Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/119

Rh new benefits from that artful policy by which her Jesuitical children led nations captive, and arrived at a degree of power and influence obnoxious and dangerous to their haughty parent. On the imagination of the simple Indians these splendid spectacles take a powerful hold, uniting, as many of them do, several of the heathenish rites of their ancient superstitions, with the showy ritual of a corrupted Christianity.

Walking through the streets one day, I was painfully surprised to observe a large statue of the Saviour borne on a platform by four men, and accompanied by ten or a dozen wretches grotesquely dressed and as absurdly masked, who were dancing before it in order to excite the mirth of the populace. It seemed to me a melancholy fulfilment of the prophetic declaration, “He is become the laugh of the drunkard, and the sport of fools.” But such is the temporising, and worldly spirit of this Babylon of the nations, that the only reply I could get from one of her worthiest ministers to an indignant remonstrance was, “We do not approve it, but it is necessary to give life to the festivity!”

Perhaps there is no country in the world where religious processions are so numerous, or the great mass of the people so fanatical as in Guatimala. Always distinguished for its rigid attention to the ceremonies of the church: it now