Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/900

856 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. against all that was old and had been sacred in popular estimation. The gods had now become to them mere earthen clay, the temples were unholy and the hallowed precincts of their homes a hole of superstition. Their noble literature was no more than a miserable scribbling and shreds of paper which they should consign to the fire or to worms. The songs of Radha and Krisha which, were expressed in the highest language of poetry, and were hitherto a fountain of joy and inspiration to the rich and the poor alike, now became horrible to them ; and one of our greatest countrymen of that age was known to declare that Krisna, the supreme soul, was worse than a sweeper. The Hindu shrines had once been desecrated by Mahomedans | who had thrown beef and other unholy things into them to destroy their sanctity; but they had only half succeeded, for thousands of hearts had remained true to them. But now our own people, the educated classes, lost faith in the temples, and looked upon them as pandemoniums and the gods enshrined in them as Beelzebubs and Molochs, whether they believed in Christanity or not. The victory of the missionaries was com- plete. The secret of their success, I beg to repeat, lay in the circumstance of their approaching us with love. They had shown a system of organised philanthrophy hitherto unknown to the country. Their charity, devotion, zeal and sympathy had drawn away those who were the natural ornaments of our society, and poor Bengal may consider this love to have been the greatest of her disasters, since more than the sword it upset time-honoured hoary institutions and alienated true hearts.