INTRODUCTION.
The Christian scheme of salvation is thus epitomized by St. Paul: "'Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow- citizens with the saints, and of the household of GroJ; and are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone." (Ephee. ii. 19, 20). This household is a " kingdom," and it ia a " kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world." (Matthew xxv. 34). It has also a roll or register in which all its- members are noted down, the roll being otherwise called " the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Rev. xiii. 8). And this discloses that inscrutable ruling of our Creator and Supreme Governor that " without shedding of blood is no remission." (Heb. ix. 23.)
This rule or law is above human logic. Into the policy of Heavenly jurisprudence, it would be a presumption to pry. The finite can never grasp the Infinite, or examine it like a herry in the hand} Once satisfied, that it is God's will and God's decree, and that it meets a human dlfficalty and solves a spiritual problem, man's duty is to accept the solution.
To inquire into ihefact of His decree and His declaration is only the exercise of a prerogative, which has been vested in the human mind by the Author of our being. It is both a privilege and a duty, to examine the evidence of the fact, but the fact being found, and the decree being authenticated, that " the Lokd has laid on him the iniquity of us all," and that " with his stripes we are healed," we must remember that a decree is intendedfor obedience and guidance, not for wrangling and disputation.
Such is the Christian scheme. It has for its cornerstone the Sacrifice of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It involves the inscrutable law of Infinite Wisdom and Heavenly Counsel that without shedding of blood there is no remission. It was available for human salvation from the moment that it had become necessary for it. The principles of Adam's religion, in the primitive age, were thus the same as ours, now in the fulness of time. Beference was made to it on the Fall of our first parents, and the introduction of sin. The seed of the woman (Gen. iii. 15) was no other than the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. His sacrifice, though accomplished in time, was commemorated and typified from the beginning. The primeval institution of Sacrifices is evident from the practice of Abel, who " by faith ofiered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it, he, being dead, yet speaketh." (Heb. xi. 4). The same was again typified in the offerings which Noah presented on the altar he had builded, and they met with the same result of God's acceptance, for we are told, " the Lord smelt a sweet savour" (Gen. riii. 21). The identical practice under a similar persuasion we notice in the time of Job, who offered burnt-offerings " continually," saying, " It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." (Job i. 6). These are indisputable facts. They manifest the way in which pious souls betook themselves to " the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."^ They indicate the hopes which inspired those " that looked for redemption in Israel."^
We may fairly presume from these recorded instances of Abel's, Noah's, and Job's offerings that they were consequent on the institution of such sacrifices from the beginning under divine direction, at once comme< morative, and prefigurative, of the great Sacrifice of " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Noah was not many generations distant from Adam, and he could have introduced and kept up in the postdiluvian world what he knew to have been ordained before the deluge. Speaking now from the Christian point of view, we can reasonably conclude that the sacrifices, acceptably offered by the patriarchs we have named, were typical of the Great Sacrifice accomplished on Mount Calvary which they foreshadowed. For " other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."* Nor is it possible "that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins,"" in any age or country. It was, to use and adapt a Vedic expression, only a. fore-ahadoioing of th4 truly Saving Sacrifice,^
Assuming, then, that the offering of Sacrifices was a recognized institution from the very days of Noah in the post-diluvian world, it might be reasonably expected that the practice would not immediately die away. If Noah and Joh knew what they were about, and performed the offerings with the solemnity of religious ceremonies, each would instruct his own children and grand children in what he would necessarily consider as the first and most important duty of the human race. The practice would thus be transmitted to their posterity as a binding divine institution. The institution would, doubtless, be maintained with the tenacity with which men usually keep up practices derived from their immediate superiors and forefathers, and never allow any to fall into desuetude without valid reasons. They would indeed be cherished as heir-looms out of respect for their parents, and nothing short of a mental or social revolution could • account for their entire extinction. Such a revolution, again, might be expected to be a fact aa notorious as that which originally caused the initiation of the practice which it overturned.
The institution we are speaking of would as a fact be therefore capable of proof or disproof from the history of Noah's descendants, by which we mean the history of mankind. The perpetuation of the practice would be corroborative of the institution and of the principles which originated it, while its entire neglect, without a valid cause, would tend to damage the presumption of its divine origin. If the practice were found in vogue among mankind for countless generations, and never fallen into oblivion without such a counter movement as we have suggested, the fact would add no small weight to the reasons for which we have presumed its divine original. If, on the contrary, the practice were wholly lost sight of after the days of Noah, such an abrupt discontinuance must weaken those reasons.
We must here add that it is only the overt acts, the offerings and ceremonies, which, if true, we would expect to find in the history of mankind. The theology, or the doctrine involved, might be insensibly perverted, or even die away altogether, through ignorance or mental imbecility. In our own country, and before our own sight, we find many instances of the maintenance of festivals, epochs, and ceremonies, combined with total forgetfulness of the principles on which they were founded. We find tlie last day of Choitra still kept up as a festival, and publicly advertized as a holiday, under the name of the Choit sankr&nti. Probably not one in a thousand is aware of the meaning involved in the term — or of the fact of the sun's entrance into Aries, and the consequent contact of the ecliptic and the equator on that day, many centuries ago. The precession of the equinox has long antiquated the congruity of the festival on the day it is held, but it still continues as an inviolate practice, valuable to the historian, only as an unerring clue to the date when the present Indian Calendar was first formed.
We find again an era prevailing in Bengal observed in all business transactions in the vernacular, and respected even in courts of justice. The present is the year 1 282 of that era, but there seems to be no authentic record of the event which initiated it. The era is still kept up, though the history of its origin has been forgotten. We can only guess that it is the continuance, on the principle of the Indian Calendar, of the Hegira which was probably imposed on Bengal, centuries ago, by sorae of the earlier Mahometan rulers, but the solar principle of the Indian calendar being essentially different from the Mahometan lunar principle, the Bengalee san has long ceased to be identical with the Hegira, though, perhaps, coincident with it at some point in its past course.
Tradition may keep up a practice or festival invol* ving overt acts, but it is not adequate for the perpetuation of the doctrine or idea which originated the practice. The perpetuation of a ceremony by imitating one's father's practice, patent to the eye, is easier than the psychological process of rightly comprehending and correctly teaching the dogma or sentiment which initiated the ceremony.
But while ignorance or misconception of the doctrine or event involved in, or supposed t^3 be comrae- morated by, a practice, perpetuated as a visible ceremony, detracts nothing from the corroborative evidence we have mentioned before, and is therefore no disproof of that doctrine, its actual transmission, along with the practice, even in a distorted form, adds considerable strength to that evidence. The institution of sacrifices was, as we have already asserted, typical of Him who "was once offered to bear the sins of many."^ The continued prevalence of the practice among the families of men would itself be corroborative evidence of the original institution, and there could be no detraction from it, even if it appeared anywhere that it was maintained in ignorance of the doctrine it was intended to commemorate. For people might have perpetuated the visible ceremony without comprehending its psychological cause. But if we find in any place that, along with the perpetuation of the practice, there was a traditional teaching that the ceremony had the mysterious power of abolishing sin and depriving death of its terrors, the fact would add still greater force to our argument,
With these preliminary observations I now proceed to state the object aimed at in this Essay. It is, to borrow an expression from Milton:
" That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence And justify the ways o£ Qod to men." Men have not been wanting, to assail, as far as they could, the integrity of God's Truth, and especially that portion of it, which is indeed its chief comer-stone, the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God which takeih away the sin of the world. Their weapons of aggression have only been " theories, imperfect in their parts, and too often with hasty generalizations, but those settled repulta in which the body of philosophers agree," far from contradicting Scripture, " often confirm and illustrate the statements of the Inspired Volume."* The direct evidences, on which all teach-, ing of God's Revelation rests, are in themselves quite sufficient for giving an intelligent " reason for the faith" that is in us, as against high-sounding cavils. The palpable and unmiatakeable tendency of infidelity, especially in a mixed community such as is found in India, to overturn the moral basis on which society is founded, and by virtue whereof it maintains its sacred institutions for the public weal, is also sufficient in itself to serve as a beacon and warning, which can only endear the doctrine of the Cross to all lovers of purity and order, and impel them to cling to their " Rock" of defence with greater tenacity than ever before. It ia to corroborate the above evidence, and to strengthen the preventive force of the above beacon, that the present work is undertaken.
We shall not anticipate our " Arian Witness" here, but we shall give a brief abstract of what we expect him to say when produced before the bar of a Truth-' loving conscience. "While we look for many things in his evidence calculated to moderate the infidelity of
■ Pratt's Scripture and ScieDce not at variance, p. 371.
the times, generally, hi8 voice will be entitled to especial deference among those in our own country who profess a religious veneration for antiquity and the oldpettkSf and make a parade of their Sanafan Dharma. He will depose to the non-esistence of caste in the primitive state of Brahminism, when the very idea of the present religious or social distinctions would have been stigmatized as revolutionary — as a sort of "nova res." He will tell us that the " Lord, or rather the Preserver, of the Creation"* offered himself a Sacrifice for the welfare of souls, that were bom as " mortals," but had attained to immortality in heaven by religious exercises duly performed on the earth, somewhat corresponding to our idea of " the spirits of just men made perfect.'"" We shall hear from him that " Sacrifice" was the authorized means for the remission of sins — that it was the way by which " Devas," who were originally but " men," had passed to celestial bliss, and that it still continues the beaten tracfe: for the same goal. The idea of the seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head was also known to him with more or less of distinctness. He knew of " the great Dragon" "that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan"" whose subjugation and destruction has always been the great struggle of life with God-fearing men. He will strikingly confirm the Mosaic account of the Creation, and will likewise speak of various traditions tending to corroborate acme of the very points in Sacred history on which men in modern times have most frequently made shipwreck of their faith.
We look to our Witness also for the disproof of an idea often broached against Hindoo Christians that they are rebels against the mndtana dharma of the country, and apostates from the faith that has animated the Hindoo mind, and the rule of life that has governed Hindoo practice, from time immemorial. This essay aspires likewise to the patriotic honor of proving that while all Hindoos who have been instructed in Western literature, science, and history have departed from the faith derived from their immediate forefathers, Hindoo Christians can alone have the satisfaction of knowing that the fundamental principles of the G-ospel were recognized, and acknowledged, both in theory and practice, by their primitive ancestors, the Brahminical Arians of India, and that if the authors of the Vedas could by any possibility now return to the world, they would at once recognize the Indian Christians, far more complacently as their own descendants, than any other body of educated natives. It may indeed be confidently asserted that such of our countrymen as have imbibed, along with the history and science of Europe, the sentiments of western infidelity, can, from the ancient Arian point of view, be described in no better light than those who were stigmatized in olden days as revilera of the Vedas, ^^ neglectera of sacri-
■' ^<,r*l'<^4l- So Manu calls contemners of the Teda. tt must be remembered that " Veda," as an abstract term, often stands for the WorA or Becelation. This will be discussed in the sequel.
fices/' and as men of no religion whatsoRver. Resuscitated Rishis (if the idea of the possibility can be conceived for argument's sake) would find " the orthodox" Hindoo himself the greatest foe to the system they had bequeathed to their descendants.'* We do not say this censoriously. We only speak in self-defeneo, becauge we are often singled out and proscribed ae
" Neglecters or opposers of sacrifice are considered oatlaws and traitors, and are classed with persons that do not deserve tlie name of men:
The Vedaa are full of aucli denuneiationa in nnmerons places, '* The learned and highly accomplished author of the Antiquities ofOrisEa, deservedly honoured as an authority by all orthodox Hindoos, himself remarks:
" At a time when the rituals of the Vedic worship deluged the country with the blood of thousands of anirauls slaughtered irt the name of God, the universal benevolence of Saltya appealed to the feeling of the people with a force and directness of purpose, which proved irresistible. Ko man, who had seen a dozen heads of cattle killed by spikes driven into their chests, the uaual mode of sacrifice at the time, could for a moment deny the superiority of a religion which preached mercy for all created beings, and absolutely prohibited slaughter of every kind. But the Brahmins were not alow in perceiving their weak points; they soon dropped the eacrifices of the Yedas; inculcated universal love and kindness even in the words of their rivals; &c." — Antiquities of Orism, hj Bahoo Sdjendra Ldla Mitra.
" outlaws" and rebeU against Brahminiam. If we are BO, we seem to be in good company.
In presenting the corroborative testimony of the Arian family to Biblical facts and principles, we shall labour in the first place to manifest the competence of our witness to speak on those subjects from his familiarity with the times and places to which they relate. We hope to show that from his age and original settlement, he would natur^llly know something of all facts and principles which were likely to be known in Palestine and its neighbourhood.
It will be no argument against us to refer to the Arian's want of consistency in his eyidence. We do not profess to produce his testimony as that of a friendly witness. We do not set him up as a select witness for ourselves, remarkable for his consistency or harmony of principles. Much less do we attach to him any. authority. Our sole argument is, that his statements and ideas, whatever they be, may have to be accounted for as facts, and that, howsoever they may be accounted for, they will be found corroborative of the principles and events which underlie the gospel dispensation.