Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/116

 rate and rapacious character of the invaders? Garcillasso de la Vega, the Inca, tells us that Huana Capac, a prince whose life had more of the elements of true Christianity in it than those of the Spaniards altogether, being full of love and humanity, was accustomed to say, that he was convinced that the sun was not God, because he always went on one track through the heavens,—that he had no liberty to stop, or to turn out of his ordinary way, into the wide fields of space around him; and that it was clear that he was therefore only a servant, obeying a higher power. The Peruvians had, like the Athenians, an unknown god, to whom they had a temple, and whom they called Pachacamac, but as he was invisible and was everywhere, they could not conceive any shape for him, and therefore worshipped him in the secret of their hearts. How ridiculous to say that people who had arrived at such a pitch of reasoning, and at such practice of the beneficent principles of love and humanity which Christianity inculcates, were incapable of embracing doctrines so consonant to their own views and habits.

How lamentable, that a British historian should suffer himself to follow the wretched calumnies of Buffon and De Paw against the Americans, with the examples of Mexico and Peru, and the effects of the Jesuit missions staring him in the face. The Spaniards and Portuguese, as we shall presently see, and as Robertson must have known, soon found that the Indians were delighted to embrace Christianity, even in the imperfect form in which it was presented to them, and by thousands upon thousands exhibited the beauty of Christian habits as strikingly as these Europeans did the most opposite qualities.