MEXICAN PROGRESS AND CATHOLICISM.
REV. S. P. CRAVER, Methodist missionary in Guanajuato, Mexico, writes to the Chicago Christian Advocate that American enterprise and the various lines of railway and telegraph springing into existence in that country have "filled the people with bright hopes of rapid progress, work, and wages"; and that the common topics of conversation and newspaper comment, instead of being, as a few years ago, of revolutionary programmes and guerrilla depredations, are of railway concessions and surveys, mining reports, and increasing commercial relations. "The very air seems filled with the spirit of change, peace, and progress." The Catholic priests, he says, are not pleased with this change, in which they read their approaching ruin, and in sheer desperation they have inaugurated an anti-Protestant crusade in Morelia, Queretaro, Guadalajara, and other places, resulting in bloodshed. In Salamanca, Guanajuato, the Protestants were greatly threatened, but the timely action of the authorities prevented any overt acts. "The American Minister is moving in the matter and we feel quite sure that the crusade will be short-lived. The inevitable influence of the great enterprises now begun and being carried rapidly forward will be to liberate Mexico's ignorant millions from their superstitious subjection to an unprincipled and corrupt priesthood."