One very precious feature of my tour was this:—the manner in which Ministers and Christian workers of all the Churches united to welcome me, and gave very practical support to this Presbyterian Mission. Frequently, the invitation was signed by all the Ministers of the district, excepting only the Roman Catholic; and my prayers rose daily to my Lord that my humble presence might be one of the means in His loving hand of paving the way for a closer union amongst the Members of His Redeemed Flock. I was much touched by the requisition that came to me from my well-beloved Dumfries, with the names of all the Ministers, and full of tender references to my early associations with the Queen of the South, as in our boyhood we loved to call her!
The Congregations, on week days not less than on Sabbaths, filled the largest Public Halls and Churches in each locality; with frequent overflow Meetings at which I had to speak for fifteen minutes or so, and then leave them in the hands of others, whilst I drove or ran to the principal Meeting, now opened and awaiting my Address. During the two years of my Tour, I addressed very nearly 1400 audiences, ranging from a few hundreds to five and six thousand each, and in doing so I travelled over many thousands of miles, on foot and in every kind of conveyance that is used in the English-speaking world.
The Chairmen at my various Meetings represented every type of Christian worker, and all social grades, from the godly Tradesman, evangelizing in his quiet Mission Hall, up through Ministers and Mayors, Provosts and Members of Parliament, Bishops and Archbishops, to Lords and Dukes and other Peers of the Realm. Under this rush of the Missionary Spirit, many conventional barriers were broken down, so that I was, even on Sunday, invited to give my Address from the very Pulpit in Episcopal Churches, as for example in the Pro-Cathedral at Manchester. On week days, this was a not infrequent experience.
These things, and all my opportunities of usefulness, thus unexpectedly thrust upon me, at the close of a long life of toil and self-denial and sacrifice for Jesus, I devoutly laid at His feet, and implored Him to use me only for His glory. And I can truly say that I never felt more deeply humbled, all my days, than at the close of some of those almost unparalleled Missionary Meetings, when I was alone with my Saviour after all was over, and thinking of my lowly Home and all the way by which the God of my father had led me, from these hours of hardship to this day of triumph. Fame and influence laid me lower and lower yet, at the feet of Jesus, to whose grace alone everything was due.
Never were these feelings more present with me than when I was called upon to tell the story of our Mission before the learned Professors and eager Students, at so many Universities, Colleges, Theological Halls, and similar Institutes. I have a note of at least sixty-three Seats of Learning, including Princeton and the most famous Colleges in America, as well as Oxford and Edinburgh, Cambridge and Glasgow at Home, where some of the greatest living Masters in every department, such as my own world-famous Professor, the now venerable Lord Kelvin, listened to my testimony as to the power of the Gospel to make new Creatures of the South Sea Cannibals and build them up into the likeness of Jesus Christ. I trespassed not into their spheres, where I would have been a child and an ignoramus compared with them; and they, on the other hand, treated me with profound respect, and even occasionally with demonstrative appreciation, in that sphere of the moral and spiritual, the work of the Christ-Spirit and its influence on the lowest and most degraded of human beings, wherein I had some right to speak with authority. This was my “one” talent, in the presence of such men; and I “traded” with it, that the Name of my Saviour might be honored more and more, in the Halls of Letters, and in the Temples of Art and Science.
By the general desire of my fellow Missionaries on the New Hebrides, I had visited Britain ten years before, for the express purpose of raising if possible £5,000 for a new Dayspring, larger than the old, and with Steam Auxiliary Power. By the blessing of God on my humble pleading, and very largely in direct answer to prayer, for I called on no one privately for donations, there came to us in twelve months the large sum of £10,000, of which more than one half reached us by post. My Church in Victoria, to whom I rendered an account of all, set apart £6,000 for the new Mission Vessel, the interest to be added to capital till such time as she might be built; while the remaining £4,000 were devoted to the obtaining and supporting of additional Missionaries for the New Hebrides.
But a new difficulty had emerged, and created not only delay all these years, but no small measure of regrettable dissension; and that was how to maintain the Ship, and keep her floating in the service of the Mission; for the Dayspring, not being allowed to trade, had been wholly maintained by the Sabbath Schools of the Churches having Missionaries on the New Hebrides. The sum which they had raised annually, each Church in its allotted proportion, amounted to £1,500, or rather more; and it was manifest that the Steam Auxiliary would cost at least £1,000 extra per annum. Unfriendly critics doubled that charge, and some prophesied even treble; but level-minded experts limited it to £1,000, and the actual facts of experience, as to cost of maintaining the Morning Star and the Southern Cross, in these same Pacific Seas, tallied with their estimates.
The burning question, therefore, had been how to raise this extra sum for Dayspring Maintenance. Our Victorian Church proposed to increase her quota from £500 to £750, and issued appeals to the other coöperating Churches to make a similar advance. It did not seem too much to expect, in the interests of the Mission, all whose operations had trebled since the original responsibility was allocated; but they pled inability to comply, and so the project hung fire for ten years and more, experiments being meanwhile made in other arrangements for the Maritime Service of the Mission, and new interests of various kinds being thereby created, which have not tended to unity and peace in the management of the New Hebrides. There is peril also incurred to the highest spiritual interests of the Mission, which I daily pray God, in His loving kindness and mercy, to be pleased to avert!
Without ascribing anything but the most ordinary motives in the world to those who opposed the getting of a new Dayspring, the situation that thus grew up is perfectly transparent. The Australian New Hebrides Company was employed to do the work of our Mission by their Trading Ships. In 1805—e.g., we paid to them the large sum of £2,451, 8s. 1d.; all found money, for, without us, these Ships in their outgoing trip to the Islands would have sailed comparatively empty. To secure a Ship of our own would be, therefore, to deprive the Company of this handsome subsidy; and it is but Human Nature, and implies no necessary dishonor, that the shareholders and their Ministerial and Missionary friends should have become the keenest and even bitterest opponents of the new Dayspring. Further, the headquarters of the Company being at Sydney, and the subsidy for our Mission, as well as the money for the upkeep of our Missionaries and their families, being consequently expended almost exclusively there, it is, from the world’s point of view, equally natural to anticipate that the very heart and centre of the opposition has been in New South Wales, and has concentrated itself in the Advisory Committee which sits at Sydney and is known as The Dayspring Board. All this, I say, was only to be expected, if the whole transaction is to be weighed and measured by the standards of men of the World, instead of being put into the balances of Jesus Christ, and estimated in the light of the spiritual and eternal interests of the Islanders whom He has committed to our care.
With great plausibility, this selfish opposition sought to commend itself to a wilder circle by a Patriotic plea. If we did not support the Trading Company, it would fail, and the French might come on the scene and annex the New Hebrides! The facts of history were forgotten or ignored, with their ominous lesson, that other influences than trade must be brought into action to save these Islands from France. Did the tide of British trade, on the Loyalty Islands, on Madagascar, and the like, prevent their annexation by France? Certainly not! True, it will be a terrible calamity, not only to our Mission but to Australasia, if France is permitted to annex the New Hebrides; but while she is openly preparing the way for that fatal step, Britain and her Colonies mock at all our warnings, and treat the whole matter with indifference, if not contempt. New South Wales and Victoria have even withdrawn those modest subsidies from Colonial Trading Ships, whereby their Governments might have continued to manifest some little desire to save the New Hebrides from the maw of Popish France!