Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/36

Rh loans, and various other circumstances cut into the wealth of the Church; and the practical impossibility of selling the numberless estates upon which it bad mortgages or finding good reinvestments in the case of sales, compelled it, as the country became less and less prosperous, to put up with delays and losses of interest.

Moreover the Church was to no slight extent a house divided against itself. Under Spanish rule and substantially down to 1848, all the high dignities fell to Gachupines, who naturally faced toward Spain, whereas the parish priests were mainly Creoles with Mexican sympathies; and While the bishops and other managers had the incomes of princes, nearly all of the monks and ordinary priests lived in poverty. There was, therefore, but little in common between the two ranks except the bare fact of being churchmen, which was largely cancelled on the one side by contempt and on the other side by envy ; and the common priests, having generally sided against Spain during the revolution and always been closely in touch with the people, exercised, in spite of their pecuniary exactions, an influence that largely balanced the authority of their heads Finally, the ignorance of most ecclesiastics and the immorality of nearly all greatly diminished their moral force. A large number, even among the higher clergy, were unable to read the mass; and the monks, who in the early days of the colony had rendered good service as missionaries, were now recruited—wrote an American minister—from "the very dregs of the people," and constituted a public scandal.

Still, the Church wielded immense power as late as 1845, and this was reinforced by the type of religion that it offered. High and low alike, the Mexicans, with some exceptions, lived in the senses, differing mainly in the refinement oi the gratifications they sought; and the priests offered them a sensuous worship Sometimes, almost crazed by superstitious fears, men would put out the lights in some church, strip themselves naked, and ply the scourge till every blow fell with a splash. It was pleasanter, however, and usually edifying enough, to kneel at the mass, gaze upon the extraordinary display of gold and silver, gorgeous vestments, costly images and elaborately Carved and gilded woodwork, follow the smoke of the incense rolling upward from golden censers, listen to sonorous