44 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
only state in which our powers, physical and mental, will 
operate harmoniously; the only position of our existence 
which looks forward on the path of our destiny, with any cer¬ 
tainty that thought, feeling, and act, will lead to results 
pleasureable to ourselves and in harmony with the rest of 
the world. 
It is a want of proper reflection on this matter which has 
rendered abortive so many efforts to civilize different por¬ 
tions of the race. In India, in the forests of the west, in every 
other place, except the Hawaiian Islands, where the societies 
of Protestantism have made efforts to ameliorate the condi¬ 
tion of the barbarian, nearly the whole acting force has been 
brought to bear on the cultivation of the religious sentiments. 
The theory has been, make them Christians, and everything 
else will follow as a promised favor of Heaven. 
No error has cost the church more money and life than 
this. The savage has been taught the doctrines of salvation, 
and his direct relations to the Deity. Thus far, well. But 
there was no corresponding teaching to the rest of his na¬ 
ture. His physical wants and the mode of supplying them, 
remained unchanged. All his relations to the external world 
continued the same. And the largest number of the strong¬ 
est desires of the mind being thus left, to contend with those 
which the missionaries attempted to excite and purify, it is 
no wonder that so little has been accomplished. 
In the Hawaiian Islands the missionaries found a people 
living in villages, having a property in the soil, and depend 
ing chiefly upon its culture for their subsistence. They 
also found them destitute of every kind of religion, and de¬ 
sirous of receiving one: they were a talented people and 
anxious for new ideas. This was a remarkable state of 
things. Their physical adaptation to the natural world was 
so far in advance of the mental, that the latter only required 
to be placed on an equal footing with the former, to produce 
the civilization and moral rectitude which they now possess. 
The result of missionary efforts in these islands, if well 
