they atoned for all by the introduction of what they considered
the blessing of the knowledge of the true faith. It will be
seen at once that, if one can determine with accuracy
which of the many `faiths' preached about the world is actually
the true faith, a man who is in possession of it is acting properly
in endeavouring to diffuse it. The meanest soldier in the various armies
which left Spain to conquer America seems to have had no doubt
about the matter.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who, as he himself relates,
came to America at the age of eighteen, and therefore could have had
little previous opportunity of studying theology, and who, moreover,
was unfitted to do so by the want of knowledge of Latin, to which
he himself confesses, yet at the end of his history of the conquest of Mexico,
one of the most interesting books ever written, has the following passage:

`But it is to be noted that, after God, it was we, the real conquerors,
who discovered them [the Indians] and conquered them; and from the first
we took away their idols, and taught them our holy doctrine,
and to us is due the reward and credit of it all, before any other people,
even though they be churchmen: for when the beginning is good,
the middle and ending is good, which the curious [i.e., attentive] reader
may see in the Christian polity and justice which we showed them in New Spain.

`And I will leave the matter, and tell the other benefits which, after God,
by our agency, came to the natives of New Spain.'*

--
* Bernal Diaz, `Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva Espan~a',
vol. iv., cap. 207, Madrid, 1796.