operation in that mine was the
freight from Vera Cruz to the mine.

[76] This translation is bad enough, but no worse than the
original.

[77] This will sound to Protestant readers something like
horrible blasphemy; but it must be borne in mind that God the
Father of the Catholics is an entirely different idea from the
spiritual God whom we worship. The devout Protestant who
recognizes but one Being worthy of adoration, veneration, and
worship, never ventures to mention any of the names by which He
is known but with the profoundest reverence. The Catholic, on the
other hand, has a host of objects which he deems worthy of
adoration, and seems to have cheapened the article by multiplying
it. His senses are all exercised in his peculiar kind of worship,
and, as a natural consequence, they are apt to conclude that the
Almighty enjoys those exhibitions that give them the greatest
pleasure. They worship him by performing a pantomime of the life
and suffering of Christ, which is called the mass, and seek to
propitiate him by offering the body of his Son in sacrifice. They
bestow upon God gifts of jewels and of gold; and as he passes
through their streets in the form of a wafer, as they believe,
the soldiers present arms, beat the drum, and discharge their
cannon, as to an earthly prince. Though our Saviour (_Santo
Christo_) heads the calendar of intercessors between God and
man, he is seldom invoked, though they often honor him by naming
their children after him. As they have conferred upon a multitude
of their saints the supernatural powers of God, they have
necessarily brought God himself down to earth. If I might be
pardoned the expression, I should say that they treat him and his
well-beloved Son with a loving intimacy. The worship of the
Catholics is substantially materialism, more or less gross,
according to its distance from or its proximity to Protestantism.
There is no blasphemy, according to their system, in naming their
shops after the Holy Ghost, a horse-stable after "the Precious
Blood," though I could never hear them mentioned or see them
without having my Protestant notions shocked, while I equally
shocked their feelings by refusing to kneel to the Host, and
slipping out of the way to avoid i