Category: History - Religious
Travelling on the borders of Chinese Tartary, in the country of the Lamas or Buddhists, Miss Gordon Cumming remarks that it was strange, every now and again, to meet some respectable-looking workman, twirling little brass cylinders, only about six inches in length, which were...
Travelling on the borders of Chinese Tartary, in the country of the Lamas or Buddhists, Miss Gordon Cumming remarks that it was strange, every now and again, to meet some respec...
19. CHAPTER XIX.There are many aspects of the Past which have an interest for the psychological student as well as for the antiquary, and there are not a few to which everybody may occasionally...
11. CHAPTER XI.There can be no question as to the antiquity or universality of Serpent-Worship, whatever may be the difference of opinion as to its origin. According to Bryant it began in Chal...
2. CHAPTER II.When the pure morality of Christianity is adduced as a proof of its high origin, one of the favourite devices of Modern Unbelief is to claim an equally high standard for the mor...
6. CHAPTER VI.It has been justly said that a religion which, like Confucianism, has exercised for twenty-four centuries a potent influence over the Chinese mind, though owing its name and ori...
15. CHAPTER XV.The general characteristics of the North American Indians, or the Red Men, have been made familiar to us through the writings of travellers, and the picturesque romances of Feni...
5. CHAPTER V.The word _Purana_ means “old,” and the original object of the Puranas would seem to have been the preservation of ancient mythological fictions and historical traditions. But in...
12. CHAPTER XII.When Captain Cook first visited those beautiful islands of the South Pacific which are now included under the general name of Polynesia, he found their inhabitants given over to...
8. CHAPTER VIII.The Samojedes are a people of Arctic Asia, where they inhabit the forests and stony tundras of Northern Russia and Western Siberia; driving their herds of reindeer from the bank...
3. CHAPTER III.The Talmud, (from the Hebrew _lamad_, to learn,) is the name given to the great code of the Jewish civil and canonical law. It is divided, like the Zendavesta, into two parts, t...
4. CHAPTER IV.You must know, he says, that these Abraiaman are the best merchants in the world [an obvious misconception!] and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on...
7. CHAPTER VII.A religious ceremony exists in Java which has an obvious affinity to the old Nature-Worship, and finds its excuse in the dread with which the uncivilised races regarded the myst...
14. CHAPTER XIV.We meet in New Zealand with that curious system of “taboo” or “tapu” which prevails throughout the greater part of the Polynesian Archipelago; a system evidently conceived in th...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.The imaginative element in the character of the Celtic race naturally predisposes them to the reception and retention of fanciful ideas in connection with our relations to the u...
13. CHAPTER XIII.The annexation of the Fiji Islands to the British empire lends to the practices and beliefs of their inhabitants a peculiar interest, though to a great extent these have been ab...
9. CHAPTER IX.Africa is the land of superstition,--dark, cruel, ghastly superstition. It accompanies its victim from the cradle to the grave; throws its fell shadow over every scene and incid...
17. CHAPTER XVII.Among the extraordinary delusions of the human mind, none is more hateful than the conviction cherished among so many sects, that the Supreme Being can be propitiated by the sel...
10. CHAPTER X.English Law now reigns in Zululand, and the occupation of the Witch-finders is almost gone; but in times past they were potent personages, whom an enslaving superstition had arm...
16. CHAPTER XVI.The success which has attended the labours of the Lutheran and Moravian Missionaries among the Eskimos has been well deserved by their self-denying devotedness. Few of the Arcti...