ringing in their ears,—

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

I wish it to be clearly understood that this is a worldwide phenomenon. It is not confined to India only.

In order to refresh the memory of my readers about facts which I have already mentioned, let me give again a brief statement, by a contemporary writer, of the conditions which prevailed, a century ago, during the Industrial Revolution in England itself. I shall summarise the account as follows:

"The physical status of the families of the manufacturing classes in England was reduced to the lowest point by the rapid industrial change. The moral conditions were even worse. Children of tender age were reduced to physical wrecks. Young girls were ruined before they reached the age of thirteen or fourteen. Family life became impossible. The barracks in which the labourers lived reeked with immorality."

Here, in bare, cold, naked details, we have a picture of a sudden moral blight sweeping over England, from which she has never really recovered. The figures about venereal disease in England, which have recently been published, show the truth of this conclusion. They are disconcerting to read; but the times have gone by when it could be regarded as advisable not to mention them in public. Disease cannot be cured by being glossed over, or by surface healing merely. The root of the disease must be discovered; and this lies not merely in the corruption of the human heart, but also in the corruption of human conditions.

We may go to another country, East Africa, and follow out the consequences of modern exploitation there

also; we shall find that the lesson is everywhere the same, and it cannot be too deeply driven home to the Christian conscience.

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There can be no surer sign," the writer says, social disintegration, than for the marriage tie to become unstable among the masses of the people. In the mixture of men of different African tribes in European employment in British East Africa, the customary union of man and woman is now by the month. Their industrial life being precarious, their liabilities to their women are precarious also. They have no wives, as they have no homes. They get their wages at the end of the month; they change their masters at the end of the month-and so they marry for a month. These unions have no sanction in native African law, nor in our own. As is inevitable, children are rare, diseases are common. The system fits the life."

The system fits the life! This may be said of these modern industrial upheavals in almost every land, and India is no exception. But have Christ's own followers nothing to say to the desecration which is thus being wrought among the weaker members of the Body of Humanity? Is there no possibility of forestalling the evil that is being done?

Furthermore, in order that we ourselves, who are educated and cultured, may not patronisingly look down upon the poor, but rather remember the words of the Christian Scriptures-" Let him that thinketh he

standeth, take heed lest he fall," I shall give one further revealing fact.

In my travels in Africa, I was told on the authority of one whose word could be implicitly relied on (and) his statement was corroborated by others) that, in a certain province, there was scarcely one among the unmarried men, coming as they did from refined English homes, who did not give way to the temptation of keeping an African concubine in his house, whom he could never possibly marry. It was the 'custom of the country.' God's image was thus being desecrated and defiled, not by poor ignorant African labourers,

but by cultured men of my own race. God forbid that I should judge them too harshly! But I must, if I am a Christian, do all in my power to make impossible those inhuman conditions which act as imperative incentives to immorality and vice.

I have thought it best to take one single side of the industrial problem which I have personally studied, and work this out, rather than attempt to cover a wider field. The same questions that I have asked about the industrial conditions which break down married life, may also be asked concerning a hundred other things, such as the housing of the poor, the hours of labour, the provision for sickness and old age. The final answer to each one of these questions is contained in the words of Christ:

Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them; for this is the Law and the Prophets."

CHAPTER XI

THE REVOLUTIONARY ENVIRONMENT

T is strange to turn from those sayings of Christ,

IT

which describe the slow and hidden processes of

nature, as affording analogies for the coming of God's Kingdom, to those passages which have been called 'apocalyptic.' In these, the language itself is strained, in order to give the picture of extreme desolation and confusion. The normal channels of growth appear to be stopped. Human life has reached a stage of catastrophe, such as happened at Naples, or at Lisbon, or at Krakatoa, in the shock of the great earthquakes, or in modern Europe generally during the days of the recent war. Christ thus describes such cataclysmal times:

"And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be: but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be earthquakes in divers places and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows."

In a later passage the whole scene becomes more lurid still with tokens of dismay.

For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation. But in those days, after the tribulation, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light. And the stars of heaven shall fall. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory."