Identifier: christianmissi01denn (find matches)
Title: Christian missions and social progress; a sociological study of foreign missions
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Dennis, James S. (James Shepard), 1842-1914
Subjects: Missions Christian sociology
Publisher: New York, F. H. Revell
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Princeton Theological Seminary Library

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thesecrimes ; and the delinquent is at once freed from all temporal inconveniences, as wellas all dread of future retribution. In an article on Social and Religious Reform, published in The Hindu ofJune 24, 1887, is found substantially the same verdict, as follows: The Hindu mythology has to be purged of the absurdities that have overgrownit during centuries of ignorance and of superstitious and timid isolation. In thesame manner, the moral ideas of our common people have to be improved. Anorthodox Hindu would tolerate falsehood, cowardice, and self-abasement, but woulddamn to perdition his neighbour who swerves the least from accepted conventionseven in the details of personal habits. Such moral perversity does not indicate ahealthy social condition. Similarly, our ideas of charity, of social distinction, education,and social well-being in general, have to be drawn out of the influence of an obsoleteind backward civilization, and brought in harmony with the fresh spirit of the time.
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THE SOCIAL EVILS OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN WORLD 305 India the religious atmosphere is deeply pessimistic. Fear is a con-trolling influence in religious life. The anger of the gods hangs like abrooding curse over life. The dread of evil spirits dwarfs the mind andchills the heart. Religion is an aggressive struggle to ward off perilsand propitiate angry gods or malicious demons. The disadvantages ofa religious faith and practice so burdensome, so depressing, so mislead-ing can be fully understood only by one who is familiar with the socialcondition of the Indian people. In Mohammedan lands there are strange and crude conceptions ofwhat religion is and what it requires. The influence of Islam, so faras it relates to the cultivation of liberty, purity,justice, and kindliness, is revealed in its own his- isiam and its relationtory. It has ever taken an attitude towards to social morality,humanity which is marked by relentless spiritualand social despotism. True to its historic demand that all

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