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

'I am having a real holiday. This place, Greenoaks, the really magnificent place of my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Mort, is lovely. The view of the harbour, with its land-locked bays, multitude of vessels, wooded heights, &c., is not to be surpassed; and somehow I don't disrelish handsome rooms and furniture and pictures and statues and endless real works of art in really good taste.

'One slips into these ways very readily. I must take care I am not spoilt. Everyone, from the governor downwards, lays himself out to make my visit pleasant. They work me hard on Sundays and week days, but it is a continual round of, I don't deny, to me, pleasurable occupation. Kindly people asked to meet me, and the conversation always turned to pleasant and useful subjects: Church government, principles of Mission work, &c. These colonies, unfortunate in many ways, are fortunate in having governors and others in high position who are good men, and the class of people among whom my time is spent might (me judice) hold its position among the best English society.

'I am very intimate with some few families, drop in and set the young ladies down to play Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and it is a nice change, and refreshes me.'

From Sydney the Bishop went to Adelaide and Melbourne, and these five weeks in Australia obtained about 800 pounds for the Mission; the Bishop of Sydney had hoped to raise more, but there had been two years of terrible drought and destruction of cattle, and money was not abundant. The plan of sending Australian blacks to be educated with the Melanesians was still entertained; but he had not much hope of this being useful to the tribes, though it might be to the individuals, and none of them ever were sent to him.

But what had a more important effect on the Mission was a conference between Sir William Wiseman and Sir John Young, the Governor of New South Wales, resulting in an offer from the latter of a grant of land on Norfolk Island for the Mission, for the sake of the benefit to the Pitcairners; at the same time the Commodore offered him a passage in the 'Curacoa' back to Auckland, touching at Norfolk Island by the way. The plan was carried out, and brought him home in time for Christmas, to find all and prosperous under Mr. Pritt at St. Andrew's. His mind was nearly made up on the expedience of a change to a place which was likely to suit both English and tropical constitutions alike, and he hoped to make the experiment the ensuing winter with Mr. Palmer and a small body of scholars.

CHAPTER X. THE EPISCOPATE AT KOHIMARAMA. 1866

The removal of his much-loved correspondent did not long withhold the outpouring of Bishop Patteson's heart to his family; while his work was going on at the College, according to his own definition of education which was given about this time in a speech at St. John's: 'Education consists in teaching people to bear responsibilities, and laying the responsibilities on them as they are able to bear them.'

Meanwhile, he wrote as follows to Miss Mackenzie, on receiving the book she had promised to send him as a relic of her brother:—

'January 1, 1866.

'My dear Miss Mackenzie,—I have this evening received your brother's Thomas a Kempis, and your letter. I valued the letter much, as a true faithful record of one whom may God grant that I may know hereafter, if, indeed, I may be enabled to follow him as he followed Christ. And as for the former, what can I say but I hope that the thought of your dear brother may help me to read that holy book in something of the spirit in which he read and meditated on it.

'It seems to bring me very near to him in thought. Send me one of his autographs to paste into it. I don't like to cut out the one I have in the long letter to the Scottish Episcopal Church, which you kindly sent me.

'I found, too, in one of Mr. Codrington's boxes, a small sextant for me, which, being packed with the Thomas a Kempis, I think may have been your brother's. Do you really mean this for me too? If so, I shall value it scarcely less than the book. Indeed, I think that, divided as I am from all relations and home influences and affections, I cling all the more to such means as I may still enjoy of keeping up associations. I like to have my father's watch-chain in use, and to write on his old desk. I remember my inkstand in our drawing-room in London. So I value much these memorials of the first Missionary Bishop of the Church of England, in modern days at all events, and night by night as I read a few lines in his book, and think of him, it brings me, I hope, nearer in spirit to him and to others, who, like him, have done their duty well and now rest in Christ.

'We are pretty well now (Jan. 20), but one very promising lad sank last week in low fever; a good truthful lad he was, and as I baptized him at midnight shortly before he died, I felt the great blessing of being able with a very clear conscience to minister to him that holy sacrament; and so he passed away, to dwell, I trust, with his Lord.

'What a revelation to that spirit in its escape from the body! But I must not write on. With many thanks once again for these highly-valued memorials of your brother,

'I remain, my dear Miss Mackenzie,

'Very truly yours,

'J. C. PATTESON.'

The sandal-wood referred to in the following letter was the brother's gift to a church, All Saints, Babbicombe, in which his sisters were deeply interested, and of which their little nephew laid the first stone:—

'St. Matthias' Day.

'My dearest Sisters,—You are thinking of me to-day, I know, but you hardly know that in an hour or two I hope the Primate will ride down and baptize nine of our Melanesian scholars.

'The last few weeks have been a happy, though of course an anxious time, and now to-day the great event of their lives is to take place. May God grant that the rest of their lives may be like this beginning!

'We avoid all fuss. I don't like anyone being here but the Primate and Mrs. Selwyn, yet I think some dozen more may come, though I don't like it. I need not say that making a scene on such occasions is to my mind very objectionable. I could much prefer being quite alone. I have translated some appropriate Psalms, but the 2nd and 57th they hardly know as yet quite well; so our service will be Psalms 96, 97, 114; 1st lesson 2 Kings, v. 9—15, Magnificat; 2nd lesson Acts viii. 5-12, and the Baptismal Service. Henry Tagalana reads the first, and George Sarawia the second lesson. Then will come my quiet evening, as, I trust, a close of an eventful day. I have your English letters of December, with the news of Johnny laying the stone. I am thankful that that good work is begun. Sir John Young writes to me that I can have a gift of 100 acres at Norfolk Island, with permission to buy more. I think that, all being well, I shall certainly try it with a small party next summer, the main body of scholars being still brought to Kohimarama.

'The sandal-wood is not yet gone! But, my dear Joan, the altar of sandal-wood! If it is to be solid and not veneered, why, £50 would not buy it at Erromango. It sells in Sydney for about £70 a ton, and it is very heavy wood. However, I will send some of the largest planks I ever saw of the wood, and it is now well seasoned. It cost me £14 merely to work it into a very simple lectern, so hard is the grain.

'What has become of the old Eton stamp of men? Have you any in England? I must not run the risk of the Mission being swamped, by well-intentioned, but untaught men. We must have gentlemen of white colour, or else I must rely wholly, as I always meant to do chiefly, on my black gentlemen; and many of them are thorough gentlemen in feeling and conduct, albeit they don't wear shoes.

'It was a most impressive service. The dear Primate looking worn and somewhat aged, very full of feeling; the two most advanced, George and Henry, in their surplices, reading the Lessons; the nine candidates looking so reverent and grave, yet not without self-possession.

'As he signed each one with the sign of the Cross, his left hand resting on the head of each, the history of the Mission rushed into my mind, the fruit of the little seed be sowed when, eight years ago, he thought it wisest not to go ashore at Mota, and now more than twenty Christians of the Banks Islands serve God with prayers night and day.

'What would you have thought, if you could have been there? Our little chapel looked nice with the red hangings and sandal-wood lectern.

'Then we had a quiet cup of tea, and the old and new baptized party had a quiet talk with me till 8.30, when I sent them away.

'And then after an hour I was alone. That I should have been already five years a Bishop, and how much to think of and grieve over, something too to be thankful for. Perhaps after all, dear Edwin and Fisher stand out most clearly from all the many scenes and circumstances.

'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.