The Natives [the New Hebrides], destitute of the knowledge of the true God, are ceaselessly groping after Him, and not being able to live without some sort of God, they have made idols of almost everything: trees and groves, rocks and stones, springs and streams, insects and beasts, men and departed spirits, relics such as hair and finger nails, the heavenly bodies and the volcanoes; in fact, every being and every thing within the range of vision or of knowledge has been appeal to by them as GOd, — clearly proving that the instincts of Humanity, however degraded, prompt man to worship and lean upon some Being or Power outside himself, and greater than himself, in whom he lives and moves and has his being, and without the knowledge of whom his soul cannot find its true rest or its eternal life.

John G. Paton, The Autobiography of the Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), 73.