purity are continually added.

[Sidenote: Treatment of women.
Widows.]
The whole treatment of women has gradually become most tyrannical and
unjust. In very ancient days they were held in considerable respect;
but, for ages past, the idea of woman has been steadily sinking lower
and lower, and her rights have been more and more assailed. The burning
of widows has been prohibited by enactment; but the awful rite would in
many places be restored were it not for the strong hand of the British
government. The practice of marrying women in childhood is still
generally--all but universally--prevalent; and when, owing to the zeal
of reformers, a case of widow-marriage occurs, its rarity makes it be
hailed as a signal triumph. Multitudes of the so-called widows were
never really wives, their husbands (so-called) having died in childhood.
Widows are subjected to treatment which they deem worse than death; and
yet their number, it is calculated, amounts to about twenty-one
millions! More cruel and demoralizing customs than exist in India in
regard to women can hardly be found among the lowest barbarians. We are
glad to escape from dwelling on points so exceedingly painful.

IV.

CONTRAST WITH CHRISTIANITY.

The immense difference between the Hindu and Christian religions has
doubtless already frequently suggested itself to the reader. It will not
be necessary, therefore, to dwell on this topic at very great length.
The contrast forces itself upon us at every point.

[Sidenote: The Aryas and Israelites--their probable future, about 1500 B.C.
Contrast of their after-history.]
When, about fifteen centuries B.C., the Aryas were victoriously
occupying the Panjab, and the Israelites were escaping from the "iron
furnace" of Egypt, if one had been asked which of the two races would
probably rise to the highest conception of the divine, and contribute
most largely to the well-being of mankind, the answer, quite possibly,
might have been, the Aryas. Egypt, with its brutish idolatries, had
corrupted the faith of the Israelites, and slavery had crushed all
manliness out of them. Yet how wonderful has been their after-history!
Among ancient religions that of the Old Testament stands absolutely
unique, and in the fullness of time it blossomed into Christianity. How
is the marvel to be explained? We cannot account for it except by
ascribing it to a divine election of the Israelites and a providential
training intended to fit the