There is a class of devotees in this country called Yogis, whose object it is to root out every human feeling.  Some live in holes and caves.  Some drag around a heavy chain attached to them.  Some make the circuit of an empire, creeping on their hands and knees.  Some roll their bodies from the shores of the Indus to the Ganges.

The Rev. Mr. Heyer, in one of his letters from India, says, that an Indian devotee has spent more than nine years on a journey from Benares to Cape Comorin, that is, from the 27th to the 7th degree of north latitude.  The whole journey is made by rolling on the bare ground, from side to side.  When he comes to a river, of course he cannot roll over it.  He therefore fords it, or passes over it in a boat, and then rolls on the banks of the river just as far as the river is wide.  By doing this, he supposes that his determination to roll all the way is fully carried out.

[Illustration]

Some devotees hold up one or both arms, until the muscles become rigid, and their limbs become shrivelled into stumps.  In the above cut, you have a representation of a man with one of these shrivelled arms.  See how long his finger-nails have grown.  One has run through his hand and back through his arm.  Some stretch themselves on beds of iron spikes.  Some wear great square irons on their necks.  I have seen not only a man, but a woman, with these great square irons around their necks, each nearly two feet in length and two feet in breadth.  These they put on for the purpose of fulfilling some vow which they have made.  For instance, if a mother has a very sick little boy, she will say, “Now, Swammie, if you will cure my little boy, I will have a square iron put on my neck, and wear it all my life.”  After this vow is made, if the little boy gets well, the mother thinks that her Swammie has cured him, and to fulfil her engagement she will have one of these irons put on her neck.

[Illustration:]

[Illustration:]

Other devotees throw themselves from the tops of precipices, and are dashed to pieces; some bury themselves alive in holes, which their own relatives have dug; some bind themselves with ropes or chains to trees, until they die; some keep gazing so long and so constantly at the heavens, that the muscles of their neck become contracted, and no aliment but liquids can pass into the stomach.

But I will not continue this subject.  You perceive, my dear children, what a wretched religion that must be which encourages its followers to perform such acts.  And how vain are all these acts—­how utterly destitute are they of any merit.  Those who practise them are not made better by them, and they are just as far from the kingdom of heaven after having performed them, as they were before.  The Christian religion encourages no such things.  It tells us to perform no pilgrimages to holy places, to inflict no self-tortures.  But it has its requirements, and these are very simple, and may easily be performed