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 Latin- America 
 
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 THE CASE FOR MISSIONS 
 IN LATIN AMERICA 
 
 ROBERT E. 'SPEER 
 
 Our concern is with Latin America. Let 
 us ask and answer four questions. (1) Are 
 our missions in Latin American lands legiti- 
 mate and necessary? (2) If so, can they be 
 conducted without encountering the antagon- 
 ism of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin 
 America and in the United States? (3) If 
 not, what course are we to pursue? (4) If 
 we are to go forward with the missions how 
 are we to get for them that interest and sup- 
 port at home to which they are entitled, not 
 less than our missions in Asia and Africa? 
 
 I. 
 
 Are our missions in Latin American lands 
 legitimate and necessary? We answer ycj, 
 and for the following reasons : 
 
 (1) The moral condition of the South 
 American countries warrants and demands 
 the presence of those forms of evangelical re- 
 ligion which will war against sin and bring 
 men the power of righteous life. 
 
 According to the census of Brazil in 1890, 
 2,603,489 or between one-fifth and one-sixth 
 of the population are returned as illegitimate. 
 In Ecuador Mr. Curtis says that more than 
 one-half of the population are of illegitimate 
 hirth. At one time in Paraguay, after the 
 long wars, it was estimated that the percen- 
 tage of illegitimate births was over 90 per 
 cent. In Venezuela, according to the official 
 statistics for 1906, there were that year 47,606 
 illegitimate births, or 68.8 per cent. In Chile 
 the general percentage is 33 per cent, and the 
 1 
 
highest in any department a little over 66 per 
 cent. In England the percentage is 6 per cent., 
 and in France and Belgium 7 per cent. In 
 Bolivia, on four random pages of the Military 
 Register of the Republic, I counted 15S names; 
 of these names 97 are stated to be legitimate 
 and 61, or 38.6 per cent., illegitimate. There 
 is no shame about the matter in this Register. 
 The names of father and mother and their 
 occupations are given in the case of each 
 illegitimate born, as well as in the case of the 
 legitimate. In Uruguay in 1906, 21 Yi per cent, 
 of the births were illegitimate. In South 
 America, as a whole, it is safe to say that 
 from one-fourth to one-half of the population 
 is illegitimate. “Male chastity,” says Mr. 
 Hale, now connected, I believe, with the 
 Bureau of American Republics, in his very 
 temperate and fair-minded book, “The South 
 Americans,” “Alale chastity is practically 
 unknown.” 
 
 It is the right and duty of evangelical 
 Christianity to go in with morally cleansing 
 power upon this moral need. 
 
 (2) The Protestant missionary enterprise 
 with its stimulus to education and its appeal 
 to the rational nature of man is required by 
 the intellectual needs of South America. 
 
 There is a brilliant upper class, many of 
 whom have been educated abroad, but the 
 continent may justly be called an illiterate 
 continent. The educational systems are worthy 
 of no small praise, but they want conscience, 
 adaptation, morality, and especially is there 
 need of the solid education of the masses of 
 the people. In 1901, 70 per cent, of the con- 
 scripts for the Chilean army could neither 
 read nor write. The proportion of illiteracy 
 in the recruits for the German army is .04 
 per cent. In Brazil, the census of 1890 re- 
 turned 12.213,346 of the population, or approxi- 
 mately 85 per cent., as illiterate. In Chile, 
 1,951,061 were returned in 1907 as illiterate, or 
 approximately 60 per cent. These two 
 countries would dispute with Argentine the 
 2 
 
3 
 
 Market Scene in Cartegena 
 
first place in educational enterprise. And in 
 Argentine 50.5 per cent, of the population over 
 six years of age and in Bolivia nearly 80 per 
 cent, of the population over seven years of age 
 are illiterate. 
 
 Agencies which will bring home to these 
 nations the duty of educating all the people 
 and of doing it with sincere thoroughness, of 
 setting right standards, and of relating re- 
 ligion rightly to education, are justified in 
 extending their help to South America. 
 
 (3) Protestant missions are justified in 
 South America in order to give the Bible to 
 the people. 
 
 There are Roman Catholic translations of 
 the Bible both in Spanish and in Portuguese, 
 but the Roman Church has discouraged or 
 forbidden their use. Again and again priests 
 have burned the Bibles sold by colporteurs or 
 missionaries even when they were the Roman 
 Catholic versions. Again and again they have 
 denounced the missionaries for circulating the 
 Scriptures and have driven them out of vil- 
 lages where they were so employed, and have 
 even secured their arrest. It is safe to say 
 that not one person out of a thousand in 
 South America would ever have seen a Bible 
 but for the Protestant missionary movement. 
 The priests themselves are ignorant of it. A 
 few ecclesiastics, like the one Roman Catiiolic 
 cardinal in South America who was formerly 
 the Archbishop of Brazil, have written approv- 
 ingly of the circulation of the Bil)le in Portu- 
 guese, but nothing has been done by his 
 Church to promote the circulation in Span- 
 ish, which is the language of two-thirds of 
 South America. The Archbishop of Bogota 
 requires all who have Bibles in their posses- 
 sion to deliver them up to their priests. Only 
 a few months ago, the priest in the church on 
 the main plaza in Chilian, where the great 
 markets are held, boasted openly in church of 
 having burned seven Bibles. 
 
 The circulation of the Bible in South 
 America is still dependent upon the Bible 
 4 
 
Societies and the Protestant missionaries. If 
 it were not for them the people of South 
 America would to-day be without the Bible. 
 Is it wrong to give it to them? Must we 
 justify a movement without which 40,000,000 
 people would be ignorant of the Bible? 
 
 (4) Protestant missions are justified and 
 demanded in South America by the character 
 of the Roman Catholic priesthood. 
 
 I fought as long as possible against accept- 
 ing the opinion universally held throughout 
 South America regarding the priests. Ever since 
 reading as a boy the “Life of Charles Kings- 
 ley,” the enforced celibacy of the priesthood 
 had seemed to me a monstrous and wicked 
 theory, but I had believed that the men who 
 took that vow were true to it, and that while 
 the Church lost by it irreparably and infinitely 
 more than she gained, she did gain neverthe- 
 less a pure and devoted, even if a narrow and 
 impoverished, service. But the deadly evi- 
 dence spread out all over South America, con- 
 fronting one in every district to which he goes, 
 evidence legally convincing, morally sickening, 
 proves that, whatever may be the case in other 
 lands, in South Anierica the stream of the 
 Church is polluted at its fountains. 
 
 (5) Protestant missions in South America 
 are justified because the Roman Catholic 
 Church has not given the people Christianity. 
 
 There are surely some who find peace and 
 comfort and some who see Christ through all 
 that hides Him and misrepresents Him, but the 
 testimony of the most temperate and open- 
 minded of the men and women who were once 
 themselves earnest Roman Catholics is that 
 there are few whom they know in the Roman 
 Catholic Church who know the facts of 
 Christ’s life and fewer still who know Christ. 
 The crucifixes, of which South America is 
 full, inadequately represent the Gospel. They 
 show a dead man. not a living Saviour. We 
 did not see in all the churches we visited a 
 single symbol or suggestion of the resurrec- 
 tion or the ascension. There were hundreds 
 5 
 
G 
 
 Ox-cart in Chile street 
 
of paintings of saints and of the Holy Family 
 and of ^lary, but not one of the supreme 
 event in Christianity. And even the dead 
 Christ is the subordinate figure. The central 
 place is Mary’s. Often she is shown holding a 
 small lacerated dead figure in her lap, and 
 often she is the only person represented at all. 
 In the great La IMerced church in Lima, over 
 the whole chancel is the motto: “Gloria a 
 Maria. In the oldest church in Barranquilla, 
 there was no figure of Christ at all in the altar 
 equipment, but Mary without the infant in the 
 centre, two other figures on either side, and 
 over all “Gloria a Maria.” In the wall of the 
 ancient Jesuit Church in Cuzco, known as the 
 Church of the Campania, are cut the words. 
 
 Come unto ilary all ye who are burdened 
 and weao’ with your sins and she will give 
 you rest.” They are many, I am sure, who 
 learn to love and reverence the name of 
 Christ, but Christ as a living moral and spir- 
 itual power the South American religion does 
 not proclaim. 
 
 (6) Protestant missions are justified in 
 South America because the Roman Catholic 
 Church is at the same time so strong and so 
 weak there. 
 
 The priesthood has a powerful hold upon 
 the superstition of the people. As we rode 
 along one day in Brazil in a drizzling rain 
 with bare heads and rubber ponchos, an old 
 woman came running solicitously from her 
 hovel, mistaking us for priests and crying, “O 
 most powerful God, where is your hat?” To 
 ^e people the priest stands in the place of 
 God, and even where his own life is vile the 
 people distinguish between his function as 
 priest in which he stands as God before the 
 altar, and his life as man in which he falls 
 into the frailties of the flesh. Xot only is the 
 priesthood the most influential body in South 
 America, but the Church has a hold upon 
 politics and family life and society which is 
 paralyzing. Its evil is not weak and harm- 
 less but pervasive and deadly, and the Chris- 
 7 
 
tian Church is called by the most mandatory 
 sanctions to deal with the situation. But on 
 the other hand the Roman Catholic Church 
 does not have a fraction of the strength and 
 power in South America which we had sup- 
 posed it had, and the inefficiency of its work 
 is pitiful. With enormous resources, with 
 all the lines of power in its hands, it has 
 steadily lost ground. The churches, save on 
 festivals, are mostly ill-attended. The priests 
 are derided and reviled. The leading news- 
 paper in Chile, which bitterly attacked some 
 statements which I made upon returning about 
 the character of the priests, a few weeks later 
 printed a denunciation of the priests in north- 
 ern Chile more sweeping than anything I 
 had said. The comic papers gibe at them. 
 This spectacle of a continent of men losing 
 all respect for religion and leaving it to women 
 and to priests, whose moral character they 
 despise and whose religious character they de- 
 ride, is a grave and distressing spectacle. 
 There is no sadder sight to be found in the 
 whole world. 
 
 The religious teachers of South America 
 have made the men of the continent irreligious. 
 They have discovered that what was taught 
 them is false and with that discovery they 
 have flung away the faith which they now 
 call superstition. One cannot but feel toward 
 them as the author of “Ecce Homo” felt 
 toward the Pharisees. “It would be better 
 that the Jews should have no teachers of wis- 
 dom at all than that they should have teachers 
 who should give them folly under the name of 
 wisdom. Better that in the routine of a labor- 
 ious life they should hear of wisdom as a 
 thing more costly than pearls but beyond their 
 reach, than that it should seem to be brought 
 within their reach and they should discover 
 it to be paste ... If a divine revelation 
 be the greatest of blessings, then the imposture 
 that counterfeits it must be the greatest of 
 all evils.” It is not easy to understand the 
 morality of the view which would deliver the 
 whole situation in South America to the 
 8 
 
Cross supposed to possess healing powers, San Paulo Brazil 
 with^hrisPs'^hir^'^ 'vith representations of things connected 
 ^fnirisrtt\,t;re.c“"" cmchxionuhe cock fhat crowed, 
 
 hfflnon "'”‘'’’1 created it, an agency whose 
 influence unless reformed from without is 
 waning for everything but evil. 
 
 (7)_The Roman Catholic Church in South 
 America needs the Protestant missionary 
 movement. ^ 
 
 AnwRo in South 
 
 America. There are good men and women in 
 
 It- In spite of the falsehoods and vicious 
 elements in it, there is truth also That the 
 good m It may triumph over the evil, there is 
 need of external stimulus and purification 
 y 
 
The presence of Protestant missions alone 
 will shame the Church into a self-clcansing 
 and introduce the forces, or support whatever 
 inner forces there may already be, which may 
 correct and vivify it. There are some who 
 think the South American religious system is 
 simply to be swept away, that it cannot be re- 
 formed, but there is another view open to us 
 and that is that against whatever odds and 
 with whatever deep cutting excisions the good 
 may be strengthened and enabled to eliminate 
 the evil. Already Protestant missions have 
 wrought great changes. They are altering, 
 in Chile and Brazil at least, the ostensible 
 attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward 
 the Bible. They have been among the in- 
 fluences which have secured a very fair text 
 book of Sacred History in the public schools 
 in Chile. They have elevated the standard of 
 education in the schools conducted by the 
 Roman Catholic Church and have greatly 
 stimulated that Church in its establishment of 
 schools. “His praiseworthy efforts,” says the 
 ex-Minister of Justice and Public Instruction 
 in the Argentine, Dr. Federico Pinedo, of 
 Mr. Morris, the founder of the Argentine 
 Evangelical Schools, “have had the virtue of 
 awakening the Catholics, who not to be left 
 behind, have also founded numerous schools, 
 so that in every way the most needy children 
 are being benefited.” They have steadily 
 widened the sphere of freedom and hedged in 
 the Church more and more to a true Church 
 ideal. To restrain or abate the forces which 
 have done all this is not an act of true friend- 
 ship toward the Roman Catholic Church. It 
 is a betrayal of her best interests and her best 
 men and women who need all the help that 
 can be sent from without to cleanse the South 
 American soul and to purge its chief 
 institution. 
 
 (8) And lastly, though it seems to me that 
 I have only begun the argument, evangelical 
 Christianity is warranted in going to South 
 America because it alone can meet the needs 
 of the Latin American nations. 
 
 10 
 
Many leading men in South America realize 
 tnis. Again and again South American states- 
 men or governments have sought from Protest- 
 ant lands what they recognized could come 
 ^ Argentine Government 
 
 e,ave $1,000 gold toward the present building 
 Church in Buenos Ayres. 
 When Sarmiento became president of Arcen- 
 tma he commissioned Dr. Goodfellow, a mis- 
 sionary returning to the United States, to 
 ^ educated women to 
 
 open Normal Schools. Evangelical Christianity 
 IS required to meet the intellectual, moral and 
 social needs of South America as well as its 
 religious necessities. Fundamentally, it is 
 demanded by their moral necessities. The 
 South American Church system has not met 
 these. It has produced them. It has resulted 
 in stagnant populations, some of which have 
 diminished in numbers. It has inspired no 
 moral reform It has created no solid basis 
 t commercial and political character. It has 
 done nothing to uplift the Indians Its great 
 wealth has been employed neither in education 
 nor m works of charity. Its philanthropies 
 are msigmfic^t m comparison with those of 
 Catholic Church in the United 
 Protestant missions 
 alone can introduce is needed to awaken a 
 benevolent love of the unfortunate and the 
 needy, and _ to make the character without 
 which free institutions cannot endure and the 
 resources of nations must lie undeveloped 
 in the discussion over the religious rights 
 Argentine, Alberdi, a 
 advocate of freedom, resisted 
 
 raLJrv'' this power from his 
 
 country. Spanish America,” he wrote “re- 
 duced to Catholicism, with the exclusion of 
 any other cult, represents a solitary and silent 
 
 IT r dilemma is fatal- 
 
 either Catholics and unpopulated, or populated 
 and prosp^ous and tolerant in the matter of 
 religion. To invite the Anglo-Sa.xon race and 
 the people of Germany, Sweden and Switzer- 
 land and deny them the exercise of their wor- 
 11 
 
Procession of Corpus Christi, Bogota, Colombia. 
 
 12 
 
^ hospitality and 
 
 excrde”?,,'”l“ Amirica is fo' 
 
 and tS V,. German, the Irish 
 
 Hcs^ thL^^fS American, who are not Catho- 
 lics that is to say, the inhabitants whom this 
 
 ,h!l 1 J without the anent 
 
 JemTo to compel 
 
 athdsts ” become 
 
 "’bich gave tliese people what 
 good they have and which sustains the moral 
 
 Sc^ Sout*h" A character is the power 
 
 Which bouth America needs. The Protestant 
 
 is'to bp ^ ‘^bannel through which it 
 
 s to be given. Let me put this lasF considera 
 
 Winii a" *^"®bcan Bishop of 
 
 anTlln’ Buenos Ayres 
 
 and uhose work lays on him the burden 
 
 i* ‘■^"icrica s real need. “The needs of 
 
 XicTh'raVe“^ThS" Tr 
 ;^j.e,n_th, 'liopTo, S' frr'S.h'e"’Elr;’o' 
 
 be of millions of Europeans, who are Xac v 
 beginning to flow there in a stead^ stream 
 
 pie\aient s the weakest and most cormnt 
 
 Liss's 
 
 must ha™. What hop. is there S Arg™’: 
 
 Soli" Ft"’' -Surr.“;? 
 
 »urees. rapil t v“„'pnT„t,''“ agrtSf 
 
 edge, power, without that’ Snrplt rS i i ' 
 raSs. Jh^y a^e's'lil^L^l^o^^ Wt'i'hy ^ fv^h^"’ 
 
 ee air and temperate climate and 
 13 
 
wide spaces of the New World, far from the 
 social tyrannies and religious superstitions 
 which have hitherto retarded their proper 
 growth? It is nothing less than axiomatic 
 that South America needs true religion, if its 
 future history is not to be a disappointment 
 and its development a failure. . . . 
 
 “South America needs what Christian Eng- 
 land, if the Church were but moved with 
 more faith and love, could easily give — true 
 religion, viz.. Reformed Scriptural, Apostolic 
 Christianity. Our own people need it, that they 
 may be saved from only too possible degrada- 
 tion. The Spanish and Portuguese-speaking 
 people need it, that they may develop into 
 the strong free nations they desire to be. The 
 aboriginal races of Indians need it, that they 
 may be saved from extinction and find their 
 place, too, in the kingdom of God.” 
 
 If missionary work is not warranted and 
 demanded in conditions like these, where is 
 it legitimate? 
 
 II. 
 
 But if our missions in Latin America are 
 justified and necessary, can they be conducted 
 w-ithout encountering the antagonism of the 
 Roman Catholic Church in Latin America and 
 in the United States? 
 
 Well, as a matter of fact, they do not 
 escape and never have escaped this antagon- 
 ism, no matter what the care and spirit with 
 which they have been conducted. I could 
 quote criticisms by Roman Catholics of the 
 American Episcopal Missions in Brazil and 
 the Philippines, although in the latter the 
 Mission has sought carefully to protect itself 
 from the suspicion of proselytizing among the 
 Roman Catholic Filipinos. And you all know 
 how the Protestant missions in all parts of 
 Latin America have been assailed by the 
 Roman Church and how the organs of the 
 Church in the United States have dealt with 
 any who have dared to state the facts regard- 
 14 
 
15 
 
 Church and Congregation 
 
ing Latin American conditions. Now is all 
 this inevitable? 
 
 History helps ns to answer this question. 
 There was a time when in the Philippines and 
 in all Latin America there was no religious 
 liberty, no free speech, no public education, 
 no civil marriage, no burial rites or interment 
 in a cemetery for a Protestant, no valid bap- 
 tism for Protestant children and consequently 
 in some lands no right of inheritance. These 
 intolerable conditions have passed away. Did 
 they pass away without the antagonism of 
 the Roman Catholic Church ? It fought every 
 one of these reforms. It is fighting some of 
 them still. Not one advance has been made 
 toward free institutions and free education 
 and freedom of opinion and speech and re- 
 ligion in Latin America without encountering 
 the relentless opposition of the Roman organ- 
 ization. In 1852, the Pope denounced the 
 movement in New Granada toward religious 
 liberty, which decreed the expulsion of the 
 Jesuits, a curtailment of Church revenues, free 
 education, freedom of the press and freedom 
 of public and private worship. These “nefari- 
 ous decrees,’’ the Pope condemned and de- 
 clared to be “null and void.” In October, 
 1864, Pius LX wrote to Maximilian, “Your 
 majesty is well aware that in order effectively 
 to repair the evil occasioned by the revolu- 
 tion and to bring back as soon as possible 
 bappy days for the Church, the Catholic 
 religion must above all things continue to be 
 the glory and mainstay of the Mexican nation 
 to the e.xclusion of every other dissenting wor- 
 ship; that the bishops must be perfectly free 
 in the exercise of their pastoral ministry; 
 that the religious orders should be re-estab- 
 lished or reorganized ; that no person may 
 obtain the faculty of teaching false and sub- 
 versive tenets ; that instruction, whether public 
 or private, should be directed and watched 
 over by the ecclesiastical authority, and that 
 in short the chains may be broken which up 
 to the present time have held the Church in a 
 state of self-dependence and subject to the 
 16 
 
7 ™ ^ of civil government.” Now if 
 every step thus far toward the emancipation 
 and enlightenment of South America has been 
 
 weS^nibe Catholic Church, 
 
 cont nne be surprised or intimidated if we 
 continue to meet with opposition 
 
 real facts face the 
 
 tacts. It IS very well to seek to iustifv 
 
 some of our work in South America by ooiii7 
 
 to^b^deS v7ilh """ds 
 
 ^ alt with and also the great abonVinal 
 
 popidation which is to be reached, bid nXr 
 
 of these considerations will save us from the 
 
 a^thf Church, fo^r, 
 
 as the recent investigations of the deleeates 
 
 Taf ^ll'^we^ Baptist Church havTS 
 .1 , looked into the subiect 
 
 t Sc, S, " ?■?'”“ Catholic C ,S 
 
 ace|£,,4"7-„£™ 
 
 s ?rr "-“7" 
 
 tlnn completely thrown off religion 
 
 similar conditiN “if ™*r 
 
 S’r.' “c e“f “of "^*Mma,?a"d 
 
 cl'?,; S-7 ;j;= 
 
 Elf'Serf ,1,1'"'“’ Ca.l,?lic,."’i„d? "i’,; 
 
 save a pcrce„,a?e*'ff ff »' 
 and illiteracy;. 
 
 17 
 
18 
 
 Going from Balna to San Felix and Cachoeira. 
 
the people of Brazil or Chile that is not on the 
 face of it work for Roman Catholics. We 
 do not believe that that fact puts them beyond 
 the pale of enlightenment and makes any 
 effort to relieve them unwarrantable, but the 
 simple fact cannot be escaped that whatever 
 missions are operated in these lands, or indeed 
 in any Latin American lands, are operated 
 among nominal Roman Catholics; for the 
 Roman Catholic Church claims them all as 
 its own. 
 
 And the situation is not relieved by that 
 view of our mission work in these lands which 
 would acquit it of all responsibility for estab- 
 lishing Evangelical churches and would be 
 satisfied to conduct it simply as a moral and 
 educational influence, seeking by its example to 
 awaken the Roman Catholic Church to better 
 standards and a purer life. The Roman 
 Catholic Church approves of such Protestant 
 missions no more than the other kind. It has 
 opposed such work as earnestly as it has 
 fought evangelistic effort. In the Argentine 
 House of Deputies it assailed, through one of 
 its bishops, the remarkable schools of Mr. 
 Morris in Buenos Ayres, and in Brazil 
 American Catholics have lamented the work 
 even of Protestant institutions which, al- 
 though in this they were in error, they declared 
 had no evangelistic purpose or influence. 
 
 As a matter of fact our missions are wel- 
 comed in every Latin American land, but not 
 by the Roman Catholic Church. Both in 
 South America and here that Church stead- 
 fastly resents and opposes every such effort. 
 We may lament this. We may believe, as I 
 believe, that it is the height of folly for the 
 Roman Catholic Church in the United States 
 and Canada to seek to deny or cloak the in- 
 di^utable facts regarding Latin America. 
 But the cold truth is that we cannot carry on 
 any Protestant work of any sort whatever in 
 Latin America without encountering the oppo- 
 sition of the Roman Catholic Church both 
 there and here. 
 
 19 
 
III. 
 
 If, then, this opposition is unavoidable, 
 zchat course are zee to pursue? 
 
 (1) We are to do our duty. It is our duty 
 to minister to human need. We are to main- 
 tain our missions in Latin America and to seek 
 to evangelize the people of Latin America with 
 the Christian Gospel just as we seek to evan- 
 gelize the Japanese Buddhist sects whose doc- 
 trines and rites are scarcely less Christian 
 than those of many of the Latin American 
 peoples. 
 
 (2) We are to seek to build up Evangelical 
 churches in Latin America and to receive into 
 these churches converted men and women, 
 whether these men and women have been 
 nominal Roman Catholics and actual atheists 
 and unbelievers, or whether they have been 
 open repudiators of all religion, or whether, 
 as will usually be the case, they are men and 
 women who have sought for moral and 
 spiritual satisfaction in the Roman Catholic 
 Cluirch as it is in South America and have 
 been disappointed. Most of the earnest mem- 
 bers of the Evangelical Churches in Latin 
 ■America have been devout Roman Catholics 
 who were discontented with their vain search 
 for life and peace. If it is said that this 
 is proselytism, my reply is that I abhor 
 proselytism as much as any man when that 
 proselytism is the effort to win a man from 
 one form of Christian faith to another, but 
 the Latin American form of Christianity is so 
 inadequate and misrepresentative that to 
 preach the truth to it is not proselytism, but 
 the Christian duty of North .American Chris- 
 tians both Protestant and Catholic. 
 
 (3) We are to pursue ^n all this work the 
 most irenic course. We are not to attack the 
 Roman Catholic Church. That is not good 
 policy and it is not good principle, and it is 
 to many of us practically impossible. We 
 grew up here with many friends in the Roman 
 Catholic Church and we have many friends 
 
 20 
 
21 
 
 Gateway of old liouse at Arequipa. 
 
in it now. We believe that here and even in 
 Latin America it holds some great funda- 
 mental Christian truths. We respect the piety 
 and consecration of many of its men and 
 women. We are appalled at the mass of evil 
 which has overcrusted it in Latin America, 
 but even so we cannot wage a war against it. 
 Our purpose and desire are to preach Christ 
 and to set forth the positive truth in love. 
 This course will result in the destruction of 
 error. Even this course will be opposed by 
 the Latin American Church, but nevertheless 
 in spite of such opposition, in spite of the 
 insults and slander by which all who try to 
 show the actual conditions in Latin America 
 will be assailed in the United States, we must 
 not be provoked into unkindness or injustice 
 toward that which is good and true in the 
 Roman Catholic Church, both among its people 
 and among its leaders. 
 
 (4) We must be patient and hopeful. If 
 we have the truth it will prevail, and all the 
 forces of human progress are with us. In- 
 deed, there are some entirely too free and 
 radical forces awaking within the Roman 
 Catholic Church or among the Latin American 
 people. We must beware of sympathy with 
 anti-clerical movements which rest on prin- 
 ciples which are anti-religious, and with 
 tendencies of thought which not only destroy 
 tradition but by the same token dissolve his- 
 tory. We have no easy path. The true path 
 is never easy in the midst of conflicting ex- 
 tremes. To be a rank partisan is far simpler 
 than to extricate truth from error in antagon- 
 istic views and to travel on even ways. 
 
 (5) We must recognize sympathetically the 
 problem with which the Roman Catholic 
 Church has to deal. It is stupendous. One’s 
 heart goes out to the earnest men who have 
 to bear this burden. It remains to be seen 
 whether the capacity of adjustment to new 
 and unavoidable conditions is in the Church, 
 or whether it is incapable of being reformed. 
 There are many who assert that it is. We 
 
 22 
 
venture to believe otherwise, regarding large 
 sections of it at least, though in other large 
 sections a work of destruction and regenera- 
 tion must be done as radical almost as any- 
 needed in heathenism. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And now, lastly, if we are to go forward, 
 in this spirit of good will and friendliness 
 with undaunted determination ; how are we 
 to get for these missions adequate interest and 
 support at home? 
 
 Those who are now interested in such mis- 
 sions are interested, as a rule, from ultra- 
 Protestant and militant anti-Papan convic- 
 tions, and their argument for missions in 
 Latin America would involve as an inevitable 
 corollary a great propaganda in the United 
 States and Canada against the Roman Catholic 
 Church. I do not believe we ought to take 
 up the matter in this way. It is true that the 
 Roman Catholic Church in the United States 
 makes it very difficult to take it up in any 
 other way. It insists that the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church is one in all lands and in all 
 ages, and that to state what we know to be 
 the facts about Latin America is to libel 
 and attack the Roman Catholic Church in 
 the United States and Canada. This is a 
 terrible responsibility to assume, and one 
 longs for the day when the Roman Catholic 
 Church in our land will be as bold as Cardinal 
 Vaughan and Father Sherman and many 
 another ecclesiastic has been, and denounce 
 and renounce the evils and abuses which 
 flourish under the name of the Roman Catholic 
 Church in all Latin America. And we must 
 anticipate this day and be wise enough and 
 generous enough not to allow the American 
 and Canadian Roman Catholics to shoulder 
 the shame of Latin America in blind denial 
 of indisputable facts. 
 
 Our propaganda must be carried on, I be- 
 lieve, on the basis of these facts, namely, the 
 
 23 
 
conditions of need in Latin America which 
 unanswerable evidence can establish. 
 
 (1) First of all we must set forth these 
 conditions and prove them by evidence which 
 cannot be gainsaid. 
 
 Whenever evidence creeps into our presen- 
 tation which can be gainsaid or disputed, we 
 are in danger of damaging the case which 
 must be made. Such faulty evidence cannot 
 invalidate the sound evidence, but it diverts 
 attention and it compromises the argument. 
 It is no easy matter to be faultless here 
 when we review all the testimony which is 
 current. But we must take pains to be abso- 
 lutely accurate, and then we must speak out 
 unflinchingly the facts which demand atten- 
 tion and which dare not be obscured. 
 
 (2) We must challenge the conscience of 
 Great Britain and America specially. 
 
 The South American Journal states that 
 Great Britain has £555,142,041 capital invested 
 in South America, and that her dividends from 
 this investment in 1909 were £25,437,030. That 
 is more each month than the total expenditure 
 on evangelical missions in South America in 
 a hundred years. In the face of such a state- 
 ment as I quoted at the outset from the Bishop 
 of the Falkland Islands, can a nation conscien- 
 tiously do such a thing as this, draw a stream 
 of national wealth from these lands and con- 
 tribute to them no moral or spiritual treasure, 
 or next to none? 
 
 (3) We must temperately but firmly dispute 
 the position that the whole Church is facing 
 the whole world task or is entitled to claim 
 the divine resources available for a world em- 
 prise alone, if it excludes from its view the 
 need and appeal of Latin .America. 
 
 24 
 
Board of Foreign Missions 
 of the 
 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 156 Fifth Ave., New York 
 
 Price, 2 cents 
 
 1865 
 
 Nov. 1, 1JI12 
 
 THE WILLIAM DAKLIXG PKESS, NEW YOKK 
 
I. 
 
 / 
 
 t . A, prXVU-EGE ■ 
 
 ) 
 
 ) 
 
Christian Tithing a Privilege 
 
 Secretary, The Board of Foreign Missions, i 8 gi to 1937 
 iE tithe is a working scheme of proportionate giving 
 
 by which we can make the principle of stewardship 
 actual and living. I should like to suggest just a few of the 
 practical moral considerations on which it rests. 
 
 First of all, the Gospel ought to lead and enable men to 
 do more than the pagans and Jews of Old Testament 
 times. The Jew in the old dispensation was expected to 
 bring his tithe in addition to his taxes and his various 
 offerings. The generosity of many pagans equals the old 
 Jewish standards. We do not need to enter into the 
 motives that led them to give. The clear fact is that many 
 of the non-Christian people, like the Jews, have given much 
 more than tithes. Now our Lord said unequivocally that 
 principles are to be judged by their results; that modes and 
 motives of action cannot claim the allegiance of man because 
 of any beauty in themselves. By their fruits they are to 
 be tested. Unless the motives of the Gospel are able to 
 lead men to give more generously than the Old Testament 
 Jews and pagans gave, the motives of the Gospel must be 
 inferior to those of Judaism and paganism. 
 
 Secondly, the ancient Jew and the pagan faced no less 
 difficulties in the way of practicing a principle like this 
 than we face. We face no greater difficulties than they 
 faced. As a matter of fact, they faced even greater diffi- 
 culties than we face. The Jew was a poor man and lived in a 
 poor land. He had no such currency passing through his 
 hands as passes through ours. He gave of his orchards and 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 3 
 
fields or he set aside one tenth of his soil that its produce 
 might be regarded as, not his own, but God’s. If Jews 
 then and the pagans now have overridden their difficulties 
 and, in spite of poverty and limitation will do this, it is not 
 asking or expecting too much that Christian men should 
 do so. The charges that are laid upon us to be borne are 
 trivial compared with the charges laid upon the Jews in 
 the olden day. 
 
 • 
 
 Thirdly, we need some practical abiding principle like 
 this to make sure that the principle of stewardship is a 
 reality in our lives and that we do not find ourselves self' 
 deceived. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man who 
 does not deal with God in the matter of obligation as he 
 does with his fellows to find that he has not been giving 
 God his due. 1 would ask any man who has adopted the 
 minimum principle of the tithe if he did not discover that 
 in the old days he was outrageously robbing God. Just 
 exactly as we need the Sabbath to make sure of the recog' 
 nition of all time as sacred to the Lord of life, just so do 
 we need the recognition of our tithe obligation to God in 
 the matter of our wealth. 
 
 In the fourth place, God does not need tithes for himself. 
 The principle of tithc'giving is needed by man. God made 
 it clear, not as something valid for that time only, but as 
 something for all time. Man’s moral constitution has not 
 altered. Our moral nature is the same across the lands and 
 across the centuries, and the old principle was not a prin' 
 ciple that belonged to a particular epoch; it was a principle 
 that lay deep in human nature. That is why John Ruskin 
 speaks as he does in the “Seven Lamps of Architecture’’: 
 “And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabro' 
 gated principle — I might say incapable of being abrogated 
 so long as men shall receive earthly gifts from God. Of all 
 
 4 
 
that they have his tithe must be rendered to him, or in so 
 far and insomuch he is forgotten; of the skill and of the 
 treasure, of the strength and of the mind, of the time and 
 of the toil, offering must be made reverently; and if there 
 be any difference between the Levitical and the Christian 
 offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the wider 
 in its range as it is typical in its meaning, as it is thankful 
 instead of sacrificial.” 
 
 Fifthly, money is the most perilous thing w’ith which 
 we have to cope, next to the baser, sensual nature. It is 
 one of the most dangerous forces with which we have to 
 deal. We all know how perilous it is, how constantly 
 through the New Testament warnings are given regarding 
 it. So it was throughout all our Lord’s teaching. He 
 realized that some of the sources of deepest peril to man in 
 one sense lay in money. In order to escape that peril, we 
 need the protecting grasp of some great and secure principle. 
 Who does not know how serious this need is? We can 
 think of friends who have had wealth pile up for them, 
 and we have seen their spiritual atrophy, unless they clung 
 to some simple principle of action like this to hold them 
 secure. 
 
 In the sixth place, our Lord himself recognized and 
 approved the validity of the principle of the tithe. He said 
 to the scribes and the Pharisees, “Ye tithe . . . but these 
 ye ought to have done.” So many times now do we say 
 that the Old Testament laws are abrogated in Christ. 
 The types and shadows were indeed fulfilled and termi- 
 nated in Christ, but the moral law was not terminated in 
 him. None of these moral ideals did Christ abrogate. He 
 reenforced and sanctioned every one of them, and poured 
 upon each one of them the burden of a greater obligation. 
 He explicitly indorsed the tithe: “Ye tithe . . . but these 
 ye ought to have done.” 
 
 5 
 
Seventhly, the only sure way of securing to the uses of 
 God in the extension of his Kingdom what is needed is to 
 set aside carefully for him the first tenth. It is only so that 
 the causes of Christ in the world will get what they 
 require. They never will get it by any haphazard method 
 or by any method through allowing every man to whittle 
 out his own principle; it will be only when the whole 
 Church generously yields itself to some corporate principle 
 that bears a definite relation to all its life. The general 
 adoption of the principle of the tithe throughout the Church 
 would pour into all the treasuries of the agencies of the 
 Church and the great philanthropies and movements of 
 charity and good will all that they need for the work 
 that must be done, and we shall not be likely to accomplish 
 it in any but this simple, fundamental, ethical way. 
 
 • 
 
 Eighthly, I think every man will find, as all who have 
 passed through the experience can testify, that the accept' 
 ance of a principle hke this marks a distinct era of spiritual 
 enlargement in his life. It carries him forward and leads 
 him out into a wider expanse. The whole thought of God’s 
 love and presence and human duty becomes more vivid. 
 I am not speaking out of the air. I am speaking out of the 
 experience of many who look back to such a time as marking 
 the beginning of a new era in their lives. 
 
 • 
 
 In the ninth place, tithe-giving may bring the great 
 religious expansion and awakening for which we long: 
 “Bring ye the whole tithe into the store-house, that there 
 may be food in my house, and prove me now herewith, 
 saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the windows 
 of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall 
 not be room enough to receive it." I suppose we have 
 many times stumbled at Horace Bushnell's word on this 
 subject and wondered whether for once one of the greatest 
 
 6 
 
spiritual voices of his time did not miss the true note when 
 he said: “One more revival — only one more — is needed, 
 the revival of Christian stewardship, the consecration of 
 the money power to God. When that revival comes, the 
 Kingdom of God will come in a day But may this not be 
 true? Mr. Gladstone even went so far as to say, “I believe 
 that the diffusion of the principle and practice of system- 
 atic beneficence will prove the moral specific of our age.” 
 • 
 
 In the tenth place, I believe in this principle because, 
 regardless of anything that will flow from it, it is funda- 
 mentally right. It does not matter w-hat effect it may have 
 on our lives, whether it pinches or cramps. We believe 
 in it because we think it is right. I liked a letter that 
 appeared in The Sunday School Times some years ago. 
 A number of letters had been published telling of the 
 prosperity which had followed the adoption of tithe-giving. 
 One correspondent wrote that he had an utterly contrary 
 experience from the rest. He told a long story of the 
 struggle that he had undergone, growing harder and harder 
 ever since he had adopted the principle of the tithe. Shortly 
 after there was a letter from Canada which said that what 
 this last man wrote of his experience in giving because it 
 was right,_ in spite of the hardship and disasters he had 
 suff^ered, had touched the writer as no experience of pros- 
 perity had done, and he also had begun what clearly 
 seemed to him now the thing to do because and only 
 because it was right. 
 
 I do not mean to say that the privilege of giving a tithe 
 is all that there is to proportionate giving, or that it exhausts 
 the principle of stewardship. There will be men whose 
 duty and privilege it will be to give two tenths or nine 
 tenths. I am only setting forth some of the reasons for 
 believing that the practice of the tithe is the best method 
 for securing for the principle of stewardship an initial grip 
 of reality upon life. 
 
 7 
 
Let me lay the emphasis lastly on the rich privilege of 
 being justified in giving at least a tenth of our income. 1 
 have a right to take all the money that comes to me and, 
 before I do anything whatever with any of it, to set aside a 
 tenth for the Lord. What a joy it brings into life that we 
 may simply act as bankers for God, to spend for his work ! 
 Mr. Gladstone wrote of this to a son who was then in 
 residence at Oxford University, in which he suggested 
 eight rules, the observance of which would be conducive 
 to the highest interests of his son’s life, literary and moral 
 and spiritual. Among the suggestions was the following: 
 
 “In regard to money — there is a great advantage in its 
 methodical use. Especially is it wise to dedicate a certain 
 portion of our means to purposes of charity and religion, 
 and this is more easily begun in youth than in afterlife. 
 The greatest advantage of making a little fund of this kind 
 is that when we are asked to give, competition is not 
 between self on the one hand and any charity on the other, 
 but between the different purposes of religion and charity 
 with one another, among which we ought to make the 
 most careful choice. It is desirable that the tenth of our 
 means be dedicated to God, and it tends to bring a blessing 
 on the rest. No one can tell the richness of the blessings 
 that come to those who thus honor the Lord with their 
 substance.” 
 
 I can still remember the very hour that all this first 
 pressed on me in 1892 in the old First Church at Auburn. 
 Horace Pitkin then still a theological student, who later 
 died as one of the martyrs in the Boxer tempest in China, 
 read a paper on proportionate giving and the principle of 
 the tithe. I never had seen this truth until that morning, 
 and it burst on me as clear as sunlight that this is the 
 right, the privilege, and the duty of Christians. And if 
 only the Christian Church would come to it, my friends, 
 what could we not do? 
 
 8 
 
Principles of Giving in 
 Christian Stewardship 
 
 The Christian 
 
 Recognizes that God is the Creator and Giver of all 
 things, and that all people are dependent upon him for 
 their material possessions. 
 
 Rejoices in his partnership with God in acquiring, 
 saving, spending, and giving. 
 
 Believes that stewardship calls for regular, proportionate, 
 and sacrificial giving. 
 
 Page 10 of this leaflet is a reproduction of an enrollment 
 form for use in connection with a Christian tithing cam< 
 paign. There are three sections to the card which is 
 available in quantities — one to be kept by the individual, 
 one for the church files, and the other to be sent to the 
 Board of Christian Education. 75 cents a hundred at all 
 Presbyterian Book Stores. 
 
 9 
 
The Presbyterian 
 FELLOWSHIP of GIVING 
 
 I purpose to adopt the practice of proportionate giving in 
 accepting my responsibilities as a Christian steward: 
 
 □ I. By setting aside per cent of my income 
 
 for the support of the church, for the advancement 
 of the Kingdom of God at home and overseas, and 
 for the furtherance of worthy causes. 
 
 □ 2. By dedicating a tithe (a tenth) of my income as an 
 
 expression of the principle of proportionate giving, 
 historically accepted by the Christian Church. 
 
 Q 3. By adopting the practice of the tithe for a period 
 of months. 
 
 Name 
 
 Address 
 
 Marl( the square that indicates your decision. 
 
 10 
 
Issued by Stewardship Education, Board of Christian 
 Education, Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America, Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
 
 This leaflet and two other new leaflets for congregational 
 distribution are available in all of our book stores — “A 
 Business Man’s Giving,” by Wilbur LaRoe, Jr., and “The 
 Living Church a Giving Church," by Herbert K. England. 
 2 cents each, 50 cents a hundred. You will find valuable 
 also the new booklet entitled “The Christian Use of 
 Money,” by Irwin C. Paulsen, 25 cents. Order from 
 the nearest Presbyterian Book Store: 
 
 PHILADELPHIA Witherspoon Building 
 
 NEW YORK 156 Fifth Avenue 
 
 PITTSBURGH Granite Building 
 
 CHICAGO 216 South Wabash Avenue 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 234 McAllister Street 
 
 Orders ta\en for any boo\s published. 
 
 11 
 
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