Elizabeth-Town gazette. [volume] (Elizabeth-Town, N.J.) 1818-1821, 1819-01-26
MISCELLANY.
From the Connecticut Courant.
THE BRIEF REMARKER.

In the natural world, the light succeed
ed TO the darkness. The eUening and
morning mere The first day. And what a
morning Had there been human eyes to
behold it, how stupendously magnificent
we're the sight OF the new born sun, rising
in majesty, and going forth in bis strength |!
| But this, in process Of time, becoming
common spectacle, scarcely excited at
tention. The more part of mankind, if
we except the idolatrous worsbippers OF
the heavenly bodies, behold the rising,
the sitting aud meridian splendor of the
glorious sun, with the same apathy as they
behold the most trivial objects about them.
In the moral world, also the light sue
ceeded to the darkness. No sooner was
the human family mantled with darkness,
thick darkness, by the apostacy, than
light sprang up; light that was small and
faint at the first, but gradually increased
from age to age, till the San Of righteous
ness arose. That glorious luminary,
whose benefits are as much superior to
those of the natural sun, as the soul is SUI
perior to the body, is constantly shedding
down his light upon our minds, upon our
hearts, and upon our paths and yet we
are alike unmindful Of these benefits, as
of those which we derive from the sun 10
the armament. We have grown up
under them from infancy. The moral
light we behold, and which We always
have been accustomed to behold, is so clear,
| so plain, SO consonant to reason, that we
mistake it for the light of mere reason
| itself.
The light that christianity sheds upon
us, in conradistinction to the light of
reason or nature, is capable oil being es-
timated with some degree of accuracy by
comparing the nations within the pale of
ohristendom with the nations that are
without that pale hot with the roaming
hordes of savages destitute of literature
and of the arts, but with nations highly
civilized, and highly cultivated and pol
ished. OF this description are the count
less millions that inhabit the peninsula Of
India. Hindostsn was the cradle, or
rather one of the cradles of the human
race aud Of the arts. There the arts
flourished very long time before Eu-
rope had emerged from barbarism.'-
Whilst our progenitors were Ignorant and
proving savages, the Hindoos were en-
ijshtened with science and polished in
manners. And yet, nor reason, nor SCI
ence, nor knowledge of the arts, all which
they have enjoyed SO many thousands of
wears, has iIlumined the moral faculties
OF their minds, or even led them TO adopt
rational worship of the Great Author Of
their existence.
Compare the worship Of whatever class
of people now standing lowest in the
moral scale of any in all christendom;
nay compare the worship of popery, as it
was 10 its most corrupted state some CEN
turtles ago, with the worship on the pol
ished Hiudoos; and mark the amazing
difference in favor of the former. And
as help TO such comparison, take the fol-
lowing short summary which | have made
from Buchanan's Christian Researches.
The chief idol of Hindostan is Jug
gernaut; the rites of whose worship con-
sists of shocking exhibitions of obscenity,
aud his libations of human blood. This
terrible idol has his principal temple in a
town called by his name, in the province
of Oressa, which at present is subject TO
the British empire. Thither pilgrims re-
sort, not by thousands only, but by tens
and hundreds of thousands, as well from
the remotest as from the adjacent parts OF
India. As you travel towards the temple
of Juggernaut, the road is covered with
pilgrims before and behind, as far as
the eye can reach; marching slowly, with
their wives and children, under a scorch-
| ing sun. Some you see STOPPING with
age and others laboring under mortal dis
tempers; yet exerting the utmost of their
little remains Of strength TO reach the tenn
pie Of their god, that they may die in his
presence. Others perish in the way, and
being left unburied, are fed upon by dogs,
ljackals and vultures.
Ere you come within fifty miles, you
know it to be the road to Juggernaut, by
the human skulls and bones spread over it.
When arrived at this region of the shad-
ow Of death, the habitation Of the idol,
you behold the town surrounded with an
limumerable multitude of squalid, famish-
Iing pilgrims, with clotted hair and painted
skin, practising their various austerities
and modes of self torture. Upon entering
the town (if it be the day of the great
lidoatrous feast) you seea stupendous car
or tower, sixty feet in height, resting on
wheels and drawn by men. On the top
Of the car you see throne surrounded
lby priests; aud upon the throne block Of
mood, of frighyful visage. painted black,
l,pith a mouth disteaded and Of bloody