RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 145 



their thoughts are directed to the supply of their bodily 

 wants, and this has been the case with the race for ages. 

 If asked, then, what effect the preaching of the Gospel 

 has at the commencement on such individuals, I am 

 unable to tell, except that some have confessed long 

 afterwards that they then first began to pray_ in secret. 

 Of the effects of a long-continued course of instruction 

 there can be no reasonable doubt, as mere nominal belief 

 has never been considered sufficient proof of conversion 

 by any body of missionaries ; and, after the change which 

 has been brought about by this agency, we have good 

 reason to hope well for the future ; ; those I have myself 

 witnessed behaving in the manner described, when kindly 

 treated in sickness often utter imploring words to Jesus, 

 and I believe sometimes really do pray to Him in their 

 afflictions. As that great Redeemer of the guilty seeks to 

 save all He can, we may hope that they find mercy through 

 His blood, though little able to appreciate the sacrifice He 

 made. The indirect and scarcely appreciable blessings 

 of Christian missionaries going about cLoing good are thus 

 probably not so despicable as some might imagine ; there 

 is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded 

 of these people of the existence of a God, or of a future 

 state, the facts being universally admitted. Everything 

 that cannot be accounted for by common causes is ascribed 

 to the Deity, as creation, sudden death, &c. "How 

 curiously God made these things ! " is a common ex- 

 pression ; as is also, " He was not killed by disease, he 

 was killed by God." And, when speaking of the departed 

 — though there is nought in the physical appearance of 

 the dead to justify the expression — they say, " He has 

 gone to the gods," the phrase being identical with " abiit 

 ad plures." 



On questioning intelligent men among the Bakwains as 

 to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and 

 the future state, they have scouted the idea of any of 

 them ever having been without a tolerably clear concep- 

 tion on all these subjects. Respecting their sense of right 

 and wrong, they profess that nothing we indicate as sin 

 ever appeared to them as otherwise, except the statement 

 that it was wrong to have more wives than one ; and 

 they declare that they spoke in the same way of the 

 direct influence exercised by God in giving rain in answer 

 to prayers of the rain-makers, and in granting deliverance 



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