of a tender father to secure the affections of his children; or at the keenness of his feelings, when he perceives that he either does not possess, or that he has lost, their love? Or who is so insensible as to be astonished at the anguish of an affectionate husband, when he has discovered that he is not the best-beloved of his wife, and that he has been despised and abandoned by her? And is God less tender and affectionate than men? Is it possible that he can view, with indifference, the hearts of his creatures abstracted from himself, and devotedly fixed upon objects which have no claim to them? No, never. He is a jealous God. He is attached to his offspring. He loves them, and looks to be loved in return. But if this be refused, his jealousy is stirred up. And who can comprehend what is meant by the words, "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before jealousy!" "Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame;" "The Lord thy God is a consuming fire; for he is a jealous God!"

Now, idolatry is just the abandoning of God, and the giving of that affection, and reverence, and service to others, which is his unquestionable right. To him alone are our adorations due: and when men lavish them upon idols, he may emphatically be said to be robbed. And is he not robbed? In this vast country, where there are temples innumerable to Kálí, Dúrgá, and Mahádeo, there is not a single erection to the One True God, nor a single act of worship specifically performed to him. Not that the people can be said to be ignorant of him. There is no phrase more familiar to them, than "One God without a second." But him they adore not. Their hearts are completely removed from him. They have no love to him. And they pay him no regard. It is of no use to say, that the idolater supposes his image to be the true God. Were even this the case, still God is robbed. Ignorance on the part of the wife or child, who abandon their legitimate protectors, will not lessen the loss sustained by the husband or the parent, nor assuage the anguish of their hearts. They are still deprived of their dearest rights. And wicked and abandoned is that man, who knows that the objects of the people's worship are anything but the God of heaven and earth, and anything but the Maker, the Preserver, and Redeemer of mankind; and yet who can gaze upon idolatry with lukewarmness, if not with a degree of delight! This man, be he who he may, is a traitor to his God, and an enemy to his most sacred claims.

3. Had not God so rigidly condemned idolatry as he has done, the possessor of revelation might well have questioned its truth, and justly have disputed all its statements respecting

the paternal goodness of the Creator. Every wise and good father will aim at the perfection of reason in his offspring. He will never wish to see his children in the rank of fools, nor degraded in mind below the brute creation. But does not idolatry sink men in the scale of reasoning to the lowest possible degree? None of the irrational creation is so devoid of sense as to mistake a tree for a man; but man, even reasoning man, when plunged in idolatry, thinketh stocks and stones, and birds and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, his makers and preservers, and reverenceth them as such. Reason has fled. "He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself amid the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn; for he will take thereof and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image. He burneth part thereof in the fire; yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire. And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down to it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god." Now, can we conceive of a greater prostration of intellect than this? and yet we, in this country, know that there is no exaggeration in this description of the prophet. On the contrary, we are certain, that it is true, even to the very letter. We have indeed seen, if possible, still greater folly than this. How often have we beheld the people fanning the insensible block to keep away the flies; putting around it curtains, to preserve it from the musquitoes; singing it asleep at night, and doing the same to wake it in the morning; taking it sometimes to the river to bathe it, carrying it through the town on their shoulders; carefully mending its limbs when broken off, and doing a thousand other things equally ridiculous! And what debasement of mind is there, in supposing the great God to be sometimes hungry and thirsty, and needing to be supplied by his creatures with food and water; to be sometimes guilty of theft, of falsehood, of murder, and of adultery; to be sometimes burning with lust, and going about weeping and searching for the object of his affections; and to be sometimes amusing himself with the ball, with the bow and arrow, with the flute, and with the lascivious dance among impure milk-maids! But all this is true, and much more is true, which is worse than this. Brumha, the creator, is represented as inflamed with lust towards his own daughter; Shiva, as declaring to Lakhshmí, that he would part with all the merit of his works for the gratification of a similar passion; Krishna, as living with the wife of another, as murdering a washerman, and stealing his clothes, and

as sending his friend Yúdisthír to the regions of torment, by causing him to utter a falsehood.

It were absurd to say, that these are not the effects of idolatry: but an evil species of idolatry itself. An evil species of idolatry they may be. We maintain, however, that such is the intimate connexion between all idolatry and the debasement of the mind, that let idols be set up in whatever country they may, and in whatever circumstances they may, the greatest humiliation of intellect will invariably follow. What will the reader say, when he is told, that many Roman Catholics, with the Bible in their hands, believe that Christ was really in love, and that he was actually married to a certain lady; that the Virgin Mary has power over her Son to make him do as she pleases; that the saints are omniscient and omnipresent, they being capable of hearing a million of different petitioners at the same moment of time, and scattered throughout every quarter of the globe; that every trade has its presiding deceased patron, and that pregnant women have their especial departed guardian! It may perhaps be difficult to point out all the connecting links between this insanity and the setting up of idols; but the fact is obvious. Idolatry makes reasoning man mad. It is an awful system, and it demands the abhorrence of every man who wishes his fellowcreatures to occupy their proper place in the scale of creation.

4. But this is not all. The immorality attendant upon idolatry is still more painful than the mental imbecility created by it. Not to speak for the present of India, to what are we to ascribe the existence of the impurity, the prevarication, the mental reservation, and the lying, which actually make a part of the religious system of the Roman Catholics? Is it not known, that though a priest may not marry, he may yet keep a concubine; and that, to accomplish the advancement of papacy, there is not a man among them who may not keep back, disguise, and even violate the truth. The world knows, that in making these assertions, we do not slander the votaries of Rome. And how, excepting on the principle that idolatry has an innate tendency to abasement, are we to account for the existence of such things among men who hold the truth of the sacred Scrip

tures?

But let us turn to the country of our sojourn. Is there an idolater in this vast empire, or indeed in any part of the world, who is a continual truth-speaking man? Is not the land full of falsehood? It is said by one who would not lie, and who had twenty years of close intercourse with the people, that he did not believe there was a single woman in Bengal faithful to her husband, or a single husband faithful to his wife. We hope, * Our excellent correspondent ought to be aware, that the Roman Catholics indignantly deny the truth of these charges.-ED.

and are inclined to believe, that he was to a considerable degree wrong in his calculation; but who is ignorant that this monstrous evil exists to a frightful degree? Look at the conduct of man to man-roguery and deception are almost universal. Look at the behaviour of children to their parents! What neglect of them in their old age! What disrespect for them! and, frequently, what cruelty towards them! Listen to the language in continual use. There is not a man among them who, when angry, will not utter the most obscene and filthy expressions. Glance over their songs, (we will not say read them,) and how few, comparatively, will you find that are free from pollution. And it is but a little portion of the Hindu immorality that we actually behold. Its blackest parts rarely, if ever, see the light. It is well known that they have midnight assemblies, in which, and in the presence of their idols, the most deplorable scenes are exhibited scenes such as never can be described by the tongue of a Christian, and of which even their own lips are ashamed to utter the details.

And to what are we to ascribe this awful depravity? Though, as we have already said, we may be unable to point the immediate connexion between these things and idolatry, yet we are verily persuaded that the one is the direct result of the other. Who, then, is there, that is worthy of the name of man, and who believes all this, that will not abhor the worship of idols as the foulest blot of creation? and who will not, if he can do nothing towards its extirpation, abstain from giving it his presence, or his aid? It is to be feared that our countrymen, who are found so frequently in the Hindu idolatrous assemblies, little think what injury they are doing the cause of humanity, and how provoking they must be in their conduct to the God of Heaven. We may be thought presumptuous in our assertions; nevertheless, we proclaim it as our settled conviction, that such aid to idolatry, as is given at the Hindu festivals by many who profess the name of Christ, will secure to them the most direful vengeance at the great day of reckoning.

5. None of the least arguments for the evil of idolatry is the circumstance of its being a delightsome thing to the great body of mankind. We know from experience, as well as from the Bible, that the nature of man is so radically bad, that he is utterly indisposed towards any thing that is good. But is he indisposed to idolatry? The very reverse is the fact. There is not a country to be found under heaven in which idols have not, at some time or another, been worshipped. Europe, Britain not excepted, has been covered with them. Asia, for the most part, has been filled with them. And in Africa and America, devils, literally in name and in act, have been, and are even now, the objects of adoration. And not only this,

peoples and nations who, by instructions and judgments, had been broken off from their idols, have, in the most easy and willing manner, returned to them. How often was this the case with the Jews. How lamentably, too, did the Christians, in former times, depart from the pure and spiritual worship of God. They once, almost to a man, with the exception of the Waldenses and Albigenses, wandered after the Beast; and even now, the majority of them are lying prostrate before it—its willing slaves and its ardent admirers. Not a few, also, there is too much reason to believe, of our own countrymen have, whilst dwelling in this heathen land, been really reduced into idolatry. What will the reader say to the following extracts from the writings of a clergyman, who, if he was never in India, (of which the writer is uncertain,) yet entered deeply by study and research, into the spirit of Hinduism, and into "Indian Antiquities," in general?" Mr. Forbes," says he, "of Stanmore Hill, in his elegant Museum of Indian Antiquities, numbers two of the bells that have been used in devotion by the Bráhmans. They are great curiosities; and one of them in particular appears to be of very high antiquity; in form much resembling the cup of the lotus, and the tune of it is uncommonly soft and melodious. I could not avoid being deeply affected with the sound of an instrument which had been actually employed to kindle the flame of that superstition which I have attempted so extensively to unfold. My transported thoughts travelled back to the remote period when the Brahmin religion blazed forth in all its splendour in the caverns of Elephanta. I was, for a moment, entranced, and caught the ardour of enthusiasm. A tribe of venerable priests, arrayed in flowing robes, and decorated with high tiaras, seemed assembled around me: the mystic song of initiation vibrated in my ear; I breathed an air fragrant with the richest perfumes, and contemplated the Deity in the fire that symbolized him." In another place, he says, "She," that is, the Hindu religion, "wears the similitude of a beautiful and radiant cherub from heaven, bearing on his persuasive lips the accents of pardon and peace, and on his silken wings, benefaction and blessing.”

The Scripture, too, speaks of idolatry as a delightful object to man. It calls his idols his "delectable things." It represents Image-worship, under all its forms and similitudes, the most pleasing to the unrenewed and polluted mind. It exhibits it as a wanton woman, decked and adorned, and surrounded with every thing calculated to allure and please." It represents it "as a cup filled with wine"-wine sweet to the depraved and corrupted taste. And it shews it in connexion with "gold, and silver, and precious stones, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and thyme wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all