Proceeding farther eastward, to nations whose origin is so remote and so involved in darkness, that all traces of their derivation from the Noachian stock is lost, we find in their ancient traditions similar evidences of the truth, buried under a mass of the grossest and most debasing idolatry. In the avatars, or transformations of _Vishnu_ and _Buddha_, the gods of the Hindoos, we perceive the awful perversion of the primeval prophecy, and its stupid admixture with more recent revelations concerning the Messiah, which have been purposely mystified and defaced by the agents of the Evil Spirit, in order that poor besotted mortals might be led away from the truth as it is in Jesus. But their own traditions testify against the Hindoos, and show, that in not seeking to know him who had placed his witness in the physical heavens, they were without excuse; for when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. The names of their chief gods, _Brahma_, _Vishnu_ and _Seeva_, plainly indicate their Hebrew origin and meaning. _Brahma_ signifies the _great Creator_, and is evidently derived from the word ‏ברא‎ _Bra_, _He created_, which occurs in Genesis i. 1, and ‏אם‎ or ‏אים‎, _Am_ or _Aim_, _terrible_; and _Vishnu_ or _Veeshnu_, _the Preserver_, from the copulative ‏ו‎ _Ve_ or _Vau_, and ‏אישנו‎, _Aishnu_ or _Ishnu_, _the Man for us_; these two, therefore, constitute a _Binity_ or _Duad_, by reason of the copulative particle between them, and not a _Trinity_ or _Triad_ in conjunction with _Seeva_, as is generally supposed by mythologists. As to the latter name, which signifies _the Destroyer_, it is derived from ‏שואה‎, _Seevah_, _Storm_, or _Destruction_, or from ‏שוע‎, _Seeva_, the _noise_ which accompanies it, thus exemplifying the idea of the poor untutored Indian, who sees God only in the fearful storm, and hears Him only in the thunder’s dreadful roar; or, perhaps, from ‏שוא‎, _Seeva_, a _dream_ or _vain error_, an “insubstantial pageant,” or even an _idol_, which is _nothing_ in the world. The exhibition of this triple absurdity in the temples of Hindoostan, not like _Janus_ at Rome, with _two_ faces, but like _Cerberus_ in Hell, with _three_ faces, shows not a _Trinity_, or _Sacred_ _Three in One_, in which Christians believe, but a threefold exhibition of the same God, as the _Creator_, the _Preserver_, and the _Destroyer_, in which the Hindoos, like the devils, believe and tremble. These are, in fact, the attributes of the _true Deity_; for He is Jehovah, and there is none else; there is no God besides him; he forms the light and creates darkness; he makes peace and creates evil; but, inasmuch as “they had not the sense to acknowledge God (literally to have God in acknowledgment), God gave them over to a senseless mind, to do those things which are not lawful (i. e. not appointed by God)”; Romans i. 28.