Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/77

Rh retained in all the temples when other forms of idolatry were introduced by later settlers. In some forgotten age of their history the Mexicans had "exchanged the truth of God for a lie." Their belief in an invisible Creator and Ruler of the universe and the names and the character they gave him show that the ancestors of these people must have known of the one living and true God. They spoke of him as "He who is all in himself," "He in whom we live, all-wise, all-seeing, almighty and everywhere present, the Giver of every good, a Being of infinite purity and grace and the hearer and answerer of prayer." No images of this God were made; a prayer said to have been found among the old Aztec records tells us how he was regarded. Besides the sad picture which it gives us of the famines which often prevailed in Mexico, it reveals the breathings of one who, like Cornelius of old, was "a devout man and prayed to God [sic]alway:"

"O our Lord, protector most strong and compassionate, invisible, impalpable, thou art the giver of life. Lord of all and Lord of all battles, I present myself here before thee to say a few words; the need of the poor people, the people of none estate or intelligence. Know, O Lord, that thy subjects and servants suffer a sore poverty that cannot be told of more than that it is a sore poverty and desolateness. The men have no garments, nor the women, to cover themselves with, but only rags rent in every part, that let the wind and cold in. If they be merchants, they now sell only cakes of salt and broken pepper. The people that have something despise them, so that they go out to sell from door to door and from house to house; and when they sell nothing, they sit down sadly by some fence or wall or in some corner,