Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission

by Daniel C. Eddy

On the 15th of October, 1819, in the vestry of Park Street Church, in Boston, they, with others, were organized into a church of the Lord Jesus. On the 23d of October this church set sail for the place of its destination—to the field of labor in which it was to thrive and flourish. Solemn was the scene, as on the wharf stood a company of beloved ones, who were leaving home and all the dear associations of youth for a barbarous nation. There, beneath the cool breath of autumn, they united in singing,—

"When shall we all meet again?
When shall we all meet again?
Oft shall wearied love retire,
Oft shall glowing hope expire,
Oft shall death and sorrow reign,
Ere we all shall meet again."

The voyagers were commended to the "God of ocean and storm" by Rev. Dr. Worcester; the apostolic benediction was pronounced; and the vessel gayly pursued her way down the harbor, and was soon lost from sight.

After the usual pleasures and annoyances of "a life on the ocean wave," the company were made glad by beholding in the distance the green hills of the islands on the soil of which they were to labor and pray. They found the people, not as Judson and Newell found those to whom they were sent with the torch of truth, but ready to believe and embrace the gospel. The messengers they sent ashore were greeted with shouts of joy, and their wondering eyes turned to consuming idols and demolished temples. They found a nation without a religion, a government without a church, a court without an ecclesiastic. The people seemed sunk in barbarism. They had no schools, no books, no pens, no means of information. Gross darkness was over all the people, and the land was enveloped in appalling gloom.

Undismayed by the gross ignorance and encouraged by the abolition of idolatry, the servants of God went to work. They distributed themselves through the islands, and every where preached Jesus and the cross. The effects of their labors were so apparent that the American Board were encouraged to send out repeated reinforcements; and in the progress of time Mr. Stewart and his accomplished companion arrived at Hawaii on their sacred mission. Perhaps there is no mission station on the globe, no scene of missionary toil, where such glorious results have been accomplished, and such wonderful changes wrought, as at the Sandwich Islands. Mr. Bingham, speaking of the condition of the people at the time of his arrival among them, says, "The nation had, on our arrival, neither books, pen, nor pencil, for amusement or business, or for acquiring information or communicating thought. They sat, like Turks or tailors, on mats spread on the ground; dipped their fingers in the dish to eat their fish, poi, and dog flesh, without knife, fork, or spoon. They stretched themselves at full length on the mats to play cards or otherwise kill time. Their water they drank from a gourd shell; and awa, the juice of a narcotic root, chewed by others and mixed with water in the chewers' mouths, they drank, as their fathers had done, from a cocoa-nut shell, for the same purpose that other intoxicating drinks and liquors are taken."

That the nobles as well as the common people were thus degraded and uncivilized, we are referred to a description, given by the same writer, of the king, who, with the royal family, was invited on board the vessel which conveyed out the missionaries, "They came off in their double canoes, with waving kahalis and a retinue of attendants. His majesty, according to the taste of the times, having a maio, or narrow girdle, around his waist, a green silken scarf over his shoulders, instead of coat, vest, and linen, a string of beads on his otherwise naked neck, and a feather wreath, or corona, on his head,—to say nothing of his being destitute of hat, gloves, shoes, stockings, and pants,—was introduced to the first company of white women whom he ever saw."

But the speedy change from drunkenness to sobriety, from ignorance to comparative intelligence, from theft and falsehood to honesty and truth, from shameless indecency to purity and chastity, from the violation of the whole ten commandments to the sacred observance of these ten, from barbarism to civilization and refinement, from brutish idolatry to the holy service of God, was astonishing even to those through whose instrumentality it was brought about.

Thirty years ago there was no church, no school house, no seminary of learning, no regard for the Sabbath, no thought of the great Jehovah: now all of these are found. The church tower lifts itself to heaven; the school and the seminary are sending abroad their instructions; the Sabbath is regarded by the mass of the people; and Jehovah is worshipped in spirit and in truth by thousands. During the year 1840 there were four thousand one hundred and seventy-nine additions to the church in the five islands; and since then conversions have been multiplied and converts have increased. The Bible has been printed, and edition after edition given to the perishing inhabitants, until thousands of them are rejoicing in the hope which it inspires. The whole temporal and spiritual condition of the people has changed. Christianity has made men of beasts, and lifted up the whole government in the scale of being.

Perhaps we can convey no better idea of the change which a few years' labor produced in the Sandwich Islands than by giving an extract of a letter, written by Rev. C. S. Stewart about the time of the death of his wife. It is a beautiful and thrilling description of a Sabbath in an island where, a few years before, was nothing but idol worship, heathen rites and ceremonies, and ignorant superstitions.

"At an early hour of the morning, even before we had taken our breakfast on board ship, a single person here and there, or a group of three or four, enveloped in their large mantles of various hues, might be seen wending their way among the groves fringing the bay on the east, or descending from the hills and ravines on the north towards the chapel; and by degrees their numbers increased, till in a short time every path along the beach and over the uplands presented an almost unbroken procession of both sexes and of every age, all pressing to the house of God.