St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1882-04-14

BY REV. EDWARD ABBOTT.

ton had been asked: where is the
most hopeless place on the globe in
which to attempt to plant Christianity,
the answer would probably have been
the Fiji Islands.
The Fiji Islands, about two hundred
and twenty-five in number, less than
half of them inhabited, lie well out i'll
the Pacific Ocean, at IL point north
east. and about equidistant from Aus
traia and New Zealand. They are
coral islands, with all the characters
ties of their kind Their inhabitants,
twenty-five years ago, perhaps repre-
scented the lowest pitch of brutal saw
age nature to which the human race
has fallen in modern times. To be
sure, man has been known to he
nailed to Il door by his ears, and then
liberated by having his ears cut off,
and this in English-speaking "Chris
tian" Ireland, and within a few years !;
but what in Ireland makes newspa-
per horror for all the world, i'll Fiji
would have passed unnoticed, buried
beneath ii mass of vices, crimes and
atrocities, the very enumeration of
which is enough to make ones blood
run cold. The Fiji Islander of the
past has well earned the right to have
his name entered high up on the list of
the cruelest and bloOdiest of men.
That he was cannibal was but one
item in the dreadful catalogue. He
might cook them afterwards; he spared
neither sex nor age in his horrid work !;
he dug up the bodies of the dead to
enrich his rcpast he buried the sick
and the well alive; he strangled the
widows of the great as one would
crush fly; he launched his ponder
Gus canoes on human rollers, rolling
them to II Jelly; whole villages would
he depopulated to supply him with
excuses of atrocity and bestial shame
which could not he even recited in
these columns.
Less than fifty years ago two En-
glish Wesleyan missionaries, the Rev.
W. Cross and the Rev. David Cargill,
resolved on making an effort for the
conversion of the Fiji Islanders. They
landed amongst them without any Wis
iblc protectOrate, with no knowledge
of the language, and i'll the face of all
these ferociOus practices which had So
long given the islands So dreadful IL
fame. Ten, twelve, fifteen years of la
Dor passed, and there we're no results.
1t seems miracle that the lives of the
brave missionaries were spared. But
spared they were, and their faithful
word was not in vain. At last the seed
sprang up, and within the past fifteen
Years has brought forth hundredtOld.
To-day finds 900 well established Yves
lcyan churches in Fiji, 400 schools,
and communicates by the thousands.
Nearly 10000 children are i'll attend
ance at the schools, and out of IA pOpu-
latiOn of about I2O,OOO, over 100, 900
are reckoned as regular attendants at
the churches. Cannibalism has been
voluntarily abandoned, save by Il sin
gle tribe, in every one of eighty inhab-
tied islands idolatry has been abiur-
,.H and all Traces nf I baN,4 haat,
away ; the rude drums which once
beat the signal for diaholical feasts,
now give the solemn call to sacraments
and worship; devOut congregations
crowd the chapels the first sound
which greets the ear III the morning
aud the last at evening is the singing
of hymns and the voice of prayer i'll
the family worship of the villagers
pOlygamy has given way to Christian
marriage a native ministry has been
raised up and is at work every vii
lHge on - islands has its Christian
church, where baptism and the Lords
Supper are administered, and the Cos
pei is preached; every village houses,
feeds and clothes its minister: and at
annual school examinations and mis-
sionary meetings considerable offer
ings are made for a general missionary
fund.
An immense number of the people
now read the Scriptures in their own
language. The Lords day is kept
with almost Puritan rigidness. The
generosity of the people is as remarka-
bile as their honesty. And to-day, a
gentle and refined Englishwoman, as
Miss Gordon Cumming i'll her book At
Home i'll Fiji testities, can traverse
these islands alone, mingling with the
people, rambling through their vii
lagos, sleeping i'll their huts. and eat
ing at their tables, not only with none
To modest her, but absolutely witt
nothing To make her afraid. 1t is {
marvel of moral transformation. There
has been an unseen. an unwTitten, rev
olution i'll FIJI. For a wonder, here
the Ethiopian, so to speak, has chang
ed his skin and the leopard his spots
Let them who do not believe tha
IF any man be in Christ he is new
creature" compare the FIJI Islander %
lse2 with the FIJI Islander of 1852 anC
be persuaded. If the scenes in which
the savage was an actor a generation
ago seem like chapter in the life %
the devil and his fiends, the scenes il
which the savage converted appears
to-day are like glimpse of the better