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
'I must go on with my work. This very morning I was anxious, passing
shoal water with the captain and master beside me, and appealing to me
as pilot. I must try to be of some use in the ship. I must try to turn
to good account among the islands this great opportunity. Probably
elasticity of mind will come again now for very pain of body. Oh! how
much more sorrow and heavy weight on my heart! I am quite worn out and
weary. It seems as if the light were taken from me, as if it was no
longer possible to work away so cheerily when I no longer have you to
write to about it all, no longer your approval to seek, your notice to
obtain.
'I must go on writing to you, my own dearest Father, even as I go on
praying for you. It is a great comfort to me, though I feel that in all
human probability you are to be thought of now as one of the blessed
drawn wholly within the veil. Oh! that we may all dwell together
hereafter for His blessed sake who died for us. Now more than ever your
loving and dutiful Son,' &c.
Such another letter was written to his sister Fanny; but it is dated
four days later, when he was better in health, and was somewhat
recovered from the first shock; besides which, he felt his office of
comforter when writing to her. So the letter is more cheerful, and is
a good deal taken up with the endeavour to assure the sisters of
his acquiescence in whatever scheme of life they might adopt, and
willingness that, if it were thought advisable, Feniton Court should
be sold. 'This is all cold and heartless,' he says, 'but I must try and
make my view pretty clear.' Towards the end occurs the following:--
'Last night, my slight feverish attack over, my ears comfortable, with
the feeling of health and ease returning, I lay awake, thought of dear
Uncle Frank, and then for a long time of dear Mamma. How plainly I saw
her face, and dear dear Uncle James, and I wondered whether dear dear
Father was already among them in Paradise. It is not often that I can
fasten down my mind to think continuously upon those blessed ones; I am
too tired, or too busy; and this climate, you know, is enervating.
But last night I was very happy, and seemed to be very near them. The
Evening Lesson set me off, 1 John iii. How wonderful it is! But all the
evening I had been reading my book of Prayers and Meditations. Do
you know, Fan, at times the thought comes upon me with a force almost
overpowering, that I am a Bishop; and that I must not shrink from
believing that I am called to a special work. I don't think that I dwell
morbidly on this, but it is an awful thought. And then I feel just
the same as of old, and don't reach out more, or aim more earnestly at
amendment of life and strive after fresh degrees of enlightenment and
holiness. But probably I have to learn the lesson, which it may be only
sickness will teach me, of patient waiting, that God will accomplish His
own work in His own time.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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