fact that faith is not incompatible with ignorance. It is the very essence and
secret of Superstition. Whether they understand the prayers of the tohungas or
not, they delight in their frequent repetition, and insist upon their use in almost
every circumstance of life. They are generally accompanied by offerings of
animal and vegetable food, which, of course, become the perquisites of the
tohungas.
The Maori priesthood is hereditary, father transmits his office to son, after
carefully educating him in its duties. Dr. Dieffenbach was present when an aged
tohunga was giving a lesson to a neophyte. The old priest, he says, was sitting
under a tree, with part of a man’s skull, filled with water, by his side. At
intervals he dipped a green branch into the water, and sprinkled the hand of a
boy, who reclined at his feet, and listened attentively to his recital of a long
string of words. Dr. Dieffenbach doubts the common statement that the prayers
are often without meaning, while agreeing that they are unintelligible to the
majority of the worshippers. He thinks they are couched in a language now
forgotten; or, what is more probable, that among the Maories as among many of
the nations of antiquity, the religious mysteries are carefully confined to a
certain class of men, who conceal them from the profanum vulgus, or reveal only
such portions as they think proper. The claims of the exponents of an artificial
creed must necessarily depend in a great degree upon the amount of mystery in
which they involve it. With the common people familiarity breeds contempt;
they venerate that only which they do not understand; it is darkness and not light
which moves their wonder, and excites their awe.
Devoid as it is of elevated attributes, the religion of the Maori rises above some
of the Polynesian creeds in its acknowledgment of the immortality of man,
though on this point its teaching is very vague.
The Maori believes that, after death, his soul enters the Reinga, or abode of
departed spirits; and, with an unwonted touch of poetry, he looks upon shooting
and falling stars as souls passing swiftly to this undiscovered bourne; the
entrance to which he supposes to lie beneath a precipice at Cape Maria Van
Diemen. The spirits in falling are supposed to rest momentarily, in order to break
the descent, against an ancient tree, which grows about half way down. The
natives were wont to indicate a particular branch as being the halting-place of
the spirits; but a missionary having cut it off, the tree has of late diminished in
sanctity.
The entrance to the Reinga is not accomplished by all spirits in the same manner.