VISIT TO THE PROTESTANT MISSION ON MOOREA—A SKETCH OF THE EARLY HISTORY
OF THE MISSION.
_Chez_ MADAME BRUN, PAPETOAI, MOOREA,
_Saturday, 8th_.
I am safely ensconced in this most charming little home, and very glad
indeed to have reached it, for we have had rather a tiring day. Mrs
Green most kindly gave me breakfast at five, that I might be ready for a
six o’clock start; but it was fully eight before we got away, in a
Haapiti boat, which agreed to bring us to this side of the island. We
rowed out of harbour, hoping to catch a breeze, but it fell dead calm,
and for four long hours we lay just outside the reef, rocked by heavy
rollers—the water smooth as oil, and the burning heat of the sun so
intense that I almost expected that the water would really frizzle! The
thermometer at this season sometimes rises to 120° in the shade. I am
afraid that if the truth must be confessed, both M. Brun and I were
exceeding sea-sick.
At last, to our great relief, a fresh breeze sprang up, and our little
boat literally flew over the water, and in less than two hours carried
us across to the pretty village of Tiaia, in the district of Teaharoa,
whence one hour’s rowing inside the reef, along the most lovely shore,
brought us here, where we were welcomed to this sweet French home by its
pretty clever little mistress, and three charmingly old-fashioned
children, Lucie, Henri, and Adrien, who administered refreshing hot tea
to the tired and giddy travellers; after which I, for one, yielded to
peaceful sleep, and awoke to find the watchful little trio all ready to
escort me in any direction, and show me such treasures of delight as
only true country children can discover. This is a fairy-like nest, on
the shore of the loveliest sea lake, with wooded mountains all round,
and a background of mighty rock-pinnacles, which are glorified in this
evening light, and seem like the towers and ramparts of some celestial
city.
_Sunday, 9th._
To me this has been a day of intense peace. A silence which may be felt
seems to enfold this exquisite spot, and from morning till evening not a
ripple has disturbed the perfect calm of the blue waters—only the light
fronds of the cocoa-palms quiver and gleam with every faint breath of
air.
The village is perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house, and lies
buried in a thicket of bread-fruit and mango-trees. There my hosts have
spent the greater part of the day, having held four church services, and
morning and afternoon school. But I have rejoiced in a day of quiet
idleness, spent chiefly on the lovely shore beneath the shadow of very
large trees, whose great boughs overhang the white coral
beach,—shell-strewn and crab-haunted. At high tide the silvery waters
creep upward till the far-spreading roots are half bathed in the brine,
while the other half are buried in a tangle of lilac marine convolvulus,
wherein myriads of hermit-crabs disport themselves.
Madame Valles came to breakfast. She is the daughter of that dear old
lady Mrs Simpson, of whose death I told you in a former letter. Her
husband is a retired French naval officer, who has settled in this
beautiful valley as a planter.
This evening several members of the congregation met here to hold a
prayer-meeting, after which they sang most harmonious sacred
_himènes_—the very first I have heard since I was last on Moorea.
I have rarely in any land seen a nicer and more thoroughly
respectable-looking body of people than these; so gentle and courteous
in their manners, and apparently so reliable. I fancy that in this
secluded isle the people have retained more of their primitive
Christianity than they have done in Papeete, where French influence and
utter infidelity are continually acting as a leaven of evil, and where
the fervour of first love is certainly a thing of the past, as regards
the mass of the population.
Such at least is my own impression, seeing only the surface of life, and
naturally comparing things here with the very high standard now existing
in Fiji, which has been my home for the last two years. The impulsive
children of the South Seas are readily influenced for good or for evil;
and as they quickly and whole-heartedly turned from their idols to
embrace the purer faith taught them by devout white men, so now they are
in danger of becoming even more careless than the average foreigners. I
do not, however, mean to imply that the Tahitians or any of the
islanders who have once adopted Christianity, have yet fallen away from
its practice, so far as the bulk of the people in any European nation.
In such matters as meeting for family prayer, and thanksgiving at meals,
probably a much larger proportion of Tahitians than of Britons are still
true to their early teaching.
It really is very difficult, in presence of such peaceful, kindly
people, and such settled forms of civilised Christian life, to realise
what different scenes were witnessed by the earlier visitors of this
lovely isle at the time of its discovery by Captain Wallis in 1767, and
Captain Cook’s subsequent visit.
It was in March 1797 that the first band of missionaries arrived here in
the Duff, landing on Tahiti near Point Venus, where at first they were
kindly welcomed by King Pomare, Queen Idia, and the chiefs, who seem to
have expected that they would prove not merely sources of wealth, by
distributing barter, but also able assistants in the art of war.
But when the new-comers were found to be men of peace, and their mission
that of teaching, they soon fell in the estimation of the natives, and
for many years they struggled, apparently in vain, to stem the tide of
idolatry and of such evil practices as infanticide and the offering of
human victims to the feather-gods, as the Tahitians called their idols,
because they were generally adorned either with the scarlet feathers of
a small bird, or the long tail-feathers of the man-of-war or tropic
bird.
As quicksilver attracts gold, so was it supposed that this gay plumage
became the very incarnation of the god; therefore, when a tribe went
forth to war (and of course desired that the presence of their god
should be with them) they held a solemn service at the temple, and then
took perhaps only one feather from off the principal idol, and placed it
in the ark prepared for it on the sacred canoe, which formed part of
every fleet. Then, till the close of that expedition, all worship was
addressed only to the feather-symbol, and no sacrifices or prayers were
offered at the _marae_, lest the attention of the god being divided, he
should return to the land, forsaking the warriors.
At other times, however, he was present alike at every domestic shrine
which possessed a feather brought from the great temple. For, as other
nations have carried sacred symbolic fire from the altar, to sanctify
their domestic hearth or their family temple, so did these Tahitians
year by year assemble at the great national temple, bringing with them
offerings of the precious feathers. These the priests deposited inside
the hollow idols, distributing among the worshippers those which had
lain there since the previous year, thereby imbibing such essence of
sanctity as to convey the very presence of the god wherever they were
carried.
Not that those were the only visible symbols of the gods. Some appeared
to their worshippers in the form of sharks; others, less terrible, took
the form of divers birds. Hence, as I described to you in one of my
letters from Samoa, so here in Tahiti and Moorea, the herons,
kingfishers, and woodpeckers which frequented the old trees round the
temples, were reverenced as incarnations of the deities, and their cries
were interpreted as oracles.
So strong was the hold of these superstitions, that for several years
the mission seemed to make little or no progress beyond the
establishment of gardens in which various imported fruits and vegetables
were successfully raised, and the people were taught to cultivate them
systematically for their own use. Orange-trees, limes, shaddocks,
citrons, tamarinds, guavas, custard-apples, peaches, figs and vines,
pine-apples and water-melons, pumpkins and cucumbers, cabbages and other
vegetables, were thus first introduced to the island, where they are now
so thoroughly acclimatised.
But in an evil hour a great intertribal war broke out for the bodily
possession of Oro, the national idol, and this first civilising
influence was swept away—the mission premises were laid waste, the
garden entirely destroyed, and the work of twelve years scattered to the
winds.
King Pomare, Otu his son, and all the chiefs and warriors of the isle,
had assembled at the great _marae_ at Atehuru, where many fatted pigs
were offered on the altar, while the surrounding trees were adorned with
the ghastly corpses of human victims, all of whom had been sacrificed to
Oro. The ark containing the symbolic feather was then placed on the
sacred canoe belonging to the royal fleet.
But on the following day Otu pretended to have had a revelation that the
idol itself wished to be removed to Tautira; and on the chiefs of
Atehuru refusing to allow this, his followers rushed to the temple,
seized the idol, carried it off to the sea, and immediately set sail. As
soon as they reached land a human sacrifice was ordered, lest Oro should
resent this very cavalier treatment; and as no captive was at hand, one
of the king’s own servants was slain, and offered as an atonement. Of
course the despoiled chiefs flew to arms, and prepared to revenge
themselves, and recapture their god. About 300 warriors came from the
isle of Eimeo, now called Moorea, to the aid of the king, and bloody
battles were fought, in which the chiefs’ army was almost invariably
successful.
There does not appear to have been any trace of cannibalism on either
side, but the bodies of the slain were offered in sacrifice to Oro by
the victors; while, on the other hand, the king’s party did not cease
offering human sacrifices, and propitiating the idol by every means in
their power. It was recaptured by the chiefs of Atehuru, who, however,
with singular religious chivalry, allowed the king to land and deposit
his offerings near the temple, though they naturally would not admit him
within its precincts.
Happily for the mission party, it so happened that just at this crisis a
trading vessel came into harbour and landed some men; and about the same
time another small vessel was driven ashore, with a crew of seventeen
Englishmen. Thus they mustered a force of twenty-three Europeans, who
not only put the mission-house into a state of defence, but lending
their aid to the king, rendered him material aid—a service which they
must have regretted on seeing that all prisoners of war were immediately
put to death, and their bodies savagely mutilated. Finally, the chiefs
agreed to resign the custody of the idol to the king; and so, for a
while, ended one of the many bloody struggles by which the various
nations of the earth have drained their heart’s blood for the possession
of some bit of so-called sacred wood or bone.
Thenceforward the young King Otu carried the precious god with him,
whenever he sailed from one isle to another; and the sacred canoe on
which its ark was borne, was always deposited at some _marae_ shaded by
sombre trees, from whose boughs human victims offered sacrificially were
immediately suspended.
While such scenes as these were the incidents of daily life, the mission
party had hardships enough to contend with. Five whole years elapsed
without either letters or supplies reaching them from England. Their
clothes were worn out, boots or shoes were wellnigh forgotten
superfluities; tea and sugar were among the luxuries of the past. At
last a small vessel arrived, specially chartered to bring the letters
and supplies which had for so long been accumulating at Port Jackson.
Imagine the rapture of seeing that little vessel arrive; and then the
dismay of discovering that almost everything she had brought was either
useless from having lain so long at Port Jackson, or saturated with salt
water owing to the wretched condition of the ship. You who live in
luxury at home, with everything of the best, and plenty of it, and with
so many daily posts as to be a positive nuisance, cannot possibly
realise the weariness of that long waiting, or the depth of that
disappointment.
Nor was there anything cheering in daily life. The mission work seemed
to make no progress at all; the people openly mocked the white men, and
despised their teaching.
In 1808 war broke out again more savagely than before. The altars of Oro
reeked with human blood; villages were burnt, plantations destroyed, and
the whole country reduced to desolation and ruin. The mission settlement
was ransacked, the houses burnt, the books distributed among the
warriors to be used as cartridge-paper, the printing-types melted to
make musket-balls, and every implement of iron found on the place was
converted into a destructive weapon. The gardens were again demolished,
and the students, finding the din of war more congenial than the arts of
peace, joined their brethren in arms.
Finally, feeling that their lives were in imminent danger, and that
there was apparently nothing to be gained by remaining, the mission
party resolved to abandon Tahiti; and taking advantage of a vessel which
happily arrived in harbour, they embarked for Port Jackson, two only, Mr
Hayward and Mr Nott, resolving to remain at their several posts and face
the worst—the former at Huahine, the latter at Eimeo, to which King
Pomare had fled from his enemies. Various attempts were made on their
lives, happily without fatal result; and they continued to work as best
they could till the year 1812, when, at the invitation of King Pomare,
those who had been driven away from Tahiti returned, and made a fresh
effort to establish the mission on Eimeo.
They were cordially welcomed by the king, and by a small number of
chiefs, who, by Pomare’s words and example, had been brought to look
with contempt on their idols, and to incline towards the new faith; and
though greatly distracted by intertribal wars, this little company
resolved to build a substantial house which should be set apart for the
worship of the true God. Thus in the summer of 1813 was the first
Christian church in the group erected in Papetoai, the very place whence
I now write.
Thirty persons came forward to make public profession of their faith,
desiring to have their names enrolled as having rejected idol-worship.
Among those who did so was Patii, the high priest of the district, who
came to Mr Nott, and announced his intention of publicly burning all the
idols in his care. It was a promise heard with thankfulness not
unmingled with dread, for there was every probability that such an act
would lead to wild excitement among the heathen, and might possibly
result in a massacre of the Christians. However, Patii had made up his
mind, and at the appointed hour he and his friends collected a heap of
fuel on the sea-shore, near the huge _marae_ where he had so often
offered human sacrifices to these dumb idols, which he now brought
forth, and tearing off the sacred cloth in which they had hitherto been
draped, he exhibited them in their hideous nakedness, to the vast
multitudes who had hitherto assembled at his bidding to do them homage,
and who had now come to witness this act of impious sacrilege.
Some of these ugly little gods were rudely carved human figures, and
some had tiny figures carved in relief all over one large image; others
were shapeless logs of wood, covered with finely braided cocoa-nut fibre
and scarlet feathers; while some were angular columns of basalt, quite
rough, just as they had been found. One by one were these once dreaded
idols cast into the flames by their former priest, who called on the
people to behold their helplessness, and bewailed his own folly in
having hitherto worshipped such monstrous objects.
Whatever may have been the feelings of the spectators, the dreaded
tumult was averted, and the people dispersed quietly; indeed the example
thus given was followed by many, both on Eimeo (it is now called Moorea)
and also on Tahiti, to which two members of the mission—Messrs Scott and
Hayward—now again ventured to cross. Great was their joy when they found
that several of the natives had renounced idolatry and were earnest
worshippers of Christ, having been awakened by some words of King Pomare
to an exceeding longing for a better faith and purer life than that of
their fathers. Glimmerings of light had also found their way to the
Paumotu and other neighbouring isles, and by the close of 1814 there was
reason to believe that a total of nearly 600 persons had renounced
idol-worship and were feeling their way towards the Light.
Naturally, such a movement was not viewed with satisfaction by the great
mass of the people. Everywhere the Christians were persecuted by their
heathen neighbours, who burnt their houses, destroyed their gardens,
spoiled their goods, and even hunted them down, that they might offer
them in sacrifice to the insulted gods. At all times it was customary to
tell off certain families or tribes, from which the appointed
victim-hunters were to select fit subjects for sacrifice; and so
numerous were those thus eligible, that on some isles about one-third of
the population lived in terror for their lives, not knowing at what
moment their doom might be sealed. In many cases whole families forsook
their homes secretly, and started in their frail canoe to seek a new
home on some unknown isle, preferring to risk the dangers of the sea,
and the chance of being eaten by strangers, to the certainty that sooner
or later their turn must come to be offered in sacrifice to their cruel
gods.
How this terrible doom first came to be attached to any family I cannot
say, but, once decided, there was no escape. From generation to
generation the black shadow hung, like the sword of Damocles, over each
member, from the grey grandfather to the mere stripling. As he went
about his daily work, chatting with his most trusted neighbours, one of
the latter might open his hand and reveal the small sacred stone which
was his death-warrant, delivered by the priest to the man who craved
some special boon, as a symbol that the god required a human sacrifice.
Well did the doomed man know how useless was resistance. His neighbours
knew no pity, and a brief struggle invariably resulted in his being
clubbed and carried to the _marae_.
Now the supply of victims was furnished from among those known to favour
the new faith; and many a pathetic story is still told of the
unflinching courage with which those brave martyrs met their fate, only
pleading with their murderers that they too should renounce their idols
and worship the living God.
As in the early days of the Church, so now, homes were divided: the
believing wife was beaten by her heathen husband, children were driven
from their parents’ roofs, and friends were turned to foes—all in the
name of the gods.
Those who worshipped the Saviour were distinguished by the name of Bure
Atua (from _bure_, to pray, and _Atua_, God).
In spite of the persecution, their numbers steadily increased, and at
last three of the principal chiefs of Tahiti, who had hitherto been
sworn foes, resolved to unite their forces for the total annihilation of
the Bure Atua sect. A midnight meeting was appointed when the
conspirators were suddenly to fall on their sleeping, unsuspecting
neighbours, and slaughter great and small. Happily, a few hours before
the massacre was to have taken place, the Christians received a secret
hint of what was in store for them, and were able to reach the shore,
launch their canoes, and sail for Eimeo. When, at the midnight hour,
their foes reached the trysting-place, and found their victims flown,
their rage knew no bounds, and angry recriminations commenced, which
soon passed on to blows, ending in a free fight, in which one of the
principal chiefs was killed, and his followers compelled to fly.
In those turbulent days, it needed but a beginning to kindle a fierce
war, and so it now proved. The heathen tribes having fallen out amongst
themselves, seemed to forget their enmity to the Christians, and fought
blindly among themselves. Beautiful and richly cultivated districts were
reduced to desolation, houses burnt and property plundered, and numbers
of the vanquished fled to Eimeo, to join the king and his party. Finally
the weaker tribes fled to rocky fortresses in the mountains, leaving one
tribe—the Oropaa—masters of the whole island.
These presently sent messengers to those who had taken refuge in Eimeo,
inviting them to return to their homes in Tahiti. This they agreed to
do; but, according to native custom, King Pomare accompanied them to
reinstate them in their lands. With him came a very large train of
followers, who were chiefly Christians, and when they approached the
shore of Tahiti, the pagan party refused to let them land. However, that
point was yielded.
On the following Sunday, about 800 of the king’s party assembled for
divine worship. Happily they had taken the precaution of assembling
armed, for in the middle of service a firing of muskets was heard, and a
large body of men, bearing the flags of the gods, and all emblems of
idolatry, were seen marching towards the place where they were
assembled. Very striking is the story of that day’s contest. When the
enemy was seen approaching, King Pomare arose and bade all remember that
they were under the special protection of Jehovah, and that, having met
to worship Him, they must not be diverted from their purpose. So all
stood up to sing the accustomed hymn, then knelt in united prayer. They
then formed themselves into three columns, the women taking their place
among the men, resolved, like them, to fight with spear and musket. Thus
they awaited the attack of the foe. The battle-field was a strip of
ground between the sea and the mountains, covered with patches of
brushwood. Under cover of these, the Christians again and again
throughout the day knelt by twos and by threes to crave the help of the
Almighty. After some hours of desperate fighting, Upufara, the highest
chief of the heathen, was killed. His party were so disheartened that a
panic seized them, and they fled from the field, never pausing till they
reached their strongholds in the mountains.
Thus the king’s party remained in undisputed possession, and prepared,
as in old days, to follow up their victory. But King Pomare had learnt a
new lesson in war. He forbade any of his people to pursue the
vanquished, or to enter their villages, either to plunder the gardens or
molest their wives and families. He, however, selected a trustworthy
force, and bade them march to Tautira, to the temple of Oro, and totally
destroy both temple and idol, and everything connected with the old
worship. At eventide he bade the chiefs call together the congregation
which had been so ruthlessly disturbed in the morning, and all knelt
together in solemn thanksgiving for their great deliverance from so
strong a foe.
The party whom he had despatched on so righteous a mission of
destruction, carried out his orders implicitly. They turned neither to
the right hand nor the left, till they reached Tautira, where they fully
expected that the priests and people would make a stand in defence of
their gods. They, however, met with no opposition from the crowds, who
stood silently round while they entered the temple, hitherto held so
sacred, and bringing out the idol, stripped him of his coverings, and
exposed a rude unhewn log, about six feet long, of casuarina wood.
Having utterly destroyed the temples, altars, and other idols, they
carried off the rude log which for so many years had been the national
god of Tahiti, and for the possession of which the land had, during the
last thirty years, been made desolate by incessant wars. It was now
turned to better use as a post in the king’s kitchen from which to
suspend baskets of food. Eventually it was cut up for firewood.
The effect of the king’s clemency to the vanquished was magical. At
first it seemed to them utterly incomprehensible; but when, under cover
of night, some ventured from their hiding-places, and found their homes
and families all undisturbed, and learnt that the bodies of the slain
had received honourable burial, instead of being given to the dogs and
pigs, and that the king had proclaimed a free pardon to all, then one by
one they came down from the mountains to tender their submission to the
merciful conqueror, and to learn from him the secret of such new
principles. Then they agreed that the faith which inspired such deeds
was assuredly the best, and with one accord they determined to destroy
all their idols, and desired that the king would send messengers to
instruct them in the good way.
Accordingly, those who had themselves been most diligent in learning,
were sent to teach these new inquirers, and proved faithful and earnest
in their work. But so great was the demand for teachers, that they were
altogether unable to meet it; and in many a remote village, the people,
having destroyed their idol temple, built a new house of prayer, where
they met together to worship the God of the Christians, concerning whom
they as yet knew so little, beyond the mercy practised by His followers.
From this time forward, Christianity made steady progress; and when, in
the year 1817, Mr Ellis arrived as a missionary in these isles, he found
almost the entire population professing it, and apparently devout in
their practice. Family worship was established in all the principal
houses; and many had built in their gardens a small oratory, or, as they
called it, _fare bure huna_—the house for hidden prayer.
Already the grosser crimes of heathenism had been abandoned—especially
the practice of infanticide, which had prevailed to so frightful an
extent. In every district the schools were crowded, and those who had
mastered the arts of reading and writing assisted in teaching those less
advanced. Strange pictures presented themselves in these classes, where
bright, intelligent children were often the instructors of aged men and
women, priests and warriors, to whom learning was a hard task, but one
which they were determined to master, that they might read for
themselves the wonderful book which had taught such wisdom to their
king.
These were in truth earnest scholars. The only books that had as yet
reached them, were a spelling-book, printed in England, and a summary of
the Old and New Testaments, printed at Port Jackson. But of these there
were few copies: and many of the people, in their anxiety to possess
one, had prepared sheets of fine paper-mulberry fibre, on which, with a
reed-pen, dipped in the sap of the banana-tree, they had carefully
copied out whole pages of the reading-lessons, or fragments of the
sacred Scriptures. Others had committed the whole to memory.
Great, therefore, was their excitement and delight when Mr Ellis arrived
at Afareaitu, bringing with him a good printing-press. Crowds besieged
the printing-office day and night, to watch the progress of setting up
the types,—the king himself preparing the first alphabet. His delight
when the first sheet was struck off, equalled that of his people; and
all felt that it was a marked day in the history of Tahiti, when her
king, with his own hands, printed the first page of the first book
published in the South Sea Isles.
The binding of the volumes was the next interest. The supply of
millboard was small; but again the fibre of the paper-mulberry was
turned to account, several layers being pressed together to form a stiff
pasteboard, which was then coloured with the purple dye obtained from
the mountain-plantain; or else thin wooden boards were used, and covered
with the skin of whatever animal could be procured,—goat, cat, or dog:
and the new art of tanning was among the earliest industries of the
isle.
Hitherto all books circulated in the isles had been distributed
gratuitously, but it was deemed wiser for every reason, henceforth to
exact a small payment in cocoa-nut oil, which was the article most
easily obtained by the people. So great was their anxiety to purchase
the books, that there were sometimes as many as thirty or forty canoes
drawn up on the beach, having come from different remote villages, and
having each brought several persons, whose sole object was to procure
the precious volume, not only for themselves, but for others. Some who
were thus commissioned, were the bearers of huge bundles of green
plantain-leaves, each rolled up like a parchment scroll, and being, in
fact, a written order for a copy of the book, payment for which was sent
in the form of a bamboo measure filled with oil. Many of these
messengers waited for several weeks ere the copies could be supplied;
and some of the more urgent refused to leave the mission premises till
the books were delivered to them, lest other men should slip in before
them and carry off the coveted treasures.
When we consider that teachers were so few, and worshippers so numerous,
and that many large congregations assembled in the chapels they had
built for Christian prayer, firmly believing that HE in whose name they
had met, was there present; yet having none to lead their worship, save,
perhaps, a newly converted priest of Oro, or a professional dancer,
hitherto sunk in every form of vice,—we can the better understand the
extreme anxiety of the people to possess the books which were the
storehouses of excellent knowledge.
Have you ever realised the innumerable difficulties under which these
early publishers had to contend? To begin with, they had themselves to
reduce barbarous and hitherto unknown tongues to a written language,—no
easy matter, considering that many of these dialects are so rich as to
possess far more words to express shades of meaning than any European
language.[62] So, beginning with the alphabet, they had to work out
equivalents for words in which the slightest change of accent conveys
totally different meanings; then they had to puzzle out very intricate
grammatical structures, and, having mastered all this, had to commence
the very difficult work of translating so large a book as the Bible—a
book, moreover, treating of spiritual truths which it was hard indeed to
render comprehensible to such very materialistic minds as these.
Yet in the short space of about thirty years, the Scriptures have been
translated into about twenty different languages, all previously
unknown; and there is not one group throughout Polynesia, the people of
which do not now read the Scriptures in their own tongue. The same good
work is now gradually extending throughout Melanesia also; and even New
Guinea, which, ten years ago, was an unknown land, has already received
portions of the New Testament in the language spoken by at least one of
its tribes.
Considering the extremely volatile nature of these light-hearted people,
the exceeding earnestness with which they seem to have entered into the
requirements of a spiritual religion, is very remarkable. They had,
however, been early trained to a belief in the necessity of
whole-hearted attention, and reverence in the worship of their idols. It
mattered not how large and costly might be the offerings, and how
careful the ceremonial, should the priest omit, or even misplace, any
word in the appointed prayers, or should his attention be diverted, the
prayer was unavailing; other victims must be brought, and the whole
ceremony repeated from the beginning.
So, too, the rigid observance of the Jewish Sabbatical laws seemed a
natural requirement to a people who, from their infancy, had been taught
implicit obedience to the laws of _tabu_, or sacred seasons, when, at
the bidding of priest or chief, no fire must be kindled, no canoe
launched, and neither food nor drink might be tasted, under severest
penalties. When, therefore, the early missionaries declared one day in
seven to be strictly _tabu_, and themselves gave the example by
abstaining from every sort of secular employment, even preparing their
own food on the previous day (which was hence called the _mahana maa_,
or food-day), the natives willingly obeyed, and proved themselves
capable of such close and continuous attention to spiritual subjects as
the majority of Christians nowadays would find wellnigh impossible.
So, too, with the custom of saying grace before eating, which is so
strictly practised by all the converts in Polynesia. It was the more
readily adopted because, in heathen days, no morsel might pass the lips
of any member of the family till the chief person present had offered a
portion to the gods, adding a few words of prayer for their protection
and blessing. In some instances they chanted a form of thanksgiving for
the good things received, as being the gift of the gods.
I have written this story of old days somewhat at length, from a
conviction that it is probably almost unknown to you, and must surely
prove interesting, though I am fully aware that it cannot be so to you
in the same degree as it is to me, who have heard the story for the
first time on the very spot where those terrible scenes were formerly
enacted, and where the marvellous change was actually wrought.