Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/307

 trained workers, she established several congregations in the vicinity of Monterey. She was in fact like a bishop among her people, doing a thoroughly good work. Later, her mission was passed over to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who, in turn, resigned that part of their work to the Presbyterians about 1875.

After a lengthy correspondence with parties now in the field, we find that the Baptists were the first to enter Mexico in a formal way. But we must not fail clearly to state that a most valuable work of preparation was done by the American Bible and Tract Societies, as early as 1847 and 1848. These worthy bodies sent colporteurs in the wake of the American army, who went everywhere "sowing the seed" which Christian churches are now gathering.

Between the years 1867 and 1870, several of the Catholic clergy seceded, and in 1871 the Rev. H. C. Riley, a brave and independent Protestant Episcopalian, furnished with funds by the American and Foreign Christian Union, and with means of his own, obtained a foothold in Mexico City.

Then, in 1872, the Presbyterians sent missionaries to Zacatecas, and the Congregationalists but little later followed. Their preacher in Ahualulco, State of Jalisco, the Rev. J. L. Stephens, was brutally murdered by a mob, March 2, 1874, and was thus the first martyr to the cause in Mexico.

The Methodists, through the labors and visits of Bishop Haven, Dr. Butler, and others, early secured, in 1873, a portion of the old and vast convent of San Francisco, and firmly established themselves in the city of Mexico, whence their missions have spread like a prairie fire, and they are probably the most numerous body of Protestants in Mexico. Under the present energetic guidance of the Rev. J. W. Butler, a large-hearted, earnest Christian, (to whom I am indebted for these hitherto unpublished statistics,) their labors have prospered exceedingly. Sunday and day schools have been established; a printing-press is in active operation, and an illustrated paper, the Abogado Cristiano, has been put in circulation, as well as an annual (Anuario), and numberless tracts, in the Spanish language.