es; so that what should have
been divine worship, purifying, elevating, and carrying the heart to
heaven, was a corrupt but rapid torrent, poisoning the soul and
carrying it down to perdition; no morality, for how should a people be
moral whose gods are monsters of vice; whose priests are their
ringleaders in crime; whose scriptures encourage pride, impurity,
falsehood, revenge, and murder; whose worship is connected with
indescribable abominations, and whose heaven is a brothel? As might be
expected, they found that men died here without indulging the smallest
vestige of hope, except what can arise from transmigration, the hope,
instead of plunging into some place of misery, of passing into the body
of some reptile. To carry to such a people the divine word, to call
them together for sacred instruction, to introduce amongst them a pure
and heavenly worship, and to lead them to the observance of a Sabbath
on earth, as the preparative and prelude to a state of endless
perfection, was surely a work worthy for a Saviour to command, and
becoming a christian people to attempt."

The condition of women, who were then estimated at "seventy-five
millions of minds," and whom the census shows to be now above
144,000,000, is thus described after an account of female infanticide:--

"To the Hindoo female all education is denied by the positive
injunction of the shastru {u-caron}, and by the general voice
of the population. Not a single school for girls, therefore,
all over the country! With knitting, sewing, embroidery, painting,
music, and drawing, they have no more to do than with letters;
the washing is done by men of a particular tribe. The Hindoo
girl, therefore, spends the ten first years of her life in sheer
idleness, immured in the house of her father.

"Before she has attained to this age, however, she is sought after by
the ghutuks, men employed by parents to seek wives for their sons. She
is betrothed without her consent; a legal agreement, which binds her
for life, being made by the parents on both sides while she is yet a
child. At a time most convenient to the parents, this boy and girl are
brought together for the first time, and the marriage ceremony is
performed; after which she returns to the house of her father.

"Before the marriage is consummated, in many instances, the boy dies,
and this girl becomes a widow; and as the law prohibits the marriage of
widows, she is doomed to remain in this state as l