“He could tell a better story of our Saviour's birth and life than one half of those who call themselves Christians yet he always declared to me that neither he nor any of his countrymen had an idea of a future state. He was an advocate for universal toleration, and I have seen him several times assist at some of the most sacred rites performed by the Southern (Canada) Indians, apparently with as much zeal as if he had given as much credit to them as they did. And with the same liberality of sentiment he would, I am persuaded, have assisted at the altar of a Christian Church, or in a Jewish synagogue; not with a view to reap any advantage himself, but merely, as he observed, to assist others who believed in such ceremonies.”[1]
This interesting person kept eight wives in good order.
Let us quote briefly the judgment passed by a missionary of one Christian fellowship upon his brethren of another communion. The Roman Catholic Bishop Taché,[2] having referred to the zeal with which Protestant missions had been conducted in the Northwest, cautiously qualifies his estimate thus: —
“I say the zeal. The word may surprise, and I may be asked my reason for using it. ‘But have these Protestant ministers zeal?’ If by zeal he meant that sweet and divine flame which consumes all that is merely human, that sacred fire which enwraps the heart to the extent that a man wholly forgets himself that he may entirely consecrate himself to the search, to the preaching, of the truth, to the sanctification of his fellow-creatures, I will say without hesitation, No! the ministers of error have no zeal, and they cannot have it. If, on the other hand, for having zeal it suffices, for one motive or another, to spend in the service of any cause a vast amount of energy and efforts, alike for giving prevalence to this cause and for combating that which is opposed to it, above all that which opposes it with the force of repulsion which the truth has against error, — then I will say that these men have very much of zeal. Some of them bring to their ministry an ardor, an activity, sometimes even a devotedness, certainly worthy of a better cause. Would to Heaven that they had not so much zeal! that
