Theosophy, as a harmonizer of faiths, is not likely to accomplish much that will be permanently good. Religions to-day have lost much of their asperity one toward the other. The study of Comparative Religion has led men everywhere to magnify the assonances, rather than the dissonances, of the Great World Faiths. Theosophy magnifies into a cult this function of bringing religions together. It ignores, however, the fundamental differences which exist, brings all faiths into the same equational value, and assumes that they are equally effective as ways of salvation. With such profound ignorance of the essential qualities of the faiths which are to be harmonized, and with a placid assumption that these religions are of the same efficacy, only to different peoples, it is impossible to see how Theosophy can ever render a service to any of the faiths or to the people who are their adherents which will not ultimately prove a disservice to all. Peace without truth, like peace without honour, will not ultimately redound to the promotion of religion or to the salvation of men. Whatever Theosophy may render toward the development of an Oriental literature will depend largely upon its attitude toward truth and religion in general, and toward Hinduism and Christianity in particular. Its bitter attitude toward Christianity in the past does not encourage one to believe that hereafter the literature fostered by it will be either very impartial or very sane. And yet we shall be thankful for anything it may accomplish in the preservation of Sanskrit manuscripts and in the development of a wholesome literature of any kind on lines purely Oriental. CHAPTER XIV THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA I For at least seventeen centuries Christianity has found a home in India. The Syrian Church was the first to gather converts, and it still exists as a separate sect of 300,000 souls in a small part of Malabar. Roman Catholicism, also, has had here its six centuries of struggles and varied fortunes, and now claims its 1,500,000 followers. On July 9, 1906, the Protestants celebrated the bicentenary of the landing of their first two missionaries at Tranquebar, on the Coromandel coast. Ziegenbalg and Plutscho were truly men of God, and inaugurated a work which to-day has its ramifications in every part of this vast peninsula. They introduced a new era of missionary effort for India. Former endeavours were ecclesiastical. Great men, indeed, had wrought for Christ in this land; but their chief aim had been to establish a religion of forms and ceremonies. In the matter of ritual in religion, Hinduism has little to learn from, and has much to suggest to, western ecclesiastics. The early failure of our faith to secure marked and permanent success in this land finds its chief cause here.