It is a common opinion among many of our countrymen in India that Hinduism is as good for Hindus as Christianity is for us, and they cannot conceive why a person should leave the one for the other except from sinister motives. When speaking on one occasion with a lady who regularly attended church, and no doubt deemed herself an excellent Christian, about a native gentleman of high rank, whose kindly temper and courteous demeanour we were both praising, I said, "Would that he were a follower of our Saviour!" She looked surprised, and said, "Do you think so? He is, I think, a better man by remaining as he is." So strong is this feeling with some English people, that a native who calls himself a Christian is regarded by them as on that account a suspicious character. I know a well-educated native Christian who applied for a Government situation. He had good certificates; they were sent in, and when the official to whom he applied came to know he was a Christian--he knew nothing more about him--he threw them aside with the word "_namunzoor_," "not accepted"--the technical term for "rejected." One result of this English dislike to native Christians is that natives have told me that none but missionaries and a few associated with them wished them to become Christians; that English people generally wished them to remain Hindus. It can be conceived how great is the stumbling-block thus put in our way. A Church of England missionary of great experience once said to me, "Would that there were no Europeans near us! We might then hope for progress." I am not to vindicate the remark. I mention it to show the effect on the mind of a devoted missionary by English hostility to the conversion of natives. On every side, from European as well as from native society, there is every worldly obstacle to their embracing the Gospel.
[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION TO THE GOSPEL.]
At one time there were obstacles to the profession of Christianity which do not now exist. When India was being brought under the sway of England, our rulers regarded the Gospel as a disturbing and threatening element, which ought to be carefully excluded. Long after the Christian feeling at home had forced open the door, the Gospel was treated as an intruder to be in every possible way thwarted and disgraced. In illustration of the opposition the Gospel had to encounter, I quote a few sentences from a recently-published volume, "Asiatic Studies, Religious and Social," by Sir Alfred C. Lyall, K.C.B., the present Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces:--"We disbursed impartially to Hindus, Mussulmans, and Parsees, to heterodox and orthodox, to Juggarnath's Car, and to the shrine of a Muhammadan who had died fighting against infidels, perhaps against ourselves." "The chief officers of the Company in India were so cautious to disown any political connexion with Christianity that they were occasionally reported to have no religion at all." "Up to the year 1831 native Christians had been placed under the strongest civil disabilities by our regulations.... Converts were liable to be deprived not only of property, but of their wives and children; and they seem to have been generally treated as unlucky outcasts, with whom no one need be at any trouble of using any sort of consideration." We are told that they were even forced by Government order to pull the car of Juggarnaut, and severely punished if they refused. According to a parliamentary paper of 1832, "our interference extended over every detail of management: we regulated funds, repaired buildings, kept in order cars and images, appointed servants, and purveyed the various commodities required for use of the pagodas." Under home pressure this state of things has gradually given place to neutrality, which, if impartially maintained, is I suppose the only policy open to us in the peculiar circumstances of India.