e, on the
one hand, to bring his faith into comparison with Hinduism in the
matter of mere ascetic rigour and severe self-mortification, in which
the Christian has always lagged far behind the Hindu devotee and monk.
On the other hand, he will not be likely to exalt over-much this type
of life in a land in which, for more than three thousand years, it has
ruled supremely but has had so little of moral significance and has
achieved such meagre spiritual results.

Another phase of life which furnishes to the people an ideal is the
_ceremonial_. Among the myriad gods of the Hindu pantheon and all the
sages of its history and legend, there is not one who is worthy to be
exalted as an ideal of character. The reason is not far to find. With
this, however, we are not at present concerned. It is enough if we
remember that this absence of an incarnate ideal in the religion has
led to the exaltation of rules and ceremonies as the safeguards
of--yea, more, as the very essence of--a worthy and noble life. There
is no sadder fact in India at present than that of this great
religion, of two hundred and thirty million souls, being largely
emptied of moral content as related to the common life, and built up
of numberless petty external ceremonies which harass the individual,
and grip the life with a dead hand at all points. The ceremonialism of
the Scribes and Pharisees in the days of our Lord and which excited
His supreme wrath, was not a consequence as compared to that of
Hinduism to-day. From conception even to the burning-ground, every
detail of life, individual and communal, religious and social (there
is no social as apart from religious life in Hinduism), is cast into a
mould of ceremony or ritual which robs it of ethical content, and
makes it into what an indignant Brahman writer recently called "a huge
sham." To the ordinary Hindu, all of life's values are measured in the
coin of external rites. Let one be an atheist if he please, or even a
libertine or a murderer, and his status in Hinduism is not impaired.
But let him eat beef, even unwittingly, or let him ignorantly drink
water which has been touched by a man of lower caste than himself, and
his doom is irrevocably sealed! Through this whole system the Hindu
conscience is perverted, and the true distinction between right and
wrong is buried deep under this greatest and most elaborate mass of
ceremonial that the world has ever known. To a people who have thus
inherited the