More than three hundred islands of the Pacific have abandoned their heathenism, and nearly half a million of Polynesian savages have been virtually Christianized. Their communicants who have been gathered into the churches number fully sixty thousand, not including the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, who are now supporting missions of their own.
One reason of the success of the mission work is the common-sense that prevailed at the outset in dividing the field among the different denominations, so that the minds of the natives should not be confused as to the character of the teachings they were receiving.
This was done through a friendly agreement between the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Mission, the former having exclusive charge of the work in the Samoan Islands, and the Wesleyans taking possession of the Feejee and Tonga groups. Other groups were disposed of in the same way as time went on, and the arrangement was found entirely satisfactory. Catholic missions have been established in some of the islands where the Protestant missions were already settled; they have made poor progress, as the natives showed an unwillingness to abandon the faith they had adopted for another.
MISSION PARK MONUMENT.
The American Board of Foreign Missions was organized in Mission Park, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the early part of this century, and the organization is commemorated by an appropriate monument. It has evangelized the Hawaiian Islands, and carried on work in the Marquesas, Gilbert, Marshall, and Caroline islands. Since 1873 most of the active labor has been performed by the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, which owns a mission vessel, the Morning Star.
MISSION SHIP ON HER VOYAGE.