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RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
There is still another and a weighty obstacle to conviction, which arises from the state of the native mind, especially amongst men of learning. Their toleration is so comprehensive, that it amounts to indifference to truth. The Brahmans who compiled a code of Hindu law, by command of Warren Hastings, preface their performance by affirming the equal merit of every form of religious worship. Contrarieties of belief, and diversities of religion, they say, are in fact part of the scheme of Providence; for as a painter gives beauty to a picture by a variety of colours, or as a gardener embellishes his garden with flowers of every hue, so God appointed to every tribe its own faith, and every sect its own religion, that man might glorify him in diverse modes, all having the same end, and being equally acceptable in his sight. To the same effect it is stated by Dr. Mill in the preface to the Khrista Sangítá, or sacred history of Christ, in Sanskrit verse, that he had witnessed the eager reception of the work by devotees from every part of India, even in the temple of Kálí, near Calcutta, and that it was read and chaunted by them, with a full knowledge of its anti-idolatrous tendency, close to the very shrine of the impure goddess. “No one acquainted with India,” he adds, “will rate these facts at more than their real worth, and to those who, in ignorance of the genius of paganism, might found erroneous conceptions on them, it may be sufficient to recall to mind, what is the most melancholy trait in the history of this work, the readiness with which
