and of Huahine, where they hoped to be in safety. So little
progress did they appear to be making even here in their undertaking,
that, with one exception, the following year they left Huahine and
retired to New South Wales, thus bringing the once promising mission to
the Society Islands to a termination. I refer to this time to show you
how necessary it is that missionaries should not under any circumstances
despair of success. Nothing could be more hopeless than this mission
now seemed. Pomare, although he befriended the missionaries, remained
still seemingly as dark and determined a heathen as at first, and he had
now indeed no longer the power of helping them. He had, however,
received a considerable amount of instruction from them. He had
acquired the arts of reading and writing his own language, and had
learned the first principles of Christianity.

"The seed had not, as was supposed, been sown on stony ground, though it
took long in growing up. Adversity caused Pomare to think. He had been
told that Jehovah is a God of purity and holiness, and he began to
reflect that the life he and his people led must be very distasteful to
such a God, and might be the cause of the sufferings he was enduring.
The Holy Spirit seemed to apply the truth, so that he at length
comprehended the nature of sin, and especially felt his own great
sinfulness. He, therefore, wrote letter after letter, entreating the
missionaries to return. With joy they accepted his invitation. On
their arrival, the king and several of his people professed their belief
in the new religion; but a coalition of heathen chiefs being formed
against them, some severe fighting took place. The heathens were
defeated. Pomare treated them with great leniency, allowing no one to
be injured, and even sending the body of a chief killed in battle back
to his own people to be buried. So great was the effect of this conduct
that the heathen party became anxious to know more of the new faith, and
in a few months the idols of Tahiti were thrown to the ground. Although
Pomare and some of his chiefs, as well as the lower orders, had embraced
Christianity in spirit as well as in name, the mass of the people
remained, as might have been expected, ignorant of its principles, and
indulged in habits the very reverse of those it inculcates. Still the
true faith went on taking root downwards and bearing fruit upwards. In
1817 a large number of missionaries arrived fr