160 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
over the inhabitants of the valleys and hills of 
Tahiti, and had rendered their abodes, though 
naturally verdant and lovely as the bowers of Eden, 
yet morally cheerless and desolate as the region of 
the shadow of death ! 
If the spirits of departed prophets, from their 
seats of bliss, look down upon our globe; how must 
Judah’s royal bard have bent with rapture, to be- 
hold the accomplishment of triumphs, which, while 
he swept the hallowed harp of prophecy, he had: 
foretold—the multitude of the isles made glad* 
under Jehovah’s reign, and the kings of the isles 
bringing presents+ to his Son ! 
With equal transport, and with greater sym- 
pathy, those happy disembodied spirits of just 
men made perfect, who have more recently entered 
on their everlasting rest, 1f they have a knowledge 
of what passes on earth, must have viewed the 
change!. And if angels, who have none of those 
sympathies which the redeemed must feel, expe- 
rience an addition to their joy, in every sinner 
that by penitence returns to God, it seems an 
inference not unwarranted by revelation, that the 
spirits of departed believers may have a knowledge 
of events and moral changes, which transpire in 
our world, especially with those relating to the 
progress of the Messiah’s reign among mankind. 
Then with what augmented joy must that ho- 
noured and distinguished saint,f in strict obe- 
dience to whose last bequest. and dying charge 
the South Sea Mission was attempted, with those 
holy and devoted men who first matured, and sub- 
sequently aided so nobly, the plan of sending the 
* Psalm xcvil. 1. + Psalm Ixxii. 10. 
+ The late Countess of Huntingdon. 
