THE SUPERIORITY OF HINDOOISM.

Evening Star, Issue 3104, 30 January 1873, Page 3

THE SUPERIORITY OF HINDOOISM.

The Indian correspondent of the Times , writing under date Calcutta,. October 4, says : —A lecture, the mere title of which will startle a great many people in England, was delivered in Calcutta last week by the minister of the Adi-Sumaj, the elder body of the Brahmos. I may mention, in pa sing, that the Adi-Sumaj (that is, Adi-Church). * although separated from the Hindoos on many points, make their chief separation to consist in claiming a return to the Vedas, which they say Hihdoqism has departed from. ’ The leaders of this section of the Brahmos aie a highly respectable body of men, well-educated, generally ca'm aid thoughtful, and thoroughly respected by all classes of their countrymen. The minister of this body startled Calcutta, or at least the religous part of it, by announcing a lecture on “The Superiority of Hindooism to every other existing Religion.” This was meeting Christians in a very unusual way. The lecturer held that Hindooismwas “superior” because it owed its to no man ; because it acknowledged ho mediator between God and man j because the Hindoo worships God, in the intensely davotioaal sens?, as the soul of the soul; because the Hipdoo, alone, can worship God at times, in business and pleasure, and everything ; because, while other Scriptures inculcate the practice# of piety and virtue for the sake,of eternal happiness, the Hindoo Scriptures, alone, maintain that God should be worshipped for the sake of God alone, and V.riue practised for the sake of virtue alone ; because Hmdooism inculca’es universal benevolence, while other faiths merely refer to man; because Hindooism is non-secta ian (believing that all faiths are good if the men who bold them are good), non-proselytising, pre-eminently tolerant, devotional to an entire abstraction of the mind from time and iense, and the concentration of it on the Divine ; of an antiquity running back to the infancy of the human race, and, from'that timetillnow, influencing in all particulars the greatest affairs of the State and the most toinute affairs of domestic life. These are some of the <ooiuti insisted upon by the lecturer, and many a long day will it be, I fear, before we shall alter the people’s faith iu thes? points, which they can reason about as cleverly as any Englishman amongst our best theologians here, and with a surprising power of illustration from the general history of nations. The lecture was replied to on another evening by the Principal of the Free Church College, in the College Hall, and he was met there by several disputants on the previous lecturer’s ground, by whom his views, were roundly questioned. This of itself will shoW bow nocessary it is to have an able and thoroughly educated class’ of men as missionaries in India. The Christi.to lecturer (an able and gentlemanly scholar) claimed to include among the sacred books of the Hindoos the “ Tanthras. ” A young Hindoo, writing immediately after, asked, “ WJjy, then, do not Christians include among their sacred Scriptures the works of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. ” Be the point discussed what it may, it will not be doubted that in dealing with such persons the only weapon of the slightest use is reason.