Of all the Roman poets, none had a keener perception of the evil which we deplore than Juvenal. The following vigorous passage presents man in a two-fold light,-first, in a state of unsophisticated nature, and then as hardened into a more than brutal insensibility :

66

Compassion proper to mankind appears,

Which Nature witnessed when she gave us tears.
Of tender sentiments we only give

Those proofs; to weep is man's prerogative!
To show by pitying looks and melting eyes,
How with a suffering friend we sympathize!
Who can all sense of others' ills escape,

Is but a brute, at best, in hnman shape!

This nat❜ral piety did first refine

Our wit, and raise our thoughts to things divine,
This proves our spirit of the gods' descent,

While that of beasts is prone and downward bent:
To them but earth-born life they did dispense;

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us, for mutual aid, celestial sense.
But serpents now more amity maintain!
From spotted skins the leopard doth refrain :
No weaker lion's by a stronger slain;
Nor, from his larger tusks, the forest boar
Commission takes his brother swine to gore;
Tiger with tiger, bear with bear you'll find
In leagues offensive and defensive joined !
But lawless man the anvil dares profane
To forge the dart by which a man is slain!
An impious race we now behold, whose rage
The slaughter of their foes cannot assuage,
Unless they banquet on the wretch they slew,

Devour the corpse, and drink the blood they drew."
SATIRE XV.

This dreadful picture, as applied to the savages of Polynesia, is not an exaggeration. How fearfully was the prediction of Hesiod, in relation to parents and

children, verified! By the practice kukumi anga, one of the most atrocious sights imaginable was exhibited. On a son reaching manhood, his first duty was to fight his father, and, in the event of victory, he immediately took forcible possession of his farm, and drove away his vanquished parent in destitution to shift for himself, or die in the woods! In all respects worthy of this, and still more inhuman, was the ao anga, by which the friends of a husband, on his death, came and seized his house, food, and land, turning adrift the mourning widow with her helpless offspring. Let us contrast the former practice with the precept, "Honour thy father and mother;" and the latter with the declaration that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction." Such was the condition of the people of the isles, such their destitution of humanity. The question is, What was the effect of the gospel of Christ upon them? In the emphatic words of Scripture, it changed the hearts of all who believed it from stone to flesh. In proof of this, I offer the dying declarations of Tuahine,-the very first plebeian convert of Tahiti. A day or two before his death, he thus wrote to Mr. Williams :

"Raiatea, November 11th, 1827. "Oh, dear friend,- May blessings attend you and your family, through Jesus Christ our Lord. I have written this letter on the day that my body is completely destroyed with sickness. I am convinced of the near approach of death, for I perceive that my illness is very great. The 11th of November is the day on which I write; I write with great difficulty, for my eyes are now dim in death. My compassion for my family is very great; I therefore write in death

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to you, my dear friend, about my family. We do not belong to Raiatea, neither myself nor my wife; we both belong to Tahiti; but, from love to the word of God, and attachment to you, our teacher, we have forsaken our lands, and now I am about to die. It is death that terminates our close connexion. This is what I have to say to you, my dear friend, about my family do not let them remain at Raiatea; take them to Tahiti in your own large boat; convey them there yourself; let no one else. They belong to Papeete : there are their parents and their land. My perplexity is very great, occasioned by my dear family crying and grieving around me. They say, 'Who will convey us back to our lands?' I refer them to you; replying, 'Mr. Williams is our friend.' We miss you very much in my illness, and grieve Now, my dear friend, let me my dying request. Do not countrymen, and say, when I am gone, 'Oh, it is only the command of a corpse.' This is what they say, and then seize his little property. I have been endeavouring to lengthen out my breath to see you again, but I cannot my hour is come, when God will take me to himself, and I cannot resist his will. Perhaps this is the time the Lord has appointed for me. And now, my dear friend, the great kindness you have shown me is at an end; your face will not see my face again in the flesh-you and I are separated.

greatly at your absence, entreat you not to forget follow the custom of my

am going now to the place we all so

Dear friend, I ardently desire.

"May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with

you and your family!

"P.S.-Take care of my family."

"TUAHINE.

"My compassion for my family is very great; I, therefore, write in death to you, my dear friend, about my family." What language! What pathos! What parental tenderness! How marvellous the power that can fill the savage breast with such a flood of benevolent emotion! Shall we compare this pattern of tenderness with the white-man monster, who perished in the Navigators' Islands? This man shared in all the native wars; he slaughtered his fellow-creatures with his own hands, by the hundred; he had the heads of his victims invariably cut off, and ranged before him during his meals; he often seated himself upon a kind of stage smeared with blood, and surrounded with the heads of those whom he had slain; and in this state his followers used to convey him on their shoulders, with songs of savage triumph, to his own residence !* Or shall we compare him with the mingled mass of Polynesian parents, prior to the introduction of the gospel? Contrast the unutterable tenderness of this man for his family with the Martyr's account of the prevalent crime of infanticide. "The modes by which they perpetrated this deed of darkness were truly affecting. Sometimes they put a wet cloth upon the infants' mouth; at others, they pinched their little throats until they expired: a third method was to bury them alive; and a fourth was, if possible, still more brutal. The moment the child was born, they broke the first joints of its fingers and toes, and then the second. If the infant survived this agonizing process, they dislocated its ankles and the wrists; and, if the powers of endurance still continued, the knee and

* Williams, p. 120.

elbow joints were then broken. This would gene

rally terminate the tortures of the little sufferer; but if not, they would resort to the second method of strangulation.”* To this pandemonium practice the Gospel of mercy has put a perpetual end, in a large portion of the isles of the south. Those all-powerful principles which God has most wisely and graciously implanted in the parental bosom, have experienced a glorious resurrection. What you, Sir, observe of society in Europe, with one or two verbal alterations, may be truly affirmed of it in Polynesia :—“The many wheels of its intricate mechanism are beginning to revolve, and a complicated movement, continually accelerated by fresh impulses, is bearing along the world from its wintry and torpid position, and bringing it under the influence of serener heavens and an awakening spring. All the genial powers of nature are being unlocked, and the better feelings that have long slumbered in the breast of man are being roused into life.”†

To the foregoing beautiful illustration of a dying husband's love to his wife, and a parent's to his children, we may add the following of a people's love to their teachers. Mr. Williams, after a residence of twelve months at Rarotonga, intimated his intention to leave the mission of that island in the hands of others, a communication which elicited a most interesting display of sensibility. For more than a month prior to his departure, groups of the people collected, in the cool of the evening, around the trunk of some gigantic tree, or beneath the shade of a stately banana,

* Williams, p. 148.

† Advancement of Society in Knowledge and Religion, pp. 296, 297.