you come to the
house before you return. I have something for you, and a message for
Father Holden.

"I can conceive of no character," said Faith, after they had parted
from Esther, "more noble than that of the Christian missionary. He is
the true redresser of wrongs, the only real knight that ever lived.
You smile," she said, looking at Bernard. "Do you not think so?"

"I think with you," he replied. "There can be no nobler man than he
who submits to privation, and exposes his life to danger through love
to his fellow man. It is God-like. But I smiled at the association of
ideas, and not at the sentiment. Think of Holden as a knight."

"To me there is nothing ludicrous in the thought. When I look at him,
I see not the coarse unusual dress, but the heroic soul, that would
have battled valiantly by the side of Godfrey for the holy sepulchre."

"I am afraid he will meet with only disappointment in his efforts to
reform the Indians."

"We cannot know the result of any labor. We will do our duty, and
leave the rest to God."

"They have not the degree of cultivation necessary to the reception of
a religion so refined and spiritual as the Christian. They must first
be educated up to it."

"But you would not, meanwhile, neglect the very thing for which they
are educated. Religious instruction must be a part of the education,
and it brings refinement with it."

"Certainly, if it can be received; but therein consists the
difficulty. I am afraid it is as reasonable to expect a savage to
apprehend the exalted truths of Christianity, as one unaquainted with
geometry, the forty-ninth proposition of the first book of Euclid."

"The comparison is not just. Science demands pure intellect; but
religion, both intellect and feeling, perhaps most of the latter.
The mind is susceptible of high cultivation, the heart feels
instinctively, and that of a peasant may throb with purer feeling than
a philosopher's and for that reason be more ready to receive religious
truth. And who may limit the grace of God?"

"You have thought deeper on this subject than I, Faith. But how
hard must it be for the rays of divine truth to pierce through the
blackness of that degradation which civilization has entailed on them!
The conversion of the North American Indian was easier at the landing
of the Pilgrims than now."

"The greater our duty," exclaimed Faith, clasping her hands, "to atone
for the wrongs we have inflicted. But, William, some good