Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/446

434 his prostration before the passing priest and wafer. This occurred in the year of Iturbide's successful revolution against Spain and more successful subjugation to Rome. But the real gray of the dawn was the American war, twenty-three years after the proclamation of dependence as well as of independence. Before that event not an open Bible could have been seen in the whole realm, which then included California, Nevada, Colorado, up to, if not across, the line of the Pacific Railway; nor could a minister conduct worship other than after the form of the Roman Church.

That war carried the Bible and the Protestant Church into Mexico. The soldiers brought the Book in their knapsacks or pockets, and falling out by the way, through cowardice, capture, or sickness, they dropped this seed of the Gospel along these new paths. They could easily talk with the natives after a few weeks, and in their hours of sickness, sometimes unto death, they translated its lender words into the common tongue. Thus the thirsty peon tasted the first drop of the Water of Life. Then, too, the Bible Society sent its agents with the armies, who carried and scattered the Word wherever the troops marched. I have met with several since my return who engaged in this work under the shelter of our flag.

Besides the sowing of the seed in this form, was the more noticeable though not more valuable revelation of it in the shape of public worship. To that hour, no Mexican in his own land had seen any Christian worship, except the celebration of the mass and its attendant ceremonies. The gaudy array of the priests, the mumblings in an unknown tongue, the prostration before a carved image, the uplifting of the Bread and Body of God, the swinging of incense, and ringing of bells, and beating of breasts, and wailings of people, and mournful and triumphal music of the organ and choir—this was their only daily food. The extras were after the same sort: preaching that fostered the follies of superstition and