NATIVE CHURCH AT OTAKE MANGANUI-A-TE-AO. 
CHAPTER V. 
RELIGION. 
The religion of a people is in a great measure its history •, 
it gives an insight into the mental development, as well as 
the state of society attained. The thoughts of religion even 
amongst the most depraved sections of the human race, 
furnish a proof of man’s immortal nature, and his natural 
aspirings after it. However rude the ideas of God, and 
absurd the worship offered, still in them is seen the infancy 
of the immortal mind and superior being. In the universal 
existence of religious rites, there is also a strong evidence 
of the unity of the human race ; this is especially to be 
detected in the general resemblance which is found to pre- 
vail in all religions, and which can be traced step by step to 
the very commencement of man’s history. 
The simple communing of the soul with God, so graphi- 
cally alluded to in Genesis, when the voice of the Lord God 
was heard walking in the cool of the evening amongst the 
trees of the garden, man’s first happy abode and cradle of his 
H 
