Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands

'St. Andrew's: April 24, 1866.

'My dear Cousin,—I write a line at once in reply to a letter of January 29, for I see that a great sorrow is hanging over you, is perhaps already fallen on you, and I would fain say my word of sympathy, possibly of comfort.

'One, perhaps, of the great blessings that a person in my position enjoys is that he must perforce see through the present gloom occasioned by loss of present companionship on to the joy beyond. I hear of the death of dear Uncle, and friends, and even of that loving and holy Father of mine, and somehow it seems all peace, and calmness, and joy. It would not be so were I in England, to actually experience the sense of loss, to see the vacant seat, and miss the well-known voice; but it is (as I see) a great and most blessed alleviation to the loss of their society here below. You feel that when those loving hearts at Hursley can no longer be a stay and comfort to you here, you will have a sense almost of desolation pressing on you. You must, we all have, many trials and some sorrows, and I suppose Hursley has always been to you a city of refuge and house of rest.

'But I think the anticipation is harder than the reality. For him, but how can I speak of such as he is? Why should we feel anxiety? Surely he is just the man upon whom we should expect some special suffering, which is but some special mark of love and (may we not say in such a case?) of approbation. Some special aid to a very close conformity to the mind and character of Christ, to be sent in special love and mercy.

'I always seem to think that in the case of good men the suffering is the sure earnest of special nearness to God. It surely—if one may dare so to speak, and the case of Job warrants it, and the great passage "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you" (all)—is true that God is glorified in the endurance of sufferings which He lays upon the saints. And if dear Mr. Keble must suffer this last blow, as all through his life he has felt the care of the Churches pressing sorely on him, and has even had to comfort the weary, and guide the wayward, and to endure disappointment, and to restrain the over zealotish, and reprove the thoughtless, and bear in his bosom the infirmities of many people—why must we be unhappy about him, and why mourn for ourselves? God forbid! It is only one mark of the cross stamped upon him, only one more draught of the cup of the lacking measures of the afflictions of Christ. But you must, more than I, know and feel all this; and it is only in attempting to put before your eyes your own thoughts, that I have written this. For, indeed, I do sympathise with you, and I think how to me, who knew him so little yet yield to no one in deep reverence and love for him, his departure would be almost what the passing away of one of those who had seen the Lord must have been to those of old time; yet our time is not so very long now, and may be short, and we have had this blessed example for a long time, and there is on all accounts far more cause for joy than for sorrow.

'You must not think me unkind to Miss Mackenzie, because I have written to Fan to say that my letters and anecdotes are not to be fishes to swim in her "Net." It may be unwise in me to write all that kind of thing, but it does such an infinity of harm by its reflex action upon us who are engaged in this work. And I can write brotherly letters, if they are to be treated as public property. I could not trust my own brother to make extracts from my letters. No one in England can be a judge of the mischief that the letters occasion printed contrary to my wish by friends. We in the Mission think them so infinitely absurd, one-sided, exaggerated, &c., though we don't mean to make them so when we write them.

'We are all well, thank God, except a good fellow called Walter Hotaswol, from Matlavo (Saddle Island), who is in a decline. He has had two bad haemorrhages; but he is patient, simple-minded, quite content to die, and not doubting at all his Father's love, and his Saviour's merits, so I cannot grieve for him, though he was the one, humanly speaking, to have led the way in his home.

'You know that I sympathise with all your anxieties about Church matters. Parliamentary legislation would be the greatest evil of all. All your troubles only show that synodical action, and I believe with the laity in the Synod, is the only cure for these troubles.

'God bless you, my dear Cousin,

'Your affectionate Cousin,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

To the sisters he wrote at the same time:—

'I hear from Miss Yonge that Mrs. Keble is very ill—dying. But, as I wrote to her, why should such things grieve us? He will soon rejoin her, and so it is all peace and comfort. He was seventy-five, I think, last St. Mark's Day, and I began a letter to him, but it was not fair to him to give him the trouble of reading it, and I tore it up. He knows without it how I do love and revere him, and I cannot pluck up courage to ask for some little book which he has used, that there may be a sort of odour of sanctity about it, just as Bishop Mackenzie's Thomas a Kempis, with him on the Zambesi, is on my table now.'

Before going forth with this 'lonely watcher' upon his voyage, the description of this season's work with his scholars must be given from a Report which he brought himself to write for the Eton Association. After saying how his efforts were directed to the forming a number of native clergy in time to work among their own people, he continues:—'When uncivilised races come into contact with civilised men, they must either be condemned to a hopeless position of inferiority, or they must be raised out of their state of ignorance and vice by appealing to those powers within them which God intended them to use, and the use of which will place them by His blessing in the possession of whatever good things may be denoted by the words Religion and Civilisation.

'Either we may say to our Melanesian scholars, "You can't expect to be like us: you must not suppose that you can ever cease to be dependent on us, you must be content always to do as you are told by us, to be like children, as in malice so in knowledge; you can never be missionaries, you may become assistant teachers to English missionaries whom you must implicitly obey, you must do work which it would not be our place to do, you must occupy all the lower and meaner offices of our society;"—or, if we do not say this (and, indeed, no one would be likely to say it), yet we may show by our treatment of our scholars that we think and mean it.

'Or we may say what was, e.g., said to a class of nineteen scholars who were reading Acts ix.

'"Did our Lord tell Saul all that he was to do?"

'"No."

'"What! not even when He appeared to him in that wonderful way from Heaven?"

'"No."

'"What did the Lord say to him?"

'"That he was to go into Damascus, and there it would be told him what he was to do."

'"What means did the Lord use to tell Saul what he was to do?"

'"He sent a man to tell him."

'"Who was he?"

'"Ananias."

'"Do we know much about him?"

'"No, only that he was sent with a message to Saul to tell him the Lord's will concerning him and to baptize him."

'"What means did the Lord employ to make His will known to Saul?"

'"He sent a disciple to tell him." '"Did He tell him Himself immediately?"

'"No, He sent a man to tell him."

'"Mention another instance of God's working in the same way, recorded in the Acts."

'"The case of Cornelius, who was told by the angel to send for Peter."

'"The angel then was not sent to tell Cornelius the way of salvation?"

'"No, God sent Peter to do that."

'"Jesus Christ began to do the same thing when He was on earth, did He not, even while He was Himself teaching and working miracles?"

'"Yes; He sent the twelve Apostles and the seventy disciples."

'"But what is the greatest instance of all, the greatest proof to us that God chooses to declare His will through man to man?"

'"God sent His own Son to become man."

'"Could He not have converted the whole world in a moment to the obedience of faith by some other way?"

'"Yes."

'"But what did He in His wisdom choose to do?"

'"He sent His Son to be born of the Virgin Mary, to become man, and to walk on this earth as a real man, and to teach men, and to die for men."

'"What does Jesus Christ call us men?"

'"His brethren." '"Who is our Mediator?"

'"The Man Christ Jesus."

'"What means does God employ to make His will known to us?"

'"He uses men to teach men."

'"Can they do this by themselves?"

'"No, but God makes them able."