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 of all others I delight to think of for the music's sake, and
far more for the glorious thought that it conveys. "Then shall the
righteous," not indeed that I dare apply it to myself (as you know), but
it helps one on, teaches what we may be, what our two dear parents are,
and somehow the intervening, space becomes smaller as the eye is fixed
steadily on the glory beyond.
'God bless you, my dear fellow.
'Ever your affectionate
'J. C. P.'
The Mission party intended to sail immediately after Christmas in the
'Southern Cross,' the schooner which was being built at Blackwall for
voyages among the Melanesian isles. In expectation of this, Patteson
went up to London in the beginning of December, when the admirable
crayon likeness was taken by Mr. Richmond, an engraving from which is
here given. He then took his last leave of his uncle, and of the cousins
who had been so dear to him ever since the old days of daily meeting
in childhood; and Miss Neill, then a permanent invalid, notes down: 'On
December 13, I had the happiness of receiving the Holy Communion from
dear Coley Patteson, and the following morning I parted from him, as
I fear, for ever. God bless and prosper him, and guard him in all the
dangers he will encounter!' He wrote thus soon after his return:--
'Feniton: December 22, 1854.
'My dear Miss Neill,--I began a note to you a day or two ago, but I
could not go on with it, for I have had so very much to do in church
and out of it, parochializing, writing sermons, &c. It makes some little
difference in point of time whether I am living here or at Alfington,
and so the walking about from one house to another is not so convenient
for writing letters as for thinking over sermons.
'I need not tell you what a real happiness and comfort it is to me to
have been with you again and to have talked so long with you, and most
of all to have received the Communion with you. It is a blessed thought
that no interval of space or time can interrupt that Communion of the
Spirit, and that we are one in Him, though working in different corners
of the Lord's field.
'I want to look you out a little book or two; and Fanny has told you
that if ever my picture is photographed, I have particularly desired
them to send you a copy with my love. Your cross I have now round my
neck, and I shall always wear it; it will hang there with a locket
containing locks of hair of my dear Father and Mother, the girls, and
Jem.
'You will be glad to hear that they all seem cheerful and hearty. Fan
is not well, but I do not see that she is depressed or unhappy. In fact,
the terrible events of the war prove a lesson to all, and they feel, I
suppose, that it might be far worse, and that so long as I am doing my
duty, there is no cause for sorrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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