Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/406

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ABOUT MEXICO.

been twice traversed and sixty fine beams were ready to be placed on the walls. The oxen were furnished without charge. The sixty brethren each gave a week of his time without cost, and the work was all done as a voluntary offering to the Lord. As I looked at those beams afterward, neatly hewed and placed in position, they seemed to me sermons in wood, objects as sacred as the gold which was given for the tabernacle, and I doubt not that they were equally acceptable to God."

When the church was done, eight of the brethren walked fifteen miles to Zitacuaro after an organ which had been sent to them by friends in the United States. As Junapeo lies three thousand feet lower and it was impossible to carry such a load on muleback down the steep mountain-paths, these men carried it on a sort of bier, accomplishing the labor of love by nightfall of the same day.

The house was dedicated on New Year's Day, 1883. Such crowds—men, women and children, most of them on foot—came from far and near that the opening services were held out of doors. Wrapped in their blankets, they camped out under the open sky. In the tropical climate of Junapeo this was the best arrangement which could be made for such a mass of perspiring humanity. But there came a time when the house had to be packed to its utmost capacity. Fifty persons were admitted to the church on confession of their faith on that occasion. We quote again from Dr. Greene: "As I looked over that audience of five hundred, filling all the benches and seated on the floor, the great mass of humble Indians clothed in white muslin, who receive eighteen to twenty-five cents a day, not more than one in ten of whom could