MISSIONARY DOCTOR

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29911, 27 August 1962, Page 11

MISSIONARY DOCTOR

Paul White’s Visit

"Enough of that, bwsna—that was terrible,” said the African medical assistant. The young Australian missionary doctor, who had just delivered his first sermon in the vernacular, accepted the rebuke and the eventual result was Dr. Paul White's “Jungle Book" series, which has now reached 23 titles in 31 languages. "The assistant told me I was putting Australian thoughts into African words, and on thinking it over I had to agree with him,” said Dr. White in Christchurch yesterday. "The sermon was about repentance. He asked me if I knew what I was talking about, and by the time he had finished I realised I didn’t. His way of conveying Christian ideas was to clothe them in ancient African fables, an approach I have used widely ever since. The illustration of repentance he gave me was of a monkey sitting at the end of a branch and sawing himself to a fall. To save himself, he had to change his mind about what he was doing, and where he was sitting. I’d never got repentance in focus until that moment.”

Dr. White practises as a medical specialist in Sydney, and carries out a certain amount of research in his specialty, but this, he said, was only the “small end” of his job. He chose his particular specialty because it was one where most of his patients’ illnesses were chronic rather than acute, making it possible for him to allocate certain fixed days

every week to the “big end” —writing and other work for the church. He is firmly convinced that this is indeed the “big end.” “As the size of the mouse is to the size of the elephant, so is the importance of body to soul,” he said. “As mouse is to elephant, so is time to eternity. If two feasts were prepared, one from a mouse and the other from an elephant, from which would you obtain the most gravy?” Dr. White preached yesterday at St. Chad’s Anglican Church, Linwood. St. John’s (Woolston), and St. Aidan’s (Bryndwr). Yesterday afternoon he addressed a “Jungle Doctor” rally arranged by the Church Missionary Society in the Regent Theatre. During this week he will be the chief speaker at the society's spring school at Tyndale House, Cashmere.