PARALLELS BETWEEN ROMANISM AND HINDUISM.
By Rev. D. Moore, D.D.
A WRITER from Rome has undertaken to show an exact conformity between popery and paganism, and that the religion of the present Romans is derived from that of their heathen ancestors. The Abbe Dubois, long a Jesuit missionary in Southern India, in contending that his religion is better adapted than Protestantism for the people of India, uses these words: "If any of the several modes of Christian worship were calculated to make an impression and gain ground in the country, it is, no doubt, the Catholic form, which Protestants call an idolatry in disguise. It has a puja, or sacrifice; it has processions, images, statues, tirtan, or holy water, fasts, tittys, or feasts, invocation of saints, etc., all of which practices bear more or less resemblance to those in use among the Hindus." But I proceed to furnish parallels between Romanism and Hinduism, which a residence in India enabled me to discover. Both systems foster asceticism, and agree in proclaiming the meritoriousness of voluntary poverty and of celibacy. Both can boast of monks and hermits, devotees dwelling in monasteries and in deserts. Begging Brahmans may be compared to mendicant friars. Hindus and Romanists concur in saying prayers in an unknown tongue, and are both distinguished by the use of beads, which they count in performing their invocations. To the common people of both religions the reading of their Scriptures is forbidden. Hindus have their purgatories and their shraddha, or service for the repose and happiness of the dead. Their temples are lighted up in daytime like Roman churches, and as the Roman priest rings a bell during mass,395so does the Brahman during worship in the idol temple. Works of supererogation are recognized alike in the Roman and Hindu systems. In both there is allowed a low standard of piety, which may suffice for persons engaged in business, while a higher is proposed to a select few taken from the common mass. Hindus know the use of pious frauds, and have their pretended miracles, wrought by holy men and by images. They, too, hold the doctrine of the opus operatum, or the merit of a religious act apart from the disposition of the worshiper. The alleged power of the priest to make a god of a wafer by saying, "Hoc est corpus meum," strangely resembles the Brahman's claim by the use of mantras to endow a block of stone with an animating divinity. Lough Derg pilgrims, who travel on their bare knees over rough stones, or who walk with peas or gravel in the inside of their shoes or brogues, as a penance, are but humble imitators of self-torturing Hindus, who will perform painful journeys to distant shrines by dragging their bodies flat along the ground. While professed thieves and thugs in India pay their devotion assiduously to the goddess Kali, and make her their tutelary deity, Italian banditti and pirates have been known to put themselves under the protection of the Virgin, and to have vowed to her a part of their plunder. Let me mention a fact which shows that Protestants are not without some justification in calling (to use the language of Abbe Dubois) the Catholic form of worship an idolatry in disguise. In the island of Salsette, near Bombay, there is a famous image of the Virgin Mary, which is much resorted to by her worshipers. It so happened that the plaster with which this image was overlaid fell off. This deterioration led to a discovery. It became evident that the statue was not originally set up in honor of the Virgin Mary. There could be no mistaking the fact that it was at first a heathen idol representing the goddess Parvati, the consort of Siva. The Portuguese, who had possession of the island before the English, appropriated the idol, and, after disguising and transforming it, made use of it in practicing their own superstition.—Presbyterian.