numerable destructive austerities, show that as it respects its intellectual and moral condition the people are sitting in darkness and the region of the shadow of death." The appalling description of Job appears almost literally applicable to it :—"A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness." Job, x. 22. Bible, Missionary, and Education Societies are dispelling the darkness.

"The day has broke which never more shall close."

The author has seen a Bengalee Christian and a Preacher, who, when a boy, set fire to the pile that consumed the body of his father and his living mother to ashes! Behold the triumph of Christianity. In humble dependence on the Divine blessing, let means adequate to the great work of the illumination of India and the East be applied, and all the atrocity of heathenism—its idols—its.temples, will ere long be seen no more. Let the friends of humanity and religion prosecute their arduous work; for their "labour is not in vain in the Lord,"

It is not unfrequently asked by some—Has not Britain formed a connexion with India, and agreed to govern it upon such terms as to admit the perpetration of these evils? Does not such a contract with India exist? The late C. Grant, Esq., in his " Observations on the state of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain." written in 1792, and submitted to the Hon. Court of Directors in 1797, thus answers these enquiries:Are we bound for ever to preserve all the enormities in the Hindoo system? Have we become the guardians of every monstrous principle and practice which it contains? Are we pledged to support for all generations by the authority of our Government, and the power of our arms, the miseries which ignorance and knavery have so long entailed upon a large portion of the human race? Is this the part which a free, a humane, and an enlightened people, a nation itself professing principles diametrically opposite to those in question, has engaged to act towards its own subjects. It would be too absurd to maintain that any engagement of this kind exists;—that Great Britain is under any obligation, direct or implied, to uphold errors and usages, gross and fundamentally subversive of the first principles of reason, morality, and religion. In Hindostan, mothers of families are taken from the midst of their children, who have

just lost their father also, and by a most diabolical complication of force and fraud are driven into the flames! Shall we be in all time to come as we have hitherto been, passive spectators of this unnatural wickedness?* In the suppression of infanticide at Saugur; sitting Dhurna; exempting Brahmuns from the penalty of the law, &c., we have acted according to just sentiments, and the abolition of Suttees may be accomplished with equal facility and safety. This has been shown from the concurrent testimony of many Europeans resident in India, and from the Natives themselves. The rite is not an integral part of Hindoism, but an abuse fostered by the ignorant, superstitious, and unprincipled. It is the evident and imperious duty of Britain to spread her protecting shield over these defenceless widows and orphans.

"Who that sees Great Britain yet upon her throne, after a conflict in which she has survived the united assaults of the European nations, and has equally triumphed over the arts and arms of her oriental enemies—who that beholds her sitting as a queen,' and, after having humbled the Tyrant of Europe and raised the nations he had oppressed, now legislating in peace, for her own remote empire in the East;

who that beholds her enriched by commerce, and ennobled by conquest, will hesitate to pronounce that this is peculiarly the time to interpose for the deliverance of her own subjects from the oppression of a sanguinary superstition, and to prove to the world that she has herself been preserved amidst surrounding ruin, for no ordinary purposes."✝ And what are those purposes, but being the eminently honoured means of promoting the universal diffusion of the principles of that Gospel, by which the language of prophecy shall be fulfilled :—" All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

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* Par. Papers, vol. v. 1827, p. 33. Poynder's Speech, p. 214.

A VOICE FROM INDIA;

OR

THE HORRORS OF A SUTTEE.

What means that gloomy funeral pyre,
On Ganges' banks its tall head raising,
And those red gleams of murky fire,

E'en now around its broad base blazing?
What mean those wild and frantic yells,
As from a thousand throats resounding,
With drums and trumpet's awful peals,
From distant hills and woods rebounding?
Ah! 'tis a dark and murd'rous deed,

Which cruel Brahmuns there are doing,
Well may the heart turn sick, and bleed,
While such a dreadful theme pursuing!
For see! on that detested pile,

By her lord's corpse the widow lying,
While Moloch, with a fiendish smile,

Looks on, and views his victim dying.
See how she writhes! hark to her screams,
As now the lurid flames enfold her!
But all is vain, no pity gleams

In the stern face of one beholder!
Her kindred stand with hearts of stone,
Cased by the demon Superstition;
Hear her last agonizing groan,

Nor heave a sigh at her condition!

Ye British matrons, husbands, sires,
Your souls with soft compassion glowing,
O! haste to quench the horrid fires

Whence human blood is daily flowing!
With your loved King and Country plead,
Implore the Senate of your nation,
That British India may be freed

From scenes of such abomination.

And send, O! send the Gospel forth
To the dark haunts of superstition!
That they may learn a Saviour's worth,
And find in him sin's true remission.
Arise, thou Sun of Righteousness!

On heathen lands pour forth thy splendour;
Then love and peace their homes shall bless,
And their steeled hearts grow soft and tender.
Matlock Bath.

ELLEN.

DESTRUCTION AND PRESERVATION OF INFANTS IN INDIA. Page 113.