For three hundred and ninety-eight years the priests and their church have had sole, exclusive, and continuous occupation of Nata, the oldest town in America. I was probably the first Protestant missionary who ever walked the streets of the place. Here in the oldest town, with the longest occupation and the undisturbed opportunity, should be found a fair chance with these people. And what has it done? The open-minded and friendly priest complained bitterly of the fact that in his parish only five per cent of his people were born of married parents. Ninety-five per cent were registered on his books as "Naturales." The year before he had administered over three hundred baptisms and had celebrated only three marriages. "I can't get them to marry," he groaned. "Practically speaking, almost no one is married." Is Nata worse than other towns? Possibly so, but it must be remembered that the "church" has had a longer chance there than in any other city in all America, and perhaps when the other towns have been exposed for the same length of time to the system, they will show equally advanced results! There is this thing to be said about the characteristic attitude of the average priest toward his people: he always despises them. In many lands I have found this to be true. Discouraged by the failure of his system to produce spiritual life, or even good morals, he complains bitterly that the people are indifferent, careless, negligent, immoral, unfaithful, and, not least of vices, they are poor pay. If they are these things, no one knows it better than the man who hears their secret confessions. And that this man should come to a chronic attitude of distrust toward the products of his own spiritual husbandry is one of the severest indictments against the system that produces indifference on the part of the people and cynicism in the heart of the priest. What was the church doing to remedy this situation with its deadly monotony, its superstition, ignorance, and immorality? The church was maintaining its round of formulas, saints' days, masses, confessions, baptisms, funerals for-what-the-traffic-would-bear. Showy processions and occasional celebrations were the circus and movie for the people. And on the confession of the troubled priest himself, there was no moral result. Out of the dead past stood a mummied memory of the once living church, and its mumbled incantations had no power to make the dry bones live. The only power that seems able to stir new life in the old mausoleum is the advent of a vigorous Protestant work. In rage and bitterness the powers bestir themselves and begin to defame and persecute their disturbers, and in the end, they inevitably give some attention to reviving their own decaying program.