POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
323 
affixed to the different parts, actually wrote the books 
ascribed to them, but we referred them to their internal 
evidence, their harmony or accordance with the works of 
creation, and the dispensations of Providence, in their 
display of the Divine character and perfections, their 
admirable adaptation to the end for which they were 
given, and the universality of their application to man¬ 
kind. Next to the agency of that blessed Spirit, under 
whose influence those Scriptures were first penned, and 
by which alone they become the means of spiritual 
illumination to any individual, the internal evidences of 
the Bible have operated upon the minds of the natives 
with great force. When they have been asked why they 
believed the Scriptures to be the word of God, they have 
answered, We believe they have a higher than human 
origin, because they reveal what man could never know ; 
not only in reference to God himself, but our own origin 
and destinies, and what, when revealed, appears to us 
true ; because its declarations accord with the testimony 
of our own consciences, as to the moral character of our 
actions 5 and because, though written by persons who 
never saw us, or knew our thoughts, it describes so 
accurately our inclinations, imaginations, motives, and 
passions. It must have been dictated by One who knew 
what man was, better than we know each other, or it 
could not have displayed our actual state so correctly.’* 
These, or declarations to the same effect, if not given in 
precisely the same words, were the reasons they fre¬ 
quently assigned for believing the divine origin of the 
Scriptures. 
Several remarkable instances of the effect of the word 
of God, and the power of conscience, occurred about the 
year 1819. One Sabbath morning, Mr. Nott had been 
