ing the comfort of the widow. It is Christian likeOld Testament precepts are repeated and enforced in the New, and particular instructions relative to the care of the widow are added.

Now an opposite practice has no authoritative or excellent precedent for its sanction; whence then have suicide in the victim, and murder and parricide in the perpetrators, their warrant and origin among the Hindoos? It is not natural, nor called for by state policy; it cannot be conducive to the welfare of the bereaved families. Infatuation indeed it is, but this is not a cause by itself sufficient for such an effect; nothing exists without a cause. A proportionate cause then is found alone in the religion of the Hindoos. In the sacred books of this people, the victim of this most censurable practice is raised to an honourable place among her fellow-creatures, and her memory is clothed with honour and distinction. Affection to her husband is engaged, zeal for family aggrandizement is stimulated, assurances of the perfect lawfulness and propriety of the deed are explicitly laid down, influential precedents are lavishly recounted, solace is provided for the mind in the distressing hour, hymns are composed, the character of the divinity to whom the sacrifice is made is defined, parts of the ceremony which represent the honour of the sufferer are pompously prescribed, the cupidity and avarice of interested persons, sanctioned by the idea of divine appointment, are enlisted and aroused by every attendant circumstance; nor are

the priests unappointed, or their services unrewarded. In every sense of the word, it is a service of the religion of the Hindoos, and special honour is put upon it, by the most sacred canons of their divine lawgivers. If the bereaved widow fail, either through the deficiency of her own religious fervour, or the inefficacy and weakness of the influence of her religious advisers, or their unwillingness to employ persuasion where no sufficient inducement is held out for the exertion of their powers, indignity and reproach are added to bereavement, sometimes desertion, and always seclusion. With a malicious minuteness do the standard authorities of this religion prescribe the terms of ignominy. A respectable and well-informed brahmin has told me the hardships to which his own aged mother is exposed-which she suffers, and which will remain her portion until her thraldom is broken by spiritual liberty or bodily death. Every ten days must she submit her aged head to be shaved; in her daily ablutions during incongenial weather, or sickness, the water must be poured upon and over her head, not over her shoulders; every night she has to watch the burning lamp, that it go not out, and to supply it with oil till the morning. A cloth of only one prescribed description is she ever allowed to wear, and this marks her widowhood-consequently her religious disgrace; and she is denied the recreations or pleasures of general society. These children of sorrow are fed with one meal each day, they are allowed no more; and they are

never permitted to recline upon a bed, the lowly and hard ground is the pallet on which they take their grudged repose. Such is the innocent religion of the amiable brahmins! such their reward conferred on mothers and daughters, and to which, if a pariah woman aspires, she is reputed as holy as a brahmin ! even she may burn:-Such the systems, and such the moral influence under which eight-tenths of India's population live!

But what is the view which a correct system of moral truth gives of this sacrifice? There is little hazard in affirming, that such actions violate the obligations of relative and social life: they break the ties and bonds of the domestic circle, and produce a blank in civil society. A widow, (in the church of the living God,) if she rightly discharges her reciprocal duties, has an important place to fill, and she is called to fill it by the voice of nature; she is a centre round which her children may rally, a connecting link by which they feel their relation, the magnet of their affections. It devolves upon her to train them up in the way in which they should go, and to hold up to their eyes a pattern of piety and devotion, to counsel them by warnings drawn from experience, to encourage and countenance them by animating and heartcheering appeals founded on a clearer insight into the true state of things. These are natural duties. God hears the prayer of the widow; by her afflictions she has been, or should have been, taught to wrestle and take delight in prayer. Bereavements,

when sanctified, make religious privileges more to be desired; the bereaved make more progress, under divine influence, in the walk with God, and their supplications, we may reason, would more prevail: "The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much." Now, all this is the birth-right of the children, and is often the heir-loom of the family, which cannot by any circumstance of choice be alienated by the parent, and should never be cancelled. And again, religion has provided a place for the widow, and called her to occupy it with attention, not as a work of supererogation, but as a duty incumbent, "that she be well reported of for good works, that she lodge strangers, that she exercise the rights of hospitality, that she relieve the afflicted, and that she diligently follow every good work." It is true, these are prescribed to Christian widows; but practical virtues, if good, under any system, and if they constitute a part of preceptive duty in a revelation from God, are binding upon all, nor can any institute of man dissolve them; and such as withdraw from the discharge of these duties, are chargeable with disobedience, and undisguised guilt cleaveth to them in every instance of failure.

The grey hairs of infidelity are now too thin, its staff of life is now too surely broken, and its fortresses too thoroughly battered down, to leave it any longer necessary to attempt a refutation of the exploded dogma of the apostle of scepticism, "that there is no more moral impropriety in turning the flood of life which flows in

our veins, than there would be in turning the course of the Nile;" or, we may add, appositely, that there is no more violation of the Creator's laws in the concremation of a living human body, the tenement of a rational immortal spirit, than there would be in the burning of provender for cattle. A Christian at least will hear the argument deduced from the moral fitness of things. In the life of every creature there is a proprietory right possessed by the Creator, which cannot be assumed by one finite being over another, either in an individual or associated capacity. What man does not possess an inherent and positive right over, he cannot by any act transfer to another, nor dare he use it otherwise than according to the laws of Him who is the giver of every good and perfect gift. This appears a general position, holding in all things, but especially in regard to that first and invaluable boon, the living and immortal principle breathed into man's nostrils by the breath of God, when man became a living creature; and which the power of God alone has cherished and maintained. If this be correct in the nature of things, no religious system can alter or diminish the obligation.

It is a prima facie case, that the religion which permits such alienation or assumption of the divine prerogative on the part of the creature, possesses not the first character of a true system. Nor can any argument be drawn from the representation (true or false, it matters not for the argument) that the abrogation of such obligations will prove beneficial to the victim in an after state, or to those related, in the present life, if it be