But no such
inference, as we shall see hereafter, could be warranted. Yet it
must be regarded as a curious fact, that the Cross should have been
venerated as the object of religious worship both in the New World,
and in regions of the Old, where the light of Christianity had never
risen.
The next object of Cortes was to reclaim the natives from their
gross idolatry, and to substitute a purer form of worship. In
accomplishing this he was prepared to use force, if milder measures
should be ineffectual. There was nothing which the Spanish
government had more earnestly at heart, than the conversion of the
Indians. It forms the constant burden of their instructions, and
gave to the military expeditions in this Western Hemisphere somewhat
of the air of a crusade. The cavalier who embarked in them entered
fully into these chivalrous and devotional feelings. No doubt was
entertained of the efficacy of conversion, however sudden might be the
change, or however violent the means. The sword was a good argument
when the tongue failed; and the spread of Mahometanism had shown
that seeds sown by the hand of violence, far from perishing in the
ground, would spring up and bear fruit to after time. If this were
so in a bad cause, how much more would it be true in a good one! The
Spanish cavalier felt he had a high mission to accomplish as a soldier
of the Cross. However unauthorised or unrighteous the war into which
he had entered may seem to us, to him it was a holy war.
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