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

THE GREAT REFORMER IIEWAHEWA. incapable of supplying our wants, but I worshipped them because it was the custom of our fathers; they made not the kalo to grow, nor sent us rain; neither did they bestow life or health. My thought has always been-Akahi waleno Akua-nui iloka o kalani-there is one only Great God dwelling in the heavens."' In the far-off islands of the sea this Hawaiian priest believed with the prophet Jeremiah, " that the Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting King." And that "the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens." Thus, through Christian testimony, is traced the downfall of heathenism in Hlawaii, by an inherent power of reformation. What the great chieftain failed fully to accomplish himself, the surviving inspirations of his spirit did, through the will of his son, sustained by the faith and devotion of woman, to whom the world has often been indebted for the success of reformations, and aided by the prophetic counsel and countenance of one of the purest representatives of priesthood, from whose life many of our day might take lessons of disinterest(! goodness; one who, surrendering an almost unlimited power with the paganism thus prostrated, and without the aid of that preaching which was "to the Greeks foolishness," laid hold of the great truth that confounded their wisdom, and set at naught their vaunted philosophy. In tlhe face of such facts, now becoming more extensively made known through the candid criticism of fair minded and disinterested persons, it may well excite surprise, and even bring reproach on a cause worthy of approval in itself, that the supporters and partisans of these missions should have spread abroad the error that through them Hawaiian paganism perished; and that the special agents of the trust should have disingenuously countenanced, by a failure to correct, the perversion of truth. Giving to the noble Hawaiians already mnentioned, and to those offieial natives who cooperated with them, the exalted praise which is their due, for having stricken down the heathen rites of idolatry, human sacrifice, and the taboo, and which, by the Government machinery of centralized power, they could effectually and speedily do, the most that can be claimed for the missionaries, is their subsequent aid in trampling the ruins It 549

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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.
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Page 549
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 23, 2025.
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