Williams, Sir William Muir, Professors Rawlinson, Fairbairn, and Legge,
Bishop Carpenter, Canon Hardwick, Doctors Caird, Dodds, Mitchell, and
others, have given the false systems of the East a thorough and candid
treatment from the Christian standpoint. The Church Missionary Society
holds a lectureship devoted to the study of the non-Christian religions
as a preparation for missionary work. And the representatives of that
Society in the Punjab have instituted a course of study on these lines
for missionaries recently arrived, and have offered prizes for the best
attainments therein. Though we are later in this field of investigation,
yet here also there is springing up a new interest, and it is safe to
predict that within another decade the real character of the false
religions will be more generally understood.

The prejudice which has existed in regard to this subject has taken two
different forms: First, there has been the broad assumption upon which
Franke wrote to Ziegenbalg, that all knowledge of heathenism is worse
than useless. Good men are asking, "Is not such a study a waste of
energy, when we are charged with proclaiming the only saving truth? Is
not downright earnestness better than any possible knowledge of
philosophies and superstitions?" And we answer, "Yes: by all means, if
only the one is possible." Another view of the subject is more serious.
May there not, after all, be danger in the study of false systems? Will
there not be found perplexing parallels which will shake our trust in
the positive and exclusive supremacy of the Christian faith?

Now, even if there were at first some risks to a simple, child-like
confidence, yet a timid attitude involves far greater risks: it amounts
to a half surrender, and it is wholly out of place in this age of
fearless and aggressive discussion, when all truth is challenged, and
every form of error must be met. Moreover, in a thorough study there is