CHAPTER XXI.

THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION—A GENERal View.

FUNDAMENTAL religious conceptions undergo change very slowly. In some triumphant future of Pentecostal power such as has not yet rested upon the Church of Christ, it will probably be true that a nation will be born in a day, and that this birth will be into a life so utterly different from that out of which the converts have come, that they will leave their old conceptions "by life's unresting sea," never to resume them again. But the history of religious thought bears many testimonies to the conclusion that evolutionary processes more or less rapid have controlled in the development of the religious consciousness of peoples. The postulates of Platonic thought persisted in Christian theology long after New Testament times. The fiery evangelism which swept the Goths and Vandals into a professedly Christian faith left them in possession of much of their gloomy and severe conceptions of Deity and of human relationships. Druidism left its dark trail across centuries of teaching in Christian England.

While it is true that six millions of the Filipino people are counted as Roman Catholics, it is yet true that, to a far greater degree than is commonly known, they yet retain the fundamental notions of God and the controlling ideals of their idolatrous faith. In proof of this we have but to know a little of their religious past, and to come into close contact with them in their religious worship,

their ordinary ways of thinking and speaking of God, duty, immortality, and eschatological subjects in general.

The

From the meager stocks of knowledge which we possess of that earlier faith we can glean but little. Malays who were here when Legaspi, the ruler, and Urdaneta, the friar and evangelist, came to establish the authority of Spain and found the Christian faith, had never reduced their religious ideas to writing. Therefore it is impossible to study them as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Mohammedanism are studied. The friars who came to displace the old faiths were iconoclasts. Everything not of Rome was of the evil one. Rome has not yet produced one sympathetic student of Comparative Religions, or, if any studies by such a writer have seen the light of the printed page, that light has been quenched by papal order as was the book on New Rome in Zola's “La Roma.” In any case, no records are left us of painstaking effort on the part of the friar missionaries really to understand what the poor people for whom they labored did believe, and what were the hopes which those beliefs kindled in their bosoms.

From what little we know of the religious belief of the Malay invaders of the Philippines, we are led to conclude that it was an idolatrous form of demon-worship. It postulated malevolence as the chief characteristic of Deity, and its worship was a series of fear-born attempts to propitiate the wrath which they conceived burned against them unceasingly. This unseen and malevolent Being was believed to exist in many forms. Their idols were numerous, as idolatry can never be exactly certain that it has secured a correct representation of the Unseen, and with pathetic eagerness to be right continues the weary unavailing search for God if haply they may find Him who is near to every one of us.

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These idols were of the rudest and most inartistic forms. They show indisputable marks of both Hindu and Buddhistic thought, and are not wholly unlike idols found. in Java and in parts of Borneo at this time. Several images of Buddha in the sitting posture, with folded. hands resting on his knees, palms upward, have been dug up by excavators for foundations, and in plowing the fields of the central and southern islands. Idols similar to that of Krishna and Ganesh are to be seen here and there in old buildings and in out-of-the-way corners of the provinces.

It was the custom of the Malay invaders to secrete their idols, or Anitos, in remote caverns and wooded dells. They were supposed to possess miraculous power, and yet this power could not be conceived of as being exerted otherwise than in punishment for faults.

It was firmly believed that it was well pleasing in the sight of these gods to seek vengeance for wrongs suffered at the hands of another worshiper. The worshiper who failed to exact an eye for an eye was supposed to be out of favor with his Anito, and could not see his face in peace while his injury went unavenged.

Such, in briefest possible outline, are the main points. which may be considered well established in the religious belief of those whom Spain found in the Philippines at the time of conquest.

The conversion of these idolaters to Catholicism was rapidly accomplished. The king of Cebu accepted baptism almost at once. Crowds knelt and were baptized in rows. Where reluctance to accept the new faith was apparent, a large and influential party of the missionary friars were ready to employ force. In fact, one of the burning questions of early friar evangelism was whether it was right to use force in securing conversions to the

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