promise. For two or three years he had been with me, and my affection flowed out naturally to him. God had tried him by the two sicknesses at Kohimarama and at Mota, and by his whole family returning to Pitcairn. I saw that he had left all for this work. He had become most useful, and oh! how we shall miss him!
'But about five days after this (August 22) Edwin's jaws began to stiffen. For nine or ten days there was suspense, so hard to bear. Some symptoms were not so bad, it did not assume so acute a form. I thought he ought to be carried through it. He was older, about twenty-one, six feet high, a strong handsome young man, the pride of Norfolk Island, the destined helper and successor (had God so willed) of his father, the present Clergyman. The same faith, the same patience, the same endurance of suffering.
'On Friday, September 2, I administered the Holy Communion to him and Pearce. He could scarce swallow the tiniest crumb. He was often delirious, yet not one word but spoke of things holy and pure, almost continually in prayer. He was in the place where Fisher had died, the best part of the cabin for an invalid. Sunday came: he could take no nourishment, stomach and back in much pain: a succession of violent spasms at about 10.30 A.M., but his body never became quite rigid. The death struggle at 1 A.M. September 5, was very terrible. Three of us could scarcely hold him. Then he sank back on my arm, and his spirit passed away as I commended his soul to God. Then all motionless. After some minutes, I said the first prayer in the Burial Service, then performed the last offices, then had a solemn talk with Pearce, and knelt down, I know not how long.
'We buried him at sea. All this time we were making very slow progress; indeed the voyage has been very remarkable in all respects. Pearce seems to be doing very well, so that I am very hopeful about him. The temperature now is only 72 degrees, and I imagine that his constitution is less liable to that particular disease. Yet punctured wounds are always dangerous on this account.
'Patience and trust in God, the same belief in His goodness and love, that He orders all things for our good, that this is but a proof of His merciful dealing with us: such comforts God has graciously not withheld. I never felt so utterly broken down, when I thought, and think, of the earthly side of it all; never perhaps so much realised the comfort and power of His Presence, when I have had grace to dwell upon the heavenly and abiding side of it. I do with my better part heartily and humbly thank Him, that He has so early taken these dear ones by a straight and short path to their everlasting home. I think of them with blessed saints, our own dear ones, in Paradise, and in the midst of my tears I bless and praise God.
'But, dear Fan, Fisher most of all supplied to me the absence of earthly relations and friends. He was my boy: I loved him as I think I never loved any one else. I don't mean more than you all, but in a different way: not as one loves another of equal age, but as a parent loves a child.
'I can hardly think of my little room at Kohimarama without him. I long for the sight of his dear face, the sound of his voice. It was my delight to teach him, and he was clever and so thoughtful and industrious. I know it is good that my affections should be weaned from all things earthly. I try to be thankful, I think I am thankful really; time too will do much, God's grace much more. I only wonder how I have borne it all. 'In the multitude of the sorrows that I had in my heart, Thy comforts have refreshed my soul.' Mr. Tilly has been and is full of sympathy, and is indeed a great aid. He too has a heavy loss in these two dear ones. And now I must land at Norfolk Island in the face of the population crowding the little pier. Mr. Nobbs will be there, and the brothers and sisters of Edwin, and the uncles and aunts of Fisher.
'Yet God will comfort them; they have been called to the high privilege of being counted worthy to suffer for their Savior's sake. However much I may reproach myself with want of caution and of prayer for guidance (and this is a bitter thought), they were in the simple discharge of their duty. Their intention and wish were to aid in bringing to those poor people the Gospel of Christ. It has pleased God that in the execution of this great purpose they should have met with their deaths. Surely there is matter for comfort here!
'I can't write all this over again.... I have written at some length to Jem also; put the two letters together, and you will be able to realise it somewhat.
'This is a joint letter to you and Joan. It was begun on your birthday, and it has been written with a heavy, dull weight of sorrow on my heart, yet not unrelieved by the blessed consciousness of being drawn, as I humbly trust, nearer to our most merciful Father in heaven, if only by the very impossibility of finding help elsewhere. It has not been a time without its own peculiar happiness. How much of the Bible seemed endued with new powers of comfort.... How true it is, that they who seek, find. 'I sought the Lord, and He heard me.' The closing chapters of the Gospels, 2 Corinthians, and how many other parts of the New Testament were blessings indeed! Jeremy Taylor's 'Life of Christ,' and 'Holy Living and Dying,' Thomas a Kempis, most of all of course the Prayer-book, and such solemn holy memories of our dear parents and uncles, such blessed hopes of reunion, death brought so near, the longing (if only not unprepared) for the life to come: I could not be unhappy. Yet I could not sustain such a frame of mind long; and then when I sank to the level of earthly thoughts, then came the weary heartache, and the daily routine of work was so distasteful, and I felt sorely tempted to indulge the 'luxury of grief.' But, thanks be to God, it is not altogether an unhealthy sorrow, and I can rest in the full assurance that all this is working out God's purposes of love and mercy to us all-Melanesians, Pitcairners, and all; and that I needed the discipline I know full well....
'Your loving Brother,
'J. C. P.'
It was not possible to touch at Norfolk Island, each attempt was baffled by the winds; and on September 16 the 'Southern Cross' anchored at Kohimarama, and a sad little note was sent up to the Primate with the announcement of the deaths and losses.
In spite of the comfort which, as this note said, Patteson felt 'in the innocence of their lives, and the constancy of their faith' unto the death, the fate of these two youths, coming at the close of a year of unusual trial, which, as he had already said, had diminished his elasticity, had a lasting effect. It seemed to take away his youthful buoyancy, and marked lines of care on his face that never were effaced. The first letter after his return begins by showing how full his heart was of these his children:-
'Kohimarama: Sunday, September 18, 1864.
'My dearest Fan,-I must try to write without again making my whole letter full of dear Edwin and Fisher. That my heart is full of them you can well believe.
'These last five weeks have taught me that my reading of the Bible was perhaps more intellectual and perhaps more theological than devotional, to a dangerous extent probably; anyhow I craved for it as a revelation not only of truth, but of comfort and support in heavy sorrow. It may be that when the sorrow does not press so heavily, the Bible cannot speak so wonderfully in that particular way of which I am writing, and it is right to read it theologically also.
'But yet it should always be read with a view to some practical result; and so often there is not a special, though many general points which may make our reading at once practical. Then comes the real trial, and then comes the wondrous power of God's Word to help and strengthen.
'Now it helps me to know where I am, to learn how others manage to see where they are.
'All that you say about self-consciousness, can't I understand it! Ah! when I saw the guileless pure spirit of those two dear fellows ever brightening more and more for now two years. I had respected them as much as I loved them. I used to think, 'Yes, we must become such as they; we too must seek and pray for the mind of a little child.'
'And surely the contemplation of God is the best cure. How admirable Jeremy Taylor is on those points! Oh that he had not overlaid it all with such superabundant ornamentation of style and rhetoric. But it is the manner of the age. Many persons I suppose get over it, perhaps like it; but I long for the same thoughts, the same tenderness and truthfulness, and faithful searching words with a clear, simple, not unimaginative diction. Yet his book is a great heritage.
'Newman has a sermon on Contemplation or Meditation, I forget which; and my copy is on board. But I do hope that by praying for humility, with contemplation of God's majesty and love and our Savior's humility and meekness, some improvement may be mercifully vouchsafed to me.
'To dwell on His humiliation, His patience, that He should seek for heavenly aids, accept the ministration of an angel strengthening Him, how full of mystery and awe! and yet written for us! And yet we are proud and self- justified and vainglorious!
'The Archbishop of York, in 'Aids to Faith,' on the Death of Christ, has some most solemn and deep remarks on the Lord's Agony. I don't know that it could ever be quite consistent with reverence to speak on what is there suggested. Yet if I could hear Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey (say) prayerfully talking together on that great mystery, I
