p ^. • 
 
 
 •.•■^V t .
 
 Christianity suited to all Forms 
 of Civilization, 
 
 DELIVERED IN CONNECTION WITH 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY, 
 
 JULY 9TH, 1872. 
 
 Sir BARTLE FRERE, g.c.s.l, k.c.b., d.c.l. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 27, Paternoster Row. 
 
 MDCCCLXII.
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO ALL FORMS 
 OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 T HAVE been requested by the managers of this 
 series of lectures to state to you the results of 
 observation and experience in other countries as 
 to the adequacy of Christianity to meet the require- 
 ments of the varying forms of civilization. 
 
 It will be my object to tell you what is — what I have 
 seen myself — rather than what I imagine ought to be. 
 I wish to meet the theory which, in one shape or 
 another, is not uncommonly propounded in this 
 countr^^ that Christianity is a Semitic variety of re- 
 ligion, suited to Syria and to a people of Jewish or 
 Arab origin, but little adapted to men of other races 
 and other climates. I wish to show you, as far as the 
 brief limits of a lecture allow, that experience proves 
 Christianity to be a religion perfectly adapted to 
 mankind of the most various races, and in every stage 
 of civilization, from the lowest to the highest. 
 
 We must first define the meaning we intend to 
 attach to some of the words which we shall
 
 CHRISTIANITY SU22 ED TO 
 
 have to use. For instance, the word '* Christianity " 
 itself has a signification widely different as used 
 by different Christians, and still more different as 
 used by writers who can in no sense be classed as 
 Christian writers. I shall speak of it in this lecture 
 as the religion which is a rule of life to the majority 
 of religious people in England calling themselves 
 Christians. We may take the Apostles' Creed, as 
 generally received and interpreted among us here in 
 England, as the symbol of the belief whose adequacy 
 to meet the requirements of all forms of civilization I 
 hope to illustrate. 
 
 Further let us bear in mind, that however much we 
 Christians may differ as to particular articles of doctrinal 
 belief, or of discipline, we all regard our Christian 
 religion as depending on a revelation of some kind — 
 as being something told us from without, in contradis- 
 tinction to the modern theory, "that people have their 
 religion as part of their growth, and that a man is not 
 more responsible for his religion, than he is for the 
 colour of his hair, or the length of his arm ; that, in 
 fact, it grows as a part of himself." This is a conve- 
 nient doctrine as getting rid of all personal respon- 
 sibility in matters of belief, and is rather commonly met 
 with in these days among many classes of professed 
 Christians. We have not time at present to discuss 
 it, or to show how fundamentally it is opposed to the 
 idea of any religion as a rule of life, I will only there- 
 fore remark that we cannot recognize this description 
 
 6. 

 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 as applying to Christianity, which we regard as em- 
 bodying truths and rules of conduct revealed to the 
 intelligence of man from an external power — it may 
 be through the senses, it may be through the con- 
 science or the intellect, it may be recorded in books 
 or handed down in traditions ; but in whatever form, 
 it is an external something, which is able powefully 
 to modify the very nature of man, and all functions of 
 his intellect and spirit, as well as his physical being. 
 
 As a further preliminary we must consider what we 
 require a religion to do ? 
 
 Let us leave out for a moment the consideration of 
 all that relates to the world to come. Nor let us for the 
 present even stop to discuss the question whether man- 
 kind might or might not be better off without any 
 religion at all. Much ingenuity has been expended on 
 proving such a position, just as it might be in proving 
 that mankind would be better off without salt, or bread, 
 or meat. But the general sense of mankind is all the 
 other way, and our present purpose is comparative. 
 Let us look on religion as one of the things which men 
 generally think they require to aid moral and social 
 laws in making men better and happier, more prosper- 
 ous in life, and more able to promote the well-being 
 both of believers themselves and of all in contact with 
 and affected by them. To what extent is Christianity, 
 as compared with other religions, adapted in these 
 respects to the wants of mankind under various forms 
 of civilization } This is the question which we pro- 
 
 7
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 pose to discuss, not by a priori arguments, but by 
 examples and experience. 
 
 I. Let us first consider the case of wild tribes, 
 who are, as nearly as we can judge, in what is called a 
 state of nature. We have whole families, and even 
 races, in Europe in a condition very little removed 
 from that of the wild beasts ; but they are generally a 
 degraded and neglected form of mankind who have 
 lapsed from a better state of civilization, and are 
 hardly such good subjects for illustrating our argu- 
 ment as the wild tribes of India, who, so far as 
 historical records show, have been from very early 
 ages in a state at least as barbarous as that in 
 which we have found them of late years. What I 
 am now about to tell you applies to nearly one- 
 fifth of the people of India. Some of them are not 
 much removed above the condition of the abo- 
 riginal tribes in Australia. In the Andaman Islands 
 there are remnants of a Negrillo race, who, though 
 far better formed and well developed physically 
 and mentally than the Australian race, have quite as 
 little of artificial civilization about them. In the 
 jungles of Central and Southern India are to be 
 found tribes whose habits seem to approach much 
 more nearly to those of apes than of men. A 
 few of them are said to be absolutely without 
 clothing, and to live habitually in trees ; others 
 have no better substitute for clothing than bunches 
 of leaves, while with all of them the use of clothing 
 
 8
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 is limited to the slightest imaginable amount of 
 covering. A little more civilized than these are the 
 jungle tribes, Bhils and Katkurees, and other races who 
 live mainly by the chase. The great body of the tribes 
 on our eastern frontier, the Sontalls and Koles, and 
 many of the clans of Goandwana in Central India, and 
 the Koolies and Thakoors of the west, are one step 
 higher in civilization. They have huts and fowls and 
 cattle, and some of them, especially on the eastern 
 frontier, have slaves : all have some rude cultivation on 
 spots cleared by burning the jungle., Again, one 
 step higher, are tribes known as the Pariah or outcast 
 tribes of Western and Southern India, apparently the 
 remnants of aboriginal tribes conquered by the earlier 
 invaders of Hindostan, and reduced to the condition 
 of serfs or helots. The term " outcasts " hardly de- 
 scribes their condition, because they have never formed 
 any integral part of the purely Hindoo communities ; 
 but they are " outsiders " in every sense of the word 
 — forced to live outside the village walls — for- 
 bidden to touch or draw water from the wells of the 
 Hindoo community; and though often — in the Mahar- 
 atta Country always — occupying recognized positions 
 in the village economy as settled cultivators and 
 artizans, they are strictly confined to those ser- 
 vices which, however necessary, are associated in all 
 countries with a certain sense of pollution ; they are 
 scavengers, skinners of dead animals, and the like. 
 The more settled tribes frequently approach very 
 9
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 nearly in civilization to the simpler classes of Hindoo 
 agriculturists and artizans. But they have this in 
 common with their wilder neighbours, that they are 
 all more or less Fetish or devil-worshippers — a fact 
 which distinguishes them broadly from the great body 
 of genuine Hindoos. Altogether of these races I 
 have been describing there are, according to the 
 latest estimates, not fewer than forty millions of 
 souls within the British Empire in India and Ceylon, 
 a population almost as great as that of France or 
 Germany. 
 
 Their physical qualities resemble those of savages 
 in every part of the world. All are great observers ; 
 they have that peculiar quickness of eye and ear, and 
 of all physical senses, which characterizes wild men, 
 and which you see in any civilized man who, like the 
 backwoodsman or remote colonist, has lived much 
 among the solitudes of nature. But it is not only 
 their external senses of sight and hearing and smell- 
 ing which are wonderfully quickened by the neces- 
 sities of the life they lead. Any one who lives much 
 among them will be often astonished at the minute 
 accuracy of observation evinced by them when they 
 come first among the distracting sights and sounds of 
 civilization. In the English official's tent or cutcherry 
 they may appear perfectly dazed and confounded, 
 watching every novelty of the scene around them, 
 and with difficulty made to understand the business 
 which brought them there — though it may be a capital 
 
 10
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 charge, perhaps, of robbery and murder ; and yet these 
 same savages, when by themselves after^vards, will 
 imitate with the most unmistakable fidelity — and with 
 infinite humour — every peculiarity of voice and man- 
 ner in the foreigners with whom for perhaps the first 
 time in their lives they had been brought in contact. 
 Their only wisdom is that of experience in all 
 matters of daily life ; they have, of course, no book- 
 learning, no philosophical systems — nothing of what 
 some of our modern philosophers would call the 
 shams or trammels of civilization. Careless of hu- 
 man life, they suffer little from the physical evils 
 attendant on civilization. Their diseases are gene- 
 rally such as are the consequences of deficient or 
 unwholesome food, or of want, or of malaria. Such of 
 them as have fixed habitations, when they begin to 
 find the spot where they live becoming unhealthy — 
 when their fowls or their children die, or their grown 
 folk suffer from fever — generally conclude that some 
 evil spirits have entered the village, which they forth- 
 with abandon, and move to a spot a short distance 
 off". Every evil in life is attributed to some demoniacal 
 or malicious agency. Their priests are generally little 
 more than witch-finders or exorcists of evil spirits. 
 The marriage-tie is lax among the ruder tribes, 
 but invariably becomes stronger as the tribes 
 become more civilized. They are generally far more 
 truthful than their civilized neighbours, sometimes 
 apparently from innate honesty, at other times from
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 simplicity ; but few of them appear to have that 
 abstract regard for truth which we associate with the 
 highest form of civiHzation. They are all, as a rule, 
 kind and indulgent to their children ; but the death 
 of a child is not generally a matter which affects them 
 more than the death of their young cattle, and when 
 hard pressed for means of subsistence there is little 
 trace among the men of that self-sacrifice for the sake 
 of children which is so common in many more civilized 
 communities. There is, as a general rule, little vene- 
 ration for age, when the old people become burden- 
 some through inability to provide for themselves. A 
 few tribes are still clearly addicted to human sacrifices 
 as the most potent form of propitiating the powers of 
 , evil ; and most tribes have traditions which indicate 
 that such practices were formerly more common. 
 
 One universal feature of all savage life is that every- 
 thing goes to the strongest. It is not easy to convey 
 to civilized men any definite notion of all that this 
 peculiarity implies ; still less to show how prone we 
 are to relapse into — 
 
 *' The good old rule, the simple plan, 
 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can " — 
 
 when the checks imposed by a civilized organization 
 of society are removed. 
 
 I will endeavour to illustrate both the tendency 
 and its results by an instance which was related 
 to me by an old friend, and which struck me as 
 
 12
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVLLLZATLON. 
 
 showing how this natural tendency comes out when- 
 ever there is a real struggle for existence. My 
 friend was a very intellectual, shrewd Scotchman, 
 who was cured of his youthful fancies in favour of 
 savage life by being shipwrecked half-a-century ago 
 in one of the great old East Indiamen upon the 
 island called Inaccessible, in the Southern Ocean. 
 It so happened that the whole of the crew — with the 
 exception of the captain — and all the passengers, in- 
 cluding a large detachment of troops, and numbering 
 several hundred souls of various ages and professions, 
 got safely to the rocky shores of the island, where they 
 lived for some months, supported by the provisions 
 they saved from the ship, and by the vast quantities 
 of eggs of wild-fowl which were found on the rocky 
 ledges of the island. One of the most prominent 
 characters on board the ship previous to the shipwreck 
 had been the surgeon — a man of weak physical powers, 
 but of great and varied intellectual attainments, and 
 of most popular manners and charming disposition. He 
 had possessed during the voyage an unbounded influ- 
 ence over both officers and men — was invaluable to the 
 captain as a supporter of discipline, and to the chaplain 
 as aiding his moral teaching. He had induced all the 
 young men on board to prosecute their studies regularly 
 under his direction, and was a leading authority with 
 regard to all the amusements by which the monotony 
 of the voyage was relieved. He was, in fact, a type of 
 what high intelligence in a civilized community can 
 
 13
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 achieve in the way of legitimate and useful influence. 
 For some days after the shipwreck his old power 
 continued, and was always exercised for the public 
 benefit ; but after a while the pressing necessity felt 
 by every soul of the shipwrecked community was the 
 provision of water, which had to be procured from 
 distant scanty springs, and the collection of a 
 suflicient supply of birds' eggs to satisfy the calls of 
 hunger. They had got, in fact, down to that stage 
 of civilization at which the satisfaction of the first 
 wants of nature in the way of food was of pressing 
 daily importance. From that moment all the author- 
 ity of the man of intellect vanished. He had not the 
 physical strength to carry water or climb for birds' 
 eggs, and the boatswain's mate — an illiterate man, of 
 great physical power and energy, with other qualities 
 fitted to shine in savage life — took the lead and kept it ; 
 exercising despotic sway over the whole community 
 as long as they remained on the island. 
 
 Possibly some of us might say, "this is all perfectly 
 natural and proper ; the result must be a process of 
 natural selection by which the most powerful physical 
 natures will take the lead, and the consequence a 
 gradual improvement of the race." But Indian 
 experience of savage life does not at all confirm 
 this view. The savage races are invariably smaller, 
 weaker, and worse developed than the civilized. 
 Many of the half-civilized are fine men, because 
 they retain their habits of eating animal food,
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 and thrive better than those neighbouring civiHzed 
 races whose diet is exclusiv^ely vegetable ; but in such 
 cases their mode of Hving and kind of diet combines 
 many of the advantages of both civihzed and uncivil- 
 ized life. The results of purely uncivilized existence, 
 so far as I have seen them, are invariably a decreasing 
 population, decreasing- size and health, a general ten- 
 dency to degenerate and to assimilate more nearly to 
 the habits of beasts of the forest. I should doubt if 
 mankind would ever become extinct in the jungles of 
 India, because the smallest remnant of human intelli- 
 gence gives them such an advantage over the 
 other creatures of the forest, that the extinction of 
 the race seems a very remote contingency. But a 
 gradual dwindling of mind, body, and soul is universally 
 apparent wherever civilization does not inter\^ene to 
 counteract the tendency. 
 
 Our experience of the races I have been describing 
 does not agree with the theories of philosophers who 
 maintain that the perfect condition of human nature 
 is to be found among people who live a purely mate- 
 rial life, thinking only of matter and its properties, and 
 obeying with unquestioning fidelity all the instincts 
 of their material nature. Such a life is led by the 
 most uncivilized and savage of the tribes I have been 
 describing. If the theories of modern materialist 
 philosophers were true, it seems to me these tribes 
 ought to swallow up civilization and all its shams; but 
 practice and experience prove that civilization swallows
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 Up them and their materiahstic mode of life, and unless 
 they become civilized they are invariably extinguished 
 when they come in contact with civilized communities 
 — notnecessarily by war or violence, but by the certain 
 operation of civilization. 
 
 This brings us to the question of their religion. 
 What is it, and how is it modified by contact with 
 Christianity .'' 
 
 First, let us observe that not one of them, as far 
 as I am aware, is destitute of some form of religion. 
 As to what may be the case in other parts of the 
 world I cannot tell, but as regards the wild 
 tribes of India — and some of them are probably quite 
 as wild as any in the world — I know of none who do 
 not possess a religion of some kind. It is true, I 
 have been told by some of them in so many words, 
 that "gods are for English gentlemen, respectable 
 Brahmans, and Muhammedans, and that the poor 
 children of the jungle do not pretend to or venture 
 to possess any such luxuries as the gods of the people 
 around them." But in so speaking they thought 
 only of the gods whose shrines they saw whenever 
 they visited the haunts of civilized men; and I 
 never could hear of any tribe, however wild, the 
 members of which did not possess a religion of some 
 kind — a behef in the existence of beings of super- 
 human power, whose active agency modifies the 
 conditions and objects of life of all mankind. The 
 religion of all the various tribes and classes I am 
 
 i6
 
 ALL FORMS OF CLVLLIZATLON. 
 
 speaking of is more or less Fetish worship ; that is, 
 they have some form of rehgion, which consists not 
 ahvays in the worship of evil, but in a practice of 
 deprecatory sacrifice, and petition to malevolent 
 beings with a viev/ to avert evil results to the 
 worshipper or his friends. It is also an invariable 
 feature of Fetish worship that the worshipper is 
 able, by influencing the powers of evil, to effect 
 mischief to his enemies, as well as to obtain good for 
 himself Time does not admit of more than a brief 
 reference to a few of the commonest forms of Indian 
 Fetish worship. Among the jungle tribes, beasts 
 of prey, and notably the tiger, a common symbol 
 of the spirit of evil, " Wagia," (the tiger-god,) is wor- 
 shipped by widely distant and unconnected commu- 
 nities. Next in popularity and universal acceptance 
 is the worship of such epidemic diseases as are known 
 among savages. " Matajee," the goddess of small- 
 pox, " Mahamurree," the great death, or cholera, take 
 a prominent place whenever these scourges of savage 
 as of civilized life make their appearance. The sac- 
 rifice of a fowl, or even a goat, which is a suitable 
 propitiation of the tiger-god, is rarely efficacious when 
 the goddess of epidemic disease makes her appearance. 
 A rude procession is then organized ; a figure dressed 
 up in. female garments, and ornamented as well as the 
 means of the community allow, is worshipped and 
 propitiated with sacrifices, conveyed to the limits of 
 the village, or tribe, and there handed over to a 
 
 17 
 
 B
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 neighbouring community, to be carried on or left in 
 the jungle, in the hope that the figure has conveyed 
 with it the seeds of disease, which will thus be passed 
 on to the place of her new residence. I have known 
 this system very efficacious in propagating instead 
 of allaying the disease, in consequence o,f the terror 
 inspired in the untutored inhabitants of the jungle 
 at finding within their boundary the hideous figure 
 which had been deposited there by their neighbours. 
 If the community which has expelled the figure con- 
 tinues to suffer from the disease, they have no remedy 
 but to disperse and fly. 
 
 For such people, I have heard it said in this Hall, 
 " you must have a Fetish of some sort, and a stock 
 or a stone is a better help to devotion than a priest or 
 his sermon." * Let us consider how far this assertion 
 is true — how far it accords with the facts we know. 
 
 Let us suppose for a moment the possibility of such 
 a thing as a *' Christian Fetish." I am using the 
 words of those from whose opinions I entirely differ, 
 
 * " Fetishism is a natural concomitant of this stage of our 
 " mental development"(z.^., a stage of crass, savage ignorance); 
 " * * * The only religion possible at this stage is the rehgion of 
 "sense. * * * Christianity * * has far less chance of success 
 ''here than areligion which is purely Fetishistic. * * * if sen- 
 "suous accessories are at all requisite, stocks and stones, idols 
 "and oracles, are far better helps to devotion than the pulpit or 
 "the priest — the surplice or the sermon." — Lecture ofjairam 
 ■Row, in St. George's Hall, November 12th , 1871. 
 
 18
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZA TIOX. 
 
 simply for the sake of argument. I would ask any 
 candid opponent who chooses to describe the objects of 
 worship which we place before our poorer and more 
 ' ignorant brethren as '' Fetishes," whether he really 
 thinks such " Fetishes " as are habitually placed 
 before their hearers, as objects of worship, by St. 
 Peter, St. Paul, St. John, or by the priests of our 
 own Church, have anything in common with such 
 Fetishes as form the objects worshipped by the 
 people I have been describing } All Christians agree 
 at least in this, that the religion they profess is ap- 
 plicable alike to learned and unlearned men, to the 
 untutored savage and to the civilized philosopher. 
 Hence the Christian Fetish, if such a Fetish there can 
 be, must be alike the Fetish of the poorest and most 
 ignorant peasant or savage, and of Newton, Bacon, or 
 Locke, of Wilberforce, Las Casas, or Henry Marten. 
 
 But can such a thing as a " Christian Fetish" exist .^ 
 or be preached from any Christian pulpit } As I 
 understand a Fetish, it is a being of evil, worshipped 
 with a view to deprecate its wrath, rather than to 
 propitiate its justice or mercy. Such a worship is op- 
 posed to the very fundamental notions of Christianity. 
 Whatever nicknames may be given to partial or dis- 
 torted statements of our doctrines, this, at least, is 
 certain — that nothing like Fetish worship is consistent 
 with the plainest teaching of any single book of theNew 
 Testament. There is scarcely a discourse or a parable 
 of our Lord, or an epistle of His apostles, which does 
 
 19
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 not teach that God is a God of love and mercy, and 
 inculcate love towards all mankind as the foundation 
 of Christian morality. This is the very opposite of 
 Fetish worship, and it is simple misuse of language 
 to talk of a Fetish as a possible part of any real 
 Christian teaching. 
 
 But how does Christianity fare when it is brought 
 in contact with Fetishism pure and real, such as is the 
 religion of the wild tribes we have been speaking of .? 
 Is it found inoperative .^ ill-adapted to and ineffica- 
 cious with an uncivilized and uneducated people .^ 
 unimpressive upon those whose whole life is a 
 struggle for material existence } or is it found to be 
 mischievous in its effects, and inferior, either in power 
 to affect at all, or to affect for good, in comparison 
 with Fetishism .'' 
 
 To all these questions Indian experience during 
 the last half-century must answer in the nega- 
 tive. Christianity has now been preached to Fetish- 
 worshipping tribes in every stage of civilization, from 
 naked savages of the wildest forests to the semi- 
 civilized Fetish worshippers who are mixed up with 
 the settled inhabitants of the cultivated country ; 
 and the invariable result has been to show that 
 Christianity has power to prevail against Fetish 
 worship, and that the results of the acceptance of 
 Christianity by the Fetish worshipper are invariably 
 to raise him in the moral and social scale, and to make 
 him a civilized being. I believe there is no part of
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 India in which the power of Christian preaching to 
 attract the attention of Fetish worshippers, to win 
 them from the worship of evil and impure deities to 
 the pure reHgion of Christ, and to raise them in the 
 scale of humanity, has not been thus abundantly 
 manifested. Most prominently are these results visi- 
 ble amongst the Shanars and other devil-worshipping 
 races of Southern India ; the Kols and Goands of 
 Central India; the Bhils and Koolies,']\Ihars, Mangs, 
 and Chumars of Western and Central India. Of all 
 these races it may be truly said that Christianity, as 
 far as its effects have been tried, has proved its pos- 
 session of the promises of this life as well as of the next. 
 In some parts of the country, as in Tinnevelly and 
 Chota Nagpore, the number of actual baptized converts 
 may be reckoned by tens of thousands, and all exhibit 
 a marked improvement in the habits of social life. 
 They are, as a rule, more temperate and chaste, 
 more cleanly, more honest, and more industrious than 
 they were before conversion. 
 
 In other parts of India, as in the Deccan, though 
 actual conversions have not been numerous, the 
 effect upon the whole community of outcasts has been 
 marked and general. Scattered as they are, a few in 
 every village in the countiy, there is no part of 
 the province which has not more or less felt the 
 influence of Christian teaching, and the result is not 
 only a general inclination to turn from the gods of terror 
 and uncleanness to the God of love, purity, and truth,
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 but a remarkable social change which may hereafter 
 bear political fruit, of which time does not now permit 
 me to speak more in detail. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that these results are not 
 confined to Christianity as taught in India by any 
 single Church or sect of Christians. I have seen them 
 abundantly follow the teaching of missionaries of our 
 own Church, and of the Churches of Rome and Scot- 
 land — both Free and Established, of various Noncon- 
 formist bodies, and, in the most remarkable degree, of 
 missionaries from various Churches of Germany, 
 Switzerland, and America. There is comparatively 
 little difference in the power and extent of the result, 
 except what is obviously due to the number and ear- 
 nestness of Christian missionaries employed, to their 
 more or less perfect organization, and to the period 
 during Avhich their efforts have been directed to the 
 conversion of Fetish-worshipping races and commu- 
 nities. Nor can it be said that the most learned, the 
 wisest, the most accomplished or best endowed of the 
 missionaries are always the most successful. On the 
 contrary, the most wonderful results are sometimes 
 effected by simple and unlearned men. From 
 all these things we are led to the conclusion that 
 such efforts owe their success to something which all 
 the preachers of Christianity hold in common — the 
 great, simple doctrines of Christianity which all be- 
 lieve — the plain, broad precepts of Christian morality 
 which all teach, 
 f 
 
 (
 
 ALL FORMS OF CLVILLZATIOX. 
 
 What, then, generally speaking, may be summed up 
 as the results of Christian teaching when brought to 
 bear on the low form of civilization exemplified 
 in the classes of which I have been speaking ? It is 
 everywhere a rising in the social scale — a civilizing and 
 humanizing influence, tending to make the behever in 
 Christianity a better man and a better subject I 
 would ask whether the same evidence of the power 
 and effect of Christianity is not to be found in all we 
 read regarding other parts of Asia, of America, of 
 Africa, and of Polynesia — aye, in all we see around us 
 of the effects of simple, earnest Christian teaching on 
 London Arab life ? 
 
 I have endeavoured thus briefly to describe the 
 effects of Christianity acting on the wild Fetish-wor- 
 shipping tribes of India as their ovni religion. But 
 we have also to consider its effects as acting on them 
 externally — as the religion of those in contact with 
 them as neighbours or rulers. How, as compared 
 Yv'ith other religions, does Christianity suit them, when 
 it is the religion of their more civilized neighbours or 
 conquerors "^ 
 
 Now in India we can in this aspect compare the 
 action of Christianity with that of various forms of 
 Brahmanism, of Buddhism, and of Muhammed- 
 anism. Neither of the former in theory make any 
 call on their votaries to propagate their own faith. 
 The devout Brahman and Buddhist are both separa- 
 tists in theory — seeking perfection through works and 
 
 2?>
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED 10 
 
 aspirations, among which the conversion of the igno- 
 rant and the civilization of the brutal find no place. 
 It is true that both religions are more apt to spread 
 among neighbouring communities of a different 
 creed than is generally supposed, especially when 
 those communities happen to be inferior in the 
 scale of civilization ; but the process is one rather of 
 annexation and imitation than of assimilation or 
 conversion ; and the result is never more than the 
 production of very spurious forms of Hindooism or 
 Buddhism, the professors of v/hich are never, even after 
 the lapse of generations, accepted as true brethren 
 by the genuine Brahman or Buddhist. Texts might 
 doubtless be quoted from the dogmas of either, 
 which would favour the work of the missionary 
 or civilizer ; but personal purification and salvation 
 is the main object of both, and any effort to save 
 the souls or bodies of the savage tribes of the 
 forest from death or disease, whether temporal or 
 spiritual, is attended with a risk of pollution 
 which would prevent almost any zealous Brahman 
 or Buddhist from making the attempt. 
 
 Nor is the practice of the professors of these religions 
 much better than their theory — coercion, expulsion, 
 and destruction are the only modes of dealing with 
 savages which find much favour with Hindu statesmen. 
 When effectually coerced, a certain degree of toleration 
 may be extended to them, and they may be protected 
 as useful hewers of wood and drawers of water ; but 
 
 24
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVLLIZATLON. 
 
 that they have any inherent rights as members of the 
 great human family, or that any obh'gation rests on the 
 Government to protect or improve them, is a doctrine 
 which never could reach the Hindu administrator 
 through the teaching of his own religion. 
 
 The same may be said oi the Muhammedan — 
 though his religion, like our own, is essentially one of 
 propagandism. If the savage is willing to be con- 
 verted, he may, as a member of the great family of 
 Islam, rise in the scale of civilization ; but there is 
 little hope for the unconverted savage from any 
 Muhammedan ruler, save in the most abject and 
 unconditional submission ; and if Muhammedan 
 practice is sometimes better than its theory in treat- 
 ment of subject races of another faith, it is often far 
 worse. As a general rule, unpersecuting neglect is the 
 utmiost the heathen savage or Fetish worshipper can 
 hope for from his Muhammedan lord. 
 
 Vigorous government, in any native state in India, 
 before the overshadowing advent of the great Christian 
 power, generally meant more or less severity towards 
 the jungle tribes. I will give you one of many instances 
 I could quote. In my early life in the Deccan of India, 
 I was engaged one day in trying one of these wild 
 men for some depredation on the property of his 
 civilized neighbours, when a Brahman, who had been 
 high in office under the former Maharatta Government, 
 came in to draw his pension. After listening atten- 
 tively to the trial, he fell into talk on the subject of
 
 CHRISriANITY SUITED TO 
 
 how Government should deal with such classes, and 
 expressed as the result of his own large experience 
 that nothing but the most severe modes of coercive 
 treatment were of any real avail. He illustrated his 
 argument by an anecdote of one of the great Soubadars 
 of the Maharatta Peishwa, with whom he had served, 
 and in whose province tribes of wild Bhils had been 
 numerous and troublesome. Coercion and bribery 
 had been tried, with equally little effect in mitigating 
 their depredations. At last the Soubadar got wearied, 
 and having invited all the principal chiefs to a feast, 
 under pretence of largely increasing their subsidies, 
 he set upon and slew them, whilst most of them were 
 helplessly intoxicated, and "then the country," my 
 visitor said, "had rest." He related the details of the 
 tragedy not only without any symptom of horror or 
 reprobation, but much as we might speak of the 
 destruction of a family of wolves or tigers ; with a 
 strongly expressed opinion that this mode of — what 
 it is now the fashion to call " stamping out " — was 
 the only sensible way of dealing with such vermin. 
 
 This, as I have said, was not a solitary instance of 
 the spirit in which Hindu administrators of the old 
 school would have dealt and did deal with the wild 
 tribes. The case is far different now ; and I have no 
 doubt all my young Indian friends would indig- 
 nantly repudiate any such doctrines of extermination. 
 But I would ask them where they learnt the principles 
 on which they would now act } Was it from their 
 
 26 .
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILLZATLOX. 
 
 own Shasters, or from the writings and teachings of 
 Christian priests, economists, and moraHsts ? And 
 whence did these latter derive their principles, if not 
 from the storehouse of the Christian Scriptures ? 
 
 From the days when W^arren Hastings encouraged 
 
 Cleveland to civilize the wild tribes of Eastern 
 
 Bengal, as so graphically described by Heber, down 
 
 to our own time, the administration of India has,. as a 
 
 rule, acted towards the less civilized of our subjects and 
 
 neighbours on principles which the Christian religion 
 
 aloneinculcates,and the result has in every way justified 
 
 the system, as not only the most humane, but the 
 
 most efficacious from a political and social point of 
 
 view. I know in fact of no other system which can 
 
 pretend to have reclaimed and raised to the position 
 
 of useful members of civilized society whole tribes and 
 
 communities of wild and unciyilized men ; and the 
 
 most successful measures adopted for this purpose have 
 
 been distinctly founded on the precepts of Christianity ; 
 
 sometimes adopted knowingly and avowedly — more 
 
 frequently, perhaps, unwittingly borrowed — through 
 
 the medium of that code of Christian chivalry, which 
 
 however adversely affected, at times, by ambition or 
 
 cupidity, has never wholly ceased to actuate those 
 
 Englishmen who, for centuries past, have been most 
 
 energetic in extending British domination to every 
 
 region of the habitable earth. 
 
 If any one requires proof of the literal truth of what 
 I have said, let him consult the works in which it is
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 recorded how Captain Hall and Colonel Dixon civilized 
 the Mairs of Mairwarra in Rajpotana, or how General 
 John Jacob and his lieutenants reclaimed the wild 
 tribes of Northern Sind. A remarkable instance will 
 be found in the records of Bhil civilization, 
 from the first efforts directed by Mr. Mountstewart 
 Elphinstone and Sir John Malcolm, in which Sir 
 James Outram, Colonels Ovans and French, Keatinge, 
 Douglas Graham, and Morris took part ; and in- 
 stances more or less striking might be quoted from 
 every province in India. The agents in these and 
 similar civilizing proceedings have been frequently, 
 but not always, men of deep and earnest religious 
 convictions. But even in the case of those who made 
 least pretension to a consistent profession of Chris- 
 tianity, it may be fairly asked wdience did the actors 
 get the principles on which they acted .'* Not from the 
 precepts of Greek or Roman, of Brahman, Buddhist, or 
 Muhammedan. Still less from the social or economical 
 theories of modern materialists or positivists. The 
 principles on which the wild tribes of India have been, 
 and are being, civilized, are identical with those which 
 guide the teachers of our ragged and Sunday schools 
 for the poor neglected children of this great metropolis. 
 They are Christian principles, and are, as far as I know, 
 to be found formulated nowhere save in the Christian 
 Scriptures, wherein they are laid down as imperative 
 rules of action in our dealings with our weaker and 
 
 less civilized fellow m.en. 
 
 28
 
 ALL I'ORMS OF CIVILIZATLO N 
 
 II. But let us now briefly consider the case of a 
 second great class consisting of civilized men, broadly 
 distinguished from the semi-savages of whom we have 
 hitherto been speaking — men in the stage of civilization 
 which has been reached by the great mass of the 
 populations which we see around us here in Europe. 
 They are living in organized communities, as 'artizans, 
 traders, agriculturalists, professional men, following all 
 the callings known to modern civilization. How does 
 Christianity affect them 1 Hoav far is it suited to 
 them } 
 
 We shall find it next to impossible to ansvv^er this 
 question conclusively, if we confine our attention 
 to Europe and America, because the great majority 
 of our people are, and have been for ages, pro- 
 fessed Christians. We may, indeed, compare the 
 Europe of Augustus' time v;ith the Europe of our 
 own, and draw^ our own deductions as to the effect of 
 Christianity on our civilization. But we shall hardly 
 escape debatable ground, as to how much is due to 
 Christianity, and how much to other causes ; or as to 
 whether we might not have been better or worse, had 
 the prevailing religion of modern Europe been other 
 than it is. 
 
 Here, agaii:i, India may help us. You have there a 
 great civilized population, four times as numerous as 
 that of Christian America, as numerous as all the 
 populations of Europe, excluding Russia. They are 
 quite as advanced in all the arts of social life — I may 
 
 20
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 say they are more advanced — than were the populations 
 of Europe in the time of our grandfathers, before the 
 great French Revolution and the outburst of modern 
 mechanical invention. They have practically had 
 nothing to do with Christianity^ till within the last 
 half century. But every other religion in the world is 
 there and has been long represented on the grandest 
 scale — idolatries more varied than the popular super- 
 stitions of Greece or Rome ; a full third of all the 
 Muhammedans in the world, and every form of esoteric 
 religion, philosophies, mysterious and secret creeds 
 without end. 
 
 How does Christianity fare in the face of all 
 these powers of the air } Is it forced to give way 1 
 Is it silent.^ inoperative.^ Is it powerless, or put to 
 shame .-* 
 
 I speak simply as to matters of experience and 
 observation, and not of opinion ; just as a Roman 
 prefect might have reported to Trajan or the Anto- 
 nines ; and I assure you that, whatever you may be 
 told to the contrary, the teaching of Christianity among 
 1 60 millions of civilized, industrious Hindoos and 
 Muhammedans in India is effecting changes, moral, 
 social, and political, which for extent and rapidity of 
 effect are far more extraordinary than anything you 
 or your fathers have witnessed in modern Europe. 
 Presented for the first time to most of the teeming 
 Indian communities, within the memory of men yet 
 alive, — preached by only a few scores of Europeans, 
 
 30
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 who, with rare exceptions, had not previously been 
 remarkable among their own people in Europe for 
 intellectual power or cultivation, who had little 
 of worldly power or sagacity, and none of the worldly 
 motives which usually carry men onward to success, 
 — Christianity has nevertheless, in the course of fifty 
 years, made its way to every part of the vast mass of 
 Indian civilized humanity, and is now an active, 
 operative, aggressive power in every branch of social 
 and political life on that continent. 
 
 Of the external action of Christianity, as the reli- 
 gion of the conquering race, I will say but little ; other 
 races, who were not Christians, in other ages, could 
 and did conquer and civilize ; and if a mere handful of 
 Christianized Europeans have succeeded in subduing 
 scores of potentates, and people counted by scores of 
 milHons, they have only done on a very large and 
 successful scale, what Greeks and Romans, Phoenicians 
 and Assyrians, Egyptians, Teutons, Arabs, and other 
 non-Christian races, have done before them, in all 
 time past. 
 
 But let me note, as very noteworthy in itself, and 
 as bearing especially on our subject, the spirit and the 
 motives in which the conquerors of our own nation 
 and time have acted ; because they are very different 
 from anything you will find in the spirit or motives of 
 action of any non-Christian race of conquerors I ever 
 heard of. We have had, it is true, in our Indian con- 
 quests, enough of ambition, lust of conquest, cupidity, 
 
 31
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 and all the meaner motives which actuate mankind in 
 aggressive wars on their neighbours ; but I would ask 
 you what has been the general national sentiment in 
 approving each successive acquisition ? I do not speak 
 of the motives of individual actors, but of the English 
 nation at large, in ratifying and retaining the conquests 
 from time to time achieved. 
 
 I answer, without hesitation, that it has been a 
 feeling of duty towards the conquered — ^a conviction 
 that we could not recede without abdicating the power 
 of doing good to great masses of mankind, and thus 
 permitting the existence of much preventable evil. No 
 lov/er motive would, I feel sure, have sufficed to make 
 the English nation at large approve the action of her 
 children in India in time past, or would now induce 
 Englishmen at large to continue to sustain the' burdens 
 and responsibilities of such a charge. It may be a mis- 
 taken view — that is matter of argument ; but it exists 
 — that is matter of fact, and it is distinctly traceable 
 to the system of morality founded on Christianity — 
 the duty of doing good to your neighbour — which the 
 nation at large recognizes as its rule of action, and 
 it has a very important bearing on the value of 
 Christianity as a civilizing agent. You will find 
 nothing of the kind in the motives, as far as 
 we know them, of any non-Christian nation. But it 
 is singular that you do find them most distinctly 
 marked among the most potent moving causes which 
 have impelled other Christian nations to the conquest 
 
 I
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILLZATIOX. 
 
 of non-Christians. I do not speak now of crusaders, or 
 of the rehgious element which was traceable among 
 the motives of the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors 
 of past ages, though you know how potent and how 
 elevating, as far as it went, that element was ; and how, 
 as the religious motive became fainter, all that gave 
 force as well as dignity to the action of the conquering 
 nation seemed to disappear ; — but I would ask you to 
 note how largely the desire to use power for the good 
 of subject races actuates another nation which is perhaps 
 even more than ourselves a conquering power in Asia. 
 
 We hear continually of the ambition and rapacity of 
 Russia ; but we are apt to forget that there is a power 
 urging Russia on to subjugate and civilize her bar- 
 barous neighbours, which is more potent and more 
 persistent than Avorldly ambition or cupidity, and that 
 is, the religious duty of Christianizing and civilizing : 
 any one who, in estimating the forces of Russian 
 aggressive movement, left out of view the impulse 
 derived from religious convictions among the leaders 
 of national thought — that it was a national religious 
 duty to extend to all barbarians around them the 
 blessings of being within the pale of the Russian 
 Church— would leave out of calculation the most 
 energetic element of the motive power. 
 
 This notion of doing good to the conquered is, 
 moreover, an element not traceable among the motives 
 of Assyrians, Romans, Saracans, or other conquering 
 non-Christian nations.
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 We are not now arguing an abstract question of 
 right or wrong. The desire of conquest is probably 
 one of the most powerful and universal of human 
 instincts. What we are now considering is how this 
 universal instinct is modified by peculiarities of 
 religion ; and what I wish you to note is, that in the 
 case of our own nation and of the Russian — two of 
 the great conquering Christian nations of modern days 
 — considerations of which we can distinctly trace the 
 origin to Christian morality add greatly to the effective 
 force of the natural instinct, whilst they elevate and 
 humanize it in a manner of which no trace is to be 
 found in the action of the great conquering nations of 
 other ages and creeds. 
 
 We have spoken hitherto of the external action of 
 Christianity on non-Christian communities, such as we 
 find in India. But what are its internal effects when 
 it is received as their religion by the members of 
 those communities who are at about the same level 
 of general civilization as the mass of Europeans in the 
 middle of the last century } Does Christianity act at 
 all on them ? and how .? 
 
 Let us look first at their social life — and here 
 alone the subject is so vast, that one can, in the com- 
 pass of such a lecture as this, barely touch on one or 
 two characteristic points. Let us, for instance, consider 
 the action of Christian teaching on Indian caste. 
 
 I need hardly remind you that all Indian civilized 
 communities have one general characteristic which dis- 
 
 34
 
 ALL FORMS OF CLVLLLZATIOX. 
 
 tinguishes them from similar communities in other parts 
 of the world and in other ages — they are all bound by 
 the traditions and practices of Hindoo caste. Volumes 
 would not suffice to describe Hindoo caste and its 
 effects, social, religious, and political. But there is an 
 aspect in which it may be presented which may give 
 you some faint idea of its nature and power, though it 
 represents only one of the peculiarities of the great 
 caste system. The peculiarity to which I allude is that 
 it is a great system of trades' unions, more universal 
 and better organized than any of the unions with 
 which we are acquainted in Europe. Their origin in 
 India is lost in antiquity. The earliest histories we 
 possess recognize the system as one which had already 
 grown up, and it appears more or less to have swal- 
 lowed up and assimilated the foreign elements and na- 
 tionalities which at different times have been imported 
 into India. As far as experience goes, Christianity 
 alone appears to have the power of resisting the 
 absorbing influences of Hindoo caste. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the results of caste 
 are altogether evil. How much mischief caste does 
 I have not time to describe, but I will briefly refer to 
 some of its good effects. It maintains a high stan- 
 dard of skill in all the arts of life. Even in a country 
 which for the great part of a century has been the 
 theatre of incessant desolating war, artizans, and even 
 artists of the highest skill, are still to be found, owing 
 their existence, or the possession of their arts, mainly 
 
 35
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 to the system of caste, which binds every man to the 
 profession of his forefathers. More than this : caste 
 has a great immediate effect in maintaining a 
 moral standard. I do not say that in the long run, 
 and in remoter results, the institution of caste is 
 not one of very immoral tendency. It is, I believe, 
 infinitely inferior in point of morality to the system of 
 Christian morals ; but speaking with regard to imme- 
 diate results, there can be no doubt that one of the 
 primary effects of a strict system of caste is to main- 
 tain a very considerable strictness of morals. 
 
 Of its evils I will only select two. It prevents any- 
 thing like national union, and it ensures a more or less 
 rigid form of social slavery. 
 
 It is, I need hardly tell you, diametrically opposed 
 to all the principles of Christianity. A religion which 
 teaches, as fundamental doctrines, the essential unity 
 of the human race — the brotherhood of every member 
 of that race — and the potential possession by every 
 such member of every blessing of this world, and of 
 a boundless future ; — such a religion can have nothing 
 in common with a great system whose essence is 
 divisions innumerable, impassable here and hereafter, 
 and practically annihilating the brotherhood of man. 
 Christianity is, as you all know, perfectly compatible 
 with a strict observance of gradations in social life, but 
 of anything approaching the Hindoo system of caste 
 it is the declared enemy. What then, as matter of 
 experience, is its effect on the great mass of the 
 
 ^6
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVLLIZATION. 
 
 civilized Hindoo communities, which are, with such 
 rare exceptions, devoted adherents of caste ? 
 
 I answer shortly that intimate contact with Chris- 
 tianized Europe and a general diffusion of some slight 
 knowledge of Christianity have been the death-knell of 
 caste as the social bond of Hindoos. Such a system — 
 the growth of thousands of years, among hundreds of 
 millions of people — does not die in a day. It may be 
 that only the first blow has been struck, but that blow 
 has been a fatal one. It may take ages to work out 
 the result, but the result can no longer be doubtful. 
 It is not I alone who think so. You cannot gain the 
 confidence of any thoughtful, honest, educated Hindoo, 
 without finding out that this is his conviction. He 
 may put many subsidiary causes in the foreground. 
 Our superior military strength, and our freedom of 
 political and social thought and action — our railways 
 and other means of rapid intercommunication — our 
 free press — our all-embracing literature and open 
 education — our uniform laws, — these and many other 
 agencies will occur to him as the most efficient solvents 
 of his ancient social system. But he instinctively 
 feels, what we ourselves are sometimes slow to perceive, 
 that all these institutions and agencies are somehow 
 the products and offshoots of our religion — ^that 
 Christianity is logically and legitimately the founda- 
 tion, the wellspring of influences, under a hundred 
 shapes, moral and material, which, while they con- 
 stitute our national life and strength, are destructive 
 
 37
 
 CHRISTIANI2 Y SUITED TO 
 
 of things as they have hitherto been in Hindoo social 
 life. He feels that the system of caste is doomed, 
 and can never more reign, as it reigned but one 
 generation ago, over the millions of Hindostan. 
 Moreover, most thoughtful Hindoos are ready to 
 confess that caste would have little chance of a re- 
 prieve even if we were turned out of India to-morrow. 
 The strange truths which sink so deep into the 
 hearts of people, and influence all their thoughts 
 and actions, have not been taught by any State 
 agency, and form no part of the apparatus which 
 the English rulers have consciously employed. In- 
 deed, it is apt to be charged as a reproach against 
 our Government, that it has been too indifferent to 
 missionary work, — and the charge is well founded, 
 as far as general abstinence from all active co-ope- 
 ration can m.ake it ; but I believe such abstinence 
 to have been necessary and right, and in the result 
 conducive to the sp'read of Christianity. Experience 
 shows that a temporary withdrawal of the protection 
 of the English Government, such as occurred in 
 some parts during the Mutiny years of 1857-8, so far 
 from extinguishing Christianity, helps to spread it ; 
 and candid and thoughtful Hindoos are not slow to 
 perceive that even if the English were now to leave 
 India and were not succeeded by any other 
 Christian power, it would still be impossible to 
 counteract the destructive influences already at work, 
 and that caste, as a system of impassable social 
 
 38
 
 ALL FORMS OF CFVILLZATLON. 
 
 divisions, must, ultimately, give way before the ideas 
 which have taken root during a few generations of 
 close contact with Christian Europe. 
 
 It would be impossible to contemplate without a 
 shudder such results as the solution of all the ancient 
 bonds of society, among so many myriads of people, 
 were it not that the new influences have shown 
 themselves at least as potent in binding mankind 
 into new social combinations as in dissolving old 
 social ties. 
 
 It is a curious fact that Christianity — whilst, as one 
 of its fundamental principles, abjuring all claim to 
 interfere authoritatively in matters of social or political 
 organization, whilst inculcating the paramount duty of 
 acquiescence and obedience to all lawful social arrange- 
 ments and political institutions — has proved capable, 
 beyond all othersystems, of inspiring successful attempts 
 at political and at social organization. Since the Roman 
 society and polity began to decay, men enthusiastically 
 imbued with the spirit of Christianity have ever been 
 foremost in the task of building up that great fabric 
 of European civilization which now dominates over 
 the world. Whether in the wilds of Scandinavia, or 
 among idolatrous Teuton hordes, in the cloister, in 
 the camp, in the parliament, or in the guild of mediaeval 
 Europe — or, in later ages, asserting by speech, by pen, 
 or by sword, the rights and obligations of mankind — 
 the strongest and most successful organizers and con- 
 structors, social as well as political, have ever been 
 
 39
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 men of the strongest, deepest, most earnest religious 
 Christian convictions ; differing, it may be, most 
 widely as to particular doctrines of their common faith 
 or particular practical applications of their theories, 
 but all deriving their inspiration from one common 
 source, and referring, as the ultimate authority for all 
 they do, to one book, briefer than the scriptures of any 
 other faith, and which inculcates all its moral precepts 
 with a clearness and simplicity which an intelligent 
 child can comprehend as perfectly as the most 
 advanced philosopher. 
 
 We may learn something of the comparative power 
 of Christianity, as a civilizing and constructive agency, 
 by comparing the great ecclesiastics who advised 
 Charlemagne, and Alfred, the Conqueror, Edward the 
 First, and our Tudor sovereigns, or the religious men 
 who in later days have worked out our present politi- 
 cal system, with the Roman philosopher, the Hindoo 
 recluse, or the Muhammedan fakeer, to whom the 
 conquerors of other nations might have had recourse 
 for advice in organizing their dominions. We shall 
 do well to remember that the great organizers of our 
 own nation were generally typical examples of 
 the Christianity of their own day ; when they were 
 assured that mankind needed the devotion of their 
 lives and labours, the argument was all-powerful to 
 draw them to the service of the State. Is there any 
 other religious system which thus makes public duty 
 a religious obligation } I cannot find it in Greek 
 
 40
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATfON. 
 
 or Roman philosophy, absorbed in the search for 
 truth ; still less in the Hindoo or Muhammedan sys- 
 tems, where the highest merit is attributed to ascetic 
 observances which are utterly incompatible with 
 attention to worldly affairs. 
 
 I mentioned as two prominent evils of the Hindoo 
 system of caste, that it prevents anything like national 
 union, and reduces the bulk of mankind to social 
 slavery. 
 
 How effectual a cure Christianity supplies to the 
 latter tendency needs no argument or illustration from 
 me ; but a word on its civilizing effect as a bond of 
 national union. I can speak from experience, that 
 the want of such a bond is most keenly felt by 
 educated natives of India, of every class and creed, 
 who desire to see their own countrymen rising in the 
 scale of civilized nations. It is possible that at one 
 time, under native sovereigns, caste, after a fashion, 
 supplied such a bond. Its iron rules bound together 
 all ranks and classes, and the political edifice was stable 
 as long as all external influences were excluded; but 
 all depended on the strictness of such exclusion, and 
 it is possible, that even without the foreign invasion 
 to which Hindoo caste owes its destruction, the 
 edifice must in time have been sapped by influences 
 which, like Christianity, do not necessarily require 
 foreign agency for their introduction. However that 
 may be, many educated Indians are convinced that 
 the bond of caste can no longer be relied on ; and 
 
 41
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 even those who have no leaning to Christianity feel 
 that whatever else may be proposed in the shape of 
 new philosophies or systems of education, all lack the 
 essential element of including the lowest as well as 
 the highest classes in its grasp. Caste did this by 
 including all in one bondage — Christianity does it by 
 embracing all in one brotherhood. What else can be 
 relied on, in these days of vast nationalities, which 
 render feudal subordination so impotent, I know not. 
 
 For the present, patriotic Indians are generally 
 content to acquiesce in foreign dominion, as the sole 
 alternative to internecine civil discord. The time, I 
 believe, must come when they will see that the 
 influences which form the real bond of union between 
 their foreign rulers are equally capable of uniting 
 the scattered elements of their own social and national 
 existence, and they will accept Christianity as that 
 civilizing element which alone can render their own 
 independent national existence possible. 
 
 But the time when this truth can obtain general 
 acceptance is probably still distant, and educated 
 Indians generally hold that some reform of their own 
 system is still possible, and far superior to anything 
 which Christianity can offer them. Their arguments 
 are naturally powerful with those who are living 
 entirely for the present — for the enjoyment of the 
 things of this world, and who have no object but to 
 make the most of this present life. For all such it 
 must be confessed that the attractions of Christianity 
 
 42
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATLON. 
 
 are less marked, when it is compared with any great 
 worldly system, which, like the Hindooism or Mu- 
 hammedanism of the trading, mercantile, and agricul- 
 tural classes, places its summum boiiwin in a well 
 regulated enjoyment of the things of this life. The 
 lofty aims and self-denying precepts of Christianity 
 have comparatively small attractions to those who 
 are devoted to the pleasures of sense, to the accumula- 
 tion of wealth, or even to many forms of intellectual 
 luxury. ' For all such, the worship of Aphrodite or 
 Mammon, whether in an abstract form, or in the form 
 so commonly seen in India — the actual material worship 
 of the creature — presents superior attractions. It is 
 when the world and the things of the world, its 
 pleasures and ambitions, cease to be the first objects 
 of desire, that Christianity offers, to those who have 
 been absorbed in the pursuits of the world, that which 
 is not to be found in any other religion. To the 
 prosperous trader, artizan, or agriculturalist, thriving 
 in his own business, and wishing only to enjoy the 
 good things it obtains for him, almost any religion, 
 or no religion except the worship of himself, may 
 suffice. He cannot be capable of the happiness which 
 a Christian philanthropist, or a devoted Christian, 
 can attain even in this life ; but he can at least 
 enjoy things as they are, and, if he can keep out 
 of sight the future, and his obligations to those 
 around him, he may live in great enjoyment. But 
 it is otherwise when suffering or adversity overtake 
 
 43'
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 him, when he becomes anxious regarding the world 
 beyond the grave, or seeks to know his duty to his 
 fellow-men. In all these respects there is no com- 
 parison between the teachings of Christianity and 
 those of any other form of religion. In adversity 
 or in suffering, or when the conscience is aroused 
 to ask what is our duty with regard to our fellow- 
 men — no religion can give a perfectly satisfactory 
 answer except Christianity; and the results of 
 experience in India do not in any respect contradict 
 what we should a priori expect in this respect. 
 Missionaries tell us that they make small way among 
 the prosperous traders or farmers, except when griet 
 has softened the heart, or adversity has shown a 
 necessity of some support other than that which can 
 be derived from worldly enjoyments. 
 
 III. But we have still to consider the action of 
 Christianity as a civilizing element on a third class 
 of men, — infinitely smaller in number than either of 
 the great classes we have been considering, — but most 
 important as directors of the opinions of the world. 
 I allude, of course, to those who are raised above the 
 sordid material wants of the first class we have 
 described, whose main object is not, like the great 
 majority of the second class, how to exist, or enjoy life, 
 but rather to teach mankind the end and objects of life 
 and the best mode of living. These are the educated 
 few who are the great teachers of mankind. How 
 does Christianity affect or act on them } 
 
 44
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZATIOX. 
 
 I might dwell on habits of mind which are most 
 congenial to Christianity, and which are distinctly fos- 
 tered by it, and which are also peculiarly characteristic 
 of some of the greatest teachers of mankind ; such are 
 love of truth, and teachableness of disposition. It might, 
 however, be truly said that such habits of mind arc 
 not peculiar to Christianity, and that they are to be 
 found in the greatest teachers of all ages and creeds. 
 
 It is difficult in Europe to imagine what would be 
 the condition of things apart from that Christianity 
 in the midst of which every member of every class 
 has been brought up, and which must unconsciously, 
 by its influence or traditions, have more or less modified 
 every opinion he holds. 
 
 But in India we have, in their unaltered original 
 form, the prototypes of every system of philosophy 
 which has ever existed in Europe, and we may learn 
 something of the relations between those systems 
 and Christianity, as a civilizing element, by observing 
 the attitude of Oriental teachers of philosophy in all 
 its branches towards our religion when it is presented 
 to them. 
 
 Time, of course, does not admit of even the barest 
 enumeration of the various schools of philosophy, 
 still less of an examination of their tenets. But 
 there are a few broad characteristics of the rrrander 
 divisions of Oriental teaching which it may be well to 
 notice, however briefly, with reference to their general 
 bearing on civilization. 
 
 45
 
 CIIRISTIANIl Y SUITED 70 
 
 There is this common to them all — their philoso- 
 phies are all for philosophers. They aim to teach the 
 teachers of mankind, and so indirectly act on mankind 
 at large ; but the notion of a teaching which, like that 
 of our Lord and* His apostles, was to be received, 
 wholly and completely, by all the body of disciples, 
 and which, as far as it is necessary to happiness in this 
 world or the next, was to be learned as perfectly by 
 the poor and needy as by the rich — this notion, which 
 pervades all Christianity, is utterly opposed to all 
 Oriental philosophies. It is to be found more or less 
 perfectly expressed, and not unfrequently obviously 
 borrowed from Christianity, in several of the eclectic 
 religions, which, from time to time, spring up in the 
 east, and have, from this cause mainly, acquired great, 
 and often permanent, popularity ; Sikhism and its 
 derivatives, like the Kuka schism, owe much of their 
 popular acceptance to this feature in their teaching; so 
 do the precepts of Kubeer Punt, and of Tukaram, the 
 popular Maharatta poet ; but to the higher Oriental 
 philosophies it is unknown, and its absence gives to 
 Christianity, which possesses it in the fullest degree, an 
 immense practical advantage over them, as a civilizing 
 element. 
 
 Something of the kind may be found in the brief 
 formula of the Muhammedan Creed, the repetition of 
 which constitutes almost the sole intellectual passport 
 for admission to Islam ; but the whole genius of the 
 philosophies which have received any bias from 
 
 46
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILIZA TION. 
 
 Muhammedanism is exclusion of the vulgar. Poverty 
 is inculcated as almost necessary to a high tone of 
 sanctity, but the ruling idea is the exaltation of self — 
 the exact opposite to that denial of self, which is the 
 first step in Christian practice, and which makes 
 Christianity essentially a religion for all mankind, and 
 not for any one sect or nation. 
 
 This is the most important element in what, for want 
 of a better word, I would term the "aggressiveness" 
 of Christianity. The earnest Christian is irresistibly 
 impelled by the spirit of his religion to communicate 
 its benefits to others. He may not rest whilst any 
 remain in misery or darkness. This aggressive spirit 
 is of wonderful power as a civilizing agency. There 
 is nothing like it in the spirit of Brahmanism or of 
 Buddhism; and the aggressiveness of Muhammedanism 
 is as infinitely inferior, in power and in endurance, as 
 fear is inferior to love, as a motive of human action. 
 
 And this suggests a word on Christian toleration, 
 which seems to me an equally distinctive feature of 
 Christianity, and a most potent element of civilizing 
 energy. There is nothing of it in pure Muhammedanism. 
 It is not to be found in the Koran, with its more than 
 Mosaic exclusiveness, and its energy in exterminating 
 all difference of opinion. Great civilizing Muhammedan 
 sovereigns like Akbar were compelled to import from 
 Christianity, or its derivatives, that toleration which 
 was their glory, and the secret of their success as 
 ibenefactors of mankind. It seems to me that it is the 
 
 47
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUIIED TO 
 
 absence of this element which causes the sterility of 
 Muhammedanism, and its want of power as a civilizing 
 agency ; and as this feature is the essence of Mu- 
 hammedanism, we cannot hope for anything of a 
 real permanent civilizing influence from any modifi- 
 tion of that creed. 
 
 This is of more importance to us here in Europe 
 than we might at first suppose, because, if there can 
 be such a thing as Muhammedanism without a 
 genuine faith in Muhammed, we have amongst us very 
 popular creeds which have strong affinities to that 
 religion. Next to self-worship, which is common in 
 many other creeds, the most striking and usual 
 aberration of Muhammedanism is towards the worship 
 of the God of forces, or of success ; towards a belief 
 that all the enjoyments of sense are the rightful heritage 
 of the faithful who dare to seize them, and towards 
 uncompromising and unarguing hostility to all who 
 differ from the true believer's creed. The same spirit 
 is manifest in all these respects in many of the anti- 
 Christian schools of modern European philosophy 
 and literature. Many grave treatises, and many more 
 romances, of the present generation among ourselves 
 have more of the inspiration of the Koran than of the 
 New Testament, and if the rules and proceedings of 
 the Fenian organization or the Parisian Commune 
 were studied without a knowledge of the time and 
 place where they were enacted, they would be more 
 likely to be attributed to the camps of Omar or 
 
 48
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILLZATION. 
 
 Tamerlane than to the heart of Christian society in 
 this century. 
 
 But to turn to the spirit of toleration to be found in 
 other creeds. The toleration of the Brahman or 
 Buddhist philosopher, striking as it appears at first 
 sight, proves when examined to be simple indifference 
 or neglect. 
 
 The absence of all active spirit of persecution, as 
 long as the opponent is quiescent and submissive, 
 which makes both Brahman and Buddhist practically 
 so tolerant, is the offspring of contempt, and has 
 nothing in common with the toleration which springs 
 from the desire to do by all men as we would that 
 they should do by us. 
 
 Time is wanting for any detailed comparison of 
 the civilizing tendencies of either class of creeds with 
 those of Christianity. I will mention but one obvious 
 tendency of the teaching of each, which seems to me 
 to place it, as compared with Christianity, in a position 
 of decided inferiority. 
 
 Of the innumerable schools of Brahmanism, none is 
 more popular in India than that of materialists, who 
 teach that we can know nothing, certainly, save of 
 matter and its properties; and that belief in what we call 
 life or spirit, save as functions and properties of matter, 
 — and by consequence any belief in a spiritual deity, 
 — is a hopeless error and delusion. Something of the 
 same kind is sometimes taught among ourselves, and 
 into its truth or falsehood we will not now enter. But 
 
 49
 
 CHRISTIANITY SUITED TO 
 
 of its value as a civilizing agency we may form some 
 idea, if we consider that there is hardly one of the 
 practices which the English Government has been 
 engaged in putting down, in the interests as we 
 believed of all humanity and civilization, which is not 
 clearly defensible under any moral code which can be 
 deduced from such a creed. 
 
 For instance, infanticide, or at least the slaying of 
 all children for whose nurture ample provision cannot 
 be assured, is clearly defensible upon materialistic 
 principles. So is the practice of Suttee, and the 
 slaughter of all who have an incurable disease, or who 
 from age or infirmity are unable to provide for their 
 own subsistence. The great community of Thugs 
 have excellent materialistic reasons for their mode of 
 possessing themselves of the property of others, nor 
 do I see how any form of rapine or appropriation, 
 which practically enunciates the right of the strongest, 
 can be objected to by any strict materialistic 
 philosopher. Clearly there is no form of vice, so long 
 as it is not directly prejudicial to health, from which a 
 thorough-going materialist need be restrained. He 
 is himself the sole judge of right or wrong, nor need 
 he regard anything except in its relation to his own 
 physical enjoyment. 
 
 Pressed with considerations of this kind, the 
 Brahman materialist generally evades all obligation to 
 construct any theory of moral duty. The only ob- 
 ligation he acknowledges is to find out the true nature 
 
 50
 
 ALL FORMS OF CIVILLZATION. 
 
 and laws of matter, and how he can best Hve in 
 accordance with those laws. The search is a long 
 one, and while it is in progress the whole world may 
 go on its way — unenlightened, unless it will follow 
 the researches of the philosopher. 
 
 Surely there is nothing in such systems which can 
 compare to the work, past or possible, of Christianity 
 as a civilizing agency. 
 
 Nor is the case much better if we turn to Buddhism, 
 the worship of pure reason, of which also one could 
 find examples under other names among ourselves. 
 No doubt it has achieved, in times past, triumphs of 
 civilization of which there is scarcely any parallel in 
 history. But it is equally clear that there is some 
 defect which causes it now to give way, as a practical 
 civilizing element, before Christianity. As a religion 
 for all mankind (apart of course from all question 
 of its truth) Buddhism is proved, by the inexorable 
 logic of facts, to be weaker than Christianity. 
 
 It seems to me, the cause is not far to seek — 
 Buddhism places its siunmiim bomun in escape from 
 passion, and from all connection with matter, from life 
 and from existence, as involving passion. Such a 
 system may evolve a high morality, or construct a 
 great fabric of political wisdom ; but it has nothing to 
 offer mankind, nothing which comes so home to the 
 instincts of all humanity as the Christian doctrines of 
 the resurrection of the body and life everlasting in 
 union with a glorified body. We may debate for ever 
 
 51
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 over the proof of either doctrine ; but as matter of 
 fact and experience, there can be no doubt that they 
 appeal to the hearts and instincts of mankind in 
 a manner which the atheistic annihilation taught by 
 the Buddhist philosopher never can. 
 
 Something of the feeling which I have endeavoured 
 to express, of the paramount power of Christianity as 
 a civilizing agency, and a bond of political union, is 
 apt to show itself instinctively where it might least be 
 suspected. 
 
 If a despot in Christendom is anxious for his throne, 
 or if politicians find that the people long neglected 
 are getting loose from all social and political ties, they 
 are apt to call in the Christian teacher, as though he 
 possessed some spell, the utterance of which could 
 calm the wild passions of unrestrained and untaught 
 humanity. Such men forget that Christianity is no 
 charm or magical device, and that its power rests in 
 the hearts of believers. Let them be wise in time, 
 and before they put away from them the teachings of 
 Christianity, and deliberately abjure its obligations as 
 their rule of political and social life, let them remem- 
 ber that such gifts are not often twice offered to men 
 or nations; and that to nations, as to men, it may 
 happen, after once rejecting them, to find no place 
 for repentance, " though they seek it carefully with 
 tears."
 
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