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lip, a squint eye, a hobbling gait, a squeaking voice, a scolding tongue; to live alone: these were thought proofs enough, and to such miserable victims torture was applied so cruelly that death was a welcome release.

XXV. Man's Awe of the Unknown.

Since all that puzzles the savage puzzles us, we can feel with him when he speaks of the soul as breath, of dreams as real, and, in hushed voice, of good and bad spirits around.

To this day we have not, nor does it seem likely we ever can have, any clear idea about the soul. We have a vague notion that at death it leaves the body as a sort of filmy thing or shadow or vapour. English, Chinese, and Indians alike will keep some door or window open through which the departing soul may leave, and it is a German saying that a door should not be slammed lest a soul be pinched in it!

And our dreams, which so many believe in as bringing faithful messages of joy and sorrow, seem to us so real and "true while

they last." Even in the most foolish and baseless stories which are told about bells rung in haunted houses, and ghosts with sheeted arms in churchyards, there is, remember, a witness to the awe in which man, both civilized and savage, in every age and place, holds the unseen.

For all that science tells us about the creadrop of water and in course with our blood,

tures that teem in a the little bodies that brings us no nearer the great mystery of life. The more powerful the microscopes we use, the more wonders—as we might rightly expect -do we see; but life itself no glass will ever show us, and the soul of man no finger will ever touch.

God has given to man a mind, that is, power to think and reason and remember, and with it time, place, and wish to use the gift. He, in the words of a great poet, "wraps man in darkness and makes him ever long for light." As that which costs little is valued little, man would not have cared, had much knowledge been granted him at first, to strive after more;

but because he knows little, yet feels that he has the power to learn much, he uses the power in gaining increase of wisdom and knowledge, till he feels the truth of those very old words which say of wisdom, "She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her."

XXVI. Fetish-Worship.

So far then we have seen how man seeks to explain what he sees around him, and the next thing we have to find out is, what is his first feeling towards it all? It is to bow before it and worship the powers which seem stronger than himself.

The very lowest form of worship is that paid to lifeless things in which some virtue. or charm is thought to dwell, and is called "fetish" worship, from a word meaning a charm. It does not matter what the object is; it may be a stone of curious shape, the stump of a tree with the roots turned up, even an old hat or a red rag, so long as some good is supposed to be had, or some evil to be thwarted, through

it. The worship of stones, about which we may read in the Bible, prevails to this day. among rude tribes, who have the strangest notions about them as being sometimes husbands and wives, sometimes the dwellingplace of spirits. The confused ideas which cause the savage to look upon dreams as real cause him to confound the lifeless with the living, and to carefully destroy the parings off his nails and cuttings of his hair, lest evil should be worked through them. The New Zealander would thrust pebbles down the throat of a male child to make its heart hard. The Zulu chews wood that the heart of his foe or of the woman whom he loves may soften towards him even as the wood is being bruised. The dreadful practice of men eating human flesh is supposed to have arisen from the idea that if the flesh of some strong, brave man be eaten, it makes the eater strong and brave also. The natives of Borneo will not eat deer lest they should thereby become faint-hearted, and the Malays will give much for the flesh of the tiger to make them brave.

If a Tatar doctor has not the medicine which he wants he will write its name on a scrap of paper and make a pill of it for the patient to take. A story is told of a man in Africa who was thought very holy, and who earned his living by writing prayers on a board, washing them off and selling the water.

We may laugh at this, but whenever we say a verse out of the Bible, or gabble over the beautiful Lord's Prayer, because we think. that in some mysterious way we get good by so doing, we are fetish-worshippers, and far below the poor savages I am telling you about, for we know that unless our hearts speak, no muttering of words can help us.

XXVII. Idolatry.

The customs of worshipping a fetish and of setting up an idol, although they may appear the same, are really very different, because when an idol is made it does not always follow that it is worshipped. The word "idol" comes from a Greek word meaning an image or form,

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