[Footnote 1:  The order of Buddha not to take away life is imperative and unqualified as regards the priesthood; but to mankind in general it forms one of his “Sikshupada,” or advices, and admits of modification under certain contingencies.  A priest who should take away the life of an animal, or even an insect, under any circumstances, would be guilty of the offence denominated Pachittvya, and subject to penal discipline; but to take away human life, to be accessory to murder, or to encourage to suicide, amounts to the sin of Parajika, and is visited with permanent expulsion from the order.  As regards the laity, the use of animal food is not forbidden, provided the individual has not himself been an agent in depriving it of life.  The doctrine of prohibition, however, although thus regulated, like many others of the Buddhists, by subtleties and sophistry, has proved an obstacle in the way of the Missionaries; and, coupled with the permission in the Scriptures “to slay and eat,” it has not failed to operate prejudicially to the spread of Christianity.]

[Footnote 2:  From the Singhalese book, the “Dharmma Padan,” or Footsteps of Religion, portions of which are translated in “The Friend,” Colombo, 1840.]

Thus the outward concurrence of Christianity in those points on which it agrees with their own religion, has proved more embarrassing to the natives than their perplexity as to others in which it essentially differs; till at last, too timid to doubt and too feeble to inquire, they cling with helpless tenacity to their own superstition, and yet subscribe to the new faith simply by adding it on to the old.

Combined with this state of irresolution a serious obstacle to the acceptance of reformed Christianity by the Singhalese Buddhists has arisen from the differences and disagreements between the various churches by whose ministers it has been successively offered to them.  In the persecution of the Roman Catholics by the Dutch, the subsequent supercession of the Church of Holland by that of England, the rivalries more or less apparent between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and the peculiarities which separate the Baptists from the Wesleyan Methodists—­all of whom have their missions and representatives in Ceylon—­the Singhalese can discover little more than that they are offered something still doubtful and unsettled, in exchange for which they are pressed to surrender their own ancient superstition.  Conscious of their inability to decide on what has baffled the wisest of their European teachers to reconcile, they hesitate to exchange for an apparent uncertainty that which has been unhesitatingly believed by generations of their ancestors, and which comes recommended to them by all the authority of antiquity; and even when truth has been so far successful as to shake their confidence in their national faith, the choice of sects which has been offered to them leads to utter bewilderment as to the peculiar form of Christianity with which they may most confidingly replace it.[1]