Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/542

 536 pestilent Lutherans" were incinerated for the cause of religion." The work was completed in the spirit of the age, indeed, in such a manner that when the books are opened and the last seal broken, the cries of the heathen "will most probably drown the anthems of the saints." In 1820 the Inquisition was suppressed forever in Mexico, in 1856 came the expulsion of the Jesuits, and in 1874 the suppression of the Sisters of Charity which was followed by the complete separation of church and state. The spontaneous movement of 1869 among certain members of the Roman Catholic Church, who had insisted that the time had arrived for greater liberty of conscience, a purer worship, and a better church organization, resulted in the establishment of the first Episcopal mission, and the encouragement of Protestantism, "as a set-off to the aggressive attitude of the Catholic Church." While the unfortunate priests were languishing in the gaols of Mexico in 1885, for parading the thoroughfares in their clerical vestments, an incongruous spectacle was in progress at Guardeloupe, where, on the anniversary of the appearance of the Holy Virgin to the shepherds, the festival was celebrated with cocking-mains, gambling and bull-fights.

The deliberations of the Diaz' administration were not, however, exclusively taken up in the discussion and disposition of vexed religious questions or matters of finance, for the belligerent attitude of the Yaqui Indians on the frontier created a serious diversion. In an encounter with Mexican troops, four hundred of the latter, together with General Garcia the commanding officer, were slaughtered, while the raiding hostilities of