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MISSIONARY TOUR 
Tubuai; that if they had been heathens, they should 
have fought them at once; but that they had been to 
Tahiti, and had embraced the new religion, as they called 
Christianity; had heard that Jehovah commanded those 
who worshipped Him to do no murder, and that Jesus 
Christ had directed his followers to love their enemies ; 
that they feared it would be displeasing to God, should 
they have killed any of the Tubuaians, or even have 
indulged feelings of revenge towards them ; adding, that 
they would rather lose their canoe and their property, 
than offend Jehovah, or disregard the directions of Jesus 
Christ.—Our captain gave them a passage. Pomare 
furnished them with a canoe; they returned for their 
companions, and subsequently sailed to their native 
islands. 
When they arrived, they and other natives of the 
same islands, who had also been to Tahiti, told their 
countrymen what they had learned there, and the 
changes they had witnessed ; that Jehovah was the 
only God recognized at Tahiti, and that all was peace 
and good will. God was pleased to accompany their 
plain narrative with such power to the hearts of their 
countrymen, that they abolished idolatry, erected places 
for the public worship of Jehovah, opened school- 
houses, became professedly Christian people; and the 
cruelties of their idolatry, cannibalism, and war, have 
ever since ceased among them. These natives, in all 
probability, had never heard the question as to the 
lawfulness or unlawfulness of Christians engaging in 
war discussed or even named, but they had most likely 
been taught to commit to memory the decalogue, and 
our Lord’s sermon on the mount, and hence resulted 
their noble forbearance at the island of Tubuai. 
