Hawaii - James Michener [154]
Abner had long anticipated this holy moment, and he had constructed a patient, step-by-step explanation of his religion, and as he began to speak with Keoki's help, he sensed that the huge woman on the floor was passionately eager to know all that he knew, so he worked with special care, choosing each word exactly and consulting often with Keoki as to its translation into Hawaiian, for he knew that if he could win Malama to the side of God, he would automatically win all of Maui.
"God is a spirit," he said carefully.
"Can I ever see him?"
"No, Malama."
She pondered this for some moments and said, "Well, I could never see Kane, either." Then she added suspiciously, "But Kelolo has often seen his goddess, Pele of the volcanoes."
Abner had sworn to himself that he would not be led down by-paths. He was not here to argue against Kelolo's miserable assortment of superstitions. He was here to expound the true faith, and he knew from experience that once he started on Kelolo's gods he was apt to get tangled up in irrelevant arguments.
"God is a spirit, Malama," he repeated, "but He created everything."
"Did he create heaven?"
Abner had never confronted this problem, but he replied unhesitatingly, "Yes."
"Where is heaven?"
Abner was going to say that it is in the mind of God, but he took the easier course and replied, "Up there."
"Are you certain in your heart, Makua Hale, that your god is more powerful than Kane?"
"I cannot compare the two, Malama. And I cannot explain God to you if you insist upon comparing them. And don't call Him my God. He is absolute."
This made sense to Malama, for she had witnessed the white man's superior power and knew instinctively that his god must also be superior, and she was gratified to hear Abner proclaim the fact. On this principle she was ready to accept his teaching completely, "God is all-powerful," she said quietly. "Then why did he bring the sailor's pox to infect our girls? Why does he make so many Hawaiians die these days?"
"Sin is permitted by God, even though He is all-powerful, for it is sin that tests men and proves them in God's eyes." He paused, and Malama indicated to one of her many servants that they must keep the flies off the missionary, too, and soft feathers swept his neck and forehead. Although he appreciated the attention, he felt that Malama's instructions had been an interruption consciously commanded by the woman to provide time for her thinking, so he added gravely, looking directly at the chieftain, "If you continue in sin, you cannot know God." Pausing dramatically and bringing his face close to hers, he said with great force, preparing the way for the great decision that would later become inevitable, "Malama, to prove that you know God you must put away sin."
"Is it possible that the Alii Nui herself is sinful?" Malama asked, for her religion took care of this problem by postulating that the acts of the alii were the acts of gods.
But she was to discover that in Abner Hale's new religion the answer was strikingly different. Pointing his forefinger at the prone woman he said firmly, "All men on earth are totally depraved. We abide in sin. Our natures are permeated and corrupted in all parts of our being." He paused, then fell to his knees so that he would be closer to the Alii Nui, and added, "And because kings have greater power, their sin is greater. The Alii Nui is the most powerful woman in Maui. Therefore her sin is greater. Malama," he cried in the woeful, desperate voice of John Calvin, "we are all lost in sin!”
A child cried in one of the surrounding huts, and Malama asked, "Is that baby filled with sin, too?"
"From the moment that child was born . . . No, Malama, from the moment it was conceived, it was steeped in sin. It was drowned in mortal vice, horrible, perpetual, inescapable. That child is totally