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
'What some of you say about self-possession on one's going about among
the people being marvellous, is just what of course appears to me
commonplace. Of course it is wrong to risk one's life, but to carry
one's life in one's hand is what other soldiers besides those of the
Cross do habitually; and no one, as I think, would willingly hurt a hair
of my head in Melanesia, or that part of it where I am at all known.
'How I think of those islands! How I see those bright coral and sandy
beaches, strips of burning sunshine fringing the masses of forest rising
into ridges of hills, covered with a dense mat of vegetation. Hundreds
of people are crowding upon them, naked, armed, with wild uncouth
cries and gestures; I cannot talk to them but by signs. But they are my
children now! May God enable me to do my duty to them!
'I have now as I write a deepening sense of what the change must be that
has passed upon me. Again I go by God's blessing for seven months to
Melanesia. All that our experience has taught us we try to remember:
food, medicine, articles of trade and barter.
'But what may be the result? Who can tell? You know it is not of myself
that I am thinking. If God of His great mercy lead me in His way, to me
there is little worth living for but the going onward with His blessed
work, though I like my talks with the dear Bishop and the Judge. But
others are committed to me--Mr. Pritt and Mr. Kerr go with me. Shall I
find dear old Wadrokala and Harper alive, and if alive, well?
'And yet, thank God, we go on day by day, so happy, so hopeful!
'I see two sermons by the Bishop of Oxford, "God's Revelation Man's
Trial," please send them. They bear, I conclude, on the controversy
of the day. I need not tell you that I find a very great interest in
reading these books, or rather at present in talking now and then, when
we meet, with the Judge on the subject of which those books treat. The
books I have not read. But I know no refreshment so great as the reading
any books which deal with these questions thoughtfully. I hope you don't
think it wrong and dangerous for me to do so; pray tell me. I don't
believe that I am wrong in doing it, yet it may be that I read them
as an intellectual treat, and prefer them to thoughtful books on other
subjects, because they deal with a study which I am a little more
conversant with than with history, science, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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