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spirit. A god resides in the flint, to give forth the
kindling, cheering fire; in the mountain cliff; in the cool recesses of the grottoes which nature has adorned; in each ‘little grass’ that springs miraculously from the earth.
‘The woods, the wilds, and the waters, respond to savage intelligence; the stars and the mountains live; the river, and the lake, and the waves, have a spirit.’
Every hidden agency, every mysterious influence, is personified.
A god dwells in the sun, and in the moon, and in the firmament; the spirit of
the morning reddens in the eastern sky; a deity is present in the ocean and in the fire; the crag that overhangs the river has its genius; there is a spirit to the waterfall; a household god makes its abode in the
Indian's wigwam, and consecrates his home; spirits climb upon the forehead, to weigh down the eyelids in sleep.
Not the heavenly bodies only, the sky is filled with spirits that minister to man. To the savage,
Von Reck's Kurze Nachricht, in Urlsper ger's Ausfuhrliche Nachricht, i. 192. |
Reek's divinity, broken, as it were, into an infinite number of fragments, fills all place and all being.
The idea of unity in the creation may have existed contemporanebut it existed only in the germ, or as a vague belief derived from the harmony of the universe.
Yet faith in the Great Spirit, when once presented, faith in the Great Spirit, when once presented, was promptly seized and appropriated, and so infused itself into the heart of remotest tribes, that it came to be often considered as a portion of their original faith.
Their shadowy aspirations and creeds assumed, through the reports of missionaries, a more complete development; and a religious system was elicited from the pregnant but rude materials.
It is not fear which generates this faith in the existence of higher powers.
The faith attaches to every thing, but most of all to that which is excellent; it is
