Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/320

 S76 STATE OF CHRISTIANITY people of the produce of their soil and industry. This was the cause which led to the success of the Maliomedans, and it was naturally the very opposite course which led to the defeat of the Christians. The Europeans in the Indian Archipelago have been just what the Turks have been in Europe, and the consequences of the policy pursued by both may fairly be quoted as parallel cases. The only people among the Indian islanders who adopted the Christian religion were those nations and tribes who had but partially adopted Mahomedan- ism, or were still Pagans, and who, among the nations tlieir neighbours, had made but a secondary progress in civilization. None of the greater and more im- proved tribes ever became proselytes, because they had adopted more heartily the Mahomedan doctrines, and were, besides, too powerful to be wholly subdued. The poverty and barbarism of the natives of the Archipelago, under their own forms of go- vernment, and the deprivation of political, and even of personal rights under those of Europeans, forbid us to believe that a rational Christianity either was, or ever can be, under such circum- stances, the character of religion among them. Their religion, under such disadvantages, whatever its name, can reasonably be viewed as but little better than one form of superstition distinguish- ed from another. No middle or higher ckss, we may be assured, can be formed to set an example.