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On a Far Frontier

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 12, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 11.

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On a Far Frontier

By W. A. S.

IN the February number of the Bible Society Record, organ of the American Bible Society, Mr. Penzotti, the general representative of the society in South America, has a letter reviewing progress along the darkest frontiers. Speaking of what he meets as he visits the colporteur picket lines, he says, writing from northern Chile:—
From here I propose to turn into Bolivia. I am aware that I shall meet there with “St. Patrick’s Cavalry,” but I shall meet better things, too.
In Peru the saving truth is gaining its way, a fact which irritates the sons of the night, and blackbirds are not wanting which are pecking at the truth. It is but a short time ago that in a village of the interior a priest burned alive a poor woman who was suspected of being a witch. It is only three months ago that the Bishop of Puno brought bound the teacher of an Indian school and some others, beating them all the way from Chucuito to Puno, where they were thrown into a dirty prison, for the only crime of teaching the Indians to read and write and of preaching to them the gospel. Yet the result of accepting the gospel is the abolition of the bad habit of chewing coca, giving up their drunkenness and their idolatry.
Two Bible colporteurs came to a city in the interior, and a son of Loyola set the people against them. Had the civil authorities not interfered, they would soon have been killed.
Perhaps already the reader has recognized the fact that the incident of the Indian school-teacher relates to our own mission, and remarkably indeed the Lord has overruled the attack upon our work among the Indians of the Peruvian interior. Out of the agitation over this question has evidently come the definite movement to abolish the article of the Peruvian constitution prohibiting Protestant propaganda. The tendency among the liberal-minded has been carrying sentiment in this direction, but as nearly as we can learn, the personal appeal of the representatives of our Indian brethren to the president of the republic turned the light upon the use church authorities in the interior were making of the restrictive clause in the state constitution.
W. A. S.