It is this very passage which I had quoted in my third note, only that in quoting it from the “Report on the Progress and Condition of India,” laid before Parliament in 1873, I had added the caution of the reporter, that “this assertion must be taken with reserve.”

With such small exceptions, however, I have really nothing to complain of in the line of argument adopted by Mr. Lyall. I believe that, after having read my paper, he would have modified some portions of what he has written, but I feel equally certain that it is well that what he has written should have been written, and should be carefully pondered both by those who have the interests of the natives, and by those who have the interests of Christian missions at heart. The few remarks which I take the liberty of making are made by way of explanation only; on all truly essential points I believe there is not much difference of opinion between Mr. Lyall and myself.

It may be, as Mr. Lyall says, an inveterate modern habit to assume all great historic names to represent something definite, symmetrical, and organized. It may be that Asiatic institutions, as he asserts, are incapable of being circumscribed by rules and formal definitions. But Mr. Lyall, if he directed his attention to European institutions, would meet with much the same difficulties there. Christianity, in the largest sense of the word, is as difficult to define as Brahmanism, the English constitution is as unsymmetrical as the system of caste. Yet, if we mean to speak and argue about them, we must attempt to define them, and with regard to any religion, whether Asiatic or European, no definition, it seems to me, can be fairer than that which we gain from its canonical books.

However, as Mr. Lyall does not stand alone in his opinions, and as others have claimed for Judaism and Zoroastrianism the same missionary character which he claims in the name of Brahmanism, a few explanations may not be out of place.

What has happened in London seems to have happened in Bombay also. The Zoroastrians, too, did not like to be told that their religion was dying, and that their gradual decay was due to the absence of the missionary spirit among them. We read in the “Oriental” of April, 1874, “There is a discussion as to whether it is contrary to the creed of Zoroaster to seek converts to the faith. While conceding that Zoroaster was himself opposed to proselytizing heathens, most of the Parsis hold that the great decrease in the number of his followers renders it absolutely necessary to attempt to augment the sect.”

The words which I have ventured to put in italics, will show at once how little difference of opinion there is between Mr. Lyall and myself, as long as we use the same words in the same sense. If proselytizing could be used in the etymological sense, here assigned to it by Mr. Lyall, then, no doubt, Brahmanism would be a proselytizing or missionary religion. But this is mere playing with words. In English, proselytizing is never used in that sense. If I meant by missionary religions nothing more than religions which are capable of increase by admitting those that wish to be admitted, religions which say to the world at large, “Knock and it shall be opened unto you,” but no more, then, no doubt, Brahmanism, or at least some phases of it, might be called by that name. But what, according to my explanation, constitutes a missionary religion is something totally different. It is the spirit of truth in the hearts of believers which cannot rest unless it manifests itself in thought, word, and deed, which is not satisfied till it has carried its message to every human soul, till what it believes to be the truth is accepted as the truth by all members of the human family.

Mr. Lyall tells us of Ghási Dás, an inspired prophet, who sojourned in the wilderness for six months, and then issued forth preaching to the poor and ignorant the creed of the True Name (Satnám). He gathered about half a million people together before he died in 1850. He borrowed his doctrines from the well-known Hindu sect of the Satnâmis, and though he denounced Brahmanic abuses, he instituted caste rules of his own, and his successor was murdered, not for heresy, but because he aped Brahmanic insignia and privileges. Mr. Lyall thinks that this community, if left alone, will relapse into a modified Brahmanism. This may be so, but it can hardly be said, that a reform, the followers of which are murdered for aping Brahmanic insignia and privileges, represents Brahmanism which Mr. Lyall defines as “the broad denomination of what is recognized by all Hindus as the supreme theological faculty and the comprehensive scheme of authoritative tradition to which all minor beliefs are referred for sanction.”

If Mr. Lyall imagined that the object of my Lecture was to discourage missionary efforts, he must have found out his mistake, when he came to read it, as I delivered it in Westminster Abbey. I know of no nobler life than that of a true missionary. I tried to defend the labors of the paternal missionary against disparaging criticisms. I tried to account for the small success of controversial missions, by showing how little is gained by mere argument and casuistry at home. And I pointed to the indirect missionary influence, exercised by every man who leads a Christian life in India or elsewhere, as the most encouraging sign of the final triumph of a pure and living Christianity. It is very possible, as Mr. Lyall says somewhat sarcastically, that “missionaries will even yet hardly agree that the essentials of their religion are not in the creeds, but in love; because they are sent forth to propound scriptures which say clearly that what we believe or disbelieve is literally a burning question.” But those who, with Mr. Lyall, consider love of man founded on love of God, nothing but “flat morality,” must have forgotten that a Higher One than they declared, that on these two hang all the law and the commandments. By placing abstruse tenets, the handiwork of Popes and Councils, in the place of Christ’s teaching, and by making a belief in these positive articles a burning question, weak mortals have driven weak mortals to ask, “Are we Christians still?” Let them for once “by observation and experience” try the oldest and simplest and most positive article of Christianity, real love of man founded on real love of God, and I believe they will soon ask themselves, “When shall we be Christians at last?”

What then is the real use of a Congress, such as that which has brought us together this week from all parts of the world? What is the real excuse for our existence? Why are we here, and not in our workshops?

It seems to me that the real and permanent use of these scientific gatherings is twofold.

(1) They enable us to take stock, to compare notes, to see where we are, and to find out where we ought to be going.

(2) They give us an opportunity, from time to time, to tell the world where we are, what we have been doing for the world, and what, in return, we expect the world to do for us.

I now come to the second point. A Congress enables us to tell the world what we have been doing. This, it seems to me, is particularly needful with regard to Oriental studies which, with the exception of Hebrew, still stand outside the pale of our schools and universities, and are cultivated by the very smallest number of students. And yet, I make bold to say, that during the last hundred, and still more during the last fifty years, Oriental studies have contributed more than any other branch of scientific research to change, to purify, to clear, and intensify the intellectual atmosphere of Europe, and to widen our horizon in all that pertains to the Science of Man, in history, philology, theology, and philosophy. We have not only conquered and annexed new worlds to the ancient empire of learning, but we have leavened the old world with ideas that are already fermenting even in the daily bread of our schools and universities. Most of those here present know that I am not exaggerating; but as the world is skeptical while listening to orations pro domo, I shall attempt to make good my assertions.

We know what it was for the Northern nations, the old barbarians of Europe, to be brought into spiritual contact with Rome and Greece, and to learn that beyond the small, poor world in which they had moved, there was an older, richer, brighter world, the ancient world of Rome and Athens, with its arts and laws, its poetry and philosophy, all of which they might call their own and make their own by claiming the heritage of the past. We know how, from that time, the Classical and Teutonic spirits mingled together and formed that stream of modern thought on whose shores we ourselves live and move. A new stream is now being brought into the same bed, the stream of Oriental thought, and already the colors of the old stream show very clearly the influence of that new tributary. Look at any of the important works published during the last twenty years, not only on language, but on literature, mythology, law, religion, and philosophy, and you will see on every page the working of a new spirit. I do not say that the East can ever teach us new things, but it can place before us old things, and leave us to draw from them lessons more strange and startling than anything dreamt of in our philosophy.

But take mythology. As long as we had only the mythology of the classical nations to deal with, we looked upon it simply as strange, anomalous, and irrational. When, however, the same strange stories, the same hallucinations, turned up in the most ancient mythology of India, when not only the character and achievements, but the very names of some of the gods and heroes were found to be the same, then every thoughtful observer saw that there must be a system in that ancient madness, that there must be some order in that strange mob of gods and heroes, and that it must be the task of comparative mythology to find out, what reason there is in all that mass of unreason.

A patient study of the sacred scriptures of the world is what is wanted at present more than anything else, in order to clear our own ideas of the origin, the nature, the purposes of religion. There can be no science of one religion, but there can be a science of many. We have learnt already one lesson, that behind the helpless expressions which language has devised, whether in the East or in the West, for uttering the unutterable, be it Dyaushpitâ or Ahuramazda, be it Jehovah or Allah, be it the All or the Nothing, be it the First Cause or Our Father in heaven, there is the same intention, the same striving, the same stammering, the same faith. Other lessons will follow, till in the end we shall be able to restore that ancient bond which unites not only the East with the West, but all the members of the human family, and may learn to understand what a Persian poet meant when he wrote many centuries ago (I quote from Mr. Conway’s “Sacred Anthology”), “Diversity of worship has divided the human race into seventy-two nations. From among all their dogmas I have selected one—the Love of God.”

Nor is this comparative spirit restricted to the treatment of language, mythology, and religion. While hitherto we knew the origin and spreading of most of the ancient arts and sciences in one channel only, and had to be satisfied with tracing their sources to Greece and Rome, and thence down the main stream of European civilization, we have now for many of them one or two parallel histories in India and in China. The history of geometry, for instance,—the first formation of geometrical conceptions or technical terms—was hitherto known to us from Greece only: now we can compare the gradual elaboration of geometrical principles both in Greece and India, and thus arrive at some idea of what is natural or inevitable, and what is accidental or purely personal in each. It was known, for instance, that in Greece the calculation of solid figures began with the building of altars, and you will hear to-day from Dr. Thibaut, that in India also the first impulse to geometric science was given, not by the measuring of fields, as the name implies, but by the minute observances in building altars.