Through Five Republics on Horseback | Page 4

says, "South America is a pagan field, properly speaking. Its image-worship is idolatry. Abominations are grosser and more universal than among Roman Catholics in Europe and the United States, where Protestantism has greatly modified Catholicism. But it is worse off than any other great pagan field in that it is dominated by a single mighty hierarchy--the mightiest known in history. For centuries priestcraft has had everything its own way all over the continent, and is now at last yielding to outside pressure, but with desperate resistance."
"South America has been for nearly four hundred years part of the parish of the Pope. In contrast with it the north of the New World-- Puritan, prosperous, powerful, progressive--presents probably the most remarkable evidence earth affords of the blessings of Protestantism, while the results of Roman Catholicism left to itself are writ large in letters of gloom across the priest-ridden, lax and superstitious South. Her cities, among the gayest and grossest in the world, her ecclesiastics enormously wealthy and strenuously opposed to progress and liberty, South America groans under the tyranny of a priesthood which, in its highest forms, is unillumined by, and incompetent to preach, the gospel of God's free gift; and in its lowest is proverbially and habitually drunken, extortionate and ignorant. The fires of her unspeakable Inquisition still burn in the hearts of her ruling clerics, and although the spirit of the age has in our nineteenth century transformed all her monarchies into free Republics, religious intolerance all but universally prevails." [Footnote: Guiness's "Romanism and Reformation."]
Prelates and priests, monks and nuns exert an influence that is all- pervading. William E. Curtis, United States Commissioner to South America, wrote: "One-fourth of all the property belongs to the bishop. There is a Catholic church for every 150 inhabitants. Ten per cent. of the population are priests, monks or nuns, and 272 out of the 365 days of the year are observed as fast or feast days. The priests control the government and rule the country as absolutely as if the Pope were its king. As a result, 75 per cent. of the children born are illegitimate, and the social and political condition presents a picture of the dark ages." It is said that, in one town, every fourth person you meet is a priest or a nun, or an ecclesiastic of some sort.
Yet, with all this to battle against, the Christian missionary is making his influence felt.
_La Razon_, an important newspaper of Trujillo, in a recent issue says: "In homage to truth, we make known with pleasure that the ministers of Protestantism have benefited this town more in one year than all the priests and friars of the Papal sect have done in three centuries."
"Last year," writes Mr. Milne, of the American Bible Society, "one of our colporteurs in Ayacucho had to make his escape by the roof of a house where he was staying, from a mob of half-castes, led on by a friar. Finding their prey had escaped, they took his clothes and several boxes of Bibles to the plaza of the city and burnt them."
It was not such a going-back as the outside world thought, but, oh, it was a deeply significant one, when recently the leading men of the Republic of Guatemala met together and solemnly threw over the religion of their fathers, which, during 400 years of practice, had failed to uplift, and re-established the old paganism of cultured Rome. So serious was this step that the _Palace of Minerva_, the goddess of trade, is engraved on the latest issue of Guatemalan postage stamps. Believing that the few Protestants in the Republic are responsible for the reaction, the Archbishop of Guatemala has promised to grant one hundred days' indulgence to those who will pray for the overthrow of Protestantism in that country.
"Romanism is not Christianity," so the few Christian workers are fighting against tremendous odds. What shall the harvest be?

PART I.
THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
The country to which the author first went as a self-supporting missionary in the year 1889.
And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying, "Here is a story book Thy Father hath written for thee."
"Come, wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod, And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sung to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.
--_Longfellow._
THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
The Argentine Republic has an area of one and a quarter million square miles. It is 2,600 miles from north to south, and 500 miles at its widest part. It is twelve times the size of Great Britain. Although the population of the country is about seven millions, only one per cent, of its cultivable area is now occupied, yet Argentina has an incomparable