Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/264

226 ruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” The Hindus, not content with forsaking the true God, have created for themselves false gods, have made images like to man; and, going still farther, they worship beasts, birds, and even creeping things.

Not far from the temple-wall, whose large stones are shattered by the cannon-balls of former wars, is an English burial-ground. Here, under the shadow, as it were, of an idol shrine, lie gallant officers, young wives, and tender babes. It was a saddening, sobering scene. Far from the home of infancy, far from loving hearts, they had laid down and died in a strange land. Their ashes rest within the battlements of the stronghold of the fearful Hyder Ali, and deadly serpents wind among the stones that mark their burial-place. Little matters it that the sun of torrid India parches and glares upon the earth above their mouldering bodies, if they entered into the rest of the people of God.

In the afternoon we went through the town, which contains some eight or nine thousand inhabitants, preaching and giving tracts, and we were very well received. The conduct of the