Sometimes Mary's image is baptized in the river, while men and women line the bank, ready to leap into the holy water when she is lifted out. Afterwards the water in which she was immersed is sold as a cure for bodily ills. Sometimes the earth from under the building where she is kept is also sold for the same purpose.
Imagine a church like that in Tucuru! "It consists of a palm-leaf hut, with a bare floor and no furniture whatever. Round the sides stand twelve life-size figures, made of canvas and stuffed with husks of corn, which some one of the Indian worshippers has painted with the features and dress of his own race. When I went in two women lay prostrate on the floor, and one of them screamed in agonizing tones, 'My Lords, send the rod of your power to heal him!'—evidently praying to these apostles on behalf of some sick relative. Here, once a year, a priest celebrates mass, and when he last came he stuck a paper over the entrance, which read: Hoec est Domus Del et Porta Coeli (' This is the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.') In San José we have the four walls of a new church, consecrated to the 'Virgin,' where, recently, a raffle was held on behalf of the projected edifice. As we enter, the first thing seen is an inscription, professing to be a message to each visitor from the Virgin, which says, 'My son, behold me without a temple. Come, help in building it, and I shall reward thee with Eternal Life." [Footnote: Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society.]
Christ said: "I give unto My sheep eternal life"; but the record of that saying is jealously kept from them.
When the early colonists left Spain for the New World, they took with them the Creed of Pius IV. That creed expressly states that the Bible is not for the people. "Whoever will be saved must renounce it. It is a forbidden book."
"In 1850, when the Christian world was first being roused to the darkness of South America, and philanthropic men were desirous of sending Bibles there, Pope Pius IX. wrote an Encyclical letter in which he spoke of Bible study as 'poisonous reading,' and urged all his venerable brethren with vigilance and solicitude to put a stop to it. Thus has South America been denied the revelation of God. The priest has, because of this ignorance, been able to 'lord it over God's heritage.'" [Footnote: Guiness's "Romanism and the Reformation.">[
With an open Bible, Spanish America would have progressed as North America has done. Without the enlightening influences of that Word, behold the darkness! Could anything be more eloquent than the prosperity of the land of the Pilgrim Fathers in proclaiming the value of the open Bible?
Mr. Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission, speaking on a recent occasion, said: "I always pray for South America. It is a most needy part of the world, and wants your prayers as well as mine. The workers there have great difficulties to contend with, and of the same sort as we have in China, from Roman Catholicism—the most God-dishonoring system in the world. The heathen need your prayers, but the Roman Catholic needs them ten times more. He is ten times as much in the dark as the heathen themselves are."
The Missionary Review of the World describes South America as "Earth's darkest land." Do you not think, O reader, the words are most truly applied?
"There are in South America eight hundred missionaries, men and women, from Great Britain, the Continent of Europe, Canada and the United States. In Canada and the United States there is on an average one Protestant minister for every 514 persons. In South America each missionary has a constituency of about fifty thousand, indicating a need in proportion of population one hundred times as great as in the Protestant countries of North America." [Footnote: Bishop Neely's "South America.">[
Yet, One called Jesus, whom we say we love, said: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."