176 FETICHISM — IN CENTRAL AFEICA AND ELSEWHERE. 



up and iiLsisted, against the will and desire of their community, 

 on being stoned to d'eath for having destroyed various people 

 through the agency of fetichism. This was entirely on their own 

 voluntary confession. . . . The strength of our attack lay in the 

 fact that we and our converts could flout and destroy fetiches 

 with impunity, but this was no real proof that there was nothing 

 in fetichism." 



As for the first chapter of Genesis, the Higher Critical suggestion 

 that its source was a Babylonian myth, adapted and developed by 

 the Israelites " in their own characteristic fashion," will not do. 

 For the assumption that " the fashion of the Israelites " was to 

 purify heathen myths and religions is, if we may trust their own 

 prophets, to invert the true order of history, the tendency being 

 exactly the opposite. The " characteristic fashion of the Israelites " 

 was to allow their own monotheistic faith to be only too easily 

 invaded and degraded by polytheistic beliefs and practices. But 

 as has been well said,* " When we find two accounts of the same 

 event — one vague, fantastic, extravagant, and the other sober, 

 definite and clear — experience shows that the sober narrative is 

 nearer to the event than the fantastic one." All this is confirmatory 

 proof that in the beginning man was created by God " very good," 

 and started with a clear and worthy revelation of his Creator, but 

 fell from this high estate through sin, and apart from Divine Grace 

 has been falling ever since. 



* From Creation to the Flood, by Canon Digby M. Berry, M.A., p. 29. 



