The Filipinos are tolerant of Protestantism because to them it is still a purely religious and not a civil influence.  They have not killed or been killed for religion; for it they have not burnt the homes of others, nor seen their own roof trees blaze; they have not gained power or office through religion; they have neither won nor lost elections through it.  They have the same tolerance in religious matters that they have in regard to the Copernican Theory or Kepler’s Laws.  Religion, as pure religion, unrelated to land or land titles, property or office, is no more the source of party animosity to them than to us.  Secretary Taft was wise enough to see that, and eliminated the cause that threatened to make religion a vital question.

But if religion is not consciously vital to the Filipinos, as they themselves would conceive and act on it (and I make the assertion in the assumption that the reader understands as I do by consciously vital that for which the individual or the race is willing to die singly or collectively), the unprejudiced observer must admit that it is vital to their ultimate evolution, vital in just the sense that any function is vital to one who is in need of it.  As I said before, they are not essentially a religious people; but the early Spanish discoverers prescribed religion as a doctor prescribes a missing ingredient in the food of an invalid, and the Filipinos have benefited thereby, Roman Catholicism is just what the Filipino needs.  He has no zest for morbid introspection, he does not feel the need of bearing testimony to cosmic truth, and in his lack of feeling that need is just as helpless as the man whose system cannot manufacture the necessary amount of digestive juices or red blood corpuscles; he is an invalid, who must be supplied artificially with what his system lacks.

I am quite sure that the Catholic clergy, as represented by the American Archbishop, bishops, and priests, are certain that Protestantism holds no threats for the Church in the Philippines other than that it may be the opening wedge in a schism which will send the Filipino not only out of the Church, but to rationalism of the most Voltairian hue.  When danger really threatens the Church in the Philippines, it will be no half-way danger.  The Filipino will be orthodox as he is now, formally, positively orthodox, or he will be cynically heterodox.  As God made him, he might in time have arrived at the philosophy of Omar, “Drink, for ye know not why or when,” or the identical philosophy of Epicurus, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”  But the Church found him, and recognizing his peculiarities artfully substituted her own phrase, “Eat and drink in peace, for to-morrow you die in the full knowledge that pertains to your salvation.”  Let no proselyting evangelist delude himself with the idea that the Filipino has the mental bias which leads him to think, “Let me neither eat nor drink till I know whence I came and whither I go.”  That is the spirit of true Protestantism, which discovers a new light on faith every decade and still is seeking, seeking for the perfect light.