BRŬMHŬ.
The Hindūs worship God in unity, and express their conceptions of the Divine Being and his attributes in the most awful and sublime terms. God, thus adored, is called Brŭmhŭ, “One Brŭmhŭ without a second,” the one eternal mind, the self-existent, incomprehensible spirit, the all-pervading, the divine cause and essence of the world, from which all things are supposed to proceed, and to which they return; the spirit, the soul of the universe. Amongst the Hindūs the ignorant address themselves to idols fashioned by the hand of man; the sage worships God in spirit. Of that infinite, incomprehensible, self-existent spirit, no representation is made: to his direct and immediate honour no temples rise; nor dare an Hindū address to him the effusions of his soul, otherwise than by the mediation of a personified attribute, or through the intervention of a priest; who will teach him that gifts, prostration, and sacrifice, are good, because they are pleasing to the gods; not as an unsophisticated heart must feel, that piety and benevolence are pleasing to God because they are good. But although the Hindūs are taught to address their vows to idols and saints, these are still but types and personifications of the deity, who is too awful to be contemplated, and too incomprehensible to be described. The Hindū erects no altar to Brŭmhŭ “Of him, whose glory is so great, there is no image” (Veda), and we must proceed to the consideration of the personified attributes of that invisible, incomprehensible Being, “which illumines all, delights all, whence all proceeded; that by which they live when born, and that to which all must return” (Veda).
Brŭmhŭ, the one god without a second, became a trinity, and the three emanations or parts of one Brŭmhŭ, are Brahma, Vishnŭ, and Shivŭ. The first presided over Creation, the second over Preservation, and the third over Destruction. The three principal goddesses are, Durgā, Lachhmī, and Saraswatī.