vail upon to
send, are educated with the utmost care. In our religion we retain
Brahma--by whom we mean the one supreme God of all--and abolish all
notions of the saving efficacy of merely ceremonial observances,
holding that God has given to man the choice of right and wrong,
and the dignity of exercising his powers in such accordance with his
convictions as shall secure his eternal happiness. To these cardinal
principles we subjoin the most unlimited toleration for other
religions, recognizing in its fullest extent the law of the adaptation
of the forms of relief to the varying moulds of character resulting
from race, climate and all those great conditions of existence which
differentiate men one from another."

[Illustration: CHARIOT OF THE PROCESSION OF THE RATTJATTRA, AT
JAGHERNATH.]

"How," I asked, "do the efforts of the Christian missionaries comport
with your own sect's?"

"Substantially, we work together. With the sincerest good wishes for
their success--for every sensible man must hail any influence
which instills a single new idea into the wretched Bengalee of low
condition--I am yet free to acknowledge that I do not expect the
missionaries to make many converts satisfactory to themselves, for
I am inclined to think them not fully aware of the fact that in
importing Christianity among the Hindus they have not only brought the
doctrine, but they have brought the _Western form_ of it, and I fear
that they do not recognize how much of the nature of substance this
matter of form becomes when one is attempting to put new wine into old
bottles. Nevertheless, God speed them! I say. We are all full of hope.
Signs of the day meet us everywhere. It is true that still, if you put
yourself on the route to Orissa, you will meet thousands of pilgrims
who are going to the temple at Jaghernath (what your Sunday-school
books call Juggernaut) for the purpose of worshiping the hideous idols
which it contains; and although the English policemen accompany the
procession of the Rattjattra--when the idol is drawn on the monstrous
car by the frenzied crowd of fanatics--and enforce the law which now
forbids the poor insane devotees from casting themselves beneath
the fatal wheels, still, it cannot be denied that the devotees are
_there_, nor that Jaghernath is still the Mecca of millions of debased
worshipers. It is also true that the pretended exhibitions of the
tooth of Buddha can still inspire an ignorant multitude of people