Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands Part 46

'4. I cannot come back from the islands during my winter voyage to New Zealand, it is too distant; the coast is dangerous in the winter season and the cold too great for a party of scholars first coming from the tropics. But I can go backwards and forwards through the islands and Norfolk Island during the five winter months. It is not wise to sail about in the summer, hurricanes being prevalent then.

'5. As I can only make one return from the islands to New Zealand in the year, I can only have a school consisting of (say) sixty Melanesians brought in the very crowded vessel + (say) thirty left in New Zealand for the winter; and I dare not attempt to leave many, for so much care is needed in the cold season. But in Norfolk Island I can have a school of any number, because I can make separate voyages thither from the Banks and Solomon Islands, &c., each time bringing a party of sixty, if I think fit.

'6. The productions of Norfolk Island include the yam, taro (Caladium esculentum), sweet potato, sugar-cane, banana, almond, orange, pine-apple, coffee, maize. Only cocoa-nut and bread-fruit are wanting, that natives of Melanesia care much about.

'7. There is no necessity for so violent a contrast as there must be in New Zealand between the life with us and in their homes in respect of dress, food, and houses.

'Light clothing and an improved style of native house and more cleanly way of eating their food--not of cooking it, for they are cleanly already in that--may be adopted, and more easily perpetuated in their own homes than the heavy clothing necessary here, and the different style of houses and more English food.

'This is very important, because with any abrupt change of the outer man, there is sometimes a more, very more natural abandonment of the inner thoughts and disposition and character. Just as men so often lose self-respect when they take to the bush life; or children who pray by their own little bedside alone, leave off praying in "long chamber," the outward circ.u.mstances being altered.

'I have for years thought that we seek in our Missions a great deal too much to make English Christians of our converts. We consciously and unanimously a.s.sume English Christianity (as something distinct I mean from the doctrines of the Church of England), to be necessary; much as so many people a.s.sume the relation of Church and State in England to be the typical and normal condition of the Church, which should be everywhere reproduced. Evidently the heathen man is not treated fairly if we enc.u.mber our message with unnecessary requirements.

'The ancient Church had its "selection of fundamentals"--a kind of simple and limited expansion of the Apostles' Creed for doctrine and Apostolic practice for discipline.

'Notoriously the Eastern and Western mind misunderstood one another. The speculative East and the practical West could not be made to think after the same fas.h.i.+on. The Church of Christ has room for both.

'Now any one can see what mistakes we have made in India. Few men think themselves into the state of the Eastern mind, feel the difficulties of the Asiatic, and divine the way in which Christianity should be presented to him.

'We seek to denationalise these races, as far as I can see; whereas we ought surely to change as little as possible--only what is clearly incompatible with the simplest form of Christian teaching and practice.

'I don't mean that we are to compromise truth, but to study the native character, and not present the truth in an unnecessarily unattractive form.

'Don't we overlay it a good deal with human traditions, and still more often take it for granted that what suits us must be necessary for them, and vice versa.

'So many of our missionaries are not accustomed, not taught to think of these things. They grow up with certain modes of thought, hereditary notions, and they seek to reproduce these, no respect being had to the utterly dissimilar character and circ.u.mstances of the heathen.

'I think much about all this. Sir William Martin and I have much talk about it; and the strong practical mind of the Primate, I hope, would keep me straight if I was disposed to theorise, which I don't think is the case.

'But Christianity is the religion for humanity at large. It takes in all shades and diversities of character, race, &c.

'The substratum of it is, so to say, inordinate and coextensive with the substratum of humanity--all men must receive that. Each set of men must also receive many thing of secondary, yet of very great importance for them; but in this cla.s.s there will be differences according to the characteristic differences of men throughout the world.

'I can't explain myself fully; but, dear Uncle, I think there is something in what I am trying to say.

'I want to see more discrimination, more sense of the due proportion, the relative importance of the various parts which make up the sum of extra teaching.

'There is so great want of order in the methods so often adopted, want of arrangement, and proper sequence, and subordination of one to another.

'The heathen man will a.s.sume some arbitrary dictate of a missionary to be of equal authority and importance with a moral command of G.o.d, unless you take care. Of course the missionary ought not to attempt to impose any arbitrary rule at all; but many missionaries do, and usually justify such conduct on the ground of their "exceptional position."

'But one must go much further. If I tell a man just beginning to listen, two or three points of Christian faith, or two or three rules of Christian life, without any orderly connection, I shall but puzzle him.

'Take, e.g., our English Sunday, I am far from wis.h.i.+ng to change the greater part of the method of observing it in England.

'I hope the Melanesian Christians may learn to keep holy the Lord's Day.

But am I to begin my teaching of a wild Solomon Islander at that end; when he has not learned the evil of breaking habitually the sixth, seventh, and eighth Commandments?

'I notice continually the tendency of the teaching of the very men who denounce "forms" to produce formation.

'It is nearest to the native mind; it generates hypocrisy and mere outward observance of certain rules, which, during the few years that the people remain docile on their first acceptance of the new teaching, they are content to submit to.

'I see the great difficulty of making out all this. It necessitates the leaving so very much to the discretion of the pioneer. Ergo the missionary must not be the man who is not good enough for ordinary work in England, but the men whom England even does not produce in large numbers with some power of dealing with these questions.

'It is much better and safer to have a regular well-known rule to act by; but I don't see how you can give me, e.g., precise directions. It seems to me that you must use great care in selecting your man, and then trust him fully.

'I hope it is not an excess of self-conceit and self-reliance which makes me pa.s.s by, rather lightly, I confess, some of the advice that very well-intentioned people occasionally volunteer to missionaries. I have had (D. Gr.) the Primate and Sir William Martin's men, who know what heathenism is, and the latter of whom has deeply studied the character of the various races of the world.

'I mean that when some one said, "Do you really mean to place those savage Melanesians among the immaculate Pitcairners?" the natural answer seemed to me to be, "I am not aware that you ever saw either a Pitcairner or a Melanesian." I thought it rather impertinent. The truth is, that the great proportion of our Melanesian scholars in our school, i.e., not standing alone, but helped by the discipline of the school, are quite competent to set an example to the average Pitcairners. But this I mark only as an ill.u.s.tration of my meaning. Occasionally I hear of some book or sermon or speech in which sound views (as I venture to call them) are propounded on these points.

'Always your loving and grateful Nephew,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

The next letter was called forth by my sorrowful communication of the shattered state of both my dear friends; of whom, one, at the very time that my Cousin wrote, was already gone to his rest, having been mercifully spared the loneliness and grief we had feared for him.

'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 companions.h.i.+p 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d. It surely--if one may dare so to speak, and the case of Job warrants it, and the great pa.s.sage "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you" (all)--is true that G.o.d 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?

G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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.

'G.o.d 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 sanct.i.ty about it, just as Bishop Mackenzie's Thomas a Kempis, with him on the Zambesi, is on my table now.'