I've hung the wreath of joy around (Vain thought,) He still lives in his fame. I called thee Fancy's-bid her come We'll sing too of the wine which flows Thou shall be no more Fancy's--she JUBAL. MARRIED,-On the 24th ult. by the Rev. B. Keller, Mr. Martin Bob, to Miss Ann Wildi, both of Hummelstown, Dauphin County. On the 27th by the same, Mr. Philip Cornman, to Miss Margaret Zeigler, of North Middleton. RE-PRINTED BY FLEMING AND GEDDEs, South Hanover-Street. CARLISLE. 00 CONDITIONS OF PUBLICATION. The RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY IS published every Friday, at two dollars per annum, payable HALF YEARLY in advance. No subscriber taken for a shorter time than six months-nor paper discontinued until all arrearages are paid. Unless notice is given at the end of the term subscribed for, it will be considered a new engagement. Every tenth copy allowed to efficient and responsible agents. A title page and index will be given at the close of each volume. **Letters to the editor must be post paid. ** No. 5. Religions Miscellary. "Say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold, thy salvation cometh." Vol. I fall, here called the Ununtu, the ever MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE. lasting-before sin, deified in the On landing in Bengal, in the year 1793, our Brethren found themselves surrounded with a population of heathens (not including the Mahomedans) amounting to at least one hundred millions of souls. On the subject of the DIVINE NATURE with the verbal admission of the doctrine of the Divine Unity, they heard these idolaters speak of 330,000,000 of gods. Amidst innumerable idol temples, they found none erected for the worship of the One Living and True God. Services, without end, they saw performed in honor of the elements and deified heroes; but heard not one voice tuned to the praise or employed in the service of the One God. Unacquainted with the moral perfections of Jehovah, they saw this immense population prostrate before dead matter-before the monkey, the serpent-before idols, the very personifications of sin; and they found this animal, this reptile, and the lecher Krishna and his concubine Radha, among the favorite deities of the Hindoos all these millions in prostrate homage before the instrument of the I persons of an infamous lecher and his concubine! Lower than this human reason cannot fall-the human being cannot be precipitated. In this worship, do we not perceive put forth the utmost malace of the powers of darkness? And can we not imagine, that where the news of this consummation of the triumph over man, was carried to the Stygian council The hollow abyss Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell, With deaf'ning shout return'd the loud ac claim! To one hundred millions of men in such a state of deplorable ignorance and alienation from God, was it not of the last consequence, that the glorious nature of the True God, whom to know is life eternal, should be made known? no On further inquiry they found, that this immense population had knowledge whatever of the DIVINE GOVERNMENT: that they supposed the world to be placed under the manage ment of beings, ignorant, capricious, and wicked; that the three principal deities, the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer, having no love of righteousness, nor any settled rules of government, were often quarrelling among each other, and subverting one another's arrangements; and that among 330,000,000 of governors, the governed know not whom to obey, nor in whom to confide. Now, to a christian mind, having before it the vicissitudes, afflictions, and difficulties of the present state, nothing can appear more deplorable than this ignorance of the divine government-nothing more desirable than ceiving the wisdom and the benevolence of the command, preach the Gospel to every creature, and pointing all to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. They found that this people were equally ignorant of the LAW OF GOD- Respecting the real nature of the that the injunctions of their Shasters PRESENT STATE, the missionaries perwere often contradictory, not unfre- ceived that the Hindoos labored unquently commanding services puerile der the most fatal misapprehensionsand vicious, and were rather a trans- that they believed the good or evil accript of the blind and corrupted heart tions of this birth were not produced of man, than of the divine nature as the volitions of their own wills, and that these people had no idea of but arose from, and were the unavoidsin, as connected with a disposition able results of the actions of the past different from the mind of God, and birth; that their present actions would as a moral evil. If the knowledge of inevitably give rise to the whole comhis spiritual state be of more import- plexion of their characters and conance to man than all other acquire- duct in the following birth—and that ments, and if by the law is the know thus they were doomed to interminalege of sin, then surely it was of the ble transmigrations, to float as some utmost consequence to all these mil-light substance upon the bosom of an lions, that to them should be made known the holy principles of that government under which all mankind are placed. Our brethren found, that through their ignorance of the divine law, of the corruption of the heart, and of | irresistible torrent. To a people like. these poor Hindoos, without hope, how necessary the messages of mercy-the invitations and promised succors of the Gospel! Among these idolaters no Bibles were found-no Sabbaths-no con any form-no house for God--no God, but a log of wood, or a monkey, no Saviour, but the Ganges-no wor the deep turpitude of sin, these peo-gregating for religious instruction in ple imagined that the waters of the Ganges had virtue enough in them to purify the mind from its earthly stains; and hence they saw the whole popula-ship but that paid to abominable idols, tion residing in its neighborhood, morning and evening, crowding to the river; they saw this holy water carried for religious uses to the most distant parts, and the dying hurried in their Jast moments to receive their last purification in the sacred stream. Under the delusion, that sin is to be removed by the merit of works, they observed others undertaking long and dangerous pilgrimages in which thousands perished; while others were seen inflicting on their bodies the most dreadful tortures; and others were sitting through the day and through the year, repeating the names of their guardian deities. Who can contemplate mistakes like these, terminating in everlasting disappointment, without per and that connected with dances, songs and unutterable impurities; so that what should have been divine worship, purifying, elevating, and carrying the heart to heaven, was a corrupt but rapid torrent, poisoning the soul and carrying it down to perditionno morality: for how can a people be moral, whose gods are monsters of vice; whose priests are their ringleaders in crime; whose scriptures encourage pride, impurity, falsehood, revenge and murder; whose worship is connected with indescribable abominations, and whose heaven is a brothel? As might be expected, they found that men died here without indulging the smallest vestige of hope, except what can arise from transmi 1 gration-the hope, instead of plunging into some place of misery, of passing into the body of some reptile. To carry to such a people the Divine Word, to call them together for sacred instruction, to introduce among them a pure and heavenly worship, to lead them to the observance of a Sabbath on earth as the preparative and prelude to a state of endless perfection, was surely a work worthy for a Saviour to commend, and becoming a Christian people to attempt. 67 and without hope, the unsearchable riches of Christ-to carry to them the news of life and immortality, that they may possess that hope which is as an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which is the source of a purification terminating in everlasting perfection! By late arrivals from England, intelligence has been received, that the votaries of the notorious Juggernaut are fast declining with respect to number. The public sentiment has been so much changed in Hindoostan, that at their last festival so small was the number of pilgrims present, they were unable to drag the car. It is said the Free Press of Calcutta, "has operated most powerfully in reforming the most inveterate and revolting abuses." This is cheering news indeed, to those who glory in the cause of Zion; and to all friends of morality. But still the devoted Missionary will find enough to engage his most zealous labors. Bat, finally, our Brethren found, that the ideas of these heathens respecting a FUTURE STATE, were equally erroneous and pernicious with those already stated. By a Future State, they perceive that a Hindoo commonly understands nothing more than transmigration; and that he dies with the expectation of immediately rising to birth again in some other body-in that of a dog, or a cat, or a worm feeding on ordure; that if he has committed some dreadful crime, he expects to fall, for a short time, into some one of these dreadful states of torment described in the Shasters. They discovered, that no Hindoo, except he has given all his wealth to the priests, or has performed some other act of splendid merit, or except he drown himself in a sacred river, or perish on the funeral pile, has the least hope of happiness after death. Those who are supposed to attain happiness, are said to ascend to the heavens of the gods, where, for a limited period, they enjoy an unbounded indulgence in sensual gratification. This is the only heaven of conscious bliss held out to a Hindoo; and held out to him on conditions, which the great bulk of the people find to be impracticable. The state beyond this, reserved exclusively for Jogees, is absorption, or a complete loss of seperate existence in union to the soul of the world. How important to pour into the lap of all these millions, liv-excite government to harsh measures ing without God, and without Christ, MISSION AMONG THE JEWS. From the London Jewish Expositor. TRIALS OF A JEWISH MISSIONARY. Extract from a Journal of a Missionary tour of Mr. Bergmann, a converted Jew, from Frankfort. After having called upon the Lord in prayer, for strength and blessing, whereby I might be enabled to contribute to the honor of his name, I set out from Frankfort on the 9th of May, and arrived in the evening at H. The Landlord, a sensible man, after having understood the object of my journey, cautioned me against the Rabbin of that place, who having attempted to against Jewish converts, since yester 68 Mission among the Jews. day was more incensed than ever against Christianity, because he had read in the newspapers, that the only son of a Rabbin at H. lately had been baptized at Elberfield, and that the readers might suppose that it was his only son. As caution seemed necessary, and yet I was desirous to have some conversation with that very Rabbin, I took the advice of a friend in a neighboring place. He informed me that Jewish overseers and the Rabbin had, indeed, succeeded so far, as to cause an order to be given, that no gatekeeper, or other inferior civil officer in towns, should be permitted to distribute Christian tracts among Jews; but that this order did neither extend to himself nor to me, and that consequently I had nothing to fear from calling upon the Rabbin. Having therefore taken with me some important tracts, especially "Christian passages from the Rabbinical Works," I went to the Rabbin. In reply to his first question, What is your desire? I presented to him the tracts, with the request, to peruse the last mentioned with great attention, as it clearly appeared from it, that the most. celebrated authors of the Talmud and the Cabbala had, confessed Jesus Christ to be... Here the Rabbin in a rage flew up against me. "What," said he, "Do you not know that I can flog you, ad lemifha, to death?" No sir, answered I, that you cannot; for two years since, I professed the evangelical Christian religion, and think it now my most sacred duty to make my dear Israelitish brethern also acquainted with the way of salvation. So, said he, you are a Meshumed; an accursed, baptized; take then your things back again;-but, no, I shall keep them; but you shall see that I can write large volumes against them. That, replied I, you are welcome to do; but your confutation must rest on solid grounds. Get you away, cried he in a passion; only see how merages- angry-you have made me, how my whole guff-body-shakes. Follow the Meshumed as far as the end of the Jewish street, cried he to a young Jew who was present. I took a polite leave of him and went the same day to G. On the 14th I met in F. in the Inn, with an old Jew, who showed much inclination to receive divine truth, but could read Hebrew not German. I therefore gave him some Jewish German tracts, which he readily accepted, with a promise to communicate them to some of his friends. I proceeded through S. to M. where I ar. rived on the 15th in the evening. On the following day, being the ascension day, I heard an excellent sermon in the church. The minister to whom I was introduced, received me very kindly and was much rejoiced when in my credentials he found the signature of Mr. Von Meier whom he supposed to have been one of his pupils thirty-six years ago. He advised me to pay a visit to opulent Jewish families, and foretold me very exactly the manner in which I should be received by each of them. Accordingly I went in the afternoon to the Israelite J. R. who had known me as a Jew; and was informed of my transition to the christian religion. The reception was tolerably polite, until our conversation turned upon religion, and I offered him some tracts. Then he flew into a violent passion, and said, "Never presume to speak thus to any Jew here, or I shall show you what I, an agent of the ducal court can do." I calmly answered, that his terrible threats af fected me very little, and that they would not prevent me from doing my duty as a christian. I immediately went to the house of his brother, who lived at. a considerable distance. When I arrived there, I was told that he had gone from home; but was afterwards informed that his brother on a shorter by-way, had preceded me, and caused me to be refused admittance. |