and by devices which they had no power to withstand, are daily wasting away, and giving place to their missionary teachers? When the Sandwich Islands were first discovered by Cook, he estimated the population at four hundred thousand; by the last estimate made, they had depopulated to ninety thousand.

From my remarks on the intolerance and bigotry which have prevailed in all missionary enterprises, it may appear to some as indicating a bitterness of spirit toward those who profess the faith of Calvin; I wish to assure you and others that I have confidence in the sincerity and purity of very many of its adherents.

You will, I trust, accept the remarks, respectfully offered
From your friend.

DEAR MADAM :

REPLY.

, Sept. 21, 1848.

I received your new pamphlet, with your note, on the evening of the 19th inst. I had heard from time to time, that you retained your faculties in a remarkable degree, for one so far advanced in life. And I should have been most happy also to have heard, that, as the shadows of the night of death were deepening so fast around you, a sense of your moral infirmities, and a truly enlightened persuasion of the necessity of some other righteousness than that of our fallen nature, even in its most cultivated and refined development, had produced a more evident amelioration of that "bitterness of spirit towards those who profess the faith of Calvin," which, you are perfectly right in suspecting, may "appear to some, as indicated" by your "Remarks."

God has given you talents. If they had been

"baptized

In the pure fountain of eternal love,"

you might have been qualified to serve the cause of salvation as did the godly and humble, yet brilliant and most accomplished, Hannah More. But how different the sentiments, the spirit, and the influence of her genius and heart, her life and her pen! I forbear to pursue the contrast.

You are pleased to "assure me and others" that " you have confidence in the sincerity and purity of very many of the adherents of the faith of Calvin ;" although in your "Preface," you have told us, that "no superstition or mode of faith can compare with that of Calvinism" in all that is "shocking or appalling" by the "perversion of the attributes of the great parent of the universe." And you would have us believe that it is "Calvinism," which has caused the frightful decrease in the population of the Sandwich Islands! My own reading, many years since, had taught me a very different explanation of that indisputable decrease. And even if "Calvinism be identical with the abominable licentiousness of Captain Cook and other voyagers, or of residents at those Islands, I am quite at a loss to perceive the accountableness of the American Missionaries for a "pestilence walking in darkness," and a retribution of vice and crime, which had swept away so many tens of thousands, before a single one of those slandered missionaries had set his foot upon those Islands.

Are you sure that you know whereof you affirm, when you speak of" the faith of Calvin"? If in so short a time as since 1820, "Calvinism" has wrought such horrible mischief in the "beautiful" Islands, why did it not utterly ruin "the goodly heritage," which our fathers bequeathed to us? I have been accustomed to consider New England, "the glory of all lands." And I have always understood, that, from the beginning hitherto, "the faith of Calvin" has had the predominant sway over the principles and practice of the religious portion of the community. Hence, among numerous other auspicious indications for the future, I have thanked God most fervently, that, during the last twenty-five years, there have been organized in Massachusetts alone, TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE NEW CALVINISTIC CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES!

This may not be according to your desire or prayer, however much you may wish us to "direct all our efforts to reform and save that portion of our fellow-beings, who are sunk in vice and misery" " here in our own land. I am not, I trust, altogether insensible to the importance of attending to the wants and woes. of the guilty and wretched at our own doors, and abroad in our vast country. I am a most zealous advocate of "Home Missions," and of " City Missions." I contribute freely to these,

and to the American Tract Society, which is sending such preachers as Baxter, Bunyan, and Doddridge, to "every loghouse beyond the mountains;" while the American Home Missionary Society has its own one thousand missionaries. I give my money and my voice, in aid of numerous other societies, which aim directly "to reform and save" "the vicious and miserable;" and to bring to a knowledge of "the truth as in Jesus" the many thousands of our population, who, in the higher classes as well as the lower, as yet give no evidence that they have the "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." The same is true of the members of the Church and Society of which I am the pastor. And the same is true of all others, that I have ever known, who have done the most to spread the Gospel throughout the world.

What we do for Foreign Missions, is but a fraction of what we do for the present and immortal welfare of those who are nearest to us in place; and who, in other respects, have peculiar claims upon us, as the followers of Him, who said to his disciples in his farewell instructions: "Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the earth."

Here let me ask, whether, if those disciples had interpreted their Master's will as you have expounded it in your anti-missionary pamphlets, there would now be any Christianity in any part of the whole world? And further, do you really think, that it would have been better for our Pagan ancestors in Europe, and for the world that now is, if they had never seen those missionaries, by whose self-denying and self-sacrificing instrumentality, they were "turned from their dumb idols," and sanguinary sensualities, to "serve the living God?"

Whatever reasons existed for the command to preach the Gospel to every creature, the same will continue until the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth, as the waters cover the seas." This, if I remember rightly, was some years since adopted by one of your own religious denomination, as the main argument of his able appeal for foreign missions. I refer to the amiable Dr. Tuckerman, who so zealously labored for the poor in our neighboring city. The argument may be ineffectual with some, and may be ridiculous as a dream of enthusiasm ; but it is most Scriptural, evangelical, and unanswerable.

It is, as you think, worse than useless to attempt any good for the "beautiful islands," and the idolatrous regions of the earth, -which infidels of the school of Rousseau and Voltaire, formerly described as the garden of Eden before the serpent entered it, and "God drove out the man." In the sober, unvarnished truth of real life, it can be proved by witnesses innumerable, and of unimpeachable veracity, that the character of the modern heathen, as well as that of the ancient, has been most faithfully delineated by the inspired apostle, in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. One exception only I have ever heard; and that is, that there are some things among the modern heathen, which, if they existed at Rome and elsewhere, the Holy Spirit did not suffer to be named, or so much as alluded to, because of their revolting loathsomeness. But, relying upon the aid of Him who has promised to be with his friends to the end of the world, while they labor to make disciples of all nations, we anticipate the ultimate overthrow of all idolatry, superstition, and error, and the glorious triumph of the doctrine of our atoning and almighty Redeemer, in every land upon the face of the earth. The same power that hurled Jupiter and Juno, Mars and Venus, and all the gods and goddesses of classic mythology, from the Olympian summits, is adequate to accomplish the universal evangelization of the apostate millions of our globe. And we expect to be opposed, calumniated, and reviled, as were the primitive believers, with the apostles of our Lord, and as was our Lord himself.

At the late meeting of the American Board of Missions, in Boston, there were present seven hundred and sixteen members, corporate and honorary. Among the five hundred or more clergymen, there were many whose talents and learning, piety and charity, are unsurpassed in the American Union. There were civilians also, laymen from every profession and occupation,

and some of them, to say the least, of the very highest rank in private and in public estimation. On Thursday afternoon, more than two thousand, from all parts of the land, united in a delightful commemoration of the love of Christ, in "dying for our sins according to the Scriptures." With what emotions, do you suppose, any one, whether male or female, of that intelligent and philanthropic assemblage, would read such a pamphlet as your "Remarks on the Tour around Hawaii'?" These, and

thousands of thousands of others, who are of a kindred faith and spirit, you, dear Madam, think it suitable indirectly to characterize, upon your title-page, as if like that "generation of vipers," "the Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," the "covetous," and the "adulterers," upon whom "wrath came to the uttermost," as upon "children of hell," preeminently and incorrigibly! And what is "the head and front of our offending?" Why, simply this, that because "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life," we would send the glad tidings of the "Light of life," to all who are "perishing for lack of vision."

Seriously, I cannot see the consistency of any appeal from you that we should engage in any religious enterprize whatever. I should suppose that you would prefer that we should expend our energies, as much as possible abroad, in hope that we should do the less at home, in diffusing, and perpetuating "the faith of Calvin." I can assure you, we are doing a great work in this respect, and we are purposing to do vastly more. But if I believed, as you appear to believe, I should deem it the wiser course, to say in regard to all projects of moral and social reform, in this land or in any other: "Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry!"

Report of the Prudential which I send you in antic

From the "Abstract of the last Committee of the A. B. C. F. M.," ipation of the Report at length, -you will perceive that we have now in the missionary service, as laborers from this country, only about four hundred; which, with the "native helpers," make but five hundred and fifty-seven in all. If I should live to be as aged as you are, I confidently expect that the number from this land will then be, not four hundred, but four thousand; and not four thousand only, but rather forty thousand.

But before that day, which I pray God may fully come, and yet more abundantly, you, my dear Madam, will have ceased from your earthly course. You will have passed to that world where every one will receive, according as his work shall be. You will then have known whether you have done your duty, in the use of your acknowledged abilities and your great wealth; and whether you have your part for eternity among those, who "have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood