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OF THE HINDU'S.
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Pandits. Still there is no occasion to despair. Besides that encouragement which a firm trust in the omnipotence of truth inspires, we may derive animation and hope from the history of the past.
It will not have escaped your observation, that in all the most important speculations upon the nature of the Supreme Being and man, upon matter and spirit, the Hindus traverse the very same ground that was familiarly trodden by the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and pursue the same ends by the same or similar paths. The result was equally impotent; but what it more concerns us to remark is, that all these speculations--all the specious systems of philosophers, at once acute and profound—all the plausible and graceful illustrations of the most prolific ingenuityall the seemingly substantial combinations of intellectual powers still unsurpassed, were divested of their speciousness, despoiled of their beauty, deprived of all by which they held reason captive, and shewn to be fallacious and false by the Ithuriel spear of Christian truth. The weapons, which, wielded by the first defenders of that truth, discomfited these delusions, are in your hands. Have they lost their efficacy, or have you not the skill, the courage to employ them?
It is however to be recollected that, agreeably to the invitation of the Bishop of Calcutta, an impression upon the minds of learned natives, that is, upon Pandits, Brahmans learned only in Sanskrit learning, is only a contingency. The argument is to be ad
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