I went in and
found a decent-looking clergyman preparing a flock of seven or eight
blacks and mulattoes for the Communion. He was taking them through their
catechism, explaining very properly, that religion meant doing one's
duty, and that it was not enough to profess particular opinions.
Dominica being Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholics not generally
appreciating or understanding the claims of Anglicans to the possession
of the sacraments, he pointed out where the difference lay. He insisted
that we had priests as well as they; we had confession; we had
absolution; only our priests did not claim, as the Catholics did, a
direct power in themselves to forgive sins. Their office was to tell
sinners that if they truly and sincerely repented and amended their
lives God would forgive them. What he said was absolutely true; but I
could not see in the dim faces of the catechumens that the distinction
was particularly intelligible to them. If they thought at all, they
probably reflected that no divinely constituted successor of the
Apostles was needed to communicate a truism which every sensible person
was equally able and entitled to tell them. Still the good earnest man
meant well, and I wished him more success in his missionary enterprise
than he was likely to find.

From the Church of England to the great rival establishment was but a
few minutes' walk. The cathedral was five times as large, at least, as
the building which I had just left--old in age, old in appearance, with
the usual indifferent pictures or coloured prints, with the usual
decorated altar, but otherwise simple and venerable. There was no
service going on, for it was a week-day; a few old men and women only
were silently saying their prayers. On Sundays I was told that it was
overflowing. The negro morals are as emancipated in Dominica as in the
rest of the West Indies. Obeah is not forgotten; and along with the
Catholic religion goes on an active belief in magic and witchcraft. But
their religion is not necessarily a sham to them; it was the same in
Europe in the ages of faith. Even in enlightened Protestant countries
people calling themselves Christians believe that the spirits of the
dead can be called up to amuse an evening party. The blacks in this
respect are no worse than their white kinsmen. The priests have a
genuine human hold upon them; they baptize the children; they commit the
dead to the cemetery with the promise of immortality; they are
pers