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But I said J thought it hardly fair to say that the author of the paper 
had done so. As to the historic question, I am aware that there were - 
Christian missionaries at the. time the last speaker has mentioned. 
St. Thomas the Apostle is supposed by some to have introduced Christianity 
into India, 
Mr. Cauezs (an East Indian visitor).—I think there is much that is profit- 
able in this paper. We read of the various beliefs as to the life hereafter 
and the sacrifices that are made by the different Indian tribes. Does it not 
thus help us to understand more than hitherto the value of the One great 
sacrifice that was made on the cross for us, and does it not also help us 
more clearly to understand the conditions of an eternal life hereafter ? 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING PAPER. 
By the Rev. R. Couutys, M.A., late Principal of Cottayam College. 
Professor Avery’s paper is most valuable, as affording us important facts, 
which must be taken into consideration in drawing conclusions as to the 
origin of the various religious ceremonies and beliefs of mankind. Pro- 
fessor Avery himself, however, does not here draw conclusions: and yet 
for this alone are such facts of value. We are presented with disjointed 
parts of a puzzle, and we instinctively try to put them together. 
These religious rites, beliefs, and traditions of the more uncivilised, and 
no doubt topically the more ancient, tribes of India seem to me to be 
chiefly interesting when taken in connection with those of other nations, 
Hindoos, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Accadians, &c. If we find one 
thought, or principle, running through all, we must give to that one thought, 
or principle, the same or a similar origin. Can this similar origin be due 
to the similar idiosyncrasies of different tribes? There are, in fact, several 
principal ideas and customs common to the religions of these Indian tribes, 
as described by Professor Avery,and other, whether more or less civilised, 
- peoples of all ages; there are, to take only three, the priest, the sacrifice, 
and the propitiation. The interest in the study of Comparative Religion 
centres round the question of the origin of these. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
traces the origin of the religious sentiment to ‘‘ghost worship,” Mr. 
Frederic Harrison to the worship of “natural objects”: and both 
would, I believe, make all religious observances the outgrowth purely of 
human nature. The value of Professor Avery’s paper to me is, that it 
seems to help the evidence, that all such religious observances and beliefs 
are relics, it may be more or less degraded, of a Divine revelation given to 
the early families of mankind, similar to that given to Moses on the 
Mount. It is impossible, I think, to imagine why primitive man should 
propitiate “ ghosts,” dreaded though they might be, or “natural objects” 
endowed by their heated imaginations with ghost-like influences, by offer- 
