ABOLITION OF IDOLATRY IN INDIA. wrote: 373 "On the 20th ult., the native Christians tore up their idol Sheeb, or Seera, of that form commonly called Linga. It is a massy stone, of some hundred pounds' weight. The demolition of the idol has produced a wonderful effect upon the people. Ramjhee, the owner of the temple, says that when the Destroyer, for that is the meaning of the idol's name, was taken out of his residence, the whole village ran together in perfect amazement, one crying one thing, and another another. Each individual seemed to say, 'Great is Sheeb of the Hin to the subject. Island after island, one group after | villages, containing about twenty-nine thousand another, has cast its idols "to the moles and to the inhabitants, and near to Calcutta. In a letter to bats," and adopted the profession of Christianity. the London Missionary Society, dated April 13, In immediate connexion with this change, barba- 1826, Mr. Trawin, one of their missionaries, thus rous customs have been abolished, useful arts have been introduced and cultivated, laws have been established, commerce has been commenced,-in short, a rapid and pleasing state of transition from barbarism to civilization has accompanied the spread of the Gospel. The progress of recent missionary operations in Polynesia, as detailed in the delightful work of the apostolic Williams, forms one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the world's improvement; and the wide circulation of that book-amounting to about thirty-five thousand copies—is a proof that very many have deemed it so. Leaving our readers to obtain fur-doos.' 'The impression,' observed Ramjhee, 'was ther information respecting the abolition of idola- like the shock of an earthquake.' try in the South Sea Islands from the above source, we shall merely here advert to the remarkable scene represented in our engraving-the natives of Rarotonga laying their idols before the feet of Messrs. Williams and Pitman, in 1827. These missionaries, who were paying a visit to the island, were one day requested to take their seats outside the house; and, on doing so, observed a large concourse of people approaching them with heavy burdens. These were their idols, fourteen in number, each consisting of a long piece of aito or iron-wood, about four inches in diameter, carved with rude imitations of the human head at one end, and with an obscene figure at the other. The smallest of these idols was about five yards in length; and they were wrapped round with native cloth until they were two or three yards in circumference. Each had a string of small pieces of polished pearl shells, which were said to be the manara, or soul of the god. One of these was sent to England, for the missionary museum; and some were used as rafters in a chapel then building, the cloth being previously removed. Before closing the present paper, we proceed briefly to notice the commencement of the abolition of idolatry in India. The greater comparative civilization of the Hindoos, and the influence exerted by the educated Brahmins, combined with other circumstances, upon which we cannot at present enter, have rendered the duties of our missionaries in India more arduous and discouraging than in many other places. In some cases, the heralds of the Gospel have had men to deal with whose minds have presented almost a perfect blank; but here they have to demolish a vast amount of error, before they can reach the minds of their hearers. Instead of the simply ignorant, they have to contend with men of learning and subtlety. But even in India idolatry has begun to totter and fall. The first idol was abolished there in 1826, at Rammakalchoke, a place in the centre of a great number of "The rumour of the demolished idol has spread through all the region round about, and we cannot but hope that much good will be the result. On the 27th of last month, the idol was brought to Kidderpore, and presented to us by its owners, who have turned away from it with abhorrence. This is the first instance that has occurred in Bengal; and it is important to add, that the rooting out of this idol from his dwelling-place, by the hands of its owners, and consigning it to destruction, has proceeded from the principles of the Gospel. "I should now subjoin a particular account of this idol, but the history is too indecent to see the light. Sheeb has more worshippers than all the other gods put together; and scarcely any merit is thought equal to that of building a temple in honour of him. It is painful to add, that notwithstanding the dreadful obscenity which is connected with the worship of this image, the Hindoo females pay their adoration daily before it. In honour of Sheeb, also, a most abominable festival, called churuk pooga, is annually kept. And could our friends in Europe witness, but for a few moments, the heart-rending spectacles that on these occasions are everywhere exhibited in Bengal, they would surely pray more fervently, and labour more abundantly, that the kingdom of God might come among the people of this benighted land *." Such, then, are a few of the triumphant results of missionary exertion,-results teeming with the most invaluable benefits to the human race. Some of the many blessings for which the abolition of idolatry has made way, may form the subject of future papers. While we rejoice over what has been accomplished, let us not forget how much yet remains to be done,-how many heathen nations yet remain in darkness and misery; "From many an ancient river, Their land from error's chain." * Evangelical Magazine, 1826, p. 529, &c. We have seen that the work of evangelizing the heathen, though difficult, is one that has been, to a great extent, accomplished; we know that it is prompted by a divine command, that it has the encouragement of divine promises; let us, therefore, join in renewed exertions for urging forward the chariot of the Gospel, and in diffusing, through its agency, the highest blessings of civilization. CIVILIZING RESULTS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. NO. II. ELEVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN. EVIDENCES of national advancement in the scale of civilization are of various kinds. The security of property, the certain and equitable administration of justice, personal liberty, general education, the progress of the arts, and the facilities for communication, are commonly regarded as among the most important proofs of the social improve ment of a people. However much these advantages may, individually or collectively, indicate the state of a civilized nation, its real advancement in social elevation may fairly be estimated by the degree in which a people regard the female character. No nation can be regarded as truly civilized, which does not acknowledge and honour Woman as the equal and fellowhelper of Man. Such is the doctrine of Scripture, such is manifestly the design of our wise and bountiful Creator. National weakness and human depravity are fearfully illustrated in the degradation to which woman is reduced in Pagan and Mohammedan countries; not only among the savages of the South Sea Islands, but in the vast regions of Asia, in India, China, and even European Turkey. Some glances, therefore, at the condition of woman in those great divisions of the earth will be necessary to aid in the contemplation of her elevation by the divine doctrines of the Gospel, as promulgated among the heathen by Christian missionaries. females in Hindoo society is to appearance abject in the extreme. In childhood's years a female must be dependent on her father; in youth, on her husband; and, should she survive his decease, her dependence must be on her son. The nature of this dependence may be imagined, when it is added, that at no period of life, in no condition of society, should a woman do anything according to her own mere pleasure. Their fathers, their husbands, their sons, are verily called their protectors; but it is such protection! Day and night must women be held by their protectors in a state of absolute dependence. A woman, it is affirmed, is never fit for independence, or to be trusted with liberty. They exhaust the catalogues of vice to affix its epithets to woman's name-infidelity, violence, deceit, envy, extreme avariciousness, an entire want of good qualities, with impurity, they affirm, are the innate faults of womankind. And their duty has allotted to women a love of their bed, of their seat, and of ornaments, impure appetites, wrath, inflexibility, desire of mischief, and bad conduct. Though her husband be devoid of all good qualities, yet, such is the estimation they form of her moral discrimination and sensibilities, that they bind the wife to revere him as a god, and to submit to his corporal chastisements whenever he chooses to inflict them, by a cane or a rope, on the back parts. It has been justly observed, from a consideration of the history of woman in India, that a state of dependence more strict, contemptuous, and humiliating, than that which is ordained for the weaker sex among the Hindoos, cannot easily be conceived; and to consummate the stigma, to fill up the cup of bitter waters assigned to woman, as if she deserved to be excluded from immortality as well as from justice, from hope as well as from enjoyment, it is ruled that a female has no business with the texts of the Veda-that having no knowledge of expiatory texts, and no evidence of law, sinful woman must be foul as falsehood itself, and incompetent to bear witness. To them the fountain of wisdom is sealed, the streams of knowledge are dried up,-the springs of individual consolation, as promised in their religion, are guarded and bar Mrs. Wilson, the late accomplished wife of Dr. Wilson, of the Scottish mission, Bombay, remarks, in a letter, dated November, 1834:-"The wretched state of females in India calls loudly for our assist-red against woman in the hour of desolate sorrow ance. A female child is hated even from its birth. The unhappy mother is disappointed that she has not given birth to a male child; and seldom or never fails of becoming an object of aversion to her husband, if she is so unfortunate as to have a large family of daughters. Infanticide prevails, and the number of female children slaughtered among the Rajpoots is truly deplorable." Rev. J. W. Massie, in his "Continental India," devotes a chapter to the condition of "Woman in India," and states :-" Woman, as a mother, while her husband lives, is seldom allowed in India to bear any rule in the family; children are without natural affection; so that the place assigned to and parching anguish : and cast out, as she is, upon the wilderness of bereavement and affliction, with her impoverished resources, her water may well be spent in her bottle; and, left as she is, will it be matter of wonder that, in the moment of despair, she should embrace the burning pile and the scorching flames, instead of lengthened solitude and degradation, of dark and humiliating suffering and sorrow." Suttee, or the sacrifice of widows on the funeral piles of their husbands, is now no longer permitted in British India. This horrid custom, so fearfully proclaiming the degradation of woman, though still existing in some parts of Hindostan, was abo ELEVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN. lished by an "Order in Council" of the late Lord William Bentinck, only so lately as December 4, 1829. This humane and truly Christian policy of that lamented nobleman evinced the progress made, by the influence of the Gospel, in elevating the character of "Woman in India." Lady Morgan, in her interesting work, "Woman and her Master," exhibits much of the degradation to which her sex has been wantonly reduced in many nations. She speaks of the condition of Chinese females, and remarks : "In China, polygamy prevails virtually, if not by name; and the sovereign, self-imprisoned in his golden-roofed palace, with his one empress, six queens, and three hundred (or, if he please, three thousand) concubines, reflects, on the great scale, the domestic establishment of those among his subjects, whose wealth may permit the irrational indulgence of their passion or their pride. The female slave, who, at the head of a band of inferior | slaves, is dignified with the name of superior (adequate to that of wife), who has been purchased with gold, and may be returned, if on trial not approved, is not deemed worthy to eat at her master's table. Crippled from her cradle, morally and physically, ignorant of any one of the many thousand letters of her husband's alphabet, referred to the futile amusements of infancy for all resource against utter tedium; to dress and to smoke are her pleasures; and to totter on the flat roof of her golden cage her sole privilege. She, too, feeble and imbecile as she is, is outraged in the only feeling that nature may have rescued from the wreck of man's oppression : for the Chinese wife, like the odalisque of Turkey, yields up her offspring a sacrifice to the murderous policy of her master! "If such is the destiny of the Lady of the Celestial Empire, woman of the middle and the lower classes submits to a yet severer fate. The female peasant in China presents a still more extraordinary example. Exposed to the inclemency of the seasons, with the infant tied to her back, which she may have rescued from the wild beast, or from the devouring wave, she ploughs, sows, reaps, and performs the thousand offices of toil and drudgery attached to the cultivation of the soil, from which she derives so little benefit and enjoyment. Denied, too, all moral rights, she incurs, nevertheless, a fatal responsibility for her husband's delinquencies; and suffers death with him, as his dependant, for crimes in which she could have no moral participation. The natural death of her husband gives her over to the family, who, to recover the money expended in her purchase, may re-sell her to the highest bidder; while her own is very frequently the work of her own hand. Suicide, it is asserted, is of frequent occurrence among the Chinese females of the lowest classes; and well may they seek death to whom, from the cradle to the tomb, life holds forth not one solitary good!" | 375 Mrs. Gutzlaff, wife of the zealous missionary, confirms this statement of Lady Morgan. She remarks-"Such a general degradation in religion makes it almost impossible that females should have their proper rank in society. They are the slaves and concubines of their masters, live and die in ignorance, and every effort to raise themselves above the rank assigned them is regarded as impious arrogance. As long as mothers are not the instructors of their children, and wives are not the companions of their husbands, the regeneration of this great empire (China) will proceed very slowly. As might be expected, suicide is a refuge to which thousands of these ignorant idolaters fly. Many of them evince great violence of passion, and express their revenge for the indignities received from their husbands or mothers-in-law, by self-destruction. Mrs. Morrison, who has lately returned from Macao, mentions that three women committed suicide in that settlement, near her own residence, and that, not long before her departure, four others perpetrated the same deed in an adjoining province. One of the latter number had been recently married, and returned to make a short visit to her family. She gave her young companions such an account of the treatment of many, and their mothers, that they all concluded immediate death was preferable to such a miserable life. The consequence was, that they went to an adjacent river, holding each other by the hand, plunged in, and were drowned." Lady Augusta Hamilton, speaking of the females of the imperial harem in Constantinople, says :— “The ladies of the palace of the Grand Signior are a collection of beautiful young women, chiefly sent as presents from the provinces and the Greek islands, most of them being children of Christian parents. The brave prince Heraclius abolished the infamous tribute of children of both sexes, which Georgia formerly paid to the Porte yearly. The number of women in the harem depends on the taste of the reigning Sultan; Selim had two thousand, Achmet had but three hundred, and the late Sultan had nearly sixteen hundred. These ladies are never suffered to go abroad, except when the Grand Signior removes from one place to another, when a troop of black eunuchs conveys them to the boats, which are enclosed with lattices and linen curtains; when they travel by land, they are put into close chariots, and signals are made at certain distances, to give notice that none approach the road through which they pass!" The condition of women in general is faithfully represented by the late Lady Montague :-" Any woman," she remarks, "that dies unmarried, is looked upon to die in a state of reprobation. To confirm this belief they reason, that the end of the creation of woman is to increase and multiply; and that she is properly employed in the work of her calling only when she is bringing forth children or taking care of them, which are all the virtues that God expects from her. The vulgar notion, that they do not admit women to have souls, is a vulgar mistake: it is true, they say women are not of so elevated a nature, and therefore must not hope for admission into the paradise appointed for the men, who are to be entertained with celestial beauties. But there is a place of happiness destined for souls of the inferior order, where all good women are to be in eternal bliss!" Woman, in India, China, and Turkey, esteemed by many highly civilized countries, we thus perceive is deplorably degraded. It has, however, been said by recent travellers, that in European Turkey, at least, women, in the superior ranks, considered merely as animals, are treated better than in most countries! But what rational person, even if not a believer in Christianity, could so contemplate the fairest portion of human nature? The notion is characteristic of a mind sunk in impiety and sensuality. Happily for mankind, in several Mohammedan countries, especially Turkey and Egypt, Christian knowledge is progressing, by the labours of missionaries, and particularly by the efforts of British ladies, in connection with the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East; and under their care the destiny of woman is brightening. Christian influence is seen, however, in a degree far more remarkable, in raising woman from her deep degradation, among the lately barbarous tribes inhabiting the islands of the North and South Pacific Ocean. The Sandwich islanders in the North were scarcely superior to the Tahitians and others in the South; and among these, dark and cruel | superstitions, enforced by their mysterious Tabu, established a debasing separation between the sexes. Hence, one well informed on the subject says: "The father and the mother, with their children, never, as one social happy band, surrounded the domestic hearth, or partook together, as a family, of the bounties of Providence. The nameless but delightful emotions experienced on such occasions were unknown to them, as well as all the endearments of domestic happiness. The institutes of Oro and Tane inexorably required not only that the wife should not eat those kinds of food of which the husband partook, but that she should not eat in the same place, or prepare her food at the same fire! This restriction applied not only to the wife, but to all individuals of the female sex, from their birth to their death. In sickness or pain, or whatever other circumstances, the mother, the wife, the sister, or the daughter might be brought into, it was never relaxed. "The men, especially those who had occasionally attended on the services of idol-worship in the temple, were considered sacred, while the female sex were considered common; the men were allowed to eat the flesh of the animals, fowls, and a variety of fish, cocoa-nuts, and plantains, and whatever was presented as an offering to the gods; these the females were forbidden to touch on pain of death! The fires at which the men's food was cooked were also sacred, and were forbidden to be used by the females. The baskets in which their provision was kept, and the houses in which the men ate, were also sacred, and prohibited to the females under the same cruel penalty. Hence the inferior food, both for wives, daughters, &c., was cooked at separate fires, deposited in distinct baskets, and eaten in lonely solitude by the females, in mean huts, resembling dog-kennels, when compared with the habitations of men. The tabu, one of the most powerful and extraordinary institutions in the South Sea Islands, operated with peculiar force upon the females; it was the charter by which, under the sanction of his imaginary gods, the male part of the population were exempted from a large part of the drudgery requisite to provide for their necessities, and were absolved from all obligation to cherish affection, or manifest kindness towards the female sex; while it was the inflexible law by which the latter were deprived of whatever, in their rude state of society, was regarded as a privilege, and doomed to neglect, insult, oppression and cruelty. Its operation commenced with her birth, continued through every period, circumstance, and relation of life, and terminated only with her earthly existence. It was this more than anything else that made and kept woman a slave ; and wherever this has been the case, man has ever been a savage!” These abominations, with their parent superstition, have happily been abolished in many of the islands, by the labours of our devoted missionaries. Their journals are full of information on this point, in connection with a new system of habitation, clothing, and domestic economy, adopted by these recently uncivilized barbarians. They now appear as a new race of beings, eating the same food, and at the same table, with their husbands, enjoying domestic intercourse, and cherishing all the tender affections in the knowledge and fear of God. These advances in civilization having been made, the happy change was crowned by honouring the female character by the sacred bonds of matrimony. Messrs. Bennett and Tyerman record, under date, August 11, 1822, "The first Christian marriage that ever took place in these heathen isles was celebrated this morning. Thomas Hopoo and Delia, both inmates with the missionary family, joined hands, and avouched themselves husband and wife before a large congregation, and we had the satisfaction to sign the first register as witnesses of the contract." Facts and testimonies like these afford striking illustrations of the benevolent power of pure scriptural Christianity, whose progress through the world is conveying civilization to all nations. THE KING OF SHOA. CIVILIZATION OF ABYSSINIA. SAHELA SELASSIEH, THE REIGNING KING OF SHOA. In a recent article on the "Operations of the Church Missionary Society in Abyssinia," allusion was made to the King of Shoa, and the marked favour displayed by him toward the missionaries. The character of this individual, and the efforts he is making for the improvement of his country, by intercourse with more enlightened nations, afford so pleasing a prospect for the lovers of civilization, 377 that no apology is needed for introducing into our Journal a more particular account of him; which, with the portrait given beneath, is chiefly derived from a paper lately published at Paris, in the Magasin Pittoresque, for August 14, 1841. The article alluded to relates some particulars of a visit to the southern part of Abyssinia, by M. Rochet d'Héricourt, a French traveller. M. Rochet, having embarked from Mocha, and passed through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, arrived, on the 4th of June, 1839, at Tadjurra, an Portrait of SAHEIA SELASSIEH. African village, consisting of about three hundred huts. This place, he observes, is visited by the caravans of Southern Abyssinia, for the purpose of exchanging African commodities for the products of Arabia. The next part of his route was not without danger; the country between Tadjurra and Shoa being inhabited by the nomadic Adels, or Danakils, who are stated to be greedy and deceitful. Our traveller crossed this desert, of about a hundred leagues, with a caravan; and the worst enemies he had to contend with during the journey were the hyænas, who came boldly up to the party during the night, to devour their provisions. On the 29th of September, Rochet entered the first village of the kingdom of Shoa, where he From a Drawing by M. ROCHET. immediately perceived, from the richness of the cultivation, and the style of the habitations, that he had reached a (comparatively) civilized country. He was met by an Abyssinian chief, who had heard of his arrival, and conducted to a house where an abundant repast was prepared for him; an ox being killed in his honour, and the choicest parts served to him, with honey, excellent bread, and mead. After a few days M. Rochet was conducted by the governor of the district to Angolola, the residence of the king. He arrived at this town towards evening, and proceeded, between two rows of officers, dignitaries, and inhabitants of the place, towards a circular hall, which was illuminated with |