religious devotion; to encourage
various forms of voluntary self-torture and self-mutilation; to outrage
girls under a certain age.

How much hath the Spirit of Christ wrought in that land during the century
by saving the lives of millions of poor innocent creatures from the
ravages of a savage faith and an inhuman religious devotion!

Thus, in India today the laws protect the people, old and young, from the
old murderous customs of its religion, and gives a sanctity to life and a
protection to the innocent and a check to the mad, suicidal tendency of
the religious fanatic, such as India never before knew. And all this has
been done in the teeth of their religion and notwithstanding the
persistent cries and protests of the religious leaders of the people.

I have already mentioned the fact that the obscene and the impure have in
many ways been fostered by that faith, and that the government has thus
far been unable to find courage to apply to religious temples, symbols and
rites that legislation which it has enacted against the obscene in
literature and in the ordinary life of the people. And yet, we are
encouraged to find there this anomaly today,--that men, for translating and
publishing obscene portions of the Hindu scriptures, have been punished in
accordance with this law. The day will, doubtless, soon come, it must
come, when this legislation against obscenity will be enforced without
exception in favour of temple cars and sacred objects and rites.

In reference to caste observance the State has been more courageous and
has absolutely ignored class distinction among its subjects. No one who
has not lived in the East can realize how radical and important this
policy is in that land of class distinctions based upon religious
injunction and revelation. It seemed absurd and unrighteous to that people
that the august and sacred Brahman and the unclean and outcaste Pariah
should be regarded as equal before the law, and that a pauper should
enjoy, with a prince, the same protection and blessings from the State.
Regardless of immemorial custom and religious injunction, the government
has become the great leveller--it has ignored entirely, in all the rights
and privileges which it has to confer, every caste distinction and class
privilege and disability which Hinduism had created and sacredly
maintained for centuries. And it adheres stiffly to its Christian
principle of the equal rights of all its subjects.

(_b_) Mor