To illustrate the general subject, I shall give the Indian opinion of some of the heathen gods, contrasted with that of the pagan. The American Indians do not believe the SUN to be any bigger than it appears to the naked eye. Conversing with the Chikkàsah archi-magus, or high-priest, about that luminary, he told me, “it might possibly be as broad and round as his winter-house; but he thought it could not well exceed it.” We cannot be surprised at the stupidity of the Americans in this respect, when we consider the gross ignorance which now prevails among the general part of the Jews, not only of the whole system of nature, but of the essential meaning of their own religious ceremonies, received from the Divine Majesty. {19} —And also when we reflect, that the very learned, and most polite of the ancient Romans, believed (not by any new-invented mythology of their own) that the sun was drawn round the earth in a chariot. Their philosophic system was not very dissimilar to that of the wild Americans; for Cicero tells us, Epicurus thought the sun to be less than it appeared to the eye. And Lucretius says, _Tantillus ille sol_, “a diminutive thing.” And, if the Israelites had not at one time thought the sun a portable god, they would not have thought of a chariot for it. This they derived from the neighbouring heathen; for we are told, that they had an house of the sun, where they danced in honour of him, in circuits, and had consecrated spherical figures; and that they, likewise, built a temple to it; for “they purified and sanctified themselves in the gardens, behind the house, or temple of Achad.” In _Isa._ xvii. 8, we find they had _sun-images_, which the Hebrews called _chummanim_, made to represent the sun, or for the honour and worship of it: and the Egyptians met yearly to worship in the temple of Beth-Shemesh, a house dedicated to the sun. Most part of the old heathens adored all the celestial orbs, especially the sun; probably they first imagined its enlivening rays immediately issued from the holy fire, light, and spirit, who either resided in, or was the identical sun. That idolatrous ceremony of the Jews, Josiah utterly abolished about 640 years before our Christian æra. The sacred text says, “He took away the horses, which the kings of Judah had given to the sun, and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.” At Rhodes, a neighbouring island to Judæa, they consecrated chariots to the sun, on account of his glorious splendour and benign qualities. Macrobius tells us, that the Assyrians worshipped Adad, or Achad, an idol of the sun; and Strabo acquaints us, the Arabians paid divine homage to the sun, &c. But the Indian Americans pay only a civil regard to the sun: and the more intelligent sort of them believe, that all the luminaries of the heavens are moved by the strong fixt laws of the great Author of nature.