now, after three generations have pursued these studies, it is still
felt that very much is to be learned from literatures yet to be
translated. Such as there are, are best found in the home libraries.

Let us for a few moments consider the question how far those who are not
to become missionaries may be profited by a study of false systems. To a
large extent, the considerations already urged will apply to them also,
but there are still others which are specially important to public
teachers here at home. Dean Murray, in an able article published in the
"Homiletic Review" of September, 1890, recommended to active and
careworn pastors a continued study of the Greek classics, as calculated
to refresh and invigorate the mind, and increase its capacity for the
duties of whatever sphere. All that he said of the Greek may also be
said of the Hindu classics, with the added consideration that in the
latter we are dealing with the living issues of the day. Sir Monier
Williams, in comparing the two great Epics of the Hindus with those of
Homer, names many points of superiority in the former.[18] It is safe to
say that no poems of any other land have ever exercised so great a spell
over so many millions of mankind as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, of
India, and no other production is listened to with such delight as the
story of Rama as it is still publicly read at the Hindu festivals.

Of philosophies, no system of India has approached so near to veritable
divine revelation as that of Plato, but in variety and subtlety, and in
their far-reaching influence upon human life, the Indian schools,
especially the Vedanta, are scarcely excelled to this day. And they are
_applied_ philosophies; they constitute the religion of the people. Max
Müller has said truly that no other line of investigation is so
fascinating as that which deals with the long and universal struggle of
mankind to find out God, and to solve the mystery of their relations to