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in a greater harvest , when , as quickly we trust they will be , their labourers are more numerous . The question of the chief points insisted on by the missionaries in their religious teaching has been agitated . We do not find much said in these volumes on the Trinity . Jehovahl appears to have been exhibited to the natives as distinct from Jesus Christ ; though in one instance at least , the two are confounded . In reference to other points of reputed orthodoxy , the evidence of the work is clear enough .
"Their aim had always been to exhibit fully , and with the greatest possible simplicity , the grand doctrine ? and precepts taught in the Bible , giving each that share of attention which it appeared to have obtained in the volume of revelation . God they had always endeavoured to represent as a powerful , benevolent , and holy Being , justly requiring the grateful homage and willing obedience of his creatures * Man they bad represented
as the Scripture described him , and as their own observation represented him to be , a sinner against his Maker , and exposed to the consequeuces of his guilt . The love of God in the gift of his only-begotten Son , as a propitiation for sin , and the only medium of reconciliation with God , faith in bis atonement , and the sinner's justification before God , were truths frequently exhibited : the necessity also of Divine influences to make the declaration of these truths effectual to conversion . "
Now , there is a sense in which -we ourselves could take this as the exposition of our creed . But the conventional meaning of the words as they are used in the quarter whence this book comes , and to which it is chiefly addressed , requires us to declare , that though the missionaries taught not Calvinism , they taught orthodoxy— -orthodoxy , we grant , reduced in its tone , and divested of somewhat of its repulsiveness—still the prevalent orthodoxy
of the day . Nor do we doubt that if Mr . Ellis was called upon to explain himself more fully , he would expand the above statement to a size , and develop from it features , that would be as little acceptable to the Unitarians , as conformable to the teachings of the gospel . In this connexion we may adduce some illustrations of the shrewdness of the natives on the subject of religion , and the unsuitableness of some of the points of orthodoxy to the unperverted mind .
* They felt interested in their destiny , ( Adam and Eve ' s , ) and asked whether after the fall and expulsion from Paradise they had repented and obtained pardon ; and at one time , when , in answer to this question , it had been stated that there was reason to believe that they had obtained forgiveness and were now in heaven , the native inquired how Adam ' s crime could affect his posterity after the guilt contracted by it had been removed even from the perpetrators of that crime . " Another proposed the following query :
** You say God is a holy and powerful Being , that Satan is the cause of a vast increase of moral evil in the world , by exciting or disposing men to sin . If Satan be only a dependent creature , and the cause of so much evil which is displeasing to God , why does God not kill Satan at once , and thereby prevent all the evil of which he is the author ? " " The duration of sufferings iuflicted on the wicked in the future state was occasionally introduced , and
more than once I have heard them ask if none of their ancestors , nor any of the former inhabitants of the islands , had gone to heaven . This to us and to them was one of the uiost distressing discussions upon which we entered . " " We could perceive a painful emotion among * the people whenever the subject was introduced " ' One on which we could not dwell with composure . " ** This feeling on their parts has been at times almost overpowering , and hat *
Untitled Article
Ellis ' * Polynesian Researches , 93
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 93, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/21/
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