“Religious ceremonies procure a fund of merit to the performer, which raises him in every future birth, and at length advances him to heaven, where he enjoys happiness for a limited period, or carries him towards final absorption. A person may sink to earth again by crimes committed in heaven. The joys of heaven arise only from the gratification of the senses. A person raised to heaven is considered as a god.
“When the following lines of Pope were read to a learned Bramin, he started from his seat, begged a copy of them, and declared the author must have been a Hindoo:—
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; ... Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent.”
“Such are the best views of the best of men among the Hindoos. Such a mixture of truth and error, of sense and folly, do they believe and teach.”
According to the best accounts that can be obtained from missionaries and others, the number of Pagans, in different countries, exceeds half the population of the globe.
Considerable attempts have been made, of late years, for the enlightening of the heathen; and there is every reason to believe good has been done. From the aspect of Scripture prophecy, we are led to expect that the kingdoms of the heathen at large shall be brought to the light of the gospel. (Matt. 24:14, Isa. 60, Ps. 22:28, 29; 2:7, 8.) It has been much disputed whether it be possible that the heathen should be saved without the knowledge of the gospel; some have absolutely denied it, upon the authority of those texts which universally require faith in Christ; but to this it is answered, that those texts regard only such to whom the gospel comes, and are capable of understanding the contents of it. “The truth,” says Dr. Doddridge, “seems to be this—that none of the heathen will be condemned for not believing the gospel, but they are liable to condemnation for the breach of God’s natural law: nevertheless, if there be any of them in whom there is a prevailing love to the Divine Being, there seems reason to believe that, for the _sake_ of Christ, though to them unknown, they may be accepted by God; and so much the rather, as the ancient Jews, and even the apostles, during the time of our Savior’s abode on earth, seem to have had but little notion of those doctrines, which those who deny the salvability of the heathen are most apt to imagine.” (Rom. 2:10-22, Acts 10:34, 35. Matt. 8:11, 12.) Grove, Watts, Saurin, and the immortal Newton, favor the same opinion; the latter of whom thus observes: “If we suppose a heathen brought to a sense of his misery; to a conviction that he cannot be happy without the favor of the great Lord of the world; to a feeling of guilt, and desire of mercy; and that, though he has no explicit knowledge of a Savior, he directs the cry of his heart to the unknown Supreme, to have mercy upon him,—who will prove that such views and desires can arise in the heart of a sinner, without the energy of that Spirit which Jesus is exalted to bestow? Who will take upon him to say that his blood has not sufficient efficacy to redeem to God a sinner who is thus disposed, though he have never heard of his name? Or who has a warrant to affirm that the supposition I have made is in the nature of things impossible to be realized?”