Fiji Shipping Quotes

I s’pose you know—though I can see you’re a Westerner by your talk—what a lot our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with ’em. You’ve probably heard about the Salem man that came home with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know there’s still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod.

When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, “You’ll lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among those savages.” To that Calvert replied, “We died before we came here.” That’s my question for us again tonight. Are you dead yet? Dead to yourself, dead to your own desires, dead to fear? Are we alive in Christ?