Pioneers and Founders | Page 3

to place his biography before that of the longer-lived Baptist friends--both men of curious and wonderful powers, but whose history shows the disadvantages of the Society government, and whose achievements were the less permanent in consequence. The Burmese branch of their work is chiefly noticeable for the characters and adventures of Dr. Judson and his three wives, and for the interesting display of Buddhism in contact with Christianity. According to the statistics in an American Missionary Dictionary, the work they founded has not fallen to the ground either at Moulmein or Rangoon; while there has also sprung up a hopeful English Church Mission in the same quarter. The last thing I saw about it was a mention of the neatness and dexterity of Burmese girls as needlewomen.
Samuel Marsden may be called the patriarch of Australasian Christianity. There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand. His foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out of it, has not yet seen its first generation.
The Polynesian work, of which John Williams was the martyr and the representative man, has chiefly been carried on by the London Mission. It has always been a principle with the Missionaries of the Anglican Church, whose centre has been first New Zealand, then Norfolk Island, never to enter upon any islands pre-occupied by Christian teachers of any denomination, since there is no lack of wholly unoccupied ground, without perplexing the spirit of the natives with the spectacle of "our unhappy divisions;" and thus while Melanesia is for the most part left to the Church, Polynesia is in the hands of the London Mission. Much good has been effected. The difficulty is that, for want of supervision, individual Missionaries are too much left to themselves, and are in danger of becoming too despotic in their islands. At least such is the impression they sometimes give to officers of the navy. French aggression has much disturbed them both in Tahiti and in the Loyalty Islands, and the introduction of Roman Catholic priests into their territory is bitterly resented. On the whole, observers tolerably impartial think that the civilization which these married teachers bring with them has a happier effect as an example and stimulus to the natives than the solitary ascetic priest,--a true, self-devoted saint indeed but unable to win the attention of the people in their present condition. In India, where asceticism is the test of sanctity even among the heathen, the most self-denying preacher has the best chance of being respected; but in those luxurious islets, poverty and plainness of living, without the power of showing the arts of life, get despised. If the priests could bring their pomp of worship, and large bands of brethren or sisters to reclaim the waste, they might tell upon the minds of the people, but at present they go forth few and poor, and are little heeded in their isolation. Unfortunately, too, the antagonism between them and the London Mission is desperate. The latter hold the tenets perhaps the most widely removed from Catholicism of any Protestant sect, and are mostly not educated enough to understand the opposite point of view, so that each party would almost as soon see the natives unconverted as joining the hostile camp: and precious time is wasted in warrings the one against the other.
The most real enemies to Christianity in these seas are, however, the lawless traders, the English and American whalers and sandal-wood dealers, who bring uncontrolled vice and violence where they put in for water; while they, on the one hand, corrupt the natives, on the other they provoke them into reprisals on the next White men who fall in their way. That the Polynesians are good sailors and not bad workmen, has proved another misfortune, for they are often kidnapped by unscrupulous captains to supply the deficiency of labour in some of the Australasian settlements. Everywhere it seems to be the unhappy fact that Christian men are the most fatal hinderers of God's word among the heathen.
Yet most of the more accessible of the isles have a resident missionary, and keep up schools and chapels. Their chiefs have accepted a Christian code, and the horrid atrocities of cannibalism have been entirely given up, though there is still much evil prevalent, especially in those which have convenient harbours, and are in the pathway of ships. The Samoan islanders have a college, managed by an English minister and his wife, where teachers are educated not only to much good discipline, but to much real refinement, and