a bait to Buddhists, and as a frank and full compromise with
that hitherto supplanting and hostile faith, it seems natural to suppose
that this tenth also came in the same way and with the same spirit as a
palm leaf to another religion, even our own, whose prophetic words about
the second coming of Christ could be so easily appropriated and so
harmlessly adopted into the Hindu system. It thus introduced into their
faith an element of future glory and triumph which the religion had not
formerly possessed. Indeed this very element of aggression and conquest is
one of the signs of its Western origin and Christian source.

Chapter III.

HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY CONTRASTED.

In the previous chapter I have endeavoured to show and emphasize the
teachings common to Christianity and Hinduism.

But it must not be forgotten that if their consonances are neither few nor
unimportant their dissonances are far more numerous and fundamental. They
meet us at almost every point of our investigation and impress us with a
sense of a vast contrast.

We will now give ourselves to a brief study of these divergences.

The two faiths differ essentially.

1. In their Initial Conceptions.

Their starting points are almost antipodal. This will seem evident when we
study their views:

(_a_) In reference to religion itself. Christianity is briefly and
beautifully explained by its Founder (Luke 15) as a divine method of
seeking and saving the lost. It is the expression of the Father's love
yearning for the return, and seeking the complete salvation, of the son.
It is primarily and pervasively a "Thus saith the Lord"--a revelation from
God manward. Hinduism on the other hand has been the embodiment of man's
aspirations after God. Wonderfully pathetic, beautiful and elevating these
aspirations have been at times; and doubtless guided at points by Him whom
they so ardently sought. They perhaps represent the highest reach of the
soul in its self-propelled flight towards its Maker. It is true that
orthodox Hindus variously describe the Vedas as eternal, as a direct
emanation from Brahma and as a divine entity in themselves. They
constitute the "Sruti"--"the directly heard" message of God to man. But the
authors of the Upanishads, which are a part of _Sruti_, absolve man from
the necessity of accepting the four Vedas and propound a way of salvation
entirely separate from, and independent of, ved