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Show The Missionary Herald January diversion of its purpose to the support of a rather mechanical revival system, have all tended to break down the Week of Prayer. More than all, worse than all, we are moved to add, it is to be feared that the abandonment of this season of united prayer indicates the lessening of the habit of prayer in our churches. If the prayer meeting drops out, or is changed over into some other form of religious gathering, the Week of Prayer is bound to go too. If the laity becomes disinclined to pray audibly, publicly, even in the fellowship of God's house, a Week of Prayer can hardly be maintained. This is the point of larger concern: that the social meeting of prayer is disappearing from our churches. Much can be said concerning the dryness, the formality, and even the possible hypocrisy of prayers said over and over, glibly or falteringly, at church prayer meetings. Perhaps it is better to do without such praying. But what about genuine, vital, direct prayer? Is it better to do without that? And why are we not growing up to that in our churches? Surely there are grounds for prayer, in these days, and impulses to prayer. One would think that the church of Christ, humbled, needy, eager for better things, would inevitably come together to lay hold upon its Lord, to cry unitedly for wisdom and strength and courage to meet the tremendous challenge of these times. If our eyes are open to things as they are in this world, our hearts will be moved to prayer thereabout. It is a time for the reenthronement of prayer in our churches. "CHRISTIANS are not going about this year in India with shamed faces. A significant Instead, this is the time of Assembly in a great evangelistic effort." India g0 rejnai-kg the Christian World (London) in commenting upon the recent assembly of the South India United Church at Vellore, that city of martial memories. The delegates came from Jaffna in Ceylon, from Vizaga-patam in the north of the presidency, from Madura and Madras, and from Travancore in the extreme south. Presbyterian and Congregationalist elements compose this union; negotiations are proceeding for including the Wesleyans also. Already there is a Christian community in this United Church of 165,000, the increase in the last two years being 12,000. The assembly was distinguished, not for its ecclesiastical business, but for its earnest attention to the matter of evangelism. Its devotions were led by Mr. Sherwood Eddy. The week preceding the meeting had been devoted to a concerted evangelistic effort throughout the field of the United Church. Thousands of Christians, many of them miserably poor, went without their week's earnings to do the work of evangelism. Results, so far as figures show, varied widely, from the comparatively few decisions secured among the caste families of Jaffna to the winning to Christianity of over three thousand at Travancore, with as many more recorded as inquirers. Full of gratitude and hope, the South India United Church-from the first an Indian church in which Europeans have always been in a small minority-is becoming still more determinedly a missionary church; and a missionary church, as the Christian World rightly concludes, is the one hope of India's conversion. WE have asked in these columns for a great variety of things needed on mission fields: watches, Some New • . * ways to Help c o m m u n i o n sets, safes, spectacles, bicycles; and quite uniformly they have been forthcoming. Here come some new suggestions from Mr. C. H. Burr, of Ahmed-nagar, now on furlough in this country:- "In the church at Ahmednagar, India, we have a choir which is able to sing in English simple anthems, cantatas, and vesper services, and |
