VISIT TO HONOLULU. 207 



home. Undoubtedly the pioneers of missionary enter- 

 prise had, almost without exception, to face dangers and 

 miseries past telling, but that is the portion of pioneers 

 in general. In these days, however, the missionary's 

 lot in Polynesia is not often a hard one, and in many 

 cases it is infinitely to be preferred to a life among the 

 very poor of our great cities. 



But when all has been said that can be said against 

 the missionaries, the solid bastion of fact remains that, 

 in consequence of their lal)ours, the whole vile character 

 of the populations of the Pacific has been changed, and 

 where wickedness runs riot to-day, it is due largely to 

 the hindrances placed in the way of the noble efforts 

 of the missionaries by the unmitigated scoundrels who 

 vilify them. The task of spreading Christianity would 

 not, after all, be so difficult were it not for the efforts 

 of those apostles of the devil to keep the islands as they 

 would like them to be — places where lust runs riot day 

 and night, murder may be done with impunity, slavery 

 flourishes, and all evil may be indulged in free from law, 

 order, or restraint. 



It speaks volumes for the inherent might of the 

 Gospel that, in spite of the object-lessons continually pro- 

 vided for the natives by white men of the negation of 

 all good, that it has stricken its roots so deeply into 

 the soil, of the Pacific islands. Just as the best proof 

 of the reality of the Gospel here in England is that it 

 survives the incessant assaults upon it from within by 

 its professors, by those who are paid, and highly paid, 

 to propagate it, by the side of whose deadly doings the 

 efforts of so-called infidels are but as the battery of a 

 summer breeze ; so in Polynesia, were not the principles 

 of Christianity vital with an immortal and divine life, 



H 



