If we do not give protection and Christianity to them, there is no hope for these Indians.  Their fate will be the same as Indians on the reservation in the State of New York, who have been for one hundred years in the midst of our best civilization, but are still lazy and shiftless, their reservation being permeated through and through with unmentionable vices.  They have no interest in the civilization of the present.  They are living in the past, dreaming over the glory of their ancestors.  They cannot be reached through civilization without religion.  To an Indian there is nothing secular.  Everything pertains to his religion.  When he goes on a hunt, if he has no success, it is because the gods are opposed to him; and if he is successful, the gods were in it.  When we go to an Indian and seek to change him, we must first change his gods.  We must Christianize him if we would civilize him.  There is where many of our experiments have been wrong.

Is it not laid upon us, who know something of this work, to do this?  I believe if we will not do it, that in the last great day, as we stand with the Indian before the judgment bar of God, our position will be worse than that of the Indian.  It seems to me that I can hear what the Judge would say to him at that time.  The Indian comes before God, a pagan from a Christian land; he comes having improved none of the powers that God gave him.  The Lord might say to him:  “Did I not give you as good opportunities and as good capacities as the white man in whose midst you were?  This Christian nation is the foremost for missions.  It has sent to all the lands of the earth, and yet here you come a pagan, not knowing God, uncivilized, a barbarian.”  Might not this Indian say:  “I was in prison.  I was surrounded by a reservation around whose outside lines were the soldiers of the United States, and I would be shot if I went off this reservation.  I had no business with which to support myself; I had no chance for trade or commerce; I had to buy of and sell to one man.  What opportunity had I?  When an occasional missionary came to me with the gospel of Christ, I looked upon this man as one of my enemies—­a man from the nation that had robbed me of my opportunities; and, my Father, why should I listen to him, especially when he spoke in a strange language?  Am I to blame that I come here empty?  Am I to blame that I must go away?” I believe the Lord would turn to us and say, “Inasmuch as ye have not done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have not done it unto Me.”  And, speaking for myself alone, I would rather at that last day be in the place of that darkened Indian—–­savage, barbarian, pagan, as he is—­than in the place of the Christian that knew of his need and would not help him.

* * * * *

THE CHINESE.

DOES RESTRICTION RESTRICT?