The worship in Hinduism is infinitely diversified. Its Pantheon, roomier than that of ancient paganism, contains three hundred and thirty million gods. Is this an expression, however distorted, of man's hope in the variety and abundance of divine help for human need? The people, however, had no clear thought of God, and yet for three thousand years the oldest of Aryan prayers had gone up: "Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine Vivifier; may he enlighten our understanding."* It sounds like the voice of man's heart calling itself to meditation, and crying for light to the "sun behind the sun." But the philosophic Brahman who repeated that prayer looked calmly out upon the jumble of cruel, lustful, capricious gods, watched the rise and fall of sects that gathered about some famous reformer; saw Jugganath lord of the world worshipped, whose offering is a flower, and at whose shrine all castes may eat one bread and be undefiled; or saw with equal unconcern Kali worshipped, whose necklace is of skulls, who delights in blood and especially in human sacrifices. Let all these votaries feed the Brahman at the birth, the marriage, and the death, in season and out of season, and let caste rules have due observance, and any creed under the sun may house itself in Hinduism, where priestesses are devoted from infancy and trained to be common strumpets, attached to temples or wandering together through the land, and where a sacred sanction has fostered and sheltered infanticide, child marriages, polygamy, prostitution, sati (or suttee), and thuggee. After this life, endless transmigrations are for the many; and union with the Supreme is for the few, to whom the Brahmic bliss is possible on both sides of death. If a man believed merely in the survival of the fittest, and had no. faith whatever in the supernatural, he might confidently expect Christianity to outlive these three religions which are found to-day in India and Ceylon. What hopes then ought we to cherish who believe that our Lord is the Light of the World; and that all authority in heaven and earth is His? With that faith our brethren entered India. III. BEGINNINGS. Carey and Thomas, on landing in India with the "good news," were under England's ban for their obedience to Jesus Christ; and the vast majority of British Christians were indifferent to the great * Sir Monier Williams. movement of the age. "Use and wont" blunt the conscience and blind the eyes in England as well as in India. Missions, like a twoedged sword, were to smite apathy at home and superstition abroad. These men did as much for Christians as for heathens, as much for England as for India. They carried Christ's banner into danger and shamed the Church into an advance. From that time to this missionaries have never ceased to co-operate with British soldiers, statesmen and judges in the great work-civil and sacred-that God gave us to do in a land of confusion and the shadow of death. JUSTICE. Two great measures of this period call for a passing notice. Before Lord Cornwallis left India he had established, through the earlier labours of Sir William Jones, the Supreme Court of Criminal Judicature in Calcutta, and laid the foundation for the efficient administration of justice throughout a lawless continent. But for weary years the people of India, and also of England, had to endure civil courts that were dilatory, technical and ruinously dear. THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT. But the most famous measure connected with the name of Lord Cornwallis is the Permanent Settlement of Bengal. It was an honest attempt to secure a steady revenue from the land, to turn the zemindars, or farmers of the land revenues, into landlords; and also to guard the rights of the ryots, or tenants who tilled the soil. A pledge was given that the Settlement should be "permanent." The measure gave immediate confidence, but was in many ways a mistake. The condition of Bengal was utterly unsuitable to form a fair basis for an absolute and permanent settlement. When Carey landed, in the year of its passing, the results of the famine of twenty-four years earlier were still to be seen everywhere. A third of the population of Bengal had perished, and three-fifths of its area were an uncultivated jungle abandoned to wild beasts and serpents." Men, who were then made landlords on easy terms, grew fabulously wealthy as population increased. The measure was passed without due knowledge of Indian tenures and tenant-right, and with undue regard to English notions: this settlement will be mentioned again when the India of to-day is considered; but it prepared the way for such a * Page 78. 66 wise and varied arrangement of the land revenues, to suit the different localities in India, as would alone give lasting fame to any nation, and is one of England's chief glories in the East. CAREY AS A FARMER. Carey, as we may see by his " Enquiry," hoped to support himself and family in India by cultivating the land. But before he could find a field for work, hindrances and disappointments beset him at every step. He knew that while they stayed in Calcutta they might at any moment be ordered back to England, as persons resident in India without the Company's permission. The little money that the sanguine estimate of Thomas proposed to keep them for a year was soon spent, and Carey had seven persons to provide for in a strange land; two of the children fell ill, and he heard little but reproaches from his wife; and once and again he writes in his journal, "dejected." But he seized every opportunity of learning the language and talking with the natives. He visited daily the places of public resort to tell his message. With the aid of his pundit he discussed with Muhammedans "the relative merits of the Koran and the Bible in a kindly spirit, to ' recommend the Gospel and the way of life by Christ." Later there is a record of an acute and kindly talk with Brahmans. And he is "very weary" walking fifteen or sixteen miles in the sun to borrow money. At Bandel he met Kiernander the Danish missionary, then in his eighty-fourth year; and would have settled at Nuddea, famous for its University and Sanscrit learning, but could get no land. Finally he moves almost penniless forty miles east of Calcutta to take a few acres of land within a quarter of a mile of the impenetrable forests and swamps of the Sundarbans, a region once populous and fertile, but cursed with pirates and then abandoned to wild beasts except where salt was manufactured. Around the Englishman with his gun came the timid Bengalis to settle in hundreds, and even thousands, now that the tigers were to be kept away. He mentions that tigers had taken off twenty men that season from the Government salt works in the district. This characteristic timidity of the Bengalis, who flock about this one man and his gun, may suggest the diversity of the peoples of India; for while she furnishes some of the bravest soldiers in the world, Sir John Strachey thinks that a single Bengali soldier is not to be found in all the Indian-armies. Here he met an Englishman who, though a stranger, welcomed the family into his |