Equally striking is the contrast between Christianity and Hinduism as to the attributes of God.  According to the former, he is omnipresent; omnipotent; possessed of every excellence—­holiness, justice, goodness, truth.  According to the chief Hindu philosophy, the Supreme is devoid of attributes—­devoid of consciousness.  According to the popular conception, when the Supreme becomes conscious he is developed into three gods, who possess respectively the qualities of truth, passion, and darkness.

[Sidenote:  Conception of God.] “God is a Spirit.”  “God is light.”  “God is love.”  These sublime declarations have no counterparts in Hindustan.

He is “the Father of spirits,” according to the Bible.  According to Hinduism, the individual spirit is a portion of the divine.  Even the common people firmly believe this.

Every thing is referred by Hinduism to God as its immediate cause.  A Christian is continually shocked by the Hindus ascribing all sin to God as its source.

[Sidenote:  The object of worship.] The adoration of God as a Being possessed of every glorious excellence is earnestly commanded in the Bible.  “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God; and him only shalt thou serve.”  In India the Supreme is never worshiped; but any one of the multitudinous gods may be so; and, in fact, every thing can be worshiped except God.  A maxim in the mouth of every Hindu is the following:  “Where there is faith, there is God.”  Believe the stone a god and it is so.

[Sidenote:  The sense of sin.] Every sin being traced to God as its ultimate source, the sense of personal guilt is very slight among Hindus.  Where it exists it is generally connected with ceremonial defilement or the breach of some one of the innumerable and meaningless rites of the religion.  How unlike in all this is the Gospel!  The Bible dwells with all possible earnestness on the evil of sin, not of ceremonial but moral defilement—­the transgression of the divine law, the eternal law of right.

[Sidenote:  Atonement.] How important a place in the Christian system is held by atonement, the great atonement made by Christ, it is unnecessary to say.  Nor need we enlarge on the extraordinary power it exercises over the human heart, at once filling it with contrition, hatred of sin, and overflowing joy.  We turn to Hinduism.  Alas! we find that the earnest questionings and higher views of the ancient thinkers have in a great degree been ignored in later times.  Sacrifice in its original form has passed away.  Atonement is often spoken of; but it is only some paltry device or other, such as eating the five products of the cow, going on pilgrimage to some sacred shrine, paying money to the priests, or, it may be, some form of bodily penance.  Such expedients leave no impression on the heart as to the true nature and essential evil of sin.