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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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one religion after another lead lives not so clearly worse than
the lives led by Christians, as to merit all the distinction of
punishment between hell and heaven ; when it is found, too,
that the follower of each of these religions is just as sure as
the Christian is that his particular religion is the true one,
and all others false, then the Christian stranger begins to
question whether he is wholly right in regarding the "heathen"
as only destined for damnation, and their religion as so utterly
wrong.
At the same time the truth gradually dawns upon him
that religion is universal, and an essential part of human nature.
Of the truth of this I have been deeply impressed upon my
travels. I remember the rude Mongols, far away in the midst
of the Gobi Desert, setting apart in their tents the little altar
at which they worshipped. I recall nights spent in the tents
of the wandering Kirghiz, when the family of an evening would
say their prayers together ; I think of the Afghan and Central
Asian merchants visiting me in Yarkand, and in the middle
of their visits asking to be excused while they laid down a
cloth on the floor and repeated their prayers ; of the late
Mehtar of Chitral, during a morning's shooting among the
mountains, halting, with all his court, for a few minutes to
pray ; and, lastly, of the wild men of Hunza, whom I had
led up a new and difficult pass, pausing as they reached the
summit to offer a prayer of thanks, and ending with a shout
of "Allah !"
In all these there was a religious sentiment deeply rooted.
They all shared the feeling that there was some Great Spirit
or Influence guiding and ruling all things, and that in some
indefinable way they were dependent on this Spirit. This
feeling, which is religion, is universal, and has developed with
the development of the human race. It seems to have been
implanted in the mind of man as life was breathed into his
body. And as I have watched the workings and the results
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