CHAPTER FOURTEEN. FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT. "My dear young friend," said Mr Bent, addressing me, in continuation of the subject on which he had before been speaking, "we should never despair while God is with us of the success of our labours among the heathen. In my experience I have known numerous instances in which, when it appeared that profound darkness rested on the land, light has burst forth and spread far and wide around. "I believe that thirteen years had passed after the _Duff_ had made her most successful voyage to these seas in 1796, and landed a large body of missionaries at Tahiti, before one single acknowledged convert to Christianity was made. Still the diminished band of missionaries laboured on. They obeyed God's express command to preach the word to all creatures, and they knew that His word would not return to Him void. God works through human agency, and it must be confessed that many of these missionaries were not fitted by education for the work they had undertaken. It may be said with justice that therefore they did not succeed. Still they laboured on, teaching many the principles of Christianity although none turned to the truth. "Pomare, the king of Tahiti, although he was friendly to the missionaries, for long remained as determined a heathen as any of his people. At length, however, attacked by his own subjects, he could not protect the missionaries, and the larger number were compelled to retire to the island 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.