332 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
Although the training of their children, and other 
domestic duties, which the females were now called to 
discharge, were important matters of inquiry, there were 
others, more deeply interesting, frequently brought for¬ 
ward at their meetings. Some of these questions regarded 
the children who were born since the gospel had been in¬ 
troduced, and who they were most anxious should share 
all its blessings; others frequently referred to such as 
they had murdered under the influence of idolatry. Some¬ 
times a mother would, in enumerating the crimes of which 
she had been guilty, recount the number of her innocents 
she had destroyed, and with anguish relate her struggles 
of affection, or pangs of remorse, and the distress she 
now felt 5 observing, that their images were ever present to 
her thoughts, and, as it were, constantly haunting her 
paths, so that she was afraid even to retire to the secret 
places of the bushes for private prayer, lest their ghosts 
should rise before her. Often such individuals would say, 
they feared there was no hope of mercy for them, that 
they had repeatedly committed the premeditated murder 
of the innocent, and would perhaps repeat the Scripture 
declaration, that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in 
him, and ask, Ought I to go to Jesus Christ for pardon ? 
were any murderers of their own children ever for¬ 
given 
While some would ask such questions as these, or 
state them as the exercises of their own minds, there 
were others who would speak of the cruelties of which 
they had been guilty, with a want of feeling that 
has appeared to border on insensibility to their enormity. 
Many, however, especially those who were most serisible 
of the mercy of God through Christ, would on these 
occasions expatiate on the amazing forbearance of Jeho- 
