TAHITIAN TRANSLATION. 13 
undoubtedly actuated by a conviction that it was 
able to make them wise unto salvation, through 
faith which is in Christ Jesus. 
The intensity of ardour manifested by many at 
first, has, as might be expected, subsided : still the 
scriptures are earnestly sought, and highly prized, 
by a great portion of the adult population. 
The whole of the New Testament has been 
translated and printed, not indeed in a uniform 
volume, but in detached portions, which many of 
the natives have bound up together. Separate 
portions of the Old Testament have also been 
translated, and some of the books are printed; it 
is to be hoped that a uniform edition of the Bible 
will, at no very distant period, be circulated among 
the people. Whether or not any of the Apocry¬ 
phal books will ever assume a Polynesian dress, 
it is impossible to say, but at present it is im¬ 
probable. 
The dialects spoken by the tribes inhabiting the 
different groups in the South Sea, being strictly 
analagous to each other, it was hoped that the 
Tahitian translation of. the scriptures would have 
answered for the whole ; there is, however, reason 
to fear that distinct translations will be necessary, 
not only for the Sandwich Islands, the Marquesas, 
and Tongatabu, but also for the Hervey Islands, 
which are not more than 600 or 700 miles distant 
from the Society Isles. So strong a resemblance, 
however, exists between the dialects, that the Tahi¬ 
tian translation will require only slight variations, 
the idioms and structure of the language being, in 
all their distinguishing features, the same. 
When the uncultivated nature of the language, 
into which the scriptures have been translated, is 
considered, connected with the remembrance that 
