Part 13 (1/2)

JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON

MISSIONARY

New Zealand, discovered by Captain Cook in 1769, lay derelict for half a century, and like others of our Colonies it ca under the rule of France Froy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the hand of our reluctant Governacity of Sir George Grey, one of our greatest empire-builders in Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand Thanks to them and to others, there has arisen in the Southern Pacific a state which, more than any other, seeirt islands, its temperate climate, its mountains and its plains A population alht be expected to repeat the history of their ancestors In politics and social questions its sons show the sareater enterprise

[Illustration: JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON

Fro by Willianition here for the part they played in the history of these islands In 1814, before they became a British possession, Samuel Marsden came from Australia to carry the Gospel to their inhabitants, and formed settlements in the Northern districts, in days when the lives of settlers were in constant peril froe; and whenever they caes felt his power and responded to his influence, and he was able to lay a good foundation In 1841 the English Church sent out George Augustus Selwyn as first Missionary Bishop of New Zealand, giving him a wide province and no less wide discretion He was the pioneer who, from his base in New Zealand, was to spread Christian and British influences even farther afield in the vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean

Selas educated at Eton and King's College, Cae, and these famous foundations have never sent forth a man better fitted to render services to his country In a small sphere, as curate of Windsor, he had already, by his energy, patience, and practical sagacity, achieved reth of early manhood, he was selected for a responsible post which afforded scope for the exercise of his powers In the old country he ht have been hampered by routine and tradition; in a new land he could mark out his own path The constitution of the New Zealand Church became a model for other dioceses and other lands, and his wisdom has stood the test of ti a story froraphy[37] When the Maori War broke out he joined the troops as chaplain and shared their perils in the field Against the enterprising native fighters these were not slight, especially as the British troops were few and badly led He was travelling without escort over routes infested by Maoris, refusing to have any special care taken of his own person, and his chief security lay in rapid motion Yet twice he dismounted on the way, at peril of his life, once under an impulse of humanity, once from sheer public spirit The first time it was to pull into the shade a drunken soldier asleep on duty and in danger of sunstroke; the second to fill up the ruts in a sandy road, where it see ht be upset Many other incidents could be quoted which show his unconventional ways and his habitual disregard for his own conity, or safety In New Zealand he found plenty of people to appreciate these qualities in a bishop

[Note 37: _Life and Episcopate of G A Selwyn_, by H W Tucker, 2 vols (Wells Gardner, 1879)]

Though Selas the reater man, yet a peculiar fa to the sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the consummation of his work by a martyr's death Born in London in 1827, he was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by e, and many other relatives, lived close round the old town of Ottery St Mary; and his father, an able laas raised to the Bench in 1830, bought an estate at Feniton and came to live in the same district before the boy was fifteen years old It was at Ottery, where the nae was so familiar, that the earliest school-days of 'Coley' Patteson were passed; but before he was eleven years old he was sent to the boarding-house of another Coleridge, his uncle, as ain rather desultory fashi+on, so that he had his share of success and failure His chief distinctions on at cricket, where he rose to be captain of the XI; but with all whose good opinion orth having he won favour by his cheerful, frank, independent spirit If he was idle at one tiy; if he was one of the most popular boys in the school, he was not afraid to risk his popularity by protesting strongly against moral laxity or abuses which others tolerated It is well to remember this, which is attested by his school-fellohen reading his letters, in which at tiood opinion of others

His interest in the distant seas where he was to win fame was first aroused in 1841 Bishop Selas a friend of his faood-bye to the Pattesons before sailing for New Zealand, he said, half sportively, to the boy's ive me ”Coley”?' This idea was not pursued at the time; but the name of Selas kept before him in his school-days, as the Bishop had left e employed his nephew to copy out Selwyn's letters from his diocese in order to enlist the sympathy of a wider audience But this connexion dropped out of sight for many years and seems to have had little influence on Patteson's life at Oxford, where he spent four years at Balliol He went up in 1845 as a commoner, and this fact caused hiht to have won a scholarshi+p, and, conscious of his failure, he took to iving up his cricket to secure ame He was as fond as ever of Eton, and of his schoolin another direction, and the new interests, deepening in strength, inevitably crowded out the old

After taking his degree he reat cities of Italy and wrote enthusiastically of the faalleries He also paid ained a fair knowledge of the Gere, he went on to theHebrew and Arabic This pursuit was due partly to his growing interest in Biblical study, partly to the delight he took in his own linguistic powers He had an ear of great delicacy; he caught up sounds as by instinct; and his retentive memory fixed the i of the philologist, classified and tabulated his results, and thus was able, when drawn into fields unexplored by science, to do original work and to produce results of great value to other students But he was not the izes, riting to his father fro it rather as a ence which needed excuse Bishop Selwyn could have told hi his linguistic gifts he was going exactly the right way to fit himself for service in Melanesia

Patteson's appointe, which involved residence in Oxford for a year, brought no great change into his life

Rather he used what leisure he had for strengthening his knowledge of the subjects which seemed to him to matter, especially the interpretation of the Bible He returned to Greek and Latin, which he had neglected at school, and found a new interest in theraphy filled up what ti his cricket for a while, hethes, for all his innate conservatism, he found hi the University; but he had not time to make his influence felt At the end of the year he was ordained and took a curacy at Alphington, a hamlet between Feniton and Ottery His mother had died in 1842, and his object was to be near his father, as growing infirm and found his chief pleasure in 'Coley's' presence and talk His interest in foreign ain, but at this time his first duty seemed to be to his family; and in a parish endeared to him by old associations he quickly won the affection of his flock He was happy in the work and his parishi+oners hoped to keep him for many years; but this was not to be In 1854 Bishop Selwyn and his ere in England pleading for support for their Church, and their visit to Feniton brought matters to a crisis Patteson was thrilled at the idea of seeing his hero again, and he at once seized the opportunity for serving under hie him; rather he had to assure hi ht of sacrifice; that fell to the father's lot, and he bore it nobly His first words to the Bishop were, 'I can't let hio'; but a moment later he repented and cried, 'God forbid that I should stop hily 'Mind!' he said, 'I give hiain'

In the following March, the young curate, leaving his home and his parish where he was alain, set his face towards the South Seas Once the offer had been made and accepted, he felt no more excitement It was not the spiritual exaltation of aof the lessons which he had been learning year by year He had put his hand to the plough and would not look back

The first things which he set hie and the art of navigation The first he studied with a native teacher, the second he learnt from the Bishop, and he proved an apt pupil in both In a few months he became qualified to act as uage was to him only a matter of weeks His earliest letters sho quickly he came to understand the natives He was ready to meet any and every demand made upon him, and to fulfil duties as different from one another as those of teacher, skipper, and storekeeper His head-quarters, during his early months in New Zealand, were either on board shi+p or else at St John's College, five miles from Auckland But, before he had completed a year, he was called to accompany the Bishop on his tour to the Islands and to make acquaintance with the scene of his future labours

Bishop Selwyn had wisely limited his mission to those islands which the Gospel had not reached The counsels of St Paul and his own sagacity warned hier of jealous rivalry

So long as Christ was preached in an island or group of islands, he was content; he would leave them to the ministry of those ere first in the field Many of the Polynesian groups had been visited by French and English missionaries and stations had been established in Samoa, Tahiti, and elsewhere; but north of New Zealand there was a large tract of the Pacific, including the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands, where the natives had never heard the Gospel roups were known collectively as Melanesia, a name hardly justified by facts,[38] as the inhabitants were by no means uniform in colour If the Solomon Islanders had almost black skins, those who lived in the Banks Islands, which Patteson came to knoell, were of a warm brown hue such asin the very last month of his life, Patteson tells his sisters how the colour of the people in Mota 'is just what titian and the Venetian painters delighted in, the colour of their oeather-beaten boatmen'

[Note 38: Melanesia, from Greek [Greek: melas]=black, [Greek: nesos]=island]

Selwyn had visited these islands inter Christianity a them With only a small staff of helpers and et into direct contact with a large population, so widely scattered His work h natives selected by hi and open to i So every year he brought back with him from his cruise a certain number of Melanesian boys to spend the ware of the inning of the next cruise At Auckland, with its soldiers, sailors, and merchants, the boys became familiar with other sides of European life beyond the walls of the Mission School; and their interest was stith to be drawn from European civilization By this syste the islanders a certain knowledge of European ways, and that their relatives, seeing how the boys had been kindly treated, would feel confidence in theThis policy comh he modified it in details, he remained all his life a convinced adherent of the principle

Slow progress through a few pupils, selected when young, and carefully taught, orth h too often in Missionary reports success is gauged by figures and statistics

These cruises furnished the adventurous part of the life Readers of Stevenson and Conrad can picture to theic of the South Seas Patteson, with his reserved nature and his dread of seelaly of such sights; but he was by no lioons, of pal over lofty crags to the clear water below

He enjoyed being on board shi+p, with his books at hand and some leisure to read theenerally sohtful days when they received friendly greeting on the islands and found that they werethe natives But the eleer were rarely absent for long For a large part of each voyage they had some forty or fifty Melanesian boys on board, on their way to school or returning to their homes The schooner built for the purpose was as airy and convenient as it could be made; yet there was little space for privacy The natives were constitutionally weak; and when illness broke out, no trained nurses were at hand and Patteson would give up his own quarters to the sick and spend hours at their bedsides So an island, that their old scholars had fallen away and that they had to begin again fro at all, because the behaviour of the natives was , or because news had reached the Mission of so The traditions of the Melanesians inclined theo on the war-path only too readily, and both Selwyn and Patteson had an instinctive perception of the native teht treat these perils in his letters home, there was never complete security To reassure his sisters he tells thes and only two arrows fired at theht be the cause of death acco had been effected and friendly trading and talk had given confidence to the visitors, it ed at them by some irresponsible native as they es needed unconventional qualities in the lish parishes had an idea how the Melanesian islanders made their first acquaintance with their Bishop When the boat came near the shore, the Bishop, arrayed in some of his oldest clothes, would juhly handled by the breakers which guarded the coral bank It was desirable not to expose their precious boat to the cupidity of the natives or to the risk of it being dashed to pieces in the surf, so the Bishop risked his own person instead He would then with all possible coolness walk into a gathering of savages, catch up any familiar words which seeuistic help, try to convey his peaceful intentions by gesture or facial expression When an island had been visited before, there was less reason to be on guard; but sometimes the Bishop had to break to relatives the sad news that one of the boys coorous climate of New Zealand or to one of the diseases to which these tribes were so liable Then it was only the personal ascendancy won by previous visits that could secure hie

All practical measures were tried to establish friendly relations with the islanders; and when people at ho impressively to a decorous circle of listeners, he was really engaged in lively talk and barter, receiving yams and other articles of food in return for the produce of Birham and Sheffield, axe-heads which he presented to the old, and fish-hooks hich he won the favour of the young But such brief visits as could be made at a score of islands in a busy tour did not carrydi intercourse with the same tribe Selwyn felt it was most desirable that he should have sufficient staff to leave a missionary here and there to spend unbroken winter le station, where he could reach more of the people and exercise a more continuous influence upon them Patteson's first experience of this was in 1858, when he spent three roup which was later to be annexed by the French