Four Sermons, As Usual, Had Been Preached To Audiences Of 6000 People.

There had been a funeral, the natives say, though Mr. C. does not remember it, and his text had been "Be ye also ready," and larger throngs than usual had followed the preachers to their homes.

The fatiguing day was over, the natives were singing hymns in the still evening air, and Mr. C. "had gathered his family for prayers" in the very room in which he told me this story, when they were startled by "a sound as if a heavy mountain had fallen on the beach." There was at once a fearful cry, wailing, and indescribable confusion. The quiet ocean had risen in a moment in a gigantic wave, which, rushing in with the speed of a racehorse, and uplifting itself over the shore, swept everything into promiscuous ruin; men, women, children, dogs, houses, food, canoes, clothing, floated wildly on the flood, and hundreds of people were struggling among the billows in the midst of their earthly all. Some were dashed on the shore, some were saved by friends who hurried to their aid, some were carried out to sea by the retiring water, and some stout swimmers sank exhausted; yet the loss of life was not nearly so great as it would have been among a less amphibious people. Mr. C. described the roaring of the ocean, the cries of distress, the shrieks of the perishing, the frantic rush of hundreds to the shore, and the desolation of the whole neighbourhood of the beach, as forming a scene of the most thrilling and awful interest.

You will remember that I wrote from Kilauea regarding the terror which the Goddess of the Crater inspired, and her high-priest was necessarily a very awful personage. The particular high-priest of whom Mr. Coan told me was six feet five inches in height, and his sister, who was co-ordinate with him in authority, had a scarcely inferior altitude. His chief business was to keep Pele appeased. He lived on the shore, but often went up to Kilauea with sacrifices. If a human victim were needed, he had only to point to a native, and the unfortunate wretch was at once strangled. He was not only the embodiment of heathen piety, but of heathen crime. Robbery was his pastime. His temper was so fierce and so uncurbed that no native dared even to tread on his shadow. More than once he had killed a man for the sake of food and clothes not worth fifty cents. He was a thoroughly wicked savage. Curiosity attracted him into one of the Hilo meetings, and the bad giant fell under the resistless, mysterious influence which was metamorphosing thousands of Hawaiians. "I have been deceived," he said, "I have deceived others, I have lived in darkness, and did not know the true God. I worshipped what was no God. I renounce it all. The true God has come. He speaks. I bow down to Him. I wish to be His son." The priestess, his sister, came soon afterwards, and they remained here several months for instruction. They were then about seventy years old, but they imbibed the New Testament spirit so thoroughly that they became as gentle, loving, and quiet as little children. After a long probationary period they were baptized, and after several years of pious and lowly living, they passed gently and trustfully away.

The old church which was the scene of these earlier assemblages, came down with a crash after a night of heavy rain, the large timbers, which were planted in the moist earth after the fashion of the country to support the framework, having become too rotten to support the weight of the saturated thatch. Without a day's loss of time the people began a new church. All were volunteers, some to remove from the wreck of the old building such timbers as might still be of service; some to quarry stone for a foundation, an extravagance never before dreamed of by an islander; some to bring sand in gourd-shells upon their heads, or laboriously gathered in the folds of bark-cloth aprons; some to bring lime from the coral reefs twenty feet under water; whilst the majority hurried to the forest belt, miles away on the mountain side, to fell the straightest and tallest trees. Then 50 or 100 men, (for in that day horses and oxen were known only as wild beasts of the wilderness,) attached hawsers to the butt ends of logs, and dragged them away through bush and brake, through broken ground and river beds, till they deposited them on the site of the new church. The wild, monotonous chant, as the men hauled in the timber, lives in the memories of the missionaries' children, who say that it seemed to them as if the preparations for Solomon's temple could not have exceeded the accumulations of the islanders!

I think that the greater number of the converts of those four years must have died ere this. In 1867 the old church at Hilo was divided into seven congregations, six of them with native pastors. To meet the wants of the widely-scattered people, fifteen churches have been built, holding from 500 up to 1000. The present Hilo church, a very pretty wooden one, cost about $14,000. All these have been erected mainly by native money and labour. Probably the native Christians on Hawaii are not much better or worse than Christian communities elsewhere, but they do seem a singularly generous people. Besides liberally sustaining their own clergy, the Hilo Christians have contributed altogether $100,000 for religious purposes. Mr. Coan's native congregation, sorely dwindled as it is, raises over $1200 annually for foreign missions; and twelve of its members have gone as missionaries to the islands of Southern Polynesia.

Poor people! It would be unfair to judge of them as we may legitimately be judged of, who inherit the influences of ten centuries of Christianity.

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