A new sacramental ceremony has also been instituted, and is thus prefaced and described in the periodical called the New Dispensation

"JESUS! Is the sacramental rite meant only for those nations that are in the habit of taking bread and wine? Are the Hindus excluded from partaking of the holy eucharist? Wilt thou cut us off, because we are rice-eaters and teetotallers? That cannot be. Spirit of Jesus! that cannot be. Both unto Europe and Asia thou hast said, Eat my flesh and drink my blood. Therefore the Hindu shall eat thy flesh in rice, and drink thy blood in pure water, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled in this land.

"On Sunday, the 6th March, the ceremony of adapting the sacrament to Hindu life was performed with due solemnity, in accordance with the principle above set forth. The Hindu apostles of Christ gathered after prayer in the dinner hall, and sat upon the floor, upon the bare ground. Upon a silver plate was Rice, and in a small goblet was Water, and there were flowers and leaves around both. The minister read the following verses from Luke xxii. :

"And he took bread and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. "Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for you.'

"A prayer was then offered, asking the Lord to bless the sacramental rice and

water :

"Touch this rice and this water, O Holy Spirit, and turn their grossly material substance into sanctifying spiritual forces, that they may, upon entering our system, be assimilated to it as the flesh and blood of all the saints in Christ Jesus. Satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls with the rich food and drink thou hast placed before us. Invigorate us with Christ-force and nourish us with saintly life.'

"The Lord blessed the rice and He blessed the water.

"And these were then served in small quantities to those around, and men ate and drank reverently, and the women and children also ate and drank, and they blessed God, the God of prophets and saints."

The "vow of self-surrender" is another novelty of the New Dispensation. Those who take it constitute the order of Grihastha vairagi, or ascetic householders. They are men of the world, they work in various ways, make money by diligent labour, but discharge no priestly function. Nor are they missionaries. They are seculars who devote themselves and all they can acquire to the Church. Self-surrender is their motto. They give all their substance to Mother Church. They toil from morn to night, they labour diligently in their various vocations, and they lay all their earnings at the feet of the Church, with full confidence that she will do what is right with them. They are her children and servants. Covetousness thus, we are quaintly told, becomes impossible. The wants of those who have taken this vow of self-surrender upon them must, I suppose, be supplied by the Church, such as their food and clothing,—but particulars of this kind are not given. The spiritual blessings that accompany the vow, and chiefly the extinction of covetousness and worldliness, are particularly dwelt upon. But I confess a little more detailed information as to the management of the scheme how the devotees are boarded, lodged, and clothed-would be acceptable. I do not suppose the number of these devotees is yet con

siderable. Three were admitted on one occasion, two on another, and

so on.

Another peculiarity of the Church of the New Dispensation is the singing of hymns by devotees from door to door for the benefit of the worldly-minded. Hitherto the practice has been confined only to the lower classes of the people, the poorer Vaishnavas. But the middle and higher classes are now warmly invited to engage in this "exalted work." They are exhorted to give up their indolence and selfish apathy, their pride and vain-gloriousness, and to go in the evening to the houses of the wealthy, and to the huts of the poor, singing before them the praises of God and the riches of his mercy, thus securing a great benefit to their country by a little self-denial. They are to form themselves into little groups of Dispensation Minstrels, singing "God's sweet name" in different parts of the city. This innovation was introduced on the Bengali New Year's Day in April last.

In order to illustrate the teaching of the apostles of the New Dispensation, I cannot do better than extract from their own organ a sermon on "The Cross," probably from the pen of "the minister" himself, Mr. Sen.

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"Many are the lessons which the Cross suggests. For eighteen centuries it has deluged the world with faith, love, and righteousnes. It has strengthened many a weak heart; it has sanctified and saved many a sinner. It has given light and peace to many a nation. Hence is it that the world glorifies the cross, and many a devotee gratefully wears it on his bosom. The men of the New Dispensation have read the mysterious symbol and pondered it, and made it the subject of anxious and earnest prayer, for some days past, in their holy Sanctuary. What noble sentiments and exalted thoughts has it excited in their minds! What a flood of heavenly light has it poured into their humble souls! Like their Christian brethren they too have sat day after day during the past and the present week at the foot of the cross, wondering at the miracles it has wrought in the world. And, like them, they too are ready humbly to bear the cross, and bear witness unto Jesus amid the trials and sufferings of life. To "him crucified" the cross was nothing but the shedding of sacrificial blood for the salvation of the world. What is it to us? To us it has only one meaning, the crucifixion of the flesh, the destruction of animal propensities, the annihilation of the old man. We are then crucified, when we are dead unto the world. The cross is man's figure with hands outstretched. Put any man into this position, and you have a man-cross. Let us consider this position, and see what it means. It means the human body fastened and motionless. It means the man whose hands are nailed, and cannot therefore hold the things of the world; the man whose feet are nailed, and are therefore incapable of moving in the paths of sin and carnality. It means yoga posture, humanity dead yet alive. Every man standing above the world, whose senses are dead unto the flesh, whose carnal nature has been wholly subdued by communion, who speaks not, moves not, and is not tempted by temptations, such a man is like a cross. old man in us must die upon that cross, nailed by communion and yoga. you thought of Christ, the Prince of Martyrs and yogis? Then think of Buddha. He is dead, a motionless, statue-like figure representing crucified humanity, slain self, vanquished senses. Then turn to the picture of the great Hindu yogi, Siva, lying on the ground, dead and senseless, with the feet of Shakti, Divine Force, standing upon him. The whole thing looks like an inverted cross.

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Have

Here is an allegorical representation teaching us how the true devotee must be a complete carcase at the feet of the Almighty. It is the cross, it is the cross everywhere, reminding us of the necessity of crucifixion and new life."

The mingling together of the lessons of the Cross of Christ, the passionless Buddha, and Hindu asceticisms, has a strange and weird character. But what shall we say of the following, an Address to the Spirit of Saint Peter, also from the New Dispensation? Does it not look like a travestie of the Roman Catholic invocation of saints and angels?

"Honoured Saint, art thou the gate-keeper of heaven? Art thou not he in whose hands is the key of paradise? Then there is no admission into heaven without thy permission. And whom wilt thou admit? All those to whom Jesus hath given a passport. None of these wilt thou reject? No favouritism, no sectarianism in thee. Canst thou be guilty of partiality? Canst thou have a grudge against individuals or sects on account of narrow prejudices or jealousies? No. That cannot be. If the Lord has entrusted to thee the key of heaven, thou canst have no bigotry, thou canst not be a respecter or hater of persons. Thou art the head of the Catholic Church of God. Hence there can be no sectarianism in thee. Thou art a Catholic, the Catholic of Catholics. In thee is the unity of the Church perfected. All those who are of God and who are of Christ are one in thee. Against none of these wilt thou set thy face. Thou comprehendest all. Seamless was Christ's garment. There can be no division, no schism in the Church of Jesus, which is the Church of humanity. Thou art the head of the Roman Catholic Church, they say. Why not the Head of the Human Catholic Church? Yes, of the Universal Church of humanity art thou the heavenappointed Head. Who can deny thee? Can St. Paul's Church deny St. Peter's Church? No. Paul is Peter and Peter is Paul, and they are one in Jesus, and with Jesus one in God. We are of Paul, and we are of Peter. Therefore, thou wilt not exclude us, though men have excluded us. Be kind and just to us, heaven's gate-keeper, and pray do not shut us out. Have pity on us, poor prisoners of the Lord Jesus."

"The doings of this Church of the New Dispensation," says a private letter from Calcutta, "remind me of what I read of the Salvation Army in England. It is the mission of the New Dispensation to lead the people of this country to the Holy Land, says one of their preachers. They assemble in the evening-twenty of them or more—always half a dozen boys amongst them, with big lanterns, and they go parading up and down the streets and lanes, singing Bengali hymns. The other evening I met them in the Upper Circular Road, they passed through Carey's Church Lane into College Square, and there, taking their seats in front of a native gentleman's house, they began to sing with great enthusiasm. The owners of the neighbouring houses seemed pleased with the harmony, and some of them begged the performers to sing in front of their houses. First they sang two Sankirtan hymns standing; then, seats being courteously offered and accepted, a little crowd collected. There were, perhaps, a hundred or more, and I cannot help saying that a more orderly and impressive service I never witnessed. I listened to one of the discourses in English, and it was wonderfully effective, full of intellectual persuasion, without rant of any kind; it is a system of eclecticism that

has charms for all hearers. Some of the discourses about Christ would satisfy our Evangelical friends at home, whilst Buddhists, Hindus, and Moslems will all find something to admire. Purity of thought, word, and deed is faithfully inculcated, with a noble human philanthropy, embracing all sects, that would have charmed your friend Carlyle."

Mr. Sen regards the New Dispensation as a God-sent protest against Atheism. Whatever the discoveries of science, whatever the speculations of philosophy, all of them, he believes, can be reconciled with the religious truths inculcated by his reformed Brahmoism. The history of Brahmoism, he insists, proves its divine origin. So many earnest men would not have found consolation in it if it were otherwise. For more

than twenty years some of them have found spiritual consolation in it, in all trials. An intellectual system, that is, one merely and simply intellectual, would not have given such consolation. Sinners have been converted, and some of the vilest characters reclaimed by it. And this, he maintains, is a proof that it is something more than an intellectual system. The New Dispensation, however, does not merely preach goodness, it preaches godliness. Goodness is human, it teaches, and godliness divine. In this way only can the divinity be assimilated and made our own. The yoga faculty, or the power of spiritual communion and absorption, is specially claimed for the Hindu race, a faculty enabling them to annihilate time and space, and to bring home to their minds an external Deity and an external humanity. In the following eloquent strain, Mr. Sen exhorted his hearers, in his last address in the Town Hall in Calcutta, to make use of this yoga faculty, and make of all the nations of the world-one people :

"Waving the magic wand of yoga, we say to the Ural mountains and the river Ural, 'Vanish,' and lo! they disappear. And we command Europe to enter into the heart of Asia, and Asia to enter into the mind of Europe, and they obey us, and we instantly realize within ourselves a European Asia and an Asiatic Europe, or, in other words, a commingling of oriental and occidental ideas and principles. We say to the Pacific, 'Pour thy waters into the Atlantic,' and we say to the West, 'Roll back to the East.' We summon ancient India to come into us with all her rishis and saints, her asceticism and communion and simplicity of character, and, behold! a transfiguration! The educated modern Hindu cast in Vedic mould! How by yoga one nation becomes another! How Asia eats the flesh and drinks the blood of Europe! How the Hindu absorbs the Christian; how the Christian assimilates the Hindu! Cultivate this communion, my brethren, and continually absorb all that is good and noble in each other. Do not hate, do not exclude others, as the sectarians do, but include and absorb all humanity and all truth. Let there be no antagonism, no exclusion. Let the embankment which each sect, each nation, has raised, be swept away by the flood of cosmopolitan truth, and let all the barriers and partitions which separate man from man be pulled down, so that truth and love and purity may flow freely through millions of hearts and through hundreds of successive generations, from country to country, from age to age. Thus shall the deficiencies of individual and national character be complemented, and humanity shall attain a fuller and more perfect standard of religious and moral life. There is no reason, my European friends, why you should move eternally in your narrow groove, rejecting everything which is Eastern and Asiatic. Why should you not add to your national virtues those of

the East? Why should you not add to your philosophy and science and civilization the faith and poetry of Asia ?”

It is not wonderful that such eloquent appeals should stir the hearts of Mr. Sen's listeners. Viewing his labours and his successes, his indefatigable industry and his courage, his enthusiasm and his fortitude, it is not wonderful perhaps that Professor Monier Williams should write of "his almost superhuman eloquence, ability, and genius."

But many may ask, in this country, what have the Theists of Bengal actually accomplished. In what respects, besides their speculative religious opinions, are we called upon to admire them? I will enumerate a few

of the reforms advocated by them. In the first place a complete abolition of all caste restrictions. It is not easy for any one who has not witnessed the force of those restrictions in the East to understand how much is implied in their complete renunciation; secondly, the abolition of the worship of deceased ancestors, the Sraddha; thirdly, a reformation of the ceremonies usual at birth and at cremation; fourthly, reform of marriage customs-and to remodel the ceremonies appropriate to marriage is to reconstruct Hindu society; fifthly, the promotion of female education and emancipation; sixthly, to limit men to one wife; seventhly, to remove the prohibition against the marriage of widows; and, eighthly, social reform, the suppression of intemperance of all kinds, the promotion of education amongst the people, and the social and moral regeneration of the people of India generally. To secure these last objects Mr. Sen founded the "Indian Reform Association" on his return from his visit to England in 1870, an association chiefly intended to promote female improvement. A female normal and adult school, in connection with it, was opened in 1871.

Men who are engaged in a great warfare against prejudice, superstition, and evil customs, deserve our sympathy and esteem, whatever we may think of their theological opinions. India has been paralyzed by the social system forced upon her, centuries ago, by a superstitious and selfseeking priesthood. The men of the New Dispensation seek to remove that paralysis. They would restore freedom of action, as well as of thought; and, with this, blessings incalculable will be realized. All, therefore, who desire the welfare of humanity will earnestly wish the reformers "God speed," for their warfare is against their prejudices of centuries, against spiritual slavery, and the moral and social fetters which, for more than two thousand years, have bound more than a hundred and fifty millions of the human race in religious thraldom.

W. KNIGHTON.