Religion in Brazil has never been a matter for dissension or the cause of social upheaval: the original _donatarios_ brought chaplains with them as a matter of course, missionary Jesuits and members of Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican and other Orders gradually founding establishments in the settlements. With regard to the natives their task was easy, since there existed no definite religion to be eradicated, and, except when the work of the missionaries interfered with the designs of the planters, cordial co-operation existed between the _padres_, colonists, and authorities; many of them had a hand in political matters, were emissaries between the mother country and Brazil, and enjoyed marked prestige. No Inquisition was ever established in Brazilian territory, and a bone of contention thus avoided. With the erection of the Republic in 1889 Church was separated from State, probably much to the betterment of conditions, for considerable criticism of clerical ways and habits had grown up, laxity following upon security; put upon her mettle as an independent organization, and faced with the competition of other permitted forms of belief, the Roman Catholic church in Brazil is said to have performed much needed purifying. Tolerance is a long-established habit. Protestant forms of Christianity exist undisturbed, and although their temples are very generally attended exclusively by the foreign congregations responsible for their origin, and proselytizing is not encouraged, their social work is undoubtedly useful. In the southern organized settlements each community practises the form of faith of the home land, the Russians of the Greek church, Germans with their Lutheran establishments, and so on; there is not the slightest interference—religious intolerance is indeed unimaginable in Brazil. It has been said often of the Brazilian that this attitude arises from indifference, that the practice of religious observances is left to women and children and that the grown men of communities are cynical—next door to what used to be called “agnosticism” by the professional European unbelievers of the past generation. This is, I think, only apparently true. It has an appearance of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; it is common for Brazilian men in conversation to affect an airy amusement before the claims of religious bodies: but due allowance must be made for French influence. Almost up to the time of the European War there was a parade of emancipation from clerical leading strings by the intellectual French, yet the course of the conflict has witnessed a spiritual awakening, the resurrection of something dormant; the France of today is probably more sincerely religious than she has been for many a century. The cynicism of masculine Brazil may be no more deeply rooted.