With regrets, and yet with unquenchable hope for these Islands, I embarked for Australia, having received the solemn promise of my brethren, that in entering upon this great effort I was to be left absolutely free of all control, and empowered to carry out the work as God might seem to guide me, and open up my way. I had only spoken to one man in Sydney; all the doors to influence had therefore to be unlocked, and I had no helper, no leader, but the Spirit of my Lord. The Second Part of this Autobiography, should God spare me to write it, will record His marvellous goodness in using my humble voice and pen and the story of my life for interesting thousands and tens of thousands in the work of Missions, and especially for binding together the children of the Sabbath Schools of Australasia in a Holy League of help to the New Hebrides, which has already borne precious fruit to His glory, and will continue to do so for ages to come.
Oftentimes, while passing through the perils and defeats of my first years in the Mission field on Tanna, I wondered, and perhaps the reader hereof has wondered, why God permitted such things. But on looking back now, I already clearly perceive, and the reader of my future pages will, I think, perceive, that the Lord was thereby preparing me for doing, and providing me materials wherewith to accomplish the best work of all my life—the kindling of the heart of Australian Presbyterianism with a living affection for these Islanders of their own Southern Seas—the binding of all their children into a happy league of shareholders, first in one Mission Ship, and finally in a larger and more commodious Steam-Auxiliary, and, last of all, in being the instrument under God of sending out Missionary after Missionary to the New Hebrides, to claim another island and still another for Jesus. That work, and all that may spring from it in time and Eternity, never could have been accomplished by me, but for first the sufferings and then the story of my Tanna enterprise!
Some unsophisticated souls who read these pages will be astonished to learn, but others who know more of the heartless selfishness of human creatures, will be quite prepared to hear, that my leaving Tanna was not a little criticized, and a great deal of nonsense was written, even in Church Magazines, about the breaking up of the Mission. All such criticism came, of course, from men who were themselves destitute of sympathy, and who, probably, never endured one pang for Jesus in all their comfortable lives. Conscious that I had, to the last inch of life, tried to do my duty, I left all results in the hands of my only Lord, and all criticisms to His unerring judgment. Hard things also were occasionally spoken to my face. One dear friend, for instance, said,—
“You should not have left. You should have stood at the post of duty till you fell. It would have been to your honour, and better for the cause of the Mission, had you been killed at the post of duty like the Gordons and others.”
I replied,—“I regard it as a greater honour to live and to work for Jesus, than to be a self-made martyr. God knows that I did not refuse to die; for I stood at the post of duty, amid difficulty and danger, till all hope had fled, till everything I had was lost, and till God, in answer to prayer, sent a means of escape. I left with a clear conscience, knowing that in doing so I was following God’s leading, and serving the Mission too. To have remained longer would have been to incur the guilt of self-murder in the sight of God.”
Never for one moment have I had occasion to regret the step then taken. The Lord has so used me, during the five-and-twenty years that have passed over me since my farewell to Tanna, as to stamp the event with His own most gracious approval. Oh, to see a Missionary, and Christian Teachers, planted on every island of the New Hebrides! For this I labour, and wait, and pray. To help on the fulfilment thereof is the sacred work of my life, under God. When I see it accomplished, or in a fair way of being so, through the organization that will provide the money and call forth the men, I can lay down my head as peacefully and gratefully as ever warrior did, with the shout of victory in his ears,—“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace!”
For the present, my pen is here laid aside. I shall wait to see what use the Lord makes of Part First of my autobiography, before I prosecute the theme. If the Christian public seems not to find in it the help and quickening that some friends think it likely to bestow on those who read, the remainder need not be written. Part Second, if called for, will contain a record, in many respects, an utter contrast to all that has gone before, and yet directly springing therefrom, as will be seen by all who look beneath the surface. I am penning these words in 1887, and five-and-twenty years lie betwixt this date and my farewell to Tanna. These years, if ever published, will tell the story of my visiting all the Colonial Churches, and collecting the purchase money of our white-winged Mission Ship, the Dayspring; my return to Scotland, visiting all the home congregations in 1864, and securing several new Missionaries to follow me to the New Hebrides; my second marriage, and settlement on Aniwa, with her whom the good Lord still spares to me, the mother of our happy family, and my God-given helpmeet in all the work of the Gospel; the conversion of that whole island of Aniwa from idolatry, and the planting there of a Church and Congregation of Christ, from which have since gone forth many Native Evangelists and Teachers. Then there will fall to be recorded my call from the Islands in recent years to revisit all the Colonial Presbyterian Congregations once again, telling them the story of the Conversion of Aniwa—the sinking of the well, and other incidents, which turned an entire people from idols and from cannibalism to the service of the living and true God—whereby the Churches, and especially the children, were led more and more to make the New Hebrides their own very harvest field in the Heathen world. And finally, I will have to tell how I was again sent home to Scotland in 1884 to raise money for the purchase or building of a steam-auxiliary Mission Ship, now urgently required in the interests of the Mission, both because of the great increase in the number of the Missionaries and the necessities of so many families; and also and chiefly to avert the dreadful disappointments and loss of time, and thereby sometimes of life itself, caused by the frequent becalming of our little Dayspring in these thickly-islanded seas. That part of the story will show the fruits of the education and perils and experiences of a lifetime, in the marvellous impression produced by the simple and unadorned recital of the story of Tanna and Aniwa, amongst the Christian people of Scotland, Ireland, and England. Multitudes were blessed in almost every town where a meeting was granted me. Three Missionaries devoted themselves to the New Hebrides, and are already labouring there; while others consecrated themselves to several of the great seats of Foreign Mission enterprise in Africa and Asia. I returned to my own Church of Victoria with a sum of nearly £9,000, of which £6,000 was for the new Missionary Steam-Auxiliary, and the remainder for the outfit and support of more Missionaries for the Islands; and that money I handed over to the Australian Church, where it awaits, at interest in the bank, the arrangements being made by all the Colonies to take each their due share in the future up-keep of the Ship. For this—for everything—for all, praise be to the Lord! I never asked one subscription, except in prayer and in my public appeals. The Lord sent in all freely to me through the hands of His people; to Him be all the glory. I went back to Aniwa, and found the work of the Lord going forward there as if in a regularly settled Congregation at home, fostered and guided by an occasional visit of my ever dear and genuine friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watt, from old stern-hearted but at last relenting Tanna. The Church of Victoria has again summoned me to visit the Colonial Congregations, to tell the story of my Mission life, and to promote the interests of its now grand and growing Foreign Scheme. It is in the midst of such labours, while addressing at least one meeting every day, and three or four every Sabbath day, that I have penned the preceding pages; and I leave them to speak for themselves, without any attempt at ornament or style. The Lord whom I serve in the Gospel knows my motive and my hope, and I very calmly leave this book to His disposal, and the succeeding volume to His guidance, if such there shall ever be—as the reader well knows I have had to leave heavier and darker issues in the same blessed Hands. I offer every one, who has done me the favour to read or to listen, my kindly greeting. May you and I meet in the glory of Jesus, and continue our fellowship there! Good-bye.