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

'How you would be amused could you see the figures and scenes which surround me here! To-day about 140 men, women, lads and girls are working voluntarily here, clearing and fencing the gardens, and digging the holes for the yams, and they do this to help us in the school; we have two pigs killed, and give them a bit of a feast. The feeling is very friendly. A sculptor might study them to great advantage, though clothing is becoming common here now. Our thirty-four baptized adults and our sixteen or twenty old scholars wear decent clothing, of course.

'Well, I must leave off.

'I think very often of you, your wife and children, and, indeed, of you all. It would be very nice to spend a few weeks with you, but I should not get on well in your climate.

'The heat seems to suit me better, and I am pretty well here. Indeed I am better than I have been for more than a year, though I have a good deal of discomfort.

'Good-bye, dear Arthur. How often I think of your dear dear Father.

'Your affectionate Cousin,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

To the sisters, the journal continues—recording, on August 14, the Baptism of twelve men and women the day before, the Communion of sixteen at 7 A.M., the presence of fifty-six baptized persons at morning service. More than 100 were working away the ensuing day in preparing yam gardens for Kohimarama, while two pigs were stewing in native ovens to feast them afterwards; and the Bishop was planting cocoa-nut trees and sowing flower seeds, or trying experiments with a machine for condensing water, in his moments of relaxation, which were few, though he was fairly well, and very happy, as no one can doubt on reading this:—

'Lots of jolly little children, and many of them know me quite well and are not a bit shy. They are often very sad-looking objects, and as they don't get regularly washed, they often have large sores and abscesses, poor little things. But there are many others—clean-skinned, reddish brown, black-eyed, merry little souls among them. The colour of the people is just what Titian and the Venetian painters delighted in, the colour of their own weather-beaten Venetian boatmen, glowing warm rich colour. White folks look as if they were bleached and had all the colour washed out of them.

'Some of the Solomon Islanders are black, and some of the New Hebrides people glossy and smooth and strong-looking; but here you seldom see any very dark people, and there are some who have the yellow, almost olive complexion of the South European. Many of the women are tattooed from head to foot, a regular network of a bluish inlaid pattern. It is not so common with the men, rather I ought to say very unusual with them, though many have their bodies marked pretty freely.'

On the 17th sixteen more adults were baptized, elderly men, whose sons had been baptized in New Zealand coming in, and enemies resigning deadly feuds.

The work in Mota is best summed up in this last letter to Bishop Abraham, begun the day after what proved the final farewell to the flock there, for the 'Southern Cross' came in on the 19th, and the last voyage was at once commenced:—

"'Southern Cross": Sunday, August 20, 1871.

'My dear dear Friends,—Yesterday the "Southern Cross" came to me at Mota, twenty-seven days after leaving that island for Norfolk Island with some fifty Melanesians on board under charge of Bice.

'Into what a new world your many kind affectionate letters take me! And how good it must be for me to be taught to think more than I, alas! usually do, about the trials and sorrows of others.

'I have had such a seven weeks at Mota, broken by a three weeks' course in the New Hebrides, into two portions of three and four weeks.

'Last year we said in our Report, that the time seemed to be come when we should seek to move the people in Mota to do more than assent to the truth of our words and the blessings promised in the Gospel, when we should urge them to appropriate to themselves those blessings, by abandoning their ignorant heathen ways, and embracing Christianity.

'That time has come in the good Providence of God, in answer to His all-prevailing Intercession, and hastened (who can doubt it?) by the prayers of the faithful everywhere—your Whit-Sunday thoughts and prayers, your daily thoughts and prayers, all contributing to bring about a blessed change indeed in the little island.

'In these two months I have baptized 289 persons in Mota, 231 children and infants, seventeen of the lads and boys at Kohimarama, George Sarawia's school, and forty-one grown and almost all married men and women.

'I have tried to proceed cautiously and to act only when I had every human probability of a personal conviction and sincere desire to embrace Christian teaching and to lead a Christian life. I think the adult candidates were all competently instructed in the great truths.

'I feel satisfied of their earnestness, and I think it looks like a stable, permanent work. Yet I need not tell you how my old text is ever in my mind, "Thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged." Now more than ever are your prayers needed for dear old George Sarawia and his infant Church.

'I never had such an experience before. It is something quite new to me. Classes regularly, morning and evening, and all day parties coming to talk and ask questions, some bringing a wife or child, some a brother, some a friend. We were 150 sleeping on the Mission premises, houses being put up all round by people coming from a distance.

'Scarce a moment's rest, but the work so interesting and absorbing, that I could scarcely feel weariness. The weather for six out of the seven weeks was very rainy and bad generally; but I am and was well, very well—not very strong, yet walking to Gatava and back, five or six miles, on slippery and wet paths, and schooling and talking all day.

'The actual services were somewhat striking. The behaviour of the people reverent and quiet during the infants' and children's baptisms; and remarkably so during the baptisms of adults.

'You can understand the drift of my teaching: trying to keep to the great main truths, so as not to perplex their minds with a multiplicity of new thoughts.

'I think that I shall have to stay a few days at Mota on my return (D.V.) from Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands, as there are still many Catechumens.

'I am half disposed to ordain George Priest on my return (D.V.) Yet on the whole I think it may be better to wait till another year. But I am balancing considerations. Should any delay occur from my incapacity to go to Mota, which I don't at all anticipate, it would be a serious thing to leave such a work in the hands of a Deacon, e.g. ten communicants are permanent dwellers now in Mota; and I really believe that George, though not learned, is in all essentials quite a fit person to be ordained Priest. This growth of the work, owing, no doubt, much to him, is a proof of God's blessing on him.

'I pray God that this may be a little gleam of light to cheer you, dear friends, on your far more toilsome and darksome path. It is a little indeed in one sense; yet to me, who know the insufficiency of the human agency, it is a proof indeed that the Gospel is dunamis Theou eis soterian.

'I can hardly realize it all yet. It is good to be called away from it for a month or two. I often wished that Codrington, Palmer, and the rest could be with me: it seemed selfish to be witnessing by myself all this great happiness—that almost visible victory over powers of darkness.

'There is little excitement, no impulsive vehement outpouring of feeling. People come and say, "I do see the evil of the old life; I do believe in what you teach us. I feel in my heart new desires, new wishes, new hopes. The old life has become hateful to me; the new life is full of joy. But it is so mawa (weighty), I am afraid. What if after making these promises I go back?"

"What do you doubt—God's power and love, or your own weakness?"

'"I don't doubt His power and love; but I am afraid."

'"Afraid of what?" '"Of falling away."

'"Doesn't He promise His help to those who need it?"

'"Yes, I know that." '"Do you pray?"

'"I don't know how to pray properly, but I and my wife say—God, make our hearts light. Take away the darkness. We believe that you love us because you sent JESUS to become a Man and die for us, but we can't understand it all. Make us fit to be baptized."

'"If you really long to lead a new life, and pray to God to strengthen you, come in faith, without doubting."

'Evening by evening my school with the baptized men and women is the saying by heart (at first sentence by sentence after me, now they know them well) the General Confession, which they are taught to use in the singular number, as a private prayer, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the ten Commandments (a short version). They are learning the Te Deum. They use a short prayer for grace to keep their baptismal vows.

'I think that they know fairly well the simpler meaning of these various compendiums of Prayer, Faith and Duty. But why enter into details? You know all about it. And, indeed, you have all had your large share, so to say, in bringing about this happy change.

'And then I turn from all this little secluded work to the thoughts of England and France, the Church at home, &c....

'I have now read the "Guardian's" account of the civil war in France. There is nothing like it to be read of, except in the Old Testament perhaps. It is like the taking of Jerusalem.

'It is an awful thing! most awful! I never read anything like it. Will they ever learn to be humble? I don't suppose that even now they admit their sins to have brought this chastening on them. It is hard to say this without indulging a Pharisaic spirit, but I don't mean to palliate our national sins by exaggerating theirs. Yet I hardly think any mob but a French or Irish mob could have done what these men did.

'And what will be the result? Will it check the tendency to Republicanism? Will Governments unite to put down the many-headed monster? Will they take a lesson from the fate of Paris and France? Of course Republicanism is not the same thing as Communism. But where are we to look for the good effects of Republicanism?

'August 22nd.—The seventh anniversary of dear Fisher's death. May God grant us this year a blessing at Santa Cruz!

'Your affectionate

'J. C. PATTESON.'

The last letter to the beloved sister Fanny opened with the date of her never-forgotten birthday, the 27th of August, though it was carried on during the following weeks; and in the meantime Mr. Atkin, Stephen, Joseph and the rest were called for from Wango, in Bauro, where they had had a fairly peaceable stay, in spite of a visit from a labour traffic vessel, called the 'Emma Bell,' with twenty-nine natives under hatches, and, alas! on her way for more. After picking the Bauro party up, the Bishop wrote to the elder Mr. Atkin:—

'Wango Bay (at anchor): August 25, 1871.

'My dear Mr. Atkin,—You may imagine my joy at finding Joe looking really well when we reached this part of the world on the 23rd. I thought him looking unwell when he spent an hour or two with me at Mota, about ten weeks since, and I begged him to be careful, to use quinine freely, &c. He is certainly looking now far better than he was then, and he says that he feels quite well and strong. There is the more reason to be thankful for this, because the weather has been very rough, and rain has been falling continually. I had the same weather in the Banks Islands; scarcely a day for weeks without heavy rain. Here the sandy soil soon becomes dry again, it does not retain the moisture, and so far it has the advantage over the very tenacious clayey soil of Mota.

'Nearly all the time of the people here has been spent—wasted, perhaps, we should say—in making preparations for a great feast: so that Joe found it very hard to gain the attention of the people, when he tried to point out to them better things to think of than pigs, native money, tobacco and pipes. Such advance as has been made is rather in the direction of gaining the confidence and good-will of the people all about, and in becoming very popular among all the young folks. Nearly all the young people would come away with him, if the elders would allow them to do so. I have no doubt that much more has been really effected than is apparent to us now. Words have been said that have not been lost, and seed sown that will spring up some day. Just as at Mota, now, after some twelve or thirteen years, we first see the result in the movement now going on there, so it will be, by God's goodness, some day here. There at Mota the good example of George Sarawia, the collective result of the teaching of many years, and the steady conduct, with one exception, of the returned scholars, have now been blessed by God to the conversion of many of the people. We no longer hesitate to baptize infants and young children, for the parents engage to send them to school when they grow up, and are themselves receiving instruction in a really earnest spirit.