all that
dislike and fear of the solemn truth which the conviction of guilt or
demerit never fails to produce. These Otaheitans, then, are evidences to
themselves of the existence of a power and wisdom superior to their own,
to which they are consciously accountable; and they are without excuse,
if, knowing this, they do not worship God as they ought. It may amuse,
and perhaps instruct the reader, which is the reason for introducing
this note, to enquire how far the inventions of the Otaheitans, as of
all other people, made any way necessary or desirable by the
circumstance of their climate and situation, influence them in their
notions on the subject of their national religions. He will find that
amongst them, as amongst others, the popular religion is founded, not on
the exercise of reason contemplating the works of nature and the
dispensations of Providence, but on principles intimately connected with
man's physical wants, and modified by the peculiarities of ingenuity,
which the artificial supply of those wants occasions; and perhaps he
will make out one remarkable conclusion from the survey of them compared
with others--that where these arts of ingenuity are frequent, and at the
same time applied to very perishable subjects, there the objects of
worship and the kind of religious service, are of a refined nature,
allowing little or nothing of the grossness of _material_ idolatry; and
that, on the contrary, when they are few, but at the same time exercised
on very durable substances, then the greatest tendency exists to the
worship of the mere works of man's hands. Sagacious and clever people,
in other words, have cunningly devised fables for their creeds; the
clumsy-headed and the idle fall down before stocks and stones, as if
there were no such things as memory or imagination or understanding in
the world. It follows, that to extirpate gross idolatry, you must
multiply inventions, and encourage ingenuity--the first operation, it
may be confidently said, to which missionaries among the heathens should
direct their exertions. It is no less certain, that to destroy spiritual
idolatry, nothing short of the mighty power of God himself, implanting a
new principle allied to his own nature, is available. When missionaries
obtain the management and dispensation of this new principle, then, and
only then, they will succeed in making men _worshippers in spirit and in
truth_. But the propriety of their labours is to be evinced o