PACIFIC ISLANDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22695, 6 April 1937, Page 11

PACIFIC ISLANDS

MISSIONARIES' WORK PIONEERS OF CIVILISATION The part played by missionaries as pioneers of civilisation in the islands of the Pacific was emphasised by the Rev. J. F. Goklie, founder and chairman of the Methodist Mission in the Solomon Islands, when addressing members of the Auckland Rotary Club at their luncheon meeting yesterday. Mr. D. Henry presided. Mr. Goklie said he had begun the work of bringing Christianity to the savages 35 years ago, for in May, 1902, he visited the western Solomons with two colleagues. They were the first missionaries to take up work in that part of the group, and went to places where no missionary had ever been before. He saw there not only the salvation of the individual, but the resurrection of a race.

The missionaries went to people with no written language, and one of their first duties was to reduce the language to writing, and then teach the natives to read' and write a language which they spoke better than their teachers, continued Mr. Goldie. They had done this and had given the natives the Bible and a literature.

"How many realise that the Christian missionary preceded and paved the way for civil administration?" said Mr. Goldie. "He has gone before and made easy the pathway of legitimate commerce." Mr. Goldie said there was a population of 250,000 in the Solomons, which was one of the finest groups in the Pacific, with every foot of tho land capable of intensive cultivation, but in 1902 the total exports did. not amount to £SOOO. To-day part of the missionaries' work was to divert into useful channels tho great stream of human life that had been wasting itself in head-hunting and going down to extinction. In their work these one-time savages had been given new vision, hope, courage and the incentive to live, and hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of products were being exported from nil this.group. "Men who were spending their time head-hunting and in all the evil practices of dense heathenism now live clean, upright, decent lives," said Mr. Goldie. "In our education we are trying to develop all-round character so that when the inevitable invasion of non-Christian civilisation begins they will be able to stand up and meet it without spiritual disaster."