at their husband's funeral in Fiji. See John Williams,
_Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands_,
pp. 478 _sq._

Sec. 12. _The Ethical Influence of Tongan Religion_

Surveyed as a whole, the Tongan religion presents a singular instance of
a creed which restricted the hope of immortality to the nobly born and
denied it to commoners. According to the doctrine which it inculcated,
the aristocratic pre-eminence accorded to chiefs in this world was more
than maintained by them in the next, where they enjoyed a monopoly of
immortality. And not content with sojourning in the blissful regions of
Bolotoo, their departed spirits often returned to earth to warn, to
direct, to threaten their people, either in dreams and visions of the
night, or by the mouth of the priests whom they inspired. Such beliefs
involved in theory and to some extent in practice a subjection of the
living to the dead, of the seen and temporal to the unseen and eternal.
In favour of the creed it may at least be alleged that, while it looked
to spiritual powers, whether ghosts or gods, for the reward of virtue
and the punishment of vice, it did not appeal to another life to redress
the balance of justice which had been disturbed in this one. The Tongan
religion inculcated a belief that the good and the bad alike receive a
recompense here on earth, thus implicitly repudiating the unworthy
notion that men can only be lured or driven into the narrow way of
righteousness by the hope of heaven or the fear of hell. So far the
creed based morality on surer foundations than any faith which would
rest the ultimate sanctions of conduct on the slippery ground of
posthumous rewards and punishments. In this respect, if in no other, we
may compare the Tongan religion to that of the Hebrew prophets. It has
been rightly observed by Renan that whereas European races in general
have found in the assurance of a life to come ample compensation for the
iniquities of this present life, the Hebrew prophets never appeal to
rewards and punishments reserved for a future state of existence. They
were not content with the conception of a lame and laggard justice that
limps far behind the sinner in this world and only overtakes him in the
next. According to them, God's justice is swift and sure here on earth;
an unjust world was in their eyes a simple monstrosity.[239] So too,
apparently, thought the Tongans, and some Europeans may be inclined to
agr