grace and public sentiment in this respect, the fact can not be ignored that fanaticism is not yet extinguished, and particularly in the towns distant from the centers of intelligence, and in which the indigenous element predominates."
"Notwithstanding this, since the year 1861, missionaries of various Protestant religions have come to establish their worship, and carry on their propaganda, not only in the capital of the republic and in its principal cities, where there were also great elements in favor of fanaticism, but in towns of the indigenous population, in the country, and in the very centers where fanaticism has had the greatest dominion for a long time, and where it still exists, although it has lost much of its old power.
"These missionaries have established these churches publicly, they have founded their religious worship, they have distributed their Bibles and other books, they have preached their doctrines in public, opened their primary schools and seminaries, established their orphanages, circulated their periodicals and publications, and have, relatively, and in view of the difficulties which they have had to struggle with, good success, and with scarcely any danger."
"There are no exact data, in this department, of the progress made in the republic by those missions, and only in an accidental manner has it been known what two of them have attained up to this time. The first, called the Mexican Branch of the Church Catholic of our Lord Jesus Christ, the existence of which commenced in 1861, already counts upon a church which serves it as a cathedral in the ancient temple of San Francisco, with the churches of San José de Gracia and San Antonio Abad; it has fifty congregations scattered in different parts of the republic; orphanages and schools, in which it is sustaining and educating more than five hundred children; theological seminaries, in which young men are being educated for the ministry; a weekly periodical entitled 'La Verdad' ('The Truth'), which is its organ, and counts upon more than three thousand active members. It must be borne in mind that this church is only one of those that work in that sense, and that, from the circumstance of having the character of Mexican, it has not counted upon so decided and efficacious a protection of foreign elements as the other churches which belong to different Protestant denominations, established in the United States and in England, which, through the desire of propagating their faith in every country, give themselves to expenses and efforts which they would not do in behalf of a new denomination having the character of Mexican."
