The practical religion of the Abyssinian Christian is of the very lowest degree of formality.  Fasts, penances, and excommunications, form the chief discipline; but the penitent can always provide a substitute for the two former, and the latter is always to be averted by money.  Spiritual offences, however, are rare; for murder and sacrilege alone give umbrage to the easy conscience of the natives of Shoa.  Abstinence and largesses of money are equivalent to wiping away every sin.  Their creed advises the invocation of saints, confession to the priest, and faith in charms and amulets.  Prayers for the dead, and absolution, are indispensable; and, as a more summary mode of relieving the burdens of the flesh, it is pronounced, that all sins are forgiven from the moment that the kiss of the pilgrim is imprinted on the stones of Jerusalem, and that even kissing the hand of a priest purifies the body from all sin.  A creed of this order, which makes spiritual safety dependent, not upon personal purification of mind and divine mercy, but upon forms which are unconnected with either, and which even can be executed by a substitute, of course excludes the necessity for morals of any kind.  All is corruption—­“Born amid falsehood and deceit, cradled in bloodshed, and nursed in the arms of idleness and debauchery, the national character almost defies the missionary.”

There are some strange remnants of Judaism still lingering amongst the tribes of these highland regions.  The Galla have a tradition, that their whole nation will one day be called on to march, en masse, and reconquer Palestine for the return of the Jews.  The king of Shoa regards himself as a direct descendant of the house of Solomon, calls himself king of Israel, and the national standard bears the motto, “The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed.”  They believe the 45th Psalm to be a prophecy of Queen Magueda’s visit to Jerusalem; whither she was attended by a daughter of Hiram, king of Tyre.  The Jewish prohibitions against the flesh of unclean animals, are observed by the Abyssinians.  The sinew which shrank, and the eating of which was prohibited to the Israelite, is also prohibited in Shoa.  The Jewish Sabbath is strictly observed.  The Abyssinians are said, by Ludolf, to be the greatest fasters in the world.  The Wednesdays and Fridays are fasts; the forty days before Easter are rigidly observed as a fast; and from the Thursday preceding Easter till the Sunday, no morsel of meat is to enter the lips, and the prohibition against drink is equally rigorous.  St Michael and the Virgin Mary are venerated in the highest degree; St Michael as the leader of the hosts of heaven, and the latter as the chief of all saints, and queen of heaven and earth, and both as the great intercessors of mankind.