"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 from England at Eimeo. Among them came two whose names are known far beyond their spheres of action--William Ellis and John Williams. The following year some of them removed to Huahine, the principal of the Leeward or Society group, and soon after John Williams and Mr L Threlkeld, invited by Tapa and other chiefs of Raiatea, settled in that island. Similar invitations were received from the chiefs of other large islands, while native teachers were sent to the smaller islands which were also occasionally visited by the missionaries. Thus in a few years the entire population of the Georgian and Society Islands had renounced idolatry, and were in general outwardly very strict in their religious observances. I say outwardly, because many of those who attended religious worship and refrained from all work and amusement on the sabbath, still continued in the practice of heathen vices. Yet I believe that at that very time the great mass of the people were not more ignorant of Christian truth, nor more vicious, than are too many communities of like size in so-called Christian Europe. We should judge of people who have lately been brought out of a savage state, not by a standard which we should wish them to attain, but by other people who have long been considered civilised Christians; and thus judging of the inhabitants of Tahiti and