158 
EELIGIOUS IDEAS OF BAKWAINS. 
Chap. VlII. 
have confessed long afterwards that they then first began to pray 
in secret. Of the effects of a long-continued course of instruction 
there can be no reasonable doubt, as mere nominal belief has 
never been considered sufficient proof of conversion by any body 
of missionaries; and, after the change wliich has been brought 
about by this agency, we have good reason to hope well for the 
futmre: those I have myself witnessed behaving in the manner 
described, when kindly treated in sickness often utter imploring 
words to Jesus, and I believe sometimes really do pray to him 
in their afflictions. As that gTeat Eedeemer of the guilty seeks 
to save all he can, we may hope that they find mercy tlnwgh 
His blood, though little able to appreciate the sacrifice He made. 
The indirect and scarcely appreciable blessings of Christian mis¬ 
sionaries going about doing good are thus probably not so despi¬ 
cable as some might imagine ; there is no necessity for beginning 
to tell even the most degi’aded of these people of the existence of 
a God, or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted. 
Everything that cannot be accounted for by common causes is 
ascribed to the Deity, as creation, sudden death, &c. How 
curiously God made these things!” is a common expression; as 
is also, “ He was not killed by disease, he was killed by God.” 
And, when speaking of the departed—though there is nought in 
the physical appearance of the dead to justify the expression— 
they say, “ He has gone to the gods,” the pluase being identical 
with ahiit ad plures.^^ 
On questioning intelligent men among the Bakwains as to 
their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and the future 
state, they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having- 
been without a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects. 
Eespecting their sense of right and wrong, they profess that 
nothing we indicate as sin ever ap23eared to them as otherwise, 
except the statement that it was wrong to have more wives than 
one; and they declare that they spoke in the same way of the 
direct influence exercised by God in giving rain in answer to 
prayers of the rain-makers, and in granting deliverance in times 
of danger, as they do now, before they ever heard of white men. 
The want, however, of any form of public worship, or of idols, or 
of formal prayers or sacrifice, make both Caffres and Bechuanas 
appear as among the most godless races of mortals known any- 
