Christianity; and why they roam over, rather than occupy, those lands on which they have been suffered to remain. From the days of Elliot, Mayhew, Brainard, and their zealous compeers, there have never wanted missionaries to endeavour to civilize and christianize; but they have found, for the most part, their efforts utterly defeated by the wicked and unprincipled acts, the wicked and unprincipled character of the Europeans. When the missionaries have preached to the shrewd Indians the genuine doctrines of Christianity, they have immediately been struck with the total discrepancy between these doctrines and the lives and practices of their European professors. "If these are the principles of your religion," they have continually said, "go and preach them to your countrymen. If they have any efficacy in them, let us see it shewn upon them. Make them good, just, and full of this love you speak of. Let them regard the rights and property of Indians. You have also a people amongst you that you have torn from their own country, and hold in slavery. Go home and give them freedom; do as your book says,—as you would be done by. When you have done that, come again, and we will listen to you."
This is the language which the missionaries have had everywhere in the American forests to contend with.[1] When they have made by their truly kind and
- ↑ Mr. Mayhew in his journal, writes, that the Indians told him, that they could not observe the benefit of Christianity, because the English cheated them of their lands and goods; and that the use of books made them more cunning in cheating. In his Indian itineraries, he desired of Ninicroft, sachem of the Narragansets, leave to preach to his people. Ninicroft bid him go and make the English good first,
