Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/373

Rh Testament had been secretly circulating in Mexico. Spanish prisoners of war had taken with them to Spain and to her former colonies in this country thousands of copies of the New Testament translated by Enzinas and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Amid the wild havoc of war the blessed story "of Jesus and his love" was breathed in many an ear as this little book sped on his errands of peace. The fruit of such seed-sowing appeared along many a path yet untrodden by other messengers of the cross. The Rev. Dr. Bingham, then secretary of the American Bible Society, went into Mexico in 1826, and everywhere found a great thirst for the word of God. He shipped to the capital five hundred Bibles and one hundred and thirty New Testaments. It was his opinion that up to that time not more than two thousand copies of the Scriptures had ever reached Mexico.

The Mexican clergy seem to have been divided among themselves as to the expediency of circulating the Bible. At one time a poster appeared on the inside door of the cathedral in Vera Cruz announcing the publication of a Spanish Bible with notes, under the patronage of the archbishop; the same notice appeared in Mexico. But this edition was in thirty parts and cost, unbound, eight dollars a copy. Another record tells us that the only terms on which a Spanish Bible could be procured was by the payment of thirty dollars for the book itself, and thirty dollars more to the curate of the parish for the privilege of reading it. The bargain was completed when the buyer solemnly promised not to read his treasure in the presence of wife, children or servants.

Such a case is reported in the Bible Record for 1880. A gentleman was traveling in Mexico, in the wildest