Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/49

Rh borrowing from missionaries. What strikes Mr. Tylor, who is not on my side, may surely be allowed to strike me. There is, in fact, a strong resemblance between these Christian ideas and Australian ideas. Mr. Howitt was inclined to suspect Christian influence, but his inquiries did not confirm his suspicion (Howitt, Journal of the Anthropological Institute., vol. xiii., p. 192). Mr. Tylor does decide in favour of missionary influence. But Mr. Hartland cuts himself off from this resource. The savages are "guiltless of Christian teaching" (p. 312). But the opinion that they are not "guiltless" "probably is not altogether beyond dispute" (p. 302). Will Mr. Hartland make up his mind? Meanwhile Mr. Tylor and I, otherwise opposed here, are agreed in our opinion that the savage and Christian analogies are remarkable. We may both be wrong where we agree, though one of us is not unlikely to be right where we differ, as we do about the cause of the similarities. Here, however, Mr. Hartland has a choice of alternative theories almost equally seductive. If he agrees with Mr. Tylor he can say: "The savages borrowed from Christians." If he agrees with me that they did not borrow he can say: "Christianity retains or revives savage beliefs," as is said, or hinted, in certain other cases. Or Mr. Hartland may differ both from Mr. Tylor and me, and say that there is no analogy or resemblance whatever between the Christian "Our Father in Heaven," and the savage "Our Father in, or above, the Heavens." Yet here I doubt that his case would not be commonly accepted; it certainly does not seem to be accepted by Mr. Tylor or by Mr. Howitt, who at once looked about, for the cause of this "Our Father," to Christian influences among the Kurnai.

Of course, in detail, our conception of divine Fatherhood