TRADE AND RELIGION.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 301, 31 May 1875, Page 3

TRADE AND RELIGION.

{South Australian Cnronicle.)

Some of the pious people in Western Australia are much distressed about the sandal wood trade of that colony. It is well known that this wood is used by the Chinese, who arc the principal customers for it, principally, or entirely, for idolatrous purposes, being burned as incense in their temples of worship. Though this fact is as well understood as are the uses of opium, men who pass as the most straightlaced Christians carry on the traffic unceasingly, and their cargoes destined for uses are on the sea while they are offering up prayers for the conversion of the heathen. There are consistent religionists, however, in Perth, for by the leading journal of that city I find that one gentleman “ never had any dealings in sandalwood, and never shall have, on Christian principles, I look,” says he, “ upon all this sickness as the judgment of God upon us, and I have no doubt the sandalwood is the cause of it.” That mercenary hypocrisy merits punishment is no doubt true enough, but why should the plague fall upon innocent children and adults who have never traded in the aromatic timber? Sandalwood has fallen in price in China; either the market is glutted, or there is a decay in the devotion of the Mongolians to their national creeds and religious ceremonies,