DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.640#0097
lxxxiv
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
the village preacher' attempts each art, reproves each dull delay,
allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way.' No standard of
morals to repress the vicious; no moral education in which the
principles of virtue and religion may be implanted in the youth-
ful mind. Here every thing that assumes the appearance of
religion, ends (if you could forget its impurity) in an unmeaning
ceremony, and leaves the heart cold as death to every moral
principle. Hence the great bulk of the people have abandoned
every form and vestige of religious ceremony. The bramhun
who commurScated this information, attributed this general dis-
regard of their religion to the kulee-yoogii > and consoled himself
with the idea, that this deplorable state of .things was an exact
fulfilment of certain prophecies in the pooraniis.
Some persons may plead, The doctrine of a state of future
rewards and punishments has always been supposed to have a
strong influence on public morals: the Hindoos not only have
this doctrine in their writings, but are taught to consider every
disease and misfortune of life as an undoubted symptom of
moral disease, and the terrific appearances of its close-pur-
suing punishment—can this fail to produce a dread of vice/and
a desire to merit the favour of the Deity ? I will still further
assist the objector, and inform him, that the Hindoo writings
declare, that till every immoral taint is removed, every sin
atoned for, and the mind has obtained perfect abstraction from
material objects, it is impossible to be re-united to the Great
Spirit; and that, to obtain this perfection, the sinner must linger
in many hells, and transmigrate through almost every form of
matter. Great as these terrors are, there is nothing more palpa-
ble than that, with most of the Hindoos; they do not weigh the
weight of a feather, compared with the loss of a roopee. The
reason is obvious : every Hindoo considers all his actions as the
effect of his destiny; he laments perhaps his miserable fate, but
he resigns himself to it without a struggle, like the malefactor
in a condemned cell. To this may be added, what must have
forced itself on the observation of every thoughtful observer,
that, in the absence of the religious principle, no outward terrors.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
the village preacher' attempts each art, reproves each dull delay,
allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way.' No standard of
morals to repress the vicious; no moral education in which the
principles of virtue and religion may be implanted in the youth-
ful mind. Here every thing that assumes the appearance of
religion, ends (if you could forget its impurity) in an unmeaning
ceremony, and leaves the heart cold as death to every moral
principle. Hence the great bulk of the people have abandoned
every form and vestige of religious ceremony. The bramhun
who commurScated this information, attributed this general dis-
regard of their religion to the kulee-yoogii > and consoled himself
with the idea, that this deplorable state of .things was an exact
fulfilment of certain prophecies in the pooraniis.
Some persons may plead, The doctrine of a state of future
rewards and punishments has always been supposed to have a
strong influence on public morals: the Hindoos not only have
this doctrine in their writings, but are taught to consider every
disease and misfortune of life as an undoubted symptom of
moral disease, and the terrific appearances of its close-pur-
suing punishment—can this fail to produce a dread of vice/and
a desire to merit the favour of the Deity ? I will still further
assist the objector, and inform him, that the Hindoo writings
declare, that till every immoral taint is removed, every sin
atoned for, and the mind has obtained perfect abstraction from
material objects, it is impossible to be re-united to the Great
Spirit; and that, to obtain this perfection, the sinner must linger
in many hells, and transmigrate through almost every form of
matter. Great as these terrors are, there is nothing more palpa-
ble than that, with most of the Hindoos; they do not weigh the
weight of a feather, compared with the loss of a roopee. The
reason is obvious : every Hindoo considers all his actions as the
effect of his destiny; he laments perhaps his miserable fate, but
he resigns himself to it without a struggle, like the malefactor
in a condemned cell. To this may be added, what must have
forced itself on the observation of every thoughtful observer,
that, in the absence of the religious principle, no outward terrors.