In some quarters, however, whole families and whole clans have been blessedly converted, and idolatry has been completely eradicated. In other cases where mass movements have taken place, certain missionaries have found it physically impossible to sift out each doubtful individual, and for safety have demanded that the whole family or clan or village shall give up idolatry before any single individual convert has been received for church-membership. To combine strict faith and practice, according to the New Testament standard, with a proper respect for local customs and traditions, demands great wisdom in our missionaries, and makes their conferences very practical and very necessary. Certain it is that in our Baptist missions abroad greater care is exercised in receiving members than that to which we are accustomed in the homeland. The missionary cannot afford to have false disciples in the flock, if he knows it, for "one sinner destroyeth much good." New Year's Day at Madras was full of interest. Lady Pentland, wife of the governor of the Madras Presidency, invited us to a New Year's garden-party. An open-air gathering of any sort on the first day of January would have been a novelty to us, but this one found the atmosphere so balmy and the vegetation so green, that such a party was a positive delight. The avenues of approach to the governor's residence were lined with the body-guard of his excellency, stationed in twos along the way, and clad in scarlet The reception took place under a wide-spreading tree, on a spacious lawn. There were as many as a thousand guests. It was a gay and beautiful scene. Hindu and Moslem, Parsee and Christian, all met together. It was an exhibition of loyalty to the British Crown, as well as a proof that just government may yet weld all India's classes and castes together. Lord Pentland spoke to us most pleasantly of certain members of his family whom we had met in America, and Lady Pentland showed herself to be a charming hostess. But a reception still more charming to us was the reception which the Rochester men gave us that same New Year's night, at the bungalow of Doctor Ferguson, close to the Day Memorial Chapel, where the sessions of the conference were held. At least ten of our graduates sat down to supper, together with their wives. Subsequently, from adjoining rooms, other members of the conference came in to the New Year's reception, which is an annual affair. The United States consul dropped in, with a few other guests, until the total number could not have been far from eighty. It was like a family gathering. When I remembered that the Telugu Mission was once called "The Lone-Star Mission," and was in danger of being given up, and when I noted that it now numbers one hundred and sixty-eight churches and a church-membership of more than seventy thousand, I could but say, "What hath God wrought!" X THE TELUGU MISSION