Renaissant Latin America; an outline and interpretation of the Congress on Christian work in Latin America, held at Panama, February 10-19, 1916

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RENAISSANT
LATIN AMERICA

AN OUTLINE AND INTERPRE-
TATION OF THE CONGRESS ON
CHRISTIAN WORK IN LATIN
AMERICA, HELD AT PANAMA,
FEBRUARY 10-19, 1916

By
HARLAN P. BEACH, D.D., F.R.G.S,

Profcisor of the Theory and Practice of Missioni, Yale University

NEW YORK

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

1916

Copyright, 19 1 6, by the

Missionary Education Movement of thi

United States and Canada

FOREWORD

In preparing this condensed account of an epoch-
marking conference, the author has been embarrassed
by space Hmitations which have necessitated the omis-
sion of much material quite as important as some that
has been included. His aim has been to select that
which is most typical of the Panama Congress and to
omit duplications, so far as the completeness of separate
chapters would allow. Repetitions still remain for the
reason that a number of the Commissions needed to
include material which had been used in a different
relation in other reports; and to omit these duplicated
portions would mar the completeness of a given Com-
mission's work.

The author wishes it to be distinctly understood that
this volume has been written with a constant desire to
reproduce truly the ideas given expression at the Con-
gress and not to emphasize his own judgments on many
of the problems discussed. To that end, and with the
concurrence of its editorial committee, he has used
freely, and without acknowledging his obligations
formally, the exact words of the reports and of the
platform addresses. He has not inserted quotation
marks always when the ordinary usage would require
them. This is due to the exigencies of his desire to
give the precise thought of a writer or speaker, and

iv FOREWORD

at the same time to economize space ; so that quotation,
paraphrase and condensation may occur in a single sen-
tence, making the marks of quotation, if used, an
enigma and a blemish. This editorial license will be
criticised most by those speakers whose more formal
addresses are summarized and extracted from in Chap-
ter X. The author hopes that he has not sinned in the
manner described by Dr. McCosh in his "Divine
Government," where he remarks, "A garbled quota-
tion may be the most effective perversion of an
author's meaning." If he has transgressed seriously
in this matter, forgiveness is asked publicly for scores
of offenses that may be noted not only in that chap-
ter, but more especially in the extremely concise re-
productions of ideas expressed in platform discus-
sions.

Despite the brevity and omissions of this volume,
it will have failed utterly of its purpose, if it has not
brought to the reader some impression of the profound
importance of a congress which should mean more
for the higher life of Latin America and for the
awakening of Christian responsibility for aiding its
leaders in national uplift than any other single factor
in its social, mental and spiritual regeneration. Hap-
pily, the full significance of the Congress may be more
fully appreciated from the three-volume report, con-
taining the investigations of its eight Commissions,
as well as a careful report of its platform discussions
and addresses.

July 15, 1916. H. P. B.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword iii

I The Story of the Congress i

II Rediscovering Latin America 25

III Interpretation, Message, Method 55

IV Latin Americans and Education 81

V Leaves for the Healing of Nations 109

VI The Upbuilding of Womanhood 123

VII The Latin Evangelical Churches 139

VIII The Home Fulcrum 165

IX Unity's Fraternal Program 187

X Congressional Addresses 207

XI Aftermath and Estimates 229

Index 251

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Panama Congress in Session Frontispiece

The Business Committee 26

Delegates at Pedro Miguel Locks 26

Street Preaching 58

Industrial Mission 58

Woman Colporteur, Chile 90

Yucatan-Indian Evangelist, Mexico 90

Sunday School, Brazil 122

Children Who Need a Sunday School, Mexico 122

Continuation Committee 154

Sea Wall Church, Panama 154

Some Latin-American Delegates at Panama 186

Girls' Dormitory, Christo School, Cuba 218

Arrival of the Physician at the Dispensary, Porto Rico 218

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS

In the oldest city founded upon the American main-
land by Europeans, at the southern terminus of the
Panama Canal, was held from February tenth to the
nineteenth, 191 6, a congress unparalleled in the New
World's history of missions. Some of the reasons mak-
ing it so noteworthy were mentioned in Dr. Mott's
response to the address of welcome extended to the
Congress by Senor E. Lefevre, Minister of Foreign
Affairs of the Republic of Panama. "We have dele-
gates," said he, *'from virtually every one of the re-
publics of North and South America. We likewise
have representatives from Europe and the distant
parts of the world. I fancy that not in the history of
the Western Hemisphere has there been assembled a
gathering so representative of the leaders and the forces
of righteousness of this great sphere of the world's
activity. There have been notable gatherings rep-
resenting the political ideals and ambitions and hopes
of the Western Hemisphere. There have been most
successful gatherings to promote commercial relations
between these nations. There have been scientific con-
gresses— notably the one recently held in Washington
— that have done much to cement the bonds between

2 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

these peoples and to prepare for a better day. But
not before this time have we had such a representative
company of Christian workers, men and women of wide
vision, who have met together for this altruistic pur-
pose in the realization of great hopes." '"' Dr. Mott
might have added that it was to Panama, also, that in
June, 1826, representatives of Colombia, Guatemala,
Mexico, Peru and the United States had been invited
''to consult together and, if deemed practicable, to
form a league to resist Spain, or any other power that
might attempt to interfere in America, and to consider
the expediency of freeing Cuba and Porto Rico from
Spanish rule.'' It was thus a city of early importance
in the mediating history of the New World, and it was
now once more to become so.

In deciding upon the meeting place for this Con-
gress four possibilities were seriously considered. A
central city in the United States was ruled out, since
this was a gathering for Latin America and not for
its northern neighbor, for missionaries from all the
sending countries and not for those from the United
States solely. Rio de Janeiro had its strong claims, —
the capital of Latin America's United States and allur-
ing in its tropical loveliness as it skirts an almost peer-
less harbor under the shadow of Sugar Loaf and the
Sleeping Giant. But its hot, humid, debilitating cli-
mate and the fact that Brazil is Portuguese while the
remainder of Latin America is Spanish were objec-
tions against that city. Even more attractive was
Buenos Aires, South America's metropolis, surpassed

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 3

in population by only three cities of the Western
Hemisphere, the Greater New York, Chicago and Phil-
adelphia, and vastly more than "a. plaster imitation of
Paris," as is proved by its substantial public buildings,
great business houses, spacious docks serving the ves-
sels of a thousand ports and a record for cleanliness
and sanitation making it one of the healthiest capitals
in the world. Yet its remoteness from the majority who
would naturally attend such a gathering was sufficient
to disqualify it for a Christian Congress.

Panama remained and was finally chosen as the
meeting place of the first important evangelical con-
ference to be held in Latin America. And it was highly
appropriate that it should be thus honored. As the
Panama News Letter reminded the delegates, one can-
not forget that the records and ruins of old Panama
show that it was the seat of a Roman Catholic arch-
bishop before St. Augustine — the oldest permanent
town in the United States — was founded ; and that it
w^as here that money was raised to equip the expedi-
tion which first carried the cross of Christ to South
America and brought back for wondering Europe the
news of the great Inca Empire and its unique people.
Its famous Gold Road over which slaves and mules
carried the treasure of the Incas was the precursor of
other trails and of the railway of Forty-Niner fame.
But the crowaiing sanitary and civil engineering
achievement of the world, the Panama Canal and its
sheltering healthful Zone, were both an attraction and
a strong argument. That silver band of w^ater uniting

4 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

two great oceans, fed by never failing streams and
flushed by tropical rains, receives into its hospitable
embrace the merchantmen and navies of the world.
Just as the Canal binds together and enriches the
nations, so this Congress had in it the possibilities of
uniting and blessing the Latin-American republics.
Meeting near its waters was to take courage and to
plan seemingly impossible things, to shrink from no
expenditure of money and life and to make use of the
wisdom and inexhaustible resources of the Heavenly
Kingdom.

It was above the city, on the slopes of beautiful
Ancon, that the Congress convened. The government's
Hotel Tivoli was the trysting place where lovers of
God and of men daily and nightly met and lived to-
gether. A majority of the leaders were lodged at the
hotel; so that some of the finest fruits of this Latin-
American paradise were the firm friendships and com-
mon points of sympathy and view resulting from such
close intimacy. Tennis before breakfast, when the
dewdrops sparkled on every blade of grass and on each
glossy banana frond and when the sun was rising out
of the Pacific to rule the tropical day, or early tramps
to the dense jungle, impenetrable by anything larger
than a rat except an elephant, and again the walks to-
gether just before dinner, were restful preparatives
and interludes in a never-to-be-forgotten experience.
Nor was there anything insular or exclusive about
these intimacies. Bishops from North America locked
arms with Latin laymen, as they strolled about or sat

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS S

together in the breeze-swept ballroom, where the ses-
sions of the Congress were held. While it' was only
the more demonstrative Latins who embraced each
other, they and the staid, cold New Englanders were
as one in their familiar intercourse between sessions.
In other words, had there never been anything more
than these ten days of Christian fellowship, with no
suggestion of formal conference, the gathering would
have justified fully its assembling. Dubious or ag-
gressive Romanist onlookers must have felt inwardly
impelled to testify of this group of leaders, "Behold
how they love one another!" And so said the rank
and file of the Panamanians.

As the place chosen for the Congress was strategic,
so there w^as a providential timeliness in its convening
just at this juncture in history. As was show^n so
effectively by Dr. Mott, the completion of the Canal
has turned the thought of serious people to the
changed relationships involved. It has created a new
water map of the world, with the Canal Zone as
its center, whence radiate new ocean routes with their
necessitated racial adjustments, due to international
rivalries. It has compelled the United States in par-
ticular to review its Monroe Doctrine, both in its polit-
ical and in its religious aspects and obligations. The
long drawn out political disturbances in Mexico have
linked the Northern Republic by close ties with the
"A. B. C. countries" of South America, as they strive
together to bring to Mexicans the elements of a stable
peace. Those present at a special session of members

6 RENAISSANT LATIN AINIERICA

of the Christian Congress called to consider mission-
ary problems arising from the revolution in that re-
public could hardly fail to note the parallel between
the political helpfulness of "A. B. C." diplomacy as re-
lated to Mexico and the hoped-for religious advance-
ment arising from that evening spent in common in-
terdenominational planning for a more brotherly and
cooperative program for that perturbed and divided
country. Such a deputation as was sent to Latin
America in 19 14 by the Carnegie Endowment for In-
ternational Peace, resulting in the discovery of strong
feelings of friendship and of w^ays in which the north-
ern and southern continents could be helpful, both in-
tellectually and culturally, to each other, suggests the
opportuneness of a similar religious rapprochement
through this conference. The Pan American Scien-
tific Congress, held only a few weeks before, was
another suggestion of the immediate desirability
of bringing the Christian forces together for
a scientific discussion of missionary efificiency and
dynamics. It was also deemed to be the psychological
moment in which to bring to bear upon the Latin-
American missionary propaganda certain results, in-
digenous and imported, arising from such movements
and object-lessons as the educational work of the
Piedras Negras Institute, the broad social and re-
ligious program of the Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation and the remarkable achievements of Senor
Alvaro Reis' self-supporting church in Rio de Janeiro,
perhaps the strongest evangelical congregation in Latin

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 7

America. Indeed, the Congress was permeated with
the Zeitgeist and tingled with the Geistesdrang of this
epochal period in the evolution of the missionary
enterprise; it was the rich heir of recent advances in
the science of missions and burned with the ardor
which the impelling spirit of unity and cooperation
is imparting in these latter days. And finally the
shadow and the reality of the awful European war
entered as a factor into this timeliness. Thus a series
of important conferences in the Levant, to be held
under the leadership of Dr. John R. Mott, representing
the Edinburgh Conference Continuation Committee,
had to be given up, making it possible at this critical
period to render the Panama Congress more effective
than it otherwise might have been. Post-bellum op-
portunities will doubtless be unique, and now is the
time in which the Church and individual Christians
should consider and prepare for them. If Europe's
burdens, because of the costly and exhausting warfare,
will then be too heavy to admit of aiding Latin Amer-
ica, Latins and North Americans should unite their
forces and increase their efforts to make good the
loss.

How did this Latin-American Congress on Christian
Work, thus strategically convened and timed, come to
be? Dr. Robert E. Speer, who later was made its
Chairman, told the story in an address at the Foreign
Missions Conference of the United States and Canada
at Garden City, L. L, in January, 19 16. A few rep-
resentatives of the evangelical Churches of Latin

8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

America and missionaries from its republics met to-
gether in Princes Street, Edinburgh, during the ses-
sions of the World Missionary Conference of June,
1910. It had seemed best to limit the dehberations
and representation of that Conference to missions in
non-Christian lands; hence a depth and earnestness of
feeling characterized that group of men, who felt that
the service commanding their supreme allegiance was
in danger of being passed by. Four matters were most
upon their mind. They w^ere much concerned over the
apparent indifference of great masses of their fel-
lows to what they themselves deemed to be the funda-
mental spiritual rights of the Latin- American nations
and were anxious that these claims should be laid upon
the hearts of the home constituency in a more effec-
tive way. Secondly, they were deeply impressed with
the need of an adequate, popular and helpful litera-
ture for the Portuguese and Spanish evangelical
churches. Again, they were convinced that now was
the time when those parts of those great lands,
sparsely inhabited but some day to be densely settled,
now comparatively unoccupied by the Church, should
be arranged for by such distribution of responsibility
among the Churches as would ensure adequate provis-
ion and care. And, lastly, they were convinced that
these great needs could be met only as some gather-
ing might be held which would do for Latin-American
peoples what the Edinburgh Conference was seeking
to do for all the mission work among non-Christian
nations.

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 9

The first step toward the realization of their desires
was taken in March, 19 13, when a conference was held
in New York, attended by representatives of mission-
ary organizations of Canada and the United States
having work in Latin America. At the expiration of
two days spent in discussing the needs of those fields
with missionaries who chanced to be home on fur-
lough, a committee was appointed to promote the in-
terests of missions in Latin- American lands. A year
later the small committee of five called a meeting at
Garden City, for additional consultation, especially
with reference to the situation in Mexico, due to the
prolonged insurrection there. The meeting instructed
the committee to increase its number and to add repre-
sentatives of each agency doing work in Latin America,
resulting in a committee of eighteen. When this action
became known in the Latin-American countries, cor-
respondence and personal interviews of missionaries
recalled the hopes entertained at Edinburgh. The result
was the initiation of the plan for the Panama Congress.
A report was made at the Foreign Missions Conference
at Garden City in January, 191 5, when each Society
having work in Latin-American lands was separately
approached. As these organizations responded favor-
ably and in different ways expressed their desire to
send delegates, the Congress was definitely decided
upon.

While this decision was reached with practical una-
nimity by the organizations most concerned, different
opinions as to its advisability were expressed by a

10 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

few. Opposition arose in three main sections of the
Church. A few hyper-evangelicals objected to the
Congress on the ground that it was a step toward
compromise with Rome, since any such gathering
would probably echo the prevalent demand for sym-
pathy and possible cooperation with the Roman
Church in measures upon which all could agree, being
wholly apart from doctrine and objectionable practice.
This, they feared, would set in motion a Rome-ward
movement. At the opposite pole of Protestant Chris-
tianity were a few advocates of union among all
branches of the Christian Church, who felt that such
a gathering would irritate the Romanists so greatly
that later union with them of any sort would be im-
possible, or at least would be made more difficult. As
their sacramentarian views were more nearly those of
Rome than of most Churches having missionaries in
Latin America, they conscientiously opposed the Con-
gress, especially if held in the capital of a republic
dominantly Roman Catholic. Naturally the strongest
opposition came from the Roman Bishop of Panama,
whose views were set forth in official pronounce-
ments to his constituency, in which he bade them be-
ware of false prophets that were coming among them
**clad in sheep furs," but who were really "wolves in
their interior," and in which he prohibited their attend-
ing the meetings under penalty of mortal sin. While
a few local opponents of Protestantism were similarly
stirred and issued more or less bitter fulminations
against the Congress, it was interesting to see what local

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS ii

Catholic papers had to say against this form of attack,
And Protestant opposition likewise proved to be no
obstacle to the effectiveness of the Congress. Thus
five bishops of the Church v^hich had questioned the
advisability of its assembling v^ere present and were
most helpful participants in its deliberations.

With the exception of the Edinburgh World Mis-
sionary Conference, it is probable that no similar
gathering had been so laboriously prepared for as was
the Congress at Panama. Carefully chosen commis-
sions had been giving months to the painstaking in-
vestigation of eight vital phases of missions in Latin
America. A goodly proportion of the leading men
and women working in these special departments of
missionary effort freely imparted the best from their
experience to the commissions. Each of these
separately discussed the material thus gathered, and
later the eight commissions came together for a joint
review of the results reached. The revised reports
were then printed in proof and sent to the fields for
final criticism there. After they had been thus al-
tered, each commission prepared for the private use of
delegates to the Congress its final report. As most of
them were journeying in groups to Panama, they met
day by day to discuss still further certain outstanding
issues of the various reports. It may be said that when
the commissions reported on the Congress platform,
the material presented was as nearly final in its form
as could be hoped for. In this respect, Panama out-
ranked Edinburgh, and consequently there was less

12 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

left to be criticised than at any similar gathering in
any country. The secretary of the Congress, the Rev.
S. G. Inman, is well within the facts when he asserts
that these * 'reports constitute probably the most ex-
haustive study of the social, educational and spiritual
conditions of Latin America ever made."

The personnel of the Latin- American Congress on
Christian Work was both notable and in some respects
unique. The World Conference of 1910 had attracted
to the Scotch Athens experts on missions and mission
W'Orkers from all parts of the world, though lands
under the dominating influence of forms of Chris-
tianity other than Protestant could not be represented
officially from their missionary ranks. All gradations
of racial development, all forms of religious belief,
all stages of missionary experimentation and achieve-
ment, all varieties of missions theory, had a hearing
on the Edinburgh platform. The problems discussed
differed so greatly in the environments represented,
that both in the printed reports and on the plat-
form variations in the common task rather than
likenesses were noticeable. Cosmopolitanism was
manifest everywhere, and so Conference members came
together in groups and by racial affiliations rather
than through a bond of identical tasks and similar ex-
periences. At Edinburgh, moreover. Occidentals,
almost all of whom were missionaries, were in the
overwhelming majority. It is true that a few able
natives were present from the great mission fields, but
with rare exceptions these delegates were silent specta-

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 13

tors of a movement in which they seemed to have
Httle part. The joint result of so ecumenical a gather-
ing was inevitably somewhat confusing; and its con-
tribution to the science of Missions was that of a vast
preliminary collection and coordination of data rather
than a specific study of distinct problems, isolated from
related facts.

Panama's assembly was in marked contrast to Edin-
burgh's. Missionary experts were fewer, but ex-
perienced missionaries were more numerous, counted
by percentages, and more prominent as speakers. In-
stead of being representatives of a score of races, at
Panama the Latins w^ere the only ones present besides
the men and women who had identified themselves
with the Latin- American world, if two Indian boy
participants, not delegates, are excepted. The twenty
republics whence the delegates came are singularly
homogeneous, and their problems are naturally similar.
While portions of Latin America are primitive or
backward, Panama as a whole dealt with peoples hav-
ing a civilization akin to that of southwestern Europe.
Missionary methods are almost identical throughout
the Latin republics, and hence there was a common
ground to be traversed with the hope of improvement
all along the line, rather than with the necessity of
reconciling opposed methods and theories. Instead
of the ten days' monotony of addresses in English by
missionaries almost solely, at Panama three languages
were used at will. Here one from North America
learned for the first time what oratorical possibilities

14 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

lay in the Iberian tongues and in the Latin mind. If
the missionaries supplied the Anglo-Saxon poise and
richer spiritual experience, their Latin brothers and
sisters furnished the high enthusiasm and the cheering
warmth that made the auditor listen with rapt atten-
tion, even when the address was in a tongue which he
did not understand. Here was a simple, single set of
problems and a homogeneous company of workers to
discuss them. Even on the religious side, they had not
to deal with faiths as divergent as Buddhism, Moham-
medanism and Confucianism, but mainly with phases
of the same germinal Christianity, varying with its
different environment and racial development. Here
was the possibility of a scientific determination of cer-
tain forms of missionary theory and method, which
within three months began to find their formulation
in the regional conferences following upon the Con-
gress at Panama.

In a word, if the two largest missionary conferences
in recent years are compared, Edinburgh was general,
cosmopolitan, unusually varied in viewpoint and exten-
sive in scope, while Panama was specialized, homogene-
ous, united and uniform in Its objectives and intensive
in its investigations and discussions, as was natural
when all the delegates represented a single great divi-
sion of the world. While the attendance was much
smaller at Panama, the total number being 481, of
whom 304 were delegates and ofBcial visitors from
twenty-one different nations, this very fact enabled
those present to become more closely acquainted and

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 15

to feel more exhilaratingly the pulsations of real unity
than was possible in the greater gathering at Edin-
burgh. The statistics of the Congress may suggest
the preponderance of outside elements, since Latin-
American representatives number 145 as against 159
delegates and official visitors from Canada, the United
States, Great Britain, Spain and Italy; yet that slight
disparity in numbers does not indicate that there was a
corresponding difference in viewpoint, as delegates
from outside Latin America were all deeply sympa-
thetic with the objectives and desires of the Latin-
American group.

A nearer view of the Congress as it convened at
Panama will supply the needed setting for the fuller
appreciation of its important deliberations. The
United States Government's Hotel Tivoli, which is ap-
proached through a stately avenue of graceful palm
trees, lies on the verdant slopes of Ancon open to the
cooling breezes from the Pacific, — an item of great
importance in the tropics, where clothes reduce them-
selves to the lowest terms of Palm Beach suits and
Panama hats or pith helmets for the men and the
filmiest, coolest fabrics for the women delegates. The
spacious lower floor is devoted mainly to the great
dining-room and the equally generous ballroom. The
mountain and seaward sides of each of these were open
to all the winds of heaven, unless a chilly morning or
evening called for the closing of glass doors. At all
times the beauty-loving eye could turn eastward to the
placid Pacific, or upward in the opposite direction to

t6 RENAISSANT latin AMERICA

the green hillside, covered with tropical growths, ex-
cept where punctuated with beautiful residences or
government buildings.

From the high ceilings of the place of meeting pend-
ent flags of all the American republics lazily responded
to the intermittent breezes, as did the great palm
fronds that adorned the pillars. Three sides of the
hall were devoted to exhibits of books, periodicals
and maps of the various regions of Latin America, the
last having been prepared under the direction of Mr.
S. W. Boggs for the inspection and criticism of the
delegates. Another missionary map of South Amer-
ica, measuring nine by thirteen feet, also prepared by
him, was the background of the platform. A separate
alcove of the room was devoted to the striking collec-
tion of the American Bible Society's Spanish and
Portuguese publications.

It was eminently fitting that a Latin American, Pro-
fessor Eduardo Monteverde of the University of
Uruguay, who is also working in connection with the
Young Men's Christian Association of Montevideo,
should have been elected president of the Congress.
His unfailing courtesy, kindly smile, forceful speech,
scholarly achievements and devoted Christian life made
him a typical representative of the best in the Latin-
American Evangelical Church.

Dr. Robert E. Speer, senior secretary of the Board
of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States of America, was chairman of the
day sessions devoted to the hearing and discussion of

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 17

the eight commission reports, a man too well known
to need any word of introduction to the reader of
missionary literature. Under his firm yet kindly con-
duct of these sessions the Congress moved on calmly
and almost without friction even when the topics dis-
cussed were such as to awaken deep feeling on opposite
sides of important questions. The chairman of the
Business Committee, which was the real heart of the
organism, was the best known figure in the mission
world to-day, John R. Mott, LL.D. These old-time
friends and fellow workers were pillars upon which
the strong superstructure of the Congress securely
rested, standing, as they did, for the highest mission-
ary ideals and themselves dwelling in the manifest
presence of God. To the members of the Business
Committee who so unstintingly gave their time be-
tween sessions to many vital matters affecting the con-
duct and efficiency of the conference, the success of
the gathering was largely due.

The Congress so happily domiciled and officered
was conducted no less ideally. Preceding the morn-
ing session, devoted to the report of one of the eight
commissions and lasting from half past eight until
eleven, came a period of silent prayer and meditation
followed by the opening devotional exercises. Each
commission was allowed half an hour in which to open
and close its presentation, of which twenty minutes
were ordinarily given to its introduction and ten min-
utes to closing at the afternoon session. At eleven
o'clock the delegates turned from interesting discus-

i8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

sions to an uplifting half hour of devotion, their
thought being led by men of devout mind and deep
religious experience and accentuated by accessory
praise and intercession. The interval between eleven
thirty and half past three, when the Congress recon-
vened, was variously spent, though most of the dele-
gates made it a time for social intercourse, seeing
quaint Panama City, only five minutes walk from the
hotel, or for siestas, suggested not so much by the
tropical environment as by the strenuous nature of the
full days. The afternoon session of tw^o hours was
set apart for a further discussion of the theme of the
day. No speaker at either of the sessions could become
prolix or somnolent, for the twofold reason that the
time limit of seven minutes, when a speaker was cut
short by an inexorable bell, did not permit him to com-
plete his unwelcome task, and because he was so
anxious to make his point that he spoke directly —
sometimes tumultuously — to his subject without exor-
dium or peroration. As cards were signed by those
desiring to speak upon any subject, the Chairman knew
how many were to be heard; and in some cases the
number was so great that the limit was cut down to
five minutes or even less.

The languages of the Congress were three. Most
spoke in English, and it was noticeable that of those
to whom it was not the natal tongue but who used it
on the platform, the Latin- American women usually
surpassed the men. When Spanish or Portuguese was
used, official interpreters — summarizers rather — were

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 19

provided who followed the speaker with an English
digest of what had been said, usually half as full as
the original address. The Rev. Webster E. Browning,
Ph.D., of Santiago, was the one who thus aided the
Spanish speakers; and his summaries were notably
clear and pointed. The Rev. H. C. Tucker, D.D., of
Rio de Janeiro, similarly served the Portuguese dele-
gates, and his interpretations were unusually felicitous
in point of following closely the spirit and oratorical
forms of his originals. In some cases a speaker would
give what he had to say in his native tongue and then
immediately follow it with his own English rendering,
a conspicuous example being Senor E. Lefevre, Minis-
ter of Foreign Affairs of the Panama Republic, whose
cordial address of welcome on the opening evening
w^as thus repeated in faultless English.

In addition to the regular morning and afternoon
sessions devoted to the discussion of commission re-
ports, a more popular gathering was held in the even-
ings, when themes not connected with the commissions
were presented by distinguished Latin-American and
English-speaking ladies and gentlemen. While the
Congress did not convene on Sunday, on the evening
of February thirteenth most of the delegates attended
a session held in the Instituto Nacional where Dr. Mott
had been invited to address them and the citizens of
Panama upon his observations and impressions of the
unparalleled European conflict, — an address that
throbbed with Christian passion, sympathy and tender-
ness. On that occasion, which was made a semi-formal

20 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

reception to members of the Congress, Dr. E. G. Dex-
ter, rector of the Institute, and Senor G. Andreve, Sec-
retary of PubHc Instruction, voiced Panama's welcome
to the speaker and to the Congress also. Both Sun-
days were filled with services from one end of the
Canal Zone to the other at which delegates spoke with
power and great acceptance.

While the United States Government and its Canal
officials did not formally greet the Congress, they
graciously invited its members to inspect the Canal
through its most typical and important sections. On
Tuesday afternoon, the delegates entered into picnic
mood and boarding the train comported themselves as
students on holiday. Arriving at Pedro Miguel, they
detrained and inspected with keen interest the con-
struction and mechanism of the gigantic locks as the
vessel which was to carry the party to Gatun Lake
passed through. The sail thither impressed the dele-
gates with the unappreciated magnitude of this colossal
undertaking, especially at Culebra Cut, where busy
dredges were finishing the work caused by the great
slide. One of these the following Saturday established
a world's record for a day's dredging, which was at
the rate of nearly twenty-five tons of mud and rock
per minute. To the few who knew Panama in the old
days, no less wonderful than the engineering triumphs
of General Goethals was the marvelous transformation
due to General Gorgas, whereby this miasmatic, mos-
quito-infested region, where yellow fever conquered
the French Canal builders, has become a health resort.

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 21

Though the screened porches of most of the buildings
suggest winged enemies of man, so relentless is the
warfare against them that the present writer saw only
one fly and not a solitary mosquito during the entire
ten days of his sojourn there, while many delegates
did not see any.

Panama, lying below Ancon and only a short dis-
tance away, was the laboratory to which those members
of the Congress frequently resorted who had never
seen a Latin-American town. This somewhat typical
Spanish city still has its Sunday bull fights, its Sunday
lottery drawings held in a section of the Bishop's resi-
dence diagonally opposite the Cathedral, the Cathedral
itself and the cosmopolitan population which consti-
tutes its charm and its problem, as in so many Latin-
American centers. It was less helpful from the labora-
tory view^point in that little w^ork Is done by missions
for any except the negroes, who are of an unusually
fine type, coming mostly from Jamaica. At the Sea
Wall Methodist church, however, those labored for
are Spanish-speaking people, except on Sunday morn-
ing, when the audience is mixed. The presence at this
particular center of a large number of young soldiers
has complicated the task, as Is so often the case when
moral restraints are relaxed In a city where tempta-
tions to lust and debauchery are present.

What Panama and the Congress there assembled
were to be to the delegates and to the Latin-American
world was foreshadow^ed by Bishop Oldham at the
very opening of its sessions. In his uplifting prayer

22 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

were these petitions : "Many, many hearts have longed
and hoped and prayed for this hour. They have
watched and they have waited, and they have scarcely
known sometimes whether their eyes would see this
hour. And now the hour has come when, gathered
from many parts of the world, we are assembled to put
together our plans, our visions, our hopes, our fears,
and to ask that out of them all there may come one
great plan, one great purpose, one great throbbing de-
sire, beyond anything that we have yet known, to bring
good to all here assembled. . . . Grant that in
the midst of everything, placed as we are at such a
time in the world's history as this, — that here may be
one beautiful, glorious, luminous spot from which all
Christendom shall take larger courage and firmer
hope. . . . May this be a mount of vision, and
may the Lord God Himself reveal unto us the things
we are to do and what we are to be."

And the support and inspiration of those memor-
able days of counsel and deliberation were found in a
simple incident, reported from an experience of Dr.
Speer in the Philippine Islands in 1915. A Filipino
school teacher, in an address of welcome, said to the
Board delegation that he hoped those friends had come
"to bring some sweet word from our dear Lord.'' In
his recital of the incident Dr. Speer added : "I thought
of all the Christian experience that lay back of that
phrasing of the desire of this Filipino youth, of all that
it signified to us, . . . the abiding longing of
our hearts always and in every place, to hear again, to

THE STORY OF THE CONGRESS 23

hear anew, 'some sweet word from our dear Lord.' '*
Once and again, and every hour oftentimes, "some
sweet word" would fall from lips touched by their
Lord that whispered peace and comfort and wisdom
and strength and the assurance of success in that
bright future of Latin-American missions, when what
was so prayerfully and devoutly sought out on the
green slopes of Ancon looking toward the sunrising
should be believed by the Church and wrought into
the spiritual and common life of all Latin- American
lands.

II

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA

As it is proposed to present in this volume each of
the reports of the eight commissions in a single chap-
ter, including the discussions connected with its presen-
tation,— material twenty-fold more extended than the
chapter itself, — it is obviously impossible to do more
than select what seems of greatest importance in con-
nection with each theme and condense even that
modicum. The reader is referred for details and ad-
ditional phases of each topic to the three-volume re-
port of the Congress, containing the full statements
of the eight commissions as finally edited, with the
correctives due to the discussions of the Congress in-
corporated in the text.

To Commission I on "Survey and Occupation,"
whose Chairman was Mr. E. T. Colton, was entrusted
the important task of laying before the delegates the
results of its careful investigation of the varied condi-
tions bearing directly or indirectly upon the mission-
ary occupation of Latin- American lands. It was thus
a preview for the other Commissions.

As delimited by the Commission, Latin America in-
cludes all the areas south of the Rio Grande, consist-
ing of ten republics north and ten south of the Panama

25

26 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Canal Zone, and of colonies of France, Great Britain,
Holland, Denmark and the Zone itself, administered
like Porto Rico by the United States. Inhabiting this
generous territory of 8,459,081 square miles is a
population of 80,203,902, — largely estimated rather
than counted. These figures need to be compared with
more familiar units to be fully appreciated. Thus the
United States of North America, excluding Alaska,
could be superimposed upon the United States of
Brazil with room enough left to accommodate two
additional New Englands and New Jerseys, plus New
York and Pennsylvania. New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania and Maryland would not quite fill Ecua-
dor, that tiny triangle on South America's map.
Nearly thirteen New Englands could be packed into
our next-door neighbor, Mexico; while Argentina is
almost one-third as large as all British territory in
North America. Compared with populations of other
mission fields, Latin America's inhabitants equal in
number the negroes in all of Africa, according to
recent conservative estimates, or the combined popula-
tion of the great mission fields of the Japanese Empire,
— including Korea and Formosa, — the Turkish Empire
and the Union of South Africa. Anglo-Saxon Amer-
ica outnumbers by little more than a third Latin Amer-
ica's populations.

It was prospective areas and populations, however,
rather than present figures, that quickened the imagina-
tion of the Congress. While the boundaries cannot be
enlarged, areas now useless were spread before the

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 27

delegates as inviting fields of bright promise. Thus
the forest-covered regions of Central America, Colom-
bia, Venezuela, the Guianas, parts of Ecuador and
Peru and equatorial Brazil — at present least desirable
for immigration — are nevertheless well adapted to
negroes, Hindus, Indians, and other races acclimated
to the tropics; so that instead of sixteen millions
occupying the fringes of these regions, the area and
habitableness of much more of these sections can be
extended to accommodate more than sixty millions.
In regions more adapted to white men, Argentina,
Uruguay and Southern Brazil, there are a million
square miles available for se;ttlement, where it is pre-
dicted that a population of one hundred millions of
people will be found at the end of the century, with
an ultimate capacity of twice as many. Senor Calderon
predicts that in the year 2000, Latin America will
domicile 250,000,000 people. While few would agree
with the famous French geographer Reclus in his state-
ment that it will finally support two billions of peo-
ple, the estimate that it will one day maintain half a
billion, or almost one-third the world's present
population, is quite believable.

To this land of desire, the last great unoccupied
area of the habitable world except sections of Africa,
a stream of immigration is already setting, so that in
19 1 3 about a million immigrants landed on Latin-
American shores while nearly half that number re-
turned home, — forty-five percent, as against forty per-
cent, returning home from the United States the year

28 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

before. Most are from European lands, but the num-
ber of Japanese immigrants is increasing and many-
come from China and India. French, Italian, Spanish
and Portuguese arrivals do not need to change their
type of civilization and are speedily absorbed; v^hile
North Americans, Englishmen and Germans require
one or two generations of life in Latin America before
assimilation does its work. During this period of
absorption and assimilation, it is vastly important that
a religious atmosphere more helpful than is found
there at present should be provided.

The Commission could not omit from its purview
the vast resources of Latin America, which are the
bait alluring immigrants, commerce, and capital to
the Latin hook, and at the same time the substantial
foundation for the belief that this part of the world
is one of great prospective importance from the Chris-
tian viewpoint.

Despite the fact that much of its area is an im-
penetrable jungle of coarse grass, rainless regions of
sandy soil, swamps, miasmatic forests and lofty moun-
tain tracts, there is incalculable wealth in products of
forest, ranch, farm and mine. Half the rubber of the
world comes from tropical America. Argentina alone
in 1914 possessed 123,612,000 cattle, horses, sheep —
eighty millions of these, — goats, mules, pigs, etc. Four-
fifths of the world's coffee supply comes from Brazil,
and its diamond fields supply more briUiants than any
part of the world except South Africa. Virgin
forests of Latin America abound in rosewood and

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 20

other valuable timber, Chile's sterile land supplied in
19 1 3 nitrates valued at $120,000,000. Cuba, the
greatest sugar-cane raiser of the world, in 19 14 pro-
duced 2,575,000 tons of sugar, and its capital city
supplied other countries with 183,234,330 cigars.
Four years ago Argentina milled 1,345,568 tons of
wheat. The supposedly barren wastes of Peru the
same year yielded 1,740,024 tons of sugar-cane, while
from its mines were shipped nearly ten million dollars
w^orth of copper, — and so on endlessly. Resulting from
this wealth of productions, international trade has
grown from two billion dollars to three billions dur-
ing the last ten years; and the Hon. John Barrett
predicts that in the five years following the war this
trade will increase to five billions. To transport this
costly product twenty-five steamship lines from North
America and over fifty from Europe ply back and
forth, with Japan's commercial fleets coming thither
from the Far East. Here, surely, are the guarantees
of future increasing populations ; here, also is the cer-
tainty of increasing, selfish greed which needs the
altruistic touch of the living Christ, in order to heal
the inevitable leprous growth of a materialistic civiliza-
tion.

A study of Latin Americans already domiciled in
these republics and the heirs of four centuries of Ibero-
American environment and influence is the discovery
of peoples of mingled strength and weakness. That
early inheritance must always be remembered. "When
the Spaniards came to the New World," writes Lord

30 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Bryce, ''they came mainly for the sake of gold. . . .
Few settlers came from Spain to till the land. The
first object was to seize all that could be found of the
precious metals, much to the astonishment of the
natives, who thought that gold must be to them a
sort of fetich. The next was to discover mines of
those metals and make the Indians work them. The
third was to divide up the more fertile districts into
large estates, allotting to each adventurer his share of
labor-natives along with his share of the lands. No
settlers came out to clear the ground from wood and
build homes upon it, as did the colonists of New Eng-
land and those who sought to create a New France
on the St. Lawrence. No Spaniard thought of tilling
the land himself. Why should he when he could make
others till it for him? . . . Accordingly, the in-
vaders became a ruling caste, living on the labor of
their Indian serfs, and for a long time they confined
themselves to the lands upon which the latter were al-
ready established." And these conquistadores, "brave,
hardy, romantic and warlike," as Francisco Yanes
rightly describes them, were equalled by the Paulistas
of Southern Brazil who as a racial blend of Portuguese
and Indian marched as handeirantes, or banner-men,
on similar errands of Indian conquest and golden
achievement. Red men proving insufficient in num-
ber and unequal to the blacks as laborers, Africa was
robbed to supply the eastern half of the continent with
slaves. From that early period onward, the white man
has been dependent largely upon these two racial ele-

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 31

ments, to the detriment of his blood and of his own best
development.

And yet we of the Anglo-American race do not
fairly estimate the Latin American. Quoting again
from the Assistant Director of the Pan American
Union, Mr. Yanes: "I may say that a charge fre-
quently made against us Latin Americans, and in a
sense true, is that we are a race of dreamers. Perhaps
it is so. We inherited from our forefathers the love
of the beautiful and grand, the facility for expression
and the vivid imagination of our race. From them
we inherited the sonorous, majestic Spanish, the
flexible, musical Portuguese, and the French — language
of art, and a responsive chord to all that thrills, be it
color, harmony, or mental imagery. We inherited
their varying moods, their noble traits and their short-
comings, both of which we have preserved and in cer-
tain cases improved under the influence of our environ-
ment,— our majestic mountains, our primeval forests,
the ever blooming tropical flowers, the birds of sweet-
est wild songs and wonderful plumage, — under magnif-
icent skies and the inspiration taken from other poets
and writers, be they foreign or native, who have gone
through life like the minstrels of old with a song on
their lips and an unsatisfied yearning in their hearts."
This is typical of the best Latin Americans.

Those early adventurers may have been dominated
by forces that Professor Shepherd compresses within
his quotation, ''gospel, glory and gold;" yet be it said
that the first of these w^as never wanting, no matter

32 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

how we may evaluate it. And thus it happens that
the bright Hning of that dark cloud was the devotion —
flaming forth again and again — in such heroic souls as
animated Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican curas,
doctrineros and misioneros — priests, catechists and
missionary monks — who braved danger of every de-
scription to aid their degraded charges. How the work
of the Jesuits impressed itself upon Indians of the
Paraguayan reductions is a miracle of missions, albeit
wrought to the destruction of all native initiative and
of true manliness. The author last quoted holds that
the Spanish clergy had three motives in dealing with
the Indians, "destruction, construction and instruc-
tion." Of these destruction was sometimes mere icono-
clastic zeal which did not seem to conflict with the
retention of much that was heathenish, kept ''because
of their ignorance and weak minds.'* Too often in
the early years conversions, forbidden to be through
force, were the result of entradas and conquistas de
almas, which entries and conquests of souls were made
by missionaries accompanied by soldiers who raided
villages and carried off children and youths to be
taught Spanish and instructed in the Catholic faith.
Yet over against multitudes of these shepherds may
be placed one such saint as Las Casas, the "Apostle to
the Indies" — as "seamy" a saint as some of St. Paul's
Corinthian charges, some historians think, yet one
whose influence contributed in large measure to the
enactment of humane legislation that became a feature
of later Spanish policy. These are sample leaves from

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 33

the history of the early centuries, turned that the
reader may see the origin of many things in Latin-
American Hfe to-day that he may fail to understand
otherwise.

Recalling such historical incidents, many Anglo-
Americans are surprised to find what unusual men
and women their Latin neighbors are. They have
among them universities in Lima, Mexico City, Cor-
doba in Argentina and Sucre which began their work
from thirteen to eighty-five years before Harvard was
established, while Peru's second University at Cuzco
antedates Yale by nine years. The printing press came
to the New World in 1536, when its first book was
printed in Mexico, Father Las Casas' plea for a bet-
ter life, while South America's first book was published
in Peru about 1584. Patriots of undying fame laid
the foundations of Latin- American liberty: — Bolivar,
called the Washington of South America, though San
Martin was more like him than Bolivar; O'Higgins,
the Chilean hero ; Tiradentes, the forerunner of Brazil-
ian independence; Morelos and Hidalgo, Catholic
priests and martyrs in the cause of Mexican liberty.
Latin-American literature ranks fairly well with
Anglo-American, though ignorance of Spanish and
Portuguese prevents North Americans from enjoying
its treasures. Science is honored by such names as
Ernesto Quesada, the sociologist, whose library con-
tains 25,000 volumes in which his own writings fill a
five-foot shelf. Estanislao Zeballos, the jurist, has a
collection of 28,000 volumes, and his published works

34 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

require nine feet of shelf-room. International law-
has been enriched by such authorities as Drago and
Calvo of Argentina and Ruy Barbosa of Brazil. It
was a young physician, Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who
transformed Rio de Janeiro from a "City of Death"
into the healthy tropical metropolis of two years later.
A Cuban, Dr. Carlos A. Finley, discovered and an-
nounced the communication of yellow fever by mos-
quitoes, freely acknowledged by General Gorgas and
Dr. Reed as the foundation for their later elaboration
and application in the Panama Canal Zone. Poets,
painters, sculptors, musicians, bear Latin-American
names of high distinction. And those present at the
Panama Congress listened to Latins w^hose ability as
representatives of diplomacy, law, education and re-
ligion was abundantly evident.

As the Commission was seeking for all the truth,
it did not hide from view the other side of this shin-
ing shield. A brief table will show its racial basis, as
roughly divided into seven classes :

Whites 18,000,000

Indians 17,000,000

Negroes 6,000,000

Mixed White and Indian 30,000,000

Mixed White and Negro 8,000,000

Mixed Negro and Indian 700,000

East Indian, Japanese and Chinese 300,000

Of Latin America's eighty millions, it is mainly
the eighteen millions of whites who are measurably
what one finds in Europe or North America. The

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 35

remaining seventy-seven percent, are not so cultured,
and most of them are in manifold need.

Of the mixed populations it may be said that they
are favored in one particular above those in North
America, namely, in the absence of any distinct color
line, whether red or black. One's position in society
need not be affected by any degree of miscegenation,
as some of Latin America's most famous men have
been of mixed ancestry. Social status depends, rather,
upon innate ability, financial standing, mentality and
social gifts. Though more than a score of terms are
in use to denote varying degrees of race admixture,
Senor Calderon rightly says: "A single half-caste
race, with here the negro and there the Indian pre-
dominant over the conquering Spaniard, obtains from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. There is a greater
resemblance between Peruvians and Argentines,
Colombians and Chilians, than between inhabitants
of two distant provinces of France, ... or be-
tween the North American of the far West and the
native of New England. The slight provincial dif-
ferences enable us the better to understand the unity
of the continent." Yet he necessarily adds: "There
is a spontaneous hierarchy in the Latin New World;
there are superior and inferior democracies, maritime
nations and inland states. Paraguay will always be
inferior to the Argentine Republic, Uruguay to Brazil,
Bolivia to Chile, Ecuador to Peru, Guatemala to
Mexico; as much from the point of wealth as in
population and influence."

Z6 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

As to the effects of the almost universal mis-
cegenation, Lord Bryce's studies and South American
observations find brief expression in these con-
clusions : ( I ) The fusion of two parent stocks, one
more advanced, the other more backward, does not
necessarily result in producing a race inferior to the
stronger parent or superior to the weaker. (2) Con-
quest and control by a race of greater strength have
upon some races a depressing and almost ruinous
effect, as in the case of the Peruvians after the com-
ing of the conquisfadores. (3) The ease with which
the Spaniards intermingled by marriage with the In-
dians, and the Portuguese with the negroes, shows
that race repugnance is no such constant factor in
human affairs as Teutonic peoples are apt to assume.
(4) As touching the future, it seems certain that the
races now inhabiting South America will all ulti-
mately be fused. The Spanish republics — except the
purely white Argentina and Uruguay — will be Ibero-
American, Brazil will be Ibero-American-African,
the process requiring in the Spanish republics two
centuries or more. (5) Of the quality of the emerging
mixed race, he writes : "One cannot but fear that
the Portuguese of tropical Brazil may suffer from
the further infusion of an element the moral fiber
of which is conspicuously weak, though there are
those who argue that the blood of the superior race
must ultimately transmute the whole. It is not to be
assumed that the peoples of the Spanish republics will
necessarily decline, for the present degradation of the

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 37

Indians may be due as much to their melancholy
history as to inherent defects. It is still too soon to
be despondent. There may be in the Indian stock a
reserve of strength, dormant, but not extinct, ready to
respond to a new stimulus and to shoot upwards under
more inspiriting conditions." Speaking elsewhere of
the probable influence of the negro strain, he says:
''What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will
have on the European element in Brazil I will not
venture to predict. If one may judge from a few
remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the
intellectual standard. One of the ablest and most re-
fined Brazilians I have known had some color, and
other cases have been mentioned to me."

Stated in a single paragraph, the three outstanding
social groupings as they face the missionary are the
Indians, the lower peon class, and the aristocratic
land-owning class. Generally speaking, there is no mid-
dle class such as exists in Europe and North America,
although in commercial centers one is beginning to
form. Most of the Indians are still primitive, though
members of the race have risen to prominence, Benito
Juarez of Mexico and a number of Peru's Indian
presidents, for example. To-day most of the Indians
are pitifully ignorant and are practically neglected by
social and religious agencies. They are prolific, but
unsanitary conditions and ignorance of hygiene cause
a high death-rate. The peon class, next above the
Indians, is of mixed blood, the union having produced
a hardy race. They are capable of enduring hard

38 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

work on a meager diet and live in squalor. They are
oppressed by the landed class, and neglected by the
Church and by most of the states. Between the third —
or aristocratic — class and the other two a gulf is fixed
that can be most easily bridged by gold. Its members
dominate most things, live in luxury and provide their
fam.ilies with every desirable means for enjoying life
— like wealthy persons in most lands. Yet, as already
suggested, they do not strive to keep down the lower
classes, nor is intermarriage with promising women
of color tabooed.

Follow^ing its detailed survey of Latin-American
races, here only cursorily touched upon, Commission
I presented the claims of these peoples upon the
evangelical Churches of more favored lands. Immi-
gration and commerce, the world over, tend to be
destructive to morals and religion through the removal
of home restraints, the absence of helps to higher liv-
ing in the new and usually low environment of the
fresh immigrant on foreign shores, or the convivial
habits of men engaged in foreign firms, where
one's associates have often little respect for morals
and religion. The Commission bore testimony to the
godly lives and helpful influence of many business
men of Latin America, but regretted to report that
in so many cases moral tragedies of colonization and
commerce were the result of New World contact. Too
often one derelict, hailing from Europe or North
America, means the destruction or crippling of many
lesser Latin craft with which there has been in-

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 39

jurious collision. The manifest duty of Anglo-Saxon
Christians is to abate the evils engendered by coloniza-
tion and commerce. Where one's countrymen exploit,
one must serve. The character-building forces of
nations that export the products of breweries, dis-
tilleries and other instruments of debauchery should
outreach and circumvent those destructive agencies.

The imminent peril to faith seen among all classes
of Latin Americans is an even stronger appeal to
evangelical Churches. Very few among the intel-
lectuals have any vital interest in Christianity. The
Latin-American Church, untouched by the modern
learning of the nineteenth century, did not concern
itself with the new rationalism, materialism, pessi-
mism and naturalism whose full force engulfed the
Latin scholar who studied in home or foreign uni-
versities where such movements were dominant. Un-
aided in their hour of need, the faith of educated
men suffered shipwreck, or found itself in gravest peril.
Four groups are noted among the intellectuals, though
of varying numbers and importance : ( i ) A violent
anti-clerical party, many of whom extend their opposi-
tion to religion of every form; (2) the more or less
well-reasoned atheists and skeptics who look in-
dulgently upon religion as harmless for women and
for the lower classes, but who themselves are indif-
ferent to its personal claims; (3) the dissatisfied
groups who are groping their way in the darkness
with the usual result of ending in cynicism and hard-
ness of heart; and (4) those whose period of doubt

40 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

and of faith's collapse is before them as they enter
upon their free higher education. As one listens to
the roll-call of Latin republics, one is appalled by the
prevalence of all degrees of unbelief and of opposition
to Christianity. Surely doubt and denial of all faiths,
spreading apace and unchecked among eighty millions
of people, concern the entire Christian world.
Churches with modern religious scholarship and
strong faith are bound to offer intellectual Latins the
torch with which to relight the failing or darkened
lamps of Christian belief and life.

Whatever doubt there may be about the justinable-
ness of sending representatives of evangelical missions
to Roman Catholic Latin America, there can be no
valid objection to heeding the claims of its unevangel-
ized millions, especially the neglected Indians. That
section of the Commission's report might be reprinted
with profit as a clarion call, voicing the deepest of
Latin-American spiritual needs. Neglect, if you will,
the thirty millions of mestizos, whose nominal
Christianity is little better than a "baptized heathen-
ism," as a Romanist once described it, seventeen mil-
lions of approximately pure-blooded Indians remain
for whom very little has been done. These and the
six millions of pure-blpoded negroes, also practically
neglected, are peoples whose physical, social and
spiritual condition is a mute yet moving Macedonian
appeal to the evangelical Church.

The study of the Latin-American situation con-
vinced the Commission that missions had a still higher

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 41

and more subtle contribution to make to the Latin
republics. The influence of spiritual and intellectual
freedom upon the character of individuals and nations
is a patent teaching of history. Just as the Roman
Catholic Church, obedient to its sense of mission, has
planted its institutions and exerted its influence in the
midst of Protestant communities and states, so the
evangelical Churches feel it incumbent upon them to
supply to Latin America, in so far as its republics do
not possess them, the foundations of intellectual free-
dom, the open Bible to be possessed, studied and
practiced by all, and the recognition of the right and
value of democracy in ecclesiastical government.

As the Panama Congress faced these responsibili-
ties and opportunities, it was heartening to be re-
minded that the far-flung line of fraternity and co-
operation was in the main wisely located. The major
bases for present and more extended operations are
so chosen as to make them, like St. Paul's strategic
entrepots, natural and effective centers of out-reach-
ing lines of diffusion to unoccupied hinterlands. Al-
most unequaled waterways and sixty-five thousand
miles of railway, connecting most of the mission
stations with each other and the ports, are available
for the gospel messengers. While nearly four-fifths
of Latin America lies within the tropics, elevated areas
supply a temperate climate, and cities of the lowlands
are becoming increasingly sanitary. Excepting the In-
dian tongues, the two Iberian languages, so nearly akin
that Spaniard can readily understand Portuguese and

42 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

vice versa, are the linguae Francae of Latin mission
fields, — a fact, with their relatively easy acquisition,
that is at once a help to the faithful student of these
languages and a peril to the indolent missionary who
forgets how the evangelical message is crippled and
disparaged because of his slipshod use of the beautiful
mother tongues of the Latin peoples.

Over against these favoring factors were certain
opposing elements, chief among them racial relations.
German assurance, English bluffness, American angu-
larity and other barbarisms, are little calculated to win
the polite and sensitive Latin — an argument for the
repression of characteristics that wound or offend.
The easy weapon of ridicule and the keen edge of
criticism need to be sheathed, or used with the utmost
tact and care. The inbred prejudice of Latins toward
races whose ancestors were known only as the enemies
of true religion, an inheritance from history, is present
in many minds. The Latin-American fear lest their
civilization should be overwhelmed through political
and commercial aggression is a middle wall of parti-
tion between them and the rest of the Occidental
world. Their writers linger over the North American
peril, the threat of Germany, the menace of Japan;
while the Monroe Doctrine is a shield whose dark
side faces southward, the fear of which is hardly
banished by the northern Christian's assurance, "Our
call is to evangelize, not to Americanize." If that
assertion is made w4th any suggestion of race supe-
riority, their special abomination, the words are re-

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 43^

sented. And then what if all this show of friendliness-
were merely the preparative for northern aggression,
another case of Porto Rican occupation, of Cuban
overlordship, of Canal Zone acquisition?

Religious liberty, constitutionally granted but often
found only on the statute books, is a help where
dominant, a hollow mockery in too many instances-
Religious prejudices, almost universally present and
ranging from indifferent tolerance to virulent opposi-
tion, are slowly yielding before increasing knowledge
and the power of the evangelical program, so that re-
ligious openness is reported from most republics.
Now is the pragmatic moment for the evangelical
Churches to objectify themselves in evangelistic en-
deavor, in literary production, in educational work
of intellectual and religious strength, in the extension
of that welcome hand which has thus far been so
grudgingly stretched forth in healing, and in a host
of philanthropic activities so acceptable that it was
hoped that the Congress might find some point of
cooperation with the Roman Church in their prosecu-
tion. Such a prospect was obscured somewhat by the-
lack of national leadership adequately prepared for
leading on to a bloodless victory the evangelical
forces, — a defect to be emphasized later in this
volume.

The last section of the report preceding its findings
was devoted to the statistics gathered by the Com-^
mission. Without presenting lifeless figures, which
will be found in an appendix of the three- volume re*

44 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

port, a few statements may be made, mainly by way of
comment.

The magnitude of the unfinished task was vividly
impressed by the data presented. The Indian-speak-
ing aborigines, numbering some six millions, were a
challenge to Christian heroism and faith, — a part of
the work almost wholly neglected. Bolivia in its
province of La Paz alone has more Indians than all
of the United States, with nothing but the Gospel of
St. Luke in print to guide them. The missionary there
must first learn Spanish and through that medium the
Aymara in order to communicate with his needy
charges. With the exception of those in the Para-
guayan Chaco, no prominent work is being done for
the red man from Allen Gardiner's burial place in
the remotest south to the Indians of the Texas border-
lands, though isolated stations exist and heroic work is
being done. Statistics of literature suitable for Latin-
American missions do not appear, and even in the
Commission's report dealing with that subject, they
are meager ; so that it is probably true that this is the
greatest weakness of the evangelical propaganda.
Happily the Bible Societies are active and on that
side the defect is not so noticeable. A task unbegun
rather than unfinished, one might almost say, is
that for the higher government student class, where
figures are also lacking, though this is a most stra-
tegic section of the Latin community. Zero is the
numeral representing the number of church edifices
in Colombia, the fifth republic in size of South Amer-

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 4S

ica, though school buildings are so used. Ecuador
has one church building and Venezuela two. In
Jamaica and Porto Rico, which are really home mis-
sion fields, the number of evangelical church mem-
bers is gratifying. The former island has sent eleven
workers to its mission in Africa. The average con-
tribution of the 1,325 Canadian Presbyterian com-
municants for church purposes in Trinidad was $4.86
in 19 1 3. But let the totals, rather than isolated facts,
convince the reader that Latin America is still in the
large a neglected part of the world-field,— with one
evangelical missionary to forty thousand and one
communicant of its evangelical churches to three hun-
dred and eleven Romanists or totally unreached Latin
Americans. Such statements, however, are feeble in-
deed compared with the impressions made that Friday
morning as missionary after missionary told of spirit-
ual destitution everywhere, and of the millions wholly
unreached thus far by Christianity in any form. If
one were to use any figure to suggest the dearth of
missionaries, perhaps a truer impression would be
given, if it were stated that in the South America of
greatest destitution, there is one missionary to half
a million people.

When the material of the Commission was placed
before the Congress, the reactions were varied and
insistent. North American, British, German and
Latin speakers sounded out imperative calls from a
score of New World Macedonias north and south of
the equator. Mexico's fourfold need, as voiced by

46 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Senor Garza Mora, was re-echoed once and again
throughout the day by nationals and missionaries
aHke. Fundamentally an open Bible, faithfully
preached and holily illustrated, and then this quartette
of needs in the evangelical propaganda: The raising
up of a well educated national ministry out of the
poorly taught and meagerly financed evangelical
churches; many more schools and higher institutions
for the training of children and youth under the
beneficent influences of a glad and brotherly gospel;
the driving out of some of the feeble or fiercely mili-
tant literature of the churches by better leaflets and
books and by a vastly larger volume of them; and a
more manifest, more efficient cooperation and unity
among the evangelical agencies. In sections where
Missions have accomplished more than in others, the
undertone of deeper want was heard — in this utter-
ance of Senor Elphick of Chile, for example: "The
great need, not only of Chile, but of all the countries
nowadays, is a tremendous revival. . . . There-
fore I would urge this Congress to send people
equally to all Latin America, so that all the churches
may fall upon their knees and pray God to send the
Holy Spirit into our hearts. We have splendid ma-
chinery, but we have no power for that machinery."
Bishop Stuntz closed his seven-minute burst of im-
passioned oratory with the same refrain : "We need
[in the Plate region] just what we need in all of these
countries, — we need the power of God resting upon
those at work there."

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 47

The absence of diatribes against a Church which
is not only opposed to evangelical workers, but which
history has shown to be inadequate to enlighten the
Latin world, was noticeable; though it was not sur-
prising that an occasional outcry was heard. Thus
Senor Alvaro Reis, a distinguished leader of Brazil,
where not less than eighty persecutions directed against
the modern spiritual movement are on record, appealed
to the Congress to define its attitude and purpose in
facing the existing Roman Church throughout South
America. Another sort of semi-discordant, yet wholly
human, note was the discouraged plea of a canny Scot,
John Ritchie, for Peru, — as large as France, Belgium,
Spain, Switzerland and Italy combined. As he looked
to Porto Rico, smaller than little Connecticut, where
there are more than three hundred preaching places,
and then thought of Peru with only thirty-three for-
eign workers all told, so that twelve departments
averaging the size of Holland are without a single
evangelical witness, native or foreign, the question
of investigating the disparity in distribution of mis-
sionaries seemed a proper one. Yet his plaint was
prefaced by a note of thanksgiving that after twenty-
five years of suffering and patient toil, in November,
191 5, the day of the open door to preach the Gospel
throughout Peru had dawned.

With the afternoon session came a presentation of
special sections and classes in Latin lands of the New
World. The Rev. James H. McLean was the spokes-
man of 45,000 students in higher institutions of learn-

48 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ing, less than one percent, of Latin Americans proper,
who nevertheless exercise ninety-nine percent, of the
intellectual and moral influence. If nothing effective
is done for these men and women by missionaries,
forty-five percent, will be sworn enemies of vital re-
ligion in a decade, while the remainder will be utterly
negative in religious matters. How hopeless the best
of them may become was evidenced by a student who
told the speaker of his praying to a being, supposed
to be God, in these words, "Speak to me, if Thou
exist, for the silence is crushing my soul." The Con-
gress president. Professor Monteverde, followed the
presentation with a statement as to work already being
done for this strategic class.

Dr. Tucker gave a genuine *'big Injun" address, as
he pleaded for making the red man large in our re-
spect and aims for future work. In the southern
half of the Western Hemisphere is the place in which
to accomplish this desired result. What Mr. Grubb
and others are already doing is prophetic of still larger
successes. The Brazilian hinterland was especially
spoken of as the field for future expansion of the In-
dian work, the hopefulness of which Dr. Conto de
Magalhaes had set forth. New York's missionary
layman, Mr. Eben E. Olcott, told us chapters out of his
Peruvian experience and of what practical Chris-
tianity can do for a race that is maltreated and neg-
lected. One valley which he traveled through was
populated by only seventy thousand, the remnant of a
million Indians who succumbed before the hardships

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 49

imposed upon them by the ruthless Spaniards of cen-
turies ago.

Dr. S. D. Daugherty spoke of the invasion of Latin
America by men from Protestant lands, and especially
those who go from the United States to establish
banks and to engage in other business. The duty of
the evangelical Church to these men is obvious. Chris-
tian firms should send out only Christian gentlemen
who will elevate the tone of society and help for-
ward all forms of true religion.

Certain questions raised by Commission I were next
discussed. Secretary Earl Taylor began with the vital
alternative as to whether the Church should address
itself to the unoccupied fields, or enlarge the work
already in progress. While he believed that a group
of Christian business men would vote in favor of
concentration rather than for a dispersion of forces, he
inclined to answer both "Yes" and "No." While we
ought not to concentrate to the exclusion of outlying
areas, on the other hand diffusion ought not to be at
the expense of strong centers. To solve the problem
he pleaded for a "hemispherical" policy that by its
synergism might lift up the entire Latin- American
world toward the face of Jesus Christ. A conti-
nental program will enable the evangelical Church to
meet both phases of the problem.

A lack of coordination and cooperation among
missions seemed to the Rev. Eduardo Pereira of Brazil
to make them appear as so many army corps in dis-
order, having no connection nor direction, each going

50 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

its own way. So inefficient a plan can no longer con-
tinue; missionaries and nationals alike desire coopera-
tion and a definite program. Secretary J. E. McAfee
dwelt especially upon the divided ranks of Protes-
tantism due to its denominationalism which he felt
should not be propagated in Latin America; and he
suggested a number of correctives, chief among them
the training in union institutions of the Church's
future leaders.

The Rev. George H. Brewer answered the question,
"What is meant by an adequate occupation of the
field?" by affirming that it implied efficient leadership,
first-class equipment, adequate and sympathetic home
support and the concentration of force at strategic cen-
ters. An effective unit of occupation for a given area
he described as the establishment of an organized
church with its building, its church home, and an
ordained ministry devoting full time to church work.

Professor Beach presented, in reply to the question,
**Is it desirable to make a scientific or thorough sur-
vey of the field at the present time? If so, what is
the most practical plan to accomplish this?" a series
of propositions showing that now was the time of
times to undertake this survey and suggesting a prac-
ticable scheme for such an undertaking — a plan which
was later placed in charge of delegates to the various
regional conferences to be acted upon so far as pos-
sible.

The Rev. E. M. Sein broke the monotony of answers
by a citation of conditions favorable to the evangelical

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 51

missions in Latin America, and to immediate forward
movements. Religious liberty is finally universally
proclaimed; barriers are being broken down and men
are passing out from the domination of a state Church ;
more books and helpful literature — albeit so inade-
quate— and more readers favor progress; improved
intercommunication aids the cause of Missions; in-
creasing harmony and mutual helpfulness inspirit and
enable the movement to do more with the same forces
than formerly; the sympathy of governments and of
men of influence with evangelical education is a valu-
able asset; and there is a very considerable Christian
force consecrated and willing for the work of an ag-
gressive evangelistic movement.

Three great assets with which we go forth to the
task of the evangelical Churches laboring in Latin
America were discussed as the closing word upon this
Commission's report. Dr. Speer was the speaker and
these were his points in briefest outline : We are deal-
ing first of all with hopeful nations, with peoples of
great national aspirations. Yet this advantage brings
with it grave problems demanding commensurate wis-
dom. Even more helpful is the second asset of in-
tellectual assumption and of religious conceptions
wholly wanting or held in weakest solution in Asiatic
and African mission fields, but present in all these
republics, except among the most primitive tribes.
One of the greatest hindrances to Latin-American mis-
sionaries was mentioned as the third .asset, the skep-
ticism of these lands. This attitude of doubt and re-

52 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ligious questioning is so prevalent in all Occidental
institutions of higher learning that the missionaries
are already familiar with the philosophical and re-
ligious problems which must be met on the Latin-
American fields.

Closely akin to these assets are three needs
which are especially pressing. The vast Indian
problem calls for many things, but especially for
heroic and undiscourageable devotion to a sparsely
scattered remnant whose degradation and seeming
hopelessness are repelling. The important student
class and the great numbers of foreigners suggest
other needs. A million Italians in Argentina, "who
constitute one of the greatest blocks of masked atheism
that can be found anywhere in the w^orld," and neg-
lected thousands of other nationalities throughout
these lands, who are a leaven of evil rather than of
good, make manifest the clamant need of character-
producing power in these countries — the need which
the crucified Christ alone, the Christ who rose again,
can supply. The third need is that our international
relationships in this Western Hemisphere should be
increasingly penetrated with the spirit of Christ. Mr.
Colton's question of the morning, as to whether free
commerce in rationalism was reasonable, while there
was no gift of the Bible and its spiritual treasures for
these nations, was a most important reminder of
international duty. Nationalism and racial ambitions
should be subjected to the common fellowship and the
community of interest of all mankind.

REDISCOVERING LATIN AMERICA 53

Four personal duties with which the discussions of
the day were impressing the Congress were mentioned
in Dr. Speer's final paragraph. Prayer that the Lord
of the Harvest may send forth enough of the right sort
of reapers into these ripe fields was a manifest duty;
the obligation to draw near to one another and
Church to Church for a united effort, that the spirit
of Christ may come down to make Latin evangelical
churches great torches for the illumination of the
darkness, is equally obvious; a third duty is to pene-
trate with the very mind and spirit of Christ all our
thinking about what we do, about our own individual
relationships, about the great body of those outside
the Church — a duty the importance of which is inten-
sified when one recalls the dissensions, want of unity
and divisive problems present in all the nations rep-
resented in the Congress ; and beyond the assets, needs
and duties of this Latin-American field, is the over-
whelming sense of the stupendousness of our task,
of the all-sufificiency of God, of the power of faith
when men open themselves to Him; so that He is
our great, our personal, our present duty.

It was most fitting that at the midday devotions
Bishop Lloyd should have focussed the thought of the
delegates upon St. John's reassuring words, "In him
was life, and the life was the light of men:" — light
so much needed the world over, and Latin America
more needy in many primitive sections and races than
many other lands; life that is illumined by the Star of
Bethlehem and by the Sun of Righteousness brighten-

54 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ing millions of groping, darkened lives. Yet both
light and life are obscured by clouds of brotherly mis-
understanding and divided counsels. Hence, perhaps,
these words in the Bishop's prayer: "Make it im-
possible for us to be separated. Compel all Thy peo-
ple to be one, that men may see the light that lightens
men, that liberty may come through the knowledge
of truth, that men may have their life in abundance,
that our Master may have His will.''

As a backward look over the day's deliberations.
Professor Braga's closing prayer was also very ap-
propriate. "Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the
word of the Spirit and for the love of Jesus Christ.
We confess that we have not done our duty in the
measure of the opportunity opened to us by Thy loving
providence. We beseech Thee, O divine fountain of
grace and power, to give us renewed strength and
uncompromising devotion to our Lord's service. In
the name of our Redeemer, the Son of the Living
God, Christ Jesus. Amen."

Ill

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD

Commission II, on "Message and Method," whose
members had been entrusted with the deHcate and im-
portant task of drawing up a brief statement of those
aspects of the Christian message which would seem to
require special emphasis at the present time in Latin
America, and to suggest methods of presenting and
interpreting the message and of most helpfully apply-
ing its truths in practical ways to actual conditions in
the countries concerned, was perhaps the one that
awakened the most solicitude and that elicited the
greatest volume of prayer, both before the Congress
and during its presentation. Yet as the delegates met
that Saturday morning and looked out eastward to-
ward the peaceful Pacific, its shimmering surface
seemed to reflect God's calm, while its high-rising
tide was a symbol of the heights to be reached on that
day which many had anticipated with trepidation. The
very palm fronds with which the place of meeting
was decorated, as they swayed and rustled in the
breeze, w^ere assuringly prophetic of the victory of
that memorable afternoon.

More, even, than the report of Commission VIII on
"Cooperation and the Promotion of Unity" did this

55

S6 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

one arouse pre-Congress discussion among those who
doubted the wisdom of carrying missionary activity
into Roman CathoHc lands. Among evangehcal mis-
sionaries themselves were varying degrees of tolerance
or bitterness toward that Church which dominates
Latin-American Christianity. Men and women, who
as Latins had grown up under its shadow and who
had found it a vine of hunger and thirst, or who had
felt the wounding force of its scourging branches, —
one delegate bore on his body the marks of the evan-
gelical confessor, — were apprehensive lest the irenicon
of the Commission should conceal facts which to them
seemed the sole reason for their present faith, ac-
cepted because of the character and fruitage of the
Church which they had felt compelled to flee in order
to save themselves and reach the gospel norm. Polemics
seemed to a few ardent Latins to be justified by Jesus*
attitude seen in the twenty-third chapter of St. Mat-
thew, and as demanded rather than irenics.

The Commission prefaced its report with an illu-
minating interpretation of Latin- American history,
especially on its religious side, and of present-day
conditions, — an amplification of certain facts presented
by Commission L Iberian blood, mingled as it was
with Indian and negro strains, never succeeded in
changing the primitive element into either Spanish or
Portuguese; so that Senor Calderon goes so far as
to class Mexico, Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia as In-
dian nations, while he speaks of the general popula-
tion as a *'babel of races, so mixed that it is im-

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 57

possible to discover the definite outlines of the future
type." Of course in Brazil it is the negro rather
than the Indian who is similarly in evidence. Unfor-
tunately in this racial admixture, the Iberians who
first gave direction to this blood fusion were, for the
most part, adventurers, freebooters, soldiers, — unprin-
cipled, lawless, contemptuous of moral restraint, de-
sirous of gold only, — who largely composed the
colonial armies of Spain and Portugal. It was only
when the Conquest was well advanced and the founda-
tions laid that the stream of higher Castilian culture
came in sufficient volume to offset incipient moral
chaos, though too late to prevent an inheritance that
hung like a deadweight upon the New World of the
Latins. The Commission truly pointed out that "the
national complexity of the Latin Americans, explained
by their historic origins and heritage, is reflected in
moral standards and ideals which are quite different
from those of Europe, as well as of most of North
America. Account must be taken of this in all at-
tempts at religious approach. We have here a num-
ber of racial constituents, each bearing its own tradi-
tion and all combining to produce a highly composite
and subtle character, whose mental quality must be
carefully analyzed and whose motives must be
thoroughly grasped, if the Gospel is to be brought in-
telligently to bear upon their peculiar needs." Special
attention was called to the potent influence exercised
upon the new democracies by France, of whose contri-
butions South-American writers make the most glow-

S8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ing acknowledgment. No greater problem confronts
the missionary enterprise in these lands, in so far as
its agents are Anglo-Saxons, than that of sympathetic
penetration into the Latin-American spirit.

The inheritance of this composite race from prim-
itive Indian faiths is not what the promise of elaborate
polytheisms of the Incas of Peru and of the Aztecs of
Central America and Mexico would suggest. The
policy of the Spanish conquerors of crushing out the
civilization of a conquered foe, rather than of absorb-
ing its useful features, caused to fall into ruins even
the ethicized and spiritualized sun-worship of the Incas
and the pure monotheism centered in Pachacamac, the
Peruvian creator of the universe. While these higher
aspects of native religion were crushed out, the more
vulgar superstitions and practices of heathenism sur-
vived and are perpetuated to-day among a large pro-
portion of the seventeen millions of Indians scattered
from Mexico to Cape Horn. Thus at Guadalupe,
Mexico's holy shrine, and at Copacabana on Lake Titi-
caca, Indians still dance before the church and perform
other rites of their pre-Christian ancestors. And so it
happens that the blind gropings, superstitious fears and
crude ritual of primitive cults have become mixed
with the prevailing religion of to-day and leave five
millions of Indians almost as pagan as if the New
World had never been discovered.

To understand the Roman Catholic Church of Latin
America, four facts must be borne in mind; and first
the manner of its introduction. Catholicism entered

INDUSTRIAL MISSION
STREET PREACHING

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 59'

the New World under the aegis and control of the
Spanish Crown rather than with the initiative and
under the direction of the Pope. It was thus bound up
with the romance of discovery, the lust of wealth and
the carnage and subjugation of resisting peoples. The
Roman pontiff, according to Bernard Moses, **could
do nothing by himself in this immense territory; he
had not the means of establishing in it the institutions
necessary for the propagation of religion." The au-
thority given by Pope Alexander VI to the sover-
eigns of Castile and Leon over the Latin section of
America was enlarged by the bull of Julius II, so that
the establishment of churches, monasteries, or other
religious institutions, as well as all ecclesiastical ap-
pointments, present or future, should be subject to the
consent of the king. The Spanish government was
thus a missionary society; the king was its invested
head with veto power ; and the various Orders and the
secular clergy were under civil regulations greatly
hampering them.

Yet it cannot be doubted that a genuine missionary
interest lay behind these ambitious — often selfish —
schemes of conquest. Columbus named his landfall
Holy Savior— San Salvador; the Portuguese first
called Brazil Santa Cruz— Holy Cross; Cortes was
commanded to Christianize the Mexicans, and on his
standard was emblazoned a red cross with the legend,
'Triends, let us follow the cross, and under this sign,
if we have faith, we shall conquer;" from the time of
his and Pizarro's first expedition monks or priests.

6o RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

were required to sail in every Spanish ship bound for
discovery or for war. Nevertheless recent Latin-
American scholarship reflects the revulsion against
Christianity and the Roman Church because of the
unworthy methods of the early propaganda.

A second fact to be considered in Latin America's
Church is its missionary leadership as seen in history
and to-day. Three orders, the Dominicans, the Fran-
ciscans and the Jesuits, led among the others in this
propaganda. The exactions of their primitive and
barbaric environment bred in them the power of initi-
ative, an aggressive resourcefulness, which, inspired
by religious fervor, not only rose to great heroisms of
service, but did not shrink from conflict with secular
interests. In the sacrificial ardor and versatile labor
with which they set themselves to win pagan peoples to
civilization and the Church, the first two generations
of these missionaries have never been surpassed.
"There was no tropical wilderness too intricate or far-
stretching for them to traverse, no water too wide for
them to cross, no rock or cave too dangerous for them
to climb or enter, no Indian tribe too dull or refractory
for them to teach." Preeminent among the three
orders were the Jesuits. They were powerful in
Mexico, but were famous for their labors in Brazil
and Paraguay. Their achievements in the latter coun-
try, alluded to in the previous chapter, brought one
hundred thousand Indians into their reductions where
they were taught the rudimentary arts of civilization
and the tenets of Catholicism. What manner of men

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 6i

these orders sent to Latin America may be under-
stood from the biographies of missionaries like No-
brega of Brazil, Catadina of Paraguay, Baraze of
Peru, Pedro Claver of Venezuela and Las Casas, "pro-
tector of the Indians" everywhere.

Thirdly, Roman Catholicism's spirit and method are
likewise to be considered. From Ferdinand to Philip
III, a militant, ecclesiastical autocracy prevailed
wherein the defence and extension of the established
Church were inseparably related. Ardent evangelism,
patient instruction, self-denying labor, humanitarian
ministry and martyrdom alternated with and often
accompanied wholesale slaughter and cruel subjection
of the natives, spoliation of their lands and a criminal
use of their toil and wealth. The type of Christianity
transplanted to the New World was necessarily Spain's
mediaeval orthodoxy. The early missionary fervor
was soon lost in the tasks of organization and of con-
trolling religious opinion. Monasteries were built,
universities were founded, wealth was accumulated.
The Dominicans set up the Inquisition in Mexico,
Cartagena and Lima in the attempt to reduce a conti-
nent to intellectual and spiritual conformity. The
apostolic fires had burned low and decadence set in.

Missionary methods followed the ideals of that age.
Like Charlemagne and Vladimir, the conquerors often
gave the Indians the option of war or submission to
the Roman faith. When the former was the alter-
native chosen, they were reduced and baptized. In
Mexico there were wholesale conversions. Gomara

62 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

estimates the number baptized during Cortes' conquest
as between six and ten millions, and adds : "In short,
they [the Spaniards] converted as many as they con-
quered." Coercive conversion was against the protest
of Pope Paul III who declared that the people were
to be ''called to the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching
and by the example of a good and holy life." Las
Casas even more loftily pleaded : **The means for es-
tablishing the Faith in the Indies should be the same
as those by which Christ introduced his religion into
the world — mild, peaceable and charitable." Jesuit
methods were catechetical, disciplinary and industrial,
but ultra-paternal. In the Paraguayan reductions,
their peaceful villages provided the Indians with pro-
tection, instruction, cooperative labor and the bless-
ings of a Christian leadership. Unhappily the system
did not secure self-supporting communities, nor did
it produce a native agency for further evangelization.
With the withdrawal of the missionaries, they fell
away, and there was no permanent Christian contri-
bution made to the moral uplift of the continent.

The fourth item to be considered in connection with
the Latin-American Church is its present status. The
establishment of republics introduced ideas of freedom
and progress incompatible with a ruling ecclesiasticism.
The ultimate result is that at last all Latin-American
republics recognize the right of religious liberty and
of toleration, even if they do not actually secure them.
Roman Catholicism in varying degrees preserves the
aspect of a state religion and professes to occupy ade-

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 63

quately all of Latin America, for which it desires to
assume sole religious responsibility, resenting and op-
posing the proffered help of evangelical Churches.

Scientific candor based on the best testimony of
Roman Catholic and Protestant sources compels the
belief that the Latin Church is unable to do for these
republics what their inhabitants need to see accom-
plished. Its priests, with a few notable exceptions,
are discredited with the thinking classes. Its moral life
is weak and its spiritual witness faint. It is weighted
with mediaevalism and other non-Christian accretions.
It labors under "the grave misfortune" — to use Lord
Bryce's words — of the "absence of a religious founda-
tion for thought and conduct.*' The Commission
summed up the net results of the Roman Catholic prop-
aganda in the words of Canon Robinson, an Anglican
historian of missions who would probably disapprove
of evangelical work in Latin America except for the
wholly unevangelized. "We realize and we thank God
for the good work which the Roman Catholic missions
have done and are doing in many parts of the world ;
but our appreciation of this cannot blind our eyes to
the fact that in Central and South America the mis-
sions of the Roman Catholic Church have proved an
almost complete failure." Of South America, he adds :
"After three centuries of nominal Christianity, any
conversion of its peoples which will involve the prac-
tice of the elementary teaching of Christianity lies still
in the seemingly distant future."

Evangelical missions were barely alluded to in the

64 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

report. Beginning with the French Calvinistic mission
to Brazil of 1555-6, which failed because of the per-
fidy of Villegagnon, continued in the Dutch attempt
under Johann Moritz of 1637-44, permanently estab-
lished by the Moravians in St. Thomas, W. I., in 1732
and in what is now British Guiana in 1735, starved out
with the tragic death of Captain Allen Gardiner and
his six brave companions in 1851 on Tierra del Fuego,
the later period of enduring evangelical work in the
Latin states began with Dr. Kalley's mission, estab-
lished in Brazil in 1855. Many Societies have entered
since then and to-day are doing an excellent work,
though amid great difficulties. They are thus a help-
ful part of Latin America's inheritance from the recent
past.

Upon such an historical background the Latin repub-
lics of our day must be viewed. Their citizens have
gradually elaborated an exalted theory of the state, of
society, of government and a democratic idealism rich
in visions of liberty, brotherhood, justice and peace.
Yet this idealism has only incipiently realized itself.
It has ambitious dreams for the future, embodied in
the political ideology of the statesman, the enthusiasm
of sociologists, the fervid eloquence of orators and in
the poetry and prose of the indigenous literature.
Surely this strong, developing, eclectic congeries of
important republics has the right to the best that the
world's experience has to give, particularly in the
realm of education and religion.

As for the bearer of the evangelistic message, it is

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 65

obvious at the outset that the preacher of Christ in
Latin America must cherish in his own heart and mind
and must convey to his hearers the masterful con-
sciousness that he is declaring the true revelation of
God which is older than Romanism and which from
apostolic days has constituted the true substance of
the saving gospel of divine grace. Controversy, when
necessary because of attacks which are likely to occa-
sion misunderstanding if unmet, or because it is some-
times essential to clear the ground for the constructive
presentation of a positive message, should never go
beyond the point of ''speaking the truth in love."

The evangelical messenger in carrying out this pro-
gram not only takes his text, but expounds his whole
message, from and by the authority of the Bible. He
should so present it that it will appear to be the most
catholic of books, and not merely an evangelical docu-
ment. Hearers may be reminded that the Roman
Church accepts and appeals to the authority of this
Book as the Word of God. Upon this point the de-
crees of the Council of Trent, the teachings of great
Roman Catholic theologians, and even the encyclical
of the late Pope against modernism, are unanimous.
The distinctive position of the evangelical Church is
embodied in its twofold affirmation : First, that as the
teaching of Christ and of His apostles was addressed
to the poor and unlearned, as well as to the rich and
learned, and as it was preserved in the Bible, this Book
can be used by all classes and races to know what is
essential for salvation concerning the Triune God,

€6 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Second, nothing which has been declared by Christ and
His apostles to be necessary for salvation can be added
to, or subtracted from, by any other authority, with-
out serious injury to the soul and resulting eternal
loss. An essential part of this gospel is the possibility
of awakening a soul deadened by sin, and the reality
of its communion with God. It is supremely impor-
tant that, as the individual at the last must answer to
God personally, so he should at all times have direct
dealings with Him, without any priestly mediation.

In lands where the crucifix is so prominent a symbol,
the message of a living Christ needs to be emphasized.
His atoning sacrifice was made once for all. By it
He became the only Saviour of mankind, making the
intervention of His mother and of the saints unneces-
sary. As the risen Christ, He is the exclusive Head
of the Church, seeing that He "liveth evermore.'' No
more inspiring message can be given the men of Latin
America than that of the personal leadership of Jesus
Christ. The greatest and the humblest are impressed
by the idea of a privilege so unexpected in the light of
their former training, so surpassing in its essential
wonder and power, so evidently based upon New Tes-
tament teachings. Experience shows that direct and
controversial public attack upon the worship of the
Virgin, when thrust into the foreground of the work,
awakens only fanatical hatred and detestation of Prot-
estantism. But when the message of fellowship with
God through the Redeemer, and of the promised lead-
ership of Christ, is steadily proclaimed, Mariolatry

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 67

and saint-worship fall away. The teachings of Jesus
are the supreme guide of human life. They are to
be applied to our social conditions, to our industrial,
political and ecclesiastical problems.

The spiritual life, so helpfully ministered unto by
Roman Catholic writers, is in peril in many of the
Latin-American churches, as may be seen if one cares
to attend their formal, often unintelligibly mumbled
services. Penance should be replaced by repentance;
images need to be exchanged for Christlikeness and a
sainthood imprinted on the heart; the confessional is
to be made unnecessary by a consistent, daily confes-
sion of Christ in the holy life; the sacrifice of the mass
must be subordinated to and symbolical of the daily
cross-bearing of all who joyously follow the footsteps
of the world's Burden-bearer.

The Church and its fellowship should be made allur-
ingly attractive to those who must suffer much in
leaving the Church of their childhood, followed by its
virulent anathemas. The evangelical messenger should
explain fully the underlying unity of the various Prot-
estant denominations, if he would win Latins who
love uniformity and dislike ecclesiastical variety. He
should make it equally clear that he does not come to
bring an exotic organization, but rather desires to aid
in establishing a truly indigenous, apostolic Church,
whose atmosphere shall be socially and spiritually
helpful. Even the church building should be suffi-
ciently ecclesiastical to satisfy the tastes of those who
shrink from the plain, Puritan boxes, unadorned in

68 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

any satisfying way, of some missions. Some plan
should be devised to supply forms of worship accepta-
ble to persons accustomed to the order and beauty of
Roman churches, where mystery and symbolism is
dominant. Unprepared services, informal pulpit man-
ners, familiar or irreverent tones in prayer, should
be as studiously avoided as offhand sermons delivered
in half -intelligible Spanish or Portuguese.

The Commission emphasized the social gospel in its
bearings upon the evangelical program. This is de-
manded by the industrial revolution resulting from
Latin America's development of its virgin resources
and from the incoming of the factory system. Scores
of vital problems arising therefrom clamor for solution
already. These changes coming en masse, and not
gradually as with us, are liable to wreck the existing
social organization of Latin America and to alienate
workingmen from the Church. Manifestly a preven-
tive social endeavor is demanded here, rather than
remedial services. Community life and social reforms
should first be studied, then discussed in a lecture room
apart from the church or chapel, so as to attract men
who avoid evangelical meeting places. With a gospel
basis, these addresses will make public sentiment.

Two actual examples of a wisely coordinated social
work under evangelical direction were instanced by
the Commission. One was the People's Central Insti-
tute of the Southern Methodist Mission in Rio de Ja-
neiro, which is a downtown, institutional forward
movement to reach the masses in the commercial and

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 69

business centers, as well as slum-dwellers and sea-
faring classes. It is organized in seven departments —
that of evangelization and religious instruction, the
departments of elementary and practical education, of
varied physical training, of charity and help, of recre-
ation and amusement, of employment, and one for
seamen.

A second simpler and yet more effective piece of
work was that of the Christian Woman's Board of
Missions at Piedras Negras, Mexico. This People's
Institute was the outgrowth of a small reading-room,
where the discussion of public issues called forth a
series of public conferences on civics and morals at the
municipal theater. These aroused so much interest
that there was an imperative demand for an expansion
of the work and for a permanent home for the enter-
prise. A popular subscription provided the funds for
the present well-equipped building, intended for seek-
ing points of contact with the higher classes who could
not be persuaded to attend religious meetings. Its
dedication was an official act of the government, which
often holds patriotic meetings in its auditorium. Night
classes in fifteen different subjects are conducted for
young men and women, with as many as one hundred
and fifty enrolled at one time. One of the Institute's
most interesting features is a Sunday morning meet-
ing, generally attended by people who would never
appear at an ordinary evangelical preaching service.
A government official, or some prominent citizen
known for his high moral character, is asked to open

70 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

the discussion of the topic chosen, which afterward
is thrown open to all present. The director presides
and closes with his own presentation, showing the
bearing of Christian teaching on the problem. These
meetings and others of a debating club have often
awakened interest and initiated movements for com-
munity betterment, which have been taken over
subsequently by the government or other organ-
izations. These two Institutes illustrate disinterested
love, which is in direct contrast with the dominant
selfishness of trade and diplomacy and which con-
sequently attracts and often wins Latin Americans.
In other words, missionaries are doing what Dr.
Grenfell thus describes : "When you set out to com-
mend your gospel to men who don't want it, there is
only one way to go about it — to do something for them
that they will understand.'' Social service is pre-
eminently such a magnet.

Carrying the Christian message to the educated
classes is both strategic and highly important. For
two generations Comte, Herbert Spencer and Jeremy
Bentham have ruled the minds of educated Latin
Americans with their doctrines of positivism, mechan-
istic evolution and utilitarianism. Leaders of the
Roman Church have been unable to stem the harmful
tide. To these intellectuals the evangelical worker
carries the same message of fellowship with God
through Jesus Christ, and after their entrance upon it,
seeks to bring them to an open confession of their
faith and into Christian service. But just here a

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 71

serious obstacle is confronted in the fact that they
shrink from open connection with evangelical com-
munities composed almost wholly of the poor and
uncultured, with no strong intellectual leadership.
Such leadership should be provided through special
education of both national and foreign workers,
hints for which training are wisely set forth in the
Commission's report. The subjects of evolution, re-
ligion, historical Christianity, the Bible, the Church,
and social ethics, are those demanding emphasis. The
final chapter of the report enters into the preparation
for Christian work in Latin America with great par-
ticularity.

With this body of important facts before them, the
delegates were given full freedom to speak, regardless
of whether they had sent in cards or not, and without
any limitations except those imposed by the spirit of
Christ. The two tendencies among them were well
illustrated by Seiiorita Cortes of the Young Women's
Christian Association and the Rev. F. A. Barroetavena
of Argentina. The latter held that the Roman Catholi-
cism of North and of Latin America were so differ-
ent that the liberal attitude toward the system would
be quickly changed, if its southern type were under-
stood. Here the Church has so tyrannized over the
inferior peoples that many hate religion. He held that
as a general rule an attitude of warfare should be
adopted toward the Roman Church. Sefiorita Cortes,
speaking from her own experience, said that at first
she was approached in ways that antagonized her.

72 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

which only increased her loyalty to Rome. Later she
began to examine evangelical views by herself, saw
contradictions in Romanism, came in touch with mis-
sionaries who loved and prayed for her and thus ar-
rived at a glad acceptance of Protestanism. Since then
she has adopted in her work the *'loving method"
spoken of by Dr. Oldham, and it has been most
successful.

A few points made in the floor discussions may be
taken as typical of all that was said. Mr. Hurrey,
speaking concerning work for the educated classes, ad-
vocated friendly helpfulness, particularly toward those
who go to the United States for education and who
find themselves friendless and in need in our colleges
and universities. Meet them on shipboard before land-
ing to advise with them. In New Orleans, Baltimore
and New York have places where they can be received
and saved from disreputable resorts. Such friendli-
ness will result in the success that was related in the
case of a brother of one of the Central-iVmerican
presidents who went to t-he Northfield student confer-
ence with prejudice and determined to leave. The
Christian spirit displayed there entirely changed his
attitude, and he is now most approachable. Mr. Ewald,
who as an Association secretary has had much to do
with Latin students, urged the importance of setting
apart men to reach the student and cultured classes,
thus providing them a leadership that would command
their respect. Particularly important is it to raise up
an educated Latin ministry to supplement the inade-

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD yz

quacies of missionaries, especially in the free use of
the Latin tongues, though some of these missionaries
seem to have been born with Latin hearts and Iberian
tact. In twenty or thirty places establish a center pre-
sided over by a strong man who will give himself to this
class, so strategic in the community. Secretary Ewing
of the Christian Association told of methods used
among university students, beginning with activities
for promoting good fellowship, sociability and physi-
cal upbuilding which, since student work was estab-
lished, affect the lives of nearly five hundred who
attend the Uruguayan student conferences. Social
service has been organized and a group of thirty are
making a preliminary social survey. In the National
University of Buenos Aires an inner circle of fifteen
believers use every opportunity to present vital Chris-
tianity, so that during the six years points of contact
with about two thousand students, professors and gov-
ernment ofBcials have been established.

Mr. Lenington of Brazil told typical stories of the
effect produced upon auditors by preaching the father-
hood of God. A person said to him once: "I will
always thank God that I came into this first evangelical
service, because I never knew before that God was my
Father." A federal judge was overheard saying to
some fellow lawyers whom he was urging to attend
a service at which the Lord's Prayer was to be ex-
pounded : *'I want all of you men to go to-night, be-
cause you have never realized what it is to know God
as your Father, as I have heard that man tell of the

74 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Father's kingdom, the Father's will, the Father's name.
He is the Father who cares for all the needs of life."

Mr. Allison of Guatemala gave as the chief hin-
drance in the Romanist's way, preventing his accept-
ance of evangelical teaching, the wide circulation by
Catholics of commendations of their Church by Prot-
estants, and warned North Americans against "the
Protestant defense of Romanism." The Rev. Eduardo
C. Pereira reminded the Congress of the twenty-third
chapter of St. Matthew, of the attitude of the apostles
toward the Scribes and Pharisees and of St. Paul's
denunciation of error and said that he desired to
imitate these great exemplars not only in proclaiming
the love of the Gospels, but also in calling attention
to religious errors taught in Latin lands without war-
rant from Scripture.

Evangelistic campaigns as a method of extending
the message were discussed by two specialists, Dr.
John R. Mott and Miss Rouse. Cooperation even of
two persons was, according to Dr. Mott, an essential
prerequisite for success. With united plans campaigns
are possible in most unpromising sections, as in Rus-
sia, for example. When they are well organized and
manned, immense fruitage follows as in Sherwood
Eddy's Asiatic work, seconded by men like Ding
Li-mei in China. Conclusions that he had reached
were these : ( i ) If we want great results, we must con-
centrate. (2) We must sink our differences and fall
in humility at the feet of Christ, all of us united. (3)
Men must be set apart for special work — men like Dr.

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 75

William E. Taylor of China and Baron Nicolai of
Russia, though sometimes important aid is given by
men from without, like Mr. Eddy.

From her successful student work in European coun-
tries, Miss Rouse had learned that one must speak out
frankly, even though it is a great adventure. National
psychology will greatly aid in evangelistic work, when
it is understood and used. Students are to be met on
grounds familiar to them — if religion is a matter of
rewards and punishments, or of auto-suggestion, begin
from that point. Do not attack the customs and re-
ligions of a country, and avoid the appearance of
trying to win converts to any given Christian church.
Follow up the campaign with apologetic literature, not
American or English, but material prepared by nation-
als of a given country.

What this sketch of a wonderful day has utterly
failed to reproduce is the growing spirit of unity in the
delegates' attitude toward all phases of opposition to
Roman Catholicism. Antagonism and bitterness grad-
ually melted into a sense of brotherly longing to aid
Romanists toward a fulness of Christian love and life
which they sadly lack and for which many inwardly
hunger. Single sentences, petitions in prayer, and espe-
cially the remarks of Dr. Oldham and Bishop Brown,
the latter the chairman of the Commission, were the
means used by God to bring the Congress to this frame
of mind. At the morning session. Dr. Oldham was the
lock-operator in the control house — to employ Canal
terminology — who opened the flood-gates that began

76 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

to lift the Congress to the higher level. After a touch-
ing reference to his early training in a Roman Catholic
home and the turning to evangelical views, he said
with the utmost tenderness and yet with profoundest
feeling that if it were his privilege to minister to those
of a different faith, his Saviour would surely teach him
what should be the trend of his teaching and the tone
of his appeal. Bishop Brown, who had been a mis-
sionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Brazil
for twenty- four years, concluded the work of the day's
conference sessions with a story which so well illus-
trates the spirit of the man and of the majority of the
delegates that it is reproduced at length. It will sug-
gest how much is lost by a condensed report like the
present one, and will exhibit the interpreter, the mes-
sage, the interpretation and the method as nothing
else could do.

The incident is this, in part : "I remember there was
a woman of about sixty years who began to attend
the services of my church. It was my custom to go
down immediately at the close of the service to the
door to shake hands and to say some word to everyone
present, but that good woman invariably escaped be-
fore I could get there. After attending every service —
Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday eve-
ning— for perhaps three or four months, she remained
and I had an opportunity of speaking with her. I told
her how great had been my pleasure in seeing her in
constant attendance upon the church services, and I
asked if I might have the pleasure of visiting her at

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 'J^

her home. With the courtesy which never fails, she
said, using that phrase which is so famihar, 'My house
is at your orders/ I went to see her, and in the course
of the conversation I asked her what it was that first
attracted her to the church. She repHed that the first
thing was that in passing the doors, she heard a large
number of persons singing. That w^as a strange thing
to her. She made some inquiry and learned that we
were Protestants. That frightened her somewhat, be-
cause there are so many of the plainer people who
think that a Protestant is one who denies the existence
of God. Then she said : 'After I had overcome my
fear, I ventured to attend your church, but I was
afraid to speak to you. One thing that attracted my
attention was the singing of the hymns in the Portu-
guese language. I could understand it; and then you
read something from a book,' she had never known
anything about the Bible, 'and I understood that. Then
you spoke to us all. I understood every word you said.
I would like to be a member of your church, but there
is one difficulty. When I was a child ten years of age,
my mother on her deathbed called me to her and gave
me a little image of St. Anthony and asked me as her
dying request that on given days I would kneel before
that image and make my devotions. From that day to
this, I have complied with that dying request. You
have never said one word in any sermon that I have
heard directly touching this particular point; but I
know perfectly well that if I were a member of your
church, I ought not to continue that practice. If I

78 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

were to discontinue it, it would seem to me as if I
were dishonoring the memory of my mother.'

"I know not how others might deal with that case.
But I confess that as I looked into her face, I said:
*You mistake me greatly, if you think I do not under-
stand fully and sympathize deeply with you, but I want
to say just two things. The first is that if your mother
had had the light that you now have, she would never
have made that request. The second thing is that I
want to make a very simple request of you. Go and
light your candle; kneel and make your devotions
before the image of St. Anthony. In addition to that,
I am going to give you a copy of the New Testament.
I am going to mark certain passages, and I want you
to go apart at least once every day to get all by your-
self and read one or two of those marked passages and
then kneel down and lift up your heart to God in
prayer. Believe that He is your Father and that He
loves you and takes care of you. Tell Him all your
cares and griefs ; keep nothing back from Him. You
can tell Him what you would not dare to tell another.
Speak to Him with the utmost freedom, for He loves
you. And then after a time, I want you to come back
to me and let us talk again.'

*T never shall forget as long as I live the day she
returned. Perhaps two months had passed and one
day after the service she came toward me and said:
'Now I am ready. In all the years that have passed,
God my Father has dealt with infinite tenderness to-
ward me. He knew that I was acting in ignorance.

INTERPRETATION, MESSAGE, METHOD 79

I thought that it was because of the candle and the
prayers that I said before that particular image. Now
I find that God did not see the candle nor the image.
But He saw my heart; and yet I find a sweeter com-
fort in going direct to Him without anything interven-
ing. H you will have me, I am ready to enter your
Church.' I dare say that men of different temper-
ament might deal with a situation of that kind in dif-
ferent ways; yet, dear friends, it does seem so im-
portant to show a loving and kind spirit in all our
public utterances. There will be occasions, of course,
in private when men come to you and ask their ques-
tions. Then you speak on these controversial points,
but I would not bring them up in the midst of a great
congregation. ... I want to leave this thought in
your minds. The love of Christ constraineth us' in all
our poor, weak, fluctuating love for Him. By the ad-
mission of that love, we shall learn in time what has
been so well called, 'the insuperable power of pure af-
fection.' " Under the magic spell of that love, the dele-
gates left the hall.

IV
LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION

The questions of Plato's ''Republic," "What then is
education ? Or is there a better than the old-fashioned
sort?" were masterfully investigated and lucidly dis-
cussed for Latin America in the report of Commission
III on "Education." Its chairman was Professor
Donald C. MacLaren, former President of Mackenzie
College, Brazil, easily the foremost missionary insti-
tution in South America. Upon the Commission were
notable American educators, like President King of
Oberlin College, Professor E. D. Burton of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, Dean Russell of Teachers College
and his encyclopedic colleague, Professor Paul Monroe,
besides fifteen missionary and national represen-
tatives of Latin-American institutions and ten
Other notable authorities. Their printed report
was not only the most extended one presented to
the Congress, but it also ranks as the best exposition
of education, viewed from a missionary standpoint,
thus far produced for any single great section of the
mission field.

In the absence of the chairman, a vice-chairman,
President King, presented the report and made the
closing address. In clarity, justness of perspective,

8l

82 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

wise selection of points of emphasis, manifestation of
pedagogical acumen and loyalty to the intellectual
processes as swayed by God, it was surpassed by no
other presentation of Commission chairmen. As the
first two objectives of the report were technical and
intended to be useful and stimulating to the educational
workers on the field and to missionary secretaries and
Board officials, mission study class leaders and others
in the home lands already interested in Latin America,
this chapter will address itself to the Christian public
in general whose intelligent interest is desired.

The delegates would probably agree that President
King's resume, given at the close of the day, included
the outstanding impressions made by the report and the
five hours' discussion of the subject. He named six
particularly significant facts : ( i ) The enormous illit-
eracy of Latin America, ranging from forty to eighty
percent., with great regions wholly unreached by edu-
cation. (2) Yet in many sections there is a well or-
ganized system of instruction, from the kindergarten
to -the university. (3) All the missionaries bear wit-
ness to the strongly marked leadership of the highly
educated men of Latin America. (4) But according
to the same testimony, almost unanimously given,
these men are generally abjuring religion as out-of-
date. (5) Almost everywhere there is a very inade-
quate training of the Christian community, especially
of its leaders, both teachers and preachers. (6) There
is dire need of industrial and agricultural training at
certain points for the economic uplift of the people.

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 83

This demand will be all the more urgent, as we extend
our ministrations to the Indians whose problems have
been touched only in a desultory way thus far. With-
out attempting to enlarge upon these facts seriatim,
most of them and others not mentioned will be consid-
ered, omitting the education of women and girls and
the problems of the national church leadership, which
are discussed in Chapters VI and VII respectively.

Details as to illiteracy are quoted by the Commis-
sion in this paragraph: "In few nations is illiteracy
more pronounced. In some countries, such as Ecua-
dor, it is impossible to arrive at any accurate estimate.
In such advanced countries as Brazil, some estimates
reach as high as eighty percent. The best estimates
are given herewith: Argentina, fifty and five-tenths
percent, of persons six years of age and older; Bolivia,
*a large proportion can read'; Brazil, seventy per-
cent. ; Chile, sixty-three percent. ; Colombia, eighty
percent. ; Uruguay, forty percent, of persons six years
of age and older; Costa Rica, 'large proportion' ; Hon-
duras, 'high' ; Mexico, sixty-three percent, of persons
over twelve years of age."

These figures should not be understood as necessa-
rily indicative of a general apathy as to education. Re-
member that Latin America's average density of popu-
lation is less than ten persons per square mile, with
perhaps three children of school-going age. If town
and urban populations are subtracted the average per
square mile would be greatly reduced, so that in many
rural districts thirty square miles would not provide

84 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

enough pupils for a single school. In certain sections
of Argentina, a hundred square miles would not sup-
ply a sufficient number. Just as in Africa's Protestant
sub-continent it is practically impossible for British
and Boers to provide education for their children, so
it is impracticable for many sections of Latin America
to support schools, even if the financial obstacle were
not also prohibitive. Yet it must be confessed that
Latin Americans are not so eager for education among
the lower classes as in most civilized countries, even
outside the Indian and negro half-breeds.

What are the various governments doing to remedy
this stigma of illiteracy? As they do not regard it as
such in any great degree, they are doing very little,
except in the higher branches of education, and also
for the upper classes. Their elementary schools are
the least developed part of the educational system.
The backward races form so large a percentage of the
population — in Mexico, for example, three-fourths of
the total is Indian and one-sixth is mixed Indian blood
— that little is done for them. The attention given to
the education of girls in elementary schools is rela-
tively satisfactory, as the number provided for them
is about seven-twelfths as great as for boys. Coedu-
cation, it should be said, is rare after pupils are ten
years of age. The curriculum as legally set forth
leaves little to be desired, though what is actually
taught falls far short of the requirements. As a large
part of this work in a number of countries is done in
Roman Catholic schools, subsidized by the state, Chris-

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 85

tian doctrine and sacred history form part of the ele-
mentary school curriculum. Unhappily the memoriter
method is in vogue, and in many schools the catechet-
ical plan of questions and answers prevails. In too
many schools it is true, as in Bolivia, that the end
and aim of teachers and scholars is to prepare for the
two yearly examinations. In the republic just named,
a list of questions, containing twice as many as there
are pupils in the class, is prepared, answers to which
may be found in the texts used.

Secondary schools — liceos and colegios — form the
most important and flourishing part of the Latin-
American educational system. They are more nearly
connected with the higher steps in education than with
the elementary, so that in some states pupils can enter
them only through private preparatory schools. Being
under the same government control as the universities,
they are viewed with favor. Instructors are employed
to lecture three hours a week, while an administrative
staff permanently engaged gives some oversight to
student life and also supervises the instruction. The
classics are often absent from these state schools,
but modern languages are studied— English following
French in popularity and German standing third. The
six-year course covers part of the work done by col-
leges in the United States, and in most cases its com-
pletion is crowned by the degree of B. A., or of Bach-
elor of Humanities, thus affording direct entrance to
the national universities. The graduate differs from
the secondary school alumnus in the United States in

86 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

his having Httle or no acquaintance with the classics,
in his greater knowledge of his national literature, in
his fuller mastery of modern languages, in his ac-
quaintance with philosophy, logic, psychology, ethics
and sociology, and in the amount of time given to his-
tory, civics, the natural sciences, drawing, geography
and military exercises. E. E. Brandon, in his mono-
graph on the Latin-American universities, says : "The
age of the liceo graduate is about the same as that of
the American boy when he finishes high school. The
Latin American is perhaps superior in breadth of
vision, cosmopolitan sympathy, power of expression
and argumentative ability, but, on the other hand, per-
haps inferior in the power of analysis and initiative
and in the spirit of self-reliance."

The universities of Latin America, of which there
were twelve before the year 1800, w^ere in a peculiar
sense the organs of the Roman Church during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries ; and hence they were
often the medium for the expression of its views and
the instruments for the exercise of its power. Their
principal object was to promote the cause of religion
and to provide an educated clerg}\ The university
thus became an effective instrument for controlling in
the interests of the Church, not only the social life of
the people, but also the education given by the state.
It was a great conservative force and served as one of
the chief bulwarks of the divine right of government
through a monarchy.

With the establishment of independent nationalities

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 87

early in the last century, the universities were secular-
ized and passed under the control of the state. This
was in part a result of French critical thought and the
skepticism of the period, in part a movement toward
freedom in religion, and in part a rejection of the
control of the mother country exercised through
Church and State. Hence it is that the government
universities to-day are non-religious; and because of
the liberal views of the professors, most of the students
are either opposed to the Church and its mediaeval
obscurantism, or are apathetic as regards all religion.

As Latin America has nothing corresponding to the
American college, it naturally follows that its univer-
sities should consist of professional schools, prepared
for in part by students from the six-year course liceos
or colegios, and in part supplementing this deficiency
by courses ordinarily given in our colleges. While
the central place of the arts department is thus usurped
by the specialty of a given university faculty, its cur-
riculum is broadened by the inclusion of whatever is
deemed essential to complete the student's knowledge.
Thus in both medicine and engineering, there is much
more comprehensive training in science than with us;
yet it is to be noted that this science is taught with the
concrete social problems of medicine or of engineering
in view. Law courses especially are very broad and
require as many years as the combined college and law
curricula in North America. The breadth of such
instruction will account for the fact that in some coun-
tries fully eighty percent, of the graduates of these

88 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

schools do not enter the legal profession but take the
studies for their general educative value.

University student bodies lack the solidarity of
American students, partly because dormitory life exists
in only a very few, and also because the different facul-
ties often occupy buildings remote from each other,
instead of sharing a common campus. The influence
of professors upon the students is less marked than in
America, since most of them simply give lectures as
additional to their regular professions pursued wholly
apart from the university. Consequently they have
little interest in the institution and its student body.
As there is no permanent teaching staff, except those
professors imported from Europe, the character- form-
ing values of American universities are largely absent;
and the students lack the restraints of their teachers
and their fellows in moral and religious matters.
These institutions are wholly under state control exer-
cised by the Minister of Education, without any over-
sight of boards of overseers or trustees. Any dissat-
isfaction with the administration can be manifested
only through student demonstration and agitation.
This unites them and the graduate body very closely
and gives university trained men extraordinary influ-
ence in society, politics and religion. In other words,
the university spirit or soul is not localized in an insti-
tution, but in a national group, or a social class.

Government technical and special schools are mainly
normal, commercial, agricultural and industrial. Of
these, normal institutions are most in favor. They

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 89

may be entered from the elementary schools at the min-
imum age of fourteen, and are thus of secondary
grade. In recent years no phase of technical training
has shown a more marked development than commer-
cial education. Governments favor it because of in-
creasing industrial and trade requirements and even
more in order to lessen the number of educated men
who as graduates of the universities are active in polit-
ical agitation. Agricultural schools range from little
more than experiment stations to the dignity of a de-
partment of a university, as in Argentina. The in-
creasing values of food products for export and home
consumption make them very important to the state.
Students in the high grade agricultural college are usu-
ally sons of the landed gentry, while the patronage
of the secondary schools is mainly drawn from the less
favored social strata, — the sons of farmers and over-
seers who are not landholders. Industrial education
is just now being especially emphasized, due in large
part to the publication in 1912 of F. Encinas's book
on "Our Economic Inferiority." The excellent tech-
nical school systems of the United States and Germany
are being closely studied with the expectation of incor-
porating their methods in the schools now being estab-
lished. Previously departments of engineering were
part of the university scheme, and now secondary
schools of arts and trade are being established with a
broader and more practical objective, even including
such trades as tailoring, cobbling and blacksmithing.
Turning from state education, one finds in the

90 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Roman Church's present educational activities very
little work of high scholastic grade. Historically it
v^as almost the sole teacher, from the simple school
where Indians were taught to read, to Latin America's
ancient and more recent universities. As the latter in-
stitutions are now under state control, the Church has
little interest in them. Besides some participation in
other universities, it has two of its own, less than thirty
years old — at Santiago, Chile, and at Buenos Aires.
The former has faculties of law, mathematics, agricul-
ture and industry, and engineering. The latter, still in
its formative period, has schools of law and social
science. So for the most part, aside from theological
education, the Church's efforts are directed toward the
support and supervision of secondary schools. In these
are to be found most of the boys of the upper classes.
From them come all the members of the learned pro-
fessions. Here are trained the men who later domi-
nate society and direct the state. Consequently the
control of these schools is the strategic educational
leverage.

As for elementary education, it apparently is not
greatly desired for the common people by the hier-
archy. Professor Ross writes : *Tor the children of
the peons the Church desires no education other than
that drill in the rudiments of her faith which she her-
self provides. Secular education will not promote their
eternal welfare and it may endanger it. That educa-
tion should give them a chance to rise in life does not
appeal to her. What is 'rising in life' compared with

YUCATAX-INDIAN EVANGELIST. MEXICO
WOMAN COLPORTEUR, CHILE

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 91

saving the soul ? . . . The priest wants the peons
ignorant in order that he may preserve his authority
over them, keep their feet from straying from the path
of eternal salvation and be relieved of the necessity of
defending his doctrines, combating heresies and meet-
ing the competition of the Protestant missionary. If,
however, education must come, the Church wants to
provide it herself in her own parish school, where, as
a clerical editor put it to me, 'religion saturates the
entire course of study/ "

The part played by evangelical missions in Latin-
American education has been an important one, though
the Societies have not done a tithe as much as the
opportunities and needs demand. At the beginning,
at the close of the first quarter of the last century,
the Rev. James Thomson, of the British and Foreign
Bible Society, landed at Buenos Aires and established
Lancasterian schools. The man and the system were
very interestingly described at a special session of the
Congress delegates by Dr. Browning of Chile. It will
be recalled that these schools adopted the plan of small
classes under student monitors. The master outlined
the work of the day to them in a preliminary session,
and they in turn taught it to the classes. The book
used for reading was the Bible without notes as pub-
lished by his Society. Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colom-
bia, Venezuela and Mexico welcomed and aided his
schools financially, as did the Church at first through
its more liberal clergy. The result was that not a few
leading Latin Americans became liberalized and gladly

92 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

welcomed the introduction of the gospel. Many states-
men secured copies of the Bible, studied it and pro-
fessed to be guided by its teachings. In Mexico, the
government dispossessed the beautiful convent of Beth-
lehem, which accommodated a thousand students. The
schools soon disappeared, probably because of a lack
of proper teachers, as also because of the persecution
awakened among the obscurantists by the introduction
of the Bible. Had these schools of Thomson contin-
ued, it is probable that the ecclesiastical history of
South America would have been different, giving, as
they did, the pure Word of God to the ruling classes.

Little more was attempted until forty years ago,
when the Societies did their pioneer work, largely op-
portunist in character. Thus, if local prejudice was
against woman's education, secondary schools for
young men were started; if there was a demand for
women teachers, as in Mexico, normal schools for
girls were established. Southern Brazil, Argentina,
Chile and British Guiana have been the countries
where evangelical schools have been most successfully
developed by missionaries. In the country last
named, the parochial schools of the Wesleyans and
Church of England enroll more than 17,000 pupils.
Bolivia supplies the most notable recent example of
state subsidization of North American mission schools,
though limitations as to religious instruction will prob-
ably lead to giving up the aid as soon as sufficient
missionary funds can be secured.

A few references to specific work, suggestive of a

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 93

great mass of similar data, will be given, beginning
with elementary education. Kindergartens, the
pioneer of which class may have been Miss Phoebe
Thomas', established in Sao Paulo in 1882, are
usually a department of boarding or normal schools.
They are most successful when conducted by Chris-
tian Latin-American women trained in the United
States. Free government kindergartens are leading to
their discontinuance, a step greatly deprecated by one
of the delegates.

The Argentine evangelical schools, established in
1898 in Buenos Aires by the Rev. C. Morris of the
South American Missionary Society, are notable in-
stances of philanthropic schools for poorer children.
An inspiration has thus been given to the movement, so
that these schools in that capital enroll five thousand
six hundred pupils, receive an annual subsidy from
the government of nearly $93,000 and own buildings
valued at $192,000, largely secured by popular sub-
scription. Dr. Speer writes of the schools : "No one
can see these great throngs of children, orderly, well
taught, reading the New Testament as one of their
text-books, inspired with the sense of duty to God
and to their country, prepared practically for life by
industrial training, without being uplifted by the
sight."

Evangelical parochial schools, developed to some
extent in Mexico and Chile, but reaching their com-
pletest form in those under the fostering care of the
Rev. William A. Waddell, now President of Mackenzie

94 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

College, are for Protestants and others who desire to
patronize them. Foreign standards are abandoned;
their courses in the vernacular are much like those of
primary grades in the United States, offering the
irreducible minimum of instruction necessary for every
citizen and church member. They are carried on
under the control of ministers or members of churches
and are supported by the pupils' parents, with the
exception of the expense of superintendence and
teacher training. One dollar thus spent calls out from
five to ten times that amount from local sources. A
recent development makes them the public schools of
their villages supported at government expense, but
with full permission for the teachers to have classes
in the Sunday school and to visit the families of the
children. The salaries are thus increased, and the
influence of evangelical teachers on the community at
large is multiplied greatly.

Among elementary schools for Indians, those of the
South American Missionary Society In the Gran Chaco
of Paraguay were instanced as unusual. Started in
1897, the first text-books were in manuscript form,
and various difficulties were encountered. Mr. W. B.
Grubb in his ''Church in the Wilds," pages 187-193,
gives an interesting account of the work, from the
learning of nicknamed letters to the instruction of
industrial classes. The results he thus summarizes:
"Year by year the children pass out of the school,
educated for their life's work, instructed in the way
of righteousness, and prepared to take up some trade

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 95

and to learn some of the hard lessons of life. These
are ignorant of the dark past of their parents and are
surrounded from infancy with the light of truth. We
look to them, therefore, as the heralds of the gospel
to the regions beyond.'*

As among Romanists, evangelical missionaries re-
gard the secondary school — liceo, gymnasio, instituto,
or colegio, as it may be called — as the most important
feature of their educational program. All their board-
ing schools of any importance are of this type, usually
with an elementary school in connection with them.
Coeducational schools of this grade are seldom
favored. The Methodist Normal School for Girls at
Saltillo, Mexico, with a total matriculation of two
hundred and twenty-five, is a useful institution
which is partly subsidized by the state. It not
only trains evangelical teachers for church schools,
but the graduates are also in great demand for public
school positions. The Methodist institution at Uru-
guayana, Brazil, with an enrolment of one hundred
and sixty, carries boys through high school and pre-
pares them for entering Mackenzie College. Religious
instruction is not compulsory, but most of the students
attend the local evangelical church and the Christian
Endeavor meetings. Commercial and industrial
schools are too few, but those reported show the value
of bringing young people, fitting themselves prac-
tically for life, under strong religious influences and
instruction. Farming and gardening, iron and wood
working, weaving and general manual training are

96 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

taught. The efficient bibHcal and practical instruction
imparted will do much toward solving vexed problems
of the church. The religious life of secondary schools
is aided through curriculum Bible study, except in
state subsidized institutions, and through voluntary
groups and societies, like Christian Endeavor and the
Student Christian Association. Opinions are divided
as to the advisability of making Bible study compul-
sory, though all agree that it should be competent.
As religious instruction is compulsory in Catholic
schools, required study is usually the policy. Some
societies stipulate that the majority of secondary
school students must be from evangelical families in
order to secure the right atmosphere.

There is no regular college of North American
grade and character in Latin lands. Yet there are a
number of institutions above high school grade.
Among them the most prominent are the Baptist Col-
lege at Rio de Janeiro, the Instituto Evangelico at
Lavras, Brazil, Cranberry College of the Southern
Methodists in the same republic, and the outstanding
institution for higher learning among Protestants of
South America, Mackenzie College at Sao Paulo.
Originally Presbyterian, it is now non-sectarian, but
with all the leading denominations represented in its
large international faculty. Technological instruction
is far more prominent than are the courses usual to
arts departments in North America. Of its 366
students, twenty-seven are young women. In its
affiliated Eschola Americana, located a mile away,

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 97

there is an enrolment of 506 pupils of whom 124 are
girls. The race composition of its student body ap-
pears in these figures: Brazilians, 514; Italians, 150;
Portuguese, 47; Germans, 45; North Americans, 34;
English, 28; French, 15; other nationalities, 39 — the
two institutions being united in these figures. As a
whole, the college is practically self-supporting from
tuitions. The state and national educational officials
are deeply interested in Mackenzie. Through their
influence, free excursions have been run from other
institutions to bring the students together for various
intercollegiate events. It is setting the pace for
higher education of the modern type in Brazil. The
large influence of the college and of its lamented head,
President H. M. Lane, LL.D., was publicly acknowl-
edged, both in the Legislature and Senate at the time
of his death in 19 12. Another type of work of uni-
versity rank is that done by Dr. Lester and the Rev.
J. H. McLean at the University of Chile, where they
have lectured during the last four years. Texts selected
include poetry, essays and works of fiction permeated
with Christian doctrine. Confidence and friendship
are thus established in a republic where respect for a
good instructor amounts almost to veneration.

The Commission reported that the best theological
institutions were in Brazil, though the Presbyterian
Seminary at Coyoacan, Mexico, was drawing its
students before the revolution from Mexico, Central
America and the West Indies. Many so-called theo-
logical schools are groups of from three to twelve

98 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

students taught by missionaries in connection with
other heavy duties, the students often being immature,
or engaged in work as evangeHsts or colporteurs. The
union institution of the Northern and Southern Pres-
byterians at Campinas, Brazil, whose faculty was so
admirably represented in the Panama Congress by
Professor Braga, is probably the best developed of its
kind in South America. The newly founded Union
Seminary of Santiago, Chile, is shared by the Presby-
terian and Methodist Missions who unite on the
creedal basis of the Evangelical Alliance. That capi-
tal is fortunate in having six men who are well fitted
for such teaching. Another earlier union effort is the
seminary at Mayaguez, Porto Rico, where Presby-
terians and United Brethren combine for theological
instruction, with a faculty of five professors and in-
structors. Yet, as will be seen in a later chapter, the
theological education of Latin America is lamentably
deficient as a whole, partly because strong Christian
men of university training do not offer themselves,
and partly for the reason that the theological schools
are weak financially and are ineffectively manned.

Of popular educational movements, evangelical in
character, the varied work of the Young Men's and
Young Women's Christian Associations, the latter
still in its early stages, is the most acceptable and
efficient. Here also belongs the fine program of the
People's Central Institute in Rio and of the People's
Institute at Piedras Negras, already mentioned. A
wide range of testimony emphasizes the importance

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 99

and attractiveness of athletics and physical instruction
in this popular form of educational activity.

The religious education imparted through Sunday-
schools is peculiarly important in lands where the
Bible is not popularly known. Yet the investigations
of the Commission showed that the prerequisites of
successful work were largely wanting. In all Latin
America only three Sunday schools meet in buildings
especially designed for them, two in Buenos Aires and
the third at Bello Horizonto, Brazil. Of the fourteen
theological schools reported, seven teach something of
pedagogy, psychology and Sunday-school manage-
ment. One has a course on methods of teaching and
two require study of a first-standard teacher-training
course. Two correspondents report the training of
superintendents by correspondence, seven by reading
courses and five by summer schools or other schools
of methods. The only countries showing any system-
atic effort to train teachers are Cuba, Mexico and
Brazil. The 191 5 tour of workers from North Amer-
ica, headed by Mr. Frank L. Brown, General Secre-
tary of the World's Sunday School Association, has
greatly stimulated the interest in forward movements
in these schools. Mr. Brown writes: *The line of
easiest and largest advance in South America will be
through the Sunday school and Christian educational
institutions. There is practically free opportunity for
Sunday schools in all parts of South America. That
so much progress has been made when the literature
helps have been so meager, when teachers have been

100 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

untrained, when there has been so Httle to attract
scholars in the Hne of special expedients, speaks hope-
fully for the future when these conditions shall be
corrected.'*

Extremely valuable sections of the report upon the
aims, methods and problems of evangelical education
and upon the judgments and conclusions arrived at by
the Commission are too technical and extended even
to summarize. The discussion by the delegates
brought out many facts bearing upon those problems
and ideals. A few of these follow — extracts from
fuller statements.

President King: ''I suppose that what the Chris-
tian school is attempting is ... to gather
in as teachers those who have what I call the char-
acter-begetting power. Now all good men and
women do not have it — certainly not in the same de-
gree. It is above all desirable that in your educa-
tional centers there should be those who have this
contagion, who have this character-begetting power;
and the success of the school as a Christian agency
will be measured largely by the degree in which you
get your spirit into the pupils who are sent out from
it, who have in their turn this character-begetting
power."

The Rev. John Rowland, D.D., Mexico : "The Latin
American, with his quickness of perception, his acute-
ness of analysis, his high flights of imagination, has
many qualities that make us humble and anxious to
sit at his feet and learn of him, rather than to attempt

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION loi

to teach him; but there are some other quaUties that
need to be awakened In him. In the whole Latin lan-
guage we can find no word that will translate that
word that means so much for the Anglo-Saxon races
and for the history of the world." Then followed a
plea for imparting a stronger conception of the will,
with the habitual use of it in its higher practical and
ethical relations.

Dr. Edwin G. Dexter, rector of the Institute
Nacional, Panama, in illustrating the need of common-
sense and the superiority of Latin-American teachers
in the lower grades, told this story of an American
college graduate whose school in Porto Rico lost most
of its scholars. On examining into the matter, it was
discovered that one of the scholars was absenting him-
self from school with the excuse that he had no shoes
to wear. The teacher, with an eye for powerful
object-lessons, appeared in the schoolroom the next
morning barefoot. The children, though much sur-
prised, remained through the morning session, but
only about one-half were present in the afternoon.
The next day only a quarter of the children were at
school. Their reason for staying away was that the
teacher must be a peon to go barefoot, and they re-
fused to be taught by a peon.

The Rev. Alvaro Reis, the eminent Presbyterian
leader of Brazil, testified to the high value of the in-
struction imparted by evangelical institutions in which
he received his education. He spoke of the emphasis
placed by Jesuit teachers upon religious education.

102 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

often harmful because of its insistence upon image
worship, and urged that the open Bible should be the
book on the student's desk, not only to be studied, but
also to be incarnated in his daily life.

The Rev. J. O. Gonzales of Cuba, in discussing the
question as to how Christian influence may be most
effective in government institutions, advocated the
Christian Association plan of supplying hostels, to
which he would send missionaries competent to reach
students of the modern type. He would pursue the
opposite course from the Jesuit's system of ignoring
modernity, or of opposing it, saying: "Let the
students hear what an unbeliever has to say ; but at the
same time put by his side some good, learned man
prepared to answer questions that may arise in their
minds. In that way you may hold them. Otherwise,
they will laugh at you, because they will see that you
do not know what men of science have said." He
spoke out of seventeen years' experience in educational
work among Roman Catholics.

Apropos to this subject, which was frequently
alluded to in connection with what the Commission
had said of intellectual freedom in its report, another
statement of President King, made in his closing ad-
dress for the Commission, may be quoted. "If ever
we are to reach these Intellectual leaders, we must use
the modern approach ; and will you bear a very faith-
ful word on that subject. I came back sick at heart
from the Orient, partly because I found in India and
Japan many excellent and godly missionaries who

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 103

were standing square across the path of educated
Hindus, Japanese and Chinese. They were saying
virtually, *You cannot have anything to do with evolu-
tion and historical criticism and be a Christian.* Well,
a great German said years ago, 'The wounds of
knowledge can be healed only by knowledge,* and we
must make the approach to these men with a little
different conception of the relation of religion to the
modern and intellectual world. I do not know any-
thing in the intellectual realm that forbids a man*s
being in the deepest and most real sense of the word
an honest and consistent follower of Jesus Christ.**
His full statement, of which this is but a part, was
later referred to in vehement criticism by Dr. John
Fox of New York, and variously by others. One
Latin- American woman delegate warmly approved Dr.
King's position and testified to its personal value in
her own experience. Apparently he would be gladly
welcomed by Latin intellectuals as an apologetic and
constructive speaker, if he could be induced to make
a tour of Latin America, as some of the delegates
hope he may be induced to do. This would be in
fulfilment of the purpose of one of the findings of
the report. "The Commission is of the opinion that
great good might be accomplished by the establish-
ment, in Europe or the United States, of endowed
lectureships, the lecturers to deal with the great ques-
tions of religion and philosophy from a scholarly point
of view, and the lectures to be deHvered in the prin-
cipal cities of Latin America.'*

104 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

The Rev. C. E. Bixler of Brazil urged the importance
of agricuhural education in mission schools. In that
republic most of the cultivation is done with the hoe,
without a knowledge oftentimes even of plows. Self-
supporting churches in rural communities would be
possible, if such education w^ere available and effec-
tive. "We must not only introduce farm machinery,
but we must also teach how to use it. We should plan
to have a course in agriculture in the central schools
that now exist and those to be established in the
future. We can do much to prepare people for self-
support in this way, because one man with a machine
can do the work of five or ten working with the hoe;
and if we can increase their production with little
cost, they can have something to give." He had
previously stated that the success of the gospel had
been greatest among a middle class who had land
enough, but who could not ordinarily cultivate more
than four acres because of the prevalent hoe culture.
This was insufficient to provide anything more than
the food and clothing of a large family, leaving noth-
ing for supporting the church.

The Rev. W. E. Browning, Ph.D., of Chile regarded
the following as the greatest weaknesses of educa-
tional work from the point of view of religious results.
The missionary is too timid in dealing with his
students, especially in teaching the Bible. In Chile
there is too little permanency in the faculty, with many
short term and contract teachers, who remain so brief
a time that they do not learn the language well

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 105

enough to be a religious help to their students and to
make the cumulative influence of Christian friendship
tell. Incompetence due to sending the best candidates
to the Far East and supplying Latin America with
the dubious remnants is another cause — men like this
one recommended to him by a distinguished educator
to whom he had applied for a teacher : "Our men go
to China. There is only one man who might go to
you. He is rather uncouth and awkward. He re-
minds me of a great, awkward Newfoundland pup,
but I think he would just fit into your work." Dr.
Browning well addsj "Of what help would that man
be in meeting the atheism and Catholicism and all the
problems we have on our field?'* Equipment is an-
other handicap in every way. One of the Chilean
universities is spending $19,200,000 in its upbuilding,
while mission schools are without proper staff for
doing effective religious teaching. Cooperation
among the churches would aid in follow-up work
after graduation, when students go home away from
their own church and soon revert to their old religious
status because of lack of Christian nurture.

Professor Erasmo Braga of the Campinas Theologi-
cal Seminary, Brazil, regarded the following as cor-
rectives of the weaknesses of theological training in
South America. A proper point of view in their estab-
lishment; correlation between the seminaries and the
national system of education in order to secure well-
prepared candidates; a correction of the present
method of recruiting for these institutions, so that

io6 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

men whose qualifications are merely early piety and
education in mission schools are not necessarily to be
received into the seminaries; discouraging induction
into the ministry of short-cut students without a
thorough secondary and college training; reduction of
the number of so-called seminaries and their combina-
tion into single union institutions; and higher stand-
ards for the training of theological students, before
and after entering the seminaries.

The Rev. J. F. Goucher, D.D., of Baltimore, argued
for interdenominational cooperation in order to secure
efficiency and the financial support for great union in-
stitutions. When Latin-American governments are
providing budgets of over $300,000 annually for
single universities, it is futile for any one denomina-
tion to insist on establishing or supporting feeble in-
stitutions of no great influence when by combination
several societies could have one strong college or uni-
versity, which might call for a capital of twenty mil-
lions. The Rev. W. H. Rainey of Peru seconded Dr.
Goucher *s suggestion, though he would have one great
Christian university for all Latin America. It would
need to be interdenominational for a higher than a
financial reason, the exemplification of unity as
superior to denominationalism. Dr. King pleaded for
three strong Christian universities, when speaking for
the Commission. In general the great educational lack
of Latin America is that of higher education for
Christian leadership, so that medical men, for instance,
shall not far surpass in technical fitness those who

LATIN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION 107

have the higher task of the cure of souls and the up-
building of the living Church of God.

Two facts that particularly impressed Lord Bryce
during his travels in South America generalize the real
problems of Missions in Latin America. *'If one re-
gards these various nations as a whole," he writes,
"one is struck by the want of such an 'atmosphere of
ideas,* if the phrase is permissible, as that which men,
breathe in western Europe and in North America.
Educated men are few, books are few, there is little
stir of thought, little play of cultivated intelligence
upon the problems of modern society. Most of these
countries seem to lie far away from the stream of
intellectual life, hearing only its distant murmur. The
presence of a great inert mass of ignorance in the
native population partly accounts for this; and one-
must remember the difficulty of providing schools and
the thinness of the population scattered through moun-
tainous or forest-covered regions. . . . Another
fact strikes the traveler with surprise. Both the in-
tellectual life and the ethical standards of conduct of
these countries seem to be entirely divorced from re-
ligion. The women are almost universally 'practicing'
Catholics, and so are the peasantry, though the Chris-
tianity of the Indians bears only a distant resemblance
to that of Europe. But men of the upper or educated
class appear wholly indifferent to theology and Chris-
tian worship. It has no interest for them . . .
and may be left to women and peasants. The Catholic
revival or reaction of the first half of the nineteenth

io8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

century did not touch Spanish America, which is still
under the influence of the anti-Catholic current of the
later eighteenth."

To bring to these republics the intelligence without
which democratic institutions cannot reach their ideals,
to impart to the nascent evangelical communities the
Christian knowledge and training indispensable for
their development and proper leadership, to win the
intellectuals to allegiance to Him who is not only the
Truth but also the Life, is a task which will prove
also to be Kingdom-making and will exalt its King.

V
LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS

Literature, which is the subject investigated and
discussed by Commission IV, may be regarded as the
corollary of education, — "a proposition following so
obviously from another that it requires little or no
demonstration," as a mathematician would say. For
how can they read who have no books ? Or how can
the evangelical Church be built up without the aid of
a varied and plenteous supply of printed material
adapted to its multitudinous needs? If one may be
pardoned for a further metaphor, how can an aggres-
sive campaign against ignorance and misinformation
be carried on without ammunition? a figure used
effectively by Secretary Swift of the American Tract
Society, who reminded the Congress that missions in
Latin America had reached the munitions stage.

As its value may be questioned in lands of Iberian
culture, a quotation from Dr. Ritson, Secretary of the
British and Foreign Bible Society and a vice-chairman
of the Commission, will supply the argument for em-
phasizing it in Latin America, as well as in other coun-
tries similarly conditioned concerning which he
primarily wrote: ^'Whatever be the means adopted
for the evangelization and Christianization of the

109

no RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

human race, Christian Hterature is a factor to be
reckoned with. One of the most urgent requirements
of the Church in the mission field is a native ministry
with spiritual fitness and intellectual equipment for
leadership. In many lands we have done little more
than place the Bible in the hands of evangelists and
teachers and pastors in their mother tongue. That is
the first and supreme gift, but it is our duty to give
more. The men upon whom devolves leadership in
the indigenous Church are dealing with spiritual
truths that are new to them and have not been trained
to think. Is it right to leave them to begin de novo?
In the historic Church there has been a progressive
interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and it is our
duty to give the missionary Church the benefit of that
Christian scholarship which has been ripening, and of
that wealth of Christian experience which has been
accumulating through the centuries. By providing a
Christian literature ... we may share with it
those blessings which we ourselves have secured only
through blood and tears.

"But the training for the ministry is only one aspect
of the case. Almost every missionary Society has its
educational policy, and is spending tens of thousands
of pounds on schools and colleges, and is devoting the
lives of many of its best and ablest servants to the
task of teaching. . . . Our students must read.
They find ready at hand a vast amount of materialis-
tic and poisonous literature turned out from publishing
houses, . . . and unless we provide something

LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS in

better they will read that which will undermine their
spiritual and moral life and ruin them body and soul.
Has a missionary Society which takes no responsibility
in providing healthy Christian literature any right to
educate ?

''Again, the power of the printed page as an evan-
gelist . . . has not yet been realized. It is
obvious that it is not a substitute for the missionary.
The personal factor, the living voice, can never be re-
placed and has an influence all its own. But the
printed page has some advantages : it can be read and
re-read and pondered over ; it can reach a vastly larger
congregation than is to be found within the walls
of the sanctuary ; it can accompany the hospital patient
to his home ... ; it can travel forth as a pioneer
where the climate is deadly and the population is
sparse and conditions are unfriendly and hostile. The
printed page alone is the ubiquitous missionary. In
evangelizing by means of literature we are following
the Great Exemplar, who chose as the medium of
revelation a Book as well as a Church."

It was most fitting that this particular Commission
should have had as its Chairman Professor Andres
Osuna, a Latin American of such distinguished ability,
not only as a literary man but also as an educator,
that the Mexicans had just chosen him as Commis-
sioner of Education of the Federal District. While
this prevented his being present at Panama, he was
happily substituted for by Dr. Winton, whose work in
literary lines, both as a Mexican missionary and as

TI2 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

an editor of his own Church, the Methodist Episcopal,
South, made his presentations authoritative. Only one
session was devoted to the theme.

Evangelical missions center their work about the
Bible, which has been a closed volume to the masses
of the Roman Church; hence it was made prominent
in the Commission's report. Of the Protestant ver-
sions that of Cipriano de Valera, a converted Roman
-Catholic monk who escaped to England where he mar-
ried an English lady and gained his degree at Cam-
bridge, is in Spanish literature what King James's is
to the English versions. It is a revision of the Bible
translated by Cassiodoro de Reina, a Spanish reformer
of the sixteenth century. Valera spent the last twenty
years of his life upon the work, publishing it in 1596,
fifteen years before our Authorized Version appeared.
Delgado de Vargas, a special delegate to the Congress
from Spain, cited Father Scio's estimate, found in the
introduction to his Vulgate version, who asserted that
it was one of the purest and best productions of
Spanish literature. Senor de Vargas added that
Valera's translation in Spain is regarded as the best
example of classical Spanish after Cervantes' "Don
Quixote." For some years a company of English,
American, Mexican and Spanish scholars have been at
work in Madrid preparing a version that will be a z'ia
media between the literal interpretation of the accepted
texts, which by their ruggedness grip the conscience
and stimulate spiritual meditation, and a rendition into
pure literary Spanish, enabled by its inherent charms

LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS 113

to win an affectionate reading by lovers of Castilian.
The revisers have just completed the New Testament.

Joao Ferreira d' Almeida, who began as a boy of
fifteen to translate the Scriptures and who was con-
verted from Catholicism, was the first person to com-
plete the entire translation of the Portuguese New
Testament from the originals. His death in 1691
prevented his completing the Old Testament, but
other scholars finished it in 1753. It was followed in
1781-83 by a Roman Catholic Portuguese version of
the Vulgate, with occasional use of the Greek text,
which was published in twenty-three volumes. Prot-
estant missionaries in Brazil have been working for
more than a decade upon a new version, of which the
New Testament has already been published and the
Old Testament is nearing completion.

The Romanists have published versions of the Vul-
gate in Spain and also in Mexico. The best ones ap-
pear in from nineteen to twenty-five volumes, and the
cost is prohibitive even to some priests. Brazilian
ecclesiastics have formed an organization known as
the Jerome Society which has recently issued the
Gospel in Portuguese. This has been a by-product,
apparently, of evangelical missions. Dr. Tucker of
Rio de Janeiro told the delegates of a Roman Catholic
Congress in Brazil some time ago which discussed
the question, "What shall we do in the face of the
Protestant propaganda of the Bible ?" and answered it
by the decision to go into the work of translating.
In Sarmiento's translation of Carriere's French para-

114 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

phrase of the Book of Acts, the Cardinal Archbishop
of Rio explains by way of preface : *'At the moment
in which we write these words of approval and apology
of the work of popularizing the reading of the Holy
Gospels, we judge it convenient to make it very clear
that this our attitude can never be confounded with the
propaganda that our separated brethren, the Protes-
tants, are actively making." Later he says: "We
trust the future clergy may be trained in this school,
that our seminary students may know this treasure
and may familiarize themselves with this divine Book,
that every one of them may possess a copy of the
Holy Gospels." It is a privilege to have awakened
in part this interest in the Scriptures, thus aiding the
Romanists toward the accomplishment of a main pur-
pose of Latin-American missionary enterprise.

Other literature required for promoting the evan-
gelical cause is varied, but one primary necessity is for
commentaries and other works making the purpose,
meaning and contents of the Bible clear. One of the
two grounds of objection by Romanists to the intro-
duction of the Bible into Latin America is that
ignorant people ought not to be trusted with the
Scriptures in the vernacular. Hence the new versions
of their own are accompanied with annotations to
prevent erroneous beliefs from being derived from
them. Surely commentaries are now all the more
desirable that readers may know how devout scholars
and divines of evangelical Churches understand the
sacred texts. Such explanatory books will be to read-

LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS 113

ers what the Gospels and the colporteurs are to the
common people, "introductions to Jesus Christ," which
others than the little Bolivian girl so long for. Mr.
Stark of the British and Foreign Bible Society told
how this child came early one morning to a colpor-
teur's room pleading with him in these words: "O,
sir, will you give me an introduction to Jesus Christ?
I am so often hungry and cold, and my mother is
cruel, and I have none to love me."

Such introductory literature will serve another pur-
pose also. Senorita Palacios of Mexico City indicated
to the Congress its value through this illustration : '1
was talking with the president of the University of
Puebla about the Word of God, and he said: 'Don't
you know the Bible is a book that I would never put
in the hands of my daughters ?' I thought he would go
on to speak about the historical difficulties; but when
I asked, *Why do you say that?' he said: 'You know
the Psalms are very immoral; they teach vengeance,
and I do not put them in the hands of my daughters.'
Now you see that the Old Testament cannot be under-
stood as we understand it, unless there has been some
preparation for the use of it. Therefore we should
not put Old Testament stories into the hands of per-
sons who have not had that preparation." Seiior
Elphick of Chile also warned workers against using
the Old Testament without a New Testament prep-
aration, as it proves too often a stumbling-block. The
story of Jesus should be the beginning of instruction,
and it should be made attractive by beautiful pictures.

Ii6 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

For thoughtful readers, especially students, Dr. Teeter,
of Chile, advised such books as President King's
'^Ethics of Jesus,'* which should be translated among
the first of this class.

The Commission reported that the present list of
usable literature was limited, though its second Ap-
pendix gave figures which showed that some hundreds
of books and tracts have been published in the last
ten years. Biographies were almost wholly lacking,
according to Mr. Ewing of Buenos Aires. Periodicals
are too numerous and too weak to command respect,
with rare exceptions. If Societies would combine and
publish union periodicals, with denominational supple-
ments when desirable, much more would be accom-
plished for the cause. Miss Clementina Butler out-
lined a scheme of such cooperation, which, supple-
mented by subventions for a few years, would prob-
ably provide a syndicated periodical that would be
both popular and helpful, though without a denomina-
tional or even a Protestant name.

The Commission, and delegates also, described the
sort of literature that was especially desirable in Latin
America. Negatively, Mr. Revell suggested that books
of sermons were not listed among "the six best sellers"
in North America, but that they seemed to be char-
acteristic of Latin-American evangelical literature. Dr.
Howland deprecated as a "pernicious thing," "homi-
letical-review-ready-made sermons or outlines," which
tend to laziness and dishonesty. Dr. Teeter objected
to books that were denominational when intended for

LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS 117

general use, instancing a volume which he, a Meth-
odist, was using for an interdenominational group and
which contained a chapter pointing out the errors
of Presbyterians, several of whom were members of
the class. He also deprecated the translation and pub-
lication of books discussing problems of a century
ago. A number disapproved of certain publications
which were controversial to the point of bitterness.
Literature written in faulty Spanish or Portuguese was
especially criticised, the Rev. A. Trevino advising mis-
sionaries not to write Spanish half in English. Even
more harmful than defects in language and style is
pettiness in thought, which the Commission asserted
helped to breed skepticism.

Looking at the question from a positive viewpoint,
literature of Latin-American rather than of European
and 'North American authorship was required. Iberian
peoples dislike the plain and unpretentious use of their
native tongues. But more subtle than the charm of
their own mellifluous utterance is the ministry to the
temperament and spirit of races of Latin lineage in a
manner that will satisfy their peculiarities and pre-
dispositions, a service that none can perform so well
as members of those races. As a correspondent of
the Commission truly says : "Much of our literature
is of little value for initial propaganda, as it depends
for its appeal so wholly on acceptance of biblical
authority. Our whole evangelical scheme, as we have
been presenting it, is too much a logical argument
from premises which are unacceptable to those who

ii8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

hear or read." A Spanish or Portuguese writer would
not be Hkely to err in such particulars. He would
avoid the unadorned and homely style of missionary
authors which is an acknowledged cause of empty
evangelical churches and of ineffective tracts and
books, and which prevents those of real merit from
gaining a reading.

If Latin-American authorship is to be the policy in
producing evangelical literature in the future, we
must face the problem of securing competent national
writers within the evangelical Churches of Latin
America. Many leading Christians are not qualified
for such work, and the few who are possessed of the
requisite literary gifts are so heavily burdened already
that they cannot take on additional tasks. It is mani-
festly desirable to train some of the younger Latins
for such writing. It was proposed that promising
young men be given the requisite opportunity for
perfecting their gifts and thus be enabled to prepare
literature. Dr. Mott suggested the desirability of fol-
lowing some such plan as Japan has recently adopted.
One of the finest minds of that Empire has been set
apart to prepare a life of Jesus Christ which shall be
a Japanese interpretation of the Master. He is now in
Oxford University, studying under Dr. Sanday. With
a Japanese heart and superb abilities as a writer in his
own language, he will emerge from his British isola-
tion and profound studies to produce an interpreta-
tion that will do much to win Japan to Jesus. But
where this is impossible, Bishop Colmore's advice was

LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS 119

to give men of literary promise a broad education,
preferably in England or the United States, and after
thus filling them with great ideas upon important sub-
jects, ask them to write out of their very selves, with
all the powers of a Spanish or Portuguese literary
man, some vital message to their own people. There
was a general feeling that if translations for a time
must be depended upon, they should be something
more than "transliterations from English into
Spanish," to quote the Bishop's words.

For men thus prepared either for translating or
for original work, a variety of books and leaflets is
waiting to be written. While controversy is to be
avoided when possible, it must not be left unprovided
for. Writers in this department should be wholly
conversant with the viewpoint and teachings of
Roman Catholic authorities, as too many missionary
authors are not. The Roman system of today is the
carefully thought out product of many of the greatest
intellects of the past, and hence cannot be met with-
out full preparation. In this realm the primary aim
should be to establish the truth and only secondarily
to combat error.

Books for Christian nurture are needed. The two
antipodal types of men to be ministered unto are the
intelligent, educated thinkers who are being drawn
into a barren and lifeless materialism, and those who
tend toward crass superstition. The latter class is
not wholly made up of ignorant people of little learn-
ing. Many educated men are the prey of Spiritism

120 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

and kindred delusions, a reaction against the unsatis-
fying materialistic philosophy so prevalent in Latin
America. Books on the following subjects clamor
to be written: "The Message of Evangelical Chris-
tianity," "The Essentials of Religion as Found in the
Bible," "Helps to the Devotional Reading of the
Bible," "The Nature of Church Authority" and
"Helps to Character Building."

General literature is lacking in clean, high-class
novels and other popular books, greatly needed to
counteract the baneful influence of objectionable and
even pornographic literature. A number of whole-
some short stories have been translated already into
Spanish and are favorably received. Books for boys
and still others for girls are a desideratum also.

The Commission's report emphasizes the need for a
far better hymnology than the evangelical Church now
possesses. It is deplorably weak in this realm which
so appeals to music-loving Latin America. Dr. Win-
ton, in his closing address, explained the technical
weakness of our present hymnology and pleaded for
indigenous hymns and for a music that can be wxdded
happily to the words. When the union hymn-book
so much desired is thus prepared, the Church will
advance on the wings of song.

Tracts and leaflets which are so discounted in the
United States have their use and are appreciated in
Latin Amxerica. In most of its republics reading mat-
ter is still scarce, and well edited leaflets and bright
tracts are at a premium, especially when well illus-

LEAVES FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS 121

trated. As a great majority of the people are ignorant
of the simplest gospel truths, these tracts should meet
that need sympathetically and fairly. When the in-
spiration for writing it springs from actual experiences
of a vital sort, the tract is far more likely to be
vigorous, well-timed and effective than when it is writ-
ten in cold blood in recognition of a general need.
Atheism, Mormonism and Spiritism call for special
tracts and leaflets.

Sunday-school literature was wisely emphasized.
The chairman of the Commission, realizing the need
of his countrymen, has been instrumental in preparing
graded lessons that promise to meet the demands of
the new religious education. The Presbyterians,
M'ethodists and Disciples of Mexico have cooperated
in publishing graded lessons for children under thir-
teen. Manuals for teachers will also be published
cooperatively. There is already on foot a plan for
similar publications in Portuguese.

In the Congress session the agents so indispensable
for bringing evangelical literature into the homes and
lives of the people were eulogized. The Rev. W. H.
Rainey, the Peruvian representative of the British and
Foreign Bible Society, is one such eulogist. "The
colporteur," he said, "is not simply a book-hawker, not
simply a commercial agent. If he were, it would not
be dishonorable. But he goes as a pioneer evangelist,
a scout of the great militant Church of Jesus Christ.
. . . Colporteurs cooperate with the missionary.
They go to a town and visit every house. They find

122 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

those who are interested and give a Hst of the names
to the nearest pastor. Sometimes they call the people
together and preach to them, so that when the pastor
comes, he finds the church waiting for him to organ-
ize. . . . He must work alone a great deal of
the time ; he must travel the dusty roads in the broiling
sun; he must climb the mountains; he must go down
the river in boats, tormented by mosquitoes; he bears
the burden and the heat of the day that your way
may be made more easy. Therefore we appeal to you,
especially you native pastors, to recognize the col-
porteur's work as true evangelical work and the col-
porteur himself as a true and sincere evangelist and
missionary."

This Commission's report, even more than those pre-
ceding it, reiterated again and again the vast oppor-
tunities and the urgent need for cooperation, if the
evangelical cause is to avail itself of the best talent
and is to receive the financial support demanded in
order to make literature the powerful, saving factor
that God intends it to become. At least nine Boards
or Societies are now preparing and publishing litera-
ture for Latin America, with much waste of money
and force. When the plan outlined by Commission
IV in its Appendix C materializes, or something even
better, efficiency and unity will be the gainers and the
leaves of healing will bless still more the life of Latin-
American nations.

CHILDREN WHO NEED A SUNDAY SCHOOL
SUNDAY SCHOOL, BRAZIL

VI
THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD

A new thing under the missionary sun was the ap-
pointment of Commission V on ^'Women's Work,"
with the same powers and standing as the other seven
commissions. This differentiates the Panama Con-
gress from all other formal international conferences
of note, although in smaller gatherings of missionaries
the women had been represented and had borne an
honored and helpful part. Being without precedents,
Miss Belle H. Bennett and Mrs. Ida W. Harrison,
LL.D., the Commission's chairman and vice-chairman,
led on their company of twenty-five other women and
their corps of eighty correspondents in a successful
advance-guard movement. Up to this point, the re-
ports had been excellent specimens of expert investiga-
tion, with only a minimum suggestion of any real
human life behind the subjects discussed. This one
was in refreshing contrast, in that it was full of con-
crete material dealing with a theme which always
makes its strong appeal.

Latin-American literature is almost entirely lacking
in any full account of its womanhood ; hence the Com-
mission presented an appraisal of the girls and women
whose cause it championed, mainly in the words of
competent writers upon those republics. Only broad

123

124 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

generalizations were possible, and they were grouped
under four headings, the higher, the middle and the
lower class women and the Indians.

Of the higher classes, Albert Hale writes, — though
he includes others than these women: "You cannot
travel through South America without finding an ap-
preciation of art, education and good manners;
boorishness is practically unknown; kindliness, cour-
tesy and breeding characterize the people." M. Georges
Clemenceau, ex-Premier of France, says of these
women : "The family tie appears to be stronger than,
perhaps, in any other land. . . . The rich . . .
take pleasure in having large families. . . . The
greatest affection prevails and the greatest devotion to
the parent roof -tree. . . . The women . . .
enjoy a reputation, that seems well justified, of being
extremely virtuous. ... In their role of faithful
guardians of the hearth, they have been able to silence
calumny and inspire universal respect by the purity
and dignity of their life." Professor E. A. Ross
asserts that in "the higher classes of tropical South
America, the women are distinctly brighter than the
men," and that on the West Coast they have "more
character." He attributes this to the early immorality
of the men, which affects unfavorably both body and
mind. Of the high-born Mexican women, Nevin O.
Winter writes : "They are sympathetic to an extreme.
They are almost invariably watchful for the needs of
their poor relations and are everywhere supporting
numerous charities."

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 125

While it is difficult to describe women of the middle
class when it is only now emerging, the report in-
cludes in it all grades of women employed in the busi-
ness world, trades and teachers of every sort. In
Brazil and Argentina that class for the most part helps
to solve the new problems of womanhood. In Chile
they have placed emphasis upon the dignity of labor
and have aided in introducing foreign ideals. Peruvian
women of the middle class are looked upon with dis-
dain, and even women teachers have little social stand-
ing. Though woman's day has not yet dawned in
Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, in Mexico it has al-
ready shone upon many women, which is regarded
as one of the most hopeful signs of the times, a
Mexican leader saying, "The highest moral develop-
ment is to come from the middle class." The Com-
mission quotes as equally applicable to these women
what was said of Orientals in the Continuation Com-
mittee Conference findings: "The walls which
guarded the young girl are being demolished rapidly,
and the spiritual walls which can protect her purity
and peace are rising only slowly. The girls who leave
Christian schools and homes to enter these new condi-
tions must know more than their mothers did, must
have more poise and self-control, and above all they
must have the spiritual power of the indwelling Christ
and the sense of a divine call to service."

Women of the lower class make the strongest ap-
peal. These are picturesque sketches of them by Pro-
fessor Ross and Miss Florence Smith of Chile. "One

126 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

woman, bent under a burden, carries a child at the
breast, and is soon to become again a mother. An-
other laden woman plies distaff and spindle as she
creeps along. Here is a file of barefoot women bent
under loads of earth or brick, escorted by a man with
a whip." Miss Smith writes of Colombian women as
they work with pickax or shovel on the highway, or
stagger under burdens too heavy to be borne, — of the
mothers of the 40,767 babies who died in Chile alone
in 1909, less than a year old, because of alcoholism
and unhygienic conditions. She pleads for the poor
fallen girls, so numerous in all the republics. *'Im-
moral? Perhaps, as we count immorality. But who
of us dares to say that, given their heritage, their
ignorance, their temptations, we should not have sunk
so low? Listen: *I was only fourteen. I knew
nothing ; my mother sold me.* 'The times were hard ;
I had no work and a sick sister to feed.' 'I was an
orphan; my aunt tired of me and connived with an
evil woman who caused me to be drugged.* 'My own
father seduced me.' " So runs on and on the heart-
moving dirge. The dark cloud has its silver lining,
however. These lower class women have strong
natural affections, both for their families and for their
friends. Filial love is universal so that elderly and
married women obey their mothers as in childhood.
Children upon meeting or leaving father or mother
kiss them upon either the hand or the forehead.

So far as the Commission's report goes, Indian
women of this lower stratum do not fare any worse

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 127

than those just described; indeed, they are more free
and less degraded among the higher tribes, descendants
of the Incas and Aztecs. A Mexican correspondent
says that Indian women there live in villages by them-
selves and cultivate their little plots of ground; they
carry their flowers, fruit and vegetables to the city
and sell them on the streets or in the markets. These
daughters of the Aztecs weave blankets, make pottery
and still offer for sale feather work like that for which
their ancestors were famous. In Bolivia the Indian
women are on the plane of their husbands, not hav-
ing a lord and master as in North America and not
suffering from loose marriage bonds. Indian girls
from the mountains of Peru often show exceptional
artistic ability and develop original decorative motives
from nature forms. Among the Mapuche Indians of
Chile there is a woman priesthood, according to Rev.
Alan Ewbank, and the witch-doctor is a woman. If
a man aspires to become a witch-doctor, he must
assume the dress of a woman. But the woe of it is
that probably five millions of these Indian women are
without anything except the faintest idea of their
Heavenly Father and Savior, if they have heard even
their names.

Forty millions of women and girls such as have
been described constitute the Latin-American parish
of Commission V. While the challenge of their
needs reached the ears of Mrs. Mary Hartmann in
1848, when her husband died, and she began that
heroic and saintly ministry to the bush negroes of

128 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Dutch Guiana, where she maintained a Christian sta-
tion immured in a wilderness of heathenism, to Miss
MeHnda Rankin falls the honor of pioneering woman's
work in Mexico. Having been moved by the stories
of conditions there from returned Mexican War
soldiers, she created sentiment and in 1850 started a
school for Mexican children at Brownsville on the Rio
Grande. In addition to teaching, she visited the
Mexicans among whom she distributed Bibles, which
soon crossed the river to Matamoras where they were
gladly received. In 1857, when religious liberty was
declared in Mexico, she went over to that city and
later worked in Monterey. In this difficult field she
labored on with singular devotion, until broken health
forced her to relinquish her work in 1871. Her task
was that of a teacher and a distributor of Bibles ; yet
under her supervision, her pupils established and
ministered to fourteen congregations which were taken
over later by the Presbyterians.

Miss Rankin laid down three principles at that early
stage of Latin- American work which are worthy of
remembrance. She wrote : *'I believe it wise, as far
as possible, to avoid exciting prejudices in our labors
among Roman Catholics. ... It has been a fixed
principle with me not to attack their religion, but to
present the truth and let that do its work. . . .
If you wish to enlighten a room, you carry a light and
set it down in it, and the darkness will disperse of
itself." Another of her dicta was this: *'Mexico
should become evangelized mainly through the instru-

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 129

mentality of Mexicans themselves; yet they need to be
guided into the best manner of working." She fur-
ther aimed to make her work undenominational, so
as not to perpetuate the divisions of the Church at
home in this new territory and to avoid confusing the
people with doctrinal distinctions about which they
knew nothing. Other women pioneers in the Com-
mission's Hall of Fame are Miss Martha Watts of
Brazil and Mrs. Frances Hamilton of Mexico, two
rare workers.

Education of various sorts is a strategic method
very commonly employed by the women missionaries.
Here a strong argument for kindergartens was
entered in opposition to the report of the Commission
on Education, and despite government competition.
They are invaluable because by simple plays and songs
they teach the value of work, the ideals of purity, un-
selfishness, morality and truth — the very elements of
Christian character. An experienced Mexican mis-
sionary argues for them thus: "For the improve-
ment of the education of the children, American
kindergarten methods are greatly in demand. As a
people the Mexicans are musical, and the children re-
spond readily to the songs and games. The admirable
devotion of the people to their children makes them
appreciate such opportunities when afforded by the
missions. Possibly there is no better way of break-
ing down prejudice than through the kindergarten
under missionary auspices." Day nurseries for little
children are also greatly appreciated, especially when

130 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

one recalls how many of them are illegitimate with
no father to relieve the mother's burden of daily
earning her child's support.

The mission normal institution is most valuable,
both because caste is less evident there and because
teachers in evangelical schools should be either earnest
Christians or trained in an evangelical atmosphere. In
191 3 Dr. Browning reported forty -two schools and
three thousand six hundred and ten students of this
grade. Among the notable secondary institutions for
girls, he regarded the Santiago College of Chile *'the
best known North American school for girls in all
South America." It begins with kindergarten and car-
ries the work through primary, secondary and higher
grades, under the direction of a superior corps of
teachers. In addition to the curriculum in liberal arts,
it has a conservatory of music with an eight years*
course and a department of fine arts.

Securing students from the higher classes has not
proceeded far in Latin America. Their young women
are secluded from general society and are loyal to
Roman Catholicism. In Church institutions they are
taught accomplishments, such as embroidery and
music, and in the conventual schools religion is very
central. What is demanded is an education suitable
"for a wiie and mother," that is, a non-vocational
training. As large families are desired and as in-
fant mortality is two or three times as great as in
North America, this should be considered by the upper
class students, for such women might inspire reform

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 131

measures for the public benefit, as well as know how
to care for their own children. The Commission is
of the opinion that if girls from the higher ranks
in society are to be reached, a large sum of money
is requisite to provide adequate buildings, faculties of
good breeding and high culture, libraries and labora-
tories. This in turn calls for cooperation between
the missionary Boards.

As a specimen of an entirely different sort of teach-
ing the Congress was deeply interested in the unique-
ness of Miss Coopers work among the San Bias In-
dians on an island a hundred miles from Colon. Twice
at extra sessions she had delighted her audience with
the racy, gloriously-believing account of that mission
and had illustrated her addresses with two trophies of
her work, bright Indian boys who spoke and aided her
variously. Certain that she was sent of God and
utterly fearless of what man could do against one so
sent, she had braved many dangers and had triumphed.
In her school she has about 100 boys and 70 girls.
Here is a sample of her as she addressed the Congress.
**They come to my school in the morning as soon as
the sun rises. They are very eager to learn. They
will stay as late as eleven o'clock at night. For the
first two months I was there, I taught school three
times a day, and I had some private scholars besides.
As soon as one group of children went out, another
came in. They seemed to think that I could live with-
out eating. Well, I could almost live by teaching. I
have never been sick. ... Let me tell you some-

132 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

thing of the results. I have them in sanitation and
morals, just as well as other results. When I went out
there to that town, the houses were so close together
that you could not walk hardly, but now we have broad
streets and fences. There were ten saloons on the
island ; there is not one now.'*

Social programs were discussed by the Congress. It
had been hoped that here might be found a common
bond between the Roman Church and evangelical mis-
sions; but as a Church there is apparently no present
probability of any united action with evangelicals.
The woman's movement has scarcely begun to touch
Latin America, though developments affecting the in-
dustrial life and the entry of women in teaching and
the professions are requiring some such organiza-
tions as are found in North America and Europe. The
evening before the presentation of the Commission's
report was a woman's session, and at that time the
wife of the President of the Congress, Senora Monte-
verde, told of the beginnings of concerted action
_^mong women. The league for fighting tuberculosis
and the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union against intemperance she had mentioned as typ-
ical of the good that might be accomplished by women
either with or without the use of the Protestant name.
Mexico seems farthest along in these organizations.
The women there attend meetings in the interests of
temperance, missions, working women and clubs of all
sorts. Elsewhere it seemed desirable to adopt and
enlarge the club idea, one missionary writing: 'The

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 133

field of the club seems to be as large in Latin- American
countries as in any others ; and there is no reason why
it may not be developed to an indefinite extent, bring-
ing about the same results as those to be obtained in
any other part of the world. It may be regarded as
a legitimate part of mission activity to be developed
in connection with church and school work." Women's
organizations for the purpose of promoting a better
education seem most common among Peruvians. So-
cial betterment is also appealing to many women.

The program of the Young Women's Christian As-
sociation on its social side was commended by Senora
Monteverde and also by the report and by one of the
speakers. The Association at Buenos Aires, repre-
sented in the Congress by Senorita Cortes, is the fore-
most organization in its social work for women. Mul-
titudes of girls from abroad and from distant parts of
the Plate countries come to that capital with little
money and are subjected to the moral perils of the
city. The Association aids them in various ways, not
as a boarding house merely, but as a home and a
"family" of young women with strong Christian lead-
ership. Its employment bureau, savings-bank, and
especially its religious meetings, are all helpful and are
greatly appreciated.

Mrs. John Howland of Mexico at the women's
session of Tuesday night had spoken of "the womanly
approach to the citadel of the home," and this was a
phase of woman's work that was presented very effec-
tively. Miss Florence Smith's address that same eve-

134 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ning upon *' Womanhood in the Home" was most in-
teresting. As already intimated, the home is more
populous than with North Americans and Europeans.
Besides the large family of children, — the wife of the
President of the Congress is the mother of eleven, —
there are usually others living there. In the family
which Miss Smith described there were present *'hus-
band and wife, married son, wife and baby, invalid
daughter, three other children, two mothers-in-law and
numerous relatives and friends, gathered daily about
their hospitable board. ... In rural communities
three and even four generations, where girls marry at
thirteen, are often found under the common roof-
tree; and stalwart sons of thirty-five and forty are
referred to as 'los nmos/ and if unruly even at that
age are reduced to obedience by the rod." Yet man
is also dominant over w^oman. ''From the cradle to
the grave, the life of the average Latin- American
woman is under male influence : in childhood under
paternal authority, or, failing that, under elder brother,
or nearest male relative; as a wife, wholly subservient
to her husband; in old age, if widowed, to her sons.
If she belongs to a conservative family, all these in-
fluences are secondary to that of the priest." Mental
apathy or inertia is likewise present, which even in
evangelical families is hard to dispel among the women.
Into such homes the woman missionary goes with
her broader vision and her w^insome Christian mes-
sage. A little school girl may have led her thither;
the entire family may follow her thence to the church.

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 135

Besides all the children of day and Sunday-schools,
the sick and afflicted must be visited in their homes;
new families must be followed up; opportunities for
instilling important information bearing upon hygiene
and temperance must be utilized; a visiting nurse is
needed; and so in various ways the home citadel
capitulates to the power of Christian adaptability and
friendliness.

In the Commission's opinion, the lack of good lit-
erature is, possibly, one of the greatest weaknesses in
missionary work for Latin-American women, as the
whole range of wholesome books for young people and
stories for children are wanting. Miss Blaney, teach-
ing in the Escuela Popular of Valparaiso, writes : "The
missions have printed and sold books only of a reli-
gious character for girls. I believe that if the money
could be obtained to print translations of good English
books and fiction, it would help to prepare the way for
open-mindedness and eventually for hearing the gospel.
Lately I have had the pleasure of knowing some young
society girls who know English. They have liked
the English books I have loaned them so much that
they will read no others, and they are always asking
for more. One of them said she 'found French and
Spanish novels so silly after having read about such
nice people in English fiction.' "

From Peru comes a plea for a woman's magazine,
voiced in these words : "A Roman Catholic priest has
said that his Church has full control of Peru, because
it has the women entirely in its power. If we wish

136 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

to win Peru for Christ, we must reach the w^omen.
The same is true even in a stronger sense of BoHvia
and no doubt appHes to all Latin America. While
many women here cannot read, those who have been
educated enough for that eagerly read all the books
and papers they can find. Their intellectual life is
starved, and their whole life is very narrow." If peri>
odical articles cannot be written or translated because
of the many demanding tasks of the women mission-
aries, Miss Hodge's suggestion that Miss Laura
White's plan be tried seems worthy of consideration.
In her girls' school she introduced a course in which
the girls were to study carefully some good stories in
English and then translate and revivify them in their
own tongue, thus enabling her to edit most creditably
a vernacular magazine as a by-product of the class-
room.

The upbuilding of Latin- American womanhood will
be accomplished through the uplifting of the living,
loving Christ. On a crest of the dividing chain be-
tween Argentina and Chile, thirteen thousand feet
above the sea, is one of the most remarkable statues
of the world, the heroic figure of the Christ of the
Andes, standing with a cross in one hand and with the
other uplifted. It was erected to commemorate the
settlement by arbitration rather than by arms of the
boundary dispute between the two adjacent republics,
and on its pedestal the traveler reads, "He is our peace
who hath made both one." At its dedication on March
13, 1904, the Bishop of Ancud said: *'Not only to

THE UPBUILDING OF WOMANHOOD 137

Argentina and Chile do we dedicate this monument,
but to the world, that from this day it may learn the
lesson of universal peace." That parable in stone
sprang from the hearts of Bishop Benevente and
Senora de Costa who, as president of the Christian
Mothers' Association of Buenos Aires, undertook the
work of securing funds and having the statue erected.
"I even dare to think," she writes, "that the idea had
to issue from the brain of a woman, because it is an
idea of sentiment, and in all time men have reproached
us for thinking with the heart. ... It may be
said that I had to contend with obstacles which seemed
insurmountable for a woman. But I have a moral
quality which I may call Saxon. I am persistent and
tenacious in all that I believe true, good, or just. I
have always thought that there is no force more power-
ful than an energetic will which knows how to desire
with faith." Her article closes with an appeal for
money to build a monastery near the statue to serve as
a refuge for lost travelers. Such an one is a type
of the highest womanhood of Latin America, — a life
abounding in alms deeds, supported by faith, accom-
plishing the seemingly impossible through her indom-
itable will.

Until the parable is a materialized fact, the evangel-
ical women of Latin America must live the exalted,
transfigured life, patiently enduring opposition and
misunderstanding, overcoming suspicion and fanatical
hatred with friendliness and love, surmounting all
obstacles through the constant exercise of Senora de

138 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Costa's "energetic will which knows how to desire with
faith." In the future some glad, blissful day will
dawn when the boundary line will be obliterated and
evangelical and Romanist will be united through a
return to the simplicity of the early apostolic faith
in a crucified, risen, omnipresent, loving Christ, — "our
peace who hath made both one."

VII
THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES

The vitally important theme, "The Church in the
Field," was in good hands, as Commission VI was
composed of a Latin-American Methodist bishop as
chairman, Dr. Homer C. Stuntz, previously a mis-
sionary in the Philippines, and twenty-six others. Of
these, eighteen were experienced workers in Latin
fields, five were strong Latin Americans and three
were missionary secretaries. The spirit in which they
approached their task is seen in the opening paragraph
of the Commission's findings: *'With reference to
the general purpose of evangelical work as carried on
by foreign missionaries in Latin America, it cannot too
often be remembered that the missionary comes in the
spirit of brotherly sympathy, not to impose, but to
help; not to dogmatize, but to demonstrate; not pri-
marily even to teach, but to facilitate access to the
Spirit of God who 'shall guide into all the truth.* "

The Church whose interests they represented was
defined as made up of "the indigenous bodies of Chris-
tian believers of the evangelical faith and practice
growing up in the field under consideration;" and its
spirit accords with the general purpose of evangelical
missions just stated. Its strength cannot be measured

139

140 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

alone by the quarter of a million communicants of
to-day. Back of them are double or triple their total
of friends, sympathizers and adherents. They are
convinced of the truth of the evangelical message;
they worship in evangelical churches; their children
are in the Sunday-schools; many of them will come
mto the Church some day. Moreover, it must be kept
in mind in any fair appraisal of the strength of the
Church in Latin America that as a social force it is
influential out of all proportion to the number of its
members. It is a true gospel leaven; and it is the
nature of leaven — though small in bulk compared to
the meal in which it is hidden away — to permeate
steadily the remainder of the whole mass and to bring
it into conformity with itself.

One cannot estimate fully the problems and char-
acter of the evangelical community without bearing
clearly in mind the Roman Catholic Church under
whose overshadowing influences most of its member-
ship have lived. Those who know Romanism through
acquaintance with it in North America or Great
Britain should realize that Catholicism in those
countries is centuries removed from the supersti-
tious, persistently living yet ever moribund Church
of Latin America. To be convinced of this, the
traveler needs only to attend services in the beautiful,
progressive city of Havana, where not five minutes'
walk away from the ceiba tree in whose shade
Columbus preached to the Indians, he will see and
hear a ritual not less magical nor more religiously

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 141

helpful than that of the pagan red man of four cen-
turies ago. In so enlightened a city as Panama, the
Congress delegates, on their way to hear Dr. Speer
preach, saw diagonally opposite the famous old Ca-
thedral, on the first floor of the Bishop's residence, a
greater throng assembled for the Sunday morning lot-
tery-drawing than is attracted to the cathedral services,
while far greater numbers are to be seen at the bull-
fight Sunday afternoons than at all the churches.
Though the same thing might be said of Roman
Catholics in attendance at Coney Island as compared
with the attendance at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth
Avenue, yet the services and the spirit in the two
cathedrals differ greatly.

To be more specific, the Church from which the
Latin American comes out is venerable, with a history
which, it claims, goes back to St. Peter and Jesus. Its
churches and cathedrals appeal to the imagination
through their symbolical architecture and ritual, their
cool spaciousness and their "dim religious Hght," so
helpful to those who would go apart for private devo-
tion or meditation. Most of them having state or
private foundations, their support makes little demand
upon the people, many of whom are poor. Latin-
American religion is largely sacramentarian. Auricu-
lar confession, which is part of penance, is exalted and
by the women is highly regarded; Church worship is
priestly rather than congregational, the audience being
passive and often apathetic listeners with no real inter-
est in what many do not at all understand. With the

142 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

exception of a very small minority, the priesthood is
not broadly read and trained ; and even when there is
unusual intelligence, ecclesiastical prescriptions and
prohibitions restrict the eager seminarist to little more
than a mediaeval obscurantism. All this light and
shadow is held so indispensable to the souFs salvation
that the layman finds it difficult to leave the Church of
his childhood and of his fathers; while the faithful
priest deems it part of his bounden duty to prevent by
every means the renunciation of Catholicism by any
of his flock. When this cannot be prevented, the
heretic departs followed by anathemas and ostracism,
if not persecution.

Coming from such a heritage and training, what
does this religious outcast find in the evangelical com-
munity for which he has sacrificed many things? He
unites with a church which is stigmatized as a foreign
importation, a taunt that means much. The church
building which shelters him is anything but ecclesias-
tical in architecture and furnishings, as little calculated
to foster devotion as a pewed loft oftentimes. Yet
for its upkeep he is expected to contribute weekly.
If the convert — pervert, his world calls him — chances
to belong to the upper or middle classes, he finds that
his fellow Christians are from a stratum of society
which he shrinks from associating with : — "not many
wise, not many mighty, not many noble" surely; and
perhaps he substitutes "any" for "many" in the quota-
tion. Though the Commission states that with the
exception of a recent immigrational addition Latin

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 143

and Indian are the two main elements in mission
churches, it adds that the one from which the mission-
ary wins converts is more Indian than Spanish in
many fields. Such a person will find among his hum-
bler fellow members no outstanding leadership of men
of his own class. If the church has a national pastor,
he usually has no more than a secondary school educa-
tion. If a missionary is the only leader, his other ex-
cellencies may be obscured by a halting or narrow
use of the mellifluous tongue, an offence to a Latin
ear. If the missionary happens to be enamored of his
native country and correspondingly unappreciative of
his adopted land, the convert's resentment rises. Yet
if the new comer is from the lower classes, as most of
them are, these new associations are not as trying as
to the student, or merchant, or professional man de-
scribed above. He finds himself among others of his
class and there is a fellowship and nearness to one
another that he has never known before.

Yet of whatever class the Latin- American convert
may be, he has left behind him the narrow, formal,
lifeless religion of his fathers and, like the pearly
nautilus, has raised against it a firm wall of separation,
while he builds for his emancipated soul larger and
more stately mansions, varying in their spaciousness
and beauty with his own capacity and faithfulness and
that of his teacher. The Bible, especially the New
Testament and its incomparable Gospels, is the guide
and inspiration of his newly acquired freedom. The
lifeless crucifix is cast aside while he lays hold of a

144 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

sympathizing Jesus, a living Christ. Yet the cross
is not abandoned. It has revealed to him what he
never realized before, the heinousness of sin and the
certainty of its full atonement and of his own salvation
through Christ alone, without the intervention of
priest, or saint, or the Mother of Christ. Instead of
wearing a crucifix, he is sometimes called upon to bear
about on his body the marks of the Lord Jesus, and
always follows Him with the necessity of taking up
his cross daily, if he is fully faithful. Just in propor-
tion to the measure of his acceptance of salvation does
he endeavor to save others, with a sympathy begotten
from his own experience and a tactful love imparted
by the human Jesus, now ascended and giving gifts
to men. As time passes, he finds that his life must be
real and Christocentric, if it is to outvalue his old
experience. Here he is at the critical point of his
spiritual history, — the parting of the ways where many
relapse into the formality and laxity of former days
and many others stir themselves up to a new and daily
experience of the power of the keeping Christ.

In discussing the organization and membership of
Latin evangelical churches, the Commission empha-
sized the Moorish influence evident in all parts of
Latin America except Brazil. This influence upon the
evangelical membership should be regarded by evan-
gelists and administrators of Christian work. It de-
mands both comprehension and great patience. When
understood, it furnishes a ready explanation for some
temperamental, domestic, social and even religious

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 145

phenomena otherwise most baffling to the missionary
of a widely different race.

The Indian element has been Christianized only
imperfectly; hence that strain in the Church has no
true ideas of sin, little hatred for it and no idea that it
is ever possible to live free from its contamination.
The Latin element is not acquainted with the Scriptures
and so differs little from the Indian in its attitude to-
ward sin. Dissimulation is common; everything is
excused on the plea of temperament, precedent, or
custom. Add to these tendencies the Latin emotion-
alism, desire to please and the consequent responsive-
ness and demonstrativeness of congregations hearing
the gospel, and one can understand why some are
admitted to the church who are not truly Christian,
Well may the caution of Senor Rodriguez Cepero be
observed in receiving members: "The workers in
Porto Rico must not look for statistics only. The
work in some churches is like artificially ripened fruit
Fruit dealers sometimes resort to such methods, but
members must not be brought into the church in the
same way. They must ripen slowly, so that they are
truly converted before they are admitted to its member-
ship." Yet that extreme of caution which chills and
repels the timid but earnest seeker after truth is also
to be avoided. A catechumenate of some sort is very
desirable for most applicants for membership, that
they may know the certainty concerning those things
wherein they are instructed. It is needed to avoid an
evil resulting in the Apostolic Church, when the step

146 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

from Judaism to Christianity was apparently so short
that many entered the infant Church only to bring
with them Judaizing tendencies. The incoming of
Latins who count themselves Protestants merely be-
cause of an antagonism for Romanism, without having
broken away from their sins and without having en-
tered into any sort of evangelical experience, is an
extreme form of this danger which suitable instruc-
tion would expose and correct.

The program of evangelical churches thus consti-
tuted has been stated in part in Chapter III. How im-
portant personal work is, the quotation of a Central-
American missionary's testimony will evidence. "Peo-
ple are afraid of being 'queered' by attending evan-
gelical meetings. The greater part of these people will
never be reached, if we wait to get them into formal
service. Those who have no heart interest in evan-
gelical teachings and practices are afraid of being
ostracised. ... By personal tact, by grace of
manner and by an unshrinking persistence, the very
persons who are thus made the victims of such treat-
ment may be won from their prejudice and error. To
neglect the God-given opportunities of doing personal
work with the many whom we meet day by day is to
run the risk of showing ourselves unprofitable and
unworthy servants."

Young people's societies were strongly commended
by the Commission. In Brazil they are a most fruitful
field for developing workers. People converted late
in life do not give up their habits and conceptions read-

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 147

ily. Young people are much more teachable and can
be trained into the highest form and expression of the
Christian life. They are more ready to take part in
public worship and church work than are the youth
of the United States, partly because of greater facility
in speaking in public. Another correspondent of the
Commission urged that these societies should add to
their religious meetings activities of a social and phys-
ical sort, the latter to meet the counter-attractions of
the dance, cock-pit, bull-fight and race-track. "Base-
ball, basketball and kindred games are good for the
boys. Similar recreation could be planned for the
girls. Literary clubs and entertainments of every
legitimate kind should be provided. Any general
provision for the growth of the evangelical churches in
Latin America must include these social forces. This
is vital to the life of the Church and of the young
people. If the Church does not offer safe and sane
recreation for its youth, the world will offer some other
kind.** Yet a missionary in Cuba emphasizes the obvi-
ous caution that these societies should be subordinate
to the Church in order that the reHgious life may be
strongly maintained.

To what has already been written concerning Sun-
day schools, one needs to do little more than add the
endorsement of this Commission. Thus Mr. Jones
of the Friends Mission in Cuba stated that about half
of those received into the church during the past three
years have come directly through the Sunday school,
while ninety-five percent, of their best trained full

148 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

members came from the same source. While Profes-
sor Monteverde beheved fully in the Sunday-school
work, with which he has been identified for thirty
years, he is convinced that its program and teaching
methods should be changed radically, if they are to be
most effective. The appointment of the Rev. G. P.
Howard, of Montevideo, as South America's Sunday-
school secretary, noted by the Commission, doubtless
\Y\\\ help on these improvements.

Special evangelistic efforts of the churches, like the
"protracted meetings" reported as being so helpful in
Yucatan, were commended. In Chihuahua and Mex-
ico City and in seven South American centers evan-
gelistic and special meetings for united prayer have
resulted in conversions and in the spiritual quickening
of very many. It was queried whether the time has
not arrived to unite in holding concerted interdenomi-
national evangelistic services extending over some
wxeks, or at least several days. These would be held
in the stronger centers under the leadership of men
having a fine sense of local situations and able to
speak to the people in their own tongue.

Social work of the churches has been discussed
previously, and only one item needs to be added here
concerning its relation to reforms. Experience shows
that it should be "an attitude of extreme wariness.
The worker ought to remember that any action of his
may involve for years the reputation of the evangelical
churches." Concerning abuses which attempt to de-
stroy the liberties or which threaten the existence of

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 149

defenceless tribes or races, the Commission says: ''If
the demands of Christianity require the action of the
missionary, he should obtain the adhesion of the bulk
of the Christian forces in the country before taking
action, then appeal to the national authorities to right
the wrong, and only after exhausting in vain the na-
tional resources of justice should he assume the respon-
sibility of publishing the particulars in foreign lands.
Pride of race is nowhere keener than in Latin America ;
and to hold one of its republics up as a gazing-stock
to the nations of the earth is an unpardonable sin, no
matter how just the cause."

The problems of missions in these republics are such
that they received considerable attention in the report,
little in the discussion. The external relations of
churches to the state are less troublesome than before
religious liberty had been declared. The Rev. Fran-
cisco Penzotti, with nearly forty years experience in
Central and South America, has been imprisoned many
times for the offense of distributing the Bible or
preaching, the most noted instance being an eight-
months' incarceration in a common jail at Callao, Peru.
The Rev. L. G. ]\Iora of ^Mexico told the Congress
of that republic's sixty-four evangelical martyrs. Such
extreme cases and many less important ones have com-
pelled missionaries to face the government and have
hindered evangelical growth. Though religious equal-
ity is the law of every Latin-American state, the
Roman Catholic Church is actually the established or
dominant religion except in Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala,

150 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Cuba and Panama. Outside Brazil, where there is a
true Hberty of worship, the priest, generally through
the petty authorities, can at times harass the Christian
worker and interfere with his work. The laws relating
to civil marriage, divorce, religious instruction, public
beneficence and burial are other hindrances to the mis-
sionary propaganda. On the other hand, officials are
increasingly friendly to the missionaries and are favor-
ing certain elements in the evangelical community,
where it can be done rightly. The Congress favored
a policy of identity of interests between missions and
the state. Both groups are w^orking for the same great
fundamental objects, the spread of education, the sup-
pression of disease and crime, the eradication of the
causes of moral corruption and the safeguarding of the
rights of the people to the peaceful pursuit of industry
and happiness. All conflict should be avoided.

As for internal problems. Those connected with
discipline are varied. Temptations to impurity and the
public attitude toward that sin in the case of men make
a pure evangelical Church difficult to maintain. The
almost prohibitive cost of marriage for the poor and
the tendency to Corinthianize among the wealthy, with
the large proportion of illegitimacy prevalent, add to
the problem. Mr. Ritchie felt that unfaithfulness in
marriage and related questions w^ere so serious as to
require a special conference to discuss them.

Sunday observance in the countries under review
is most difficult. The most attractive excursions, and
business meetings of clubs, commercial houses and

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 151

political parties are held on Sundays. When men join
evangelical churches, they are apt to be so interrelated
socially, industrially and by ties of kinship to those
about them who care little for the sacredness of the
day that to expect any immediate sensitiveness to the
question of Sunday observance is as unreasonable as
it is desirable. The probationary period required by
many denominations as a test of willingness to follow
Christ in all things strengthens the Sabbath-keeping
spirit of candidates. Evangelical churches have
thrown their influence on the side of a more scriptural
use of Sunday and have uttered their testimony against
its flagrant abuses. These and other influences have
actually crystallized into statutes, Argentina, for exam-
ple, having passed a Sunday law that has been in force
for a decade. Other countries have initiated legislation
having the same object in view, so that the problem
is lightening. Yet it still remains. As a missionary
in Brazil puts it : "The real 'Sunday problem' before
the mission churches to-day is to find out reverently
and prayerfully what is essential with respect to Sun-
day in the light of God's Word, and what is traditional
only. . . . The evangelical forces must come to
some conviction as to the ideals of Sunday observance
w^hich they will seek to bring to bear on the life habits
of their converts. There must be an attempt by con-
structive processes to bring about a more wholesome
use of the Sunday holiday by the social groups which'
live apart from the disciplinary and cultural processes
of the evangelical churches. The very best experience

152 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

of Christian leaders in all parts of the world should be
drawn upon to this end."

Intemperance is an evil which prevails all over Latin
America. Native wines, imported liquors, alcohol
made in the great sugar areas of Peru, Argentina and
Brazil, are sold in almost every kind of commercial
house, and are accessible in every restaurant, dining-
car and hotel. The voice of the evangelical Church in
this wide field is practically unanimous in condemning
this evil. Temperance societies are now being formed
by Latin Americans in the different countries, and
scientific temperance instruction has been introduced
into the public schools of Peru and to some extent in
Uruguay and other countries. Whatever there is of
teaching throughout these lands as to total abstinence
from alcoholic liquors is due in its inception to the
evangelical movement.

A fourth besetting sin of Latin Americans, though
not deemed sinful by many, as it is frequently under
Church oversight, is gambling, especially in the form
of lotteries. All church members are brought face to
face with it and its variations in the guise of raffles and
other schemes of chance. For the majority of them
it appears to be perfectly legitimate to purchase lottery
tickets, for this is sanctioned by the government. More-
over, those who fail to draw premiums consent to this
on purchasing tickets and are prepared for it. Indeed,
the selling of these tickets gives employment to very
many needy persons, especially to the maimed and
crippled. It is not easy to convince impulsive Latins

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 153

of the evil of the lottery; years of courageous exposi-
tion of ethical principles and of patient dealing with
departures from these standards are required before
it ceases.

The churches under consideration are very much
like the one in Corinth whose problems, as revealed in
his first Corinthian epistle, caused St. Paul so much
anxiety and called for such sternness. It is for that
reason that the Commission thus writes: "The evan-
gelical churches should always and everywhere guard
against falling into lax ways in the matter of disci-
pline. Church membership should ever be held incom-
patible with lying, stealing, adultery, dishonest prac-
tices and in fact with any expression of a low standard
of morals." It would be wholly unjust to infer that
evangelical church members of Latin America are typ-
ically described in the warning quoted; they are the
exceptions while every church has its saints, just as did
those of apostolic days.

In turning from the grosser weaknesses of the evan-
gelical communities to consider the spiritual life of
their churches, one takes heart despite the lacks still
evident there. It is obviously a more openly tested
life than is found in Protestant lands. Volumes could
be written telling of persecutions ranging all the way
from malicious libel and the petty social slights and
business boycotts, which are the commonplace expe-
riences of new members, up to imprisonment. These
things are met in the spirit of good soldiership, and
those who have once identified themselves openly with

154 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

the Church are rarely known to have permitted perse-
cution to swerve them from their loyahy to Christ.
Other evidences of spiritual faithfulness when under
test are seen when men give up a lucrative business
because they will not work on Sunday, or because the
giving or receiving of bribes was demanded. Some
have restored money unlawfully taken; others have
banished liquor from their stores, thereby losing many
of their most profitable customers; still others have
ended unlawful family relations by a marriage which
was a public confession of former wrong-doing, not
easy for those who made it.

In the more specifically religious duties of Chris-
tians, it is gratifying to find that in many churches a
considerable proportion of the membership is found at
every preaching service and at prayer-meetings and
other public functions of the church, attending in all.
five or six services a week. If the prayer-meeting is
a spiritual thermometer of the Church, then it must
be admitted that the spirituality of Latin church mem-
bers is perhaps deeper than in the home lands ; for the
attendance is greater and the prayers more spontaneous
in the former than in the latter. However, other
factors besides spirituality determine one's presence
at prayer-meetings. The greatest difficulty in these
meetings is not in getting people to attend and to pray,
but in making them realize the true significance of
prayer and in preventing merely perfunctory praying.
An additional proof of the genuine spiritual life of
the converts is seen in their custom of reading and

"1

1^ ll-j''

SEA WALL CHURCH, PANAMA
CONTINUATION COMMITTEE

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 155

Studying the Bible. Many young Christians put older
ones to shame by the assiduous way in which they
drink at the living springs of revelation. In the Church
at large, however, there is the same lack of Bible study
as is found elsewhere. It is not so easy to arrive at
just conclusions as to the spiritual status of members
of these churches by the evangelistic activities in which
they are willing to participate. The larger number of
those who are ready to undertake such work are far
more ready to denounce evil ways than to instill right-
eous purposes. Yet a steady increase of true evangelis-
tic zeal is noted.

A member of the Commission writes from Brazil as
follows: "A deeply spiritual pastor tends to make a
deeply spiritual church; and a spiritual church, if prop-
erly led, inevitably becomes an intensely aggressive
church. . . . Our greatest need in Latin America
is for competent, aggressive. Spirit-filled leadership.
Our people are ready to follow where such leadership
is found, taking part in personal evangelism, in tract
distribution, in the holding of cottage prayer-meetings
and in the manifold activities of church upbuilding."

Over against this help to spirituality the Commission
noted as hindrances the lack of devotional literature
in Spanish and Portuguese and the absence of a sense
of personal responsibility for the performance of their
ordinary church duties noted among many of the
members. They have been brought up to think that
the Church will go on, whether those composing it
actively cooperate or not. Not a few Sunday-school

156 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

teachers and church officials accept their duties and
then perform them when they are incHned to do so.
Their children attend Sunday-school no oftener than
they please, and their absence receives no rebuke from
the parents.

The task of self -propagation of the evangelical
Church was urged by the Commission as a corrective
of imperfectly developed or waning spirituality. "The
principal aim of every intelligent pastor," it declares,
"should be to set every member to work. Every mem-
ber who is not interested in some branch of Christian
work will very likely soon be lost to the Church. By
the employment of various methods, the problem of
self -propagation will have been solved ; and the spirit-
ual life and missionary spirit of the Church will have
been aroused to its highest pitch through the spiritual
life and activity of each member coming to realize
what is his duty to God and to the dying world around
him." Many churches contribute to the Board under
whose care they are, while some have taken the initi-
ative in work in behalf of other races. Five years
ago a group of Christians of one denomination organ-
ized a Board of Missions, raised among the churches
a fund of $i,ooo a year, appointed two of their number
and sent them to three of the Indian tribes of central
Mexico. This organization has also made an annual
contribution for some years to help sustain an inde-
pendent work in Chile. Several missionaries urge the
organization of active members of the church into
small bands for aggressive evangelism, planning their

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 157

work and keeping them inspired for its performance.
A woman's missionary society for work at their own
doors was another proposal looking toward self -prop-
agation.

Problems of self-support were discussed, with more
frequent references to successful methods in Korea
and Africa than in Latin America. If beginnings had
been in that direction, as was the case in Korea, possi-
bly results would have been like the church growing
out of the voluntary Bible reading of a Negro me-
chanic which won his master's family, led to the estab-
lishment of an evangelical community and the erection
of the only building in Ecuador dedicated exclusively
to gospel service. More applicable than the Korean,
Chinese and African illustrations of self-support was
that of the Philippine Islands — apparently drawn from
the experience of the Commission's chairman — as
conditions there more nearly parallel those obtaining
in Latin America. An itinerancy for preaching the
simple gospel led to the conversion of a few. From
these the most fit were chosen to conduct Sunday serv-
ices and one on mid-week. The missionary visited
them once in two or three months, the members in the
meanwhile maintaining their own meetings and gather-
ing in others. As a result, within seven years that
denomination had gathered into its church fellowship
over 20,000 believers, and more than a hundred se-
lected exhorters and local preachers were preaching
from one to three times weekly without so much as
thinking of receiving salary. Three or four of the

158 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Stronger churches had undertaken the entire support
of their Fihpino pastors who gave all their time to the
work.

In Latin America an error may have been made of
the sort described by a Buenos Aires missionary : "I am
beginning to feel that it is a mistake to go into a city
and put up a building of a given sort and say to the
people in effect: *Come and be our members; that is
all that you have to do, as we pay all expenses for
building and for running the church. All you have to
do is to be good Christians and just members.* I
think it is a mistake to let the people feel that it is the
Board's house, organ and seats, that this is the Board's
man that we have for pastor and that nothing is ours."
Another writes from Mexico: "If we continue the
present plan, we shall not establish self-sustaining
churches in Mexico in one hundred years. If the peo-
ple realize the pastor's financial dependence upon them,
they will rally to his support, not only financially, but
otherwise; they will attend his meetings more regu-
larly and aid him in the work which is one between him
and them, and not between him and some Board." An
inspiring example of what Latin America actually has
done in this direction is supplied by the independent
Brazilian Presbyterian Churches where self-support
was urged from the first. They maintain public wor-
ship, are developing a strong national ministry and
pay for everything which is done by Brazilians. To
secure self-support evangelical Christians must be in-
sistently taught the obligations of stewardship of life

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 159

and property and the privilege of making sacrifices for
the Church and its Lord.

Of three marks of a well developed national Church,
self -propagation, self-support and self-government, the
last is in Latin America a peculiarly delicate one to
debate. The Congress faced these facts. First, a
large percentage of church expenses is paid by the
sending Societies, making it seem desirable for them
to retain control of funds, and hence with little inde-
pendence of the churches so supported. Yet the Pres-
byterian Church of Brazil is independent of the sup-
porting Board in New York, except for a certain
amount of money granted each year to aid the weaker
churches, the grant being diminished ten percent, each
year. Missionaries cooperate with it by developing
new fields which are later turned over to the national
Church. While some would object to placing so much
power in the hands of the national evangelical Church,
nothing was made more evident to the Commission
than that the Church in the field should be given a
larger share in the initiation and prosecution of the
common task than has been accorded it hitherto.

Again, as the evangelical communities enlist the mid-
dle and higher classes in their membership, there is a
growing restlessness because missionaries are slow to
admit members of the national Churches to member-
ship upon administrative and disciplinary committees
and boards. Upon this point the Commission thus
expressed itself : "We note a growing tendency to put
responsibility upon the native Church and to rely upon

i6o RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

the guidance of native leaders in local affairs. We
believe that this is in accord with the best principles
and especially the general principle that the work of
evangelization of the field belongs, and should even-
tually be left, to the members of the native Church/*

Finally, premonitions were noted of a movement,
similar to that underlying the two Presbyterian
Churches in Brazil, which would establish organiza-
tions made up wholly of national members and minis-
ters and entirely independent of support, guidance, or
direction in any form from non-Latin Boards and
Churches. The action of the Conference at Cincinnati
with regard to united work and exchange of properties
and constituencies between two Boards showed, at a
special meeting of some of the delegates concerned,
that Mexican leaders did not approve of being thus
disposed of, as would not have been possible for an
independent Church. When the time comes for na-
tional leadership of sufficient strength, as in parts of
Brazil, this may be wise ; but the Latin leaders do not
advise any further action at present.

The great need of a numerous and fully qualified
national leadership as a vital prerequisite of Latin
evangelical Church development, which other Commis-
sions had insisted upon, was even more prominent in
the report and discussion of this theme. Here the for-
eign, as well as the national leader, was considered.
As the missionary is so often the foremost man of an
evangelical community, he should have had, first of
all, a personal experience of the living God, with its

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES i6i

resultant soundness of character. And yet it must be
more than intuitive faith and an axiomatic moraHty
that he brings to men. Latins will question the moral
standards of Christianity and also the authority of
Christ in the realm of morals and ethics; and unless
he is able to meet them on their own ground, his work
will be unfruitful. A second characteristic of foreign
leadership is a keen sense of the brotherhood of the
human race. There is no place in Latin America for
the missionary who believes in the special election and
high calling of the Anglo-Saxon or any other race to
a predestined supremacy of the world. A third essen-
tial for one who is to lead is tactful sympathy. The
social evil, illiteracy, mendicancy, intemperance, poli-
tical corruption, hatred and a host of other evils can
no more be eradicated by cynical criticism in Latin
America than in any other land. These are not Latin
evils but are common to humanity. He who would
serve any people must be as considerate, as friendly
and as loving as his Master. A fourth characteristic
required for leadership in this work is broad culture.
There is no danger of putting too much emphasis upon
the intellectual training of those who are to work
among the western representatives of one of the most
brilliantly intellectual races that the world has known.
Nowhere is the obstacle which bars the access of the
gospel to the hearts of men so preeminently an in-
tellectual one.

But evangelical missionaries are bound to be rela-
tively ephemeral in Latin America. The future great-

i62 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ness or failure of these republics is in the hands of
their educated leaders. The Latin evangelical who
would win men of culture and influence cannot do so
if he is dogmatic and savors of hollow ecclesiasticism.
No insincerity will be permitted ; obscurantism is even
more objectionable in Protestants than in the Roman
Church. Among the intellectuals he will need to meet
such a challenge as Argymiro Galvao, formerly pro-
fessor of philosophy in the law school at Sao Paulo,
publishes in his lecture on 'The Conception of God.**
"We are in the realm of realism; the reason medi-
tates not on theological principles, but on facts fur-
nished by experience. God is a myth; He has no
reality; He is not an object of science." The national
leader must recognize likewise the self-consciousness
of the dominant classes in these virile republics. They
are proud of their history and of their heritage and
are slow to submit to foreign influence.

The quest for such men as can lead worthily the
Latin evangelical Churches is one demanding time
and patience. One of the weaknesses of foreign mis-
sionary effort has been the expectation of results with-
out allowing the necessary time for their production.
This too often leads to ''hot-house" methods, with
premature ripeness and quick decay. But time alone
will not secure leaders. Prolonged Christian nurture
and superlative mental training are essential. The
state and national institutions must be looked to for
some of these men; and if their allegiance and enlist-
ment can be secured, the campaign is half won. How

THE LATIN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES 163

can an effective appeal be made to these students?
The Commission replies thus : "We shall win them
to faith in Jesus Christ and a dedication to His service
only as we treat human problems, both intellectual and
moral, with unflinching honesty; as we put ourselves
in sympathetic touch with the best in their national
aspirations; as we believe that the Latin American
will have his own contribution to make to the great
composite which will one day be the religion of the
race."

Where shall such leaders receive the special prep-
aration for their momentous task? In Europe or
North America, some insist. Yet the student going
to those lands lives an exotic life; he is in danger of
losing sympathy and touch with his own people; his
foreign training, whether theoretically or practically
considered, is valuable for conditions and theories
widely different from those obtaining in Latin Amer-
ica. These drawbacks are not offset by the advantages
of superior teaching methods and better educational
equipment.

But even if a few choice men are educated abroad,
it is impracticable for many leaders to be sent to those
lands for final education. And here this Commission
faced the same impasse that confronted the one on
"Education." The preparation of men and women for
work among the lower classes is relatively well
provided for ; there is nothing wholly suitable for pre-
paring university graduates for the new positions of
Christian leadership. The report and a hypothetical

i64 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Statement of Dr. Chester on the floor hinted at the
possibility of special churches in a few great cultural
centers where this class could be ministered unto
separately. Already the Young Men's Christian
Association is doing something for those who will be
leaders in the professions and in business, but the
Church has yet to be built in which Christian leaders
can meet intellectuals week by week and face to face.
The preparation of these preachers and religious
guides waits for that great Christian university,
with its broad and devout theological department,
where a select few may be prepared inwardly and
intellectually for the most rewarding duty of the
evangelical Church. When that day dawns these
Latin republics will have their Martin Luther and
John Knox, their John Wesley and Charles Finney,
their Sherwood Eddy and John R. Mott. Meanwhile
the Commission was not unmindful of lay leadership
in every walk in life and of that greater company of
humble Christian workers and pastors in whose faith-
ful hands is the shepherd's crook and whose loving
counsels and helpful ministry to body and soul will
build up the evangelical churches and hasten the com-
ing of a spiritual Kingdom whose Head is Jesus Christ
Himself.

VIII
THE HOME FULCRUM

The report of Commission VII on "The Home
Base/' with Mr. Harry Wade Hicks as its experienced
chairman, dealt only with the home operations of
North American Societies having work in Latin
America. Time limitations and other serious difficul-
ties prevented the extensive correspondence involved
in an international presentation of the subject. Yet
it should be recalled that the twenty-one denominations
in the United States and Canada having missions in
Latin America include 137,789 churches or parishes
out of approximately 150,000, or a little more than
nine-tenths of the Protestant churches in these coun-
tries. It is vitally important that these millions of
Christians should be thoroughly aroused for the sup-
port of missions among their southern neighbors. The
program for the development of interest in their life
and religious problems is less advanced than in the
case of Asiatic and African fields, yet the Panama
Congress cannot fail to increase greatly intelligence
and the sense of obligation toward Latin America.

The Commission was impressed with the special
need of intercession for that part of the world where
the delicacy and greatness of the task is little ap-
preciated and whose claims Christians of North

165

i66 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

America so little heed. In Europe, the great war,
and certain theories of interchurch relationships al-
ways, are responsible for the still greater lukewarm-
ness in furthering work among the Latin republics.
Hence an opening statement of the report : "The con-
viction that through intercessory prayer the difficul-
ties surrounding the work are to be overcome has been
deepened week by week as the investigations have
progressed. Whatever other measures may be ad-
vanced for developing cooperation at the home base,
the duty of praying for the missions and workers in
Latin-American lands, for their adequate support and
for the peoples for whom they are laboring, is upheld
by the Commission as the one indispensable condition
of success." In general such an emphasis is more
common in Great Britain than in North America.

The Commission diagnosed the abnormal attitude of
Christians toward evangelical work in Latin lands as
the first step in its treatment of the case. Ignorance
is a root reason for indifference. With a little knowl-
edge of their revolutions, politics, trade and possibly
geography, their moral and spiritual conditions and
problems have been slighted or overlooked altogether.
Hesitation to speak or write concerning their moral
and spiritual shortcomings on account of a moving
sense of sins and frailties nearer home has contributed
still further to apathy. An impression of the strength
of the Roman Church in Latin America combined with
an ignorance of its inadequacy to minister to the soul's
needs in those countries is additional reason for lack

THE HOME FULCRUM 167

of interest. Few realize the slight hold that the
Catholic Church has on the multitudes, the grow-
ing infidelity among educated men, and the hundreds
of thousands of unevangelized Indians and the vast
extent of territory in a land Hke Brazil, as a single
example, entirely untouched by either Protestant or
Romanist. These and eight minor reasons for lack of
interest in Latin missions were symptomatic of the
fundamental failure to appreciate spiritual needs and
values and of a lack of personal experience of the
impelling power of the gospel of Christ.

Yet over against this apathy is placed the growing
interest in Latin-American lands. Political develop-
ments and even wars and revolutions have forced
certain problems upon the public attention. Confer-
ences between Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United
States concerning Mexican problems have brought
these powerful nations of South America to the favor-
able attention of diplomats and citizens alike. Com-
merce and trade, affecting the tables and the pocket-
books of most North Americans to a slight degree at
least, link North and South. A better mutual under-
standing is due to visits of eminent statesmen, like
Ex-President Roosevelt, Lord Bryce and Secretaries
Bryan and Root, of scientific expeditions and their
influential heads, and especially of such religious
leaders as Drs. Mott, Speer and Clark. Then force-
ful missionaries and secretaries, like Bishops Kin-
solving and Stuntz and Dr. Harry Guinness, have
done much within recent years to enlighten and in-

i68 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

spire their readers and hearers, as they have discussed
this last land of desire. The northward flowing
stream of Latin- American students has supplied at
many centers a group of interpreters of their own
countrymen, as they have mingled with the great mass
of their fellows in educational institutions and at col-
lege Christian conferences. Literature, too, is largely
responsible for the increasing respect for and interest
in the peoples and problems of our Latin neighbors.

Almost universal ignorance as to things Latin-
American and the consequent apathy concerning them,
with the slowly awakening interest on the part of a
few, call for a constructive program of education.
Arguments for a campaign of instruction as the basis
of any intelligent scheme of Christian work are not
far to seek. Commissions I and II had revealed vast
areas unoccupied and great multitudes unreached by
the evangelical message. This is what Bishop Oldham
referred to in the discussion as "the size of the job,'*
concerning which he said : "Our people like big
things, and they are profoundly moved when you put
before them even the physical meaning of the prob-
lem. I do not know any congregation in North
America that does not love to hear that Brazil alone
is as big as the United States, that there is room in
its vast territories for new rivers to be discovered,
even if there continue to be 'rivers of doubt.' They
are interested to hear of a land so big that you can
lose everybody in it except a certain ex-President."
Self-interest also requires this knowledge, since in a

THE HOME FULCRUM 169

reflex way Latin-American politics, education, and
social and religious conditions affect other nations,
particularly the United States. Helping to solve the
educational, social and religious problems of those
countries will augment their peace and prosperity and
hence increase the stability and wealth of the world.
As students of Christian efficiency, valuable sugges-
tions are derivable from an unprejudiced study of the
failures and successes of the Roman Church in Latin
America. Do we lack the heroic and self-sacrificing
in our lives as Christian workers? The life-stories of
evangelical missionaries, national and foreign, supply
this inspiration to well-doing. Dr. Grenfell in his
perilous Labrador ministry is no more stimulating
than many unsung heroes and heroines of Moravian
missions in Guiana, than Grubb in his early ex-
periences in the Paraguayan Chaco, or than the starv-
ing missionary company headed by Captain Gardiner
in Tierra del Fuego. As the Great Commission does
not read, *'Go ye into all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature except the Latin Americans,"
and as they sorely need that gospel, we should have
in our minds and hearts a bill of particulars that will
supply the sufficient motive.

The Commission's report cautions us to bear in
mind the misleading character of comparative statis-
tics of numerical need. Thus South America has as
high a ratio of missionaries to the population as some
Asiatic countries. Its greater claims are realized only
when one recalls the sparsity of population and the

170 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

inadequate means of communication there in com-
parison with those of Japan and India. Nor should
South America be considered as a unit in such mat-
ters. Even the one country of Brazil varies greatly
in its different states. Thus while the republic as a
whole is said to have one missionary to 90,000 in-
habitants, in North Brazil there is one to 200,000 in-
habitants, and these populations are thinly scattered
over almost interminable stretches of plain, mountain
and jungle — much of it being almost unequalled in
its deadly climate. We were also asked to remember
that Latin-American prices are so much higher in
most republics that a given sum of money will not
buy as much as in most mission countries; and, fur-
ther, that the aesthetic sense of Latins and in some
sections the climate demand unusually substantial and
well-built plants. In view of these financial dif-
ferences, the statement of expenditures by eleven of
the leading Societies, having work in Latin America
and also in other parts of the mission field, is some-
what disappointing. In the year 19 13- 14, these
Societies expended on Latin-American work $1,655,-
010 while in their other missions the expenditure was
$10,326,194. That is, they invested in Latin fields a
little less than one-sixth of the amount sent to other
lands, though the purchasing power of money was
far less there than in the other countries.

A survey, largely statistical, of what was being
done in the field under consideration, for which the
home base is responsible, occupied about a fourth of

THE HOME FULCRUM 171

the report. There are sixty-five sending Societies
working for the evangelization of Latin America,
divided among the sending lands as follows : Canada,
three; the United States, forty-six; Great Britain,
twelve; New Zealand, one; international Societies,
three. These numbers are somewhat misleading to
the average layman, because they include Societies
some of which send out missionaries and leave them,
to shift largely for themselves, and others of which
have resources so small as to be totally unable to da
any educational or institutional work worthy the
name. With these sixty-five sending Societies there
are thirty-seven auxiliary or cooperating, non-sending
Societies. The seven Latin-American countries in
which the largest number of sending Societies are at
work are the following: Argentina, nineteen; Mexico,
seventeen; Brazil and Porto Rico, thirteen each; and
British Guiana and Cuba twelve each ; Central America
and Porto Rico, sixteen each; Brazil, fifteen; British
Guiana and Jamaica, thirteen each.

Some of the financial items are these. The appro-
priations for Latin America by the largest Boards
were tabulated for five five-year periods, from 1889
to 1914 inclusive. The totals of 1889-1894 and 1909-
1914 respectively were $3,659,858.23 and $10,565,-
000.05, an increase in twenty-five years of nearly
threefold the appropriations of the first five years.
An analysis of the expenditures in Latin America of
twenty- four North American Societies shows how
every dollar contributed is used when subdivided for

172 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

these purposes: For salaries, 31.8 cts. ; for support
of native work, 28.5 cts. ; evangelistic work, 14.6 cts. ;
work among unevangelized Indians, 9.3 cts.; new
property and school buildings, 7.2 cts.; special work,
3.7 cts.; medical work, 3.1 cts.; literary work, 1.2
cts.; and for industrial work, six mills only.

An attempt to discover what causes had led to large
gifts to missions in Latin America was only partially
successful; yet it seemed to indicate that in a majority
of cases the impulse came from a visit to some of
those republics. Dr. Chester, in the discussion, stated
that in the Southern Presbyterian Church three men
gave about one-twelfth of their Board's entire mis-
sionary income, and that not one of them had visited
the fields. Preliminary prayer and then sitting down
beside them and telling them the facts fully had been
the means used. A layman of another Church after
visiting Cuba began a work there which he thus
describes: "What led me to become interested was
that I had often heard of this cut-off district east of
the mountain range, with a population of 25,000 and
no Protestant force to help them. I promised to
finance the whole undertaking for a year. I have
never had a place to stop and have invested to date
about $39,000 in the work in eastern Cuba." He
began the first year by providing funds for five chapels
and five Cuban workers. The administration of the
mission was left to his Society, of course.

The home base cares for other than strictly Latin-
American constituencies in those lands. A very im-

THE HOME FULCRUM 175

portant enterprise of this sort is securing ministers for
churches for EngHsh-speaking peoples in port cities.
Thus the Congress held one of its evening sessions
in the Union Church of Panama, and was also in-
debted greatly to its pastor for the manifold services
rendered to its delegates. In Mexico City also is a
Union Church aided by the North American Com«
mittee on Anglo-American Communities Abroad. An-
other exceedingly important work of the same Com-
mittee is a ''Tourist Guide, Missions and English Ser-
vices, Latin America," prepared by a committee of
which Dr. Speer is chairman and which has been dis-
tributed to the number of about ten thousand copies
for the use of travelers and immigrants to those
republics.

Latin-American students in the sending countries
constitute a most important opportunity for dwellers
at the home base. In 191 5 it was estimated that two
thousand of them were studying in sixty-four institu-
tions of the United States and Canada. They seek an
education for the sake of service to their home lands ;
and when returning thither, they interpret in daily
life and conversation those experiences that have im-
pressed them most deeply. They come from wealthy
and influential families, for the most part, and return
to become leaders in commerce, in the professions and
as captains of industry. These ambitious and gifted
men appreciate to the full the genuine friendship of
Christian people and the fellowship found in Christian
institutions and homes. The early days and months

174 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

of their stay in a new land are the critical ones, and
Christian help should not be lacking then especially.
Sympathy and friendship will react favorably as they
return home, while neglect, ridicule and harshness will
be a distinct hindrance to the evangelical cause in
Latin America. Though societies like Corda Fratres
and Cosmopolitan Clubs are very helpful here, the
Young Men's Christian Association, particularly its
Student Department, can impart a more warmly Chris-
tian touch than those excellent secular organizations.
Happily, it has been continually aggressive in its con-
tact and helpfulness to those in colleges of the United
States, through its Committee to Promote Friendly
Relations among Foreign Students.

Home base plans for the promotion of prayer for
Latin lands are various, though not as generally em-
ployed as could be desired. Prayer calendars are the
most commonly used among these helps, and when
supplemented by special leaflets for specific Latin fields,
they have aided the cause. Three Societies report the
existence of leagues of prayer for missions. These
organizations communicate by letter or printed page
calls for prayer in which special needs and workers
are mentioned. What has proved helpful to the Con-
gregationalists and the Northern Baptists and Meth-
odists should be more widely used in this cause.

The Commission found many suggestions in the
experience of North American workers as it investi-
gated the methods and means employed at present in
developing an interest in Latin-American missions. In

THE HOME FULCRUM 175

local congregations sermons and special addresses
may be effectively used to bring the field before large
audiences. It could not recommend strongly the use
of general and church periodicals for the purpose of
promotion, since they have little that is to the point.
Even The Missionary Review of the World had diffi-
culty in securing suitable articles on these lands.
Prayer-meetings seldom include that part of the world
in the program of subjects. Even mission study
classes have done relatively little for Latin America.
Sunday schools and young people's societies report
scant attention paid to this subject. Women's mis-
sionary societies are more alive to the importance of
Latin countries than the Church at large. Through
special programs, appropriate leaflets and attractive
articles they acquaint their constituencies concerning
conditions and the work being done.

In our day of great missionary conferences one
would think that through such channels at least much
might be done to promote the cause. Yet with the
exception of the Presbyterians, Methodists and South-
ern Baptists, who place it on the same level as other
fields, as does the Laymen's Missionary Movement,
even South America is still the "Neglected Continent."
The greatest exception to this general rule is the Mis-
sionary Education Movement which provides for its
adequate presentation on its influential platforms.

This last named organization is foremost also in
providing a literature of promotion for Latin America.
Hitherto it had provided study text-books for South

376 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

America, which have been used extensively and
profitably by the Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist
young people. Its program for 19 16-17 surpasses all
previous efforts, as the list includes nearly half a dozen
books for study use, besides the full report of the
Panama Congress and the present volume, to be used
for reference. The women's Central Committee on
the United Study of Missions has sold about sixty
thousand copies of Dr. and Mrs. Clark's "The Gospel
in Latin Lands," and the Council of Women for Home
Missions report between one hundred and fifty and
two hundred thousand books on Latin-American and
Home Missions as used for promotion purposes. The
Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions
makes the cause prominent not only on its quadrennial
Convention platform, but also in its sectional meetings
and in the presentation of fields in colleges and uni-
versities. Through six of its own volumes and six
published by the Missionary Education Movement its
study classes have gotten an intimate knowledge of
Latin fields. Class enrolment showed for nine years
an attendance ranging from forty-four to over three
thousand annually. That such studies are not in vain
is suggested by the fact that of over five thousand
student volunteers sailing between 1907-14 inclusive,
eight hundred and sixty-two went to Latin America.
Other organizations furthering missions in Latin
America are the great Bible Societies through their
periodicals and platform presentation of Bible work;
the general Young Men's Christian Association

THE HOME FULCRUM 177

through public addresses, publications, photographs
and reports; the indirectly helpful propaganda of the
Pan-American Union with its palatial headquarters in
Washington; and the conference at Lake Mohonk,
which includes Latin lands in its program, as also
Clark University's lectures and conferences.

Methods for attracting attention and imparting the
desired information and inspiration, in addition to
those already mentioned, are both varied and ingen-
ious. Maps, pictures, stereopticon talks, dramatic pre-
sentations and even pageants have been employed for
such purposes. Ten Boards have made special pro-
vision for interesting children.

Once more the Commission went through the cate-
gories in reply to the question, What measures are re-
quired to secure adequate support of Christian work in
Latin America? In brief the answer is, Do all that
you have done heretofore, with greater energy, with
enlarging conceptions and with fuller cooperation.
Prayer again led the van, and ten suggestions for
making intercession more effective were noted. The
ninth was new and worthy of reproducing : "The pub-
lication in a magazine, or a circular letter to members
of prayer groups, of answers to prayer in the fields
of Christian work in Latin America should be ar-
ranged as an assurance to faith and an aid to prayers
of thanksgiving." The first one was also important,
urging missionaries to send to the home base lists of
specific objects of prayer to be printed for general
and for private use.

178 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Anent the portrayal of the spiritual needs of Latin
countries, the importance of humility and a recogni-
tion of similar weaknesses in the sending countries was
put very happily. That section concludes with a state-
ment made on the subject by a friend of the cause,
who writes : "I do not believe in anti-Catholic prop-
aganda here or in South America, except it be full
of love. Place emphasis first on the fact that fifty
per cent, of the thinking men of South America are
not in full sympathy with the Roman Catholic Church
and its teaching. If their own Church does not at-
tract them, we should endeavor to do so. Emphasize,
secondly, that many of their altruistic men are enemies
of religion, because they want to help their people to
better things, and they believe religion is hindering.
If they feel thus, their own Church cannot help them.
We must do so. A patient process of education, such
as we have used to overcome general missionary in-
difference at the home base, ought to be undertaken, but
on the lines indicated just above."

Brotherly relations with Latin Americans can be
strengthened through church leadership in communities
where they are temporarily residing, particularly in
large university centers; through a free interchange
of thought and of directed observation in lands where
Latins or Anglo-Saxons are strangers ; through intro-
ductions given by missionaries to merchants or
students going abroad, thus securing them friends and
helpers in need; through a union of Societies for pro-
moting friendly relations; through personal calls by

THE HOME FULCRUM 179

missionaries on furlough upon persons from Latin
America; through inviting students and other com-
petent speakers to address various classes upon their
country and its present outlook — a suggestion help-
ful enough, if the speaker has a facile use of English,
but harmful to the cause with a halting, indistinct
speaker; through a study with Latins of problems
facing them at home which find partial solution in the
experience of other countries; and through the pro-
motion of personal religious work with those ready
for it. All this should be done in the spirit suggested
by Dr. Mott : "That race will be most blessed which
gives its best with generous hand, not in fear and
not with ulterior motives, but with sincere recognition
of all that is good in others and with unselfish motives ;
and which in all its intercourse tries to see with the
other's eyes and to sympathize with the other's
hopes."

Though statements concerning literature had be-
come repetitious, the emphasis on providing material
that has a human interest and written in a style
which is attractive is most important. "The Com-
mission believes that every Christian worker entering
Latin America for life service should give considera-
tion to literary style and force in writing, and that
the faculties of observation should be exercised in-
telligently and persistently, based on a progressive
study of conditions at the home base and the best
methods of appealing to the imagination and will
through the printed page." Some exceedingly good

i8o RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

hints relating to photography as helpful to the literary
and platform propaganda, and as requiring previous
mastery of the art, might have been taken from the
chairman's own experiences in successful field photog-
raphy.

The plea for more frequent and better coached dep-
utations from the home base to Latin fields was
most timely and helpful. It might have been more
closely linked with what is said of publicity, as one
main function of deputations is to use information
and inspiration derived from missionary visitation to
stir the churches and the general public. Yet the
Commission had a wider objective in that section of
its report, as too little systematic work has been done
looking toward the most effective publication of
dynamic material. A development of the Southern
News Bureau, or a broader scheme in the special in-
terests of Latin America, would do much for the
cause of evangelical missions.

A last word was said as to education in matters
Latin-American, especially those affecting spiritual and
moral issues. In twelve concise propositions — though
two are long — the best that can be done through that
medium w^as set forth most practically. If facts are
the fuel of missionary fires, and if reading and study
are the brush-hooks and axes for making them usable,
this section alone is worth much.

As only one session was devoted to the "Home
Base," and as even that period was shortened by other
business, the discussion was less full than usual. Dr.

THE HOME FULCRUM i8i

Browning reminded defenders of missions that the
objection against work in South America could be met
by Roman Catholicism's best representatives who
would probably reiterate what a bishop of that Church
said to an evangelical missionary when he came to
Chile : "I am glad to welcome you to this land. We
cannot manage it. Moreover, we have lost our hold
on the population. If you can bring any inspiration
to our people, I for one shall be glad to welcome yoy
to a part in our work." In that republic there are
about seven hundred priests of whom three hundred
are in teaching or other positions, leaving four
hundred for the regular church work of almost four
millions, or nearly ten thousand people to a single
priest. As Chile is better provided than many other
sections, one Catholic preaching priest for ten
thousand of the population is perhaps a safe estimate
for all Latin America. He certainly needs the help
welcomed by this enlightened bishop.

Bishop Lambuth urged the home base to embrace
in its poHcy the possibility of every person's hearing
the gospel, and that mainly through the national
Churches, working out from all centers of twenty
thousand people where a strong missionary should be
resident. He pleaded also for a vertical as well as a
horizontal occupation of the field,— for a plan that
w^ould reach various classes, high and low alike.

Bishop McConnell desired to emphasize for the con-
sideration of friends at home the words of Phillips
Brooks, said of Japan,— that it is the business of the

i82 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Christian Church to take the Lord Jesus to these lands
and leave Him there, that there may be worked out
any form of Christianity that may prove to be fitted
best for the people of that country.

The Rev. Stuart McNairn spoke of the viewpoint of
the British public which criticises missions in Latin
lands. Again and again the clergy had said to him:
"The Roman Catholic Church, our sister Church, is
already in possession of the field. It is mere im-
pertinence to attempt to work in that field." His re-
sponse to them was this: "Whatever the Church of
Rome feels about it, the people of South America
want us and need us. Every republic in that continent
has altered its constitution in order that Protestant
evangelical work may be carried on within its borders."
English laymen objectors were reminded that British
bondholders were getting millions a week in South
American dividends, and that it was time that they
should do something for that continent.

Bishop Brown told two personal incidents to illus-
trate the importance of prayer in Latin missions — the
power upon his own life in Brazil of old Bishop
White's daily intercession for him, and the picture of
a layman's home in which he found all the members of
a family, even the three-year old boy, praying for
definite persons on the mission field, each choosing
his or her own missionary.

The home base is where the army of gospel con-
quest is to be recruited for Latin America. Once more
the challenge rang out for many and well-prepared

THE HOME FULCRUM 183

volunteers. The ministry has the key to many young
Hves in its hands. The minister can open doors of
vision through which lands of the Southern Cross
will burst upon expectant eyes in a way to allure
young men and women to those countries. High stand-
ards are required for such fields, and a better prep-
aration is requisite than for some other mission coun-
tries. The demand is likewise a many-sided one,
calling for varied talents and gifts.

It was not at all surprising that the last paragaph
of the printed report presented the Commission's chal-
lenge of enlargement and reenforcement, — stronger
work in old stations, extension to new centers, the
entry of Societies not represented hitherto in this
part of the world field. This program of enlargement
and the materialization of plans looking toward
greater cooperation and hence less waste, the proposed
establishment of evangelical churches in unoccupied
regions and among aboriginal races as the citadels of
spiritual conquistadores, can but hearten the home
base and supply the field forces with the needed sinews
of war and the hearts of brave men and women de-
manded for Latin America's uplift.

Though not included in the report of this Commis-
sion, a discussion of the important theme, 'Training
and Efficiency of Missionaries," is summarized here,
since it is a matter entrusted by the missionary
Societies of the United States and Canada to the
Board of Missionary Preparation. Wednesday after-
noon was devoted to its presentation by Director Frank

i84 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

K. Sanders, Ph.D., of that Board. He recapitulated
the history of the organization from its estabHshment
by the Foreign Missions Conference of North America
in 19 1 2, with an account of five objectives already
accomplished or in prospect: (i) The production of
varied literature for missionary candidates, beginning
with the investigation of certain types of service and
ascertaining the most effective preparation for such
tasks; (2) a similar investigation of the six great
fields, — including Latin America whose report was
prepared by Dr. Speer and his committee, — with
definite suggestions as to how to prepare for each;
(3) the study of missionary administration quite
largely from the candidate's point of view; (4) the
general service of a candidate secretary at large, so well
fulfilled by Dr. Sanders; and (5) the standardiza-
tion of institutions in respect to missionary teaching
and the preparation of candidates. What he sought
of members of the Congress was their practical sug-
gestions as to preparation for Latin America, which
the commissions had only occasionally and briefly
touched upon.

From Cuba came the quick response, through Senor
Gonzalez : "We expect all the foreign missionaries to
know our history, to know our society, to know our-
selves. The more a missionary studies all the factors
that have produced the Latin civilization and the Latin
way of thinking and the way the Latins have of ex-
pressing themselves, and how they came to have their
particular institutions, the better will it be for him.

THE HOME FULCRUM 185

. . . It is true that every missionary has to preach
Christ and Him crucified. But the more points of con-
tact you have, the more open ways there are by which
you can preach that Christ and that Christ crucified,
the better. And then we expect you will sympathize
with us in all our trials, tribulations and troubles. We
expect the missionary will preach the gospel but that
he will never preach American Christianity. ... I
mean the work must be done as Paul did his, as I
understand history. . . . Let him bring Christ and
let Christ and the gospel bring the national type; and
that type will grow, and will grow more easily and
strongly and will have deeper root in the public con-
science.'*

In part of a paragraph from Professor Monteverde's
address are suggestions as to two classes to be reached,
who must be prepared for. "In order to speak to
those who are skeptical, one must be familiar with all
that which we call materialism. He must know who
the great writers are in this field, and he must know
their works. And when it comes to speaking to
Roman Catholics, he must know their doctrines and
how they came to be. He must also know how to
defend himself from their attacks. He must know
the character of the Latin American. He must
realize the necessity of being very careful with the
words he uses. He must remember how sensitive
these people are. And with all such high ideals, he
must have a social nature and be able to meet them
on their own ground." Thirty others, nine being

i86 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Latin Americans and five of the thirty being women
delegates, spoke upon the studies, linguistic and other-
wise, to be pursued, upon the varied forms of work to
be done and upon the conservation of time and health
that the newly arrived missionary may most efficiently
carry out his mission. It is possible to add only one
other paragraph from a delegate who represented
the more conservative element in the Congress.

This man, the Rev. Eduardo C. Pereira, Dr. Speer
characterizes as the ''writer of the best Portuguese
grammar used in Brazil, a scholar and a Christian
statesman." He said in part: "There are several
requisites for a successful missionary in Latin
America. First, he must not forget his literary and
theological courses. The Brazilian people will not
respect the man who does not know ; they respect only
the man who does know. The second requisite is
that he shall not be too much of a modernist ; he must
not be full of modern things. The churches want
the pure, full gospel. A third requisite is that he
must never be proud or arrogant. He is to live among
a very susceptible people." It was evident from all of
these speakers that the man or woman going as a
missionary to Latin America must be inwardly
strongly spiritual, outwardly social and tactful, in-
tellectually fully furnished for every demand, and
with an upward look and grip that will enable God's
ambassador to be sure of knowing His will and of
feeling His strength coursing through the life.

IX

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM

Commission VIII on ''Cooperation and the Promo-
tion of Unity," with the Rev. Charles L. Thompson,
D.D., of the Home Missions Council, New York as
chairman, had a subject which had been trenched upon
by every other commission to the extent not only of
having "stolen its thunder," but of having depleted
its clouds of most of their rain. It was thus the
parallel of Commission I. As that discussion of sur-
vey and occupation had necessitated a broad preview
of most of the ground to be covered later by the
other commissions, so this one gave the backward
look and served as a review of certain points in each
of the seven preceding it. Yet its more or less
repetitious character constituted its strength. Each
chairman had shown during the preceding days how
fundamental united hearts and cooperating heads
and hands were for the ideal carrying out of the
operations which his commission had in charge. Now
came the massing of hitherto isolated facts whose joint
impression was more convincing and convicting, more
inspiring and impelling, than had been single units
presented one by one. Cooperation and unity as
presented at Panama were like the pillars Jachin and

187

j88 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Boaz which Solomon set up before his temple. Their
names may have been those of the two donors. Yet
their probable significance in Hebrew correctly de-
scribes the functions of united cooperation, as God
seems to be declaring to His Church to-day, "He
shall establish" — unity, and "In it is strength" —
cooperation.

Occupancy of the field and delimitation of territory
as helpful thereto were considered at the outset. Com-
mission I had displayed its maps on three sides of the
Congress hall — great stretches of territory with only
here and there a center of evangelical light and power.
In only one of these, that of Porto Rico, could one
see how the thirteen Societies were located geographi-
cally; even in that case the wall map did not contain
denominational dividing lines such as appear in "The
Latin American Tourist Guide," page 32. If this map
suggests the political gerrymander, it should be re-
membered that when American Societies entered that
island, the four pioneer Boards sent each a represen-
tative to Dr. Thompson's office, where they knelt
around the map and prayed themselves into positions
that would not permit of friction and duplication of
effort. The present map, as altered by the later entry
of nine other Societies has received its apparent gerry-
mandering intricacies through agreement among
brethren, after the example of Abraham and Lot.

The same could not be said of certain other sec-
tions of Latin America; though thus far occupation
has been on so limited a scale, that duplication and

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 189

friction are not very noticeable, Brazil being the most
open to this weakness. Indeed, Porto Rico raised this
query, in spite of the argument that as part of the
United States it might claim a larger number of mis-
sionaries than other portions of Latin America: **The
question emerges whether the wants of the field could
not now be met by a smaller number; and if so, the
difficult following question will be as to how to secure
this adjustment. To effect the withdrawal of forces
now on the field implies advanced federation ; and yet
it is doubtless one of the present demands of coopera-
tion that there be such a statesmanlike view of the
entire field, that a redistribution of forces may be
effected without jeopardizing the fraternal relations
of the denominations to each other. . . . Thus if
too many Societies are operating in Porto Rico, there
are certainly too few in Central America. Denomina-
tions withdrawing from Porto Rico and extending
their work in Mexico and Central America could not
be regarded as having lost prestige or opportunity.
They will only be using both more strategically and,
by combining with other Societies in the general ar-
rangement, be giving a final view of the solidarity of
Protestant missions."

Turning from questionable sections, the Commis-
sion suggests that the very fact that a territory is
sparsely occupied makes this the time when delimita-
tion of it can be decided upon most easily. In that
case, the entrance of later Societies would be by ar-
rangement with the original Boards. About the un-

190 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

reached Indians there could be no question, especially
those dwelling in barbarism in mountains and forests,
wholly without God and without hope. Though living
in wretchedness, they are not without capacity for use-
ful lives and worthy citizenship. There is little pros-
pect that any possible extension of Roman Catholic
missions will prove adequate to meet their needs. As
separate evangelical missions, touching here and there
a wandering tribe, cannot overtake the task, some con-
certed plan seems to be the only solution of this
problem.

A common understanding and usage, rather than
cooperation, is what is called for under Commission
II on the Message. If to people accustomed to a
united Church, we can show a faith which through
all its diversity has attained a higher unity of love,
yet still maintaining liberty of thought, evangelicals
will speak to sympathetic ears and will find the way
to open minds and hearts. The chairman's closing
presentation of the Commission's view was devoted
largely to this message. It must be distinctly evan-
gelical; it must be spoken positively, constructively,
tenderly; the message must not stand alone, but find
its incarnation in missionaries' lives that truly enter
into Latin- American experiences; it must go into
lowly homes, weeping with the tearful and healing
as it goes. Does anyone inquire as to emphasis, —
whether the message to the individual or its applica-
tion to life, to social or moral conditions, — Dr. Thomp-
son's reply is the inquiry made of the birds flying

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 191

above Ancon Hill : *'Which wing do you emphasize
in your flight? The finest chance for cooperation is
in the social ministries of the gospel. Only common
endeavors can lift communities. Union movements
in matters eleemosynary, education and for moral re-
form, are absolutely essential."

Cooperation in education was too obviously desir-
able to warrant anything more than a roll-call of
republics to see how far it had advanced. Argentina
thought it too early for union movements except in
a theological school. Brazil's three mission colleges
agreed that standardized courses, examinations and
discipline are desirable. The union of Presbyterians
and Methodists in the theological seminary at Campi-
nas w^as an inspiration, present and prospective. Two
seminaries were suggested as being better than one,
however, both to be union but to be located so as to
meet better the needs of the vast area. One union uni-
versity in Brazil was desired for all Portuguese-speak-
ing students. Chile is beginning a union Bible train-
ing school and might work toward a union university.
Cuba pleaded sectional and racial feeling as a reason
for little interest in cooperative educational plans.
Mexico, in revolutions oft, is nevertheless forward in
this matter and has in Coyoacan College a joint institu-
tion for Presbyterians North and South, while North-
ern and Southern Baptists have a plan arranged for
joint academic and theological institutions. In Peru
little is achieved, but there is an acknowledged need of
common courses and methods in their schools. Porto

192 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Rico finds help in United States schools of lower
grades, and in theological education it has the Presby-
terians and United Brethren linked up in a union
Seminary to which other denominations also send
students. As previously recorded, there is a general
desire for cooperation in higher and highest educa-
tional work, with the apex in one or more Christian
universities for Latin republics.

Even more unanimous is the dissatisfaction with
the present dearth of dynamic evangelical literature,
and with the plethora of feeble denominational period-
icals in place of a very few of the highest class. The
Commission quotes an illustration from Dr. Arthur
Brown's "Unity and Missions" as suggestive of a
reason for union publications. An Anglican bishop
conceived the idea of a union catechism. He there-
fore called a meeting of all the missionaries in that
region and proposed an interdenominational committee
to prepare such a booklet, suggesting that everything
upon which they agreed should be put in the body of
the catechism, while subjects upon which there was
disagreement should be relegated to an appendix.
When the work was completed, all were impressed
with the strength of the catechism and with the weak-
ness of the appendix. Eight of the Latin republics
report some progress in union publication and a com-
mon longing for improvement through cooperation.
From Colombia comes a cry for union in producing
apologetic works. *'The supply of such literature is
inadequate, and its character is a disgrace to Protest-

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 193

ant civilization. French free thought is twenty times
better presented to the readers of Colombia than is
evangelical faith. Books on free thought are more
numerous, are cheaper and are written in good
Spanish. A catalogue of such antichristian literature
should be obtained and the efficient answers from an
evangelical point of view should be sought out. We
have a limited amount of really excellent controversial
literature, but where shall we go for a first-class
modern apologetic against the ravages of free thought
and atheism?"

Less was said of the need of cooperation in work
for women than upon its relation to other subjects on
the Congress program. Mrs. Westfall went farther
than others had done in arguing for non-duplication
of women's schools and of other forms of endeavor.
The Societies should make a study of all that is done in
a given field before deciding upon plans. If there was
one kindergarten already in operation in a center, no
other should be started by a second Society, and so
of nurses' training schools, etc. By correlation, after
a careful study of the situation, waste of inadequate
funds, of workers and of energy would be obviated, and
at the same time a well-rounded provision for meeting
the varied needs of womanhood would be made.

From many angles the desirability of having a
common understanding of certain items ecclesiastical
was seen. The evangelical Church in Latin fields
seems to be behind that of other mission lands in this
particular. Discipline varies, and with it spring up

194 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

abuses where members migrate from one denomination
or local church to another. This is especially noted
in Central America, where the number of independent
missions with lax rules is greater than that of regular
Boards. In Porto Rico the interchange of members
is so arranged that little difficulty arises from migra-
tion. The Baptists, Episcopalians and Lutherans are
not included in this arrangement, for obvious yet
regrettable reasons. In not a few countries differences
in salaries paid Latin workers causes trouble. As Sec-
retary Cook puts it: "When we realize that in one
of these great Latin fields we have been so subsidizing
the Church as to hinder the development of the spirit
of independence and self-support and we begin to
tighten up the screws a little, there are always pastors
who immediately move over to another Communion,
perhaps of the same faith and order, where the grass
is a little longer, the pasturage a little better ; and when
that Communion puts on the screws, they simply move
on to another where the subsidy is more ample." Dr.
Cook's opinion of such men was revealed in a case
narrated where a pastor had gone from his own
denomination through two others until he found him-
self with the Baptists. "I ask the question, * Where
will he go when the leaves the Baptists?' Nobody
seemed to know, but one brother very sweetly sug-
gested that he would go to Heaven. Well, if he goes
to Heaven after that process, he gets there by the
skin of his teeth."
Little was said about cooperation at the home base,

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 195

and little was needed after Commission VIFs full dis-
cussion. Insistence upon the principle that coopera-
tion must be carried out both at the home base and
abroad, if it is to be effective, was necessary in the
Commission's view. Its possibility on a large and
profitable scale was proved by the Missionary Educa-
tion Movement which for years has been eminently suc-
cessful through the cooperation of many Boards rep-
resented in its Committee of Twenty-eight. The Con-
tinuation Committee of the Edinburgh Conference of
1910 is a wider proof of the helpfulness of inter-
national cooperation in Missions; while the Panama
Congress itself met because of mutual agreements and
cooperative participation. Such examples should be
multiplied.

Two relatively new points were mentioned at which
cooperation was desirable. The first had to do with
the CO working of evangelical Churches and govern-
ment officials and institutions. Argentina already aids
Mr. Morris's schools, while Bolivia and Brazil give
subsidies to missionary institutions to a limited extent.
Mr. Grubb's work in the Paraguayan Chaco is mapped
officially as being under government patronage, and he
is regarded as the commissioner of those Indian ter-
ritories. As has been seen, the success of the Piedras
Negras Institute in Mexico is in large part due to
official recognition and help, as is that of the People's
Institute in Rio de Janeiro. Chile subsidizes mission-
ary schools for Indians. Porto Rican workers co-
operate with the United States in sanitary and anti-

196 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

tuberculosis measures and in the suppression of nui-
sances and immoralities. Cordial cooperation between
the Young Men's Christian Association and the
government in Uruguay and Mexico suggests the
desirability of further missionary participation in
enterprises looking toward the physical, social and
intellectual and moral betterment of the Latin- Amer-
ican citizen.

A second more intangible but quite as important
point of desirable contact between evangelical missions
and the Latins is in the appreciation of national ideals
and conformity thereto, when possible. Thus in no
other mission field, with the possible exception of
Japan, is nationalistic feeling so intense as in some of
the southern countries, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and
Porto Rico in particular. This manifests itself
among evangelicals chiefly in their desire for self-
direction in church life and government. This aspira-
tion by many is considered to have been the funda-
mental reason for the lamentable division which oc-
curred in the Presbyterian Church in Brazil several
years ago. Neither of the two bodies resulting from
the schism is under the control of extra-national
organizations. That this self-direction inspires the
Church to new endeavor and greater sacrifice is proved
by the fact that the larger of these bodies received
last year more new members by confession of faith
than ever before, amounting to over ten percent, of
its membership. One of these self-supporting congre-
gations, inspired by the spirit of nationalism as well as

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 197

by deep religious conviction, gave $15,000 in 19 15
for its local and missionary work.

The eventual goal of a national evangelical Church,
in place of the present denominational divisions, is al-
ready dimly discernible in some of the republics, and
also in Porto Rico where the desire is most pro-
nounced. With the example of one great Roman
Catholic Church always before them, Latins are prone
to feel as described in a sentence written by Professor
Giovanni Luzzi: "Accustomed as they are to the
great idea of the unity of the Church, they have no
sympathy with our accentuated denominationalism."
Another motive for nationalistic independence has
manifested itself in Mexico and seems to actuate cer-
tain pastors who wall have nothing to do with Boards
from the United States, identifying them with hated
foreign invasion. They have appealed to the patriot-
ism of the people, and also to their prejudices, with
some success. Naturally this nationalistic spirit among
Latin Americans is found more frequently among the
better educated, who also happen to be most influential.
It is plainly desirable that this spirit should not be
allowed to separate the missionaries from national
Churches ; instead, without trying to force denomina-
tionalism upon them, this element of national pride
may be used as an incentive toward a united, self-
supporting and self -propagating Church, with liberty
of thought, yet united in Christ. Multiplied evidences
convinced the Commission that if the appeal were
made to loyalty to the Word of God and to the

198 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

nation, rather than to the denomination, many strong
leaders would accept the challenge. Not a few share
the conviction of an energetic young worker for the
evangelical cause who declined to enter the Church,
saying: "I feel that it would narrow my influence,
if I joined any of the denominations. But just
organize a national Church, and I will be the first to
join."

The suggestion of cooperation with Roman Catho-
lics, as set forth in the report presented tentatively to
the Congress at Panama, met with serious objection on
the field. It was modified to read as follows : "When
the inevitable question is raised, whether at any point
or in any form we may expect cooperation with the
Roman Catholic Church, the usual reply is that such
an expectation is hopeless. Moreover, in view of the
position of the Roman Catholic Church toward the
evangelical work, the Commission feels that any sug-
gestion on our part of cooperation with that Church
as an organization is likely to be misunderstood
and to provoke responses that would tend to defeat
the irenic purposes we have in our approach to all in-
dividual members of that Communion who may be
willing to cooperate with us in any branch of our mis-
sionary activities.'* With respect to this change of
statement. Dr. Thompson said in his closing address
for the Commission: "In response to a general de-
mand from the field, we have modified our report so
that it declares that there is not now any hope of
cooperation of any kind, or in any degree, with the

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 199

Roman Catholic Church as an organization. . . .
We accept it as a present fact ; we do not accept it as
an ultimate fact. It is not even now a fact every-
where. When Cardinal Farley occupies the platform
with Bishop Greer and other evangelicals in New
York to promote some civic or social reform, it is a
declaration that some time such a scene may be wit-
nessed in Buenos Aires, or Rio de Janeiro. We even
dare to cherish the hope of an ultimate union of
Christendom. We do not believe in a perpetual post-
ponement of an answer to Christ's prayer."

When evidences of unity and the desire for its fur-
ther promotion had been hurtling in from all the Com-
missions and they had been overshot by Commission
VIII's combination columbiad, the logical demand was
for some provision whereby the campaign for
cooperation and unity might be made effective. Two
plans were urged by the Commission, and the best
one of all was supplied by a later action of the Con-
gress. The convening of interdenominational con-
ferences could not be questioned as a most valuable
aid; for was not the Panama gathering on Ancon
Hill daily and hourly demonstrating its fusing power?
Reports from a number of Latin republics testified to
the existence and great value of union meetings, special
and general in their objectives, which are being held
regularly. Their success without a carefully wrought
out program indicated that after the holding of the
post-Congress regional conferences, permanent and
better coordinated gatherings would become a regular

200 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

feature of Latin America's evangelical program, one
of whose most useful results would inevitably be a
better acquaintance and more effective team-work.
The deepening of the spiritual life would doubtless
follow, no matter what the special object of any con-
ference might be.

The unifying force of prayer was equally em-
phasized. History and personal experience have
shown its ability to meet just such needs as con-
front missionaries to Latin lands. The delicacy
and magnitude of the task are altogether baffling
without that wisdom which is promised where there
is faith and no wavering. It creates a helpful
atmosphere within which men can plan and work
better than when it is absent and the air is heavy
and lifeless. Prayer offered for others is "like
a gun that kicks," to borrow Beecher's simile; "part
of the force of the powder carries the bullet straight
to its mark, while the remainder reacts upon yourself."
But if the two or three gathered together in Christ's
name, with Him in the midst, can effect miracles, how
much more powerful would be a general prayer move-
ment in Latin America's behoof? And so the Com-
mission suggested a permanent annual day of united
thanksgiving and intercession for those great re-
publics, both on the fields and in the sending coun-
tries. It further recommended the preparation of a
prayer or series of prayers for unity, one of which may
be used in the regular worship of Sunday morning
throughout the Latin-American evangelical Churches.

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 201

Like the Commission on "Home Base," it called for
the publication of a prayer calendar, to be used daily
in homes and at private devotions. Prayer circles
in large cities where the interest warrants could be
held as occasion demanded. Differences between
variant families of Christians and the urgency of
pressing needs alike call for united supplication.
"Rival sects," writes Professor Toy, "lose sight of
their differences in the presence of needs that drive
them to God for help. Prayer is a religious unifier —
communion with the Deity is an individual experience
in which all men stand on common ground, where
ritual and dogmatic accessories tend to fade or to
disappear." The Congress itself proved the efficacy
of united prayer.

But the third and best means of promoting unity
and cooperation in Latin-American missions was
the decision arrived at on Friday afternoon when the
Congress voted to recommend that the Committee on
Cooperation in Latin America be enlarged and re-
constituted as a consultative and advisory body, with
North American and European sections acting
separately at present. The amended Section VI of
the resolution reads as follows : "That the American
and Canadian sections should, as may be desired by the
cooperating Boards, take steps promptly to give effect
to the findings of the various Commissions in the light
of the discussions of the Congress, so far as the
cooperation of the missionary agencies of the United
States and Canada are concerned." As more than

202 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

three-fifths of the missionary force are sent by
Societies in Canada and the United States which
already are practically one in matters pertaining to
the lands concerned, this means prompt action looking
toward efficiency and cooperation. To make that the
more speedily effective, the various sectional con-
ferences mentioned in Chapter XI scattered immedi-
ately on the adjournment of the Congress to consult
and decide in regional groups what was desirable to
do and to send their findings to the Committee just
constituted for its action and to the Boards concerned
for their endorsement.

Though everything looks favorable for the future
of Latin-American cooperation, the reader should
remember that to change long-standing policies and to
readjust existing relations, to exchange plants and
constituencies, and above all to reconcile the home sup-
porters to interdenominational plans, will call for
patience and forbearance. A tiny rift in the lute, in-
terrupting the harmony of the Congress, was dis-
covered at a special meeting of those interested in
Mexico and the progress of plans decided upon by
the Cincinnati Conference of 19 14 for that republic.
It there appeared that the decisions made by the
Boards in the United States had in a few cases been
misunderstood and had given rise to bitterness on the
ground of denominations having been "sold out" to
others in whose polity those thus disposed of had no
interest. Probably political animosity toward the
United States was partly responsible for this feeling.

UNlTY^S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 203

More than at any other session of the Congress did
the delegates lose their dead-earnest solemnity, when
half a dozen of the speakers for this Commission
argued their points by humorous illustrations, or as
apt parallels were quoted. Thus Dr. Vance showed
the element in human nature that must be met in any
cooperative reduction of forces by the story of a
negro minister of Orange, N. J., who replied to the
question as to whether there were not too many
colored churches there already: "Yes, entirely too
many, as we have nine. We really need only two,
mine and one more." Of another sort was his ac-
count of the Matt H. Shay, a most powerful engine
that could pull unbelievably long trains of loaded cars.
As Dr. Vance's hearers had been skeptical about his
story, he interviewed the makers and learned that
with some subtraction it was true, and that the secret
of its wonderful power was the fact that there were
really three engines, — three packed into one. Our
weakness is rebuked by his subsequent appeal : "Why
should we be afraid of each other? Why should we
shy off from each other? Why should we suspect
each other?"

Dr. Chester showed the Congress how cooperation
and division of the field could be accomplished. In
the Congo Mission of the Southern Presbyterian Board
they could not overtake the work, so Bishop Lambuth
of the Southern Methodist Board came to establish
a mission beside them. The Presbyterians not only
gladly welcomed him, but they also gave him his

204 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

first church by turning over a quantity of their own
strong members, "who knew the Shorter Catechism
backwards and forwards," for the Bishop to turn
into Arminians, regardless of predestination and fall-
ing from grace.

Mr. Revell, the New York publisher, told of an
iron workers' convention held in Washington, where
representatives of the business from various European
nations met with Americans to consult as to their
mutual interests. They resolved to adopt two
emblems, one to suggest the ruinous past and the other
the better future. The former represented a melting-
pot in which were rifles with crossed bayonets and
the legend above it, ''Might is Right" with the word
"Competition" below; the second emblem was an-
other melting-pot in which were rifles with reversed
bayonets and the legends, "Right is Might" and "Co-
operation." "Are the men of this world wiser in
their generation than the children of light?" Mr.
Revell asked.

Bishop McConnell dwelt upon the conquering power
of a brotherly and spiritual atmosphere. "Some things
have to be corrected by creating an atmosphere in
which these things perish of themselves. When I
was a boy and got my first glimpses into geological
history, I used to wonder who killed those great beasts
of tremendous size that splashed about in the swamps.
After awhile I made this discovery — that nobody
killed them; the climate changed and they died. So
with many evils in the world; they are to be over-

UNITY'S FRATERNAL PROGRAM 205

come by a change of climate only. The only way we
can have spiritual climate is by the cooperative move-
ment coming in to dominate the lives of the
Churches."

Let this chapter close with the final paragraph of a
powerful address upon the possibility of cooperation
with governments in Latin America, delivered by the
Rev. James McLean of Chile. "The missionary ought
never to be less than a spiritual plenipotentiary. He
ought ever to hold himself free from political intrigue,
and the stream of his life ought to touch and refresh
the society which surrounds him. His attitude toward
life ought to be that of whole-souled friendship
wherever possible. Certainly he makes no gain by
isolation and antagonism; much less by competition.
In many of these republics the chief obstacle to
progress comes from the opposition of individuals.
Whether we are invited to cooperate in education, in
temperance, in social reform, in a Christian sense
where we can do it without lowering our allegiance,
we ought gladly to do it, we ought gladly to offer
our help. Thank God, in spite of racial and political
barriers there is no barrier to brotherly love. Here
is a wide ministry indeed into which we can enter as
God gives opportunity."

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES

Chapters II to IX of this volume have dealt
seriatim with the reports of the eight commissions of
the Congress and with the discussions following their
presentation. They were in the nature of the case
more or less technical. Yet Panama will stand for
much more than a scientific conference of friends
and workers for Latin America. Those were days of
inward inspiration coming in the midst of problems
which seemed insoluble, and nights with the tropical
stars looking down upon men and women gathered to
hear the prophets and prophetesses of a coming day
when Christianity's triumphs will circle the world and
crown again the later Latin conquistadores, leading
in their jubilant train, not enslaved aborigines, but
souls of black, red and white alike — all rejoicing in
Christ Jesus who has set them free and given them
the life which is life indeed. As it is impracticable
to give the reader even an outline of the nearly forty
addresses of a general character not intimately related
to the Congress, a selection has been made, and the
reader may gather therefrom what the thought of
these leaders was as they faced the spiritual life and
the needs of men. Rather than to give full synopses

207

2o8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

of the addresses, they are presented in extracts or in
a summary of portions of them. The reader is re-
ferred to the RepDrt for fuller statements.

Those of a devotional character are not reproduced,
as they are much like what one would have heard in
Northfield or at Keswick, with little reference to the
Congress. The topics and speakers at the eleven
o'clock hour were in chronological order as follows:
'The Preeminence of Christ," the Rt. Rev. Arthur S.
Lloyd, D.D. ; "The Ministry of Intercession," the Rev.
Archibald McLean, LL.D. ; "Lessons from the Early
Christians," Professor William Adams Brown, Ph.D.,
D.D. ; "Reality in Religion," President Henry
Churchill King, LL.D. ; "Christ's Vision of the Unity
of All Believers," the Rev. Paul de Schweinitz, D.D. ;
"The Recovery of the Apostolic Conception of God,"
the Rev. Lemuel C. Barnes, D.D. ; and "The Secret
of a Mighty Work of God," Bishop Walter R,
Lambuth, D.D.

Logically, though not chronologically, should be
placed first, the address of welcome, delivered on the
opening evening by Seiior Ernesto Lefevre, Minister
of Foreign Affairs for the Republic of Panama. In
musical Spanish His Excellency extended a cordial
greeting, after which he repeated it in equally happy
English. Here are a few extracts from his address.

"Impelled by a deep feeling of cordiality and good-
will, I come to welcome you in the name of the
Panamanian government at this opening session of
the Congress on Christian Work in Latin America.

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 209

'The constitution of the Republic of Panama gives
ample guarantees of liberty of conscience. As a proof
of this and because our government fervently desires
to create a feeling of tolerance in the Republic, I have
not hesitated to accept your kind invitation and to
proffer a genuine welcome, although I am a sincere
and devout Catholic. Let me impress upon you that
although the Panamanians have but recently gained
their independence, it does not follow that they do
not recognize the benefits brought about by respecting
the liberties and rights of others.

"You have chosen the most propitious moment for
your noble task. While I am speaking, violence and
fury are unchained in the Old World, destroying
everything which they meet in their pathway. . . .
We, the peoples of America, should do all in our
power, not only to keep away from strife, but to bring
about a lasting peace among those who are at war.
. . . Your purpose is to unify the moral and re-
ligious forces of America. For this reason and with
great foresight you have selected for this Congress
the soil of Panama as a central point from which its
influences will widely radiate. We appreciate the im-
portance of our location here ; and since we desire to
meet the demands of every human interest, we hold
our country open to all men and to all generous ideas.
Our motto, 'Pro Mundi Beneficio/ [For the benefit
of the world], is not an empty phrase, but a true
sentiment of our people. With all the respect and
consideration which is due to such a gathering as this,

210 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

I take great pleasure in saluting you in the name of
the government of Panama and wish for you all suc-
cess in your mission." Dr. Mott's response was like-
wise most felicitous.

It was but natural that the European war should
have some place in the program of the Congress. The
time chosen was on Sunday evening, when the dele-
gates were invited to assemble at the great hall of the
beautiful Instituto Nacional, the Republic's highest
educational institution, and to enjoy with citizens of
Panama a thrilling address by Dr. Mott. The rector
of the Institute, Dr. E. G. Dexter, graciously w^elcomed
the Congress, after which he introduced Sefior G.
Andreve, Secretary of Public Instruction, w^ho in turn
presented the speaker of the evening.

"In these spacious days, in these solemn days," said
Dr. Mott, "in these days of God's own visitation, it is
fitting that a great company like this, made up of so
many men and women of wide outlook and of respon-
siveness to the highest purposes that move men,
gathered from so many nations, should focus our at-
tention upon the greatest concentration of human
strain, the greatest concentration of human oppor-
tunity that this world has ever known." And then
through his personal experiences, he allowed his
audience to share with him "that sacred and solemn
privilege of looking into the very soul of the Euro-
pean peoples." For more than an hour he held his
audience spellbound, as he threw the searchlight of
Christian sympathy into hospitals, trenches, camps.

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 2n

military prisons, and the sobbing yet courageous homes
of the nations mourning for their dead. But the Christ
of Calvary, Man of Sorrows, was also in home and
battlefield; and with that finger with which He once
wrote on the dust of the temple floor, He is now writ-
ing on the clouds beside Constantine's ''In hoc signo
vinces" the one word "Opportunity." In particular,
He is calling the Latin and Anglo-Saxon of the
western hemisphere to unite in a great union move-
ment America's Christian forces for the help of
Europe in these days of cataclysm and Armageddon
woe. Dr. Mott's closing words were these: *'It is
the time of times for the Christians, especially of the
neutral lands of the Americas, to afford a wise and
unselfish leadership of the forces of righteousness. H
they serve the war-swept and suffering nations in their
deep suffering, these nations will follow their leader-
ship in the years before us. In the darkest hour of this
terrible night, it is the most distinctive mission of
many like ourselves who bear Christ's name to tell of
the coming dawn. Let us all strike the note of hope.
Christ came that the good might conquer the ill, that
love might vanquish hate, that where sin did abound,
grace may yet more abound. The night is far spent,
the day is at hand. Let us as individuals and as
nations cast oft* the works of darkness; let us put on
the armor of light.'' A feeble echo this of a world
prophet's awakening summons.

The keynote of the Congress was sounded when it
really began its sessions on the first Thursday after-

212 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

noon. Doctor Oldham's reading of Isaiah 2: 1-4 and
Ephesians 3 : 1-4 and his devout prayer were followed
by Dr. Robert E. Speer's opening address upon "Our
Attitude and Spirit.'* The delegates had met as Chris-
tian brothers and sisters, a real spiritual family. Yet
there is another presence felt, for we are here in the
fellowship of Christ; nay, in Christ Himself. As
one of the delegates, Mr. Howell, told him that he
lived in a town in Cuba named Christ, Cristo, he
spoke of all that that suggested to the Christian and
of the longing imparted to live really in Christ. In
such an atmosphere, we face life with new standards
as to our relationship to each other. How near we
are to one another in Him. As for himself, Dr.
Speer said : "I never have gone to any gathering any-
where with the same experience of heart, with the
same feeling of brotherly love, with the same con-
fidence of unity of mind, of result, which God has
given in connection with this gathering here in Panama.
The more varying our experience, the more diverse
our temperaments, the more supplementary our points
of view, the richer our fellowship here, the larger the
contribution which it will be possible for us to make
to the body of Christ and its work in the world."

Our attitude toward the enterprise entrusted to us
must be that of Jesus Himself, and that was fourfold.
He had an absolute discernment of it all and saw men
and His tasks for them with unerring truth. Love as
a factor in His work was absolutely undying, limit-
less, sacrificial. Self-will was eclipsed by the Father's

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 213

will; utter unselfishness characterized His service.
"And there was, lastly, a patience that could never
be worn away, a patience that never was fretful, never
irritated, that never gave over, that held fast to one
whom He ever knew to be murderer through all the
years in the hope that still His love might break His
friend's heart." Most of the address was an applica-
tion of these characteristics to the missionary's life.
The heart's center was Love ; and he quoted the words
of David Livingstone who had touched at Bahia,
Brazil, on his way to Africa, in whose birthday prayer
of the year before he died they are found : "O Divine
Love, I have not loved Thee deeply, richly, tenderly
enough."

How such a passion would posses a man and what it
would cause him to do Dr. Speer quietly but with
dramatic power told in this paragraph. "There is a
wonderful passage in James Thomson's 'City of
Dreadful Night,' where the soul in its dismal way
gropes in the darkness across the desert, rough talons
and arms grasping at it from the scraggly bushes on
either side, as it passes along in the darkness.
Presently the soul comes to a high precipice and looks
over a great stretch of white sandy beach on which
the surf of the incoming tide is breaking. There, to
its horror and consternation, on the beach nearer to
which every instant come the lapping waves, Hes the
soul's own self to which it cannot go. The soul looks
down in horror upon itself, waiting there for the slow
engulfing of the approaching tide. Presently far down

214 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

the white sands a white figure is seen drawing near
as of a woman carrying a red lamp in her hand ; and
the soul watches with intense eagerness the woman
who appears to be seeking something. The woman
draws near. She comes closer and closer, until the
soul sees that it is not a lamp that she carries in her
hand, but her own bleeding heart ; and the blood-drops
trickle step by step as she makes her way to where
the soul's own self is left; and stooping over it with
her own bleeding heart, she gathers up that which she
would save."

From Calvary with its inscription, "He saved others,
himself he cannot save," the audience was led to the
transfiguring door of expectation. ''If He be true, —
and w^e know that He is truer than our knowledge of
His being true, — He stands now as He has always
stood over against the hearts of His people. We may
be sure He is standing in front of us now. Oh, if we
but be still, we shall hear Him now as then : 'I stand
at the door and knock. If your Congress will open
the door, I will come in — I will.' Shall He not?
Shall I not say to Him now as one of all of us — I
hear Him knocking — 'Lord, I came here to have Thee
come into my life in a new and more commanding
way than ever. Come in ! Come in !' " In the hushed
stillness Christ came in.

Quite different from this address, but equally es-
sential for Latin America's intellectuals, were the de-
liverances of the following evening, when modern
science was considered in its relation to the evangelical

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 215

propaganda — in one aspect a stumbling-block and rock
of offense, in another a foundation-stone upon which
the intellectual superstructure of the Church must rest.
Though presiding, President King had been asked to
speak generally upon the contributions of science to
human progress. Despite its disturbing character, we
should look upon it as an ally and not as an enemy.
"If we really believe in the providence of God, we
shall believe He has been in these movements, as well
as in others, and has not left Himself without wit-
ness,— that the veracity of modern science has proved
to be really a great new note of challenge not only,
but a great encouragement to faith." And then he
indicated five particulars in which modern science has
aided religion. It has enormously increased the re-
sources of wealth and power and knowledge. It has
voiced emphatically the insistent challenge to ideal in-
terests to produce men and women who shall be worthy
of these vast resources. It has brought to us a view
of the world far larger and more significant than we
have had heretofore and has forced us thereby to a
more adequate and a larger conception of God. It
has brought to us the scientific method, a method util-
ized so notably in this Congress. *'And, finally, modern
science has given us the great new vision of what
we call the scientific spirit, — what is after all nothing
but Jesus' own first condition of entrance into the
Kingdom of Heaven, the spirit of the humble, open-
minded man."

Professor Braga, of Brazil, spoke upon 'The Claims

2i6 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

of Christ on Thinking Men." Naturally he had mainly
in mind the intellectuals of Latin America. They are
living in an intensely practical age and are seeking to
resolve the problems of life and to grasp the great
truths concerning men from the viewpoint of the
practical. In reaching out for help, they are turning
more and more to North America for aid. In secur-
ing, analyzing and classifying practical information,
it is done partly for themselves, but also with an al-
truistic intent. The tendency hitherto has been to
sound only the shallower depths. Now it looks toward
the more profound truths of life and for such views it
is turning northward. This is not the true source of
help. As Professor Braga said in conclusion : "J^^^^
gives the keynote of all these problems when He says,
'I am the way, the truth, and the life.' Jesus must
be the w^ay, the truth and the life for all the awakening
intellectuals of South America. His teaching and His
doctrines are for man's profit, for his own personal
advantage; and then they fit him for that large con-
tribution, that noblest service to humanity through
Christ. It is this that has the largest claims upon the
thoughtful minds of South America, upon the awaken-
ing hearts and lives of that great continent."

Bishop McConnell, w^ho has episcopal oversight of
the Methodist Board's work in Mexico, said the con-
cluding word upon this subject, his topic being, "The
Christian Faith in an Age of Science." The scientific
spirit in the last half century has passed through three
distinct stages. At first evolution, which especially

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 217

concerns us now, was interpreted almost wholly in
materialistic terms. Later, evolutionists speak of
themselves as agnostics. Then came the latest step at
which there is some return to the spirit of faith that
is represented in men like Sir Oliver Lodge — whose
views, however, are not wholly respected by scientists.
Scientific thought has passed through these stages be-
cause of the pressure put upon it by forces of Chris-
tian living. On the other hand religion has been
favorably influenced by science. The smoke of the
battle between the Old and the New Testaments has
begun to clear away, and we find that we have a better
perspective than ever before, a new grip upon cer-
tain spiritual elements at the heart of our faith. In-
stead of explaining Christ away, He comes back with
a force stronger than ever. Prayer stands on a firmer
foundation now, so that the scientific spirit itself has
been modified and has in it more of the spirit of faith
than it formerly had. Latin Americans are in the last
analytic stage, scientifically regarded; and the only
thing that will help them out is the effect of a living
religion in the community.

Our study of science has had a reflex influence upon
our own spirits. Because we have been wrestling with
material things, our treatment of theology is couched
now in the terms of life, and not upon abstractions as
in former days when one read such discussions as
this upon the Trinity, the subdivisions being three—
pleromatic humanity, pleromatic divinity, and hypo-
static union. There has been also a correction of our

2i8 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

feeling. The old pessimism and despair are passing
away, and the most hopeful men are those having the
hardest problems to solve. Like the hospital novice
who feels nauseated when he first goes on the field
of battle, but who forgets his stomach when he cares
for the sorely wounded, so we are finding new
strength and hope as we enter into an age of service.
Three great challenges face the Christian in this
age of science. He and the scientist alike stand be-
fore the conquests of nature, of disease and of poverty.
With the forces underlying this threefold conquest we
must have something to do. The second challenge con-
fronting us is that we shall reorganize human society
upon such a basis as to place human values in the fore-
most place, giving man the preference over theories
or mere things. And finall}^ it is "the heart of Scrip-
ture that the scientific spirit, working together with
the religious spirit, dares accept this challenge to
change human nature, if you care to put it so; at least
to change the conditions of human life, the home life,
the conditions of childhood, the conditions of youth,
and to transform all these conditions under which
human beings live. It is just the message of redemp-
tion. . . . All men w^orking together from what-
ever angle can do something toward bringing about
this consummation, that there shall be, even in these
material things, in a very real sense such a revela-
tion of God that w^e can say that we stand in His
presence, — so that each common bush shall glow with
God."

,^<^:^'^ir^

ARRIVAL OF PHYSICIAN AT THE DISPENSARY,
PORTO RICO
GIRLS' DORMITORY, CHRISTO SCHOOL, CUBA

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 219

A score of times at least during the nine days' con-
gressional sessions Latin leadership had been urged
as a primal necessity of the evangelical Churches.
Two addresses on Monday evening dealt with this
pivotal theme. The Rev. E. C. Pereira of Brazil spoke
upon **True Leaders the Fundamental Need.'' "The
true leader, like the poet, is born and not made. He
gains and holds his place by the spontaneous consent,
rather than by the formal vote, of men. Legitimate
child of his environment, he absorbs the noble but as
yet uncertain ideas, the confused sentiments, the ill-
defined hopes, the vague aspirations that are com-
mon to his fellows, and then interprets, defines and
illustrates them. Stirred by his environment, he in
turn reacts upon it. Moral currents are formed and
then swell. The struggle begins; men's spirits are
aflame. A banner is unfurled to the strong winds of
an ideal, and around it are gathered soldiers ready for
any sacrifice. In the rude struggle of conflict, the
leader becomes a hero or martyr. Like the good
shepherd of the parable, he never leaves his flock to
the cruel teeth of their vulpine foes. The leader, how-
ever, is not only the commander in the hour of con-
flict. He should also be the interpreter, the authori-
tative exponent and organ of those he leads. Such is
in general outline the function of the leader, especially
in the new Ibero- American societies." The speaker
then mentioned three causes making true leadership
difHcult at present in Latin America. The first and
most important one is ethnic, the moral and social in-

220 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

stability of these southern democracies. A second is
psychological, the lack of great ideals. The third is
the absence in any large measure of a system of
education adequate for the formation of character.

What manner of men were needed for these posi-
tions of influence Senor Pereira partly described in
these words : "It is necessary in the present condition
in Latin America that the leader should be a man of
God, without ambition and without personal vanities
and follies, — a man not only diligent, active and prac-
tical in meeting and solving the difficulties of the
moment, but also a man of foresight and of broad
vision of the future and able to keep before the minds
of his fellow Christians, not the narrow view of a
combat, but the larger conception of a campaign.

"It is necessary that missionaries, filled with the
spirit of John the Baptist, watch and labor anxiously
for the time when they may occupy a place in the
background and consider themselves the friends, coun-
sellors and foster-fathers of the nascent Church.
. . . The voice of God, speaking through the ex-
perience of fifty years, proclaims to the apostles of
all the denominations at work in Latin America that
their task will be like that of the daughters of Danaus,
unless they succeed in raising up men of true leader-
ship, men able — while checking the turbulent spirit of
revolt — to gather about themselves the good, the noble
and the true, pointing them to the way of the Cross
and of service, and leading them to the fulfilment of
the noble and divine program of Missions." The en-

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 221

tire address, as these extracts may suggest, was most
searching and convincing. And Bishop Stuntz, who
followed with one upon the correlative theme, "The
Price of Leadership," aptly completed a fine piece of
argumentation and of effective appeal which gave the
missionary administrator's point of view.

Perhaps the most striking address of the entire Con-
gress, all things considered, was that of one of the
Supreme Court judges of Porto Rico, the Honorable
Emilio del Toro. As an enlightened Roman Catholic,
he could discuss his theme, 'The Principles and
Spirit of Jesus Essential to Meet the Social Needs of
Our Time," with an appreciation of the best work
of his own Church and also with absolute fairness to
the evangelical movement. Although the Judge spoke
in Spanish, he was listened to with the profoundest in-
terest, and at the close his address received most hearty
applause. He said in part :

"I have been asked to state this evening what are
the principles and the spirit of Christianity essential
to meet the needs of Latin America in our time; and
I reply, the divine teachings of the Sermon on the
Mount, conveyed in the same spirit of love and truth
in which they fell from the lips of the Master. . . .

'The success of the United States of America has
been due in large measure, in my opinion, to the deeply
religious training of the Puritans. 'When they landed
on these shores, their moral revolution,' as a Porto
Rican thinker, Roman Balderioty Castro, has said,
'had been finished, and on being transplanted to the

222 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

wider field of a new w^orld, it was to bear all its fruits :
full personal guarantees; deep roots for individual
religious feeling and ample field for all its forms,
that is, for all forms of worship; absolute respect of
property, and in consequence elective governments;
taxes foreseen and discussed, and expenditures known
and efificient for the welfare of the governed; the
right of assembly, of thought, of speech and of the
press, and absolute liberty of labor in all its forms;'
privileges which leave deep in the soul of the peoples
which exercise them *an ardent desire and an active
hope of unlimited improvement.'

**Latin America is coming out into the life of
civilization with a different lot. The seeds of Chris-
tianity sown since the times of the colonizers have
produced their fruits; and wherever there has been
the most liberty, there its mission has become the
noblest in practice. . . . Besides, the religious life
of the Spanish- American countries has been character-
ized by the most absolute predominance of the
Catholic Church; and in my judgment the same benefi-
cent influence w^hich Catholicism has exercised in the
development of its civilization would have been greater
had it been obliged to contend face to face from the
earliest times with a vigorous Protestant movement.

"Until a few years ago the Catholic Church was, in
my native Island, Porto Rico, the state religion.
Among the public expenditures those for worship were
conspicuous. The influence of the clergy extended
everywhere. And what was the result after four cen-

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 223

turies of abundant opportunity? A people for the
most part indifferent or unbelieving.

'There took place a change of regime. The Church
was separated from the state. A struggle began.
Under the protection of the free institutions of North
America established in the Island, Presbyterians,
Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, began their work.
Faint-hearted Catholic priests, accustomed to the en-
joyment of special privileges, decried the ruin of
their Church, But it was not so. The spirit of the
North entered into her, and men accustomed to a life
of freedom gave her a new impetus. . . .

"Those who love the progress of the nations, those
who study history dispassionately, those who have
faith in the improvement of mankind, cannot but see
with deep sympathy that the Reformation is spreading,
that free investigation opens broader horizons to the
human spirit, that Christianity preached and inter-
preted by all disseminates its beneficent influence and
raises the level of society. .

"It is not enough in every case to enlighten the
mind; it is necessary constantly to blow the fire. It
is not enough to preach Christianity ; Christianity must
be lived. It is not enough to say to the poor
descendant of the Incas of Peru, *Love and respect
all men as your brothers,* and then treat him as a
slave. If we put in his hand the Bible, we must put
with it our love and our sympathy. If we invite him
to live the Christian life, we must show him by our
example what that life is. . . .

224 RENAISSAXT LATIN AMERICA

"The labor is complex. ... To carry it out in
its widest sweep requires enormous effort, inexhaust-
ible material resources, a far-sightedness almost super-
human on the part of the leaders, and a devotion and
complete consecration to their duty on the part of the
laborers. And before all and above all, it requires
that the spirit of love — which in my judgment is the
essence of Christianity — should inspire both the labor-
ers and the leaders. Only love, without wdiich charity,
faith and religion are as bodies unsouled, will be able
to impress Latin America. And when it is so im-
pressed by love, when it is profoundly convinced of
the spirit of sympathy of the missionaries, then, and
only then, will be the propitious moment to sow and
cultivate in it all the Christian virtues. May God
illumine your hearts and minds."

To follow such an address by such a man seemed
presumptuous. Yet President Charles T. Paul, of the
College of Missions, Indianapolis, not only succeeded
in maintaining its high standard, but Dr. Morrison of
The Christian Century, a fellow Disciple, does not
hesitate to place his effort at the very apex of all the
great utterances of the Congress. His theme was the
same as that of Judge Del Toro, and it appealed to
Latin Americans more than any other address of an
Anglo-Saxon. The reasons were not far to seek.
President Paul is a polyglot and is steeped not only
in Iberian literatures, but also in the writings of Latin-
American authors, of which he made a most effective
use. It was a philosophical interpretation of social

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 225

conditions in Latin America from the evangelical
viewpoint. When he turned to the spiritual needs of
those republics, he quoted from their own poets and
philosophers, and then added the panacea of all these
ills from the finest thoughts of Jesus and His modern
followers. Occasionally and most tactfully he would
appeal to those whom Latin intellectuals would hear
when no evangelical voice would be tolerated, as in this
paragraph :

"We may recall the words of Lecky, the rationalist
historian, who declared that in the record of three
short years Jesus has done more to soften and regener-
ate mankind than all the disquisitions of the philoso-
phers and all the exhortations of the moralists. The
cry that escaped Him on the cross has been sometimes
regarded chiefly as an exclamation of agony. It was
vastly more than that. It was a cry of victory wrung
from the consciousness that He had set in motion
forces that would save the world." Protestant and
Romanist were as one that evening as they magnified
Jesus and His Cross.

Space limitations prevent further suggestions of the
riches of these congressional addresses, though one
thinks longingly of other deeply moving and helpful
utterances, particularly the two of the second Friday
evening upon "The Vital Power of Christianity —
How Realized and Maintained." The speakers were
the Rev. Alvaro Reis of Rio de Janeiro and the Rev.
James I. Vance, D.D., of Nashville. If North Amer-
ica as well as its Latin neighbor could hear and heed

226 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

those two addresses, the end of the campaign would
be nearer. Many others were almost equally note-
worthy, especially Dr. Goucher's rhapsody upon "The
Triumphs of Christianity."

A few paragraphs must be given, however, to the
sermon of the Congress, which came on the closing
afternoon, a most fitting message for the final one of
a wonderful conference. The speaker was the Rev.
George Alexander, D.D., president of the Presbyterian
Board, North. Dr. Speer had read part of the seventh
chapter of St. John, beginning at the fourteenth verse,
the delegates sang in adoration "Hail to the Lord's
Anointed," and President Monteverde led in prayer.

Dr. Alexander's text was Hebrews 13: 8, "Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for-
ever," and his theme, "The Immutable Christ." Not
in His earthly manifestation was He unchangeable, nor
in His message and ministry, which were richly varied.
He is immutable as the revealer of God to all times.
As healer of the grievous hurt of humanity. He
changes not. Though education, ethical culture,
civilization, may prove inadequate in this, Jesus Christ
is the same to-day as in Palestine two millenniums ago.
So, too. He is changeless in His leadership of redeemed
humanity; for He is King of the Ages. It is ours
to carry the comfort of this message to' all not pos-
sessing it, especially in this time of war tragedy. Ours
is the responsibility to complete His unfinished task;
for when He left the world, Christians were con-
stituted His continuators as its salt, its light. Dr.

CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESSES 227

Alexander very touchingly enlarged upon this Idea in
closing.

"It was not Simon Peter who awakened three
thousand souls on the Day of Pentecost, but Christ
in Peter. It was not Paul who carried salvation to
all the great centers of the Roman Empire, but Christ
in Paul. ... It was Christ, not St. Augustine,
that brought salvation to Great Britain ; it was Christ,
and not Wesley, that brought Jesus to the vision of
the Cornish miners; it was Christ that sent David
Livingstone into the heart of the dark continent of
Africa. And the mighty force for the redemption of
Latin America is to be Christ carried in your hearts
and in your lives ; Christ speaking through your lives,
and Christ's love revealed in your love; Christ's
patience in your patience; Christ's life in your Hfe;
and He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever.
And He is saying to each of us, 'Behold, I stand at
the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and
open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with
him, and he with me.' 'O Thou who changest not,
abide in me.' "

After singing "Blest be the tie that binds," only the
closing words remained to be spoken, in praise and
in intercession. The last voice of many was that of
Dr. Mott whose final prayer preceded the benediction,
pronounced by Senor Pereira.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, in these solemn closing
moments of this never-to-be-forgotten Congress, we
would again bow down in humility before Thee. We

228 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

would fall upon our faces; we would acknowledge
Thee to be the Lord, the Father Everlasting. We
would have Thy hand of love and power to be ex-
tended in blessing upon each one of us. Now help us
as we go forth that we may watch, that we may stand
fast in the faith, that we may be strong. Help us
that we may be steadfast, unmovable, always pointing
to and abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch
as we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord.
God grant that we may meet again, whether it be in
one of these Latin lands, or in some other part of
the world, or in that land of wide dimensions whose
builder and maker is God. May it be in the fuller
presence. All this we ask in faith believing, through
Jesus Christ who has bound us together and who will
stay with us even unto the end of the ages. Amen."

XI

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES

So important a conference could not fail to produce
marked effects. Even while the Congress was in ses-
sion the fruitage began to appear. Thus on Monday
evening a meeting was called at St. Luke's Church
where sixty-eight delegates especially interested in the
work in Mexico met to reconsider plans made at the
Cincinnati Conference of 19 14. Reports of progress
from the home base and from the field gave grounds
for encouragement, as well as suggestions for tact and
caution. A number of Societies had gone forward to
materialize the Cincinnati plans, greatly to the delight
of the laymen. Dr. Mott spoke on this point : 'They
have said, *If this is the poHcy that is now likely to
obtain, we are becoming interested.' I honestly believe
that the attitude and expressions of the workers right
here in this room, from Mexico and from the Boards
interested in Mexico, will have more to do with point-
ing the way to the solution of the most obstinate prob-
lems in this and other parts of Latin America than
any other single thing done on these grounds. In
other words, we have had resolutions long enough.
They have seen the path indicated at Cincinnati, but
Cincinnati went one step farther than resolutions.

229

230 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

They have said, *We will take this matter right into
the Board rooms, and we will apply our principles.'
And it would seem, therefore, that if in a concerted,
statesmanlike, courageous and sacrificial manner we
would go forward on the lines that we cannot believe
we were led into by selfish considerations, even though
we might have been mistaken here and there in detail,
such action would prove contagious." Dr. Speer and
Secretary Earl Taylor of the Methodist Board spoke
strongly in favor of an immediate forward movement,
so soon as war conditions will permit.

Yet testimony, both Mexican and missionary, mani-
fested the presence of a natural resentment against
the Cincinnati and Board decisions, on the ground that
the Mexicans themselves had not been sufficiently con-
sidered and consulted. One Church went so far as to
pass a resolution in open meeting to the effect that
they would not endorse the Cincinnati plan and that
they would continue their separate existence. An
illuminating discussion followed, and as a result this
motion was carried : "Voted : First, that we heartily
support the Cincinnati resolutions in principle ; second,
that, leaving the question of reorganization and re-
alignment of the Mexican Churches in abeyance for
the time being, we would urge the missionary Boards
engaged in work in Mexico in the administration of
their work to move as rapidly as possible in harmony
with the suggestions of the Cincinnati Conference;
and, third, that we endorse the proposal to have a
national convention held in Mexico at the earliest

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 231

possible moment." The date of such a conference was
then fixed for October, but later political changes may
make that impracticable. From the meeting that even-
ing came a clearer appreciation of the Mexican situa-
tion than would have been possible without Panama,
where some of the strongest friends of the v/ork there
could talk matters through face to face, Mexicans,
Board secretaries and missionaries alike.

As previously intimated, the greatest step in ad-
vance was the establishment of a permanent "Com-
mittee on Cooperation in Latin America," the Amer-
ican and Canadian Section of which met an hour
after the dissolution of the Congress. It not only
organized with Dr. Speer as Chairman and Mr. In-
man as Executive Secretary, but it also planned for
meetings to carry the message of Panama to the
great centers of population in North America. It
considered measures for securing the cooperation of
Societies not now working in South America such as
the American Board, the Northern Baptist, the various
Lutheran bodies and British Societies in South Amer-
ica, as well as extension of activities by the Boards
already supporting work there. Three other votes of
the Committee are prophetic of the character of its
coming activities. One referred to the Executive Com-
mittee the appeal of the Rev. V. Ravi inviting the
W'aldensians in Uruguay to cooperate in missionary
work in Latin America. It was likewise voted to re-
quest the Committee on Education to consider the
desirability and feasibility of sending a deputation of

232 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

educators to South America to study and report con-
cerning the location of educational institutions and to
refer the matter with power to the Executive Com-
mittee. As its budget of $12,000 for its first year was
practically provided for, the initial meeting of the
committee was most inspiring.

The first ofBcial session of this Executive Committee
met in New York on April 25, 1916. As suggestive of
what it has already achieved, a few items may be
noted. Mr. Colton reported for the subcommittee on
Survey and Occupation that the Lima Regional Con-
ference had invited the American Board to undertake
work in Peru and that there is large hope that that
Board will enlarge its program for Latin America;
that the Disciples of Christ are considering the ex-
tension of their work in Argentina; that the Amer-
ican Baptist Home Mission Society is giving considera-
tion to the enlargement of its activities in Nicaragua;
that the Methodists are considering entering Costa
Rica; and that the Northern Presbyterians and Meth-
odists have undertaken certain adjustments of terri-
tory which will be developed later. Mr. Inman re-
ported that Mr. John A. Mackay of Scotland had been
visiting South America to investigate a field for the
United Free Church, and that Mr. Reed of Ecuador
had written concerning the opening up of work in
that republic by some strong Board. Dr. Speer read
a letter from Dr. Wallace concerning a union evan-
gelical seminary In Mexico; and it was voted to ex-
press satisfaction in the negotiations and a hope that

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 2^:^

the plan outlined may be consummated, even if it
were necessary for deputations to visit that republic to
insure its realization. The Committee on Literature
stated that it already has taken steps to provide some
of the literature decided upon by the Latin- American
regional conferences. It was also voted to ask mission
Boards to assign some of their strongest men on fur-
lough to prepare a detailed and annotated bibliography.

Secretary Inman stated that the imperfect informa-
tion now possessed showed that one hundred and
seventeen religious papers had printed accounts of
the Congress, and that three hundred and three daily
papers had contained one or more notices of its work.
From Latin America also had come statements from
two editors who had criticised the Congress strongly
before it was held, but after they had been at its
sessions, they frankly acknowledged their mistake and
gave enthusiastic reports of the good that is resulting
from it.

Returning again to Panama, two days after the ad-
journment of the Congress the first delegations were
departing for the regional conferences, one group
going southward to those held at Lima, Peru; San-
tiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, and another sailing northward for the
Cuba conference at Havana. Later, other delegates
went their ways to the conferences at Barranquilla,
Colombia, and San Juan, Porto Rico. The conferences
of the South American republics, except Barranquil-
la's, were under the chairmanship of Secretary A. W.

234 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Halsey, D.D., of the Presbyterian Board, North, and
their dates were as follows : Lima, February 29-March
4; Santiago, March 16-21; Buenos Aires, March 28-
31; Rio de Janeiro, April 21-25; Barranquilla, under
the chairmanship of the Rev. Charles C. Millar, D.D.,
February 29-March 4; Havana, February 26-29, with
the Rev. C. L. Thompson, D.D., as chairman; and
San Juan, March 16-20, the Rev. L. C. Barnes, D.D.,
presiding.

In general these regional conferences w^ere made up
of delegates who had been present at Panama and who
brought with them its inspiring and illuminating mes-
sage, and of local members representing practically all
of the Societies working in those immediate sections.
The topics discussed were identical with those con-
sidered at the Congress; and so each region was able
to apply the best collective and local wisdom to the
promotion of its own progress and to the solution of
local problems. The discussions were based upon
carefully prepared and fully detailed commission re-
ports, the group of reports for the Santiago Conference
making the equivalent of a book of two hundred pages.
A volume is being printed which will give a full
account of the regional conferences.

These regional presentations of Panama's work
were apparently of great local interest. At Lima, the
city founded by the conquering Pizzarro himself
seventy-two years before Jamestown was settled and
until a century ago Rome's ecclesiastical headquarters
in South America, the conference was the occasion

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 235

for holding the first public Protestant meeting ever
held in Peru outside the little mission halls. A theater
had been rented, and the meeting was advertised.
With some trepidation the evangelical believers faced
this anticipated ordeal. To quote from Dr. Morrison :
"We were all more or less vibrant with the feeling
of novelty and uncertainty. What hostile elements
might be present in the vast assembly, no one knew.
The theater faces the plaza, and during the early part
of our program a band was playing in this plaza. A
great crowd stood outside the theater door as we
entered. It was evident that the whole affair was
felt to be a radical innovation — a Protestant meeting
held publicly in a theater and with police protection!
. . . From our point of view on the stage we were
made to feel the heterogeneous character of the
audience. There were a very few Anglo-Saxon faces
— some missionaries, ten or twelve Americans or
Englishmen engaged in business in Lima, and about
two-thirds back someone pointed out to me the in-
terested face of the Hon. Benton McMillan, United
States Minister to Peru. . . . Then there were
the humble and intelligently devout faces of the mis-
sion members. These seemed to constitute more than
two-thirds of the audience. Scattered through the
house were many men whose cheers seemed to me to
indicate not so much a positive attitude of favor and
support for the evangelical ideals as a negative jeer-
ing of the Roman Catholic Church, concerning which
they had evidently experienced a bitter disillusionment.

2z(i RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

The number of men of this temper, if I am any judge,
was very large. They are not evangehcals. They
would probably call themselves liberals in religion, as
well as in politics. The fact is that in religious faith
they are quite at sea, if not confessed atheists.'*
Bishop Kinsolving of Brazil presided, speaking in
Portuguese as did Senor Alvaro Reis of Rio, while
the other two speakers. Professor Monteverde and
Rev. F. Barroetavena, used Spanish. There was no
real disturbance, though a Franciscan monk, who came
in with a parcel of leaflets which were distributed at
the close of the meeting, was the occasion of a com-
motion. The circulars were not so much an attack
upon Protestantism as on the Liberal party for grant-
ing the right of public worship to others than Roman
Catholics.

How the less fanatical cities regarded these public
meetings of the conferences, may be gathered from an
account of the Santiago theater meeting as reported in
La Union, the daily mouthpiece of the Catholic Church
there. Again we are indebted to The Christian Century
articles of Dr. Morrison. "We had heard mention of
this Protestant sect which our people had christened
with the picturesque name of 'Canutos* [so called be-
cause Seiior Canut was one of the best known of the
early preachers, so that all evangelicals in Chile are
called after his name, a la Dowieites]. We had the
impression that the Lutheran religion had gained some
ground among us, thanks to the persevering labor of
the Salvation Army which under pretense of fighting

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 237

alcoholism is carrying forward a formidable prop-
aganda in favor of Protestantism. In a word, we
were convinced beforehand that Protestantism, in spite
of its exotic character as regards the mentality, the
mode of life and the religious traditions of our people,
had gained a few adepts [ ?] among the Chileans.
But we never thought that the thing might assume
greater proportions. In going to the Comedy Theater,
we imagined that we would find it more or less filled
with foreigners, numerous misses and ladies, a few
Chileans more or less curious Hke ourselves, a few
women of our land, and a very, very few specimens
of the native land of O'Higgins and Arthur Prat,
who, as is known, are ardent advocates of the Virgin
of Carmen. Our surprise, therefore, was great, when
we found the theater full from the pit to the highest
gallery, all the seats occupied by a gathering that, it is
true, was cosmopolitan, but in which the national
element predominated."

Then follows a most vivid description of the meet-
ing itself, concluding with this characteristic Latin-
American Catholic estimate : ''For us, all this had
been a revelation. Protestantism has advanced con-
siderably among us. Its apostles, those who propa-
gate it, its elements of action, are formidable. We pro-
pose to study with all calmness and with a spirit free
from passion that which the advance means for the
country. We believe it involves grave perils for our
social tranquillity, for the harmony of the Chilean
family. Far be it from us to suppose that its agents

238 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

and propagandists deliberately pretend to create these
disturbances. But their work is bound to have such
an unfortunate result, because they aspire to the mak-
ing of Protestantism the national religion; and this
pretension, as history shows, has made seas of blood
to run and has sunk in misery those peoples who have
fallen into those abysses of misfortune known as re-
ligious wars."

From the Protestant point of view these regional
conferences have already been most profitable. Thus
the chairman of the Havana Conference, Dr. Thomp-
son, said at its closing session: "There never before
was an occasion in Cuba like this. We have had
splendid fellowship, and hereafter we can cooperate.
Panama was great, but this has been more concrete.
We have never had such companionship. Before the
Panama Congress some of us feared that some ques-
tions would be hard to answer; but now we can
separate, knowing that we have found the heart and
mind of one another, and it will be a sweet memory.
We can do much better together than any of us can
do alone." Secretary McAfee says of Havana : "Those
of us who attended the conference in Cuba are ac-
customed to say that a miracle was wrought there
and there are a good many evidences of it. It was seen
in the change of sentiment on the part of leaders, and
it was marked also in the whole atmosphere and temper
of the conference." A "Committee of Conference in
Cuba" appointed in consequence, held a profitable ses-
sion at Santa Clara, April 25-26.

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 239

In a similar strain Dr. Halsey speaks of the con-
ference held at Lima: "The Lima conference was a
great success. . . . The newspapers treated us
very fairly, giving us good space, and we received
nothing but courteous treatment from all classes.
. . . At the beginning the national workers were
a little slow to take part in the discussions, but as the
days wore on they realized that the conference was
for them, and they freely indulged in the discussions.
In general the Lima conference was characterized by a
spirit of unity, of harmony and of the utmost freedom
in stating difficulties with great stress laid on co-
operation."

These regional conferences did not cease to interest
their promoters in North America as soon as they dis-
solved. Thus the deputation appointed to hold the
South American conferences met in Indianapolis June
14-16 to review their work there and to draw up find-
ings for the continent as a whole. They prove the
high value of such regional gatherings and also of
after consultation in the interests of furthering what
was so auspiciously begun at the field centers.

Enough has been said to substantiate the contention
of Chapter I that the Panama Congress has sur-
passed not only the World Conference of 19 10, but
all others in the speedy mobilization of varied forces
called for by the discussions and papers heard there.
Not a sign of flagging interest is discernible in the
various committees entrusted with large cooperative
responsibilities in Latin America and in North Amer-

240 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

ica. The almost unbelievable work that has already
been accomplished — this is written less than five
months after the dissolution of the Panama Congress
— is beyond any missionary precedent. Study, as well
as work, is likewise in progress. Thus at the date of
penning this paragraph more than five hundred leaders
of young people's study classes throughout the eastern
half of the United States are being trained to lead
groups, many of them to study Bishop Stuntz's
"South American Neighbors," while Dr. Speer's two
books on the subject of Latin America, written since
the Congress, will be widely used by study classes
within nine months of its adjournment, as will the
present volume. Scientifically conducted investiga-
tions, sane and frank discussions, wise conclusions
prayerfully reached, followed by local application of
the well-planned program to local needs, constitute an
achievement not reached hitherto by any great con-
ference of Christians.

But the reader will be especially interested to know
how the Congress impressed others than the North
Americans who are here mainly spoken of. From an
English paper comes. this estimate, written by Secre-
tary A. S. McNairn of Great Britain's Evangelical
Union of South America : "To sum up one's impres-
sions of the Congress: It was a time of deep and
refreshing fellowship with men whose lives have been
given for Latin America and who know intimately its
deepest needs. It was a period of abiding inspiration,
which must profoundly affect the future life and v/ork

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 241

of all who were privileged to participate. The Con-
gress was characterized by deep insight and broad
outlook and by its frank and sincere facing of the
situation and courageous handling of the problems."
From the Canal Zone itself where His Lordship
Rojas, Bishop of Panama, had issued his "Voz de
Alerta a los Catolicos/' warning his flock against the
campaign to be started by the Congress, and where
the Panama Pan-American Truth Society had pre-
sented delegates with a copy of its pamphlet entitled,
"The Guerilla Missionary Congress," a Catholic-
owned daily, the Star and Herald, printed an edi-
torial a week after the Congress had closed entitled
"Christian Work," in which this paragraph occurs:
"The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church was
clearly antagonistic to the enterprise from the first;
and that is a great pity, for anything that advances the
cause of Christ and humanity must of necessity be ad-
vantageous to that Church, if it proposes to keep
abreast of the times and to keep its advanced position
as the champion of progress, material and spiritual.
No Church in all history has done nobler work for
humanity; and Catholic missionaries are even to-day
the pioneers of Christian endeavor in the dark spots
of the world. It thus seems all the more difficult to
understand why the Church in Panama opposed the
holding of the Congress here, and why the authorities
of the Church forbade its members from having any-
thing to do with the enterprise. Surely the Roman
Catholic Church is not willing to admit that it fears

242 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

to compete with other Churches in its own field.
. . . Nor was the Congress a patronizing snub for
the people of Panama and their Church. Its purpose
was as stated, and there never was the slightest indi-
cation at any of the sessions or in any of the speeches
that the delegates had any motive other than the highly
creditable one of assisting in the Christian uplift of
the peoples of Latin- American origin. Surely it is
not denied that there is ample field in those countries
for such work. . . . The world has reached a
stage in its progress wherein selfishness and dogma
must give way to the altruistic ideals of the brother-
hood of man, if any impression is to be made on the
mass of sin and ignorance that infests it. The Church
should include all creeds and its one essential should
be belief in the divine mission of its great founder
and a firm intent to follow in His footsteps."

From other Latins come these four estimates of the
Congress at Panama, two from Portuguese-speaking
and two from Spanish-speaking Latin Americans. The
first is from the pen of the Rev. Efrain Martinez, a
leader in the Presbyterian Church of Chile and a help-
ful participant in the Panama discussions:

"Allow me to say that I believe the Congress will
be for a long time to come the supreme authority and
the compass for all the missionary activity that shall
be developed in Latin America. It is also the index
of the power wnth which the last command and
promise of Christ beat in the heart of the Church. I
believe that we all ought to hope that the two greatest

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 243

needs of the work will be satisfied, — that union and
cooperation of the missionary forces will result, and
that a numerous and efficient national ministry will be
raised up.

"In Chile, apart from the need of continuing the
mutual cooperation begun in the fusion of periodicals
and in the establishment of a seminary for the Pres-
byterians, Methodists and the Christian and Mission-
ary Alliance, we hope to have, as a consequence of
the Congress, a national ministry capable and numer-
ous, a day school for each church, a great enlarge-
ment of the evangelistic and educational forces in the
plains of Chile and, above all, a normal school and
more missionaries."

The second Spanish estimate is from the pen of an
honored Latin- American jurist who came at his own
charges to the Congress and whose telling address is
extracted in the preceding chapter. The Hon. Emilio
del Toro, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of
Porto Rico, writes : *Tn my judgment, it will not be
long before the beneficent influence of the Congress
of Panama will be felt in the religious, social, moral
and educational life of Latin America. As I said in
my address delivered before the Congress, I firmly
believe that to spread the Reformation intelligently and
vigorously in the Latin-American world is to awaken
struggles of conscience in which will be forged and
tempered those great characters so necessary for the
uplifting and salvation of the republics, so carrying
into it the quickening breath of the liberties thus

244 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

conquered by the peoples of the North. Of course,
the success of the proposed campaign will largely
depend upon the moral stature and deeply Christian
spirit of those in charge of that great duty."

Dr. Jose Carlos Rodrigues, former editor and pro-
prietor of the Jornal do Commercio, of Rio de
Janeiro, is a Brazilian whose words have great weight.
His opinion follows. "The ideal life of the Christian
would be like that of Mary, sitting at the Master's feet
and hearing from His sacred lips ttjv dyaOrjv iie^ida,
'the good part* of His word. Christ, indeed, addressed
Himself solely to the individual man. He was not
cumbered with serving public powers or nations, but
He took up the unit of man whom He saved and in-
structed. And it is exactly because He made men that
He has become forever the greatest regenerating and
revolutionary power in the world.

"It is a hard task for His disciples, however, to
collaborate in this work of making new men. To
the unspiritual eye this beautiful world and its multi-
fold temptations, both intellectual and sensual, are
constantly working to frustrate the mightiest Chris-
tian exertions to induce the soul to come to Jesus' feet.
And, as if that were not enough, there is on our con-
tinent a still stronger force that holds back the soul
from the fountain of Truth — our great inertia, our
carelessness regarding the knowledge of God.

"The Panama Congress has, I think, both fully and
adequately considered the various agencies that help
in propagating the gospel, and on the other hand the

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 245

problems of counteracting the many devices for em-
barrassing or stopping that glorious work. The result
of its labors cannot fail to be fruitful. The spirit of
liberty permeates the South American soil; and the
few among us who experience the ^glorious liberty of
the children of God^ will certainly become radiating
centers of the truth that Jesus Christ is indeed the
only foundation of our happiness and hope and of
all true social progress, as well as of the realization
some day of mankind's highest and holiest aspira-
tions."

It is probable that the most philosophical interpreta-
tion of the Panama Congress will be found in Pro-
fessor Erasmo Braga's Portuguese volume describing
it, if one may judge by its preliminary outline. He
has kindly supplied this statement: "The following
observations express the historical and religious mean-
ing of the Panama Congress as defined in my mind.
The most interesting feature of evangelical Chris-
tianity at present is its convergent tendency. If we
recall how individualism developed and how the Prot-
estant Churches diverged after the Reformation, this
new tendency appears to be a very important his-
torical phenomenon. The Panama Congress was one
of these convergent movements, and as a result of it,
the forces of evangelical Christianity are probably
about to be consolidated as never in the past.

"The social and religious elements of the Americas
have gathered together on the Isthmus for the first
time, to study one another and to agree on some plan

246 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

of cooperation for the spiritual uplift and salvation of
this continent. Since the days when the Anglo-Saxon
and the Norman came in contact, no other movement
has placed the Saxon and the Latin types of civiHza-
tion at close quarters in such favorable conditions to
exchange their differing heritages. At Panama both
Saxons and Latins met in spiritual communion, de-
termined to understand and love one another.

"The reports prepared for, and the papers produced
by, the Panama Congress are a priceless contribution
to the study of Latin America. Nowhere else is there
to be found such a mass of information about Latin
America from the point of view of our social and
religious evolution, including as they do the opinions
of Latin Americans themselves. Latin-American
womanhood appears in these studies as the brightest
element of our social and moral life, and the op-
portunities and achievements of Latin civilization are
listed as assets to be duly reckoned with.

"The supreme contribution of the Panama Congress
to the solution of Pan-American problems is the re-
affirmation of the fact that the living, personal in-
fluence of Jesus Christ is the great and the only power
needed by the Latin-American peoples to regenerate
the individual man and to build up free and Christian
commonwealths. It is only Jesus Christ — His spirit,
His love. His law — that can give spiritual meaning
to Pan-Americanism. It was a loving act of Prov-
idence that brought this Congress into being at such
a time of bitter suffering for humanity."

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 247

The final word of appreciation should be uttered
by the man who did far more than any other person
to create, foster and bring to a successful issue this
epoch-marking Congress. The Rev. S. G. Inman, its
organizer and secretary, has this to say of Panama:

"What was accomplished at Panama? Daring
would be the attempt fully to catalogue the results of
such a many-sided gathering. But at least the fol-
lowing may be mentioned :

"First, the most comprehensive survey of the social,
educational, and religious conditions of Latin America
ever attempted was presented through the commission
reports and the ten days' discussions of the Congress.

"Second, this survey unquestionably showed that the
existing moral and spiritual life of these young nations
demands help from the outside for its proper develop-
ment, and that the Latin Americans, far from resent-
ing such help, heartily welcome its coming through
evangelical missionary agencies.

"Third, the study of the Latin-American people
has revealed to Anglo-Saxons a surprisingly large
number of praiseworthy things in their civilization,
and will result in the missionary Societies putting
larger emphasis on the idea of cooperation with the
Latin Americans, and avoiding in all possible ways
the patronizing and critical spirit. The high quality
of the Latin- American delegates to the Congress and
their constructive contribution to every phase of the
discussions demonstrated the power of Latin America
to furnish the highest type of leadership for the world's

248 RENAISSANT LATIN AMERICA

Spiritual life, when given the proper opportunities for
its development.

^'Fourth, it proved conclusively that the greatest im-
pelling force to bring men of different nations and
different creeds together is not uniformity of belief
but the burden of great tasks. The remarkable unity
of the Congress was due to its facing of human need,
and this unity was threatened only when its attention
was turned from the need by a suggestion that it
define itself by dogmatic statement.

"Fifth, it was demonstrated (a) that the spirit of
Christ can so sway men that it is possible for those of
such different inheritances and diverging prejudices
as Anglo-Saxons and Latins to sit down together and
discuss with perfect frankness the most intimate
phases of their individual and national life in such a
way as to come to an ever-increasing regard for one
another and an ever-increasing agreement as to the
solution of their problems; (b) that Protestant Chris-
tianity has developed to the point where it can meet
in a Roman Catholic country and discuss frankly the
religious problems of lands predominantly Roman
Catholic in such a spirit of fairness and humility, and
withal fearlessness, as to commend itself to fair-
minded men of all creeds and to contribute in a note-
worthy way to the binding together of the divergent
and often warring elements of such a polyglot com-
munity as Panama.

"Sixth, the immediate practical result of the Con-
gress was the organization of the Committee on

AFTERMATH AND ESTIMATES 249

Cooperation in Latin America to continue the work
of the Congress and carry out its recommendations
concerning an enlarged, more efficient and more closely
coordinated Christian work in Latin America. Thirty-
four missionary Societies, practically all those in the
United States and Canada supporting work in Latin
America, have elected members of this Committee,
making it officially representative of these Boards.
The machinery for quick and united action has still
further been perfected by the election, by each of the
seven regional conferences held immediately following
the Panama Congress, of a field committee which is
to cooperate with the larger home base committee.

"Thus the Congress has devised a complete chain
whose various links provide for united, economical,
pervasive, and effective processes for making Christ
known, loved and obeyed in every part of Latin
America."

INDEX

"A. B. C, countries" linked to United
States, 5, 6.

Addresses of the Congress, special,
see ch. X, pp. 207-28.

Africa, cooperation in Belgian
Congo, 203-4.

Agricultural colleges, 89.

Agricultural education, 82-3, 104.

Aim of church work in Latin Amer-
ica, 139.

Alexander, G., Congress sermon,
226-7.

Allison, W. B., warning against
Catholic commendation, 74.

Almeida, J. F. d', version of Portu-
guese New Testament, 113.

American Bible Society, exhibit at
Congress, 16.

Ancon, 4.

Ancud, Bishop of, Christ of the
Andes, y6-7.

Andreve, G., welcome to the Con-
gress, 20.

Anti-Catholic propaganda deprecated,
178.

Aristocratic class, 38.

Assets of Latin-American Missions,
51-2.

Attendance at evangelical services,
154-S.

B

Bandeirantes, 30.

Barnes, L. C, devotional address,
208.

Barroetavena, F. A., advocated op-
position to Catholics, 71; at Lima
conference, 236.

Beach, H. P., reply to question, so.

Benevente, Bishop, Christ of the
Andes, 137-

Bennett, Miss B. H., chairman of
Commission V, 123.

Bible: how presented, 65; and Lan-
casterian schools, 91-2; Protestant
versions in Iberian tongues, 112-3;
Catholic versions, 113-4; why
translations are desirable, 114;
guide of new convert, 143; study
variable, 155.

Bible Societies, good work, 44.

Biography stimulates interest, 169.

BixTer, C. £., on agricultural educa-
tion, 104.

Board of Mistionary Preparation,
183-4.

Boggs, S. W., maps, 16.

Braga, E., prayer quoted, 53; im-
proving theological education, 105-
6; "Claims of Christ on Thinking
Men," 216; estimate of Congress,
24S-6.

Brandon, E. E., quoted, 86.

Brazil, efifccts of miscegenation in,

36 (s).

Brewer, G. H., adequacy in occupa-
tion, 50.

British Guiana's schools, 92.

Brooks, Phillips, quoted, 18 1-2.

Brotherly relations with Latin Amer-
icans, 178-9.

Brown, W. A., devotional address,
208.

Brown, W. C, incident narrated,
76-9; two prayer incidents, 182.

Browning, W. E., Spanish inter-
preter of Congress, 19; weaknesses
in education, 104-5; welcomed by
Catholic bishop, 181.

Brycc, Lord: estimate of early con-
querors, ^0; on miscegenation, 36;
real missionary problems, 107-8.

Buenos Aires, its claims for the
Congress, 3-3.

Business Committee of Congress, 17.

Business men in Latin America,
38-9, 49.

Butler, Miss C, syndicated period-
ical, 116.

Calderon, F. G., quoted on popu-
lations, 27; Latin-American races,
35; "babel of races," 56.

Canadian Presbyterian giving, 45.

Canal, see Panama Canal.

Canal Zone: Sunday services, 20;
healthfulness to-day, 20.

Carnegie Endowment International
Peace, 6.

Castro, R. B., quoted, 221-2.

Cepero, J. R., caution in receiving
converts. 145.

Chester, S. H., special churches for
intellectuals, 164; motives of giv-
ers, 172; cooperation in Africa,
203-4.

Christ of the Andes, 135-6,

Christian Century quoted, 235-8.

Church, Evangelical: duty in Latin
America, 39-40; two- fold affirma-
tion, 65-6; emphasizes a living
Christ, 66; fellowship, 67; worship.

251

252

INDEX

68; social gospel, 68; better build-
ings, 67-8; fully discussed in ch.
VII, pp. 139-164; general purpose
of evangelical work, 139; Church
defined, 139-40; relation to Roman-
ism, 140-2; experiences of con-
verts, 142-4; Moorish influence,
144; race elements, 145; cate-
chumenate desirable, 14S-6; per-
sonal work, 146; young people's
societies, 146-7; Sunday schools,
147-8; special evangelistic efforts,
148; social work, 148-9; limitations
because of Catholicism, 149-50;
discipline, 150; Sunday observ-
ance, 150-2; intemperance, 152;
gambling, 152-3; spiritual life, 153-
4; church attendance, 154; leader-
ship important, 155; devotional
literature lacking, 15S-6; self -prop-
agation, 156-7; self-support, 157-9;
self-government, 159; move toward
independence, 160; indigenous
leadership inadequate, 160-2; secur-
ing and educating leaders, 162-4;
trend toward national Church,
197-8.

Church of Sr. Alvaro Reis, 6-7.

Cincinnati plans for Mexico, 229-31.

"City of Dreadful Night," 213-4.

Colton, E. T., chairman Commission
I, 25; latest news as to survey,
232.

Columbus preaching in Havana, 140.

Clark University conferences, 177.

Clemenceau, G., cited, 124.

Colegios, 85-6.

Colmore, C. B,, securing strong na-
tive writers, 118-9.

Color line absent in Latin Amer-
ica, 35-

Colporteurs eulogized, 121-2.

Commentaries desirable, ii4-5-

Commissions, 11-2.

"Committee of Conference In Cuba,"
238.

Committee on Cooperation in Latin
America, 201-2, 231-3; value in
future, 248-9.

Concentration in Missions, 49.

Conferences on Latin America, mis-
sionary, 175; promotive of coop-
eration, 199-200; regional after
Congress, 233-9.

Congresses for Latin America: at
Washington and elsewhere, i ; at
Panama, 1826, 2.

Congress, Panama, of 1916: why
notable, 1-2; place of, 3-5; timeli-
ness, 5-7; genesis, 7-9; objections
to, 9-1 1 ; carefully prepared for,
11; attendance, 14-5; its hall, 15-6;
officers and Business Committee,
16-7; program, 17-9; its languages,
i8-b; official interpreters, 18-9.

Conquistadores, 30; religious objec-
tives, 59-60.

Controversy with Romanists dis-
cussed, 65.

Converts from Catholicism's experi-
ence, 142-3,

Cook, E. F., on unified salaries, 194.

Coope, Miss A,, work for San Bias
Indians, 131-2.

Cooperation and Unity: fully dis-
cussed in ch. IX, pp. 187-205; ex-
emplified in occupation, 188-90;
uniformity in message, 190-1; co-
operation in education, 191-2; in
literature, 192-3; in woman's work,
193; in building up Church, 193-4;
at the home base, 195; with the
government, 195-6; conforming to
national aspirations and ideals, 196;
building up a national Church,
197-8; cooperation with Romanists
impracticable now, 198-9; in con-
ferences, 199-200; in prayer, 200-1;
through enlarged Committee on
Cooperation in Latin America, 201-
2; possible misunderstandings, 202;
"three engines in one," 203; illus-
trated in Belgian Congo, 203-4;
rivalry vs. cooperation, 204; aided
by "change of climate," 204-5;
missionary plenipotentiaries, 205;
how it works in Mexico, 229-31;
permanent committee on, 231.

Corda Fratres, 174.

Cortes, Srta. E., how won to Christ,
71; social worker, Y. W. C. A.,
133-

Cosmopolitan clubs, 174.

Costa, Sefiora de, Christ of the
Andes, 137.

Council of Women for Home Mis-
sions, study text-books, 176.

Coyoacan College, 191.

Cross, how regarded by converts,
143-4-

Cruz, Dr. Oswaldo, 34.

Cuba, committee on conference in,
238.

D

Daugherty, S. D., business men go-
ing to Latin America, 49.

Dav nurseries helpful, 129-30.

Delegates of Congress, fellowship of,
4-S-

Del Toro, E., "The Principles and
Spirit of Jesus," 221-4; estimate
of Congress, 243-4.

De Schweinitz, P., devotional ad-
dress. 208.

Destitution in Latin America, spirit-
ual, 45.

Dexter, E. G., introduced Dr. Mott,
20; Latin- American teachers vs.
missionary, 101.

INDEX

253

Discipline in evangelical Church,
150, 153; common understanding
desirable, 194-

Dollar, how each is spent in Latin-
American missions, 172.

Dominicans establish Inquisition, 61.

E

Edinburgh World Conference, J910:
its Levant conferences postponed,
7; did not include Latin America,
8; compared with Panama Con-
gress, 1 1-3.

Education in Latin America: full
discussion, ch. IV; significant facts,
82; illiteracy, 83; sparse popula-
tion hampers education, 83-4; gov-
ernment institutions, 84-6; secular-
ized, 87; solidarity lacking in gov-
ernment universities, 88; technical
schools, 88-9; Catholic educational
work, 90-1; historical sketch of
Protestant education, 91-2; forms
of recent educational work, 93-100;
character-begetting power, 100;
common sense needed, loi; hostels
desirable, 102; intellectual free-
dom, 103; Brazil needs agricultural
education, 104; weakness of mis-
sionary education, 104-5; correc-
tives for theological education, 105-
6; interdenominational cooperation
demanded, 106; Bryce's criticism
of Latin schools, 107-8; depend-
ence on Christian literature, iio-i;
kindergartens helpful, 129; mission
normal schools, 130; Miss Coope's
Indian work, 13 1-2; cooperation
discussed, 191-3; deputation to S.
America, 231-2,

Elementary schools: government's,
84-5; Ross on, 90-1; missionary,
93-S; for Indians, 94-5.

Elphick, R., on Chile's needs, 46;
Old Testament after New Testa-
ment, 115.

Environmental influence of Latin
America, 31.

Estimates of the Congress, ch. XI,
pp. 229-249.

European War: and the Congress, 7;
Dr. Mott on, 210-1.

Evangelistic work: Mott and Miss
Rouse on. 74-5 ; literature in, 111;
meetings, 148.

Evening sessions of Congress, 19.

Evolution, Bishop McConnell upon,
216-7.

Ewald, C. J., Association work for
students, 72-3.

Ewbank, A., quoted, 137.

Ewing, H. E., work for students, 73.

Expenditure on Latin-American mis-
sions, 170-2.

Fatherhood of God attractive, 73-4.
Fellowship of the Congress, 4-5.
Filipino teacher's greeting, 22-2.
Finlc]^ Dr. C. A., 34.
Fox, J., 103.

Galvao, A., "Conception of God,"
162.

Gambling through lotteries, in
Panama, 141; difficult to give up,
152-3.

Garden City, L. I., Conference and
Congress, 7-9.

Giving to missions in Latin Amer-
ica, 45.

God, conception of by Galvao, 162.

Goethals, General, 20.

Gomara quoted, 61-2.

Gonzalez, J. O., on how to teach,
102; conception of a Latin-Amer-
ican missionary, 184-5.

Gorgas, General, 20.

Goucher, J. F., cooperation in edu-
cation, 106; "The Triumphs of
Christianity," 226.

Government aiding missions, 195-6;
missionaries aiding, 205.

Granberry College, 96.

Great Commission misread, 169.

Grenfcll, Dr., quoted, 70.

Grubb, W. B., quoted, 94-5; govern-
ment commissioner, 195.

"Guerilla Missionary Congress," 241.

H

Hale, A., quoted, 124.

Halscy, A. W., Lima regional con-
ference, 239.

Hamilton, Mrs. F.. a pioneer, 129.

Hartmann, Mrs. M., Moravian
pioneer, 127-8.

Havana regional conference, 238.

Health of Canal Zone to-day, 20-1.

Hicks, H. W., chairman of Com-
mission VII, 165.

Higher educational institutions, 96-8.

History of Latin America inter-
preted, 56-8.

Home Base: full discussion of in
ch. VIII, pp. 165-83; discussion
limited to N. America's societies,
165; prayer fundamental, 165-6;
abnormal attitude toward work in
Latin lands. 166-7; interest now
growing, 167-8; constructive pro-
gram of education needed, 168-9^;
statistics apt to mislead, 169-70;
society survey, 170-1; financial
items, 17 1-2; motives to giving.

254

INDEX

172; Home B»8€ by-products, 172-
3; Ivatin- American students in
sending countries, 173-4; promot-
ing prayer, 174; developing inter-
est, 174-s; conferences, 175: study
of Latin America, 176; Y. M. C. A.
methods of promotion, 176-7; pic-
tures and dramatics, 177; securing
adequate support, 177; recognition
of N.-Amencan weakness, 178;
strengthening brotherly relations,
178-9; style in promoting litera-
ture, 179-80; publicity work at
home, 180; Bp. Lambuth's plan,
181; British criticism of Latin
missions met, 182; prayer helpful,
182; the home ministry a key to
getting candidates, 183; coopera-
tion at, 195.
Rowland, J., on the Latin American,

lOO-I.

Rowland, Mrs. J., woman's work in

homes, 133.
Hurrey, G. D., work for educated

classes, 7a.
Hymnology deficient, 120.

Illiteracy in Latin America, 83.

Immigration to Latin America, 27-8.

Immorality forced on women, 126.

Independent Brazilian Presbyterian
churches, 158-60.

Indianapolis conference on regional
conferences, 239.

Indians of Latin America: present
degradation, 36; described, 36;
number neglected, 40, 44; Tucker's
plea for, 48; Olcott's, 48; Specr
on, 52; religions of, 58; elemen-
tary schools for, 94-S; their
women's condition, 126-7; Miss
Coope's work for, 13 1-2; element
in evangelical Church, 145; un-

f»rovided for religiously, 190; need
ove and sympathy, 223.

Industrial schools, 95.

Inman, S. G., estimate of Congress
reports, 12; secretary Cooperation
Committee, 231; reports concern-
ing Scotch participation, 232; on
reports of the Congress, 233; esti-
mate of Congress, 247-9.

Inquisition in Latin America, 61.

Instituto Evangelico at Lavras, 96.

Instituto Nacional meeting, 19.

Intellectuals of Latin America: perils
to their faith, 39; groups, 39; how
reached, 70-3, 162; special churches
for, 164; addresses of Congress
for, 214-8.

Intemperance, 15a.

Interest in Latin-American missions
growing, 167-8.

International law authorities, 34.
Interpretation of Latin America's

religious position, 56-64.
Interpreters of Congress, official,

18-9.
Italians in Argentina. 52.

Jesuits: in Paraguayan Chaco, 33;
foremost Order in Missions, 60.

Jesus Christ, our attitude should be
like His, 212-3; knocking at the
door, 214, 227; central in life.
216; "The Immutable Christ,"
226-7.

Jones, S., importance of Sunday-
school work, 147-8.

Kindergartens, 93; argument for,
129.

King, H. C, presents Education
report, 81-3; character-begetting
power, 100; on modernism, 102-3;
Christian leadership, 106; devo-
tional address, 208; science aiding
progress, 215.

KinsoTving, L. L., presides at Lima
conference, 236.

Lake Mohonk Conference, 177.

Lambuth, W. R., plan for occupa-
tion, 181.

Lancasterian schools, 91-2.

Lane, H. M., eulogized, 97.

Languages of Congress, 18-9; kin-
ship of Iberian tongues helpful,
41-2; missionary peril, 42.

Las Casas: humane legislation due
to him, 32; his book, 33.

Latin America: defined, 25-26; area
and population, 26; comparative
areas, 26; possible future popula-
tion, 27; immigration, 27-8; re-
sources, 28-9.

Latin Americans: Congress delegates
characterized, 14; Brjrce's estimate
of conquerors, 30; Yanes' estimate
of them, 31; famous patriots, 33;
literary men, 33; physicians, 34;
attitude toward N. America, 42-3;
interpretation of its history, 56-8;
theory of state and society, 64;
two dislikes, 67; Howland's char-
acterization, loo-i; Bryce on prob-
lems, 107-8; womanhood, 124-7;
women students, 130-1; Latin ele-
ment in evangelical Church, 145;
pride of race, 149; gambling com-

INDEX

255

mon, 152-3; in last analytic stag*
of science, 217; value of Congress
in interpreting them, 247.

La Union quoted, 236-7.

Leadership, evangelical: aided by
evangelical literature, no; spirit-
uality desirable, 155; addresses on,
219-21.

Lecky, W. E. H., cited, 225,

Lectureships for Latin America, 103.

Lefevre, E., welcomes Panama Con-
gress, i; bilingual address, 19;
address outline, 208-10.

Lenington, R. F., Fatherhood of
God, 73-4.

Liceos, 85-6.

Lima regional conference, 234-6.

Literature, evangelical: full discus-
sion of, ch. V, pp. 109-122;
exhibit at Panama, 16; Dr.
Ritson on, 109-11; Bible central,
1 1 2-4; other related literature,
114-6; desirable varieties, 11 6-8;
securing strong writers, 11 8-9;
character of books to be written,
119; books on Christian nurture,
119-20; general literature desirable,
120; hymnology deficient, 120;
traqts and leaflets demanded, 120-1;
for Sunday schools, 120; colpor-
teurs, 121-2; cooperation especially
needed, 122; lacking for women,
135; woman's magazine wanted,
135-6: devotional works lacking,
155; literary style aids, 179; union
plans for, 192-3; antichristian, 193;
work since Congress on literature,

Livingstone, D., his prayer, 213.
Lloyd, A. S., devotional address,

53-4, 208.
Lord's Prayer expounded, 73.
Lotteries, see Gambling.

M

McAfee, J. E., Protestantism's divi-
sions, 50; Havana conference, 238.

McConnell, F. J., quotes Phillips
Brooks, 181-2; spiritual climate
and cooperation, 204-5; "Chris-
tian Faith in an Age of Science,"
216-8.

Mackenzie College, 96-7.

MacLaren. D. C, chairman Commis-
sion III, 81.

McLean, A., devotional address, 208.

McLean, J., Plea for Latin-American
students, 48; missionaries and gov-
ernments, 205.

McNairn, A. S., English objectors
to Latin missions, 182; estimate of
the Congress, 240-1.

Maps of occupation, 16, 188.

Martinez, E., estimate of Congress,
242-3.

Martyrs, in Mexico, 149.

"Matt H. Shay" illustration, 203.

Memoriter teaching, 85.

Message and Method: fully discussed
in ch. Ill, pp. 55-79; complicated
questions, 56; historical interpre-
tation, 56-8; inheritance from
primitive faiths, 58; key to under-
standing Roman Church, 58-63;
evangelical history, 63-4; the mis-
sionary, 6s; his message biblical,
65-6; enlargement of Roman ideas,
66-7; spiritual life, 67; church
fellowship, 67; worship, 68; social
gospel, 68; object-lessons, 68-70;
reaching the educated, 70-1, yz-j,;
God's fatherhood, 73-4; evangel-
istic campaigns, 74-5; illustration
of message and method, 76-9; char-
acter of the common message,
190-1.

Methods of mission work, Roman
Catholic, 61-2.

Mexico: special meeting on, 6; early
missions in, 128-9; friction in co-
operation in, 202; special meeting
for, 229-31; conference in October,

Ministry can aid in getting candi-
dates, 183.

Miscegenation, effects of, 36-7.

Mission study classes in S. America,
240.

Missionaries, Evangelical : require-
ments, 65; what they should b©,
160-1, 184-5; Sr. Pereira on, 220.

Missionaries, Roman Catholic: work
of the Orders, 32; entries and
conquests of souls, 32; estimate of,
59-61; methods, 61-2.

Missionary Education Movement,
175-6.

Missions, evangelical: justified in
Catholic lands, 41; encourage-
ments, 41-2; obstacles, 42-3; sum-
mary statement, 44-5 5 extension
and intension, 49; disunited ranks,
50; favorable facts, 50-1; three
assets, 51-2; three needs, 52;
duties, 53; historical outline, 64;
why promote the work, 168-9.

Monroe Doctrine: influenced by the
Congress, 5; Latin suspicions, 42.

Monteverde, E., Congress president,
16; characterizes ideal Latin mis-
sionary. 185; speaker at Lima con-
ference, 236.

Monteverde, Sefiora A. de, com-
mends Y. W. C. A. work, 133.

Moorish influence in evangelical
Churches, 144.

Mora, L. G., on Mexico's needs, 46;
on Mexican martyrs, 149.

256

INDEX

Morris, C, his Argentine evangelical
schools, 93; aided by government,
195.

Morrison, C. C, regional confer-
ences, 23S-8. „ , , .

Moses, B.. quoted on Pope s relation
to Latin America, 59-

Motives to supporting Latin-Amer-
ican missions, 172.

Mott, J. R., response to address of
welcome, 1-2 ; on timeliness of
Congress, 5-6; chairman Business
Committee, 17 1 evangelistic cam-
paigns, 74-5; Japan's method of
securing writers, 118; brotherly
spirit commended, 179; on the
European war, 210-1; closing
prayer of Congress, 227-8; on Cin-
cinnati plan, 229-30.

N
National Church leadership, 160,

Nationalism strong in Porto Rico
and Brazil, 196. , . ,, .

Needs of Latin America: Moras
statement of. 46; Elphick s state-
ment, 46; Stuntz's statement, 46;
three, 52. . . , u*

Negroes of Latin America: brought
as slaves, 30; six millions neg-
lected by Church, 40.

Normal schools for women, 130.

North-American Committee on Anglo-
American Communities Abroad,
1 73.

North-American supporters of Latin-
American missions, 165.

Novels, high-class ones helpful, 120.

O

Objections to convening Panama
Congress, lo-i.

Obstacles to Latin missions, 42-3-

Occupation, see Survey and Occupa-
tion- , ,.

Olcott, E. E., on Indians, 48.

Oldham. W. F., opening prayer, 2^;
his "loving method, 72; lock-
operator of Congress, 75-6; size of
the Latin-American job, 168; lu
opening services, 212. ,

Orders, Roman Catholic, work in
Latin America, 60-1.

Osuna, A., chairman Commission IV,
III.

Palacios, Srta. J., Mexican view of

Bible, US-
Panama Canal: importance, 3-4;

made new world map. s; visited,

20.
Panama city: history, i; why chosen

for the Congress, 3-4; other con-

gresses, 2; its Bishop and the Con-
gress, 10^ visited, 21; its missions,
21; on bunday, 141.
Panama News Letter quoted, 3.
Panama Republic's constitution, 209.
Pan-American Scientific Congress, 6.
Paraguayan Chaco: Jesuit work

there, z^; Protestants there, 44.
Parochial schools, evangelical, 94.
Patriots, Latin-American, 33.
Paul, C. T "The Principles and

Spirit of Jesus," 224-5.
Paulistas, 30.^

Penzotti, F., imprisoned, 149.
Peons, 36-7.
People's Central Institute, 68-9;

aided by government, 195.
Pereira, E. C, ranks disunited, 49-
50; Catholic errors, 74; ideal Latin
missionary, 186; "True Leaders
the Fundamental Need," 219-20.
Periodicals of churches help Latin-
American missions little, 175.
Personal work in evangelical Church,

146.
Peru, plea for, 47.
Photography aids. 180.
Physicians, noted Latin- American, 34.
Piedras Negras Institute: an object-
lesson, 6; its program, 69-70; aided
by government, 195.
Pope and Latin Arnerica, 59.
Populations of Latin America, 26-8.
Porto Rico situation queried, 189:
its workers aid government, 19S-6;
nationalistic feeling strong there,
196; benefits from missions, 222-2,.
Prayer: at daily sessions, 17-18; Bp.
Oldham's, 22; Bp. Lloyd's, 54;
Prof. Braga's, 54; for Commis-
sion II, 55 ; too formal and easy,
154; especially needed for Home
Base, 165-6; promotion through
calendars, etc., 174; suggestions
concerning, 177; essential for co-
operation, 200-1 ; closing prayer of
Congress, 227-8.
Presbyterian Churches in Brazil, in-
dependent, 158-60.
Principles of mission work. Miss

Rankin's, 128-9.
Printing early in Latin America, 33-
Program of Congress, 17-9.
Publicity bureaus, 180.
Puritans in the New World, 30,
221-2.

R
Races of Latin America: Numerical
statement. 34; no color line, 35 5
miscegenation effects, 36-7; claims
on evangelicals, 38-9; feeling
against other races, 42.
Rainey, W. H., one evangelical uni-
versity, 106.

INDEX

257

Rankin, Miss M., Mexican pioneer,
128-0.

Ravi, v., Waldensians in Uruguay,
231.

Reformation spreading, 223.

Regional conferences, 233-9.

Reina, C. de. Bible version, 112.

Reis, Sr. Alvaro, his church, 6-7; on
education, 101-2; "The Vital
Power of Christianity," 225; at
Lima conference, 236.

Religions of indigenous inhabitants
of Latin America, 58.

Religious liberty not fully assured
in Latin America, 43.

Resources of Latin America, 28-9;
Barrett's prediction, 29.

Restlessness of better class of church
members, 159-60.

Revell, F. H., evangelical literature,
116; rivalry and cooperation, 204.

Rio de Janeiro: its claims for the
Congress, 2; health reclamation,
34; Archbishop of, value of ver-
nacular translations, 114.

Ritchie, J., plea for Peru, 47.

Ritson, J. H., on Christian literature,
109-11.

Robinson, Canon, on Catholic mis-
sions, 63.

Rodrigues, J. C, estimate of Con-
gress, 244-5.

Roman Catholic Church: attitude to-
ward Congress, lo-i; not helpful
to intellectuals, 39; its missions
justified. 41 ; cooperation with, im-
possible, 43; Protestant criticisms
of, 47; delegates' relation to it,
56; four facts help understand it,
58-63; spirit and method, 61-2;
present status, 62-3; defects, 63;
spiritual life imperilled, 67; errors
warned against, 74; its universi-
ties, 86-7; helpfulness of Bible
translations for, 114; object to
vernaculars, 114; described, 140-2;
harasses Protestant work, 150; anti-
Catholic propaganda deprecated,
178; priests' ratio to population,
181; cooperation with, 198-9; atti-
tude of Panama Republic, 209;
Judge del Toro on, 222-3; estimate
of Santiago regional conference,
236-9; Star and Herald's view of
Congress, 241-2.
Ross, E. A., quoted, 90-1; S. Amer-
ican women, 124, 126.
Rouse, Miss K., how to reach stu-
dents, 75.

St. Anthony devotee's conversion,

76-9.
Saltillo Methodist Girls' Normal

School, 95.

Sanders, F. K., conference on effi-
cient candidate training, 184-6.

Santiago College. Chile, 130.

Santiago conference, 236-8.

Schools, see Elementary schools, and
Secondary schools.

Science and Christian faith, ais,
216-8.

Scientific character of Congress, 14.

Secondary Schools: Government's,
84-5; early missionary, 92; later
missionary, 95-6.

Sein, E. M., favorable aspects of
missions, 50-1.

Self-governing evangelical churches,
159-60.

Self-propagation of churches, 156-7.

Self-support of churches, 157-8; gifts
of Brazilian church, 196-7.

Shepherd, Prof., quoted, Spaniards'
three desires, 31; motives in deal-
ing with Indians, 32.

Smith, Miss F.. on Colombian
women, 126; S. American homes
and women, 134.

Social work: social gospel needed in
Latin America, 68; for women,
132-3; reforms, 148-9; social needs
met by spirit of Jesus, 221-4.

Societies in Latin America, mission-
ary, 171.
Solidarity lacking among Latin-Amer-
ican students, 88.

Southern News Bureau, 180.

Speer, R. E., genesis of Congress,
7-9; chairman of day sessions, 16-7;
Filipino teacher's story, 22-3;
assets, needs, duties in Latin mis-
sions, S1-3; "Tourist Guide," 173;
opening address of the Congress,
212-4; approves Cincinnati plan,
230; chairman Cooperation Com-
mittee, 231; union seminary in
Mexico, 232-3.

Spiritual life of Churches, 153-4.

Star and Herald, on Congress, 241-2.

Stark, A. R,, Bolivian girl incident,
IIS-

Statistics of Congress: alluded to,
43-4; apt to mislead, 169-70; so-
ciety, 171; financial, 171-2.

Strategy missions: Panama strategic
for Congress, 4-5; stations well
located, 41.

Student Volunteer Movement and

Latin America, 176.
Students of Latin America: plea for,
47-8; work by Christian Associa-
tion, 72-3; Miss Rouse on, 75;
solidarity lacking, 88; Latin Amer-
leans studying abroad, 173-4.
Study of Latin-American missions,

176.
Stuntz, H. C, on Plate country
needs. 46; chairman Commission
VIL 139; "The Price of Leader-

258

INDEX

ship," 221; "South American
Neighbors," 240.

Sunday observance, 150-2.

Sunday schools, 99-100; literature
important, 121; importance and
weakness, 147-8; defects of, 156.

Survey and Occupation: fully dis-
cussed in ch. II, pp. 25-54; terri-
tory defined, 25-6; prospective
areas, 26-7; immigration, 27-8; re-
sources, 28-9; peoples concerned,
29-36; social groupings, 36-8;
claims on evangelical Churches,
38-41; aids to occupation, 41-2;
obstacles, 42-3; statistical items,
43-5; Mexico's need, 45-6; Roman
tactor, 47; student class, 47-8;
Indians, 48; Northern business
men, 49; extension or intension,
49; divided Protestantism, 49-50;
adequacy of occupation defined,
50; favorable time for survey, 50;
favoring conditions, 50-1; assets
of the task, 51-2; needs, 52; per-
sonal duties, 53; cooperation aids,
188; good opportunity for changes,
189-90; latest news concerning, 232.

Swift, J., on evangelical literature,
109.

Taylor, S. E., extension and inten-
sion, 49; approves Cincinnatti plan,
230.

Technical schools, 88-9.

Teeter, W. H., quoted on literature,
116, 117.

Theological institutions, 97-8; educa-
tion should be cooperative, 191 -2.

Thompson, C. L., chairman Commis-
sion VIII. 187; mapping territory,
188; emphasis in message, 190-1;
on Catholic cooperation, 198-9;
Havana conference, 238.

Thomson, J., "City of Dreadful
Night," 213-4.

Thomson, J., Lancasterian schools,
91-2.

Timeliness of Panama Congress, 5-6.

Toro, see Del Toro.

•'Tourist Guide, Missions and Eng-
lish Services, Latin America,"
I73» 188.

Tracts still useful in Latin America,
120-1.

Training of National leaders. 163;
"Training and Efficiency of Mis-
sionaries, 183-6.

Trevifio, A., on translation work, 1 1 7.

Tucker, H C, Portuguese inter-
preter of Congress, 19; plea for
Indians, 48; value of Bible trans-
lation work, 113.

U

Union churches in Latin America.
''■73'

United Free Church may work in
b. America, 232,

United States Government's cour-
tesies, 20.

United Study of Missions, Central
Committee, 176.

Universities in Latin America, 33;
Government's, 86-8; union Chris-
tian university demanded. 192.

Uruguayana School, 95.

Valera, C. de, version of Bible, 112.
Vance, J. I., cooperation and human

nature, 203; "The Vital Power of

Christianity," 225.
Vargas, D. de, quoted, 112.

W

Waldensians in Uruguay, 231.

War, see European war.

Watts, Miss M., a pioneer, 129.

Winter. N. O., quoted, 124.

Woman's work in Latin America:
full discussion in ch. VI, pp. 123-
37; its constituency, described,
124-7; sketch of early work and
workers, 127-9; educational work
for them, 129-32; social work,
132-3; work in the home, 133-5;
literature needed, 135-6; Christ
needed, 136-7; cooperative educa-
tion, 193.

Yanes, F., quoted, Conquistadores,
30; characterizes Latin Americans,

31.

Young Men's Christian Association:
object-lesson of, 6; work for stu-
dents, 72-3; work for intellectuals,
164; and Latin-American students
in N. America, 174-

Young people's societies, 146-7.

Young Women's Christian Associa-
tion, social work, i33-

Yucatan, protracted meetings in, 148.