No native agency in any mission has been so richly owned by God and honoured with success as the pastors and catechists of Fiji. They are the finest product of the mission, and very largely the fruit of Hunt’s teaching and holy living. They were ready to go anywhere, and suffer or sacrifice everything, even life itself, to rescue the perishing heathen, and to teach them a better life. They have many excellences, the greatest of which is their wonderful knowledge of the Bible. They quote copiously and accurately from the Scriptures.

With memory highly developed, their reasoning is almost limited to analogy. They have all been students of nature from childhood. The jungle is their almanack, and the months are named from the flowering plants peculiar to each. The habits and peculiarities of plants, insects, birds, fishes, and all manner of life in the wonderland of a coral reef give a never-ending supply of illustration. Their language lends itself to oratory, and their rhetoric never fails. In appeal they are impassioned, but they arrest attention and convince the judgement before they apply their message, pleading for God with a power that is often startling and irresistible. Their native proverbs are often used with more effect than an argument. A proverb clenches the teaching and presents the truth like a flash-light. People trying to evade the consequences of sin, or to get away from its punishment, are likened to the flying fish, that leap out of the water to escape the bonita, and are gobbled up by the seagulls.

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While such things lighted up and gave point to their preaching, the Bible was the rich mine whence they obtained their nuggets and wealth of illustration...