has unavoidably impressed an exclusive bias upon its principles. In
both codes the rules are often of restricted and narrow application.
But, in the Christian Scriptures, the rules are so comprehensive and
large as uniformly to furnish the major proposition of a syllogism;
whilst the particular act under discussion, wearing, perhaps, some
modern name, naturally is not directly mentioned: and to bring
this, in the minor proposition, under the principle contained
in the major, is a task left to the judgment of the inquirer in
each particular case. Something is here intrusted to individual
understanding; whereas in the Koran, from the circumstantiality
of the rule, you are obliged mechanically to rest in the letter of
the precept. The Christian Scriptures, therefore, not only teach,
but train the mind to habits of _self_-teaching in all moral
questions, by enforcing more or less of activity in applying
the rule; that is, in subsuming the given case proposed under the
scriptural principle.

Hence it is certain, and has been repeatedly illustrated, that whilst
the Christian faith, in collision with others, would inevitably
rouse to the most active fermentation of minds, the Mahometan (as
also doctrinal but unsystematical) would have the same effect, in
kind, but far feebler in degree; and an idolatrous religion would
have no such effect at all. Agreeably to this scale, some years ago,
a sect of reforming or fanatical Mahometans, in Bengal,[Footnote:
At Baraset, if I remember rightly.] commenced a persecution of the
surrounding Hindoos. At length, a reaction took place on the part
of the idolaters, but in what temper? Bitter enough, and so far
alarming as to call down a government interference with troops and
artillery, but yet with no signs of _religious_ retaliation.
That was a principle of movement which the Hindoos could not