is said that I have done wrong. In what way have I done wrong? I have
heard a white missionary say that the white man's God sends sickness to
people when they sin, and that if the sinners leave off their evil ways
then they become well and happy again, and I said the same to these
people--and if they paid me ten shillings, why, do not the whites make
payments to their priests?"

I might add, in parenthesis, that the argument advanced did not find
favour with the magistrate on the bench who, like so many of his kind,
had little knowledge of Bantu lore and languages, and who therefore
could only perceive the letter of the law and not the human spirit
behind the acts that constituted a breach of the white man's statute.

The Natives, like most of the white people, prefer not to think overmuch
about death and whether there be life for us beyond the grave; like the
vast majority of Europeans they prefer to take the superstitions and
beliefs of their forefathers for granted. Vague notions about ancestral
and familiar spirits that emanate from the grave in the guise of snakes
or other animals are accepted in the same spirit or traditional mood in
which the doctrines and dogmas of the various religions of Europe are
accepted by the bulk of white believers.

I have found among the Bantu the same child-like faith in all that is
proclaimed by traditional authority about things supernatural, and I
have found also among them the same hesitation or inability to believe
without questioning in all that is laid down in the name of tradition
that we see among ourselves. The will to believe is temperamental and
general, but the unbeliever is found among the Bantu as well as
everywhere else.