MISSION SHIP’S VISIT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 1 May 1937, Page 4

MISSION SHIP’S VISIT

THE SOUTHERN CROSS "WORK CANNOT BE MEASURED IN MONEY’’ ECCLESIASTICAL AREA The Southern Cross, the motor shin of the Melanesian Mission, will visit Nelson on f l uesdav next, bringing with her some of the native Christian brothers. Arrangements are being made to welcome the members of the Mission party. The Bishop of Melanesia, the Rt. Rev. 11. \Y. Baddelev, in a recent adress in Wellington reports the “Dominion,” said that the mission bad always been very much in the hearts of the people of New Zealand. “I am sometimes ask. ed for particulars of the return the mission is receiving for the expenditure of the alms given toward its work ; my answer has been that results cannot be assessed in terms of money.”

Bishop Baddoley said that the visit of the mission ship Southern Cross would give citizens an oportunity of seeing for themselves the typo of young man the mission bad produced in its schools. He hoped that the visit of the ship would supply a more personal relationship between the people and the mission.

Melanesia was an ecclesiastical area rallicr than a geographical one. Its territory nearest New Zealand lay 1200 miles north of this country and it then spread for 2000 miles in a. great arc to the northward. The mission worked among a poulation of about 600,000, scattered mostly in rather small communities oil many islands. It was obvious that u white staff could never cover so extensive a territory split into so many groups. The principle was therefore recognised that the task of spreading the Gospel in the islands must devolve in the main on the natives themselves. To this end the mission bad developed .schools from which young men, and to a lesser extent, young women, were sent through the villages and isolated communities. A development was the formation of the Christian brothers, virile young men, who went about as teachers, exerting a fine influence among peoples who were slow to abandon superstitions that often were barbarous. The brothers’ life was always arduous, sometimes discouraging, frequently filled with danger. Yet their work was surely tolling. They taught the natives the principles of hygiene, ministered to them m their sickness and sought to replace fears and hatred with the love that Christ, their great Teacher, had laid down as the basis of the Christian way of life.