. REV. U. EELLS. ON THE WORSHIP AND TRADITIONS OP 



Discussion. 



The Chairman. — I am sure we have to thank not only the 

 anther of the paper, but the Rev. J. W. McCleod for rendering it 

 so admirably at such short notice. 



The paper is a ^ery interesting one. These wide-spread tradi- 

 tions are of immense value. A good deal of nonsense, I venture 

 to say, is talked about some of these wild tribes, because the 

 assumption is that they have remained in the original condition of 

 the human race, and that all civilization, religion, and moi-ality are 

 to be traced up from that state to the present one. But suppose 

 that there has been a large amount of degeneration, and that 

 that accounts for a good deal of degradation, even in that case this 

 survival of eld traditions is of immense value. How constantly 

 we hear that such and such people have no knowledge of Grod, of 

 spirit, or of future life and so on. Did it ever strike those Avbo 

 make these assertions how much of his real convictions and 

 beliefs you can get out of a peasant in England ? Direc^tly a 

 countryman finds you are getting interested in his ideas, he dries 

 up and will, perhaps, refuse to answer you at all. I have rather a 

 taste for getting hold of local traditions and stories about ghosts ; 

 but it is the most difficult thing in the \\orld. Tf there is the 

 faintest suggestion that you are making fun of him, it is fatal, and 

 even if you are taking an unsympathetic interest, it is quite 

 enough to stop the whole flow of information; and therefore, it is 

 natural enough that visitors to these people should not understand 

 them, and never giving them their sympathy, would be utterly 

 unable to find out their religious beliefs. It is only the mission- 

 aries who have lived among them and won their confidence who 

 get anything certain. 



The Australians, when I was a boy, were said to have no 

 religious beliefs; but Dr. Eraser's papers and others show us that 

 they have ideas on religion which are veiy interesting to study, 

 and it is curious to find how exceedingly wide-spread amongst all 

 these Australian and Polynesian regions is the universal belief in 

 the elements of religion. Certainly to my mind they are very 

 little a degenerate religion, I'ather tha.n an original one. They 

 bear traces of degenei'acy and not of evolution, to use a modern 

 word, and throughout you find the same traces; but I think \vc 



