164 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
of their reports was brought to the questioning meet¬ 
ings to receive our confirmation or explanation. The 
religious character and observances of the English were 
usually matters of great interest. The dimensions and 
number of our cathedrals, churches, and chapels, the 
size of the congregations, the proportion of the popu¬ 
lation that attended public worship, and the order of 
the services, were often topics of inquiry or conver¬ 
sation. The experience of those who were true Chris¬ 
tians in England, was also introduced; and their re¬ 
marks on this point, especially when they first became 
interested in the subject of religion themselves, were 
often rather amusing. ^^How happy the Christians 
in England must be,” they would sometimes say.— 
^^So many teachers, so many books, the whole of the 
Bible in their language, and no idolatry, they must 
have little else to do but to praise God. Their crimes 
have never been like ours; they never offered human 
sacrifices, murdered their infants, &c. Do they ever 
repent ? have they any thing to repent of?” It was, how¬ 
ever, only those who were recently awakened to a sense 
of the enormity of these crimes, and were but very par¬ 
tially informed as to the true state of England, that 
ever asked such questions as these. 
The doctrine of the resurrection of the body has ever 
appeared to them, as it did when announced by the 
apostle to the civilized philosophers of Athens, or the 
august rulers in the Roman hall of judgment, as a fact 
astounding or incredible. Of another world, and the 
existence of the soul in that world after the dissolution 
of the body, they appear at all times to have entertained 
some indistinct ideas; but the reanimation of the moul¬ 
dering bodies of the dead, never seems, even in their 
