THE MEXICAN MESSIAH. 97 



But time and change must have done much in the course of 

 centuries to confuse the teachings of Quetzatcoatl. Notwithstand- 

 ing such mutation, enough remained of them to impress the Span- 

 iards of the sixteenth century with the belief that he must have 

 been an early Christian missionary, as well as a native of Europe. 

 They found that many of the religious beliefs of the Mexicans 

 bore an unaccountable resemblance to those of Christians. 



The religion of the Mexicans, as the Spaniards found it, was 

 in truth an amazing and most unnatural combination of what 

 appeared to be Christian beliefs and Christian virtues and moral- 

 ity with the bloody rites and idolatrous practices of pagan bar- 

 barians. The mystery was soon explained to the Spaniards by 

 the Mexicans themselves. The milder part of the Mexican re- 

 ligion was that which Quetzatcoatl had taught to the Toltecs, a 

 people who had ruled in Mexico some centuries before the arrival 

 of the Spaniards. The Aztecs were in possession of power when 

 the Spaniards came, and it was they who had introduced that 

 part of the Mexican religion which was in such strong contrast 

 to the religion established by Quetzatcoatl. It appeared further 

 that the Toltec rule in the land had ceased about the middle of 

 the eleventh century. They were a people remarkably advanced 

 in civilization and mental and moral development. They were 

 well versed in the arts and sciences, and their astronomical 

 knowledge was in many respects in advance of that of Europe. 

 They established laws and regular government in Mexico during 

 their stay in the country, but about the year a. d. 1050 they dis- 

 appeared south by a voluntary migration, the cause of which re- 

 mains a mystery. 



It was not until the middle of the fourteenth century that the 

 Aztecs acquired sufficiently settled habits to enable them to found 

 states and cities, and by that time they seem to have adopted as 

 much of what had been left of Toltec civilization and Toltec re- 

 ligion as they were capable of absorbing, without, however, aban- 

 doning their own ruder ideas and propensities. Hence the incon- 

 gruous mixture of civilization and barbarism, mildness and fe- 

 rocity, gentleness and cruelty, refinement and brutality presented 

 by Mexican civilization and religion to the Spaniards when they 

 entered the country two centuries later. " Aztec civilization was 

 made up," as Prescott says, " of incongruities, apparently irreconcil- 

 able. It blended into one the marked peculiarities of different na- 

 tions, not only of the same phase of civilization, but as far removed 

 from each other as the extremes of barbarism and refinement." 



The better that is, the Toltec side of this mixed belief in- 

 cluded among its chief features a recognition of the existence of a 

 Supreme God, vested with all the attributes of the Jehovah of the 

 Jews. He was the creator and the ruler of the universe, and the 



TOL. XXXIX. 9 



