p. 129 | Then and Now in Fiji by Gordon Cumming

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 15, 1883

Then and Now in Fiji.

By Gordon Cumming

THINK of the sick buried alive; the array of widows who were deliberately strangled on the death of any great man; the living victims who were buried beside every post of a chief's new house, and must needs stand clasping it, while earth was gradually heaped over their devoted heads; or those who were bound hand and foot and laid on the ground to act as rollers, when a chief launched a new canoe, and thus doomed to a death of excruciating agony; a time when there was not the slightest security for life or property, and no man knew how quickly his own hour of doom might come; when whole villages were depopulated simply to supply their neighbors with fresh meat!

Just think of all this, and of the change that has been wrought, and then just imagine white men who can sneer at missionary work in the way they do. Now you may pass from isle to isle, certain everywhere to find the same cordial reception by kindly men and women. Every village on the eighty inhabited isles has built for itself a tidy church, and a good house for its teacher or native minister, for whom the village also provides food and clothing. Can you realize that there are nine hundred Wesleyan churches in Fiji, at every one of which the frequent services are crowded by devout congregations; that the schools are well attended; and that the first sound which greets your ear at dawn, and the last at night, is that of hymn-singing and most fervent worship, rising from each dwelling at the hour of family prayer?—Gordon Cumming.