It does not follow from this that Hindus are lukewarm or insincere in their convictions.  On the contrary, faith is more intense and more widely spread among them than in Europe.  Nor can it be said that their religion is something detachable from ordinary life:  the burden of daily observances prescribed and duly borne seems to us intolerable.  But Buddhism and many forms of Hinduism present themselves as methods of salvation with a simplicity and singleness of aim which may be paralleled in the Gospels but only rarely in the national churches of Europe.  The pious Buddhist is one who moulds his life and thoughts according to a certain law:  he is not much concerned with worshipping the gods of the state or city, but has nothing against such worship:  his aims and procedure have nothing to do with spirits who give wealth and children or avert misfortune.  But since such matters are of great interest to mankind, he is naturally brought into contact with them and he has no more objection to a religious service for procuring rain than to a scientific experiment for the same purpose.  Similarly Confucians follow a system of ethics which is sufficient for a gentleman and accords a decorous recognition to a Supreme Being and ancestral spirits.  Much concession to superstition would be reprehensible according to this code but if a Confucian honours some deity either for his private objects or because it is part of his duties as a magistrate, he is not offending Confucius.  He is simply engaging in an act which has nothing to do with Confucianism.  The same distinction often applies in Indian religion but is less clear there, because both the higher doctrine as well as ordinary ceremonial and mythology are described under one name as Hinduism.  But if a native of southern India occasionally sacrifices a buffalo to placate some village spirit, it does not follow that all his religious notions are of this barbarous type.

Asiatic ideas as to the relations between religions are illustrated by an anecdote related to me in Assam.  Christianity has made many converts among the Khasis, a non-Hindu tribe of that region, and a successful revival meeting extending over a week was once held in a district of professing Christians.  When the week was over and the missionaries gone, the Khasis performed a ceremony in honour of their tribal deities.  Their pastors regarded this as a woeful lapse from grace but no disbelief in Christianity or change of faith was implied.  The Khasis had embraced Christianity in the same spirit that animated the ancient disciples of the Buddha:  it was the higher law which spoke of a new life and of the world to come.  But it was not understood that it offered to take over the business of the local deities, to look after crops and pigs and children, to keep smallpox, tigers and serpents in order.  Nobody doubted the existence of spirits who regulate these matters, while admitting that ethics and the road to heaven were not in their department, and therefore it was thought wise to supplement the Christian ceremonies by others held in their honour and thus let them see that they were not forgotten and run no risk of incurring their enmity.