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178 Christianity they are irreconcilably antagonistic. They detest the doctrine of a divine Christ, and his followers have to share his odium at their hands. Alas, it is simple truth to say, that if the Lord Jesus were to come down from heaven to-day, and put himself in their power, they would as assuredly crucify him afresh in the streets of Delhi for saying he was “the Son of God,” as did the Jews in Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago. You have only to read their “Sacred Kulma” to be assured of this spirit, and understand their rage against him; while their fearful deeds in 1857-8 upon his followers were a commentary on the Kulma, written with Christian blood; a record over which they gloat, and in the extent of which they still glory. Sad and abundant evidence of this fact is to follow in these pages; yet all this hatred and determination would have been utterly powerless had it stood alone—had the Hindoos not so strangely and unexpectedly united themselves with it.

2. This leads us to the consideration of the peculiar fact which, for once, brought the Moslem and Hindoo elements of the country into union and a common interest.

Lord Lake, the English General, had defeated the Mahratta chief, Bajee Rao, whose title, the Peishwa, was derived from a Brahmin dynasty founded at Poonah by Belajee Wiswanath. This title formerly meant Prime Minister, but its holders rose from that position to sovereign authority by usurpation and opportunity, and, in view of the high-caste assumptions of the Mahratta nation, their sovereign seems to have laid claim to a sort of headship in Hindooism, and so “Peishwa” became a religious as well as a secular title, and carried a great influence with it in the estimation of the Hindoos.

Duff, the historian of the time, gives a fearful picture of the licentiousness which prevailed at Bajee Rao's capital in 1816, and of his perfidy in attempting the assassination, by treachery, of Mr. Elphinstone, the English Embassador, and in the death of several Europeans whom he caused to be killed in cold blood, as well as the families of the native troops in their service. His ferocious