Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 649

RELIGION A SUPERHUMAN CONCEPTION
609
the solemn splendour of our religious services, with the
and disgusting myths contained in the Hindu
Puranas and with the extravagant, barbarous, and often
terrible religious ceremonies to which the Hindus are
addicted, I cannot help feeling that the Christian religion
I cannot help experiencing
shines with new splendour.
an irresistible feeling of gratitude for the blessing of having
been born in a part of the globe to which God's divine
light has penetrated.
It is then that I echo the words of
the holy Lawgiver of the Hebrews contained in Deutero-
nomy iv. 8. Some so-called philosophers of modern times
have maintained that the mind of man alone is able to
conceive a just notion of the divinity. They have dared
to attribute that which they themselves have conceived it
to be to the efforts of their own critical faculties, as if this
power itself had not been imprinted on their minds in the
first instance by the Christian education which they received
in early youth.
Where, indeed, are there to be found any philosophers,
ancient or modern, who have arrived without the assist-
ance of Revelation at trustworthy notions of God and of
the worship due to Him ? Socrates, the most renowned
of all, spoke of the Supreme Being in a manner worthy of
Him. Yet even he was unable to shake off entirely the
fetters of pagan superstition.
After drinking the cup of
hemlock and addressing to his friends a sublime discourse
upon the immortality of the soul, he again returned to the
vain imaginings of pagan worship, and addressing Crito,
told him he had vowed the sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius
inconsistent
and begged him to accomplish this vow on his behalf.
The Hindus, like all idolatrous nations, originally pos-
sessed a conception, imperfect though it was, of the true
God
tion,
;
but this knowledge, deprived of the light of Revela-
grew more and more dim, until at
last it
became
extinguished in the darkness of error, of ignorance, and of
corruption.
Confounding the Creator with His creatures,
they set up gods who were merely myths and monstrosities,
and to them they addressed their prayers and directed their
worship, both of which were as false as the attributes which
they assigned to these divinities.
Nevertheless, such is the moral obliquity of this people