Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/174

 him on through darkness, all his life long? He was hungry, and his bow satisfied him. Thirsty, and drank of the brook. He dies, and will He, who nourished his body, slay his soul? Can the spirit, which He breathed into clay, perish like the gale which sighs once, arid is not? Doth not the smoke ascend, and the cinders go downward to the earth, when the fuel that fed the flame is consumed?"

"Connect your natural religion, with that which is revealed from above," said the Pastor. "Whether you call Him who ruleth over all, the Great Spirit, or Jehovah, strive to enter into his Heaven. To whom do the promises of the gospel address themselves with more force, than to a race like ours, homeless and despised?"

"I know that the shades of my fathers live," he replied, "but not in the white man's Heaven. On earth they lived not as brothers, though ye say that one Father created them. Ye say that in your Heaven, they "go no more out. But the spirit of the red man must wander; as on earth, so in heaven. If it might not rove, it would faint amid the islands of bliss. Your holy book; tells of the great city in Heaven, the New-Jerusalem, which is built of pure gold. It is described with gates of pearl, and streets of transparent glass. Our Heaven is not so. The poor Indian would tear to enter such a glorious place. He is contented to lie down in the forest, whose, lofty columns prop the blue arch of the skies, and to see the moon look forth in brightness from her midnight throne.