As That Great Redeemer Of The Guilty
Seeks To Save All He Can, We May Hope That They Find Mercy
Through His blood,
though little able to appreciate the sacrifice He made.
The indirect and scarcely appreciable blessings of Christian
Missionaries
going about doing good are thus probably not so despicable
as some might imagine; there is no necessity for beginning to tell
even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God
or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted.
Every thing that can not be accounted for by common causes
is ascribed to the Deity, as creation, sudden death, etc.
"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 naught
in the physical appearance of the dead to justify the expression -
they say, "He has gone to the gods," the phrase being identical with
"abiit 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.
Respecting their sense of right and wrong, they profess that
nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared 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 deliverances 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 where. But, though they all possess
a distinct knowledge of a deity and of a future state,
they show so little reverence, and feel so little connection with either,
that it is not surprising that some have supposed them
entirely ignorant on the subject. At Lotlakani we met an old Bushman
who at first seemed to have no conception of morality whatever;
when his heart was warmed by our presents of meat, he sat by the fire
relating his early adventures: among these was killing five other Bushmen.
"Two," said he, counting on his fingers, "were females, one a male,
and the other two calves." "What a villain you are, to boast of killing
women and children of your own nation! what will God say when you appear
before him?" "He will say," replied he, "that I was a very clever fellow."
This man now appeared to me as without any conscience,
and, of course, responsibility; but, on trying to enlighten him
by further conversation, I discovered that, though he was employing
the word that is used among the Bakwains when speaking of the Deity,
he had only the idea of a chief, and was all the while referring to Sekomi,
while his victims were a party of rebel Bushmen against whom he had been sent.
If I had known the name of God in the Bushman tongue the mistake
could scarcely have occurred.
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