Saturday press. [volume] (Honolulu, H.I.) 1880-1885, 1884-08-30
SATURDAY PRESS
SATURDAY, ........... AUGUST 70. rss.


FROM FIRST PACE.
swept away by the torrent OF vice let
loose upon them. As it is tens of thou
sands have lived in the light, and died
in the faith, true disciples according to
their strength, and if not victors, yet to
be counted as honestly enlisted in
Christs service.
The veteran missionaries in this work
are asking of late years, as it true that
the success so widely heralded to the
world is, after all, failure1" One
hesitates to reply to question involv-
ing so much, but surely it is true that
there is growth in mission work only as
It shall accept candid criticism, study
the science and the philosophy Of the
life it deals with, consider hcredity, de
velopment. and environment, and not
expect morality and character under
conditions in which they would be i'm
possible for one Of our race. When
Bishop Pattlson, the model missionary,
said, 1.-THE second stage of mission work
is the most difficult" he knew whereof
he spake. The first is mainly upon the
heart, the second is more directly upon
the life Of converts, who are more or
less pulled up by mere knowledge, are
head.strong, unconscious Of their weak
ness, and test the tact Of their teachers
for more severely than they did in their
original ignorance and simplicity 1t
demands the uplifting of the whole man
by Gods grace, and by every means
that human wisdom suggests, and then
by protecting him from the harm he
would do himself, until he is thoroughly
established in well-doing, which must
be matter Of time and habit believe
that whatever it may have been in the
past, the present system of the Ameri-
can Board of Foreign Missions, and of
all other progressive associations, tends
to coincidence with the views OF this
paper
As ! leave my subject have only TO
refer to one success Of the Hawaiian
Mission in the few really strong and
fine individuals whom it has produced,
who have never hesitated to make the
sacrifices for others which their teachers,
as they fully recognized, had made for
them. When company Of native
Hawaiian missionaries, which for some
years had been stationed at the Mar
quesas Islands, was sent for to return,
because salaries could no longer be paid,
its members elected to stay and support
themselves by hard labor, rather than
leave savage, people whom they bad
learned to love. One of them, Kekela,
offered his own person as a hostage to a
hostile tribe for the life of an American
seaman whom they had captured. The
tribe finally accepted other ransom, and
President Lincoln, hearing the story,
sent to the missionary watch, with
some expression of his respect for the
act. The teachers reply was that,
"White men had saved his soul. and he
could well afford to give them hi, body"
Hawaiian Christian missionaries, sup
ported from home, have worked long
and faithfully in the Mortlock Islands,
close to the shore Of Asia, and in Mic
ronesia and the Gilbert and Marshall
Groups. Some, indeed, have sadly
failed: they have done best under the
supervision Of white men,
The same men left in Hawaii as in
dependent pastors might have yielded
to the temptations about them; but I'M
der the stimulus of the selfdenying life
they haye chosen, those who burned
their ships, they have lived nobly for
God and man.
This soft and gentle race, full OF
generous impulses, equally receptive of
good or bad teaching, and unfit to meet
the strong advance of Anglo-Saxon
civilization, is yet, in its blind descent
to decay, scattering the seeds of Christ
ian life, received by it from distant lands,
among its wilder brethren. And may
it not be that the torch lit in Hawaii
shall shine across the islands Of Poly.
nesia even to the far shores OF the
Pacific Scar