iest aspirations of a great people; and finally in the
lesson taught by the intellectual and religious fate of them among
that people that have substituted, like the Brahman ritualist, form
for spirit; like the Vedantist, ideas for ideals; like the sectary,
emotion for morality. But greatest, if woeful, is the lesson taught by
that phase of Buddhism, which has developed into Lamaism and its
kindred cults. For here one learns how few are they that can endure to
be wise, how inaccessible to the masses is the height on which sits
the sage, how unpalatable to the vulgar is a religion without
credulity.

Ever since Cotton Mather took up a collection to convert the
Hindus,[38] Americans have felt a great interest in missionary labor
in India. Under the just and beneficent rule of the British the Hindus
to-day are no longer plundered and murdered in the way they once were;
nor is there now so striking a contrast between the invader's precept
and example as obtained when India first made the acquaintance of
Christian militants.

The slight progress of the missionaries, who for centuries have been
working among the Hindus, is, perhaps, justified in view of this
painful contrast. In its earlier stages there can be no doubt that all
such progress was thereby impeded. But it is cause for encouragement,
rather than for dismay, that the slowness of Christian advance is in
part historically explicable, sad as is the explanation. For against
what odds had not the early missionaries to struggle! Not the heathen,
but the Christian, barred the way against Christianity. Four hundred
years ago the Portuguese descended upon the Hindus, cross and sword in
hand. For a whole century these victorious immigrants, with unheard-of
cruelty and tyranny, cheated, stripped, and slaughtered the natives.
After them came the Dutch, but, Dutch or Portuguese, it was the same.
For it was merely another century, during which a new band of
Christians hesitated at no crime or outrage, at no meanness or
barbarity, which should win them power in India. In 1758 the Dutch
were conquered by the English, who, becoming now the chief
standard-bearers of the Christian church, committed, Under
Varisittart, more offences against decency, honor, honesty, and
humanity than is pleasant for believer or unbeliever to record; and,
when their own theft had brought revolt, knew no better way to impress
the Hindu with the power of Christianity than to revive the Mogul
horror an