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A

LECTURE

ΤΟ

EDUCATED HINDOOS,

DELIVERED ON

SUNDAY, MARCH 13,

BY THE

REV. E. F. BROWN, M. A.,

OF

THE OXFORD MISSION.

Price 1 Anna.

CALCUTTA:

OXFORD MISSION PRESS.

The following is the first of a series of four lectures. The subjects

of the remaining ones are Religion-Theism—and Christianity, which will be published as they are delivered.

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DEAR FRIENDS AND BROTHERS.

THERE was once a time when a Prisoner stood before His judge. I dare say the story is well known to many of you. And that Prisoner, though innocent, did not seem to care so much to prove His innocence for His own sake, as that He might save the judge himself from committing a great injustice. As He argued with him, He let fall some words about truth. And the judge taking up that word, answered with a question which has gone on echoing in the hearts of men through the ages: What is truth?

They were the words of an infinite despondency. They were the words of a man who had given up all hopes of ever finding the truth, and who never did find it. Why not? If on these Sunday evenings, we can manage to answer that question fairly and honestly, by an appeal to each man's reason, and that general consciousness of right and wrong which we are never left wholly without, and to the experience of the great moral teachers of other ages and our own, we shall at least have done something towards guarding ourselves from missing the truth in the way that it was missed by Pontius Pilate.

What is truth? My friends, there came to me many months ago in my English home a message that that question was being asked today by young men in Calcutta. This message was repeated louder and louder, until it seemed to me that I must come, and do what little in me lay to help you to an answer. For I said to myself-nay, perhaps it was a Higher Voice which said to me-shall earnest men be crying this cry out of the might of a great soul-hunger, and shall there be no one to answer it? Shall we to whom what we believe to be the highest truth ever made known to man has come as it were by inheritanceshall we dare selfishly to sit down and enjoy our heritage with that cry ringing in our ears.

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