The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 124

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

124 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

His great desire was to go back to his own people
as missionary. “Great and eternal God,” he once
prayed, “make me to understand the Bible, have
mercy upon me, make me good. Make me go back
to Hawaii, tell folks in Hawaii no more pray to
stone god. Make some good man go with me.”

When the Foreign Mission school was opened in
Connecticut in 1816, Obookiah and several other
Hawaiian lads were among its first pupils. But
Obookiah, who had aroused so much interest in
Hawaii and Hawaiians through his own eager en-
thusiasm, was not to put his training into use. He
died while he was in the mission-school.

Perhaps Obookiah’s death aroused even more
interest than his life could have done. An Amer-
ican student at Andover at once offered himself as
missionary to Hawaii in Obookiah’s stead, and six-
teen others, including three Hawaiians from the
Connecticut school, also agreed to go.

When the missionaries reached the islands in
March, 1820, they found the fields “white already
to harvest.” A wise and capable king had central-
ized the government of the islands, and under his
comparatively enlightened rule and humane criminal
laws the grip of the tabu was steadily weakening.
King Kamehameha never became a Christian him-
self, but his son, under the influence both of his own
mother and of his father’s favorite wife, formally
abolished the tabu and issued a proclamation for-
bidding forever a return to idolatry in the islands.
So when, as a climax, the missionaries came to bring
the Hawaiians the new religion, Obookiah’s prayer
was in reality answered.

Next to Obookiah the high chiefess, Kapiolani,
had perhaps the most to do with establishing Chris-
tianity in Hawaii, though many members of the
royal family, both chiefs and chiefesses, early be-
came eager, loving followers of Christ, and the wife
of Kamehameha the Great was the first baptized
convert in the Hawaiian Church.

Kapiolani was not content with being a Chris-
tian herself. Idolatry and the tabu system had
been overthrown in the islands, and the natives,
under the influence of their rulers, had formally
accepted Christianity. Many of them, however, still
believed heartily in the fire-gods of Kilauea and
dared not give up their worship. So Kapiolani
determined to defy the fire-gods and publicly to
destroy their power once and forever.

To do this it was necessary that Kapiolani

_ should make on foot a dangerous, wearisome jour-
ney of one hundred miles to the crater of the yol-

cano Pele. Her people pleaded with her not to go,
but she only answered: “There is but one great
God; He will keep me from harm.” When they
saw that she could not be dissuaded, eighty of her
people decided to go with her.

As they journeyed toward the volcano, Kapio-
lani was stopped again and again by men and
women along the way and implored to return home
and not risk Pele’s anger. With heroic faith she
kept bravely on, simply answering, “If I am de-
stroyed, you may all believe in Pele; but if I am
not, then you must all turn to the true God.”

Growing along the mountain path were the
ohelo berries, sacred to Pele, which no Hawaiian
dared eat without the permission of the goddess.
Determined to break every tabu, Kapiolani ate
freely of them without making the customary of-
fering; but her followers dared not do so.

Arriving at the crater, she led the way down
the steep, rocky path, across the hot lava-beds,
the ground trembling under her feet and steam
issuing from every crevice. Into the great lake of
fire she deliberately hurled stone after stone,
“knowing that nothing could be more disrespectful
and displeasing to the goddess.” It required no
small amount of courage and faith for a woman
lately converted to Christianity to face “the awful
fires of Kilauea” and defy the gods she had wor-
shiped since childhood.

In 1837 came the “Great Awakening” in
Hawaii. A spirit of prayer and inquiry swept over
the islands, and the missionaries preached to
throngs so great that only the open air could ac-
commodate them. About this time, too, the trans-
lation of the entire Bible was completed, and the
study of the Scriptures in their own tongue helped
greatly in guiding the eager Hawaiians into the
Kingdom. The revival lasted till 1848, though its
effects have never ceased.

Belle M. Brain, who has written the whole story
of The Transformation of Hawaii, says that the
wonderful success of the Hawaiian mission stirred
the American Board to “put forth vigorous efforts
to complete the evangelization of the islands at an
early date in order that they might be held up
before the world as an example of the power of the
Gospel to Christianize and civilize a heathen people.
Their best workers were therefore sent out to this
field in large numbers, neither men nor money
being spared for the accomplishment of this
purpose.

“The Board at last began to feel that its work