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with vices? What effect has your teaching on the bad people rt” 
His reply was : “ We have nothing to do with them at all. -No 
religion can deal with the bad : it is only the good we have to 
deal with. The bad must be left to themselves. -But, 1 
said, “ I must differ from you altogether. It is the bad people 
that we always go to first and try to deal with, and if our religion 
did not make bad people into good ones, I would give it up. 
The priest replied, “ If that is the case, I think your religion 
is a very superior religion,” and he did not say it contemptuously , 
though I do not think he was very credulous about the matter. 
I have seen people who seemed utterly lost in hopeless depravity 
• — I am not speaking of England but of what we mean by Chris- 
tian countries — and by getting them to go m prayer to bod 
and ask for grace, I have seen them entirely changed. 1 have 
seen drunkards reclaimed, and people who were leading dissolute 
lives become good and holy. I have seen it among Christians 
and in converted heathens, and I can have no doubt, so long as 
I live, of the power of the Gospel to turn sinners into very 
saints of God. (Cheers.) 
The Chairman. — I think I shall be expressing the thoughts of every one 
present, when I say that we are deeply indebted to the right rev. prelate for 
his kindness in coming here, and giving ns so valuable a paper. (Cheers.) 
I cannot forbear making a remark upon one excellent feature in that paper 
.—namely, its perfectly unprejudiced character. It would have been 
pardonable for a Christian bishop living among heathenism, to have dilated 
much on the faults of the system he had seen, and on the excellences of 
the system of which he is so able a preacher. But Bishop Claughton has not 
done so. He has come to us, a scientific and not a religious society, and has 
most philosophically pointed out where the Buddhist system fails, and has 
then compared with those points the particular characteristics in which the 
Christian religion is eminently excellent. Some communications have to be 
read, after which it will be open for any one to offer remarks upon the paper. 
The Honorary Secretary then read a letter from Professor Max Muller, 
in which he expressed his regret at being unable to be present, mentioned 
that he had read the proof copy of Bishop P. C. Claughton’s paper, and added, 
“ I do not think we differ much in our estimate of Buddhism. He naturally 
dwells on its dark, I on its bright side ; he judges of it by what he has seen 
of it in Ceylon, I from its own sacred books.” Also the following from 
Professor Chandler : — 
“Pembroke College, Oxford, Jan. 15, 1874. 
“ Dear Sir, — Allow me to thank you for the kind invitation you have 
sent me to attend a meeting for the discussion of Buddhism on Monday 
night. I regret that I cannot come to London, for in Buddhism, as die 
