1843.] and the Abyssinian Church. 703 



The Abyssinian Church. 

 Christianity is the national religion over the more elevated portions 

 of Abyssinia, but the wild Galla has overrun her fairest provinces, and 

 located himself in her most pleasant places. The bigotted Moslem crowds 

 thick upon the skirts of her distracted empire, and the tenets she pro- 

 fesses, are base, foolish, and degrading, engrafted on the superstitions of 

 the Jew, the Mahomedan and the Pagan; promulgated by men, rude, 

 ignorant and uninstructed, and received by a people emerging into the 

 first stage of civilization. The light of religion must have been feeble 

 even in the beginning, but as it was imparted, so it still remains. Sects 

 and parties have arisen, and province has been banded against province 

 in all the fiery wrath of the zealot ; but lost in the maze of subtle con- 

 troversy, these internal wars have raged for generations without disturb- 

 ing the original doctrine, and the same errors of the Church prevail to 

 this day throughout the land, as when first propounded in the beginning 

 of the fourth century. 



But the nation has not alone been called upon to sustain internal 

 commotion, together with the fierce assaults of the heathen and of the 

 fanatic followers of the false prophet. The measure of her oppression was 

 not filled until the bitter cup had been drained, and deeply drained, of 

 the converting zeal of European priesthood, until the usual horrors 

 attendant upon religious war had been painfully undergone, and the 

 requisite sacrifice of the life-stream of her children had been unsparingly 

 poured out, when nearest and dearest relatives rallied under opposite 

 standards, and when the same cry of destruction rung from either host — 

 the glory of the true faith. 



The glowing zeal of the Jesuit has seldom been displayed in more 

 glaring colors, or in more decided defeat, than in the attempts so per- 

 severingly made by that dread society to draw within the meshes of 

 her encircling net, the remote church of Ethiopia. And although the 

 means employed are to be justly condemned, still that ardour must be 

 the theme of the high praise of all, which impelled old men and young 

 to dare the difficulties and dangers of a rude uncivilized land, with ex- 

 posure to the prejudices of a people, as bigotted as themselves in the 

 cause of their religion. 



But the wily system of establishing rival orders and monasteries, of 

 mortification, of snapping asunder domestic ties, and of collecting toge- 



