In the stream itself, mothers are teaching their infants to swim. Their love for the water is apparent in every struggle. They take to it like ducklings, and almost as soon as they can walk they can be trusted alone in that element. Now they turn their smiling faces towards their parents, and kick and cry for one more plash and still another; the delighted mother encouraging its attempts with soothing voice and tender care.
Such was the spectacle on which Kiana and his friends were gazing, after leaving the chapel and seating themselves by the sea-shore.
That day Olmedo had in his discourse dwelt more earnestly than usual upon the doctrines of his creed, with the hope finally to induce Kiana to cast aside his mythology and accept the Roman Catholic Trinity. Here, indeed, was the stumbling-block. How could Olmedo hope to make an idea, which was in a great degree contradictory and incomprehensible even to many of the cultivated and theological minds of Europe, intelligible to the simple reason of the Polynesian, when by the former it was at least only received as a great mystery!
“You tell me,” said Kiana, “that there is one great God, who made heaven and earth, an all-wise, all-perfect, all-powerful Being. He has created the Hawaiian, the Spaniard, the Mexican, and all the races of men. I know this to be true. My people worship the wooden images of deities, and think they supply their wants. But those of us who have been taught the true meaning of our sacred songs, know full well that these senseless idols cannot make the taro grow,—they do not send us rain,—neither do they bestow life, nor health. My thought has always been, there is one only Great God dwelling in the heavens.”
“Your thought is indeed right,” replied Olmedo; “but God many years ago, seeing how wicked the world was, sent his only-begotten Son to teach it true religion. He was cruelly crucified by the people to whom he was sent, and he went up to heaven, where he remains to be the judge and Saviour of all men. After his ascension, he sent to his disciples, to comfort them, the Holy Ghost. Now these three persons are one God,—the God whom we Christians worship. All your images are vain idols; cast them aside, and set up in their places the image of the Son, Jesus Christ, and his holy mother, of whom he was born in the flesh, by the will of God, without a human father. Then shall you and your people be saved.”