In addition to the domestic, social, and public influences which guard and uphold the existing state of things, there is the tremendous power of personal gain and honour. The honour, the wealth, the very subsistence of large influential classes, are bound up with the maintenance of idolatry. The Pundits, the guardians and expositors of their sacred books; the Pundas who minister in the temples; the Gungaputrs who serve at the river side; the Purohits, the family priests; the Gurus, the father confessors and guides of the people; and the Jyotishees, the astrologers, with their families and relations, would be stripped of their honour and gain, of their very means of living, if Hinduism was at once abandoned. Benares is a great commercial as well as religious city. If it ceased to be Hindu, we cannot suppose its commerce would be paralyzed; but as a considerable part of its ordinary trade is dependent on the thousands of pilgrims who resort to it, on the money they expend on food, on gifts to the priests, and on the purchase of articles exposed for sale, great loss would be in the first place incurred. The many artisans now employed in making images of stone and brass, would find no purchasers for their goods. In addition to the pecuniary loss which directly and indirectly would fall on all classes, the whole community would feel the glory of Kasee, the Splendid City, had departed, when, stripped of its sacredness, crowds of pilgrims no longer filled its streets, frequented its temples, or bathed at its ghats. They would feel as the Jews did in their dark and disastrous days, when the ways to Zion were untrodden, and there was the silence of desolation within its gates. When the peculiarities of Benares are in any degree realized, the work of making known the gospel to its inhabitants may appear formidable to the extent of hopelessness.