fact that the bishop never came back for the planks he had begged of me, caused me to make some inquiries, and I found that the church had been plentifully supplied with benches by the poorer portion of the congregation.
Yet how many of these earnest people could one guarantee to have completely cast out all their belief in Ju-Juism? If I were put upon my oath to answer truthfully according to my own individual belief, I am afraid my answer would be not one.
What an awful injustice the missionary preaches in the estimation of the average native woman, when he advises the native of West Africa to put away all his wives but one. Supposing, for instance, it is the case of a big chief with a moderate number of wives, say only twenty or thirty, he may have had children by all of them, or he may have had children by a half dozen of them,—what is to become of those wives he discards? are they to be condemned to single blessedness for the remainder of their days? Native custom or etiquette would not allow these women to marry the other men in the chief's house; they can't marry into other houses, because they would find the same condition of things there as in their own husband's house, always supposing Christianity was becoming general. These difficulties in the way of the missionary are the Ju-Ju priests' levers, which they know well how to use against Christianity, and which accounts for the frequent slide back to Ju-Juism, and in some cases cannibalism of otherwise apparently semi-civilized Africans.
The Pagan portion of the inhabitants of the Brass district have still their old belief in the Ju-Ju priests and animal worship.
