do not require that one shall applaud any religion so indiscriminately as to include the practical excrescences in which are accumulated the small occasional fanaticisms of ages. The hurtful thing in theological error is not in any catechetical formula; into that an individual mind will be certain to read its own ideas: but the evil is done in the nests of old custom where the new ideas warm into life forces of practical evil. What India really needs is not that universal political suffrage which is the European and American kingdom of Heaven, nor the abolition of Brahman caste, which is not at all like the luxurious and privileged aristocracy of other countries, but more like that scholars' caste which Emerson hoped for in America: the need is for a happier social life, with gentlemen and ladies meeting in it on equal terms, and the practical emancipation of manners and habits from the ascetic usages which the cultured Pandits regard as an exoteric necessity for popular morality. It is that scholarly Pandit who has to learn from scholarly England that the greatest immorality is any system that sits authoritatively on every woman and child and prevents the development of the moral freedom essential to real virtue as well as to happiness.

CHAPTER XV

Bombay - Alexander Agassiz

Missionaries - England in India - "The Old Missionary"-Nelacantah Goreh- Professor Peterson - Hindu hymn - A drive with Judge West-Shankuran Pandit -The Towers of Silence - Zoroastrianism - Parsîs - The zenana - Ramabai-Keshub Chunder Sen and his monument Bhakti (faith) - Indian sects-Faults of English colonists-Samuel Laing, M. P., "A Modern Zoroastrian "The ideal Jain temple.

A

S I was approaching Bombay I observed with delight a group of large monkeys sporting in the forest. They looked like truant children come out to see our train pass. We were moving slowly and I had a chance to wave my handkerchief to them, and to see them dancing about and some running up the trees. I was travelling with Colonel Miller of Bombay, a clever and solid English gentleman, who was equal to any amount of war but could not forgive Haeckel for having killed one monkey. (It was a peculiar monkey which the naturalist wanted for his college museum at Jena.) Colonel Miller, an amateur artist also, knew monkeys well, and agreed with the Sinhalese that to kill a monkey was murder even though done for science. Those forest monkeys made me realize the truth of Oersted's chapter on the "Unbeautiful in Nature," in which he affirms that it is only when we see creatures out of their natural place that we do not recognize their beauty.

In Bombay, by the introduction of my South Place friend Mr. Phipson, I was accorded a room in the English Club. There were eminent scholars in the place who

made my stay happy and instructive. With Professor Peterson of Elphinstone University I visited the caves of Elephanta, and there had the pleasure of meeting my old acquaintance Alexander Agassiz. He resembled his father in various ways. I am not sure that he is old enough to remember the time when his father was the most widely denounced heretic in America, and from that retrospective point of view saw with me the picturesqueness of the same heretic becoming a darling of the pulpits because of his opposition to Darwinism. It required only a decade for the storm that raged around the heresy that mankind was not descended from a single pair to sink into a teapot tempest beside the tornadoes caused by the discovery of our anthropoid ancestry.

The offence given by Agassiz was not really the denial of any Biblical statement, it being indeed easy to find in the Bible suggestions of various origins of mankind, — as for instance Cain's emigration to the Land of Nod, finding a wife there and building a city. The trouble was that the theory of Agassiz did away with the fundamental faith "in Adam's fall we sinnèd all," and logically upset the entire system of missions to peoples not descended from the fair and perfect Adam and Eve created by Milton in the Garden of Eden. And that corollary was not evaded by Agassiz; he said it was a grievous mistake to try and introduce our own doctrines and institutions among races totally distinct by origin and development.

After my travels in India I reached the conclusion that the possession of that vast country by England is a great blessing to mankind as well as to India, this being largely due to the fact that religion had nothing to do with its origin; also that the English monarch being the official head of Brahmanism, it is a sort of disloyalty for Chris

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tianity to interfere with the natural religion of the country. The old East India Company was a purely mercantile concern; instead of caring about the institutions or morals of the country, the harems of some old tradesmen are still associated with several groups of houses; they never considered it necessary that the natives should be clothed like the English. In this way the traditions of personal liberty in India were solidified before the country passed under what is called the "benevolent despotism" of England. And whatever may be said of the faults of the government in India, benevolent it certainly is in the most important sense, namely, that it has entirely ended the old chronic wars between tribes and races on points of theology. In China and Manila, American missionaries, especially no

torious since the time of Judson for their ignorance, can

continue to advance the cross by the sword, but in India Christianity is compelled to depend on its merits and attractions. The Taeping insurrection and massacres in China were not the work of any native religionists in that country, but of a powerful chief excessively converted by some American missionaries, who began butchering Confucians and Buddhists in accordance with the divine orders in the Bible for exterminating the Canaanites and the priests of Baal. If the missionaries in India only knew more of the people they would tremble to reflect what might occur if those people should accept the Bible as their guide. English and American Christians adapt themselves at home to their systems, and do not accept literally the sayings ascribed to Jesus that he had come not to send peace but a sword, and that his disciples should sell their garments to buy swords. But a long and tragical history has shown that the Hindus are apt to take abstractions in serious and practical ways.

A little book by Sir William Hunter, entitled "The Old Missionary," he told me it was drawn from fact, - reveals the reason why men of ability and learning have withdrawn from the missionary field in India. The missionary, albeit not unorthodox, had emphasized the gentle, benevolent, and humane elements of his religion, and blended them with the same elements in the religion of the humble people around him. He had gained their affection, and built up a peaceful and happy parish of native Christians, none of whom could understand a word of the creeds, but were all able to feel the charm of his spirit and his charities. But one brilliant Hindu youth of his parish resolved to become a clergyman; he studied the Bible and the Church formulas critically and discovered what the old missionary had kept in the background. He insisted on the letter of the creeds and sacraments, split up the old missionary's parish, ruined all his work, and brought his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.

A gentleman at the English Club at Allahabad sent me to an old Hindu Solomon there, who spoke perfect English, and of whom I inquired how many Hindu Christians there were in the place. He asked me how many English officials there were there. I answered," Let us say twenty." "How many servants are allowed each family?" "Perhaps five." "Five times twenty is one hundred. There are one hundred Hindu Christians in Allahabad as long as those families stay." "But what do their priests and relations say?" "Not a word. Nobody supposes their religion is changed any more than their complexion."

The "Cowley Brothers" are connected with the Church of England in a technical way, but their mission at Poonah is not, I was told, adopted by the Church, and amounts only to a small colony of extreme ritualists gath