2 PETER.

CHAP. III. verse 10.

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.

The Hindoos call the present age the Kali-yugam, which is the last and the worst; the Kreatha-yugam, the age of innocence and universal happiness, is fast approaching. But there must first be a general destruction of the present state of things. The lightnings and rains of brimstone will blast and burn up all created things; the sun will fall like the red lotus, and the moon like the white; the stars will drop like the illupi flowers, and then shall the end be. See Scanda Purana and Koorma Purāna.

1 JOHN.

CHAP. II. verse 16. -"The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."

Christians speak of their enemies as being threefold, the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the Scanda Purāna it is recorded, "The soul is entangled in three kinds of snares; it has no beginning, and is infinite." The snares are, "women, gold, and the earth."

JUDE.

VERSE 12. "Clouds they are without water; trees

whose fruit withereth." (Proverbs xxv. 14. "Like

clouds and wind without rain.")

"Alas, alas, my days of pleasure have passed away, my prosperity has gone, and I am now like the white cloud" (i. e. without rain). "Poor Kandan has lost all his property, and he is now like the cloud without a womb." ("From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth." Psalm cx. 3.) "Trees whose fruit withereth." "That wretch is like the poison tree." "You resemble the male palmyra tree, which bears no fruit." "Who will go near that fellow? he is like the fruit-bearing palmyra in the place of burning, no one will ascend it."

REVELATIONS.

CHAP. I. verse 12.-" I saw seven golden candlesticks." The lamps in temples and houses are always in unequal numbers. In giving areca nuts, or beetle leaves, care is always taken to deal out an uneven number. In calling a medical man one, or three, or five messengers will be sent, and, in taking the medicine, the hours of one, three, five, seven, nine, or eleven will be selected. The Brahmins in giving a feast always take care to have an unequal number of guests. †

* Where the bodies are consumed on the funeral pile. +"The gods delight in an uneven number.” See the 8th Eclogue of Virgil.

XXI. 8.—“ All liars shall have their part in the lake

which burneth with fire and brimstone."

More systematic, more determined liars, than the people of the East, cannot in my opinion be found in the world. They often utter falsehoods without any apparent reason, and even when truth would be an advantage, they will not tell it. Reprove them, and they appeal to Brahma as an excuse, because he said he had found out the summit of the pillar of fire when he had not, or because some of the other gods uttered falsehoods, or, "it was their ignorance or fate!" Yet, strange to say, some of their works and sayings represent a falsehood as almost the unpardonable sin. Take the following for an example : —

"The sin of killing a Brahmin is as great as that of killing a hundred cows; and the sin of killing a hundred cows is as great as that of killing a woman; the sin of killing one hundred women is as great as that of killing a child in the womb; and the sin of killing one hundred in the womb is as great as that of telling a lie!"*