An English missionary in Swatow, China, heard sounds of bitter weeping by the wayside one night. Looking for its source, he found a heathen woman bowed over a child’s grave, upon which, according to the local custom, lay an overturned cradle.
(Clara A. Lindsay in Woman’s Work.)
In the village of the Wind a young girl became known as an enquirer. Her Caste passed the word along from village to village wherever its members were found, and all these relations and connections were speedily leagued in a compact to keep her from hearing more. When we went to see her, we found she had been posted off somewhere else. When we went to the somewhere else (always freely mentioned to us, with invitation to go), we found she had been there, but had been forwarded elsewhere. For weeks she was tossed about like this; then we traced her and found her. But she was thoroughly cowed, and dared not show the least interest in us.... Take a child of four or five, ask it a question concerning its Caste, and you will see how that baby tree has begun to drop branch rootlets....
The young girls belonging to the higher Castes are kept in strict seclusion. During these formative years they are shut up within the courtyard walls to the dwarfing life within, and as a result they get dwarfed, and lose in resourcefulness and independence of mind, and above all in courage; and this tells terribly in our work, making it so difficult to persuade such a one to think for herself. It is this custom which makes work among girls exceedingly slow and unresultful.
A few months ago a boy of twelve resolved to become a Christian. His clan, eight thousand strong, were enraged. There was a riot in the streets; in the house the poison cup was ready. Better death than loss of Caste. In another town a boy took his stand and was baptized, thus crossing the line that divided secret belief from open confession. His Caste men got hold of him afterwards; next time he was seen he was a raving lunatic. The Caste was avenged! (Amy Wilson Carmichael in “Things as They Are.”)
Spirit-worship, as existing among the Lao, is not reduced to a system as is Buddhism. It has no temple, but it is enshrined in the heart of every man, woman, and child in the country.... Children are seen with soot marks upon their foreheads. These are placed there by spirit-doctors and are to ward off evil. They also wear around their wrists charm-strings. This belief is by no means confined to the peasantry.
Every person is believed to have thirty-two good spirits pervading his body, called kwan. As long as these kwan all remain as guardian spirits within, no sickness or mishap can befall the person. But alas! these kwan are freaky, vacillating spirits, and may leave the body without a moment’s warning, and at once sickness or accident befalls. Much time and money are spent trying to keep these kwan in a good humor, so that they will not desert the body....
The folk-lore of this people is pregnant with this belief in magic and spirit-worship, and so the children at the knee learn to reverence and fear both, and in after years when the saner reason of maturity would assert itself, this belief has become a habit too deeply ingrained in the mind to be cast aside. (Lillian Johnson Curtis in “The Laos of North Siam,” Westminster Press.)
I wish some of you might be here tomorrow to go with me to my Sunday-School for heathen children. This is a school which had to be discontinued for some time, and I re-opened it on Easter Sunday, with the assistance of nine of our older girls and pupil teachers. One hundred were present last Sunday, including some girls from our two mission schools, and a few visitors. The majority of the children are very poor and dirty, and they are learning to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know,” with as much gusto as though they were as clean as pinks, and they carry away with them a lesson leaf and a picture card, to try to tell at home what they have learned that day. I quite forget they are Chinese children, for their human nature is very like that of the children at home. One Sunday, two little girls from our mission school, clean and comfortably dressed, were sitting on the front seat, when I brought in three little heathen girls, soiled and untidy, to sit beside them. Whereupon one of the clean little girls drew herself off in one corner, gathering her clothes close about her for fear of touching the others; while the second clean little girl moved toward the soiled children and shared her hymnbook with them, pointing out each character as we sang. Did you ever know any little children at home who acted as did these two Chinese children? (Edith C. Dickie in The Foreign Post.)
“Suffer the little children.” Mark 10:13–16.
Various ways in which Christ’s disciples hinder the children,—consider them too young,—too irresponsible,—feel that adults have the first claim to Christ’s time and attention.
How different was Christ’s attitude! “In His words over the little children, Christ has lifted childhood into a type of character, and has given children their share in the Kingdom of God.” (Shailer Mathews.)
The touch of Christ on a little child’s life brings blessing. Are we bringing the children to Him or forbidding them? “The place for the lambs is in the fold.” (Woelfkin.)
(Spirit of Missions.)
1. What would be the moral and physical effects on a boy, of the religious rites of ancestor worship as practiced among the Fang tribe of Africa?
2. What can we learn from Mohammedan methods in teaching their children the Koran, and establishing them in the doctrines and usages of their faith?
3. What are the principal difficulties met by representatives of Christianity in efforts to come in contact with and influence Mohammedan children?
4. Suggest methods best adapted for overcoming these difficulties.
5. What methods have been most successful in reaching the children in the missions of your denomination?
6. What estimate should be placed on the Sunday-School as a factor in the evangelization of mission lands?
7. What are the greatest needs for better equipment in Sunday-School work in the lands where your Board is at work?
8. What can American children be trained to do in meeting these needs?
Children of Persia, Mrs. Napier Malcolm, (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.)
Children of Egypt, Miss L. Crowther, (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.)
“Little Wednesday,” Everyland, June, 1913.
“A Social Settlement in the Slums of Okayama,” Missionary Review of the World, Dec., 1912.
Sketches from the Karen Hills, Alonzo Bunker, (Revell.)
On the Borders of Pigmy Land, Chaps. 9, 10, 19–25, Ruth B. Fisher, (Revell.)
The Light of the World, Chap. 6, R. E. Speer, (Mission Study Series.)
Lotus Buds, Amy Wilson Carmichael, (Geo. H. Doran Co.)
Things as They Are, Amy Wilson Carmichael, (Revell.)
Overweights of Joy, Amy Wilson Carmichael, (Revell.)
The Call of Moslem Children, Missionary Review of the World, Oct., 1913.
“I must be about my Father’s business.”
Christ needs all the children of the world—Work for the children in awakening lands, Japan, China, India—Work for the children in lands convulsed by war and revolution, Turkey, Persia—Work for the children in lands asleep—The world’s tragedies—What a slave boy accomplished—Need for trained workers—How Bishop Selwyn obtained and trained them—Children at work for Christ—Children from mission lands helping to save America—Missionary children at work—American children have a share in the working and giving and going—The world needs the Holy Child.
The Children of the World need Christ.
Christ needs the Children,—all the Children of the World.
Unless the children of today are brought to the Master and trained for His service, the outlook is dark indeed for coming generations. If every child now living could be brought under Christian influences, receive a Christian education, and be sent out to live and work for Christ, what a marvelous transformation this world would experience! In a conspicuous place on the wall at a recent Sunday-School convention hung a banner with the words “Childhood is the Hope of the World,”—the same thought that was embodied in the remark of a prominent Japanese Christian, who said to a missionary, “The grown-up people are so ignorant and set in their ways, they will not become Christians, but the hope is in the children.”[95]
“He who helps a child,” says Phillips Brooks, “helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any other stage of their human life, can possibly give again.” Here is a challenge to all who believe that the world needs hope, that humanity needs help, that God needs human agents to carry out His plans, that Christ needs the child!
What is there for the child of today,—the man and woman of tomorrow,—to do in countries that are awaking out of age-long sleep?
Sixty years ago Japan was in darkness. What great transformations have taken place since Commodore Perry sailed for Yedo Bay in November, 1852! As a commercial, military, and naval power Japan has been taking her place with the important nations of the earth. We have already learned that her educational system contains much that might well be copied in Western lands. The manner in which Japan is “catching up” with nations that have had centuries of advantage over her reminds one of the educational experimenters who claim that a child need not be bothered with mathematics until he is ten or twelve years old, and that he will then speedily “catch up” with children who have toiled over their mathematics since they were of kindergarten age. During the serious outbreak of bitter feeling in Japan regarding the proposed Alien Land Holding Bill pending in the California Legislature, a large reception was tendered in Tokyo to Dr. John R. Mott, Hamilton Wright Mabie and Dr. Peabody. In the course of his address, Count Okuma, who is not in any sense a Christian, remarked that diplomacy, the courts, and commercial interests were alike helpless to maintain peace on earth and good will among men. “The only hope,” he said, “is in the power of Christianity and in the influence of Christians to maintain peace and righteousness in the spirit of brotherly love.”[96]
Not only from a political point of view, but far more from an intellectual and religious point of view, is Japan in great, urgent need of what Christianity can give her. “It seems from the figures of a religious census recently taken in the Imperial University of Japan at Tokyo, that of the students in attendance, three-fourths of them declare themselves agnostics, while fifteen hundred are content to be registered as atheists. That leaves only five hundred of the whole student body to be accounted for: and of these, sixty are Christian, fifty Buddhist, and eight Shinto.... The educated classes of Japan have practically broken with Shintoism and Buddhism, and are looking around for some better basis for ethics and faith. The issue in Japan is no longer between Christianity and Buddhism, but between Christianity and nothing.”[97]
Side by side with this pregnant statement we place a few sentences from the Sixth Annual Report of the Kindergarten Union of Japan.
“What influence has the kindergarten on the lives of its graduates in later years? From many churches we hear of them as church members doing active service, like one young man who has a class of twenty-five boys in Sunday-School. As teachers, as mothers, in many walks of life, they are showing the power of Christ in their lives, and all, whether Christians or not, are better men and women for their training in Christian schools.”
The inference is so obvious that we need not comment upon it. Rather let us do our share to multiply the agencies that can embody in their reports such incidents as the following from the American Church Mission Kindergarten at Sendai:—
“More than ever before have we emphasized Christianity as the center of our thought and life, and feel much encouraged to go much farther next year. Yearning over our graduates, who, when they leave us, may be separated for a long time from Christian teaching, we earnestly desired to see Christianity move definitely forward in their hearts, so far as may be for little children. So we based the last month’s work on Phil. 2:6–11. This seems deep, but was found helpful by the teachers.... Just before graduation, in the free talk at luncheon hour one day, a boy whose parents were about to move to Akita said most disconsolately, ‘There won’t be any God to take care of me when I go to Akita!’ ‘Oh, yes, there will,’ said Taguchi San, who, seeing his need of a broader understanding of the Omnipotent God, told of the God of all the earth, and that He cared for us wherever we go, even when farther than Akita.”[98]
China’s awakening has been so sudden and so rapid that even while the Christian women of America were studying “China’s New Day,” many facts in that up-to-date text-book became ancient history. A few of the startling contrasts between the Old China and the New were indicated in the Congregationalist of April 24, 1913.
Associated Press despatches from Peking on Thursday of last week reported that the Chinese Government has made an appeal to all the Christian churches in China to set aside April 27—next Sunday—as a day of prayer for the Chinese National Assembly, for the new Government, for the President of the new Republic yet to be elected, for the constitution of the Republic, for the maintenance of peace and for the election of strong and virtuous men to office. Representatives of provincial authorities are instructed to be present at these services....
Thirteen years ago this coming summer the Imperial Government of China hunted and slew her Christian subjects like wild beasts and brought all of the resources at her command to aid in driving the hated religions of the “foreign devils” from her shores. Today the new Republic solemnly and officially sets apart a day and urges all her Christian subjects, as well as foreigners, to assemble and, in the presence of the officials, intercede for those things which Christian nations seek and supremely value.
In 1900 a despatch was sent from the throne to all viceroys of all the provinces to exterminate all foreigners, and the streets of Peking were placarded with posters threatening with death all who provided them refuge. A few weeks ago the President of the Republic, Yuan Shi Kai, addressing in Peking an assembly of delegates to the Annual Convention of the Y. M. C. A., said:
“You, my friends, who are members and delegates to this Christian Association from every province of the Republic, are examples for the men of every class of society. By the help of your guiding light and uplifting influence, millions of young men, well equipped, morally, intellectually, and physically, will be raised up in this nation to render loyal service to the Republic in her time of need, and lift her to a position that shall add to the civilized world an undying luster.”
China is doing her part to make amends for the past and to demonstrate to the entire world the sincerity of her purpose. Undoubtedly this is the first time in history that such an appeal has been made by a non-Christian nation. With commendable promptness both the Federal Council and Committee of Reference and Council of the Foreign Missionary Societies of North America have asked the churches to intercede for China.
Was there ever a more striking proof of the presence of God in the life of the world and of His purposes for men in Jesus Christ the universal Saviour? Was there ever greater encouragement to use the mighty enginery of united prayer for a specific end?
Listen to the testimony of the son of a prominent Christian official in China:—
“Where did the Chinese Republic ever come from? You say from the reformers and revolutionists. You don’t go back far enough. Dr. Sun was in a large measure responsible for it all, but where does he come from? Where did he get his principles of freedom and equality? These were instilled into his heart by a missionary, and who was he? He was a follower of Jesus Christ, and in China for the direct purpose of teaching how Jesus came to save the world.... Blot out of China today the education which owes its origin to Jesus Christ, and where will China be? In the depth of deepest ignorance.”[99]
Sun Yat Sen, by many considered “the first citizen in the hearts of his countrymen,” spoke with no uncertain sound of China’s greatest need in this time of her crisis. “Brothers,” he said, when addressing a number of Chinese students, “applied, practical Christianity is our true need. Away with the commentaries and doubts. God asks your obedience, not your patronage. He demands your service, not your criticism.”[100]
“Applied, practical Christianity,” is what the missionaries are trying to give China, and can any part of their work be more practical or more important than what they are doing for the children who are soon to be the statesmen and educators, the military and social leaders, the fathers and mothers of the great new Republic of the East?
Many pages might be filled with true tales of how Chinese children, won to Christ in early life, have brought blessing and uplift to hundreds in their land. The story of Dr. Li Bi Cu and her mother is a wonderful illustration of what might be multiplied many thousands of times if there were always some one ready to rescue girl babies and to give them a fair chance.
Dr. Li Bi Cu is one of China’s new women. A forceful speaker, using perfect English, with a charming personality, Dr. Li Bi Cu never fails to win the hearts of her audiences. Those who heard her at Northfield can never forget the appeal made by the little woman in Chinese dress, to the women of the United States to come to the help of her countrywomen. The mother of Dr. Li Bi Cu was rescued from the street, where she had been thrown to die, when only a day or two old, and taken to a mission school, where she was cared for, educated, and trained as a Bible woman. She married a Methodist minister, Mr. Li, and her daughter, Li Bi Cu, grew up in a Christian home. One of the missionaries, seeing unusual ability in the young girl, brought her to America for a more thorough education than China afforded. She studied in Folts Institute, and later entered the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Graduating with honor, she returned to China after eight years’ residence in the United States and was sent to the Fukien Province, where the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church had opened a hospital, and where she has cared for the souls and bodies of thousands of patients.[101]
A charming sequel to the story shows how this splendid Chinese woman is ready at a moment’s notice to do her duty as a Christian citizen of the world. She was passing on her return to China a point not far from Chicago, when the train struck a track laborer and suddenly stopped. The injured man, a Russian by birth, was brought aboard, and Dr. Li, hearing of the accident, volunteered her help. Then was seen the curious combination of a Chinese Christian woman physician caring for a wounded Slav in an American baggage car![102]
“Applied, practical Christianity” is being taught to the mothers of China, and some of them are responding in a way that augurs well for the future of their children and their land. Mrs. T. N. Thompson of Tsining writes of a recent women’s convention to which Christians came from far and near, some from a distance of sixty miles. Women spoke from the platform with ease, spirit, and eloquence. Some of the subjects discussed were:—Equal authority of husbands and wives—Partiality between sons and daughters—Duty of sending girls to school—Cleanliness and order of the home as taught in mission schools—Dedication of children to the Lord. The subject of marriage engagements was thoroughly canvassed, and many laughed heartily at reminiscences of old heathen days when children were betrothed in babyhood.”[103] “Old heathen days!” And yet it is but one hundred years since Robert Morrison baptized his first Christian convert, and but fourteen years since the great Boxer uprising tried to rid the land of all Christians. Thus it was ordained long centuries ago when God “appointed a law in Israel, when He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children that should be born, who should arise and tell them to their children.” (Psalm 78:5, 6.) From father to son, from mother to daughter, the knowledge of God’s love and Christ’s salvation is to be transmitted, and those who gain that knowledge in early childhood are the ones on whom China can surely depend in the important years to come.
“The children born of Christian parents in India,” says Rev. E. A. Arnett in the Sunday School Times, “are probably not more than half a million, but upon the thorough and systematic character of the religious work done among these depends the hope of the future of the church of India. These are to be the army for India’s conquest. The day of opportunity is soon to come to India as it has come to Japan and to China. A great crisis is approaching when there will be a death-grapple in the open between Christianity and the opposing forces. Then will be needed as never before an Indian church, rich in men and women able and fit for the fight.”
That India’s children with all their handicaps are capable of being made “fit for the fight” can be abundantly proven. A letter from a missionary friend tells of a little Indian protege, now a grown woman, who was the child of a drunken father and a half crazy, evil-tempered mother, who, in a brawl, lamed her poor baby for life. The child was sent away to school after her father’s death, and it seemed as if it were to prove her salvation. But at the age of fourteen the old evil propensities broke forth. She became foul-tongued, irreverent, disobedient, and diseased. She was sent to visit her mother, then an inmate of an insane asylum, where the girl was placed under observation and declared to be a moral degenerate. The fact that she was perfectly satisfied to stay at the asylum was a cause of great distress to her missionary friend, and soon a number of earnest workers banded themselves to pray for her “literally night and day.” A wonderful change came over the girl; the seed sown in earlier years sprang up and bore fruit. She asked to be allowed to leave the asylum, and soon after taking a position she gave her heart to Christ. Far out on the western frontier of India, a woman, growing in grace and character, is compounding medicines, and otherwise helping in a mission hospital, occupying a difficult and trying position. Oh! was she not worth saving,—that little, lame, degenerate baby, born in the degradation of darkest India, and accomplishing a work today that you or I could not do?
What is there for the children to do in lands that have lately been convulsed with war and revolution? Who will fill the places of able-bodied men, maimed and slain in battle? Who is to reconstruct and upbuild and guide through long years to come the countries that have been shaken to their very foundations? The only hope of Turkey and Persia is in their children, and what is done by Christians for these children today will determine very largely the course of history in the “near East.”
The boys’ school at Teheran, Persia, has won the name of a “factory”! Among the Mohammedan boys brought here, is a little fellow whose father said to the missionary, “I hear this is a factory where you manufacture men. Do you think you can turn out a man from my boy?”[104] Such “factories” are needed throughout Turkey and Persia, and those who know the boys of these countries will assure you that they are capable of turning out to be men if they have the proper opportunities. When the self-supporting Christian boarding school for Mohammedan boys was started in Teheran, the missionaries naturally felt a good deal of concern as to the results of such an experiment. The actual results are thus reported,—
“Not only has it been somewhat more than self-supporting financially, but, thanks to the co-operative plan initiated from the beginning, into which the boys entered with enthusiasm, and in which they showed a most admirable spirit throughout the year, a good share of the management and government was taken by the boys themselves in a most efficient manner,—of course under the close supervision of my wife and myself.”[105]
The following testimony of William E. Curtiss, the world-famous correspondent of the Chicago Record Herald, written after an extended visit to the Orient, would seem to be convincing proof that missionaries can give and Turkish children can profit by that which will re-mould and upbuild the remnants of the Turkish Empire.
“The influence of the American schools has been carried to every corner of the Empire. Every student leaving these American schools has carried the germ of progress to his sleeping town. He has become a force for the new order wherever he has gone. This influence has been working for a half century or more, and has been preparing the minds of the people for the great change that has recently come over them. The missionaries do not teach revolution, they do not encourage revolutionary methods; but they have always preached and taught liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man.”[106]
It is well to remember that the children under missionary influence are being trained not only for what they can be and do in the future, when they are grown up, but are being taught to use now what they have learned, for the benefit of others. Listen to the report of what some Syrian girls did during a summer vacation.
“An hour ago I came home from Sunday-School which we are having this summer. We began it the first summer we came to K. ... and twenty children attend. We are teaching them lessons from the Old Testament, and I think I can say that our school is a real success this year.”
“I am teaching some children Bible stories and have given one of the boys two papers to make a study of some chapters which I have appointed for him.”
“I brought a new Bible with me, and I try to teach our servant to read it.”
These few extracts are from letters which I have received this summer showing how Beirut school-girls are trying to give expression to the pass-it-on spirit. All over the country they are busy according to their opportunities. I know of one little girl who last year was in the lowest class of our Preparatory Department, but this year has a school of seventeen every Sunday afternoon during the vacation. One of her older brothers and a boy cousin taught classes, but she was both organizer and superintendent.
One of the pleasantest gatherings we shall have this fall will be the Report Meeting, when we shall hear from all the pupils about results of their summer efforts for others. Fourteen took certain Bibles home with them, promising to use them in teaching others to read.[107]
Is there anything for children to do in countries where as yet no great awakening or startling political upheaval has taken place, but where missionary influence has been quietly, steadily at work? What about those “unoccupied mission fields” where not even a beginning has been made toward giving the Gospel message? Does Christ need the children of these lands to be at work for Him?
“Some one thus summarizes ‘The World’s Tragedies’:—
207,000,000 bound by caste—from Hinduism.
147,000,000 permeated with atheism—from Buddhism.
256,000,000 chained to a dead past—from Confucianism.
175,000,000 under the spell of Fatalism—from Mohammedanism.
200,000,000 sitting in darkness—from Paganism.”[108]
Let us try to realize that each unit of these vast figures stands for a life that was once an innocent little child, born into conditions or surroundings similar to those of which we have been studying in this book. Think of the future tragedies that may be averted if each little child today is redeemed and begins to work for Christ. What a slave boy accomplished. Why should there not be thousands of averted or transformed tragedies like those surrounding the life of the little black boy, born in 1806 on the West Coast of Africa? Because of certain peculiar circumstances at his birth it was prophesied that he was not to be a devotee of any idol, but one “celebrated and distinguished to serve the great and highest God.” At one time when the house of his prosperous father caught fire, the little boy rushed in and saved the idols. Whereupon it was commonly said,—“This child will be a great worshiper of the gods; he will one day restore the gods to our nation.”
When the child was about fifteen, a raid was made upon the village by Mohammedans, and a large number of women and children were led away captive with ropes around their necks, young Ajayi and his mother and grandmother among the number. Sold from one person to another, often bartered for rum or tobacco, he finally fell into the hands of Portuguese traders. He and his fellow slaves were rescued by an English man-of-war from the Portuguese vessel, and he was educated by the Church Missionary Society. He became a school-master, then preacher, and finally Bishop of the native Church on the Niger. Fourah Bay College, where he pursued a part of his studies, was founded as a result of the conviction forced upon the Church Missionary Society that, if Africa were to be evangelized, it must be done chiefly through native agency, because of the devastating effects of the climate on foreigners. In other words, Christ needs the children of Africa, to be trained for Him in places where no one else in the wide world can accomplish the task.
The Hope of Africa
A West African Baby
A Group of Fang Boys, Africa
On the beautiful white monument, erected over the grave in Lagos, Sierra Leone, can be read these words that give a brief outline of the noble life work of the little slave boy whom some one thought worth saving and training for Christian service.
Sacred to the memory of
THE RIGHT REV. SAMUEL AJAYI CROWTHER, D.D.
A Native of Osogun, in the Yoruba Country;
A Recaptured and Liberated Slave;
The First Student in the Church Missionary Society’s College,
At Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone;
Ordained in England by the Bishop of London, June 11th, 1843;
The First Native Clergyman of the Church of England in West Africa,
Consecrated Bishop, June 29th, 1864.
A Faithful, Earnest, and Devoted Missionary in Connection
With the Church Missionary Society for 62 Years,
At Sierra Leone, in the Timini and Yoruba Countries
And in the Niger Territory;
He Accompanied the First Royal Niger Expedition in 1841;
Was a joint founder with others of the Yoruba Mission in 1845,
And Founder of the Niger Mission in 1857;
And of the Self-Supporting Niger Delta Pastorale in 1891.
He fell asleep in Jesus at Lagos, on the 31st December, 1891,
Aged about 89 Years.
“Well done, thou good and faithful servant, ... Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Matt. 25:5.
“Redeemed by His Blood.”[109]
Our story of The Child will not be complete unless we pay close attention to one of the great fundamental policies of Christian missions,—alluded to above,—that the work of world evangelization must be accomplished chiefly through trained natives of the countries where the Gospel is not known. And these agents, in order to be most efficient and successful should be won to Christ in early life. The methods used by Bishop Selwyn in the New Hebrides were so successful and interesting and illustrate this point so thoroughly that it will pay us to study them.
Bishop Augustus Selwyn, of the Episcopalian Church of New Zealand, proposed to secure children of the natives in the new fields, educate these children in schools of a Christian country, and send them as pioneer missionaries to their own peoples. He proposed, also, that, after these children had overcome the pagan opposition, white missionaries should be introduced for co-operating with them. “The white corks,” he said, “were for floating the black net.”
With this in view, in 1848, he made a voyage of exploration in H. M. S. Dido as far as to the Loyalty Islands. Observing that the Fijis, the Southern Hebrides, and several other groups were occupied by other religious denominations which were doing successful work, he chose for his field the groups not thus occupied. These were the Northern Hebrides, Banks, Santa Cruz, Torres, Reef, and Solomon Groups....
Over these islands the trail of the Serpent has extended. A wilder, more besotted, and fiercer people than their inhabitants it would be hard to find. With the exception of the natives of the Santa Cruz and Reef Islands, they all were formerly cannibals, and those of them in the Solomon Group were also head-hunters....
The work of procuring boys proved to be difficult and perilous. By great tact and a kind and courteous manner the Bishop secured in his first trip five. In process of time he was able to employ the boys, who had been some time in his school, to do the soliciting, and then he was more successful. Each succeeding year the natives received him with greater cordiality, and more readily supplied his vessel with stores of taro, yams, and fruit. The number of boys in the school has been one hundred and fifty to two hundred.
On Norfold Island a thousand acres of land were purchased for the school at a cost of ten thousand dollars. In this tract a beautiful chapel was built, and around it houses for the teachers and pupils. The land was very fertile, and was easily made to produce almost all the food the school needed. The boys were taught the gospel of work. They were trained in the mechanic trades, the cultivation of the ground, and the care of livestock; and to each of them was committed a small garden for him to cultivate for himself. They were kept in the school six to ten years, and then taken, as teachers, to their homes or to other islands.
In 1854 Rev. John Coleridge Patteson joined the mission. He had been moved when fourteen years of age, by a sermon of Bishop Selwyn, to devote himself to the missionary cause. In 1861 he was consecrated as the First Bishop of Milanesia....
The Milanesians who have embraced Christianity have ceased from their cannibalism, their head-hunting, and their warfare, and have become an humble, upright, and peace-loving people. In 1905 the number of baptized persons in the groups of the mission was 2,811, of white missionaries, 41, of native teachers, 689, of mission stations, 200.[110]