Books: Life of John Coleridge Patteson

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

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'So some said, "Mortify, worry the body, which is essentially and
inherently evil." "No," said others, "the sins of the body don't
hurt the mind; the two things are distinct, don't react on one
another." (St. Paul deals with all this in the Colossians.) The
Incarnation is the solution or the culmination of the mystery.

'What a prose! but I meant, that people so often use words as if the
use of a word was equivalent to the knowledge of the thought which,
in the mind of an accurate thinker, accompanies the utterance of the
word.

'I should think that three-fourths of what we clergymen say is
unintelligible to the mass of the congregation. We assume an
acquaintance with the Bible and Prayer-book, thought, and a knowledge
of the meaning of words which few, alas! possess. We must begin,
then, with the little ones; as far as I see, all children are apt to
fail at the point when they ought to be passing from merely employing
the memory (in learning by heart, e.g., the Catechism) by exercising
the reasoning and thinking faculty.

'"Well now, you have said that very well, now let us think what it
means."

'How well Dr. Pusey says, in his Sermons, "Not altogether intentional
deliberate vice, but thoughtlessness is destroying souls."

'I run on at random, dear Sophy, hoping to give you one and a half
hour's occupation on a sick bed or couch, and because, as you say,
this is the only converse we are likely to have on earth.

'I think I am too exclusively fond of this reading, very little else
interests me. I take up a theological book as a recreation, which
is, perhaps, hardly reverent, and may narrow the mind; but even
Church history is not very attractive to me. I like Jackson and
Hooker, and some of the moderns, of whom I read a good many; and I
lose a good deal of time in diving into things too deep by half for
me, while I forget or don't learn simple things.

'All this modern rage for reviews, serials, magazines, I can't abide.
My mind is far too much distracted already, and that fragmentary mode
of reading is very bad for many people, I am sure.

'Naturally enough at forty-two years of age ninety-nine hundredths of
the "lighter" books seem to me mere rubbish. They come to me
occasionally. However, there are younger ones here, so it isn't
sheer waste to receive such donations: they soon get out of my room.
Not, mind you, that I think this the least evidence of my being
wiser, or employing my time more carefully than other folk. Only I
want you to know what I am, and what I think.

'Pena has sent me a nice book which I wanted: 1st. Because I have a
great personal liking for Shairp, a simple-minded, affectionate man,
with much poetical feeling and good taste-a kindly-natured man. 2nd.
Because he writes in an appreciative kind of way, and is the very
opposite of .... whom I can't stand with his insufferable self-
sufficiency, and incapacity for appreciating the nobler, simpler,
more generous natures who are unlike him. Well! that is fierce. But
there is a school of men whom I can't stand. Their nature repels me,
and I hardly wish to like them; which is an evil feeling.

'I shall add a line in a few days.

'My very dearest love to Aunty--dear Aunty; and if I can't write to
Pena, give her my best love and thanks for her book.

'Dear Sophy, your loving Cousin,

'J. C. P.'

Two other letters, one to each of the sisters, were in progress at
this time. To Joanna, who had been grieved for the poor girl whose
transgression had occurred in the beginning of the year, he says:--

'About Semtingvat, you must be comforted about her. For a poor child
who, two short years before, had assumed as a matter of course that a
woman simply existed to be a man's slave in every kind of way, her
fault could not, I think, be regarded as very great. Indeed, there
was much comfort from the first; and since that time they not only
have gone on well, but I do believe that their religious character
has been much strengthened by the kind of revelation they then
obtained of what Christianity really does mean. Anyhow, all notice
the fact that U---- has improved very much, and they all sing
Semtingvat's praises. I had no difficulty about marrying them after
a little while. I spoke openly in chapel to everyone about it.
Their wedding was not as other weddings--no festivity, no dressing of
the chapel, no feast, no supper and fun and holiday. It was
perfectly understood to be in all respects different from a bright,
happy wedding. But it was quite as much for the sake of all, for the
sake of enforcing the new teaching about the sanctity of marriage,
that we made so very much of what (as men speak) was under the
circumstances a comparatively light fault, less than an impure
thought on the part of such as have been taught their duty from their
childhood.

'I am almost confused with the accounts from England. All seems in a
state of turmoil and confusion; all the old landmarks being swept
away by a deluge of new opinions as to all matters civil and
ecclesiastical. I don't think that we ought to refuse to see these
signs of a change in men's mode of regarding great political and
religious questions. A man left high and dry on the sand-bank of his
antiquated notions will do little good to the poor folk struggling in
the sea way, though he is safer as far as he is himself concerned by
staying where he is than by plunging in to help them.

'It is a critical time in every sense. Men and women can hardly be
indifferent; they must be at the pains of making up their minds. As
for us clergy, everywhere but in Norfolk Island, we must know that
people are thinking of matters which all were content a few years ago
to keep back in silence, and that they expect us to speak about them.
How thankful I am that we fortunate ones are exempt from this. Yet
in my way I, too, try to think a bit about what is going on; and I
don't want to be too gloomy, or to ignore some good in all this
ferment in men's minds. It is better than stagnation and indolent
respectability. There is everywhere a consciousness of a vast work
to be done, and sincere efforts are made to do it. I suppose that is
a fact; many, many poor souls are being taught and trained for heaven
through all these various agencies which seem to a distant and idle
critic to be so questionable in some ways.

'Of old one thought that the sober standard of Church of England
divinity was the rule to which all speculations should be reduced;
and one thought that Pearson, Hooker, Waterland, Jeremy Taylor also,
and Andrewes, and Bull, and Jackson, and Barrow, &c., stood for the
idea of English divinity. Now we are launched upon a wider sea.
Catholic usage and doctrine take the place of Church of England
teaching and practice; rightly, I dare say, only it may be well to
remember that men who can perhaps understand a good deal of the
English divines, can hardly be supposed to be equally capable of
understanding the far wider and more difficult range of
ecclesiastical literature of all ages and all writers.

'Everyone knows and is struck by the fact that passages of old
writers are continually quoted by men of quite different schools of
thought in favour of their own (different) views. Clearly they can't
both understand the mind and spirit of these writers; and the truth
is, isn't it, that only they who by very long study, and from a large
share of the true historical imagination, sympathise with and really
enter into the hearts and minds of these writers, are competent to
deal with and decide upon such wide and weighty matters?

'It seems to me as if men who are in no sense divines, theologians,
or well read, speak strongly and use expressions and teach doctrines
which, indeed, only very few men should think of uttering or
teaching.

'And yet, don't think I wish to be only an exclusive Anglican,
without sympathy for East or West; still less that I wish to ignore
the Catholic Church of the truly primitive times; but I take the
real, so to say, representative teaching of the Church of England to
be the divinity of the truly primitive Church, to which our
formularies and reformers appeal. I know, moreover, that our dear
Father accepted Jackson and Waterland; and I don't feel disposed to
disparage them, as it is the fashion to do nowadays. Few men, in
spite of occasional scholastic subtlety, go so deep in their search
right down into principles as Jackson. Few men so analyse, dissect,
search out the precise, exact meaning of words and phrases, so carry
you away from vague generalities to accurate defined meanings and
doctrines. He had an honest and clear brain of his own, though he
was a tremendous book-worm; and I think he is a great authority,
though I know about him and his antagonism to Rome. I don't fear to
weary you by this kind of talk; but don't I wish I could hear three
or four of our very best men discuss these points thoroughly. In all
sincerity I believe that I should be continually convinced of error,
shallow judgments, and ignorance. But then I should most likely get
real light on some points where I would fain have it.'

To this unconscious token of humility, another must be added, from
the same letter, speaking of two New Zealand friends:--'To me she has
always been kindness itself, with her husband overrating me to such
an amusing extent that I don't think it hurt even my vanity.'

Full preparation was going on for the ordination, of the two priests.

No special account of the actual service seems to have been written;
and the first letter of January was nearly absorbed by the tidings of
the three Episcopal appointments of the close of 1869, the Oxford
choice coming near to Bishop Patteson by his family affections, and
the appointment to Exeter as dealing with his beloved county at home.

And now, before turning the page, and leaving the period that had, on
the whole, been full of brightness, will be the best time to give Mr.
Codrington's account of the manner of life at St. Barnabas, while the
Bishop was still in his strength:--

'Certainly one of the most striking points to a stranger would have
been the familiar intercourse between the Bishop and his boys, not
only the advanced scholars, but the last and newest comers. The
kindly and friendly disposition of the Melanesians leads to a great
deal of free and equal familiarity even where there are chiefs, and
the obsequious familiarity of which one hears in India is here quite
unknown. Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether other Melanesians
live in the same familiarity with their missionaries--e.g., Carry,
wife of Wadrokala, writes thus:--"I tremble very much to write to
you, I am not fit to write to you, because, does an ant know how to
speak to a cow? We at Nengone would not speak to a great man like
you; no, our language is different to a chief and a missionary."

'Making every allowance, and, looking at the matter from within, that
perfect freedom and affectionateness of intercourse that existed with
him seems very remarkable.

'The secret of it is not far to seek. It did not lie in any singular
attractiveness of his manner only, but in the experience that
everyone attracted gained that he sought nothing for himself; he was
entirely free from any desire to be admired, or love of being thought
much of, as he was from love of commanding for the sake of being
obeyed. The great temptations to missionaries among savage people,
as it seems, are to self-esteem, from a comparison of themselves with
their European advantages and the natives among whom they live; and
to a domineering temper, because they find an obedience ready, and it
is delightful to be obeyed. Bishop Patteson's natural disposition
was averse to either, and the principles of missionary work which he
took up suited at once his natural temper and his religious
character. He was able naturally, without effort, to live as a
brother among his black brothers, to be the servant of those he lived
to teach. The natural consequence of this was, the unquestioned
authority which he possessed over those with whom he lived on equal
terms. No one could entertain the idea that anything was ordered
from a selfish motive, for any advantage to himself, or that anything
was forbidden without some very good reason. This familiarity with a
superior, which is natural with Melanesians, is accompanied,
especially in Banks Islanders, with a very great reserve about
anything that touches the feelings or concerns character. Thus a
boy, who would use the Bishop's room as if it were his own, coming in
unasked, to read or write, or sit by the fire there, would with very
great difficulty get over the physical trembling, which their
language implies, that would come upon him, if he wished to speak
about his own feelings on religious matters, or to tell him something
which he well knew it was his duty to make known. When one knows how
difficult it is to them to speak openly, their openness with the
Bishop is more appreciated, though he indeed often enough complained
of their closeness with him. The real affection between the boys and
the Bishop required no acquaintance with the character of either to
discern, and could surprise no one who knew anything of the history
of their relation one to another. It is well known that he wished
his elder boys to stand in the place of the sixth form of a public
school; and to some extent they did so, but being mostly Banks
Islanders, and Banks Islanders being peculiarly afraid of interfering
with one another, his idea was never reached. Still no doubt a good
deal is attained when they arrive rather at the position of pupil-
teacher in a National School; and this at least they occupy very
satisfactorily, as is shown by the success with which so large a
school has been carried on since the Bishop's death. No doubt the
Ordination of more from among their number would go far to raise them
in their own estimation.

'In truth, the carrying out of the principle of the equality of black
and white in a missionary work, which is the principle of this
mission, is very difficult, and cannot be done in all particulars in
practice by anyone, and by most people, unless brought up to it,
probably not at all. Nevertheless, it is practicable, and, as we
think, essential, and was in all main points carried out by Bishop
Patteson. But the effect of this must not be exaggerated. It is
true that we have no servants, yet a boy regularly brought water,
&c., for the Bishop, and a woman regularly swept and cleaned his
rooms, and received regular wages for it. The Bishop never cooked
his dinner or did any such work except upon occasions on which a
bachelor curate in England does much of the kind, as a matter of
course. The extraordinary thing is that it is, as he at any rate
supposed, the custom in other missions to make scholars and converts
servants as a matter of course; and the difference lies not in the
work which is done or not done by the one party or the other, but in
the social relation of equality which subsists between them, and the
spirit in which the work is asked for and rendered.

'The main thing to notice about the Bishop is that there was nothing
forced or unnatural in his manner of taking a position of equality,
and equality as real in any way as his superiority in another.
Consequently, there was never the least loss of dignity or authority
on his part.

'There never was visible the smallest diminution of freedom and
affection in the intercourse that went on. It required some
knowledge in one respect to appreciate the extraordinary facility
with which he conversed with boys from various islands. A stranger
would be struck with his bright smiles and sweet tones as he would
address some little stranger who came into his room; but one who knew
a little of the languages alone could know with what extraordinary
quickness he passed from one language to another, talking to many
boys in their own language, but accommodating his tongue with
wonderful readiness to each in succession. It would be hard to say
how many languages he could speak; those which he spoke quite freely,
to my knowledge, were not so many: Mota, Bauro, Mahaga, and Nengone,
certainly; some others no doubt quite readily when among the people
who spoke them; and very many only with a small vocabulary which was
every instant being enlarged. It does not appear to me that his
scientific philological acquirements were extraordinary; but that his
memory for words giving him such a command of vocabulary, and so wide
a scope for comparison, and his accurate and delicate ear to catch
the sounds, and power of reproducing them, were altogether wonderful
and very rarely equalled. A man of his faculty of expression and
powers of mind could not speak like a native; he spoke better than a
native, than a native of Mota at least. That is that, although no
doubt he never was quite master of the little delicate points of Mota
scholarship, which no one not a native can keep quite right, and no
native can account for, yet his vocabulary was so large and accurate,
and his feeling of the native ways of looking at things and
representing them in words so true, that he spoke to them more
clearly and forcibly than even any native spoke, and with the power
of an educated mind controlling while following the native taste. He
was an enthusiast, no doubt, about these languages, and jealous of
their claim to be considered true language, and not what people
suppose them to be, the uncouth jargon of savages. I will only say
that his translations of some of the Psalms into Mota are as lofty in
their diction and as harmonious in their rhythm, in my estimation, as
anything almost I read in any language. This no doubt sounds
exaggerated, and must be taken only for what it is worth.

'It was probably in a great measure because his natural power of
acquiring languages was so extraordinary, and needed so very little
labour in him, that he did so very little to put on paper what he
knew of all those many tongues. All there is in print I have put
together. Besides this, he carried the same unfortunate way of
leaving off what he had begun into these notes on language also. In
the year '63-'64 he got printed a number of small grammatical papers
in almost all the languages he knew, because he felt he ought not to
subject them to the risk of being lost. Another reason why he did
not go into any laborious manuscript or printing work with the
various languages was, that he saw as time went on, first, that it
was so very uncertain what language would come in practice into
request; and, secondly, that one language would suffice for the use,
in practice, of all natives of a neighbourhood. For example, the
language of part of Mae (Three Hills), in the New Hebrides, was once
studied and well known. Nothing whatever came of the intercourse
with that island, once so constant, I don't know why, and now the
people themselves are destroyed almost, and hopes of doing them good
destroyed by the slave trade. And, secondly, the use of the Mota
language in our ordinary intercourse here has very much diminished
the need for any one's knowing a particular language beyond the
missionary who has charge of the boys who speak it. Thus the Bishop
rather handed over the language of Bauro to Mr. Atkin, of Florida to
Mr. Brooke, of Leper's Island to Mr. Price; and as the common
teaching of all boys who belonged to either of the principal groups
into which the school fell went on in Mota, there was no practical
use in the other tongues the Bishop knew, except in his voyages, and
in giving him more effectual powers of influencing those to whom he
could speak in their own tongue. Besides, he saw so clearly the
great advantage, on the one hand, of throwing together in every
possible way the boys from all the islands, which was much helped by
the use of one language, and, on the other hand, the natural tendency
in a group of boys from one island or neighbourhood to keep separate,
and of the teacher of a particular set to keep them separate with
himself, that, without saying much about it, he discouraged the
printing of other languages besides Mota, and in other ways kept them
rather in the background. How things would have arranged themselves
if Mota had not by circumstances come into such prominence I cannot
say, but the predominance of Mota came in with the internal
organisation of the Mission by Mr. Pritt. It is impossible for one
who knew Bishop Patteson intimately, and the later condition of the
Mission intimately, to lose sight for long of Mr. Pritt's influence
and his useful work.'

Perhaps this chapter can best be completed by the external testimony
of a visitor to Norfolk Island, given in a letter to the Editor of
the 'Australian Churchman':--

'Daily at 7 A.M. the bell rings for chapel about one minute, and all
hands promptly repair thither. In spite of the vast varieties of
language and dialect spoken by fifty or sixty human beings, collected
from twenty or thirty islets of the Pacific main, no practical
difficulty has been found in using the Mota as the general language
in Chapel and school, so that in a short time a congregation of
twenty languages are able to join in worship in the one Mota tongue,
more or less akin to all the rest, and a class of, say, nine boys,
speaking by nature five different languages, easily join in using the
one Mota language, just as a Frenchman, a German, a Russian, a Pole,
an Italian, and an Englishman, all meeting in the same cafe or
railway carriage, on the same glacier or mountain top, might
harmoniously agree to use the French language as their medium of
communication. So the service is conducted in Mota with one
exception only. The collect for the day is read in English, as a
brief allowable concession to the ears and hearts of the English
members of the Mission. The service consists of the greater part of
the Church of England Service translated. Some modifications have
been made to suit the course of religious instruction. The Psalms
are chanted and hymns sung in parts, and always in admirable tune, by
the congregation. Noteworthy are the perfect attention, the reverent
attitude, the hearty swing and unison of the little congregation, a
lesson, I felt with shame, to many of our white congregations.

'Immediately after service clinks out the breakfast bell, and, with
marvellous promptitude and punctuality, whites and blacks, lay and
clerical, are seen flocking to the mess-room. The whites sit at the
upper end of the table, but beyond the special privilege of tea, all
fare alike, chiefly on vegetables: yams or sweet potatoes, and
carrots or vegetable marrows, as may suit the season, with plenty of
biscuit for more ambitious teeth, and plenty of milk to wash it down.
Soon afterwards comes school for an hour and a half. Then work for
the boys and men, planting yams, reaping wheat, mowing oats, fencing,
carting, building, as the call may be, only no caste distinction or
ordering about; it is not go and do that, but come and do this,
whether the leader be an ordained clergyman, a white farm bailiff, or
a white carpenter. This is noteworthy, and your readers will gain no
clear idea of the Mission if they do not seize this point, for it is
no matter of mere detail, but one of principle. The system is not
that of the ship or the regiment, of the farm or the manufactory of
the old country, but essentially of the family. It is not the
officer or master saying "Go" but the father or the brother saying
"Come." And to this, I firmly believe, is the hearty cheerful
following and merry work of the blacks chiefly due. At 1 P.M. is
dinner, much the same as breakfast. Meat, though not unknown, is the
weak point of the Mission dietary. In the afternoon, work. At 6,
tea. In the evening, class again for an hour or two; this evening
class being sometimes a singing lesson, heartily enjoyed by the
teacher. I forget precisely when the boys have to prepare matter
arising out of the lessons they have received viva voce.

'There are evening prayers, and bed-time is early. Noteworthy are
the happy conjunctions of perfect discipline with perfect jollity,
the marvellous attainment of a happy familiarity which does not
"breed contempt."

'I presume I need scarcely say to your readers that besides education
in reading, writing, and arithmetic, through the medium of the Mota
language, instruction in the Holy Scriptures and the most careful
explanations of their meaning and mutual relation, forms a main part
of the teaching given. The men and boys of the senior classes take
notes; notes not by order expressly to be inspected, but, so to say,
private notes for the aid of their memories; and from the translation
given to me by Bishop Patteson of some of these, I should say that
few, if any, of the senior class of an English Sunday School could
give anything like so close, and sometimes philosophical, an
explanation of Scripture, and that sometimes in remarkably few words.