Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands

'Your affectionate cousin,

'J. C. PATTESON, Bishop.'

One of these deaths was that of Kareambat, the little New Caledonian confided to the Bishop of New Zealand by poor Basset. He had been christened on the previous Epiphany.

No doubt this grief on coming home increased the effect of this year of trial. Indeed even on the voyage there had been this admission, 'Somehow I don't feel right with all this holiday; I have worked really very hard, but "change of work is the best holiday." I don't feel springy. I am not so young as I was, that's the truth of it, and this life is not likely to be a long one. Yet when used up for this work, absence of continual anxiety and more opportunity of relaxation may carry a man on without his being wholly useless!'

The Maori war was a constant grief and anxiety to all the friends on shore, and there was thus evidently much less elasticity left to meet the great shock that was preparing for the voyagers in the expedition of 1864. Mr. Codrington was not of the party, having been obliged to go to England to decide whether it was possible to give himself wholly to the Mission; and the staff therefore consisted of Mr. Pritt, Mr. Kerr, and Mr. Palmer, with Mr. Joseph Atkin, whose journal his family have kindly put at my disposal.

The endeavour was to start after the Ascension Day Communion, but things were not forward enough. May was not, however, very far advanced before the 'Southern Cross' was at sea.

On May 17, Norfolk Island was visited, and Edwin Nobbs and Fisher Young had what proved to be their last sight, of their home and friends. The plan was to go on to Nengone and Erromango, take up the stores sent to the latter place from Sydney, drop the two clergymen at Mota, and after a stay there, go to the New Hebrides, and then take up the party, and if possible leave them to make experiment of Curtis Island, while going to those Santa Cruz islands for which he always seems to have had such a yearning.

'I feel as usual,' he finishes the letter sent from Norfolk Island, 'that no one can tell what may be the issue of such voyages. I pray and trust that God will mercifully reveal to me "what I ought to do, and give me grace and power to fulfil the same."

'I have now been for some time out of the way of this kind of work, but I hope that all may be safely ordered for us. It is all in His hands; and you all feel, as I try to do, that there should be no cause for anxiety or trouble.

'Yet there are moments when one has such an overwhelming sense of one's sins and negligences provoking God to chastise one. I know that His merciful intention towards men must be accomplished, and on the whole I rest thankfully in that, and feel that He will not suffer my utter unworthiness to hinder His work of love and goodness.'

At Mota, Mr. Atkin's journal shows to what work a real helper needed to be trained:—

'The Mission-house had lost its roof in a gale of wind. The epidemic that was raging last year did not seem to have continued long after with such violence; some more of the people were dead, but not very many. We took off all the Mota boys, and things that were wanted in three boat-loads, the last time leaving the Bishop. There was, fortunately, very little surf, and we got nothing wet, but as the tide was high, we had to carry the things over the coral reefs with the water a little above our knees.

'About an hour later we dropped anchor at Vanua Lava. On Saturday morning I went ashore with the boat, and got water for washing and sand for scrubbing decks, and several tons of taro and yams discharged on board the vessel. Then made another trip, left all the boys on shore for a holiday, and took off twelve or fourteen cwt. of yams, taro, and cocoa-nuts. After dinner and washing up, went to fetch boys back. Where we bought the yams there was such a surf breaking that we could not haul the boat on the beach, and we had to wade and carry them out. After we got on board, we had a bathe. Two of the Solomon Islanders distinguished themselves by jumping off the fore-yard, and diving under the ship. Mr. Tilly and the mates had been stowing, and the rest of us had been getting yams all day, and if our friends could have seen us then, haggard-looking and dirty, singing choruses to nigger melodies, how shocked they would have been!

'Next Thursday went across to Mota, took the Bishop on board, and sailed south as fast as possible.

'Sunday morning we were at the entrance of the passage between Ambrym and Mallicolo, without a breath of wind. We had service at 10 A.M.; and in the afternoon, psalms and hymns and chants in the cabin, the Bishop doing most of the singing.

'June 6th.—On Monday morning we landed at the old place at Tariko. We began to buy some yams. The Bishop and William Pasvorang went ashore, and the rest of us stayed in the boat, keeping her afloat and off the reefs. Unfortunately the place where we landed was neutral ground between two tribes, who both brought yams to the place to sell. One party said another was getting too many hatchets, and two or three drew off and began shooting at the others. One man stood behind the Bishop, a few feet from him, and fired away in the crowd with a will. The consternation and alarm of both parties were very ludicrous. Some of each set were standing round the boat, armed with bows and arrows, but they were so frightened that they never seemed to think of using them, but ran off as hard as they could scamper to the shallow water, looking over their shoulders to see if the enemies' arrows were after them. One arrow was fired at the Bishop from the shore, and one hit the boat just as we pushed off.

'The Bishop himself says of this fray:—"I was in the middle, one man only remained by me, crouching under the lee of the branch of the tree, and shooting away from thence within a yard of me. I did not like to leave the steel-yard, and I had to detach it from the rope with which it was tied to the tree, and the basket too was half full of yams and heavy, so that it was some time before I got away, and walked down the beach, and waded to the boat, shooting going on all round at the time; no one shooting at me, yet as they shot on both sides of me at each other, I was thankful to get well out of it. I thought of him who preserves from 'the arrow that flieth by day,' as He has so mercifully preserved so many of us from 'the sickness.'" Now don't go and let this little affair be printed.'

At Parama there was a friendly landing. At Sopevi Mr. Atkin says: 'We could not find the landing place where the Bishop two years ago found several people. We saw three or four on the shore. They were just the same colour as the dust from the volcano. What a wretched state they must be in! If they go to the neighbouring-isles they will be killed as enemies, and if they stay at home they are constantly suffocated by the ashes, which seemed to have fallen lately to the depth of more than afoot.'

At Mallicolo a landing place was found, and an acquaintance begun by means of gifts of calico. At Leper's Island St. Barnabas Day was celebrated by bringing off two boys, but here again was peril. The Bishop writes:—

'The people, though constantly fighting, and cannibals and the rest of it, are to me very attractive, light-coloured, and some very handsome. As I sat on the beach with a crowd about me, most of them suddenly jumped up and ran off. Turning my head I saw a man (from the boat they saw two men) a few yards from me, corning to me with club uplifted. I remained sitting, and held out a few fish-hooks to him, but one or two men jumped up and seizing him by the waist forced him off. After a few minutes (lest they should think I was suspicious of them), I went back to the boat. I found out from the two young men who went away with me from another place, just what I expected to hear, viz. that a poor fellow called Moliteum was shot dead two months ago by a trader for stealing a bit of calico. The wonder was, not that they wanted to avenge the death of their kinsman, but that the others should have prevented it. How could they possibly know that I was not one of the wicked set? Yet they did discriminate; and here again, always by the merciful Providence of God, the plan of going among the people unarmed and unsuspiciously has been seen to disarm their mistrust and to make them regard me as a friend.'

Curtis Island was inspected, but there was no possibility of leaving a party to make experiment on it; and then the 'Southern Cross' sailed for the Santa Cruz cluster, that group whose Spanish name was so remarkable a foreboding of what they were destined to become to that small party of Christian explorers. Young Atkin made no entry in his diary of those days, and could never bear to speak of them; and yet, from that time forward, his mind was fully made up to cast in his lot with the Mission.

It was on August 15 that the first disaster at these islands took place. Not till the 27th could the Bishop—on his sister Fanny's birthday—begin a letter to her, cheering himself most touchingly with the thought of the peace at home, and then he broke off half way, and could not continue for some days:—

'My dearest Fan,—You remember the old happy anniversaries of your birthday—the Feniton party—the assembly of relations—the regular year's festivity.

'No doubt this anniversary brings as much true happiness, the assurance of a more abiding joy, the consciousness of deeper and truer sympathy. You are, I hope, to pass the day cheerfully and brightly with perhaps – and – about you.... Anyhow, I shall think of you as possibly all together, the remnant of the old family gathering, on a calm autumn day, with lovely South Devon scenery around you.

'The day comes to me in the midst of one of the deepest sorrows I have ever known—perhaps I have never felt such sorrow…perhaps I have never been so mercifully supported under it. It is a good and profitable sorrow I trust for me: it has made so much in me reveal itself as hollow, worldly, selfish, vainglorious. It has, I hope, helped to strip away the veil, and may be by God's blessing the beginning of more earnest life-long repentance and preparation for death.

'On August 15 I was at Santa Cruz. You know that I had a very remarkable day there three years ago. I felt very anxious to renew acquaintance with the people, who are very numerous and strong.

'I went off in the boat with Atkin (twenty), Pearce (twenty-three or twenty-four years old), Edwin Nobbs, Fisher Young, and Hunt Christian, the last three Norfolk Islanders. Atkin, Edwin and Fisher have been with me for two or three years—all young fellows of great promise, Fisher perhaps the dearest of all to me, about eighteen, and oh! so good, so thoroughly truthful, conscientious, and unselfish!

'I landed at two places among many people, and after a while came back as usual to the boat. All seemed pleasant and hopeful. At the third place I landed amidst a great crowd, waded over the broad reef (partially uncovered at low water), went into a house, sat down for some time, then returned among a great crowd to the boat and got into it. I had some difficulty in detaching the hands of some men swimming in the water.

'Well, when the boat was about fifteen yards from the reef, on which crowds were standing, they began (why I know not) to shoot at us.—(Another letter adds) 300 or 400 people on the reef, and five or six canoes being round us, they began to shoot at us.—I had not shipped the rudder, so I held it up, hoping it might shield off any arrows that came straight, the boat being end on, and the stern, having been backed into the reef, was nearest to them.

'When I looked round after a minute, providentially indeed, for the boat was being pulled right into a small bay on the reef, and would have grounded, I saw Pearce lying between the thwarts, with the long shaft of an arrow in his chest, Edwin Nobbs with an arrow as it seemed in his left eye, many arrows flying close to us from many quarters. Suddenly Fisher Young, pulling the stroke oar, gave a faint scream; he was shot through the left wrist. Not a word was spoken, only my "Pull! port oars, pull on steadily." Once dear Edwin, with the fragment of the arrow sticking in his cheek, and the blood streaming down, called out, thinking even then more of me than of himself, "Look out, sir! close to you!" But indeed, on all sides they were close to us!

'How we any of us escaped I can't tell; Fisher and Edward pulled on, Atkin had taken Pearce's oar, Hunt pulled the fourth oar. By God's mercy no one else was hit, but the canoes chased us to the schooner. In about twenty minutes we were on board, the people in the canoes round the vessel seeing the wounded paddled off as hard as they could, expecting of course that we should take vengeance on them. But I don't at all think that they were cognisant of the attack on shore.'

Several letters were written about this adventure; but I have thought it better to put them together, every word being Bishop Patteson's own, because such a scene is better realised thus than by reading several descriptions for the most part identical. What a scene it is! The palm-clad island, the reef and sea full of the blacks, the storm of long arrows through the air, the four youths pulling bravely and steadily, and their Bishop standing over them, trying to ward off the blows with the rudder, and gazing with the deep eyes and steadfast smile that had caused many a weapon to fall harmless!

Pearce, it should be observed, was a volunteer for the Mission then on a trial-trip.

There was an even more trying time to come on board. The Bishop continues:—

'I drew out the arrow from Pearce's chest: a slanting wound not going in very deep, running under the skin, yet of apparently almost fatal character to an ignorant person like myself; Five inches were actually inside him. The arrow struck him almost in the centre of the chest and in the direction of the right breast. There was no effusion of blood, he breathed with great difficulty, groaning and making a kind of hollow sound, was perfectly composed, gave me directions and messages in case of his death. I put on a poultice and bandage, and leaving him in charge of some one, went to Fisher. The wrist was shot through, but the upper part of the arrow broken off and deep down; bleeding profuse, of which I was glad; I cut deeply, though fearing much to cut an artery, but I could not extract the wooden arrow-head. At length getting a firm hold of the projecting point of the arrow on the lower side of his wrist, I pulled it through: it came out clean. The pain was very great, he trembled and shivered: we gave him brandy, and he recovered. I poulticed the wound and went to Edwin. Atkin had got out the splinter from his wound; the arrow went in near the eye and came out by the cheek-bone: it was well syringed, and the flow of blood had been copious from the first. The arrows were not bone-headed, and not poisoned, but I well knew that lock-jaw was to be dreaded. Edwin's was not much more than a flesh wound. Fisher's being in the wrist, frightened me more: their patience and quiet composure and calm resignation were indeed a strength and comfort to us all.

'This was on Monday, August 15. All seemed doing well for a day or two, I kept on poultices, gave light nourishing food, &c. But on Saturday morning Fisher said to me, "I can't make out what makes my jaws feel so stiff."

'Then my heart sank down within me, and I prayed earnestly, earnestly to God. I talked to the dear dear lad of his danger, night and day we prayed and read. A dear guileless spirit indeed. I never saw in so young a person such a thorough conscientiousness as for two years I witnessed in his daily life, and I had long not only loved but respected him.

'We had calm weather and could not get on. By Saturday the jaws were tight-locked. Then more intense grew the pain, the agony, the whole body rigid like a bar of iron! Oh! how I blessed God who carried me through that day and night. How good he was in his very agonies, in his fearful spasms, thanking God, praying, pressing my hand when I prayed and comforted him with holy words of Scripture. None but a well-disciplined, humble, simple Christian could so have borne his sufferings: the habit of obedience and faith and patience; the childlike unhesitating trust in God's love and fatherly care, supported him now. He never for a moment lost his hold upon God. What a lesson it was! it calmed us all. It almost awed me to see in so young a lad so great an instance of God's infinite power, so great a work of good perfected in one young enough to have been confirmed by me.

'At 1 A.M. (Monday) I moved from his side to my couch, only three yards off. Of course we were all (I need not say) in the after cabin. He said faintly, "Kiss me. I am very glad that I was doing my duty. Tell my father that I was in the path of duty, and he will be so glad. Poor Santa Cruz people!" Ah! my dear boy, you will do more for their conversion by your death than ever we shall by our lives. And as I lay down almost convulsed with sobs, though not audible, he said (so Mr. Tilly afterwards told me), "Poor Bishop!" How full his heart was of love and peace, and thoughts of heaven. "Oh! what love," he said. The last night when I left him for an hour or two at 1 A.M. only to lie down in my clothes by his side, he said faintly (his body being then rigid as a bar of iron), "Kiss me, Bishop." At 4 A.M. he started as if from a trance; he had been wandering a good deal, but all his words even then were of things pure and holy. His eyes met mine, and I saw the consciousness gradually coming back into them. "They never stop singing there, sir, do they?"—for his thoughts were with the angels in heaven. Then, after a short time, the last terrible struggle, and then he fell asleep. And remember, all this in the midst of that most agonizing, it may be, of all forms of death. At 4 A.M. he was hardly conscious, not fully conscious: there were same fearful spasms: we fanned him and bathed his head and occasionally got a drop or two of weak brandy or wine and water down. Then came the last struggle. Oh! how I thanked God when his head at length fell back, or rather his whole body, for it was without joint, on my arm: long drawn sighs with still sadder contraction of feature succeeded, and while I said the Commendatory Prayer, he passed away.

'The same day we anchored in Port Patteson, and buried him in a quiet spot near the place where the Primate and I first landed years ago. It seems a consecration of the place that the body of that dear child should be resting there.

'Some six years ago, when Mrs. Selwyn stopped at Norfolk Island she singled him out as the boy of special 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, &c., 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 should feel that it might be very profitable. But he must be a very humble man who should dare to speak on it. Yet read it, Fan, it cannot harm you; it is very awful, it is fully meant that He was sinless, without spot, undefiled through all. It makes the mystery of sin, and of what it cost to redeem our souls, more awful than ever.

'And then, surely to the contemplation of God and the necessary contrast of our own weakness and misery, we add the thought of our approaching death, we anticipate the hours, the days, it may be the weeks and months, even the years of weariness, pain, sleeplessness, thirst, distaste for food, murmuring thoughts, evil spirits haunting us, impatient longings after rest for which we are not yet prepared, the thousand trials, discomforts, sadnesses of sickness—yes, it must come in some shape; and is it to come as a friend or an enemy to snatch us from what we love and enjoy, or to open the gates of Paradise?

'I humbly thank God that, while I dare not be sure that I am not mistaken, and suppose that if ready to go I should be taken, the thought of death at a distance is the thought of rest and peace, of more blessed communion with God's saints, holy angels and the Lord. Yet I dare not feel that if death was close at hand, it might not be far otherwise. How often the "Christian Year," and all true divinity helps up here! Why indulge in such speculations? Seek to prepare for death by dying daily. Oh! that blessed text: Be not distracted, worry not yourselves about the morrow, for the morrow shall, &c. How it does carry one through the day! Bear everything as sent from God for your good, by way of chastisement or of proving you. Pusey's sermon on Patience, Newman's on a Particular Providence, guarding so wisely against abuse as against neglect of the doctrine. How much to comfort and guide one! and then, most of all, the continual use of the Prayer-book. Do you often use the Prayer at the end of the Evening Service for Charles the Martyr? Leave out from "great deep…teach us to number"—and substitute "pride" for "splendour." Leave out "according to… blessed martyr." In the Primate's case, it is a prayer full of meaning, and it may have a meaning for us all.