BISHOP PATTESON.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4607, 30 May 1872, Page 3

BISHOP PATTESON.

Professor Max Muellkr, of the University of Oxford, has addressod a letter to the London Times upon the proposed memorial to Bishop Patteson The letter throughout is so interesting that we regret that the smallne3s of our space precludes us from publishing the letter in full. We give, however, some of the leading portions of it. The learned professor saya i —" Sir, —An appeal from the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has appeared in the newspapers, inviting subscriptions for a memorial of Bishop Patteson. The subscriptions wore intended to supply a new ship for missionary purposes, and to build a church in the Norfolk Islands. I saw the advertisement by accident. Many of my friends never knew of it till I told them, No Hat of subscribers has as yet been pnblished, I have waited from day to day and from week to week in the hope that some one bottcr qualified than I feel myself for such a task would speak ; but 1 I cannot any longer repress a feeling of regret that this meinori.il should not from the first have assumed a broader and truly national character. Surely there are men who, with the deepest oloquonce of the heart, could havo told every man, and woman, and child, what England has lo3t in the death of that true-hearted son of h,ers —Bishop Patteson. His death was a great national loss j it may become an oveu greater national gain and blessing. As a national loss it found its place by right in the Queen's Speech ; as a national gain' it should be marked by a truly national thanksgiving or thank-offer-ing., ***** Devoted as he was to his work in that new world, he did not become estranged from the literary and scientific interests of hia old home. His correspondence with me was chiefly on philological subjects. He had a genius for languages, and felt a deep interest in the great problems connected with the science of languages. His library will 'be found well supplied with the best books on comparative philology. Even Sanskrit grammars he asked to have sent to him, because he felt that a knowledge of that ancient language waa essential, to every true scholar. Every one of his letters deserves to be published, and I cannot resist the desire to give at least a few extracts. " In 1867 ho writes t—-* In almost all cases the natives are friendly ; where they are not well disposed, it is owing to some outrage previously committed upon them by some whaling or trading vessel. We two [he and the Bishop of ,New Zealand] have been among large parties of them, stark naked, armed with clubs, bows, and arrows, with perfect security. They are moat docile, gentle, lovable fellows.' " In 18G6 he writes :—'All that I can do is to learn many dialects of a given archipelago, present their existing varieties, and so work back to the original language. This to some extent has been done in the Banks Group, ancl in tno eastern part of the Solomon Islands. But directly I get so far as this I i am recalled to the practical necessity of using my knowledge of the several dialects rather to make known God's truth to the heathen than •to inform the • literati' of the process of dialectic rariation. Do nob mistake me, my dear friend, or suspect me of silly sentimentalism. But you can easily understand what it is to feel, ' God has given to me, and to me only, of all Christian men, the power of speaking to this or that nation; and, moreover, this is the work He has sent me to do.' Often, Ido not deny, I should like perhaps the other better. It is very pleasant to shirk my evening class, and to spend the time with Sir W. Martin discussing some point of Melanesian philology. But then, my dear lads have lost two hours of Christian instruction, and that won't do.' "No doubt, but for hia death, he might have passed away as a hard-working, meritorious, but almost unknown missionary. There are mauy great and good men —it may be, as great and good as •he was —who pass away unnoticed by the world. But that is the very reason why we should be ready to recognise and honour the man who himself looked for no recognition and no honour, but who, as by a terrible flash of lightning, was suddenly revealed to us by his death in all his grandeur' and human v majesty. It is well that we should know what stuff there may be unknown to us ia the men whom we meet in common life, doing their allotted work steadily and quietly, but carrying, in their breaats those lion hearts which neither ambition nor love, of ease, neither danger nor death, can force one inch from the narrow path of duty. To have known such a man is one of life's greatest blessings. In his life of |purity, unselfishness, devotion to man, a faith in a higher world, those who have eyes to' see may read the best, 1 the most real Imitatio Christi. In his death, following so closely on his prayer for forgiveness for i his enemies — * for 'they- know ', not What they do' —we have witnessed once more a truly Christ -'like death. As; we look back, into, the distant past, when,, thero was as yet'no Rome, no Attfensj when Germany had not *yet been discovered, when Britain was but a, fabulous island, nay, when the soil of Europe had not yet been trodden by the* larbingerVof 'tho^Aryan raca may we not look forward, too, into the distant) future, when those ' Black Islands' of t the JBacifift r jhall,^have, ..been; v changed into bright apd,, happy;, Isles, with busy harbours, villages, ( and towns 1 *In that distant- r futuW,! depend upon, it, the name( of Pa.tfcesqn .will, live ia everyicot* • tags, in every' school arid 1" church of Melanesia, not as theaame of a fabulous saint or martyr/ but' as-the ■ never-to'Jbe-forgoiten name of a good,;a.'.brave, God-fearing,[and God-loving man.. Hfa, bones will not work,, childish miracles;but hissp'iriirwill workaigns »isd!wohderi3 b^re'Tekiiiig'^vWam&ncthe |owestf of Melanesian the indelible Godlike stamp of human nature, and by upholding among futurfi*generations a true faitjh. in God, founded on a true faith in man. S " To Havo 6arrWdlmlf.on«l small stone to thfr' cairn wpich is to commemorate this greatj and* hoiy'life'shoula-beraMafeislaetron'to all who" kneW.Pattp/wn, a;,duty« to,a]liwho have h sard the name of the first Bishop of Melanesia. ' ~

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