Bloody sacrifices are offered up on such occasions.  The king of Nudiya, some time ago, offered a large number of sheep, goats, and buffaloes on the first day of the feast, and vowed to double the offering every day; so that the whole number sacrificed amounted to more than sixty-five thousand.  You may remember that king Solomon offered up on one occasion twenty-two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep.  If all the animals slain throughout Hindostan, at the festival of the goddess Durga, were collected together, they would amount to a much larger number than Solomon offered.

After the worship and offerings have been continued for three days, the festival closes.  As the morning of the first day was devoted to the consecration of the images, the morning of the fourth is spent in unconsecrating them.  This work is done by the Brahmins.  They profess, by various ceremonies, to send back the goddess to her heaven, concluding with a farewell address, in which they tell her that they expect her to accept of all their services, and return and pay them a visit again in the coming year.  Then all unite in bidding her a sorrowful adieu, and many seem affected even to the shedding of tears.

Soon afterwards the images are carried forth into the streets, placed on stages or platforms, and raised on men’s shoulders.  As the procession moves onward through the streets, accompanied with music and songs, amid clouds of dust, you might see them waving long hairy brushes to wipe off the dust, and to keep off the flies and mosquitoes, which might trouble the senseless images.  But where are these processions going?  To the banks of the Ganges.  And for what purpose?  For the purpose of casting the images into the river.  When all the ceremonies connected with the occasion are finished, those who carry the images suddenly fall upon them, break them to pieces, and then throw them with violence into the river.  After this the people return to their homes.

I have now given you a specimen of the image-worship of the Hindoos; and how different is it from the worship which the Bible enjoins.  “God is a Spirit; and they who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth.”  The very reverse of this, as you have seen, marks the worship of the heathen.  They are not satisfied, unless they can have some object before them, to which they can make their offerings and their prayers.  Thus daily are they engaged in a service which, above all others, is the most offensive and provoking to a holy God—­a service which has caused him to declare, that idolaters shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.  This, too, is the service in which every person, who has never given himself to the Saviour, is engaged; and, of course, in which you are engaged if you have not given your hearts to him.  Those who think more of their money than they think of Christ, just as certainly worship the image which is stamped on a dollar or a cent, as the heathen worship their idols.  Those who love their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters more than Christ, make these their idols.  And are you, my dear children, yet out of Christ?  If so, you have your idols.  And what are these idols?  Are they the world and its vanities?  Then God is as angry with you as he is with the heathen, and unless you give up these idols, you too must be lost.