"From the hand of God," he said very quietly.
VILLAGE OF POLO-HANG IN CANTON.
A week later, Sybil wrote again to her friend.
"Canton, January, 1881.
"My Dearest Lily,—We saw such a strange sight yesterday; and we could not help liking to see it, although, of course, it was very dreadful. We went inside a Buddhist temple at Canton. These temples are often called joss-houses; this one was the Temple of Five Hundred Gods. Fancy five hundred gods! and these idols were all there, arranged in different lines. They all seemed to look different, and some were dreadfully ugly. I saw beards on a few of their faces. In the part of the temple where, in a church, our altar would be, there was a terrible-looking thing: I suppose a very special god.
"We saw one of the priests. He had his beads in one hand, and a fan in the other. Some of the priests are men who have committed great crimes, and have escaped to a monastery and had their heads shaved, so as not to be caught and punished.
"Some of the idols were as large as if they were alive, and they had their arms in all sorts of different positions. Some held beads, and a few wore crowns; I think they were disciples of Buddha. The buildings of the temple, and the houses of the priests, were surrounded by lakes and gardens.
"We have been able to get you a picture of part of the inside of the temple, so I send it to you; but Leonard says that he thinks as you'll have the picture (and he considers it a very good one) that you ought to know that this temple is said to have been founded about 520 years a.d., and to have been rebuilt in 1755. Fancy people wasting prayers before these images! Isn't it a pity that they don't know better? There are more than 120 temples, or joss-houses, in Canton.
