John Wesley, Jr. Part 19

J.W. was not quite satisfied with that explanation, but he preferred to wait until he had seen enough so that he could ask his questions more intelligently. So he kept relatively still, but his eyes did not cease from observing.

As the trip progressed, and the jumps between towns became longer, the young salesman had time to see a good deal. In the far Southwest he became aware that the increasingly numerous Mexican population was no longer a matter of box-car dwellers, more or less migratory. It was a settled people. Its little adobe villages, queer and quaint as they seemed to Middle-Western eyes, were centers of established life. And he discovered that in these villages always one building overshadowed all the rest.

One day as they were headed towards El Paso he ventured to mention this to his traveling companion. "Seems to me," he said, "that none of these little mud villages is too poor to have a church, and mostly a pretty good church too. How do they manage it?"

Now Finch was no student of church life, but he did know a little about the country. "That's the way it is all over this Southwest, my boy, and across the line in Old Mexico it's a good deal more so. My guess is that the churches and the priests began by teaching the people that whatever else happened they had to put up for the church, and from what I've noticed I reckon that now nothing else matters much to the church. It has become a kind of poor relation that's got to be fed and helped, whether it amounts to anything or not. But it's a long way from being as humble and thankful as you would naturally expect a poor relation to be."

During the El Paso layover the two of them took a day across the International Bridge. J.W. had watched the Mexicans coming over, and he wanted to see the country they came from.

"You'll not see much over there," a friendly spoken customs official told him. "It's a pretty poor section of desert 'round about these parts. You ought to get away down into the heart of the country."

"Yes, I suppose so," J.W. responded, "but there isn't time on this trip.

Are such people as these coming over to the United States right along?"

"I should say they are," said the man of authority with emphasis. "In the last four or five years the Mexican population of the United States has about doubled; three quarters of a million have crossed the Rio Grande somewhere, or the border further west. You people from the East make a big fuss over immigration from Europe, but you hardly seem to know that a regular flood has been pouring in through these southwestern gateways. You will some day."

What they saw on the Mexican side of the bridge was, as the customs man had said, nothing much. But J.W. came away with a strange sense of depression. He had never before seen so much of the raw material of misery and squalor; what he had observed with wondering pity in the villages on the American side was as nothing to the unrelieved hopelessness of the south bank of the river.

That night in the hotel lobby J.W. noticed a fresh-faced but rather elderly man whom he recognized as one whom he had seen over in Mexico earlier in the day. With the memory of what he had seen yet fresh upon him, J.W. ventured a commonplace or two with the stranger, and found him so genial and interesting that they were still talking long after Fred Finch had yawned himself off to bed.

"I thought I remembered seeing you over there," said the unknown, "and you didn't look like a seasoned traveler; more like the amateur I am myself, though I do get about a little."

"I'm no seasoned sightseer," said J.W.; "this is my first time out. And that's maybe the reason I've developed so much curiosity about the people we saw to-day. Do you know much about them?"

"Who? the Mexicans?" The other man smiled, and then was suddenly serious. "My friend, I begin to think I'm making the Mexicans my hobby.

I don't know who you are, but if you are really interested in the Mexicans as human beings I'd rather tell you what I know than do anything else I can think of to-night. It isn't often I find a traveling man who cares."

"Well, I do care," J.W. a.s.serted, stoutly. "They're people, folks, aren't they? And it looks as though they could stand having somebody get interested in them a little."

"Ah, I see now what you are; you are that remarkable combination, a traveling man and a Christian. Am I right?"

"Why, I suppose so," said J.W., with a smile and a touch of the old boyish pride in his name. "My initials, as you might say, are 'John Wesley,' and I'm not ashamed of them."

"And that means you are not only a Christian, but a Methodist? My dear man, we must shake on that. I'm a Methodist myself, as the stage robber said to Brother Van, with the romantic name of Tanner. Got my first interest in Mexico and the Mexicans when my daughter married a young Methodist preacher and they went down there as missionaries. I make a trip to see them and the babies about once a year. But now I am getting interested in these people as an American and, I hope, a Christian who tries to work at the business. What did you say your other name was?"

J.W. hadn't said, but now he did, and the two settled to their talk.

This William Tanner, some sort of retired business man, certainly seemed to know his Mexico. And he had that most subtle of all stimulants to-night, a curious and sympathetic hearer. By consequence he was eager to give all that J.W. would take.

Before long J.W. had edged in a question about the church. He said, "You know, Mr. Tanner, we have a pretty good Roman Catholic church in my home town, though Father O'Neill doesn't tie up much to what the other churches are trying to do, and some of his flock seem to me pretty wild, for sheep. Now, these churches down here are all Roman Catholic too, yet they certainly don't look any kin to Saint Ursula's at Delafield. Are they?"

It was the sort of question which William Tanner had asked himself many a time when he first came to Mexico. "This is the way of it, Mr.

Farwell," he said. "The church came to Mexico, and to all Latin America, from Spain and Portugal. It had a few great names, we must acknowledge, in those early times. But in a little while it settled down to two activities--to make itself the sole religious authority and to get rich.

It was a church of G.o.d and gold, and as a matter of course it preached that it was the supreme arbiter of life and death in matters of faith, and extended its authority into every relation of life. It brought from the lands of the Inquisition the idea of priestly power, and there was none to dispute it in Latin America, as there was in the colonies of our own country. It gave the people little instruction, and no responsibility or freedom. It made outward submission the test of piety and faith. And so when Spain lost its grip on the western hemisphere the church found itself with nothing but its claim of power to fall back on.

Well, you know that would work only with the ignorant and the superst.i.tious."

"Mexico, and all Latin America for that matter, clear to the Straits of Magellan, is a land of innumerable crosses, but no Christ. The church has had left to it what it wanted; that is, the priestly prerogatives; it marries, baptizes, absolves, buries, where the people can pay the fees, and the people for various reasons have not cared that this is all. If they are afraid, or want to make a show, they call in the church; if they don't care, or if they are poor, they go unbaptized, unmarried, unshriven, and do not see that it makes any difference. They have no understanding of the church as a Christian inst.i.tution; in fact, I think it would puzzle most of them to tell what a true church ought to be. Now, all this is the church's reward for its ancient choice, which, so far as I can see, is still its choice. To the average Latin American the church is, and in the nature of things must be, a demander of pay for ceremonial, and a bitterly jealous defender of all its old autocratic claims. That is of the nature of the church."

"But I don't understand," interposed J.W. "If the people have no real use for the church, why do they support it? It certainly is supported."

"That, Mr. Farwell, is the tragedy of the church in all these lands,"

said Mr. Tanner, soberly. "The church began by looking to its own interests first. It wanted great establishments and a docile people. It found the gospel hard to preach to the natives--the real gospel, I mean.

The cruelties and greed of the conquest had made impossible any preaching of a ministering, merciful, and unselfish Christ. In fact, the vast majority of the priests who came over from Europe brought with them no such ideas. The church was ruler, not missionary. And so far as it dares it sticks stubbornly to that notion even to this day. So it has had to make practical compromise with the paganism and superst.i.tion it found here. Many of its religious observances are the aboriginal pagan practices disguised in Christian dress and given Christian names. The church has sold its birthright for the privilege of exploiting the credulity and the fears of the people. It has made merchandise of all its functions. Now, after the centuries have come and gone, both church and people through long custom are willing to have it so. The people have their great churches, with incense and lights and all the pomp of medaeival days. But they have no living Christ and no thought of him. The priests have their trade in ceremonial and their perquisites, but they have no power over the hearts of men."

As his new acquaintance paused for breath after this long answer to a short question, J.W., remembering something Fred Finch had said, brought the remark in: "The man who is showing me the ropes as a hardware man tells me that all over Latin America the church is likely to be the one real building in every town and village. Is that also something that the people are so used to that they don't notice it any more?"

"Oh, yes," Mr. Tanner a.s.sented. "I suppose the contrast between the church and the miserable little hovels around it never occurs to any of them. It has always been so. The church has built itself up out of the community, and for the most part it puts very little back. It conducts schools, to be sure; and yet eighty per cent of the Mexican people are illiterate, it has some few inst.i.tutions of help and mercy; but the whole land cries out for doctors and teachers and friendly human concern."

"Is that really so?" J.W. asked. "Do the people really want our missionaries, or are we Protestants just shoving ourselves in? I can see that something is desperately wrong, but we are mostly Saxon, and they are Latins. Do these people want what to them must seem a queer religion and a lot of strange ideas?"

"So long as they do not understand what we come for, naturally they are suspicious. When they find out, they take to mission work and missionaries with very little urging. I wish you would meet my son-in-law," Mr. Tanner said with positiveness. "Why, the one tormenting desire of that man's life is to see more missionaries sent down into Mexico; more doctors, more teachers, more workers of every sort. He writes letters to the Board of Foreign Missions that would make your heart ache. The church at home couldn't oversupply Mexico with the sort of help it desperately needs if it should turn every recruit that way, and disregard all the rest of the world's mission fields."

"Do you mean," asked J.W., who was seeing new questions bob up every time an earlier one was answered, "do you mean that so many missionaries could be used on productive Christian work right away? Or is it that we ought to have a big force to prepare for the long future of our work in Mexico?" Now, J.W. was not so sure that this was an intelligent question, but he had heard that in some mission fields it was necessary to wait years for real and permanent results.

His companion saw nothing out of the way in the question. It was part of the whole problem. "I mean it both ways," he said. "What I've seen of our Methodist work down in these parts, particularly its schools and one wonderful hospital, makes me sure we could get big harvests of interest and success right off. We're doing it already, considering our relatively small force and our limited equipment."

"But all Latin American work takes patience. I've made one trip down as far as Santiago de Chile, and what is true in Mexico is, I guess, about as true in other parts. The Roman Catholic Church has been here four hundred years, and its biggest result is that the people who don't fear it despise it. Latin America is called Christian, but it is a world in which what you and I call religion simply does not count. Well, then, that's what makes me talk about the need of persistence and patience.

The bad effects of three or four hundred years of such religion as has been taught and practiced between the Rio Grande and Cape Horn can't be got rid of in a hurry. Wait till Mexico has had a real chance at the Christ of the New Testament for three hundred years, and then see!"

J.W. had yet another question to ask before he was ready to call it a day. "If all that you say is so--and I believe it is, Mr. Tanner--why should so many of the Mexicans hate the United States? They do, for I've heard it spoken of a good deal lately, and I remember what was always said when some one proposed that we should intervene to make peace and restore order in Mexico. It would take ten years and a million men, and all Mexico would unite to oppose us. You talk about how much the Mexicans need us and want us. But a great many of them surely don't want us at all."

"I know what that means," Mr. Tanner admitted. And it is true. We are all influenced by the past. Look at the history of our dealings with Mexico. The very ideas we fought to establish as the charter of our own freedom we repudiated when we dealt with Mexico three quarters of a century ago. We had every advantage, and what we wanted we took.

Certainly, we have done better by it than Mexico might have done, but I never heard that reason given in a court of law to excuse the same sort of transaction if it touched only private individuals. Then, in late years big business has gone into Mexico. It has had to take big chances.

It has paid better wages than the peon could earn any other way. It has a lot to its credit; but it has been much like big business in other places, and, anyway, the admitted great profits have enriched the foreigner, not the Mexican.

"Besides, Mexico is not the States. As you say, it is Latin in its civilization, not Saxon. It does not want our sort of culture. And some of our missionaries, both of the church and of industry, have thought that the Mexican ought to be 'Americanized.' That's a fatal mistake in any mission field outside the States. All in all, you can see that it isn't entirely inevitable that the Mexican should understand our motives, or appreciate them when he does understand. But that's all the more reason for bearing down hard on every form of genuine missionary work. It's the only thing that we Americans can do in Mexico with any hope of avoiding suspicion or of our presence being acceptable to the Mexicans in the long run. We've got to fight the backfire of our American commercialism, and the prejudice which is as real on the Texas side of the river as it is on the other; for if the Mexican thinks in terms of 'gringo,' the American of the Southwest is just as likely to think in terms of 'greaser.'"

When J.W. and Mr. Tanner parted for the night it was with the mutual promise that they would have another talk some time the next day, but the promise could not be kept. The retired business man heard from some of his business in the early morning, and had just time to say a hurried farewell. As he put it, "I thought I had retired, but unless I get back to look after this particular affair I may have to get into the harness again, and that is not a cheerful prospect at my age. So I go to business to avert the danger of going back to business."

A little later the two hardware salesmen were in El Paso again, after a couple of side trips. J.W. took advantage of a long train wait to hunt up the city library. He wanted to know whether Mr. Tanner was right in saying that the Latin-American question was much the same everywhere.

He wrote a letter to Mr. Drury that night, having thus far used picture postcards until he was ashamed. In the letter he took occasion to mention his talk with the "missionary father-in-law," and his own bit of reading up on the subject.

Said he: "I guess that man Tanner was right. He did not speak much of the difference between the people of one country and those of another, which rather surprised me. He said nothing of the two great cla.s.ses, the rulers with much European blood, and the peons, largely or altogether Indian. There must be all sorts of Latin Americans, rich and poor, mixed blood of many strains, Castilian and Aztec and Inca, and whatever other people were here when Columbus set the fas.h.i.+on for American voyages. But this is where this 'missionary father-in-law' hit the heart of the trouble: Latin America has all sorts and conditions of men, but everywhere it has the same church. And it is a church that can't ever make good any more. It might, at the beginning, but it can't now. It has a reputation as fixed as Julius Caesar's. I'm hardly ready to set up as an expert observer, being only a cub salesman on his first trip, but, Mr. Drury, I believe I can see already that the only chance for these people to get religion and everything else which religion ought to produce, is for us to send it to them. Maybe that would stir up the church down here, and help to give it another chance at the people's confidence, though I'm not sure."

Our church ought to send doctors; the amount of fearful disease that flourishes among the poorer people is just frightful. If Joe Carbrook were not so set on going to the Orient, he could do a big work here, and so could a thousand other doctors. It would be so much more than mere doctoring; it would be the biggest kind of preaching.

And the church should send teachers. You know I believe in conversion; but if the Mexicans I have seen are samples of Latin America's common people, they need teachers who have the patience of Christ a good deal more than they need flaming evangelists who make a big stir and soon pa.s.s on. Because these folks have just _got_ to be made over, in their very minds. They are not ready for the preaching of the gospel until they have seen it lived. Long experience has made them doubtful of living saints, though plenty of them pray to dead ones.

This is the whole trouble, Mr. Drury, it seems to me. They've known only a church that had got off the track. Any religious work that reaches them now has almost to begin all over again. It has to undo their thinking about prayer and faith and G.o.d's love and human conduct and nearly every other Christian idea. They have a Christian vocabulary, but it means very little. They think they can buy religion, if they want it--any kind they want. And if they can't afford it, or don't want it, they don't quite think they'll be sent to h.e.l.l for that, in spite of what the priest says. They think enough to be afraid, but not enough to be sure of anything. The missionaries have to teach them a new set of religious numerals, if you get what I mean, before it is any use to teach them the arithmetic of the gospel.

"I'm beginning to see that everything among the Latin Americans runs back to the need of Christian living. The wrong notion of religion has got them all twisted. I know Delafield is a long way from being Christian, but the difference between Delafield and such a pitiful mud village as I've seen lately has more to do with the sort of Christianity each place has been taught than with anything else whatever. But I never thought of that before."

As Pastor Drury read that letter his heart warmed within him. He said to himself, "John Wesley, Jr., is 'beginning to see,' he says. Please G.o.d he musn't stop now until he gets his eyes wide open. The thing is working out. He's groping around for something, and some day he'll find it."

CHAPTER VIII