Page:Lake Ngami.djvu/448

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440
RELIGION.

strong argument in favor of this hypothesis that no word in their language properly denotes God. Speaking of these people, Mr. Moffat says: "I have often wished to find something by which I could lay hold on the minds of the natives; an 'altar to the unknown God,' the faith of their ancestors, the immortality of the soul, or any religious association; but nothing of this kind ever floated in their minds. 'They looked on the sun with the eyes of an ox.' To tell the greatest of them that there was a Creator, the Governor of the heavens and earth—of the fall of man, or the redemption of the world—the resurrection of the dead, and immortality beyond the grave, was to tell them what appeared to be more fabulous, extravagant, and ludicrous than their own vain stories about lions, hyænas, and jackals. To tell them that these (referring, of course, to the different elements of our creed) were articles of our faith would extort an interjection of superlative surprise, as if they were too preposterous for the most foolish to believe."

"'What is the difference?' said a native one day to the writer just quoted, pointing to his dog, 'between me and that animal? You say I am immortal, and why not my dog or my ox? They die; and do you see their souls? What is the difference between man and beast? None, except that man is the greater rogue of the two!'

"They could not see that there was any thing in our customs more agreeable to flesh and blood than in their own, but would, at the same time, admit that we were a wiser and a superior race of beings to themselves. For this superiority, some of their wise heads would try to account; but this they could only do on the ground of our own statement, that God made man.

"A wily fellow, who was the oracle of the village in which he dwelt, once remarked, after hearing me enlarge on the subject of creation, 'If you verily believe that one Being created all men, then, according to reason, you must also be-