Transformed Communities

The Pitcairn Islanders.

By His book alone, God has wrought wonders of transformation.

We have been wont to think the presence of personal agency an essential condition of the work of conversion; and perhaps, in view of the emphasis laid by God Himself upon the living voice and the believer’s witness, we are not likely to give any undue importance to personal contact with souls. But we must not forget that God’s choice of human channels for His grace does not leave Him absolutely dependent upon them. In more instances than one. He has set His peculiar seal and sanction upon His own inspired word as the means of softening hard hearts and changing foes to friends.

The story of the Pitcairn exiles is an illustration of the power of the Bible alone, as the seed of God, to raise up in the most sterile soil and amid most hopeless conditions a harvest for the kingdom. For He has two sorts of seed — one is the word of God; the other the children of the kingdom. (Mark iv. 14; Matt. xiii. 38.)

In the mind and heart of the mutineer, John Adams, God’s way may possibly have been prepared by early parental training of which we have no record; but, so far as we know, no human hand wielded the subtle moulding influence that turned that abandoned sailor to God. In this case the solitary cause which wrought such miraculous effects on Pitcairn Island was the written word of God. And other facts are fast coming to the surface and demanding thankful recognition, which prove that, quite apart from the voice and presence of the living and witnessing believer, the Bible is doing its own peculiar work. Where the feet of no other missionary have yet left their tiacks, this living word, which liveth and abideth forever, has sometimes proved the pioneer missionary and evangelist.

Pitcairn Island lies solitary in Pacific waters, and is about seven miles in circuit. Carteret discovered it over a century and a quarter since, and named it after one of his officers who caught the first glimpse of it. There for more than sixty years the mutineers of the Bounty and their descendants found a habitation. In 1790, nine of these mutineers landed there, with six men and twice as many women from Tahiti. At that time the island was found uninhabited, though relics of previous occupancy were afterwards discovered.

Among these settlers of a century past, quarrels violent and bloody broke out, and the flames of passion, fed by strong drink, burned so hotly that when the dawn of the new century came, it looked down on desolation: all the Tahitian men had perished, and all but one of the Englishmen. John Adams was, of the mutineers, the sole survivor. He had rescued from the wreck a Bible and a prayer-book. Destitute of all other reading, and left without former companions, he turned to these two books for occupation, comfort and counsel. As he read the word of God, he began to be conscious that he was looking in a magic mirror — he saw himself in his hideousness, and remorse for past sins and crimes began to sting his conscience as with a whip of scorpions. And from contrition he was led to conversion — from fear to faith — and all this without any man to guide him. He became not only a true believer in Christ, but a witness to His grace and a missionary. With the aid of these two books, he undertook to teach those grossly ignorant women of Tahiti, and the children that were left of this mixed parentage. Mark the result! Upon this lonely island grew up a Christian community so remarkable that all travellers visiting those shores have borne common witness to the gentleness of character and virtuous simplicity of conduct which were there displayed.

This story of the Pitcairn Islanders thus stands quite unique in the history of missions. Here was a bastard community — a progeny whose parentage was mutiny and lust, from the beginning doubly accursed. Of all the common institutions of the gospel, which we significantly call” means of grace,” there was complete destitution — no clergymen or Christian laymen, no churches or Sunday-schools, no restraints of law or religion. One stray copy of the blessed book of God, and of that Book of Common Prayer, which is so largely permeated with that word of God, — and even these ‘in the hands of a reckless, godless mutineer, — first became means of blessing and salvation to him, and then to that degraded class by whom he was surrounded.

The Colonists of Sierra Leone.

When William A. B. Johnson went to this Mountain of Lions, in 1816, he found the refuse of slave ships there gathered. If the horrors of that ‘’middle passage,” in which four hundred wretches were crammed into a hold, twelve yards long, seven wide, and three and a half high, had crushed their minds and moral natures into as narrow a compass as their bodies, they could have not been more hopeless subjects for labour. They were manumitted slaves, but in all but name were still in most abject bondage. These liberated captives represented tribes so numerous that samples of one hundred and fifty dialects might have been found at Queen’s Yard in Sierra Leone. Johnson found himself at Hogbrook, with fifteen hundred half-starved, diseased, filthy Africans, dying at the rate of two hundred a month, and already dead to all response even to human kindness. He held a Sunday service with but nine attendants, and these nearly nude. The fact is that, like the victims of Spanish treachery in Central America, they had so suffered at white men’s hands, that even the gospel was unwelcome at white men’s lips, and the idea of Heaven, if white men were to be there, was almost as repulsive as hell would be without them.

This simple-minded German fed them daily with their allowance of rice, and patiently showed them loving sympathy, and so won their confidence for himself. Then they thronged his cottage to hear the gospel until he had to resort to the open air as a meeting-place. His school was likewise full to overflowing, and those pupils who had never seen a book or known a letter, in less than a year were reading the New Testament. With unceasing labour, and, better still, unceasing prayer, fighting the deadly climate and the enfeebling fever, seeing his fellow-helpers falling beside him till the graveyard at Kissy was full of bodies, he persevered, telling the simple gospel story. And when, in 1819, his wife’s illness drove him to England, he left at Regents Town a model state, like Eliot’s Nonantum and Duncan’s Metlakahtla. The natives had laid out a settlement, properly organized, with decent homes, and all the signs of a Christian community. They had built a church, which held 1,300 and overflowed with habitual attendants at three services each Lord’s day. He had 263 communicants, a daily service attended by from 500 to 900, and hundreds of cases of as deep conviction of sin and as genuine conversion to God as any field ever produced. At the very time when his courageous faith almost gave way before the gigantic obstacles he had to surmount, and he had sought the retirement of a forest to indulge in sorrowful thought, he heard one of these poor slaves pra3nng for the liberty of a son of God, and he knew that the hour of victory was at hand. Even the secular authorities were constrained, in their report to the British Government, to confess, like Pharaoh’s magicians, ‘This is the finger of God.” As they contrasted the former state of the colony, “grovelling and malignant superstitions, their greegrees, their red water, their witchcraft, their devil houses,” with the existing sincere Christian worship, they wrote, ‘’The hand of Heaven is in this!” It is ‘’a miracle of good which the immediate interposition of the Almighty alone could have wrought.” And they added, “What greater blessing could man or nation desire or enjoy than to have been made the instruments of conferring such sublime benefits on the most abject of the human race.”

Johnson was so impressed with the simple childlikeness of their faith and the obvious groaning of the Spirit in their prayers, that his journals are full of these records. Their devotion to him was pathetic and romantic. Hundreds of them went on foot with him to Freetown, five miles off, and when the sea prevented their going with him further, they said, in their broken English: “Massa, suppose no water live here — we go all the way with you — till feet no more.” And when he came back, and his arrival was announced in the church at night, some could not wait to go out the door, but leaped out through the window. Some went that night to Freetown to meet him, while others could not sleep, but sang the night away.

Again, in 1823, he was compelled to seek rest in England. And now over a thousand scholars were in his school, seven hundred of whom could read. He had four hundred and fifty communicants, and they had their own missionary society. And when it pleased God that seven years of work should close with his burial at sea, Sara Bickersteth, — the first of her nation to taste the grace of God, his own child in the faith, — watched by his berth, read to him the twenty-third Psalm and prayed beside him, heard his dying words and closed his dying eyes. And so, dying, like Mills and Hunt, at thirty-five, this man in seven years, and amid a community as hopelessly ignorant and unimpressible as ever a missionary confronted, actually laid the basis of a Christian state, where, thirty years after his death. Bishop Vidal confirmed three thousand candidates, and where, in later years, parishes with native pastors, a college and a vigorous life of its own, pushed missions into the interior and along the Niger.

Tyndall has called attention to the wonders of crystallization. “Looking into this solution of common sulphate of soda, mentally, we see the molecules, like disciplined squadrons under a governing eye, arranging themselves into battalions, gathering round distinct centres and forming themselves into solid masses which, after a time, assume the visible shape of this crystal.” But there is something far transcending this in wonders, when, out of a community such as Johnson found at Sierra Leone, or Hunt at Fiji Islands, a well-ordered Christian state is organized. A secret, unseen, mysterious power, which none can define or describe, is at work. Around the name of Jesus the disorderly and confused elements of a moral chaos arrange themselves in symmetry and beauty, and society becomes crystalline and reflects the glory of God.

The New Zealand Converts.

The New Zealanders were alike objects of fear and hate, when the devoted Marsden pleaded their cause with the Church Missionary Society and laid the basis of one of the most successful missions of the modern era. They were perpetually at war, and with brutal murders revenged the treachery and violence of white men who touched at their shores.

But while Samuel Marsden was yet at New South Wales, he met many from these islands who visited Paramatta, and he detected in them something which promised a nobler life. When the mission was first projected, no clergyman could be found ready for an enterprise so heroic; and two skilled mechanics undertook to win a way for the gospel by the arts of civilization. At the end of thirty years’ toil, Marsden declared that civilization is not necessary before Christianity, but will be found to follow Christianity more easily than Christianity to follow civilization; and, he added, that with all its cannibalism and idolatry, New Zealand would yet set an example of Christianity to some nations then before her in point of civilization.

Certain outrages by a sea captain at Whangaroa Harbour had provoked horrible retaliation on the part of the natives, and this led to subsequent acts of vengeance on the part of a whaling vessel. The excitement ensuing postponed missionary effort; but at length, the two mechanics ventured to New Zealand and were well received. Marsden now yearned to follow in person, but could not find a ship captain to take him at a less cost than six hundred pounds for the risk; so he bought a brig and set sail, landing on those shores unarmed, and with but one companion.

As he lay awake that first night, excited by the awful environment of paganism and cannibalism, he saw above him those brilliant constellations, the Southern Cross and the Southern Crown, which served to remind him of One who bore the cross for all men and who would yet wear the crown of universal empire. And on the Christmas-day which soon followed he preached the first sermon in New Zealand, using a native interpreter. His text was, “Behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy;” and around him were gathered a motley group of men and women and children and chiefs. For vears no converts crowned the work, though the natives seemed to desire the Pakehas, or Englishmen, to settle among them; and ventured to assure Marsden that they would not be killed and eaten, as they were such salt eaters that their flesh was less savoury than that of the Maoris — a statement which did not diminish the quantity of salt eaten by the English. At length the spirit of religious inquiry was awakened, and truth found such root and room to grow that even chiefs began to be baptized. And when Marsden made his sixth visit, the east and west shores of the bay where he landed presented one of those strange and eloquent contrasts often seen where the gospel has won a partial victory. On one side, naked savages, their hands red with blood, yelling like demons, and the moans of the wounded and dying: on the other side, a peaceful community, decently clad, assembled for worship, and using devoutly the Church service printed in their own tongue. Here at one glance were the anticipations of heaven and hell — the misery and wretchedness of paganism confronting Christianity with its trees of righteousness and plants of godliness. When, at seventy-two, the patriarchal missionary paid his last visit, his coming was the signal for ecstatic delight. In his arm-chair before the mission house, he received the thousands who from great distances thronged to do him honour; and on re-embarking they bore him on their shoulders six miles to the shore. Since then, when, on the unconscious verge of another sea on whose unknown waters he was so soon to set sail, the apostle of New Zealand lifted his hands in a farewell benediction — since then, fifteen thousand native Christians bear witness that the introduction of Christianity into the cannibal islands on Christmas-day, 1814, was not in vain. Three years after Marsden’s death Bishop vSelwyn reported a whole nation of pagans converted to the faith.

The Ferocious Cannibals of Fiji.

We have before referred to the atrocious cannibals of Fiji, the slaves of a religion of organized cruelty, that fattens on blood, crushes conscience, and kills sensibility as a red-hot iron burns out the very eye-ball. For a hardened Fijian to be brought to tenderness of heart and sensitiveness of conscience is as much a miracle as to replace a maimed limb or restore a withered arm. Hunt saw two conversions wrought at Viwa. One from paganism as an idolatrous system, to the Christian faith; that was wonderful, like opening a blind eye or straightening a crooked form. But the other was more marvellous: it was a conversion from the love and guilt and power of sin to God and love of godliness. It was comparatively easy to secure a profession of Christianity; but tJiis was like a resurrection from the dead.

When this Wesleyan farmer saw in these pagan monsters penitence for sin as sin, deep conviction of guilt and agonies of godly sorrow; when for days and nights together they were racked with wildest grief until from sheer exhaustion they fainted, and recovered only to swoon again after another agony of prayer, he said, this is the work of God.

John Hunt goes on his circuits of a hundred miles a month, telling Christ’s story, forming schools to train converts for teachers, ‘^ turning care into prayer,” working hard on his Fiji New Testament. Who can tell what that lonely servant of God had to overcome in facing hostile, cruel chiefs without force or threat, mastering a difficult tongue without grammar or lexicon, teaching such savages when their pagan tongue supplied no fit terms to convey divine thoughts I

God had much people even there, and when His fit and full time came He knew how to lead them out. The priests predicted an awful drought as the judgment of the gods on the sin of those who confessed

Jesus; but the failure of the prophecy shook popular faith in the pagan idols. The Queen of Viwa, and the “Napoleon” of Fiji, Verani, became Christians, — and Verani a preacher and winner of thousands of souls.

This lesson of God’s power has been taught us, repeatedly, in the new chapters of the Acts. The story of JoJin Hunt in the Fiji Group is the all-convincing example and illustration. When he went there in 1838, the moral aspect of those hundred islands was as hideous as their material aspect was lovely. If nature had lavished her bounties and beauties so that every prospect was pleasing, how vile and repulsive was man. Treachery and ferocity, raging passion and devilish cruelty, were branded on the very faces of the Fijians. One who had shuddered at the sight has sought to paint the awful portrait: ‘’The forehead filled with wrinkles; the large nostrils distended and fairly smoking; the staring eyeballs red, and gleaming with terrible flashings; the mouth distended into murderous and disdainful grin; the whole body quivering with excitement; every muscle strained, and the clenched fist eager to bathe itself in the blood of him who has roused this demon of fury.”

If one could dip his pen in the molten brimstone of hell’s fiery lake, he could still write no just account of the condition of the Fijians fifty years ago. Two awful forms of crime stood like gates of hell to let in demons and shut out gospel heralds. Of all children born at least two-thirds were killed at birth, and to make sure of their death there was a system of organized destruction, and every village had its authorized executioner, to repeat the tragedy of Bethlehem’s babes. Of course, infanticide and parricide go together; and so if the parents did not spare their offspring, neither did the offspring spare the parents, but despatched them when old or feeble.

Cannibalism, — the most atrocious form of pagan ferocity, that breaks the whole decalogue at once, the climax of theft, sensuality and murder, — was not only a custom, but a sacred religious rite, and the children that were allowed to live, were trained to dishonour and devour the human form divine. Mothers gave their babes a taste of the horrible feast, as a beast her cubs, to excite a relish for the horrid meal; and not only dead bodies, but living captives, were given over to young children as playthings on which to practise for sport the art of mutilation and dissection. It became a pride to Fijian chiefs to boast of the number of human bodies they had eaten; and Ra Undreundu’s pile of stones, in which each stone stood for one such victim, contained nine hundred! The Fijian word for corpse ‘S’akalu,” suggests also the idea of a meal, as the Greek word for rejoicing suggests a banquet ixapa). All the life of these people, civil and religious, was inwrought with the destroying and devouring of helpless victims. A building of a hut, a launching of a canoe, a burying of the dead, and events of far less moment, were the signals for a banquet on human flesh. And if the plump form of a favourite wife, or the tender flesh of a little child promised an unusual delicacy, without compunction or hesitation the husband and father called his friends to a feast on the dainty morsel!

It was among such a people that the ploughboy of Lincolnshire landed in 1838. He soon found that the half of the inhuman cruelty and devilish butchery of this people had never been told him; and yet he went to Somosomo, whose people were the worst of all. When the youngest son of the King Tuithakau was lost at sea, sixteen women were strangled and then burned in front of the mission-house, notwithstanding Mr. Hunt’s entreaties that they should be spared; and when, some months after, eleven men were dragged by ropes to be roasted in the ovens, these demons, who were preparing the feast, threatened to burn down the missionary’s house, because his wife closed and blinded the windows to shut out the sickening sight and smell of burning bodies!

Not one Christian among a hundred would have counselled Hunt to attempt work among such incarnate monsters, when the king himself forbade his subjects under pain of death to ^’lotu” or profess the new faith, and when even the readiness to confess Christ seemed to be due to mere greed of gain in cutlery and firearms. Captain Wilkes of the American navy, in 1840, witnessed the trials of their seemingly hopeless work, and besought them at least to let him carry them to a more hopeful field; but John Hunt had heard a divine voice — ‘’Fear not, for I have much people in these islands” — and he stayed. Three years at Somosomo sufficed so to change the horrid life about him that at least a bloodless war was waged, a large canoe launched and a great feast held for weeks without one human sacrifice; and this last with no direct interference of the missionary.

The last six years of John Hunt’s short career of ten, were spent at Viwa, near Mbau, the head centre of Fiji power. King Thakombau, “the butcher of his people,” was a fierce foe, and his wars and hostility to the missionary seemed to make all success hopeless — yet here again the patience of God’s saints was rewarded. Even among this city of demons, God had much people.

The Land of the Brahman.

Even India, the Malakoff of heathenism, is not deficient in signs of divine power in furnishing her quota of converts and martyrs. The greater part of a century has passed since the directors of the British East India Company put on record their conviction that ‘’ the sending of Christian missionaries into our Eastern possessions is the maddest, most expensive, most unwarranted project that was ever proposed by a lunatic enthusiast.” No arraignment of the entire principle and policy of modern missions to the Hindus could have been more sarcastically severe. Observe the terms, which indirectly accuse those who favoured and furthered such a project, as not only lacking good sense, adequate justification, or business economy, but as enthusiasts, madmen and lunatics! But, what is worse — at that time, now more than eighty-five years ago, — this outrageous assault upon obedience to our Lord’s command was not repudiated by the great body even of English Christians, and found positive support even among members of parliament and ecclesiastical dignitaries. A few disciples, full of faith and prayer, dared, notwithstanding all this violent opposition, to send messengers and give money for this insane purpose.

And now it is not too much to say that popular sentiment has undergone such a complete revolution that even the secular newspaper has become the advocate and vindicator of missions to India. The testimony of such men as Sir Bartle Frere, Sir William Muir, Sir Monier Monier Williams, Sir Herbert Edwardes, Max Müller, Sir Richard Temple, Sir Donald McLeod, Sir William Hill, Lord John Lawrence, the Earl of Northbrook, Hon. W. E. Baxter, and a host of others, who have had ample time and large facility for forming an intelligent judgment, have left on record words so weighty that, in comparison, all sneers or charges against missions in India become light and frivolous, if not ‘contemptible and dishonest. Such men as these, who could be misled neither by ignorance nor motives of policy, have borne singularly unanimous witness to the number and worth of native converts; and to something even more important — the fact, that Christianity is forming a new nation in the land of the Brahman; that while every other faith is decaying, this divine gospel is alone beginning to run its course; that the changes taking place under the benign influence of

2G2 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

Christianity are, for extent and rapidity of effect, far more extraordinary than anything witnessed in modern Europe by us or our fathers. Shortly since, Sir Rivers Thompson, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, testified that “Christian missionaries have done more real and lasting good than all other agencies combined.” And to all this testimony there still remains to be added, before an intelligent verdict can be made up, the testimony of the native Hindus themselves — not Ganga Dhar, Abdul Messeh, Tulsi Paul, Narayan Sheshadri, Keshub Chunder Sen and others like them who have been converts or open advocates of Christianity, but the native rajahs and princes; from the Rajah of Tanjore, who built a monument to Schwartz, down to the first Prince of Travancore, who in 1874, publicly said:

‘^ Marvellous has been the effect of Christianity in the moral moulding and leavening of Europe. I am 7iot a Christian; I do not accept the cardinal tenets of Christianity as they concern man in the next world; but I accept Christian ethics in their entirety. I have the highest admiration for them.”

Four years before this, a learned Brahman had candidly said: Where did the English-speaking people get all their intelligence, and energy, and cleverness and power? It is their Bible that gives it to them. And now they bring it to us and say: ‘This is what raised us. Take it and raise yourselves!’ They do not force it upon us, as the Mohammedans did their Koran, but they bring it in love, and translate it into our languages and lay it before us, and say, ‘■ Look at it, read it, examine it, and see if it is not good.’ Of one thing I am convinced, — do what we will, oppose as we may, it is the Christian’s Bible that will sooner or later zvork the regeneration of this land.’*

India has presented perhaps the most formidable barriers ever encountered in any of our mission fields. The subtlety and acumen of the Brahmanic priesthood, and their power over the superstitious and ignorant common folk, the rigid restraints of caste — itself a wall of ice, mountain high against the approach of the gospel, and a system of frigid immobility which, like a vast polar zone of frost, locks in eternal winter the whole society it girdles — the long sway of that religious faith which is one of the purest and best of Oriental religions, notwithstanding its practical corruptions — these are some of the hindrances Christian missions have had to meet. And yet notwithstanding all, the gospel is slowly razing these high walls, undermining these strongholds, and, like the resistless summer sun, melting these ice castles.

The seraphic Henry Martyn, eighty years ago was so horror-struck at the gross idolatries and nameless atrocities connected with the pagodas and pageants of Juggernath, and the blazing fires of the suttee, that his exquisite sensibilities shrank back in revolt at the sight, and he said,” I shivered as if standing, as it were, in the neighbourhood of hell. The fiends of darkness seem to sit in sullen repose in this land!” Now ruined pagodas have become Christian temples, and where demons were once worshipped, prayer ascends to Him who cast out demons with His word.

Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, who spent nearly a half century in India, twenty years ago, ‘’tersely catalogued the bloodless triumphs that had been won” on that field, where Carey led the way a century ago. That catalogue we venture to reproduce entire from the masterly work of his eminent biographer.*

Horrors and Iniquities of India Removed by Government. I. Murder of Parents.

{a) By Suttee.

{b) By exposure on the banks of rivers.

Ic) By burial alive. Case in Joudhpore territory, 1860.

* “Life of John Wilson,” by George Smith, LL.D., p. 352.

II. Murder of Children.

{d) By dedication to the Ganges, there to be devoured by crocodiles. lb) By Rajpoot infanticide, West of India, Punjab, East of India.

III. Human Sacrifices.
{a) Temple sacrifices.

(<^) By wild tribes — Meriahs of the Khonds.

IV. Suicide.

{a) Crushing by idol cars.

{b) Devotees drowning themselves in rivers.

(<r) Devotees casting themselves from precipices.

{d) Leaping into wells — widows.

{e) By Traga.

V. Voluntary Torment.
{a) By hook-swinging.
{p) By thigh-piercing.
{c) By tongue-extraction.
{ii) By falling on knives.
((?) By austerities.

VI. Involuntary Torment.
{a) Barbarous executions.
lb) Mutilation of criminals.

lc) Extraction of evidence by torment.
{d) Bloody and injurious ordeals.
{e) Cutting off the noses of women.

VII. Slavery.

{a) Hereditary predial slavery.

lb) Domestic slavery.

(<f) Importation of slaves from Africa.

VIII. Extortions.
{a) By Dharana.
{b) By Traga.

IX. Religious Intolerance.

{d) Prevention of Propagation of Christianity.

lb) Calling upon Christian soldiers to fire salutes at heathen festivals, etc.

(c) Saluting gods on official papers.
{d) Managing affairs of idol temples.

X. Support of Caste by Law.

(d) Exclusion of low castes from offices.

{b Exemption of high castes from appearing to give evidence. lc) Disparagement of low caste.

There are reasons to believe that thousands even in India believe, btit, like the Pharisees of old, do not confess Christ lest they be put out of the synagogue. Observers who have had rare opportunities to note the facts tell us that secret believers are rapidly multiplying; and that for every avowed convert there are hundreds who, for fear of kin and caste, of ostracism and actual starvation, dare not make such avowal, but are ready when the break shall come. So said ‘’The Indian Witness” in 1889.

The Slaves of Jamaica.

Who can read the story of Jamaica, and doubt the power of the gospel over even the most degraded negro slaves. When the island was formally ceded to Great Britain by the treaty of Madrid in 1670, the place of the native Indians was taken by Africans, imported by Spaniards, and during the eighteenth century over half a million were brought over to suffer as the heirs of Canaan’s curse. The history of these slaves, their poverty, misery, degradation, wretchedness, is among the blackest annals of the race; and when the facts became known in Great Britain, the popular heart of English freemen demanded their liberation. On August I, 1834, the emancipation began to take effect in the freedom of the children of the slave families; but the midnight of July 31, 1838, was to usher in the complete liberation of the whole slave community; and on that night, led on by William Knibb and James Philippo, fourteen thousand adult slaves and five thousand children joined in prayer to God as they waited and watched for the hour of twelve, midnight, which was to terminate the life of slavery in Jamaica; and as Rev. J. J. Fuller says, who was himself a child of slavery and there present, every coloured man on the Island was on his knees that night.

A mahogany coffin had been made, polished and fitted by the carpenters and cabinet-makers of this slave population, and, as became the great occasion, a grave was dug. Into that coffin they crowded all the various relics and remnants of their previous bondage and sorrow. The whips, the torture-irons, the branding-irons, the coarse frocks, and shirts, and great hat, fragments of the treadmill, the handcuffs — whatever was the sign and badge of seventy-eight years of thraldom — they placed in the coffin and screwed down the lid. As the bell began to toll for midnight, the voice of Knibb was heard, “The monster is dying — is dying” — until, when the last stroke sounded from the belfry, Mr. Knibb cried — “The monster is dead! Let us bury him out of sight forever!” and the coffin was lowered into its grave; and then the whole of that throng of thousands celebrated their redemption from thraldom by singing the doxology! This was the way these black slaves took vengeance on their former masters — not by deeds of violence, lust, rapine, murder; but by burying the remnants of their long bondage and the remembrance of their great wrongs, in the grave of oblivion. Where did those debased Africans learn such magnanimous love, except of Him whose greatest miracle was His dying prayer, ‘’Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

This is not the end of this story. To-day there is not on the island among all the different bodies one church dependent on outside help: they all support themselves, and a large portion of them have for pastors the sons of former slaves. They have also their own independent missionary society, as well as schools, high schools, grammar schools, etc.

On the island to-day there are more than two hundred and seventy Baptist churches alone, seventy of which are ministered to by young men trained in the colleges of Jamaica, children of former slaves; and the Presbyterians, Wesleyans and Episcopalians have their congregations beside. Here, within a littie more than a half century, the gospel has not only broken slave bonds, but has developed former slaves into a Christian community of freemen of the Lord, with Christian institutions. Folly and vice, idolatry and witchcraft, ignorance and superstition, were the thick growths that covered the soil half a century since, where now are the trees of righteousness, self-sustaining and self-propagating churches of coloured people, ministered to in many cases by sons of those who were formerly enthralled in slavery. These preachers, developed from a former slave population, side by side with their white brethren maintain the gospel with equal success. To see the difference which the gospel can make, one needs only to contrast Jamaica with Hayti.

Old Calabar.

When Rev. J. J. Fuller, to whom already reference has been made, left his native island of Jamaica to follow his father in a mission on the west coast of Africa, he landed in the Gulf of Guinea and the Bight of Biafra. This was in 1845. He found neither Bible nor book, not even written language; none of the people had ever heard the name which brings salvation. There was a community of naked, degraded, depraved, ignorant savages, and human sacrifices were the natural apex to a pyramid of cruelties, which were not only common, but sanctioned and supported by superstitions which claimed the rank of religion. These horrid and revolting customs were simply built into the whole structure of society, like pillars into the temple they uphold. Cruelty was a part of the education of the people, and a very efficient school it was in vice and crime!

The people had faith in a future life, but even that faith only stimulated cruelty; for it led to the cultivation of customs supposed to be a protection alike to the dead and the living. If anybody died, somebody else was responsible; accusation followed, and trial for witchcraft by tests which were equally fatal for the innocent and the guilty. Poison was the ordeal that followed accusation. The living infant was buried with the dead mother; and if the mother had borne twins, she was beaten to death and the babes were put out of the way; and so a curse was supposed to be lifted from the land. A king’s death meant a wholesale burial alive of men and women who were put into the royal grave. Mr. Fuller, during forty-five years of personal ministry, witnessed the great transformation. A people without God or hope shortly began to feel after God, and a new faith began to dawn over their horizon. Their language was put in written form. Alfred Saker and the Presbyterian missionaries translated the whole Bible for them; and now they have churches, schools and a native ministry. The people are learning to read and write, and coming up to the higher plane of enlightenment. Belief in witchcraft is dead; the ordeal of the Calabar bean, the massacre of slaves, and other like absurd and cruel customs of centuries, have disappeared.

Take one contrast: In 1845, one of the kings of old Calabar died. Into his grave, according to longestablished custom, many living people were put to die beside the dead. To-day a grandson of that buried chief is an elder in a Presbyterian church; and every morning, with the open Bible in his hand, he leads his household in family worship.

Mr. Fuller tells of his going into the Cameroons, and how in the morning, looking across the river he saw many canoes with people dressed up in all their war dresses, and their spears and swords were brandished in the sun. They had their war caps upon their heads. He took his glass and looked, and found that the decoration on the bows of all those canoes was nothing else but human heads. He went up to the chief and said to him, ‘’What do you do such cruel deeds for? “He looked very much astonished that any one should ask him such a question, and said, ‘’What deeds?” Pointing across the river, Mr. Fuller said,” Look, yonder. What about that row of human heads on your canoe? Why do you do such cruel things? They are not right.” ‘The chief replied: “You people come into this country and live here and you claim to be a good people, and that is true enough; but do you tell me that when I die my sons are going to put me into an empty grave alone and nobody with me?” When Mr. Fuller replied “Yes,” he looked at him and said, “You are a fool.” Then all his sons came up directly and said, “What is the matter, father?” And he repeated what he had said to Mr. Fuller: “This man who has come to live in this country says that when I die you boys will put me into an empty grave, alone, with no one with me,” and they looked at Mr. Fuller and grinned their savage grin, and then turned away and said, “Father, do not believe him. He is a fool, and he is a foreigner. What does he know? Let him alone.” And yet mark it! That same chief lived on until the old custom of burying living people with the dead was completely abolished. In his town, about fifty yards from his own house, stood a little chapel, and the preacher in that chapel was none other than one of his sons, who was preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ!

If God, in such a short time, can produce such a marvellous change, surely prayers for missions, and for the extension of Christ’s kingdom in the world, have abundant proof that they are being answered of God. Think of the present condition of the people, and then of what was their former state, when this missionary first met them in their degradation as naked savages. A letter was recently received from the Church in Cameroons, reporting that they had built a chapel for themselves that will seat one thousand people, and that the membership of that one church had grown to seven hundred; also that they had collected for themselves among their own people one thousand pounds, and had established fifteen different stations in different parts of the country within a year or two, in order to spread the gospel among their own tribe. Africa, with all her degradation and ignorance, desires to have the gospel, and if it is given to this degraded people they, of themselves, in their own country, will spread that gospel. The time will come, and Mr. Fuller believes that it is not far off, when the Dark Continent will emerge from her degradation and darkness. Fifty years ago, up the Congo River, no one had ever heard the gospel, and it was looked upon as a hard soil to work; but to-day the Scripture is being translated into their own tongue, their young men are being taught to read the Bible, Christian churches are being formed, and some of the cruelties that the missionaries met, when they landed first in the Congo, are gradually being removed; so that the time has already come when a great change is visible among the people.

Mr. Fuller further narrates how he stood at his door and saw one of the chiefs coming toward him. He was a great man, a man of position in his country, but the only covering that he had on, was the fibres of the plantain tree combed out and on his head a great cap with parrots’ feathers. He had a great bullock horn hung across his breast, and he walked as stately as a monarch. Several of the princes were following him, all of them dressed in the same way. Mr. Fuller called to this man as he passed the door, using his name, “Mikani,” but he only looked round, and would not answer. He was called again, but would not answer; and yet a third time, when one of his followers turned and said to Mr. Fuller, “• What do you want? ““I only want to speak to him and ask him a question,” was the reply. The man said: ‘’He will not answer you. He has just been taking the sacred oath, and has sworn that for nine days he will not speak to anybody except by signs. At the end of the nine days he will go back to the place where he came from, and after that he will converse as of old.” It seemed of no use to trouble him any more, but after the nine days were over Mr. Fuller went to his house. He was sitting at the door, and this bullock’s horn that he had worn across his breast was hanging across the threshold of his door. His visitor looked at it, and then looked at him, and said: ‘’Do you mean to tell me that a big man like you, in such a position as you are, believes in such a foolish charm as that?” The man was rather insulted. ‘’What do you mean? “he said. “Why! look at that! Do you mean to say that such a thing has any power in it? Let me take my penknife and open it, and I will show you what is in it.” There was nothing there but some red clay, parrots’ feathers, dogs’ teeth, pieces of the skins of animals, some of his own hair, and a little bit of his own toenail. “Do you mean to tell me that you believe in that stuff?” He answered: “Believe it? Yes. If I have that horn hanging at my door no witch will dare to come into my house. If she came, before she crossed the threshold of my door she would be dead.” Mr. Fuller again remonstrated: “You do not believe such rubbish, do you?” “I do. And the reason why you missionaries all die, is that you come into this country, and the witches know that you have nothing to keep off the power of their witchcraft, and so they kill you; but they will not come near me because they know that I have got a charm that will stop them.”

Mr. Fuller made it his business to visit that man day after day, and try to convince him; but it seemed of no use. He could do nothing. Six months after that time, he was sitting in his little study and heard the drum that tells of death. He knew what it meant. When a chief dies, the sound of that drum tells the tale, and the missionary has to be immediately on the move to prevent cruelty. He took his hat directly, and started up, and got to the chief’s hut. ‘’Mikani, who is dead?” He hung his head down for a minute, and then he said: ‘’One of those princes that were with me on that day.” ‘’Why,” said Mr. Fuller, “you told me that the man that had got that charm would not die. Did not that prince wear one of these horns?” “Yes.” “Did he not have a cap?” “Yes.” “Was he not protected by that same charm? Then, how is it that he is dead?” The poor savage hung his head down for a moment. Then lifting it up he looked full into the missionary’s face for a few moments and was silent. Finally, he stretched out his hand and took hold of the horn as it hung across the door, and removed it from its place and flung it across the road, and said: “I will try your way.” Where is he to-day? Go to the Cameroons, and you will see a native minister there preaching the gospel; but on the right hand of that native preacher sits a gray-headed man, and the very look of that man’s face tells us of his inward peace and happiness. He is the same man. He has tried and found that there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved but the name of Jesus Christ. He is the head deacon of the Church, and the membership is now about seven hundred. There is a congregation of perhaps a thousand gathering together there now. Yet when Mr. Fuller landed in 1845, less than fifty years since, these people were rank savages, brutal in every act, — naked, depraved, cruel, vicious savages; and to-day, clothed and in their right mind, they meet as a Christian congregation, with their dark faces and their bright eyes, worshipping the same Saviour that we love; — and if this is true in such a community, we know that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ will win its way wherever it goes.

The Pentecost on the Congo.

Few tales of missionary experience surpass for thrilling interest that of the work of the past fifteen years at Banza Manteke. In 1879, Rev. Henry Richards went from England as missionary of the Livingstone Inland Mission, and, at Banza Manteke, one hundred and fifty miles from the mouth of the Congo, and ten miles south of its stream, established a mission station, afterward transferred to the American Baptist Missionary Union.

Mr. Richards came to the United States in 1890, and told of the Lord’s work on the Congo, — a story so full of interest that we present in these pages a condensed account, as worthy both of preservation and wider circulation.

When Stanley travelled from Zanzibar across the Dark Continent, for a thousand days, though he met many thousands of people each day, he did not find one who knew the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1879, two missionaries were sent out to penetrate this trackless, desolate region. At length they reached Banza Manteke, and, unable to go farther, decided there to establish a station; for many villages were near by, and the people were friendly.

They had only one tent, and built a hut of the long grass that grew about them. There, in September, 1879, Mr. Richards found himself alone, among people entirely unknown to him, as were also their customs and their language. He began at once to study them and then their strange tongue. Some things, however, he learned only too soon. He found that they all seemed to be thieves, and would take everything on which they could lay hands. They were equally adepts at lying; for when he would look into their faces and charge them with their theft, they would deny it with brazen-faced stolidity.

He gives an interesting description of his experience in learning their language. They had no dictionaries, grammars, nor literature of any kind, and no white man had ever learned their tongue. In a note-book he wrote down phonetically everything he heard, with the supposed meaning belonging to the word. In this way he soon had a number of words, phrases, and sentences, which at once he began to use. His hearers often laughed at his mispronunciations and his awkward blunders in putting words together; but he quietly persisted in his effort. Some words he found it very hard to get at. For instance, he noticed the strong affection between mothers and their children, and he sought the word for mother. He thought he had succeeded, but afterward he learned that the supposed word for mother really meant a full-grown man. He was three months in finding out the equivalent for yesterday.

He tried to get hold of the grammar of the language. He began with the nouns, and sought for the way of forming plurals, suspecting it was by some modification at the end of the words, but he could detect no such change. After much experimenting he found that there were sixteen classes of nouns, with as many modes of forming the plural; and in like manner he discovered seventeen different classes of verbs, with many tenses besides the ordinary present, past and future, each having its specific form, the shades of meaning in these variations often being very delicate and beautiful.

The language was found to be no mere jargon, but really very beautiful, euphonious and flowing, with numerous inflections. When once acquired, it was easy to preach in it and to translate the Scriptures into it. He says, ‘’If some of our best linguists were to try to form a perfect language, they could not do better than to follow the Congo. It seems to be altogether superior to the people; and there must have been a time when they were in a higher state of civilization, from which in some way they have degenerated.”

After learning in this patient way to use the language a little, he began to study into the customs, superstitions and religion of the people. He found that they believed in a great Creator, who made all things, but they did not worship this ‘’Nzambi,” because they did not think Him a good God, or worthy of praise and worship. He did not concern Himself about them; He was too far away. They had little images cut out of wood — some like themselves, only with birds’ heads, beaks, and claws; others like animals — these are their gods. They trust them to protect from sickness, death, disaster, but expect no direct blessings from them. They believe also in witchcraft, to which they attribute all evils and misfortunes, and which they counteract by charms. They send for witch-doctors, if any one is sick, who with many incantations drive out the demon, or point out some person as the witch, who has to undergo the test by poison, so common in Africa.

Mr. Richards sought to show them that sickness, death and other calamity are due not to witchcraft, but to sin. He gave them the Bible account of the creation and the fall, etc., and tried to show that God is not only a great, all-powerful Creator, but a kind and loving Father. For four years he pursued this course, thinking it necessary to give them some idea of the Old Testament before beginning with the New. But they were just as rank heathen at the end of this time as when he first went among them. There was no evidence of any change. They did not even feel themselves to be sinners.

Then Mr. Richards went home for a season of rest, and, while there, spoke to some who had had much experience in mission work, seeking a clew to his maze of difficulty. He was advised to go back and preach the lazy — for that convinces of sin. So on reaching Banza Manteke again, the first thing he did was to translate the Ten Coniviandinents and expound them to the people. They said the commandments were very good, but claimed that they had kept them; and the plainest and most personal applications of the decalogue made no apparent impression. So two years more passed, and the people were no better. He began to be hopeless of doing them any good. He had gained their respect, and they were kind to him, but that was all.

At last, in his discouragement, he began to study the Scriptures anew for himself, feeling that there must be some mistake in his preaching or lack in his living. In the Apostolic days souls were converted; why not now? Surely the gospel had not lost its power. If, in the days of the Acts of the Apostles, heathen turned from idols to serve the living God, why should not these heathen in Banza Manteke? He studied the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, and began to see that the commission is not, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Law,” but ‘’ preach the Gospel.” This was the turning-point in the work of this lonely and disheartened missionary! He determined simply to preach the gospel. Again he noticed that disciples were bidden to wait until they were endued zvitk power from on high. He felt that he had not this power. He returned to his work, determined not only to preach the gospel, but cry to God for the promised enduement.

It was needful to decide just what ‘* preaching the gospel” means. If he preached Jesus crucified, the people would want to know who Jesus was. He decided to take Luke’s Gospel as most complete and suitable for gentiles. He began translating ten or twelve verses a day, and then read and expounded them, asking God to bless His own word. At once his dark hearers proved more interested than when he had preached the law, and he was more and more encouraged. When he came to the sixth chapter of

Luke, thirtieth verse, a new difficulty arose — ‘’Give to every man that asketh of thee.” But these people were notorious beggars; they would ask for anything that pleased their eye — his blanket, his knife, his plate — and when he would say he could not give these things to them, they would reply, ‘’ You can get more.” Henry Richards was greatly perplexed as to wJiat to do zvitJi that verse. He let his helper in translation go, and went to his room to pray over the matter. The time for the daily service was drawing near. What should he do? Why not pass over that verse f But conscience replied that this would not be honest dealing with God’s word. The preaching hour came; instead of advancing, he went back to the beginning of the gospel, reviewing the earlier part, to gain time for fuller consideration of that perplexing text. Still, on further study, he could not find that it meant anything but Just what it said. The commentators said, Jesus was giving general principles, and we must use common sense in interpreting His words. But this did not satisfy him. If he interpreted one text in this way, why not all others? “Common sense” seemed a very unsafe commentator.

A fortnight of prayer and consideration drove him to the wall: the Lord meant just what He said. And so he read to the people that verse,” Give to every man that asketh of thee,” and told them that this was a very high standard, and would probably take a lifetime to live up to it; but he meant to live zuhat he preached. After the address the natives began to ask him for this and that, and he gave them whatever they asked for, wondering whereunto this thing would grow; but he told the Lord he could see no other meaning in His words. Somehow the people were evidently deeply impressed by his course. One day he overheard one say: “I got this from the white man.” Then another said that he was going to ask him for such a thing. But a third said, “No; buy it if you want it;” and another said, “This must be God’s man, we never saw any other man do so. Don’t you think if he is God’s man we ought to stop robbing him?” Grace was working in their hearts. After that they rarely asked him for anything, and even brought back what they had taken!

This humble man went on translating and expounding Luke’s Gospel, and the interest continually grew. The climax was reached as he came to the account of the crucifixion of Christ. A large congregation confronted him that day. He reminded the people of the kindness and goodness of Jesus, and of His works of mercy; and, pointing to Him as nailed upon the cross between thieves, he said: ‘’Jesus never would have died if we had not been sinners; it was because of your sins and mine that he died.” The impression was very deep. The Holy Ghost seemed to have fallen upon the people!

He continued preaching the gospel and seeking Holy Ghost power. One day as they were returning from a service, Lutale, who helped him in translating, began to sing one of the Congo hymns. His face shone with joy, and he said: ‘’ I do believe these words; I do believe Jesus has taken away my sins; I do believe He has saved me.” Seven years of toil, weary waiting and suffering had passed, and now the first convert was found at Banza Manteke! At once, Lutale began testifying what the Lord had done for him. But the people became his enemies and tried to poison him; so that he had to leave his town and live with Mr. Richards for safety. For a time there were no more converts, but the people were stirred. By and by the king’s son became a Christian. Shortly after, another man came with his idols, and placing them on a table, said, with savage determination, ‘’ I want to become a Christian,” and he soon began to preach. The work went on until ten were converted, but all had to leave their own homes, as they were threatened with death.

The missionary now shut up his house, and taking these men with him, went from town to town preaching the gospel. The whole community was greatly moved; one after another came over to Christ’s side. Two daily meetings were held, and inquirers were numerous. The work continued and was blessed, WLitiX all the people immediately aroiuid Banza Manteke had abandoned their heathenism! More than one thousand names were enrolled in a book of those who gave evidence of real conversion.

After years had passed, Mr. Richards found the converts holding on their way. About three hundred had been baptized, and the native Church was earnest and spiritual. There had been much persecution, but it had failed to intimidate these new converts. Materials for a chapel, provided through the liberality of Dr. A. J. Gordon’s church in Boston, were brought to a point fifty or sixty miles distant, and carried by the people all the way to Banza Manteke, over rough roads. Some of the carriers went four or five times, each trip requiring a week. In all there were about seven hundred loads, of sixty pounds each, and the whole of these loads were borne without charge.

Those who had been thieves and liars before, now became honest, truthful, industrious and cleanly. Witchcraft, poison-giving, and all such heathen practices have been put away. They brought their idols, and at the first baptism had a bonfire of images, destroying every vestige of idolatry! Latis Deo!

The Pentecost at Hilo.

We have reserved for the last of these sketches of transformed communities, one which deserves a separate setting, as a peculiarly lustrous gem.*

Titus Coan, nearly sixty years ago, in 1835, began his memorable mission on the shore belt of Hawaii.

* Eschol. By S. J. Humphrey, D.D.

He soon began to use the native tongue, and within the year made his first tour of the island. He was a relative of Nettleton and had been a co-labourer with Finney, and had learned what arrows are best for a preacher’s quiver, and how to use his bow. His whole being was full of spiritual energy and unction, and, on his first tour, multitudes flocked to hear, and many seemed pricked in their hearts. The multitudes thronged him and followed him, and like his Master, he had no leisure, so much as to eat; and once he preached three times before he had a chance to breakfast. He was wont to make four or five tours a year, and saw tokens of interest, that impressed him with so strange a sense of the presence of God, that he said little about them and scarcely understood, himself. He could only say, “It was wonderful!” He went about, like Jeremiah, with the fire of the Lord in his bones; weary with forbearing, he could not stay.

In 1837, the slumbering fires broke out. Nearly the whole population became an audience, and those who could not come to the services were brought on their beds or on the backs of others. Mr. Coan found himself ministering to fifteen thousand people, scattered along the hundred miles of coast. He longed to be able to fly, that he might get over the ground, or to be able to multiply himself twentyfold, to reach the multitudes who fainted for spiritual food.

Necessity devises new methods. He bade those to whom he could not go, come to him, and, for a mile around, the people settled down — Hilo’s little population of a thousand swelled tenfold, and here was held, on a huge scale, a two years’ unique ‘’camp meeting.” There was not an hour, day or night, when an audience of from two thousand to six thousand would not rally at the signal of the bell.

There was no disorder, and the camp became a sort of industrial school, where gardening, matbraiding, and bonnet making were taught as well as purely religious truth. These great ‘’ protracted meetings” crowded the old church with six thousand hearers, and a newer building with half as many more; and when the people got seated, they were so close that until the meeting broke up no one could move. The preacher does not hesitate to deal in stern truths. The law with its awful perfection; hell, with its fires, of which the crater of Kilauea and the volcanoes about them might well furnish a vivid picture — the deep and damning guilt of sin, the hopelessness and helplessness of spiritual death — prepare the way for earnest gospel invitation and appeal. The vast audience sways as cedars before a tornado. There is trembling, weeping, sobbing and loud crying for mercy, sometimes too loud for the preacher to be heard; and in hundreds of cases his hearers fall in a swoon.

Titus Coan was made for the work God had for him, and he controlled these great masses. He preached with great simplicity, illustrating and applying the grand old truths, made no effort to excite but rather to allay excitement, and asked for no external manifestation of interest. He depended on the word, borne home by the Spirit. And the Spirit wrought. Some would cry out, ‘’The two-edged sword is cutting me to pieces.” The wicked scoffer who came to make sport dropped like a log, and said, “God has struck me.” Once while’ preaching in the open field to two thousand people, a man cried out, “What shall I do to be saved?” and prayed the publican’s prayer; and the entire congregation took up the cry for mercy. For a half hour Mr. Coan could get no chance to speak, but had to stand still and see God work.

There were greater signs of the vSpirit than mere words of agony or confession. Godly repentance was at work — quarrels were reconciled, drunkards abandoned drink, thieves restored stolen property, adulteries gave place to purity, and murders were confessed. The high priest of Pele and custodian of her crater shrine, who by his glance could doom a native to strangulation, on whose shadow no Hawaiian dared tread, who ruthlessly struck men dead for their food or garments’ sake and robbed and outraged human beings for a pastime — this gigantic criminal came into the meetings with his sister, the priestess — and even such as they found an irresistible power there — and with bitter tears and penitent confession, the crimes of this monster were unearthed. He acknowledged that what he had worshipped was no God at all, and publicly renounced his idolatry and bowed before Jesus. These two had spent about seventy years in sin, but till death maintained their Christian confession.

In 1838, the converts continued to multiply. Though but two missionaries, a lay preacher, and their wives, constituted the force, and the field was a hundred miles long, the word and work was with power, because God was in it all. Mr. Coan’s trips were first of all for preaching; and he spoke on the average from three to four times a day; but these public appeals were interlaced with visits of a pastoral nature at the homes of the people, and with the searching inquiry into their state. This marvellous man kept track of his immense parish, and knew a church membership of five thousand as thoroughly as when it numbered one hundred. He never lost individual knowledge and contact in all this huge increase — what a model to modern pastors, who magnify preaching but have ‘* no time to visit!” It was part of his plan that not one living person in all Puna or Hilo should not have the gospel brought repeatedly to the conscience, and he did not spare any endeavour or exposure to reach the people.

He set his people to work, and above forty of them visited from house to house within five miles of the central station. The results were simply incredible were they not attested abundantly.

After great care in examining and testing candidates, during the twelve months, ending in June, 1839, 5,244 persons had been received into the Church. On one Sabbath, 1,705 were baptized, and 2,400 sat down together at the Lord’s Table. It was a gathering of villages, and the head of each village came forward with his selected converts. With the exception of one such scene at Ongole, just forty years later, probably no such a sight has been witnessed since the day of Pentecost. What a scene was that when nearly two thousand five hundred sat down together to eat the Lord’s Supper! And what a gathering!” the old, the decrepit, the lame, the blind, the maimed, the withered, the paralytic, and those afflicted with divers diseases and torments; those with eyes, noses, lips and limbs consumed with the fire of their own or their parents’ former lusts, with features distorted and figures the most depraved and loathsome, — and these came hobbling upon their staves, and led or borne by their friends; and among the throng the hoary priest of idolatry, with hands but recently washed from the blood of human victims, together with the thief, the adulterer, the Sodomite, the sorcerer, the roblDcr, the murderer; and the mother — no, the monster — whose hands had reeked with the blood of her own children! These all met before the cross of Christ with their enmity slain, and themselves ‘Svashed and sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

During the five years, ending June, 1841, 7,557 persons were received to the Church at Hilo, — three-fourths of the whole adult population of the parish. When Titus Coan left Hilo in 1870, he had himself received and baptized 11,960 persons.

These people held fast the faith, only one in sixty becoming amenable to discipline. Not even a grogshop was to be found in that parish, and the Sabbath was better kept than in New England. In 1867, the old mother church divided into seven, and there have been built fifteen houses for worship, mainly with the money and labour of the people themselves; who have also planted and sustained their own missions, having given in the aggregate one hundred thousand dollars for holy uses, and having sent twelve of their number to the regions beyond.

Christian history presents no record of divine power more thrilling than this of the Great Revival at the Hawaiian Islands from 1836 to 1842. When in 1870 the American Board withdrew from this field, there were nearly sixty self-supporting churches, more than two-thirds having a native pastorate, with a membership of about fifteen thousand. That year their contributions reached $30,000. Thirty per cent, of their ministers became missionaries on other islands. That same year, Kanwealoha, the old native missionary, in presence of a vast throng, where the royal family and dignitaries of the islands were assembled, held up the Word of God in the Hawaiian tongue, and in these few words gave the most comprehensive tribute to the fruits of gospel labour:

‘’Not with powder and ball, and swords and cannon, but with this living Word of God, and His Spirit, do we go forth to conquer the Islands for Christ!”