Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/136

 CHAPTER III.

HOLY OBJECTS.

While a highly-exalted conception of the First cause of nature would see him equally in everything, and believe the whole world to be alike natural and divine, no actual religion, believed by any considerable number of persons, has ever reached so abstract an idea. To all of them some things are more sacred than others; in the more primitive forms of faith these things are either a species of divinities themselves, or they are the abode of some divinity; in the more advanced types, they are held to be sanctified by the power of God, or to be the earthly representatives of his invisible majesty. To the class of holy objects belong all charms, amulets, fetishes, sacred animals, and other things of whatever kind, which are believed in any country to possess a different order of powers from those which scientific investigation discovers in them.

The theory underlying the use of such objects among the negroes—and it is practically the same as that of more civilized nations—is well explained by a German missionary. "Fetishes, or Shambu," according to him, "are holy things, which are supposed to have received a particular power from God, both to drive away evil spirits, as also to be useful in all illnesses and dangers, especially against sorcery." They cover both themselves and their gods with fetishes. These descend from father to son, and are preserved with the greatest care. Some are kept in sanctuaries of their own. There exists among these negroes (the Mavu) a class of professional fetish-makers, who are mostly old women, and who wear a peculiar dress. A man, who had fetishes at the bottom of his staircase, informed the writer that their use was to keep the devil from getting into his house. Another tribe of negroes prefer to take things which