p. 11 | ITEMS ABOUT MEXICO

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 35.

ITEMS ABOUT MEXICO.

Some kind of religious performances are to be seen every day in the Roman Catholic Churches of Mexico. They are disgusting in their mummeries and impostures; they are absurd, ridiculous, a venal superstition. The prayers in an unknown tongue and in an indistinct tone, the fumes from the incense cup, the burning of candles on the altar tables, the tinkling of bells, the shaven head and flowing vestments, the tinsel, the altars, the miserable daubs and images of the Crucified One, Mary, the apostles, and saints, form a strange combination that goes under the name of religion. Its fruits are ignorance, superstition, and vice. The religious condition of Mexico is deeply deplorable. There is a great gulf between the millions of her people and the religion of Jesus Christ. Nothing but the simple and pure Gospel of the crucified Son of God can bridge it and save them.—Rev. Neill E. Pressly.

MARY and the saints constitute the Mexican pantheon. The living God is not known, and the Christ is afar off. Liberalism is the religion of the men who rule Mexico, while the Indians worship their Christian idols, and the women the Virgin’s form. The roulette wheel spins at the church fair, and bull and cock-fights afford Sunday delight. Apparitions of the Virgin are still discovered on the leaves of the maguey plant and worshiped. Idolatry is not forbidden by the Ten Commandments as given to the people by the church.—Rev. Robert E. Speer.

THE tactics pursued by the enemies of evangelical faith in Mexico are identical with those followed by Romanists elsewhere. They try first to terrorize, then to deny our religious belief, then they malign our morality, and when they have thus depreciated us, and inoculated their ignorant dupes with this virus of malice and hatred, the step is a short one for these to think that to kill would be doing God service.—Rev. William Butler, D.D.

THE evangelical churches of Mexico are meeting the three tests which every church must meet. They are reaching the poor; they are reaching the sinner; they have a place for the child. If they lack much that we possess, it must be remembered that they are emerging from a night which has lasted for three and a half centuries. They are moving ahead toward larger light.—Rev. R. E. Speer.

WHEREVER we would gain entrance for our faith among adherents of other religions, we are certainly bound, both in justice and prudence, to acknowledge all the truth and good we find already prevailing among them. For instance, the Japanese can unquestionably give us lessons in filial reverence, obedience, control over anger, moderation in our judgments of others. We are therefore bound to acknowledge this unreservedly to them.—Dr. Buss.