Missionary Travels and Researches in South AfricaLivingstone, David
Religion
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
Livingstone, David
Missions -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
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. It must,
however, be recollected, while reflecting on the degradation of the
natives of South Africa, that the farther north, the more distinct do
the native ideas on religious subjects become, and I have not had any
intercourse with either Caffres or Bushmen in their own tongues.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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