POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
161 
powerful incentives to devotedness and unabated effort. 
Well might one now engaged in this work exclaim, ^^Five 
hundred millions of souls,* who are represented as being 
unenlightened ! I cannot, if I would, give up the idea of 
being a Missionary, while I reflect upon this vast num¬ 
ber of my fellow-sinners, who are perishing for lack of 
knowledge. ^ Five hundred millions T intrudes itself 
upon my mind wherever I go, and however I am em¬ 
ployed. When I go to bed, it is the last thing that 
recurs to my memory; if I awake in the night, it is to 
meditate upon it alone; and in the morning, it is gene¬ 
rally the first thing that occupies my thoughts.” 
What mind, under the influence of the unequivocal 
declarations of the sacred volume, and an acquaintance 
with the true condition of the heathen, can calmly enter¬ 
tain the thought of the perishing millions of the pagan 
world ? 
We always told those who inquired, that it was not 
for us to say, what was the actual state of the departed; 
that of those who died in infancy, we were permitted to 
cherish the soothing and consolatory hope of their feli¬ 
city ; that those who survived infancy, had not been 
without the admonitions of conscience, which had borne 
a faithful testimony to the character of all their actions; 
and that on the evidence of that witness they would 
be acquitted or convicted at the awful bar of God. At 
the same time assuring them, that whatever crimes 
they might have to answer for, rejection of the gospel 
would not be one; though this would, perhaps, involve 
the heaviest condemnation on their descendants, if by 
them that gospel was neglected or despised. 
* It is estimated that there are more than ^ix hundred millions desti¬ 
tute of the knowledge of the gospel. 
II. 
Y 
