Ancient Faiths And Modern. Thomas Inman
or, probably, could, impart. The girls learned to weave and embroider coverings for the altars of the gods. Great attention was paid to morality, and offences were punished with extreme rigour, even with death itself. Youths were taught to eschew, vice and cleave to virtue, to abstain from wrath, to offer violence or do wrong to no man, and to do good where possible.
When of an age to marry, the pupils were dismissed from the convent, and the recommendation of the principal thereof often introduced those whom he regarded as the most competent of the students, to responsible situations in public life. Such was the policy of the Mexican priests, who were thus enabled to mould the mind of the young, and to train it early to the necessity of giving reverence to religion, and especially to its ministers—a reverence which maintained its hold on the warrior long after every other vestige of education had been effaced. In this matter America showed an astuteness equal to that exhibited by Papal hierarchs in Rome.
To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed, for the maintenance of the priests, and these glebes were augmented by successive princes, until, under Montezuma, they were of enormous extent, and covered every district of the* empire. The priests took the management of their property into their own hands, and treated their tenants with liberality and indulgence. In addition to this source of income, they had "first fruits," and other offerings, dictated by piety or superstition. The surplus was distributed in alms amongst the poor, a duty strenuously prescribed by their moral code. Thus we find, adds Prescott, whom we are closely, and almost verbatim, following, the same religion inculcating lessons of pure philanthropy and of merciless extermination—an inconsistency not incredible to those familiar with the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the early ages of the Inquisition.
In the course of a not very long life, I have heard, upon many occasions, the argument that the persistency of the Roman Catholic Church, in spite of its abominable corruptions, its utter contempt for truth, its outrageous cruelty, its glaring superstition, its intolerable arrogance, and its rapacious covetousness, proves that it is, and must ever be regarded as a divine institution. But this argument loses all its weight when we find that the religion of the Mexicans, which the Spaniards declared to have sprung from the Devil, had the virtues, as well as many vices, of the Roman faith. If one came from Heaven, the other could not have come from Hell. The simple truth seems to be, that crafty and designing men are always able to find dupes, and that red men and black, the haughty Italian and the lively Frenchman, the stolid boor and the polished orator, may all suffer alike from an education which has taught them, in youth, to believe in the reality of a revelation given to a class of human beings who, by its means, assume to be divine.
The Mexican temples—teocallis, or "houses of God "—were very numerous, indeed there were several hundreds in each of the principal cities of the kingdom; but we need not describe them more minutely than to say that they were truncated pyramids terminating in a level surface, upon which blazed the sacred fire. All religious services were public, as in Roman Catholic countries. There were long processions of priests, and numerous festivals of unusual sacredness, as well as monthly and daily appropriate celebrations of worship, so that it is difficult to conceive how the ordinary business of life was carried on. The sun was an universal object of reverence. At a period not long prior (about 200 years) to the Spanish conquest, human sacrifices were adopted for the first time, and they speedily became common, both as regards repetition and the numbers of victims slaughtered. In some instances the oblations terminated with cannibalism. The burnt offering was roasted, not incinerated, and, like the Paschal lamb, was devoutly devoured. Sexual rites, symbols, or worship, appear to have been very rare, for I can only find one or two doubtful references to them. In this matter the Mexicans were far superior to all the old Shemitic and Egyptian, as well as the Hindoo, races. So far Prescott.
Whilst writing the foregoing, it has required some determination not to comment very extensively upon the facts recorded, for they do, indeed, set the thoughtful mind on fire. Amongst the questions which they provoke, the first is, "how far the accounts given to us are to be depended upon?" In answering this query, we readily recognize that our authorities can only have been Spaniards, who were, to a great extent, implacable enemies of the Mexicans, to a great extent ignorant of their language, and bitterly hostile to them in matters of religion. But this recognition leads us to trust the accounts which they give, for, if the invaders had been able to treat the natives as unmitigated savages, they would have had the more excuse for pillaging their sacred stores, temples, and palaces, and exterminating the pagan worshippers. Again, if the picture thus painted were a fancy one, having no real existence save in the mind of the writer, we should be able readily to recognize its counterpart in the Spanish history of the Peruvians, just as we are able to ascertain the identity of the authorship of certain anonymous works by Lord Lytton, by the existence therein of his marked peculiarity of style. The best testimony, however, to the substantial truth of the accounts given of the nature of the Mexican faith, is to be found in various minute episodes of their general history, in the behaviour of the Aztecs with each other, and towards their invaders, and the general customs which are recorded. That the Spanish writers had a real belief in the account of which Prescott has given us so admirable a resume, we may feel assured, for one of them introduced the naïve remark, "that the Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things which God had taught to Christendom."
When once we have satisfied ourselves of the truth of the Spanish accounts of the ancient Mexican institutions, we find ourselves in the presence of some very striking religious and political facts. We see before us a nation who had attained to as distinct a conception of the Almighty as we have ourselves; who had discovered a heaven, a hell, and an intermediate place, without the assistance of Jew or Greek, Babylonian or Persian; who had instituted a sacerdotal class, and made provision for their subsistence, without any assistance from Melchizedek or Moses; who had adopted a principle of national education long before such a thing was thought of in England, or in Europe. In fine, the Aztec faith and policy were, at least, as praiseworthy, if not far nearer to perfection, than the faith and policy which obtained in Christian Italy, France, and Spain, during the dark and the middle ages. There is not, indeed, any one point in which the contrast is not favourable to the Aztecs, except in the single point of human sacrifice. Christianity can, apparently, make a heavy accusation against the Aztec religion on this point, and may fairly seem to reproach it for that frequency of human sacrifice, and even cannibalism, which formed, at the time of the Spanish conquest, an essential part of the Mexican faith.
Yet, when we dive below the surface, and examine this matter with philosophic care, we readily see that the charge is deprived of much of its weight. Who, for example, can compare the practice of the people of Montezuma with that of Spaniards under the sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, without seeing that in Spain there were human sacrifices, which were conducted with far more cruelty than those in Mexico. We find, in the first place, that the custom of sacrificing human beings was no more an essential part of the Aztec, than it was of the Christian, faith; it was only in existence two hundred years before the Spanish invasion, and many centuries, bloodless of human offerings, had passed away ere the period of what we may term brutality arrived. Just so it was with the religion of Jesus; for centuries it was unstained by blood, and comparatively meek and humble, yet, when its priesthood rose to power, they indulged in human holocausts on a most extended scale. The Spaniards give accounts of thousands of victims offered up at once to the Mexican god of war; but what are these in comparison to the victims of Paris, sacrificed by Papists on the eve and day of St. Bartholomew, and those at Beziers.
It may be doubted by the philosopher whether the Christian religion was not, from its very commencement, as intolerant of opposition and as persecuting as it became hereafter.
The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree, which did not bear fruit out of its season (Mark xi. 13, 14, 21), shows that even he, whom the Christians take for an example, was quite capable of that pettiness, which visits upon the innocent the vexation felt by one's self. But when we read the story in Acts, v., about Ananias and Sapphira, we see, in all its naked horror, a fearful Christian persecution. The victims were done to death for deceiving an apostle. But why should we be surprised at the followers of "the Son" doing that which "the Father" ordained? Is there any human king who ever promulgated a more bloody order than did Jehovah Sabaoth, the God which, amongst the Hebrews, corresponded to the Mexican god of war, when he commissioned