Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/272

 262 masses—these are absent. Especially is experimental faith, the personal, joyous experience of believers, gone. Nay, it never came. The Church needs renovation. A monopoly of religion is as dangerous as a monopoly of inferior businesses—the more dangerous; infinitely more. The Roman Catholic Church has suffered from monopoly. It is bestirring itself as never before, because of the invasion of other churches. It knows the talk about its being the exclusive Church is all humbug; that the other ecclesiastical expression of Christianity is as truly divine as any it claims from a Peter that never was at Rome, and a Church that has been historically the most imperfect of any that has existed.

We are needed. We are welcomed by the people, and shall yet be by the priests. All American churches are needed. The idea that it is sectarian for these churches to come here in their own proper form, is another folly more foolish than the Romanist counterpart, because more inconsistent with the history of these churches. Come in your own clothes, not dressed as Joseph or a harlequin. Come as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists; the five fingers (for the thumb is a finger) that make up the right hand that Christ stretches out for the salvation of the world. Let not the hand be doubled up against itself, nor even against that left hand of superstition and irrational rational ism which so often unites to smite the Lord's right hand. Use your own forces in your own way, and God will give the increase.

That such increase is certain, I have no doubt. My stay here has convinced me that this is a very open field; that many are waiting our coming; that if the Church takes possession of it boldly and liberally, she will have instant and large reward. May her faith and works be adequate to the signs of the Lord's will and pleasure. Let her not smite the ground timidly, and only thrice; but in such abundance of prayers and means as shall show how strong is her faith, how ardent her love for her Saviour and her brethren. He that soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly; but he that soweth bountifully, shall reap also bountifully. Let her so