Words & Music: , 1875.

Once Dr. [Earl S.] Tay­lor was in Cal­cut­ta dur­ing an eclipse of the sun. For days be­fore that event he saw the ci­ty’s streets crowd­ed with pil­grims on their way to var­i­ous sac­red plac­es, where they hoped to wor­ship and bathe in the Hoog­hly ri­ver just be­low the Gan­ges dur­ing the time of the eclipse, ex­pect­ing there­by to ward off evil. When at last the fate­ful hour of dark­ness ar­rived hun­dreds of thou­sands of na­tives thronged the sac­red wa­ters, ter­ror­ized by the eclipse and mak­ing a great cla­mor be­cause they feared a great pow­er of evil in the form of a snake was about to swall­ow the sun-god. As Dr. Tay­lor, look­ing from the Y. M. C. Build­ing, wit­nessed this ter­ri­ble ev­i­dence of heath­en­ish su­per­sti­tion, he heard group of na­tive Christ­ians sing­ing in their meet­ing:

The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin;
The Light of the World is Jesus

How thrill­ing! For In­dia’s spir­it­u­al dark­ness is due sole­ly to the eclipse of Je­sus, the Light of the world, made by heath­en­ism in the hearts of her be­night­ed mill­ions.