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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 17, 15 August 1884, Page 27

" Now you have wandered around our planet, "said a recent visitor to the hospitable London study of Moncure D. Conway, "wkat i n ,, th f,, CO mrßem rBe o£ the wbole 3° urn ey impressed you most painfully ? " Two things, " said Mr. Conway, « first the Sabbatarianism of the Sandwich Islands, and secondly, the spectacle presented at Benares and other great Indian cities of religion gone rotten. Of the two, the former, of course, was much the smaller ; but anything more miserable than Honolulu ou the Sabbath could hardly be imagined. These islands, usually so bright and gay, seemed to be under the influence of a weird eochantment. The windows are shut no life was hesrd in the streets ; a Bombre gloom filled the air : the atmospheie was sultry in the extreme, but no ice could be procured for love or money. Missionaries from Boston, a city where the concert-room and picture-gallery are open on Sunday, and where tbe inhabitants have completely freed themselves from the old Blue laws, have descended upon this hapless island in the far Pacific, and established the Sabbath as a dread demon before whose glance all mirth aud innocent pleasure fled far away. A Babbath, like a great false god, was enthroned in their midst, and woe to be those who did not bow down io it in worship. A more authentic incarnation of the visible-inv.isible I have seldom beheld. It was omni-preseDt. You could not escape from it, overshadowing as it did every street countenance. Literalism was set up to be worshipped at the expense of the true spiritual religion. The idol reigned supreme.