The superstitious African Negro does precisely the same thing to-day, because he believes in witchcraft; the holly bush not growing in his tropical air, he has substituted the cayenne pepper bush. The witch or wizard whom he fears can no more pass over that pepper leaf with its red pods than the Irish fairy can dare the holly leaf with its red berries. Superstitious acts are thus rooted in us all, heathen and Christian, the world over; only with this great difference,--that to the Christian they bear no religious or even moral significance; to the heathen their entire _raison d'être_ is that they are his religion, or rather part of his worship in the practice of his religion. In emerging from his heathenism and abandoning his fetichism for the acceptance of Christianity, no part of the process is more difficult to the African Negro than the entire laying aside of superstitious practices, even after his assertion that they do not express his religious belief. From being a thief, he can grow up an honest man; from being a liar, he can become truthful; from being indolent, he can become diligent; from being a polygamist, he can become a monogamist; from a status of ignorance and brutality, he can develop into educated courtesy. And yet in his secret thought, while he would not wear a fetich, he believes in its power, and dreads its influence if possibly it should be directed against himself. Some church-members thus believing and fearing do wear fetiches, claiming that their use is simply defensive. In their moral thought they make a distinction, which to them is clear and satisfactory in the present stage of the enlightenment of their conscience, between the defensive and the offensive use of the fetich,--the latter is a black art; the former is a white art. Only the heathen and non-Christian element of the community practise the black art. They ignore not God's existence, but deny that He plays any part in the economy of human life. They believe in evil spirits, and that they themselves can have association with them, by which they may obtain power for all purposes; they use enchantments to obtain that power; and having it, or professing to have it, they exercise it for the gratification of revenge or avarice, or in other ways to injure other persons. They become, in heart, murderers; and if occasion serve, by poison or other means, are willing to become actual murderers. The community regards them as criminals, and executes them as such when it is proved that they used black art to accomplish the death of some one who has recently died. The Christian, of course, will practise none of the black arts, but believing in their existence and power as permitted to the Evil One under the divine government, he is willing to allow himself to use, as a counter-influence, a fetich of the white art in self-defence.