service commenced, went to the chapel, accompanied by the principal chief, and after commending his diligence, engaged him in the following dialogue. "How came you to build so large a place? there are not people enough in your island to fill it.' Instead of answering me he hung down his head, and appeared much affected. I asked him why he wept; observing that it was with us rather a day of joy than sorrow, for we were about to dedicate this house to God. 6 Oh,' he replied, I weep in consequence of what you say, that there are not people enough in the island to fill this one house; if you had but come about three years before you first visited us, this house and another like it, would not have contained the inhabitants.' On inquiring what had become of the people, he informed me, that about three years prior to my first arrival, a disease had raged among them, which, though not very fatal, was nearly universal. This was accompanied by a famine, the result of a severe storm, which swept over and devastated the island; and, while enduring these complicated sufferings, the warriors of Atiu came upon them in a fleet of eighty canoes, killed the people indiscriminately, set fire to the houses which contained the sick, and, having seized those who attempted to escape, tossed them upon fires kindled for the purpose. 'By these means,' said the chief, 'we have been reduced to the remnant you now behold; and had you not come when you did, our sanguinary destroyers would have repeated their visit, killed us all, and taken the island to themselves.' The person who conducted this murderous expedition was Roma-tane, whose conversion to Christianity, by my discourse upon the folly of idolatry, I have already described. And it is a deeply interesting fact, that this chieftain, who, with savage aspect and devastating cruelty, had led his ferocious tribe against the almost defenceless people of Mauké, was not only the first person whose voice they heard inviting them in accents of persuasive energy to receive the gospel of peace, but also among the very first who there united in commemorating the Saviour's death. It was a truly delightful sight, to behold the once sanguinary chieftain, with his no less bloodthirsty warriors, sitting down at the same sacramental table, with the remnant of a people to whom his very name had been a terror, and whose race he had almost exterminated: thus, verifying what a speaker, at one of our native missionary meetings, observed, that, by the gospel, savages brethren in men became Christians, and Christ.""* 6 Christians of England! Supporters of the London Missionary Society! Such are the facts of the case with respect to war and it evils, to peace and its blessings, and to the success of your missionaries in working the wondrous change. Do you blush at the enterprise which you have espoused and upheld? Do you regret the substance which you have thus appropriated? Are you not at one with your martyred Williams, in the following emphatic words :-"How many thousands of ships has England sent to foreign countries to spread devastation and death? The money expended in building, equipping, and supporting one of these, would be sufficient, with the divine blessing, to convey Christianity, with all its domestic comforts, its civilizing effects, and spiritual advantages, to hundreds and thousands of people." Would that millions of our nation's † Ibid, p. 109. * Williams, p. 73. wealth, which have been lavishly appropriated to objects utterly discordant with the gospel of mercy, had been thus laid out! O ye voyagers, ye travellers, ye men of science, who compass the oceans and continents of our globe, what say you to these things? Do you affirm their falsehood? Prove it! Do you acknowledge their truth? Apply it! With these achievements of the missionary, compare your own. What has been done by you, or by your predecessors, to extinguish the flames of war, to rear the temple of concord, to dry the tears of a weeping world, and to make “ savages brethren in Christ?" Oblige the churches of the living God, the friends of missions, by a statement of your claims. Ah! they may soon be set forth. Much, very much, have ye done to perpetuate and aggravate the calamity, to swell the wail of hopeless woe, and to embitter the overflowing cup of human wretchedness. Ah! how little does the cause of God or of man, of civilization or of humanity, owe to you! How poor, how mean, how utterly worthless, is the whole library of your specific literature, travels, journals, and voyages, when weighed in the balances with the "Enterprises" of the Martyr of Erromanga! He has done incalculably more earthly good-eternity, and the gospel which prepares for it, wholly apart-than your entire fraternity united. Am I dogmatizing? I appeal to the facts of the present letter. How are these facts to be accounted for? The missionary informs you of all that he said, and of all that he did; he thus exhibits the means. But to what shall we ascribe their efficacy? Hear the converted native, part of whose words are already before you, as uttered at a missionary meeting. "These gods are conquered; but the invisible God will remain for ever. The idols now hanging in degradation before us were formerly unconquerable; but the power of God is gone forth, by which men become Christians, and savages brethren in Christ."* Yes, "the power of God is gone forth." This fact explains the whole matter. "Consider what I say, and the Lord give you understanding in all things."† * Williams, p. 28. † 2 Tim. ii. 7. LETTER V. TO SIR THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, BARONET. ON THE RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOUR IN RELATION TO FRIEND of humanity, and honoured advocate of the slave! the facts which will be embodied in this letter, excite feelings which at once suggest the dedication of it to you. Permit me, at the same time, to acknowledge the receipt of your recent work on the slave-trade, and to thank you for the publication of that philanthropic volume. Nothing, connected with Africa, has yet been published, from which I have derived so much pleasure and encouragement as from your "Remedial" suggestions. But while from the beginning to the end, there is not a statement, nor a view, which has not the full concurrence of my humble judgment, my gratification is extreme to find you bearing, in the face of your country and your country's government, in the face of Europe, and, indeed, the world, with all its courts and kings, and presidents, a testimony to the omnipotence of the gospel, and the importance of missionary labour |