[1] All the might of the world is now on the side of
Christianity. Those barbarous, inchoate powers which still
cling to heathenism are already trembling before the
advancing strides of the Christian nations; Christian just
enough to rouse all their energies and to make them
intensely ambitious, and on the alert to increase their own
dominion, without having learned Christianity's highest
lesson, the lesson of love.
Even that heathenism which seems to have some power is only
waiting for its time of decay. In vast, undisturbed
forests, whose interlacing branches exclude the light,
moisture is generated, and rills, fed by marshes and quiet
pools, united to form running rivers. But let the trees be
cut down, and the ground be laid open to the sun, and the
swamps will dry up, and the rivers run no more. So is it
with the Brahmins, and all the effete teachers of
heathenism. As long as the dense shadows of ignorance brood
over the people, they will possess some little trickling
power; but let the light of knowledge shine in upon the
masses, and the channels of their influence will dry up and
be forgotten.--_Beecher._