Another thing we had enough of and that was church museums, and my wife begged of me not to mention church this, or church that, to her again. We were constantly asked, “Have you been to such a church, seen such a painting or piece of sculpture? Did you hear the music in such a church?” Not a word about the worship. Some ancient writer has said that the churches were first adorned so as to attract the heathen. That may be the case still, as probably many Christian heathen now go to them, but as I am only a Barbarian heathen I certainly was not attracted or pleased. Why the house of God, the place of prayer and spiritual worship, should be turned into a curiosity shop, art gallery, a museum for relics, or as a charnel house be profaned with dead men’s bones, is something I am too ignorant to explain. There seems to be a blasphemous incongruity in all this to my untrained mind. Religious worship seemed to be but a showy performance and the churches, places of amusement, all to please the senses. Frequently as we entered a church a priest would be having some service before an altar, paid to mumble by the hour, with a few old women or crippled men in front or rather at his back. These seemed to be the only people in church except on gala days. Our guide, also a priest, would take us from chapel to alcove and point out all the curious things, and passing within a few feet of the performer chatted as gaily as if he was chief showman expecting a pour boire, as he was. It all went on as a matter of business and reminded me of a Hindu temple where the priest is muttering prayers before an idol, while the people are chattering, buying and selling around him. The only difference, the one was in Europe and the other in India; the one more grand and beautiful than the other. The spirit and show of idolatry was the same. Is it any wonder that men become irreligious, infidels, when they see all this insincerity, hypocrisy, the heartless form and ceremonies in pretense of worshiping the Almighty? It is impossible for thinking men to be such fools as to suppose that God is pleased with all this parade and show. A Frenchman summed up the matter thus: “The people, that is the masses, need some serious amusement and there is nothing so innocent and harmless as religion, so let them enjoy it.” An Italian said: “If you want to find real religious life in the Catholic church, Rome is the last place in which to seek for it. Religious faith has died out of the Italian mind.” The French as a people have thrown away their religious performance, not faith, as they probably never had any faith in it, and could not have done otherwise as thinking beings with the spurious article offered them, but the Italians are head over ears in their religious galas and carnivals as a pleasant pastime. There is not a more idolatrous, religiously frivolous nation on earth than the Italian.