“That, Mr. Farwell, is the tragedy of the church in all these lands,” said Mr. Tanner, soberly.  “The church began by looking to its own interests first.  It wanted great establishments and a docile people.  It found the gospel hard to preach to the natives—­the real gospel, I mean.  The cruelties and greed of the conquest had made impossible any preaching of a ministering, merciful, and unselfish Christ.  In fact, the vast majority of the priests who came over from Europe brought with them no such ideas.  The church was ruler, not missionary.  And so far as it dares it sticks stubbornly to that notion even to this day.  So it has had to make practical compromise with the paganism and superstition it found here.  Many of its religious observances are the aboriginal pagan practices disguised in Christian dress and given Christian names.  The church has sold its birthright for the privilege of exploiting the credulity and the fears of the people.  It has made merchandise of all its functions.  Now, after the centuries have come and gone, both church and people through long custom are willing to have it so.  The people have their great churches, with incense and lights and all the pomp of medaeival days.  But they have no living Christ and no thought of him.  The priests have their trade in ceremonial and their perquisites, but they have no power over the hearts of men.”

As his new acquaintance paused for breath after this long answer to a short question, J.W., remembering something Fred Finch had said, brought the remark in:  “The man who is showing me the ropes as a hardware man tells me that all over Latin America the church is likely to be the one real building in every town and village.  Is that also something that the people are so used to that they don’t notice it any more?”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Tanner assented.  “I suppose the contrast between the church and the miserable little hovels around it never occurs to any of them.  It has always been so.  The church has built itself up out of the community, and for the most part it puts very little back.  It conducts schools, to be sure; and yet eighty per cent of the Mexican people are illiterate, it has some few institutions of help and mercy; but the whole land cries out for doctors and teachers and friendly human concern.”

“Is that really so?” J.W. asked.  “Do the people really want our missionaries, or are we Protestants just shoving ourselves in?  I can see that something is desperately wrong, but we are mostly Saxon, and they are Latins.  Do these people want what to them must seem a queer religion and a lot of strange ideas?”

“So long as they do not understand what we come for, naturally they are suspicious.  When they find out, they take to mission work and missionaries with very little urging.  I wish you would meet my son-in-law,” Mr. Tanner said with positiveness.  “Why, the one tormenting desire of that man’s life is to see more missionaries sent down into Mexico; more doctors, more teachers, more workers of every sort.  He writes letters to the Board of Foreign Missions that would make your heart ache.  The church at home couldn’t oversupply Mexico with the sort of help it desperately needs if it should turn every recruit that way, and disregard all the rest of the world’s mission fields.”