'What some of you say about self-possession on one's going about among the people being marvellous, is just what of course appears to me commonplace. Of course it is wrong to risk one's life, but to carry one's life in one's hand is what other soldiers besides those of the Cross do habitually; and no one, as I think, would willingly hurt a hair of my head in Melanesia, or that part of it where I am at all known.
'How I think of those islands! How I see those bright coral and sandy beaches, strips of burning sunshine fringing the masses of forest rising into ridges of hills, covered with a dense mat of vegetation. Hundreds of people are crowding upon them, naked, armed, with wild uncouth cries and gestures; I cannot talk to them but by signs. But they are my children now! May God enable me to do my duty to them!
'I have now as I write a deepening sense of what the change must be that has passed upon me. Again I go by God's blessing for seven months to Melanesia. All that our experience has taught us we try to remember: food, medicine, articles of trade and barter.
'But what may be the result? Who can tell? You know it is not of myself that I am thinking. If God of His great mercy lead me in His way, to me there is little worth living for but the going onward with His blessed work, though I like my talks with the dear Bishop and the Judge. But others are committed to me—Mr. Pritt and Mr. Kerr go with me. Shall I find dear old Wadrokala and Harper alive, and if alive, well?
'And yet, thank God, we go on day by day, so happy, so hopeful!
'I see two sermons by the Bishop of Oxford, "God's Revelation Man's Trial," please send them. They bear, I conclude, on the controversy of the day. I need not tell you that I find a very great interest in reading these books, or rather at present in talking now and then, when we meet, with the Judge on the subject of which those books treat. The books I have not read. But I know no refreshment so great as the reading any books which deal with these questions thoughtfully. I hope you don't think it wrong and dangerous for me to do so; pray tell me. I don't believe that I am wrong in doing it, yet it may be that I read them as an intellectual treat, and prefer them to thoughtful books on other subjects, because they deal with a study which I am a little more conversant with than with history, science, &c.
'Besides, I do see that we have, many of us, very vague notions of the meaning of terms which we use, and I see that I must be prepared (I speak for myself) to expect that a clergyman may not with impunity use a language wanting in definiteness and precision. It is possible that men do too passively receive hereditary and conventional opinions which never have a living reality to them. But this, you know, I do not confound with the humble submission to authoritative teaching, given upon authority, to supersede the necessity of every person investigating for himself the primary grounds of his religious convictions.'
It is worth noting how the Bishop submits his reading to his father's approval, as when he was a young boy. Alas! no more such letters of comfort and counsel would be exchanged. This one could hardly have been received by that much-loved father.
Preparations for the voyage were going on; but the 'Dunedin,' the only vessel to be procured, at best a carthorse to a racer compared with the 'Southern Cross,' was far from being in a satisfactory state, as appears in a note of 3rd of May to the Bishop of Wellington:—
'Here we are still. The only vessel that I could make any arrangement about not yet returned, and known to be in such a state that the pumps were going every two hours. I have not chartered her, but only agreed with the owner a month ago nearly that I would take her at a certain sum per day, subject to divers conditions about being caulked (which is all she wants, I have ascertained), being provided with spare sails, spars, chronometer, boat, &c., and all agreement to be off unless by a certain day (already past) she was in a state satisfactory to Mr. Kerr. But there is, I fear, none other, and I am in a difficulty.'