Brazilian Sketches | Page 6

leaders. What a call is there for trained native pastors and
evangelists! Some of the Seminary students have been preaching as
many as twenty-one times a month in addition to carrying their studies
in the school. Dr. Shepard has been forced to stop them from some of
this preaching because it was preventing successful work in the class
room. The need is so great that it is very difficult to keep the students
from such work.
I must not go too far afield from the subject of this chapter, but I must
take the time to say that nothing breaks down prejudice against the
gospel more effectively than do the schools conducted by the various
mission boards. One day a Methodist colporter entered a town in the
interior of the State of Minas Geraes and began to preach and offer his
Bibles for sale in the public square. Soon a fanatical mob was howling
around him and his life was in imminent peril. Just as the excitement
was at the highest two young men belonging to one of the best families
in the place pressed through the crowd and, ascertaining that the man
was a minister of the gospel, took charge of him and drove off the mob.
They led the colporter to their home, which was the best in the town,
and showed him generous hospitality. They invited the people in to
hear him preach, and thus through their kindness the man and his
message received a favorable hearing. It should be remembered, too,
that these young men belonged to a very devout Roman Catholic
family.
What was the secret of their actions? They had rescued, entertained and
enabled to preach a man who was endeavoring to propagate a faith that
was very much opposed to their own. The explanation is that they had
attended Granberry College, that great Methodist school at Juiz de Fora.
They had not accepted Protestant Christianity, but the school had given
them such a vision and appreciation of the gospel that they could never
again be the intolerant bigots their fellow townsmen were. The college
had made them friends and that was a tremendous service. First we
must have friends, then followers. Nothing more surely and more
extensively makes friends for our cause than the schools, and it must be
said also that they are wonderfully effective in the work of direct
evangelization.

The First Baptist Church commissioned Deacon Theodore Teixeira and
Dr. Shepard to pilot us over the city. The church provided us with an
automobile and our splendid guides magnified their office. It is a
MAGNIFICENT city, indeed. The strip of land between the mountains
and the seashore is not wide. In some places, in fact, the mountains
come quite down to the water. The city, in the most beautiful and
picturesque way, avails itself of all possible space, even in many places
climbing high on the mountain sides and pressing itself deep into the
coves. Perhaps no city in the world has a more picturesque combination
of mountain and water with which to make a beautiful location. It has
about a million inhabitants, and being the federal capital, is the greatest
and most influential city in Brazil.
Most of its streets are narrow and tortuous and until recently were
considered unhealthy. A few years ago the magnificent Avenida
Central was cut through the heart of the city and one of the most
beautiful avenues in the world was built. Twelve million dollars' worth
of property was condemned to make way for this splendid street. It cuts
across a peninsula through the heart of the city from shore to shore, and
is magnificent, indeed, with its sidewalks wrought in beautiful
geometrical designs, with its ornate street lamps, with its generous
width appearing broader by contrast with other narrow streets, with its
modern buildings.
There is another street, however, which is dearer to the Brazilian than
the Avenida. He takes great pride in the Avenida, but he has peculiar
affection for the Rua d'Ouvidor. Down the Ouvidor flows a human tide
such as is found nowhere else in Brazil. No one attempts to keep on the
pavement. The street is given over entirely to pedestrians. No vehicle
ever passes down it until after midnight. In this narrow street, with its
attractive shops filled with the highest-priced goods in the world, you
can soon find anyone you wish to meet, because before long everyone
who can reach it will pass through. In this street the happy, jesting,
jostling crowd is in one continuous "festa".
In passing through the city one is greatly impressed by the number of
parks and beautiful public squares, and in particular with the wonderful
Beiramar, which is a combination of promenades, driveways and park
effects that stretches for miles along the