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 should like to join with you in showing our gratitude by some deed
of charity, or whatever you think right. Something that without any show
might be a thank-offering to God for His signal act of mercy.
'Ever your loving Brother,
'J. C. PATTESON.
'5.30. I wrote this quite early this morning. I can hardly think
yet what it all means. Now, I feel only a sense of some very heavy
affliction removed. Poor dear Father, and all of us! what should we have
been without him!'
A letter to the brother himself was written under the same impulse,
even more tenderly affectionate, but so deep and intimate, that it would
almost be treason to give it to the world. The next letter was written
soon after the alarm had passed, but is undated:--
'My dear Fan,--Yesterday I was unluckily too seedy with headache to go
on the ice, and this morning I have been skating for half an hour, but
the ice is spoilt. Very jolly it is to be twisting and turning about
once more. I thought of writing to old Jem to come down for it, as
I should think the frost is not severe enough to freeze any but the
shallow water of the floods, but it was not good enough to reward him
for the trouble of coming so far.
'The constant sense of his preservation from that great danger really
prevents my feeling so acutely perhaps as I ought to do the distress of
others. I really think I ought to be less cheerful and happy than I feel
myself to be. I had a pleasant little talk with Dr. Pusey on Monday:
he was recommending me two or three books for Hebrew reading, but they
would be of no use to me yet; the language is difficult to advance far
into, and you know my shallow way of catching a thing at first rather
quickly perhaps, but only superficially. I find my interest increasing
greatly in philological studies. One language helps another very much;
and the beautiful way in which the words, ideas, and the whole structure
indeed, of language pervades whole families, and even the different
families, (e.g., the Indo-Germanic and Semitic races,) is not only
interesting, but very useful. I wish I had made myself a better Greek
and Latin scholar, but unfortunately I used to hate classics. What
desperate uphill work it was to read them, a regular exercise of
self-denial every morning! Now I like it beyond any study, except
Divinity proper, and I try to make up for lost time. There are admirable
books in my possession which facilitate the acquisition of critical
scholarship very much, and I work at these, principally applying it to
New Test. Greek, LXX, &c. But my real education began, I think, with my
first foreign trip. It seems as if there was not time for all this,
for I have Hebrew, Arabic, &c., to go on with (though this is a slow
process), Pearson, Hooker, Blunt on the Reformation (a mere sketch which
I read in a day or two at odd times), Commentaries, Trench's Books on
Parables and Miracles, which are in my room at home, and would in parts
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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