have committed mistakes, which, though lamentable, may be pardonable in those who made them. No wonder that the Roman Church saw an opportunity in this failure, and succeeded in winning a large proportion of the people to her banner. It is true that the natives were perplexed at the entire difference between two religions, each of which called itself by the name of Christ; and, in the homage paid before images of the Virgin and the Saviour, thought they saw a return to their old idolatry. But they felt the attractiveness of the forms of worship, and they felt relief at a system of dependence on a conscience not their own. Obedience, says Sir James Stephen, prompt, absolute, blind and unhesitating such submission, however arduous in appearance, is, in reality, the least irksome of all self-sacrifices. The mysterious gift of freewill is the heaviest burthen of the vast multitude of mankind. Men everywhere desire to walk by sight, not by faith-to obey the stern command of a superior, if so they may be absolved from listening to the still small voice of conscience-to bear the yoke of spiritual bondage, if so they may escape the fatigue of study, the labour of meditation, the pains of doubt, and the anxieties of mental freedom.* Well, the missionaries have made many mistakes, and not among the least is the impatience they have shown for rapid and immense results. But forty missionary families, even if no earthly interest ever attracted them, are not numerous enough to convert a heathen nation in forty years to an all-permeating Christianity. To bring up a couple of children as true Christians may well, and almost exclusively, occupy many years of their parents' lives; and can the most zealous religionist hope that partial efforts on 80,000 human beings, surrounded * Essays. Founders of Jesuitism.' THE TEACHING OF EXAMPLE. 397 by many temptations, should be crowned with a so much larger and more rapid success? The mistake of the missionaries was a very common one-they were treating symptoms instead of the disease. Outward acts, which were but eruptive indications of the inward ailment, they sought to get rid of by a severe repressive hygiene. The disease under which the patient suffered was one of the heart-and the heart they had not touched, and scarcely prescribed for. Yet, had this charge been made against the missionaries, they would possibly have replied, indignantly, that they had gone to the fountain-head of all cure; that they had taught the Hawaiians the highest heights of theology; that they had set before them the doctrines of the Trinity, Justification, Original Sin, and that great mystery, which '-binding Nature fast in Fate, Alas! between that transcendental teaching and the actual workings of a depraved nature, there was a great chasm which their doctrine did not bridge over. A more simple and parental education was required-line upon line and precept upon precept, but patiently and lovingly applied, and dropped like the gentle dew from beaven. As the angler casts his fly delicately upon the water, watches, waits, withdraws it, and throws it again, so the fisher of souls must by many tentative essays perseveringly strive to catch men. Men will not be driven into Christianity like sheep into a pen; and the human heart refuses to be transformed by enactments, penalties, and imprisonments. Of means within our own power for religious advancement, the contemplation of examples is the most certain and the most powerfulto gaze on holiness in fellow-men, and, most of all, to gaze upon the Prince of Purities, until He becomes in our eyes fairest among ten thousand and altogether lovely.' 'It is the burthen of Xavier's letters,' writes Sir James Stephen, that the living exhibition of the Christian character is the first great instrument of Christian conquest over idolatry, and that the inculcation of elementary truth is the second.* CHAPTER XXV. GLANCES AT THE PAST AND GUESSES AT THE FUTURE. HE day upon which Hawaii has entered is one in THE which the light is neither clear nor dark. She ranks among the family of nations, as the last baby in a household, when it can speak and run, is gradually admitted into the companionship and games of its brothers and sisters. The isolation of her position in the centre of the ocean gives a special value and interest to the group, but leaves it open to every assailant that chooses to bring a frigate's broadside to bear on the capital. Her defences must be the equal treaties of other nations, supported by mutual jealousies, rather than the sixty guns of the forts of Honolulu. But treaties, even, will not guard her from the testy act of one foreign government in the absence of the others' ships of war, or from piratical and filibustering expeditions. Like the midnight pull at the house-bell, the annoyer will have vanished before the arrival of the police, and the whole strength of a division will not repair the injury done to the nerves of the disturbed inmates. Under the guarantee of America, France, and England, writes Sir George Simpson, referring to the period of his visit (1843), the Sandwich Islands are secured as effectually as any other community against foreign interference, excepting that, from their position and the inexperience of their rulers, they are peculiarly liable to come into collision with the very powers that have guaranteed their independence. Their position alone, with respect to the trading interests of England and America, will render neutrality extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, in the melancholy event of a war between those kindred states; while any infringement of the law of nations in this respect will be sure to lead to the occupation of the group on the part of England, either as the avenger of her own wrongs, or as a protector against the vengeance of America. But, unlike this occasional danger, the inexperience of their rulers is a rock on which they may be dashed at any time with fatal effect; and within these few short years the cause in question has placed the native government at the mercy both of France and of England. During the progress of the Crimean war, the possible extension of which was uncertain, the King, Kaméhaméha III. issued a proclamation of neutrality, with a prohibition to his subjects to engage, directly or indirectly, in privateering. Such a step may be cynically compared to the frogs in the fable protesting against the battle of the bulls. Admitting the similitude, it must be granted that the danger which threatened the Hawaiian kingdom from an European war was that which the frogs deprecated, and theirs was a situation in which insignificance would not act as a safeguard. On the breaking out of hostilities between the states of North America, a similar manifesto was issued. The proclamation is as follows: KAMEHAMEHA IV., KING OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. Be it known to all whom it may concern, that we, Kaméhaméha IV., King of the Hawaiian Islands, having been officially notified that hostilities are now unhappily pending between the Government of the United States and certain |