The most prominent feature in the India Mission of this Society has been the ordination of Evangelists to the work of the ministry; either as Pastors of Churches, as missionaries to the heathen, or assistants to the missionaries.  English education continues to extend its influence.  The institutions in Calcutta, Madras, and Bangalore, are fuller than ever, and very efficient.  The school fees in India during 1868 amounted to 940 pounds.  The attitude of the educated classes towards christianity has wonderfully changed, and the impression it is making on them is very strong.  In the same great cities Female education now occupies a larger place than ever in the labours of the Mission.  In two of the missions of South India, seven among the well-trained evangelists of those missions have been ordained as pastors or missionaries during the past two years, and eleven others have been proposed for the same responsibilities.  The number in Travancore still stands at eleven, and in North India at six.  The total number of Native ordained pastors and missionaries in the Indian Missions of this Society is twenty-eight, of whom fifteen are pastors of churches, and thirteen are employed as missionaries.  It will probably ere long amount to forty.

[Illustration:  Temple of Siva.]

The travancore Mission has now been established more than sixty years.  The settled agencies, which have shaped it into its present form, have been at work just half a century.  And none who contrast the present state of the province with what it was when the mission began, can fail to mark the wonderful progress which it has made during these sixty years, in every element of true prosperity.  The province has enjoyed an increasing degree of security and order under its native rulers, and has made special advance under its present enlightened Raja and his able minister Sir T. Madhava Rao.  While slavery and serfdom have been abolished, the intensity of Brahminical bigotry has been diminished, and a very large measure of religious freedom has been secured for the varied classes of the population.  Sound knowledge and freedom of thought on the most important subjects prevail to an extent utterly unknown at the commencement of the present century.  At the same time, the direct work of the mission has met with the most encouraging success.  In the seven districts of the mission, recently reduced to six, the great number of native churches, the large congregations, the number of scholars, the order and general purity of christian society, and the liberality with which the agencies of the gospel are supported, exhibit that success in a striking manner.  The crowning proofs of blessing and prosperity are seen in the congregations prepared for complete self-support; in their great liberality; in the large band of well-educated Native preachers and teachers; in newly appointed elders; and in excellent and tried native pastors.  In these latter points the Travancore mission has begun to take rank with some of the most advanced missions of all Societies, and to approach the position of rural churches in Great Britain itself.