Christ and him crucified is, after all, the truth on which the
regeneration of the Christian and the non-Christian lands must hang, no
one will deny. This story, ever fresh, is inherently fitted to touch the
dead heart into life, and to infuse vitality into effete nationalities
and dead civilizations. But a great deal of rubbish has to be removed in
heathen lands, ere its legitimate consequences can be realized. And a
patient, persistent study of the false religions, and the complicated
systems of philosophy associated with them, enables the missionary to
throw out of the way those heaps of prejudices and errors which make it
impossible for the story of the cross to reach and influence the
heart."[3] It has been very wisely said that "any fragment of truth
which lies in a heathen mind unacknowledged is an insuperable barrier
against conviction: recognized and used, it might prove a help;
neglected and ignored, it is insurmountable."[4]

The late Dr. Mullens learned by careful observation, that the
intellectual power of the Hindus had been so warped by false reasoning,
that "they could scarcely understand how, when two principles are
contradictory, one must be given up as false. They are prepared to
receive both sides of a contradiction as true, and they feel at liberty
to adopt that which seems the most comfortable. And nothing but a full
exposure of evil, with a clear statement of the antagonistic truth,
will suffice to awaken so perverted an intellect."[5]

The missionary has often been surprised to find that the idea which he
supposed was clearly understood, was wholly warped by the medium of
Hindu thought, as a rod is apparently warped when plunged into a stream,
or as a beautiful countenance is distorted by the waves and
irregularities of an imperfect mirror. To the preacher, sin, for
example, is an enormity in the sight of God; but to his Hindu listener