'Ascension Day, May 30th.—There is a good deal of discussion going on now among the people. I hear of it not only from our old scholars, but from some of the men. I have been speaking day by day more earnestly to the people; always reading here and there verses of the Gospels or the Acts, or paraphrasing some passage so that they may have the actual words in which the message is recorded. They say, "This is a heavy, a weighty word," and they are talking, as they say, night after night about it. Some few, and they elderly men, say, "Let us talk only about our customs here." Others say, "No, no; let us try to think out the meaning of what he said." A few come and ask me questions, only a few, not many are in earnest, and all are shy. Many every night meet in Robert Pantatun's house, twenty-five or thirty, and ask him all manner of questions, and he reads a little. They end with prayer.
'They have many strange customs and superstitious observances peculiar to this group. They have curious clubs, confraternities with secret rites of initiation. The candidate for admission pays pigs and native money, and after many days' seclusion in a secret place is, with great ceremony, recognised as a member. No woman and none of the uninitiated may know anything of these things.
'In every village there is a Sala Goro, a place for cooking, which only those who have "gazed at the sacred symbol" may frequent. Food cooked there may not be eaten by one uninitiated, or by women or children. The path to the Sala Goro is never trodden by any woman or matanomorous ("eye closed"). When any ceremony is going on the whole of the precincts of the Sala Goro are sacred. At no time dare any woman eat with any man, no husband with his wife, no father with his daughter as soon as she is no longer a child.
'Of course such a system can be used by us in two ways. I say, "You have your method of assembling together, and you observe certain customs in so doing; so do we, but yours is an exclusive and selfish system: your secret societies are like our clubs, with their entrance fees, &c. But Christ's society has its sacred rite of admission, and other mysteries too, and it is for all who wish to belong to it. He recognises no distinction of male or female, bond or free."
'Some of the elder men are becoming suspicious of me. I tell them plainly that whatever there may be in their customs incompatible with the great law of Love to God and man must come to nought. "You beat and terrify matanomorous in order to make them give, that you may get pigs and native money from them. Such conduct is all wrong, for if you beat or frighten a youth or man, you certainly can't love him."
'At the same time I can't tell how far this goes. If there were a real ceremony of an idol or prayer to it, of course it would be comparatively easy to act in the matter; but the ceremony consists in sticking a curious sort of mitre, pointed and worked with hair, on the head of the candidate, and covering his body with a sort of Jack-in-the green wicker work of leaves, &c., and they joke and laugh about it, and attach, apparently, no religious significance to it whatever.
'I think it has the evil which attends all secret societies, that it tends to produce invidious distinctions and castes. An instinct impels men to form themselves into associations; but then Christ has satisfied that instinct legitimately in the Church.
'Christianity does meet a human instinct; as, e.g., the Lord's Supper, whatever higher and deeper feelings it may have, has this simple, but most significant meaning to the primitive convert, of feasting as a child with his brethren and sisters at the Father's Board.
'The significance of this to people living as more than half the human beings in the world are living still, is such as we have lost the power of conceiving; the Lord's Supper has so long had, so to say, other meanings for many of us. Yet to be admitted a member of God's family, and then solemnly at stated times to use this privilege of membership, strengthening the tie, and familiarising oneself more and more with the customs of that heavenly family, this surely is a very great deal of what human instinct, as exhibited in almost universal customs, requires.
'There are depths for those who can dive into them; but I really think that in some of these theological questions we view the matter solely from our state of civilisation and thought, and forget the multitudes of uneducated, rude, unrefined people to whom all below the simple meaning is unmeaning. May I not say to Robert Pantatun, "Christ, you know, gave His Body and Blood for us on the Cross, He gives them to you now, for all purposes of saving you and strengthening your spiritual life, while you eat and drink as an adopted child at your Father's Table"?