tifarious devices to convert the Church into a
money-making channel. If the true religious spirit ever pervaded the
provincial Filipino's mind, it was quickly impaired in his struggle
to resist the pastor's greed, unless he yielded to it and developed
into a fanatic or a monomaniac. [280]

Astute Filipinos, of quicker discernment than their fellows, did not
fail to perceive the material advantages to be reaped from a religious
system, quite apart from the religion itself, in the power of union
and its pecuniary potentiality. As a result thereof there came into
existence, at the close of Spanish rule, the _Philippine Independent
Church_, more popularly known as the _Aglipayan Church_. Some eight or
nine years before the Philippine Rebellion a young Filipino went to
Spain, where he imbibed the socialistic, almost anarchical, views of
such political extremists as Lerroux and Blasco-Ybanez. By nature of
a revolutionary spirit, the doctrines of these politicians fascinated
him so far as to convert him into an intransigent opponent of Spanish
rule in his native country. In 1891 he went to London, where the
circumstance of the visit of the two priests alluded to at p. 383
was related to him. He saw in their suggestion a powerful factor for
undermining the supremacy of the friars. The young Filipino pondered
seriously over it, and when the events of 1898 created the opportunity,
he returned to the Islands impressed with the belief that independence
could only be gained by union, and that a pseudo-religious organization
was a good medium for that union.

The antecedents and the subsequent career of the initiator of the
Philippine Independent Church would not lead one to suppose that there
was more religion in him than there was in the scheme itself. The
principle involved was purely that of independence; the incidence of
its development being in this case pseudo-religious, with the view
of substituting the Filipino for the alien in his possession of sway
over the Filipinos' minds, for a purpose. The initiator of the scheme,
not being himself a gownsman, was naturally constrained to delegate
its execution to a priest, whilst he organized another union, under
a different title, which finally brought incarceration to himself
and disaster to his successor.

Gregorio Aglipay, the head of the Philippine Independent, or Aglipayan,
Church, was born at Batac, in the province of Ilocos Norte, on May
7, 1860, of poor parents, who owned