Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/162

 156 The souls of the wicked departed to a place of utter darkness, called Mictlan, or hell, where it seems they underwent no other punishment than that of being deprived of light. AZTEC IDOL Had the Mexicans been content with worshipping only the great and invisible god, Teotl, and in offering him the first-fruits of their fields and gardens, all would have been well with them. But from the time that priests arose among them, so-called men of God, dated their woes and miseries. They made idols, which they pretended were images of the deities, and these the people adored—first as the representatives of God; then they lost sight of the Supreme Being, and worshipped the senseless stone.

The greatest god to whom they gave external form, and who ranked next to the invisible God, was Tezcatlipoca, the "Shining Mirror," the master of heaven and earth, the creator of all things. He meted out rewards and punishments; he was ever youthful, ever powerful It was declared by some that he had descended from heaven by a rope of spider's webs. He it was who drove from the country the great high-priest of Tula, the benevolent Quetzalcoatl