376 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE SABBATH. [1840. 



Doubtful as is the prospect for the future, there may still 

 be a remedy, and the missionary may yet be spared the pain 

 which he certainly must feel, when he reflects that he has 

 aided in christianizing a people, only to fit them for their 

 burial. Upon the present generation, but little impression 

 can be made ; yet, by providing social, and strictly moral 

 amusements, for the young, by banishing sadness from their 

 countenances, and substituting the light and life and joy 

 springing from happy and contented hearts, much good may 

 be effected. The encouragement of intermarriages with for- 

 eigners, for the improvement of the race, may also be bene- 

 ficial. But, above all, it is necessary, that the practical, 

 though not nominal, union of church and state, should be 

 absolutely dissolved. The missionaries may then confine 

 themselves to their appropriate sphere, and leave politics and 

 legislation, where none of the great principles of the christian 

 religion are involved, to those who are responsible for the civil 

 administration of the government.* 



For some years after the arrival of the missionaries their 

 progress was quite slow; but in 182:2 they established a print- 

 ing press, and commenced the publication of the bible and 

 such tracts as were calculated to do sx>od among the heathen. 

 In 1823, the government publicly acknowledged the christian 

 sabbath, and required all ordinary business and sports to be 

 suspended on that day. In 1824, Kamameha II. was suc- 

 ceeded by his brother, Kamameha III. The latter being but 

 a mere lad, at the time of his accession to the throne, the 

 government was administered by Kaahumanu, one of the 

 wives of his father, as regent, during the first eight years of 

 his reign. Many important and valuable reforms were intro- 

 duced during her regency, and when the youthful monarch 

 assumed the reins of government, in 1832, he continued the 



* The Rev. Mr. Bingham, in his " Residence in the Sandwich Islands'* — a 

 work from which I have obtained much valuable information — insists (p. 278 

 et seq.) that the charge, or assertion, of a union of church and state in the 

 Hawaiian Group, is utterly erroneous, [n theory, this is doubtless so; but it is 

 scarcely possible for an unprejudiced reader to examine his book, without com- 

 ing to the conclusion that in practice it is directly the reverse. 



