excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection," &c. His fear was lest God should gather his soul with the wicked; his desire, that he might be found at the right hand of the judge, in the congregation of the righteous.

It may be thought that the allusions to the resurrection in 1 Cor. xv. form an exception to this use of language, inasmuch as it is manifest that the apostle is there treating only of the resurrection of the saints; but the exception is only apparent. The wicked are out of sight and out of mind, and therefore there is no occasion for the language of contrast. In verse 20, he affirms that Christ is raised from the dead, and calls him the first fruits of them that slept; thus suggesting the inference that all who die and sleep in Him will, as the fulness of the harvest, participate in His resurrection. Verse 21 evidently implies something more than a mere reconstruction of the body; in truth it intimates a moral resurrection, of which the reconstruction of the body in the likeness of Christ is the fitting consummation.

This interpretation involves a speculative question which we have never seen discussed; that is, whether, without a Saviour, there would have been any resurrection. If, as seems necessary, it be answered affirmatively, there can then be no doubt that verse 21 must be understood in a restricted sense as applying to believers only, and is an intimation that they will participate in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Sinners shall not "be made alive," that is, raised "in Christ." Verse 22. That the case of the righteous only is under consideration is evident from verse 23: "But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming." The justice of this view will be more plainly manifest if we pass along to verse 42: "So also is the resurrection of the dead;" i. e., of the bodies of the dead; "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption," &c. But these things cannot be affirmed of the unrighteous.

It may be contended that the expression, "Christ is risen from the dead," suggests merely that he alone of the dead was raised; but even so the è intimates a separation; and much more does it convey such an intimation when, in speaking of a certain class, the saints, which shall participate in the general

resurrection, it affirms of them that they shall rise from the dead.

If it be thought that it simply indicates the priority of their resurrection, this is of itself a separation, and presupposes difference of moral character, as the very reason for the separation. Let us turn it as we please, and it exactly tallies with the doctrine that the product of the resurrection in the case of the righteous differs wholly from its product in the case of the wicked. And thus it is one of many infallible indications in the language of inspiration, of a future and eternal separation between the friends and the enemies of God.

It is worthy of a passing remark, how the view upon which we have been insisting corresponds with the language of Scripture in alluding to departed saints. They are not dead, but asleep. When they are called the dead, 1 Cor. xv., it is in allusion to the body only. But that is accounted dead even before its dissolution: "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin." Rom. viii. 10. According to the view herein presented, with how much force can it be said of every saint," He is not dead, but sleepeth."

It may be worth while to notice also that the law of cause and effect holds good in the moral as much as in the material world. Men are preparing their bodies, either for purity and glory, or for pollution and shame. The harvest of the resurrection will be according to the seed sown here; there is nothing arbitrary in the appointment of future happiness and misery. "The wicked shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices." The vices of men, their abuses of their own bodies, will be perpetuated in the resurrection. Every member, function, and appetite will tell the tale of its own perversion. Sin and vice contribute to make the mould into which the bodies of the wicked will be cast.

If it be asked how the righteous can be prepared for the resurrection of glory, inasmuch as they are. beset with sinful imperfections; the answer is, that it is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the deaushall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwellth in you;" or, as it is in the margin, "because of his

!

Rom. viii. 11. "We are the

Spirit that dwelleth in you." temple of God," are to be "clothed upon with our house from heaven," and "he that hath wrought us for the self same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit." If the body is kept for the Lord, the Lord will be for the body, and will raise us in his own likeness. Any one with a Concordance and Greek Testament can easily satisfy himself of the justice of the distinction herein set forth.

ARTICLE V.

OUR INDIAN TRIBES.

No race has ever presented a greater variety in its character and condition than the present Indian population of the United States. They furnish examples of almost every grade of wealth and want, of intelligence and degradation; from the rich and cultivated Cherokee to the filthy Digger eating the vermin from his own person, and with apparently little but the form of man to distinguish him from the brute. There is a wide diversity of opinion as to their capabilities and wants, modified. as men's views must be by contact, cupidity and prejudice, on the one hand; and enthusiasm, benevolence and remoteness, on the other. Published statements relating both to their early and present condition are not always trustworthy, and are sometimes contradictory, so that it is difficult to come to a definite opinion; or, having formed one, to feel sure that it is based upon reliable data.

It seems desirable to remove, at the outset, some wrong impressions, the tendency of which is to discourage benevolent efforts in behalf of the Indian race.

Many Cherokees in Texas and California, as well as in the Indian Territory, are men of wealth; and this is also true of the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and of Indians in New York and Kansas. A number of Indians from different tribes are now receiving a liberal education in the United States, and some are graduates of some of our best colleges.

It is generally supposed that the number now included in the various tribes represents but a small fraction of the original population. This idea has arisen from exaggerated estimates of their former numbers, and from the generalization of facts peculiar to particular tribes. Catlin estimates the original Indian population of this country at 14,000,000.* A writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica sets their number at one fourth of a million. Mr. Schoolcraft says it is not probable that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the number of souls upon Indian territory bore any very considerable ratio to the number of square miles of country which they occupied in the way of villages and hunting grounds. He elsewhere reckons the Indians who occupied the present area of the United States at the time of its discovery, at not far from one million, and thinks that they do not fall short of half that number now.† This reduction, though large, is not so great as is generally supposed; nor is it a strong indication, when compared with the influences that have combined to produce it, that the mere contact of civilization must be fatal to the race.

"We are convinced," says a writer already quoted, "that the Indian is a man of the woods; and that, like the animals he lives upon, he is destined to disappear before the advancing tide of civilization which falls upon him like a blight, because it supplies new food to nourish his vices, while it demands intelligent and moral faculties, in which he is deficient, and renders useless those traits which are prominent in his character." The

*The mode of subsistence, the manner of warfare, and the political and social condition of these tribes at that time, are evidence enough to disprove such estimates as this. They were divided into small tribes perpetually at war with each other, and these wars originating mostly in blood feuds were wars of extermination and not of conquest. Thus "two young warriors," says Bancroft, "from the heart of the Five Nations, would cross the glades of Pennsylvania and the valleys of Western Virginia, and steal within the mountain fastnesses of the Cherokees, where, hiding in the clefts of the rocks, and changing their places of concealment till provided with scalps enough to astonish their village, they would bound over the ledges and hurry home." Maize was almost their only agricultural product, and this was raised in very limited quantities; extensive corn-fields would have been derogatory to the skill and prowess of the tribe. The area needed to supply a family subsisting upon game could not have been a narrow one; but, according to Catlin, it could not have exceeded seven hundred acres, supposing the whole country to have been permanently occupied, which was not the case.

There were by actual census in 1830, 129,266 Indians within the chartered limits of the United States. This estimate includes only about 18,000 of the Indians then west of the Mississippi.

fact that the Indian thus "disappears" is beyond dispute, but that this is due to a radical incompatibility between his character and the claims of civilization remains to be proved.

A truly Christian civilization, wherever it has been brought to bear upon the Indian race, has produced the opposite result. The Cherokees, who are perhaps the most favorable instance, were estimated at 12,000 two hundred years ago; they now number 20,000, after having been almost decimated by their forced removal from their homes in 1839. They sustain a regularly organized government, with a supreme and circuit courts, and a well regulated system of public schools. The same is true of the Choctaws and several other tribes. One eighth of the Choctaw population are members of evangelical churches. Gen. Wady Thompson, on visiting the Cherokees some years ago, remarked: "When I remember what the Cherokees were thirty years ago, and see what they are now - then a rude, barbarous and profligate people, now educated, courteous and thoroughly civilized-it seems as though some power more than human had accomplished these wonders." Such are the facts concerning large Indian communities of different origins; and the names of Katherine and David Brown, Elias Boudinot, and many others, bear precious testimony to the power of religious truth to develop, even in the "man of the woods," the rarest qualities of mind and heart.

Another erroneous impression is, that the diminution of the Indian tribes has been caused by reducing their means of subsistence. This has been true in some cases, but is not the general fact. The Pawnees have suffered severely in this way since the opening of Californian emigration. The Indians are naturally migratory, and the mere act of retiring before the American settlers involved no real injury unless it should lead to collision with other tribes. But we are assured that large portions of the present territory of the United States had then but a small aboriginal population. "Vermont, the northwest part of Massachusetts, and a portion of New Hampshire, were solitudes. Ohio, Indiana, and much of Michigan, were open to Indian emigration; and from the portage between the Fox and the Wisconsin to the Des Moines, Marquette saw neither the face nor the footprint of man, and in all the region between the