erer to
furnish his family with a holiday meal. With his forehead ceremonially
marked with a touch of the blood lying thick upon the ground, the
offerer leaves the temple, his sacrifice finished. Such is animal
sacrifice; if the description recalls the slaughter-house, the actual
sight is certainly sickening. Yet, far as a European now feels from
worship in such a place, and thankful to Him who has abolished sacrifice
once for all, there is no doubt religious gratification to those who go
through what I have described. Our point is that, as Sir M. Monier
Williams declares, in such an offering, "there is no idea of effacing
guilt or making a vicarious offering for sin."[123]

[Sidenote: The educated classes and the idea of sin.]

[Sidenote: The brahma monopoly of nearness to the Deity broken down.]

The educated classes, breathing now a monotheistic atmosphere, although
in close contact with polytheism in their homes and with pantheism in
their sacred literature, have reached the platform on which the idea of
sin may be experienced. A member of that class, a pantheist no longer,
is in the presence of a personal God, a Moral Being, and is himself a
responsible person, with the instincts of a child of that Supreme Moral
Being, our Father. With his education, he knows himself to be
independent of brahmanical mediation in his intercourse with that Being.
As confirmation, it is noteworthy how many of the religious leaders of
modern times, like Buddha of old, are other than brahman by caste. In a
previous chapter the names of a number of these non-brahman leaders were
given. Even the Hindu ascetics of these latter days are more numerously
non-brahman than of old, for in theory only brahmans have reached the
ascetical stage of religious development. Whatever the reason, the
brahmanical monopoly of access to and inspiration from the Deity is no
longer recognised by new-educated India.

[Sidenote: The worship of the new sects--its significance.]

In like manner, the new religious associations seem to feel themselves
directly in the presence of God. Congregational worship, a feature new
to Hindus, is a regular exercise in the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j or Theistic
Association of Bengal, the Pr[=a]rthan[=a] Sam[=a]jes or Prayer
Associations of Western India, and the [=A]rya Sam[=a]j or Vedic
Theistic Association of the United Provinces and the North-West of
India. When Rammohan Roy, the theistic reformer, opened his church in
Calcutta