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This bit of heathen humbug now in operation, from so many distant portions of the earth, shows how radically similar is all heathenism. It shows, too, how mean, vulgar, filthy, and altogether vile, is such religion as man, unassisted, contrives for himself. It shows, again, how sadly great is the proportion of the human race still remaining in this brutal darkness.
The old Chief led them in prayer a strange, dark, groping prayer, with streaks of Heathenism coloring every thought and sentence; but still a heart-breaking prayer, as the cry of a soul once Cannibal, but now being thrilled through and through with the first conscious pulsations of the Christ-Spirit, throbbing into the words "Father, Father; our Father."
In fact, he is a soil fit to work up on, instead of being a barren rock as hitherto, firm in his own ignorance and prejudices. In the education of the rising native generation lies the hope of ultimate conversion. You may as well try to turn pitch into snow as to eradicate the dark stain of heathenism from the present race.
In the same way the similarity between the ancient heathen life and the life of to-day is merely external: the inward condition of men in the times of heathenism was absolutely different from their inward condition at the present time.
The forests of Germany, though pierced already to the south in the third and fourth centuries by the torch of missionaries, though already at that time illuminated by the immortal Gothic version of the New Testament preceding Ulppilas, and still surviving, sheltered through ages in the north and east vast tribes of idolaters, some awaiting the baptism of Charlemagne in the eighth century and the ninth, others actually resuming a fierce countenance of heathenism for the martial zeal of crusading knights in the thirteenth and fourteenth.
R. R. A. Doolan arrived at Metlakahtla from England, and, at Mr. Duncan's suggestion, he at once went on to the Nass River to establish a permanent Mission. With prayerful energy the young Missionary, inexperienced and ignorant of the language, flung himself into the conflict with heathenism. A sore conflict it was.
Modern Christianity has been called a civilised heathenism; with no less justice it might be called an organised hypocrisy. After a dolorous complaint as to the magazines "lying everywhere for the use of our sons and daughters," in which the doctrines both of natural and of revealed religion are assailed, the Archbishop proceeds to deal with the first great form of infidelity, namely Agnosticism.
Christianity softens, subdues, and renders docile the human mind, before the dark folds of heathenism have deepened and thickened with increasing years. One of these pupils, after reading in the New Testament the narrative of Christ's sufferings, one day asks "Why did Jesus come and suffer and be crucified?" I then explained to her as well as I could in her own tongue.
Here were those, whom we had hoped to train up for immortal blessedness, about to be sent back to a darkness almost like that of heathenism. The stoutest Nestorians who were standing by were melted. After these tender lambs had been commended to the gracious Shepherd of Israel, they began to make their preparations for leaving us.
But there arose in the midst of a gross heathenism, with all its great immoralities, a rapidly growing community, which demanded purity of life and conduct from its communicants and supreme allegiance to Christ, the Lord and Saviour; how strong it was is shown by the fact that the Roman Empire tried to stamp it out, failed, and was taken captive itself by the religion it had despised.
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