"I thank you for this admission in favour of the necessity of Christian missions, especially to India, where cruelties are still practised in broad day, such as we should be apt to regard as monstrous inventions, fitted only to gratify a morbid appetite for the horrible, were they not attested by faithful eye-witnesses. What think you of this specimen? At the annual festival in honour of Muha Div (the great god), many persons are suspended in the air by large hooks, thrust through the integuments of their backs,[13] and swung round for a quarter of an hour, in honour of this deity; and often over a slow fire. Others have their sides pierced, and cords are introduced between the skin and ribs, and drawn backwards and forwards, while these victims of superstition dance through the streets. Others cast themselves from a stage upon open knives, inserted in packs of cotton. Sometimes one of these knives enters the body, and the poor wretch is carried off to expire. If an infant refuses his mother's milk, it is often hung up in a basket on a tree, to be devoured by the vultures. This is no criminal offence, as it would be amongst us, but a ceremonial regulation of their faith. And in India, the mother often sacrifices her first-born, to conciliate her guardian deity in behalf of her unborn progeny. When the child is two or three years old, she takes it to the river, encourages it to enter, as though about to bathe it, but suffers it to pass into the current of water, when she abandons it, and stands an inactive spectator, beholding the struggles and listening to the screams of her perishing infant." [13] We find, from a document which has recently come from India (December, 1856), that some of these cruel rites are abolished in a few of the provinces; and there is now no doubt but the work of legislative humanity and enlightened policy having been begun, will steadily advance, till the triumphs of missionary enterprise in our Indian empire are complete. "An order has just been promulgated by the magistrate of Poonah, under instructions from government, prohibiting hook-swinging and other barbarous practices throughout the Poonah Zillah. Such a measure has long been desired by all who wish for the improvement of the natives. Of old it was believed--or careless and idle minds found it convenient to believe--that it was dangerous to meddle with any native practice, however immoral or revolting, that was connected with or claimed the sanction of religion. But times are changed, and innovations which might not safely have been attempted a century or half a century ago, the age is now ripe for.