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many of the savage tribes at present existing.* Now we shall put a case in point to our Rationalist. Suppose that he had been a traveller, and that returning home from a distant voyage, he had published an account of a newly discovered island, -that he had described its mountains, trees, animals, and inhabitants, faithfully and distinctly, and that all these had certain peculiarities, totally different from any other trees, animals, or men known to us before. With this sole authority regarding this strange island in our possession, would not our Rationalist stare to find a person sit down and write another volume, refuting almost every thing affirmed of this island, and its inhabitants, and describing the place anew from his own fancy -working up part of the authentic information of the original describer, with other matters known of the old country, with which alone the critic could be conversant. Now, is not this what the Rationalist actually does with regard to matters of sacred belief? He knows nothing of them, save from the sacred record, and could have had no other means of forming his opinions of such abstract subjects, and yet he cuts and carves and polishes down all its facts and affirmations, to suit his own entirely earth-formed views. He has conceived an abstract view of the universal benevolence of the Deity, therefore anything like future punishments is an absurdity-he sees nature and nature's laws proceeding upon a system of continual uniformity, therefore anything like miracles is but a dream of a sickly fancy. Man holds audible and visible communication with man, and the language of nature speaks from her remotest bounds; but the spiritual influence of God on man, a creature formed after his own image, and the avowed object of his solicitude, would be a ridiculous conceit to the mind of the Rationalist. There are many things in the laws and history and civil polity of the Jews, which appear very unaccountable-many things cruel, and vindictive, and exterminating in their early wars and conquests, therefore to the Rationalist it is all a piece of humbug, and so would the singular anomaly of the dispersion and present scattered state of that people-the only people on earth without a country and without a government-were it not that such a state cannot be denied, seeing that we can prove it by our senses, the almost only proof of facts which a Rationalist will allow. Then the Rationalist repudiates the accuracy of the historical record, because there are several apparent confusions of dates, and other uncertainties in regard to circumstances with which that record had little occasion to be precise or particular.

It is the object of the system of the Rationalist to put all things on a right footing, to order matters aright in this world, and to reconcile the ways of God to man. He maintains that every thing is

See some facte bearing upon this subject in the article which follows this.

wrong, and has been wrong since the beginning of the world; and that nothing will be right till man puts it right by good laws, good government, the banishing of all superstition, universal education, universal suffrage, and universal free trade. Now, although we hold most of these notions good in their own way, yet is it not passing strange, that the world and human society have existed for some six thousand years in a state of irrationalism under all possible kinds of laws, governments, and creeds, during the lives of the wisest philosophers and most powerful rulers,-and that it is irrational still!

Then, if such be the fact-and our philosopher cannot deny it-what are we to conclude from it? Either that the system of the moral world is radically wrong in its construction; or, if human nature be right theoretically, how do we find it practically wrong? Why have the Rationalists of all past times not been able to show us a right-going state of things,—a good and a happy world? We do not pretend to settle this question, but this we will say, that the existing world, imperfect as it appears to us, and imperfectly as we can comprehend it, coincides greatly better with revelation than it does with rationalism.

Revelation leads us to expect evil, and frailty, and narrow-sighted judgment in every human being, of whatever grade or capacity. It leads us to expect a particular moral government of the Deity, instead of a general and apparently equable dispensation to the whole human race. Thus certain nations and individuals are placed in circumstances highly favourable to their prosperity and happiness,-others again in conditions where there are what experience proves insuperable barriers to the full development of their mental and physical conditions. Such arrangements we cannot, of course, reconcile with any of our mere human views of strict impartiality,—but the facts are no less certain, both in actual practice as in the revealed word of the Being who so arranged them. The Rationalist may toil and sweat to cure these, but he cannot alter them. Therefore it is that the Scriptures appear practically right, and the Rationalist practically wrong. But a Rationalist is never a practical man,-he is a speculatist, a declaimer, and a special pleader, but he never goes in search of facts on the other side of his question. His aim is, to make out a case to build up his theory, and to lull and satisfy his ever-gnawing and uneasy mind. The main object of the Rationalists, from the Epicureans downwards, is to push the Deity as far away as possible. Man has a natural repugnance to look his Maker in the face, he wishes him far off,-some abstract essence, who little heeds, and leaves his worlds and their inhabitants to work on according to some general laws which were at the beginning impressed upon them. To them the sublime song of the Psalmist would be deemed an insult and intrusion, instead of the filial approach of a son to a father.

"O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me; thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising. Thou understandest my thoughts affar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit; or whither shall I flee from thy presence. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

The object of the Rationalist being to get quit of Scripture altogether, and to set up in its place his goddess, Reason, he aims at doing so by one of two ways. He either denies the authenticity of the Sacred Record in toto, or he takes the whole in a sort of metaphorical sense,—as a work in which there are some truths, and some good ideas, but mixed up with a great deal of mystical and imaginary matter which deserves no attention. The first kind of scepticism we can understand,-it may exist in a vigorous and powerful enough intellect, but with strong prejudices, and frequently with a total want of information on the subject. The second indicates a mind, or a state of mind, which we have considerable difficulty in comprehending, and yet it characterizes the Strauss school with its innumerable disciples in Germany. That the Scriptures should contain even one particle of inspired truth, mixed up and jumbled with a mass of metaphorical error, or call it at best imaginary fiction, is a tenet which, we think, could scarcely gain implicit credit in any kind of reflecting mind. And yet, we suspect, some such idea of the Scriptures is perhaps the most prevalent of any, and is by no means confined to the Rationalists of Germany.

A common question suggested is, amid so many different codes of religious belief existing in the world, how are we to distinguish which is the true and which are the false. A Jew, a Mahommedan, a Bhuddhist, all have separate creeds, and each believes that his own is the true one, just as the Christian does. Now these cannot be all true, and hence the Rationalist insists upon abiding by the light of reason, and rejects all indiscriminately, as equally the offspring of blind superstition. This is scarcely fair reasoning, and would not be satisfactory in any other matter-as a question in science, for instance. Thus, suppose that the question were the truth of Newton's theory of gravitation and the planetary system-to decide this question would we reason thus:-The Hindoos have a system of astronomy-the Chinese have another-the Mexicans have a third-many other nations have their own views of the heavenly bodies, but very vague and often absurd,-now, as all these are false, why may not Newton's be so too? The reason why we give the preference to Newton's theory is, that it has been tested, scrutinized, and approved of, by

the ablest and most knowing scientific minds in the whole world. We take not the opinion of the Hindoo, because he knows nothing but his own system; nor of the Chinese, for the same reason; nor of any other half-informed nation in the world. And so it stands with their systems of religion. The Hindoo and the Bhuddhist know no religion but their own, and therefore their narrowed intellects can be no test of the truth or falsity of any religion. The Christian knows all other religions, and testing the evidences of all these, and comparing such with Christianity, he is enabled to come to a more comprehensive and just conclusion. Though we by no means say that the individual belief of the Christian rests and is founded on this argument alone, yet it appears a sufficient refutation of the assumption of the Rationalist.

To not, a few we may have appeared to have spent too many words on this subject-to many who have no doubt themselves, and who are not aware that such doubts are widely abroad in society. Will such believe, however, that Germany swarms with works on Rationalism; that the Scriptures are printed with copious Rationalist commentaries, explaining away their real meaning altogether; that books, written in America, openly denying the most sacred parts of the New Testament, and scoffing at these, in the coarsest language, are republished and sold in great numbers in London; and that self-styled clergymen preach such doctrines from week to week to crowded audiences of our large manufacturing towns.

It is the nature of such advocates to brand their opponents with bigotry, narrow-mindedness, shallowness of intellect, and facile belief; and these vituperations they make to stand too frequently in place of logical argument, but there are no greater bigots than those who aspire to the extreme of liberality. Their so-called liberality too often degenerates into license; and license is impatient of all control, especially the control of strict and logical thought.

It is curious to mark the progress of scepticism in nations, it goes on from one degree to another, assuming various shapes, and taking up various positions, till at last the mind becomes, as it were, a void, in which condition it may remain for a time, in a state of entire neutrality or insensibility, or its continual cravings and restlessness may at last be terminated by conviction. Such latter condition seems to be the state of many parts of Germany and France at present. Scepticism has almost thoroughly purged the mind both of old lingering superstitions, as well as of truth, and now a movement or re-action has taken place, the mind turns again to those subjects of high import,-it looks at truth as from a new position,-it begins to speculate, to inquire and to compare truth with falsehood. The state of matters was somewhat similar at the period of the Reformation-when a new dawn broke in upon benighted Europe. Is it too much to hope that a great periodic change of a similar nature is about to follow the present prevalence of aroused thought; and that thus another great wave of progressive intellectual amelioration will flow onwards upon society.

THE LOST SENSES.

BY JOHN KITTO, D.D. THESE are two very interesting volumes, written by a very interesting man. On the deprivation of one of the senses, that of hearing, he thus writes feelingly and from sad experience.

"I became deaf on my father's birth-day, early in the year 1817, when I had lately completed the twelfth year of my age. The commencement of this condition is too clearly connected with my circumstances in life to allow me to abstain from troubling the reader with some particulars which I should have been otherwise willing to withhold.

My father, at the expiration of his apprenticeship, was enabled by the support of his elder brother, an engineer well known in the West of England, to commence life as a master builder, with advantageous connections, and the most favourable prospects. But both the brothers seem to have belonged to that class of men whom prosperity ruins; for after some years they became neglectful of their business, and were eventually reduced to great distress. At the time I have specified, my father had become a jobbing mason, of precarious employment, and in such circumstances that it had for some time been necessary that I should lend my small assistance to his labours. This early demand upon my services, joined to much previous inability or reluctance to stand the cost of my schooling, and to frequent head-ache which kept me much from school even when in nominal attendance, made my education very backward. I could read well, but was an indifferent writer, and worse cypherer, when the day arrived which was to alter so materially my condition and hopes in life.

The circumstances of that day-the last of twelve years of hearing, and the first of twenty-eight years of deafness, have left a more distinct impression upon my mind than those of any previous, or almost any subsequent day of my life. It was a day to be remembered. The last day on which any customary labour ceases,— the last day on which any customary privilege is enjoyed,—the last day on which we do the things we have done daily, are always marked days in the calendar of life; how much, therefore, must the mind not linger in the memories of a day which was the last of many blessed things, and in which one stroke of action and suffering, one moment of time, wrought a greater change of condition, than any sudden loss of wealth or honours ever made in the state of man. Wealth may

be recovered, and new honours won, or happiness may be secured without them; but there is no recovery, no adequate compensation, for such a loss as was on that day sustained. The wealth of sweet and pleasurable sounds with which the Almighty has filled the world, of sounds modulated by affection, sympathy, and earnestness, can be appreciated only by one who has so long been thus poor indeed in the want of them, and who for so many years has sat in utter silence amid the busy hum of populous cities, the music of the woods and mountains, and more than all, of the voices sweeter than music, which are in the season heard around the domestic hearth.

On the day in question my father and another man, attended by myself, were engaged in new slating the roof of a house, the ladder ascending to which was fixed in a small court paved with flag stones. The access to this court from the street was a paved passage through which ran a gutter, whereby waste water was conducted from the yard in the street.

Three things occupied my mind that day. One was that the town-crier, who occupied part of the house in which we lived, had been the previous evening prevailed upon to entrust me with a book, for which I had long been worrying him, and with the contents of which I was most eager to become acquainted. I think it was

2 Vols. London: 1845.

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Kirby's Wonderful Magazine;' and I now dwell the rather upon this circumstance, as, with other facts of the same kind, it helps to satisfy me that I was already a most voracious reader, and that the calamity which befel me did not create in me the literary appetite, but only threw me more entirely upon the resources which it offered.

The other circumstance was that my grandmother had finished, all but the buttons, a new smock-trock, which I had hoped to have assumed that very day, but which was faithfully promised for the morrow. As this was the first time that I should have worn that article of attire, the event was contemplated with something of that interest and solicitude with which the assumption of the toga virilis may be supposed to have been contemplated by the Roman youth.

The last circumstance, and the one perhaps which had some effect upon what ensued, was this. In one of the apartments of the house in which we were at work, a young sailor, of whom I had some knowledge, had died after a lingering illness, which had been attended with circumstances which the doctors could not well understand. It was, therefore, concluded that the body should be opened to ascertain the cause of death. I knew this was to be done, but not the time appointed for the operation. But on passing from the stree into the yard, with a load of slates which I was to take to the house-top, my attention was drawn to a stream of blood, or rather, I suppose, bloody water, flowing through the gutter by which the passage was traversed. The idea t at this was the blood of the dead youth whom I had so lately seen alive, and that the doctors were then at work cutting him up, and groping at his inside, made me shudder, and gave what I should now call a shock to my nerves, although I was very innocent of all knowledge about nerves at that time. I cannot but think that it was owing to this that I lost much of the presence of mind and collectedness so important to me at that moment; for when I had ascended to the top of the ladder, and was in the critical act of stepping from it on to the roof, I lost my footing, and fell backward, from a height of about thirty-five feet, into the paved court below.

Of what followed I know nothing: and as this is the record of my own sensations, I can here report nothing but that which I myself know. For one moment, indeed, I awoke from that death-like state, and then found that my father, attended by a crowd of people, was bearing me homeward in his arms; but I had then no recollection of what had happened, and at once relapsed into a state of unconsciousness.

In this state I remained for a fortnight, as I afterwards learned. These days were a blank in my life, I could never bring any recollections to bear upon them; and when I awoke one morning to conciousness, it was as from a night of sleep. I saw that it was at least two hours later than my usual time of rising, and marvelled that I had been suffered to sleep so late. I attempted to spring up in bed, and was astonished to find that I could not even move. The utter prostration of my strength subdued all curiosity within me. I experienced no pain, but I felt that I was weak; I saw that I was treated as an invalid, acquiesced in my condition, though some time passed-more time than the reader would imagine, be ore I could piece together my broken recollections so as to comprehend it.

I was very slow in learning that my hearing was entirely gone. The unusual stillness of all things was grateful to me in my utter exhaustion; and if in this half-awakened state, a thought of the matter entered my mind, I ascribed it to the unusual care and success of my friends in preserving silence around me. I saw them talking, indeed, to one another, and thought that, out of regard to my feeble condition, they spoke in

whispers, because I heard them not. The truth was revealed to me in consequence of my solicitude about the book which had so much interested me in the day of my fall. It had, it seems, been reclaimed by the good old man who had sent it to me, and who doubtless concluded, that I should have no more need of books in this life. He was wrong; for there has been nothing in this life which I have needed more. I asked for this book with much earnestness, and was answered by signs which I could not comprehend.

"Why do you not speak?" I cried. "Pray let me have the book."

This seemed to create some confusion; and at length some one, more clever than the rest, hit upon the happy expedient of writing upon a slate, that the book had been reclaimed by the owner, and that I could not in my weak state be allowed to read.

"But," I said in great astonishment, “Why do you write me, why not speak Speak, speak."

Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words- YOU ARE DEAF.'

In

Did not this utterly crush me? By no means. my then weakened condition nothing like this could affect me. Besides, I was a child; and to a child the full extent of such a calamity could not be at once apparent. However, I knew not the future-It was well I did not; and there was nothing to show me that I suffered under more than a temporary deafness, which in a few days might pass away. It was left for time to show me the sad realities of the condition to which I was reduced."

All efforts used proved ineffectual to restore his sense of hearing, and thus one means of communication with his fellow-men was cut off for ever. Dr Kitto has some interesting remarks regarding the connection of speech with hearing.

It has often occurred to me that there is really more connection between the organs of hearing and of speech than is usually supposed. It is now the received behef that the deaf and dumb are naturally only deaf, and that they are dumb also because they have never had opportunity of learning to speak. It is undoubtedly true that for this reason they do not speak; but I am persuaded there is also-apart from this, and physically connected with deafness-a sort of inability to utter articulate sounds. I have no physiological acquaintance with the subject; but the impression growing out of my own experience and observation is, that the same functional causes act upon both organs. The hearing, being the more delicate organ, is utterly extinguished by that which only suffices to impede or deaden, without utterly destroying, the vocal organs; leaving in them so much vitality as may, under a certain artificial training and stimulus, be awakened into imperfect action. The deaf can thus be taught to speak, as a bear can be taught to dance, or a man without hands to fabricate baskets; but a natural indisposition to use this acquired art, with more or less difficulty, or pain in the use of it, remains ; and this I am disposed to attribute not to the education being left imperfect through deafness, but to a physical difficulty in the formation of articulate sounds.

It will be seen how far my own experience bears upon or illustrates this hypothesis.

Before my fall, my enunciation was remarkably clear and distinct; but after that event it was found that I had not only become deaf, but spoke with pain and difficulty, and in a voice so greatly altered as to be not easily understood. I have no present recollection of having ever experienced positive pain in the act of speaking; but I am informed by one who was present, and deeply interested in all which took place at that time, that I complained of pain in speaking; and I am further told, that my voice had become very similar to that of one born deaf and dumb, but who has been taught to

speak. This appears, under all the circumstances, to be a very strong corroboration, if not an absolute proof of the position I have ventured to suggest. And it is a fact, that under all the modifications and improvements which my vocal organs have since sustained, this resemblance to the voice of the born deaf and dumb has been preserved. It is evident that this cannot be accounted for by any of the reasons which have been supposed to explain the imperfect development of the vocal organs in those born deaf and dumb; seeing that my vocal powers were once in a perfect condition, and speech acquired before I became deaf. I see not how this fact is to be accounted for in any other way than that which has been suggested.

Although I have no recollection of physical pain in the act of speaking, I felt the strongest possible indisposition to use my vocal organs. I seemed to labour under a moral disability which cannot be described by comparison with any disinclination which the reader can be supposed to have experienced. The disinclination which one feels to leave his warm bed on a frosty morning, is nothing to that which I experienced against any exercise of the organs of speech. The force of this tendency to dumbness was so great, that for many years, I habitually expressed myself to others in writing, even when not more than a few words were necessary; and where this mode of intercourse could not be used, I avoided occasion of speech, or heaved up a few monosyllables, or expressed my wish by a slight motion or gesture ;signs, as a means of intercourse, I always abominated; and no one could annoy me more than by adopting this mode of communication. In fact, I came to be generally considered as both deaf and dumb, excepting by the few who were acquainted with my real condition; and hence, many tolerated my mode of expression by writing, who would have urged upon me the exercise of my vocal organs. I rejoiced in the protection which that impression afforded; for nothing distressed me more than to be asked to speak; and from disuse having been superadded to the pre-existing causes, there seemed a strong probability of my eventually justifying the impression concerning my dumbness which was generally entertained. I now speak with considerable ease and freedom, and, in personal inter course, never resort to any other than the oral mode of com nunication.

It is probable that in Dr Kitto's case the nerves of the tongue were injured by the fall, as well as those of the ear, and that he gradually recovered the use of the lingual nerves afterwards. It seems also probable, that the majority of deaf mutes are also deprived of the full use of speech by an affection of the nerves of the tongue. Fortunately for Dr Kitto, nature had endowed him with an enlarged and active mind-be took to reading and literature-appears to have travelled in the East, and to have accumulated by personal observation great stores of useful knowledge. Since his return he has found a solace as well as a source of profitable employment in the exercise of his mental faculties-he is the editor of the Pictorial Bible the notes to, which, as illustrative of oriental manners and usages, are particularly interesting-he has also edited the Biblical Cyclopedia, a most valuable book, and other works. In the volumes before us the history of the deaf, dumb, and blind, is recorded with much feeling and with no little philosophical acumen. It has often struck us that more practical information might be acquired regarding the powers of the human mind, from studying the sensations and acquirements of peculiar deficiences, which the absence of one or more of the senses gives rise to, than from all the

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ú priori speculations of the metaphysicians. Thus the existence or non-existence of innate ideas has been a questio vexata with two leading sects of philosophers from time immemorial. Now the experience of all mutes and of the blind is certainly corroborative of Locke's school, that all ideas are obtained through the senses. The blind have no ideas of visible things, not even in their dreams. The deaf have no ideas of sound, and dream only of tangible and visible things. There is one idea which, if any were innate or natural to the mind, would surely be found to be so, and that is the idea of Deity. Yet we have the most satisfactory evidence that perfectly isolated beings have no such idea, until they are informed of it through the medium of some one of the senses. Dr Kitto here details the well known case of Massieu, the highly intelligent pupil of the Abbé Sicard. The account of his mental development when a child is curious and instructive; he declares he had formed no conception of a Deity, although his father had made him go down on his knees evening and morning, and make the gestures of one praying. The testimony of a most intelligent American lady, who at a mature age received instructions in a deaf and dumb asylum, is to the same effect. She declares that the idea that the world must have had a Creator, never occurred to her nor to any other of several intelligent pupils of similar age, and with equal advantages for acquiring ideas of religious truths. Mrs Phelan makes a similar statement respecting her pupil, "No idea," she says, "had entered his mind of the existence of a supreme Being. In proof of this, one of the first questions he continued to put to me was, whether I had made the sun and moon."

We took occasion some time ago to put a series of questions to a very intelligent boy, a pupil of St John's Street deaf and dumb school in this city, with a request that he would endeavour to carry back his mind to the period of childhood, and answer the questions without mixing up with them any thing of his subsequent acquirements. We give the answers below, verbatim as we received them. What is your name and age? My name is James Burgess, and my age is 14 years.

At what age were you admitted to school? I think about eight years of age.

In your early days, or before you came to school, did you ever direct your attention to the sun, moon, and stars? Yes, sir.

What did you think of them! I thought a man brought a burning fire to the sky, because the sun and stars looked red; and also thought the moon had a face like a man, so I was afraid of it, and hid myself in my parents' house whenever it shone.

Did you ever witness the death of any friend or acquaintance? and what did you think of this? I saw the death of my brother, who was himself deaf and dumb. I imagined my brother was not dead, but thought he was unning, (deceiving me,) so that after he was buried, I went for several times to his grave, thinking he would rise; but I was disappointed, and ceased going to his grave.

When a child, were you afraid when left alone in a lonely place, or in the dark? I was afraid when left alone. I imagined I saw many things, such as murderers; so I ran with terror to my bed, and covered myself with the blankets.

Had you any dreams? and of what kind? I remem ber of dreaming often, but I cannot recollect what kind they were.

Before you were educated, did you know that it was wrong to do mischief, such as to steal, or to tell a lie! I did not think there was any sin in stealing, or doing any thing of that kind, only imagined it to be disobeying my parents' commands, for which I was chastised.

When you saw a person reading or writing, had you any wish to do the same! Although I saw a person reading or writing, I had no desire to imitate them, for play was my whole delight.

Were you ever sick? and had you any thought about death? I remember of being once sick, but I had no idea of death; neither could I understand it.

In what stage of your instruction did you first become acquainted with the existence of God? It was after a considerable time at school. Although I had often been told that God made me, yet I did not understand who God was, till I was made to understand that man made chairs, tables, and many other different objects, but that he could not make man; it was then that I was convinced that there must be such a being as God, so that from one object to another I became gradually acquainted with the very existence of God.

Did you form an idea of God at once, or after repeated tellings? After repeated tellings.

State any thing else connected with your thoughts and experience? I had many strange thoughts about the works of the creation, such as grass.

I thought birds made the trees, when I saw so many birds lodging in them. I thought man made cows. I also thought, when I saw the rain, that there were men in the air with pails of water, sprinkling it down upon us; and many other strange ideas of different things, so that I was totally ignorant of the great Creator of all things, until I came to school, where I became gradually acquainted with them.

We have the same practical proof of the absence of all idea of Deity in those savage tribes who have been so long and so completely isolated from more civilized men as to have lost even all traditional notions of a God or of another state of existence. This is well exemplified in Moffat's interesting account of a chief of the Bechuana nation in South-east Africa.

"They had no ideas of any thing beyond this world: several, interrogated by the missionaries, Schmelin, Campbell, and Moffat, declared that they had no idea whatever of a God, or devil, or any spirit, of a future state, or immortality of a soul; and yet they had in general acute intellects, and excellent memories. Africaner, a chief of the Bechuana nation, after conversion, became a sincere believer and deep thinker. Being asked what his views of God were before he enjoyed the benefit of Christian instruction, he replied that he never thought any thing of these subjects. That he thought about nothing but his cattle. He admitted that he had heard of a God (from christian colonists), but he stated that his views of the Deity were so erroneous, that the name suggested no more to his mind than something that might be found in the form of an insect, or in the lid of a snuff box."

Dr Vanderkemp says, of the Kafirs, "If by religion we mean reverence for God, or the external action by which that reverence is expressed, I never could perceive that they had any religion, or any idea of the existence of a God. They have no word in their language

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