Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands Part 64

'Norfolk Island: December 14, 1869.

'My dear Sophy,--I should be specially thinking of you as Christmas draws nigh with its blessed thoughts, and hopes, and the St. Stephen's memories in any case I should be thinking of you. But now I have lately received your long loving letter of last Eastertide, partly written in bed.

Then your dear child's illness makes me think greatly (and how lovingly!) of you three of the three generations. Lastly, I hear of dear Aunt William's death. You know that I had a very great affection for her, and I feel that this is a great blow probably to you all, though dear Aunty (as I have noticed in all old persons, especially when good as well as old) takes this quietly, I dare say. The feeling must be, "Well, I shall soon meet her again; a few short days only remain."

'I suppose that you, with your quarter of a century's widowhood, still feel as if the waiting time was all sanctified by the thought of the reunion. Oh! what a thought it is: too much almost to think that by His wonderful mercy, one may hope to be with them all, and for ever; to behold the faces of Apostles, and Apostolic men, and Prophets, and Saints, holy men and women; and, as if this were not enough, to see Him as He is, in His essential perfections, and to know Him. One can't sustain the effort of such a thought, which shows how great a change must pa.s.s on one before the great Consummation. Well, the more one can think of dear Father and Mother, and dear dear Uncle James and Uncle Frank, and Cousin George, and Uncle and Aunt William, others too, uncles and aunts, and your dear f.a.n.n.y, and your husband, though it would be untrue to say I knew him, taken so early--the more one thinks of them all the better. And I have, Sophy, so many very different ones to think of Edwin and Fisher, and so many Melanesians taken away in the very first earnestness and simplicity of a new convert's faith. How many have died in my arms--G.o.d be thanked--in good hope!

'If by His great mercy there be a place for me there, I feel persuaded that I shall there find many of those dear lads, whom indeed I think of with a full heart, full of affection and thankfulness.

'I have been reading the "Memoir of Mr. Keble," of course with extreme interest. It is all about events and chiefly about persons that one has heard about or even known. I think we get a little autobiography of our dear Uncle John in it too, for which I don't like it the less.

There are pa.s.sages, as against going to Borne, which I am glad to see in print; they are wanted now again, I fear. I am glad you like Moberly's "Bampton Lectures." His book on "The Great Forty Days," his best book (?) after all, has the germ of it all. I am so thankful for his appointment to Salisbury. I dare say you know that he is kind enough to write to me occasionally; and he sends me his books, one of the greatest of the indirect blessings of being known to Mr. Keble. I do very little in the way of reading, save that I get a quiet hour for Hebrew, 5-6 A.M., and I do read some theology. In one sense it is easier reading to me than other books, history, poetry, because, though I don't know much about it, I know nothing about them.

'My pleasure would be, if with you, in talking over such little insight as I may have received into the wondrous harmony and symmetry of the whole Bible, by tolerably close examination of the text of the Greek, and to some extent of the Hebrew. The way in which a peculiar word brings a whole pa.s.sage or argument en rapport with a train of historical a.s.sociations or previous statements is wonderful; e.g., the verb of which Moses is formed occurs only in Exodus ii. 10, 2 Samuel xxii. 17, Psalm xviii. 16. See how the magnificent description of the Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea in Psalm xviii. is connected with Moses by this one word.

These undesigned coincidences, and (surely) proofs of inspiration are innumerable.

'I do delight in it: only I want more help, far more. We have great advantages in this generation. Dear Uncle James had no Commentary, one might almost say, on Old Testament or New Testament. Ellicott, Wordsworth, and Alford on the New Testament were not in existence; and the Germans, used with discrimination, are great helps. An orthodox Lutheran, one Delitzsch (of whom Liddon wrote that Dr. Pusey thinks highly of his Hebrew scholars.h.i.+p), helps me much in Isaiah. He has sucked all the best part out of Vitringa's enormous book, and added much minute, and I am told correct criticism. And how grand it is! This morning--it is now 6.15 A.M.--I have been reading part of that wonderful chapter xxvi.

'It strikes me that the way to teach a cla.s.s or a congregation is to bring out the doctrine from the very words of Scripture carefully, critically examined and explained. Only think, Sophy, of the vague desultory way in which we all, more or less, read; and we have accepted a phraseology without enquiring to a great extent, and use words to which we attach no definite meaning. Few in the congregation could draw out in clear words what they mean when they talk of faith, justification, regeneration, conversion, &c. &c. All language denoting ideas and thoughts is transferred to the region of the mind from denoting at first only external objects and sensations. This is in accordance with the mystery of all, the union of mind and matter--which no pagan philosopher could comprehend--the extreme difficulty of solving which caused Dualism and Asceticism on the one hand, and neglect of all bodily discipline on the other. Mind and matter must be antagonistic, the work of different beings: man must get rid of his material part to arrive at his true end and perfection.

'So some said, "Mortify, worry the body, which is essentially and inherently evil." "No," said others, "the sins of the body don't hurt the mind; the two things are distinct, don't react on one another."

(St. Paul deals with all this in the Colossians.) The Incarnation is the solution or the culmination of the mystery.

'What a prose! but I meant, that people so often use words as if the use of a word was equivalent to the knowledge of the thought which, in the mind of an accurate thinker, accompanies the utterance of the word.

'I should think that three-fourths of what we clergymen say is unintelligible to the ma.s.s of the congregation. We a.s.sume an acquaintance with the Bible and Prayer-book, thought, and a knowledge of the meaning of words which few, alas! possess. We must begin, then, with the little ones; as far as I see, all children are apt to fail at the point when they ought to be pa.s.sing from merely employing the memory (in learning by heart, e.g., the Catechism) by exercising the reasoning and thinking faculty.

'"Well now, you have said that very well, now let us think what it means."

'How well Dr. Pusey says, in his Sermons, "Not altogether intentional deliberate vice, but thoughtlessness is destroying souls."

'I run on at random, dear Sophy, hoping to give you one and a half hour's occupation on a sick bed or couch, and because, as you say, this is the only converse we are likely to have on earth.

'I think I am too exclusively fond of this reading, very little else interests me. I take up a theological book as a recreation, which is, perhaps, hardly reverent, and may narrow the mind; but even Church history is not very attractive to me. I like Jackson and Hooker, and some of the moderns, of whom I read a good many; and I lose a good deal of time in diving into things too deep by half for me, while I forget or don't learn simple things.

'All this modern rage for reviews, serials, magazines, I can't abide.

My mind is far too much distracted already, and that fragmentary mode of reading is very bad for many people, I am sure.

'Naturally enough at forty-two years of age ninety-nine hundredths of the "lighter" books seem to me mere rubbish. They come to me occasionally. However, there are younger ones here, so it isn't sheer waste to receive such donations: they soon get out of my room. Not, mind you, that I think this the least evidence of my being wiser, or employing my time more carefully than other folk. Only I want you to know what I am, and what I think.

'Pena has sent me a nice book which I wanted: 1st. Because I have a great personal liking for Shairp, a simple-minded, affectionate man, with much poetical feeling and good taste-a kindly-natured man. 2nd.

Because he writes in an appreciative kind of way, and is the very opposite of .... whom I can't stand with his insufferable self-sufficiency, and incapacity for appreciating the n.o.bler, simpler, more generous natures who are unlike him. Well! that is fierce. But there is a school of men whom I can't stand. Their nature repels me, and I hardly wish to like them; which is an evil feeling.

'I shall add a line in a few days.

'My very dearest love to Aunty--dear Aunty; and if I can't write to Pena, give her my best love and thanks for her book.

'Dear Sophy, your loving Cousin,

'J. C. P.'

Two other letters, one to each of the sisters, were in progress at this time. To Joanna, who had been grieved for the poor girl whose transgression had occurred in the beginning of the year, he says:--

'About Semtingvat, you must be comforted about her. For a poor child who, two short years before, had a.s.sumed as a matter of course that a woman simply existed to be a man's slave in every kind of way, her fault could not, I think, be regarded as very great. Indeed, there was much comfort from the first; and since that time they not only have gone on well, but I do believe that their religious character has been much strengthened by the kind of revelation they then obtained of what Christianity really does mean. Anyhow, all notice the fact that U---- has improved very much, and they all sing Semtingvat's praises. I had no difficulty about marrying them after a little while. I spoke openly in chapel to everyone about it. Their wedding was not as other weddings--no festivity, no dressing of the chapel, no feast, no supper and fun and holiday. It was perfectly understood to be in all respects different from a bright, happy wedding. But it was quite as much for the sake of all, for the sake of enforcing the new teaching about the sanct.i.ty of marriage, that we made so very much of what (as men speak) was under the circ.u.mstances a comparatively light fault, less than an impure thought on the part of such as have been taught their duty from their childhood.

'I am almost confused with the accounts from England. All seems in a state of turmoil and confusion; all the old landmarks being swept away by a deluge of new opinions as to all matters civil and ecclesiastical.

I don't think that we ought to refuse to see these signs of a change in men's mode of regarding great political and religious questions. A man left high and dry on the sand-bank of his antiquated notions will do little good to the poor folk struggling in the sea way, though he is safer as far as he is himself concerned by staying where he is than by plunging in to help them.

'It is a critical time in every sense. Men and women can hardly be indifferent; they must be at the pains of making up their minds. As for us clergy, everywhere but in Norfolk Island, we must know that people are thinking of matters which all were content a few years ago to keep back in silence, and that they expect us to speak about them. How thankful I am that we fortunate ones are exempt from this. Yet in my way I, too, try to think a bit about what is going on; and I don't want to be too gloomy, or to ignore some good in all this ferment in men's minds. It is better than stagnation and indolent respectability. There is everywhere a consciousness of a vast work to be done, and sincere efforts are made to do it. I suppose that is a fact; many, many poor souls are being taught and trained for heaven through all these various agencies which seem to a distant and idle critic to be so questionable in some ways.

'Of old one thought that the sober standard of Church of England divinity was the rule to which all speculations should be reduced; and one thought that Pearson, Hooker, Waterland, Jeremy Taylor also, and Andrewes, and Bull, and Jackson, and Barrow, &c., stood for the idea of English divinity. Now we are launched upon a wider sea. Catholic usage and doctrine take the place of Church of England teaching and practice; rightly, I dare say, only it may be well to remember that men who can perhaps understand a good deal of the English divines, can hardly be supposed to be equally capable of understanding the far wider and more difficult range of ecclesiastical literature of all ages and all writers.

'Everyone knows and is struck by the fact that pa.s.sages of old writers are continually quoted by men of quite different schools of thought in favour of their own (different) views. Clearly they can't both understand the mind and spirit of these writers; and the truth is, isn't it, that only they who by very long study, and from a large share of the true historical imagination, sympathise with and really enter into the hearts and minds of these writers, are competent to deal with and decide upon such wide and weighty matters?

'It seems to me as if men who are in no sense divines, theologians, or well read, speak strongly and use expressions and teach doctrines which, indeed, only very few men should think of uttering or teaching.

'And yet, don't think I wish to be only an exclusive Anglican, without sympathy for East or West; still less that I wish to ignore the Catholic Church of the truly primitive times; but I take the real, so to say, representative teaching of the Church of England to be the divinity of the truly primitive Church, to which our formularies and reformers appeal. I know, moreover, that our dear Father accepted Jackson and Waterland; and I don't feel disposed to disparage them, as it is the fas.h.i.+on to do nowadays. Few men, in spite of occasional scholastic subtlety, go so deep in their search right down into principles as Jackson. Few men so a.n.a.lyse, dissect, search out the precise, exact meaning of words and phrases, so carry you away from vague generalities to accurate defined meanings and doctrines. He had an honest and clear brain of his own, though he was a tremendous book-worm; and I think he is a great authority, though I know about him and his antagonism to Rome. I don't fear to weary you by this kind of talk; but don't I wish I could hear three or four of our very best men discuss these points thoroughly. In all sincerity I believe that I should be continually convinced of error, shallow judgments, and ignorance. But then I should most likely get real light on some points where I would fain have it.'

To this unconscious token of humility, another must be added, from the same letter, speaking of two New Zealand friends:--'To me she has always been kindness itself, with her husband overrating me to such an amusing extent that I don't think it hurt even my vanity.'

Full preparation was going on for the ordination, of the two priests.

No special account of the actual service seems to have been written; and the first letter of January was nearly absorbed by the tidings of the three Episcopal appointments of the close of 1869, the Oxford choice coming near to Bishop Patteson by his family affections, and the appointment to Exeter as dealing with his beloved county at home.

And now, before turning the page, and leaving the period that had, on the whole, been full of brightness, will be the best time to give Mr.

Codrington's account of the manner of life at St. Barnabas, while the Bishop was still in his strength:--

'Certainly one of the most striking points to a stranger would have been the familiar intercourse between the Bishop and his boys, not only the advanced scholars, but the last and newest comers. The kindly and friendly disposition of the Melanesians leads to a great deal of free and equal familiarity even where there are chiefs, and the obsequious familiarity of which one hears in India is here quite unknown.

Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether other Melanesians live in the same familiarity with their missionaries--e.g., Carry, wife of Wadrokala, writes thus:--"I tremble very much to write to you, I am not fit to write to you, because, does an ant know how to speak to a cow? We at Nengone would not speak to a great man like you; no, our language is different to a chief and a missionary."

'Making every allowance, and, looking at the matter from within, that perfect freedom and affectionateness of intercourse that existed with him seems very remarkable.

'The secret of it is not far to seek. It did not lie in any singular attractiveness of his manner only, but in the experience that everyone attracted gained that he sought nothing for himself; he was entirely free from any desire to be admired, or love of being thought much of, as he was from love of commanding for the sake of being obeyed. The great temptations to missionaries among savage people, as it seems, are to self-esteem, from a comparison of themselves with their European advantages and the natives among whom they live; and to a domineering temper, because they find an obedience ready, and it is delightful to be obeyed. Bishop Patteson's natural disposition was averse to either, and the principles of missionary work which he took up suited at once his natural temper and his religious character. He was able naturally, without effort, to live as a brother among his black brothers, to be the servant of those he lived to teach. The natural consequence of this was, the unquestioned authority which he possessed over those with whom he lived on equal terms. No one could entertain the idea that anything was ordered from a selfish motive, for any advantage to himself, or that anything was forbidden without some very good reason. This familiarity with a superior, which is natural with Melanesians, is accompanied, especially in Banks Islanders, with a very great reserve about anything that touches the feelings or concerns character. Thus a boy, who would use the Bishop's room as if it were his own, coming in unasked, to read or write, or sit by the fire there, would with very great difficulty get over the physical trembling, which their language implies, that would come upon him, if he wished to speak about his own feelings on religious matters, or to tell him something which he well knew it was his duty to make known. When one knows how difficult it is to them to speak openly, their openness with the Bishop is more appreciated, though he indeed often enough complained of their closeness with him. The real affection between the boys and the Bishop required no acquaintance with the character of either to discern, and could surprise no one who knew anything of the history of their relation one to another. It is well known that he wished his elder boys to stand in the place of the sixth form of a public school; and to some extent they did so, but being mostly Banks Islanders, and Banks Islanders being peculiarly afraid of interfering with one another, his idea was never reached. Still no doubt a good deal is attained when they arrive rather at the position of pupil-teacher in a National School; and this at least they occupy very satisfactorily, as is shown by the success with which so large a school has been carried on since the Bishop's death. No doubt the Ordination of more from among their number would go far to raise them in their own estimation.

'In truth, the carrying out of the principle of the equality of black and white in a missionary work, which is the principle of this mission, is very difficult, and cannot be done in all particulars in practice by anyone, and by most people, unless brought up to it, probably not at all. Nevertheless, it is practicable, and, as we think, essential, and was in all main points carried out by Bishop Patteson. But the effect of this must not be exaggerated. It is true that we have no servants, yet a boy regularly brought water, &c., for the Bishop, and a woman regularly swept and cleaned his rooms, and received regular wages for it.

The Bishop never cooked his dinner or did any such work except upon occasions on which a bachelor curate in England does much of the kind, as a matter of course. The extraordinary thing is that it is, as he at any rate supposed, the custom in other missions to make scholars and converts servants as a matter of course; and the difference lies not in the work which is done or not done by the one party or the other, but in the social relation of equality which subsists between them, and the spirit in which the work is asked for and rendered.

'The main thing to notice about the Bishop is that there was nothing forced or unnatural in his manner of taking a position of equality, and equality as real in any way as his superiority in another. Consequently, there was never the least loss of dignity or authority on his part.

'There never was visible the smallest diminution of freedom and affection in the intercourse that went on. It required some knowledge in one respect to appreciate the extraordinary facility with which he conversed with boys from various islands. A stranger would be struck with his bright smiles and sweet tones as he would address some little stranger who came into his room; but one who knew a little of the languages alone could know with what extraordinary quickness he pa.s.sed from one language to another, talking to many boys in their own language, but accommodating his tongue with wonderful readiness to each in succession. It would be hard to say how many languages he could speak; those which he spoke quite freely, to my knowledge, were not so many: Mota, Bauro, Mahaga, and Nengone, certainly; some others no doubt quite readily when among the people who spoke them; and very many only with a small vocabulary which was every instant being enlarged. It does not appear to me that his scientific philological acquirements were extraordinary; but that his memory for words giving him such a command of vocabulary, and so wide a scope for comparison, and his accurate and delicate ear to catch the sounds, and power of reproducing them, were altogether wonderful and very rarely equalled. A man of his faculty of expression and powers of mind could not speak like a native; he spoke better than a native, than a native of Mota at least. That is that, although no doubt he never was quite master of the little delicate points of Mota scholars.h.i.+p, which no one not a native can keep quite right, and no native can account for, yet his vocabulary was so large and accurate, and his feeling of the native ways of looking at things and representing them in words so true, that he spoke to them more clearly and forcibly than even any native spoke, and with the power of an educated mind controlling while following the native taste. He was an enthusiast, no doubt, about these languages, and jealous of their claim to be considered true language, and not what people suppose them to be, the uncouth jargon of savages. I will only say that his translations of some of the Psalms into Mota are as lofty in their diction and as harmonious in their rhythm, in my estimation, as anything almost I read in any language. This no doubt sounds exaggerated, and must be taken only for what it is worth.

'It was probably in a great measure because his natural power of acquiring languages was so extraordinary, and needed so very little labour in him, that he did so very little to put on paper what he knew of all those many tongues. All there is in print I have put together.

Besides this, he carried the same unfortunate way of leaving off what he had begun into these notes on language also. In the year '63-'64 he got printed a number of small grammatical papers in almost all the languages he knew, because he felt he ought not to subject them to the risk of being lost. Another reason why he did not go into any laborious ma.n.u.script or printing work with the various languages was, that he saw as time went on, first, that it was so very uncertain what language would come in practice into request; and, secondly, that one language would suffice for the use, in practice, of all natives of a neighbourhood. For example, the language of part of Mae (Three Hills), in the New Hebrides, was once studied and well known. Nothing whatever came of the intercourse with that island, once so constant, I don't know why, and now the people themselves are destroyed almost, and hopes of doing them good destroyed by the slave trade. And, secondly, the use of the Mota language in our ordinary intercourse here has very much diminished the need for any one's knowing a particular language beyond the missionary who has charge of the boys who speak it. Thus the Bishop rather handed over the language of Bauro to Mr. Atkin, of Florida to Mr.

Brooke, of Leper's Island to Mr. Price; and as the common teaching of all boys who belonged to either of the princ.i.p.al groups into which the school fell went on in Mota, there was no practical use in the other tongues the Bishop knew, except in his voyages, and in giving him more effectual powers of influencing those to whom he could speak in their own tongue. Besides, he saw so clearly the great advantage, on the one hand, of throwing together in every possible way the boys from all the islands, which was much helped by the use of one language, and, on the other hand, the natural tendency in a group of boys from one island or neighbourhood to keep separate, and of the teacher of a particular set to keep them separate with himself, that, without saying much about it, he discouraged the printing of other languages besides Mota, and in other ways kept them rather in the background. How things would have arranged themselves if Mota had not by circ.u.mstances come into such prominence I cannot say, but the predominance of Mota came in with the internal organisation of the Mission by Mr. Pritt. It is impossible for one who knew Bishop Patteson intimately, and the later condition of the Mission intimately, to lose sight for long of Mr. Pritt's influence and his useful work.'

Perhaps this chapter can best be completed by the external testimony of a visitor to Norfolk Island, given in a letter to the Editor of the 'Australian Churchman':--

'Daily at 7 A.M. the bell rings for chapel about one minute, and all hands promptly repair thither. In spite of the vast varieties of language and dialect spoken by fifty or sixty human beings, collected from twenty or thirty islets of the Pacific main, no practical difficulty has been found in using the Mota as the general language in Chapel and school, so that in a short time a congregation of twenty languages are able to join in wors.h.i.+p in the one Mota tongue, more or less akin to all the rest, and a cla.s.s of, say, nine boys, speaking by nature five different languages, easily join in using the one Mota language, just as a Frenchman, a German, a Russian, a Pole, an Italian, and an Englishman, all meeting in the same cafe or railway carriage, on the same glacier or mountain top, might harmoniously agree to use the French language as their medium of communication. So the service is conducted in Mota with one exception only. The collect for the day is read in English, as a brief allowable concession to the ears and hearts of the English members of the Mission. The service consists of the greater part of the Church of England Service translated.