religious question? The Rebellion was Heathenism—vile, selfish, and cruel—trembling for its very existence and goaded to retaliation, rising up in its hour of opportunity against the Christian civilization, whose increasing reforms and enlightenment manifestly knew no limit save the overthrow of every wrong, and the removal of every error, in India. It was the irrepressible and inevitable conflict of light with darkness; it was the Christian knowledge and saving faith of the nineteenth century mightily wrestling with venerable ignorance and licentious idolatry for the possession of the bright Land of the Veda, and for perpetual supremacy over its 200,000,000 of men! The prize and the agony for its possession were correspondent; and God defended the right.
III. Yes; for God and his providence must be acknowledged here as we search for the causes of this great conflict. On how many of its facts, as well as its precious results, is written, “This is the finger of God!” The permissive providence which allowed this terrible calamity to fall upon the English in India, was, even by their own subsequent, contrite acknowledgment, only what their sins deserved. It is consistent with all that we know of the divine government to suppose that the Almighty must have taken cognizance of their compromises of his truth, of their patronage of idolatry, of their repression of his Christianity, so as to keep it away from a people who needed it so much. He knew that if such a course was to continue unchecked India could not be saved for long centuries to come. He was resolved that caste and idolatry must be overthrown; and if Englishmen dared to prop up the God-dishonoring systems, they must feel the blow which dashed those systems to pieces.
I need not enumerate their national sins in India—they have done so themselves. As I write, the pamphlets are before me which contain their petitions to their Queen and Parliament, signed by multitudes of the best men of Britain, acknowledging before God and the world, in the hour of their national agony, how unworthy and responsible they felt themselves to be for the sins and shortcomings of their rule in India, and how earnestly
