In coming to the end of the long course of Hindu religious thought, it is almost inevitable that one should ask what is the present effect of missionary effort upon this people, and what, again, will eventually be the direction which the native religious sense, so strongly implanted in this folk, will take, whether aided or not by influence from without.

Although it is no part of our purpose to examine into the workings of that honest zeal which has succeeded in planting so many stations up the Indic coast, there are yet some obvious truths which, in the light of religious history, should be an assistance to all whose work lies in making Hindu converts.  To compile these truths from this history will not be otiose.  In the first place, Christian dogma was formally introduced into South India in the sixth century; it was known in the North in the seventh, and possibly long before this; it was the topic of debate by educated Hindus in the sixteenth and seventeenth.  It has helped to mould the Hindus’ own most intellectual sects; and, either through the influence of Christian or native teaching, or that of both, have been created not only the Northern monotheistic schools, but also the strict unitarianism of the later Southern sects, whose scriptures, for at least some centuries, have inculcated the purest morality and simplest monotheistic creed in language of the most elevated character.[40] In the second place, the Hindu sectary has interwoven with his doctrine of pantheism that of the trinity.  In the third place, the orthodox Brahman recognizes in the cult of Christianity, as that cult is expressed, for instance, in Christmas festivities, one that is characteristic, in outward form and inner belief, of a native heterodox sect.  In the fourth place, the Hindu sectary believes that the native expression of trinitarian dogma, faith-doctrine, child-god worship, and madonna-worship takes historical precedence over that of Christianity; and the orthodox Hindu believes the same of his completed code of lofty moral teachings.  Vishnuism is, again, so catholic that it will accept Christ as an avatar of Vishnu, but not as an exclusive manifestation of God.  In the fifth place, the Hindu doctors are very well educated, and often very clever, both delighting in debate and acute in argument It follows, if we may draw the obvious inference, that, to attack orthodox Brahmanism, or even heterodox Hinduism, requires much logical ability as well as learning, and that the best thing a missionary can do in India, if he be not conscious of possessing both these requisites, is to let the native scholars alone.