The new Indian policy which furnished this opportunity was probably not original with President Grant, and we are not disposed to call in question the purity and kindness of his motives in adopting it. At the time of its inauguration, however, he was surrounded by influences decidedly hostile to the Catholic Church; and it is probable that from the beginning the men “behind the throne” had a clear conception of the manner in which the new policy could be worked for the benefit of the sects. It was based upon an idea plausible to non-Catholics, but which no Catholic can ever accept—the idea that one religion is as good as another, and that, for example, it does not make much difference whether a man believes that Jesus Christ is God, or that he was simply a tolerably good but rather weak and vain man. This idea has been carried out in practice-for even to the “Unitarians” have been given two Indian agencies: those of the Los Pinos and White River in Colorado, whose entire religious education for 1876, as reported by the agents, consisted in “a sort of Shaker service of singing and dancing held for two or three days.” The chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Mr. Brunot, appears to have been anxious to spread abroad the doctrine of indifferentism among the Catholic Indians. Whenever, in his numerous “councils,” he found himself in company with such Indians, he undertook to enlighten them after this fashion: “A chief said yesterday: ‘I don’t know about religion, because they tell so many different things.’ Religion is like the roads; they all go one way; all to the one good place; so take any one good road and keep in it, and it will bring you out right at last.” ... “I heard an Indian say that the white man has two religions. In one way it looks so; but if you will understand you will see it is only one.” ... “It is not two kinds of religion, but it is as two roads that both go the same way.” We scarcely think it is within the province of the federal government to pay a gentleman for preaching this kind of doctrine to Catholic Indians. But what was the new Indian policy? It was explained by President Grant, in his message of December 5, 1870, in these words: “Indian agents being civil officers, I determined to give all the agencies to such religious denominations as had heretofore established missionaries among the Indians, and perhaps to some other denominations who would undertake the work on the same terms—that is, as missionary work.”