IN CENTRAL AFRICA AND ELSEWHERE. 



167 



great facts in consequence of receiving the Bible as a Divine revela- 

 tion. That being so, I cannot believe that polytheism develops 

 into monotheism, still less that the polydaemonistic tribal beliefs 

 reach monotheism by the same route. History testifies to the con- 

 trary. The polytheism of Greece did not develop into monotheism 

 but into scepticism, and scepticism never develops into monotheistic 

 belief. Nay verily ! Auguste Comte himself being witness ! When 

 he founded positivisyn he said that " religiosity," as he called it, 

 is a mere weakness, and an avowal of want of power." But as 

 he grew old he found that there was needed an appeal to the human 

 heart as well as to the human head, so he constructed a religion. 

 His gods are three : Supreme Fetich, the Earth ; Supreme Medium, 

 space ; and Supreme Being, humanity. These he directed were to 

 be worshipped daily in the temples of positivism. Surely this is, 

 as Professor Flint calls it, a " monstrous mixture of atheism, fetichism, 

 ultramontanism and ritualism." Yet positivism is claimed by its 

 author and his disciples to be the very last thing in philosophy and 

 religion ! Is this the end of evolution ? 



It is neither development nor degeneration. Man leaving God, 

 God left man to his own devices and to his own knowledge, and the 

 more childish he becomes so the more childlike do his beliefs become 

 as to the unseen world. As the lecturer has shown us, a child is a 

 creature of his senses, hence a religion based on the senses as a source 

 of knowledge becomes that great Child — the African ! 



Lieut. -Colonel G. Mackinlay said : — Mr. Hoste's account of the 

 burning of fetiches on conversion in Africa is paralleled in Europe. 

 The wooden household saint of many Roman Catholics corresponds 

 in many ways to African fetiches ; both are consulted and asked 

 to help in various difficulties, and both are liable to punishment and 

 abuse if the requests are not granted. 



I have known many Spaniards who have burnt their household 

 saints on conversion. One woman on such an occasion took out all 

 of them from the three-cornered cupboard in which she had care- 

 fully kept them all her life, and one after another she solemnly 

 committed them to the flames. She kept the most sacred one to 

 the last, but finally put that also in the fire, watching it intently, 

 half expecting it to spring out ; but it also was soon consumed, and 

 when all her stock of venerated relics had disappeared, she cried 



