Through Five Republics on Horseback | Page 4

distinct Indian nations, speaking 300 distinct languages, and numbering
some millions, all in the darkest heathenism." H. W. Brown, in "Latin
America," says, "There is a pagan population of four to five millions."
Then, with respect to the Roman Catholic population, Rev. T. B. Wood,
LL.D., in "Protestant Missions in South America," 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._