the name of Sarai, our mother, is given half to Sarah, and half to Abraham. It is the tradition of Rabbi Joshua, the letter yod, having prostrated itself before God, said, O eternal Lord, thou hast blotted me from the name of a most holy woman. God most holy replied, thou hast hitherto been in the name of a woman, and in the end of the name, (of Sarai) thou shalt hereafter be in the name of a man, and in the beginning of the name. Hence it is written, Moses called the name of Oshea, Joshua. The Babylonian Gemara says, "the letter yod, says God, which I have taken from the name of Sarai, stood and cried to me for many years, that it might be prefixed to the name of Oshea, to whose name I have added it.' This is a specimen of the traditions, which the Jews regarded not less than their law. Lightfoot's Hor. Heb. Campbell's note. Summary of the speeches of Mr. Wilberforce, on the clause in the East India Bill, for promoting the religious instruction and moral improvement of the natives of India. (Continued from page 109.) THE evils of India are not merely such, as a despotic government never fails to introduce and to continue. They are fa mily, fire-side evils. They pervade the whole mass of the population, and embitter the domestic cup in almost every family. How indeed can we overrate the sum of evils produced, and the happiness impaired and lost, from the single circumstance of the prevalence of polygamy. The president Montesquieu had no peculiar zeal for Christianity. But would we see a lively picture of the jealousies, the heart burnings, the artifice, the falsehood, the cruelty, the rage, the despair, of which polygamy is the fertile source, let us look to that great writer's Persian letters. Here we may find a decisive settlement of the question, concerning the rank in the scale of beings, which is as signed to the female sex, among the nations of India. Their great lawgiver speaks of woman, in the most disparaging and contemptuous terms; and we see the same estimate of them, in many of the Hindoo customs and institutions. Again, in India we find prevalent that evil, I mean infanticide, against which we might have hoped that nature would have supplied adequate restraints, if we had not been taught by experience, that for our deliverance even from this detestable crime, we are indebted to Christianity. For it is not to philosophy, it is not to civilization, it is not to progress in refinement, or in the arts and comforts of social life; it is not even to liberty herself, that the world is indebted for this emancipation. The friends of Christianity may justly glory in the acknowledg Let me refer also to the practice of burning widows, on the funeral pile of their deceased husbands. A writer of great authority, (Mr. Dow) many years ago, stated the custom to have become almost extinct. But sorry I am to say, that this is so far from being the truth, that the practice which Bernier states to have been greatly discouraged, though not absolutely prohibited by the Mahometan government, and which, in consequence, had considerably declined, has increased since the country came under our dominion. Great pains were taken by the missionaries, a few years ago, to ascertain the number of widows which were annually burnt, in a district thirty miles round Calcutta; and in this comparatively small area, one hundred and thirty widows were burnt in six months. In 1803, within the same space, the number amounted to two hundred and seventy five, one of whom was a girl of eleven years of age. Certain persons were employed purposely to watch, and to report the number of these horri ble executions; and the place, person, and other particulars, were regularly certified. After hearing this, you will not be surprised on being told, that the whole number of these annual sacrifices of women, thus cruelly torn from their children, at the very time when they must be in the greatest need of the fostering care of the surviving parent, is estimated, I think, in the Bengal provinces, to be ten thousand. Nor must we dare to flatter ourselves, though in truth it would be a wretched consolation, that these widows are of fered a willing sacrifice. Bernier relates, from his own personal view, that the women are always carefully fastened down, sometimes with strong green bamboos, at others with thick strong ropes, thoroughly soaked in water; and that when the wretched victims drew back, he has seen those demons, the Brahmins, thrusting them into the fire with their long poles. Sometimes indeed the relations and friends of the widow, exerting their utmost influence with her, succeed in persuading her to live. But the Brahmins delude the poor wretches with the hopes of glory and immortality, if they consign themselves to the flames. Their only alternative is, a life of hard fare, and of servile offices; in short, a life of drudgery, degra dation, and infamy.* • It would be scarcely justifiable to forbear inserting the following account of one of these horrible scenes, at which the missionary, Mr. Marshman, was present a few years ago. I will extract his own words, only adding, that he is a man of the most established integrity; in the veracity of whose account, the most entire reliance may be justly placed. If these transactions took place in any part of England, instead of the indifference with which they have been too long regard ed, the public zeal would be called forth, and every possible endeavor would be used to put an end to them. It re "A person informing us that a woman was about to be burnt with the corpse of her husband, near our house, I, with several of our brethren, hastened to the place. But before we could arrive, the pile was in flames. It was a horrible sight. The most shocking indifference and levity appeared among those who were present. I never saw any thing more brutal than their behavior. The dreadful scene had not the least appearance of a religious ceremony. sembled an abandoned rabble of boys in England, collected for the purpose of worrying to death a cat or dog. A bamboo, perhaps twenty feet long, had been fastened at one end to a stake, driven into the ground, and held down over the fire by men at the other. Such were the confusion, the levity, the bursts of brutal laughter, while the poor woman was burning alive before their eyes, that it seemed as if every spark of humanity was extinguished by this accursed superstition. That which added to the cruelty was, the smallness of the fire. It did not consist of so much wood as we consume, in dressing a dinner; no, not this fire that was to consume the living and the dead! I saw the legs of the poor creature hanging out of the fire, while her body was in flames. After a while, they took a bamboo, ten or twelve feet long, and stir. red it, pushing and beating the half consumed corpses, as you would repair a fire of green wood, by throwing the unconsumed pieces into the middle. Pér. ceiving the legs hanging out, they beat them with the bamboos for some time, in order to break the ligatures which fastened them at the knees, (for they would not have come near to touch them for the world.) At length they succeeded in bending them upwards into the fire, the skin and muscles giving way, and discovering the knee sockets bare, with the balls of the leg bones; a sight which, I need not say, made me thrill with horror, especially when I recollected that this hapless victim of superstition was alive but a few minutes before. To have seen wolves thus tearing a human body limb from limb, would have been shocking; but to see relations and neighbors do this to one with whom they had familiarly conversed not an hour before, and to do it with an air of levity, was almost too much for me to bear. "You expect to hear perhaps, that this unhappy victim was the wife of some Brahmin of high caste. She was the wife of a barber, who dwelt in Serampore, and had died that morning, leaving the son I have mentioned, and a daughter of about eleven years of age. Thus has this infernal superstition ag gravated the common miseries of life, and left these children stript of both their parents in one day. Nor is this an uncommon case. It often happens to children far more helpless than these; sometimes to children possessed of property; which is then left, as well as themselves, to the mercy of those, who have decoyed their mother to their father's funeral pile.” [This narrative may excite feelings of disgust and horror. But it is suited also to excite the liveliest gratitude for that most benign religion, under which we are permitted to live. I will not ask what female, but what individual in christendom, in contemplating this scene, can refrain from blessing God, that he was born, and has been reared, under the benign influence of the Gospel? And distressing as the spectacle may be, let us not turn hastily from it. "True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear, or eye; but in feeling for the suffer. ings of others, and being forward and active in relieving them." In another number, we may be able to conclude this summary; and as we may rely on the facts which it contains, it cannot fail, we think, of being very interesting and useful.] ARGUMENTS AGAINST REQUIRING SUBSCRIPTION TO HUMAN OREEDS. "1. THAT stating any doctrine in a confession of faith with a greater degree of precision than the Scriptures have done, is in effect to say, that the Scriptures have not stated it with precision enough; in other words, that the. Scriptures are not sufficient. 2. That this experiment of leaving men at liberty, and points of doctrine at large, has been attended with the improvement of religious knowledge, where and whenever it has been tried. And to this cause, so far as we can see, is owing the advantage which protestant countries in this respect possess above their popish neighbors. "3. That keeping people out of churches, who might be admitted consistently with every end of public worship, and excluding men from communion, who desire to embrace it upon the terms that God prescribes, is certainly not encouraging, but rather causing men to forsake the assembling of themselves together. 4. That men are deterred from searching the Scriptures, by the fear of finding there more or less than they looked for; that is, something inconsistent with what they have already given their assent to, and must at their peril abide by. "5. That it is not giving truth a fair chance, to decide points at one certain time, and by one set of men, which had much better be left to the successive inquiries of different ages and different persons. "6. That it tends to multiply infidels amongst us, by exhibiting Christianity under a form and in a system, which many are disgusted with, and who yet will not be at the pains to inquire after any other." Some years ago, a serious attempt was made in England by some members of the established church, to free themselves and others from the tyranny and inconvenience of having to subscribe articles of faith, which they neither believed nor understood. At that period a publication appeared, entitled "Considerations on the propriety of requiring a subscription to articles of faith." To this followed an "Answer from the Clarendon press." Dr. Paley is not supposed to be the author of the "Considerations," but he wrote a "Defence" of them in reply to the Answer. The defence is an ingenious and able performance. Having replied to the answer, he stated the six arguments which we have copied, as "contained in the Consideration, to which no auswer has been attempted:" As we have reason to doubt whether there was any person in Great Britain able to answer these arguments, we publish them for the consideration of all our readers, and particularly those who think it to be safe and proper to require subscription to human creeds. If any one of these will furnish us with a concise, candid, and well written answer, he may rely on its being published in this work. VOLTAIRE'S VIEWS OF THE MADNESS OF WAR. B. I AM well enough acquaint ed with the rights of peace: they consist in keeping one's word, and leaving every man in possession of the rights of nature. But as to the right of war, I don't know what it is. The code of murder seems to me a strange fancy. I hope we shall shortly have the laws and rights of robbers on the highway. A. What! do you deny the possibility of a just war? B. I never knew of any such thing; it appears to me self-contradictory and impossible. A. Two princes dispute concerning an inheritance, their titles are litigious, and their reasons equally plausible; war must decide, and consequently the war is just on both sides. B. It is physically impossible but that one of the two must be in the wrong; and it is absurd and barbarous that nations should perish, because one of these two princes has reasoned falsely. Let them fight in single combat, if they choose; but it is shocking that a whole people should be sacrificed to their interests.-For example-the archduke Charles disputes the throne of Spain with the duke of Anjou, and four hundred thousand men are slain. I wish to know if this be just? A. I confess it is not.-How can we explain this rage? B. In the same manner as physicians give an account of the plague and madness. We are not always attacked with madness-Nothing more is necessary in general, than for one mad minister of state to bite another, and in three or four months the madness is communicated to four or five hundred thousand men. [The above sentiments have been extracted from the Dialogue on the "Right of war." Voltaire and Volney have very justly reproached Christians, for their inconsistency in making war. Let Christians no more expose themselves to such reproaches.] TESTIMONY OF GANGANELLI, CLEMENT XIV. "HEROISM Scarce ever exists without atrocity; and when we analyze the high feats of all those conquerors who are extolled as prodigies of valor and genius, we ordinarily find them shaded by the blackest horrors." "The most brilliant actions are not always the most estimable. A nation, observant of its word, and attached to its duty, is doubt less superior to another distinguished for valor, but distinguished also for treachery and perfidy. Conquests are not always founded on justice. In history we read of many heroes, who were only renowned robbers." "The warlike were not the happy nations; besides that victories are often attended with the ruin of conquerors, fortune and |
