-ti JOHN FKASEUj B.A., LL.D. 



knowing tlicir religious traditions, must see that those traditions 

 are based on something more ancient and something which shows 

 that they hold the idea of a spiritual being, and that they look on 

 the curious life of this world as a life of work and thought, having 

 relation towards a life of action and thought to come. One 

 who knows a great deal of Australia and the Australians, says that 

 the ordinary idea of omnipotence, goodness, and eternity is distinctly 

 characterised in the religious ideas of the Australian natives. As 

 to the proposition which has been advanced that these people came 

 from India, there would appear to be good grounds for that supposi- 

 tion, as shown by certain similarities of phrases and the resem- 

 blances which point to a migration through New Guinea, the people 

 who established themselves in the northern part of Australia 

 having evidently penetrated that country from the southern 

 part of New Guinea, going afterwards south-west, and thus 

 overspreading the continent of Australia. This, at any rate, 

 is the idea of those who have looked into the question. 

 Tradition certainly seems to point to the Australian aborigines 

 coming from the north. Ridley (perhaps the chief authority 

 amongst the many devoted missionaries and laymen who have 

 lived amongst them and investigated the history and customs 

 of the race) speaks of a tradition about the first lauding of 

 man on the north-west coast of Australia from Java. He says. 

 moreover, " it has been shown out of their own mouths, from their 

 songs and their cherished traditions, that they are by no means 

 destitute of some qualities in which civilised men glory ; such as 

 the power :of inventing tragic and sarcastic fiction, the thirst for 

 religious mystery, stoical contempt of pain, and reverence for 

 departed friends and ancestors. It may be affirmed, with some 

 reason, that they have lianded down with reverential care through 

 many generations, a fragment of primeval revelation. The manner 

 in which they have displayed these characteristics present to us 

 such a strange mixture of wisdom and folly, of elevating and 

 degrading thoughts, of interesting and repulsive traditions, of 

 pathetic and grotesque observances, that in order to account for the 

 apparent contradictions, we must have recourse to the supposition 

 of an ancient civilisation from which this race has fallen, but of 

 which it haa retained some memorials" I need not now say more 

 than to express my sincere pleasure at the full and careful treatment 

 of this most important subject exhibited in the paper of Dr. Frascr. 

 The poor aborigines have been for well-nigh a century hardly the better 



