population of four to five millions." Then, with respect to the Roman
Catholic population, Rev. T. B. Wood, LL.D., in "Protestant Missions
in South America," says, "South America is a pagan field, properly
speaking. Its image-worship is idolatry. Abominations are grosser and
more universal than among Roman Catholics in Europe and the United
States, where Protestantism has greatly modified Catholicism. But it
is _worse_ off than any other great _pagan_ field in that it is
dominated by a single mighty hierarchy--the mightiest known in
history. For centuries priestcraft has had everything its own way all
over the continent, and is now at last yielding to outside pressure,
but with desperate resistance."

"South America has been for nearly four hundred years part of the
parish of the Pope. In contrast with it the north of the New World--
Puritan, prosperous, powerful, progressive--presents probably the
most remarkable evidence earth affords of the blessings of
Protestantism, while the results of Roman Catholicism _left to
itself_ are writ large in letters of gloom across the priest-ridden,
lax and superstitious South. Her cities, among the gayest and
grossest in the world, her ecclesiastics enormously wealthy and
strenuously opposed to progress and liberty, South America groans
under the tyranny of a priesthood which, in its highest forms, is
unillumined by, and incompetent to preach, the gospel of God's free
gift; and in its lowest is proverbially and habitually drunken,
extortionate and ignorant. The fires of her unspeakable Inquisition
still burn in the hearts of her ruling clerics, and although the
spirit of the age has in our nineteenth century transformed all her
monarchies into free Republics, religious intolerance all but
universally prevails." [Footnote: Guiness's "Romanism and
Reformation."]