Lehal Library

CHAP. I THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE 11 temns as wanderers, and, unlike the Hindu and the Buddhist, he is still actively desirous of acquiring merit by adding to the number of true believers. But Buddh- and canist, and Brahmanist, and Muhammadan have each an J°^e?inr' instructed body of ministers, and each confides in an chrLauthoritative ritual, or in a revealed law. Their reason tianity. and their hopes are both satisfied, and hence the difficulty of converting them to the Christian faith by the methods of the civilized moderns. Our missionaries, earnest and devoted men, must be content with the cold arguments of science and criticism; they must not rouse the feelings, or appeal to the imagination; they cannot promise aught which their hearers were not sure of before; they cannot go into the desert to fast, nor retire to the mountain-tops to pray; they cannot declare the fulfilment of any fondly cherished hope of the people, nor, in announcing a great principle, can they point to the success of the sword and the visible favour of the Divinity. No austerity of sanctitude convinces the multitude, and the Pandit and the Mulla can each oppose dialectics to dialectics, morality to morality, and revelation to revelation. Our zealous preachers may create sects among ourselves, half Quietist and half Epicurean, they may persevere in their laudable resolution of bringing up the orphans of heathen parents, and they may gain some converts among intelligent inquirers as well as among the ignorant and the indigent, but it seems hopeless that they should ever Christianize the Indian and Muhammadan worlds.^ The observers of the ancient creeds quietly pursue the even tenor of their way, self satisfied and almost indifferent about others; but the Sikhs are converts to sikhism an a new religion, the seal of the double dispensation of active and Brahma and Muhammad: their enthusiasm is still ?!f7^.^"^ principle. fresh, and their faith is still an active and a living principle. They are persuaded that God himself is 1 The masses can only be convinced by means repudiated by reason and the instructed intellect of man, and the futility of endeavouring to convince the learned by argument is exemplified in Martyn's Persian Controversies, translated by Dr. Lee, in the discussion carried on between the Christian missionaries at Allahabad and the Muhammadan Mullas at Lucknow, in Ram Mohan Roy's work on Deism and the Vedas, and in the published correspondence of the Tatubodhni Subha of Calcutta. For an instance of the satisfaction of the Hindus with their creed, see Moorcroft, Travels, i. 118, where some Udasis commend him for believing, like them, in a God [Col. Kennedy (Res. Hind. MythoL, p. 141) states that the Brahmans think ! of the Christian missionaries (as propagandists), although the English have held authority in India for several generations. J.D.C." little —