. The world's inhabitants; or, Mankind, animals, and plants; being a popular account of the races and nations of mankind, past and present, and the animals and plants inhabiting the great continents and principal islands. is practised, and funeral masses and feasts follow death. Religiously, the Abyssinians are Christians by profession, in spite ofthe propagandism of Mahometanism in their neighbourhood. Takingorigin at a time when Christianity was still in a somewhat in-determinate state, the Abyssinian Church preserves a singularcrudity of ideas. They belong specially to the division of Chris
. The world's inhabitants; or, Mankind, animals, and plants; being a popular account of the races and nations of mankind, past and present, and the animals and plants inhabiting the great continents and principal islands. is practised, and funeral masses and feasts follow death. Religiously, the Abyssinians are Christians by profession, in spite ofthe propagandism of Mahometanism in their neighbourhood. Takingorigin at a time when Christianity was still in a somewhat in-determinate state, the Abyssinian Church preserves a singularcrudity of ideas. They belong specially to the division of Christianscalled monophysite, regarding Christ as possessed only of one nature,and the Holy Ghost as proceeding from Grod the Father only. But thereis no doubt that, according to their lights, the Abyssinians are a religiousnation. There is no country in the world, says Bruce, where thereare so many churches as in Abyssinia. Though the country is verymountainous, and consequently the view much obstructed, it is veryseldom you see less than five or six churches, and, if you are Numbers ofon a commanding ground, five times that number. Every man that dies, thinks he has atoned for all his wickedness if he. ABYSSINIAN. Religion. II 572 THE INHABITANTS OF AFRICA. leaves a fund to Luild a cliurcli, or has built one in his hfetime. Thesituation of a church is always chosen near running water, for the con-venience of their purifications and ablutions, in which they observestrictly the Levitical law. The churches are full of slovenly pictures ofsaints, but there are no statues or sculptures. The chief of the Church is called the Abuna, that is, Our father,and for several centuries has always been a foreigner, a Coptic priest
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