tween conflicting doctrines we must first create, or, at least, develop, a capacity to choose, and choose aright: if we tell an Apache or a Sioux that Galileo says the earth moves around the sun, and Brother Jasper says the sun moves around the earth, and he must decide for himself which of the two is right, he will surely elect to follow Brother Jasper, for his eyes tell him the latter teaches truth. Here he can choose, for his senses serve, even though they deceive, him; but if we ask him to thus deal with questions beyond the realm of sense, we leave him like a ship without chart or compass on the endless expanse of an unknown, misty ocean. When a bewildered soul, half awakened from the lethargy of barbarism, asks us: "What shall I do to be saved?" surely we offer a stone for bread if we answer: "A says thus and B thus: choose between them at your own pleasure and at your own risk."

To arouse brethren who have fallen behind to a truer, wider, nobler life is essentially missionary work; it has never been done, it can never be done, successfully and thoroughly except by those who labor for something more than hire; that his teaching be fruitful of good, an Indian teacher must be a missionary in spirit, if not in name. I am prepared to go farther and say that no man whose duty it is to guide, control and inspire Indians is fit for or worthy of his office unless he feel and show forth in his public acts, his language and his life a living faith in the morality of the Gospels and a sincere and earnest purpose to have those placed in his charge share and live by his belief.

I have said that, to civilize the Indian, we must first make him a Christian what kind of a Christian shall we try to make him? This is a grave and delicate question, but we must answer it, and answer it sensibly and candidly, with a full recognition of vital conditions in our national life and in entire loyalty to our country's institutions. I saw some time since in one of the papers of this city a statement to the effect, in substance, that I would deal this evening with the Indian Problem" from a Catholic standpoint." I am a Catholic and I suppose my hearers, at least in great majority, are Catholics likewise in that sense, the statement is true; but if anyone believes that my words this evening are inspired by jealousy or hostility towards any other form of Christianity, by the wish to impede or belittle what sincere Christians of other denominations are doing for the Indian's betterment or by the purpose to claim or secure for Catholic agencies privileges or advantages of any kind which I and, so far as I know,

all Catholics connected with work among and for the Indians would not gladly see enjoyed by Protestant agencies of the like merit and working to the like ends, then the person so believing is unjust to me, and is guilty of far more flagrant injustice to the Catholic Church in America.

There was once a prominent Englishman, notorious alike for his profligate life and for his violent hatred towards the Catholic religion, who described himself as "a good Protestant though a bad Christian: "how far the first part of this description may have been appropriate, I leave Protestants to say, but I assert, without any fear of contradiction, that no one can be a good Catholic who is a bad Christian, and that no one can be either a good Catholic or a good Christian who sees with an evil eye good work done by good men because these men are not of his faith.

Let us then see with pleasure all men of good will take part in this truly Christian and no less patriotic work: let us welcome the aid of any one, who, acting according to his lights, does what he can, in sincerity and charity, to make these weaker, these still benighted brethren see the truth as he sees it. We may, indeed, we must, regret that such men do not share our faith and that those they train up will not know its blessings: we may be, indeed we clearly should be, aroused by this generous and healthful competition to work the harder ourselves that the more among the Indians may be more fortunate: but, whatever others may do, let us never sanction by act or word or even thought the iniquity of seeking to keep Indians in the degradation of heathen savagery because their conversion and enlightenment might do credit to a rival creed.

I have already said that only shameless calumny can impute this unworthy spirit to the Catholic Church of the United States in her dealings with the Indians. When she was called by President Grant, in common with other religious bodies throughout the Union, to aid in the Indian's redemption, she responded most joyfully of all, and spent in the work, not merely the offerings of her laity, but the strength and lives of her devoted servants, men and women, with a profusion which may have passed the zeal and generosity of other communions; but she sought in no wise to discourage or injure them, unless, indeed, it was an injury to do better than they the common work in which all were engaged. Afterwards, for the most part, they practically abandoned this field of labor, when the Government withdrew the aid it had promised, but for this change of policy

she certainly was not to blame and it was hardly a wrong to them that her children gave her means to go on with the work, means which they did not find and, in truth, did not seek. The labors of her hierarchy and clergy, of her Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, of her Marquette League, worthily represented here this evening, of the many zealous laymen who have given so freely of their time and thought and money for the Indian's welfare, yet more the pious liberality of Mother Catherine and the self-sacrifice of all those Catholic missionaries of both sexes who have taught and healed and cared for the Indians, all these things may have been seen by some with "jealous eye malign;" but no one will say, or say, at least, with any honest belief in the truth of what he says, that she has ever sought to deprive her rivals of a "square deal," or ever sacrificed the enlightenment and happiness of the Indian to sectarian prejudice and envy.

And let me say further and in conclusion that this spirit, the spirit which has guided and inspired the Catholic Christians of America in dealing with this problem and through whose guidance and inspiration I believe it must be solved, is not only Catholic and Christian, but also American. In a quaint poem of Thomas Dudley, the first of the name to settle in New England, are found these verses:

"Let men of God in courts and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch,

Lest that i egg bring forth a cockatrice

To poison all with heresy and vice."

The old Puritan wrote according to the fashion of his time; most men of all creeds then thought as he did, and now and then some one in America of to-day, with more or less disguise, echoes his thoughts; but, when this happens, it is merely a sporadic case of atavism: the advocate of intolerance and sectarian hatred in America is from two to three hundred years behind his age and his countryOf all things religious proscriptions and religious enmities are the least American: all the bitterness of prejudice against men of other faiths has died, or is fast dying, out among us under the softening influence of perfect freedom of conscience; and yet, be it well remembered Americans have not sunk, nor are they sinking, into indifferentism and spiritual apathy. Our history has shown far more forcibly and clearly than ever had been shown before or elsewhere that the less a man may be forced by law to say he believes

as to things unseen, the more and the more firmly he will believe in fact, and the more resolutely and surely he will act on his belief. And it is this great lesson of American history, this great fact of American civilization, which more than aught else encourages me to hope the native peoples of America may survive to bless those days of sore trial for their ancestors which yet shortened, perhaps by thousands of years, the time of their own growth into a higher type of manhood.

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE.

VESALIUS, THE ANATOMIST, AND HIS TIMES.

IN the article in the January MESSENGER on “Vesalius as a Horrible Example," we saw that though a number of supposedly trustworthy writers have emphasized the persecution of Vesalius by the ecclesiastical authorities of his time, there is absolutely no foundation in history for such an opinion. As we trace the life of Vesalius, we shall find that not only was there no conflict between him and the Church, but, on the contrary, his career is of special interest as showing at the very time when the reformation was supposed to be so necessary to free the human mind from the trammels of Church authority, that a great scientific worker found the best opportunities for the development of his genius and his most helpful occasions for scientific investigation of a high order, in countries where the so-called reformation produced no effects and in universities absolutely untouched by any phase of the Lutheran movement. There is besides every reason to think that Vesalius himself remained in constant sympathy with the old Church, and he certainly exhibited no tendencies at all to become an adherent of the newer and supposedly more liberal doctrines.

His life is of interest to the modern physician and to the biological scientist because he is the founder of modern physiology as well as the father of anatomy. It is of interest, however, to the reading public in general, because it occupies the years in which the so-called reformation took its rise, and stands out as a contradiction of all that has been said with regard to the supposed obscurantism that prevailed in all countries and educational institutions under the control of the Roman Church. Far from going to Germany in order to pursue his studies under the presumedly more liberal conditions that would prevail in universities where the reformation obtained, Vesalius constantly sought his opportunities and found them in universities that remained closely allied with the old Church and under the dominance of Papal influence. Mr. Andrew White says he had more opportunities at Padua because this was in the Venetian States, and Venice was constantly in opposition to the Popes and allowed anatomy to be carried on in spite of ecclesiastical protests, but we have shown this to be a mere pretext, since in Vesalius' time every city in Italy that had a uni