mortal, and has a higher life beyond the grave. In fact, it appears
to him just as natural for man to trust in some intelligence
higher than himself, who he believes brought him into being, as
it is for children to trust in their parents.

As reasonable beings, without prejudice, we cannot for a
moment believe that heathens who bow down to idols, or sav-
ages who trust in totums, or the civilized who have faith in mas-
cots, believe there is any power in the object itself, but simply
that there is somehow or other, a spiritual intelligence con-
nected with it, which they cannot understand or explain, inde-
pendent of the thing itself. They only know that it satisfies their
nature to confide in it. As beings of common sense, we cannot
believe otherwise than that their feelings are akin to those of the
little girl who pets and caresses her doll, sleeps with it; and em-
braces it with all the tenderness of a devoted mother, and yet
not for a moment believes it real. She is actuated to love and
caress it in order to satisfy that parent love born in her own
soul, which the God of nature has so wisely implanted in the
breast of all human-kind.

Those mother-like caresses of the little girl, as she plays with
her doll, declare no more emphatically to our reason that she
inherits maternal love, than do those acts of rational beings
who idolize totums and mascots declare that they are spiritual
beings connected in some way with a higher Intelligence, who
created them and governs all, and to whom all are accountable
in this life and in the life to come. Pokagon does not wish to be
understood, because he has reasoned by way of analogy in proof
of spirituality, that he wishes to encourage idol-worship, after
the relation between God and man has been revealed to men.
Nor can he understand how it is possible for true Christians to
trust or confide in anything this side of eternity beyond the re-
vealed God of Heaven, to satisfy their spiritual wants.

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