On the way between Vera Cruz and the capital, not far from the modern city of Puebla, stands the venerable relic—with which the reader will become familiar in the course of the narrative—called the temple of Cholula. It is a pyramidal mound, built, or rather cased, with unburnt brick, rising to the height of nearly one hundred and eighty feet. The popular tradition of the natives is that it was erected by a family of giants, who had escaped the great inundation and designed to raise the building to the clouds; but the gods, offended with their presumption, sent fires from heaven on the pyramid, and compelled them to abandon the attempt.[367] The partial coincidence of this legend with the Hebrew account of the tower of Babel, received also by other nations of the East, cannot be denied.[368] But one who has not examined the subject will scarcely credit what bold hypotheses have been reared on this slender basis.
Another point of coincidence is found in the goddess Cioacoatl, “our lady and mother;” “the first goddess who brought forth;” “who bequeathed the sufferings of childbirth to women, as the tribute of death;” “by whom sin came into the world.” Such was the remarkable language applied by the Aztecs to this venerated deity. She was usually represented with a serpent near her; and her name signified the “serpent-woman.” In all this we see much to remind us of the mother of the human family, the Eve of the Hebrew and Syrian nations.[369]
But none of the deities of the country suggested such astonishing analogies with Scripture as Quetzalcoatl, with whom the reader has already been made acquainted.[370] He was the white man, wearing a long beard, who came from the East, and who, after presiding over the golden age of Anahuac, disappeared as mysteriously as he had come, on the great Atlantic Ocean. As he promised to return at some future day, his reappearance was looked for with confidence by each succeeding generation. There is little in these circumstances to remind one of Christianity. But the curious antiquaries of Mexico found out that to this god were to be referred the institution of ecclesiastical communities, reminding one of the monastic societies of the Old World; that of the rites of confession and penance; and the knowledge even of the great doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation![371] One party, with pious industry, accumulated proofs to establish his identity with the Apostle St. Thomas;[372][373] while another, with less scrupulous faith, saw, in his anticipated advent to regenerate the nation, the type, dimly veiled, of the Messiah![374]
Yet we should have charity for the missionaries who first landed in this world of wonders, where, while man and nature wore so strange an aspect, they were astonished by occasional glimpses of rites and ceremonies which reminded them of a purer faith. In their amazement, they did not reflect whether these things were not the natural expression of the religious feeling common to all nations who have reached even a moderate civilization. They did not inquire whether the same things were not practised by other idolatrous people. They could not suppress their wonder, as they beheld the Cross,[375] the sacred emblem of their own faith, raised as an object of worship in the temples of Anahuac. They met with it in various places; and the image of a cross may be seen at this day, sculptured in bas-relief, on the walls of one of the buildings of Palenque, while a figure bearing some resemblance to that of a child is held up to it, as if in adoration.[376]
Their surprise was heightened when they witnessed a religious rite which reminded them of the Christian communion. On these occasions an image of the tutelary deity of the Aztecs was made of the flour of maize, mixed with blood, and, after consecration by the priests, was distributed among the people, who, as they ate it, “showed signs of humiliation and sorrow, declaring it was the flesh of the deity!”[377] How could the Roman Catholic fail to recognize the awful ceremony of the Eucharist?
With the same feelings they witnessed another ceremony, that of the Aztec baptism; in which, after a solemn invocation, the head and lips of the infant were touched with water, and a name was given to it; while the goddess Cioacoatl, who presided over childbirth, was implored “that the sin which was given to us before the beginning of the world might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew!”[378]
It is true, these several rites were attended with many peculiarities, very unlike those in any Christian church. But the fathers fastened their eyes exclusively on the points of resemblance. They were not aware that the Cross was a symbol of worship, of the highest antiquity, in Egypt and Syria,[379] and that rites resembling those of communion[380] and baptism were practised by pagan nations on whom the light of Christianity had never shone.[381] In their amazement, they not only magnified what they saw, but were perpetually cheated by the illusions of their own heated imaginations. In this they were admirably assisted by their Mexican converts, proud to establish—and half believing it themselves—a correspondence between their own faith and that of their conquerors.[382]
The ingenuity of the chronicler was taxed to find out analogies between the Aztec and Scripture histories, both old and new. The migration from Aztlan to Anahuac was typical of the Jewish exodus.[383] The places where the Mexicans halted on the march were identified with those in the journey of the Israelites;[384] and the name of Mexico itself was found to be nearly identical with the Hebrew name for the Messiah.[385] The Mexican hieroglyphics afforded a boundless field for the display of this critical acuteness. The most remarkable passages in the Old and New Testaments were read in their mysterious characters; and the eye of faith could trace there the whole story of the Passion, the Saviour suspended from the cross, and the Virgin Mary with her attendant angels![386]
The Jewish and Christian schemes were strangely mingled together, and the brains of the good fathers were still further bewildered by the mixture of heathenish abominations which were so closely intertwined with the most orthodox observances. In their perplexity, they looked on the whole as the delusion of the devil, who counterfeited the rites of Christianity and the traditions of the chosen people, that he might allure his wretched victims to their own destruction.[387]
But, although it is not necessary to resort to this startling supposition, nor even to call up an apostle from the dead, or any later missionary, to explain the coincidences with Christianity, yet these coincidences must be allowed to furnish an argument in favor of some primitive communication with that great brotherhood of nations on the old continent, among whom similar ideas have been so widely diffused.[388] The probability of such a communication, especially with Eastern Asia, is much strengthened by the resemblance of sacerdotal institutions, and of some religious rites, as those of marriage,[389] and the burial of the dead;[390] by the practice of human sacrifices, and even of cannibalism, traces of which are discernible in the Mongol races;[391] and, lastly, by a conformity of social usages and manners, so striking that the description of Montezuma’s court may well pass for that of the Grand Khan’s, as depicted by Maundeville and Marco Polo.[392] It would occupy too much room to go into details in this matter, without which, however, the strength of the argument cannot be felt, nor fully established. It has been done by others; and an occasional coincidence has been adverted to in the preceding chapters.