Books: Life of John Coleridge Patteson

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Life of John Coleridge Patteson

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'And now what is to come? This move to Norfolk Island? Or what?"
Something," you say; "perhaps in time showing the Governor that the
Melanesians are not so very wild." But it is another Governor; and
so far from the Melanesians being wild, it is expressly on the ground
that the example of the school will be beneficial that I am asked to
go!

'Tell all who may care to know it about our St. Matthias' Day, I must
give myself the pleasure of writing one line to Mr. Keble. I won't
write many lest I weary him, dear good man. I like to look at his
picture, and have stuck the photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Keble which
Charlotte Yonge sent me into the side of it. How I value his prayers
and thoughts for us all!

'Your loving brother,

'J. C. P.

'P.S.--No terms of full communion between the Home and the Colonial
Church can be matter of Parliamentary legislation. It is the "One
Faith, One Lord," that binds us together; and as for regulating the
question of colonially ordained clergy ministering in English
dioceses, you had better equalise your own Church law first for
dealing with an Incumbent and a Curate.'

'Auckland: Tuesday in Holy Week.

'My dear Uncle,--I have long owed you a letter, but I have not
written because I have had an unusual time of distraction. Now, all
my things being on board the " Southern Cross," I am detained by a
foul wind. We can do nothing till it changes; and I am not sorry to
have a few quiet hours, though the thought of a more than usually
serious separation from the dear Primate and Mrs. Selwyn, Sir William
and Lady Martin, hangs over my head rather gloomily. Still I am
convinced, as far as I can be of such matters, that this move to
Norfolk Island is good for the Mission on the whole. It has its
drawbacks, as all plans have, but the balance is decidedly in favour
of Norfolk Island as against New Zealand. I have given reasons at
length for this opinion in letters to Joan and Fan, and also, I
think, to Charlotte Yonge, who certainly deserves to know all my
thoughts about it.

'But I may shortly state some of them, in case you may not have heard
them, because I should like this step to approve itself to your
mind:--

'1. Norfolk Island is 600 miles hearer to Melanesian islands than
Auckland, and not only nearer in actual distance, but the 600 miles
from Norfolk Island to Auckland are the cold and boisterous miles
that must be passed at the extremities of the voyages with no
intervening lands to call at and obtain a change for our large party
on board.

'2. The difficulty usually is to get westward when sailing from New
Zealand, by the North Cape of New Zealand, because the prevalent
winds are from the west. So that usually the passage to Norfolk
Island is a long-one.

'3. New Zealand is much to the east of Norfolk Island, and to go
from the Loyalty, New Hebrides, Banks, and Santa Cruz groups to New
Zealand, it is necessary to make a long stretch out to the N.E. (the
trades blowing from about S.E. by E.), standing down to S. on the
other tack. But Norfolk Island is almost due S. of other those
groups.

'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 circumstances 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 assume English Christianity (as something distinct I
mean from the doctrines of the Church of England), to be necessary;
much as so many people assume 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 encumber 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 fashion. 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 circumstances 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 class 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 assume some arbitrary dictate of a missionary
to be of equal authority and importance with a moral command of God,
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 wishing 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 pass 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 illustration 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 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."

'"How have you heard the Gospel?"

'"Because God sent you to us."

'"And now, listen. How are all your people still in ignorance to
hear it? What have I often told you about that?"

'Whereupon the scholars looked shy, and some said softly, "We must
teach them."

'"Yes, indeed you must!"

'And so the lesson ended with questioning them on the great duty and
privilege of prayer for God's Holy Spirit to give them both the will
and the power to do the work to which God is calling them.

'So we constantly tell them "God has already been very merciful to
you, in that He has called you out of darkness into His marvellous
light. He has enabled you to receive the knowledge of His will, and
to understand your relations to Him. He has taught you to believe in
Him, to pray to Him, to hope for salvation through the merits of His
Son's death and resurrection. He has made you feel something of the
power of His love, and has taught you the duty of loving Him and
serving your brother. He calls upon you now to rouse yourself to a
sense of your true position, to use the gifts which He has given you
to His glory and the good of your brethren. Don't suppose that you
are unable to do this. You are unable to do it, as you were unable
to believe and love Him by yourselves, but He gives you strength for
this very purpose that you may be able to do it. You can do it
through Christ, who strengtheneth you. Our fathers were not more
able to teach their people once than you to teach your people now!"

'We make no distinction whatever between English and Melanesian
members of the Mission as such. No Melanesian is excluded from any
office of trust. No classification is made of higher and lower kinds
of work, of work befitting a white man and work befitting a black
man. English and Melanesian scholars or teachers work together in
the school, printing-office, dairy, kitchen, farm. The senior
clergyman of the Mission labours most of all with his own hands at
the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is
contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone
should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag a black
boy.

'Young men and lads come to us and say, "Let me do that. I can't
write the languages, or do many things you or Mr. Pritt or Mr. Palmer
do, so let me scrub your floor, or brush your shoes, or fetch some
water." And of course we let them do so, for the doing it is
accompanied by no feeling of degradation in their minds; they have
seen us always doing these things, and not requiring them to do them
as if it were the natural work for them, because they are black, and
not proper for us, because we are white.

'Last night, a young man, sitting by the fire, said to the Bishop,
"They want you to stop with them in my land."

'"I wish with all my heart I could."

'"Yes, I know, you must go to so many places."

'"But they are different in your land now."

'"Oh! yes, they don't fight now as they used to do; they don't go
about armed now."

'"Well, that is a thing to be thankful for. What is the reason of
it, do you think? "

"Why they know about you, and see you now and then, and Henry
Tagalana talked to them, and I talked a little to them, and they
asked me about our ways here, and they want to learn."

'"Well, there are now five of you from your island, and you must try
hard to learn, that you may teach them, for remember you must do it,
if God spares your life."'

'During the year 1865 a great advance was made in the industrial
department of our work. About seventeen acres of land were taken in
hand and worked by Mr. Pritt, with the Melanesian lads. We have our
own dairy of thirteen cows, and, besides supplying the whole Mission
party, numbering in all seventy-seven persons, with abundance of
milk, we sell considerable quantities of butter. We grow, of course,
our own potatoes and vegetables, and maize, &c., for our cows. The
farm and dairy work affords another opportunity for teaching our
young people to acquire habits of industry.'

Cooking, farm, gardening, dairy-work, setting out the table, &c.,
were all honourable occupations, and of great importance in teaching
punctuality and regularity, and the various arts and decencies of
life to the youths, who were in time to implant good habits in their
native homes. Their natural docility made them peculiarly easy to
manage and train while in hand; the real difficulty was that their
life was so entirely different from their home, that there was no
guessing how deep the training went, and, on every voyage, some
fishes slipped through the meshes of the net, though some returned
again, and others never dropped from their Bishop's hands. But he
was becoming anxious to spare some of his scholars the trial of a
return to native life; and, as the season had been healthy, he
ventured on leaving twenty-seven pupils at St. Andrew's with Mr. and
Mrs. Pritt, among them George and Sarah Sarawia.