Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in South AmericaRay, George Whitfield
Religion
Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in South America
Ray, George Whitfield
Ray, George Whitfield, 1868- -- Travel -- South America; South America -- Description and travel
Now, four hundred years later, see the Indian under priestly rule. The
following is taken from an official report of the Governor of
Chimborazo: "The religious festivals that the Indians celebrate--not of
their own will, but by the inexorable will of the priest--are, through
the manner in which they are kept, worse than those described to us of
the times of Paganism, and of monstrous consequences to morality and
the national welfare ... they may be reckoned as a barbarous mixture of
idolatry and superstition, sustained by infamous avarice. The Indian
who is chosen to make a feast either has to use up in it his little
savings, leaving his family submerged in misery, or he has to rob in
order to invest the products of his crime in paying the fees to the
priest and for church ceremonies. These are simply brutal orgies that
last many days, with a numerous attendance, and in which all manner of
crimes and vices have free license."
"For the idols of the aborigines were substituted the images of the
Virgin Mary and the Roman saints. The Indians gave up their old idols,
but they went on with their image-worship. Image-worship is idolatry,
whether in India, Africa, or anywhere else, and the worship of Roman
images is essentially idolatry as much as the worship of any other kind
of images. Romanism substituted for one set of idols another set. So
the Indians who were idolaters continued to be idolaters, only the new
idols had other names and, possibly, were a little better-looking."
[Footnote: Neely, "South America."]
What has Romanism done for the Indians of Bolivia in its four hundred
years of rule? Compare the people of that peaceful, law-keeping dynasty
which the Spaniards found with the Bolivian Indian of to-day! Now the
traveller can report: "The Indians are killing the whites wherever they
find them, and practising great cruelties, having bored holes in the
heads of their victims and sucked the brains out while they were yet
alive. Sixteen whites are said to have been killed in this way! These
same Indians are those who have been Christianized by the Roman priests
for the past three centuries, but such cruelties as they have been
practising show that as yet not a ray of Christ's love has entered
their darkened minds." How can the priest teach what he is himself
ignorant of?
Where the Indian has been civilized, as well as Romanized, Mr. Milne,
of the American Bible Society, could write:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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