their native climate. They regard themselves as the equal of the whites, and look in a patronizing way on the Indian. Their families are usually very large, and the female sex is said to be very handsome.
Quite recently I had occasion to investigate the question whether pulmonary consumption tends to exterminate the American Indian?[1] and I then found that nearly all those Indian agencies which show the lowest consumption rate are precisely those which are shown in the table of this paper to contain the largest number of mixed bloods. Of course, it is just possible that the presence and the absence of pulmonary consumption in certain tribes is purely a coincidence; yet I think, from what has been said concerning the improved physical condition of the mixed Indian, it is quite evident that the greater immunity of these tribes from consumption is due to the fact that they comprise a large element which has a superior power of warding off disease.
These facts and inductions obviously show that Nature steps in and adds more toward a solution of the difficulties of the Indian problem than statesmanship has ever accomplished. Such a process, although at the beginning it acts prejudicially to the interests of the white race, will in the end operate to the advantage of both races. There can be no doubt that the harmony of feeling which it establishes, and the permanency of common interests which it insures, counterbalance all the evils which it ever inflicted. Moreover, these developments also confirm the wisdom of the course of our Government, and that of our philanthropic people who have undertaken to second these efforts of Nature, by educating and training the growing generation of Indians in the ways of civilization and of Christianity.
| DARWINISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. |
I.
THE publication of the "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin", a review of which has already appeared in the pages of the "Guardian," seems a fitting opportunity for attempting to face the question how far Darwinism affects Christian faith, and what are the points of traditional interpretation or apology which are modified by it. Christian theology has no fear of scientific discoveries. It claims all truth as belonging of right to Him who is the Truth. But Christian theologians are but slowly learning that panic fear of new theories is as unreason-
- ↑ See "New York Medical Journal," for May 7, 1887.
