272 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
produce an entire change of character and deportment. 
I do not^ however^ suppose we are to infer from the 
account that is given of this amazing work in 
Greenland, that, during the first five or seven years 
of their labours there, the being and character of God, 
&c. were inculcated, to the exclusion or neglect of the 
way of salvation through Jesus Christ. Their teaching 
would, in that case, have been more defective than I am 
willing to suppose it was. Nor do I think we are to 
conclude, that, after the change in their instruction, 
the doctrines of the Saviour’s advent, sufferings, and 
death, were insisted on, to the exclusion of the former : 
this mode of exhibiting scripture truth would have been 
almost as defective as the other ; but I suppose that, 
during the earliest years of their labours, the first prin¬ 
ciples of religion were more frequent and prominent in 
their instructions, than the doctrines peculiar to the 
gospel, and that, subsequently, these points received that 
more frequent attention, which the character, being, 
and law of God, had formerly obtained. No alteration, 
even of this kind, however, appears to have taken place 
in the kind of doctrines inculcated by the Missionaries 
among the Tahitians. From the time of my arrival in 
the islands, I had always a great desire to know whether 
any change had been made by the early preachers in their 
discourses, and other means employed at this period: 
I have not, however, been able to learn that there was 
any thing extraordinary; they do not appear in any re¬ 
spect to have varied the manner, or the matter, of their 
instructions. I have often asked Mr. Nott, and 
others who were on the spot, if there was any 
alteration in the mode of instruction, or the nature of 
their addresses, as to the prominency of any of the 
