Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/391

Rh of Christians to save them through a boon which Christians could impart. Both these tenets pointed to the same duty of securing their conversion.

With the instigation of that master and mighty motive, the redeeming units or millions of our human race from an appalling doom, what has been accomplished in positive results by all Christian effort? Unquestionably there have been results which candor and charity and appreciative estimates may plead with a varying measure of satisfaction; there have been translations of the Scriptures, and good books, grammars, dictionaries, and primers, for sacred instruction; there have been missionary posts, schools, churches, and converted and educated native preachers, with their native flocks. But how limited, inadequate, and unsatisfactory in the sum are all these results! Every branch and communion of the Christian Church — Roman, Puritan, Moravian, Episcopal, Quaker, Baptist, Methodist — has established and maintained missionary labors among our Indians. No one of these Christian fellowships — with a possible exception, soon to be recognized, in the work of Jesuit missionaries — has ever found self-satisfaction in its success. Nearly every effort made by them, after signs of promise and reward, has failed, most of them with accompaniments of deep sadness and overwhelming disaster.

Perhaps the very best relief or palliation to be found for all the shortcomings, the wasted labors, the failures of Christians in their purposed efforts to convert the heathen here or elsewhere, is to be spoken in this confession; namely, that during all these ages a constant and earnest debate, sometimes a very passionate and angry one, has been going on among Christians themselves — the very best and most intelligent of them — as to, What is Christianity; what makes a Christian; what is it to be a Christian? This question has been put and kept in a sort of chancery suit; and it is by no means out of court yet, nor really carried up by consent to the court of last resort. And