hich furnish
object-lessons to the most cultivated Occidental mind. We wonder what
the East could really have accomplished, if its native gifts had been
under the control of Christian truth. Unfortunately, those gifts were
commonly under the control of the baser instincts. Paul's philosophy of
heathenism is far more correct than that of many a modern writer on
comparative religion. Only an ancestral sin can explain man's universal
ignorance and depravity. Because he would not retain God in his
knowledge, he was given up to the dominion of vile affections, to show
him his need of a divine redemption.

Tanjore and Madura are the seats of the Dravidian temples which we
visited. Tanjore is two hundred miles south of Madras, and fifty miles
from the Bay of Bengal. It is in the Presidency of Madras, but European
influences have not greatly changed its prevailingly native aspect. The
half-naked coolies, and the children clothed only in sunshine, show how
inveterate are custom and poverty. The great Tanjore temple is the
center of worship for a hundred miles round. It is built on a stupendous
scale. It consists of a series of courts, in the midst of which are two
tremendous towers or gopuras, as the technical term should be. Its
principal tower, is pyramidal in form, is two hundred feet in height, is
covered with row after row of colossal carvings of gods and goddesses,
and is surmounted by an immense dome-shaped and gilded top of solid
stone, said to have been brought to its place upon an inclined plane
from the quarry four miles away. The gateway leading to the temple is
itself an enormous structure. It opens upon a court eight hundred feet
long by four hundred feet wide, the walls of which enclose an endless
succession of little chapels, each one of which has at its back a rude
picture of some incarnation of Vishnu or Krishna, and in front of each
picture there stands erect an image in stone of the lingam or phallus.

A great platform, in the center of the court, houses, beneath a gorgeous
canopy, an immense black granite image of a bull, the favorite animal of
Siva, carved out of a single block sixteen feet long and twelve feet
high, and kept perpetually shining by anointings of holy oil. The
imagination of the worshiper is thus excited by successive statues and
pictures, until at last he reaches the tremendous pyramidal tower, or
gopura, which portrays and symbolizes the power of the heathen god to
destroy and to recreate