Man, semi-civilised or modern, ever strives to commune with a God, an unseen Being. Is it not nobler and more inspiring to gaze towards the setting sun with solitude around us? An environment of Nature, the nearest approach to the "unknown God" which exists, subtly attracts us as the handiwork of a power unknown. Well may the altar lights and emblems, and the oppressive enclosure of temples, be more and more rejected by the thinking mind, as the dark ages of religion leave us and true reverential knowledge unfolds. We might almost be tempted to say that the cathedrals of Mexico are not a philosophical exchange for its Teocallis, nor that the stake and axe of the Inquisition were much advance upon the sacrificial stone of the Aztec war-god! The frenzied priest who cut open the breast of the human sacrificial victim with an obsidian knife, and tore out the palpitating heart to cast it before his fanciful gods, does not present a picture of such refined cruelty as that of civilised European man, the Inquisitors in long black cloaks, calmly sitting by whilst their victims were slowly roasted to death at the stake because they would not change their faith, or for other equally reasonless cause. There is, and ever will be, something peculiarly sinister and abominable about the recollection of the Inquisition and its operations, under the sky of the New World. And to the philosophical observer, who pins his thoughts to no mere creed of whatever designation, the fact seems palpable that the sinister authority which did those things is only slumbering, and did not civilisation and antagonism restrain it those scenes would be repeated. The germs of an Inquisition exist in almost every religious organisation, but the old original one would burn its victims again if it could! As to the Teocallis, perhaps their form was suggested by the natural pyramidal hills of the mountain landscape, whereon men must have stood to watch the sunset and feel nearer heaven, even in those savage lands. Even to-day this hill-ascending influence is not banished among the primitive class of the Mexican people. Every hill in the neighbourhood of a hamlet is surmounted by a cross, up to which culminating point processions constantly ascend. Indeed, at times the devout--or fanatic--Indian and _peon_ ascends these rocky steeps upon his knees, leaving blood-spots to mark his way! Processions of fanatic Indians were formerly common; they journeyed over great distances upon their knees towards some popular shrine, and although the law now prohibits these, they are surreptitiously carried out at times, and I have witnessed them myself. Onwards and upwards towards the "Unknown God" these poor people grope their way-- "Upon the great world's altar stairs." Can we say much more of the most civilised among us?