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
'One line to say whether you think me right or wrong, would be a great
comfort to me. I feel no tendency to latitudinarianism, but only to see
much good in systems unrecognised by your very highflyers. I believe
that the Church teaching is represented in an unfavourable, often
offensive, light to many of our poor, because they hear words and see
things which find no response in their hearts; because they are told,
ordered almost, to believe things the propriety of believing which they
do not recognise; because the existence of wants is implied when they
have never been felt, and a system for supplying them introduced which
finds no room in the understanding or affections of the patient.
'But you know, dear Father, what I mean, without more dusky attempts at
explaining myself.
'Do not many High Churchmen want a little more "experimental religion"
in Bishop Jebb's sense of the terms: not a religion of the feelings, but
a religion brought home to the heart, and truly felt so as to prohibit
any systematic criticism of the feelings?
'I am late this week with my sermons, I have not begun either of them,
and may have one to-morrow evening if my voice will do its part. I write
very long washy concerns, and find it difficult to do otherwise, for
it is a good pull upon me week after week, and latterly I have not been
able to read very much. I shall look out two or three that I think fair
specimens, and ask you by-and-by to run your eye over them, that you may
point out the defects.
'My ignorance of the Bible astonishes me, though not so much as it ought
to do. I purpose, D.V., to commence a thorough study of the original
texts. I must try to become something of a scholar, at all events, to
make any progress in the work. I sometimes hope that, in spite of my
many backslidings and broken resolutions, some move is taking place
within, where most it is wanted; but I live here so quietly, that I have
little (comparatively) food for some special faults. Good-bye, my dear
Father,
'Your affectionate and dutiful Son,
'J. C. P.'
'Some move taking place within!' It is impossible not to pause
and observe how as Confirmation and Communion had almost palpably
strengthened the boy's struggles with his inherent faults, so the grace
conferred with the Deacon's orders is now felt to be lifting him higher,
and enabling him to see further than he has yet seen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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