Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/109

Rh that Christ had actually been in Mexico, and so built up the tradition of Quetzatcoatl. But this theory does not get rid of—it makes essential—the presence of a missionary in Mexico, through whom the people were instructed in the truths of Christianity, and from whom they obtained a knowledge of Christ.

It is hard to understand what it was that Quetzatcoatl taught if it was not Christianity, and equally hard to conceive what he could have been if he were not a Christian missionary. A white man, with all the peculiarities of a European, teaches to a remote and isolated pagan people something the remnants of which centuries afterward are found to bear an extraordinary resemblance to Christianity. The teacher himself is depicted as a perfect and exalted type of a Christian missionary, though the Mexicans could have no model to guide them in their delineation of such a character. Long, earnestly, and successfully he preached the worship of the great unseen but all-present God, and taught the Mexicans to trust in an omnipotent and benevolent Father in heaven. He preached peace and good-will among men, and "he stopped his ears when war was spoken of." He taught and encouraged the cultivation of the earth and the arts and sciences of peace and civilization. The impression he made was, indeed, so profound that the memory of his virtues and good works survived through centuries of change and trouble, and made him acceptable as a god even to the rude, intruding barbarians, who only learned of him remotely and at second hand ages after the completion of his mission. Can he, then, be an imaginary person? Could the early Mexican pagans have evolved such a character from their own fancy or created it out of pagan materials? The thing seems incredible. It would indeed be curious if the Mexicans never having seen a white man, and wholly ignorant of European ideas and beliefs had invented a fable of a white man sojourning among them; it would be still more curious if, in addition to this, they had invented another fable of that white man instructing them in European religion and morals. The white man without the teaching might be a possible but still a doubtful story; the teaching without a white man would be difficult to believe; but the white man and the teaching together make up a complete and consistent whole almost precluding the possibility of invention.

Three points in relation to Quetzatcoatl seem well established: (1) he was a white man from across the Atlantic; (2) he taught religion to the Mexicans; (3) the religion he taught retained to after-ages many strong and striking resemblances to Christianity. The conclusion seems unavoidable that Quetzatcoatl was a Christian missionary from Europe, who taught Christianity to the Mexicans, or Toltecs.