“The horses are all ready, sir; and the ladies bonneted wait in the drawing-room.”

The sun was in the tree-tops and the shadows were long.  There was a flirtation going on between the leaves and the breeze.  The birds were flitting from branch to branch.  A chill was on the air:  it was bathing the cheek with its delicious touch, and animated life was rejoicing that evening had come.

Arriving at the great mound of the temple of the sun, with some difficulty they climb to its summit.  So dense is the shade that it is almost dark.  Here are two graves, in which sleep the remains of the grand-parents of these two beautiful and lovely women.  All around are cultivated fields clothed with rich crops, luxuriant with the promise of abundance.  At its base flows the little creek, gliding and gabbling along over pure white sand.  Sweet Alice!  How sad she seems!  She stood at the grave’s side, and, looking down, seemed lost in pious reverie.  Every feature spoke reverence for the dead.  Her cousin, too, was silent; and if not reverent, was not gay.  He, their gallant, was respectfully silent, when Alice said, without lifting her eyes: 

“I wonder if La Salle ever stood here?  This is holy ground.  No spot on earth has a charm for me like this.  I am in the temple.  I see the attentive, watchful priest feeding there (as she pointed) the holy fire, and yonder, with upturned eyes, the great lawgiver worshipping his god, as he comes up from his sleep, bringing day, warmth, light, and life.  Was not this worship pure?  Was it not natural?  The sun came in the spring and awoke everything to life.  The grass sprang from the ground and the leaves clothed the trees; the birds chose their mates and the flowers gladdened the fields; everything was redolent of life, and everything rejoiced.  He went away in the winter, and death filled the land.  There were no leaves, no grass, no flowers.  All nature was gloomy in death.  Could any but a god effect so much?  The sun was their god; his temple was the sky, and his holy fire burned on through all time.  Beautiful conception!  Who can say it is not the true faith?”

“To the unlettered mind, it was,” answered the young gentleman; “because the imagination could only be aided by the material presented to the natural eye.  Science opens the eye of faith.  It teaches that the sun is only the instrument, and faith looks beyond for the Creator.  To such the Indian’s faith cannot be the true one.  The ignorance of one sees God in the instrument, and his thoughts clothe him with the power of the Creator, and his heart worships God in sincerity, and to him it is the true faith.  But to the educated, scientific man, who knows the offices of the sun, it appears as it is, only the creature of the unseen, unknown God, and to this God he lifts his adoration and prayers, and to him this is the true faith.”

“So, my philosopher, you believe, whatever lifts the mind to worship God is the true faith?”