PRONUNCIATION OF HINDOO NAMES.

If the reader will only retain in his memory, that the short ŭ is to be sounded as the short o in son, or the u in Burton; the French é as a in plate, and the ēē as in sweet, he will pronounce so correctly, that a Hindoo would understand him. At the beginning and end of a word, the inherent vowel (ŭ) has the soft sound of au.

PREFA СЕ.

THE following account of four native converts in India, who gave decided evidence of their entering into the true spirit of christianity, and who finished their course with joy, has been transmitted to us by our Serampore brethren; and we

trust the republication of it in England will, under the divine blessing, be attended with beneficial effects.

The sending out of missionaries to heathen nations, for the purpose of converting them to christianity, has been regarded in very different views, even by professing christians. Some of these, who hold no mean rank in society, have considered missionary exertions in general, as displaying little else but the ignorance and fanaticism of those who support or conduct them. But to an impartial reader, the following pages will display effects produced on the human mind, of which ignorance and fanaticism cannot have been the cause; and induce candour to own that the gospel of Christ preached in its simplicity has achieved victo

ries, which proclaim it to be, as aforetime, "the power of God unto salvation." We are not without hope that some, hitherto unfriendly to missions, may be led, by the facts here recorded, to regard as worthy of their future support, exertions thus evidently calculated, and blessed of God, to raise immortal beings from the degradation of idolatry, the parent and protector of every vice, to the participation of that holy faith by which they are made meet to be partakers of the heavenly inheritance.

Others there are who, though they utter no accusations against missions, usually speak of them in terms of

despondency. Contemplating chiefly the obstacles by which the progress of the gospel is opposed, they adjudge our exertions to be premature; and strongly advise that they should be suspended until the heathen natives, becoming more civilized, shall consequently be better prepared to admit the pure and exalted doctrines of divine revelation. But, not to urge that christianity itself is confessedly the best of all means to civilize the rude, as well as to instruct the unenlightened, we would request such of our brethren as recommend delay in the important work, to ask themselves, in what state the four Hindoos, whose history this little work relates, and