UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
^onm*
LOS ANGELES
LIBRARY
HISTORICAL SKETCH
OF THE
HAWAIIAN MISSION,
AND THE MISSIONS TO
MICRONESIA AND THE MARQUESAS
ISLANDS.
BY
PROF. S. C. BARTLETT, D.D.
BOSTON:
AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS.
1869.
146755
:BV
SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
IN the year 1809, a dark skinned boy was found weeping on the
door-steps at Yale College. His name was Henry Obookiah (Opuka-
haia) ; and he came from the Sandwich Islands. In a civil war, his
father and mother had been slain before his eyes ; and when he fled
with his infant brother on his back, the child was killed with a spear,
and he was taken prisoner. Lonely and wretched, the poor boy, at
the age of fourteen, was glad to come, with Captain Brintnell, to
New Haven. He thirsted for instruction ; and he lingered round
the College buildings, hoping in some way to gratify his burning
desire. But when at length all hope died out, he sat down and wept.
The Rev. Edwin W. D wight, a resident graduate, found him there, and
kindly took him as a pupil.
In the autumn of that year came another resident graduate to
New Haven, for the purpose of awakening the spirit of missions.
It was Samuel J. Mills. Obookiah told Mills his simple story —
how the people of Hawaii " are very bad ; they pray to gods made
of wood ; " and he longs " to learn to read this Bible, and go back
there and tell them to pray to God up in heaven." Mills wrote to
Gordon Hall, " What does this mean ? Brother Hall, do you under-
stand it ? Shall he be sent back unsupported, to attempt to reclaim
his countrymen ? Shall we not rather consider these southern islands
a proper place for the establishment of a mission ? " Mills took
Obookiah to his own home in Torringford, and thence to Andover
for a two years' residence ; after which the young man fouud his way
to the grammar school at Litchfield, and when it was opened, in
1817, to the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Conn. At Litch-
field he became acquainted and intimate with Samuel Ruggles, who
about this time (1816) resolved to accompany him to his native island
with the gospel.
4 SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
In the same vessel which brought Obookiah to America, came
two other Hawaiian lads, William Tennooe (Kanui) and Thomas Hopu.
After roving lives of many years, in 1815 they were both converted
— Tennooe at New Haven, and Hopu after he had removed from
New Haven to Torringford. Said Hopu, after his conversion, " I
want my poor countrymen to know about Christ." These young men,
too, had been the objects of much personal interest in New Haven ;
and in the following June, during the sessions of the General Associ-
ation in that city, a meeting was called by some gentlemen to discuss
the project of a Foreign Mission School. An organization was
effected under the American Board that autumn, at the house of
President Dwight, three months before his death. Next year the
school opened. Its first principal was Mr. Edwin Dwight, who found
Obookiah in tears at Yale College, and among its first pupils were
Obookiah, Tennooe, Hopu, and two other Hawaiian youths, with
Samuel Ruggles and Elisha Loomis.
Bnt Obookiah was never to carry the gospel in person to his
countrymen. God had a wiser use for him. In nine months from
the opening of the Mission School, he closed a consistent Christian
life with a peaceful Christian death. The lively interest which had
been gathering round him was profoundly deepened by his end and
the memoir of his life, and was rapidly crystallizing into a mission.
Being dead, he yet spoke with an emphasis and an eloquence that
never would have been given him in his life. The touching story
drew legacies from the dying, and tears, prayers, donations, and con-
secrations from the living. " O what a wonderful thing," he once
had said, " that the hand of Divine Providence has brought me here
from that heathenish darkness. And here I have found the name of
the Lord Jesus in the Holy Scriptures, and have read that his blood
was shed for many. My poor countrymen, who are yet living in the
region and shadow of death ! — I often feel for them in the night
season, concerning the loss of their souls. May the Lord Jesus
dwell in my heart, and prepare me to go and spend the remainder of
my life with them. But not my will, but thine, O Lord, be done."
The will of the Lord was done. The coming to America was a
more " wonderful thing" than he thought. His mantle fell on other
shoulders, and in two years more a missionary band was ready for the
Sandwich Islands. Hopur Tennooe, and John Honoree, natives of the
islands, were to be accompanied by Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurs-
ton, young graduates of Andover, Dr. Thomas Holman, a young phy-
sician, Daniel Chamberlain, a substantial farmer, Samuel Whitney,
mechanic and teacher, Samuel Ruggles, catechist and teacher, and
SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 5
Elisha Loomis, printer and teacher. All the Americans were accom-
panied by their wives, and Mr. Chamberlain by a family of five
children. Mr. Ruggles seems to have been the first to determine
upon joining the mission, and Mr. Loomis had been a member of
the Mission School. With this company went also George Tamoree
(Kamaulii), who had been a wanderer in America for fourteen years,
to return to his father, the subject king of Kauai.
The ordination of Messrs. Bingham and Thurston, at Goshen,
Conn., drew from the surrounding region a large assembly, among
whom were a great number of clergymen, and nearly all the members
of the Mission School, now thirty or more in number; and " liberal
offerings " for the mission came in " from all quarters." A fortnight
later, the missionary band were organized at Boston into a church of
seventeen members ; public services \Vere held Friday evening and
Saturday forenoon, in the presence of " crowded " houses, at the
Park-street Church ; and on the Sabbath, six hundred communicants
sat with them at the table of the Lord. " The occasion," says the
" Panoplist " of that date, " was one of the most interesting and
solemn which can exist in this world.". On Saturday, the 23rd
of October, 1819, a Christian assembly stood upon Long Wharf, and
sang, " Blest be the tie that binds." There was a prayer by Dr.
Worcester, a farewell speech by Hopu, a song by the missionaries,
" When shall we all meet again ; " and a fourteen oared barge
swiftly conveyed the little band from their weeping friends to the
brig " Thaddeus," which was to carry the destiny of the Hawaiian
Islands.
While the missionaries are on their way, let us take a look at the
people whom they were going to reclaim. The ten islands of the
Hawaiian group — an area somewhat less than Massachusetts —
were peopled by a well formed, muscular race, with olive complexions
and open countenances, in the lowest stages of barbarism, sensuality,
and vice. The children went stark naked till they were nine or ten
years old ; and the men and women wore the scantiest apology for
clothing, which neither sex hesitated to leave in the hut at home
before they passed through the village to the surf. The king came
more than once from the surf to the house of Mr. Ruggles with his
five wives, all in a state of nudity ; and on being informed of the
impropriety, he came the next time dressed — with a pair of silk
stockings and a hat ! The natives had hardly more modesty or shame
than so many animals. Husbands had many wives, and wives many
husbands ; and exchanged with each other at pleasure. The most
revolting forms of vice, as Captain Cook had occasion to know, were
6 SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
practiced in open sight. When a foreign vessel came to the harbor,
the women would swim to it in flocks for the vilest of purposes.
Two thirds of all the children, probably, were destroyed in infancy —
strangled or buried alive.
The nation practiced human sacrifice ; and there is a cord now at
the Missionary Rooms, Chicago, with which one high priest had
strangled twenty-three human victims. They were a race of perpetual
thieves ; even kings and chiefs kept servants for the special purpose
of stealing. They were wholesale gamblers, and latterly drunkards.
Thoroughly savage, they seemed almost destitute of fixed habits.
"When food was plenty, they would take six or seven meals a day,
and even rise in the night to eat ; at other times they would eat but
once a day, or perhaps go almost fasting for two or three days
together. And for purposes" of sleep the day and the night were
much alike. Science they had none ; no written language, nor the
least conception of any mode of communicating thought but by oral
speech.
A race that destroyed their own children had little tender mercy.
Sons often buried their aged parents alive, or left them to perish.
The sick were abandoned to die of want and neglect. Maniacs were
stoned to death. Captives were tortured and slain. The whole
system of government and religion was to the last degree oppressive.
The lands, their products, and occupants, were the property of the
chiefs and the king. The persons and power of the high chiefs were
protected by a crushing system of restrictions, called tabus. It was
tabu and death for a common man to let his shadow fall upon a chief,
to go upon his house, enter his enclosiire, or wear his kapa, to stand
when the king's kapa or his bathing water was carried by, or his
name mentioned in song. In these and a multitude of other ways,
" men's heads lay at the feet of the king and the chiefs." In like
manner it was tabu for a woman to eat with her husband, or to eat
fowl, pork, cocoanut, or banana — things offered to the idols — and
death was the penalty. The priest, too, came in with his tabus and
his exactions for his idols. There were six principal gods with
names, and an indefinite number of spirits. Whatsoever the priest
demanded for the god — food, a house, land, human sacrifice — must
be forthcoming. If he pronounced a day tabu, the man who was
found in a canoe, or even enjoying the company of his family, died.
If any one made a noise when prayers were saying, or if the priest
pronounced him irreligious, he died. When a temple was built, and
the people had finished the toil, some of them were offered in sacri-
fice. In all these modes, the oppression of the nation was enormous.
SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 7
The race had once been singularly healthy. They told the first
missionaries — an exaggeration, of course — that formerly they died
only of old age. But foreign sailors had introduced diseases, repu-
table, and especially disreputable ; and now, between the desolations
of war, infanticide, and infamous diseases widely spread by general
licentiousness, the nation was rapidly wasting away.
Such was the forbidding race on whom the missionaries were to
try the power of the cross. " Probably none of you will live to wit-
ness the downfall of idolatry," — so said the Rev. Mr. Kellogg to
Mr. Ruggles, as they took breakfast together at East Windsor, the
morning before he left home. And so thought, no doubt, the whole
community. But God's thoughts are not as our thoughts.
Hopu called up his friend Ruggles at one o'clock on a moonlight
night (March 31) to get the first glimpse of Hawaii; and at day-
break the snow-capped peak of Mauna Kea was in full view. A few
hours more, and Hopu pointed out the valley where he was born. A
boat is put off, with Hopu and others in it, which encounters some
fishermen, and returns. As the boat nears the vessel, Hopu is seen
swinging his hat in the air ; and as soon as he arrives within hail, he
shouts, " Oahu's idols are no more ! " On coming aboard, he brings
the thrilling news that the old king Kamehameha is dead ; that Liho-
liho, his son, succeeds him ; that the images of the gods are all
burned ; that the men are all " Inoahs," — they eat with the women ;
that but one chief was killed in settling the government, and he for
refusing to destroy his gods. Next day, the message was confirmed.
Kamehameha, a remarkable man, had passed away. On his death-
bed, he asked an American trader to tell him about the Americans'
God ; but, said the native informant, in his broken English, " He
no tell him anything." All the remaining intelligence was also true.
The missionaries wrote in their journal, " Sing, O heavens, for the
Lord hath done it." The brig soon anchored in Kailua Bay, the
king's residence ; and a fourteen days' consultation between the king
and chiefs, followed. Certain foreigners opposed their landing ; " they
had come to conquer the islands." u Then," said the chiefs, " they
would not have brought their women." The decision was favorable.
Messrs. Bingham, Loomis, Chamberlain, and Honoree, go to Oahu ;
and Messrs. Ruggles and Whitney accompany the young Tamoree to
his father, the subject king of Kauai. The meeting of father and
son was deeply affecting. The old king, for his son's sake, adopted
Mr. Ruggles also, as his son, and gave him a tract of land, with the
power of a chief. He prepared him a house, soon built a school-house
and chapel, and followed him with acts of friendship which were of
8 SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
great benefit to the mission while the king lived, and after his death.
He himself became a hopeful convert, and in 1824 died in the faith.
And now the missionaries settled down to their work. They had
found a nation sunk in ignorance, sensuality and vice, and nominally
without a religion — though, really, still in the grasp of many of
their old superstitions. The old religion had been discarded chiefly
on account of its burdensomeness. We cannot here recount all the
agencies, outer and inner, which brought about this remarkable con-
vulsion. But no religious motives seem to have had any special
power. Indeed, King Liholiho was intoxicated when he dealt to
the system its finishing stroke, by compelling his wives to eat pork.
And by a Providence as remarkable as inscrutable, the high priest
threw his whole weight into the scale. Into this opening, thus sig-
nally furnished by the hand of God, the missionaries entered, with
wonder and gratitude. The natives educated in America proved less
serviceable than was expected. Tennooe was soon excommunicated ;
although in later years he recovered, and lived and died a well-
reputed Christian. Hopu and Honoree, while they continued faith-
ful, had partly lost their native tongue, lacked the highest skill as
interpreters, and naturally failed in judgment. Hopu, at the opening
of the first revival, was found busy in arranging the inquirers on his
right hand and his left hand, respectively, as they answered yes or
no to the single question, " Do you love your enemies ? " and was
greatly disturbed at being interrupted.
The king and the chiefs, with their families, were the first pupils.
They insisted on the privilege. Within three months, the king could
read the English language ; and in six months, several chiefs could
both read and write. The missionaries devoted themselves vigorously
to the work of reducing the native speech to writing ; and in less
than two years, the first sheet of a native spelling-book was printed
— followed by the second, however, only after the lapse of six months.
From time to time, several accessions of laborers "were received from
America, and various changes of location took place. The first bap-
tized native was Keopuolani, the mother of the king ; and others of
the high chiefs were among the earlier converts. The leading per-
sonages, for the most part, showed much readiness to adopt the sug-
gestions of the missionaries. In 1824, the principal chiefs formally
agreed to recognize the Sabbath, and to adopt the ten commandments
as the basis of government. They also soon passed a law forbidding
females to visit the ships for immoral purposes.
The gravest obstacles encountered, came from vile captains and
crews of English and American vessels. They became ferocious
SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 9
towards the influences and the men that checked their lusts. The
British whale-ships Daniel, and John Palmer, and the American
armed schooner Dolphin, commanded by Lieutenant Percival, were
prominent in open outrage. The house of missionary Richards was
twice assailed by the ruffians of the ship Daniel, encouraged by their
captain. On one occasion, they came and demanded his influence to
repeal the law against prostitution. On his refusal, they, in the pres-
ence of his feeble wife, threatened, with horrid oaths, to destroy his
property, his house, his life, and the lives of all his family. Two
days after, forty men returned, with a black flag, and armed with
knives, repeating the demand. The chiefs at length called out a
company of two hundred men, armed with muskets and spears, and
drove them off. The crew of the Dolphin, with knives and clubs,
on the Sabbath, assailed a small religious assembly of chiefs, gathered
at the house of one of their number, who was sick. Mr. Bingham,
who was also present, fell into their hands, on his way to protect his
house, and barely escaped with his life from the blow of a club and
the thrust of a knife, being rescued by the natives. A mob of Eng-
lish and American whalemen, in October, 1826, started for the house
of Mr. Richards, at Lahaina, with the intention of taking his life.
Not finding him, they pillaged the town ; while all the native women,
from a population of 4,000, fled from their lust, for refuge in the
mountains. A year later, the family of Mr. Richards took refuge in
the cellar, from the cannon-balls of the John Palmer, which passed
over the roof of the house. When printed copies of the ten com-
mandments were about to be issued, this class of men carried their
opposition, with threats, before the king. At Honolulu, while the
matter was pending, Mr. Ruggles was approached by an American
captain, bearing the satirical name of Meek, who flourished his dag-
ger, and angrily declared himself ready " to bathe his hands in the
heart's blood of every missionary who had any thing to do with it."
At one time, twenty-one sailors came up the hill, with clubs, threat-
ening to kill the missionaries unless they were furnished with women.
The natives gathering for worship, immediately thronged round the
house so thick that they were intimidated, and sneaked away.
At another time, fourteen of them surrounded him, with the same
demand ; but were frightened off by the resolute bearing of the noble
chief Kapiolani — a majestic woman, six feet high — who, arriving
at the instant, swung her umbrella over her head, with the crisp
words, " Be off in a moment, or I will have every one of you in
irons." She was the same Christian heroine wtio, in 1824, broke the
terrible spell which hung over the volcano Kilauea, by venturing down
10 SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
into the crater, in defiance of the goddess Pele, hurling stones into the
boiling lake, and worshiping Jehovah on its black ledge.
It is easy to understand why a certain class of captains and sailors
have always pronounced the Sandwich Islands Mission a wretched
failure.
The missionaries labored on undaunted. Eight years from their
landing found them at work,, some thirty-two in number, with 440
native teachers, 12,000 Sabbath hearers, and 26,000 pupils in their
schools. At this time, about fifty natives, including Kaahumanu, the
Queen Regent, and many of the principal chiefs, were members of
the church. And now, in the year 1828, the dews of heaven began
to fall visibly upon the mission. For two or three years, the way
had been preparing. Kaahumanu, converted in 1828, and several
other high chiefs, had thrown themselves vigorously and heartily into
the work. " They made repeated tours around all the principal
islands," says Mr. Dibble, " assembling the people from village to
village, and delivering addresses day after day, in which they prohib-
ited immoral acts, enjoined the observance of the Sabbath, encour-
aged the people to learn to read, and exhorted them to turn to God,
and to love and obey the Saviour of sinners." " The effect was
electrical — pervading at once every island of the group, every ob-
scure village and district, and operating with immense power on all
grades and conditions of society. The chiefs gave orders to the peo-
ple to erect houses of worship, to build school-houses, and to learn to
read — they readily did so ; to listen to the instructions of the mis-
sionaries — they at once came in crowds for that purpose." About
this time, too, (May, 1825,) the remains of King Liholiho and his wife
were brought back from their unfortunate expedition to England,
where they died from the measles. Their attending chiefs filled the
ears of the people with what they saw in England ; and Lord Byron,
commander of the British frigate which brought the remains, gave an
honorable testimony to the missionaries.
These various influences caused a great rush to hear the Word of
God. The people would come regularly, fifty or sixty miles, travel-
ing the whole of Saturday, to attend Sabbath worship ; and would
gather in little companies, from every point of the compass, like the
tribes as they went up to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the printed word
was circulated throughout the villages.
At length the early fruits appeared. In the year 1828, a gracious
work began, simultaneously and without communication, in the islands
of Hawaii, Oahu, and Maui. It came unexpectedly. The transac-
tions at Kaavaroa (Hawaii) well illustrate the work. Mr. Ruggles
SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 11
was away from home, with Mr. Bishop, on an excursion to visit the
schools of the island. They had been wrecked, and had swum
ashore. Two natives who were sent home for shoes and clothing,
brought a message from Mrs. Ruggles to her husband, requesting his
immediate return, for " strange things were happening — the natives
were coming in companies, inquiring what they should do to be
saved." He hastened back, and found the house surrounded from
morning till night, and almost from night till morning: A company
of ten or twenty would be received into the house, and another com-
pany would wait their turn at the gate. So it went on for weeks, and
even months, and the missionaries could get no rest or refreshment,
except as they called in Kapiolani and others of the converted chiefs,
to relieve them. Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles had the names of 2,500
inquirers on their books. With multitudes, it was, no doubt, but
sympathy or fashion ; but there were also a large number of real
inquirers, and many hopeful conversions. All the converts were kept
in training classes a year, before they were admitted to the church,
and then only on the strictest examination. During the two follow-
ing years, 350 persons were received to communion at the several
stations. For a time, the work seemed to lull again. But in 1836,
the whole aspect of the field was so inviting that the Board sent
out a strong missionary reinforcement of thirty-two, persons, male
and female.
At this time, and for the following year, the hearts of the mission-
aries were singularly drawn out in desires and prayers for the conver-
sion, not only of the Islands, but of America and of the world. And
scarcely had the new laborers been assigned to their places, and
learned the language, when (in 1838) there began and continued, for
six years, one of the most remarkable awakenings that the world has
ever witnessed. All hearts seemed tender. Whenever the Word
was preached, conviction and conversions followed. The churches
roused up to self-examination and prayer ; the stupid listened ; the
vile and groveling learned to feel ; the congregations became im-
mense, and sometimes left their churches for the open air, and the
prayer-meetings left the lecture-room for the body of the church.
There were congregations of four, five and six thousand persons.
The missionaries preached from seven to twenty times a week ; and
the sense of guilt in the hearers often broke forth in groans and loud
cries. Probably many indiscretions were committed, and there were
many spurious conversion*. But, after all allowances, time showed
that a wonderful work was wrought. During the six years from
1838 to 1843, inclusive, twenty-seven thousand persons were admit-
12 SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
ted to the churches. In some instances, the crowds to be baptized
on a given Sabbath required extraordinary modes of baptism ; and
Mr. Coan is said to have sprinkled water with a brush upon the can-
didates, as they came before him in throngs.
The next twenty years added more than 20,000 other members to
the churches, making the whole number received up to 1863, some
50,000 souls. Many of these had then been excommunicated — in
some instances, it was thought, too hastily ; many thousand had
gone home to heaven ; and in 1863, some 20,000 still survived in
connection with the churches.
At length came the time when the Islands were to be recognized
as nominally a Christian nation, and the responsibility of their Chris-
tian institutions was to be rolled off upon themselves. In June,
1863, Dr. Anderson, Senior Secretary of the American Board, met
with the Hawaiian Evangelical Association to discuss this important
measure. After twenty-one days of debate, the result was reached
with perfect unanimity, and the Association agreed to assume the
responsibility which had been proposed to them. This measure
was consummated by the Board in the autumn following, and those
stations no longer looked to the American churches for management
and control. " The mission has been, as such, disbanded and merged
in the community."
On the 15th of January, 1864, at Queen's Hospital, Honolulu,
died William Kanui, (Tennooe,) aged sixty-six years, the last of the
native youth who gave rise to the mission and accompanied the first
missionaries. He had wandered — had been excommunicated — and
was restored ; and after many years of faithful service he died in the
triumph of faith. In his last sickness he used " to recount the won-
derful ways " in which God had led him. " The names of Cornelius,
Mills, Beecher, Daggett, Prentice, Griffin, and others were often on
his lips ; " and he went, no doubt, to join them all above. God had
spared his life to see the whole miraculous change that had lifted his
nation from the depths of degradation to civilization and Christianity.
Could the spirit of Henry Obookiah have stood in Honolulu soon
after the funeral of Kanui, he would have hardly recognized his na-
tive island except by its great natural landmarks. He would have
seen the city of Honolulu, once a place of grass huts and filthy
lanes, now marked by substantial houses and sidewalks, and a gen-
eral air of civilization ; a race of once naked savages decently attired
and living, some of them, in comparative refinement ; a nation of
readers, whom he left without an alphabet ; Christian marriage firm-
ly established in place of almost promiscuous concubinage ; property
SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 13
in the interior, exposed with absolute security for an indefinite time,
where formerly nothing was safe for an hour ; the islands dotted with
a hundred capacious church edifices, built by native hands, some of
them made of stone, most of them with bells ; a noble array of several
hundred common schools, two female seminaries, a normal school
for natives, a high school that furnished the first scholar to one of the
classes in Williams College ; a theological seminary and twenty-nine
native preachers, besides eighteen male and female missionaries sent
to the Marquesas Islands ; near twenty thousand living church mem-
bers ; a government with a settled constitution, a legislature, and
courts of justice, and avowing the Christian religion to be " the
established national religion of the Hawaiian Islands."
These facts exhibit the bright and marvelous aspect of the case.
But, of course, they have their drawbacks. The Sandwich Islands
are not Paradise, nor even America. The stage of civilization is, as
it must be, far below that of our own country. The old habits still
shade into the new. Peculiar temptations to intemperance and licen-
tiousness come down by inheritance. Foreign interventions and
oppositions have been and still are grave hindrances. Church mem-
bers but fifty years removed from a state of brutalism, can not and
do not show the stability, intelligence, and culture of those who
inherit the Christian influences of a thousand years.
But the amazing transformation of the islands is a fact that de-
pends not alone on the estimates of the missionaries, or of the Board
that employed them. The most generous testimonies have come from
other sources. The Rev. F. S. Rising, of the American Church
Missionary Society, explored the Islands in 1866, for the express
purpose of testing the question. He visited nearly every mission
station, examined the institutions — religious, educational, social;
made the personal acquaintance of the missionaries of all creeds, and
conversed with persons of every profession and social grade. And
he writes to the Secretary of the American Board : " The deeper I
pushed my investigations, the stronger became my conviction, that
what had been on your part necessarily an experimental work in
modern missions had, under God, proved an eminent success. Every
sunrise brought me new reasons for admiring the power of divine
grace, which can lift the poor out of the dust, and set him among
princes. Every sunsetting gave me fresh cause to bless the Lord
for that infinite love which enables us to bring to our fellow-men such
rich blessings as your missionaries have bestowed on the Hawaiian
Islands. To me it seemed marvelous, that in comparatively so few
years, the social, political, and religious life of the nation should have
14 SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
undergone so radical and blessed a change as it had. Looking at
the kingdom of Hawaii-nei as it to-day has its recognized place
among the world's sovereignties, I can not but see in it one of the
brightest trophies of the power of the cross." " What of Hawaiian
Christianity ? I would apply to it the same test by which we
measure the Christianity of our own and other lands. There are
certain outward signs which indicate that it has a high place in the
national respect, conscience, and affection. Possessing these visible
marks, we declare of any country that it is Christian. The Hawaiian
kingdom, for this reason, is properly and truly called so. The con-
stitution recognizes the Christian faith as the religion of the nation.
The Bible is found in almost every hut. Prayer — social, family,
and individual — is a popular habit. The Lord's day is more sacredly
observed than in New York. Churches of stone or brick dot the
valleys and crown the hill-tops, and have been built by the voluntary
contributions of the natives. There the Word is preached and the
sacraments administered. Sunday schools abound. The contribu-
tions of the people for religious uses are very generous, and there is
a native ministry, growing in numbers and influence, girded for
carrying on the work so well begun. The past history of the Ha-
waiian mission abounds with bright examples [of individual right-
eousness], like Kaahumanu and Kapiolani, and some were pointed
out to me as I went to and fro. They were at one time notoriously
wicked. Their lives are manifestly changed. They are striving to
be holy in their hearts and lives. They are fond of the Bible, of
the sanctuary and prayer. Their theology may be crude, but their
faith in Christ is simple and tenacious. And when we see some such
in every congregation, we know that the work has not been altogether
in vain." In 1860, Richard H. Dana, Esq., a distinguished Boston
lawyer, of the Episcopal Church, gave a similar testimony in the
New York " Tribune," during his visit to the Islands. Among other
things, he mentions that " the proportion of inhabitants who can
read and write is greater than in New England ; " that they may be
seen " going to school and public worship with more regularity than
the people at home ; " that after attending the examination of Oahu
College, he " advised the young men to remain there to the end of
their course [then extending only to the Junior year], as they could
not pass the Freshman and Sophomore years more profitably else-
where, in my judgment ; " that " in no place in the world, that I have
visited, are the rules which control vice and regulate amusement so
strict, yet so reasonable, and so fairly enforced ; " that " in the inte-
rior it is well known that a man may travel alone with money, through
SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 15
the wildest spots, unarmed ; " and that he " found no hut without
its Bible and hymn book in the native tongue ; and the practice of
family prayer and grace before meat, though it be no more than a
calabash of poi and a few dried fish, and whether at home or on a
journey, is as common as in New England a century ago."
There is one sad aspect about this interesting people. The popu-
lation has been steadily declining since they were first discovered.
Cook, in 1773, estimated the number of inhabitants at 400,000.
This estimate, long thought to be exaggerated, is now supposed to be
not far from the truth. But in 1823, wars, infanticide, foreign lust,
imported drinks, and disease, had reduced them to the estimated
number of 142,000 ; and in 1830, to the ascertained number of
130,000. In the lapse of a few years after the first visits of foreign
vessels, half the population are said to have been swept away with
diseases induced or heightened by their unholy intercourse. The
mission has done what could be done to save the nation ; but the
wide taint of infamous disease was descending down the national life,
before the missionaries reached the islands ; and the flood-gates of
intemperance were wide open. They have retarded the nation's
decline ; but foreign influences have always interfered — and now,
perhaps, more than ever. The sale of ardent spirits was once
checked, but is now free. The present monarch stands aloof from
the policy of some of his predecessors, and from the influence of our
missionaries. And the population, reduced to 62,000 in 1866, seems
to be steadily declining. The "Pacific Commercial Advertiser,"
which furnishes the facts, finds the chief cause in the fearful preva-
lence, still, of vice and crime, which are said to have been increasing
of late ; and the reason for this increase is " political degradation,"
and the readiness with which the people now obtain intoxicating
drinks. It must be remembered, that " in the height of the whaling
season, the number of transient seamen in the port of Honolulu equals
half the population of the town ; " and the influences they bring,
breathe largely of hell. Commercial forces and movements, mean-
while, are changing the islands. The lands are already passing into
the hands of foreign capitalists, and the islands are falling into the
thoroughfare of the nations.
The proper sequel, therefore, of this grand missionary triumph
may be taken away ; and the race itself, as a nation, may possibly
cease to be. But in no event can the value or the glory of the work
achieved be destroyed. Not only will thousands on thousands of
human souls thereby have been brought into the kingdom, by the
labor of a hundred missionaries, and the expenditure of perhaps a
16 SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
million of dollars from America ; but a grand experiment will have been
tried before the world, and an imperishable memorial erected for all
time, of what the remedial power of the gospel can accomplish, in
an incredibly short time, upon a most imbruted race. " Fifty years
ago," says Dr. A. P. Peabody, " the half-reasoning elephant, or the
tractable and troth-keeping dog, might have seemed the peer, or
more, of the unreasoning and conscienceless Hawaiian. From that
very race, from that very generation, with which the nobler brutes
might have scorned to claim kindred, have been developed the peers
of saints and angels." And all the more glorious is the movement,
that the nation was sunk so low, and was so rapidly wasting away.
" If the gospel," says Dr. Anderson, " took the people at the lowest
point of social existence — at death's door, when beyond the reach
of all human remedies, with the causes of decline and destruction all
in their most vigorous operation — and has made them a Christian
people, checked the tide of depopulation, and raised the nation so in
the scale of social life, as to have gained for it an acknowledged place
among the nations of the earth, what more wonderful illustration can
there be of its remedial power ? "
The history of the Sandwich Islands will stand forever as the vin-
dication, to the caviler, of the worth of Christian missions, and as a
demonstration to the Christian, of what they might be expected to
accomplish in other lands, if prosecuted with a vigor at all propor-
tioned to the nature and extent of the field, and crowned with the
blessing of God.
As indicating, somewhat, the present condition at the Islands of
that Christian work for which so much effort has been made, it may
be well to add here a few sentences from the Annual Report of the
American Board for 1868 : —
" The Christianity of the Islands has had severe trials of late, from
the attitude of the government, and the opposition of corrupt and
corrupting officials. . . . The gospel is on trial ; the missionaries,
the native pastors, and the faithful followers of Christ in the native
churches and among the foreign population, are deserving of a large
place in the sympathies and prayers of Christian men the world over,
as against such odds — an unfriendly government, the intrigues of the
Papacy and of the Reformed Catholics, the opposition of ungodly
men, who would perpetuate vice and immorality for their own wicked
ends, and the tendency of the natives, not yet fully confirmed in habits
of virtue, to yield to the pressure of evil within and without — they
still press on with the banner of the cross.
SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
17
" The addition of 827 members to the native churches on profes-
sion of faith, the contribution of $29,023 to various Christian objects,
the sending out of new missionaries, the almost entire support of their
own Christian institutions, the past year, are evidences that the good
work is nobly maintained. . . .
" There are now twenty-six native pastors, settled over as many
churches, besides four licensed preachers, having stated charges, all
supported by the Hawaiian churches. And there are thirteen Ha-
waiian missionaries in the Marquesas and in Micronesia, — eight
ordained ministers and five licensed preachers."
The following list presents the names of persons who have been
sent out by the American Board, in connection with its work at these
Islands. It should be noted, however, that quite a number of the
children of missionaries, and some other persons, not named in this
list, are or have been engaged in educational and evangelizing labors
at the Islands, some of them supported wholly or in part by the Board,
and others entirely by those for whom they labor. It should also be
said, that many of those sent out by the Board, and still living and
laboring at the Islands, no longer receive support from the funds of
the Board. Those who are now sustained, wholly or in part, by the
Board are designated by the letter A against their names. Those
known to have died are marked with a * : —
NAMES.
Sailed for the
Mission.
Left or
Released.
Died.
Rev. Hiram Bingham
Mrs. Sybil Bingham.* . . .
Rev. Asa Thurston.* ....
Mrs. Lucy G. Thurston. A . . .
Mr. Daniel Chamberlain.
Oct. 23, 1819.
«
M
««
M
«
1841
«
1823
M
1848
1868
Mr. Samuel Whitney.* ....
Mrs. Mercy Whitney. A ...
Dr. Thomas Holman.* ....
Mrs. Lucia Holman
Mr. Elisha Loomis. ....
Mrs. Maria T. Loomis. ...
It
«
c
1
(
(
1
1820
M
1827
{<
1834
1845
1821
Mrs. Nancy Ruggles
«
Nov. 19, 1822.
it
1838
1847
Mrs. Clarissa Richards.* . . .
Rev. Chas. S. Stewart
Mrs. Harriet B. Stewart.* .
Rev. Artemas Bishop
Mrs. E. E. Bishop.* ....
Dr. Abraham Blatchley.
Mrs. Jemima Blatchley.
Mr. Joseph Goodrich (ordained at the
M
M
<(
«
«
11
M
(«
1825
t<
M
1826
M
1836
1828
2
18
SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
NAMES.
Sailed for the
Mission.
Left or
Released .
Died.
Nov. 19, 1822.
1836
<
1828
<
M
Mr. Levi Chamberlain.* . . .
«
1849
Rev. Lorrin Andrews.* ....
Nov. 3, 1827.
1842
1868
<
M
Rev. E. W. Clark. A ....
<
Mrs. Mary K. Clark.*
<
1857
Rev J S. Green
<
1842
Mrs. T. A. Green
<
it
•
Rev. P. J. Gulick
<
Mrs. F. H. Gulick
<
Mrs. M. P. Chamberlain. A ...
«
Mr. Stephen Shepard.*
<
1834
Mrs M C Shepard ....
<
1835
Dr. G. P. Jndd
<
1842
Mrs. L. P. Judd. .....
i
a
Miss M. C. Ogden. A . . .
i
Miss Delia Stone (Mrs. Bishop). .
<
Miss Mary Ward (Mrs. Rogers).*
i
1834
Rev. Dwight Baldwin, M. D. A
Dec. 28, 1830.
Mrs. C. F. Baldwin. A ...
<
Rev. Sheldon Dibble.* ....
<
1845
Mrs. M. M. Dibble.* ....
*
1837
Mr. Andrew Jolmstone
<
1836
Mrs. Johnstone.* ....
<
«
<
1840
Mrs. M. T. Tinker
(C
Rev. J. S. Emerson.* ....
Nov. 26, 1831.
1867
Mrs. Ursula S. Emerson. A
•
Rev. D. B. Lyman. A ....
<
Mrs. Sarah J. Lyman. A ...
<
Rev. Ephraim Spaulding.*
1
1837
1840
Mrs. Julia Spaulding.
c
ci
Rev. W. P. Alexander. A ...
<
Mrs. Mary Ann Alexander. A
<
Rev. Richard Armstrong.* , .
1
1849
1860
Mrs. Clarissa Armstrong. .
i
«
Rev. Cochran Forbes. . , .,
4
1847
Mrs. Rebecca D. Forbes. .
i
(C
Rev. H. R. Hitchcock.* . . , .
<
1855
Mrs. Rebecca Hitchcock. .
<
Rev. Lorenzo Lyons. A . .
<
Mrs. Betsey Lyons.* . . . „
«
1837
Dr. Alonzo Chapin. .
<
1835
Mrs. Mary Ann Chapin. . . .
<
«
Mr. Ed. H. Rogers.* ....
i
1853
Rev. Benjamin W. Parker. A . .
Nov. 2, 1832.
Mrs. Mary E. Parker. A ...
<
Rev. Lowell Smith. A ...
«
Mrs. Abby W. Smith. A .
<
Mr. Lemuel Fuller
«
1833
Rev. Titus Coan. A ....
Dec. 5 1834.
-/m.
Mrs. Fidelia C. Coan. A ...
i
i
1849
Mrs. Ann M. Dimond. ...
<
M
Mr. E. O. Hall
<
((
Mrs. Sarah L. Hall
<
((
SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
19
NAMES.
Sailed for the
Mission.
Left or
Released,
Died.
Miss Lydia Brown.* ....
Miss E. M. Hitchcock* (Mrs. Kogers).
Her. Isaac Bliss
Mrs. Emily Bliss
Rev. D. T. Conde
Mrs. A. L. Conde.* ....
Rev. Mark Ives. .....
Mrs. Mary A. Ives. ....
Rev. Thomas Lafon, M. D. .
Mrs. Sophia L. Lafon. . . .
Dr. 8. L. Andrews. ....
Mrs. Parnelly Andrews.* . . .
Mr. Amos S. Csoke
Mrs. Juliette M. Cooke. ...
Mr. Wm. S. Van Duzee.
Mrs. Oral Van Duzee.
Mr. Edward Bailey. . . . " .
Mrs. Caroline H. Bailey. ...
Mr. Abner Wilcox. A ....
Mrs. Lucy E. Wilcox. A ...
Mr. Horton O. Knapp.* ....
Mrs. Charlotte Knapp. ...
Mr. Charles McDonald.* ...
Mrs. Harriet T. McDonald.
Mr. Edwin Locke.* ....
Mrs. Martha L. Locke.* ...
Mr. Bethuel Munn. ....
Mrs. Louisa Munn.* ....
Mr. Samuel N. Castle
Mrs. Angelina L. Castle.* .
Mr. Edward Johnson* (ordained after
going)
Mrs. Lois S. Johnson. A ...
Miss Marcia Smith. ....
Miss Lucy G. Smith (Mrs. Lyons). .
Rev. Daniel Dole. A . . . .
Mrs. Charlotte C. Dole.*
Rev. Elias Bond. A ....
Mrs. Ellen M. Bond. A ....
Rev. John D. Paris. A ...
Mrs. Mary C. Paris. A ....
Mr. William H. Rice.*
Mrs. Marv S. Rice. A ....
Rev. Geo* B. Rowell
Mrs. Malvina J. Rowell. ....
Dr. James W. Smith. A ...
Mrs. M. K. Smith. A ....
Rev. Asa B. Smith. .
Mrs. Smith. . . .......
Mrs. Mary T. Castle. .,
Rev. C. B. Andrews. . . . ..
Rev. T. Dwight Hunt.
Mrs. Mary H. Hunt
Rev. John F. Pogue. A ...
Rev. Eliphalet Whittlesey.
Mrs. Eliza H. Whittlesey. .
Miss Maria K. Whitney (Mrs. Pogue). A
Rev. Sarnue.1 G. Dw.ight. .
Dec. 5, 1834.
«<
Dec. 4, 1836.
1841
«
1858
1853
H
1840
M
1849
«
1852
n
1830
«
1850
1865
1857
1854
1846
1842
1852
1853
Nov. 14, 1840.
1845
1839
1843
1842
1841
1840
1867
1844
1862
May 5, 1841.
•1842
Nov. 2, 1842.
Dec. 4, 1843.
Oct. 23, 1847.
1865
M
1846
«
1852
1849
«
1854
20
SKETCH OF THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
NAMES.
Sailed for the
Mission.
Left or
Released.
Died.
Oct. 23 1847
1 OKA
Mrs. Maria L. Kinney.*
Dr. C. H. Wetmore. . .
Oct. 16, 1848.
1856
1858
Mrs. Lucy S. Wetmore.
Rev. W. C. Shipman.* ....
June 4 1854
1861
Mrs. Jane S. Shipman. A .
Rev. Wm. O. Baldwin
Mrs. Mary P. Baldwin.
Mr. Wm. A. Spooner
Mrs. Eliza Ann Spooner. .
Rev. Anderson 0. Forbes. A .
Nov. 28, 1854.
April 16, 1855.
1857
1860
v
In connection with this sketch, it will be proper briefly to refer to
operations at the Islands by Roman Catholic, Mormon, and " Re-
formed Catholic " missionaries, whose efforts have not been without
influence upon the prosperity of that evangelizing work which the mis-
sionaries of the Board have prosecuted.
ROMAN CATHOLICS.
Early in the history of the mission (in 1825), a French adventurer,
by the name of Rives, left the Islands, and went to France, where,
pretending to be a large landholder at the Islands, and to have
much influence, he applied for priests to establish a Papal mission.
In 1826 the Pope appointed an Apostolic Prefect of the Sandwich
Islands. He arrived at Honolulu, with two other priests and four lay-
men, in July, 1827. They landed privately, in disregard of the law
which required foreigners to obtain permission before landing. Ordered
to leave, they still remained, in disregard of law, and connected them-
selves with a chief who was manifesting a disposition to resist the
authority of the Regent. Having opened a chapel, it was at once
reported that they worshiped images ; and the chiefs feared that
their old religion, with all its evil tendencies, was about to be re-
vived. Continuing to identify themselves with a party of malcon-
tents, the rulers had much trouble with them, a conspiracy seemed
fast ripening, and at length, in April, 1831, the chiefs passed a formal
order, requiring these foreign priests, who were there without author-
ity, and who were regarded as abettors of rebellion and promoters of
vice, to leave the Islands. Still they did not go, and in December
the government fitted out a vessel and sent them to California. In
SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION. 21
all this the authorities acted upon their own views of what was right
and necessary in the case, while the American missionaries discoun-
tenanced anything that would be regarded as an interference with
religious liberty. •
In 1836 another Papal priest came, and was forbidden to remain.
He, however, like the former company, evaded repeated orders to
leave, and in the spring of 1837 he was joined by two of the ban-
ished priests, returned from California. The captains of an English
and of a French war vessel now interfered, to prevent their being at
once compelled again to depart ; but those who had returned from
California did leave in the autumn. In December the government
forbade the teaching of " the Pope's religion." In July, 1839, the
frigate L'Artemise, Captain Laplace, visited Honolulu, and compelled
the authorities to sign a treaty declaring the Catholic worship free,
and giving a site for a Catholic church at Honolulu. A footing was
thus forcibly secured for Papal priests and influence, and the report
of the American Board for the next year, 1840, states, " The influence
of Popery begins to be disastrously seen on the Island of Oahu. It
is adverse to learning, religion, morals, and social order. For this
very reason, the best part of the native population regard it Avith
dread and aversion. But it could not be expected that all of such a
people, just emerging from utter ignorance and idolatry, would see
the errors or resist the inticements of the priests thus forced upon the
toleration of the government. The Papal religion has maintained its
ground, and, according to the report of the bishop a few years since,
it would appear that about one third of the population of the Islands
profess to be, or at least are claimed as, " Catholics."
THE MORMOHS.
The teachers of doctrines yet more opposed to the gospel plan of
salvation reached the Islands about 1850. Writing in February,
1851, Mr. Lyons stated that two Mormons, " an elder and a prophet,"
from Salt Lake, had appeared on Hawaii, belonging to " a company
of ten, scattered in pairs over the Islands." They and others have
labored zealously to propagate the Mormon doctrines, but not with
great success. When Dr. Anderson visited the Islands, in 1863, he
found their principal settlement on Lanai, a small island opposite
Lahaina, but gained no reliable information as to their numbers, say-
ing, however, that in 1861, Captain Gibson, "their leading man on
the island," writing the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated their
number of adults at 3,580.
22 SKETCH OP THE HAWAIIAN MISSION.
" REFORMED CATHOLICS."
Bishop Staley, from England, and two presbyters, belonging to the
"High Church," "Ritualistic'" portion of the English Established
Church, reached Honolulu in October, 1862. Styling themselves
" Reformed Catholics," they, and others who have followed them in
the same mission, have from the outset pursued a course adverse to
the interests of the American mission, and of Evangelical Protestant
Christianity ; manifesting more sympathy for, and more readiness to
fellowship with, the Papal than the Protestant preachers and church,
and in their worship, their readings and drapings, and their many
ceremonies, approaching far more nearly to the formalism of Rome
than to the simplicity of the gospel. But though countenanced by
the king, and by others in high places, they seem to have found it
difficult to interest very many of the people in their new form of
religion. It has been too showy, too much like the Roman Catholic,
for their religious tastes and convictions. The precise statistics of
the mission cannot be given. Bishop Staley has now been for some
time in England, but there are presbyters and " sisters " at the Islands,
occupying, it is supposed, four stations at least, — Honolulu, Lahaina,
Kona, and Wailuku, — with schools for boys and for girls, as well
as preaching services. How many they number, as connected with
their church or congregations, is not known.
SKETCH OF THE MICRONESIA MISSION.
THE mission church must in due time turn missionary. So rightly
reasoned the members of the Sandwich Islands mission. Thirty years
had elapsed ; fifteen hundred dollars a year were collected at the
monthly concert ; the first native pastor had been ordained by a
council of native churches ; and in the same year, the members of
the mission proposed that Hawaiian Christians should carry the gos-
pel to other islands. The Prudential Committee at Boston warmly
approved the proposal. Another year (1850) saw the "Hawaiian
Missionary Society " formed at Honolulu.
Two thousand miles away, to the south-west of Honolulu, lie an im-
mense number of islands — two thousand or more — now embraced
9
under the general name of Micronesia — " The Little Islands."
Scattered in groups, known by various appellations — Ladrones,
Carolines, and the like — they stretch from three degrees south to
twenty degrees north of the equator, and were then supposed to con-
tain a population of two hundred thousand. Many of them were
built wholly by the coral insect, and lie flat upon the water, while a
few of them are basaltic islands, with mountains two or three thou-
sand feet in height. These various groups differ in language and in
the details of their customs and superstitions, but agree in the general
characteristics of their native occupants. They are the natural homes
of indolence and sensuality, of theft and violence. The warmth of
the climate renders clothing a superfluity, and houses needless except
for shade ; while the constant vegetation of the tropics dispenses with
accumulated stores of food. A race of tawny savages stalk round
almost or quite naked, swim like fish in the waters, or bask in the
sunshine on shore. They prove as ready to catch, as vile sailors are
to communicate, the vices of civilized lands. Intemperance is an
easily besetting sin ; and licentiousness- is, with rare exceptions, the
(23)
24 SKETCH OF THE MICRONESIA MISSION.
general and almost ineradicable pollution of the Pacific Islands. But
in the Kingsmill group, the missionaries found a people who, though
practicing polygamy, held in honor the chastity of woman.
The attention of the missionaries was turned to three of these
groups of islands — the Caroline, the Marshall, or Mulgrave, and the
Kingsmill,- or Gilbert Islands.
The eastern portion of the Caroline chain was naturally fixed
upon as the centre of operations, by reason of the convenient
location and healthful climate. Two of these, Kusaie and Ponape,
were the first to be occupied. Ponape — or Ascension Island —
is a high basaltic island, sixty miles in circumference, surrounded
by ten smaller basaltic islands, all inclosed within a coral reef.
It rises to the height of 2,850 feet, and has its rivers and
waterfalls. The island is a physical paradise, with a delightful
climate — in which the range of the thermometer for three years was
but seventeen degrees, and with a various and luxuriant vegetation.
Among the indigenous products are the breadfruit, banana, cocoanut,
taro, sugar-cane, ava, arrowroot, sassafras, sago, wild orange, and
mango, with an immense variety of timber trees ; while lemons,
oranges, pine-apples, coffee, tamarinds, guava, tobacco, and other
exotics, thrive abundantly. From the mangrove trees that line the
shore, the ground rises by a series of natural terraces ; and while
twenty varieties of birds fill the air with life, a population of five
thousand people are so hidden in the overhanging forests and shrub-
bery, that, but for an occasional canoe, or a smoke ascending, the
passing vessel would scarcely know it to be inhabited. The inhab-
itants seem to be of Malay descent, and the place was " a moral
Sodom."
Kusaie — or Strong's Island — the easternmost of the Carolines,
is one of a small cluster, and is about thirty miles in circumference.
It rises to the height of 2,000 feet, wooded to the summit ; and it
then contained some 1,500 people, strongly Asiatic both in look and
speech. Here polygamy was unknown, and labor comparatively
honorable. Many of the inhabitants, with an unusual quickness of
apprehension, had learned of foreigners a kind of broken English
before the missionaries arrived ; and the " Good King George," as his
subjects called him, had, with surprising wisdom, forbidden the tapping
of the cocoanut tree for the manufacture of intoxicating drink.
North-east of Kusaie lie the Marshall — sometimes called Mulgrave
— Islands ; subdivided into the Radack and Ralick — or eastern and
western — chains. About thirty principal islands compose the group.
They are all of coral formation, but much higher, more fertile and
SKETCH OP THE MICRONESIA MISSION. 25
inviting, than the Gilbert group south of them. Majuro, or Arrow-
smith, for example, is described as a magnificent island, rising eight
or ten feet above the water at the landing-place, sprinkled with forests
of breadfruit and pandanus trees, and abounding with cocoanuts and
bananas. The population of the whole group was estimated at
twelve thousand or upwards, speaking, to some extent, different
languages. They had been comparatively uncontaminated by foreign
intercourse, from their reputation for ferocity. Several vessels had
been cut off by them, and a great number of foreigners killed at dif-
ferent times, in retaliation for a former deadly attack upon the
natives. The residence of the king and principal chiefs was at
Ebon Island. The natives are in some respects superior to many
of the Pacific islanders. Their features are sharper, their persons
spare and athletic, and their countenances vivacious. The women
wear their hair smoothly parted on the forehead, and neatly rolled up
in the neck — sometimes adorned with flowers ; and their skirts, fine,
and beautifully braided and bordered, extend from the waist to the
feet. The men exhibit much more skill than is common in this
region, and are fond of ornaments. Their comparative intelligence
and exemption from foreign influence constituted the inviting aspect
of this case ; their alleged ferocity, the formidable feature.
Directly south of the Marshall Islands, on both sides of the
equator, lie the Kingsmill, or Gilbert Islands. Fifteen or sixteen
principal islands, surrounded by a multitude of islets, raised by the
coral insect barely above the level of the ocean, contain a population
of thirty or forty thousand, speaking mostly a common language,
resembling the Hawaiian. The land is densely covered with cocoa-
nut groves. This is the " tree of a thousand uses," furnishing the
natives almost " everything they eat, drink, wear, live in, or use in
any way." Their hats, clothing, mats and cords are made from its
leaves ; their houses are built from its timber ; they eat the fruit,
drink the milk, make molasses and rum from its juice, and manufac-
ture from it immense quantities of oil for use and for sale. Their
religion is the loosest system of spirit-worship, without priest, idol,
or temple. They practice polygamy. The children go naked for
ten or twelve years. The men wear a girdle, and the women a
broader mat around them. Their appearance of nudity is relieved
by the tattooing, with which they are profusely and skillfully adorned.
The considerable population, the unity of origin, faith, and language,
and the general resemblance of their speech to the Hawaiian, rendered
this group inviting, especially to the Sandwich Island laborers,
although its torrid sun, comparatively barren soil, and limited range
26 SKETCH OP THE MICRONESIA MISSION.
of vegetation, made it not altogether favorable for the American
missionaries' home.
Such was the region to which the gospel was to be carried. On
the 18th of November, 1851, missionaries Snow and Gulick, with
their wives, left Boston in the Esther May, and two months afterward,
Mr. and Mrs. Sturges, in the Snow Squall, for Micronesia by way of
the Sandwich Islands. Seven native Hawaiians were ready to join
them ; but two only, with their wives, were selected for the opening
of the mission. The native churches made liberal contributions for
their outfit and support. King Kamehameha III. gave them a noble
letter of commendation to the Micronesian chiefs. A mission church
was organized early in July, 1852, and on the 15th of the same
month, just thirty-three years, or one whole generation, from the
date of the former parting at Long Wharf in Boston, the like scene
took place in the harbor of Honolulu. A crowd of natives thronged
the shore as the missionaries put off for the schooner Caroline. On
the deck of the schooner there is a prayer in Hawaiian and another
in English, a verse of the Missionary Hymn, a shaking of friendly
hands ; and with a gentle breeze the vessel glides away.
The Caroline arrived at the Gilbert Islands, and on the 21st of
August anchored at Kusaie. The missionaries were pleasantly re-
ceived by " Good King George," in a faded flannel shirt, while his
wife sat by in a short cotton gown, and his subjects approached him
crouching on their hands and knees. He consented to the mission,
gave them supplies, promised them land and a house, and on hearing
the thirteenth chapter of Romans, and witnessing their worship, he
pronounced both to be "first rate." Messrs. Snow, Opunui, and
their wives, commenced their work in this isolated place, where at
one time they passed a period of two full years without a letter from
America. A fortnight later the Caroline anchored in the land-locked
harbor of Ponape, where the king came on board, and, after some
conversation, told them it should be " good for them to stop." And
here Messrs. Sturges, Gulick, Kaaikaula, and their wives, were soon
established in their new home.
In 1854 they were followed by Dr. Pierson and the native Hawaiian,
Kanoa. These brethren brought a blessing to the crew of the whaling
bark Belle, that carried them ; her three mates were converted on
the voyage. As they cruised among the Marshall Islands on their
way to Kusaie, by a good providence the King's sister — a remarkable
woman — took passage from Ebon to another island, became attached
to the missionaries, and spoke their praises at every island where they
touched. The missionaries proceeded on their voyage to Kusaie, but
SKETCH OP THE MICRONESIA MISSION. 27
with a deep conviction that the Lord was calling them back to the
Marshall group.
At length (1857) the Morning Star, the children's vessel, heaves in
sight at Kusaie. She brings Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, and Kanakaole
with his wife, on their way to the Marshall and the Gilbert Islands.
They are joined here by Messrs. Pierson and Doane, and sail for their
destination. As they set out for Ebon Island, of the Marshall group,
they are solemnly warned by old sea-captains of the danger that
awaits them from that ferocious people. On approaching the island,
the captain, put up his boarding nettings, stationed his men fore and
aft, and- anxiously awaited the issue. Fifteen canoes drew near,
jammed full of men. In the prow of the foremost stood a powerful
man, with a wreath on his head and huge rings in his ears. On they
came ; but in the same instant Dr. Pierson and the savage recognized
each other as old acquaintances, and the savage came on board shout-
ing, " Docotor, docotor," in perfect delight. Many months before,
it seems, this man and a hundred others had been driven by a storm
upon Kusaie, where the missionaries had rescued them, and befriended
them with food and medicine ; and they had returned to their homes
in peace. So the Lord befriended the missionaries in turn, and pre-
pared them a welcome among the so-called " cannibals." And when,
after a farther cruise of thirty days, the Morning Star returned to leave
the missionaries at Ebon, they were met on the water by twenty canoe
loads of people, shouting, singing, and dancing for joy. On the shore
they were received with every demonstration of friendship ; and the
aged female chief, who had once sailed with Dr. Pierson among the
islands, took him by both hands and led him joyfully to her house.
On the same voyage Mr. Bingham and Kanoa were set down at
Apaiang, of the Gilbert group, where the king gave them a pleasant
home.
Thus was the gospel first carried to these three groups of islands ;
and here we leave them, and then- fellow-laborers that followed them,
chiefly Hawaiians, at their self-denying toils. We will briefly sketch
the progress of the work on the principal island, Ponape, as a speci-
men of the whole. Here the king, though almost helpless with the
palsy, was friendly to the enterprise ; while the Nanakin, his chief
officer, expressed himself warmly, and received an English book with
the avowed determination to learn to read it ; " the cooper should
teach him how, or he would pound him." Two short months sufficed
to awaken the enmity of unprincipled foreigners. Two captains had
bought one of the small islands, and made out a deed for the Nanakin
to sign. He brought it to the missionaries, who found it to contain
28 SKETCH OF THE MICRONESIA MISSION.
the grossest frauds, including even the forger)' of the Xanakin's sig-
nature. The exposure of course created hostility. Six months
brought fifteen vessels ; and though in most instances the captains
were friendly, and even kind, every arrival was attended with deplorable
influences on the morals of the native women. Then came the open-
ing of a school, some of the scholars sitting patiently for six long
hours to get an opportunity to steal. Then came the small-pox ; and
before the end of the first year, it had carried off multitudes of the
inhabitants, broken up the school, arrested all plans of labor, pros-
trated the Hawaiian preacher, and produced a general recklessness
and bitterness of feeling through the island. To add to the evil, the
vaccine matter received from the Sandwich Islands proved worthless ;
and wicked foreigners circulated the report that the missionaries had
introduced and were spreading the disease. By resorting boldly to
inoculation, and beginning with the Nanakin, the missionaries at
length saved many lives and regained confidence. In the midst of
this calamity, Mr. Sturges's house burned up, with all its contents,
driving him and his family to the woods. Hostilities arose also among
the tribes, •attended with robberies and murders ; and the sailors
continued to bring moral pollution. One day, in his accustomed
tour, Mr. Sturges passed near three brothels, all kept by foreigners.
But the missionaries toiled on, resumed their schools, gathered their
growing congregations, privately sowed the good seed, and in four
years' time were printing hymns and Old Testament stories in Pona-
pean. After a night of eight years, three converts were at one
time received to their little church, followed by eight others soon ;
and meanwhile a little church of six members was formed in another
part of the island. Revivals brought opposition and more or less of
persecution. At length a chapel is built in the mountains by native
hands, and at the principal station a church edifice, forty feet by sixty,
solemnly dedicated to God. Hardly was it consecrated, when the
Morning Star arrived with an eight hundred pound bell, the gift of
friends in Illinois ; and within a fortnight the Nanakin, with his wife
and fourteen other converts, sat down at the table of the Lord. The
chief had vibrated back and forth — now proclaiming Sabbath ob-
servance, breaking up five brothels, and following the missionary
round the island, and now distributing "toddy" profusely among
the people — till at length the Lord brought him in. Half the
islanders had by this time yielded an outward deference to the true
religion. Early in the year 1867, there were religious sen-ices regu-
larly held at twelve principal places, a thousand readers, 161 church
members in good standing, and numbers of converts soon to be
SKETCH OP THE MICRONESIA MISSION.
29
received. Three new churches had been erected by the natives within
two years, in one of which (in May, 1867) one hundred communi-
cants sat down to the Lord's table in the presence of six hundred
spectators, on the very spot where, fourteen years before, Mr. Sturges
was near being overcome and robbed ; and another of these churches,
just built, though seating five hundred persons, will soon need to be
enlarged. At Kusaie, there are 183 church members, of whom 93
were received in 1867. Three stone chapels had just been erected, four
native deacons ordained, and the eye of the missionary turned to one
man — the only living child of " good King George " — for a native
pastor ; while the influence of the churches is reacting on the sailors.
There are about sixty church members now at the Marshall Islands,
and the prospects are eminently hopeful. In the Gilbert group it is
still seed-time, but the knowledge is spreading from island to island.
Among the laborers are ten Hawaiian missionaries, who have toiled
wisely and faithfully. On many of these islands the population is
steadily growing less. Possibly the religious books that now exist
in these several tongues may one day lie, like Eliot's Indian Bible,
without a reader ; but they will be monuments of noble Christian self-
denial, and mementoes of souls gathered into the kingdom of heaven.
The following persons have been sent from the United States to
the Micronesia mission : —
NAMES.
Sailed for the
Mission.
Left or
Released.
Died.
Nov. 18, 1851.
Mrs. Lydia V. Snow
Rev. L. H. Gulick
Mrs. Louisa G. Gulick.
«
«
«
Jan. 17, 1852.
Mrs. Susan. M. Sturgess. .
Rev. E. T. Doane
H
June 4, 1854.
Mrs. S. \V. \V. Doane.* .
«
May, 1865.
1863
Rev. Geo. Pierson, M. D. .
Mrs. Nancy A. Pierson. . . .
Rev. Hiram Bingham, Jr. .
Mrs. Minerva C. Bingham.
Rev. Eph. P. Roberts.
Mrs. Myra H. Roberts
Nov. 28, 1854.
«
Dec. 2, 1857.
«
June 24, 1858.
«
'59 or '60
<(
1862
M
According to the latest statistics received, the church members, in
regular standing, in Micronesia, were — on Ponape, 1 78 ; Kusaie, 1 79 ;
Ebon, 80 ; Apaiang, 8. Total, 445 ; of whom 144 had been received
within the last year. This number of church members, it is well
said in a general letter from the mission, " does not indicate all that
has been wrought by the saving power of the gospel."
IT remains to say a few words of the Marquesas. The mission
here is in every aspect most remarkable, whether we consider the
character of the people, the origin, the agency, or the influence of
the mission. The Marquesas Islands, six in number, are situated
nearly as far from Micronesia as from Hawaii. They are of volcanic
formation, their mountains rising to the height of four or five thousand
feet, with a wonderful grandeur and variety of scenery. The climate
is fine, and the valleys unsurpassed in fertility, abounding in all man-
ner of tropical fruits and vegetation. The fruits hang temptingly
upon the trees, or drop on the ground. The islands contain about
8,000 people, of Malay origin, speaking a language very similar to
the Hawaiian. The natives have fine athletic forms, great vivacity
and quick apprehension, but are to the last degree impatient of labor
and control. They are, in fact, among the most lawless, quarrelsome,
and ferocious of the tribes of men. They have no acknowledged
form of government. The individual gluts his revenge unhindered ;
and the clans in the various valleys are in perpetual warfare. The
bodies of the slain are cut in pieces, and distributed among the clan
to be devoured, the little children even partaking of the horrid meal.
In 1859, when the whale-ship Tarlight was wrecked off the island
of Hivaoa, the natives conspired to massacre the crew in order to
plunder the vessel — though in both objects they were frustrated.
The community cannot have forgotten the letter of President Lincoln
to the missionary Kekela, a few years ago, thanking him forhis services
in rescuing the mate of an American ship, Mr. Whalon, from being
roasted and eaten by these cannibals. The disposition of the natives
is to some degree symbolized by their personal appearance — the
men hideously tattooed with lizards, snakes, birds, and fishes, and the
women smeared with eocoanut oil and turmeric. Add to this the
(30)
SKETCH OF THE MARQUESAS MISSION. 31
most oppressive system of tabus, so that, for example, the father, the
mother, and the grown-up daughter must all eat apart from each
other, and we have some idea of the obstacles to the Christian
religion in those islands.
Some years ago, a Hawaiian youth was left by a vessel at these
islands, sick. He recovered, and by his superior knowledge became
a man of importance, and married the daughter of the High Chief,
Mattunui. The father-in-law was so impressed with his acquisitions,
which, as he learned, were derived from the missionaries, that after
consultation with the other chiefs, he embarked for Lahaina, to seek
missionaries for Marquesas. This was in 1853. The Hawaiian
Society felt that the call was from God. Two native pastors —
one of them Kekela — and two native teachers, accompanied by their
wives, were deputed to go. They were welcomed with joy. Mattunui
sat up all night to tell of the " strange things " he saw and heard in
the Hawaiian Islands ; and an audience of a hundred and fifty listened
to preaching on the following Sabbath. The missionaries entered at
once on their various forms of Christian activity, organizing their
schools, and in due time translating the Gospel of John. One
foreigner alone was with them, — Mr. Bicknell, an English mechanic,
a noble man, afterwards ordained a preacher ; otherwise the whole
enterprise was Hawaiian. Roman Catholic priests hurried at once
to the islands, but the Hawaiian preachers held on, amid immense
discouragements, with great energy and perseverance, and with
admirable good sense. At length God gave them the first convert,
Abraham Natua. Soon after this the missionaries determined to
break down the system of tabus, and a great feast was gotten up on
the mission premises, at which the High Chief, Mattunui, and many
others, sat down for the first time with their wives, and broke through
the system in every available direction. It was a grand blow at the
whole institution. In four years the intolerable thievishness of the
natives was so far checked within the range of the missions, that
clothing could be exposed and the mission premises could be left
unlocked the entire day, with perfect safety. Urgent calls came
from various parts of the islands for missionaries — five or six pieces
of land, more than could be occupied, being given in Hivaoa alone.
Converts came dropping in slowly, one by one at first ; and a quiet
and powerful influence has been diffusing itself through the islands,
and filling the minds of these devoted preachers with great hopes of
the future. In 1867 there were eleven male and female missionaries
at the island, who had organized five churches with fifty-seven mem-
bers, and were about to establish a boarding school for boys and
32 SKETCH OP THE MARQUESAS MISSION.
another for girls. And in 1868 Mr. Coan, who had just visited the
islands, wrote thus : " The light and love and gravitating power
of the gospel are permeating the dead masses of the Marquesans.
Scores already appear as true disciples of Jesus. Scores can read the
word of the liviug God, and it is a power within them. Hundreds
have forsaken the tabus, and hundreds of others hold them lightly.
Consistent missionaries and their teachings are respected. Their
lives and persons are sacred where human life is no more regarded
than that of a dog. They go secure where others dare not go. They
leave houses, wives, and children without fear, and savages protect
them. Everywhere we see evidence of the silent and sure progress
of truth, and we rest assured that the time to favor the dark Mar-
quesans has come." Whether we view the people on whom or the
people by whom this power has been put forth, we see alike a signal
movement of the gospel of Christ.
DR. ANDERSON'S WORK ON THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
BY ANDREW P. PEABODY, D.D., CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
[From the Boston Review for May, 1865.]
T/ic Hawaiian Islands: T/icir Progress and Condition under
Missionary Labors. By RUFUS ANDERSON, D.D., Foreign
Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for For-
eign Missions. With Illustrations. Boston : Gould & Lin-
coln. 18G4.
WE may profess implicit faith in the geological theories
which adequately account for the condition and contents of the
earth's crust ; yet our faith in them lacks vividness, simply be-
cause no one of the world-forming processes has taken place
under our own observation, or under the eye of witnesses who
have told us their story. But were there at this moment an
unfinished continent or island, still the abode of Saurian reptiles,
or the laboratory of fossil coal, the fresh record of explorations
in that region would convert our cosmogony from a vague
or dead belief into a clearly conceived and intensely realized
system of nature.
There has been in the remote past a social, there has been a
religious cosmogony, and the greatest difficulty in the way of
correct apprehensions as to the origin of civilization, and as to
the methods of growth in the primitive church, lies in our lack
of realizing and satisfying conceptions of the elements involved
in each separate problem. The history of civilization is wrapped
in obscurity. The veil of the Dark Ages fell upon certain sav-
age tribes that had the mastery of Europe ; it rose upon those
tribes, still, indeed, rude in many of the arts of life, but
already in an advanced- condition of culture and of potential
refinement. When we go back to the earlier civilization, we
are equally unable to ascend to its cradle and to define the first
stages of its growth. Yet birth and source it must have had,
O O
heavenly or earthly, and we all have our theories of its genesis ;
1
but we hold them loosely and impassively, because it is so
utterly impossible for us to conceive of the transmutation of
savage into civilized man. Thus also, there was a creative era.
of the Christian church, a period when the transition was made,
often simultaneously by large numbers of men and women,
from Paganism or from Jewish ritualism to a vital faith in the
Gospel. Of this era we have numerous memorials in the
New Testament. The Epistles are full of the controversies,
cases of conscience, weaknesses, scandals, causes of apostasy,
incident to this infantile condition. But, though we doubt not
the inspiration of the sacred writers, we are apt to enter with
but feeble appreciation into the details of their casuistry ; many
of the topics which they treat seriously seem to us too trivial for
grave animadversion ; and in not a few cases they recognize as
perfectly consistent with a position in the church states of char-
acter and modes of conduct which we should regard as incom-
patible with the Christian name. We thus find it hard to con-
ceive of the earlier portions of Christian history, and while we
devoutly acknowledge in them the divine working, we fail to
discern the phases of humanity which the record simply de-
scribes without interpreting them. But if, after an interval of
many centuries, these primitive civilizing and Christianizing
processes have been renewed in our own time, even on a com-
paratively small scale ; if even in the least of the nations an
organic revolution such as had passed out of human expectation
is now nearly consummated, the spectacle has a profound inter-
est equally for the student of history and for the expositor of
the Sacred Word.
Such a spectacle is exhibited in the book before us. On
merely philosophical grounds it is of unique value. It shows
us the means and steps of civilization, the circumstances which
favor or check its growth, the action upon it of ideas and insti-
tutions respectively, its relations of cause and effect to religious
culture. It throws essential light on even the most recondite
questions, such as that of the possibility of a nation's becoming
civilized except by aid or influence from without, that of man's
primitive condition upon the earth, that of his decline or progress
from his first estate.
Equally instructive, as we hope to show in the sequel, will
this book be found by the biblical scholar. Since reading it,
3
we have understood the Epistles to the Corinthians better than
ever before, and have been led, as by no merely critical study,
to admire the prudence, sagacity, insight and foresight of the
inspired author, no less than his tender forbearance and charity
for the newly converted under their liability to the trail and soil
of the wort-hip they had abjured. At the same time, we have
here full verification of the aggressive power of Christianity in
circumstances in no wise favorable for its reception. We learn
that it was not as the outgrowth of its own age that the Gospel
found reception when first promulgated, but that it is the ever-
lasting Gospel, endowed with like life-giving energy for all
times and nations. We especially prize this testimony at a
period when naturalism is attempting to sap the foundations of
our faith. Other religions have shown themselves the conge-
nial products of their own birthtime by the failure of all at-
tempts to extend their empire, otherwise than by force, in sub-
sequent generations. They grow for a while, rapidly it may
be, because they embody and sanction ideas level with the cul-
ture of their age ; but as the race advances, or changes without
advancing, they have no hold, except on the populations which
they have educated, and cramped and dwarfed in educating
them. A divinely given religion alone can be free from these
limitations of time and race, and can work in the eternal fresh-
ness of its power on minds of every grade and of every form of
culture.
But, most of all, as lovers of mankind, do we rejoice in the
evidence here given of a new Pentecost of Christian salvation,
in the assurance of the birth into the eternal life of thousands
of perishing souls, in the establishment of the reign of Christ
upon the ruins of savage fetichism, in the songs of Zion that
have replaced the cannibal's war-whoop, in the altars of re-
demption railed with the broken spears of fierce idolators, in the
homes that from beastly dens have become nurseries for heaven.
We should incur the charge of extravagance were we to
attempt to convey the impression made upon us by Dr. Ander-
son's book. His tour among the Hawaiian Islands seems to us
the most magnificent progress recorded in history ; and his sim-
ple, modest narrative, so entirely devoid of egotism and of exag-
geration, only makes us feel the more profoundly the greatness
of lu's mission and the preeminent fitness of the agent. Dr.
Anderson in his youth devoted himself in purpose to the career
of a foreign missionary, and from the time when he first found
the Gospel precious to his own soul, the needs and claims of the
unevangclized have never been absent from his thought. Iii
the pendency of arrangements for an Eastern mission, he ac-
cepted a temporary clerical appointment on the staff of the
American Board. This appointment was soon made perma-
nent ; after eight yeai-s of service as Assistant Secretary, on
the death of liev. Dr. Cornelius, in 1832, he became one of
the three Corresponding Secretaries ; and for nearly thirty years
he has held the first place in the administration of that noble
charity. It is not easy to tell what fertility of resource, what
sagacity in the discernment of character, what world-wide
knowledge, what executive ability, what hold upon the confi-
dence of good men in all lands, what extended power of influ-
ence, have been needed and developed in a life like his. On
his prudence, patience, judgment, energy, the entire system has
depended, to a degree most fully appreciated by those who
have been most intimately conversant with his labors. No
statesman or diplomatist has held in his hands so many threads
of affairs, often delicate and complicated, often of decisive mo-
ment, often involving even grave national interests, demanding
with the directness and integrity that befit the servant of the
Most High a fully equal measure of the subtile skill and adroit
management, in which the children of this world are so apt to
surpass the children of the light, and for lack of which a large
portion of the philanthropy which has the purest record in
heaven leaves no enduring traces of itself on earth.
When Dr. Anderson entered on his official duties, the second
instalment of missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands had been
despatched, many of the natives were under hopeful training,
the language had been reduced to its alphabetic elements, and
the first essays at printing had been successfully made. But at
that time the mission was a still doubtful experiment. Shortly
afterward, the regent and nine of the principal chiefs were
gathered into the Christian church, vast multitudes were awak-
ened to a lively interest in the Gospel, and the transformation
of institutions, habits, domestic and social life took place so
rapidly as to leave no longer room for fear of the ree'atablish-
ment of idolatry. During Dr. Anderson's secretaryship more
than a hundred missionaries, clerical and lay, male and female,
have been pent to the Islands from the United States, under his
instruction and direction, while to the Home Board have been
constantly referred vital questions of policy and administration,
both civil and ecclesiastical, involving difficult relations with the
emissaries and officers of foreign governments, and with mis-
sionaries, sometimes intrusive, from other religious bodies.
Less than the soundest discretion, the most determined vigor,
and the most watchful and persistent assiduity on the part of
the American Board would at various crises of the mission have
placed its interests at fearful hazard, and occasioned disastrous
decline in the religious condition of the natives.
In 1862, the Hawaiian people was deemed to hold its right-
ful place among Christian nations, and the question was raised
as to the gradual withdrawal of the support of the Board, with
the view of leaving the Islands to support their own religious
institutions, and to furnish their own Christian teachers. To
ascertain data for the safe and judicious settlement of this ques-
tion it was thought desirable to send an officer of tiie Board to
the Islands, and especially fitting was it to delegate this com-
mission to him who had for nearly forty years identified himself
with the work, and who could claim as his " children in the
Lord" those thousands of redeemed and converted savages.
It was for him an antepast of the blessedness of heaven.
Seldom can he who sows in tears count on earth his ranks
of ripened sheaves. Even in the ordinary Christian ministry,
while the faithful servant of Christ is never without ground
for encouragement and gratitude, a collective view of vast
results is not often vouchsafed to him ; and many there are
who have effected so little to the outward eye compared with
their longing and endeavor, that they go to their rest feeling
that much of their strength has been spent for naught, and
only in the day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed,
will they know their share in the harvest- work. But as Dr.
Anderson passed from village to village and from island to
island, he was permitted to see in great part the accumulated
fruits of his life-toil, multiplied tokens of a regeneration in
which his had been the controlling mind, evidences of a work of
grace in which he had been the favored instrument, whose mag-
nitude is to be estimated not by past and present converts, but
6
by the unborn multitudes that shall enter on their Christian her-
itage. He was everywhere received with the love and rever-
ence due to a father in Christ ; thanks to God for his visit were
sung in that language so strange to his ear ; his advent was
rapturously welcomed by immense congregations of the natives ;
he united in the celebration of the Saviour's death, with larger
bodies of believers than he can often meet in his own land ; his
words of faith and love, interpreted by his missionary breth-
ren, were listened to with intense earnestness, and met with the
most fervent response ; and liberal contributions for the dis-
tribution of the Scriptures and the furtherance of the Gospel
were pressed upon him by those so recently brought from dark-
ness into God's marvellous light. It was, indeed, a triumphal
march through this newly conquered province of the Redeemer's
empire — how unspeakably blessed to one who felt so profoundly
that in all these offerings of affection, gratitude and veneration
he was but receiving tribute for the King of kings !
Trusting that most of our readers have sought or will seek
for themselves the instruction and edification proffered by the
book before us, we shall enter into none of the details of Dr.
Anderson's journeyings and personal experiences, but shall con-
fine ourselves to a brief sketch of the former and present condi-
tion of the Hawaiian people, and a discussion of a few of the
many subjects of interest treated or suggested by the author.
The Hawaiian Islands are ten in number. The native inhab-
itants bear in color, features and language strong affinities to
the Malays, from whom they were probably derived. The pop-
ulation, at the arrival of the first missionaries, was estimated at
one hundred and thirty five thousand, that of Hawaii, the prin-
cipal island, at eighty thousand. The people were in the lowest
condition of savage life. Their genial climate and spontane-
ously fertile soil had precluded the development of even the
rude arts, of which in higher latitudes necessity would have
been the teacher. Their dwellings were utterly devoid of com-
fort ; their clothing insufficient for decency. The rights of
property were hardly recognized. Extortion on the part of the
chiefs, mutual theft and robbery among the people, seem to
have been the common law. Polygamy was habitual among all
who could obtain and support a plurality of wives, and licen-
tiousness prevailed to the very verge of promiscuous concubin-
age. Infanticide was so prevalent as to have led to a marked
decline of the population, t\vo thirds of the children that were
born having been buried barely to avoid the trouble of bringing
them up. Murders and crimes of violence were perpetrated
almost without restraint ; and human sacrifices were offered for
the recovery of the king when sick, and as victims at his obse-
quies. The natural conscience seems to have been obliterated,
and there was no trace of a recognized distinction between right
and wrong.
The prevalent idolatry was of the coarsest and most senseless
type, consisting in the worship of hideous images, with no idea
even of their being symbols of unseen powers. This idolatry
was extirpated, by a unique combination of circumstances, about
the time of the embarkation of the first American missionaries.
It was a case in which Satan successfully cast out Satan, through
the mysterious working of Him who makes even the wrath
and guilt of man to praise him. Among the superstitions insep-
arable from the national religion was a stringent tabu system,
extending not only to sacred days, places and persons, but to
the domestic habits. Women were forbidden to eat in the
presence of their husband?, and were debarred from many of
the choicest articles of diet, whether fruit, flesh or fish. The
violation of these interdicts was punishable by death, and it
was supposed that the offender who escaped human vengeance
would be destroyed by the gods. Foreigners had introduced
ardent spirits, and to all the other sins of this degraded race
was now superadded the habit of beastly drunkenness. The
female chiefs, when intoxicated, found courage to indulge in
prohibited food. Their rank secured them from punishment at
the hand of man, and they were not slow in discovering that no
vindictive bolt was launched at their heads by the divinity they
had outraged. This tabu system seems to have been the funda-
mental doctrine, the articulus stantis vel cadentls ccclcsice of their
creed, and, this proved false, they found themselves atheists.
The destruction of their idols, the burning of their temples en-
sued ; and the missionaries discovered, for the first time in the
world, an utterly godless people.
It can not be denied that this condition of things offered a
vantage-ground for the labors of the earliest Christian teachers,
yet less than might seem at first thought. Had the people been
8
far enough advanced in spiritual development to feel the need of
worship or to crave objects of reverence, the rasa tabnfa thus
presented would have been easily written over with the holy
names of the Christian faith. But these conditions precedent
of religious belief seem to have been wanting. The tablet was
not there. Yet undoubtedly it was easier, humanly speaking,
to create it, than it would have been to make a palimpsest.
The resistance presented by the vis inertia of a race utterly dead
in trespasses and sins was less than might have been opposed
by vital and vigorous misbelief. The seeds of faith lie in the
depraved heart, and the dew of the divine grace which alone
can make them fruitful is seldom wanting to fervent prayer and
faithful endeavor. But, this one feature excepted, the condi-
tion of the Hawaiians in 1820 presented as unpromising a field
for evangelic culture as lay anywhere beneath the sun, and,
compared with the primitive age of the church, an immeasur-
ably Jess hopeful field than any of the communities to which the
apostles carried the word of life.
What are they now? In the arts of civilized life their pro-
gress has been at least equal to their conscious needs. While
the chiefs and many of the inhabitants of the towns have well-
built and well-furnished houses, the squalidness and misery of the
rural districts and the poorer classes have given place to habits
of decency and self-respect. The government has a written
Constitution, with a Bill of Rights as liberal as that of Massa-
chusetts, and with the powers of king, legislature and judiciary
carefully defined and limited. The laws are wise, equitable,
and preeminently Christian, guarding the religious liberty of
the people, but providing against the desecration of the Sabbath
and against the renewal of idolatrous superstitions and observ-
ances. The courts are admirably organized, and the judicial
offices filled by men of competent ability and proved integrity, in
part by native citizens, one of the three judges of the Supreme
Court being a Hawaiian. There is no country in Christendom,
in which life and property are more secure, and none in which
the laws against intemperance and licentiousness are more vigi-
lantly and rigidly executed. In the native language there
have been published twenty thousand copies of the entire
Bible, twelve thousand of the New Testament, and more than
two hundred works beside, including school-books, books of re-
9
ligious instruction, and general literature. Three Hawaiian
newspapers are issued. The Report of 1849 gives two hundred
and eighty nine schools, with eight thousand six hundred and
twenty eight scholars. There are several boarding schools, both
for boys and girls, at which a superior education is afforded,
and a High School, which would bear comparison with our
best New England academies, and which has graduated nearly
eight hundred pupils, ten of whom have been ordained as min-
isters of the Gospel. Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Sur-
veying and Political Economy are among the higher branches
of learning which have been successfully taught. The people
manifest a singular aptness for the acquisition of knowledge,
and display an equal susceptibility for the ideas, impressions,
tastes and habits which belong of right to advancing intellectual
culture.
We can not need to say that this social renovation has been,
not only coincident with and incidental to, but commensurate with
and dependent upon, the action of Christian truth on individual
hearts, and through them on the great heart of the nation.
The history of that people for the last forty years has been a
multiform commentary on the text : " The entrance of Thy
word giveth light." As regards domestic and social habits, we
have no evidence that the missionaries have busied themselves
especially in the details of improvement. But the Christian
consciousness is quick and keen in detecting incongruities and
improprieties ; the aesthetic nature is stimulated, nourished and
instructed by the Divine Spirit, which is the Spirit of beauty no
less than of grace ; and the consecration of the body and all
that pertains to the outward life, by purity, decency, neatness
and order, can hardly fail to accompany or follow the consecra-
tion of the soul to the service of God. This exterior reforma-
tion must needs bear a close proportion, in its extent and thor-
oughness, to the energy of the work of grace. In these Islands
the Gospel had from the first free course among the chiefs and
the men and women of commanding influence, and its power was
early felt through the whole people. In 1838 there was a great
awakening throughout the entire nation, which resulted in
the accession of many thousands of genuine converts to the
churches. In 1843 more than a fourth part of the entire pop-
ulation were professing Christians ; a larger proportion, it is
10
believed, than could be found anywhere else in Christendom.
To .all these the missionary stations were centres of light, places
of familiar resort, seminaries for instruction in things secular no
less than in things spiritual. The superior fitness of the habits
and appliances of civilized life was promptly perceived and felt ;
and the disciples, of necessity, became imitators of the teachers
and their families in such portions of their mode of living as
were applicable to their own condition. This last limitation is
essential to a just estimate of the degree of their civilization.
Had the missionaries themselves, with all their culture and re-
finement, belonged to a race for many generations domesticated
in that climate, their artificial wants would have been much
fewer and more simple ; and it would seem to be the tendency
of the great mass of their converts to adopt from them just
such improvements as they need for decency and comfort, while
those who from their position in the state are brought into more
intimate relations with the foreign residents conform more fully
to foreign tastes and habits. With this essential qualification
the Hawaiians already merit a place among civilized nations —
a much higher place than would be accorded to the Greeks
with their glorious heritage and their little more than nominal
Christianity ; and they hold this position solely through the
transforming power of religious faith and culture.
It is, also, because they have so readily received the divine
word, that they have become to so extraordinary a degree an ed-
ucated and a reading people. The Bible enlarges the mental
horizon, suggests themes of thought, subjects of inquiry, gives
a sacredness and a zest to knowledge of every kind, stimulates
study, and generates mental activity. There evidently exists in
this so lately benighted community a higher type of intellectual
life, a more genuine love of learning, a surer promise of ad-
vanced and extended culture, than can be found in the mass of
any people in Europe or America which is debarred free access
to the oracles of divine truth.
As for the actual religious condition of these Islands, we
have spoken of the proportion of church members in 1843. It
is nearly or quite as large at the present time. In the judgment
of Dr. Anderson and other equally intelligent witnesses, the evi-
dences of sincere piety are as general and as satisfactory as
among professed believers in any portion of Christendom.
11
Family prayer ia almost universal among the converts. The
Sabbath is kept sacred to an unusual degree, and its worship is
attended by numerous, in some places, by vast congregations.
Social prayer meetings are established in connection with every
church, and are maintained with constancy, and often with zeal.
The average moral character of the church-members is in most
respects high, even by the standard of our older civilization, and
the sins which have led to frequent ecclesiastical censure and
excommunication, though more patent to rebuke, are certainly
no more inconsistent with the spirit of our religion than the
worldliness, penuriousness and meanness which pass unchal-
lenged among the guests at our communion tables. Indeed,
what indicates, perhaps, more clearly than all things else, the
prevalent sincerity of these islanders is their readiness to give
largely from their scanty means for the support and propagation
of the Gospel. Their contributions average more than twenty
thousand dollars annually, and their time and labor are always
at the disposal of their teachers for the service of religion. In
fine, though they not unfrequently show their still infantile
estate as Christians, they at the same time exhibit abundant
proof that the religion of the Gospel has wrought in thousands
of hearts its regenerating work, and has so far leavened the
entire community that there is no ground for apprehending a
general apostasy or permanent decline.
We have dwelt on the evidences of their civilization, mainly
with reference to the question which it was Dr. Anderson's
special purpose to investigate, namely, the expediency of treat-
ing them as an integral part of Christendom, and gradually
withdrawing from them the special tutelage of the Missionary
Board. Their higher or lower degree of civilization or culture
may not affect their present condition as Christians ; but in their
capacity to transmit that condition it is a vital element. The
soul of the rudest savage may be converted to God and pre-
pared for heaven ; but the light that is in him can shed very
little radiance around him. Christian institutions alone can
perpetuate the power of the Gospel ; and they can be sustained
and extended among a population of unsettled habits and unde-
veloped intellect, only through the agency of a superior race.
At most of our flourishing missionary stations the withdrawal of
the missionaries would be followed by the speedy extinction of
12
all Christian life. A self-perpetuating church implies the estab-
lishment of permanent homes and regular modes of industry, a
forethought adequate to provide for future exigencies, mutual
confidence among fellow-worshippers, the capacity of combined
and organized action, and the existence of means of education,
and habits of mental industry sufficient to ensure a well-trained
ministry and a supply of intelligent office-bearers and leaders
in church affairs. A community of which all this could be .af-
firmed is to all intents and purposes civilized, and has within itself
resources for further advancement and higher attainment. And
in this sense the Hawaiians are civilized. We care not whether
they live in houses of grass or of stone, sleep on mats or beds,
sit on the ground or on chairs, eat with their fingers or with
forks. These matters have no concern with civilization, that is,
with the culture which fits men to be citizens and fellow-citizens.
Christianity always tends to civilize a community ; but in or-
der to produce this result, it must establish its control over the
ruling classes, must permeate the body politic, mould its
institutions, preside over its legislation, govern its social in-
tercourse, and, above all, give character to the relations
between husband and wife, parent and child, master and ser-
vant. Where this work has been in a good measure accom-
plished, its consummation may be retarded by the prolonga-
tion of foreign influence, however beneficent. It is well
neither for individual nor collective humanity to remain in tu-
telage when the period of maturity has been reached. Guard-
ianship beyond its due term cripples and dwarfs the faculties
of self-help which it has created. We must, therefore, ac-
knowledge the wisdom of the action of the American Board,
in relinquishing the immediate control of the religious interests
of these Islands to their native and resident population. The
Board still provides for the maintenance of the missionaries
already established, most of whom have passed the prime of
active usefulness. The counsel and influence of these tried,
approved and trusted teachers will be of essential benefit in
the transition from pupilage to self-government, while the
churches, unburthened by the necessity of contributing to their
support, will have no obstacle in the way of securing and com-
pensating the services of native ministers. At the same time
those recent heathen are encouraged themselves to enter on the
13
field of missionary enterprise, and this most wisely ; for among
the means of grace giving is second only to prayer, as the
American church has found in its own blessed experience. The
superintendence of the Micronesian mission is to be entrusted to
an executive board chosen by the Hawaiian Evangelical Asso-
ciation, the American Board continuing its pecuniary aid for
such time and in such measure as may be found necessary.
We have thus far presented only the bright and hopeful as-
pects of the Christian cause on these Islands. Is there not a
reverse side? That there is we could not doubt, even were our
author silent with regard to it. But, with his perfect candor,
Dr. Anderson suppresses nothing, and our readers will miss in
his pages not one of the salient facts which have been employed
with malign purpose and effect by the calumniators of the mis-
sion. We have not referred to these facts in discussing the self-
sustaining capacity of the Hawaiian churches, because they are
not of sufficient magnitude to have any important bearing on
that question, any more than the short-comings, dissensions and
corruptions of our New England Christianity have on its power
to prolong its own existence, and, by aid from on high, to pu-
rify and elevate its own standard of faith and piety. But we
will now look at the shades in the picture.
In the first place, it must be admitted that there remains
among the Hawaiian Christians a certain proclivity to licentious- /
ness and intemperance. We are grieved, but not surprised or
shocked at this. It is what is to be expected in a people sepa-
rated by hardly a generation from an utterly brutish state of
manners and morals. Aside from the theological question of
original sin, though casting essential light upon it, there can
be no doubt as to the transmission of moral tendencies in fami-
lies and races. Had one of Herod's children become a disci-
ple of Christ, he would have been a disciple of a very different
type from one of the family of Joseph of Arirnathea. He
might repeatedly, under stress of sudden and intense temptation,
have shown his sonship according to the flesh to the vilest of
men, yet without losing from his heart the evidence of his spir-
itual sonship. Just such is the case with a tribe or race of con-
verts from the lower forms of paganism. There is a heritage
of evil in their very constitution of body, mind and soul. Ages
of slavery to the animal appetites have stimulated those appe-
14
tites, and given them a natively larger influence over the active
powers of the moral nature than they have in a people whose
nature has been moulded by centuries of self-control and men-
tal and religious culture. The Christian consciousness may be
as genuine and as strong in the recent savage as in the descend-
ant from an ancestry of saints ; yet in the former case it will have
to contend with a host of the powers of evil, which in the latter
were resisted and overcome in the remote past, and have since
fought only with blunted weapons and with crippled strength.
It must be remembered, too, that the social sentiments and hab-
its of decency and propriety, which are a most essential safe-
guard and help to the individual Christian, at least in the early
stages of the religious life, are of gradual growth and of cumu-
lative efficacy, and that they have but just begun to grow in
the Hawaiian people. It is said by the Spirit of God to every
subject of renewing grace, as it was said to Abraham, "Get
thee out of thine own country, and from thy kindred, and thy
father's house, unto a land that I will show thee" ; and the
reality, intensity and working power of his faith are to be tested,
not by the distance yet to be measured to the promised land,
but by his distance from his starting point. He who moves on
his pilgrimage from an idolatrous country, from kindred steeped
in swinish sensuality, from a father's house no better than a
kennel, may find himself at the close of a long and faithful pil-
grimage below the starting point of natural conscience and con-
ventional morality, at which the child of a consecrated house-
hold hears and obeys the same call of God ; yet in the eye of
heaven he will have fought a good fight, and have finished a
noble course, and his children may commence where he closed
his career.
As we have intimated, the details in the volume before us
at once receive light from, and reflect light upon, the apostolic
epistles. In the churches at Corinth and in Asia, St. Paul
certainly recognizes as brethren beloved, and praises for their
proficiency and good gifts as Christians, persons who needed
advice and warning as to the verv rudiments of morality. At
O •* *
Corinth there had been gross violations of chastity among the
disciples, and it would seem that even the Lord's Supper had
been made an occasion of excess and drunkenness. In fine, there
was in that church a condition of things incompatible, according
15
to our modern notions, with the lowest concrete form of vital
Christianity. Yet in his second epistle we discern manifest
traces in these frail novices of a sensitiveness to rebuke, an ac-
cessibleness to the movements of contrite sorrow, indicating all
that is implied in the apostle's words as to the depth of Christian
feeling in their hearts and the reality of their conversion to God.
"For behold this self-same thing, that ye sorrowed after a
godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what
clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear,
yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal" ! St. Paul, it must
be borne in mind, in view of these moral infirmities of his con-
verts, is slow to condemn, chary of excommunication, prompt
and earnest in the restoration of offenders, aware all the while
that, though "the iniquity of their heels" — the sins in which
they were born and bred, yet which they have in purpose left
behind them — may at times "compass them about," there may
yet be on their hearts the unobliterated seal of the Spirit. We
can not but agree with some of the missionaries, as cited by Dr.
Anderson, that among these modern converts excommunication
has been too frequent, especially as the excommunicated have in
numerous instances passed from a church which would have
tolerated, not their sin, but their bitterly repented sin, to the
less discriminating mercies of Romanism, which, whatever may
be its theories, practically makes the way of transgressors easy.
The same sensitiveness to rebuke, which St. Paul recognizes
among the Corinthians, may be remarked among the Ilawaiians.
Says Dr. Anderson, "I was assured of cases where, after a ter-
rible declension, the return had been with increased humility,
experience, watchfulness, and zeal, so that the lapsed recovered
ones became at length pillars in the church."
So far from looking upon lapses of this kind, though fre-
quent, as a ground of discouragement, we rather regard them,
viewed in all their aspects, as a hopeful omen. It is an immense
gain that the community has reached a condition in which such
cases of sin are exceptional and abnormal, are not numerous
enough to constitute a characteristic feature of the Christian so-
ciety or to defy its discipline, and are already the objects of un-
feigned shame and contrition among the guilty, and of hearty
reprobation among their associates. Moreover, this unfortunate
liability, so far as it exists, seems to be confined chiefly to those
16
who have been heathen and savages, and is not likely to be
transmitted to their children except in a modified and controll-
able form and degree. The now rising generation, trained under
the shadow of the domestic altar and the Christian sanctuary,
educated by religious teachers, imbued from their tender years
in the morality of the Gospel, and large numbers of them made
in their youth hopeful subjects of Divine grace, will grow up
under at least as favorable influences as those which surround
the young persons in our own land whom we regard as the hope
of the church. This future is already beginning to be realized.
The pupils of the missionary schools are fast establishing a
higher tone of character. Of the native ministers we are told
that not one has shown himself unworthv of his sacred trust.
•/
The manifest tendency is toward an elevated standard of prac-
tical ethics.
In this connection we can not but attach great importance to
the laws of the kingdom, not only or chiefly in their prohibitory
or punitive function, but as declarative of the collective moral
sense, and as educating the general conscience. From all that
we can learn, we infer that in the legislation, and at the hands
of the judiciary of the Islands, purity and temperance are as
carefully guarded as they can be by human authority, and that
those who violate them can be protected only by the secrecy
of their guilt. The laws against the manufacture of intoxicating
drinks and against their sale to native residents are peculiarly
stringent and severe, and a very recent attempt to relax the
penalty for their sale has been defeated by the vote of nearly
three fourths of the legislature — a vote which, as passed after
able and thorough discussion, we feel warranted in regarding as
an authentic exponent of public opinion.
Does it not appear from these statements that the easily be-
setting sins of the Hawaiians are treated with greater severity
and present better promise of their rapid decline, than the vices
that infect the religious communities of older Christendom —
the selfishness, avarice and virtual dishonesty, which are "the
abomination of desolation" in the church of God, and hold in
sordid slavery many who claim to be its very pillars ?
A much more serious discouragement to missionary labor on
this field might seem to be found in the decline of the native
population. On this subject it is not easy to obtain trustworthy
17
data, either as to the extent to which causes of depopulation
have operated in former times, or as to the degree in which
they are now arrested. Captain Cook estimated the population
at four hundred thousand ; but this was undoubtedly an over-
estimate. The earliest official census, in 1832, gives one hun-
dred and thirty thousand, three hundred and fifteen ; the latest,
in I860, sixty nine thousand, eight hundred. But for the first
four years of these twenty eight, the decrease was at the rate of
more than four per cent, per annum, while for the last seven
years it has been less than two thirds of one per cent, per an-
num. The vices introduced by foreigners held a prominent
place among the causes of the rapid decline from the first dis-
covery of the Islands till the arrival of the missionaries. The
passion for strong drink made fearful ravages among the people ;
while the vile lusts of their visitors from civilized lands brought
upon them even still more loathsome agencies of disease and
death, and undoubtedly weakened the vital stamina of coming
generations. There has been also at three different periods
since the commencement of the century a visitation of devas-
tating epidemics, though it would seem that the liability to
diseases of this class is much less than in regions not lying under
the salubrious influence of breezes from the sea. Infanticide
and human sacrifices must also account in part for the dimin-
ished numbers of the people, and the former of these causes must
have very gradually ceased with the progress of Christianity.
Then too, though the rude and squalid habits of savage life are
not incompatible with a moderate growth of population, improve-
ments in dwellings, dress, and medical treatment can hardly
fail to preserve many lives that would else have been sacrificed
in infancy, by needless exposure, or by curable disease. On
the whole, we can not but believe that future enumerations will
present results of a much more favorable character than the
past, and that through the blessing of Providence this mild,
gentle, tractable and highly improvable people may maintain its
name and place among the nations of the earth, as a monument
of Christian philanthropy, as a luculent token of the fulfil-
ment of the promises of God, and as a centre and source of
light to populations on the islands and coasts of the Pacific still
lying under the shadow of death.
But were the case otherwise, were the gradual extinction of
2
18
this people clearly foreseen, would there be any the less reason
to rejoice in what has been accomplished, and to extend to the
declining remnant of the nation all the offices of Christian love ?
The salvation of thousands upon thousands of souls will still
have rewarded the toil and sacrifice of the church and its agents ;
the national decline will have been retarded by this ministry of
mercy ; and there will have been written a chapter of the
world's religious history, which we believe will be transcribed in
letters of light in the Lamb's book of life.
We refer to this last named contingency, not because we
think it probable, but because it may present itself to some of
our readers as inevitable. It is undoubtedly a beneficent law of
the divine Providence that races of feeble vitality and capacity
shall yield place by the operation of natural causes to races of
superior physical and intellectual vigor ; in fine, that the different
regions of the earth shall gradually pass into hands that can
subdue it, avail themselves of its resources and enjoy its uses.
Under this law, no doubt, the aborigines of North America will
ultimately disappear, and the humane policy which ought to
have been pursued to them from the first would not have en-
sured their preservation in the land, though it would have
averted the condemnation of blood-guiltiness from the European
settlers. But the Hawaiians do not seem to fall necessarily un-
der this law. Their constitution is adapted to their climate ;
their capacity to their soil. They are amply able to develop
the resources of their territory, and to employ for the general
benefit the advantages of their position. They thus far show
themselves susceptible of cultivation, and have made more rapid
progress than has elsewhere left its record in the history of the
world. They may not, indeed, have within themselves the ele-
ments of a great people ; but their cluster of islets can never be-
come the seat of a great people. They could not, indeed, protect
themselves by arms against any of the leading powers of Chris-
tendom ; but we trust that they will guard their modest indepen-
dence by the arts and virtues that belong to a Christian nation,
and by pacific and beneficent relations of intercourse and com-
merce. Their insular and solitary position may save them from
dangerous complications with more powerful states ; they can
not lie on the track of any future belligerents, or become the
victims of wars other than their own ; and the time has gone by
19
for aggression or usurpation from abroad, without shadow of
reason or pretence of right.
Another danger to which this people is exposed grows out of
the influx of foreign residents. Much of the land is peculiarly
adapted to the growth of the sugar-cane, while rice, coffee and
cotton are successfully cultivated. These commodities are most
profitably raised on large plantations, and the soil suited to their
production is already furnishing a lucrative investment for the
disposable capital of France, England and America ; while the
commerce of the Islands has of necessity been hitherto con-
ducted to a very great degree by immigrants from the older
commercial nations. To these dominant classes of foreigners
there have been recently added importations of coolies from
China for labor on the sugar-plantations. If enterprise on the
one hand and manual labor on the other are to be permanently
usurped by immigrants, of course under this double pressure
the native population will inevitably decline in resources and in
energy, and will be gradually absorbed and obliterated by inter-
marriage with the intrusive races. But whether this shall be
the case or not must depend, we believe, on the thoroughness
of the civilizing and Christianizing work which has been
wrought upon the natives. If considerable numbers of them
are fitted in intelligence and character to hold commanding po-
sitions, and to conduct extended operations in agriculture and
commerce, they will in the lapse of one or two generations re-
place the foreign residents ; for, with equal ability, they will
have the advantage in physical constitution, in attachment to
the soil, in the command of the language, and in the confidence
of their fellow-countrymen. If, at the other extremity of the
social scale, Christian culture develops habits of industry and
creates a felt need of the comforts of civilized life, the mass of
the people will not suffer the soil to be cultivated by strangers.
The labor of coolies, while on moral grounds little preferable
to that of slaves, is not much less costly and wasteful, their
nominally low wages being hardly an offset to the expense of
importation and the rapid mortality among them ; and the
Hawaiians, once made aware of the duty and the privilege
of toil, will readily demonstrate the superior economy of free
labor. Much of the land planted with sugar-cane is now in the
hands of small native proprietors ; and on these estates free la-
20
bor is proved to be amply remunerative. On th< whole we can
not believe that a people that deserves to live can be pressed
down and crushed out on its own soil. Foreign enterprise has
gained its ascendancy, and foreign labor its foothold in the
Hawaiian Islands, only while the natives are in training to take
effective possession of their birthright. If they show themselves
mentally or morally unfit to retain the heritage, we doubt not
that Providence will bestow it on races more worthy of it. But
in what God has done for this people, while we may not pre-
sume to lift the veil from his decrees, we can not but trust that
he has been training, not only souls for heaven, but a nation to
serve him in the land which he has given to them.
Another topic, to which we are bound to allude, however
unwillingly, in treating of the adverse or discouraging circum-
stances in connection with Hawaiian Christianity, is that of
divided religious interests. In the older portions of Christen-
dom, the phenomenon of rival sects is understood, and their
common appeal to the same plenary and divine authority casts
the weight of their combined testimony and influence on the
side of faith. But those recently converted from heathenism,
aecustomed to uniformity of belief and worship in their pre-
vious estate, and knowing little of the history of the Christian
church, are perplexed and often thrown into scepticism by the
antagonisms of mutually exclusive sects. They can not com-
prehend the identity of religion where there is no community of
religious interest and feeling. In their view the denial of the
doctrines and the contempt of the ritual in which they have
been trained are tantamount to the rejection and contempt of
Christianity. Even in the age of the apostles, and under the
ministry of those who had received their doctrine from the lips
or by the revelation of the Lord, it was feared lest different
modes of teaching and discipline on the same soil might be
fraught with mischief. St. Paul expresses his determination not
to enter on other men's labors, and laments and deprecates the
consequences of the intrusion on his own ground of teachers
not authorized or approved by himself. In the world-wide field
open to the philanthropy of the church, modern Protestant mis-
sionaries have in general recognized this principle, and have
been unwilling to present before heathendom the spectacle of a
distracted church and a divided Gospel. When they could not
21
labor side by side without collision or wide dissiliency of aim or
action, they have, like Abraham and Lot, fed their flocks apart.
This Christian comity has been violated by the Mission of the
English church, or, as it styles itself, the " Reformed Catholic
Mission." The subject is one which we would gladly omit;
but we should do injustice equally to the work under review
and to the mission cause, were we to pass it over in silence.
The late king having become interested in the services of the
English church, and there being at Honolulu many English res-
idents who had been educated in its worship, application was
made by Rev. Dr. Armstrong, once a missionary of the Amer-
ican Board, and then filling the office of President of the Board
of Public Instruction, and Mr. Wyllie, an Englishman, Minis-
ter of Foreign Affairs, to Rev. William Ellis of London,
pledging a moderate salary to some suitable English clergyman,
who might consent to assume the pastorate of a church at the
capital. The request was made for " a man with evangelical
sentiment, of respectable talents, and most exemplary Christian
life. A high churchman," added Dr. Armstrong, " or one of
loose Christian habits, would not succeed. Pie would not have
the sympathy and support of the other evangelical ministers at
all, but rather opposition." This application was in entire ac-
cordance with the wishes of the missionaries and their friends,
Indeed Dr. Anderson had previously urged a bishop of the
American Episcopal church to sent out a presbyter of his dio-
cese with reference to such a charge. Mr. Wyllie, who seems
to have been playing a double game, had previously entered
into correspondence with Mr. Hopkins, the Hawaiian consul in
London, and a plan was matured through his agency for send-
ing to the Islands a bishop and three presbyters, under the
[high church] auspices of the Society for Propagating the Gos-
pel. When this project became knowrn, the American Board
instituted a correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Bishop of London, both of whom are understood to
have sympathized with the views of the Board, and to have
been opposed to intrusion on the field which they had made
their own. But the counsels of the high church party pre-
vailed. Bishop Staley was consecrated in 1861, and arrived at
Honolulu, accompanied by two of his presbyters, and shortly
followed by a third, in October, 1862.
22
These men of lofty apostolic pretensions have taken precisely
the course which might have been anticipated, and will undoubt-
edly succeed in creating schism and animosity among the native
Christians. They ignore the ministerial character and office of
the American missionaries. They avail themselves of every
opportunity of baptising children, without reference to the
ecclesiastical relations of the parents. They have established
the most showy and Homeward tending modes of worship,
"with surplice and stole, with alb, and cope, and crosier; with
rochet, and mitre, and pastoral staff; with Episcopal ring and
banner ; with pictures, altar-candles, robings, intonations, pro-
cessions and attitudes." Meanwhile Bishop Staley has been
preaching the most extreme and oifensive doctrines of his
party in the church, doctrines diametrically opposed to those
taught by the missionaries, patristical tradition, baptismal re-
generation, the gift of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, confes-
sion to the priest, and priestly absolution. At the same time he
has stultified himself, while he has no doubt mystified his serious
hearers, and encouraged the undevout in the desecration of holy
time, by declaring that Sunday is " most-falsely and mischiev-
ously called the Sabbath," and intimating that the daily service
of the church and the observance of its solemn festivals fitly
supersede the special reverence with which the people had been
taught by the missionaries and required by the law of the land
to regard the one day in seven. He has stultified himself, we
say; for, unless the high church "has changed all this," the
precept, " Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day," la
read constantly in the ante-communion service, with the re-
sponse, "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to
keep this law." If Sunday is " most falsely and mischievously
called the Sabbath," to what observance does this portion of the
English liturgy have reference? Or does Bishop Staley require
his adherents, in the most sacred service of the altar, to perform
an act of solemn mockery, to offer a prayer which is arrant
blasphemy, to beg of the divine mercy that they may be inclined
to practice " falsehood and mischief" ? Candles at noonday are
a harmless folly ; this is gross impiety.
The success of this mission has as yet been very limited. Its
congregations are small. The modes of worship repel the sim-
ple tastes of such as have been sincerely attached to the minis-
23
trations of their earlier teachers ; and those who want to be
addressed through the senses, and gravitate toward the old
idolatry, can find more that is congenial among the Roman
Catholics than among their imitators. Yet under the patronage
of the court and of some of the more influential foreign resi-
dents this superstition must needs grow. It can hardly fail to
create a diversion from the interests of a simple faith and wor-
ship, which is especially to be deprecated at the present crisis,
when the autonomy of the native church is just beginning, and
needs the combined zeal, effort and liberality of all who love the
cause of Christ and seek the prosperity of Zion.
We have spoken freely and warmly of this intrusion ; but we
believe that we have said no more than candid Episcopalians
would readily admit and endorse. For the English church and
its American sister we cherish all due reverence, gratitude and
affection ; and because we feel this, we can not think or write
with easy tolerance of the stilted and popinjay caricatures of its
solemn order and majestic ritual.
There is also on the Islands a Roman Catholic Mission, num-
bering as proselytes, (including all baptized persons,) more
than twenty thousand souls. The Mormons have, too, a small
settlement on the island of Lanai, and reckon, (including chil-
dren,) not far from four thousand members. It does not ap-
pear that either of these forms of belief is making rapid pro-
gress, or presents any active hostility to the success of Protest-
ant Christianity.
While we should be gratified to see this new-born people
united in faith and worship, we can conceive that this diversity
of ministration, these forms of error, these tares growing with
the wheat, may be made subservient to their better proficiency
in divine things. Inquiry, comparison, mental activity on re-
ligious subjects wiH be aroused and guided ; the native pastors
will feel the more intense need of taking heed to themselves,
their doctrine and their flocks, because they are in the midst of
gainsay ers ; private Christians will have added inducements to
be loyal to the Master who can receive no wounds so deep as in
the house of his friends ; and thus a more intelligent faith and
a more fervent piety may spring from the present division,
and may prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of the truth
over all obstacles and hindrances.
24
We have foreborne making extracts from the work under re-
view, because we are unwilling that any of our readers should
become acquainted with it in scraps or fragments. We have
not even given an analysis of it, though our materials have
been chiefly derived from it. Besides, there are no especially
interesting extracts. The whole, from the Preface to the Ap-
pendix, is full of intense interest for all who love their Saviour
and their race. The narrative flags not for one moment on the
eager attention of the reader, nor can it fail to lift the devout
heart as with a continuous anthem of praise to Him who has
"given such power unto men," as is shown forth in this regen-
erated people.
One thought suggests itself in conclusion. Much of the sci-
ence of our day busies itself, with a depraved ingenuity, in de-
taching man's hold on the ancestral tree by which he traces his
descent from God, and of which, among the progeny of the sec-
ond Adam, he may become a living branch. The true answer
to these speculations is not to be found in ethnology or in phys-
iology. No race can make out an unbroken pedigree ; nor yet
can we deny that there are strong analogies between the higher
orders of quadrupeds and the lower members of the human fam-
ily, not only in physical structure, but in mental capacity.
Fifty years ago, the half-reasoning elephant or the tractable
and troth-keeping dog might have seemed the peer, or more, of
the unreasoning and conscienceless Hawaiian. From that very
race, from that very generation, with which the nobler brutes
might have scorned to claim kindred, have been developed the
peers of saints and angels. Does not the susceptibility of re-
generation, the capacity for all that is tender, beautiful and glo-
rious in the humanity of the Lord from heaven — inherent in
the lowest types of our race — of itself constitute an impassable
line of demarcation between the brute and man? Has physical
science a right to leave "the new man in Christ Jesus," which
the most squalid savage may become, out of the question in its
theories of natural selection or spontaneous development ?
When the modern Lucretianism can account for the phenomena
of Christian salvation, without the intervention of miracle, rev-
elation, or Redeemer, and not till then, can it demand our
respect as a tenable theory of the universe.
BARTIMEUS, THE BLIND PREACHER OF MAUL'
AS A PAGAN.
KxpioLAXit belonged to the ruling class,
but Bartimeus, of whom some account is
now to be given, was from the lowest or-
der of Hawaiian society. Yet he became
a scarcely less distinguished trophy of
divine grace. He was born on East Maui,
about the year 1785. Pagan mothers on
those islands then frequently destroyed
their infant children to avoid the trouble
of bringing them up, and it is said that
Pu-a-a-i-kiJ (which was his heathen name)
would have been buried alive, but for the
intervention of a relative. His birth was
only a few years after the death of Cap-
tain Cook, the discoverer of the islands,
and about as long before the visit of Van-
couver. Not a ray of gospel light had
then reached that beautiful cluster of is-
lands. The inhabitants were all idolaters,
and their altars were often stained with the
blood of human victims. The people were
ignorant and degraded, and were wasting
* Two Memoirs of Bartimeus have been
published in this country ; one by the Massa-
chusetts Sabbath-School Society in 1843, IGmo,
pp. 126, prepared by the Rev. Jonathan
S. Green, of the Sandwich Islands Mission ;
the other by the American Tract Society,
(New- York) prepared by the Rev. Hiram
Bingham, one of the pioneer missionaries to
those islands, pp. 58, but without date. The
materials for this article are drawn chiefly
from the more extended notices by those vet-
eran missionaries.
f See the May No. of Hours at Home for
sm interesting sketch of Kapiolani, by Dr, An-
derson.— EDITOR.
J Pronounced Poo-ah-ah-ee-kee.
under the influence of the most abomin-
able vices. Puaaiki was as vicious and
degraded as the rest. He early acquired
a love for the intoxicating awa; and it i.-i
supposed that his blindness may have re-
sulted from this, in connection with his
filthy habits, and the burning tropical sun
beating upon his bare head and unshel-
tered eyes. Before losing his sight, he
had learned the lua, or art of murdering
and robbery ; the Tcake, a secret dialect
valued for amusement and intrigue ; and
the hula, a combination of rude, lascivious
songs and dances.
When the American mission reached
Kailua in 1820, he was there in the king's
train, playing the buffoon for the amuse-
ment of the queen and chiefs, and thus
he obtained the means of subsistence. It
is not probable that he knew any thing of
the missionaries at that tune. The royal
family removed to Honolulu early in 1821,
and the blind dancer made part of their
wild and noisy train. There he suffered
from illness, destitution, and neglect, and
in his distress was visited by John Hono-
lii, one of the Christian islanders brought
by the mission from America, who spoke
to him of the Great Physician. This in-
terested him, and as soon as he could
walk, he went with Honolii to hear the
preaching of the missionaries. The im-
pression he made on them was that of
extreme degradation and wretchedness.
His diminutive frame bowed by sickness,
his scanty covering of bark-cloth, only a
narrow strip around his waist and a piece
thrown over his shoulders, his meagre
face, his ruined eyes, his long black beard,
his feeble, swarthy limbs, and his darfc
Itartimeus, the Blind Preacher of
[August.
soul — all made him a most pitiable ob-
ject.
HIS COX VERSION.
Yet he was a chosen vessel, and Jesus
\vas such a Friend and Saviour as he need-
ed. Led by a heathen lad, he came of-
ten to the place of Christian worship, gave
up his intoxicating drinks and the hula,
and sought to conform to the rules of the
gospel as he understood them. His heart
was gradually opened, and the Spirit took
of the- things of Christ and showed them
unto him. When now the proud chiefs
.again called for him to hula for their
amusement, his reply was, " That service
of Satan is ended ; I intend to serve Je-
hovah, the king of heaven." He was
rising on the scale of being. Some de-
rided him, but some of high rank, and
among them his patron the queen, were so
far under the influence of the gospel, that
they respected him for the stand he had
taken. He even exhorted the queen to
seek earnestly the salvation of her soul,
and his exhortations seem not to have
been wholly in vain.
The progress of Puaaiki in divine know-
ledge can be accounted for only by the
teaching of the Spirit. His blindness did
indeed favor his giving undivided atten-
tion as a hearer, and also the exercise of
his powers of reflection and memory.
His habit was to treasure up what he
could of every sermon, and afterward to
rehearse it to his acquaintances. It was
thus he grew in knowledge, and at length
became himself a preacher. "In the
fourth year of the mission," says Mr.
Bingham, "among the twenty -four chiefs
and five hundred others then under our
instruction, though there were marked
and happy cases of advancement, none
seemed to have gone further in spiritual
knowledge than Puaaiki."
In March, 1823, he accompanied the
native governor of Maui and his wife to
Lahaina, on his native island. His patron,
the governor, died in the following Novem-
ber, but Messrs. Richards and Stewart,
missionaries, who had arrived a few
months previously, then became his re-
ligious guides. In the summer of 1824,
an insurrection occurred on the island of
Kauai, the most northern of the group,
which was soon suppressed ; but it was
followed by a sort of insurrectionary ef-
fort on the part of a heathen party on
Maui, to revive some of the old idolatrous
rites. Puaaiki and his associates, then
known as " the praying ones," earnestly
opposed this ; and being called together
by the missionaries, and instructed and
encouraged, the blind convert was re-
quested to lead in prayer. Mr. Stewart
gives the following account of his own
emotions occasioned by that prayer :
'' His petitions were made with a pathos
of feeling, a fervency of spirit, a fluency
and propriety of diction, and above all, a
humility of soul, that plainly told he was
no stranger there. His bending posture,
his clasped hands, his elevated but sight-
less countenance, the peculiar emphasis
with which he uttered the exclamation,
'0 Jehovah,' his tenderness, his impor-
tunity, made us feel that he was praying
to a God not afar off, but one that was
nigh, even in the midst of us. His was
a prayer not to be forgotten. It touched
our very souls, and we believe would
have touched the soul of any one not a
stranger to the meltings of a pious heart."
IS ADMITTED TO THE CHUHCH.
It was not until the spring of 1825,
that Puaaiki was received into the church.
The missionaries seem to have erred on
the side of caution, both in this case, and
in that of Kapiolani. The darkness, pol-
lution, and chaotic state of society, was
the reason, though perhaps that should
have been a motive for receiving those lit-
tle ones earlier into the fold. But Puaai-
ki's expression of desire to be united with
the people of God in the spring of 1825,
could not be any longer resisted, and he
was carefully examined by Mr. Richards,
as to his Christian knowledge and belief,
and the evidences of a work of grace in
his heart The following is a translation
of a portion of his replies.
" Why do you ask to be admitted to
the church ?"
"Because I love Jesus Christ, and I
love you the missionaries, and desire to
dwell in the fold of Christ, and join with
1806.]
Bartimeus, the Blind Preacher of Jfaia'.
you in eating the holy bread, and drinking
the holy wine."
"What is the holy bread ?"
" It is the body of Christ, which he
gave to save sinners."
"Do we then eat the body of Christ?"
" No ; we eat the bread which repre-
sents his body ; and as we eat bread that
our bodies may not die, so our souls love
Jesus Christ and receive him for their
Saviour, that they may not die."
" What is the holy wine ?"
" It is the blood of Christ, which was
poured out on Calvary, in the land of Ju-
dea, to save us sinners."
"Do we then drink the blood of
Christ?"
" No ; but the wine represents his
blood, just as the holy bread represents
his body, and all those who go to Christ
and trust in him, will have their sins
washed away in his blood, and their souls
saved forever in heaven."
" Why do you think it more suitable
for you to join the church than others ?"
" Perhaps it is not. If it is not proper,
you must tell me ; but I do greatly desire
to dwell m the fold of Christ"
" Who do you think are proper per-
sons to be received into the church ?"
" Those who have repented of their
sins, and have new hearts."
" What is a new heart?"
" One that loves God, and loves the
word of God, and does not love sin and
sinful ways."
" Why do you hope you have a new
heart ?"
" The heart I now have is not like the
one I formerly had. The one I have now
is very bad. It is unbelieving and in-
clined to evil. But it is not like the one
I formerly had. Yes, I think I have a
new heart."
These answers are given as a sample.
Mr. Richards declares the questions to
have been all new to him, and that he
answered them from his own knowledge,
and not from having committed any cate-
chism.
On the tenth of July, 1825, Puaaiki was
admitted into the church at Lahaina, and
received the name of Satimea Lalana,
The name Lalana (London) was added at
his own suggestion, in accordance with a
Hawaiian custom of noting events. It
was designed to commemorate the then
recent visit of his former patrons, the
king and queen, to London, and their
deaths in that city. We shall use only
the former of the two names, giving it the
English form, Bartimeus.
It is needless to say, that this young
convert had ceased from the use of all al-
coholic drinks, and of «wa, long before
his admission to the Christian church.
But when a translation of Paul's epistles
came afterward into his hands, and he
read, " Prove all things ; hold fast that
which is good ; abstain from that which
is of evil character,"* he thought it his
duty to relinquish also the use of tobacco.
The Rev. Jonathan S. Green came to
Lahaina three years after Bartimeus's pub-
lic profession of his faith, and abode there
a few months, and bore a most favorable
testimony concerning him, as a " con-
sistent Christian, adorning in all things
the doctrine of God his Saviour."
RESIDENCE AT niLO.
In 1829, Bartimeus was persuaded to
remove, with his wife, to Hilo, on the
island of Hawaii. Here his field wa*
wider and more necessitous than it had
been at Lahaina. Several natives of tu-
lent and influence had there been hope-
fully converted, some of them through
his influence. Among them was David
Malo, a most active and promising youth.
Moreover, Lahaina had been longer fa-
vored with the means of grace. At Hilo
— since so wonderfully blessed with out-
pourings of the Spirit — though desirous
of returning to Lahaina, he was persuad-
ed to make his home for several years.
The resident missionary at first, was Mr.
Goodrich, the same who met Kapiolani
at the volcano. In the following year,
Kaahumanu, the ex-queen and regent of
the islands, visited Hilo, and this extra-
ordinary woman seconded the efforts of
Bartimeus by her influence as a ruler,
and still more by her example as a Christ-
* 2 The8. v. 21, 22, rendered back from the
Hawaiian into English.
Bartimeus, the Blind Preacher of Maul. [August,
ian. The cool climate of that windward
district, its green fields, its clouded skies
and frequent rains, exerted such a ben-
eficial effect upon his eyes, that he
made a painful and partially successful
effort to learn to read ; but the effort ag-
gravated the evil, and he reluctantly
gave up the design. " The light of the
body," says Mr. Clark, who spent a sea-
son at Hilo, " did not increase in propor-
tion to the light of the mind. Through
the sense of hearing he was adding rapid-
ly to his knowledge of the way of life.
Every text and nearly every sermon which
he heard, was indelibly fixed in his mind.
The portions of Scripture, which were
then being printed in his native language,
were made fast in the same way. By
hearing them read a few times, they
were fixed, word for word, chapter and
verse."
Mr. Green removed to Hilo in 1831,
and remained there a year and a half.
He saw Bartimeus daily, became inti-
mately acquainted with him as a man and
a Christian, and bears the most favor-
able testimony as to the faithful coopera-
tion of his native brother and fellow-labor-
er. Bartimeus never remitted his ac-
tivity, attending little neighborhoood
meetings, accompanying the missionary,
visiting alone or accompanied by his wife
or some native Christian brother, and re-
ceiving the many who came to his own
house, attracted by his social and affec-
tionate disposition, and by his copious
and spiritual conversation.
RESIDENCE AT WAILCKU.
Some time in 1834, Bartimeus removed
to Wailuku, on the island of Maui,
where, and in the vicinity, he continued
to reside during the eight or nine years
till his death. Here he was once more,
and during a part of the time, associated
with Mr. Green, whose love for him and
confidence in him, and admiration for
his character, appear to have increased to
the last. In 1837, there were manifest
indications of the great awakening, which
so wonderfully pervaded the group of is-
lands in the following year. The infant
church at "Wailuku was revived. TbQ
members confessed their sins, and sought
for pardon through the blood of atone-
ment. No one seemed more deeply peni-
tent than Bartimeus. No one was more
importunate in seeking for pardon, on his
own account, and for his brethren, and
for the impenitent. " And when," adds
Mr. Green, " during most of the year
1838, the Spirit of God moved upon the
mass of the population ; and caused mul-
titudes to bow to the sceptre of the Son
of God, the heart of the good old man
seemed to overflow with joy, and he
poured out the emotions of his soul in
language not easily described. None but
those who saw him during some of those
interesting scenes can conceive the ap-
pearance of Bartimeus. No painter could
do justice to the heaven-illuminated coun-
tenance of our friend. And yet no one that
saw that glow, that index of unearthly joy,
can cease to retain an affecting impression
of it."
As a consequence of this outpouring
of the Spirit, people resorted from all
quarters to Wailuku, coming often a dis-
tance of fifteen or twenty miles, for in- .
struction. But this could not long be ;
the aged, the infirm, and the young could
not come so far at all. The people, there-
fore, erected houses of worship in all the
large districts of Maui, and it became a
difficult question how to supply them
with preachers. Messrs. Green and
Armstrong did the best that seemed to
them possible in the circumstances : they .
selected a class of their most devoted and
talented church-members, and instructed
them in the Scriptures, in the elements
of moral science, and in church history.
Bartimeus was a prominent member of
this class. From our present point of
view, it seems as if he ought, long be-
fore this time, to have been formally
licensed to preach, if not ordained as an
evangelist, or even as the pastor of a
church. But the ideas of our missionary
brethren at that early period developed
slowly, in this direction. Bartimeus was
now set apart formally to the office of
deacon, or elder. This appears to have
been early in 1839. It was not until
three years after this, that he receive:!
1866.]
Bartimeus, the Blind Pt-eacher of
a formal license as a preacher of the
gospel. And it was not until February,
1843, the beginning of his last year on
earth, that he was ordained as an evan-
gelist— his services being then statedly
required by the people of Honuaula,
twenty miles from Wailuku.
LAST DATS AXD DEATH.
"Thus," says his most intimate as-
sociate and biographer, Mr. Green, " was
this good man sent forth by the church
:it Wailuku to labor in the destitute field
of Honuaula and Kahikinui. Judging
from his labors at Hilo, at Wailuku, and
indeed at every place where he had spent
any considerable time, there was much
reason to hope that he would prove a
rich blessing to the inhabitants of those
districts. He entered upon his work
with his accustomed ardor. He pro-
claimed the glad tidings of a Saviour's
mercy in the house of God, by the way-
side, and from house to house ; and he
sought by every method to win souls to
Christ. On the arrival of Mr. Clark as
pastor of the church at Wailuku, he
went over to welcome him to his new
sphere of labor, and spent a week or two.
lie also came through Kula, ' preaching
as he went,' to Makawao, aided me in the
labor preparatory to the administration
of the Lord's Supper, and spent the Sab-
bath. He then resumed his labors at
Honuaula. There, while toiling with
cheerfulness and hope for Christ and his
brethren according to the flesh, and
while we were rejoicing in the belief
that many would be savingly benefited
by his instrumentality, he was arrested
by sickness. The attack being severe,
he returned to Wailuku, that he might
procure medical aid, and also be near his
brethren with whom he had spent many
years of delightful Christian intercourse.
He seemed to have a presentiment from
the commencement of his sickness, that
he should not recover. But the thought
of death gave him no alarm. Why
should it ? He knew whom he had be-
lieved. On the Lord Jesus Christ he
had, long before, cast himself for time and
eternity. This surrender had been sue.
cecded by a sweet peace. He had the
hope of the Christian. True, he did not
escape the buffetings of Satan. The
Lord suffered him for a little season to
be tried, that the sincerity of his pro-
fession, the genuineness of his hope, and
the intensity of his love might be more
apparent. Hence, probably, the reply
which he made to his pastor, when asked
how he felt in view of another world —
k I fear I am not prepared ; my sins are
very great.' When he turned away, so
to speak, from the cross of Christ, to
look at his own sinful heart, he seemed
well nigh desponding ; but a view, by
faith, of his gracious Lord, bleeding,
dying a propitiatory sacrifice for sinners,
now, exalted at the right hand of the
Majesty on high, ever living to intercede
for His people, this, this dispelled his
fears. This made the prospect of going
to dwell with him, and to be forever
like him, exceedingly desirable. Bar-
timeus did not say as much that might
be called a dying testimony as many
others have done. There was less need
that he should do so. His daily conver-
sation, his holy example, and his unre-
mitted labors in the cause of his blessed
Master, had borne ample testimony ; and
by these, he, being dead, yet speaketh.
For a day or two before his decease, he
sank under the force of disease, so that
he was unable to converse much. He
slept in death on Sabbath evening, Sep-
tember seventeenth, 1843, and entered, as
there is the most cheering reason to be-
lieve, into the rest which remaineth for
the people of God."
'" On the nineteenth," writes Mr. Clark,
" his funeral was attended by a large
congregation of sincere mourners. The
voice, which had so often been heard
among us in devout supplication, and in
earnest entreaty, calling the sinner to
repentance, was silent in death. II is
purified spirit, raised from the darkest
heathenism, by the blessing of God on
missionary labor, was at peace with the
Saviour, and all that was mortal was
about to be committed to the dust to
await the last trumpet. A sermon was
preached from 2 Cor. v. 1 : "For we
I
the Blind Preacher of
[August,
know that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a
building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens."
HIS PUOMISKST CHARACTERISTICS.
The character of Bartimeus shines out
so clearly in the foregoing narrative, that
little more need be said. His calling to
be a preacher was evidently of God. He
had original endowments for that service.
There has been already some reference
to the strength of his memory, and to his
eloquence. An illustration of both is
given by Mr. Clark, writing from \Vailu-
ku soon after his decease.
" In January last, I met him at a pro-
tracted meeting in this place, and was
then more than ever impressed with the
extent and accuracy of his knowledge of
the Scriptures. He was called upon to
preach at an evening meeting. His heart
was glowing with love for souls. The
overwhelming destruction of the impeni-
tent seemed to be pressing with great
weight upon his mind ; and this he took
for the subject of his discourse at the
evening meeting. He chose for the foun-
dation of his remarks, Jer. iv. 13. "Be-
hold he shall come up as clouds, and his
chariots shall be as a whirlwind." The
anger of the Lord against the wicked,
and the terrible overthrow of all his ene-
mies, were portrayed in vivid colors. He
seized upon the terrific image of a whirl-
wind or tornado as an emblem of the
ruin which God would bring upon his
enemies. This image he presented in all
its majestic and awful aspects, enforcing
his remarks with such passages as Ps.
Iviii. 9 : "He shall take them away as
with a whirlwind, both living, and in
his wrath ;" Prov. L 27 : " And your
destruction cometh as a whirlwind;"
Isa. xl. 24 : " And the whirlwind shall
take them away as stubble ;" Jer. xxx. 23:
" Behold the whirlwind of the Lord goeth
forth with fury, a continuing whirlwind ;
it shall fall with pain upon the head of
the wicked;" Hosea viii. 7 : "For they
have sown the wind, and they shall reap
the whirlwind ;" Nahum i. 3, Zcch.
vii. 1-i. and other passages in which the
same image is presented — always quoting
chapter and verse. I was surprised to
find that this image is so often used by
the sacred writers. And how this blind
man, never having used a Concordance or
a Reference Bible in his life, could, on the
spur of the moment, refer to all these
texts, was quite a mystery. But his
mind was stored with the precious trea-
sure, and in such order that he always
had it at command. Never have I been
so forcibly impressed, as while listening
to this address, with the remark of the
Apostle, 'Knowing, therefore, the ter-
ror of the Lord, we persuade men ;' and
seldom have I witnessed a specimen of
more genuine eloquence. Near the close
he said, ' Who can withstand the fury of
the Lord, when he comes in his chariots
of whirlwind ? You have heard of the
cars in America, propelled by fire and
steam, with what mighty speed they go,
and how they crush all in their way ; so
will the swift chariots of Jehovah over-
whelm all his enemies. Flee then to the
ark of safety.' "
Mr. Armstrong who was with him five
years, bears this remarkable testimony
to his eloquence : " Often while listening
with exquisite delight to his eloquent
strains, have I thought of Wirt's de-
scription of the celebrated blind preacher
of Virginia." " He is a short man and
rather corpulent, very inferior in appear-
ance when sitting, but when he rises to
speak, he looks well, stands erect, ges-
ticulates with freedom, and pours forth,
as he becomes animated, words in tor-
rents. He is perfectly familiar with the
former, as well as the present, religion,
customs, modes of thinking, and in fact
the whole history of the islanders, which
enables him often to draw comparisons,
make allusions, and direct appeals, with
a power which no foreigner will ever pos-
sess."
Mr. Clark thinks him more distin-
guished for his humility even, than for
his eloquence. "Among all the graces
which shone in him in such beautiful pro-
portion, humility was the most conspic-
uous. Although much noticed by chiefs
and missionaries, as well as those of hi;;
1866.]
the Ittind Preacher of Maui.
o\v;i rank, and occasionally receiving
tokens of respect even from a far distant
land, he was always the same. He sought
the lowest place, and always exhibited
the same modest demeanor, and appeared
in the same humble garb. His prayer
was, ' Lord be merciful to me a sinner.'
This was the more remarkable, as it was
i:\ strong contrast to the natural charac-
ter of Hawaiians. Although he labored
for some time as a licensed preacher of
the gospel, he probably never took hn
station in the pulpit while addressing an
audience. He preferred a more humble
position. "
What shall we think of the capabili-
ties of a race which produces such a man,
and of the power of the gospel, when we
trace the history of this Blind Preacher ?
And what value shall we place upon the
results of the gospel on those islands, and
upon the mission which justly reckons
such results as among the fruits of its
labors ?
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
a ^
JUN 1 9 1945
C'D LD-URG
URL MAR2719DP
MAR 3 0 1974
Form L-9-35m-8,'28
,?i.ci?!l'°r"l«. LOS A
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