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 T?a.Vi' 
 
 
 
 HINDUISM AND THE HINDU PEOPLE. 
 
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HINDUISM 
 
 -AND - 
 
 THE HINDU PEOPLE. 
 
 BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF EXTEMPORE ADDRESSES DELIVERED 
 
 BY 
 
 RAM CHANDRA BOSE, 
 
 Delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 from North India. 
 
 1NDIANOLA, IOWA: 
 
 ADVOCATE-TRIBUNE PRINTING HOUSE. 
 1888. 
 
I 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The proceeds of the sales of this volume go to the Endowment Fund of the 
 Centennial School, Lucknow, India. 
 
 I know of no Institution in connection, either with our own or with 
 other Missions, so well fitted to serve the status of the native Christian 
 community in every respect as our own Christian College in this large .and 
 influential city. Within its walls the young men, on whom the choicest 
 hopes of that community are centered, receive a liberal education, and are 
 at the same time not merely shielded from the demoralizing influences by 
 which the very best fruits of Government educational establishments are 
 often blighted, but thoroughly equipped for the various duties they are to 
 be called upon as members of aggressive churches in a non-Christian 
 country to discharge. Missionary work in these Provinces has for some 
 years past been rising naturally, not on account of an artificial pressure, 
 from the masses to the higher orders of society, and the demand for a class 
 of well-educated and respectable preachers has been proportionately grow- 
 ing. Our theological seminaries will have before long to add to their 
 existing organizations classes fitted to prepare such preachers, over and 
 above those who are annually coming out of them to do a branch of work 
 which ought never to be neglected for a moment. To what can the forth- 
 coming classes, already contemplated by far-seeing men like the Principal 
 of our Bareilly Theological Seminary, look for the supply needed to make 
 them successful with such well-grounded hopes as to Institutions like our 
 Christian College ? But barring the growing demand for first-class 
 preachers, the country peremptorily demands a class of educated native 
 Christians, capable in different spheres of Usefulness of influencing those 
 classes of educated natives, which are being daily led and strengthened by 
 Government Colleges and Schools. Nor must it be forgotten that our 
 schemes having for their object the perfect independence of the native 
 churches are sure to prove abortive, if native Christians are not prepared, 
 by« superior education, for the responsible and remunerative posts which 
 have hitherto been almost entirely monopolized by Hindus, Mussulmans, 
 European and Eurasian Christians. An institution fitted to subserve such 
 a variety of noble objects is certainly deserving of encouragement and sup- 
 port. RAM CHANDRA BOSE, 
 
 [Delegate to the Methodist General Conference of 1880.] 
 Lucknow, January 1, 1883. 
 
.H I N Da f P.H I L1O3OP.H Y- 
 
 I must be pi n with a word of explanation. As I am not a Sanscrit scholar, 
 my knowledge of Hindu Philosophy is superficial, and my appearance in a 
 Hall of Philosophy among lecturers distinguished by breadth of scholarship 
 and acuteness of thought is an anachronism. But for this, as I had not been 
 consulted before my name appeared in print in connection with theirs, I am 
 no more responsible than the Emperor of Russia is for the progress of 
 Nihilism in his vast empire. 
 
 To begin Hindu Philosophy is typical in its origin, typical in its genius 
 and character, and typical in its tendencies and results. 
 
 Hindu Philosophy is typical in its origin : it owes its origin to a reaction 
 against ritualism. The age of pure nature-worship pictured in the grand 
 old hymns of the Rigveda, the oldest and purest of the religious books of 
 the Hindus, was followed by an era of dead forms and lifeless observances. 
 A gorgeous ceremonial service superseded a simple, though unauthorized 
 form of worship, and an order of priesthood destined before long to usurp 
 all authority human and divine was called into existence. Exaggerated 
 importance was attached to forms and ceremonies, and the value of sacrifices 
 was set forth in glowing terms of panegyric. Purity of life and conduct 
 was neglected, truths fitted to ameliorate the human heart were thrown into 
 the background, and religion was reduced to a series of mummeries and 
 tomfooleries. This state of tilings could not in the very nature of the case 
 last long unchecked, and so a reaction against the farce of ritualism mani- 
 fested itself. But human thought, when not guided by revealed truth and 
 the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit, proceeds from one extreme to the 
 other, and so the excesses of superstition disappeared only to make room 
 for the vagaries of rationalism. And thus Hindu philosophy appeared as 
 the resultant of the forces at work in a ceremonial age. And if the history 
 of philosophy in all its local and ephemeral forms and manifestations were 
 carefully ransacked and clearly set forth, such would appear to be its 
 origin in all the countries, ancient and modem, in which it has nourished. 
 The non-Christian religions of the world have vibrated between ritualism 
 and rationalism ; and even Christianity under the guidance of men of ex- 
 treme views and wrong tendencies has followed their example. Hindu phil- 
 osophy is typical in its origin. 
 
 Hindu philosophy is typical, not only in its origin, but in its genius and 
 character. It embodies an attempt to solve a number of unsolvable prob- 
 
4 
 
 lems, an attempt resulting, though made by some of the acutest intellects 
 -the world ever saw, in a miserable if not ludicrous failure. These problems 
 are in the phraseology of philosophy called the problems of existence. 
 Whfcre has the world come from? Where have I come from? Why does 
 the world exist? Why do I exist? What relation subsists between me and 
 the lumps of matter in close association with and around me, between the 
 ego within and thenon-ego without? What is the ego? What the ncn-ego? 
 What is the meaning of my irrepressible aspiration after the infinite? Is there 
 a personal God? What is his essence and what the relation He bears to us 
 and to the inanimate objects around us? Such aie some of the perplexing 
 questions which Indian philosophy undertakes to solve; and such are the 
 questions which philosophy in all its phases of development has considered 
 it its duty to solve. But they are inscrutable mysteries, and a bold and licen- 
 tious attempt to tamper with them is only a prelude to mistakes and errors 
 of the wildest character. A practical solution of some of these problems is 
 offered by our moral intuitions and by revelation; but philosophy presump- 
 tuously casts these sources of light overboard, and in its unassisted endeav- 
 ors to grapple with mysterious truths, it entangles itself in mazes and laby- 
 rinths from which there is no escape. The complications Dy which we find 
 Indian philosophy hemmed in are the very complications amid which we 
 find philosophic speculations of every species and tendency hopelessly 
 entangled. And the errors with which Indian philosophy bristles, are the 
 errors which have characterized philosophic thought in all its phases of 
 development. Hindu philosophy typifies philosophy in general in its 
 attempt to solve a number of unsolvable problems, in the complications 
 amid which it lias allowed itself to be entangled, and lastly, in the errors 
 by which it is disfigured. 
 
 0 
 
 It is, moreover, typical in its tendencies and results. Man is emphat- 
 ically .and intensely a religious being; and when speculative philosophy, or 
 science, falsely so-called, brings man where his moral intuitions are thrown 
 overboard, and worship is converted into a mockery, a revulsion of feeling 
 leading to to a reaction towards religion is the inevitable consequence. 
 But man is, alas! a fallen being also, and a reaction in his case means an 
 unrestrained, not a well regulated oscillation of the pendulum of thought 
 and belief; and so from one extreme he swings back to the other. The 
 extreme of elaborate, but meaningless ritualism, leads him to the extreme 
 of philosophic nihilism, and the extreme of philosophic nihilism brings him 
 back to the extreme of meaningless ritualism. The history of philosophy in 
 ancient and modem times proves this to a demonstration. The era of 
 rationalistic development brought about in India by a reaction against the 
 cold and senseless formality of the ceremonial age, depicted in the Brahmans, 
 was followed by an age of ritualism even more dreary and meaningless 
 than that from which philosophic vagaries of even the wildest kind seemed 
 
5 
 
 a relief. And that vast country has, during the entire period of its exis- 
 tence, been oscillating between the opposite extremes of gross superstition 
 and licentious speculation. Such was precisely the case in all those coun- 
 tries of the ancient world in which speculative thought was pushed to the 
 extreme of nihilistic developments; and such has been the case even in 
 those more favored lands where philosophy might have been preserved, but 
 for its supercilious contempt of revealed truth, from treading the path of 
 error. Mysticism in Germany gave birth to a form of rationalism, which 
 by the law of reaction produced pietism, and this form of superstition 
 resulted only in riveting the chains of wild speculation. And if the history 
 of individual philosophers were clearly known as that of not a few is, their 
 mental aberration would tell the same tale— superstition breeding ration- 
 alism and rationalism reproducing superstition. 
 
 But Hindu philosophy has its local idiosyncrasy, as well as its typical 
 character. This consists of two elements, its characteristic dreaminess and 
 its intense religiousness. 
 
 Hindu philosophy is peculiarly dreamy. All philosophy, not excepting 
 that which has grown up under the rigid analysis of the scientific method, 
 is more or ft*s fanciful and dreamy.. Take for instance, the beautiful 
 theory which traces the progress of man from his supposed primeval state 
 of savagery to his present glorious stage of civilization to what is called the 
 law of self-development. This is a beautiful theory of progress, but it is 
 based on a dream, viz. : that the original condition of man was the savage 
 state, an assumption never proved and obviously inconsistent with the 
 traditions of nations. Take as another example, the scientifically devel- 
 oped materialism of the day, the system which brings the world out of a 
 primordial form. This theory has strong lines of beauty and even sublim- 
 ity, but it is based upon a myth, the existence of this primordial form ! Once 
 more, take the refined pantheism of the day, which evolves the world from 
 an ubiquitous and all-pervading divine substance, unconscious in material 
 forms but conscious in the human mind. Here the existence of this essence 
 which pervades the world extensively, protensively and -substantially, is 
 coolly assumed, not proved. Philosophy in all its phases is more or less 
 fanciful and dreamy. But Hindu philosophy is emphatically, pre-emin- 
 ently so. It parades fictions as facts with an audacity to which the history 
 of modern philosophy affords no parallel, or affords a parallel only in Her- 
 bert Spencer’s account of the origin and growth of our religious ideas. 
 Prof. Tyndall points indeed to a primordial atom, but he does not dare 
 dwell on the varied processes of evolution by which things which do appear 
 have been brought out of a thing which does not appear. His Hindu pro- 
 totype fearlessly goes many steps further than he does, or even dreams of 
 doing — he supplies the missing links and minutely describes the manner in 
 which order has been evolved out of chaos, and beauty from ashes. The 
 
6 
 
 European evolutionist leaves an unfilled gap between the source of exis- 
 tence and its present varied forms; but the Indian evolutionist draws copi- 
 ously on his mind and creative imagination, and fills this intervening void 
 with miraculous success, as I shall have an opportunity of showing. 
 
 The Indian geographer does not travel, does not inquire and investigate, 
 he simply dreams and coolly talks of mountains higher than the sun, moon 
 and stars, and enlarges on oceans of milk and oceans of clarified butter. 
 The Indian chronologist does not study antiquities, does not examine coins 
 and monumental engravings— he simply dreams and talks of ages and 
 periods or history scarcely shorter than those with which geology is render- 
 ing us familiar. And so the Indian philosopher dreams an 1 presents his 
 night-visions and day-dreams, as truths of cosmogony and facts of theology. 
 Indian philosophy is of a piece with Indian geography and Indian chro- 
 nology; and its characteristic dreaminess indicates one feature of its local 
 idiosyncrasy. 
 
 The intense religiousness of Indian philosophy is the second and last ele- 
 ment of its local idiosyncrasy. In elegance of diction and gracefulness of im- 
 agery, our national poetry is far behind that of ancient Greece or even Rome, 
 but in the intensity of the religious feeling by which it is animated, it is far 
 ahead of the poetry of any other nation on the surface of the globe. Indian 
 philosophy partakes of the religious fervor and enthusiasm of Indian poetry. 
 The two questions that it proposes to settle are indications of its religious 
 character. These are— what is the origin of existence, and what is the way 
 of salvation? These two problems appear at first sight radically different 
 from each other, the one having a speculative, and the other a practical 
 significance. But as presented and solved by Hindu philosophy, they are 
 essentially one and the same problem. To know the origin of things is, 
 according to its renowned champions, to be saved. According, for instance, 
 to the Sankhya philosophy, a man is saved only when he knows the constit- 
 uent elements of nature; while according to the Vedant, the knowledge that 
 all the diverse forms, of existence are but varied manifestations of one 
 entity, viz., God, is salvation. So the speculative questions propounded by 
 Hindu philosophy are in reality religious questions, their object being our 
 salvation from the evils of corporeal existence. Now every species of phil- 
 osophy lias a religious side, or some speculations of a directly religious 
 character grafted upon it; but Hindu philosophy is religious from the begin- 
 ning to the end. The Hindu washes religiously, eats religiously, sleeps 
 religiously, and of course philosophizes religiously. 
 
 It is impossible to settle the appropriate chronological questions as to 
 the origin and growth of Indian schools of philosophy, and I do not wish to 
 bother you with the varied speculations indulged in by oriental scholars in 
 their attempts to solve what will perhaps ever remain an unsolvable prob- 
 lem. But the fact that the growth of Indian philosophy synchronizes with 
 
that of rationalistic speculation in Persia, China, and even distant Greece, 
 is too significant to be passed over unnoticed. Oriential scholars are agreed 
 that about the time when Buddha was giving a somewhat practical and 
 humanistic direction to the dreamy speculations of Indian philosophy, 
 Confucius was elaborating his sociology in China, Zoroaster was feeling in 
 Persia after a principal of unity behind the apparent dualism of nature, and 
 Pythagoras was trying in Greece to reduce the complexity of creation to a 
 primal elementary substance. The human mind seems to have been roused 
 as if by a mighty external force, from the dormancy of ages, in distant 
 parts of the globe at about the same time, to grapple with the problems of 
 existence, and to find a quiet resting place for the aspirations of the human 
 heart. But alas! the attempt though made by the greatest intellects of an- 
 tiquity, failed. The soaring mind had to recoil to its own darkness, and 
 the longing heart remained unsatisfied! This failure of rationalism is a 
 pillar of salt which should have led our modern rationalists to give them- 
 selves to speculations more profitable than those clustering around the 
 problems of existence; but the warning has been neglected, and giant minds 
 have made other attempts, but the results have been new pillars of salt ! 
 
 Hindu rationalism developed about five or six centuries before the birth 
 of our Lord, into six distinct schools of philosophy, called the six Darshans, 
 or views of truth. The names of the schools are: 1 — Nyaya, founded by 
 Gotama; 2 Vaiseshika, by Kanad; 3- Sankhya, by Kapila; 4 — Yoga, by 
 Patangali; f> Mimansa, by Jaimani; 6 — Yedant, by Badarayana or Yyasa. 
 These six schools of philosophy go in pairs, and may properly be made to 
 shrink into three distinct and separate schools of thought. The Nyaya, for 
 instance, and the Vaiseshika, are, properly speaking, two branches of one 
 and the same school of philosophy, rather than two distinct schools; and 
 this may be predicated of Sankhya and Yoga as well as of Mimansa and 
 Yedant. The principles of these systems are embodied in aphorisms or 
 Sutras, which, being brief and sententious, are as a rule susceptible of vari- 
 ous interpretations, and which often throw the apple of discord among the 
 learned in Europe as well as in India. There is associated with these sys- 
 tems a good deal of matter which is, properly speaking, not philosophical, 
 and which therefore must be thrown into the background in all attempts 
 like the present to set forth the salient features of Hindu philosophy. The 
 systems called logical, viz.: Nyaya andYaiseshika, embody elaborate disserta- 
 tions on logic, and have only a vein of philosophic thought underlying 
 their net-work of definitions, categories and syllogisms. The Yoga philos- 
 ophy is merely a tissue of the varied stratagems and manceuvers resorted to 
 by Indian ascetics to keep their restless thought fixed on one subject, while 
 the Mimansa, as its uame implies, is a commentary on, and a vindication of 
 the ritualistic portions of Yedas. Barring this large measure of superflu- 
 ous and irrelevant matter, we have three distinct lines of thought or specu- 
 
8 
 
 lation interweaving themselves with and forming the groundwork of Hindu 
 philosophy. These are: 1st, Trialism; 2d, Dualism; and 3d, Monism. Under 
 these heads Hindu philosophy will be treated of in the following para- 
 graphs, though the order in which they appear may not be pronounced 
 chronologically established. 
 
 x. TEIALISM. 
 
 1. Trialism is a phase of philosophic speculation, of which European 
 and American philosophers do not seem to possess much knowledge, and 
 for which they do not, even when made acquainted with it, discover any 
 predilection. But trialism is ineft'aceably inscribed on the banner unfurled 
 by the schools of Indian philosophy, called Logical, Nyaya and Yaiseshika. 
 These ^schools plainly and unequivocally affirm the existence of three 
 co-eternal and co-existent substances or entities. They affirm the pre-exis- 
 tence or eternity of matter in the shape of invisible and intangible atoms. 
 They affirm the pre-extisence or eternity of the human soul or souls called 
 Jivatman, and they affirm the pre-existence or eternity of God called Para- 
 matman, or the Great Soul. This system may therefore be justly called 
 trialism in contra-distinction to dualism, which admits the existence of two 
 co-eternal and co-existent principles, and monism which admits the eternal 
 existence of only one substance. 
 
 2. The lines of theological speculation, in which the Hindu mind loves 
 to indulge, render the above-mentioned affirmations absolutely necessary 
 The idea of God as Creator bringing the world out of nothing, and that of 
 God as architect bringing order and beauty out of a chaotic mass of matter, 
 are alike inconsistent with Hindu logic, and repugnant to Hindu feeling. 
 God cannot, reasons the Hindu philosepher, create without having a desire 
 to create. Now a desire, whatever may be its object, is a weakness and 
 source of misery. Hindu philosophy sets it down as an axiom that all 
 desires, good, or bad, are fountains of distress and lead, in the case of a 
 rational creature or man, to acts which become so many chains fitted to 
 enthrall and vex the tranquil spirit. Emancipation from desire, and conse- 
 quently from all acts, good or bad, is the great aim of piety and godliness. 
 Desire being invariably a source of mental distress and agony, and of spir- 
 itual enthrallment and vexation, to attribute it to God is the very height of 
 blasphemy. And as creation is an impossibility without a pre-existent 
 desire, God cannot create without neutralizing his Godhead. Then again: 
 impufe matter could not have proceeded from a pure spirit like God; and 
 as God could not possibly have created matter, its pre-existence must be 
 accepted as an indisputable truth or axiom. But what renders the assumed 
 'eternity of the human soul a necessity? The Hindus unanimously main- 
 
 . tain the principle that matter is essentially impure, and that the soul is 
 essentially pure. Matter, being impure, could not possibly have sprung 
 from the pure soul, nor the pure soul from impure matter. Nor could the 
 
soul have been created iu the Christian sense of the term. 1 lie maxim, “Ex 
 nihilo nihil fit,” from nothing nothing comes (navas tuno vastusidhi) is the 
 fundamental and universally accepted principle of Hindu philosophy. As 
 the human soul could not have sprung from impure matter, and could not, 
 moreover have been created, its pre-existence or eternity must also be 
 accepted as an indisputable truth or axiom. The assumption of the exis- 
 tence of three co-eternal or co-existent principles is therefore demanded by 
 what may be called the platform of Hindu theology. 
 
 3. Of this triad of co-eternal and co-existent principles or entities, matter 
 is the most active. It exists in the shape of eternal, uncaused, invisible 
 and intangible atoms. These combine into molecules, three of them form- 
 ing a compound which is visible just as a mote iu a sunbeam. The mole- 
 citles or compound particles, by a ceaseless process of integration and disin- 
 tegration two well-known Spencerian words — produce the world and all its 
 beauty of life and organization. Thus far their work is unexceptionable. 
 They, however, do a great deal of mischief. They bring the soul into an un- 
 natural association with the mind (manas), which is the eleventh organ of 
 the soul, called the internal organ, but which is no part of it. By effecting 
 this unnatural union, they breed in the soul desire and aversion, lead it to 
 acts good or bad, hurry it through varied forms of transmigration, and 
 make it miserable and unhappy till its emancipation is secured by penance 
 and meditation. 
 
 4. The Hindu theory of sin and salvation ought here to be clearly set 
 forth to render the varied principles of Hindu philosophy intelligible. The 
 Hindus look upon ignorance as the source of all misery, and transmigration 
 as the calamity from which deliverance is devoutly and eagerly to be 
 sought. Ignorance leads the soul to desire happiness and shrink from 
 pain. To gratify its desire for happiness as well as to avoid pain, it does 
 work which appears to it good. But these only prolong the chain of 
 transmigration or births and deaths before it. It must reap the reward of 
 its good deeds in another and brighter state of existence, but in this state 
 it is once more tempted to desire happiness and to do good, and thereby pro- 
 long its existence in impure bodies. It needs emancipation from desire, 
 and the works that follow, in order to be free from the misery of births and 
 deaths. True knowledge enables it to see its necessities clearly, to avoid 
 desire and works, and so to mitigate and finally annihilate the evil of trans- 
 migrations. Ignorance prolongs the chain of births and deaths, while knowl- 
 edge leading to an extinction of desire, and a cessation of works, secures 
 emancipation from it. Now you will clearly see the mischief done by these 
 active, energetic, meddlesome and turbulent atoms. They bring the 
 tranquil soul into association with the organ which makes it miserable, as 
 well as with impure matter. They lead it to desire happiness ancP shrink 
 from pain, drive it to works for the purpose of securing the one and avoid- 
 
10 
 
 ing the other; conduct it to stages of existence where those acts are re- 
 warded and punished, prolong its series of births and deaths, and thereby 
 hinder its emancipation from vexation and trouble. 
 
 5. The question may be raised — whence do these atoms derive their cease- 
 less activity, their plastic power and their creative energy? God is thor- 
 oughly quiescent and he cannot create or build ; and he has, moreover, no 
 energy to impart. The atoms could not have derived their energy and plas- 
 tic power from Him. The human soul derives its activity from the atoms, 
 not the atoms from it. Whence, then, do the atoms derive their wonderful 
 activity and their creative and organizing power and skill? According to 
 some expounders of Hindu philosophy there is an unseen force behind the 
 scene. But this force is essentially different from that to which Herbert 
 Spencer traces creation, inasmuch as it is knowable. It is Karma, the 
 aggregate action of a previous state of existence. The acts done in one 
 state of existence do not die; they live in a corporate capacity, and through 
 atoms create a world of retribution, wherein they are either rewarded or 
 punished. Here is the God of Buddhism, the Karma who, when the soul is 
 annihilated, recreates it to reap the reward or punishment of its deeds done 
 in the body it has cast off. 
 
 6. The question rises, What supports the elephant which supports the 
 earth? Trace this previous state of existence represented by this terrible 
 power, Karma, backwards, and you come to a state of existence, which was 
 the first. How came atoms to be powerful, then? The Indian Philosopher 
 rarely faces the horns of this dilemma, or when he does so, he escapes them 
 by affirming an eternal series of existence. 
 
 7. Before I close this portion of our subject, let me ask you to observe 
 that there is a superfluous entity in this triad of substances, and that 
 entity is God. The atoms are all activity and energy, if not life and 
 vitality; they combine and cohere, they integrate and disintegrate, they cre- 
 ate and destroy. The human soul is certainly quiescent, but in certain con- 
 ditions it displays a great deal of activity. God is the only member of this 
 triumvirate of entitities who does not show the slightest activity imder any 
 circumstances or in any condition. He is quiescent, still as a tranquil lake, 
 perfectly unconscious, incapable of thought and desire, without power of 
 
 I choice and action, an unchangeable, eternal, inconceivable, frightful 
 NOTHING! 
 
 II. DUALISM. 
 
 1. Dualism is a phase of thought with which the champions of modern 
 philosophy are thoroughly familiar. But the dualism in vogue amongst 
 them is radically and essentially different from that taught in the schools 
 of Indian philosophy, called synthetic, in contradistinction to the logical 
 schools called from their method of investigation, analytical. These schools 
 are Sankhya and Yoga, and the dualism they propound is atheistic. They 
 
11 
 
 do not, like the dualism sometimes preached in these days, admit the ex- 
 istence of God and matter, and represent the former as engaged in the 
 capacity of a great architect in building up the latter into a beautiful world. 
 They have nothing whatever to do with God, either as creator or as archi- 
 tect. They affirm the pre-existence or eternity of matter, and the pre-exis- 
 tence or eternity of the human soul. 
 
 The transition from the three principles of the analytical to the two of 
 the synthetic schools is natural and easy. In the triumvirate of princi- 
 ples brought forward by the logical schools we saw a superfluous and use- 
 less entity, a God perfectly quiescent and inactive. This dispensable phan- 
 tom has been cast overboard by the synthetic schools, while his two com- 
 panions, matter and the human soul, have been retained. 
 
 2. We may remark, by the way, that the tendency of philosophy out of I n- 
 dia is of a piece with its tendency in India. Philosophy lias everywhere 
 pushed forward its speculations to the detriment of the fundamental article 
 of the Christian faith, our belief in the existence of a personal and voluntary 
 creator of the heavens and the earth. It has exalted man indeed, but at the 
 expense of God. It has shorn the creator, now of his omniscience, then of his 
 omnipotence, and anon of his personality ; and it has in all countries shown 
 a tendency to leave him where the Hindu philosopher leaves him, a glorious 
 non-being, standing unconscious and inactive, side by side with creative 
 matter and thinking mind. 
 
 B. But to return. Sankliya philosophy propagates belief in the pre- 
 existence or eternity of matter, and the human soul or souls. Matter, ac- 
 cording to it, originally existed not in the shape of invisible and intangible 
 atoms, but in that of primordial, self-evolving principle called “Prakrit,” or 
 that which evolves or produces. The Sankhya philosopher believes in a 
 succession of causes, but this succession is not endless, it has a starting 
 point, which is “Prakrit,” called also “Tattua,” the primal source of exist- 
 ence in all its diversified forms. 
 
 This primordial substance is elementary indeed, but it consists of three 
 quasi-material and quasi-spiritual qualities, called gunas, held in perfect 
 equipoise. These qualities are Satta, Rajas and Tamas, which being in- 
 terpreted are goodness and purity, passion and activity, and darkness or 
 ignorance. These form the triad of Sankhya philosophy, and in various 
 proportions they are found in all material objects and forms of life notice- 
 able in this world. They are held in perfect equilibrium only in the primal 
 substance Prakrit, but this balance is disturbed in other substances and 
 forms of life; and these become exalted, mediocre and degenerated according 
 as the first, second or third of these ubiquitous principles prevails in them. 
 Man for instance becomes divine when the first quality, goodness, pre- 
 ponderates in him ; human when the second, activity, gets the upper hand; 
 and positively brutalized when the third, ignorance, is prevalent. 
 
12 
 
 4. The Sankhya philosophy not merely sets forth a theory of evolution, 
 but shows how it has worked. The different principles and objects which 
 sprung out of Prakrit are stated in the order in which they came out. From 
 Prakrit sprung Buddhi or intelligence, which produced out of its substance 
 Ahankara or egoism or self-consciousness, the principle which leads man to 
 call himself I, and thereby separate himself from others, from thou, she or 
 it. This I-maker, or egoism, is, properly speaking, the creator of the world 
 and its activity is seen in its preservation. Five subtle elements called 
 Tanmatras issue from it and help it in the work of creation it accomplishes. 
 These are nondescript principles somewhat like the constituent elements of 
 Prakrit, quasi-material and quasi-spiritual. They give birth to the five 
 grosser elements, earth, water, fire, air and ether. Then come the five 
 organs of knowledge, Buddheidryani, the eye, the nose, the ear, the tongue 
 and the skin ; and these are followed by the five organs of action 
 Karmeindryani, the larynx, hand, foot, excretory organ and the organ of 
 generation. The eleventh organ or the internal organ, the mind (manas), 
 which when associated with the human soul makes it capable of perception, 
 thought and volition, is the last out-come. These twenty-four elements are 
 the constitutent elements of the whole creation, and the knowledge that 
 they are such is salvation. As soon as the soul knows that its own essence 
 is different from that of the world, and that these twenty-four elements are 
 the life of creation, but not its life, it is saved. 
 
 These twenty-four principles are very unselfish ; they create the world 
 not for their own advantage, but for the advantage of Purusha, or the soul, 
 whose emancipation from the thraldom of ignorance is the object of all the 
 activity they display. But the charge we have brought against the atoms 
 of the logical schools may be justly preferred against them. They first en- 
 slave the soul and then liberate it. They bring it into unnatural association 
 with the mind, and then through the path of ignorance, desire and works, 
 leads it to enthralment. But when it is enthralled, they, in mercy, open its 
 eyes and emancipate it by giving it right knowledge about themselves, their 
 relations to the world, and their essential differences from it. 
 
 3. MONISM. 
 
 1. The Vedant, or the essence of the Veda, sometimes called the Uttra 
 Unmansa, or the last decision of Indian philosophy, is Monism. This system 
 repudiates the dualism of the synthetic schools and casts overboard its cre- 
 ative world-producing primordial substance (Prakrit), and its quiescent 
 Purusha, or human soul. It also repudiates two elements of the trialism of 
 the analytical schools; the energetic and plastic atoms, and the inactive and 
 quiescent human soul. It retains the third and most superfluous element 
 of Indian trialism, God, and evolves creation with all its wonders out of 
 his essence. Its watch-word is, non-dualism, ekamebaditiam, one without 
 
13 
 
 a second. Its creed is simple and compressed in the following line, so often 
 quoted by earnest men in India; “Brahm satyam jagan mithya, jiva Brali- 
 maiva napara, Brahm,” or God is true, the world is a lie, the soul is God 
 and not anything else. 
 
 2. God is represented in this system as the material as well as the effi- 
 cient cause of the universe. One of the most important questions settled 
 by this school is: Does the material world really exist? The Vedantic phil- 
 osopher says in reply to this question that it exists practically, not really. 
 The sort of existence accorded it is called Byavarick, or practical, in con- 
 tradistinction to Paramarthic, or real. Here Is, however, a distinction 
 without a difference, — the sort of existence accorded to the material world 
 being equal in every respect to non-existence. We assume its existence for 
 the purpose of carrying on the business of life, but in reality the world does 
 not exist, any more than the magnificent castles we build in the air when 
 we have nothing to do. It is ignorance or illusion that leads us to look 
 upon it as real, not phenomenal or imaginary. Its unreality the Vedantist 
 demonstrates by means of apt similitudes. You enter a dark room, he 
 says, and see a rope stretched before your dim eyes, mistake it for a serpent 
 and flee from it. What do you see? A serpent? No — that is a creation of 
 your fear-stricken imagination. The thing you see is the rope — that is the 
 real, and the serpeut tin 5 phenomenal; that is true, and the serpent is false. 
 So, argues the Pandit, the material objects .you see are but phenomena, but 
 the noumenon or the reality beneath them is God. The material objects 
 you see are false, while God, of whose existence they are, to adopt a well- 
 known expression of Spinoza, so many modes, is true. 
 
 2. Again, says the Pandit, you enter a dark room, and seeing a piece of 
 nacrine silver, or mother-of-pearl, mistake it for genuine silver. Is it real 
 silver that you see? No. That is a creation of your ignorance-homy! 
 imaginatipn. The nacrine silver is the substance and the genuine silver is 
 the false impression. So the objects you see convey false impressions to 
 your mind, the substratum of each and all of them being God. 
 
 3. This will further appear when we look at the relation which God bears 
 to the world, and vice versa. 
 
 4. What relation does God bear to the physical world? This is illustra- 
 ted by a number of significant and unmistakable images. What yam is to 
 cloth, that God is to the world. As yam is the material out of which the 
 cloth is made, so is God the substance out of which the world is made. 
 Again, what clay is to a jar, or gold to a bracelet, that God is to the world. 
 As a jar is made out of clay or as a bracelet is made of gold, so is the 
 world made of divine essence! Let us now reverse the picture and see 
 the relation the objects of nature bear to God. This is also illustrated by 
 appropriate images. What the waves are to the ocean, what the sparks are 
 to the fire, what the hair and nails are to the body, what the spider’s web is 
 
14 
 
 to the spider, that the material or so-called materal objects around us 
 are to God. These illusive objects have all issued out of the all-pre- 
 vading divine substance which only exists. 
 
 5. Goes the Vedantist accept all the conclusions that can legitimately be 
 deduced from his theory of non-dualism? Yes, he does so most unhesita- 
 tingly, most unfaulteringly. He believes that nothing exists but God; and 
 as a deduction he fearlessly admits that whatever is done in the world is 
 done by God. Is adultry committed? God is the perpetrator. Is a theft 
 committed? God is the thief. Are dark deeds done in the darkest hours of 
 the night? They ought to be traced to God. The Hindu never shrinks 
 from the responsibility of accepting these monstrous propositions, but he 
 has an ingenious way of divesting them of their apparently absurd and blas- 
 phemous character. He believes that all human actions are illusions as 
 well as the objects of nature. All conditions of life, all distinctions, moral 
 and social, all states of consciousness, our thoughts, volitions and feelings, 
 are mere illusions. 
 
 But who is the deceiver? What power has brought the soul under sub- 
 jection to ignorance? By whom or by what has the tranquil spirit within us, 
 Brahm himself, been made a victim of illusion? The power that binds 
 the soul with the fetters of ignorance or illusion is Maya, the power of 
 illusion. This phantom issued from Brahm himself when the Deity had, in 
 opposition to every approved principle of Hindu philosophy, a desire to 
 create. So the conclusion to which this undeservedly lauded system of phi- 
 losophy brings us is this : We are deceived as to the reality of the objects 
 
 around us, and as to our own distinctive existence, and God Himself is the 
 deceiver. 
 
 A word about the God who is the only Entity and the only agent in the 
 wprld, and we shall have completed our imperfect sketch of Hindu philoso- 
 phy. What is said about the Brahm, out of whose divine essence creation 
 has been evolved with all its glories? He is called “Saccljitananda,” which 
 means existence, intelligence and happiness. Here is the trinity of the 
 Vedant philosophy, as satta, rajas and tamasform the trinity of theSankhva 
 philosophy. 
 
 And if the Vedantic portraiture of God had ended here we might have 
 had a very sublime conception of Him left in our minds a conception lofty 
 enough to justify the comparison instituted between the Vedantic trinity 
 and the adorable Trinity of the Bible, the Father representing existence, 
 the Son, knowledge, and the Holy Ghost, happiness. But in reality this 
 sublimely simple idea of God is neutralized by what is said in Vedantic 
 philosohhy in explanation and expansion of it. Brahm is existence and ex- 
 istence only. He is intelligence without knowledge, or happy without feel- 
 ing or emotion. He is in reality the tranqil spirit of the logical schools, 
 unconscious and quiescent, incapable of thought, volition and feeling, hang- 
 
15 
 
 in-? between life .mil death, an incomprehensible and unknowably nonentity! 
 What the Vedantist save about God brings us by an indisputable line of 
 reasoning to the well-known paradox, Being Non-Being! Nor is Brahm 
 of the Upanisliads materially different from the primordial form of the 
 synthetic schools, l’rakrit, the original source of existence. He is indeed 
 said to be “nirguna," or without the slighest touch of the three principles, 
 “satta,” “rajas,” and “tamas,” while Prakrit is a compound of these held in 
 state of equilibrium But these are also subtle, incomprehensible nothings, 
 and so when superfluities are laid aside and essentials are looked into, the 
 God of the Upanisliads is the same, every-active, plastic, creative, particle of 
 matter, which is the starting-point of existence in Sankhya philosophy. In 
 Indian schools as elsewhere, materialism and pantheism, the antipodes of 
 each other at first sight, are but tw'o phases of one and the same thing, 
 atheism ! 
 
 7. Salvation, according to this, as all other systems of Indian philoso- 
 phy, proceeds from right knowledge. Man is an ignorance-bound or illusion- 
 victimized creature, and he makes himself miserable by his egoism, by re- 
 garding himself as distinct from God and his fellow creatures. 
 
 I, mine, me, this is his perpetual cry, and this is the source of his misery 
 and distress. Let the spell be broken, lei him recognize the great principle 
 of non-dualism (gdaitya) and let him be brought where he can unhesitating- 
 ly say: “Aliang Brahm,” I am Brahm, and he is saved. The process is not 
 an easy one. Years of mortification and penance are needed to emancipate 
 him from the power of ignorance, and bring him to right knowledge; but 
 when once he has attained it, he is absorbed in the Deity, as a drop of 
 water is mingled with the sea. Salvation then is absorption or annihilation 
 of personal existence in the all-prevading divine substance of which man is 
 but a particle. 
 
 8. This system has been called in a very appropriate sense, the last de- 
 cision. It may, however, be called the first and last decision of Indian phil- 
 osophy. It underlies and vitalizes almost every phase of thought that has 
 flourished under the banner of religious philosophy in India. It is found in 
 an embryonic state in the Rig Veda, the oldest religious book of the Hindus, 
 and it is the substratum of the gorgeous ritualism of the Brahmans. It ap- 
 pears in mature manhood in the Upanishads and the Darshans, and it gives 
 life to the form of religion that stands out in bold relief from the institutes 
 of our national legislator, Manu, the ideas embedded in our national epics, 
 the Ramayuna and the Mahavarat, the legendary tales of the Purans, and 
 even the impurities and obscenities of the Tantras, the filthiest books associa- 
 ted with the religion of the Hindus. Nay, it has given color and complexion 
 and life and energy to all the forms of heresy and rationalistic unbelief 
 that have appeared in our country since the arch of its sacred literature was 
 completed, several centuries ago. And to-day it moulds religious thought 
 
16 
 
 from one end of Hindustan to the other. It has a strange fascination for 
 the Hindu mind, and its influence within the jurisdiction of Hinduism is 
 omnipotent. The property of a few skeptical thinkers in America and 
 Europe, Pantheism is the common property of the Hindu nation, revelling 
 unchecked, both in the palaces of the rich and the cottages of the poor, 
 both in seats of learning and in abodes of ignorance, both in the cells of 
 ascetic self-denial and in the houses of libertine self-indulgence. A nation 
 of pantheists is'at first sight a phenomenon that can never be realized in this 
 world, but it has been realized in India; and a nation of pantheists is a fact! 
 
 9. Pantheism is exercising a fascinating influence over many a g lfted 
 and many a susceptible mind in Christendom, and the reason is obvious. 
 Pantheism has a grand truth embedded in it, and that is the 
 doctrine of the immanence of God in the world. That God is in every ma- 
 terial object we see, that He in a sense thunders in the clouds, howls in 
 the tempest, whistles in the wind, and warbles in the little rivulet, is an 
 undeniable fact. God is immanent in nature as well as immanent in the 
 human soul. And this doctrine of His immanence logically unfolded, de- 
 velopes, I am willing to admit, into Pantheism. I do not see, and do not 
 pretend to be able to explain how this doctrine consists with that of the 
 divine transcendence above the world, or how God is at one and the same 
 time intramundane and extramundane. But I accept these contraries or 
 truths which appear contradictions to our limited mental faculties. T do 
 not see how the sovereignity of God consists with human responsibility, 
 but I accept these contraries because they are in unison with the voice of 
 intuition and revelation. I do not see how I am to work as if everything 
 depended upon myself, and to trust as if everything depended upon God. 
 But I accept these contradictions for the same reason. In the domain 
 of science, as well as in the region of philosophy and theology, we are 
 compelled on account of our short-sightedness to accept what Kant calls 
 antinomies, or truths which are contraries to us, but consistent truths to 
 minds endowed with faculties superior to ours. And it is because philoso- 
 phers and theologians refuse to accept them and try to build up one-sided 
 system with logical consistency, that they plunge themselve into error and 
 propound theories derogatary, sometimes to man, but more frequently to 
 God Himself. 
 
 
LECTURE 1 1. 
 
 JFflH RBIiIQI0U3 IDEAS ®P THE HINDD3. 
 
 The impressions left on my mind by what I have seen in your country are 
 verv favorable indeed; and no one is more willing than lam to admit that you 
 are, as a nation, superior to us in all that constitutes national greatness. In 
 industry and enterprise, in ingenuity and skill, in intellectual advancement 
 and moral excellence, you are far ahead of us. In one respect, however, we 
 beat you; that is, as regards the antiquity of our race. A Jew and an Eng- 
 ishman were looking at a statue of Julius C;esar, when the Englishman 
 almost involuntarily exclaimed: “How sad it is to think that our fore- 
 
 fathers were sunk in barbarism when Julius Caesar lived and flourished!” 
 “Ouu forefathers! ” exclaimed the offended Jew, “ Pray speak of your own, 
 who were doubtless barbarous enough; my forefathers were singing praises 
 unto the one living and true Clod, centuries before Julius Caesar was bom.” 
 Yes, centuries before Julius Caesar was born, centuries before Lycurgus 
 laid the foundation of Spartan greatness, centuries before Solon founded 
 the beautiful constitution of Athens, centuries before even the siege im- 
 mortalized by Homer, Miriam raised that song of triumph to Him, who is 
 glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, perpetually doing wonders. The 
 pedigree of the Hindu nation may be traced back to that early date. About 
 the time when Joshua was taking possession of the land of Canaan, the grand 
 old hymns of the Rig Veda, the oldest and purest of the religious books of the 
 Hindus, were chanted on the banks of the Indus. The nation had even 
 then declined from the path of loyalty to Cod. The form of worship then 
 prevalent in our country was nature-worship, that is, the adoration of the 
 energies an 1 powers of nature. . This form of worship, comparatively pure, 
 was followed by an era of elaborate ritualism, when the substance of relig- 
 ion was literally buried under its forms. Then came an age of rationalis- 
 tic development when the varied phases of thought, that are paraded by 
 your philosophers as the discoveries of the Nineteenth Century, flourished 
 in India. Then was elaborated that system of class legislation which is a 
 
18 
 
 marvel of sacradotal pride and exclusiveness. Then came an age of gross 
 idolatry and moral degradation, and to-day there is not an object so mean 
 that a Hindu will not prostrate himself before and worship it. All objects 
 of nature are in India objects of worship. The sun, moon, and stars, moun- 
 tains, forests, and rivers, heroes, sages, and legislators, almost all kinds of in- 
 ferior animals, dawn to the meanest reptile, are objects of worship in our 
 country. The Hindu nation has been sinking down in the abyss of moral 
 rum with fearful rapidity. 
 
 Some of your philosophers propound a beautiful theory of prog?ess in re- 
 ligion and morals. According to it, the original religion of man was Fetichism. 
 From Fetichism man was raised by the law of self-development to the low- 
 er types of idolatry, and from these to the higher forms of Polytheism, from 
 which he easily found his way up to Monotheism. And to-day he is found 
 on the height ofthe religion of science, ready to die exclaiming, -“Oh, science, 
 now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the 
 glorious positivism of the Nineteenth Century! ” Now, I wish you to ob- 
 serve that this beautiful theory has not been realized in India. In our 
 country, as I have shown, there has been a retrogression rather than a pro- 
 gression, a fall from sublimer to coarser ideas of God and human duty, a 
 fall from Theism to Fetichism, not a rise from Fetichism to Theism. This 
 theory of progress has not been realized in any country on the surface of 
 the globe. The fault of course rests with the world, not with the theory! 
 
 Please observe that Hinduism is the most omnivorous religion the world 
 has seen. It lias swallowed up, and assimilated to its nature all the phases 
 of speculative thought that have appeared in our country during the last 
 three thousand years. Atheism and Theism, and all the forms of belief in- 
 tervening, materialism and pantheism with all the shades of thought com- 
 ing between, have found a refuge within the capacious stomach of Hin- 
 duism. Buddhism for instance, is essentially an atheistic system, but Hin- 
 duism has managed to incorporate it into its own essence. As this system 
 of religion is being lionized in America, in consequence of the charm thrown 
 around it by Arnold’s “Light of Asia”, I wish to make some remarks upon 
 it, though at the risk of giving a rambling character to my discourse. 
 
 Observe, in the first place, that Buddhism is a tissue of Plagiarism. It 
 does not present a single idea or doctrine which may be represented as its 
 peculiar) property. Tts doctrine of transmigration of souls is derived from 
 Hinduism. Its God, Kakma, or the aggregate action of a particular state 
 of existence creating a world of retribution, is derived from one school of 
 Indian philosophy; while its idea of Nirvan or extinction of mental activ- 
 ity in this life followed by annihilation, is derived from another. Every- 
 thing connected with the life of the Lord Jesus Christ bears the stamp of 
 originality. His life and character, His sayings and deeds, the manner and 
 matter of His teaching, His modes of thought, and habits of life are all orig- 
 
1 !) 
 
 mal; while there is nothing original in Bitddha. And yet people have the 
 audacity to place the Indian reformer on a par with the Saviour of man- 
 kind ! 
 
 Observe, in the second place, that Buddhism is essentially an atheistic creed. 
 Your Comptism is hut an improved edition cf enat nt Buddhism; and its 
 Godless character is patent. And when you scatter the flowers of poetry or 
 rhetoric around Buddhism, you ought to know that you are simply raising a 
 Godless creed to the skies. 
 
 Observe, in the third place, that the morality associated with Buddhism 
 is essentially selfish. Christian morality revolves around God. Christian- 
 ity commands you not merely to do good, but to do good from proper 
 motives; that is, with a single eye to the glory of God. The object of all 
 the good you do is not your deliverance from evil, not your aggrandizement, 
 not your exaltation, but the glorification of your Maker and Redeemer. 
 Christian morality, then, immolates self and glorifies God. The morality 
 taught by Buddha revolves round self. Its object is not the glorification of 
 God, not the good of mankind, but self-deliverance. The Buddhist looks / 
 upon existence as the greatest calamity, and deliverance from it as the/ 
 greatest good; and he practices virtue only with a dew to deliver himself 
 from what he considers the greatest evil. His morality, therefore, is selfish. 
 
 Buddhism, though atheistic, and opposed to the caste system, has been 
 swallowed up by Hinduism, and its founder worshipped as one of the ten 
 incarnations of Vishnu. Hinduism is therefore, not a unity, but a complex- 
 ity, not a system, but a mass of systems, not a symmetrical theory, but a 
 regular farrago of jarring theories. It is, therefore, difficult to present its 
 characteristic ideas without being betrayed into gross contradictions. Let 
 me, therefore, request that you will not attribute any contradiction you may 
 observe in what I have to say regarding the salient features of Hinduism, 
 to me. I am merely an ambassador and my person is sacred ! 
 
 1. The first question to which I wish to draw your attention is, what do 
 Hindus think of practical religion ? or, in other words, in what does reli- 
 gion consist according to current ideas in India ? In India, as in other 
 countries, there are two classes of people, the learned few, and the unlearned 
 many; and these two class give two distinct replies to this question. Go to 
 the ignorant masses, and they will tell you that religion consists in a series 
 of lifeless forms and meaningless observances. The Hindu is the most reli- 
 gious being on the surface of the globe, and whatever he does, he does ac- 
 cording to the prescribed forms of his religion. He gets up from his bed 
 religiously, he washes religiously, he dresses religiously, he eats religiously, 
 and he sleeps religiously. Nay, he becomes sometimes irreligious religiously. 
 But his idea of religion is confined within the horizon of forms and cere- 
 monies; all beyond is darkness. Go to the Hindu philospher. and he will 
 tell you that religion consists in a series of metaphysical subtleties. He 
 
20 
 
 t 
 
 tries. to solve the great problems bf existence, and he believes that his relig- 
 ious welfare hinges on their solution. Let me illustrate this by a couple of 
 significant examples. I visited a learned Pandit, at a place called Sitapore, 
 and endeavored to draw him into a religious conversation. He asked me 
 abruptly — “Do you know the essence of God ?” I replied — “Sir, I do not 
 know the essence of a single blade of grass; how can I know the essence of 
 God ?” He impatiently exclaimed, “You do not know the essence of God, 
 and yet pretend to teach me ? Go back to your home, study, and know the 
 essence of God, and then you will truly be a pious man, and a good religious 
 teacher.” I visited another learned Pandit at Lucknow, my home, and he 
 asked me — “Do you know the origin and end of existence, or how nature 
 has proceeded and is to proceed ?” On my confessing my ignorance, he 
 also administered to me a similar reproof. According to the masses in India, 
 religion is a matter of forms; while to the learned few it is a matter of met- 
 aphysical speculation. 
 
 You can have no idea of the greatness of the revolution accomplished in 
 the sphere of thought by the Lord .Tesus Christ when he said, “Out of the 
 heart proceed evil thoughts,” or “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a 
 man is born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” — you cannot, 
 I say, have an adequate idea of this change till you go to heathen countries. 
 Mt n in His time fell into the same mistakes about religion which you notice 
 in India. The ignorant masses looked upon religion as consisting wholly 
 in a series of forms, and the learned buried it under metaphysical subtleties. 
 Christ transferred religion from the region of forms, and from the domain 
 of wild philosophy, to its proper place, the human heart. 
 
 Hinduism, then, is a compound of two religions, one for the masses, and 
 one for the learned few. That for the masses, is called Karmakand, or the 
 department of works. The masses have no right to go beyond the forms of 
 religion, or to attempt to know anything about God. The religion for the 
 learned few is called Gyankand, or the department of knowledge; and they 
 are called upon to renounce works and know God. The transition, how- 
 ever, from the one department to the other is by no means an easy task. 
 A man must forsake his family, and pass through years of mortification 
 and penance, ere he is considered fit for promotion from the lower to the 
 higher department. Then he has, moreover, the great task of finding out, 
 and placing himself under the guidance of an accredited Guru, or teacher. 
 The Hindu idea of inspiration is very different indeed from ours. The 
 Hindu believes that the Veda was originally repeated in the hearing of a 
 great teacher by God himself. That teacher repeated it in the hearing of 
 his successor, and so through the medium of oral communication, it has 
 come down to the accredited teacher of the hour. The man anxious to 
 know God must find out this teacher and place himself unreservedly under 
 his guidance. 
 
21 
 
 Need I tell yon that Christianity is the only religion in the world that is 
 opposed to anything like monopoly or exclusiveness ? It addresses all man- 
 kind as sinners without taking notice of the petty distinctions that separate 
 them; and it points to only one way of salvation from sin, and progress in 
 righteousness. It recognizes no privileged path, has no mysteries for fa- 
 vored people, and makes no distinctions in matters of religion. The other 
 religions of the world, however, are by no means opposed to monopoly. 
 The ancient religions of the world had their mysteries for the learned and 
 truths for the unlearned. Mohammadhanism has its Batini or Esoteric 
 doctrines for the learned, and its Zahiri, Exoteric doctrines for the masses; 
 and this may be said of all heathen religions now existing. 
 
 2. The second question to which I wish to draw vour attention is- -what 
 is the Hindu idea of Cod V Co to the unlearned masses, and you will find 
 them scarcely ascending from their gods to the sublime idea of an intelli- 
 gent creator and ruler of the universe. Some sentimentalists in Christen- 
 dom believe that Hindus worship Cod in their idols. They do no such 
 thing. Instead of worshipping Cod, they simply worship the persons, heroes 
 or sages, represented by the idols before them. There is not a single temple 
 in India dedicated to the worship of Cod, or an image representing Him. 
 Co to the Hindu philosopher, and you will find his ideas of Cod materially 
 different from yours. You believe in a personal, intelligent, and voluntary 
 Creator of the heavans and earth. The Hindu believes in an impersonal, un- 
 intelligent and involuntary substance. You believe in a Cod capable of 
 thought, feeling and volition; whereas the Hindu believes in an unthinking 
 unfeeling essence. Your Cod has sympathies and antipathies hates sin 
 and loves the sinner: whereas the Hindu god is incapable of love and hate. 
 I once asked a learned Hindu if he was sure that God loved him. His reply 
 was characteristic — “Cod neither loves nor hates.” Our Cod is the Al- 
 mighty Ruler of the universe, whereas the Hindu believes either in idols, 
 which are nothing, or in a Being which is equal in every respect to Non- 
 Being. 
 
 3. I must now pass on to the Hindu notion of sin. According to the 
 the masses, association with matter is sin. The Hindus believe, as many an- 
 cient philosophers in Europe did, that there is something impure inherent in 
 matter, and that our being encased in material bodies is a source of degrada- 
 tion and torment. Being associated with material bodies, is according to 
 them, sin. Again, the Hindus look upon the legitimate gratification of our 
 passions and appetites as sin. We know that our passions and appetites 
 are given to us by Cod, and that when properly gratified they are sources 
 of refined pleasures. The Hindu, however, looks upon them as sources of 
 sin under all circumstances, and tries to extinguish them. And lastly, com- 
 mon people in Hindoostan look upon family life as sin. The missionary 
 daily comes across men who assure him of their inability to become really 
 
22 
 
 religious until they are free from the trammels of domestic life. The phil- 
 osopher, however, represents sin as an illusion. He believes in the unreality 
 of the world around him and of everything done by man. He is emphatic- 
 ally in dream-land! 
 
 4. The Hindu idea of salvation is suggested by the Hindu idea of sin. 
 According to the masses, deliverance from material bodies, from the power 
 of our passions and appetites, as well as from the trammels of domestic life, 
 is in one sense salvation. According, however, to the learned, deliverance 
 from ignorance is salvation. Man is laboring under an illusion, and there- 
 fore believes that he is distinct and separate from the objects of nature 
 around him, and from God. Let him be emancipated from this ignorance 
 and let him clearly see his identity with nature and God, and he is saved. 
 Right knowledge brings him to where he unhesitatingly says, “ I am God; ” 
 and this is to him the blessed paradise of rest in this world, and a prelude 
 to his final absorption into the Deity or the all-pervading substance called 
 Brahm. 
 
 Christians are called children of light, and that very properly, for they 
 can answer certain important questions which force themselves on our at- 
 tention. Take, for instance, the question embodied in the word, Whence? 
 Whence have I come? This question the Hindu philosopher cannot answer 
 any more than the scientist of the day, who wilfully lays aside revealed 
 truth. The Hindu is not sure whether he has sprung out of the substance 
 of God, or whether he is the result of a process of evolution, the starting 
 point of which is a primordial atom. If however, he assures himself that he 
 is a particle of the substance of God, he is deplorably mistaken. The Chris- 
 tian knows that God is his creator, and that whatever may have been the 
 process or creation, he owes his existence, and every breath he draws, to 
 Power Divine. He believes in the miracle of creation, and consequently in 
 the possibility of miraculous aid from above, while the proud philosopher 
 and scientist has no help beyond that of his feeble self to fall back upon' 
 Again, the Christian can satisfactorily answer the question embodied in the 
 word WnY? Why has God placed me in this world? The Hindu answer 
 to this question is sad indeed. He very frequently represents this world as 
 the sphere of divine sport God creates man, and amuses himself by making 
 him at times happy and at times miserable! Or, if he is enlightened, he be- 
 lieves that he is placed under an illusion by God himself for purposes to 
 him unknown. The Christian is sure that God has created him for the 
 manifestation of His own* glory and he tries to glorify him in his body and 
 in his soul, which are His. He is never in the dark, for whatever happens, 
 whether to him prosperous or adverse, he cheerfully looks upon as fitted to 
 subserve the grand object of his life, the glorification of God, and the conse- 
 quent advancement of the best inte tests of creation. The Christian, more- 
 over, can answer the question embodied in the word, Where? Where am I? 
 
\ » 
 
 uru^ 
 
 i jw A 
 
 l 
 
 Iu a state of union with or separation from God? The Christian is no 
 Christian till he has settled this most important question, till he is in a 
 position to affirm that he is being led by his Father in heaven, along the path 
 which he should tread. I have yet to come across a Hindu, or a Buddhist, 
 or a Brahrno, or a devotee of conscience who has this blessed assurance. 
 And lastly, the Christian can answer the question embodied in the word 
 Whither? Whither am I going? The Christian is not only assured of his 
 adoption into the family of God in this life, but he looks forward to an in- 
 heritance incorruptible, undetiled, and that fadeth not away. The Hindu 
 looks forward to certain punishment— so does the theist, inasmuch as he is 
 conscious of sin and believes in the impossibility of pardon. The Christian 
 is emphatically a child of light, while the Hindu, or the Buddhist, or the 
 Theist, or the light-hating scientist, is a child of darkness and despair. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 MANNERS and CUSTOMS 0P the HINDUS. 
 
 Practical Hinduism vies with speculative Hinduism in degrading a tine, 
 intellectual people, dwelling in one of the most magnificent countries in this 
 world can boast of. Speculative Hinduism confounds the creator with the 
 creation, obliterates the eternal distinction between right and wrong, and 
 represents human actions, as well as the objects of nature, as illusions. It 
 cannot but exercise a demoralizing influence. Practical Hinduism is by no 
 means better fitted to uphold religion and morality. It presents as objects 
 of worship a host of gods and goddesses that are either monsters of ferocity 
 or monsters of idee. It also obliterates moral distinctions by making that 
 in the case of gods a virtue which in the case of man is vice. It is, more- 
 over, a stepping-stone to the higher form of Hinduism. Practical Hindu- 
 ism bears the same relation to speculative Hinduism which the law bears to 
 Christ. As the law is the schoolmaster to bring us up to Christ, so is the 
 lower form of Hinduism the schoolmaster to bring its votaries to the higher 
 form. I am threfore justified in saying that practical Hinduism combines 
 with speculative Hinduism in degrading and debasing the Hindu nation- 
 ality. 
 
 In view of the wretched principles of Hinduism and of the abominable 
 character of its gods and goddesses, what would you expect to find in India? 
 You would expect to find a perfect picture of moral anarchy developed in 
 India. You would expect to find the bonds of society dissolved, the ties of 
 
24 
 
 domestic life rent asunder, promiscuous intercourse taking the place o 
 holy matrimony, unnat ural feelings developed, and vice and crime rampant. 
 This dark picture, I am happy to say, is not realized in India. The Hindus 
 are, on the whole, a virtuous people — I make use of the word virtuous in its 
 ordinary acceptation, not in a Christian sense. They are proverbially a 
 temperate and abstemious people. Your countrymen see strange sights in 
 India. They sometimes see about 50,000 people assembled in an enclosure 
 to celebrate a national festival. They sometimes see about 100,000 people 
 congregated on the banks of a river to perform a prescribed ablution. But 
 in these vast gatherings they rarely come across a man or woman the worse 
 for liquor. The Hindus are not passionately fond of any intoxicating drug 
 or drink. The Chinese are passionately fond of opium, and Englishmen 
 are passionately fond of beer. I dare not say that Americans are passion- 
 ately fond of beer — I do not wish to be hailed with rotten eggs in your 
 streets! The Hindus, however, may justly be represented as a nation of 
 teetotalers, and that in spite of the fact that some of the lower castes are 
 addicted to drinking. 
 
 The Hindus, moreover, are proverbially mild and gentle. You will re- 
 mind me of the mutinies, and say that they were not particularly mild and 
 gentle then. But please remember that the gross crimes associated with 
 those events were committed, not by the Hindu nation, but by those who 
 are the scum of the Hindu nation, and who in times of revolution come up 
 to the surface. Many dark crimes were committed by Englishmen in India 
 in those troublous times. Barbarities were recently perpetrated by English 
 soldiers in Afghanistan. Are we to lay these crimes at the door of the Eng- 
 lish people, and vilify them? No more are you justified in laying the dark 
 crimes with which the mutinies are associated at the door of the Hindu na* 
 tion. The Hindus, moreover, are exceedingly polite and urbane. Home 
 people are in the habit of perpetually harping upon what they are pleased 
 to call Asiatic treachery. They forget that duplicity and dissimulation are 
 weapons which the weak invariably employ against the strong, and that 
 treachery in the Asiatic races is frequently the natural reaction against the 
 oppressions to which they are subjected by European nations. Nor are 
 these nations free from duplicity and dissimulation in their intercourse with 
 their equals. Take, for instance, an ordinary example: One Englishman 
 visits another, and the host stands up, rel ieves him courteously and says, 
 “I am very glad to see you,” while aside he says, “when w ill this bore leave 
 my house.” In his dealing, however, with the poor natives of India, it is 
 not necessary for him to resort to duplicity he has only to say to a native 
 visitor, “Oo out; don’t disturb me at an unreasonable hour.” If the word 
 diplomacy means anything, it means duplicity, and when diplomacy is be- 
 ing reduced to a science in Europe, it is very cool of European gentlemen 
 to bring sweeping accusations of treachery against Asiatic peoples. The 
 
25 
 
 Hindus, according to philosophic observers like Bishop Heber, have virtues 
 which Christian nations will do well to imitate. 
 
 Now here is a social problem for you to solve, — a nation under the guid- 
 ance of an execrable faith, retaining not a few of the virtues by which it was 
 distinguished when it was loyal to its God. This is, indeed, a strange phe- 
 nomenon, but it is not hard to explain. Let me direct your attention to the 
 following facts fitted in my humble opinion to furnish the explanation 
 needed:— 
 
 1st. Please observe, in the first place, that a man is as a rule better than 
 Lis theology. I emphasize the words ins theology, for man is never better 
 than revealed truth is fitted to make him. I believe that man falls infin- 
 itely short of the lofty standard to which the facts of Revelation are fitted to 
 raise him. He is, however, better than his own theology, which is tinctured 
 with onesidedness and error. The rabid Calvinist who exalts the sovereignty 
 of God at the expense of human responsibility, thinks, wills, and acts, as if 
 he were a veritable Armenian. The rabid Armenian who exalts the freedom 
 of the will at the expense of divine sovereignty, hangs upon God with the 
 intensity of faith and trust, which the Calvinist, as a rule, exhibits. Take 
 another example: The rabid perfectionist who stands up and coolly affirms 
 that he is sinless, never hesitates to sing with enthusiasm the chorus begin- 
 ning with, “I know 1 am weak and sinful.” "While the rabid anti-perfec- 
 tionist, who tells his experience in groans and sighs, sings with cheerful- 
 ness and joy, “My life Hows on in endless song.” Man is better than his 
 theology, as a rule, and if the Hindu is better than his, we ought not to look 
 upon the circumstance as very strange. 
 
 2nd. Please observe, in the second place, that a man’s moral instincts 
 are more powerful than his theological ideas. Whenever there is a contest 
 between the instincts of our moral nature and our theological dogmas, the 
 victory rests with the former, not with the latter. There has been a contest, 
 going on for ages in India, between the instincts of the Hindu heart and the 
 dogmas of the Hindu head, and the result has been, as might have been an- 
 ticipated. 
 
 3d. Observe in the third place that there is a body of moral teaching, of 
 the loftiest and purest type, associated with the wretched doctrines of Hin- 
 duism. "When M. Renan, the brilliant but frivolous lawyer of Paris, traced 
 some Years ago the golden ride of Christian morality, “Do unto others as 
 you woidd be done by,” to the writings of Rabbi Hillel, the Christian world 
 stood aghast before him. They felt as if one of the great props of evidence 
 was giving way underneath their feet. It is, however, a dangerous thing to 
 make the evidences of our religion hinge on a solitary doctrine of Christian 
 theology, or a solitary precept of Christian morality. The golden rule may 
 be found in all its entireness in the writings of Confucius, whde the maxim, 
 “Love your enemies,” is found scattered up and down in the sacred books of 
 
26 
 
 the Hindus. “He like the Banian tree,” says the the Hindu moralist, “which 
 casts its shade, not only over its friends, but even over those by whom its 
 branches are cut off. “Be like the Sandal tree, which gives its fragrance even 
 to those by whom it is cut down.” There is, then, a vast body of moral teach- 
 ing of the purest type in the Hindu books, and this teaching has not been 
 in vain! 
 
 4th. There is, moreover, a vast body of legendary lore which is fitted to 
 feed and nourish the national virtues of the Hindus. Let me illustrate this 
 by an example: — the Hindus are a very hospitable people. Their hospitality 
 is scarcely excelled by the splendid hospitality of your own country. How is 
 their hospitality fed and nourished? By a beautiful legend, which let me 
 relate. Once upon a time there lived a king, famed for his singular gen- 
 erosity. His name was the generous Kama. Narayuna, the great god of 
 the Hindus, if not God Himself, determined to test his generosity; and so he 
 appeared on the threshold of his palace, in the form of an aged Brahmin, 
 and begged hospitality. The king hastened towards him, and with folded 
 arms enquired, saying, “What will your reverence have for refreshment?” 
 The Brahmin replied, “ I am a hungry Brahmin, but before I prefer my re- 
 quest, I wish to know how many children you have? ” The king replied, “I 
 have only one beloved son, my heir, and my life.” The Brahmin replied, “If 
 you wish to satisfy an aged, hungry Brahmin, you must give me the Hesh of 
 your only boy to eat.” The king said in reply, “Will not your holiness bring 
 forward some other request: I am willing to give you half of ray kingdom if 
 you will spare me the necessity of slaying my boy”. The Brahmin said, “ I 
 have no other request to bring forward, give me the flesh of your son to eat 
 or see a Brahmin going out of your palace hungry.” The king consulted 
 his wife, and made up his mind to make the tremendous sacrifice. The 
 Brahmin finding him ready, made another proposal still more trying. He 
 insisted that the boy should be sawn asunder, and that he and his wife 
 should hold the handles of the saw and ply it. But when the operation 
 was about to commence, the Brahmin appeared in his original form of Nar- 
 ayuna, and blessed the king, saying: “Thou art generous indeed!” This 
 legend is sung in the shape of a jingling ballad in our country, and along 
 with others of a similar type feeds some of the national virtues of the 
 Hindus. 
 
 5. And lastly, please observe that the efficacy of the death of Christ is 
 not confined to the Christian Church. A virtue goes out of it, and exercises 
 a beneficial influence over heathen lands, so that you find in these favored 
 abode of error, good fathers, tender-hearted mothers, faithful husbands, lov- 
 ing wives, dutiful children, and honest membors of society. These reasons 
 are sufficient to explain the social paradox of a people professing fatalism 
 and practising virtue of an amiable, if not a sublime type. 
 
 But there are certain destructive forces at work within the bowels of Hin- 
 
27 
 
 du society; and if these were not counteracted, the moral death of our na- 
 tion would only be a question of time. To some of these let me direct your 
 attention, premising that, as India is nearly as extensive as your own country, 
 the evils to be pointed out are not at work with the same degree of fury in 
 all its parts. A gentleman about to leave England for America, paid a visit 
 to an old lady in a country village. The old lady said: “You are going to 
 America ; you will of course see my boy Ben, and when you do so, please tell 
 him that I am very anxious to see him.” America loomed up before this 
 old lady as a village scarcely larger than her own, and she felt sure that a 
 man could not cross the Atlantic without seeing her boy Ben. Most people 
 in America have a similar idea of India. They forget that India is a vast 
 country, occupied by twenty different races, speaking twenty different dia- 
 lects, and separated from each other, in manners and customs, as decidedly 
 as the Italian is separated from the Englishman. The evils, however, that 
 I shall point out, are ubiquitous in India. 
 
 1. The tir|t evil to which I wish to draw your attention is the formidable 
 caste system of which you have heard so much. The caste system has been 
 properly described as the very essence, the life, and soul of Hinduism. In fact 
 the caste system is Hinduism, and Hinduism is the caste system. So long 
 as a Hindu observes a few of his caste rules, he is at liberty to believe in 
 what he pleases, and do what he pleases. He may be an atheist, and prop- 
 agate atheism without losing his caste. He may be an anti-theist, and prop- 
 agate hostility to God, wifhout being excommunicated. He may believe that 
 his great grandfather was an anthropomorphous ape, to the great delight 
 of the scientists of the day, without being ostracised. But if he drinks a 
 glass of water given him by the holiest European alive, he forthwith be- 
 comes an outcast. Again, he may be guilty of adrdtery, fornication, and 
 even theft, without losing his caste. Nay, he may commit all the dark 
 crimes which human hands have perpetrated in this world, and yet retain 
 his social standing. But if he drinks a glass of water given him by a Hindu 
 of a very inferior caste, he is ostracised. 
 
 A missionary may, for a few dollars, get a learned Brahmin to translate 
 the Bible for him, and even to write a treatise against Hinduism; but all 
 the dollars of America will not induce the man so recreant to drink a glass of 
 water given him by the missionary. Let me refer to an incident of the mu- 
 tinies as illustrative of the hold caste has on the Hindu mind. A few 
 wounded Sepoys were left uncared for in a room in the Agra fort. They 
 were tormented by a raging thirst. A European soldier had compassion on 
 them, fetched a glass of water, and offered it to one of the sufferers. The 
 man refused to touch the glass. These men had evidently committed gross 
 crimes — had murdered European gentlemen and dishonored European la- 
 dies; but they deliberately chose to die amid the horrors of thirst rather 
 
28 
 
 than accept a glass of water given them by European soldiers. 
 
 The caste system represses the ingenuity of the Hindu race by making 
 over the trades to the uneducated classes ; dries up the f ountains of sympathy 
 in the human heart, and breeds class antipathies of the worst type. And it is 
 the greatest obstacle which the missionary enterprise has to encounter in In- 
 dia. A respectable Hindu cannot embrace Christianity without being com- 
 pletely ostracised. The moment he does so, he places himself where he is 
 shunned, not only by his friends and relations in general, but by his own pa- 
 rents; while his own wife and children shrink from his loving embrace. Some 
 time after my baptism, a few of my female relations invited me to see them 
 in the house of a common friend. I was not allowed into my own house, 
 and I have not crossed its threshold since I was baptised, about thirty years 
 ago. These female relations had with them a bright little boy, a nephew 
 of mine, of whom I was very fond. As soon as I saw him, I instinctively 
 stretched forth my hands to lift him up and draw him towards my bosom; 
 but the boy, though only four years old, shrank from my embrace, saying, 
 “Uncle, you have corrupted yourself, and I will not touch you.” There are 
 hundreds of persons in India, who are thoroughly convinced of the truth 
 of Christianity, but who are prevented by this formidable system from en- 
 tering the church by the rite of baptism. 
 
 2. Coolinism and polygamy are among the destructive forces at work in 
 our country. You have here an infamous nest of polygamy, and you are 
 trying to purify it. But your nest of polygamy is heaven itself compared 
 with what we have in India, specially in Bengal. The Brahmins of the 
 highest caste in Bengal are called Coolins, and no one of them is considered 
 pure until he has married at least four wives. To a Brahmin of this caste 
 marriage is a profitable trade; and so whenever he squanders away, his 
 money and becomes poor, he has resource to a marriage as the easiest way 
 of mending his battered fortune. A wretch of this description sometimes 
 marries fifty wives. The question will suggest itself to your minds, how 
 does he support them? Let me relieve you of all anxiety by stating that 
 he himself is supported by his wives. He goes to the house of one and re- 
 mains as long as he is feasted and feted, and then goes to another, and so 
 on until he has completed the round of his felicituous visits. Nothing 
 even in India is so demoralizing as this wretched custom, and its forcible 
 suppression is demanded by the exigencies of a civilized government. 
 
 3. Female ignorance and female seclusion occupy a prominent place 
 among the evils to be mentioned. Female ignorance and female seclusion 
 ought in my humble opinion to go together. If females are held in igno- 
 rance, debarred from the advantages of education, or completely shut out of 
 the cheering light of knowledge, the best thing you can do with them is to 
 shut them up. I was never more impressed with this idea than when I noticed a 
 circumstance in your country. I was going in a street car at Cincinnati, along 
 
29 
 
 with half a dozen young men at about ten o’clock at night, when a lady 
 stepped in, and with characteristic dignity occupied a seat. The sight sug- 
 gested a train of thoughts to my mind, and I said to myself, what is the pro- 
 tection of this lady? The laws of your country protect her, as well as the 
 traditions and associations by which your national character is moulded 
 and fashioned; but her greatest protection is in herself. Her intelligence — 
 that is her shield and her buckler. If she had been as ignorant as our 
 countrywomen are, the best thing she could have done would have been to 
 have stayed at home, and not to have walked out at such an unseasonable 
 hour of the night. Ignorant women" had better be shut up. You will per- 
 haps say that ignorant men should be shut up. Yes, they ought but who 
 is to do the needful? The gospel of the nineteenth century, the law of the 
 survival of the fittest, is on the side of the stronger sex. But ladies need 
 not despair— they are taking to manly exercises, boating, skating, etc., and 
 the time is not far distant when ignorant husbands will be shut up by their 
 wives! 
 
 Seclusion, however, adds to the sorrows .of ignorant women. If a number 
 of educated ladies in America were confined in one of those dungeons called 
 Zenanas, they might, by means of a hundred expedients, make their “du- 
 rance vile” tolerable. They might, for instance, read good books, play upon 
 musical instruments, or sing songs, and thereby while away their time. Or 
 they might discuss politics, some ranging themselves under Garfield, and 
 some under Hancock, and keep up a running fight for days and weeks, if 
 not for months and years. In fine, they might have a hundred ways of 
 making their seclusion endurable. But from these resources our ignorant 
 women are entirely cut off, and to them seclusion is a source of unuttera- 
 ble torment. They lounge from one place to another without any specific 
 aim of life, and without a single thing to interrupt the monotony of their 
 existence. The only healthy excitement they have is a quarrel, which com- 
 ing once in a while relieves them of monotony. You laugh — but pray re- 
 member that quarrels, big and small, supply the greatest portion of the ex- 
 citement you have. Your theologians would die of monotony and inanity, 
 if quarrels did not exist in the shape of theological controversies. Your 
 republican politicians would die of languor if they had no democrats to op- 
 pose and abuse; and vice versa. Our ladies watch a quarrel with the same 
 interest with which you looked for bulletins of news from Europe, when the 
 Emperor of Kussia was reading a thundering lecture to the Sultan of Tur- 
 key; and they divide themselves into conventions, not unlike that at Berlin, 
 to adjudicate upon its merits. And in this way they amuse themselves for 
 a short time. 
 
 Sometimes our termagants of inferior castes manage to keep a quarrel 
 alive for days, if not weeks. They go on exchanging compliments until they 
 are literally hoarse, and then they throw down a basket and postpone the 
 
30 
 
 quarrel till it is lifted up. They retire to their houses, and at the appointed 
 time, come back to lift up the basket and resume the quarrel. Your re- 
 viewers do the same, when they carry a controversy to a certain stage, and 
 give their readers to understand that the remaining arguments are to be 
 presented in the next number. 
 
 4. Early marriage and perpetual widowhood are among the destructive 
 forces at work. India is emphatically a land of baby marriages. In India 
 girls three years old are married to boys five years old; and on occasions, 
 certainly rare, the marriage ceremony takes place even before the parties 
 united in wedlock are born. It has sometimes occured that a girl has been 
 ushered into the world a widow. This, however, is not a common phenom- 
 enon, but a girl widowed at the age of five or seven or nine, is an ordinary 
 sight. A girl thus widowed is compelled to remain a widow all her lifetime. 
 A man in India is at liberty to marry as often as he likes. A Hindu is some- 
 times driven to a second marriage even during the lifetime of his first wife. 
 He cannot do without male issue — he needs a male child to perpetuate his 
 name and caste privileges, as well as to perform his funeral ceremony, and 
 thereby expedite his egress from purgatory. And if his first wife does not 
 present him with a male child, he is compelled, often against his will, to 
 marry again. But the girl widowed at the age of five, in consequence of 
 the stupidity of her parents, is debarred from the privilege of a second mar- 
 riage. She must continue a widow all her lifetime. Some degree of indul- 
 gence is extended to her for a few years; but when she reaches the twelfth 
 year of her life, she becomes a widow indeed. She has to lay aside her finery 
 and her jewelry, sometimes to shave her head, and to make herself as ugly 
 as a cruel system of superstition can make her. She has to subsist on one 
 principal meal a day, and that of the coarsest kind. She has to fast twice a 
 month, and on the fast days she is not at liberty to drink a drop of water, 
 though the thermometer exhibits an excessive amount of heat. And 
 poor thing! she is cut off from public sympathy, the sympathy of all but 
 those who are very near and dear to her. The Hindus believe in the doc- 
 trine of transmigration, and they look upon her sufferings as the punitive 
 consequences of the sins she is supposed to have committed in some pre- 
 vious state of existence, and when this idea gets into the head, the springs 
 of sympathy are dried up. In former times the widow had to immolate her- 
 self on the funeral pyre of her husband, and a European lady justly says 
 that her condition then was better. An hour’s torment, and all was over 
 But now she has a life of sorrow, distress, and unutterable wretchedness. 
 
 Your Zenana missionary works among these miserable persons, and the 
 simplest truths she teaches are revolutionary. When, for instance, she re- 
 minds them that they have minds to educate, or souls to save, they gaze up- 
 on her in mute amazement. They know that their male relations have 
 souls to slave, and minds to look after; but as for themselves, they are born 
 
31 
 
 to drudge and slave, and the pleasures of knowledge and salvation are not 
 meant for them. When the progressive women of your country agitate for 
 the extension of the suffrage to the female sex, or for seats in the legislature, 
 they are said to promulgate revolutionary principles. What a gap between 
 principles looked upon as revolutionary among you, and those which are 
 considered so in the Indian Zenana ! 
 
 The missionary in India is not merely a missionary of the cross, but a 
 missionary of civilization. He does not come up to the grandeur of his posi- 
 tion when he tries to separate Christianity from the glorious forms of civil- 
 ization with which it is indissolubly connected, and to present it in what is 
 called its original simplicity. The missionary, however, does not present 
 Christianity in its pristine simplicity. He separates it, indeed, from the 
 forms of civilization with which it is connected, but he does not separate it 
 from it s forms of ecclesiastical and theological development. He does not 
 carry with him a steam engine or a cotton mill; but he carries with him a 
 fossilized creed, or a petrified theology, and stereotyped forms of church 
 government. He carries with him standards and symbolsi disciplines and 
 catechisms, but he leaves behind him telegraphs and telephones. The fault, 
 however, does not rest with him. You give him money enough to hire a 
 birch rod and force catechisms into the heads of his converts, but you do 
 not give him money enough to buy a steam engine and improve the water 
 supply of the town in which they live. My decided conviction is, that if the 
 missionary were to leave behind him his catechisms and systematized theol- 
 ogy, and take with him some of the improvements of the day, he would be 
 hailed as a greater benefactor than under the present circumstances he can 
 possibly be. India needs the Bible, and the civilization of which the Bible 
 is the productive cause, more than theological controversies and ecclesias- 
 tical wrangling. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE RESULTS OK MWIONHRY LHB0R IN 
 
 INDITE 
 
 The apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ occupied a unique position when 
 they began the great work of their lives, the work of propagating a new 
 faith. They were a feeble and forlorn band, men without wealth, without 
 power, without Social influence, without respectability, and without such 
 learning as is valued in this world. And they had, moreover, the whole 
 world with its wealth, power, influence, respectability and learning arrayed 
 against them. Yet their efforts were crowned with signal success. When 
 
32 
 
 we contemplate that success, we are tempted to look upon it, at first sight, 
 as an inexplicable phenomenon. But when we narrowly look into the mat- 
 ter, we cease to wonder at its greatness. The apostles had that with them 
 which was pre-eminently fitted to make them successful. They had, for in- 
 stance, truth on their side; and truth is inherently fitted to triumph in this 
 world. Truth has to contend with gigantic systems of error; but it is beau- 
 tifully adapted to overcome and annihilate them. And inasmuch as the 
 apostles had truth, unconquerable and all-triumphant truth on their side, 
 their success, splendid though it was, ceases to be a matter of wonder to us. 
 Then again the apostles had, not merely truth, but God on their side. They 
 had the unlimited power and the unerring wisdom of heaven to support 
 them in their labor of love. And when we think of these essential condi- 
 tions of success in their career, the victory with which it was crowned, in 
 the teeth of appalling difficulties, ceases to be an inexplicable phenomenon 
 to us. 
 
 Please observe that these two conditions of success met in the missionary 
 whom they sent abroad. The missionary left your shores, armed with 
 
 t 
 
 truth, invincible, all-conquering truth; and when you sent the missionary 
 abroad thus armed you had a right to expect success. The missionary, 
 moreover, had God on his side, the unlimited power and unerring wisdom 
 of Heaven to guide and sustain him in his labor of love. And when yon 
 sent him abroad thus armed and thus supported, you had a right, I repeat, 
 to expect success. And in the course of Providence, I have come to your 
 country to assure you that your expectations have been realized, and that 
 the efforts of your missionaries have been crowned with encouraging sue. 
 cess. Indian missionaries have no reason to be unduly elated. Their suc- 
 cess has not been magnificent enough to justify undue exaltation or self- 
 complacency on their part. But neither have they reason to be unduly de- 
 j)ressed. God has crowned their efforts with success brilliant enough to 
 prove a source of encouragement to them, as well as to you, their constitu- 
 ents. This success let me set forth in the simplest manner possible. 
 
 I will not burden you with statistics, though these are pregnant with en- 
 couragement. With two or three exceptions, all our Protestant missions 
 have been organized within the last seventy years, and many of them are 
 new organizations. Our own mission, for instance, the Methodist mission, 
 is only twenty-five years old, and missions have been organized since ours 
 was instituted. And yet to-day .we have in India a Protestant, native 
 Christian population of about 460,000 souls. An accurate and comprehen- 
 sive census was taken about ten years ago (the coming year is the mission- 
 ary census year), and that placed the native Christian population of India, 
 including Ceylon and British Burinali, at 300,000 souls. No regular census 
 has been taken since, but certain tables of statistics, accurate as far as they 
 go, though not comprehensive, have been compiled by a countryman of 
 
yours, of whom you may be proud; and according to these there lias been 
 an annual increase of upward of 9,000 souls to the church. Adding to the 
 total the many thousand souls gathered in during the recent Madras fam- 
 ine season, we have the number indicated above, viz: 450,000 Protestant 
 native Christians in India. We have about 400 ordained native ministers 
 and about 4,000 preachers and teachers of all grades, in various parts of the 
 country, engaged in proclaiming the truth, as it is in Jesus, either in organ- 
 ized churches, or in thoroughfares, and market-places. Add to this the 
 amount of apologetic literature that has been raised up, and of the religious 
 knowledge that has been spread, and of the beneficial influence that has 
 been exerted through the various departments of missionary labor, and the 
 result cannot but appear to you encouraging. But I leave the statistics be- 
 hind me, and proceed to speak of the great changes I have myself noticed 
 during the last twenty-five years in India. 
 
 Observe in the first place that missionary la Dor has raised bright churches 
 in all our great cities and towns, and in not a few of our villages, side by 
 side with Hindu temples and Mahomedan Mosques. And while the intiu, 
 ence proceeding from these infant churches is confessedly — that is, accord- 
 ing to to the confessions of Hindus and Mussulmans themselves — on the in- 
 crease; that emanating from these hoary temples and mosques is obviously 
 on the decline. Let me illustrate this by reference to what I have myself 
 seen. My work obliges me to travel a good deal in India, as I have been 
 doing in your country, and wherever I go, I have the satisfaction of attend- 
 ing, and very frequently speaking in a native Christian place of worship; 
 and I have the satisfaction, moreover, of attending, and frequently speaking 
 in a native Christian Sunday School. A few months before I left India for 
 your country, I visited a place called Amritsir, one of the principal cities 
 of the Punjab, a province lying to the northwest of India. The city is the 
 strongLold of the prevalent religion of that province, the religion of Nanak, 
 a religion, at first considered by the Hindus a heresy, but now regarded as 
 part and parcel of Hinduism. Nothing shows the omnivorous character of 
 Hinduism more thoroughly than the rapidity with which this system has 
 been devoured by it, and assimilated to its nature. Nanak contemplated a 
 midway reconciliation between Hinduism and Mahomedism, by means of 
 his new faith, and so he laid the foundation of a doctrine the most hetero- 
 geneous in its nature. You are aware that no two religions can be more 
 diametrically opposed to each other than Hinduism and Mahomedism. 
 The one is literally the antipodes of the other, and yet this reformer thought 
 it practicable to reconcile them by means of a mongrel creed. His creed 
 was at first regarded by the Hindus as a heresy. It is, however, now looked 
 upon as ahnost an essential element of their many-sided, hydra-headed sys- 
 tem of religion. But to return — this place is the stronghold of his follow- 
 
84 
 
 ers, for it contains their golden temple. This temple is a very elegant struc- 
 ture made of pure marble, standing in the center of a large reservoir, which 
 is surrounded by an embankment of stone masonry. The temple is ap- 
 proached by a marble causeway, and is surmounted by a number of small 
 domes which are covered by thin plates of gold. When I was in this city, I 
 walked out one morning to see this beautiful temple — and a6 I went on, I 
 saw groups innumerable of men, women and children threading their way 
 along the streets, along the embankment and through the causeway into the 
 temple. What were they doing in the temple? They were simply prostrating 
 themselves before an open book, as large as this pulpit Bible. This book is 
 kept open on a silver throne, overhung with a canopy of embroidered cloth 
 from four in the morning until about ten in the night, when it is removed to 
 a neighboring house, where a regular bed is set apart for it, and where it is 
 supposed to sleep ! The sight was to me sad— so many human beings, beings 
 endowed with reason, engaged in such irrational worship! But in this city, I 
 saw another sight which was to me a source of very great consolation indeed. 
 I spent a Sabbath day in the city, and on the evening of that day walked 
 out to attend the Native Christian place of worship, on the other side of the 
 city wall, and as I went on I saw groups of native Christians, men, women, 
 and children in their Sunday suits threading their way along the streets 
 towards their place of worship. I joined one of these groups, and after a 
 short walk found myself ushered into a substantial, capacious church, 
 though by no means furnished as your churches are. I saw before me up- 
 wards of a hundred persons, men, women, and children, redeemed from 
 heathenism, assembled to worship Him whom you worship in your churches 
 and cathedrals. In one side of the church I saw a choir of native Christian 
 girls seated around a harmonium, and on the pulpit I saw a native Christian 
 brother about to begin the service. The opening hymn was given, the choir 
 raised the tune, and upwards of a hundred voices, voices of men, women and 
 children redeemed from heathen degradation, were raised in joyous and ju- 
 bilant adoration of the Great Redeemer of mankind; and' when the prelim- 
 inary portion of the service was over, the native brother, in the pulpit, deliv- 
 ered a thrilling discourse on the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 I will now ask you to follow me to another city. On the banks of the 
 river Ganges, one of the sacred streams of the Hindus, stands a city which 
 Europeans call Benares, but our countrymen, Kashi. Bishop Heber, in his 
 Journal, says, that he never saw a city more characteristically, and more 
 thoroughly oriental than Benares. Its narrow, stone-paved streets, over- 
 hung with lofty buildings of a peculiarly antique shape, its innumerable 
 temples, its countless gods and goddesses, its deep sacred walls, and its 
 magnificent flights of steps descending into the waters of the holy stream 
 on which it stands, all these give it a peculiarly oriental character. The 
 most magnificent of its holy temples is called the Golden Temple of Bish- 
 
eshwer. This temple is uot so elegant as the one I have described: but it 
 is in some respects more magnificent, and decidedly more honored in the 
 Hindu estimation. It consists of a central hall with apartments in front and 
 rear, ami is surmounted by a conical dome, and a light pavilion, both cov- 
 ered with thin plates of gold. In one of the front apartments you might see 
 the god literally sunk in a small reservoir of water, and literally buried un- 
 der a heap of Howers of all colors and shades of colors. As there is a great 
 deal of sentimentalism abroad is this land with reference to the religions of 
 Asia, I will give you a glimpse of the character of the god worshiped in this 
 temple by myriads of enthusiastic devotees. And fortunately it is not nec- 
 essary for me to theorize on his character. I have simply to state and ex- 
 plain a few of the pet names which the Hindus themselves give to this deity 
 in their moments of devotional enthusiasm. They call him Bhola, which 
 means, “absent-minded.” Now why is this god called the absent-minded 
 god? Is it because he is perpetually wrapped up in holy thought and 
 sublime contemplation? No. Is it because he is perpetually absorbed in 
 schemes of benevolence and philanthropy? No. He is called the absent- 
 minded god because he is perpetually in a state of intoxication. He drinks 
 a solution of Indian Hemp which you know is an intoxicating drug, and he 
 smokes Indian Hem; and it is because he is perpetually out of his senses, 
 that he is called the absent-minded god by his devotees in their moments of 
 pietic extasy. He is, moreover, called Bhpthnath, which means the chief 
 of ghosts, because in moments of intoxication he loves to roam about in se- 
 questered places, in places where the dead are cremated, among the ruins of 
 ancient temples and castles, and in the solitude of pathless forests. Such 
 are his favorite haunts, while his companions are ghosts and hobgoblins. 
 He is also called the Yogee, the hermit, because he appears all but naked 
 with a piece of tiger skin thrown carelessly around his waist, his body be- 
 daubed with dust and ashes, his hair clotted, and a large cobra coiled on 
 his head. He is a fearful thing to look at, and he is called Mahadeo, or the 
 great god, and under various names, and in various forms he is worshiped 
 from one end of India to the other! 
 
 Not far from this temple stands another, only inferior to it in magnificence 
 and sanctity. This temple is called the temple of Gopal. I ask the ques- 
 tion — what character does the god worshiped in this temple, and that by 
 myriads of enthusiastic devotees, bear? In this case as in the former, I have 
 simply to state and explain a few of the pet names his followers give him. 
 They call him Nanichok, or butter-stealing god. When he was a little boy, 
 he was a little rogue. He used to steal butter, cream, sweets — in a word, he 
 used to steal whatever he could lay his hands upon. Besides he used to 
 kick up rows in the vicinity of his house, and literally made the place too 
 hot for his poor mother to live in. Another of the names given him is Lam- 
 pat, a word meaning cunning, but in this connection one skilled in flirta- 
 
36 
 
 tions. When this little rogue became a young man, he developed into a 
 profligate. He spent his life amid flirtations with a number of milk-women, 
 and kept up an illicit intercourse with the wife of a man. And the adulterer 
 and the adultress are among the favorite gods worshiped in India, and I am 
 sorry to add that I myself was their worshiper before my conversion. 
 
 Such are the gods worshiped in India! And the principles professed are 
 if possible even worse. I have no time to dwell on them now, but I may 
 tell you that one of the fundumental principles of Hinduism is — God is the 
 author of sin ! Travel from one end of India to the other, from Dan to Beer 
 sheba, and you will not come across a well-taught Hindu who will shrink 
 from the responsibility of representing God as the author of all his sins and 
 misfortunes. 
 
 A short time before I left India, I accompanied one of the best of your 
 missionaries, Rev. B. H. Badley, my kind-hearted preacher in charge, to a 
 fair, where we preached the gospel to crowds of hearers. One of these, evi- 
 dently a Brahmin, stepped forward and said vociferously that God was lead- 
 ing him to sin, and punishing him for it. He had the the audacity to say 
 what my lips quiver to repeat — he said that if he could only catch God he 
 would give him a thrashing! Such are the gods worshiped and such the 
 principles professed! And yet your sentimental philosophers affirm that the 
 difference between Christianity and Hinduism is only a difference of degree, 
 not a difference of kind. And when missionaries refuse to accept this but- 
 tered phraseology, they are represented as a set of fanatics and bigots! 
 There is an eternal, an essential difference between our religion, which is 
 God-given, and heathen religions, which are the creations of the evil one. 
 
 In this city, the citadel and stronghold of Hinduism, missionary labor has 
 raised three witnessing churches, one belonging to the church mission with 
 a membership of about 200, another belonging to the London mission with 
 a membership of about 100, and the third belonging to the Baptists with a 
 membership scarcely less considerable. And while the influence proceed- 
 ing from these ecclesiastical establishments is obviously on the increase, that 
 emanating from its hoary temples is apparently on the decline. I might 
 take you from city to city and present similar proofs in corroboration of ray 
 position, that missionary labor has raised bright churches in a country 
 where temples of worship have always been scenes of darkness and degra- 
 dations. 
 
 My second proposition is missionary labor has raised bright homes in a 
 country where the very idea of a home, properly so-called, can scarcely be 
 said to have existed. In India we have had households, aggregations of 
 people, but no homes. Where women are degraded as they are in India, 
 forcibly debarred from the advantages of education, or completely shut out 
 of the cheering light of knowledge, homes cannot exist. One of the many 
 things in your country which have left a favorable impression on my mind 
 
37 
 
 is the joyousness of your homes, and I need not tell you that the glory of 
 your domestic life is to be traced to the exalted position to which Christian- 
 ity has raised the women of your country. It is because they have been 
 raised to the position they are intended to occupy and adorn, that your 
 homes are sweet and joyous. And it is because women in India have been 
 kept down by a cruel system of superstition, that our homes have been for 
 ages dark and dreary. But Christianity has already commenced a reform 
 in India in this direction. I visited a place called Allahabad where there is 
 a pretty large native Christian village. The occupants of the village are 
 poor people, their salaries ranging between two and twenty-five dollars a 
 month. They live in mud houses; but I was struck by the appearance of 
 neatness and some degree of refinement which these presented — the walls 
 whitewashed, the floors swept and garnished, the few articles in each house 
 tastefully arranged, woman in her proper position, and children clothed and 
 educated. Now compare these houses with those of the community from 
 which these poor native Christians have been separated, a comparision in- 
 stituted between them and the houses of the grandees and princes of India 
 being obviously unfair. The Hindu houses of their order are abodes of 
 filth and squalor, their walls rugged and unsightly, their floors scarcely 
 swept, scarcely an article of furniture properly arranged, woman in rags and 
 not in her proper position, and children roaming about stark naked and 
 going without education. These Christian homes are not merely abodes of 
 neatness and refinement, but they are homes of piety and godliness. 1 spent 
 a night in one of these houses, and when the dinner was over they brought 
 to me the big ha’ Bible, and I enjoyed a season of prayer with them. On 
 inquiry I found that family prayer was kept up in almost all these houses — 
 a thing which cannot be said of nine-tenths of the homes of Christendom. 
 Please observe that these are by no means the highest class of homes which 
 Christianity has raised in our country. From these you rise through a 
 gradation of homes more or less refined, till you come up to those of the ed- 
 ucated converts, whose minds have been expanded by the literature which 
 is the greatest glory of your land, barring your religion, and let me tell you 
 that these are not very far behind the best of your homes in elegance and 
 refinement. 
 
 Christian civilization is making progress in India in spite of obstacles 
 thrown in its way even by those whose duty it is to push it forward most 
 vigorously. It is not perceived, as it should be, that in these days when 
 miracles cannot be summoned to our aid, Christianity cannot display its 
 superiority over the other religions of the world, except through the tri- 
 umphs of the civilization to which it has given birth. An unbeliever can- 
 not see the great change it effects in the sanctuary of the human heart, and 
 if Christianity had nothing externally grand to appeal to, its claims would 
 be disallowed. And consequently when its advocates try to detach it from 
 
38 
 
 the miracles of progress with which it is connected, they separate it from 
 the only realities by which its divine origin can be proved to a demonstra- 
 tion. If native Christians in India remained after their conversion as de- 
 cidedly sunk in semi-barbarous stagnation as their countrymen generally 
 are, they could scarcely be a city set on a hill, and attract their coun- 
 trymen towards their adopted faith. And consequently those who throw 
 obstacles in the way of their adopting the amenities and refinements of civ- 
 ilized life are literally checking the progress of our religion in our country. 
 
 My third proposition is — Christianity has raised bright hearts in a coun- 
 try where the human heart has for ages been a scene of darkness and de- 
 spair. You can scarcely have an adequate conception of the condition of the 
 human apart from Christ till you go to a heathen land. Dr. Fowler, in a 
 splendid sermon at Ocean Grove, said that he could with a dozen cutthroats 
 in America get up a church better than one could with a dozen of the most 
 enlightened men of a heathen land. In one sense this is true, — your cut- 
 throats and blackguards have in consequence of gospel light brighter views 
 of God and human duty than our philosophers; while your axioms are 
 mighty problems in our land. One feature of my work is house-to-house 
 visitation. I get up every morning, visit a few of my countrymen, and try to 
 remind them of the awful claims of eternity. One morning I walked out, 
 and as I entered a narrow lane I saw a man, apparently very ill, seated on a 
 piece of blanket, spread over a veranda. I made up my mind to have a little 
 talk with him. I walked up to him and introduced myself as a preacher of 
 the gospel, anxious to have a little religious conversation with him. He 
 ordered a seat for me, not being able to ask me to sit down on the piece of 
 blanket on which he was seated without pointing himself. I began conver- 
 sation by saying “Kir, you lock very ill; what is the matter with you ?” 
 He replied, “Oh I have been very ill, and I belive the hour of my departure 
 is at hand.” I said, “I pray God may restore you to health; but supposing 
 you die, what will become of you?” “What will become of me!” he said, 
 “that question can never be settled on this side the grave.” He paused for 
 a moment, and then corrected himself, saying, “Did I say that question 
 could never be settled, it has been settled- I have sinned, and punished I 
 shall be; no power, not even Omnipotence, can deliver me from merited 
 punishment.” This man was, with the calmness of despair, looking forward 
 to future punishment, and I have come across many in the sad predicament 
 in which he was. When Bishop Andrews visited India, a love feast was 
 held at Bareilly in which about a hundred preachers and teachers were 
 present to listen to the Bishop’s exhortation. Many of these workers de- 
 clared in tones of unmistakable sincerety, that though they had sinned and 
 gone astray, they were looking forward to an eternity of bliss through the 
 blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are to-day innumerable hearts in 
 India instinct with Christian vitality, radiant with Christian joy, and buoy- 
 
ant with the sure hope of the gospeL 
 
 My last position is — Christianity has already begun in India the work of 
 sending glorified souls to Heaven. It has not merely raised bright places of 
 worship, bright homes, and bright hearts, in a country full of spiritual dark- 
 ness, but it has peopled Heaven with its converts gathered therein. When 
 I was a boy in Calcutta, a young man of an exceedingly amiable disposition 
 embraced Christianity, and served with distinction as a preacher of the gos- 
 pel. The Lord, however, thought fit to remove him to a higher sphere of 
 usefulness. The young man had consumption, and for a time he lingered 
 between life and death under the hospitable roof of his kindhearted mis- 
 sioary teacher. But when he was cautiously assured that he was dying, be- 
 ing too feeble to sing, he repeated the hymn beginning with 
 The hour of my departure’s come, 
 
 I hear the voice that calls me home. 
 
 Now oh! my God, let trouble cease, 
 
 And let thy servant die in peace. 
 
 With the sentiment of this grand hymn in his heart the young man passed 
 into glory through the portals of death. When I was at Benares, I was 
 awakened one night at about 12 o’clock, and desired to see a dying friend. I 
 hastened into the death chamber, and found my friend seated on his bed, 
 supported by two of his companions. When I entered the room I heard him 
 distinctly offering up this prayer — “O Lord Jesus, receive me, even me!” He 
 went on repeating the same prayer until he died. When I was at Shanje- 
 hanpore, serving as head master of our orphanage school, I visited a young 
 man suffering from consumption daily for about a month. One morning, as 
 I was drinking tea with Mr. and Mrs. Buck, in charge of the establishment, 
 two of the kindest friends I have in this world, a student ran into the room, 
 and speaking to me, said — “the patient wishes to see you.” Both Mr. Buck 
 and myself hastened into his room. When he saw us, he smiled sweetly, and 
 stretching forth his hand, said— “I wish to shake hands with you before go- 
 ing to my Father in Heaven. What day of the week is this?” We said — - 
 “Saturday.” “What hour of the day?” We said — “about nine o’clock.” 
 He said — “I am very glad it is Saturday; to-morrow, on the blessed Sab- 
 bath morning, I shall be with my Father in Heaven.” The young man died 
 on the following morning, at about 2 o’clock. These instances are enough 
 to show that Christianity has already begun in India the work of sending up 
 glorified souls to Heaven. 
 
 Put these results together — the bright places of worship, the bright homes, 
 and the innumerable bright hearts it has raised in India, and the glorified 
 souls it has sent up from India, and missionary labor will not appear to you 
 a failure. The success attained, when contemplated in connection with your 
 cost of money and men, cannot but be pronounced brilliant; but when con- 
 templated in connection with what has yet to be done, it appears insignifi- 
 cant indeed. About 450,000 souls have been gathered out of a population 
 
40 
 
 of 240,000,000 of souls — a drop in a bucket. Nor do I consider myself at 
 liberty to hold out hopes of the speedy evangelization of my country. India 
 will not be converted by magic in the twinkling of an eye. When the tele- 
 graph wires were being first moimted in India, some of our countrymen were 
 engaged, in convocation assembled, in divining their meaning; and when the 
 assembly were at its wit’s end, a sage stood up and with an air of triumph, 
 offered the needed explanation. He said— “When this system is completed, 
 government will pull the wire and the whole country will be christianized!” 
 There are some Christian preachers in India now whose opinions are not less 
 ludicrous. These persons think that if a number of good churches are raised 
 among nominal Christians, their appearance will christianize the country 
 with miraculous rapidity. My belief is, that a century of systematic labor, 
 carried on by trained workers, will be needed to render the missionary 
 enterprise a success in India. You have a vast work before you, and the 
 sacrifices you will be called upon to make are great indeed. But you mil 
 not be losers. The law of Christian progress is — in proportion as you raise 
 others, you raise yourselves. You have colored people in your country, and 
 you owe them a great deal. Keep them down by artificial means and you 
 keep yourselves down. The worst effects of slavery in your country were 
 exhibited not in the slave but in the master; and the worst effects of partial 
 legislation in India are to-day exhibited in its European and East Indian 
 population, rather than in its native races. Raise the down-trodden nations 
 of the world, and you raise yourselves. And in proportion as you raise these 
 races, in that degree do you raise your own selves. And so the blessed enter- 
 prise in which you are engaged will leave you gainers and not losers. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 EXPERIENCE. 
 
 I was born and brought up in a Hindu home. When a child and a boy, 
 I saw Hinduism embodied in various forms. T saw Hinduism embodied in 
 temples more or less grand, in gods and goddesses more or less ugly, in cer- 
 emonial observances of various kinds, and in a grand series of festivals and 
 fetes. I saw the power of the national faith of the Hindus in the austeri- 
 ties and penances practiced by our religious mendicants, and its cruelty in 
 the treatment to which our widows are subjected. But 1 was not instructed, 
 rooted and groimded, in the principles and maxims of Hinduism. My pa- 
 rents were very anxious to educate me in fact, I could not do without edu- 
 cation. I belong to one of those castes called in India the literary castes; 
 and men in our caste have literally to choose between starvation and educa- 
 
11 
 
 tion. They cannot, earn their livelihood by the labor of their hands, as me- 
 chanics or as artizans, ■without bringing disgrace upon themselves, their 
 families and their castes. And often would our guardians speak tons boys, 
 in some such strain as tins— they would say: “Remember! you belong to 
 our family and our caste, and you cannot earn your livelihood as carpenters 
 or as blacksmiths without bringing disgrace upon yourselves and us, and our 
 forefathers of blessed memory; educate yourselves, and so be ornaments to 
 the respectable society to w hich you belong.” They were then very anxious 
 to educate me; but in their schemes for my intellectual advancement, they 
 fell into the mistake of throwing religion into the background, as many 
 Christians unhappily do. But their mistake was a blessing to me, inasmuch 
 as the wretched principles of Hinduism cannot but demoralize the parties 
 into whose minds they are early instilled. 
 
 I was at first sent, along with my cousin, of whom I shall have occasion 
 to speak, to a vernacular school opened in Calcutta, by one of our educated 
 countrymen; and, after I had finished my course therein, I was sent to an 
 English school, and that school happened to be the great institution opened 
 by the Prince of Indian Missionaries, Dr. Duff, and removed to my neigh- 
 borhood, in consequence of the disruption which laid the foundation of the 
 Free Church of Scotland. In this college, I was initiated into the mysteries 
 of the English language; and I had not made much progress in the litera- 
 ture and science enshrined in it, ere I completely lost my faith in Hinduism. 
 The modus opebandi was simple enough. Hinduism is indissolubly asso- 
 ciated with a body of false science which is represented by its champions as 
 part and parcel of its revelation. Christianity does not profess to teach 
 science, and so it makes use of scientific terms in their ordinary acceptation, 
 not in their scientific sense — but the sacred books of the Hindus do profess 
 to teach science as well as religion; and the science they teach is, according 
 to them, as decidedly revealed as the form of faith embodied in them. Con- 
 sequently, Hinduism stands or falls with the science with which it is insep- 
 arably connected. Now no science can be more obviously, more egregiously 
 false than that embodied in its sacred books. They, for instance, teach that 
 the earth is flat, somewhat like the water-lily with its petals turned towards 
 its centre; and as soon as a little boy learns in an English school that the 
 earth is round like an orange, his faith in Hinduism is shaken. They teach, 
 moreover, that there is a mountain od the surface of the globe higher than 
 the sun. moon, and stars, and that the succession of day and night is caused 
 by the movements of the heavenly bodies from one of its sides to the other; 
 and as soon a boy is assured that this mountain is a myth, his hereditary 
 faith totters. Again, they teach that there are seven concentric oceans on 
 the surface of the globe, one of salt water, one of fresh water, one of sugar- 
 cane juice, one of milk, etc.; and as soon as a boy obtains an insight into 
 the dreamy character of this piece of geographical information, he be- 
 
gins to despise the religion of his country. His lispings in science prove 
 the glaring absurdity of Hindnism. Even the little correct knowledge I re- 
 ceived in the lower classes of the Free Church Institution was enough, not 
 merely to shake my inherited faith, but to breed in my heart a positive con- 
 tempt of Hinduism. 
 
 Nowhere is the destructive portion of missionary work done so thoroughly 
 as in English schools. Government schools are based on the boasted prin- 
 ciple of neutrality, and the teachers in connection with them are strictly 
 directed not to interfere with the beliefs of their pupils. But the neu- 
 trality is a dream and the order a dead letter! However loyal the teachers 
 may be to the principles of the public service, the inevitable result of their 
 labors is the destruction of the Hindu faith. The pupils under the tuition 
 or training lose their faith as naturally and as certainly ns sparks tly up- 
 wards! But government destroys, does not construct, — destroys a corrupt 
 belief, but does not substitute for it a better faith. Nay, we may justly 
 bring against it the serious charge of lending its aid towards the propaga- 
 tion of varied forms of infidelity and scepticism. The constructive work, 
 however, is done in Mission schools, the importance of which, both as antidotes 
 to the poison spread by Government schools, and as instruments of Christian 
 propagandism, can not be over-rated. How is it done ? In the very best 
 way conceivable, — by the systematic teaching of the Bible, and suitable 
 books on the evidences of Christianity. The Bible occupies the most prom- 
 inent place in the curriculum of the Mission school, and all other studies 
 are made by its Christian teachers subservient to it. History, Philosophy, 
 and even Geography, are compelled, as it were, to contribute, each its own 
 quota, towards this central study; and if the necessity of employing non- 
 Christian teachers could be obviated, as it would in time be, Mission 
 schools would develop, not merely into the mightiest ngencies known for 
 the propagation of our faith in India, but into theological institutions 
 worthy of being ranked with the schools of the prophets of ancient times. 
 
 Excuse this digression. I was not merely early taught in the principles 
 of correct science, but in the truths of Christianity. No system could be 
 more complete, more symmetrical, better fitted to bring about the end con- 
 templated, than what was carried out by Dr. Dull' in his institution. 
 Christianity was carefully taught even in the lower classes through the in- 
 strumentality of the elementary books, culled Instructors, which he had him- 
 self compiled with the help of his colleagues; and even such a book ns a 
 rudimentary treatise on Geography was made fitted to teach precious Chris- 
 tian truths. A more thoroughly Christian course of training can not be 
 conceived; and I look upon my being brought up under it ns one of the 
 greatest blessings of my life. The elementary books on literature, history 
 and even geography, left on my mind a favorable impression regarding 
 Christianity; while the reading of the Bible and some small pamphlets on 
 
the evidences of our religion, led me almost imperceptibly to a recogni- 
 tion of its divine origin. I remember an incident of my life, which is fitted 
 to set forth the truth of the oft-quoted saying, that to an unprejudiced mind 
 the Bible is its own evidence. I could not rend the Gospels without being 
 convinced of the exalted purity and excellence of the character of our Lord; 
 and when alone in a dark room I read the chapter of Matthew, which graph- 
 ically describes the crucifixion of Christ, my whole body shook and trembled; 
 and I felt as if a great crime were being committed under my eyes. I be- 
 lieve the Holy Ghost then for the first time manifested His power within me. 
 
 To be convinced of the truth of Christianity is one thing, and to embrace 
 it, especially in a country like India, is another. I could not act up to my 
 convictions without forsaking my home, parents, brothers, sisters, and every- 
 body near and dear to me; and the tremendous sacrifice before me made 
 me stagger. People here scarcely know what the simple word, baptism, means 
 in India: — A respectable Hindu baptised is shunned, not only by society 
 at large, but even by his own parents, who consider it pollution to touch 
 him; while the very wife of his bosom, and his own children, naturally re- 
 coil from his loving embrace or touch. A short time after my baptism, I 
 saw some of my female relations, who had come to the house of a common 
 friend to see my cousin and myself, — entrance into our own house being 
 peremptorily denied us. They had with them a little boy, of whom I was 
 fond, he being the eldest child of a beloved cousin of mine. As soon as I 
 saw him, I instinctively stretched out my hands to lift him up and caress 
 him; but, though about five years old, he was true to the caste principles in- 
 stilled into his mind, and he shrank from my embrace, stating, “Uncle! you 
 have corrupted yourself and I will not touch you!” 
 
 Though disinclined on the whole to prove true to my religious convictions, 
 I was very fond of attending the lectures on Christian topics which our 
 missionary teachers and others used to deliver in the two great missionary 
 schools of Calcutta, our own and the General Assembly’s, at some distance 
 from my house. One night, I was returning with my cousin, Babu Bhubun 
 Mohon Bose, from a lecture in the latter institution; we were overtaken by a 
 storm, which combined with the sentiments of the discourse we had listened 
 to in solemnizing our minds; and we went on absorbed in profitable medi- 
 tation. My cousin, who had even in boyhood evinced an irresistible ten- 
 dency to a religious life, — who had ofbeai in my presence given to the poor 
 the cents given him by his mother for lunch, — broke the silence, saying, 
 “Our listening to these lectures is vain, if we do not act up to our convic- 
 tions.” This saying led to a talk, the result of which was we returned home, 
 entered a private room, and for the first time in our lives prayed to the God 
 of the Christians. We engaged in secret prayer apart from one another, he 
 in one comer and I in another of the room, not being enlightened enough 
 to see the advantage of united prayer. I showed a tendency to backslide 
 
44 
 
 subsequently, but my cousiu, always more earnest, and less prone to go to 
 the bad, kept stirring me up, and so preventing me from sliding down into 
 moral ruin. There were some other young men, convinced as we were, and 
 drawn like ourselves towards a public profession of Christianity; and we all 
 used to meet, converse on religious subjects, and read such books as James’ 
 Anxious Inquirer. But before our interview with the young men, I had, 
 on a dark night while returning from a lecture in our own institution, some 
 talk with the lecturer himself, the Bev. Thomas Smith, D. I)., the only sur- 
 viving member of the illustrious band of my teachers; and I look upon this 
 earnest conversation, begun by him with the question — “Boy ! do you un- 
 derstand what I say in these lectures?” — as one of the agencies employed 
 by God to bring me to the right decision. My cousin and myself finally 
 made up our minds to embrace Christianity, and we wrote to the late Rev. 
 Dr. Ewart, the father, counsellor and friend of the Bengal Free Church 
 expressing our determination to do so. The doctor, however, did not reply 
 or invite us to a private talk, evidently deeming it advisable to leave us to 
 ourselves. This is one of the many instances which may be advanced, to 
 show that missionaries are not after mere baptisms, and that as a rule they 
 satisfy themselves as to the sincerity of inquirers before encouraging them 
 at all. Without, however, awaiting his reply, excepting for a few days, we 
 left home one evening and took refuge in the mission house, where we were 
 kindly received, and where we received a very kind letter from Dr. Ewart. 
 We had then our trial, but before I allude to it, let me say that two of the 
 other young men, brothers in faith as well as in blood, followed our exam- 
 ple, and came to the mission house. Their male relations came to persuade 
 them to go back, but they continued firm. Then their mother came in a 
 palanquin, and meeting them in a private room, raised such lamentations, 
 as were fitted to break the stony heart, and as ultimately shook their con- 
 stancy. They went back, and I have never seep or heard of them since, 
 though my heart has often yearned for them. Our male relations came and 
 did their best to persuade us to go back; but as our caste was too high to 
 admit of our female relations coming to see us even in covered palanquins, 
 we were not exposed to the unutterably great trial through which these two 
 persons could not pass unscathed. Our trial over, wt> were baptized by the 
 Rev. W. S. Mackay, D. 1)., in the Free Church, Calcutta, on July 16th, 1851. 
 My cousin has been a consistent Christian ever since, and is now a father in 
 Israel, a pillar of the native church. He is working in the vineyard of the 
 Lord as head master of the mission school under the charge of the Rev. 
 David Herron, whose name is mentioned with respect in India, and ought to 
 be in America, as I have again and again said in your churches. He has 
 communicated the greatest impetus to female education in India by prepar- 
 ing a girl for the entrance examination of the Calcutta University, removing 
 all obstacles out of her way, and sending her up with success commensurate 
 
to the energy and enthusiasm with which he had begun and carried fonvard 
 a work which has opened in the history of female education a new era in 
 India. This girl is the eldest daughter of my cousin, and she is now pre- 
 paring herself for the higher examinations with the enthusiasm with which 
 young ladies in America scale the hill of science. 
 
 With reference to my own self, I have a sad tale to tell, I strove to lead a 
 Christian life, but in reality I oscillated between some sin or other and mo- 
 ments of devotional earnestness. I would go on in sin for a time, and then 
 strive earnestly to mend, trusting more in my own strength than in aid from 
 on high. Failure would drive me back to sin, and sin wonld drive me back 
 to renewed efforts to effect my deliverance. My religion during these long 
 years was like that of the man whose niece said— “I hope my uncle will not 
 die in the cold season when he loses his religion ! ” But the time came when 
 I lost every vestige of my respectability, and falling a victim to the vice of in- 
 temperance, d|d things of which, if I had been forewarned, I would have 
 said — “Is thy servant a dog?” When the Methodist missionaries found me, 
 I was sunk in the depths of vice. I state sober truth when I say that I have 
 yet to see a man of my position in society, which in India is considered 
 respectable, and of my education, which in India is considered fair, going 
 down so low as I did. These missionaries kindly set men to watch me, and 
 after I had given up drinking for a few days, they invited me to their revival 
 meetings; and although I was the first person to step forward when sinners 
 were called to the altar, my want of faith, combined with a latent antago- 
 nism to the theory of instantaneous conversion, made my advance fruitless 
 for a time. Besides, I fell into the mistake of looking for a particular type 
 of illumination, and particular phases of religious power in operation within 
 my heart. But the Lord’s time was approaching. When the kind-hearted 
 missionaries were thinking of giving me up as a hopeless case, I received in 
 a private meeting what I had failed to attain in so many public meetings. 
 The meeting was a class meeting held in the Ladies’ Mission Home at Luck- 
 now, under the leadership of l)r. Thoburn, who desired us all to be engaged 
 in secret prayer before the commencement of its business. I heartily 
 responded to this call, and when the rich talk was in progress, the story of 
 Paul’s conversion was presented to my mind by the Spirit of God in a new 
 light, and I said to myself — here is an example of instantaneous conversion ! 
 But the thought that Paul had elements of character the very reverse of 
 those I could boast of, was beginning to damp my hopes, when Dr. Tho- 
 bum was led by some remark of a brother to repeat the words — “My yoke is 
 easy and my burden is light.” The whole passage of which this is the con- 
 cluding verse, the passage beginning with — “Come unto me all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” — came back to mind with pe- 
 culiar power, and I felt some holy influence at work within me. I returned 
 home, and tried to sleep off the impression, but I could not sleep. I believe 
 
I slept only a few minutes, then got up, and after a long season of separa- 
 tion from God, knelt down and prayed. While earnestly engaged in this ex- 
 ercise, I felt as if I saw these words of Christ — “Come unto me all ye that 
 labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” — written in large, illu- 
 minated characters before me. The vision is now before me as vividly as it 
 was then presented; and I have no doubt but that a supernatural power 
 and influence drew my heart towards God. Ever since that night, about 
 eight years ago, I have been consciously serving God, as I was before con- 
 sciously serving sin and Satan. The missionaries instrumental in bringing 
 me back to the proper path are Dr. Thoburn, and Messrs. Cunningham and 
 Craven; while Mr. Knowles had previously striven to do me good. When 
 myself and family were in the lowest depths of degradation, three of the 
 agents of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, Miss Swain, Mrs. 
 Waugh, then Miss Tinsley, and Miss Rowe, one of the sweetest Christians I 
 have ever seen in my lifetime, visited and prayed with us; while Miss Tho- 
 burn has been the kindest friend of my family ever since the day of the 
 commencement of my acquaintance with her. My heart overflows with 
 gratitude, and often my eyes are bedewed with tears when I think of their 
 kindness, in conjunction with that shown me by the Free Church mission- 
 aries, at whose feet I was brought up, by the London Missionaries of Ben- 
 ares under whom I served for nearly ten years, and by almost all the mem- 
 bers of the North India Conference, my fathers and older brethren in exper- 
 ence and piety, if not in years. But I am under peculiar obligations to my 
 beloved parents in the faith, the Rev. James and Mrs. Kennedy, who have 
 watched my spiritual interests during the last twenty-five years vdth pater- 
 nal solicitude, who have maintained an instructive correspondence with me 
 during this long period, and in whose heart I occupy together, of course, 
 with a few other converts, a place not far from that occupied by their own 
 children and beloved relations. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless all these 
 kind friends, and console the widow and children of the late Rev. M. A. 
 Sherring, who would not abandon me in my worst days. 
 
 I was then a government official, occupying a pretty respectable situation 
 in the education department; but I was afraid to go back to my post, and 
 the head mastership of our school at Shajehanpore being offered me by l)r. 
 Johnson and Mr. Buck, I accepted it, and attached myself thoroughly to 
 the Methodist Mission. At Shajehanpore, under the guidance of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Buck, who treated me as a brother, rather than a subordinate, I spent 
 three of the best years of my life, working both as a Christian teacher and 
 as an exliorter. Here I commenced that work to which I ultimately felt 
 called upon to devote myself unreservedly, the work of preaching the gospel 
 to my educated countrymen by means of public lectures and private visita- 
 tion. Over and above my school work and that in the orphanage, I deliv- 
 ered courses of lectures, with the help of Messrs. Buck, Knowles, and Bud- 
 
don, a generous-hearted, pious young man, high in government employ, who 
 is one of my kindest friends, and the late Mr. Brown, whose widow is to ns 
 a bright example of cheerful resignation in bereavement and .adversity. 
 From Shajehanpore I was transferred to Moradabad, where under the gui- 
 dance of Mr. Parker and Mr. M’Grew, by whom I was treated with marked 
 kindness, I served one year more as a teacher and local preacher. Here, 
 also, courses of lectures were delivered, with their assistance, for the benefit 
 of the educated community, lectures which were crowned, as it were, by one 
 delivered in a crowded house by Bishop Andrews. I was, however, called 
 to give up teaching, and devote myself wholly to this work, which 6eemed 
 to grow around me. I resigned my head-mastership, and secured a house 
 at Lucknow, trusting the Lord would help me, and bring me support from 
 some quarter. And I was not disappointed. A preachership became prov- 
 idently vacant, and my kind-hearted missionary friends, under the direction 
 of Bishop Andrews, offered it to me; and I left Moradabad and began my 
 work at Lucknow. 
 
 I have been doing this work for about four years, and I am glad to say 
 that the missionary gentlemen, under whom I have served, have expressed 
 themselves satisfied with my conduct. My ambition is to please the Lord 
 Jesus Christ first, and then to give my employers satisfaction; and I am 
 glad that, though I have considered it my duty and privilege freely to ex- 
 press my opinions in Indian journals on subjects appertaining to our work, 
 I have not been considered disrespectful in my private intercourse with 
 those whom I love and honor; and I have tried to be loyal to the Great 
 Master. My modes of operation are visitation, public lectures in English 
 and in Urdu, preaching and itinerancy. I spend the first six months of the 
 year at home in Lucknow, delivering two courses of lectures in two differ- 
 ent districts of the city, preaching occasionally under the direction of my 
 preacher in charge, in the church, and in the market, and visiting almost 
 daily my educated countrymen, and holding religious conversation with 
 them. During the last six months I am, as a rule, absent from home, en- 
 gaged in similar work in all the great cities and towns in the North West 
 Provinces, and a few in Punjab. My work is appreciated everywhere, and 
 I am invited, not only by missionaries of our own missions, but by others 
 who cheerfully pay my expenses. Besides this I try to influence the edu- 
 cated community through the press, and I am under obligations to the edi- 
 tors of the Bengal Magazine, the Lucknow' Witness and tne Bengal 
 Christian Herald, who are always ready to throw open their pages and 
 columns for my articles. I have published a volume of lectures on Chris- 
 tian miracles, or rather the evidence based on these miracles; but it is full 
 of typographical mistakes. I wish to see it republished. I feel compelled to 
 say that my publication work has come to an end for want of funds, and if 
 some of those who may read these pages were disposed to help me in it they 
 
48 
 
 would, I am sure, be pushing forward a much-needed and interesting 
 branch of missionary work. 
 
 Let me now say something about the persons among -whom I work, the 
 educated, English-speaking natives of India. In all the great cities and 
 towns of our country, around colleges and schools opened by the govern- 
 ment and benevolent societies, are clustering growing communities of edu- 
 cated Indian gentleman, who, though unable perhaps to write and speak 
 English with commendable freedom and accuracy, are not very far behind 
 educated men here in literary and scientific attainments. These persons 
 may in one sense be regarded as the leaders of the nation, and the influence 
 they exercise as a class is great even now, and bids fair to be omnipotent 
 hereafter. They form the vanguard of civilization in our country, and 
 whether they will or not, they are leading the masses of population it repre- 
 sents. Where? — this is to be determined by their own attitude towards re- 
 ligion. I have often said to them that they are either leading the people 
 towards, or drawing them away, from God and bliss. Their religious con- 
 dition, therefore, can not be a matter of indifference to persons interested in 
 the welfare of India, and certainly to those who long and pray for its evan- 
 gelization. 
 
 With reference to their attitude toward religion, they maybe divided into 
 three classes. The first class consists of those -who are men of superior ed- 
 ucation, pretty well versed in modern science, and conversant with the phil- 
 osophical and religious speculations of the age. Their religion is a fac 
 simile of that embodied in various forms in Huxley’s “Lay Sermons!” 
 that indicated very distinctly in the very first of these “Sermons.” They 
 are modest enough to acknowledge that they cannot settle the question, 
 whether there is a God or whether He is a myth. They are, however, sure 
 that science has nothing to do with the problem, and that it may be, along 
 with the various creations of superstitious fear, consigned to the limbo of 
 the theological ago which has gone by. They recognize the order of nature 
 as an objective reality, rather than a subjective idea and they point out the 
 absolute necessity of our being or acting in unison with it. They represent 
 such things as prayer and external forms of devotion as absurd, the silent 
 admiration of this eternal and immutable order for in defiance of 
 every correct principle of logic they assume its eternity and immutability 
 being in tlicir opinion more suited to their condition as students of nature 
 and devotees of science. They believe in Altruism or living for others, but 
 they make use of such words as live and act with condescending deference 
 to our ordinary modes of expression, which they know are fallacious. They 
 can not possibly be ignorant of the fact that we are lumps of matter and 
 nothing more, moved to and fro by material laws over which we have no 
 control. Their position is obviously weak and indefensible, but they are 
 men of education and parts, and they can handle arguments and carry on con-