e to the church. That is it: Do
anything you please, provided you share the spoils with the church.

Across the breast of the Virgin's image in the church of Our Lady of
Penha in Pernambuco, before which church the Bibles were burned in
1903, are written the following words: "One hundred days' indulgence to
the person who will kiss the holy foot of the Holy Virgin." This
pitifully expresses, perhaps, the thought behind saint worship. It is
the hope that the aching of the sinful heart may find some assuagement
through the worship of these gilded, gaudy images. It is claimed by the
priests and some of the more intelligent that the image worshiped is
only a concrete representation of the saint, and it contains
symbolically the spirit of the saint. To be sure! This is exactly the
reason the more intelligent fetish worshiper in Africa assigns for
worshiping his hand-made god. The etone or piece of wood is a
representative of God and to a degree contains His spirit. Such worship
is condemned as being idolatry in the African. The thing which is
idolatry in the African must be idolatry in the Catholic. Even the
Catholics will condemn the idol worship of the heathen, and yet this
same Catholic church has in scores of places in South America and in
other heathen lands, taken the identical images worshiped by the
heathen and converted them into Catholic saints.

In the city of Braga, in Portugal, is a temple which centuries ago was
devoted to Jupiter. It was afterward converted into a Catholic church
and dedicated to St. Peter. The idol Jupiter, with two keys in his
hand, was consecrated into St. Peter. In another part of the same city
is a temple devoted to Janus in Roman times, which was turned into a
temple dedicated to St. John. The idol which formerly was worshiped as
Janus is being now worshiped as St. John. In the same temple there is
an image now consecrated as St. Mark which was formerly the god Mars.
The saint worship in Brazil is just as heathenish. In China Buddhist
idols were renamed Jehosaphat by the Jesuits and worshiped. Their
practices in Brazil are in keeping with their methods in other lands.

What is the difference between a worshiper who thus seeks indulgence
through the worship of an image in Brazil and a like worshiper with a
like soul need bowing before a similar wooden image in Africa or China?

CHAPTER VII.

PENANCE AND PRIEST.

Confession and penance play a large part in the religious life