FEMALE SOCIETY. 87 struction of slavery, will go down, to posterity covered with honour and renown; will be held in everlasting remembrance, while the memory of the wicked shall rot; then, what will be the joys, what the awards of grace, what the exalted honours which await those pious and excellent females who will rise up like a host to extricate the daughters of India from their misery and their degradation? I rejoice to find that a society has existed for some years, to send out ladies to superintend female schools in India, China, and the East. From the facts which are stated in this chapter, and from the utter neglect that is shown to female education in these heathen lands, no object can be of greater importance, and every one who desires the welfare of his race, must wish that great success may crown. the undertaking. Difficulties will, no doubt, arise in the prosecution of the scheme, and such a society will, in its infancy, have to struggle with adversities similar to those which every benevolent institution has been obliged to submit to. Great wisdom, prudence, and devotedness will be required on the part of its directors and its friends to overcome prejudices, to surmount the scorn and contempt of the world, and to remove the fears and apprehensions which many of the best friends of Zion entertain respecting it. But should it outlive, as I trust it will do, all the anxieties of its friends, and all the scandals of its foes, what a heavenly spectacle will it present to 88 FEMALE SOCIETY. our view of pious and devoted females-not only overcoming the weakness and timidity natural to their sex-not only leaving their homes, their friends and their country to which their warm affections render them so attached, and casting themselves almost without protection, and without guardians, apon the care of their Heavenly Father to pursue a career of mercy-but exposing themselves to the storm and the tempest for the sake of their Lord, braving the dangers of the ocean, and the toils and difficulties of a foreign clime to bring back the wanderers to the fold, and venturing to contend, on a dangerous strand, with the powers of evil, to rescue their sex from infamy and shame. My heart warms to this sister band. May they never want the protection, the friendship, the care, and the superintendence of their Almighty friend; and since theirs is a cause beset with greater trials, privations and sorrows, than ours, may grace and strength and power continually rest upon them from above. I hail them, with delight, on their career of benevolence. What though there should be no earthly reward! the Lord will be their inheritance. What though no honour nor favour, nor applause of men should animate their minds in the day of exertion and trial! the light of heaven, the approbation of their Master and a harvest of precious souls will be a higher recompense. What though peculiar temptations, and disasters and sufferings should threaten sometimes to overwhelm their spirits! FEMALE SOCIETY. 89 yet goodness and mercy will follow them all the days of their life; their dwelling-place will be in the house of our God for ever; and an entrance will be administered to them abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour. AND COMMERCE THE PAST AND THE FUTURE-A BRAMIN AT BELLARY-THE SIONARIES. WHAT is caste? is a question which is often put to a missionary, in his visits to the churches, at home; and it is one which is really difficult to answer, since its ramifications, in the Hindoo system, are so deep, and its evils so numerous and numerous and appalling. Some have considered it a civil rite, while others have maintained that it is a religious one. But the truth is, it is so incorporated with the whole superstition, that it is both civil and religious, as far as Hindoo society can be said to partake of the one and the other. It is the adamantine chain which binds the distinct masses of the community to DIVISION OF TRIBES. 91 gether, and links them to their gross superstition; it is the foundation on which the fabric of their idolatry rests, and without which it must fall 1; it is that fatal, that retributive, that irresistible destiny which connects them with the life that was, the life that is, and the life that is to come. In the division which Bramha has made of mankind, the Bramins are the priesthood-the first order among men-the most sacred and divine of the race-and the most fortunate in securing every right and privilege to themselves; the Cheitras are the nobility to whose care are entrusted the kingly office, the affairs of government, the military and civil departments of the state; the Veishas are the merchants, the farmers, and those who, in England, would be denominated the respectable classes of society; the Shoodras are the great body of the people, and constitute the artificers, the tradesmen, the inferior agriculturists, and the working classes of all kinds. But these four tribes are divided and subdivided into many other castes who eat and drink together, intermarry among themselves, and have little intercourse with their kinsmen of the same general order. In addition to these, there are the Pariars who are esteemed the outcasts of society, the refuse of mankind, the serfs of the soil-the men of infamy and degradation-the beings who are unworthy of the divine protection, and of a name or a dwelling among the offspring of Bramha, and who are consigned to ignominy and subjection for ever. |