y, but they know neither
her language nor her religion.

How many millions of human beings of all creeds and colors does she
control? Are they or their descendants to embrace our faith?--that is,
I are we the divine instrument for accomplishing the vast change that
we expect by the universal acknowledgement of Christianity? or are
we--I pause before the suggestion--are we but another of those examples
of human insignificance, that, as from dust we rose, so to dust we
shall return? shall we be but another in the long list of nations whose
ruins rest upon the solitudes of Nature, like warnings to the proud
cities which triumph in their strength? Shall the traveler in future
ages place his foot upon the barren sod and exclaim, "Here stood their
great city!"

The inhabitants of Nineveh would have scoffed at such a supposition.
And yet they fell, and yet the desert sand shrouded their cities as the
autumn leaves fall on the faded flowers of summer.

To a fatalist it can matter but little whether a nation fulfills its
duty, or whether, by neglecting it, punishment should be drawn down
upon its head. According to his theory, neither good nor evil acts
would alter a predestined course of events. There are apparently
fatalist governments as well as individuals, which, absorbed in the
fancied prosperity of the present, legislate for temporal advantages
only.

Thus we see the most inconsistent and anomalous conditions imposed in
treaties with conquered powers; we see, for instance, in Ceylon, a
protection granted to the Buddhist religion, while flocks of
missionaries are sent out to convert the heathen. We even stretch the
point so far as to place a British sentinel on guard at the Buddhist
temple in Kandy, as though in mockery of our Protestant church a
hundred paces distant.

At the same time that we acknowledge and protect the Buddhist religion,
we pray that Christianity shall spread through the whole world; and we
appoint bishops to our colonies at the same time we neglect the
education of the inhabitants.

When I say we neglect the education I do not mean to infer that there
are no government schools, but that the education of the people,
instead of being one of the most important objects of the government,
is considered of so little moment that it is tantamount to neglected.

There are various opinions as to the amount of learning which
constitutes education, and at some of the government schools the native
chil