Siva, the third great personage in the Hindu triad, is regarded as the destroyer of all created things. He is represented as He is represented as a naked old mendicant having five heads. Sometimes he is pictured as having only one head, with three eyes, one being in the forehead. He is clothed in

a tiger's skin, wears a necklace of human bones, and carries in his hand a human skull, his body being smeared with ashes. The Hindoos in general regard Siva as possessed of all the attributes and perfections that are peculiar to the Deity; so that not only in the opinion of those who call themselves Saivas, or the votaries of Siva, is he the one great god, but he is such in the opinion of nearly all the people, who when they would speak of God speak of him as the Siva who rules the three worlds: and yet the Siva Purana and the Skanda Purana abound in numerous instances of the follies and vices of this their great god. It would be tedious to enumerate even a few of them. We may, however, mention that he is often spoken of as a bloated beggar wandering about in a state of nudity, chewing intoxicating herbs, and involving himself in inextricable difficulties by his infidelities to his wife. His intrigues with the wives of certain Rishis brought on him their curse. When Vishnu assumed the form of a Mohinee, he was betrayed into an act of the most shameful immorality. . . . He is said to have danced with frantic joy over the bodies of the giants which his wife had slain. He takes special delight in dancing with devils in the grounds where the dead are burned. Having cut off in a fit of angry jealousy the head of Brahma, he is said to have converted the skull into an alms-dish, which he carries about with him. Having become jealous of the penances and austerities performed by certain giants, he drew them away-it is stated by deceit—from their religious services, and so destroyed them. Such is Siva, the Maha Deva of the Hindus.

The wife of Siva is Parvati, the mountain goddess. She has innumerable names, from having appeared in a variety of forms on earth. Her powers are such as to render her an object of terror not only to men, but even to the very gods themselves, who are represented as propitiating her in the most solemn and reverential manner possible. She is honoured too with annual fasts and feasts. Yet the sacred writings of the Hindus present her to the view of her worshippers as a bloody-thirsty demon. Her two principal manifestations were as Doorga and Kali. She was called Doorga from having slain a giant by that name. As Doorga, she delights in war and bloodshed, and drinks the blood of the slain. She demands of her worshippers bloody offerings, and is best pleased with songs and dances of the most obscene and lascivious character. Hence the festival in honour of this goddess celebrated annually in Calcutta creates no small sensation among men and women of all ages and ranks, the Doorga Poorga being a time of bacchanalian joy among the people.

As Kali, this goddess wears a most hideous form. Her person is jet black, she has ten arms, a fiery head, a tongue hanging down to her breasts. She has about her body the skulls and bones of giants, being the trophies of her victory over them, while her hair hangs in loose dishevelled tresses down to her very heels. She is the most sanguinary deity of

India, being unequalled in ferocity by any. Human sacrifices please her most, and next to them are sacrifices of lions and tigers. Self-inflicted tortures, such as cutting one's flesh and burning one's own body, give her great pleasure and delight. Thieves and murderers find in her a patron and protectress, who, if propitiated with incantations and oblations, will be sure to befriend them in their dangerous enterprises. And yet for all this there is no deity more generally worshipped than Kali. She has been well called the great goddess whom the people of India adore. Under no circumstances do they omit celebrating her festivals, and offering her the prescribed sacrifices and oblations.

Having thus given some account of the three principal gods and goddesses of the Hindus, we shall now add a few words in reference to the two sons of Siva, who are worshipped as much as their great parent. These two sons are Ganesa and Kartikeya.

Ganesa was born of Siva and Parvati when they assumed the form of elephants. He is the god of knowledge, and is represented as a fat pigbellied man with an elephant's head and four arms. He is universally adored. Not only are temples erected to him and festivals observed in honour of him, but his image is found everywhere, in the corners of streets, under trees, and in the temples of the other gods. He is invoked at the commencement of every enterprise, while brokers and traders hold him in especial reverence. In fact none omit to worship him, knowledge and prudence being necessary for all. Of this god the Puranas say that by false quotations from the Vedas and by sophistical reasonings he made the parents of his mistresses believe that he had made the circuit of the earth, which he had never done, and that by this means he recommended himself to their notice. In popular mythology, he has no wife, but sits at the thresholds of temples and other conspicuous places, expecting a bride as beautiful as his mother.

Kartikeya, who is represented with six heads and six arms, is the other son of Siva. He is the god of war and pleasure. The legends relative to his birth are far too indelicate to permit of their being here introduced. He commands the armies of the gods, and bestows strength of body on his votaries. He is worshipped in South India by the names of Subramanyan and Kanda Swami, and is honoured with temples and festivals. The Skanda Purana, which gives an account of him and his deeds, represents this god as taking special pleasure in amusements and enjoyments of all kinds. It would seem that at one time he was regarded as the patron of thieves, who had to invoke his aid previous to setting out on their predatory excursions, a Brahmin assisting at the ceremonies; but this honour now belongs to Kali.

Another of the celebrated gods we have to notice is Indra, who is regarded as the Lord of the Lower Heavens. During the Vedic period of the world he was invested with the highest attributes of divinity, and was invoked with the most ardent and unwearied devotion. During the the present period, which we may denominate the Puranic, he is considered as inferior to the three gods of the Hindu triad, but is yet the object of adoration among the people, who address prayers to him in the time of drought. The Brahmins invoke him in particular at the Shradha or

obsequies in honour of deceased ancestors. This very god, however, is spoken of as guilty of the grossest immoralities, having debauched the wife of his own Guru or spiritual teacher. He is a covetous and jealous god, and is displeased when offerings are made to other deities. His thefts were numerous, of flowers, of horses, and whatever else he desired. His name became proverbial among the sages for whatsoever was low and immoral, and yet Indra is a god.

There is one more deity left of which we intended to speak. This is Krishna, the chief of the terrestrial gods, and one of the incarnations of Vishnu, in which he manifested forth his glory in a manner unknown before. The Hindus throughout the length and breadth of India regard Krishna with feelings of enthusiastic veneration, and worship him as a kind and gracious being, several festivals being celebrated in the year on his account; but the Puranas which speak of his birth and acts set before us a being whose vices and crimes would be a disgrace to even the most abandoned and profligate among men. He seduced the wife of a virtuous and holy man, and made her his mistress; he intrigued with the daughters of the land in which he passed his early years; he ordered his friend to utter a deliberate lie, telling him that the Shastras sanction falsehoods under certain circumstances; he robbed and murdered as occasion required, everything being done in the most merciless and reckless manner; and yet no god commands the love of the millions of India so much as the beautiful, the benignant, and the benevolent Krishna.

This brief, and necessarily imperfect, sketch of the character of a few of the Hindu deities 1 will suffice to show that, as long as the people of India continue to believe in the gods which their sacred books propose to them as objects of worship, they cannot be expected to be anything different from what they are now-a nation sunk in practices which dishonour and degrade humanity.

The Puranas, which contain these accounts of their gods, are read and expounded publicly in the temples of the Hindus, crowds flocking thither to listen to stories which destroy not only all delicacy of feeling but all sense of right. The Puranas are read also by females in their own houses, as well as to the members of a whole family assembled for the purpose. They are not regarded by the generality of Hindu readers as works of fiction to be perused merely for amusement; nor, again, as recounting allegories or poetic fables, which will only bear a philosophic application. On the contrary, the quarrels, the intrigues, and the wars of these deities are looked upon as veritable events that are simple matters of fact, demanding the belief of the worshippers of the sacred triad and their illustrious offspring.

If then Brahma, the author of the Vedas, the world's great teacher, be represented as guilty of deliberate falsehoods; if Vishnu, the guardian god of the Hindus and the preserver of order, be spoken of as violating the

1 Such readers as wish for further information on this subject may consult with advantage the following works: Kindersley's Hindu Literature, Ward's View of the Religion and Literature of the Hindus, Moor's Hindu Pantheon, Vans Kennedy's Hindu Mythology, The Asiatic Researches, Wilson's Vishnu Purana, and Max Müller's Comparative Mythology.

laws of truth and moral purity; if Siva, the avenger of human wrongs and the punisher of crimes, be said to have perpetrated the vilest deeds; if the great goddesses the Hindus worship are patronesses of perjury, theft, and murder; if the inferior gods are equal to the superior gods in vice and crime can it be expected that their votaries will be men and women of a widely differing principle and practice? Hence it is that we find among the people so little regard for truth or virtue. The young grow up under the influence of a religion that virtually sanctions drunkenness and gambling, falsehood and perjury, hatred and revenge, cunning and deceit, fraud and dishonesty, treachery and conjugal infidelity, robbery and murder.

The gods and goddesses that a Hindu worships are patterns to him not of virtue but of vice. His religion "is to the Hindu the great source of impiety and corruption of manners: and, instead of returning from his temple or his religious services improved in knowledge, grieved for his moral deficiencies, and anxious to cultivate a greater regard for the interests of morality and religion, his passions are inflamed and his mind polluted to such a degree that he carries the pernicious lessons of the temple, or the festival, into all the walks of private life. His very religion becomes his greatest bane, and, where he should have drunk of the water of life, he swallows the poison that infallibly destroys him."

To assert then, that Hinduism is a harmless form of faith, or that its ethics and philosophy are sufficient to rescue the people from the state of moral degradation in which they now are sunk, is to assert what is not true, what is plainly contradicted by facts. The pernicious effects, domestic, social, and national, produced by the Polytheism of India are visible on every side, and the only hope for the people is in their being taught to see for themselves these evils.

Christian education therefore, we conclude, is needed to break the chains with which a gigantic system of priestcraft has for ages enthralled them.

THE PROVINCIAL SYSTEM IMPERILLED IN AUSTRALIA.

WE inserted in our pages last November a paragraph from the Adelaide Church Chronicle, complaining that the Metropolitan of Australia has, at variance with his Letters Patent, established a "Provincial Synod of New South Wales," to the exclusion of all the dioceses of his Province outside the limits of that colony, and to the exclusion also of even a part of his own diocese which is so situate; and that thus "a great wrong has been done to the Australian Church," inasmuch as the Metropolitan has thereby practically "put it out of his power to summon a Provincial Synod of Australia," since he "could not consistently sit in two distinct Provincial Synods." The anomalous organization thus commented on had already engaged our attention, and the recent Australian mails have brought tidings of the local continuance of the controversy.

In answer to the complaint above recited, an article appeared in January in the (Sydney) Australian Churchman, contesting the accuracy of the representations on which it was founded; but with what success our

readers will judge from the subsequent rejoinder from Adelaide, the major part of which we annex. In addition, however, to the criticisms on that article made by the writer below, we should not omit to point out that the Australian Churchman dropped an ominous-looking hint that on the death of the present Metropolitan " another Metropolitan may not be appointed." The Adelaide writer says:

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"Your reply is that the Provincial Synod of New South Wales does not profess to be the Provincial Synod of Australia; and that the Dioceses of New South Wales are entitled to be regarded ecclesiastically as a Province;' that in short they could have no other title than a Province.

"To this I would answer that the Bishop of Sydney, as Metropolitan of the Australian dioceses, has no ecclesiastical right to convene a Provincial Synod of New South Wales; and that, so long as he is Metropolitan of Australia, a few dioceses in his Province have no right to meet and call themselves a Provincial Synod. What would be thought of the Archbishop of Canterbury summoning a convocation, not of the Province of Canterbury, but of the dioceses of the east of England; or of the dioceses in the west of England associating themselves into the Province of Wessex? What precedent is there for a Province within a Province ? or for a Metropolitan to preside over two Provinces, one Province being but a portion of the other? The dioceses of New South Wales have a perfect right to meet for conference, on account of their accidental connexion with New South Wales, but not to form themselves into a Province, to the exclusion of the other Australian dioceses. If the Bishop of Sydney were not Metropolitan of Australia, it would not matter. There would be one Province in New South Wales, and the other dioceses might form another Province under another Metropolitan. But at present this is not possible. He is the Metropolitan of Australia, under Letters Patent, and it would be an act of schism to meet without him. Is it not equally an act of schism for him to form a Provincial Synod merely of one part of his Province ?

"It may be too much to say that he has altogether put it out of his power to summon an Australian Provincial Synod: but it is clear that he has placed himself in an inconsistent position: that he has confused the local boundaries of the colony of New South Wales with the ecclesiastical boundaries of his Province: that by means of the local act he has thrown great difficulties in the way of an Australian Provincial Synod: that, as he cannot serve two masters, he must abide by the decisions either of the Province of New South Wales, or of Australia; and the question is, by which he will abide? Between the regulations of Diocesan and Provincial Synods, it is not always easy to draw the line, though for the most part possible; but who shall decide between the functions of two Provincial Synods, sitting almost simultaneously? Again, could the dioceses of Australia meet upon equal terms in Synod, when many are bound not merely by their local Acts of Parliament, which affect the respective dioceses only, but when the Metropolitan and the dioceses most intimately connected with him are bound by a local act affecting them as a Province ? Of course the New South Wales Act would not attempt to legislate for the Provincial Synod of Australia; but as long as the Bishop of Sydney is Metropolitan of the Australian dioceses, ought he to have accepted