THE MELANESIAN MISSION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 38, 13 February 1904, Page 6

THE MELANESIAN MISSION.

A mass meeting was held in the Choral Hail last night of those interested in the llelanesian mission to heaC the Bishop of Melanesia give an account of his stewardship. The hall was crowded, and the narration of the work being done awakened much enthusiasm —so much, indeed, that of the two boats the Bishop asked for one was contributed by a gentleman in the audience, and the price of the second (£33) was nearly raised by the public subscription. The Bishop said that the difficulty of work in the diocese would be realised if people remembered that there were about a thousand different dialects witliin it, spread over a broad area of ocean in the different islands. One of these —the Mota —had been adopted as the vehicle of education at Norfolk Island because there were so many ideas in English —as faith, hope, love — which had no equivalents in the dialects, and the dialect made it easier for the native scholars to comprehend than English would. The home life was one of the chief educational methods, and the boys and girls were treated as the children of the missionaries, introducing them to ideas that had never appeared till then in the lives of their people. The religious life also was broadly taught, and the right to attend chapel made so much a privilege that it was the keenest punishment to be prohibited from attendance. The boys were taken to Norfolk Island when they were quite small, educated for eight or nine years, and then sent back to their own islands or to others —which yielded better results —as missionaries. It had been said that the native teachers were of no use, but he had proved they were by the fact that there had not been a single massacre in those islands where native teachers were ever since the system was begun, whereas the white missionary was frequently in danger. The system followed on the Norfolk Island, he was convinced, was the best that could be followed. The traders had come to recognise that trade followed the missionary, and were all helping him in many cases nobly, refusing money where they were legitimately entitled to it. The Bishop of Auckland delivered an enthusiastic speech, expressing his greatest hope that the Auckland diocese might assert itself as the most "redhot" missionary centre in the colonies. He asked all" to remember the "tuckboxes" of the missionaries which Mrs. Calder supervised, and wished all who could to send practical support in the shape* of good homely cakes, jams, cheese, ever-useful quinine tabloids, compressed meat-extracts, and similar things. He regarded the missionary spirit as the very essential of church life in New Zealand. The Bishop of Christchurch spoke most humorously, but at the same time with biting sarcasm, at the expense of those whose religious view was bounded by the parochial fence. "You look after God's work and God will look after your fence,' , lie said. The Bishop found in the missionary spirit the salvation of the church—the spirit that cried out to the pettifogging soids that quarrelled amongst themselves, "Come, let us look at greater things!"