University of Virginia Library

FEBRUARY 15. (Sunday.)

To-day divine service was performed at Savannah la Ma for the first time these five weeks. The rector has been indisposed lately with the lumbago: he has no curate ; and thus during five whole weeks there was a total cessation of public worship. I had told several of my female acquaintance that it was long since they had been to church, that I was afraid of their forgetting all about it, and that if there should be no service for a week longer I should think it my duty to come and hear them say their Catechism myself. Luckily the rector recovered, and saved me the trouble; but the long privation of public prayer did not seem to have annoyed them, and I have seldom witnessed a more meagre congregation. I cannot discover that the negroes have any external forms of worship, nor any priests in Jamaica, unless their Obeah-men should be considered as such; but still I cannot think that they ought to be considered as totally devoid of all natural religion. There is no phrase so common on their tips as " God bless"you! " and " God preserve you! " and " God will bless you wherever you go ! " phrases which they pronounce with every appearance of sincerity, and as if they came from the very bottom of their hearts. "God-A'mity! God-A'mity!" is their constant exclamation in pain and in sorrow. This proves their belief in a Supreme Being. But they have even got a step further : for they also allow the existnece of an evil principle.

From their language they appear to believe that hell is a place of torment, and that the devil reigns there ; and surely they could not be afraid of duppies (or ghosts) without some idea of a future state ; and indeed, nothing is more firmly impressed upon the mind of the Africans, than that after death they shall go back to Africa and pass an eternity in revelling and feasting with their ancestors.

The, proprietor of a neighbouring estate lately used all his influence to persuade his foster-sister to be christened, but it was all in vain ; she bad imbibed strong African prejudices from her mother, and frankly declared that she found nothing in the Christian system so alluring to her taste as the post-obit balls and banquets promised by the religion of Africa. I confess that this prejudice appears to me to be so strongly rooted, that I am sadly afraid the efforts of the curates who are expected to be sent out by the Bishop of London will avail but little ; and that the rewards after death which Christianity offers will be outweighed by the pleasures of eating fat hog, drinking raw rum, and dancing for centuries to the jam-jam and kitty-katty.