CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN S. AMERICA 55 



vince the most heterodox of the absolute need of a 

 Church. I earnestly wish that there could be such an 

 increase in the personnel and equipment of the Roman 

 Catholic Church in South America as to permit the 

 establishment of one good and earnest priest in every 

 village or httle community in the far interior. Nor is there 

 any inconsistency between this wish and the further wish 

 that there could be a marked extension and develop- 

 ment of the native Protestant Churches, such as I saw 

 established here and there in Brazil, Uruguay, and 

 Argentina, and of the Y M.C. Associations. Most 

 of the good people who profess religion will con- 

 tinue to be Roman Catholic, but the spiritual needs of a 

 more or less considerable minority will best be met by 

 the establishment of Protestant Churches, or in places 

 even of a Positivist Church or Ethical Culture Society. 

 Not only is the establishment of such Churches a good 

 thing for the body politic as a whole, but a good thing 

 for the Cathohc Church itself; for their presence is a 

 constant spur to activity and clean and honourable 

 conduct, and a constant reflection on sloth and moral 

 laxity. The government in each of these common- 

 wealths is doing everything possible to further the 

 cause of education, and the tendency is to treat 

 education as peculiarly a function of government, and 

 to make it, where the government acts, non-sectarian, 

 obligatory, and free — a cardinal doctrine of our own 

 great democracy, to which we are committed by every 

 principle of sound Americanism. There must be abso- 

 lute religious hberty, for tyranny and intolerance are as 

 abhorrent in matters intellectual and spiritual as in 

 matters political and material ; and more and more we 

 must all realize that conduct is of infinitely greater 

 importance than dogma. But no democracy can afford 



