Note 401 — Chapter V

We see a good instance of this in the case of the Abyssinians, who have professed Christianity for centuries; but, as no pains were taken to cultivate their intellect, they found the religion too pure for them: they, therefore, corrupted it, and, down to the present moment, they have not made the slightest progress. The accounts given by Bruce of them are well known; and a traveller, who visited them in 1839, says: ‘Nothing can be more corrupt than the nominal Christianity of this unhappy nation. It is mixed up with Judaism, Mahommedanism, and idolatry, and is a mass of rites and superstitions which cannot mend the heart.’ Kraff's Journal at Ankobar, in Journal of Geographical Society, vol. x. p. 488; see also vol. xiv. p. 13: and for a similar state of things in America, see the account of the Quiché Indians, in Stephens's Central America, vol. ii. pp. 191, 192. Compare Squier's Central America, vol. i. pp. 322, 323, with Halkett's North-American Indians, pp. 29, 212, 268. For further confirmation of this view, in another part of the world, see Tuckey's Expedition to the Zaire, pp. 79, 80, 165.