.

On the next Sabbath I attended the Indian celebration of the appearance
of the most blessed Virgin. During the Christmas holidays in the
country of the Pintos, I had seen Indians dressed up in whimsical
attire, enacting plays, and singing and dancing; but this was the first
time that I had ever seen, in a house dedicated to the worship of God,
or, rather, in a temple consecrated to the adoration of the Virgin,
fantastic dances performed by Indians under the supervision of priests
and bishops. When I found out what the entertainment was, I was
heartily vexed that I should be at such a place on the Sabbath day. The
dancing and singing was bad enough, but the climax was reached when the
priest came down from the altar, with an array of attendants having
immense candles, to the side door, where the procession stopped to
witness the discharge, at mid-day, of a large amount of fire-works in
honor of the most blessed Virgin Mary.

I hurried home from this profanation of the Lord's day, and sat down
and contemplated the old Aztec god, who had been deified for his
wisdom, and could not but regret the change that had been imposed upon
these imbecile Indians. The next Sabbath after this was the national
anniversary of the miraculous apparition; but, having seen enough of
this sort of thing, I concluded that my Sabbaths would be better spent
in staying at home and reading a Spanish Testament, which had been
brought into the country in violation of the law. When I was first at
the city of Mexico, Governor Letcher related to me the stratagem by
which he contrived to smuggle an American Bible agent out of the
country when the police were after him, on an accusation of selling
prohibited books! for in such a country as this, the Word of God is a
prohibited book.

Juan Diego, upon whose veracity rests the story of the miraculous
appearance of the Virgin, was an Indian _peon_; and though, like the
rest of his race, he probably was an habitual liar, yet when he bears
testimony to a miracle he is presumed to speak the truth. He lived in a
mud hut somewhere about the barren hill now consecrated to the Virgin
of Guadalupe. The attempt to make out that it was Saint Thomas, or the
Wandering Jew who here had an interview with the Virgin Mary, and that
the old rag on which the picture is painted is really a part of the
cloak of Saint Thomas, is, by a very verbose proclamation of the
Archbishop of Mexico, dated 25th March, 1795, pronounced