But, while weighing well the obstacles, how great are the encouragements!  What an auspicious fact that even a hostile organization has appropriated the Christian cultus bodily, and can find no better weapons than its blessed truths.  Christianity is felt as a silent power, even though under other names.  It is, after all, the leaven that is working all-powerfully in India to-day.

There was a period in the process of creation when light beamed dimly upon the earth, though the sun, its source, had not yet appeared.  So through the present Hinduism there is a haze of Christian truth, though the Sun of Righteousness is not yet acknowledged as its source.

But the Spirit of God broods over the waters, and the true Light of the world will break on India.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 34:  The fact that environment has to a certain extent affected the religions of mankind is entirely overworked, when men like Buckle make it formative and controlling.]

[Footnote 35:  Instead of the later and universal pessimism, there was in the Vedic religion a simple but joyous sense of life.]

[Footnote 36:  Hinduism, p. 31.]

[Footnote 37:  Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i., p. 15.]

[Footnote 38:  Aryan Witness, p. 204; also Hinduism, p. 36.]

[Footnote 39:  Ibid., p. 37.]

[Footnote 40:  A son of Hariscandra. Hinduism, p. 37.]

[Footnote 41:  This is in strong contrast with the Old Testament precepts, which everywhere had greater respect to the heart of the offerer than to the gifts.]

[Footnote 42:  The Brahmans had found certain grades of population marked by color lines, shaded off from the negroid aborigines to the Dravidians, and from them to the more recent and nobler Aryans, and they were prompt also to seize upon a mere poetic and fanciful expression found in the Rig Veda, which seemed to give countenance to their fourfold caste distinction by representing one class as having sprung from the head of Brahma, another from the shoulders, the third from his thighs, and a fourth from his feet.  Altogether they founded a social system which has been the wonder of the ages, and which has given to the Brahmans the prestige of celestial descent.  The Kshatreych or soldier caste stands next, and as it has furnished many military leaders and monarchs who disputed the arrogant claims of the Brahmans, conflicts of the upper castes have not been infrequent.

The Vaishya, or farmer caste, has furnished the principal groundwork of many admixtures and subdivisions, until at the present time there are endless subcastes, to each of which a particular kind of employment is assigned.  The Sudras are still the menials, but there are different grades of degradation even among them.]

[Footnote 43:  Hindu Philosophy, Bose, p. 47.]