Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/49

 about the feet of God. Break once these golden links of loving help and service, and all the strong bonds of civilised society will be weakened and loosed."

Nor is our society without several dark features that compel earnest attention in this direction. The land where popular belief enhances the value of paradise with the unfading charms of celestial nymphs and offers their favours as the reward (be it only as a second choice) for the highest of religious rites; the country where the current faith often formulates itself into a most subtle or seductive class of amorous poetry, which piety does not scruple to sing and modesty does not blush to hear; the empire whose armed defenders are provided in "regimental bazaars" with markets covert for the offer of winsome flesh to licensed lust, and whose landed aristocracy often own a vulgar herd of nondescript men and women; the society infected with customs that lend the dignity of a caste to the basest of professions, or work upon the ignorance of