nothing false, not to touch the tables with his foot, nor even to shake the dishes; for it is added, a tear sends the messes to the restless ghosts, anger to the foes, falsehood to the dogs, contact with the foot to the demons, agita tion to sinners. The institutes also direct the Bramin ❝to begin and end a lecture on the Veda with pronouncing to himself the syllable Om; for unless this syllable precede, his learning will slip away from him; and unless it follow, nothing will be long retained."

Is there any thing like these contemptible puerilities in the institutions of Moses? He prescribed certain ceremonies in worshipping, to preserve order, to suit the Jewish taste, to preclude whimsical or idolatrous rites, to guard and perpetuate the worship of the true God, to assist the sublime devotion of the Hebrew temple; a temple, in which were sung the excellent songs of David. These songs contained the most pure and fervent sentiments of the human heart, addressed not to inferior gods or to dead ancestors, but to a Being of infinite knowledge holiness and mercy.

and

power,

A great part of the Hindoo religion, and indeed of all the systems of antient paganism, consists in unnatural austerities. The people in question carry such mortifications to a singular length. Their restrictions with respect to diet are exceedingly fanciful and burdensome. For instance, their code prohibits the use of a spirit distilled from rice for this whimsical reason-" since the spirit of rice is distilled from mala, or the filthy refuse of the grain; and since mala is also the name for sin; let none but the sudra drink that spirit." Wine too was thought by the eastern nations to have proceeded from some evil genius, and was therefore forbidden. This prohibition was copied by Mahomet. How much more just and liberal is

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Moses, who only forbids wine to the priests during their attendance in the sanctuary, and to those who for a voluntary time subjected themselves to the law of the Nazarites. On ordinary occasions the priests, equally with the people, were indulged in a temperate and thankful use of that salutary liquid. The pious Psalmist justly blesses God for this cordial, which maketh glad the heart of man; and Christianity expressly allows its ministers a little wine for the purposes of health. The institutes of Menu abound with similar regulations. They forbid priests to eat flesh meat, and clarified butter, till they have been first touched with some holy texts well recited, because they are the food of gods. The genuine Hindoos abhor the killing, and much more the eating of any thing, which had life. They reckon it abominable for a man to wish to enlarge his own flesh with the flesh of another creature. Their laws enact the following penalty for killing and eating any animal-As many hairs as grow on the beast, so many similar deaths shall the slayer of it in this world endure in the next." The restrictions of other antient nations respecting food, especially of the Egyptians, savored of like superstition. According to Herodotus, Plutarch, and Juvenal, the Egyptians ab stained from sea salt and fish, because they considered the sea as the excrement of Typhon, the malevolent deity. They also abhorred the use of onions and beans, and of wool in garments; for which Plutarch accounts in the following manner. Having a prejudice against matter in general, they had a stronger against excrementitious matter, and every thing that promoted it.b Hair and wool they viewed as excrements; and a the eating of onions and beans, beside being too nutritious, and thereby increasing the matter, and especially the fat of the body,

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which they regarded as excrementitious, was the occasion, they thought, of offensive excrements." How different, how unspeakably more rational are the Mosaic restrictions in the article of diet! In these we see nothing arbitrary, puerile or unaccountable, as we showed in a former lecture; but the rules now referred to wear a complexion totally opposite.

Similar remarks might be made on the other austerities recited by Dr. Priestley. For example, pilgrimages to distant rivers for the purpose of purifying the soul by bathing in their waters; the dreadful methods used for mortifying the body, such as living in forests upon raw herbs and roots, standing whole days on tiptoe, exposing the flesh to hot fires, heavy showers, and pinching frosts, living solitary and silent, without external heat, and without a mansion, renouncing every earthly connection and enjoyment, completely subduing all the passions and senses, and wholly occupied in the con templation of God and of truth. Among the numerous fasts of this nation there is one of a singular purifying efficacy, consisting in abstinence from food for twelve days together in honor of the moon. On the eleventh day the worshipper eats nothing, but drinks the urine of a cow. At length he reaches the highest stage of purity, and lives on nothing but air. as one of the greatest purifiers. a festival called the feast of fire, teen days; in which the devotees walk over burning coals covering a space of forty feet in length; they walk faster or slower according to the ardor of their devotion. The most extravagant, yet not uncommon act of their religion, is devoting themselves to a certain and painful death by casting themselves under the chariot wheels of

This people esteem fire Accordingly they have which continues eigh

their idols, when moving in procession, or women's voluntarily burning themselves alive with the dead bodies of their husbands. In short, the Hindoo religion, though celebrated by most travellers for its singular mildness, was originally as cruel as any other. Like all other old systems of paganism, it enjoined human sacrifices, as appears from the Vedas. But the religion of the Old Testament, though stigmatized by infidels as odious and sanguinary, has no trace of the cruel austerities abovenamed. In particular it condemns those barbarous rites, and especially the practice of human sacrifices, as the greatest of those abominations, for which God destroyed the Canaanites. · Another striking feature of the Hindoo religion, is its system of penances, or atonements for particular offences. By the law of Moses a person was unclean, who had touched a dead body. But with this people the person, who only hears that a relation is dead in a distant country, is reckoned unclean. A severe penance of five days is enjoined on the offender, who drinks water in a vessel, in which there has been spiritous liquor; but for drinking that liquor itself he is doomed to drink more spirit in flame, or to drink till his death the urine of a cow. The effect of rightly pronouncing certain sacred words is peculiarly great in the business of expiation. This effect extends even to the dead, whose manes are supposed to feed upon, and receive benefit from the oblations of the living. Hence the law of Moses, to counteract these prevailing superstitions, forbids all sacrifices or religious honors to the dead. It also forbids the vain hope of expiating real crimes, or of cleansing the soul from moral defilement by any outward ceremonies. It requires in such cases hearty repentance and amendment.

Another distinguishing trait in the religion of the Hin

es.

doos, is their extreme veneration for the cow, and the great use they make of this animal in their sacred rites. It is impossible to trace this superstition to any sure or satisfactory source. Mr. Holwell, a learned writer on the antiquities of this people, accounts for their extraordinary reverence for this animal from the following circumstance. The Hindoos say that fallen spirits are doomed to transmigrate into eighty seven different bodies, which are so many ascending stages of purgation, preparatory to their entering human bodies. They likewise hold that the body of the cow is the highest of these previous stagThis idea naturally attaches to this creature a preeminent virtue and dignity. This solution would account for the fact, if a proportional respect were paid to the animal or form, which immediately preceded the cow in the climax of purification. But this is very far from being the case. It is therefore more probable that the framers of the Hindoo, and also of the Egyptian system, selected this mild and useful creature, as a suitable emblem of some deity or divine attribute, and thus laid the foundation for regarding her with sacred veneration. I shall recite a very few instances of this veneration, and of religious penance founded upon it; and if the recital be offensive to every sober and delicate mind, how much more disgusting must be the practice of them; and what a perverted judgment and taste must those have, who can prefer these customs to the institutions of Moses! For various kinds of theft the sacred code of this people dooms the offender to make atonement by "swallowing the five pure things produced from a cow, viz. milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung." One of their grand penances consists in eating for a whole day a composition of the above ingredients, and then fasting entire