I lament as much as any man the little progress which Christianity has made in these countries, and the inconsiderable effect that has followed the labours of its missionaries; but I see in it a strong proof of the Divine origin of the religion.  What had the apostles to assist them in propagating Christianity which the missionaries have not?  If piety and zeal had been sufficient, I doubt not but that our missionaries possess these qualities in a high degree:  for nothing except piety and zeal could engage them in the undertaking.  If sanctity of life and manners was the allurement, the conduct of these men is unblameable.  If the advantage of education and learning be looked to, there is not one of the modern missionaries who is not, in this respect, superior to all the apostles; and that not only absolutely, but, what is of more importance, relatively, in comparison, that is, with those amongst whom they exercise their office.  If the intrinsic excellency of the religion, the perfection of its morality, the purity of its precepts, the eloquence, or tenderness, or sublimity, of various parts of its writings, were the recommendations by which it made its way, these remain the same.  If the character and circumstances under which the preachers were introduced to the countries in which they taught be accounted of importance, this advantage is all on the side of the modern missionaries.  They come from a country and a people to which the Indian world look up with sentiments of deference.  The apostles came forth amongst the Gentiles under no other name than that of Jews, which was precisely the character they despised and derided.  If it be disgraceful in India to become a Christian, it could not be much less so to be enrolled amongst those “quos, per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat.”  If the religion which they had to encounter be considered, the difference, I apprehend, will not be great.  The theology of both was nearly the same:  “what is supposed to be performed by the power of Jupiter, Neptune, of Aeolus, of Mars, of Venus, according to the mythology of the West, is ascribed, in the East, to the agency Agrio the god of fire, Varoon the god of oceans, Vayoo god of wind, Cama the god of love.” (Baghvat Gets, p. 94, quoted by Dr. Robertson, Ind.  Dis. p. 306.) The sacred rites of the Western Polytheism were gay, festive, and licentious; the rites of the public religion in the East partake of the same character, with a more avowed indecency.  “In every function performed in the pagodas, as well as in every public procession, it is the office of these women (i. e. of women prepared by the Brahmins for the purpose) to dance before the idol, and to sing hymns in his praise; and it is difficult to say whether they trespass most against decency by the gestures they exhibit, or by the verses which they recite.  The walls of the pagodas were covered with paintings in a style no less indelicate.” (Others of the deities of the East are of an austere and gloomy character, to be propitiated by victims, sometimes by human sacrifices, and by voluntary torments of the most excruciating kind.  Voyage de Gentil. vol. i. p. 244—­260.  Preface to the Code of Gentoo Laws, p. 57; quoted by Dr. Robertson, p. 320.)