During all our wanderings, whether in India, Cashmere, or Thibet,
the most striking feature throughout, was the outward display of
religion and the prominent part which religious forms of worship
take in the every-day life of the people.
Monuments and temples
everywhere bear testimony to the universal belief in a Supreme Being;
and Hindoo, Mussulman, and Buddhist alike, by numberless prayers and
frequent offerings, confess their desire to propitiate His power and
to cultivate His favour.
Every little village has its "Musjid" or "Shiwala," and everywhere,
and at all hours, votaries of the different sects may be seen, in
the fashion they have learnt from childhood, openly REMEMBERING,
at least, their Creator.
The naked Hindoo, with loosened scalp lock and otherwise closely-shaven
head, stands in running water, and with his face upturned to the sun
apostrophises the Divine Essence, whose qualities and attributes he has
alone been taught to recognise, through the numberless incarnations
of his degenerate creed. Five times a day the Mussulman kneels in
open adoration of his Maker, and, doffing his slippers, repeats, with
forehead to the ground, the formula laid down for him by the only
Prophet he has learnt to believe in. The Buddhist, too, mutters his
"Um mani panee" at every turn, and keeps his praying wheel in endless
motion, with entire confidence in its mystic virtues, and fullest
faith in the efficacy of those forms which he has thus been taught
to follow from his cradle.
Each worships after the fashion of his fathers before him, and each,
by the dim illumination of his own particular light, fancies himself
upon the true path, and is able plainly to perceive his neighbour
groping in the outer darkness.
Seeing all this, and turning in imagination to other lands, it is
curious to consider that the Church which possesses the only Lamp
of Truth, and who by the help of its light pronounces all these
zealous worshippers alike, to be but "Infidels and Turks," and
says to all, in language not quite so polite as that of Touchstone,
"Truly, shepherds, ye are in a parlous state," herself makes no such
public demonstration of her faith. To an Eastern infidel travelling
in the West, she would even appear, to outward eye, a tenfold greater
infidel than her neighbours. Except on one day in seven, he would
seldom find a place of public worship open to his gaze, while the Name
which he himself has learned to reverence to such a degree that every
scrap of paper that might chance to bear it, is sacred in his eyes,
he might hear a thousand times, and perhaps not once in adoration;
and while it commences every action of his own life he would there
find it utterly excluded from its accustomed place. Even the form of
parting salutation, which in almost all lands - Infidel and Heretical
- greets him in the name of God, would, in Protestant England, fall
upon his ear with no such signification.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 118 of 158
Words from 61072 to 61575
of 82277
