Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/399

Rh seven hundred and twenty converts. Nor did they by any means perform that rite on the easy terms with which the Jesuit Fathers were satisfied. They required of the candidates protracted, patient, and intentionally thorough previous discipline as evidence that they understood and appreciated the significance of the rite, and consistency of feeling and conduct after it. The Moravians were especially faithful in didactic, moral teachings, in purity, sincerity, and integrity, — making changed habits and manners essential. The Moravians also insisted, as much as did the Friends, on peace principles. Their converts were to be non-combatants. To this we are to ascribe in large part the trials and sufferings and removals to which they were subjected. The heathen Indians despised them as cowards, lacking in patriotism, and the whites believed they were secretly treacherous.

Apart from all deeper tests and the preferences resting upon our individual views and beliefs, we may freely admit and even commend the great advantages which the Roman Catholic forms and methods have over the bare and didactic teachings of Protestants, in effecting what is called the “conversion” of savages. The ceremonies, the altar ritual, the emblems and symbols of the old Church — often as easy of exhibition and as readily furnished in a wilderness, and really perhaps more imposing and impressive in the rude forest surroundings, in groves, on lake and river shores, than anywhere else — would be attractive, even awing, to simple, childlike people. The very few and the very elemental lessons, positively spoken, never argued, never explained, in which the accompanying teachings were conveyed, asking only assent and implicit faith, would not make a severe exaction on the savage mind. That mind was called a docile one because of the facility with which it yielded its assent, — all the readier, as the Jesuits themselves allowed, in exact proportion to the lack of comprehension of what was taught. Father