Juggernaut is one of the most celebrated stations of idolatry in India. All the land within twenty miles is considered holy; but the most sacred spot is enclosed within a stone wall twenty-one feet high, forming a square of about 656 feet. Within this area are about fifty temples; but the most conspicuous buildings consist of one lofty stone tower, 184 feet high and twentyeight and a half feet square inside. The idol Juggernaut, his brother Bulbudra, and his sister Sabadra, occupy the tower. The roofs are ornamented with representations of monsters; the walls of the temple are covered with statues of stone, representing Hindoo gods, with their wives, in attitudes grossly indecent. The three celebrated idols alluded to, are wooden busts six feet high, having a rude resemblance of the human head, and are painted white, yellow, and black, with frightfully grim and distorted countenances. They are covered with spangled broadcloth, furnished from the export warehouse of the British government. The car on which the idol is drawn, measures forty-three and a half feet high, has sixteen wheels, of six and a half feet diameter, and a platform thirty-four and a half feet square. The ceremonies connected with this idolatrous worship, are, in many instances, exceedingly revolting and obscene. At Ranibut, in the province of Gurwal, is a temple sacred to Rajah Ishwara, which is principally inhabited by dancing women. The initiation into this society is performed by anointing the head with oil taken from the lamp placed before the altar, by which act they make a formal abjuration of their parents and kindred, devoting their future lives to prostitution, and the British government, by giving annually 512 rupees to the religious mendicants who frequent this temple, directly sanction this system of obscenity and pollution. Many temples of impurity exist in other places of Hindostan. Tavernier mentions a village where there is a pagoda to which all the Indian courtezans come to make their offerings. This pagoda is full of a great number of naked images. Girls of eleven or twelve years old, who have been bought

and educated for the purpose, are sent by their mistresses to this pagoda, to offer and surrender themselves up to this idol.

In order to induce ignorant devotees to forsake their homes, and commence pilgrims to these temples of impurity and idolatry, a set of avaricious villains, termed Pilgrim hunters, are employed to traverse the country, and by all manner of falsehoods, to proclaim the greatness of Juggernaut and other idols. They declare, for example, that this idol has now so fully convinced his conquerors [that is, the British] of his divinity, that they have taken his temple under their own superintendency, and that they expend 60,000 rupees from year to year to provide him with an attendance worthy of his dignity. These pilgrim hunters are paid by the British government. If one of them can march out a thousand persons and persuade them to undertake the journey, he receives 1500 rupees, if they be of the lower class; and 3000 rupees, if they be persons belonging to the highest class. But, what is worst of all-the conduct of the British government in relation to this system, has led many of the natives to believe that the British nation approves of the idolatrous worship established in India. A Hindoo inquired of a missionary in India, "If Juggernaut be nothing, why does the Company take so much money from those who come to see him?" Mr. Lacey, a missionary, who went to relieve the destitute on the road to Cuttack, during one of the festivals, relates the following incident: -"You would have felt your heart moved, to hear, as I did, the nativés say Your preaching is a lie ;-for, if your Saviour and your religion are thus merciful, how do you then take away the money of the poor and suffer him to starve? It is indeed no wonder that when the natives see a poor creature lying dying for want, they should reflect, that the two rupees he paid as a tax, would have kept him alive. Nor is it indeed a pleasing reflection to a European mind, that these two rupees form precisely the difference between life and death to many who have perished for want on their road home. Another missionary

relates, "Passing one evening a large temple, I caught a sight of one of the idols, and exclaimed, sinful, sinful. The native who was with me asked, Sir, is that sinful for which the Company give thousands? A man said to me a few days ago, If the government does not forsake Juggernaut, how can you expect that we should ?" In this way the efforts of Christian missionaries to turn the Hindoo from idolatry, are, in many instances, completely paralyzed.*

Such is the worship which the British government supports, and from which it derives an annual revenue: Such is the covetousness literally and directly connected with "idolatry," manifested by those who give their sanction and support to a system of idol-worship, distinguished for rapacity, cruelty, obscenity, and every thing shocking to the feelings of humanity! If we are commanded to "flee from idolatry," "to abstain from meats offered to idols," and to "hate even the garment spotted by the flesh," what shall we think of the practice of receiving hundreds of thousands of rupees annually, for permitting blinded idolaters to worship the most despicable idolsof clothing those idols, repairing their temples, and paying the rapacious and unfeeling priests that minister at their altars? What shall we think of the practice of Christian Britons sending forth a body of idol-missionaries, far exceeding in number all the Christian missionaries, perhaps, throughout the world, who, from year to year, propagate delusion, and proclaim, for the sake of gain-the transcendent efficacy of beholding "a log of wood!" "Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this." No wonder if Christian missionaries have the most formidable opposition to encounter, when the very nation that sent them forth to undermine the fabric of Pagan superstition, gives direct countenance and support to every thing that is abhorrent and debasing in the system of idolatry.

Most of the facts above stated have been selected and abridged from Mr. Pegg's “ Pilgrim tax in India."

How appropriate the wish expressed by Dr. Buchanan, "that the proprietors of India stock, could have attended the wheels of Juggernaut, and seen this peculiar source of their revenue!" I would live on "a dinner of herbs," or even on the grass of the fields, before I would handle a sum of money procured in this way, to supply the most delicious fare. From whatever motives support is given to this system of Idolatry it will remain an indelible stain on the British nation, to generations yet unborn, and its miserable and demoralizing effects will only be fully known in the eternal world.

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CHAPTER II.

ON THE ABSURDITY AND IRRATIONALITY OF COVETOUSNESS

THE Creator has endowed man with mental faculties which, if properly directed and employed, would be sufficient, in many cases, to point out the path of virtue, and to show the folly and unreasonableness of vice. All the laws of God, when properly investigated as to their tendency and effects, will be found accordant with the dictates of enlightened reason, and calculated to produce the greatest sum of human happiness; and the dispositions and vices which these laws denounce will uniformly be found to have a tendency to produce discomfort and misery, and to subvert the moral order and happiness of the intelligent system. On these and similar grounds, it may not be inexpedient to offer a few remarks on the folly and irrationality of the vice to which our attention is directed.

In the first place, the irrationality of Covetousness, will appear, if we consider the noble intellectual faculties with which man is endowed.

Man is furnished not only with sensitive powers to perceive and enjoy the various objects with which his terrestrial habitation is replenished, but also with the powers of memory, imagination, judgment, reasoning, and the moral faculty. By these powers he can retrace .and contemplate the most remarkable events which have happened in every period of the world, since time began: survey the magnificent scenery of nature in all its variety and extent; dive into the depths of the ocean; ascend into the regions of the atmosphere; pry into the invisible regions of creation, and behold the myriads of animated