Could we observe the course of evolution down which a species of animals or plants has come from some remote ancestry to their present form, with what interest would we note the specific characteristics gathering strength, as from generation to generation they prove their "fitness to survive"! The whole onward career of the evolving species would seem to have been aimed at the latest form in which we find it. Yet quite as wonderful phenomena as the species that has survived are the many variations of the species that have presented themselves, but have not proved fit to survive. One species only survives for hundreds of would-be collaterals that are extinct. The religious evolution that we have been observing is the growing power of Christ's personality in New India; and now, as further testimony to its power, a number of collateral movements, similarly inspired yet eccentric and hardly likely to endure, attract our attention. In these eccentric movements the power of Christ's personality is manifest, and yet it appears amid circumstances so peculiar that the phenomena in themselves are grotesque. [Sidenote: The Punjab--two have set themselves up as Christ come again.] [Sidenote: Hakim Singh.] [Sidenote: Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad.] Three of these strange movements let us look at as new evidence of the power of Christ's personality in India. All three occur in still another province than those named, the Punjab, a province _sui generis_ in many ways. Within a generation past, at least two men have arisen, either claiming to be Christ Himself come again, or a Messiah superior to Him. A third received a vision of "Jesus God," and proclaimed Him, wherever he went, as an object of worship. Of the first of the three leaders, Sir Alfred Lyall tells us, one Hakim Singh, "who listened to missionaries until he not only accepted the whole Christian dogma, but conceived himself to be the second embodiment [of Christ], and proclaimed himself as such and summoned the missionaries to acknowledge him." It sounds much like blasphemy, or mere lunacy; but in India one learns not to be shocked at what in Europe would be rankest blasphemy; the intention must decide the innocence or the offence. Hakim Singh "professed to work miracles, preached pure morality, but also venerated the cow,"--strange chequer of Hindu and Christian ideas.[101] The second case is the better known one of Mirz[=a] Ghol[=a]m Ahmad, of Q[=a]di[=a]n, who sets up a claim to be "the Similitude of the Messiah" and "the Messiah of the Twentieth Century." As his name shows, he is a Mahomedan, but the assumption of the name "Messiah" also shows that it is in Christ's place he declares himself to stand. At the same time, his appeal is to his fellow-Mahomedans; for he explains that as Jesus was the Messiah of Moses, he himself is the Messiah of Mahomed. His superiority to Christ, he expressly declares. "I shall be guilty of concealing the truth," he