Books: Life of John Coleridge Patteson

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'Sunday, Feb. 24, St. Matthias, 10 A.M.--The day is come, my dearest
Father, and finds me, I thank God, very calm. Yesterday, at 6 P.M.,
in the little chapel at Taurama, the three Bishops, the dear Judge,
Lady Martin, Mrs. Abraham, Mr. Lloyd and I met together for special
prayer. How we missed Mrs. Selwyn, dear dear Mrs. Selwyn, from among
us, and how my thoughts passed on to you! Evening hymn, Exhortation
in Consecration Service, Litany from the St. Augustine's Missionary
Manual, with the questions in Consecration Service turned into
petitions, Psalm cxxxii., cxxxi., li.; Lesson i Tim. iii.; special
prayer for the Elect Bishop among the heathen, for the conversion of
the heathen; and the Gloria in Excelsis.

'Then the dear Bishop walked across to me, and taking my hand in both
of his, looking at me with that smile of love and deep deep thought,
so seldom seen, and so deeply prized. "I can't tell you what I
feel," he said, with a low and broken voice. "You know it--my heart
is too full! "

'Ah! the memory of six years with that great and noble servant of God
was in my heart too, and so we stood, tears in our eyes, and I unable
to speak.

'At night again, when, after arranging finally the service, I was
left with him alone, he spoke calmly and hopefully. Much he said of
you, and we are all thinking much of you. Then he said: "I feel no
misgiving in my heart; I think all has been done as it should be.
Many days we three have discussed the matter. By prayer and Holy
Communion we have sought light from above, and it is, I believe,
God's will." Then once more taking both hands, he kissed my
forehead: "God bless you, my dear Coley. I can't say more words, and
you don't desiderate them."

'"No," said I; "my heart, as yours, is too full for words. I have
lived six years with you to little purpose, if I do not know you full
well now!"

'And then I walked, in the perfect peace of a still cloudless night--
the moon within two days of full--the quarter of a mile to St.
Stephen's schools, where I slept last night. On the way I met the
Bishop of Wellington and Mrs. Abraham, coming up from St. Stephen's
to the Bishop's house.

J. C. P.--What a night of peace! the harbour like a silver mirror!

'B. of W.--Dominus tecum.

'Mrs. A.--I trust you will sleep.

'J. C. P.--I thank you; I think so. I feel calm.

'Sunday Night, 10 P.M. (Feniton, Sunday, 10.40 A.M.)--It is over--a
most solemn blessed service. Glorious day. Church crowded--many not
able to find admittance; but orderly. More than two hundred
communicants. More to-morrow (D.V.). All day you have been in our
minds. The Bishop spoke of you in his sermon with faltering voice,
and I broke down; yet at the moment of the Veni Creator being sung
over me, and the Imposition of Hands, I was very calm. The Bible
presented is the same that you gave me on my fifth birthday with your
love and blessing. Oh! my dear dear Father, God will bless you for
all your love to me, and your love to Him in giving me to His
service. May His heavenly blessing be with you--all your dear ones
for ever!

'Your most loving and dutiful Son,

'J. C. PATTESON, Missionary Bishop.

'February 25th.--I am spending to-day and to-morrow here--i.e.,
sleeping at the Judge's, dining and living half at his house, and
half at the Bishop's--quiet and calm it is, and I prize it. The
music yesterday was very good; organ well played. The choirs of the
three town churches, and many of the choral society people, filled
the gallery--some eighty voices perhaps. The Veni Creator the only
part that was not good, well sung, but too much like an anthem.

'Tagalana, half-sitting, half-kneeling behind me, held the book for
the Primate to read from at the Imposition of Hands--a striking
group, I am told.'

Here ends the letter, to which a little must be added from other
pens; and, first, from Mrs. Abraham's letter for the benefit of Eton
friends:--

'The Consecration was at St. Paul's Church, in default of a
Cathedral. Built before the Bishop arrived, St. Paul's has no
chancel: and the Clergy, including a Maori Deacon, were rather
crowded within the rail. Mr. Patteson was seated in a chair in
front, ten of his island boys close to him, and several working men
of the rougher sort were brought into the benches near. We were
rather glad of the teaching that none were excluded. The service was
all in harmony with the occasion; and the sermon gave expression to
all the individual and concentrated feeling of the moment, as well as
pointing the Lesson and its teaching.

'The sermon was on the thought of the Festival: "And they prayed, and
said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether
of these two Thou hast chosen." (Acts i. 24.) After speaking of the
special import and need of the prayers of those gathered to offer up
their prayers at the Holy Communion, for those who were to exercise
the office of apostles in their choice, he spoke in words that
visibly almost overpowered their subject:--

'"In this work of God, belonging to all eternity, and to the Holy
Catholic Church, are we influenced by any private feelings, any
personal regard? The charge which St. Paul gives to Timothy, in
words of awful solemnity, 'to lay hands suddenly on no man,' may well
cause much searching of heart. 'I charge thee before God, and the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these
things, without preferring one before another, doing nothing by
partiality.' Does our own partial love deceive us in this choice?
We were all trained in the same place of education, united in the
same circle of friends; in boyhood, youth, manhood, we have shared
the same services, and joys, and hopes, and fears. I received this,
my son in the ministry of Christ Jesus, from the hands of a father,
of whose old age he was the comfort. He sent him forth without a
murmur, nay, rather with joy and thankfulness, to these distant parts
of the earth. He never asked even to see him again, but gave him up
without reserve to the Lord's work. Pray, dear brethren, for your
Bishops, that our partial love may not deceive us in this choice, for
we cannot so strive against natural affection as to be quite
impartial."

'And again, as the Primate, addressing more especially his beloved
son in the ministry, exclaimed, "May Christ be with you when you go
forth in His name, and for His sake, to those poor and needy people,"
and his eye went along the dusky countenances of his ten boys,
Coleridge Patteson could hardly restrain his intensity of feeling.'

Another letter from the same lady to the sisters adds further details
to the scene, after describing the figures in the church:--

'Lady Martin, who had never seen the dress (the cassock and rochet)
before, said that Coley reminded her of the figures of some young
knight watching his armour, as he stood in his calm stedfastness, and
answered the questions put to him by the Primate.

'The whole service was very nicely ordered, and the special Psalm
well chanted. With one exception (which was, alas! the Veni
Creator), the music was good, and Coley says was a special help to
him; the pleasure of it, and the external hold that it gave, helping
him out of himself, as it were, and sustaining him.'

Lady Martin adds her touch to the picture; and it may perhaps be
recorded for those who may in after times read the history of the
first Bishop of the Melanesian Church, that whatever might be wanting
in the beauty of St. Paul's, Auckland, never were there three Bishops
who outwardly as well as inwardly more answered to the dignity of
their office than the three who stood over the kneeling Coleridge
Patteson.

'I shall never forget the expression of his face as he knelt in the
quaint rochet. It was meek and holy and calm, as though all conflict
was over and he was resting in the Divine strength. It was
altogether a wonderful scene: the three consecrating Bishops, all
such noble-looking men, the goodly company of clergy and Hohua's fine
intelligent brown face among them, and then the long line of island
boys, and of St. Stephen's native teachers and their wives, were
living testimonies of Mission work. Coley had told us in the morning
of a consecration he had seen at Rome, where a young Greek deacon had
held a large illuminated book for the Pope to read the words of
Consecration. We had no such gorgeous dresses as they, but nothing
could have been more simply beautiful and touching than the sight of
Tagalana's young face as he did the same good office. There was
nothing artistic about it; the boy came forward with a wondering yet
bright look on his pleasant face, just dressed in his simple grey
blouse.

'You will read the sermon, so there is no need to talk about it.
Your brother was overcome for a minute at the reference to his
father, but the comfort and favour of His Heavenly Master kept him
singularly calm, though the week before he had undoubtedly had much
struggle, and his bodily health was affected.'

All the friends who were thus brought together were like one family,
and still called the new Bishop by the never disused abbreviation
that recalled his home. He was the guest of the now retired Chief
Justice and Lady Martin, who were occupying themselves in a manner
probably unique in the history of law and lawyers, by taking charge
of the native school at St. Stephen's.

The next two were great days of letter writing. Another long full
letter was written to the father, telling of the additional record
which each of the three consecrating Bishops had written in the Bible
of his childhood, and then going into business matters, especially
hoping that the Warden and Fellows of Merton would not suppose that
as a Bishop he necessarily had £5,000 a year and a palace, whereas in
fact the see had no more than the capital of £5,000 required by
Government! He had already agreed with his father that his own share
of the inheritance should go to the Mission; and, as he says, on
hearing the amount:--

'Hard enough you worked, my dear Father, to leave your children so
well off. Dear old Jem will have enough; and my children now dwell
in 200 islands, and will need all that I can give them. God grant
that the day may come when many of them may understand these things,
and rise up and call your memory blessed!

'Your words of comfort and blessing come to me with fresh strength
just now, two days only after the time when you too, had you been
here, would in private have laid your hand on my head and called down
God's blessing upon me. I shall never know in this world what I owe
to your prayers.'

There is much, too, of his brother's marriage; and in a separate
letter to the sisters there are individual acknowledgments of each
article of the equipment, gratifying the donor by informing her that
the 'cutaway' coat was actually to be worn that very evening at a
dinner party at the Chief Justice's, and admiring the 'gambroon,'
which turned out to be the material of the cassock, so much as to
wish for a coat made of it for the islands. Apropos of the hat:--
'You know my forehead is square, so that an oval hat does not fit; it
would hang on by the temples, which form a kind of right angle with
the forehead.'

Another letter of that 26th was from the Bishop of Wellington to Dr.
Goodford respecting this much-loved old pupil:--

'Anything more conscientious and painstaking cannot be conceived than
the way he has steadily directed every talent, every hour or minute
of his life, to the one work he had set before him. However small or
uncongenial or drumdrudgery-like his occupation, however hard, or
dangerous, or difficult, it seemed to be always met in the same calm,
gentle, self-possessed spirit of love and duty, which I should fancy
that those who well knew his good and large-minded, large-hearted
father, and his mother, whom I have always heard spoken of as
saintly, could best understand. Perhaps the most marked feature in
his character is his genuine simplicity and humility. I never saw it
equalled in one so gifted and so honoured and beloved.

'It is really creditable to the community to see how universal is the
admiration for his character, for he is so very good, so exceedingly
unworldly, and therefore such a living rebuke to the selfishness of
the world; and though so gentle, yet so firm and uncompromising that
you would have supposed he would hardly be popular outside the circle
of friends who know him and understand him. Certainly he is the most
perfect character I ever met.'

The last day of February was that of the Installation.

Again Mrs. Abraham must speak:--

'On Thursday last we had another happy day at Kohimarama, where
Bishop Patteson was duly installed in the temporary chapel of St.
Andrew's College, as we hope to call it, after the church at
Cocksmoor, in "The Daisy Chain." The morning was grey, and we feared
rain would keep us ladies away, hut we made the venture with our
willing squire, Mr. M----, in the "Iris" boat to help us. The pity
was, that after all Lady Martin could not go, as she had an invalid
among her Maori flock, whom she could not trust all day by herself.
The day lightened, and our sail was pleasant.

'The Primate and Missionary Bishop planted a Norfolk pine in the
centre of the quadrangle--"the tree planted by the water side," &c.
The Bishop then robed and proceeded to chapel, and the Primate led
the little service in which he spoke the words of installation, and
the mew Bishop took the oath of allegiance to him. The Veni Creator
was sung, and the Primate's blessing-given. The island boys looked
on from one transept, the "Iris" sailors from another, and Charlie
stood beside me. I am afraid his chief remembrance of the day is
fixed upon Kanambat's tiny boat and outrigger, which he sat in on the
beach, and went on voyages, in which the owner waded by his side, and
saw him (Kanambat) skim along the waves like a white butterfly. We
all dined in hall, after the boys, on roast beef and plum pudding,
melons and water melons, and strolled about the place and beach at
leisure, till it was time to sail back again.'

On the Sunday the new Bishop preached at St. Mary's one of the
sermons that broke from him when he was too much excited (if the word
may be used) for his usual metaphysical style. The subject was the
promise of the Comforter, His eternal presence and anointing, and the
need of intercessory prayer, for which the preacher besought
earnestly, as one too young for his office, and needing to increase
in the Holy Spirit more and more. Very far were these from being
unrealised words. God's grace had gone along with him, and had led
him through every step and stage of his life, and so mastered his
natural defects, that friends who only knew him in these years hear
with incredulous indignation of those flaws he had conquered in his
younger days. 'Fearless as a man, tender as a woman, showing both
the best sides of human nature,' says one of the New Zealand friends
who knew him best; 'always drawing out the good in all about him by
force of sympathy, and not only taking care that nothing should be
done by others that he would not do himself, but doing himself what
he did not like to ask of them, and thinking that they excelled him.'
Humility, the effort of his life, was achieved at last the more truly
because not consciously.

The letter to his father was again almost wholly on money matters;
but at the end come two notable sentences:--

'How can I thank you for giving me up to this work, and for all the
wise and loving words with which you constantly cheer me and
encourage me? Your blessing comes now to strengthen me, as work and
responsibilities are fast accumulating upon me. I thank God that He
enables us at the two ends of the world to see this matter in the
same way, so that no conflict of duties arises in my mind.

'This book, "Essays and Reviews," I have, but pray send your copy
also; also any good books that may be produced bearing on that great
question of the Atonement, and on Inspiration, Authority of
Scripture, &c. How sad it is to see that spirit of intellectualism
thinking to deal with religion in forgetfulness of the necessary
conditions of humility and faith! How different from the true
gnosis!'

'Kohimarama: April 29, 1861.

'My dearest Father,--As I read your letters of Feb. 21-25, you are, I
trust, reading mine which tell you of what took place on Feb. 24.
That point is settled. I almost fear to write that I am a Bishop in
the Church of Christ. May God strengthen me for the duties of the
office to which I trust He has indeed called me!

'As I read of what you say so wisely and truly, and dear Joan and Fan
and Aunt James and all, of my having expected results too rapidly at
Mota, I had sitting with me that dear boy Tagalana, who for two
months last winter was in the great sacred enclosure, though, dear
lad, not by his own will, yet his faith was weak, and no wonder.

'Now, God's holy name be praised for it, he is, I verily believe, in
his very soul, taught by the Spirit to see and desire to do his duty.
I feel more confidence about him than I have done about anyone who
has come into my hands originally in a state of complete heathenism.
It is not that his knowledge only is accurate and clearly grasped,
but the humility, the loving spirit, the (apparent) personal
appropriation of the blessing of having been brought to know the love
of God and the redemption wrought for him by the death of Christ;
this is what, as I look upon his clear truthful eyes, makes me feel
so full of thankfulness and praise.

'"But Tagalana, if I should die, you used to say that without my help
you should perhaps fall back again: is that true?"

'"No, no; I did not feel it then as I do now in my heart. I can't
tell how it came there, only I know He can never die, and will always
be with me. You know you said you were only like a sign-post, to
point out the way that leads to Him, and I see that we ought to
follow you, but to go altogether to Him."

'I can't tell you, my dearest Father, what makes up the sum of my
reasons for thinking that God is in His mercy bringing this dear boy
to be the first-fruits of Mota unto the Christ, but I think that
there is an inward teaching going on now in his heart, which gives me
sure hope, for I know it is not my doing.

'All you all say about Mota is most true: I never thought otherwise
really, but I wrote down my emotions and impulses rather than my
deliberate thoughts, that my letter written under such strange
circumstances might become as a record of the effect produced day by
day upon us by outward circumstances.

'What some of you say about self-possession on one's going about
among the people being marvellous, is just what of course appears to
me commonplace. Of course it is wrong to risk one's life, but to
carry one's life in one's hand is what other soldiers besides those
of the Cross do habitually; and no one, as I think, would willingly
hurt a hair of my head in Melanesia, or that part of it where I am at
all known.

'How I think of those islands! How I see those bright coral and
sandy beaches, strips of burning sunshine fringing the masses of
forest rising into ridges of hills, covered with a dense mat of
vegetation. Hundreds of people are crowding upon them, naked, armed,
with wild uncouth cries and gestures; I cannot talk to them but by
signs. But they are my children now! May God enable me to do my
duty to them!

'I have now as I write a deepening sense of what the change must be
that has passed upon me. Again I go by God's blessing for seven
months to Melanesia. All that our experience has taught us we try to
remember: food, medicine, articles of trade and barter.

'But what may be the result? Who can tell? You know it is not of
myself that I am thinking. If God of His great mercy lead me in His
way, to me there is little worth living for but the going onward with
His blessed work, though I like my talks with the dear Bishop and the
Judge. But others are committed to me--Mr. Pritt and Mr. Kerr go
with me. Shall I find dear old Wadrokala and Harper alive, and if
alive, well?

'And yet, thank God, we go on day by day, so happy, so hopeful!

'I see two sermons by the Bishop of Oxford, "God's Revelation Man's
Trial," please send them. They bear, I conclude, on the controversy
of the day. I need not tell you that I find a very great interest in
reading these books, or rather at present in talking now and then,
when we meet, with the Judge on the subject of which those books
treat. The books I have not read. But I know no refreshment so
great as the reading any books which deal with these questions
thoughtfully. I hope you don't think it wrong and dangerous for me
to do so; pray tell me. I don't believe that I am wrong in doing it,
yet it may be that I read them as an intellectual treat, and prefer
them to thoughtful books on other subjects, because they deal with a
study which I am a little more conversant with than with history,
science, &c.

'Besides, I do see that we have, many of us, very vague notions of
the meaning of terms which we use, and I see that I must be prepared
(I speak for myself) to expect that a clergyman may not with impunity
use a language wanting in definiteness and precision. It is possible
that men do too passively receive hereditary and conventional
opinions which never have a living reality to them. But this, you
know, I do not confound with the humble submission to authoritative
teaching, given upon authority, to supersede the necessity of every
person investigating for himself the primary grounds of his religious
convictions.'

It is worth noting how the Bishop submits his reading to his father's
approval, as when he was a young boy. Alas! no more such letters of
comfort and counsel would be exchanged. This one could hardly have
been received by that much-loved father.

Preparations for the voyage were going on; but the 'Dunedin,' the
only vessel to be procured, at best a carthorse to a racer compared
with the 'Southern Cross,' was far from being in a satisfactory
state, as appears in a note of 3rd of May to the Bishop of
Wellington:--

'Here we are still. The only vessel that I could make any
arrangement about not yet returned, and known to be in such a state
that the pumps were going every two hours. I have not chartered her,
but only agreed with the owner a month ago nearly that I would take
her at a certain sum per day, subject to divers conditions about
being caulked (which is all she wants, I have ascertained), being
provided with spare sails, spars, chronometer, boat, &c., and all
agreement to be off unless by a certain day (already past) she was in
a state satisfactory to Mr. Kerr. But there is, I fear, none other,
and I am in a difficulty.'

Of the same day is a letter to the Rev. Stephen Hawtrey:--

'Taurarua, Auckland: May 6, 1861.

'My dear Mr. Hawtrey,--I was highly pleased to receive a note from
you. Though I never doubt of the hearty sympathy and co-operation of
all Eton friends (how could you do so with such an annual
subscription list?), yet it is very pleasant and more than pleasant
to be reminded by word or by letter that prayers and wishes are being
offered up for Melanesia by many good men throughout the world.

'I should like to send a special appeal for a Mission Vessel by the
next mail. We cannot get on without one. Vessels built for freight
are to the "Southern Cross" as a cart-horse to a thoroughbred steed,
and we must have some vessel which can do the work quickly among the
multitude of the isles, and many other reasons there are which we
seamen only perhaps can judge fully, which make it quite essential to
the carrying on this peculiar Mission that we should have a vessel of
a peculiar kind.

'Tagalana, from Mota (Sugar Loaf Island), in the Banks Archipelago,
is, I think, likely by God's great mercy to become the first-fruits
of that cluster of islands unto Christ. He is here for the third
time; and I have infinite comfort in seeing the earnestness of his
character, and the deep sense of what he was, and what he is going to
be, so truly realised.

'He is now so unlike what still his people are, so bright and open in
manner, and all who see him say, "What is come to the lad, his manner
and very appearance so changed!" "Clothed," thank God, he is, "and
in his right mind," soon to sit, if not already seated, at the feet
of Christ. You may, if you think fit, let your thoughts centre more
especially in him. He, of all who have come into my hands absolutely
stark naked and savage, gives now the greatest ground for hope and
thanksgiving. I shall (D.V.) think of all your dear friends
assembled in your church and house on St. Barnabas Day. May God
bless and reward you all for your work of charity to Melanesia!

'Very sincerely yours,

'J. C. PATTESON, Missionary Bishop.

'P.S.--I hope to baptize that dear boy Tagalana on his own island in
the course of the winter. I should wish to make the service as
impressive as possible, in the presence of as many islanders as I can
bring to the spot, under the shadow of a mighty banyan tree, and
above the sparkling waves of the great Pacific.'