hes had parted
from the common stock, are nearer the universal germ than those to be
found anywhere else, and more nearly represent the primary notion of
religion held by the race of Japheth, after that of Shem, to which God
revealed Himself more distinctly, had parted from it. These oldest
writings are quaint, pure, and simple, but on them the fancies of a race
enervated by climate engrafted much that was hideous, monstrous, and
loathsome, leading to gross idolatry, and much vice perpetrated in the
name of religion. Mythology always degenerates with the popular
character, and then, so far as the character is formed by the religious
faith, the mythology helps to debase it further, until the undying moral
sense of conscience awakens again in some man, or band of men, and a new
morality arises; sometimes grafted upon philosophic reasoning, sometimes
upon a newly-invented or freshly introduced religion.

Thus, when Hindooism had become corrupt, the deeply meditative system of
Buddha was introduced into many parts of India, and certainly brought a
much higher theory and purer code than that founded on the garbled nature-
worship of ancient India; but both religions co-existed, and, indeed,
Buddhism was in one aspect an offshoot of the Hindoo faith.

Christianity--planted, as is believed, by St. Thomas, on the Malabar
coast--never became wholly extinct, although tinged with Nestorianism,
but it was never adopted by the natives at large, and the learning and
philosophy of the Brahmins would have required the utmost powers of the
most learned fathers of the Church to cope with them, before they could
have been convinced.

The rigid distinctions of caste have made it more difficult for the
Church which "preaches the Gospel to the poor," to be accepted in India
than anywhere else. Accounting himself sprung from the head of Brahma,
the Brahmin deems himself, and is deemed by others, as lifted to an
elevation which has no connection either with moral goodness, with
wealth, or with power; and which is as much the due of the most poverty-
stricken and wicked member of the caste as of the most magnificent
priest. The Sudras, the governing and warlike class, are next in order,
having sprung from the god's breast, and beneath these come infinite
grades of caste, their subdivisions each including every man of each
trade or calling which he pursues hereditarily and cannot desert or
change, save under the horrible penalty of losing