Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/366

342 Religion springs from an inherent aspiration, common to human nature everywhere, towards a knowledge of, and union with, what is divine and eternal. The development of this instinct carries humanity through the same phases according to laws governing religious evolution, which are universal. Asia, Africa, and ancient Europe, have produced religious systems, each with its myths, rites of sacrifice, practices of penance, vigils, ceremonial observances, and consecrated priests, and the conclusion seems obvious that within human nature itself are found the springs from which these various independent systems—identical in their intention but so different in their moral value—originate. Man is potential to respond to the demands of his own being, whether in the physical and material, or in the moral and spiritual order, and, although the organisation and development observed in primitive religions many differ widely in different quarters of the globe, yet wherever mankind dwells in community, religious development stands on the same foundation and proceeds according to the same fundamental law.

It need therefore in reality be no more astonishing that the Maya race and its descendants should have evolved a completely organised religious system, with an impressive ritual and a well-ordered calendar of ecclesiastical festivals, independently of any previous communication with the old world, than that they were found to have a knowledge of spinning, weaving, and metal working, and an effective system of civil government. All due allowance being made however for such considerations, the beliefs and practices of the Mexicans, which were so like Christian ones as to exclude the hypothesis of mere chance, were numerous and striking.

Duran says of their triune idol that "being one," he is adored under three names, and having three names, he is adored as one almost as we believe in the most Holy Trinity. The persons of this trinity were Totec the lord of the majesty and fear; Xipe, the man despised and persecuted, and Tlatlauhquitezcatl, the mirror of splendour. Children were baptized between three and twelve years—signifying a new birth—by pouring on of water to cleanse them from the taint of inherited sin; and auricular confession was practised for the forgiveness of sin committed, penances being imposed. Even their revolting human sacrifices seem to have been a degraded and materialised interpretation of our Lord's words of consecration when instituting the Eucharistic sacrifice, for the flesh of the victim was eaten reverently, while sacramental words were pronounced calling it the food of the soul and the very flesh of the god to whom the sacrifice was being offered. Holy water was used in many ceremonies, and especially at the crowning of kings. At stated times, a sort of passion play was performed in which a man was bound to a cross and killed with arrows. All these, and many other ceremonies bearing a striking analogy to Christian rites, much impressed the Spaniards, especially the friars, who composed a voluminous literature on the subject. Sometimes, indeed, theories were