Rather than that this should ensue with any of God's elect, or that any who are truly seeking him should be balked and lose their souls, it were better that many wolves in sheep's clothing get within the consecrated ground of the Church. The conversion of spurious professors here is by no means so doubtful or difficult a thing as when they get into the churches in America; and at the worst, they can be turned out when discovered.

The state of things at Kaneohe, and at the next station of Waialua, is confirmative of these views. Many have become slack and indifferent, and have left off going to meeting, saying the way to the church is long, and have given up heart, and hope, and effort altogether.

The Catholics have a priest not far from there, and he has gained some, together with the control of one hundred of their children, not because they really think the Popish way is the right way, but because, by their own confession, they are tired of waiting upon their kumu, (teacher,) and have an itching desire to be sprinkled and housed in some church, with a lurking belief-by no means unknown to wiser minds in Christian lands-that somehow they are more likely to be saved in the Church, than unbaptized out of it.

It is natural there should be a difference of opinion as to how such cases are to be prevented, or treated when found, among a people with whom a profession of religion is so popular. No one can deny that the whole subject of admitting to the Church is beset with difficul

TWO ASPECTS OF NATIVE CHURCHES.

251

ties. Perhaps the more conscientious and orthodox the pastor, the greater will be his quandary.

It is but fair that those who are interested in and support missionaries, should be made acquainted as far as possible with their trials, and what they have to contend with, the deceit and hypocrisy of native character, the degradation and vileness of the native mind. If the dark side of native character, and the dark aspect of native churches, have been heretofore* too much withheld from the public, as some think, there is more reason that both sides should be given now, in order that erroneous views may be corrected, and the truth arrived at by comparison, so far as it can be ascertained by those who are not on the spot to see things as they are, and as no reports can possibly exhibit them.

* Travellers who visit missionary establishments sometimes contribute to existing errors. If they write in favor of them, they wish to do it to some purpose; they wish, of course, to be popular, in an age which asks for new and exciting matter from the press. Hence we have seen books professing to give the state of things at the Society, Sandwich, and even Marquesas Islands, written in a style of extravagance, adapted rather to gratify than to inform the reader. There are other travellers who fall into the other extreme. It is a point with them to show that the missionary enterprise does no good; that it impoverishes and depopulates the Islands, and that the natives who survive its pestilential influence are made more idle, filthy, and vicious. The reader needs not to be informed that it is an old usage among men to comfort one's own conscience, by an effort to lay its guilt on the back of another. Neither does the public, we presume, need to be informed that if any one goes down into Egypt after the corn of scandal-the sins of missionaries-he will find the stewards of the granaries on board his craft before he can anchor, and the sack filled, and the money also returned in the sack's mouth-at so cheap a rate do they supply the wants of their brethren.-Hawaiian Spectator, Vol. i. p. 99.

Therefore we have been always ready, in these pages, to state facts as they have fallen in our way, and to make it known when we differ as to how difficulties should be surmounted, and trials met; at the same time not forgetting the proverb which says of grief ironically, that every one can master it but he that hath it; nor letting slip one of those sayings of Shakspeare's heroine which I have put at the head of this chapter, I CAN

EASIER TEACH TWENTY WHAT WERE GOOD TO BE DONE, THAN TO BE ONE OF THE TWENTY TO FOLLOW MINE OWN

TEACHING.

We can easily point out faults and errors in others, and commend them to patience and fidelity in suffering and duty; but it is quite another thing always to act in just the right way ourselves, or to be and to do what we recommend wisely to others. How finely does Leonato say to Antonio in the drama of Much Ado About Nothing

Brother, men

Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief,
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words;
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,

To be so moral, when he shall endure
The like himself: therefore give me no counsel.
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

I pray thee, peace: I will be flesh and blood;
For there was never yet philosopher,
That could endure the tooth-ache patiently;

SUPPOSED PIT OF AN OLD VOLCANO.

253

However they have writ the style of gods,

And made a pish at chance and sufferance.

There is seldom seen, even in Hawaii-nei, where the extremes of fruitfulness and aridity often meet, a greater difference in the external aspect of two places, than appears at the present time between Kaneohe and Waialua, at which latter missionary station we have now arrived in the course of our travels around Oahu.

At Kaneohe, directly around the mission premises, and all the way up to the lofty precipice which breaks it off from the Valley of Nuuanu, on the Honolulu side, there are grassy knolls, running brooks, and green meadows of great fertility, alternating within the compass of ten or fifteen miles. There is good evidence that the entire district was once a volcanic crater. It is hemmed in on all sides, except seaward, by lofty basaltic and lava precipices, just like the sides of Hale-aka-la. Nothing can be more picturesque and charming than the first view you get of it from the brow of the Pali.

you,

There you stand, if the fierce rush of the trades will let at least two thousand feet above the diversified grassy basin below, and look away over the rich landscape of calm sunshine and shade, blended by distance into a mellow unity, along the aspiring cliffs, and off "o'er the waters of the dark blue sea," till they rise up in the distant horizon to a level with the plane of your eye.

The descent is so long and difficult by a zigzag in the almost upright wall of the Pali, like the celebrated Es

troza Pass in the island of Madeira, that one has to take the best heed to his steps who will go down there. And if a man's rectus and vasti muscles, the semitendinosus and biceps flexor cruris, do not ache after it, it must be because his legs are made without them.

When once fairly down, the way to the station, four or five miles, is clear over the greensward; and you look back with wonderment at the vast walls and ramparts, of which no power less than volcanic could have been the architect, or could ever have rent from them, and sunk to nearly a level with the sea, the great subjacent plain over which you are passing.

The way thence to Waialua is forty miles to the westward, along the sea, often on the beach. At the point where you emerge from what may be called the great crater of Kaneohe, the precipice is cut off plumb down to a level with the sea, making a wall on your left of eight or ten hundred feet perpendicular height. There are several villages to be passed through where the Catholics are numerous.

Fish-ponds are fenced-in all along, and there are many little bays and bights of the ocean which, together with the grassy and gentle line of the coast, form an unusual variety in Hawaiian natural scenery, and a fine contrast to the deep cuts and bold mountains further inland. The country on all that side of the island is well watered, and holds out many inducements for settlement to Hawaiians; yet the population is but five thousand, and that decreasing.

I stopped to rest and bathe at a place called Hauula,