EFFICACY OF DIVINE LOVE. 187 
kind. Emotions of astonishment, admiration, and 
gratitude, involuntarily arise in every mind in the 
least degree susceptible of humanity or religion ; 
while increasing convictions of the divine origin of 
revelation must fasten on the understanding, and 
additional encouragement strengthen the hopes, of 
every individual who, according to the promise of 
God, is anticipating the arrival of a period, when 
a transformation, equally decisive and lovely, shall 
change the moral deserts of the earth into regions 
of order and beauty, and the wilderness shall be¬ 
come as the garden of the Lord. 
In order more fully to illustrate the kind of 
scripture truth that appears, in connexion with 
others, to have affected deeply the minds of the 
people, one single instance, among many that 
might be adduced, will shew, that in the mild 
and verdant islands of the south, as well as the 
frozen and barren regions of the north, in Tahiti 
as well as in Greenland, the attractions of the Cross 
move and melt the human heart. It was the cus¬ 
tom of the Missionaries, not only to instruct the 
natives in the school, preach to them in the chapel, 
and itinerate through the villages, but to assemble 
them for the purpose of reading, from manuscript, 
such portions of the scripture as were deemed 
suitable to their circumstances. On one of these 
occasions, Mr. Nott was reading the first portions 
of the Gospel of St. John to a number of the 
natives. When he had finished the sixteenth verse 
of the third chapter, a native, who had listened 
with avidity and joy to the words, interrupted him, 
and said, “ What words were those you read ? what 
sounds were those I heard ? let me hear those words 
again.” Mr. Nott read again the verse, “ God so 
loved,” &c. when the native rose from his seat, 
