ens.
But the missionaries are the only influence for good in the islands,
the only white men seeking to mitigate the misery and ruin brought
by the white man's system of trade. The extension of civilized
commerce has crushed every natural impulse of brotherliness, kindness,
and generosity, destroyed every good and clean custom of these
children of nature. Traders and sailors, whalers and soldiers, have
been their enemies.

Whatever the errors of the men of God, they have given their lives
day by day in unremitting, self-sacrificing toil, suffering much to
share with these despoiled people the light of their own faith in a
better world hereafter. In so far as they have failed, they have
failed because they have lacked what proselytizing religion has
always lacked--a joy in life that seeks to make this mundane
existence more endurable, a grace of humor, and a broad simplicity.

Polynesians have always been respecters of authority. Under their
own rule, where priest and king equally rose to rank because of
admired deeds, the _tapus_ of the priests had the same force as
those of chiefs, and life was conducted by few and simple rules. Now,
when sect fights sect; when priests assure the people that France is
a Catholic nation and the Governor says the statement is false;
where the Protestant pastor teaches that Sunday is a day of
solemnity and prayer, and the Frenchmen make it a day of merriment
as in France; where salvation depends on many beliefs bewildering
and incompatible, the puzzled Marquesan scratches his head and
swings from creed to creed, while his secret heart clings to the old
gods.

The Marquesan had a joyful religion, full of humor and abandon,
dances and chants, and exaltation of nature, of the greatness of
their tribe or race, a worship that was, despite its ghastly rites
of human sacrifice, a stimulus to life.

The efforts of missionaries have killed the joy of living as they
have crushed out the old barbarities, uprooting together everything,
good and bad, that religion meant to the native. They have given him
instead rites that mystify him, dogmas he can only dimly understand,
and a little comfort in the miseries brought upon him by trade.

I have seen a leper alone on his _paepae_, deep in the Scriptures,
and when I asked him if he got comfort from them I was answered,
"They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig." But
only a St. Francis Xavier or a Livingstone, a great moral force,