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Updated: June 11, 2025
It had been assembled by Egede for the express purpose of affording some unbelievers among the Eskimos an opportunity of stating their difficulties and objections in regard to the new religion.
More than two thousand natives, one-fourth of the whole population, died that summer. Of two hundred families near the mission only thirty were left alive. A cry of terror and anguish rose throughout the settlements. No one knew what to do. In vain did Egede implore them to keep their sick apart. In fever delirium they ran out in the ice-fields or threw themselves into the sea.
It is thus that Egede, a missionary of the last century, describes the Eskimo philosophy of the stars: 'The notions that the Greenlanders have as to the origin of the heavenly lights as sun, moon, and stars are very nonsensical; in that they pretend they have formerly been as many of their own ancestors, who, on different accounts, were lifted up to heaven, and became such glorious celestial bodies. Again, he writes: 'Their notions about the stars are that some of them have been men, and others different sorts, of animals and fishes. But every reader of Ovid knows that this was the very mythical theory of the Greeks and Romans.
All of these Eskimos were well acquainted with Egede, and a few of them were friendly towards him; but many were the reverse. There was great excitement among them at the time the party arrived excitement that could scarcely be accounted for either by the rum or by the unexpected arrival. Egede soon found out what it was.
"But suppose," continued Egede, "that God had answered you by delivering you in another way by keeping you on the berg; by making that berg, as it were, into a great oomiak, and causing it to voyage as no oomiak ever voyaged causing it to plough through pack-ice as no ship made by man ever ploughed; to go straight to an island to which no human power could have brought you; and to have done it all in time to save your own dear Pussi and all the rest of us from starvation would you not have said that God had answered your prayer in a way that was far better?"
Egede observed the keen gaze, though he judged it wise to take no notice of it at the time, but he did not fail to pray mentally that the good seed might take root. The attention of the party was called off the subject of discourse just then by a further movement of the pack-ice. "See, the lanes of open water widen," exclaimed Okiok eagerly, pointing seaward.
I was personally acquainted with Inspector Daugaard-Jensen from former dealings with him, and knew that whatever he undertook would be performed with the greatest conscientiousness. The administration of the Royal Greenland Trading Company gave permission for the dogs to be conveyed free of charge on board the Hans Egede and delivered at Christiansand.
And well they might, for in these few sentences the Eskimo had opened up a number of the problems on which man, both civilised and savage, has been exercising his brain unsuccessfully from the days of Adam and Eve until now. No wonder that poor Hans Egede paused thoughtfully and no doubt prayerfully for a few minutes ere he ventured a reply.
This fact is essential, because the evidence of old writers, from Herodotus to Egede, corroborates the evidence of travellers, Indian Civil Servants, and missionaries of today, by what Dr. Tylor, when defending our materials, calls 'the test of recurrence. Professor Millar used the same argument in his Origin of Rank, in the last century. Thus Mr. They are of many centuries.
"Yet it certainly exists," continued Egede; "you cannot help believing that?" "Yes, I must admit that." "Then why did God permit sin?" Of course the old man could not reply, and the missionary pointed out that some things were incomprehensible, and that that was one of them. "But," he continued, "that is no reason why we should not talk of things that are comprehensible. Let us turn to these."
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