"When I first came to your lectures it was not instruction that I wanted. Instruction was the pretext; a secret desire to expose what I reckoned your irrational and superstitious follies was the reality. At last against my inclination, against my feelings I was obliged to admit the truth of Christianity. Its evidence was so strong that I could not resist it. But I still felt contrary to what I 'thought.' On hearing your account of the nature of sin, and especially sins of the heart, my conscience burst on me like a volcano. My soul was pierced through . . . I was in a hell of torment. On hearing and examining further I began, I know not how or why, to find relief from the words of your Bible. What I once thought most irrational I soon found to be very wisdom, what I once hated most I soon began to love most, and now I love it altogether . . . 'In spite of myself I became a Christian.' Surely some unseen power must have been guiding me! Surely this must have been what your Bible calls grace, free grace, sovereign grace!" Such was the simple, straight forward, manly confession of Alexander Duff's first Hindu convert. ———————— CHAPTER VII. THE KOOLIN BRAHMIN. Mokesh Chunder Ghose was not long to stand alone. He was followed by a Koolin Brahmin, Khrisha Mohun Banerjea, now a well-known and much respected Christian clergyman. Of a candid, enquiring disposition, he had been convinced of the errors of Hinduism before he had received Christianity as truth from God. He was at the head of party of deep-thinkers who would no longer consent to be duped, and his own very high rank as a Koolin Brahman made him an object of special wrath to his former co-religionists. They fiercely demanded of Banerjea's family they should disown him, on pain of themselves losing their caste should they refuse to do so. The reformer's family called on him to renounce what they called his errors, and own his belief in the Hindu religion, or be for ever cast out from his home. The poor young man chose ruin rather than falsehood. Banerjea left his home at night with some of his friends who held the same views as himself. "We left," wrote he, "the home where we passed our infant days; we left our mother that nourished us in childhood; we left our brother with whom we associated in our early days; we left our sisters with whom we sympathised since they were born." Personal danger was added to private grief. As Banerjea and his friends were returning, a furious mob broke loose on them, and it was with some difficulty that they made their escape. No wonder that the Koolin Brahman fell into a fever. He had as yet lost all, without any positive gain; he had left Krishna but he had not found Christ. "I was perfectly regardless of God," he wrote at a subsequent time, "yet, as a merciful Father He forgot not me!"