St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1882-01-13
Religious Heading.
Changes Wrought by the Gospel
i'm the Fiji Islands.

Strange indeed is the change that
has come over these isles since first
Messrs. Cragill and Cross, Wesleyan
missionaries. landed here i'll the year
1875. resolved at the hazard of their
lives to bring the light of Christianity
To these ferocious cannibals. Imagine
the faith and courage of the two white
men. without any visible protection,
landing in the midst of these blood
thirsty hOrdes, whose unknown Ian
guage they had in the first instance to
master and day after day witnessing
such scenes ~ chill ones blood even to
hear about. Many such have been de
scribed to me by eye-witnesses.
Slow and disheartening was their
labor for many years, yet so well has
that little leaven worked that, with
the exception of the Kai TholOs, the
wild highlanders, who still hold out in
their mountain Businesses, the eighty
inhabited isles have all abjured can
nibalism and other frightful customs.
and have LOtued q. {. embraced Chris
tianity) in such good earnest as may
well put to shame many more civilized
nations.
| often wish that some of the caVil-
lers who are forever sneerlng at
Christian missions could see something
of their results in these isles. But first
they would have to recall the FIJI of
ten years ago, when every mans hand
was against his neighbOr, and the land
had no rest from barbaTous inter tn
bal wars, in which the foe, without
respect of age or sex, were looked upon
only in the light of 50 much beef ; the
prisoners deliberately fattened for the
slaughter dead bodies dug up that
had been buried ten or twelve days,
and could only be cooked i'll the form
of buildings limbs cut off from living
men and women, and cooked and eaten
in the presence of the victim, who had
previously been compelled to dig the
oven and cut the tirewOod for the pur-
pose and this not only i'll time of war,
when such atrocity might be deemed
less ineXcusabie, but in time of peace,
to CRAFTY the caprice of appetite of the
moment.
Think of the sick buried alive the
array of widows who were deliberately
strangled on the death of any great
man /; the living victims who were
buried beside every post of il chief =
new house, and must needs stand
clasping il while the earth was gIadu-
ally heaped over their devoted heads E;
or those who were bound hand and
foot, and laid on the ground to act as
rollers, when IA chief launched new
canoe, and thus doomed to a death of
eNcruciating agony a time when there
was not the slightest security for life
or property, and no man knew how
quickly his own hour of doom might
come when whole villages were de-
populated simply to supply their neigh
hOIs with fresh meat
Just think of all this, and of the
change that has been wrought, and
then Just imagine white men who can
sneer at missionary work i'll the way
they do. Now you may pass from isle
To isle, certain everywhere to find the
same cordial reception by kindly men
and women. Every village in the
eighty inhabited isles has built for it
self IA tidy church, and good house
for its teacher or native minister, for
whom the village also provides food
and clothing. Can you realize that there
are nine hundred Wesleyan churches in
FIJI, at every one of which the frequent
services are crowded by devout CON
gregatiOns that the schools are well
attended, and that the first sound that
greets your ear at dawn, and the last
at night, is that of hymn-singing and
most fervent worship, rising from each
dwelling at the hour of family prayer
What these people may become after
much contact with the common run OF
white men we cannot, of course, tell,
though we may unhappily guess. AT
present they are Il body of simple and
devout Christians, full of deepest rev
ercnce for their teachers and the mes
sage they bring, and only anxious to
yield all obedience.
OF course there are number OF
white men here, as in other countries
who themselves not caring one straw
about any religion) declare that Chris
tianity in these isles is merely nominal
adopted as ii matter of eXpediency, and
that half the people are still heather
ut heart. Even were this true (and all
outward signs go to disprove it) Won
der what such cavaliers expect.
wonder if they know by what gradual
steps our own British ancestors yield
ed to the Light, and for how many
centuries idolatrOus customs continued
to prevail in our own isles Yet here
all traces of idOlatry are utterly swept
away From Miss Gordon Cummings
AT Home in Fiji"
Notes.