to go to hell, or to one of the many hells provided by the doctrine of Guadama; and he has every reason to suppose that his progenitors have gone there before him. No idea could be more familiar to a Birman, therefore, than that of a place of torment. He is taught that there are eight great hells, four hot, and four cold. Those who are irascible, cruel, or quarrelsome, drunken, dishonest, or lascivious, will, after death, in the great hell seinzi, be torn in pieces with glowing irons, and then be exposed to intense cold: after a time, their limbs will again unite, and again be torn asunder, and this process will be continually repeated for 500 times 360,000 years. Those who, either by action or speech, ridicule their parents, or magistrates, or priests, or old men, or persons studious of the law, also, those who with nets or snares entrap fish or other animals, will be punished in the great hell chalasot, by being laid on a bed of fire, and sawed asunder into eight or ten pieces with burning saws for twice that number of years. Those who kill oxen, swine, goats, or other animals, hunters by profession, warlike kings, ministers and governors guilty of oppression, are to be ground between four burning mountains, in the great hell sengata, for four times the above period. The term of punishment is doubled, with a variation in the torture, in the case of drunkards and persons guilty of abominations. Robbery, theft, guile, fraud, and bribery are visited with a fifth degree of punishment. Beyond these, there is the great hell tapana; the seventh, for infidels, called matapana; and the eighth, which is the most terrible of all, called mahaviri. These great hells are surrounded with various smaller ones, in the description of which the same imbecile pruriency of imagination discovers itself, that gave birth to the monkish legends and fables of the dark ages. The smaller hells are purgatories, to which all are subject, who have spoken angrily, used deceit, uttered scandal or abuse, paid little attention to the words of pious men, or admitted any forbidden thing in their words, actions, or desires.* To ask a Birman, then, whether he would wish to go to hell because his progenitors were there, how offensive soever that word to ears polite,' could not, we humbly submit, be very repulsive to him.

The individual to whom this question was put, had objected to giving up a religion embraced by her parents and ancestors, -the standing plea of Papist, Jew, and heathen for all their errors and abominations in all ages. This same argument is well met in the tract entitled Sootya Durson, drawn up by

See Asiatic Researches. Vol. VI. Art. 8.

Messrs. Yates and Eustace Carey, and of which we hope before long to have a Birman translation: Say not that it is 'proper to adhere to the customs and religion of your fathers. As well might it be said, that the person whose parents were born blind, ought never to use his eyes.' That there is a place of future punishment,-a wrath to come, is not, however, as this Reviewer seems to imagine, a doctrine peculiar to Calvin, but a tenet common to all religions-to the Christian, the Jewish, and the Mohammedan, the old Pagan faith, the Brahminical, and to Buddhism; it is a dictate of natural religion, enforced by that most sure witness,-remorse. What is peculiar to the religion of Jesus Christ, is, salvation from hell. This is a doctrine of which no other religion under the sun knows any thing. The language of the New Testament is: "Whosoever believeth, shall not perish." And the reason given to enforce that enlarged spirit of charity which is the element of all Missionary exertion, is, that "God will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." These sentiments, the Reviewer, whose creed is that of Pope's Universal Prayer, deems unchristianly and repulsive. But surely he must have forgotten the awful language of that Church of which he is a professed member: They also are to 'be had accursed, that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light ' of nature. For holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the 'name of Jesus Christ whereby men must be saved.' With regard to excellent pagans' and the heathen at large, what the followers of Calvin hold, is, that as many as have sinned ⚫ without law, shall also perish without (being judged by that) law, and as many as have sinned under the law, shall be judged by the law; for there is no respect of persons with God.'t

But it is not our intention to follow the Reviewer through all his objectionable statements, which is the less necessary as the article has already drawn forth a spirited vindication of the Missions which are the immediate subject of his misrepresentations, to which we may refer our readers. We shall only advert to one other point. The Reviewer repeats, on the authority of Dubois, the ten times refuted calumny, that the Missionaries systematically attempt to convert and connect

* Ecl. Rev. vol. xxiv. p. 502. + Rom. ii. 11, 12.

A Vindication of Christian Missions in India from a recent Attack in the Quarterly Review. By John Howard Hinton, M.A. 8vo. pp. 30. (Wightman and Cramp). 1826.

themselves with almost exclusively the very dregs of the people. The proportion of converts made from among the Brahmans, is quite large enough to disprove this ridiculous assertion, so far as India is concerned. But the literary labours of Dr. Carey and his colleagues, and the educational and other public institutions at Calcutta, in which these same Missionaries are associated both with English gentlemen and with native Hindoos and Mohammedans of the very first respectability in the Presidency, leave the retailer of the calumny without excuse. Did Swartz or Henry Martyn connect himself exclusively with the dregs of the people? And what will this Reviewer say to the proceedings of Missionaries in Taheite, in Hawaii, in Madagascar, where kings and queens and chiefs have, at their preaching, embraced the faith? And with regard to Mr. Judson, it is equally far from the truth, that he connected himself with the dregs of the people: it is very certain, that he not only had access to personages of the first consideration in Birmah, but that many among the higher orders had begun to discover a spirit of religious inquiry; among whom was the princess who had the direction of the education of the heir apparent. The brother of the reigning monarch had urged Mr. Judson's return to Ava, requesting him to bring with him all the sacred books. Soon after this his second visit to the capital, Mrs. Judson thus writes:

My old friend, the lady of the viceroy of Rangoon, came to see me as soon as she heard of my arrival, and has promised to introduce · me at court on the return of the royal family..........In a day or two after our arrival, Mr. J. introduced me to Prince M. and his Princess: they treated us with the greatest kindness. The Princess took me into her inner appartments, made me a handsome present, and invited me to visit her frequently, and ordered her cart to be prepared to convey me home. Prince M. is intelligent, desirous to obtain foreign information, and has for some time been examining the Christian religion. Oh! that a merciful God would enlighten his mind, and make him a real disciple of the blessed Redeemer. I hope to gain some influence over the Princess, and induce her to read the New Testament, which is now in her own language.' p. 334.

*This was in February 1824. Since then, no accounts have, we believe, been received from Dr. and Mrs. Judson; and fears are entertained that they may have been sacrificed to the Emperor's resentment against the English. A sepoy who escaped from Ava to the British head-quarters at Prome, stated, however, that all the Europeans were imprisoned and in chains, and wholly dependent on charity for subsistence, but that no executions had taken place up to the time of his leaving the capital; and that Mrs. Judson was permitted to live at her own house, and to see Dr. Judson every two or three days.

With regard to the humble character' assumed by these teachers of the Gospel,-the strangest reproach that perhaps ever was cast upon any Christian Missionaries by a Christian man,-we shall only remark, that inconsideration or ignorance could alone lead a person to represent that as any obstacle to the success of a mission addressed to the worshippers of Guadama Buddha, whose priests affect no higher character. In Birmah, indeed, the machinery of instruction seems already prepared in the national institutions, and the zayats may hereafter serve the same purpose that the Jewish synagogues did in the Apostolic age. There, the obstacles to mental and moral improvement are neither so numerous nor so formidable as those which have presented themselves in India, and which are quite sufficient to account for the slow progress which Christianity has hitherto made in that devoted country. Upon this subject, we shall avail ourselves of some very forcible remarks which occur in a paper inserted in a recent Number of the "Friend of India," printed at Serampore.

Among the Chinese, the Burmese, the Persians, and the Arabs, all the treasures of knowledge accumulated by their literati, are indiscriminately open to the great body of the people, without any distinction of rank or birth. But in this country, the case is unhappily different. Those who reared the temple of knowledge, and consecrated it with the relics of their genius, closed its entrance against the great body of the people, admitting none to a participation of its benefits but their own, the sacerdotal class. The body of the community were restrained to the outer court, and every attempt to enter into the temple was resented with great indignation. Motives of perso

nal and family advantage unhappily prevailed in their minds over every sentiment of patriotism. Instead of attempting to raise the nation, they provided only for raising their own class, depositing the product of their labours in a learned language, from the study of which they excluded the shoodra. Thus, to the natural disinclination of the lower orders to mental pursuits, they added the awful sanction of religion, and condemned the shoodra who might be tempted to look into those intellectual treasures from which his country derives so much glory and distinction, to bodily mutilation in this world, and indefinite torment in the next. It was revealed from heaven to the natives of India, that the gods, the guardians of the human race, were desirous that the great bulk of society should continue from age to age in a state of mental darkness. Thus, was established and fortified by whatever is awful and sacred, the most complete system of mental despotism which the ingenuity of man has devised; and for the first time since the creation, was the privilege of acquiring knowledge ren dered hereditary. The great bulk of the people were thus from the moment of their birth consigned to hopeless ignorance, with but one chance of improvement, the distant hope of being born Brahmuns in some future birth, and then permitted to look into the mysteries of knowledge. Every aspirant after improvement, (and nature implants

the desire without any regard to the arbitrary institutions of man,) was nipped in the bud: the barrier between knowledge and ignorance was rendered impassable.

• Hindoo society was thus divided into two distinct classes, the one monopolizing all the learning of the country, the other buried in ignorance. This state of things produced the result which might have been expected, both among the shoodras and the brahmuns. Darkness begat delusion. Reduced to a state of mental villanage, the great bulk of society plunged themselves into the most dangerous errors, and became an easy prey to the monstrous absurdities which are fostered in a state of intellectual darkness. The separation of the soul from intellect, which the Hindoo philosophers have for ages attempted to established in theory, they practically accomplished in the case of the shoodra. By this institution, which elevated the priests to distinction on the general ruin of the mental faculties of their fellowcountrymen, they gained, it is true, power and wealth, but they lost all ardour for progressive improvement. Having declared their doctrines infallible, and threatened with future punishment all who should suspect them of being wrong, they naturally fell deeper into error themselves. The salutary check of public opinion was removed, and all hope of establishing a better system under the auspices of Hindouism, was frustrated. The age of degeneracy which they themselves had predicted, was fully realized. The country, though in possession of the Vedas and six systems of philosophy, is not at this moment a whit further advanced in the career of general improvement, than it was two thousand years ago.'

Upon the whole, we are led to think that Buddhism, which, under different names, numbers more votaries than are ranged under any other creed, presents the most hopeful portion of the vast empire of superstition. It is that system which would seem to oppose the fewest political and moral obstacles to the diffusion of pure and undefiled religion. The Quarterly Reviewer, with what precise view it is difficult to conjecture, remarks that, in the more eastern countries of Asia, very little progress was ever made by Christianity. It appears, he says, to have made some progress at one period on the western ́ coast of India;' but scarcely a trace can be found among the Boudhists of Ava, Siam, Cochin China, China, and Japan, ' of a Christian teacher having ever been among them, notwith'standing the boasted conversions of the Franciscans, Domini'cans, and Jesuits.'* Of these Christian teachers, would to God that no traces and no remembrance in those countries did exist!—The greatest obstacle to the success of a Christian mission in either Siam or Cochin China, would be that which is created by the recollection of the joint enterprise of Louis XIV. and the Jesuits, in alliance with a Greek adventurer, in

* In Cochin China, however, the number of Christians, according to the viceroy and the missionaries, is 70,000.