What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

MISSIONARY INTOLERANCE AND PERSECUTION. the contempt and rudeness common to the lowest orders particularly of natives, with whom malevolence to the unfortunate had always been an active principle. They were punished for their idolatry, and they who repeated the offence five times, either by worshipping at the chapel or indulging in their old rites, were obliged to remove the filth of thefort witlt their hands. Romanists to the number of thirty men and women were incorporated in the ranks of common malefactors, and from time to timefor several years made liable to sinzlar _pusn,ments." The partial historian of this persecution for conscience' sake, unblushingly attributes the "' qildness " of this inhumanity, in comparison with the harsher punishment which would have attended such offences a few years before, to the " humnan,zigry spirit of the Christicmity 7 " itrodueed by the missi,onaries. The saving clause of the sentence, is in the cind of Christianity thus introduced. But at the inauguration of the new faith, it would have been more appropriate that some other name had been taken, and that the religion of the meek and lowly one of Bethlehem had sprung and flourished of its own benignant spirit, and not from the rankness of evil passions; had come at its own time and in its own way, with healing on its wings, not to be smitten by the rude blasts of persecution; had made known its own messages of peace and good will to all men, and not have been shamed by curses and cruelties meted out to the oppressed. If Christianity had come thus, not only the intolerance of PTomanism, which American missionaries had enriched the Ilawaiian tongue with new epithets to denounce, but intolerance in all matters of religious faith, would never have raised its head. And if a purified and enlightened public sentiment-and not the inhumanities either of legal enactment or of arbitrary will, had been the means of reformation, the historian would not have been required by truth reluctantly to acknowledge in reference to the above-recited punishments, that " there were individual instances of missionaries whose minds, illiberalized by sectarianism, looked on with reprehensible apathy." ]1eanwhile, the pair of patient priests, protected as they believed by the panoply of truth, and sustained by an inward consciousness of duty, pursued their path of piety so meekly and 569 iI l

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Title
What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.
Author
Baxley, Henry Willis, 1803-1876.
Canvas
Page 569
Publication
New York,: D. Appleton & company,
1865.
Subject terms
South America -- Description and travel
California -- Description and travel
Hawaii -- Description and travel

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"What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D." In the digital collection Making of America Books. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/abf7940.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 24, 2025.
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