A Pioneer Missionary to the Sandwich Islands: Hiram Bingham

To young people who think of the Sandwich Islands as a portion of the United States, sharing in the character and power of America among the nations of the earth, it is difificult to realize that in the memory of persons now living those islands were not only the abode of savage heathen, but were not even deemed a safe place for the most devoted missionaries to work. Hardly any portion of the world can be pointed to as having been more changed by the gospel and its representatives in a generation, than the Hawaiian, or Sandwich Islands.

When American foreign missions were first undertaken, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, as the home of savage heathen, were not yet considered a proper field for Christians to enter even to preach the gospel. The destruction of Captain Cook and some of his men by heathen idolaters in that field, was a present horror in the minds of all who thought of it the world over. When two native boys from the Sandwich Islands were brought to Connecticut and put under Christian training in the new mission school at Cornwall, in Litchfield County in that state, new missionary zeal in behalf of those islands was aroused. And when several American missionaries volunteered to go to the Sandwich Islands, there were of course many who felt that this was” tempting Providence.” There were apparently no favoring circumstances. An abiding faith in God and a willingness to trust in him beyond all sight or knowledge were all that those missionaries had to depend on; and they asked for nothing more.

Rev. Hiram Bingham, one of the first of those missionaries, was in 1819 given a public farewell in the First Church of Hartford, the church with which, later, I first united. My father-in-law, the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, preached the sermon on this occasion and a copy of this sermon I had. In that sermon, Mr. Gallaudet referred to the fact that martyrdom might await the new missionary, in his new field; but that Christ would be with him and he could be with Christ whatever the issue. Asa Thurston, a fellow-student with Bingham at Andover, and the wives of the two, went out in the first vessel. Several other missionary helpers from the islands and from this country went out from the Cornwall school.

The story is familiar to the Christian world, how God prepared the way for these missionaries by prompting in advance these heathen islanders to destroy their idols and to be ready to receive new messengers of the Most High, who were coming over the sea. Thus the new missionaries had an open field, and God’s special favor from the beginning. It was not a very great while before a single Christian church in those islands had a larger membership than any other church in the world; and this is but one illustration of the wonderful work of grace in that mission field.

But the missionaries had opposition to encounter, and were called to a severe struggle even after idolatry and paganism were providentially overcome. Representatives of “Christian” nations and of civilization and commerce, on vessels from England and the United States, were angered because the missionaries introduced good morals and pure living among the natives, and thus interfered with the vicious and immoral lives of those coming thither on ships from lands of “civilization.” The conflict was a hard one. It was on the part of the foreigners an outspoken and a shameless one. They insisted that a new law passed by the chiefs, forbidding the taking of natives to foreign vessels for immoral purposes, should be repealed or ignored. When the missionaries refused their consent to this they were threatened with violence and death. An issue came with Mr. William Richards, one of the earliest missionaries. He refused to yield up some natives who sought his protection, even at a threat of his life. His good wife expressed her readiness to die with him in such a course.

But other natives from that land of “heathenism” rose up in support of their Christian teachers the missionaries, and in defense of morahty and decency, against the advocates of iniquity and vice from representatives of “civilized” and “Christian” nations, and the defenders of right were for the time successful. But the conflict was not settled with a single struggle. It had to be made over and over again.

Here as elsewhere while Christian missions prepare the way for improved commerce and civilization, commerce and civilization may strive to undo the work or to oppose the best influence of Christian missions. The conflict which was begun in Eden continues in every new mission field. Not even officers and men of the regular navy of England and of the United States were in every instance on the side of morals and decency in the struggle as it continued. But this is the very conflict in which foreign missionaries are engaged. And in this conflict missionaries are on God’s side, and there need never be a doubt as to the ultimate issue.

Although the natives of the Hawaiian Islands had no written language, the missionaries gave them one. Into that language they translated the Bible and then prepared for them school books and various books for their education and training. In the continued struggle between good and evil, the missionaries had glad helpers among those engaged in commerce and civilization, even though others in the same spheres were on the other side. The commander of a United States naval vessel brought presents to the king of the islands, with assurance of the sympathy of the best people of the United States in the struggle of the young nation with vice and idolatry. The President of the United States, good John Quincy Adams, wrote to the King of Hawaii a warm letter in favor of the missionaries and Christianity; and the influence of this was positive and excellent.

Schools were started; education advanced; progress was made. And in spite of the continued efforts of “Christian” traders to introduce rum and brandy and the vices of civilization, the islands advanced with remarkable rapidity, as showing what missions and missionaries can do in spite of the opposition of those who ought to know better.

After long years of faithful missionary service in the Sandwich Islands, Mr. Bingham returned to Connecticut. I became personally acquainted with him in New Haven, where he was pastor of an African church. I looked up to him, in view of the great work he had done for his Master, and of the high honor that his Master had conferred upon him in his being assigned to such a work. His son, Hiram Bingham, junior, whom I was also privileged to know, was a missionary among the Micronesian Islands, and the first commander of the first missionary brig “Morning Star.”

There were rich results from the Sandwich Island mission, in the second generation of workers there. Asa G. Thurston, son of one of the missionaries, whom I was with in Williston Seminary, and who afterwards was a prominent Yale student, did credit to his parentage and to his training. With Dr. Titus M. Coan I was associated, when he was on the editorial force of the New York Independent. He was a son of the pastor of that great church in the Sandwich Islands, the largest church in its membership in the world. Two children of William Richards, spoken of above, were my schoolmates at East Hampton. General Armstrong, son of another of the missionaries, I was with in army service, where he was brave and true and had a fine record. After that he did service so Old Time Student Volunteers

to his country and to humanity by what he accomplished in and through Hampton Institute. If he had done nothing more than to secure the education of Booker Washington, his life work would have been a great one. Booker Washington is really an outcome of the second generation of Sandwich Island missionaries.