“A Buddhist missionary, even in free-thinking America, would daily risk being mobbed, but this does not at all prevent missionaries from abusing the religion of the Brahmans, Lamas, and Bonzes, publicly to their teeth; and the latter are not always at liberty to answer them. This is termed diffusing the beneficent light of Christianity and civilization upon the darkness of heathenism! And yet we find that these pretensions – which might appear ludicrous were they not so fatal to millions of our fellowmen, who only asked to be left alone – were fully appreciated as early as in the seventeenth century. We find the same witty Monsieur de la Loubere, under a pretext of pious sympathy, giving some truly curious instructions to the ecclesiastical authorities at home, which embody the very soul of Jesuitism.
“From what I have said concerning the opinions of the Orientals”, he remarks, it is easy to comprehend how difficult an enterprise it is to bring them over to the Christian religion; and of what consequence it is that the missionaries, which preach the Gospel in the East, do perfectly understand the manners and belief of these people. For as the apostles and first Christians, when God supported their preaching by so many wonders, did not on a sudden discover to the heathens all the mysteries which we adore, but a long time concealed from them, and the Catechumens themselves, the knowledge of those which might scandalize them; it seems very rational to me that the missionaries, who have not the gift of miracles, ought not presently to discover to the Orientals all the mysteries nor all the practices of Christianity.
“Twould be convenient, for example, if I am not mistaken, not to preach unto them, without great caution, the worshipping of saints; and as to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, I think it would be necessary to manage it with them, if I may say so, and not to speak to them of the mystery of the Incarnation, till after having convinced them of the existence of a God Creator. For what probability is there, to begin with, of persuading the Siamese to remove Sommona-Cadom, Pra Mogla, and Pra Scaribout from the altars, to set up Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul, in their stead? Twould, perhaps, be more proper not to preach unto them Jesus Christ crucified, till they have first comprehended that one may be unfortunate and innocent; and that by the rule received, even amongst them, which is, that the innocent might load himself with the crimes of the guilty, it was necessary that a god should become man, to the end that this man-God should, by a laborious life, and a shameful but voluntary death, satisfy for all the sins of men; but before all things it would be necessary to give them the true idea of a God Creator, and justly provoked against men. The Eucharist, after this, will not scandalize the Siamese, as it formerly scandalized the Pagans of Europe; forasmuch as the Siamese do not believe Sommona-Cadom could give his wife and children to the Talapoins to eat.
“On the contrary, as the Chinese are respectful toward their parents even to a scruple, I doubt not that if the Gospel should be presently put into their hands, they would be scandalized at that place, where, when some told Jesus Christ that his mother and his brethren asked after him, he answered in such a manner, that he seems so little to regard them, that he affected not to know them. They would not be less offended at those other mysterious words, which our divine Saviour spoke to the young man, who desired time to go and bury his parents: ‘Let the dead’, said he, ‘bury the dead’.
“Everyone knows the trouble which the Japanese expressed to St. Francis Xavier upon the eternity of damnation, not being able to believe that their dead parents should fall into so horrible a misfortune, for want of having embraced Christianity, which they had never heard of. …It seems necessary, therefore, to prevent and mollify this thought, by the means which that great apostle of the Indies used, in first establishing the idea of an omnipotent, all-wise, and most just God, the author of all good, to whom only everything is due, and by whose will, we owe unto kings, bishops, magistrates, and to our parents the respects, which we owe them.
“These examples are sufficient to show with what precautions it is necessary to prepare the minds of the Orientals to think like us, and not to be offended with most of the articles of the Christian faith.”
And what, we ask, is left to preach? With no Saviour, no atonement, no crucifixion for human sin, no Gospel, no eternal damnation to tell them of, and no miracles to display, what remained for the Jesuits to spread among the Siamese but the dust of the Pagan sanctuaries with which to blind their eyes. The sarcasm is biting indeed. The morality to which these poor heathens are made to adhere by their ancestral faith is so pure, that Christianity has to be stripped of every distinguishing mark before its priests can venture to offer it for their examination. A religion that cannot be trusted to the scrutiny of an unsophisticated people who are patterns of filial piety, of honest dealing, of deep reverence for God, and an instinctive horror of profaning His majesty, must indeed be founded upon error. That it is so, our century is discovering, little by little.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 