Indians, who have so put on the likeness of the beasts, are now
dying off the face of the earth like the beasts whom they admire and
imitate?

And this was the way with our own heathen forefathers before the
blessed Gospel was preached to them. It is frightful, in reading
old histories, to find how many Englishmen, our own forefathers,
were named after fierce wild beasts, and tried, alas! to be like
their names--children of wrath, whose feet were swift to shed blood,
under whose lips was the poison of adders, and destruction and
bloodshed following in their paths, not knowing the way of peace.
The wolf was the common wild beast of England then; and there are, I
should say, twenty common old English names ending in wolf, besides
as many more ending in bear, and eagle, and raven. Fearful sign!
that men of our own flesh and blood should have gloried in being
like the wolf, the cruellest, the greediest, the most mean of savage
beasts! How shall we thank God enough, who sent to them the
knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ, and called them to be new men in
Christ Jesus, and called them to holy baptism, to receive new names,
and begin new lives in the righteous likeness of God Himself?--that
as by nature they had been the children of wrath, so in baptism they
might become the children of grace; that as from their forefathers
they had inherited a corrupt nature, original sin, and the likeness
of the foul and ravenous beasts which perish, they might have power
from the Spirit of God to become the sons of God, conformed into the
likeness of Jesus Christ, in peace, and love, and righteousness, and
all holiness.

And yet, in names there is a lower depth still among fallen and
heathen men; when they lose utterly the last dim notion that God