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But I foresee that you are going to overlook the great source of our knowledge on the subject. Or, at least, you are going to balance other books against the four Vedas, which we know to have come from Brahmd; while it is not possible that our earthly disputations should be able to teach better than what he has inspired. If, then, you are willing to take them as the foundation of your argument, good ; but otherwise, I may as well be silent." "Well, I too have a difficulty in beginning this argument," said Blancombe, " and it is of the same nature as yours, though not exactly the same thing." "What is your difiiculty?" asked Saddnanda. **It is a doubt," answered Blancombe, "whether we are going to begin rightly." "How so?" asked the other. "Why," he replied, " every place, and in the same way every truth, seems to have a road leading to it, and many which lead away from it. Just, then, as a man would not reach Benares by 234 MORAL PRELIMINARIES. walking towards Seringapatam, so we are not likely to find the true religion if we look for it in an irreligious manner." "You mean in an irreligious spirit?" again asked the other, " Just so," he answered, " that is part of my meaning ; for one reason why mankind so often miss the truth seems to be that they set out with some principle of falsehood in their minds ; and when they have called their corrupt passion, what- ever it may be, by some holy name, they think it religion." "Then you mean to say," asked Sadtoanda, "that we must try to purify our minds of prejudice, and to come with a sincere love of truth, though it may happen to contradict whatever we have been accustomed to believe?" "I mean that," replied Blancombe, "and something more. For even our past belief, if it has led us in any way to worship God, must have been to us, in some measure, a way of access to Him. Supposing, then, we should lose such a belief without opening up any better way in the course of our inquiry, there may be danger of our becoming more remote from Grod than before. Hence, I would hardly advise any man anywhere to enter upon intellectual speculation as to the religion which has hitherto controlled his thoughts, without earnest prayer that the eternal and imseen Being, whom we confess to be imaged by all sorts of worship, though in a distorted mirror by most of them, would either enable him to hold fast what- ever is good in his present faith, or else lead him into some- thing far better. Let the Brahman, for example, use the text of the Gayatrf, praying for the most spiritual light of the Divine Ruler to illuminate his mind; and do you in the same way entreat the Preserver of the World to preserve you from mental evil, and to purge the gaze of your soul ; and let the Saugata also endeavour both to purify his intelligence, and to associate it with deep feeling of that which is most Divine about us. For not without such prayers and aspirations do I think it either safe or holy to go about criticising the objects of our £Edth, and comparing those of other men. But amidst all USE OF EXTERNAL HISTOBY. 235 these, the more vividly we can fix our mind's gaze upon the certainty of a supreme Iswara who will hear and guide us, and the more clearly we can conceive of Him as the Spirit of very truth, therefore as something disengaged from all fictions, and idolatries, and compromises, the more likely we are to obtain from Him availing help. Yet this is not all. For supposing that He whom we seek should already have given, in any region of the world, a true revelation of His own being, we cannot well escape the blame of pride and negligence, if we disdain examining all the credentials of such a revelation; or if we suffer ourselves to be ignorant of the history which records it. We could not consistently pray for light, or expect to have such prayers favourably heard, unless we avail ourselves of whatever light is already given. Hence I do not see how we are to discuss the sacred records of any religion, without first laying a sound historical foun- dation." "But why is that so important?" asked Saddnanda; " for if the books are good they will teach us of themselves." " Perhaps they may," replied Blancombe, " if we give them an opportunity of doing so by taking them fairly in our hands. But if we set out with a prejudice that one set of books is as good as another, and read false rather than true ones, or if we accustom ourselves to say there is no more confirmation in the outward world for a Koran than a Purdna, or for a Bible than a Koran, the best books in the world may then have no chance of teaching us. Hence it may be very important for us, and especially for learned inquirers, to have some knowledge of history, and not to mix all nations and generations into a confused mass, but to know what came before, and what after, and who lived in countries where sacred events are said to have happened, as well as who lived in other countries at the same time. For thus we may acquire tests of natural probability, and be able to say whether events are in themselves credible, whether the persons recording them were true witnesses, and whether any collateral testimony can 236 USE OF EXTERNAL HISTORY. be derived from other nations whose prepossessions may have been of another kind. So important is all this kind of external probability, that any books which do not answer such testa may fairly be suspected, or, at least, cannot be put on the same ground of credibility as books which do answer them. Espe- cially books may become very suspicious, which are of so uncertain an origin that their date may be conjectured, without violence, to have been a thousand years earlier or later. In the same way, books in the hands of a whole people, and especially of any community extending over many nations, are, on the first look of things, less likely to have been altered, either to insert prophecies, or for any other wrong motive, than a volume in the hands of a mere priesthood ; and yet if the priests were either obliged or accustomed to read and expound their volume at short intervals to the people at large, this distinction need not be so emphatic. Then, again, as to the internal contents of religious books, we have to inquire whether they agree in character with the manners of the times, and especially in narrative with the accounts given more or less by other nations as independent witnesses ; for the tes- timony of a stranger is one of double strength. But such an inquiry can never be satisfactorily conducted, unless we have first our groundwork of history laid out as a map before us. Hence, I almost venture to say, that nations in whom the historical instinct is not strong, or who have no conscientious and clear record of facts in their own history, can never claim to have been the depositories of a Divine revelation, at least for mankind. You see yourself, such people furnish us with no data by which we can test their books; or probably such data as they give bear record against them. Indeed, the very fact of not having been inspired with a coftscientious regard to truth in recording events, may be said to put men out of the court of the nations as witnesses. Thus, if I read anywhere that a prince had * brought all the earth under one umbrella,' when other authorities informed me that many independent NATIONAL ACCURACY. 237 kings lived even in the same country, I should be afraid that the imagination of such a writer might carry its exaggerating tendency into religion, and paint a common event as a miracle, or any mendicant faquir as a great saint. Again, if I found the ordinary teachers of any religion represented not merely as earnest and conscientious, but as gifted with superhuman infalli- bility, and free from the common accidents of men, I should regard any reality answering to this description as at least sufficiently rare to be imlikely, and as requiring, therefore, more than usual testimony. The same rule would apply to events so strange as not to be traceable to the ordinary links of causation in nature.