REVIEW OF THE CHANGE IN TAHITI. 179 
conquerors. It was a period of humiliation, dark¬ 
ness, and distress; while the population of Tahiti 
itself was torn by factions, and desolated by wars, 
that threatened its extinction. Their teachers 
were not much more favourably circumstanced. 
Few in number, compared with what they had 
been when they maintained their former station in 
Matavai, and suffering under the heaviest domestic 
bereavements; prevented by personal indisposi¬ 
tion, and other circumstances, from engaging, 
either very frequently or extensively, in the main 
work of instructing the people; their exertions, 
greatly to their own regret, were exceedingly cir¬ 
cumscribed. In addition to these discourage¬ 
ments, the prejudices of many of the king’s most 
warm and valuable friends were unusually strong, 
as they considered the continuance of his misfor¬ 
tunes to result, in part, from the countenance he 
gave, and the inclination he manifested towards, 
the religion of the foreigners. 
In the means employed there was nothing ex¬ 
traordinary. It is recorded, in the history of the 
Greenland Missions, that the Moravian brethren, 
for five or seven years, laboured patiently and 
diligently in teaching their hearers what are 
termed the first principles of religion—inculcating 
the doctrines of the being and attributes of God, 
and the requirements of his law—without making 
the least favourable impression upon them, or 
being, in many instances, able to secure the atten¬ 
tion of the people to their instructions. The first 
instance of decisive and salutary effect from their 
teaching, was, we are informed, what would, in 
general, be termed accidental, and occasioned by 
their reading to some native visitors an account of 
the sufferings and death of the Saviour, which they 
n 2 
