these dumb idols and fictitious deities men are commanded to pay their adorations, to the total disregard of Him from whom they have received life, and breath, and all things.

The Shasters of the Hindoos, as evidently appears from the passages quoted,contain the most glaring contradictions. In one part, departure from the worship of God is censured as the fruit of ignorance and folly: in another, departure from Him to the worship of fictitious deities is inculcated, and the punishment of hell threatened to them who despise the idols. These contradictions, therefore, evidently prove that the authors of these Shasters, instead of being guided by the unerring Spirit of God, wrote merely according to their own blinded judgment and conception, and are a standing proof that the claims of these Shasters to divine authority are false, and without foundation.

I know the Hindoos will say, in reply to this observation, that the worship of the debtas and idols, and the worship of the supreme God, are substantially the same, because he receives through them the worship of his creatures. This explanation, however, is by no means satisfactory. Allow me to ask the advocates of this heterogeneous system the following question:-Suppose your servant, instead of attending at your house to do the work proper to his situation, goes to the river side, makes an image of clay, calls the image he has thus made his master, and waits diligently upon it, by placing rice before it, screening it from the sun, pouring water upon it, &c. Suppose he comes to you in the evening, and when you charge him with having neglected your service, he denies it, and explains himself by telling you what he has been doing:—will you, I ask, admit of this explanation, and allow the reality of his professed service? And suppose he continues this practice during the whole month, will you at the month's end pay him his wages? No; instead of doing this, you will look upon him as disordered in his intellect, and send him about his business. Applying, therefore, this illustration to the advocates of idolatry, allow me

* প্রতিমায়৷• শিলাবুদ্ধিং কুর্রাণে৷ নরকং ব্রজেৎ ।

to tell them, that however they may think to get to heaven by it, they will find themselves at last, like the servant who came for his wages, wofully disappointed; for instead of heaven, hell will undoubtedly be their portion. Again: the Hindoos themselves allow these debtas, whom they call the representatives of the Deity, to have been exceedingly wicked; and the Shasters, which record their histories, state them to have been addicted to every vice which can disgrace human nature*. Can we then suppose that the Shasters, which state such polluted beings to be the representatives and vicegerents of the Deity, to be true? Can we suppose that the infinitely pure and ever blessed God, who hates all sin, will hold intercourse with, or condescend to be worshipped through the medium of those who on all hands are allowed to have been so notoriously wicked? Impossible: it is the highest dishonour that can be offered to God, to associate him in any way with so much impurity: it is opposed to reason; it contradicts the universally prevailing laws and customs of mankind in civil affairs, and is a strong mark of the falsehood of those Shasters which contain such inconsistent and contradictory statements. How different is this from the account of the divine Being, which is contained in the Bible! There he is represented as saying: "My glory will I not give to another, nor my praise to graven images."

In order, therefore, to enable the reader to judge whether the account of God which is contained in the Bible, or whether that of the Hindoo Shasters is most likely to be true, I shall here introduce two easy and familiar illustrations, the first applying to the worship of the debtas, and the second to the worship of idols.

* In the history of these gods, we are informed, that Brahma was inflamed by lust towards his own daughter; and it was only through the intervention of Shonok and other Rishees, that he was prevented from committing the most unnatural crime. Indro and Chondro eloped, and lived in adultery with their Gooroos' wives. Christno carried on an illicit intercourse with an endless number of milk-maids, stole their clothes whilst bathing, and wantonly amused himself by jesting with their nakedness. And the story of Sheeb, from which the worship of the Linga originates, is of so horrid and monstrous a nature, that it is an insult to common decency to repeat it.

First, I ask, then, in reference to the worship of wicked debtas, such as those whose histories are contained in the Hindoo Shasters are said to have been, Has any person ever heard of a king issuing a circular through his dominions, which absolved his subjects from their allegiance to him; which said that the king no longer required them to honour, reverence, and obey him as their sovereign, unless perfectly convenient to them; but that they might, if they preferred it, respect, reverence, and serve the captains of gangs of thieves, the most notorious adulterers, and other debauched characters, who had made themselves infamous by depredation and every kind of wickedness in his kingdom: and that, if they thus acted, their sovereign would require no more from them; but accept this, though they treated him personally with the utmost contempt and indifference, as a full and satisfactory proof of their loyalty and affection? Were a circular of this nature, professing to have come from the king, to be issued in any country, we may reasonably suppose that the inhabitants would, on account of its absurdity, suppose it to be a fiction, and universally disregard it. In fact, reason and common sense would convince them that it was a forgery; because in every country, the king, his counsellors, and all other persons filling situations of eminence, demand, according to their dignity, respect and honour from their inferiors.

I pass on from this illustration, and with reference to the worship of idols, ask, in the second place, the advocates of this worship, if they think a king would be pleased with his subjects, were they to make a variety of monstrous ugly shapes,-call these their king,-say he resided in them, &c. &c. and instead of honouring and reverencing him only, pay respect to these hideous and fictitious objects which they themselves had made: and if they think the king would not be pleased with his subjects for such conduct as this, how, then, can they suppose that the great King of heaven and earth, the living and the true God, will be pleased with them, when they make a variety of hideous images,-call these God,-say he is in them,

́and substitute the worship of these fictitious objects for the worship of him who is a Spirit, and who requires to be worshipped in spirit and in truth?

Now let the reader, who is desirous of distinguishing truth from falsehood, bring these two illustrations to bear upon the subject under investigation; let him apply them to the contents of the Hindoo Shasters, and compare the accounts of the character and worship of God which is contained in these Shasters, with the more reasonable and just account which is contained on the same subject in the Bible: and if his mind be free from prejudice and misapprehension, he will be surely ready to acknowledge, that the Shaster which commands universal and exclusive honour to be given to God, as Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all men, is true; whilst those which deprive him of this honour, and give it to a variety of fictitious polluted deities and dumb idols, are beyond doubt false, and the productions of men of corrupt and reprobate minds.

The purity and spirituality of worship which the Divine Being requires, is also fully inculcated in the Bible; but it is nowhere to be found in the Shasters of the Hindoos: instead of this, their religious worship is connected with profane songs, obscene ceremonies, indecent dancing, and various other immoral and unnatural practices, which tend to pollute the mind, elicit impure desire, and open the door to every kind of licentiousness*. The Hindoo Shasters, instead of inculcating, like the Bible, universal integrity and benevolence, permit, in certain cases,

* I only need, for the confirmation of this assertion, to refer the reader to the midnight dance and song before the idol, on the last night of the Doorga Poojah, and to the obscene practices on the boats, when the idol is on the succeeding evening thrown into the river. We may also infer, from the images on the great temple, and several of the inferior cars of Juggernaut, what takes place at the Rhut Jattra. Whilst the story of Sheeb, when Narayon assumed in his presence the form of a beautiful woman, (from which the worship of the Linga originates,) with that of Christno and the milk-maids, and various others of a similar nature which are recorded in the Shasters, have all the same unhallowed tendency of inflaming the passions, and engendering crime.

of prevarication and lies*; and the effect of this permission must be evident to every observer of their moral character. The Shasters may confine this permission to certain cases; but the Hindoos, in their conduct, have extended it alike to all: for it is an evident and painful fact, that they are perhaps the most addicted to falsehood of any people upon the face of the earth; and a man must be an eye witness, before he can believe the audacious and composed manner in which they can lie on the most trifling and ordinary occasions+.

Examining, therefore, the contents of the Hindoo Shasters according to the principle before laid down, it is evident that they cannot possibly be true. The application of this principle will perhaps be best understood by the following illustration. Suppose a native of Benares is living at Calcutta, and a person brings him a letter, and says it is from the king of Benares. Suppose he has no personal acquaintance with the king, yet knows him to be a very wise, learned, benevolent, and holy man ; and that, in consequence of his goodness, united to the high authority which as a king he sustains, he is worthy to be universally loved and obeyed by all his subjects. In this case he will of course, before he opens the letter, expect to find its contents harmonize with the wisdom, goodness, and authority of its professed author: but if, on examination, he finds it quite the reverse, he will no doubt immediately reject it as an imposition. The king, he knows, is a wise man; but this letter contains the most

* স্ত্রী নৰ্ম্ম বিবাহেষু বৃত্ত্যর্থে প্রাণ শঙ্কটে। গবার্থে ব্রাহ্মণার্থেচ নানৃত সাি জগঞ্জিত• ৷

↑ The author lately detected some Hindoos in his employ, of attempting to deceive him. On discovering their fault, he endeavoured to extort confession from them; but this was utterly vain : they unitedly persevered in asserting their innocence, and denying the crime laid to their charge. Being, however, ultimately convicted by facts which were too plain to be withstood, they attempted to apologize for their infamous conduct by saying, that the principal person concerned was a Brahmin, and that they were required by the command of the Shaster to lie, in order to save him from the difficulties into which he might be brought, if his crime was discovered.