PRIESTLY INFLUENCE. 
389 
inasmucli, as it is natural to man to retain longer un- 
altered, those customs and ceremonials which connect 
his thoughts with the Great Spirit, whom even the most 
benighted Pagan cannot but acknowledge ; and here we 
are inclined to believe, that the mystical allegories of the 
ancient Egyptians, have been the foundation of those 
fetiche absurdities, which are so blindly followed by the 
Negro races to this day. Among that singular people, 
the sacerdotal appointments were not only the most 
honourable, but the most influential, and even their 
kings had probably only a nominal superiority over 
those, who pretended alone to be the intermediators 
between men and the deities. “The sacred office 
of the priests, by giving them the exclusive right to 
regulate all spiritual matters, as well as to announce 
the will, threaten the wrath, and superintend the 
worship of the gods, was calculated to ensure them 
universal respect*,” — and they seem to have taken great 
care that any sublimer knowledge or belief in the 
attributes of Omnipotence they themselves enter- 
tained, should be concealed from vulgar speculation, 
under the fabulous guise of a plurality of gods. We 
can readily conceive that a religion, which thus offered 
as it were tangible evidence of a communication with 
superior Being, would soon find votaries among those 
black races, who had an opportunity of observing 
the veneration of the Egyptians ; and that the dark 
* Vide Wilkinson’s Isl Series, Vol. i., p. 257. 
