I SHALL never forget the great pile of rejected gods, instruments of priest craft, and stone adzes presented to me, one evening in the slimmer of 1862, by the chiefs and ‘sacred men’ of Danger Island,’ says the Rev. W. W. Gill in his “Life in the Southern Isles.” “I was the first white missionary to land among them. The sun had set; not a breath of air was stirring; the lagoon was like a mirror; a great crowd of dusky faces was looking on with evident interest and anxiety.” Such are the scenes witnessed amongst the once cannibals of these southern islands of the Pacific, where God is so graciously working, turning multitudes from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to Himself, Amongst the heap of things to be destroyed were some “soul-traps.” What are these? Not the same traps as abound in England, but visible forms of superstition, which the priests used for terrifying the people. These soul-traps consisted of a series of rings twisted in cocoanut fiber, as our illustration shows. Each of the two traps represented has a number of rings, some of which are large and some small.
These traps used to be hung outside the house of a sick man, or of one who had offended the “sacred men.” A sacred man would sit and watch the trap, and, should a bird or an insect ay through one of the rings, he would say that the soul of the sick person or offender, having assumed the form of the bird or insect, had left his body and had passed into the trap. The demon Vaerua, or spirit, it was added, had hurried off the man’s soul to the unseen world, where it would be feasted upon. Should the soul be eaten by the demon, of necessity the body must also perish.
Naturally the friends of the man would seek to propitiate the demon, with the hope that the priest might induce him to allow the trapped soul to return to the body. Sometimes, by means of gifts, this was said to be accomplished, but at others the priest would declare the case to be hopeless. Then it was publicly known that the sick man had lost his soul, and he, believing this and regarding himself as doomed to die, would pine away.
The soul-traps were made with large and small loops; large ones for adults, small ones for the children; or large for chiefs and great people, small for such as were of small account!
“Thanks to the gospel of the blessed God,” says Mr. Gill, “the natives of Danger Island no longer fear soul-traps. Those who fear God need fear nothing else. It is interesting to note that priest craft is the same all the world over―amongst the heathen and amongst civilized races. It originates in an inordinate lust for power, coupled with the assumption that the ‘sacred men,’ or priestly class, have special authority delegated to them over the invisible world.”