POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
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extension of its influence^ and the increasing power of 
the principles it implanted, during the last fourteen 
years, already occupies no inferior place among the 
modern evidences of Christianity, and the demonstra¬ 
tions of its legitimate tendency to ameliorate the condi¬ 
tion, and elevate the moral and intellectual character, 
of the most wretched and depraved among mankind. 
Emotions of astonishment, admiration, and gratitude, 
involuntarily arise in every mind in the least degree sus¬ 
ceptible of humanity or religion ; while increasing con¬ 
victions of the divine origin of revelation must fasten 
on the understanding, and additional encouragement 
strengthen the hopes, of every individual who, accord¬ 
ing to the promise of God, is anticipating the arrival 
of a period, when a transformation, equally decisive and 
lovely, shall change the moral deserts of the earth into 
regions of order and beauty, and the wilderness shall 
become as the garden of the Lord. 
In order more fully to illustrate the kind of scripture 
truth that appears, in connexion with others, to have 
affected deeply the minds of the people, one single 
instance, among many that might be adduced, 
will shew, that in the mild and verdant islands of 
the south, as well as the frozen and barren regions of 
the north, in Tahiti as well as in Greenland, the attrac¬ 
tions of the Cross move and melt the human heart. 
It was the custom of the Missionaries, not only to 
instruct the natives in the school, preach to them in 
the chapel, and itinerate through the villages, but 
to assemble them for the purpose of reading, from 
manuscript, such portions of the scripture as were 
deemed suitable to their circumstances. On one of 
these occasions, Mr. Nott was reading the first portions 
