Is it not better, Christian friend, to defy Moloch instead of
worshipping him? Is it not still better to regard this deity as the
creation of fanciful ignorance? Is not existence a terror if Providence
may swoop upon us with inevitable talons and irresistible beak? And does
not life become sweeter when we see no cruel intelligence behind the
catastrophes of nature?

STANLEY ON PROVIDENCE.

Buckle, the historian of Civilisation, points out that superstition is
most rampant where men are most oppressed by external nature. Wild and
terrible surroundings breed fear and awe in the human mind. Those
who lead adventurous lives are subject to the same law. Sailors, for
instance, are proverbially superstitious, and military men are scarcely
less so. The fighter is not always moral, but he is nearly always
religious.

No one acquainted with this truth will be surprised at the piety of
explorers. There is a striking exception in Sir Richard Burton, but we
do not remember another. From the days of Mungo Park down to our own
age, they have been remarkable for their religious temperaments. Had
they remained at home, in quiet and safety, they might not have been
conspicuous in this respect; but a life of constant adventure, of daily
peril and hairbreadth escapes, developed their superstitious tendencies.
It is so natural to feel our helplessness in solitude and danger,
and perhaps in sickness. It is so easy to feel that our escape from a
calamity that hemmed us in on every side was due to a providential hand.

Whether Stanley, who is now the cynosure of all eyes, began with
any considerable stock of piety, is a question we have no means of
determining; but we can quite understand how a very little would go a
very long way in Africa, amid long and painful marches through unknown
territory, the haunting peril of strange enemies, and the oppressive
gloom of interminable forests. Indeed, if the great explorer had become
as superstitious as the natives themselves, we could have forgiven it
as a frailty incident to human nature in such trying circumstances.
But when he brings his mental weakness home with him, and addresses
Englishmen in the language of ideas calculated for the latitude of
equatorial Africa, it becomes necessary to utter a protest. Stanley has
had a good spell of rest in Egypt, and plenty of time to get rid of the
"creeps." He should, therefore, have returned to Europe clothed and in
his right mind. But instead