108 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



A form of religion which is to maintain itself and to 

 be useful to a people, must be especially adapted to their 

 mental constitution, and must respond in an intelligible 

 manner to the better sentiments and the higher capacities 

 of their nature. It would, therefore, almost appear self- 

 evident that those special forms of faith and doctrine 

 which have been slowly elaborated by eighteen centuries 

 of struggle and of mental growth, and by the action and 

 reaction of the varied nationalities of Europe on each 

 other, cannot be exactly adapted to the wants and capaci- 

 ties of every savage race alike. Our form of Christianity, 

 wherever it has maintained itself, has done so by being in 

 harmony with the spirit of the age, and by its adapta- 

 bility to the mental and moral wants of the people among 

 whom it has taken root. As Macaulay justly observed 

 in the first chapter of his history : 



" It is a most significant circumstance that no large society of 

 which the tongue is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and 

 that, wherever a language derived from that of ancient Rome is 

 spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails." 



In the early Christian Church, the many uncanonical 

 gospels that were written, and the countless heresies that 

 arose, were but the necessary results of the process of 

 adaptation of the Christian religion to the wants and 

 capacities of many and various peoples. This was an 

 essential feature in the growth of Christianity. This 

 shows that it took root in the hearts and feelings of men, 

 and became a part of their very nature. Thenceforth 

 it grew with their growth, and became the expression of 

 their deepest feelings and of fcheir highest aspirations; 

 and required no external aid from a superior race to keep 

 it from dying out. It was remarked by one of the speakers 

 at the Anthropological Society's meeting, that the absence 

 of this modifying and assimilating power among modern 

 converts — of this absorption of the new religion into 

 their own nature — of this colouring given by the national 

 mind — is a bad sign for the ultimate success of our form 

 of Christianity among savages. When once a mission has 

 been established, a fair number of converts made, and the 

 first generation of children educated, the missionary's 



