'I use Proper Psalms, 89, 96, 126, 145, and for lessons a few verses, 2 Kings v. 9-15, and Acts viii. 35-9. After the third Collect, the Primate may say a few words, or I may do so; and then I shall use our usual Melanesian Collect for many islands, very briefly named; and so conclude with the Blessing.
'What this is to me you must try and realise, that you may be partakers of my joy and thankfulness. To have Christians about me, to whom I can speak with a certainty of being understood, to feel that we are all bound together in the blessed Communion of the Body of Christ, to know that angels on high are rejoicing and evil spirits being chased away, that all the Banks Islands and all Melanesia are experiencing, as it were, the first shock of a mighty earthquake, that God who foresees the end may, in his merciful Providence, be calling even these very children to bear His message to thousands of heathens, is not it too much? One's heart is not large enough for it, and confession of one's own unworthiness breaks off involuntarily into praise and glory!
'I know, my dear Sisters, that this is most likely one of the great blessings that precede great trials. I can't expect or wish (perhaps) always to sail with a fair wind, yet I try to remember that trial must come, without on that account restraining myself from a deep taste of the present joy. I can't describe it!
'Then we have now much that we ever can talk about—deep talk about Mota and the other islands, and the special temptations to which they must be exposed; that now is the time when the devil will seek with all his might to "have" them, and so hinder God's work in the land; that they have been specially blest by God to be the first to desire to know His will, and that they have heavy responsibilities.
'"Yes," they say, "we see man does not know that his room is dirty and full of cobwebs while it is all dark; and another man, whose room is not half so dirty, because the sun shines into it and shows the dirt, thinks his room much worse than the other. That is like our hearts. It is worse now to be angry than it was to shoot a man a long time ago. But the more the sun shines in, the more we shall find cobwebs and dirt, long after we thought the room was clean. Yes, we know what that means. We asked you what would help us to go on straight in the path, now that we are entering at the gate. We said prayer, love, helping our countrymen. Now we see besides watchfulness, self-examination; and then you say we must at once look forward to being confirmed, as the people you confirmed at Norfolk Island. Then there is the very great thing, the holy and the great, the Supper of the Lord." So, evening by evening and day by day, we talk, this being of course not called school, being, indeed, my great relaxation, for this is the time when they are like children with a father.
'I know I feel it so. Don't take the above as a fair sample of our talk, for the more solemn words we say about God's Love, Christ's Intercession, and the Indwelling of the Spirit, I can hardly write down now.
'Your loving Brother,
'J. C. P.
'P.S.—Feast of the Epiphany. Those dear children were baptized on Thursday. A most solemn interesting scene it was!'
Thoroughly happy indeed was the Bishop at this time. In a note of February 3 to the Bishop of Wellington, he speaks of the orderly state of the College:—