_Dios y libertad_ had been the watchword of the reform movement, but it had not been put into practice until the time of President Juarez, who encouraged mission work, and exerted himself to protect the missionaries from fanatics. However frequent attacks upon these workers were made in provincial towns and one foreign missionary, Rev. J. L. Stephens, of the Congregational Church, was slain at Ahualuco in 1874. A number of native converts and preachers have met with serious, and even fatal injuries, but no other Americans have been killed. President Diaz has also encouraged these ministers when they were downhearted. Rev. William Butler quotes an interview which several missionaries had with him in which the President expressed himself as follows: “I have seen this land as none of you ever saw it, in degradation, with everything in the line of toleration and freedom to learn. I have watched its rise and progress to a better condition. We are not yet all we ought to be and hope to be; but we are not what we once were; we have risen as a people, and are now rising faster than ever. My advice is, do not be discouraged. Keep on with your work, avoiding topics of irritation and preaching your gospel in its own spirit.” The president has no warmer supporters than the Protestant missionaries and their little bands of adherents. Their numbers to-day after thirty years of aggressive work seem small, as the ten Protestant denominations who maintain missions in Mexico only claim about twenty-five thousand members, or about one hundred thousand adherents including those who attend the Sunday-school and other services. The Presbyterians are working in fourteen different states. They have fifty organized churches and two hundred and twenty-two outstations which are served by twenty-one foreign missionaries and one hundred and one native workers. The Methodist Episcopal Church has twenty-nine missionaries in the field and one hundred and twenty-two native workers, and is holding services at more than a hundred different places. The various denominations have divided up the field and are working together in harmony. The Methodists, for instance, are working in Guanajuato, Leon, Pachuca, Puebla, Silao, and Oaxaca. The Presbyterians have centred their efforts in Aguas Calientes, Zacatecas, Saltillo, San Luis Potosi and Jalapa. All denominations have missions in the City of Mexico. The Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists have their own publishing houses and issue periodicals and a great deal of printed matter in Spanish. There are in all about two hundred and fifty foreign missionaries in Mexico serving about seven hundred congregations. Many of these workers are medical missionaries who are doing a vast amount of good, and others are teachers who are instructing the youth. The Protestant bodies own property in Mexico valued at nearly two million dollars.