Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian IslandsYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Religion
Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missions -- Melanesia; Patteson, John Coleridge, 1827-1871
So careful was Mr. Patteson not to offend the men who had first worked
on these islands, that on one Sunday when Tutoo was ill, he merely
gave a skeleton of a sermon to John Cho to preach. On the 27th of July,
however, the deputation arrived in the 'John Williams'--two ministers,
and Mr. Creagh on his way back to Nengone, and the upshot of the
conference on board, after a dinner in the house of Apollo, the native
teacher, was that as they had no missionary for Lifu, they made no
objection to Mr. Patteson working there at present, and that if in
another year they received no reinforcement from home, they would take
into consideration the making over their teachers to him. 'My position
is thus far less anomalous, my responsibility much increased. God will,
I pray and trust, strengthen me to help the people and build them up in
the faith of Christ.'
'August 2.--Yesterday I preached my two first Lifu sermons; rather
nervous, but I knew I had command of the language enough to explain my
meaning, and I thought over the plan of my sermons and selected texts.
Fancy your worthy son stuck up in a pulpit, without any mark of the
clergyman save white tie and black coat, commencing service with a hymn,
then reading the second chapter of St. Matthew, quite new to them, then
a prayer, extemporary, but practically working in, I hope, the principle
and much of the actual language of the Prayer-book--i.e. Confession,
prayer for pardon, expression of belief and praise--then another hymn,
the sermon about forty minutes. Text: "I am the Way," &c. Afternoon:
"Thy Word is a lantern unto my feet."
'You can easily understand how it was simple work to point out that a
man lost his way by his sin, and was sent out from dwelling with God;
the recovery of the way by which we may again return to Paradise is
practically the one great event which the whole Bible is concerned in
teaching. The subject admitted of any amount of illustration and
any amount of reference to the great facts of Scripture history, and
everything converges to the Person of Christ. I wish them to see clearly
the great points--first, God's infinite love, and the great facts by
which He has manifested His Love from the very first, till the coming
of Christ exhibited most clearly the infinite wisdom and love by which
man's return to Paradise has been effected.
'Significant is that one word to the thief on the Cross "Paradise." The
way open again; the guardian angel no longer standing with flaming sword
in the entrance; admission to the Tree of Life.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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