Dwij Author:William Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tian family on the Mission premises. That school has since been greatly enlarged, a new and commodious building having been erected, in which, together with two ... more »branch schools connected with it, upwards of 400 boys are educated. In the city we have four chapels, and four other smaller preaching places. We have on the Mission premises a handsome church, and more than 300 native Christians, with various schools, and every thing necessary for effectively conducting a Christian Missionary establishment. Amongst the boys, are six who are being trained as teachers and preachers to their countrymen ; and we have five catechists (adults) who are, and have been, some of them for many years, acting in that capacity. With regard to Banaras itself, it is a large city, calculated to contain between 300,000 and 400,000 inhabitants. It is, and ought to be, to us Englishmen, the most interesting city in the whole Heathen world. Banaras, the natives tell you, is built of gold, though you, in your unbelief, suppose it to be, like other cities, built of brick and mortar. Banaras, they assure you, is too holy to rest on the earth—it rests on the trident of one of their great gods. Banaras, they say, is the gate of heaven, and whoever dies there—even though he be an idol- breaking Mahomedan, or a beef-eating Englishman —is sure to go to heaven. Could you see that farfamed and ancient city, with its thousand temples, hesides all the Mahomedan mosques, and its more than a hundred colleges and seats of learning of the reverend Brahmans, you would say, " Surely, this is a holy and highly interesting place." Could you see the crowds of pilgrims thronging the different avenues to that city; could you see the immense multitudes standing hy hundreds and thousands on the banks of the "holy" Ganges; could yo...« less