At the time we write we hear of an attempt to defend idolatry and caste made by men of considerable education.

[Sidenote:  Theosophists.] The so-called “Theosophists” have, for several years, been active in India.  Of existing religions, Buddhism is their natural ally.  They are atheists.  A combination which they formed with the Arya Samaj speedily came to an end.

Lastly, the followers of Mr. Bradlaugh are diligent in supplying their books to Indian students.

Poor India!  No wonder if her mind is bewildered as she listens to such a Babel of voices.  The state of things in India now strikingly resembles that which existed in the Roman Empire at the rise of Christianity; when East and West were brought into the closest contact, and a great conflict of systems of thought took place in consequence.

But even as one hostile form of gnostic belief rose after another, and rose only to fall—­and as the greatest and best-disciplined foe of early Christianity—­the later Platonism—­gave way before the steady, irresistible march of gospel truth, so—­we have every reason to hope—­it will be yet again.  The Christian feels his heart swell in his breast as he thinks what, in all human probability, India will be a century, or even half a century, hence.  O what a new life to that fairest of Eastern lands when she casts herself in sorrow and supplication at the feet of the living God, and then rises to proclaim to a listening world

    “Her deep repentance and her new-found joy!”

May God hasten the advent of that happy day!

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF ISLAM.

OUTLINE OF THE ESSAY.

The progress of Islam was slow until Mohammed cast aside the precepts of toleration and adopted an aggressive, militant policy.  Then it became rapid.  The motives which animated the armies of Islam were mixed—­material and spiritual.  Without the truths contained in the system success would have been impossible, but neither without the sword would the religion have been planted in Arabia, nor beyond.  The alternatives offered to conquered peoples were Islam, the sword, or tribute.  The drawbacks and attractions of the system are examined.  The former were not such as to deter men of the world from embracing the faith.  The sexual indulgences sanctioned by it are such as to make Islam “the Easy way.”

The spread of Islam was stayed whenever military success was checked.  The Faith was meant for Arabia and not for the world, hence it is constitutionally incapable of change or development.  The degradation of woman hinders the growth of freedom and civilization under it.

Christianity is contrasted in the means used for its propagation, the methods it employed in grappling with and overcoming the evils that it found existing in the world, in the relations it established between the sexes, in its teaching with regard to the respective duties of the civil and spiritual powers, and, above all, in its redeeming character, and then the conclusion come to that Christianity is divine in its origin.