The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

UNLOCKING THE FORBIDDEN BOOK

in the days of Luther. Protestantism seemed to them to have
come out of the very nostrils of Satan. Heresy they considered the cardinal sin.
5. The friars did not wish the fact known that, in printing
quotations from the Bible, they had changed certain sections
in order to avoid embarrassing questions. The Romanist
Catechism commonly used in the dialects throughout the
Philippines entirely omits the second commandment-forbidding graven images-and divides the last commandment into
two, in order to make up for the one omitted.
In the Catechism in the Cebuan dialect 2 the ten commandments are given as follows:
First: Thou shalt love God above all other things.
Second: Thou shalt not use the name of God in vain.
Third: Thou shalt keep holy the sabbath and the fiestas.
Fourth: Honor thy father and thy mother.
Fifth: Thou shalt not kill.
Sixth: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Seventh: Thou shalt not steal.
Eighth: Thou shalt not slander and thou shalt not lie.
Ninth: Thou shalt not covet the wife of thy fellowman.
Tenth: Thou shalt not covet the property of thy fellowman.
Despite every precaution of the friars, more Bibles found
their way into the Philippines than will ever be known. The
adventures of some of them read like a fairy tale. Away
back in 1838 the British and Foreign Bible Society succeeded in distributing a considerable number of Bibles through
an American firm in Manila. They repeated this exploit in
1853, selling about a thousand Spanish Bibles. About the
year 1870 a German by the name of Hoffenden, who had
been converted in the Far East, tore the covers and front
pages off a number of Bibles and brought them into the Philippines without interference, the customs house men having no
suspicion as to the nature of the books. He presented the
mysterious books to various laymen and priests, none of
whom recognized what they were! This deception is said
Published by Congregacioon Mariana del Ateneo de Manila 19I7.