difficulties, but they have met them skillfully.” (I.: XVII.) “Fifty years ago,” in the language of this same report, “these five nations—now blessed with a Christian civilization, in which many thousands are active and intelligent workers, while the common sentiment of the whole people reverently supports their efforts, and approves their influence—were pagans.” Fifty years ago the Sioux, now gathered at Santee and Sissiton, in Christian communities and homes and schools, with churches enrolled on the same records as those of New York and Philadelphia, in connection with Presbytery and Synod and General Assembly, were savage hordes, roaming through the Northwest as wild as the wildest. These savages have been changed. The facts are before our eyes. How was the transformation wrought? The answer is clear. No one can, no one does, mistake it. The United States Senate Report, from which I have quoted, acknowledges these to be the results of Christian missions. Where the Government has totally failed, the voluntary efforts of the churches have been crowned with this success. The preaching of the Gospel has done this work, and it alone. This ought not to surprise us. It will not surprise any historical student. The same agency by which our ancestors have gained their law and liberty and civilization—who a few centuries ago were savages and cannibals, offering human sacrifices, hanging the skulls of their slain enemies in their houses and using them as drinking-cups in their feasts—the same agency by which in our time the cannibals of the Fijis, and the cruel tribes of Madagascar, have found themselves possessed of a peaceable and progressive civilization, has broken the darkness and rolled away the shadows from these Indian tribes, as quietly, as peacefully and as gloriously as the coming of the sun has brought in the morning. Only the changes which in our ancestors required centuries for their accomplishment, have been wrought among these Indians in as many decades.