h, who
had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a
Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found
everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely
meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from
returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath
theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the
buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and
his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the
surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that
seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may
show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its
history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the
Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle
Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the
early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and 'that what has been
said by Christ that alone was well said?'

[Footnote 5: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' Appendice, No. x. Sec.
4.]

The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the
faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though
important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these
researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must
be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at
truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable
medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To
those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser
values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened
if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the
world, the Science of Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to
the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will
any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was
seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse.
Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient
religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of
faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all
who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
the same comparison alone can possibly