problem which will not be found
anticipated in the East." These words of the Scotch divine are doubtless
strong; too strong, I think. And yet they may be serviceable, if they warn
us against that proneness to depreciate the intellectual value and serious
purpose of the religious books of that land. It is worse than useless to
confidently descant upon the errors, inconsistencies, the follies and
absurdities of these writings without acknowledging at the same time the
profound thought, the deep spiritual yearning and the sublime poetic
beauty, which characterize some portions.

In this connection the question of the origin of Hinduism is important.

It was formerly laid down as a postulate of the Christian's belief that
Hinduism is of the devil; and that, coming from below, it must be shunned
as a study and denounced root and branch as a thing purely satanic. This
theory has entirely given way to a more rational belief. The question
whether the truths of Hinduism, with those of other ethnic religions, have
filtered down from some primitive revelation and are the relics of a
vanishing faith, divinely communicated to some of the earliest members of
our race; or whether God has directly, from time to time, guided the
thoughts and answered the deep yearnings of the soul of the Indo-Aryan, is
one which is still discussed. But modern scholarship is practically of one
voice in maintaining that God hath not left Himself without witness among
the many nations of the earth,--a witness that has indeed been
comparatively feeble--a revelation that is dim and starlike as compared
with the noonday brightness of the Sun of Righteousness in the Christian
religion. The day has come when the Christian must accept and believe that
God has been dealing directly with this people through the many centuries
of their history, leading them to important truths, even though their evil
hearts and worse lives have caused them, in many cases, to "change the
truth of God into a lie and worship and serve the creature more than the
Creator." Many of the truths which are imbedded in the religion of that
land find their solution in no other hypothesis than this.

This study of Hinduism will also lead us to realize the important truth of
the many points of contact between that faith and our own. A knowledge of
their sympathies cannot be of less importance than that of their
antipathies. And this knowledge is indispensable to the Christian worker
in India as