"6. To dwell in the mansions of God, at the foot of a tree; to have the ground for a bed, and a hide for a vesture; to renounce all ties of family or connections: who would not receive delight from this abhorrence of the world? "7. Set not thy affections on foe or friend; on a son or a relation; in war or in peace, bear an equal mind towards all: if thou desiredst it, thou wilt soon be like Vishnu. "8. Day and night, evening and morn, winter and spring, depart and return: time sports, age passes on; desire and the wind continue unrestrained. "9. When the body is tottering, the head grey, and the mouth toothless; when the smooth stick trembles in the hand it supports, yet the vessel of covetousness is unemptied. "10. So soon born, so soon dead; so long lying in thy mother's womb, so great crimes are committed in the world. How then, O man! canst thou live here below with complacency? "11. There are eight original mountains, and seven seas:--Brahma, Indra, the Sun, and Kudra,--these are permanent; not thou, not I, not this or that people; what, therefore, should occasion our sorrow? "12. In thee, in me, in every other, Vishnu resides; in vain art thou angry with me, not bearing my reproach: this is perfectly true, all must be esteemed equal; be not proud of a magnificent palace." When the reader takes a cursory view of the principal doctrines and precepts of the Hindoo Vedas, he may be very apt to imagine that the writer, or writers, have received their information from some other source than the fragments of a broken law, which are still imprinted upon the mind of man, even in a state of nature; and he may not unlikely suppose, that these men had this knowledge--although remote and much corrupted, from our sacred volume; particularly as that part, entitled "The Ignorant Instructed," seems to partake of the style of Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes. But if you make a more minute investigation, you will see much wanting, and much wrong; and no marvel, for they who are deprived of the great blessing of revelation, or they who despise it, or wish to be wise above what is written, are like people groping in the dark; and will certainly either fall short of the truth, or stumble over it altogether. Those sages of antiquity, to whom the writers seem to refer, were perhaps distinguished for their wisdom; yet by that very wisdom they knew not God in his saving characters. Man may know, to a certain extent, that there is a God; because "the heavens declare his glory, and the firmament sheweth his handy-works." And the apostle says, in his epistle to the Romans, that "the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing one another." I say, therefore,