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Updated: June 15, 2025
The Church of England folk there regard me as their Bishop, I understand; and the Bishops of Sydney and Melbourne assume this to be the fitting course. A really able energetic man might do much there, and, in five years, would be Bishop of Levuka. 'This is all of Melanesia and myself; but you will like to have this scrawl read to you.
There are, however, diversities in the constitution of the various organizations that may be called voluntary; conditions of membership and functions vary. +531+. Such organizations are of two sorts, one mainly political or governmental, the other mainly religious. The best examples of the first sort are found in Melanesia, Polynesia, and West Africa.
Captain Erskine, in his interesting "Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific," especially remarks upon the "avidity with which the inhabitants of the polyglot islands of Melanesia, from New Caledonia to the Solomon Islands, adopt the improvements of a more perfect language than their own, which different causes and accidental communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that "among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon only to five."
Even as far back as 1810 the port of Sydney sent out a great number of vessels all over the South Seas. The majority of these were engaged in the whale fishery, and, as a rule, were highly successful; others, principally smaller craft, made long but very remunerative cruises among the islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, trading for coconut oil, sandal-wood, and pearl shell.
It was a sight so different in its peaceful simplicity from what I was accustomed to see in Melanesia, it all looked so happy, gay and alluring that it hardly needed the invitations of the kind people, without weapons or suspicion, and with wreaths of sweet-scented flowers around their heads and bodies, to incline us to stay.
In 1848 the bishop sailed away eastward, out of sight of land, in a small schooner of 21 tons, and after ten days reached the Chathams; in 1849 he even ventured in the same vessel far to the northward among the coral islands of Melanesia. In 1847 he had held a second synod, and there were some cheering occurrences among the Maoris, especially in the south-west district. At Wanganui the Rev.
To have Christians about me, to whom I can speak with a certainty of being understood, to feel that we are all bound together in the blessed Communion of the Body of Christ, to know that angels on high are rejoicing and evil spirits being chased away, that all the Banks Islands and all Melanesia are experiencing, as it were, the first shock of a mighty earthquake, that God who foresees the end may, in his merciful Providence, be calling even these very children to bear His message to thousands of heathens, is not it too much?
His rounds took him into low-roofed cottages in which were fishing tackle and sails and here and there mementoes of deep-sea travelling, a lacquer box from Japan, spears and oars from Melanesia, or daggers from the bazaars of Stamboul; there was an air of romance in the stuffy little rooms, and the salt of the sea gave them a bitter freshness.
Has he fairly looked at all the per contra? Mrs. S. 'I feel sure he has. J.C. P. 'I don't deny that my father tells me I must not shrink from it; that some things seem to point to it as natural; that I must not venture to think that I can be as complete a judge as the Bishop of what is good for Melanesia but what necessity for acting now?
The very carriage in question was no more than one of those pony-phaetons with regard to which Bishop Pattison appealed, in one of his letters from Melanesia to his brethren in peaceful, pleasant country rectories and vicarages at home, asking the astonished clergymen, with their clergywomen in the background, if they really considered the clerical equipage, with its modest expense, equivalent to a divine institution?
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