up the nations, and put them in the way of improvement by commerce and civilization. Christianity is itself the most perfect civilizer hitherto discovered. John Williams very truly remarks, that, until the people are brought under the influence of religion, they have no desire for the arts and usages of civilized life; but that invariably creates it. While nations are under the power of their superstitions, they evince an inanity and torpor, from which no stimulus has proved powerful enough to arouse them, but the new ideas and new principles imparted by Christianity.

Was it that the savage Sandwich Islanders, in the days of Cook, did not discover God by the light of nature? Were not the invisible things of him from the creation of the world clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead?

"Knew they not God?-They might have seen

His beauty in the glorious green

Of these fair Isles, and heard his voice
In Nature's song, that bade Rejoice!
And witnessed in the soil they trod,
Heaved up in coral wonder-God !
And marked HIS footsteps, bathed in wrath,
On the volcano's fiery path.

But all in vain ;-though every hill

Its Maker knew; each conscious rill,

Leaping and sparkling, told of HIM;

Morn's blush, and Evening's twilight dim,
Proclaimed their God; though valleys rang,

And the blue-waved Pacific sang;

And mountain, mead, and rock replied,

"God! God!"—they heard not, raved, and died !—”

God was not in all their thoughts until enthroned there by Christianity, brought in God's own providential time, and inaugurated in his own way in the Heart of the

Pacific, so as best to answer the part to be fulfilled by these Islands in the conquest of the entire Island World of the Pacific, and of the great continents that lie upon it, for the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is remarkable to notice how, in the providence of God, death, to the first discoverer of the Sandwich Islands, and spiritual life to their depraved aborigines, should both issue instrumentally from the bosom of this Bay of Kealakekua. This was the birth-place of Opukahaia, or Obookiah, and it was his embarkation at this port, accidental as it seemed, in 1809, on board an American trader, that forged the important link in the chain of events which was finally completed in 1819, just ten years after, in the embarkation of the missionary band from Boston for Hawaii in the brig Thaddeus.'

On board the American trader there was a pious student of Yale College, who took much pains on the voyage to America to instruct the tawny Hawaiian sailor in the rudiments of knowledge. Along with his companion, Thomas Hopu, he was taken, on their arrival, to New Haven, where the spark of missionary zeal may be said to have first struck out, in the successful efforts of some of the students there, to initiate these youth into the elements of learning and Christianity. "The friends of Christ in New England were led to look upon these sons of Paganism, thus providentially brought to their doors, as having a claim for sympathy, care, and instruction in the Christian doctrine; and, in attempting to meet this claim, they cherished the reasonable hope that suitable efforts to enlighten and convert them would tend to the evangelization of their idolatrous nation."*

Aiming to secure the salvation of these strangers,

* Bingham's History of the Sandwich Islands, p. 57.

and to make their agency available in disseminating the Gospel through heathen countries, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions established, in the year 1816, a trial school at Cornwall, Connecticut, for whatsoever sons of unevangelized barbarians they could gather together. Hereby was fanned the nascent flame of the Island Mission, which in due time was to irradiate the Heart of the Pacific with so wide a blaze.

Let us pause and mark here the hand of God. "The time of blessed visitation," says Hollis Read, "had come for the isles of the sea. The English churches had already taken of the spoil of their idols, and were rejoicing and being enriched by their conquests. The American Zion must participate in the honour and profit of the war. Hence Henry Obookiah, an obscure boy, without father or mother, kindred or tie, to bind him to his native land, must be brought to our shores; be removed from place to place, from institution to institution, everywhere fanning into a flame the smoking flax of a missionary spirit, and giving it some definite direction; be made the occasion of rousing the slumbering energies of the Church on behalf of the heathen, and of kindling a spirit of prayer and benevolence in the hearts of God's people; and finally, and principally, his short and interesting career, and perhaps, more than all, his widely lamented death, must originate and mature a scheme of missions to those Islands, the present aspect of which presents scenes of interest scarcely inferior to those of the apostolic age."*

The companion of Opukahaia, Thomas Hopu, I met at Kailua. He was then fifty-two years of age, and was the sixth man living of those that came from Cornwall, all

Hand of God in History. Ed. by Rev. H. Christmas, London.

but one of whom were then said to be in good standing in the church, although they had all been wayward and unstable.

He gave me a graphic account of sundry early adventures of his when a sailor, before he went to Cornwall: how he was the means of saving all on board the schooner he was in, when it was overset at sea, and the masts sprang out as she capsized. He dived under and bit off a rope that held the boat; then got it to the floating masts, and, freed of water, helped the crew into it, and rigged a sail out of the captain's shirt, through which, by a propitious Providence, they reached, just alive, one of the West Indies. Though a wicked sailor, he said he often prayed then to God in the Lord's Prayer, which he had learned while first going to America with Henry Opukahaia.

From the West Indies he shipped again to the United States; but it being the time of the last war with England, the brig was captured by a British cruiser not far from Newport, and carried into Tarpaulin Cove. There, according to his story, he prevailed upon his shipmates to seize a Yankee sloop the British had brought in there. They succeeded in the enterprise, and returned with the sloop to the very port where it was owned.

Reclaimed from the sea, and adopted by the benevolent, Hopu now lived for three years at Cornwall, where, although he never enlisted the sympathy and interest that were attracted to Obookiah, he was fitted for an important part, at first, as interpreter to the early missionaries, and a teacher in the schools.

While at the Cornwall Mission School, it is related of him that he took a journey into the country with a friend, and spent an evening with a company who were

much entertained by the questions proposed to him by an irreligious lawyer, and his amusing answers. At length Thomas said, in substance, "I am a poor heathen boy. It is not strange that my blunders in English should amuse you. But soon there will be a larger meeting than this. We shall all be there. They will ask us all one question, namely, 'Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?' Now, Sir, I think I can say, Yes. What will you say, Sir?”

2

He ceased, and an oppressive stillness pervaded the room. At length it was broken by a proposition of the lawyer, that, as the evening was far spent, they should have a season of devotion, in which Thomas should lead. It was acceded to; and Thomas, in his accustomed meek and affectionate manner, addressed the throne of grace. Soon he prayed for the lawyer in person, alluding to his learning and talent, and besought that he might not be ignorant of the way of salvatlon through Christ.

As he proceeded thus, the emotion of the lawyer rose above restraint. He sobbed aloud. The whole company were affected, and sobs drowned the speaker's voice. When they separated for the night, and retired to their respective rooms, there was no rest to the lawyer, for the question of Thomas still rung in his ears, "What will you say, Sir?" Nor did its echo cease till the Spirit of God renewed his heart, and he truly found the Saviour.

This same Thomas Hopu is now bronzed and wrinkled beyond his years, and his lamp of life must soon go out. Though his conduct as a Christian since his return is said to have been by no means always exemplary, nor his influence upon his countrymen what was to have been looked for from his advantages, we must lean to the side of charity in our judgments both of him and his fellows.

Mr. Dibble very properly says, that too much had been