'There is much talk, something more than talk, I think, about putting up a large church-house here, on this side of the island (north-west side) and of a school-house, for church also, on the south-east side.
'We have all heavy coughs and colds; and I have had two or three very disturbed nights, owing to the illness of one of the many babies. The little thing howls all night.
'All our means of housing people are exhausted. People flock here for the sake of being taught. Four new houses have been built, three are being built. We shall have a large Christian village here soon, I hope and trust. At present every place is crammed, and 25 or 30 sleep on the verandah. The little cooking house holds somehow or other about 24 boys; they pack close, not being burdened with clothes and four-posters. I sleep on a table, people under and around it. I am very well, barring this heavy cold and almost total loss of voice for a few hours in the morning and evening.
'August 1st.-Very tired 7 A.M., Prayers 7.20-8.20, school 8.20-10; baptized 55 infants and young children. Now it is past 1; a boisterous day, though as yet no rain. I had a cup of cocoa at 6.30, and at 10.30 a plate of rice and a couple of eggs, nice clean fare. The weather is against me, so cold, wet, and so boisterous. I got a good night though, for I sent Mrs. Rhoda and her squalling baby to another house, and so slept quietly.
'I am sorry that teaching is so irksome to me. I am, in a sense, at it all day. But there is so much to be done, and the people, worthy souls, have no idea that one can ever be tired. After I was laid down on my table, with my air-pillow under my head and my plaid over me, I woke up from a doze to find the worthy Tanoagnene sitting with his face towards me, waiting for a talk about the rather comprehensive subject of Baptism.
'And at all odd times I ought to be teaching George and others how to teach, the hardest work of all. I think what a life a real pedagogue must have of it. There is so much variety with me, so much change and holiday, and so much that has its special interest.
'The 'Southern Cross' has been gone a week. I hope they have not this kind of weather. If they have, they are getting a good knocking about, and they number about 55 on board.
'August 6th.-To-day there is no rain, for the first time for weeks. It blew a heavy gale all night, and had done so with heavy rain for some days before.
'At 8 A.M. to-day I baptized 14 grown men, one an old bald man, and another with a son of sixteen or so, five women and six lads, taught entirely in George's school. Afterwards, at a different service, 7 infants and little children were baptized. 238 + 5 who have died have now been baptized since the beginning of July. To-day's service was very comforting. I pray and trust that these grown-up men and women may be kept steadfast to their profession. It is a great blessing that I could think it right to take this step. You will, I know, pray for them; their position is necessarily a difficult one.
'It is 2 P.M., and I feel tired: the crowds are gone, though little fellows are as usual sitting all round one. I tell them I can't talk; I must sit quietly, with Charlotte Yonge's 'Pupils of St. John the Divine.' Dear me, what advantage young folks have nowadays, though indeed the dangers of these times far outweigh those of our young days.
'I suppose Lightfoot's 'Commentaries' hardly come in your way. They are critical and learned on the Greek of St. Paul's Epistles. But there are dissertations which may be read by the English reader. He seems to me to be a very valuable man, well fitted by his learning, and moderation, and impartiality, and uncontroversial temper to do much good. His sympathies with the modern school of thought are, I fancy, beyond me.
'There is no doubt that Matthew Arnold says much that is true of the narrowness, bigotry, and jealous un- Christian temper of Puritanism; and I suppose no one doubts that they do misrepresent the true doctrine of Christianity, both by their exclusive devotion to one side only of the teaching of the Bible, and by their misconception of their own favourite portions of Scripture. The doctrine of the Atonement was never in ancient times, I believe, drawn out in the form in which Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and others have lately stated it.
'The fact of the Atonement through the Death of Christ was always clearly stated; the manner, the 'why,' the 'how' man's Redemption and Reconciliation to God is thus brought about, was not taught, if at all, after the Protestant fashion.
'Oxenham's 'History of the Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement' is a fairly-written statement of what was formerly held and taught. Such words as 'substitution,' 'satisfaction,' with all the ideas introduced into the subject from the use of illustrations, e.g. of criminals acquitted, debts discharged, have perplexed it perhaps, rather than explained, what must be beyond explanation.
'The ultra-Calvinistic view becomes in the mind and language of the hot-headed ignorant fanatic a denial of God's Unity. 'The merciful Son appeasing the wrath of the angry Father' is language which implies two Wills, two Counsels in the Divine Mind (compare with this John iii. 16).
I suppose that an irreverent man, being partly disgusted with the popular theology, having no scruples about putting aside Inspiration, and conceiving that he himself is an adequate representative of the nineteenth century's intelligence, and that the nineteenth century's intelligence is most profound and infallible, sets to work to demolish what is distasteful to himself, and what the unerring criticism of the day rejects, correcting St. Paul's mistakes, patronising him whenever he is fortunate enough to receive the approbation of the great thinkers of our day, and so constructs a vague 'human' religion out of the Christianity which he criticises, eliminating all that lies beyond the speculative range of the mind, and that demands assent by its own authority as God's Revelation. I don't know how to state briefly what I mean.
'I think I can understand that this temper of mind is very prevalent in England now, and that I can partly trace the growth of it. Moreover, I feel that to ignore, despise, or denounce it, will do no good.
'As a matter of fact, thousands of educated men are thinking on these great matters as our fathers did not think of them. Simplicity of belief is a great gift; but then the teaching submitted to such simple believers ought to be true, otherwise the simple belief leads them into error. How much that common Protestant writers and preachers teach is not true! Perhaps some of their teaching is untrue absolutely, but it is certainly untrue relatively, because they do not hold the 'proportion of the faith,' and by excluding some truths and presenting others in an extravagant form they distort the whole body of truth.
'But when a man not only points out some of the popular errors, but claims to correct St. Paul when he Judaizes, and to do a little judicious Hellenizing for an inspired Apostle, one may well distrust the nineteenth century tone and spirit.
'I do really and seriously think that a great and reverently-minded man, conscious of the limits of human reason-a man like Butler- would find his true and proper task now in presenting Christian teaching in an unconventional form, stripped of much error that the terms which we all employ when speaking doctrine seem unavoidably to carry with them.
'Such a man might ask, 'What do you mean by your theory of Substitution, Satisfaction, 'Where do you find it?' 'Prove it logically from the Bible.' 'Show that the early Church held it.'
'Butler, as you know, reproved the curiosity of men who sought to find out the manner of the Atonement. 'I do not find,' he says, 'that it is declared in the Scriptures.' He believed the fact, of course, as his very soul's treasure. 'Our ignorance,' he says, 'is the proper answer to such enquiries.'
'At the same time, no one now can do, it seems, what another Butler might do, viz., deal with the Bible as the best of the nineteenth- century men wish to hear a divine deal with it. He would never make mere assertions. He would never state as a proved truth, to be presented to a congregation's acceptance, a statement or a doctrine which really equalled only an opinion of Wesley or any other human teacher. He would never make arbitrary quotations from Scripture, and try to prove points by illogical reasoning, and unduly pressing texts which a more careful collation of MSS. has shown to be at least doubtful. And by fairness and learning he would win or conciliate right-minded men of the critical school. What offends these men is the cool reckless way in which so many preachers make the most audacious statements, wholly unsupported by any sound learning and logical reasoning. A man makes a statement, quotes a text or two, which he doesn't even know to be capable of at least one inter- pretation different from that which he gives to it; and so the critical hearer is disgusted, and no wonder.
'One gain of this critical spirit is, that it makes all of us Clergy more circumspect in what we say, and many a man looks at his Greek Testament nowadays, and at a good Commentary too, before he ventures to quote a text which formerly would have done duty in its English dress and passed muster among an uncritical congregation. Nowadays every clergyman knows that there are probably men in his congregation who know their Bible better than he does, and as practical lawyers, men of business, are more than his match at an argument. It offends such men to have a shallow-minded preacher taking for granted the very points that he ought to prove, giving a sentence from some divine of his school as if it settled the question without further reference even to the Bible.
