RELIGION A FUTURE STATE. 199 



not all nature forbid it ? Do not the sun, the moon, the stars, 

 the solemn night, and cheerful dawn, announce a Creator 

 even to the children of the wilderness ? Is it not proclaim- 

 ed in the awful voice of thunder, and written on the sky by 



" the mostr terrible and nimble stroke 

 Of quick, cross lightning ?" 



Is it possible that any reasoning creature can be so degraded 

 as not to have some notion, however faint and inadequate, 

 of an Almighty Being? Such a conception is necessarily in- 

 cluded, more or less, in all forms of idolatry, even the most 

 absurd and bestial. The indefinable apprehensions of a sav- 

 age, and his dread of something which he can not describe, 

 are testimonies that at least he suspects (however dimly and 

 ignorantly) that the visible is not the whole. This may be 

 the germ of religion — the first uncouth approaches of " faith" 

 as the " evidence of things not seen" — the distant and im- 

 perfectly-heard announcement of a God. 



May not our incorrect ideas on this head, in reference to 

 the Ovambo, be attributed to want of time and insufficient 

 knowledge of their language, habits, and shyness in reveal- 

 ing such matters to strangers? When interrogating our 

 guide on the subject of religion, he would abruptly stop us 

 with a " Hush !" Does not this ejaculation express awe and 

 reverence, and a deep sense of his own utter insufficiency to 

 enter on so solemn a theme ? The Ovambo always evinced 

 much uneasiness whenever, in alluding to the state of man 

 after death, we mentioned Nangoro. " If you speak in that 

 manner," they said in a whisper, " and it should come to the 

 hearing of the king, he will think that you may want to kill 

 him." They, moreover, hinted that similar questions might 

 materially hurt our interest, which was too direct a hint to be 

 misunderstood. To speak of the death of a king or chief, or 

 merely to allude to the heir-apparent, many savage nations 

 consider equivalent to high treason. 



As already said, the Ovambo surround their dwellings 



