PERU AND ECUADOR AS MISSION FIELDS.
By Bishop Ninde
Peru is probably the most intolerant of all the republics of the southern continent. Public worship is strictly forbidden outside the Papal church. I was myself admitted by ticket to the prayer-meeting in Callao. Happily a considerable portion of the people, including many of the magistrates and other public men, are not so bigoted as their laws would indicate, and so the laws are not always as strictly construed as they might be. At present there is a strong pressure upon Peru in behalf of religious freedom, caused by the example of its immediate neighbor on the north, the republic of Ecuador. Until within the past two years Ecuador has been regarded as the most antiquated and hopelessly papal of all the South American states. But recently a revolution has occurred in which the liberals triumphed. An eminent citizen was recalled13from his voluntary exile by the triumphant liberals, and placed at the head of a new government. The concordat with the pope, dating back in the sixties, was annulled, and new laws enacted which guarantee entire freedom of conscience and worship, and greatly restrict the privileges of the official church. As a consequence, many of the clerics at once fled to Peru, and a great and effectual door has been opened for the Protestant missionary. But no missionaries of any Protestant denomination, that I am aware of, are upon the ground. It should be said that the American Bible Society has its itinerating laborers scattering the pure Word of God thru these vast regions, with their sparse populations, and thus sowing the seeds of a true Christian faith.—Bishop Ninde, in the Gospel in All Lands.