ration of India resemble Rome's
government of its provinces in the seven centuries from the reduction
of Sicily, 240 B.C., to the fall of the Western Empire, 476 A.D., so
much as in the relation of nascent Christianity to the pagan cults
which had made society what it was. Carey and the brotherhood stood
alone in facing, in fighting with divine weapons, in winning the first
victories over the secular as well as spiritual lawlessness which fell
before Paul and his successors down to Augustine and his City of God.
The gentle and reasonable but none the less divinely indignant father
of modern missions brings against Hindoo and Mohammedan society
accusations no more railing than those in the opening passage of the
Epistle to the Romans, and he brings these only that, following Paul,
he may declare the more excellent way.

As Serampore, or its suburbs, is the most popular centre of Jaganath
worship next to Pooree in Orissa, the cruelty and oppression which
marked the annual festival were ever before the missionaries' eyes. In
1813 we find Dr. Claudius Buchanan establishing his veracity as an
eye-witness of the immolation of drugged or voluntary victims under the
idol car, by this quotation from Dr. Carey, whom he had to describe at
that time to his English readers, as a man of unquestionable integrity,
long held in estimation by the most respectable characters in Bengal,
and possessing very superior opportunities of knowing what is passing
in India generally: "Idolatry destroys more than the sword, yet in a
way which is scarcely perceived. The numbers who die in their long
pilgrimages, either through want or fatigue, or from dysenteries and
fevers caught by lying out, and want of accommodation, is incredible.
I only mention one idol, the famous Juggernaut in Orissa, to which
twelve or thirteen pilgrimages are made every year. It is calculated
that the number who go thither is, on some occasions, 600,000 persons,
and scarcely ever less than 100,000. I suppose, at the lowest
calculation, that in the year 1,200,000 persons attend. Now, if only
one in ten died, the mortality caused by this one idol would be 120,000
in a year; but some are of opinion that not many more than one in ten
survive and return home again. Besides these, I calculate that 10,000
women annually burn with the bodies of their deceased husbands, and the
multitudes destroyed in other methods would swell the catalogue to an
extent almost exceeding credibi