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
To these humble requisites, it appears that a missionary ought on
occasion to be able to add those of a prime minister and lawgiver.
Angadhohua, a bright, clever lad, only too easily led, was to be
instructed in the duties of a chief; Mr. Patteson scrupulously trying
in vain to make him understand that he was a person of far more
consideration and responsibility than his white visitor would be in his
own country. The point was to bring the Christian faith into connection
with life and government. 'Much talk have I had with John in order that
we may try to put before them the true grounds on which they ought
to embrace Christianity,' writes Mr. Patteson, when about to visit a
heathen district which had shown an inclination to abandon their old
customs, 'and also the consequences to which they pledge themselves by
the profession of a religion requiring purity, regularity, industry,
&c., but I have little doubt that our visit now will result in the
nominal profession of Christianity by many heathen. Angadhohua, John,
and I go together, and Isaka, a Samoan teacher who has been a good deal
among them. I shall make an arrangement for taking one of their leading
men to New Zealand with me, that he may get some notion of what is meant
by undertaking to become a Christian. It is in many respects a great
benefit to be driven back upon the very first origin of a Christian
society; one sees more than ever the necessity of what our Lord has
provided, a living organised community into which the baptized convert
being introduced falls into his place, as it were, naturally; sees
around him everything at all times to remind him that he is a regenerate
man, that all things are become new. A man in apostolic times had the
lessons of the Apostles and disciples practically illustrated in the
life of those with whom he associated. The church was an expression of
the verbal teaching committed to its ministers. How clearly the
beauty of this comes out when one is forced to feel the horrible blank
occasioned by the absence of the living teacher, influencing, moulding,
building up each individual professor of Christianity by a process
always going on, though oftentimes unconsciously to him on whom it
operates.
'But how is the social life to be fashioned here in Lifu according to
the rule of Christ? There is no organised body exemplifying in daily
actions the teaching of the Bible. A man goes to chapel and hears
something most vague and unmeaning. He has never been taught to grasp
anything distinctly--to represent any truth to his mind as a settled
resting-place for his faith. Who is to teach him? What does he see
around him to make him imperceptibly acquire new habits in conformity
with the Bible? Is the Christian community distinguished by any habits
of social order and intercourse different from non-Christians?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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