"And now," said the Minister, producing some leaves of sermon-like script, "may I call your attention, my friends, to the striking analogies found in the religious usages and belief of the Aztec,--correspondent with those of the Christian,--some of which I have considered in this little paper?
"One of the most extraordinary coincidences with Christian rites may, I think, be traced in their ceremony of naming their children,--the Aztec baptism. An account of this rite, preserved by Sahagan, is thus put into English:
"'When everything,' says the chronicler, 'necessary for the baptism had been made ready, all the relations of the child were assembled, and the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism. After a solemn invocation, the head and lips of the infant were touched with water, and a name was given it; while the goddess Cioacoatl, who presided over childbirth, was implored that "the sin which was given to this child before the beginning of the world might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew." This,' continues the narrator, 'is the exact formula used: "O my child! take and receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash and purify. I pray that these heavenly drops may enter into your body and dwell there, that they may destroy and remove from you all the sin which was given to you at the beginning of the world.
"'She then washed the body of the child with water. This done, "He now liveth," said she, "and is born anew; now is he purified and cleansed afresh, and our Mother Chalchioitlyene (the goddess of water) again bringeth him into the world." Then taking the child in both hands, she lifted him towards heaven, and said, "O Lord, thou seest here thy creature, whom thou hast sent into the world, this place of sorrow, and suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and inspiration; for thou art the Great God, and with thee is the great goddess." Torches of pine illuminated this performance, and the name was given by the same midwife, or priestess, who baptized him.'
"The difficulty of obtaining anything like a faithful report of these rites from the natives," said the Minister, "was complained of by the Spanish chroniclers, and no doubt led them to color the narrative of these (to them) heathen rites and observances with interpolations from their own religious belief. 'The Devil,' said one of these bewildered missionary monks, 'chose to imitate the rites of Christianity, and the traditions of the chosen people, that he might allure his wretched victims to their own destruction.' Leaving these monkish annalists to their own childish conclusions, and absurd interpretations of the Aztec religious analogies, we pass on to the tradition of the Deluge, so widely spread among the nations of the Old World, the Hebrew account of which was thus travestied by these semi-barbarians. Two persons, they held, survived this historical flood,--a man named Coxcox, and his wife. Their heads are represented in ancient paintings, together with a boat floating on the waters.