The Litchfield County Post

INTERESTING LETTER

From the Sandwich Islands. Mission, to the Assistant Secretary, published in the Boston Daily Advertiser.

TOHAIGH BAY, (Owhyhee,) Nov. 5, 1826.

Mr. Dear Brother, I snatch a few moments this evening to improve an opportunity that offers to send to America by way of Woahoo, in writing a hasty letter to you, my distant brother.

We have, of late, been privileged by a visit from several of the chiefs of the Leeward islands, who we hope belong to the kingdom of our Lord. They spent a month or upwards at Kairuah and vicinity, where we have been gratified and encouraged by their example and influence in behalf of religion. The object of their visit is to extend the knowledge of Christ and his Gospel to all their people; and to prepare them for the reception of a code of Christian laws. In the prosecution of this object, they have come hither, where are assembled the whole people, inhabiting Kohala and Hamakua to receive the laws which are about to be published. I have also improved the occasion to follow them in order to preach the Gospel to the many thousands here collected. I arrived here this morning in a canoe, having left my home yesterday, and hoped to be enabled to preach to the people daily until my return.

Mr. Bingham and family still remain at Kairuah, where we are revising the Gospel of Matthew for the press. Mr. Richards and family are just returned to Lahaina after a visit to this island of six weeks. His stay was protracted in consequence of information received from Lahaina, of the base conduct of the crews of several English and American whale ships, who had threatened to kill him if they could find him; because through his influence, a stop had been put to prostitution. They went in a body to his house to demolish it, but found it carefully guarded by some friendly natives; when they turned away to another part of his land, and took away his hogs and his fowls as their booty.

A Mr. Butler, a resident of Lahaina, and who has long been an enemy to the mission, was with them to point out his premises and property to the sailors. The women are all fled, and with them Kekauohuhu, who had the charge of the place in the absence of Hoapili, Governor of Maui. For several days in succession they prosecuted their search through the village for women, breaking into houses, and taking away the property of the inoffensive inhabitants, who looked on without assaulting them because their chiefs were gone, who should lead them. They bore the spoiling of their goods with fortitude knowing it was for righteousness' sake that they were called to suffer: but they yielded not an inch in complying with the demands of the ships; and the sailors at last abandoned their search, and hired their captains to take them to Woahoo, in hopes of getting women there. This is but a specimen of the abuse and insult that the mission is daily receiving from our own countrymen and other foreigners, who leave no means untried to bring into discredit, not only us, but all who profess to have become pious.

The principal spite of foreigners is levelled against our dear brother and fellow laborer, Mr. Bingham: but you may be assured, that the brethren consider it a common cause, and equally as much against the whole body as against him; and we feel it to be our duty publicly to give him and his measures, so far as they have come to our knowledge, our decided approbation.

Sabbath evening Nov. 5.

I have just returned from the service of this day, where I have preached twice to a congregation of more than ten thousand listening hearers. They were assembled in a cocoa-nut grove, and I delivered my message to them in open air.—The stillness of this immense multitude; the solemn occasion upon which we had met: the thought that all this people would pass into eternity in the lapse of a few years; gave a solemnity and an interest to the scene, which I have seldom felt. The Lord help me to speak as one standing between the two worlds,—as an ambassador of reconciliation between God and his fallen creature man, revealing to him a covenant of grace.

It is a truly interesting and pleasant service to be the messenger of peace to perishing immortals; and, in a special manner, this service is pleasant, when it is connected with the persuasion, that those, for whose good we are labouring, are anxiously desirous of the light and knowledge that lead to salvation. Such, my brother, is the state of this people. There was never, perhaps, a time, when the prospect of complete success to our enterprise was greater than at present. Could you but witness, for one day, the order, the attention, the anxious, eager look, and observe the tear start from the eye of the tawny sun-burnt savage, and the countenance of hope and joy as he casts his eye upward to heaven upon hearing the terms of pardoning mercy proclaimed to him, your heart would leap for joy, and you would give God thanks for having put in the hearts of any to come over the wide waste of water that divides us, to preach salvation to this people, who have long been sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.

But I must leave you here, as the messenger waits to carry this to Woahoo. Remember me affectionately to all my Christian friends in Boston, assure them of the undiminished regard which I and Mrs. Bishop still feel towards them, and of the happiness which we enjoy in the blessed work in which we are engaged.—Adieu.

Yours affectionately, in the best bonds,

ARTEMAS BISHOP.