610 CHRISTIAN EXAMPLE IN INDIA
that nothing even to this day has been capable of shaking their faith in their idols, or of persuading them to believe in the more reasonable religion of their conquerors. The
Christians have vainly endeavoured to introduce their creed by persuasion. And if the Mahomedans have succeeded in making a fairly large number of proselytes, it is only by employing here as elsewhere bribery or violence. But in spite of the honours and dignities offered by the latter to those who, renouncing their national religion, embraced the
Moslem faith, Mahomedan missionaries have obtained only partial success and Mahomedanism has not become predominant in any single province of India.
The Christian religion, to which Europe owes its civilization— that blessed and humane religion, so well adapted to alleviate and improve the condition of a wretched people crushed under the yoke of oppression: that religion whose manifest truths have softened the hard hearts of so many
barbarous nations— has been preached without success to the Hindus for more than three hundred years. It is even losing day by day the little ground which it had once
gained, against a thousand obstacles, through the zeal and persevering efforts of many virtuous and zealous
missionaries. The seed sown by them has, in fact, fallen on stony ground. It must be acknowledged that the conduct of the Europeans who have been brought up in the profession of Christianity, and who are now to be found all over India, is too often unworthy of the faith which they are supposed to profess; and this scandalous state of affairs, which the natives of India can in no way explain, is a powerful factor in increasing the dislike of the latter for a religion which apparently its own followers do not themselves respect.
As a matter of course, the taint of corruption which
characterizes all the religious institutions of the Hindus has duly left its mark on their social morality. How, indeed, could virtue prevail in a country where all the vices of mankind are justified by those of their gods? It naturally follows that their religion and their morality are equally corrupt, and this confirms in a certain sense the reflection of Montesquieu, that, ' in a country which has the misfortune to possess a religion that does not proceed