Hawaii Page 18

  Gideon Hale, a gaunt man of forty-two who looked sixty, could explain each matter: " Our minister visited Harvard and he assures us the place has become a haven for Unitarians, deists and atheists. No son of mine shall be contaminated in such a den of iniquitousness." So seventeen-year-old Abner was packed off to Yale, which remained a haven for the honest if austere precepts of John Calvin as expressed in New England Congregationalism.

  As for the money, gaunt Gideon explained: "We are practicing Christians adhering to the word of Calvin as preached by Theodore Beza in Geneva and by Jonathan Edwards in Boston. We do not believe in painting our barns in worldly displays of wealth, nor in painting our daughters to parade their concupiscence. We save our money and apply it to the betterment of our minds and the salvation of our souls. When my son Abner graduates a minister from Yale, he will glorify God by preaching the same message and exhibiting the same example. How did he get from this farm to divinity school? Because this family practices frugality and avoids worldly exhibit."

  In his senior year at Yale, emaciated Abner Hale whose parents did not allow him enough money to live on, experienced a spiritual enlightenment which changed his life, impelling him to unanticipated deeds and imperishable commitments. It was not what the early nineteenth century called "conversion," for Abner had undergone this phenomenon at eleven, while walking at dusk from the far fields to the milking shed. It was a wintry Marlboro night, and as he walked through the crackling stubble, frost on his breath, he heard a voice cry distinctly, "Abner Hale, are you saved?" He knew he was not, but when he replied, "No," the voice kept repeating the inquiry, and finally a light filled the meadow and a great shaking possessed him, and he stood in the fields transfixed, so that when his father came for him he burst into wild tears and begged: "Father, what must I do to be saved?" In Marlboro his conversion was held to be a minor miracle, and from that eleventh year his pious father had scrimped and borrowed and saved to send the predestined boy to divinity school.

  What thin-faced Abner experienced at Yale was far different from conversion; it was spiritual illumination on a specific point and it arrived through a most unlikely person. A group of his worldly classmates, including his roommate, the young medical student John Whipple, who had once smoked and drunk, came by his room as he was writing a long report on "Church Discipline in the City of Geneva as Practiced by Theodore Beza."

  "Come along to hear Keoki Kanakoa!" his rowdy classmates shouted.

  "I'm working," Abner replied, and closed his door more tightly against temptation. He had come to the part of his paper in which Beza had begun to apply the teachings of Calvin to the general civil life of Geneva, and the manner in which this was done fascinated the young divinity student, for he wrote with some fervor: "Beza constantly faced the problem which all who govern must face: 'Do I govern for the welfare of man or for the glory of God?' Beza found it easy to give his answer, and although certain harshnesses which the world condemned did unavoidably occur in Geneva, so did the Kingdom of God on earth, and for once in the long history of civilization, an entire city lived according to the precepts of our Divine Father."

  There was a rattling at his door and wiry John Whipple stuck his head in and called, "We're saving a seat for you, Abner. Seems everyone wants to hear Keoki Kanakoa."

  "I am working," Abner replied the second time, and carefully he closed his door and returned to his lamp, by whose amber light he wrote painstakingly: "The Kingdom of God on earth is not easy to attain, for mere study of the Bible will not illuminate the way by which a government can acquire sanctity, for obviously if this were the case, thousands of governments that have now perished and which in their day attended to the Bible would have discovered the godly way. We know they have failed, and they have failed because they lacked a man of wisdom to show them. . . ." He bit his pen and thought of his father's long and gloomy battle with the town fathers of Marlboro. His father knew what the rule of God was, but the fathers were obstinate men and would not listen. It was no surprise either to Abner or to his father when the daughter of one of these perverse men discovered that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock, although just what this sin involved, Abner did not fully know.

  "Abner!” a stentorian voice called from the hallway. "It is your duty to hear Keoki Kanakoa." The door was thrust open, revealing a chunky little professor in a waistcoat too tight and a stock too dirty. "In the interests of your soul you should hear the message of this remarkable young Christian." And the man came over to the desk, blew out the light, and dragged his reluctant pupil to the missionary lecture.

  Abner found the seat which handsome John Whipple had saved for him, and the two young men, so unlike in all ways, waited for the chairs on the college platform to be occupied. At seven-thirty President Jeremiah Day, calm but glowing with spiritual fire, led to the farthest chair a brown-skinned, white-toothed, black-haired young giant in a tight-fitting suit. "It is my honor to present to the students of Yale College," President Day said simply, "one of the most powerful voices in the world today. For when Keoki Kanakoa, son of a ruler of Owhyhee speaks, he speaks to the conscience of the world; to you young men who have already committed yourselves to Christ's ministry, the voice of Keoki Kanakoa brings particular challenges."

  At this, the young giant, standing about six feet five and weighing more than two hundred and fifty pounds, rose and graced his audience with a dazzling smile, after which he raised his hands like a minister and prayed: "May the good Lord bless what I am about to say. May He open all hearts to hear."

  "He speaks better than I do," John Whipple whispered, but Abner was not amused, for he wished to be back at his books, feeling that he had come close to the heart of his essay on Theodore Beza when his professor insisted upon dragging him to the lecture by this barbarian from Owhyhee.

  But when the brown-skinned giant launched into his message, not only Abner Hale but everyone else in the auditorium listened, for the engaging young savage told how he had run away from an idol-worshiping home, from polygamy, from immorality, from grossness and from bestiality to find the word of Jesus Christ. He recounted how, after landing from a whaling ship in Boston, he had tried to gain entrance to Harvard but had been laughed at, and how he had walked to Yale College and had met President Day in the street and had said to him, "I come seek Jesus." And the head of Yale had replied, "If you cannot find Him here, this college should be dissolved."

  Keoki Kanakoa spoke for two hours. Sometimes his voice fell away to a whisper as he spoke of the evil darkness in which his beloved islands of Owhyhee festered. Again it rose like a thundering sea when he told the young men of Yale what they could do for Christ if they would only come to Owhyhee and circulate the word of God. But what had captured earlier audiences throughout New England, and what now completely absorbed the men of Yale, so that no one stirred even at the end of two hours, was Keoki's impassioned story of what it was like to live in Owhyhee without Christ. "When I was a boy," he began softly, in the fine English he had mastered in various church schools, "we worshiped dreadful gods like Ku, the god of battle. Ku demanded endless human sacrifices, and how did the priests find victims? Before a sacred day my father, the Governor of Maui, would tell his assistants, 'We require a man.' Before a battle he would announce, 'We require eight men,' and his assistants would then gather and say, 'Let's take Kakai. I am angry with him,' or perhaps, 'Now would be a good time to get rid of that one and take his lands.' And at night two conspirators would creep secretly from behind while a third would walk up boldly and say, 'Greetings, Kakai, how was the fishing?' and before he could reply . . ."

  At this point giant Keoki had been coached by his missionary preceptors to pause dramatically, wait, then hold aloft in his enormous hands a lethal length of coconut-fiber rope. "While my father's agent smiled at the victim, one conspirator crept up and pinioned his arms. The other slipped this rope around his neck . . . like this." And slowly he twisted his two great hands together, compressing the rope into a tight k
nelt. Making a strangling noise in his throat, he allowed his big head to fall on his chest. After a pause, while his enormous frame seemed to burst from its ill-fitting American suit, he slowly raised his head and disclosed a face masked in pity. "We do not know Jesus," he said softly, as if his voice were coming from a sepulcher.

  Then he swept into his peroration, his voice hammering like thunder and tears splashing down like rain, so that the terror of his youthful days became clearly visible throughout his body. "Young men of God!" he pleaded. "In my father's islands immortal souls go every night to everlasting hell because of you! You are to blame! You have not taken the word of Jesus Christ to my islands. We hunger for the word. We are thirsty for the word. We die for the word. Are you, in your indifference, going to keep the word from us forever? Is there no man here tonight who will rise up and say to me, 'Keoki Kanakoa, I will go with you to Owhyhee and save three hundred thousand souls for Jesus Christ'?"

  The gigantic man paused. In deep and honest grief his voice broke. President Day poured him a glass of water, but he brushed it aside and called, through choking sobs, "Will no one go with me to save the souls of my people?" He sat down, quaking in his chair, a man shattered by the revelation of God's word, and after a while President Day led him away.

  The impact of Keoki Kanakoa's missionary sermon struck the roommates Hale of divinity and Whipple of medicine with stunning force. They left the lecture hall in shocked silence, brooding upon the misery depicted by the Owhyheean. In their room they did not bother to relight the lamp, but went to bed in darkness, weighed down by the indifference with which Keoki had charged them. When the awfulness of this indifference finally penetrated his conscience, Abner began to weep--for he had grown up in an age of weeping--and after a while John asked, "What is it, Abner?" and the farm boy replied, "I cannot think of sleep, seeing in my mind those human souls destined for all eternity to everlasting hell." From the manner in which he spoke, it was evident that he had been watching each separate soul plunge into eternal fire, and the misery was more than he could bear.

  Whipple said, "His final call keeps ringing in my ears. 'Who will go to Owhyhee with me?'" To this Abner Hale made no reply.

  Long after midnight, when the young doctor could still hear his roommate sobbing, he rose, lit the lamp, and began dressing. At first Hale pretended not to know what was happening, but finally he whipped out of bed and caught Whipple by the arm. "What are you going to do, John?"

  "I am going to Owhyhee," the handsome doctor replied. "I cannot waste my life here, indifferent to the plea of those islands."

  "But where are you going now?" Hale asked.

  "To President Day's. To offer myself to Christ."

  There was a moment's hesitation while the doctor, fully dressed, and the minister, in nightgown, studied each other. It was broken when Abner asked, "Will you pray with me?"

  "Yes," the doctor said, and he kneeled beside his bed.

  Abner, at his, prayed: "Father Almighty, tonight we have heard Thy call. From the starry wastes of the sky Thy voice has come to us, from across the boundless deep where souls rot in evil. Unworthy as we are to serve Thee, wilt Thou nevertheless accept us as Thy servants?" He continued for several minutes, issuing a prayer to a distant, living, full-bodied, vengeful yet forgiving God. If at that moment he had been asked to describe the Being to Whom he prayed he would have said, "He is tall, rather thin, with black hair and penetrating eyes. He is very serious, marks every transgression, and demands all humans to follow His precepts. He is a stern but forgiving Father, a harsh but just disciplinarian." And he would have described Gideon Hale in exactly the same terms. If anyone, at the end of his summary, should have asked, "Does this Father ever smile?" the question would have astonished young Abner as one he had not yet considered, but upon careful reflection he would have answered, "He is compassionate, but He never smiles."

  When the prayer was ended John Whipple asked, "Are you coming with me?"

  "Yes, but shouldn't we wait till morning to speak with President Day?"

  " 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,' " the young doctor quoted, and Hale, acknowledging the aptness of this admonition, dressed.

  It was four-thirty when they knocked at President Day's door, and with no visible surprise he admitted them to his study, where he sat in coat and muffler hiding his nightgown. "I surmise that the Lord has spoken to you," he began gently.

  "We are offering ourselves for Owhyhee," John Whipple explained.

  "Have you considered this grave step?" Day asked.

  "We have often discussed how we should spend our lives in God," Abner began, but he was taken by a fit of weeping, and his pale young features became red and his nose runny. President Day passed him a handkerchief.

  "Some time ago we decided to dedicate our lives to God," Whipple said forcefully. "I stopped smoking. Abner wanted to go to Africa to rescue souls, but I thought I would work among the poor in New York. Tonight we realized where it was that we really wanted to go."

  "This is not then the decision of the moment?" President Day pressed.

  "Oh, no!" Abner assured him, sniffing. "My decision goes back to Reverend Thorn's sermon on Africa three years ago."

  "And you, Mr. Whipple? I thought you wanted to be a doctor, not a missionary."

  "I vacillated for a long time between medicine and seminary, President Day. I chose the former because I thought I could serve God in two capacities."

  The president studied his two able students and asked, "Have you prayed on this grave problem?"

  "We have," Abner replied.

  "And what message did you receive?"

  "That we should go to Owhyhee."

  "Good," Day said with finality. "Tonight I was inspired to go myself. But my work remains here."

  "What shall we do now?" Whipple asked, as spring dawn came over the campus.

  "Return to your rooms, say nothing to anyone, and on Friday meet with the committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions."

  "Will they be here so soon?" Abner gasped in obvious delight.

  "Yes. They have found that they are often needed after Keoki Kanakoa speaks." But noticing the joy in the young men's faces he warned, "Reverend Thorn, the leader of the group, is most adroit in uncovering young men who are guided by emotion and not by true dedication to Christ. If yours is not a profound commitment strong enough to sustain you for a lifetime, don't waste the time of Eliphalet Thorn."

  "We are committed," Abner said firmly, and the two young men bade their president good night.

  On Friday, John and Abner peered from behind curtains as the committee from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions gravely marched into Yale to hold sessions with various young men whose imaginations had been captured by Keoki Kanakoa. "That's Reverend Thorn," Abner whispered as the leader appeared. He was a tall, thin man, in a frock coat that reached his ankles and a black beaver hat that stretched far in the opposite direction. He had bushy black eyebrows, a hooked nose and a forbidding chin. He looked like a judge, and the two young scholars were afraid.

  But John Whipple's fear was misguided, for he had an easy time when he faced Eliphalet Thorn. The intense, gaunt face leaned forward, while the four lesser ministers listened, and Whipple heard the first kindly question: "Are you the son of Reverend Joshua Whipple, of western Connecticut?"

  "I am," John replied.

  "Has your father instructed you in the ways of piety?"

  "He has." It was apparent that the committee recognized Whipple for what he was: a forthright, appealing, quick-witted young doctor from a God-fearing rural family.

  "Have you experienced conversion?" Reverend Thorn asked quietly.

  "When I was fifteen," John said, "I became much concerned about my future, and I vacillated between medicine and the clergy, and I chose the former because I was not certain in my heart that I understood God. I did not feel myself a pious youth, even though my father so repor
ted me to the church. And then one day as I was trudging home from school I watched a whirling-broom of dust as it became larger and larger, and I am certain that I heard a voice say to me, 'Are you prepared to serve Me with your life?' and I said, 'Yes.' And I shook as I have never shaken before and the cloud of dust hovered about me for some time, but did not get into my nostrils. From that time on I have known God."

  The five austere clergymen nodded approval, for this kind of sudden discovery of God had grown commonplace in New England, following the Great Awakening of 1740, and no man could guess how another would experience conversion, but Reverend Thorn bent his icy face forward and asked, "If you were originally confused, Mr. Whipple, between medicine and clergy, and if your confusion rose from the fact that you were not certain that you knew God, why, after God spoke directly to you, did you not change your decision and study for the ministry?"

  "I was perplexed by this problem for a long time," Whipple confessed. "But I liked medicine and I concluded that as a doctor I could serve God in two capacities."

  "That's an honest answer, Mr. Whipple. Return to your studies, and you will receive a letter from us within the week."

  When John Whipple left the interview he was in a state of such exaltation that he neither looked at his roommate nor spoke to him. In fact, it was the most completely sublime moment in his life up to then and the one in which he felt closest to God. He had committed himself totally to God's work and he was certain that no power on earth could ever divert him from that commitment. Without speaking, he told his roommate that he had been accepted.