Books: Life of John Coleridge Patteson

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

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'It is sometimes a consequence of our national self-conceit,
sometimes of want of thought, that no consideration is shown to the
characteristic native way of regarding things. But Christianity is a
universal religion, and assimilates and interpolates into its system
all that is capable of regeneration and sanctification anywhere.

'Before long I hope to get something more respectable in the way of a
report printed and circulated. It seems unreasonable to say so, but
really I have very little time that I can spare from directly
Melanesian work, what with school, translations, working out
languages, and (thank God) the many, many hours spent in quiet
interviews with Melanesians of all ages and islands, who come to have
private talks with me, and to tell me of their thoughts and feelings.
These are happy hours indeed. I must end. Always, my dear friend,
affectionately and sincerely yours,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

The readmission thus mentioned was by the imposition of hands, when
the penitent was again received, and his conduct ever since has
proved his repentance true.

February brought Mr. and Mrs. Palmer to their new home, and carried
away Mr. Codrington for a holiday. The budget of letters sent by
this opportunity contained a remarkable one from young Atkin. Like
master, like scholar:-

'February 24, 1869.

'My dear Mother,--You must not think about my coming back; I may have
to do it, but if I do, it will seem like giving up the object of my
life. I did not enter upon this work with any enthusiasm, and it is
perhaps partly from that cause that I am now so attached to it that
little short of necessity would take me away; my own choice, I think,
never. I know it is much harder for you than for me. I wish I could
lighten it to you, but it cannot be. It is a great deal more self-
denial for you to spare me to come away than for me to come away.
You must think, like David, "I will not offer unto the Lord my God of
that which doth cost me nothing." If you willingly give Him what you
prize most, however worthless the gift may be, He will prize it for
the willingness with which it is given. If it had been of my own
choosing that I came away, I should often blame myself for having
made a selfish choice in not taking harder and more irksome work
nearer home, but it came to me without choosing. I can only be
thankful that God has been so good to me.'

Well might the Bishop write to the father, 'I thank you in my heart
for Joe's promise.'

How exactly his own spirit, in simple, unconscious self-abnegation
and thorough devotion to the work. How it chimes in with this,
written on the self-same morning to the Bishop of Lichfield:-

'St. Matthias Day, 6.45 A.M., 1869.

My dear Bishop,--You do not doubt that I think continually of you,
yet I like you to have a line from me to-day. We are just going into
Chapel, altering our usual service to-day that we may receive the
Holy Communion with special remembrance of my Consecration and
special prayer for a blessing on the Mission. There is much to be
thankful for indeed, much also that may well make the retrospect of
the last eight years a somewhat sad and painful one as far as I am
myself concerned. It does seem wonderful that good on the whole is
done. But everything is wonderful and full of mystery....

'It is rather mean of me, I fear, to get out of nearly all troubles
by being here. Yet it seems to me very clear that the special work
of the Mission is carried on more conveniently (one doesn't like to
say more successfully) here, and my presence or absence is of no
consequence when general questions are under discussion....

'Your very affectionate

'J. C. PATTESON.'

The same mail brought a letter to Miss Mackenzie, with much valuable
matter on Mission work:-

'February 26, 1869.

'Dear Miss Mackenzie,--I have just read your letter to me of April
1867, which I acknowledged, rather than answered, long ago.

'I can't answer it as it deserves to be answered now. I think I have
already written about thirty-five letters to go by this mail, and my
usual work seldom leaves me a spare hour.

'But I am truly thankful for the hopes that seem to show themselves
through the mists, in places where all Christian men must feel so
strong an interest. I do hope to hear that the new Bishopric may
soon be founded, on which Mr. Robertson and you and others have so
set your hearts. That good man! I often think of him, and hope soon
to send him, through you, £10 from our Melanesian offertory.

'You know we have, thank God, thirty-nine baptized Melanesians here,
of whom fifteen are communicants, and one, George Sarawia, a
clergyman. He was ordained on December 20.

'There are many little works usually going ons which I don't consider
it fair to reckon among the regular industrial work of the Mission.
I pay the young men and lads and boys small sums for such things, and
I think it right to teach the elder ones the use of money by giving
them allowances, out of which they buy their clothing, &c., when
necessary, all under certain regulations. I say this that you may
know that our weekly offertory is not a sham. No one knows what they
give, or whether they give or not. A Melanesian takes the offertory
bason, and they give or not as they please. I take care that such
moneys as are due to them shall be given in 3d., 4d., and 6d. pieces.

'Last year our offertory rather exceeded £40, and it is out of this
that my brother will now pay you £10 for the Mackenzie fund. I write
all this because you will like to think that some of this little
offertory comes bond fide from Melanesians.

'...You take me to mean, I hope, that Christianity is the religion
for mankind at large, capable of dealing with the spiritual and
bodily needs of man everywhere.

'It is easy for us now to say that some of the early English
Missions, without thinking at all about it, in all probability,
sought to impose an English line of thought and religion on Indians
and Africans. Even English dress was thought to be almost essential,
and English habits, &c., were regarded as part of the education of
persons converted through the agency of English Missions. All this
seems to be burdening the message of the Gospel with unnecessary
difficulties. The teacher everywhere, in England or out of it, must
learn to discriminate between essentials and non-essentials. It
seems to me self-evident that the native scholar must be educated up
to the highest point that is possible, and that unless one is
(humanly speaking) quite sure that he can and will reproduce
faithfully the simple teaching he has received, he ought not to
teach, much less to be ordained.

'All our elder lads and girls here teach the younger ones, and we
know what they teach. Their notes of our lessons are brought to me,
books full of them, and there I see what they know; for if they can
write down a plain account of facts and doctrines, that is a good
test of their having taken in the teaching. George Sarawia's little
essay on the doctrine of the Communion is to me perfectly
satisfactory. It was written without my knowledge. I found it in
one of his many note-books accidentally.

'As for civilisation, they all live entirely with us, and every
Melanesian in the place, men and women, boys and girls, three times a
day take their places with all of us in hall, and use their knives
and forks, plates, cups and saucers (or, for the passage, one's
pannikins) just as we do. George and two others, speaking for
themselves and their wives, have just written out, among other
things, in a list which I told them to make out: plates, cups,
saucers, knives, forks, spoons, tubs, saucepans, kettles, soap,
towels, domestic things for washing, ironing, &c.

'The common presents that our elder scholars take or send to their
friends include large iron pots for cooking, clothing, &c. They
build improved houses, and ask for small windows, &c., to put in
them, boxes, carpet bags for their clothes, small writing desks,
note-books, ink, pens. They keep their best clothes very carefully,
and on Sundays and great days look highly respectable. And for years
we know no instance of a baptized Melanesian throwing aside his
clothing when taking his holiday at home.

'As far as I can see my way to any rule in the matter, it is this:
all that is necessary to secure decency, propriety, cleanliness,
health, &c., must be provided for them. This at once involves
alteration of the houses, divisions, partitions. People who can read
and write, and cut out and sew clothes, must have light in their
houses. This involves a change of the shape and structure of the
hut. They can't sit in clean clothes on a dirty floor, and they
can't write, or eat out of plates and use cups, &c., without tables
or benches, and as they don't want to spend ten hours in sleep or
idle talk, they must have lamps for cocoa-nut and almond oil.

'These people are not taught to adopt these habits by word of mouth.
They live with us and do as we do. Two young married women are
sitting in my room now. I didn't call them in, nor tell them what to
do. "We didn't quite understand what you said last night." "Well, I
have written it out,--there it is." They took, as usual, the MS.,
sat down, just as you or anyone would do, at the table to read it,
and are now making their short notes of it. Anyone comes in and out
at any time, when not at school, chapel, or work, just as they
please. We each have our own sitting-room, which is in this sense
public property, and of course they fall into our ways.

'There is perhaps no such thing as teaching civilisation by word of
command, nor religion either. The sine qua non for the missionary--
religious and moral character assumed to exist--is the living with
his scholars as children of his own. And the aim is to lift them up,
not by words, but by the daily life, to the sense of their capacity
for becoming by God's grace all that we are, and I pray God a great
deal more; not as literary men or scholars, but as Christian men and
women, better suited than we are for work among their own people.
"They shall be saved even as we." They have a strong sense of and
acquiescence in, their own inferiority. If we treat them as
inferiors, they will always remain in that position of inferiority.

'But Christ humbled Himself and became the servant and minister that
He might make us children of God and exalt us.

'It is surely very simple, but if we do thus live among them, they
must necessarily accept and adopt some of our habits. Our Lord led
the life of a poor man, but He raised His disciples to the highest
pitch of excellence by His Life, His Words, and His Spirit, the
highest that man could receive and follow. The analogy is surely a
true one. And exclusiveness, all the pride of race must disappear
before such considerations.

'But it is not the less true that He did not make very small demands
upon His disciples, and teach them and us that it needs but little
care and toil and preparation to be a Christian and a teacher of
Christianity. The direct contrary to this is the truth.

'The teacher's duty is to be always leading on his pupils to higher
conceptions of their work in life, and to a more diligent performance
of it. How can he do this if he himself acquiesces in a very
imperfect knowledge and practice of his duty?

'"And yet the mass of mediaeval missionaries could perhaps scarce
read." That may be true, but that was not an excellence but a
defect, and the mass of the gentry and nobility could not do so much.
They did a great work then. It does not follow that we are to
imitate their ignorance when we can have knowledge.

'But I am wasting your time and mine.

'Yours very truly,

'J. C. PATTESON.

'P.S.--George and his wife and child, Charles and his wife, Benjamin
and his wife, will live together at Mota on some land I have bought.
A good wooden house is to be put up by us this winter (D.V.) with one
large room for common use, school, &c., and three small bed-rooms
opening on to a verandah. One small bed-room at the other end which
any one, two or three of us English folks can occupy when at Mota. I
dare say, first and last, this house will cost seventy or eighty
pounds.

'Then we hope to have everything that can be sown and planted with
profit in a tropical climate, first-class breed of pigs, poultry,
&c., so that all the people may see that such things are not
neglected. These things will be given away freely-settings of eggs,
young sows, seeds, plants, young trees, &c. All this involves
expense, quite rightly too, and after all, I dare say that dear old
George will cost about a sixth or an eighth of what we English
clergymen think necessary. I dare say £25 per annum will cover his
expenses.'

On Easter Sunday the penitent was readmitted to the Lord's Table. A
happy letter followed:-

'Easter Tuesday, 1869.

'My dearest Sisters,--Another opportunity of writing. I will only
say a word about two things. First, our Easter and the Holy Week
preceding it; secondly, how full my mind has been of Mr. Keble, on
his two anniversaries, Holy Thursday and March 29. And I have read
much of the "Christian Year," and the two letters I had from him I
have read again, and looked at the picture of him, and felt helped by
the memory of his holy saintly life, and I dared to think that it
might be that by God's great mercy in Christ, I might yet know him
and other blessed Saints in the Life to come.

'Our Holy Week was a calm solemn season. All the services have long
been in print. Day by day in school and chapel we followed the holy
services and acts of each day, taking Ellicott's "Historical
Lectures" as a guide.

'Each evening I had my short sermonet, and we sought to deepen the
impressions made evidently upon our scholars by whatever could make
it a real matter of life and death to them and us. Then came Good
Friday and Easter Eve, during which the Melanesians with Mr. Brooke
were busily engaged in decorating the Chapel with fronds of tree-
ferns, bamboo, arums, and oleander blossoms.

'Then, at 7 A.M. on Easter Morning, thirty of us--twenty-one, thank
God, being Melanesians--met in Chapel for the true Easter Feast.

'Then, at 11 A.M., how we chanted Psalms ii, cxiii, cxiv, and Hymn,
and the old Easter Hallelujah hymn to the old tune with Mota words.
Then at 7 P.M. Psalms cxviii, cxlviii, to joyful chants, and singing
Easter and other hymns.

'So yesterday and so to-day. The short Communion Service in the
morning with hymn, and in the evening we chant Psalm cxviii, and sing
out our Easter hymn. Ah well! it makes my heart very full. It is
the season of refreshing, perhaps before more trails.

'Dear U--- was with us again on Easter morn, a truly repentant young
man, I verily believe, feeling deeply what in our country districts
is often not counted a sin at all to be a foul offence against his
Father and Saviour and Sanctifier.

'Six were there for their first Communion, among them honest old
Stephen Taroniara, the first and only communicant of all the Solomon
Isles--of all the world west of Mota, or east of any of the Bishop of
Labuan's communicants. Think of that! What a blessing! What a
thought for praise and hope and meditation!

'I sit in my verandah in the moonlight and I do feel happy in spite
of many thoughts of early days which may well make me feel unhappy.

'But I do feel an almost overpowering sensation of thankfulness and
peace and calm tranquil happiness, which I know cannot last long. It
would not, I suppose, be good: anyhow it will soon be broken by some
trial which may show much of my present state to be a delusion. Yet
I like to tell you what I think, and I know you will keep it to
yourselves.

'Good-bye, and all Easter blessings be with you.

'Your loving brother,

'J. C. PATTESON '

The island voyage was coming near, and was to be conducted, on a
larger scale, after the intermission of a whole year. Mr. Brooke was
to make some stay at Florida, Mr. Atkin at Wango in Bauro, and the
Bishop himself was to take the party who were to commence the
Christian village at Mota, while Mr. Codrington and Mr. Bice remained
in charge of twenty-seven Melanesians. The reports of the effects of
the labour traffic were becoming a great anxiety, and not only the
Fiji settlers, but those in Queensland were becoming concerned in it.

The 'Southern Cross' arrived in June, but the weather was so bad
that, knocking about outside the rocks, she sustained some damage,
and could not put her freight ashore for a week. However, on the
24th she sailed, and put down Mr. Atkin at Wango, the village in
Bauro where the Bishop had stayed two years previously.

Mr. Atkin gives a touching description of Taroniara's arrival:--

'Stephen was not long in finding his little girl, Paraiteka. She was
soon in his arms. The old fellow just held her up for the Bishop to
see, and then turned away with her, and I saw a handkerchief come out
privately and brush quickly across his eyes, and in a few minutes he
came back to us.'

The little girl's mother, for whose sake Taroniara had once refused
to return to school, had been carried off by a Maran man; and as the
heathen connection had been so slight, and a proper marriage so
entirely beyond the ideas of the native state, it was thought
advisable to leave this as a thing of heathen darkness, and let him
select a girl to be educated into becoming fit for his true wife.

Besides Stephen, Joseph Wate and two other Christian lads were with
Mr. Atkin, and he made an expedition of two days' visit to Wate's
father. At Ulava he found that dysentery had swept off nearly all
the natives, and he thought these races, even while left to
themselves, were dying out. 'But,' adds the brave man in his
journal, 'I will never, I hope, allow that because these people are
dying out, it is of no use or a waste of time carrying the Gospel to
them. It is, I should rather say, a case where we ought to be the
more anxious to gather up the fragments.'

So he worked on bravely, making it an object, if he could do no more,
to teach enough to give new scholars a start in the school, and to
see who were most worth choosing there. He suffered a little loss of
popularity when it was found that he was not a perpetual fountain of
beads, hatchets, and tobacco, but he did the good work of effecting a
reconciliation between Wango and another village named Hane, where he
made a visit, and heard a song in honour of Taroniara. He was
invited to a great reconciliation feast; which he thus describes,
beginning with his walk to Hane by short marches:--

'We waited where we overtook Taki, until the main body from Wango
came up. They charged past in fine style, looking very well in their
holiday dress, each with his left hand full of spears, and one
brandished in the right. It looked much more like a fighting party
than a peace party; but it is the custom to make peace with the whole
army, to convince the enemy that it is only for his accommodation
that they are making peace, and not because they are afraid to fight
him. It was about 12 o'clock when we reached the rendezvous. There
was a fine charge of all, except a dozen of the more sedate of the
party; they rattled their spears, and ran, and shouted, and jumped,
even crossing the stream which was the neutral ground. We halted by
the stream for some time; at last some Hane people came to their
side; there was a charge again almost up to them, but they took it
coolly. At about 10 o'clock the whole body of the Hane men came, and
two or three from Wango went across to them. I was tired of waiting,
and asked Taki if I should go. "Yes, and tell them to bring the
money," he said.

'While I was wading through the stream, the Hane men gathered up and
advanced; I turned back with them. They rushed, brandishing their
spears, to within ten or twelve paces of the Wango party, who had
joined into a compact body, and so seated themselves as soon as they
saw the movement.

'Kara, a Hane man, made his speech, first running forwards and
backwards, shaking his spear all the time; and at the end, he took
out four strings of Makira money, and gave it to Taki. Hane went
back across the stream; and Wango went through the same performance,
Taki making the speech. He seemed a great orator, and went on until
one standing by him said, "That's enough," when he laughed, and gave
over. He gave four strings of money, two shorter than the others,
and the shortest was returned to him, I don't know why; but in this
way the peace was signed.'

After nineteen days, during which the Bishop had been cruising about,
Mr. Atkin and his scholars were picked up again, and likewise Mr.
Brooke, who had been spending ten days at Florida with his scholars,
in all thirty-five; and then ensued a very tedious passage to the
Banks Islands, for the vessel had been crippled by the gale off
Norfolk Island, and could not be pressed; little canvas was carried,
and the weather was unfavourable.

However, on September 6, Mota was safely reached; and great was the
joy, warm the welcome of the natives, who eagerly assisted in
unloading the vessel, through storms of rain and surf.

The old station house was in entire decay; but the orange and lemon
trees were thirty feet high, though only the latter in bearing.

The new village, it was agreed, should bear the name of Kohimarama,
after the old home in New Zealand, meaning, in Maori, 'Focus of
Light.' After landing the goats, the Bishop, Mr. Atkin, and five
more crossed to Valua. They were warmly welcomed at Ara, where their
long absence had made the natives fancy they must all be dead. The
parents of Henry, Lydia, and Edwin were the first to approach the
boat, eager to hear of their children left in Norfolk Island; and the
mother walked up the beach with her arm round Mr. Atkin's neck. But
here it appeared that the vessels of the labour traffic had come to
obtain people to work in the cotton plantations in Queensland, and
that they had already begun to invite them in the name of the Bishop,
whose absence they accounted for by saying his ship had been wrecked,
he had broken his leg, he had gone to England, and sent them to fetch
natives to him. No force had been used as yet, but there was evident
dread of them; and one vessel had a Mota man on board, who persuaded
the people to go to Sydney. About a hundred natives had been taken
from the islands of Valua, Ara, and Matlavo, and from Bligh Island
twenty-three were just gone, but Mota's inaccessibility had
apparently protected it. It will be remembered that it has a high
fortification of coral all round the beach, with but one inconvenient
entrance, and that the people are little apt to resort to canoes.
This really has hitherto seemed a special Providence for this nucleus
of Christianity.

They spent the night at Ara, making a fire on the sandy beach, where
they boiled their chocolate, and made gravy of some extract of meat
to season their yam, and supped in public by firelight, reclining
upon mats. Afterwards they went up to the Ogamal, or barrack tent:
it was not an inviting bed-chamber, being so low that they could only
kneel upright in it, and so smoky that Stephen remarked, 'We shall be
cooked ourselves if we stay here,' proving an advance in
civilisation. One of the private houses was equally unattractive,
and the party slept on the beach.

The next morning they started to walk round the island: taking two
cork beds, a portmanteau and a basket of provisions; stopping
wherever a few people were found, but it was a thinly peopled place,
and the loss of the men carried off was sensibly felt.

One village had had a fight with a boat's crew from Sydney. They
made no secret of it, saying that they would not have their men taken
away; and they had been sharp enough to pour water into the guns
before provoking the quarrel.

Further on there was a closer population, where the Bishop was
enthusiastically welcomed, and an Ogamal was found, making a good
shelter for the night. Then they returned to Ara, where Mr. Atkin
notes, in the very centre of the island, a curious rock, about 200
feet high, and on the top, 20 or 30 feet from the nearest visible
soil, a she-oak stump, and two more green and flourishing a little
below. The rock was of black scoriae, too hot in the middle of the
day to sit upon, and near it was a pool of water. 'Such water, so
rotten.' The water used by the visitors had been brought from
Auckland. The natives do not trouble water much, I don't think they
ever drink it, and they certainly don't look as if they ever washed.

On the following day they recrossed to Vanua Lava, where they spent a
quiet calm Sunday in the vessel, landing in the afternoon to see
Fisher Young's grave, which they found well kept and covered with a
pretty blue creeper.

The next Sunday they spent at Kohimarama: beginning with Celebration
at 7.30 A.M., and in the afternoon making the circuit of the island,
about ten miles. In one place Mr. Atkin bent over the edge of the
natural sea wall, and saw the sea breaking 150 or 200 feet below!