470 A RELIGIOUS PLATFORM

came to them. And I knew no reason why they should scruple
to let him marry them all, which T knew well enough would be
granted to be as authentic and valid in England as if they were
married by one of our own clergymen. What was afterwards
done in this matter I shall speak of by itself.

I then pressed him to tell me what was the second complaint
which he had to make, acknowledging that I was very much his
debtor for the first, and thanked him heartily for it. He told me
he would use the same freedom and plainness in the second, and
hoped I would take it as well. And this was, that notwithstand-
ing these English subjects of mine, as he called them, had lived with
those women for almost seven years, had taught them to speak
English, and even to read it; and that they were, as he perceived,
women of tolerable understanding and eapable of instruction ; yet
they had not to this hour taught them anything of the Christian
religion, no, not so much as to know that there was a God ora
worship, or in what manner God was to be served, or that their
own idolatry, and worshipping they knew not whom, was false and
absurd.

This, he said, was an unaccountable neglect, and what God would
certainly call them to account for, and perhaps at last take the
work out of their hands. He spoke this very affectionately and
warinly. “I am persuaded,” says he, “had those men lived in the
savage country whence their wives came, the savages would have
taken more pains to have brought them to be idolaters, and to
worship the devil, than any of these men,” so far as he could see,
“had taken with them to teach them the knowledge of the true
God. Now, sir,” said he, “though I do not acknowledge your
religion, or you mine, yet we should be glad to see the devil’s ser-
vants, and the subjects of his kingdom, taught to know the general
principles of the Christian religion; that they might, at least, hear
of God, and of a Redeemer, and of the resurrection, and of a future
state—things which we all believe; they had at least been so
much nearer coming into the bosom of the true Church than they
are now in the public profession of idolatry and devil-worship.”

T could hold no longer; I took him in my arms, and embraced
him with an excess of passion. ‘‘ How far,” said I to him, “ have