Categories

February 8, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Friend of the Mission from the First’

“He had been the friend of the Mission from the first – had forsaken his vices, embraced the Gospel, joined the Church of Christ, and maintained a consistent life.”

“When he found that he must die, he resolved to retire to the island, and to that spot in that island, which had been familiar in his early days.”

“As he stood upon the shore of O‘ahu ready to depart, with the Missionaries near him, and multitudes of natives about him weeping because they should see his face no more …”

“… he declared, in the presence of all, his confidence in the Missionaries, and his joy in the religion which they had brought to the Islands and to himself …”

“… and then desired that all might be quiet, while, on the beach and under the open heavens, one of the Missionaries should commend him and them to the protection and guardianship of Almighty God.”

“Having retired to the home of his fathers, he a few days after died; and as he died, this venerable warrior and chieftain said, ‘I am happy – I am happy’ – a speech, which, we venture to say, no dying Islander ever uttered before the Missionaries arrived and preached the Gospel.”

“Some months before his death, he had his parting advice to his people committed to paper. Just before he left O‘ahu, it was read to him.”

“‘These are my sentiments still,’ said he; ‘and, on the day that I am taken away, I wish the people to be assembled, and these words to be read to them as mine.’”

“This document, like his other compositions, since his professed obedience to the Gospel, is described as breathing a spirit of piety, and exhibiting evidence of the Christian hope.”

“The evidences of his Christian character are thus enumerated by Mr. Bingham – ‘The consistency of his life with what he knew of the requirements of the Word of God – his steady adherence to Christian principles, which he professed to follow since his contest, preservation, and victory at Tauai …’”

“‘… his steady, warm, and operative friendship for the Missionaries; and his constant, earnest, and efficient endeavours, while his health would allow it, to promote the cause of instruction and religious improvement among the people …’”

“‘… his constancy in attending the worship of God – his firmness in resisting temptation – his faithfulness in reproving sin – his patience in suffering – his calm and steady hope of heaven, through the atonement of Christ …’”

“‘… whom he regarded as the only Saviour, to whom he had, as he said, given up himself, heart, soul, and body, to be his servant for ever —all combine to give him a happy claim to that most honourable title of Rulers on earth, a Nursing Father in Zion, and to the name of ‘Christian, the highest style of man.’’”

“‘This world,’ he said, ‘is full of sorrow: but, in heaven, there is no sorrow nor pain – It is good! – It is light! – It is happy!’”

“It is a subject of gratitude, that the life of so important a man was preserved during the troubles of last year, when his sudden removal might have been followed by most disastrous consequences.”

“Thanks should be rendered, also, for the gracious support which was afforded him, during his long illness, as death gradually advanced.”

“The power of religion was strikingly manifest in the victory, which, in this instance, faith gained over inveterate habits, pride, the love of sin, and the love of the world: nothing but Christian truth ever obtained such a conquest.”

“Such a man as Karaimoku would be a blessing to any nation.”

“He only wanted an early education, to have made him an accomplished statesman. The nation must long lament his loss, for there is no one who can fill his place.” (Missionary Register, 1828)

“Kalanimōku, whom the natives called (“kaula hao, iron cable, of the country, a compliment higher than the discharge of twenty-one guns from the fort would have been” (Bingham)), died in 1827.”

“Anticipating the approach of his dissolution from the progress of dropsy (edema – a condition characterized by an excess of watery fluid collecting in the cavities or tissues of the body), the old chief sailed from Honolulu for Kailua (Kona), where he wished to die.”

“Here, under an unsuccessful operation for his disease, he fainted, and after a few hours expired, on the 8th of February. In him the heathen warrior was seen transformed into the peaceful, joyous Christian.” (Anderson)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

William Pitt Kalanimoku (c. 1768–1827) was a military and civil leader of the Kingdom of Hawaii-Pellion

February 7, 2018 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Oregon Mission

Early missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) on the continent were to the Cherokee and Choctaw Indians of the southeast.

“Other Indian missions were begun shortly after this; in fact the next two decades saw the most widespread efforts of the Board upon the American continent. Many of these missions to Indian tribes were short lived and not very productive but there are three which stand out as of special interest: the mission to the Cherokees, the Oregon mission and the mission to the Dakotas.”

“The Oregon mission is famous for the part in it of Dr. Marcus Whitman and for its connection with the settlement of the northwest and the final inclusion of what are now the states of Washington and Oregon within the Union.”

“There are two controversies connected with this enterprise which have enhanced the interest it would have on other grounds.”

“One has to do with a very human feud between two families growing out of the fact that a certain young lady. Narcissa Prentiss, turned down one suitor and accepted another.”

“The rejected suitor was Rev. H. H. Spaulding who carried on a very successful work among the Nez Perce Indians in Idaho and the successful one was Dr. Marcus Whitman.”

“After Dr. Whitman had been commissioned by the Board to go on an exploratory expedition among the western Indians he was strongly advised to find him a wife to take with him. That didn’t seem hard to do for. in fact, he had already met Miss Prentiss and things were ripe for a proposal.”

“But he found it very difficult to find another couple who had the proper qualifications and who were willing and able to undertake the long and dangerous journey over the Oregon trail. It finally became apparent that the only such couple were Spaulding and his bride.”

“Now quite understandably Mr. Spaulding never liked Narcissa Whitman and eventually bad feeling developed between him and the doctor although there never seemed to be any between Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spaulding.”

“It is greatly to the credit of all concerned that the quarrel was finally settled and settled for good by frank and prayerful conferences and the help of other members of the mission.”

“Both the Spauldings and the Whitmans were completely devoted Christian missionaries; had they not been it is not likely that they could have worked together so long and finally disposed of their quarrel.”

“The other controversy has to do with the historic ride of Dr. Whitman back to the east in the winter of 1842-43. The question in dispute is whether he went east primarily to counsel with the Prudential Committee of the Board about the continuance of the mission …”

“… or to intercede at Washington in the interest of emigration into Oregon and the claiming of the northwest as United States territory. Did he ride as a patriot or as a missionary?”

“As a matter of fact it seems that Marcus Whitman went east with both objectives in mind. The Mission Station at Waiilatpu which was the Whitman’s place of work, a few miles from the present city of Walla Walla, was on the main trail then travelled to the Willamette Valley.”

“Every year larger and larger parties of immigrants passed the station. They started from Missouri in the spring and arrived at Waiilatpu late in the autumn sadly in need of supplies and human help generally. Dr. Whitman had become increasingly interested in this flow of immigration.”

“He was forever pleading with Secretary Greene of the Board to send out pious and industrious families to settle in that part of the territory.”

“While the Board didn’t do anything to help him hundreds and finally thousands came, some pious hut more who were not of any particular help to the cause of the Indian mission.”

“That part of the mission about Waiilatpu was never so prosperous as the one among the Nez Perces. The Indians were the Cayuses, a small and restless tribe number numbering not more than three hundred. “

“There were some among them who were faithful Christians and who worked at the farms which they cultivated under the instruction of Dr. Whitman and his helpers.”

“They had learned something of the Christian gospel before the Whitman party arrived and were accustomed to having daily devotions. Some children came to the school which was conducted when conditions permitted.”

“But the Indians finally came to feel, probably with some justification, that Dr. Whitman’s main interest was in the white settlement of the country. It seemed to them that he was a friend of the whites and they looked upon the white immigrants as threatening their own possession of rights to the land. They certainly had sufficient grounds for that fear.”

“Another and rather curious cause for antagonism toward Dr. Whitman contributed to the eventual tragedy. It was quite customary among the Indians to kill the ‘te wat’ or medicine man if the patient that he treated died.”

“Inevitably some of those whom Dr. Whitman treated died and he was held to blame for it. When there was an epidemic of measles the Indians suffered more than the whites …”

“… and many died as they had developed no immunity to the white man’s disease and also because they treated it by first sweating the patient and then having him plunge into cold water. So the sickness and deaths were blamed on the white men.”

“After a period of increasing tension and irritation, one day a general massacre was carried out and both Dr. and Mrs. Whitman along with a dozen others were killed.”

“The inevitable result was the pursuit and punishment of the Indians and this part of the mission was ended. The Cayuse tribe eventually lost its identity.”

“But the Nez Perces continued to make progress as a Christian community. The beginnings of the Church for the white population had been made in Oregon and Washington. Whitman College also constitutes a permanent memorial and fruit of the short and troubled career of Dr. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman.” (All from Hugh Vernon White, Secretary, The Congregational Church)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

WhitmanMission

Marcus Whitman-1802-1847

Marcus_Whitman

Marcus_Whitman_Statue_Walla_Walla

Marcus Whitman-Statuary Hall DC

Whitman_Mission_Entrance

Whitman_Mission_Memorial

Whitman College

February 6, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Jimmy Mann

The day after Jimmy Mann arrived in Hawaii in 1916, he was penniless. The first night he had met “Doc” Hill and lost $4.40, all he had to his name, in a “friendly crap game.”

During the nearly 41 years since, James B. Mann has become one of the Territory’s best-known engineers. And in the process he has more than recouped that first night’s loss.

He drew the first design for the Ala Wai drainage canal and Kapiolani Blvd.

He was engineer for the first concrete road on the Big Island through the forest reserve from Waiakea to Olaa.

He was associated with Edward Clissold and the late Ralph E. Woolley in Home Factors, a residential subdivision firm, until recent years.

He founded Hawaii Blueprint & Supply Co., originally Blueprint Photo Copy Co., which he sold in 1954.

For more than 30 years he has been in private practice as a civil engineer and surveyor for subdivisions, boundary determinations, land court titles, and the like.

Both he and his wife, the former Henrietta Smith whom he married in 1922, have been active in civic and community affairs. He was vice president of Leahi Hospital’s board of trustees, and Mrs. Mann was a Punahou School trustee.

But he started his Hawaii career pretty much at the bottom. After getting off the boat in Hilo he went to work as a $1.25 a day county surveying gangman. Then he came to Honolulu as an assistant territorial surveyor at $125 a month.

Born in Portland, Ore., in 1892, he was graduated from Oregon State College as a mechanical engineer in 1912. After a summer stint as a dock foreman, he studied hydraulic engineering at the University of Wisconsin.

In 1913 he arrived in Miami, Fla., then a town “half the size of Hilo,” to work on drainage and development of the Everglades country.

“I haven’t been back since, but they say you can drive for two miles and its one hotel after the other.”

In 1915 he returned to Oregon State for a winter of graduate work in highway engineering. Then he decided to look up a friend who had gone to Hawaii.

He bought a $40 rail and ship fare ticket, meals included, that took him from Corvallis, Ore., to Hilo via Portland, Astoria, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

It was not a luxury cruise, however.

“I never saw the water – there were no portholes in fourth class – or the sky until we were three hours from Hilo and I sneaked past a guard and got on deck.”

Despite his “gambling” loss to William H. (Doc) Hill, then an itinerant eyeglass peddler, and today one of the Territory’s wealthiest men, the two young men became good friends.

“We use to date the same girls.”

Later his surveying job took him to Kauai and then back to the Big Island, surveying public lands and homesteads.

His boss was Robert K. King, older brother of former Governor Samuel Wilder King, a man whom he credits with teaching him all he knows about surveying.

Then Governor Lucius E. Pinkham had what was considered “a crazy-brain idea” of digging a canal to drain and fill the lowlands at Waikiki and to build a road from town to Kaimuki.

He was assigned to draw up the governor’s ideas on paper.

“Now we have the Ala Wai canal and Kapiolani Blvd.”

His next job was with the water resources branch of U.S. Geological Survey.

“Just to give you an idea of how much the Territorial government has grown, in those days Iolani Palace not only housed the governor and secretary but also the treasurer.

“Down in the basement was the Department of Public Works, the Board of Harbor Commissioners, the Land Commissioner and the Water Resources Branch.

“I don’t think there were 25 persons in the whole basement.”

During World War I he was one of a group of six or seven Island men sent to Virginia for Army engineering training.

Their instructor was a young Army first lieutenant named Edmond H. Leavey, who later married the elder daughter of a Honolulu newspaper publisher, rose to major general and to the presidency of the giant International Telephone & Telegraph Co. (Mrs. Leavey was the former Ruth Farrington.)

The war ended while Mr. Mann, then commissioned a lieutenant, was en route to Siberia. He returned to Hawaii.

Back home he found his government job filled, and since there was no GI bill, he was out of work.

Walking down the street he met Geoffrey Podmore of the Bishop Estate, who suggested he see George M. Collins, later an estate trustee and then superintendent of the land department.

He spent six years with the estate’s staff.

In 1925 he resigned to become a partner in the engineering firm of Wright, Harvey & Wright. He opened his own office in 1930.

Mr. Mann was a student of Island history. One of his fondest memories of Sanford Ballard Dole, president of the Republic of Hawaii and first governor of the Territory of Hawaii, dining at his Liliha St. home off and on for three years before his death.

The Manns have two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Cline, was a civil engineer with his father. A younger, James Jr., was manager of the Hukilau Hotel at Hilo.

The daughter is Mrs. Laurie S. Dowsett.

Surveying his 42 years in Hawaii through the transit of success, he considers his $40 ticket a fortunate and rewarding investment. (All here is from Greaney, Honolulu Advertiser, January 12, 1958)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

blueprint

February 5, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Memoirs of Henry Obookiah

“A few months after (the death of ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia) a book appeared in New England – a thin, brown-covered volume of a hundred small pages. It told, in his own words and the words of those who had known him the story of the boy’s life and death.”

“The printer who set the type, struck off the sheets and bound them together did not know it, but that book was to launch a ship and a movement that was to transform Hawai‘i.” (Albertine Loomis’ Introduction in Memoirs of Obookiah)

“Memoirs of Henry Obookiah by Edwin W Dwight is the story of a young Hawaiian man from 19th century Hawai’i who lived for only 26 years, and yet whose brief existence changed the course of a nation and the people of Hawai‘i.” (Lyon)

“For the boy was ‘Ōpūkaha’ia (his American friends spelled and pronounced it Obookiah), and his life and early death and his hope of taking Christianity to his people were the inspiration for the Sandwich Islands Mission. The ship launched was the Thaddeus, which sailed with the pioneer company from Boston in October, 1819.”

“In the long run, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent eighty-four men and one hundred women to Hawaii to preach and teach, to translate and publish, to advise, and counsel – and win the hearts of the Hawaiian people. …”

“Slender and simple as it was, this book shaped the future of Hawai‘i.” (Albertine Loomis’ Introduction in Memoirs of Obookiah)

“How could such a tiny book containing the biography of a young Hawaiian who died at the age of 26, in 1818, so compel a foreign nation to send its young people thousands of miles to a distant land to be committed to missionary service?”

“(A) young Hawaiian in a foreign land he was instrumental in befriending the very agents who became the cornerstone for the modern Protestant missions movement in America.”

“What had started on the other side of the Atlantic, through the persuasive works of William Carey and the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792, had now spread to America through a student-led movement by Samuel Mills Jr. and others, culminating in the formation of the ABCFM in 1810.”

“The brief life of Henry Obookiah was attributed to his being a catalyst for the founding of the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. ‘The interest he [Henry Obookiah] aroused led the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, of Boston, to establish a Missionary School at Cornwall, Conn., for ‘‘the education of heathen youth’.’” (Lyon)

“(T)he intended audience of the Memoirs was the Christian community of New England, and that part of the book’s purpose was to stir the hearts of New Englanders towards the cause of missions in order that they would give both financially and materially to the Foreign Mission School.”

“The final chapter of the Memoirs is divided into three sections. The first section establishes Henry Obookiah as the most promising student at the Foreign Mission School and a model of both scholarship and Christian character.”

“The second section is short and is comprised of two letters written by Obookiah himself. The third section is an account of the sickness and death of Obookiah.” (Lyon)

“The Memoirs tell of the life of Henry Obookiah, how his family was killed by tribal warfare in Hawai’i, and how his life was miraculously saved. The Memoirs go on to describe Obookiah departing from Hawai’i at the age of 16 and arriving in New England.”

“The major portion of the Memoirs traces young Obookiah’s progress and chronicles the fact that he studied and boarded with a succession of Congregational ministers in New England. The effect of his studies and the living arrangements with such pious Christians had a most profound effect upon Obookiah, leading to his conversion to the Christian faith.

At the opening of the final chapter of the Memoirs, young Obookiah is a model student at the Foreign Mission School and the hope of the mission to the Hawaiian Islands.” (Lyon)

“If the churches of New England, knowing the purpose of God concerning Obookiah, had chartered a ship and sent it to Owhyhee, on purpose to bring him to Christ, and fit him for heaven; it would have been a cheap purchase of blessedness to man, and glory to God: …”

“… and were there no expedients now to rescue his poor countrymen, for whom he prayed, the end would justify the constant employment of such means, to bring the sons and daughters of Owhyhee, to glory.”

“But besides his redemption, God by his Providence towards him, has illustrated his government of the moral World, and added new evidence to the truth of the declaration, ‘All that the Father hath given unto me shall come.’” (Portion of Eulogy at the Funeral of Obookiah, Rev Lyman Beecher)

‘Ōpūkaha’ia Inspired the American Protestant Mission to Hawai‘i.

Ōpūkaha’ia, inspired by many young men with proven sincerity and religious fervor of the missionary movement, had wanted to spread the word of Christianity back home in Hawaiʻi; his book inspired missionaries to volunteer to carry his message to the Hawaiian Islands.

On October 23, 1819, the Pioneer Company of missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) from the northeast United States, set sail on the Thaddeus for the Hawaiian Islands.

There were seven couples sent in the Pioneer Company of missionaries to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity. These included two Ordained Preachers (note: Bingham and Thurston were ordained as missionaries at Goshen, a more complex position than preacher), Hiram Bingham and his wife Sybil and Asa Thurston and his wife Lucy; two Teachers, Mr. Samuel Whitney and his wife Mercy and Samuel Ruggles and his wife Mary; a Doctor, Thomas Holman and his wife Lucia; a Printer, Elisha Loomis and his wife Maria; a Farmer, Daniel Chamberlain, his wife and five children. They landed at Kailua-Kona, April 4, 1820.

Among the other Hawaiian students at the Foreign Mission School were Thomas Hopu, William Kanui, John Honoliʻi and George Prince ‘Humehume’ (son of Kauai’s Kaumuali‘i).

By the time the Pioneer Company arrived, Kamehameha I had died and the centuries-old kapu system had been abolished; through the actions of King Kamehameha II (Liholiho), with encouragement by former Queens Kaʻahumanu and Keōpūolani (Liholiho’s mother), the Hawaiian people had already dismantled their heiau and had rejected their religious beliefs.

“Memoirs of Henry Obookiah is a truly significant work in relation to both the history of the nation of Hawai‘i, which later was annexed by the United States, and the profound impact that it had upon American evangelical Protestant missions. It is rare that an individual such as Henry Obookiah would be a vessel chosen to affect two nations so profoundly.” (Lyon)

On August 15, 1993, ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s remains were returned to Hawai‘i from Cornwall and laid in a vault facing the ocean at Kahikolu Church, overlooking Kealakekua Bay.

Click HERE to view/download Background on Memoirs of Henry Obookiah

Commemoration of Bicentennial of ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s Death – February 17, 1818 – February 17, 2018 – The following are some of the commemoration events planned in the Islands and on the continent.

10 am (HST), February 17, 2018 State-wide bell ringing;
10 am, Feb 17, Haili Church, Kawaiaha’o Church & Hawaiian Mission Houses;
10 am, Feb 17, Mokuaikaua Church, Memorial Dedication plaque to Henry Obookiah;
10:15 am, Feb 17, Mokuaikaua Church, Henry ‘Ōpūkaha’ia Memorial Concert;
3 pm (Eastern) Feb 17, Remembrance at the original ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s gravesite at Cornwall, CT;
9:30 am, February 18, 2018, commemoration services at Kahikolu Church;
9 am & 11 am, Feb 18, Mokuaikaua Church Services, Guest Speaker to discuss Life of ‘Ōpūkaha’ia;
10 am, Feb 18, service at Henry ‘Ōpūkaha’ia Memorial Chapel/Hokuloa Church, Punalu‘u;
10 am (Eastern), February 18, 2018 Services at UCC Cornwall;
6 pm, February 17, 18, 24, 25 at Kalihi Union Church, ‘Glory In His Soul’, a musical drama on life of ʻŌpūkahaʻia.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Memoirs_of_Henry_Obookiah

February 4, 2018 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

He Akua Hemolele – Ke Akua no kakou

“(O)ur mission was providentially favored with a visit from Mr. Ellis, a missionary from (the London Missionary Society), and Messrs. Tyreman and Bennet, who had been sent thither as the deputed agents of the London Missionary Society.”

“Without their contrivance or ours, they, while seeking to convey and accompany teachers from the Society to the Marquesas Islands, found an opportunity to touch at the Sandwich Islands in their course.” (Bingham)

“Four or five hymns having been prepared in Hawaiian by Mr. Ellis, were introduced into public worship with manifest advantage. On the 4th of August, these were read and sung, and I addressed the throne of grace in the language of the country.”

“In my early efforts to do this, it seemed that an invisible power granted the needed assistance. The language was found to be favorable to short petitions, confessions, and ascriptions of praise and adoration.”

“On the next day, while many of our friends, over oceans and continents, were remembering us at the monthly concert, the king and his attendants applied themselves to then new books.”

“A number of natives, already able to teach them, joined with the missionaries as teachers, and we rejoiced to see the king’s thatched habitation, under the guns of the fort at Honolulu, become a primary school for the highest family in the land. Naihe, Kapiolani, Nāmāhāna, and La‘anui, at then own houses in the village, were endeavoring to learn to read and write.” (Bingham)

“The London Missionary Society’s “talents, experience, kindness, and courtesy, rendered the Christian intercourse of these brethren with our missionaries, so isolated and secluded from civilized society, a peculiar privilege, long to be remembered with pleasure. Prejudices had been allayed, and the confidence of the rulers in our cause, increased.”

“Mr. Ellis, being some four years in advance of us, in acquaintance with missionary life, among a people of language and manners so similar to those whom we were laboring to elevate, and being peculiarly felicitous in his manner of communication with all classes …”

“… greatly won our esteem, awakened a desire to retain him as a fellow laborer, and made us grateful for the providence that kindly made the arrangement, for a season, by which the language was sooner acquired, and our main work expedited.” (Bingham)

“On the 4th of February, 1823, the Rev. Mr. Ellis and family from the Society Islands, as had been expected, arrived at Honolulu on board a small vessel, the Active, Richard Charlton master, and were kindly welcomed both by the missionaries and the rulers.”

“They were accompanied by three Tahitian teachers, Kuke, and Taua, having their wives with them, and Taamotu, an unmarried female.”

“Mr. Ellis entered at once into the labors of the mission, and with much satisfaction, we could unitedly say, ‘Let us see the great work done in the shortest possible time.’” (Bingham)

“(The) hymn He Akua Hemolele originated on the arrival of Mr. Ellis in Honolulu harbor. A canoe from the shore brought Mr. Bingham out to the vessel.”

“Mr. Ellis called down to him ‘He Akua Hemolele,’ God is good, or perfect. Mr. Bingham replied, ‘Ke Akua no kakou,’ He is our God.”

“And so in the typical fashion of a Hawaiian ki’ke, this dialog of greeting continued for several phrases which were later worked over into the four short stanzas of the hymn.”

“And a member of the Green and Parker families reminds us that this old hymn was a lullaby often hummed in Hawaiian by the first Mother Rice, in the days before cradles went out of style and mothers still took time to sing their babies to sleep.” (Damon; Ululoa)

“As early as 1823 a small hymn-book of 60 pages (Na Himeni Hawaiʻi; He Me Ori Ia Iehova, Ke Akua Mau) was prepared by the Revs. H. Bingham and W. Ellis.” (Julian)

“It had been my privilege to labour in harmonious cooperation with the able and devoted American missionaries first sent to the Sandwich Islands.”

“Having a knowledge of the language of Tahiti, which varies but slightly from that of Hawaii, I had assisted in forming the Hawaiian alphabet, and fixing the orthography of the native language, as well as in other departments of missionary labour.”

“More than thirty years had passed away since I had left those islands, and it was an unexpected satisfaction to my own mind to find that the Christian sentiments embodied in a simple hymn …”

“… which had been prepared chiefly with a view to implanting seeds of truth in the minds of the young, had afforded consolation and support to the mind of a native of those islands in the lonely solitude of a distant ocean, amidst the perils of shipwreck, and the prospect of death …”

“… and I mention this circumstance for the encouragement of other labourers in the cause of humanity and religion, that they may cast their bread upon the waters and labour on, in the assurance that no sincere effort will be altogether in vain, though its results should never be known. (Ellis) Lorenzo Lyons later penned the hymn He Akua Hemolele.)

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Ellis and Bingham