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He is not so silly as to believe in his own inviolability by bullets, and digestion of poisons; and those who are such savages as to confide in these superstitions are not unlikely to try experiments just to strengthen their faith.
A medical entry in Governor Winthrop's journal may seem at first sight a mere curiosity; but, rightly interpreted, it is a key to his whole system of belief as to the order of the universe and the relations between man and his Maker. Nothing sheds such light on the superstitions of an age as the prevailing interpretation and treatment of disease.
It is true that the hard task of conversion remained, and that Indian vices and superstitions were not easily overcome. But at least the savages were ready to listen to Christian teaching. Some of them had courage enough to reform their lives. Children and women were baptized. Many received when dying the sacraments of the Church.
"Well, then, do give me morphia enough to put me to sleep, so that I will wake up only in another world. "The Doctor did so; Colonel Grower thanked him; wrung his hand, bade him good-by, and went to sleep to wake no more." "Do you believe in presentiments and superstitions?" said another of the Fourteenth.
But the most interesting and instructive of the "Canterbury Tales" are those which relate to the religious life, the morals, the superstitions, and ecclesiastical abuses of the times. In these we see the need of the reformation of which Wyclif was the morning light.
Others showed a little house that was dedicated to another idol, and requested that it should be burned to the ground, which was done. But they have now turned their false superstitions into true religion and Christian piety, repairing to the church so regularly that on certain week-days, while the bell is rung for mass, the church is entirely filled with those who come to hear.
There is some fetish there, and the place is known as the burial-ground of the kings. I was also told that four or five marches off a cache of treasure, described to be large, had been made during the Ashanti-Gyáman war, and had been defended by the usual superstitions.
"At any rate," added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, "I shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me. If Clym has returned by that time he will perhaps come too. I wish to show Mr. Wildeve that I bear him no ill-will. Let the past be forgotten. Well, God bless you! There, I don't believe in old superstitions, but I'll do it."
"Thus through my preaching," he continued, "have come many of the superstitions of the papists, and the old fables first to the world, and the whole under the shape of some goodness. For who ever swallows the hook without some bait? who ever would believe a story if there were not some measure of truth mingled with the falsehood; or some semblance of good to shade the evil?
The Israelites brought out of Egypt base and slavish passions, which had to be purged out of them; so have we out of heathendom. They brought out, too, heathen superstitions, and mixed them up with the worship of God, bearing about in the wilderness the tabernacle of Moloch and the image of their god Remphan, and making the calf in Horeb; and so, alas! again and again, has the Church of Christ.
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