Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/188

160 festival was kept, the old woman told us that the cholera was among them, but that if these images were taken outside and carried round the church, the cholera would go away, and all would get well. Two intelligent heathen lads, standing by, asked me what god this was. On my replying that it was no god, but an idol, that this was not Christianity, for our Scriptures commanded us to make no graven images—the older of the lads said to me in English, “Do not speak so! Many evil men flock to this place. Do not speak so in this place!" But now, with the noise, confusion, and wrangling seen in every Hindu crowd, where everybody directs everybody else, the images were raised on the bearers' shoulders, and moved off in procession. It was much as in the former case—fireworks, music, the angel, Peter, the Virgin Mary, closing with the chief actor, St. Anthony, followed by crosses and banners, the priests and choir-singers.

Scarcely a month or week passed without some such idolatrous scenes being enacted in the Romish church of Royapooram, under the eye and with the countenance of European priests. The identity of their practices with those of the heathen is so complete, that we