they may have the actual words in which the message is recorded. They say, 'This is a heavy, a weighty word,' and they are talking, as they say, night after night about it. Some few, and they elderly men, say, 'Let us talk only about our customs here.' Others say, 'No, no; let us try to think out the meaning of what he said.' A few come and ask me questions, only a few, not many are in earnest, and all are shy. Many every night meet in Robert Pantatun's house, twenty-five or thirty, and ask him all manner of questions, and he reads a little. They end with prayer.
'They have many strange customs and superstitious observances peculiar to this group. They have curious clubs, confraternities with secret rites of initiation. The candidate for admission pays pigs and native money, and after many days' seclusion in a secret place is, with great ceremony, recognised as a member. No woman and none of the uninitiated may know anything of these things.
'In every village there is a Sala Goro, a place for cooking, which only those who have 'gazed at the sacred symbol' may frequent. Food cooked there may not be eaten by one uninitiated, or by women or children. The path to the Sala Goro is never trodden by any woman or matanomorous ('eye closed'). When any ceremony is going on the whole of the precincts of the Sala Goro are sacred. At no time dare any woman eat with any man, no husband with his wife, no father with his daughter as soon as she is no longer a child.
'Of course such a system can be used by us in two ways. I say, 'You have your method of assembling together, and you observe certain customs in so doing; so do we, but yours is an exclusive and selfish system: your secret societies are like our clubs, with their entrance fees, But Christ's society has its sacred rite of admission, and other mysteries too, and it is for all who wish to belong to it. He recognises no distinction of male or female, bond or free.'
'Some of the elder men are becoming suspicious of me. I tell them plainly that whatever there may be in their customs incompatible with the great law of Love to God and man must come to nought. 'You beat and terrify matanomorous in order to make them give, that you may get pigs and native money from them. Such conduct is all wrong, for if you beat or frighten a youth or man, you certainly can't love him.'
'At the same time I can't tell how far this goes. If there were a real ceremony of an idol or prayer to it, of course it would be comparatively easy to act in the matter; but the ceremony consists in sticking a curious sort of mitre, pointed and worked with hair, on the head of the candidate, and covering his body with a sort of Jack- in-the green wicker work of leaves, and they joke and laugh about it, and attach, apparently, no religious significance to it whatever.
'I think it has the evil which attends all secret societies, that it tends to produce invidious distinctions and castes. An instinct impels men to form themselves into associations; but then Christ has satisfied that instinct legitimately in the Church.
'Christianity does meet a human instinct; as, e.g., the Lord's Supper, whatever higher and deeper feelings it may have, has this simple, but most significant meaning to the primitive convert, of feasting as a child with his brethren and sisters at the Father's Board.
'The significance of this to people living as more than half the human beings in the world are living still, is such as we have lost the power of conceiving; the Lord's Supper has so long had, so to say, other meanings for many of us. Yet to be admitted a member of God's family, and then solemnly at stated times to use this privilege of membership, strengthening the tie, and familiarising oneself more and more with the customs of that heavenly family, this surely is a very great deal of what human instinct, as exhibited in almost universal customs, requires.
'There are depths for those who can dive into them; but I really think that in some of these theological questions we view the matter solely from our state of civilisation and thought, and forget the multitudes of uneducated, rude, unrefined people to whom all below the simple meaning is unmeaning. May I not say to Robert Pantatun, 'Christ, you know, gave His Body and Blood for us on the Cross, He gives them to you now, for all purposes of saving you and strengthening your spiritual life, while you eat and drink as an adopted child at your Father's Table'?
'It is the keeping alive the consciousness of the relation of all children to God through Christ that is needed so much. And with these actual sights before me, and you have them among you in the hundreds of thousands of poor ignorant creatures, I almost wonder that men should spend so much time in refining upon points which never can have a practical meaning for any persons not trained to habits of accurate thought and unusual devotion. But here I am very likely wrong, and committing the very fault of generalizing from my own particular position.
'June 4th.-I was greatly pleased, on Friday evening last which George Sarawia spent here with me, to hear from him that he had been talking with the Banks Islanders at Norfolk Island, and on board ship, about a plan which he now proposed to me. I had indeed thought of it, but scarcely saw my way. It is a new proof of his real earnestness, and of his seeking the good of his people here. The plan is this:-
'G. S. 'Bishop, we have been talking together about your buying some land here, near your present place, where we all can live together, where we can let the people see what our mode of life is, what our customs are, which we have learnt from you.'
'J. C. P. 'Capital, George, but are you all willing to give up your living in villages among your own particular relations? '
'G. S. 'Yes, we all agreed about it. You see, sir, if we live scattered about we are not strong enough to hold our ground, and some of the younger ones fall back into their old ways. The temptations are great, and what can be expected of one or two boys among eighty or ninety heathen people?'
'J. C. P. 'Of course you know what I think about it. It is the very thing I have always longed for. I did have a general school here, as you know.'
'G. S. 'Yes, but things are different now. People are making enquiries. Many young fellows want to understand our teaching, and follow it. If we have a good large place of our own there, we can carry on our own mode of living without interfering with other people.'
'J. G. P. 'Yes, and so we can, actually in the midst of them, let them see a Christian village, where none of the strange practices which are inconsistent with Christianity will be allowed, and where the comforts and advantages of our customs may be actually seen.'
'G. S. 'By-and-by it will be a large village, and many will wish to live there, and not from many parts of Mota only.'
'Well, I have told you, I suppose, of the fertility of this island, and how it is far more than sufficient to supply the wants of the people. Food is wasted on all sides. This very day I have plucked ten large bread-fruits, and might have plucked forty now nearly ripe, simply that the bats may not get them. I gave them away, as I can't eat more than a third part of one at a meal.
'So I went with George on Saturday, and we chose such a beautiful property, between Veverao and Maligo, I dare say about ten acres. Then I spoke to the people here, explaining my wishes and motives. To-day we have been over it with a large party, that all might be done publicly and everybody might hear and know. The land belongs to sixteen different owners; the cocoa-nut trees, breadfruit, almond, and other fruit-trees are bought separately.
'They all agree; indeed, as they have abundance of space of spare land just as good all about, and they will get a good stock of hatchets, pigs, from me, for this land, there is not much doubt about that. But it is pleasant to hear some of them say, 'No, no, that is mine and my son's, and he is your boy. You can have that for nothing.'
'I shan't take it; it is safer to buy, but it is pleasant to see the kind feeling.
'If it be God's will to prosper this undertaking, we should begin next year with about fifteen of our own scholars, and a goodly number of half-scholars, viz., those who are now our regular scholars here, but have not been taken to New Zealand.
'Fencing, clearing, could go on rapidly. Many would help, and small payments of beads and fish-hooks can always secure a man's services.
'I should build the houses with the material of the island, save only windows, but adopt of course a different shape and style for them. The idea would be to have everything native fashion, but improved, so as to be clearly suitable for the wants of people sufficiently civilised. All that a Christian finds helpful and expedient we ought to have, but to adopt English notions and habits would defeat my object. The people could not adopt them, there would be no teaching for them. I want to be able to say: 'Well, you see, there is nothing to prevent you from having this and that, and your doing this and that.'
'We must have some simple rules about cleanliness, working hours, but all that is already familiar to those who have been with us at Kohimarama and Norfolk Island. Above all, I rejoice in the thought that the people understand that very soon this plan is to be worked by George Sarawia. He is to be the, so to say, head of the Christian village.
