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Leaving our little Indian friends, we now make our way through the State of Sao Paulo, in South-Eastern Brazil, to the city of the same name, which means “St Paul.” The climate here is more temperate and healthy (except in the lowlands near the sea-coast), which is a pleasant change from the tropical heat of Northern Brazil.

Sao Paulo is very up-to-date, and more like a modern European city than any other in Brazil. Yet although many of the Portuguese-speaking people who live here are educated, they are very ignorant of the true religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their religion, like that of the people in every other city in South America, consists chiefly in the worship of a woman, the Virgin Mary, and there are very many Roman Catholic feasts given in her honour during the year.

The mother of our Saviour is thus the object of worship of many thousands of women and children in South America to-day, and yet the exaltation of the Virgin Mary has not by any means uplifted these women and children; on the contrary, their social, moral, and spiritual state is worse than that of the women and children of any heathen country. It is only where the Lord Jesus Christ is worshipped and upheld that mothers, sisters, and little children are honoured, cared for, and put into their proper place.