ADVERTISEMENT. THESE Letters were written at several periods, to friends who had asked the Author's opinion on the subjects therein discussed. Two of them, the second and third, were addressed to a dignitary of the established church, a learned and liberal-minded gentleman, who, so far from taking offence at the candour and freedom with which the Author expresses his sentiments, was pleased to return him his unqualified thanks for the same. The others were addressed to friends, who appeared equally satisfied at the independent, candid, and impartial manner in which the subject was treated, and who encouraged him to have the whole published for the information of the Public, among whom much misapprehension prevailed, chiefly occasioned by many erroneous statements, published of late years at home, by many well-intentioned authors, who, misled by too warm a zeal, and mistaking their own religious creed as the common standard which should rule all the human race, and knowing nothing, or very little of the invincible attachment of the people of India to their religion and customs, expected to be able to overcome the insurmountable religious prejudices of the Hindoos, and bring them at once to their own faith. The Author has endeavoured to state (as well as his very imperfect acquaintance with the English language has enabled him to do) with freedom, candour, and simplicity, the desperateness of such an attempt. His notions on the subject are derived from an experience of thirty-two years of confidential and quite unrestrained intercourse among the natives of India, of all castes, religions, and ranks; during which, in order to win their confidence, and remove suspicion, as far as possible, he has constantly lived like them, embracing their manners, customs, and most of their prejudices, in his dress, his diet, their rules of civility, and good-breeding, and their mode of intercourse in the world. But the restraints under which he has lived during so long a period of his life, have proved of no advantage to him in promoting the sacred cause in which he was engaged as a religious teacher. During that time he has vainly, in his exertions to promote the cause of Christianity, watered the soil of India with his sweats, and many times with his tears, at the sight of the quite insurmountable obduracy of the people he had to deal with; ready to water it with his blood, if his doing so had been able to overcome the invincible resistance he had to encounter every where, in his endeavours to disseminate some gleams of the evangelical light. Every where the seeds sown by him have fallen upon a naked rock, and have instantly dried away. At length, entirely disgusted at the total inutility of his pursuits, and warned by his grey hair that it was full time to think of his own concerns, he has returned to Europe, to pass in retirement the few days he may still have to live, and get ready to give in his accounts to his Redeemer. These Letters are now brought without pretensions before the public, whose indulgence the Author solicits, chiefly in what may appear deficient in point of style. What he states is not from hearsay, it is the result of a long and attentive experience; and he |