le amongst them
degrade themselves so that one can't make head or tail of them. If you
consider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation in the
tender age of childhood, the missionary system appears no longer only as
the acme of human importunity, arrogance and impertinence, but also as
an absurdity, if it doesn't confine itself to nations which are still in
their infancy, like Caffirs, Hottentots, South Sea Islanders, etc.
Amongst these races it is successful; but in India, the Brahmans treat
the discourses of the missionaries with contemptuous smiles of
approbation, or simply shrug their shoulders. And one may say generally
that the proselytizing efforts of the missionaries in India, in spite of
the most advantageous facilities, are, as a rule, a failure. An
authentic report in the Vol. XXI. of the Asiatic Journal (1826) states
that after so many years of missionary activity not more than three
hundred living converts were to be found in the whole of India, where
the population of the English possessions alone comes to one hundred and
fifteen millions; and at the same time it is admitted that the Christian
converts are distinguished for their extreme immorality. Three hundred
venal and bribed souls out of so many millions! There is no evidence
that things have gone better with Christianity in India since then, in
spite of the fact that the missionaries are now trying, contrary to
stipulation and in schools exclusively designed for secular English
instruction, to work upon the children's minds as they please, in order
to smuggle in Christianity; against which the Hindoos are most jealously
on their guard. As I have said, childhood is the time to sow the seeds
of belief, and not manhood; more especially where an earlier faith has
taken root. An acquired conviction such as is feigned by adults is, as a
rule, only the mask for some kind of personal interest. And it is the
feeling that this is almost bound to be the case which makes a man who
has changed his religion in mature years an object of contempt to most
people everywhere; who thus show that they look upon religion, not as a
matter of reasoned conviction, but merely as a belief inoculated in
childhood, before any test can be applied. And that they are right in
their view of religion is also obvious from the way in which not only
the masses, who are blindly credulous, but also the clergy of every
religion, who, as such, have faithfully and zealously studied