POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
307 
were concerned, that all members were brethren ; and 
that Christ himself was the only spiritual chief or king ; 
that his influence or reign was not temporal, but, like his 
authority, spiritual. The only distinction recognized in 
a Christian church, we informed them, regarded those 
who acted as officers, and that such distinctions only 
prevailed in what concerned them as a church, and did 
not refer to their usual intercourse with the commu¬ 
nity of which they were members, and in which they 
were governed by the . ordinary regulations established 
in civilized society. 
The duties which those who united in church fellow - 
ship were required to perform towards each other, towards 
those desirous of uniting with them, and to the careless 
or irreligious, were also fully and frequently brought 
under their notice, together with the paramount duty of 
every Christian to endeavour to propagate Christianity, 
that the Christian church might become a kind of 
nursery, from which other churches might be planted in 
the extensive wilderness of paganism around. 
Next to this, the institution, nature, design, admini¬ 
stration, and uses of the Lord’s supper, were familiarly 
explained, that they might understand, as far as possible, 
the engagement into which they were desirous to enter, 
and the observances connected therewith. > 
The Lord’s supper, or sacrament, we regarded as 
analogous to the passover, symbolical of the death of 
Christ as an atonement or sacrifice, of which event it 
was commemorative; that it was designed to perpetuate 
the remembrance of His death, even to the end of time, 
and was to be in faith participated by all who build 
their hopes of admission to the heavenly state on His 
atonement. 
