tiges of their former state
with them when they passed from the temple to the church. If
the instructed and civilized Greek did not all at once rise
out of his former self, and understand and realize the high
ideal of his new faith, we should be careful, in judging of
the work of missionaries among savage tribes, not to apply to
their converts tests and standards of too great severity. If
the scoffing Lucian's account of the impostor Peregrinus may
be believed, we find a church probably planted by the apostles
manifesting less intelligence even than modern missionary
churches. Peregrinus, a notoriously wicked man, was elected
to the chief place among them, while Romish priests, backed by
the power of France, could not find a place at all in the
mission churches of Tahiti and Madagascar.

We can not fairly compare these poor people with ourselves, who have an
atmosphere of Christianity and enlightened public opinion, the growth of
centuries, around us, to influence our deportment; but let any one
from the natural and proper point of view behold the public morality of
Griqua Town, Kuruman, Likatlong, and other villages, and remember what
even London was a century ago, and he must confess that the Christian
mode of treating aborigines is incomparably the best.

The Griquas and Bechuanas were in former times clad much like the
Caffres, if such a word may be used where there is scarcely any clothing
at all. A bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches long hung from
the lady's waist in front, and a prepared skin of a sheep or antelope
covered the shoulders, leaving the breast and abdomen bare: the men wore
a patch of skin, about the size of the crown of one's hat, which barely
served for the purposes of decency, and a mantle exactly like that
of the women. To assist in protecting the pores of the skin from the
influence of the sun by day and of the cold by night, all smeared
themselves with a mixture of fat and ochre; the head was anointed with
pounded blue mica schist mixed with fat; and the fine particles of
shining mica, falling on the body and on strings of beads and brass
rings, were considered as highly ornamental, and fit for the most
fastidious dandy. Now these same people come to church in decent though
poor clothing, and behave with a decorum certainly superior to what
seems to have been the case in the time of Mr. Samuel Pepys in London.
Sunday is well observed, and,