The Cotton Factory Times. — 1898-06-17 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

WINNEFRED SMITH.  Tko Fakirs of /Julia.  The holiest place in all Bombay is the "tank." It is to the natives a sanctuary, and around it  little temples rise, to it pilgrims 0, near it numbers of fakirs sit, covered with filth and ashes, in the hot sun. A writer after a description of these fakirs  indulges in the following rejections awakened by the scene:--" What most be the character of the faith whose ideal is before us? We stand be. wildered in the sunshine, trying to realise that it is not a dream--that these men, our brothers, this filth, this degradation, this naked idleness, is the embodiment of sanctity—and our hearts go out to India, the first example of whose greatest faith meets us in such a form. This is Hinduism, hoary Hinduism, 3,000 years old, and ruling to-day more than 200,000,000 men and women. The spectacle before us is the outcome of her teachings. This is the highest life one can lead. To their minds existence is an evil ; emancipation from it in this life, and in countless future lives is the one hope. Detach yourself from earth, go without clothes; have no home, no friends, no people; do no work; take no interest in anything at all; enjoy nothing, feel nothing, hope for nothing. Detach yourself— to do this, suffer pain, sleep on spikes, starve your' self, or eat carrion and nameless abominations; hold, your arms up till they wither and the nails go through the hand; do anything and everything to get rid of your supreme curse—conscious existence. "This nightmare dread of existence is the natural outcome of the transmigration theory— the saddest and most hopeless of all human explanations of life. Think for one moment of what it would mean to you to believe that every living thing on the face of the earth was the body of some soul—birds, beasts, insects, reptiles, men--all alike soul-houses; and the human souls were ceaselessly shifting from countless lives, and must for ever shift among these according to their merits or demerits. Transmigration we call it, and dismiss the idea with a word. But to believe that idea, to think that the souls you love best, and that death has called away, are pent up in some body—a jackall's, a cow's, a serpent's, perhaps—and will be bound there, feeling, suffering, enjoying if they can, until death smites them once again, and once again you go to groveling reptile life or loathsome being. You may be born to-morrow a leper, an idiot, a murderer, anything—Karma, your lute determines what shall be, and your fate depends entirely on your merits. There is no pity anywhere, no forgiveness. Trouble comes to you to-day? Ah, you earned it yesterday, back in your last body. Then you sinned, now you are punished. This theory apparently explains everything 8o satisfactorily— all the crookedness ancl inequality of life, all the strange chances of destiny. But it is so hard, so hopeless. Eighty-six million times you will be born and re-born, to suffer, live, and die. What more natural than to wish to shorten the period? Become a devotee, perhaps even a fakir. By so doing you detach yourself. You gradually escape re-incarnation. You stand a faint and far-off chance of sooner finding rest—the oblivion of Nirvana—' not to be.'"  WC/la.—All education begins in work. What we think, what we know, or whet we behave is, in the end, of little oonsequence. The only thing of consequence is what wo do—and for man, woman, or child, the first point of edocatiou is to tasks thew do their bost.—ltusitia.