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Untitled Article
unacquainted with them . And , however extraordinary his powers , it cannot be expected that he should enter sufficiently into the criticism of the New Testament to determine the sense
of the difficult passages connected with the Trinitarian controversy . To require his opinion of these parts of scripture , or to insist upon his taking certain definite views of their import , would be highly unreasonable . And yet , such is the influence of human systems , that because he declines
entering upon the discussion of questions that have been the subjects of continual controversy in the Christian world ; the Friend of India entirely withholds from him the appellation of Christian , and considers his publication as calculated to do serious injury to the cause of truth .
It might have been supposed that the vvork of a learned Brahmun , sent forth amongst his countrymen with a title like this , " The Precepts of Jesus the Guide to Peace and Happiness , " would have been hailed by " a Christian most tia most
Missionary " as auspicious n iviissionary , as auspicious to his own undertaking . Even if the work had not been in every particular unexceptionable , it might have been expected , that this would rather have been kindly suggested , than made a prominent subject of animadversion .
An intelligent Hindu who shews himself , at all events , a friend to Christianity , and who makes it his object , at the expense of much obloquy and persecution on the part of his countrymen , to display the excellence and value of Christian precepts , could hardly count upon meeting with rebuke
and reprehension from the Christian Missionaries in India . Though he should appear not to estimate sufficiently the historical testimony in favour of Christianity , ( and do the bulk of Christians enter into any accurate investigation of it ?) this is not altogether inexcusable in . one who , in all
probability , has had few opportunities of verifying the historical records of the New 1 estament , by a comparison with other histories relating to the same period . If it could be proved , indeed , that he himself rejected the evWnte- of the miracles of Christ , it wolp b £ doing him no wronff to withhoJp from him the name of Christian ; but o £ this we think the- pamphlets
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before us do not afford proof ; and as he is indignant at the application to himself of the term Heathen , which he describes as a violation of truth , cha ~
rity and liberality , there appears every reason to believe that he is , in the honest persuasion of his own mind , a Christian , and entertains no doubt of the divine authority of Jesus , and the truth of the Christian revelation . If
so , it is to the honour of Christianity that so distinguished an inquirer after truth can for himself discover in the instructions of Christ , that which commends itself to his admiration and regard : nor can it fail to gratify Unitarian Christians to find that the doc
tnnes of the New Testament , as understood and received by them , produce conviction in the mind of such a man , and in the degree in which they are known to him , induce him to the cordial reception of Christianity , whilst
the doctrines which they reject , and with which he has the best opportunity of becoming acquainted , produce no conviction , and , as far a 3 they operate , impede his persuasion of the truth of Christianity .
But it is time to proceed to a more particular examination of the pamphlets which have suggested these remarks . The first , which contains eighty-two pages , exclusive of the
Introduction , is entirely composed of the discourses of Jesus , taken from the four Evangelists , but principally from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke . Upon this the Christian Missionary makes the following remark :
" The extracts from the Gospel of Christ ' s beloved disciple , who has recorded his Master ' s sublimest dogmatic sayings , which had been passed 6 ver by the other Evangelists , fill scarcely four
pages , whereas those from the Gospel or St . Matthew fill thirty-five , and those from the Gospel of St . Luke thirty-two pages , "
The extracts from St . Matthew ' s Gospel contain the whole of the Sermon on the Mount , the greater part of the tenth and thirteenth chapters , the whole of the eighteenth , from
3 rd verse of the nineteenth to the 28 th verse of the twentieth , from the 23 rd verse of the twenty-first to the end of the twenty . third , part of the twentyfourth , and the whole of the twentyfifth chapter ; besides a number of
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473 Review . —Ram Mohun Roy > and Indian Unitarian Controversy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1821, page 478, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2503/page/38/
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