the flickering light of the
lanterns hanging from the roof, we spoke of God's love for men.

The next morning we found one of our church families in a log hut,
gathered about a letter which they had just received from their boy who
was at a Government School in California. When we had read the letter,
the father of the family, Albert Cesspouch, a man of about forty-five,
blind from trachoma, which affects so many of the Indians, stood up and
drawing his blanket around him held up his hand to signify that he was
going to speak.

With the natural dignity of the Indian, he commenced to talk in the Ute
tongue, his daughter Rosita interpreting for him. First he thanked us
for the words we had spoken the night before and then went on to speak
of something which had been on his mind since the previous summer. It
seems that there had been a flag-raising at the agency headquarters, and
moving pictures had been taken of the Indians as they reverenced the
flag. He had been thinking about it during those months. "It means," he
said, "that they want to take our young men away to fight. It is not
right. The young men should not fight." Then putting his hand in his
pocket he drew out a little silver cross that had been given him some
years before when he had been confirmed, and holding it up as if his
sightless eyes could see it he said, "That's good. That means that men
should not fight, but live as brothers."

We explained to him that he had misunderstood the significance of the
flag-raising, but who shall say that that Indian, uncultured, poverty
stricken, diseased and ignorant by all our civilized standards, had not
come nearer to an understanding of the heart of the Christian gospel
than the majority of his sophisticated white brothers?

Perhaps, after all, Christ's message is a simpler thing than we have
supposed. One can go into a theological library today and find stacks
and stacks of volumes on religion, ethics, theology, casuistry,
exegesis, philosophy, the Bible, ecclesiastical history, mysticism,
apologetics, metaphysics and a dozen other subjects, all designed to
illuminate, define and expound the realities that Jesus taught; but
somehow they seem worthless when we note the clear grasp of the inner
truth that the simple Indian had achieved without their help. We have
tended to conceive of truth as something to be studied and apprehended
intellectually rather than something to be lived. We need the reminder
of that old