The priests quarreled with the civil chiefs, but their sacred character was increased by the conflict, and caste is the result. The priests are the highest caste (or class), next come the warriors, then the merchant, the farmer, etc., last of all the tanners, buriers of the dead, etc. These classes never intermarry or intermingle in any way; it is contaminating to sit together even. About this time idols appear, and gods multiply until they reach the number of 330,000,000. Men groaned under this stupendous system of oppressive idolatry. Buddha tried in the seventh century before Christ, to reform it, but he failed, though he succeeded in establishing a new faith which has numbered its converts by the hundreds of millions. But Brahminism continues to be the religion of India, even until to-day. The task of Christianity to supplant it is gigantic, and rendered doubly difficult by the failure of Buddhism. In later days a new reformer appeared, Rammohun Roy. He started the Brahmosomaj, or reformed Brahminism, but under his successor, Keshub Chunder Sen, it is drifting toward Christianity. Starting from the Veda, Hinduism has ended in embracing something from all religions, and in presenting phases suited to all minds. It is all-tolerant, all-compliant, all-comprehensive, all-absorbing. It has its spiritual and its material aspect, its esoteric and exoteric, its subjective and objective, its rational and irrational, its pure and its impure. It has one side for the practical, another for the severely moral, another for the devotional and imaginative, another for the sensuous and sensual, and another for the philosophical and speculative. Those who rest in ceremonial observances find it all-sufficient; those who deny the efficacy of works and make faith the one requisite, need not wander from its pale; those who are addicted to sensuality may have their tastes fully gratified; those whose delight is in meditating upon the nature of God and of man, or the relations of matter and of spirit, the mystery of separate existence, or upon the origin of evil, may here indulge their love of speculation. And this capacity for almost limitless expansion causes almost numberless sectarian divisions even among the followers of any given particular line of doctrine. Yet there remains much of the old nature-worship, or more correctly speaking, of the old devil-worship among the Hindus even at this late day. As in Tinnevelly the people worship a stone devil, who holds a trident in one hand, and a child which he was about to devour in the other. The idol generally has a garland of red and white oleander flowers on its head and shoulders. [Illustration: DEVIL WORSHIPED IN TINNEVELLY.] THE GODS OF HINDUISM. The three idols sculptured on the walls of Elephanta Cave are found all over India, and constitute the chief gods which are worshiped by the Hindus. [Illustration: INDRA, GOD OF THE ATMOSPHERE.] [Illustration: