TOLERATION IN SPAIN

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 7, 1881

TOLERATION IN SPAIN.

THE days of the inquisition are hardly yet over in Spain, and it is found difficult to enforce the laws of toleration even after they are enacted. Not long since the Protestants opened a booth for the sale of Bibles, hymn-books and other evangelical treatises, during the progress of a fair held in honor of the Virgin in one of the villages near Saragossa. A leaded, displayed, and highly sensational column appeared in the next day's paper warning the people against this new device of the evil one, and the Archbishop, through some of the petty officials, ordered the shop to be closed. The chief of police, however, interferred, and the sale continued, carefully watched by those who considered it an open mouth to perdition.

The third day a boy of about seventeen took up a book and began to read it with great eagerness. Seeing his wearied condition, those in charge invited him to come inside of the booth out of the cold and storm, and drew forth his story, which was that having been discovered reading a Bible, he had been expelled from the college where he was studying for the priesthood, and in consequence disowned by his parents. He had walked in the rain for three days, almost without food, and slept at the roadside, his one desire being to get to those who could tell him more about the gospel. As he desired to enter the evangelical school, he was placed under the care of a Bible woman, and might have had a happy home, but the police, instigated by the Archbishop, demanded his letter of authorization from his father for leaving home, without which the law forbade his residence in the city. At this juncture some distant relatives turned up and offered to take and provide for the boy, on condition of his never speaking to the Protestants, and the law at once gave him into their custody.—Christian Union, Feb. 23, 1881.