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- soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and
that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. The spontaneous
fruits of the earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the
support of the indolent natives, remorselessly seized upon and
appropriated by the stranger, are devoured before the eyes of the
starving inhabitants, or sent on board the numerous vessels which now
touch at their shores.
When the famished wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural
supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their
support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to
hereditary opulence, does this manual labour come more unkindly than
to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of heaven.
Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself;
and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, soon terminate
his miserable existence.
But what matters all this? Behold the glorious result!--The abominations
of Paganism have given way to the pure rites of the Christian
worship,--the ignorant savage has been supplanted by the refined
European! Look at Honolulu, the metropolis of the Sandwich Islands!--A
community of disinterested merchants, and devoted self-exiled heralds of
the Cross, located on the very spot that twenty years ago was defiled by
the presence of idolatry. What a subject for an eloquent Bible-meeting
orator! Nor has such an opportunity for a display of missionary rhetoric
been allowed to pass by unimproved!--But when these philanthropists send
us such glowing accounts of one half of their labours, why does their
modesty restrain them from publishing the other half of the good they
have wrought?--Not until I visited Honolulu was I aware of the fact that
the small remnant of the natives had been civilized into draught-horses;
and evangelized into beasts of burden. But so it is. They have been
literally broken into the traces, and are harnessed to the vehicles of
their spiritual instructors like so many dumb brutes!
. . . . . . .
Lest the slightest misconception should arise from anything thrown out
in this chapter, or indeed in any other part of the volume, let me here
observe that against the cause of missions in, the abstract no Christian
can possibly be opposed: it is in truth a just and holy cause. But
if the great end proposed by it be spiritual, the agency employed to
accomplish that end is purely earthly; and, although the object in
view be the achievement of much good, that agency may nevertheless be
productive of evil. In short, missionary undertaking, however it may
blessed of heaven, is in itself but human; and subject, like everything
else, to errors and abuses. And have not errors and abuses crept into
the most sacred places, and may there not be unworthy or incapable
missionaries abroad, as well as ecclesiastics of similar character
at home? May not the unworthiness or incapacity of those who assume
apostolic functions upon the remote islands of the sea more easily
escape detection by the world at large than if it were displayed in
the heart of a city? An unwarranted confidence in the sanctity of its
apostles--a proneness to regard them as incapable of guile--and
an impatience of the least suspicion to their rectitude as men or
Christians, have ever been prevailing faults in the Church. Nor is this
to be wondered at: for subject as Christianity is to the assaults of
unprincipled foes, we are naturally disposed to regard everything like
an exposure of ecclesiastical misconduct as the offspring of malevolence
or irreligious feeling. Not even this last consideration, however shall
deter me from the honest expression of my sentiments.
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