Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/401

Rh. The Rev. Procopio Diaz, who lost two fingers in the riot of 1873, came now as a welcome visitor. He took up his abode in Chilpanzinco, the capital of the State of Guerrero, where the governor was so friendly to the Protestants that he kept Bibles in his house for circulation. One of the church-members in Chilpanzinco died recently, and his funeral was the first ever conducted on Protestant principles in the State. The glorious hopes of the gospel shed a new and strange light on a scene too often marked by irreverence.

In addition to the usual irritation felt in isolated places against new Protestant enterprises, there are now many tokens of a revival of old prejudices. Says a mission report in 1885, "The pressure of opposition from the reactionary party in Mexico is greater than for many years past." The priesthood have charged Protestant ministers from the United States with being secret agents for their government, and that they are there only to prepare the way for the annexation of Mexico to the United States. Several mobs have resulted from inflammatory appeals to their religious feelings and their patriotism.

Following these appeals to mob law came the martyrdom of a faithful brother, Rev. Nicanor Gomez, pastor of the church in Capulhuac. He had gone with two sons, one of them also a minister of the gospel, to lay the foundations of a new and promising church in Almaloya, near Toluca. Not finding the official who was to give sanction to this enterprise, Mr. Diaz, another pastor, and several of the brethren waited his arrival in the house of a neighbor. There were evidences that a riot was determined on to prevent the Protestants from