The Demiurge

From "The Demiurge":

"We were traveling light, so when we arrived, Theo proposed that we make a small detour on foot before going home. He led us through some side streets to a modest building topped with a small dome, which he called a 'chapel'; not quite a temple but serving the same purpose.

'This is a place of contemporary worship,' Theo explained as we entered it.

The inside of the chapel was somber and dark; it appeared empty, and a heavy scent hung in the air. A few rays of the late afternoon sun made their way through the ornate windows, and when my eyes became used to the dim light, I saw that the walls of the chapel were almost entirely covered in pictures. There were rows upon rows of images of human faces, in gold and dark tones, and even the curved and irregular parts of the walls were covered in ornate patterns in similar colors.

'These are saints,' Theo explained. 'Ordinary mortals who lived and died long ago, but who are venerated for their great virtue and devotion.' I looked closely at the images: there were some differences from one to the next, but all, or nearly all of the saints looked straight at me from their pictures, with stony faces and slightly over-sized eyes. They could well have been sketches of one and the same saint.

Here and there I saw a picture with more than one figure in it: a scene, perhaps showing some important event. There was a picture of a woman holding a small child on her knee; and another of a few people standing around some kind of gallows, with a naked body stretched out on it in banal cruelty... This little temple was built in homage of an all-encompassing creator of all that there is, but it seemed to me that its builders had crowded its walls with an odd collection of pictures of his creation."