''And now, listen. How are all your people still in ignorance to hear it? What have I often told you about that?'
'Whereupon the scholars looked shy, and some said softly, 'We must teach them.'
''Yes, indeed you must!'
'And so the lesson ended with questioning them on the great duty and privilege of prayer for God's Holy Spirit to give them both the will and the power to do the work to which God is calling them.
'So we constantly tell them 'God has already been very merciful to you, in that He has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. He has enabled you to receive the knowledge of His will, and to understand your relations to Him. He has taught you to believe in Him, to pray to Him, to hope for salvation through the merits of His Son's death and resurrection. He has made you feel something of the power of His love, and has taught you the duty of loving Him and serving your brother. He calls upon you now to rouse yourself to a sense of your true position, to use the gifts which He has given you to His glory and the good of your brethren. Don't suppose that you are unable to do this. You are unable to do it, as you were unable to believe and love Him by yourselves, but He gives you strength for this very purpose that you may be able to do it. You can do it through Christ, who strengtheneth you. Our fathers were not more able to teach their people once than you to teach your people now!'
'We make no distinction whatever between English and Melanesian members of the Mission as such. No Melanesian is excluded from any office of trust. No classification is made of higher and lower kinds of work, of work befitting a white man and work befitting a black man. English and Melanesian scholars or teachers work together in the school, printing-office, dairy, kitchen, farm. The senior clergyman of the Mission labours most of all with his own hands at the work which is sometimes described as menial work; and it is contrary to the fundamental principle of the Mission that anyone should connect with the idea of white man the right to fag a black boy.
'Young men and lads come to us and say, 'Let me do that. I can't write the languages, or do many things you or Mr. Pritt or Mr. Palmer do, so let me scrub your floor, or brush your shoes, or fetch some water.' And of course we let them do so, for the doing it is accompanied by no feeling of degradation in their minds; they have seen us always doing these things, and not requiring them to do them as if it were the natural work for them, because they are black, and not proper for us, because we are white.
'Last night, a young man, sitting by the fire, said to the Bishop, 'They want you to stop with them in my land.'
''I wish with all my heart I could.'
''Yes, I know, you must go to so many places.'
''But they are different in your land now.'
''Oh! yes, they don't fight now as they used to do; they don't go about armed now.'
''Well, that is a thing to be thankful for. What is the reason of it, do you think? '
'Why they know about you, and see you now and then, and Henry Tagalana talked to them, and I talked a little to them, and they asked me about our ways here, and they want to learn.'
''Well, there are now five of you from your island, and you must try hard to learn, that you may teach them, for remember you must do it, if God spares your life.''
'During the year 1865 a great advance was made in the industrial department of our work. About seventeen acres of land were taken in hand and worked by Mr. Pritt, with the Melanesian lads. We have our own dairy of thirteen cows, and, besides supplying the whole Mission party, numbering in all seventy-seven persons, with abundance of milk, we sell considerable quantities of butter. We grow, of course, our own potatoes and vegetables, and maize, for our cows. The farm and dairy work affords another opportunity for teaching our young people to acquire habits of industry.'
Cooking, farm, gardening, dairy-work, setting out the table, were all honourable occupations, and of great importance in teaching punctuality and regularity, and the various arts and decencies of life to the youths, who were in time to implant good habits in their native homes. Their natural docility made them peculiarly easy to manage and train while in hand; the real difficulty was that their life was so entirely different from their home, that there was no guessing how deep the training went, and, on every voyage, some fishes slipped through the meshes of the net, though some returned again, and others never dropped from their Bishop's hands. But he was becoming anxious to spare some of his scholars the trial of a return to native life; and, as the season had been healthy, he ventured on leaving twenty-seven pupils at St. Andrew's with Mr. and Mrs. Pritt, among them George and Sarah Sarawia.
After Trinity Sunday, May 27, the 'Southern Cross' sailed, and the outward voyage gave leisure for the following letter to Prof. Max Muller, explaining why he could not make his knowledge of languages of more benefit to philology while thus absorbed in practical work:-
''Southern Cross,' off Norfolk Ireland: June 6, 1866.
'My dear Friend,-I am about to tire your patience heavily. For I must find you some reasons for doing so little in making known these Melanesian dialects, and that will be wearisome for you to read; and, secondly, I cannot put down clearly and consecutively what I want to say. I have so very little time for thinking out, and working at any one subject continuously, that my whole habit of mind becomes, I fear, inaccurate and desultory. I have so very many and so very different occupations, and so much anxiety and so many interruptions, as the 'friction' that attends the working, of a new and somewhat untried machine.'
'You know that we are few in number; indeed (Codrington being absent) I have but two clergymen with me, and two young men who may be ordained by-and-by. Besides, had I the twenty troublesome men, whom you wish to banish into these regions, what use would they or any men be until they had learnt their work? And it must fall to me to teach them, and that takes again much of my time; so that, as a matter of fact, there are many things that I must do, even when all is going on smoothly; and should sickness come, then, of course, my days and nights are spent in nursing poor lads, to whom no one else can talk, cheering up poor fellows seized with sudden nervous terror, giving food to those who will take it from no one else,
'Then the whole management of the Mission must fall upon me; though I am most thankful to say that for some time Mr. Pritt has relieved me from the charge of all domestic and industrial works. He does everything of that kind, and does it admirably, so that our institution really is a well-ordered industrial school, in which kitchen work, dairy work, farm work, printing, clothes making and mending, are all carried on, without the necessity of having any foreign importation of servants, who would be sure to do harm, both by their ideas as to perquisites (= stealing in the minds of our Melanesians), and by introducing the idea of paid labour; whereas now we all work together, and no one counts any work degrading, and still less does any one qua white consider himself entitled to fag a Melanesian.
'Mr. Tilly, R.N., has also quite relieved me from my duties as skipper, and I have no trouble about marine stores, shipping seamen, navigating the vessel now. I cannot be too thankful for this; it, saves me time, anxiety, and worry; yet much remains that I must do, which is not connected with peculiar work directly.
'I can't refuse the Bishop of New Zealand when he presses me (for want of a better man) to be trustee of properties, and to engage in managing the few educational institutions we have. I can't refuse to take some share in English clerical work while on shore; indeed, in 1865, my good friend Archdeacon Lloyd being ill, I took his parish (one and a half hour distant from Kohimarama), the most important parish in Auckland, for some three months; not slacking my Melanesian work, though I could only avoid going back by hard application, and could make no progress. Then I must attend our General Synod; and all these questions concerning the colonial churches take some time to master, and yet I must know what is going on.
'Then I must carry on all the correspondence of the Mission. I am always writing letters. Every £5 from any part of New Zealand or Australia I must acknowledge; and everyone wants information, anecdotes, which it vexes my soul to have to supply, but who else can do it? Then I keep all the accounts, very complicated, as you would say if you saw my big ledger. And I don't like to be altogether behindhand in the knowledge of theological questions, and people sometimes write to me, and their letters need to be answered carefully. Besides, take my actual time spent in teaching. Shall I give you a day at Kohimarama?
'I get in the full summer months an hour for reading by being dressed at 5.30 A.M. At 5.30 I see the lads washing, 7 A.M. breakfast all together, in hall, 7.30 chapel, 8-9.30 school, 9.30-12.30 industrial work. During this time I have generally half an hour with Mr. Pritt about business matters, and proof sheets are brought me, yet I get a little time for preparing lessons. 12.45 short service in chapel, 1 dinner, 2-3 Greek Testament with English young men, 3-4 classics with ditto, 5 tea, 6.30 evening chapel, 7-8.30 evening school with divers classes in rotation or
