The quiet little discussions we had together on theological subjects settled, once and for all, many questions that had previously vexed me a great deal.
Both girls were devoted adherents of the Church of England, and could repeat most of the Church services entirely from memory.

They wanted to do a little missionary work among the blacks, but I gently told them I thought this inadvisable, as any rupture in our friendly relations with the natives would have been quite fatal--if not to our lives, at least to our chances of reaching civilisation.

Moreover, my people were not by any means without a kind of religion of their own.

They believed in the omnipotence of a Great Spirit in whose hands their destinies rested; and him they worshipped with much the same adoration which Christians give to God.

The fundamental difference was that the sentiment animating them was not _love_, but _fear_: propitiation rather than adoration.
We sang the usual old hymns at our Sunday services, and I soon learned to sing them myself.