The effort to christianize the Sandwich Islands was begun in the year 1820, and has succeeded beyond any similar efforts recorded in history. In the year 1853, a little more than thirty years from the commencement of the mission, the Board was able to make proclamation in the Annual Report, that the people of the Sandwich Islands had become a Christian nation. The proofs then adduced of this fact were beyond all controversy; such as entitled the Hawaiian nation to the Christian name, if any people on earth might claim it; though without that intellectual development and social culture, which enter so deeply into the modern idea of civilization. But even in respect to these things a vast work had been accomplished. It was evident to the Prudential Committee, as early as the year 1848, that the time had come for a change of some sort in the relations of the missionaries to the people of the Islands and to the Board. They saw that new and additional motives must be presented to induce the married missionaries to remain at the Islands, or the greater part of them might feel constrained to return to this country within a few years, to make provision for their children. This was not owing simply, nor chiefly, to the number and age of their children, (for such a result was nowhere seen in the older missions elsewhere,) but to the novel and remarkable relations, at that time, of the mission to the people of the Sandwich Islands. The problem, as then presented, was, how to give scope to the parental feelings in missionaries, without increasing burdens and expenses that could not be borne; though it soon appeared that there was really a higher problem to be solved, and one that was novel in missions, namely, how to bring the mission itself, as such, to a termination, dissolving its relations to the Board, and merging its members in the newly created Christian community. The first problem stated came first in the order of time, and it involved the solution of the other. It was, how to convert the Islands into the home of the missionaries, (which the peculiar relation of the Islands to the commercial world then rendered possible,) and the missionaries into citizens and pastors. This was effected, so far as the action of the Prudential Committee was concerned, by a series of resolutions made public in the Report of the Board for the year 1849. The response of the missionaries was in general favorable, though it required five years was complete the arrangement. The case was unprecedented; there was no experience; every step had to be considered in its principles, its equity, and its expediency. The transition was at length effected, and the mission was merged in the general Christian community of the Islands. The meeting of the mission in May, 1853, was its last meeting in its associated, corporate character as a mission,--responsible, as such, to the Board, controlling, as such, the operations of its members. The relations of