awhile, he said to the missionary:  “Good Voice, now I can; I will be faithful to my own wife, I will keep Sunday, I will pray and avoid the dances and other heathen customs; when you think best I will come down and be received into the church.”  That was a glad moment.  To clasp the hand of the first Gros-Ventre brother in Christ, won through a strange tongue and from a people who had sat in darkness for eighteen hundred years since the great light shone in Galilee!

I said, “Bring your wife and friends with you to Christ.”  He went home but soon returned, saying sorrowfully:  “My wife and my friends are none of them willing.  If I join I think it must be alone.”  “Well,” I said, “let it be so,” and it was.  His clothes were second-hand and old, and he had no natural attractiveness of appearance; but in a simple, manly, determined way, he made his confession and was baptized before an audience of Indians in the little mission chapel, (July, 1887), a poor Indian, but another Daniel standing alone.

Then, as the man of Gergesa, he went home to tell his neighbors what God had done for him.  He had a Bible in Dakota, of which language he understood something, and a few Gros-Ventre translations in writing, and some attempts at hymns, and some pictures.  With these he preached, in neighbors’ houses, and then he would report to me of his reception, and ask me questions about the Christian life.  A veritable man “Friday” had come to me; I was no longer alone.  Then why did his health fail, and he forty miles away where I could not see him?  But so God willed.  Soon they brought me the word:  Your friend has gone.  I gathered up his last words, questioning his wife and lame old father.  He wanted to see his friend and tell him some things.  He thought he did see him come in and then go out before he could speak.  He said, “I thought it was difficult, but I joined with those who pray, and I find now it is only a short way.  I am going above.”  With his last breath and his Bible open, he asked to be shown the way, that he might go in it.

The influence of a genuine life is strongest at home, and so it comes that the wife is seeking to follow her husband.  There are other converts with us now, but we shall never forget this first Gros-Ventre “friend,” (madakina); and although the story of his life is not a peculiar one to white men, nay for that very reason, we are glad to write this record of a once lowly, but now glorified, believer.

* * * * *

THE CHINESE.

* * * * *

LOS ANGELES CONGREGATIONAL CHINESE MISSION.

BY REV.  ROBERT G. HUTCHINS.

Our First Church has recently enjoyed two peculiarly impressive occasions; one the anniversary on the 17th of last month, of the Chinese school, established by Dr. Pond; the other the reception, on the 3d instant, of six Chinese brethren to church membership.  To appreciate the significance of these scenes, one must remember how contemptuous is the prejudice which prevails on this coast against these inoffensive strangers.