usual superstition attributed its good effects to
some mysterious healing power in water itself. Therefore, when the
patient was not able to undergo the usual process, or when his medical
attendant was above the vulgar and routine practice of his profession,
it was administered on the infinitesimal system. The quack muttered a
formula over a gourd filled from a neighboring spring and sprinkled it
on his patient, or washed the diseased part, or sucked out the evil
spirit and blew it into a bowl of water, and then scattered the liquid
on the fire or earth.[125-2]

The use of such "holy water" astonished the Romanist missionaries, and
they at once detected Satan parodying the Scriptures. But their
astonishment rose to horror when they discovered among various nations a
rite of baptism of appalling similarity to their own, connected with
the imposing of a name, done avowedly for the purpose of freeing from
inherent sin, believed to produce a regeneration of the spiritual
nature, nay, in more than one instance called by an indigenous word
signifying "to be born again."[126-1] Such a rite was of immemorial
antiquity among the Cherokees, Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians. Had the
missionaries remembered that it was practised in Asia with all these
meanings long before it was chosen as the sign of the new covenant, they
need have invoked neither Satan nor Saint Thomas to explain its presence
in America.

As corporeal is near akin to spiritual pollution, and cleanliness to
godliness, ablution preparatory to engaging in religious acts came early
to have an emblematic as well as a real significance. The water freed
the soul from sin as it did the skin from stain. We should come to God
with clean hands and a clean heart. As Pilate washed his hands before
the multitude to indicate that he would not accept the moral
responsibility of their acts, so from a similar motive a Natchez chief,
who had been persuaded against his sense of duty not to sacrifice
himself on the pyre of his ruler, took clean water, washed his hands,
and threw it upon live coals.[126-2] When an ancient Peruvian had laid
bare his guilt by confession, he bathed himself in a neighboring river
and repeated this formula:--

"O thou River, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the Sun,
carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear."[127-1]

The Navajo who has been deputed to carry a dead body to burial, holds
himself unclean until he has thoroughl