This is a continent of spiritual need. The Roman Catholic Church has
been a miserable failure. "Nearly 7,000,000 of people in South
America still adhere, more or less openly, to the fetishisms of their
ancestors, while perhaps double that number live altogether beyond
the reach of Christian influence, even if we take the word Christian
in its widest meaning." [Footnote: Report of Senor F. de Castello]
The Rev. W. B. Grubb, a missionary in Paraguay, says: "The greatest
unexplored region at present known on earth is there. It contains, as
far as we know, 300 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.
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 climate.
