BELIEF OF SOME MODERN HEATHEN NATIONS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 17, 1869

BELIEF OF SOME MODERN HEATHEN NATIONS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

It is often assumed that all the heathen nations and tribes at the present time are firm believers in the immortality of the soul. But in a previous article I have shown that the great mass of heathendom now believe in the total annihilation of men. In this article I will simply notice the belief of a few of the small tribes and nations of pagans. Of the Esquimaux, the Universal Traveler says, They “appear to have no idea of the existence of a Supreme Being, nor can they be said to entertain any notions on this subject which may be dignified with the name of religion.”—p. 77. How much of an idea can such people have of the soul’s immortality.

This author says about the same of the native Greenlanders. “It is very singular,” he writes, “that the heathens inhabiting this country have no worship. It was believed by some navigators, who saw the Greenlanders observing the rising sun in the morning, that they worshiped the sun. . . . but they have no religion at all, although they are not without some notions of a Divine Being, and a future state.”—p. 82. What kind of faith can such people have in the soul’s immortality? Their ideas of a future state are exceedingly vague and indefinite.

The Feejees can not believe the soul immortal, for they believe in the annihilation of the wicked. Mr. Alger, in his learned work on this subject, says of them: “Departing souls go to the tribunal of Ndengei, who either receives them into bliss, or sends them back as ghosts, to haunt the scenes of their former existence, or distributes them as food for devils, or imprisons them for a period, and then dooms them to annihilation.”—Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 70. These ideas are utterly incompatible with the immortality of the soul.

The Sandwich Islanders are far from believing it. Of them the above author says: “The people of the Sandwich Islands held a confused medley of notions as to another life. In different persons among them were found, in regard to this subject, superstitious terror, blank indifference, positive unbelief.” “Some thought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others that they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; others still, that they survived there, subsisting upon lizards and butterflies.”—Ibid. Will any one claim these as orthodox believers in the immortality of the soul? I trow not.

“The New Zealanders said the souls of the Atnas, the nobles, were immortal, but the Cookees perished entirely.”—Ibid., p. 210.

It strikes me that these are not very good witnesses in favor of the immortality of all men.

D. M. CANRIGHT.