Note 17 — LETTER XXXV.

The great difficulty of converting the Indians to christianity does not arise from their attachment to their own religion, where they have any, so much as from certain habits which they seem to have imbibed with the very milk of their mothers.

A French missionary relates, that he was once endeavouring to convert an Indian, by describing to him the rewards that would attend the good, and the dreadful punishment which must inevitably await the wicked, in a future world, when the Indian, who had some time before lost his dearest friend, suddenly interrupted him, by asking him, whether he thought his departed friend was gone to heaven or to hell. I sincerely trust, answered the missionary, that he is in heaven. Then I will do as you bid me, added the Indian, and lead a sober life, for I should like to go to the place where my friend is. Had he, on the contrary, been told that his friend was in hell, all that the reverend father could have said to him of fire and brimstone would have been of little avail in persuading him to have led any other than the most dissolute life, in hopes of meeting with his friend to sympathise with him under his sufferings.