A HEATHEN CHIEF OF FUTUNA.
Showing the hair divided in many locks, tortoise-shell earrings, bead and shell necklace.
EPETENETO,
The first native pastor in the New Hebrides
It is easy to raise the shallow cry that the New Hebrides Mission is overmanned, as compared with India, China and Africa, as some, and very specially the same men who most keenly oppose the Dayspring, are persistently doing. We might answer by retort,—Your own Towns and Villages are overmanned; why not resign your charges, and go to the millions of Heathendom? But we leave that retort to others, and reply: There are differences in all these fields of enterprise, which demand specific adaptation of means to ends, and we fearlessly declare, in the face of all Christendom, that God Himself has approved of our system by the almost unparalleled results. We plant down our European Missionary with his staff at a given Station. We surround him with Native Teachers, who pioneer amongst all the Villages within reach. His life-work is to win that Island, or that People, for God and Civilization. He masters their Language, and reduces it to writing. He translates and prints portions of the Bible. He opens Schools, and begins teaching the whole population. He opens a Communicants’ Class, and trains his most hopeful Converts for full membership in the Church. And there he holds the fort, and toils, and prays, till the Gospel of Jesus has not only been preached to every creature whom he can reach, but also reduced to practice in the new habits and the new religious and social life of the Community. In this way has Aneityum been won for Christ, and thoroughly Christianized; and Aniwa, and Erromanga, and Efatè, and Nguna, and Tongoa, and several adjoining Isles. And, humanly speaking, there is no other way in which these Tribes and Peoples can be evangelized. The next stage will be that of the Native Pastorate, with a very few superintending European Missionaries—a stage on which, for instance, my own Aniwa has long since practically entered, the Elders carrying on all the work of the Church, with an occasional visit from a neighboring Missionary. But the foundations of Civilization and of Christianity must either be laid and solidly built up by a Missionary for each of these Peoples, or they will never be laid at all.
Let our Churches then go forward on the lines which God the Lord hath blessed. Complete the pioneering work on the New Hebrides, bring the Gospel within reach of every creature there, and then set free your money and your men to do the same elsewhere. But even in India and in China and in Africa, with their countless millions, learn a lesson from the work on the New Hebrides. Plant down your forces in the heart of one Tribe or Race, where the same Language is spoken. Work solidly from that centre, building up with patient teaching and lifelong care a Church that will endure. Rest not till every People and Language and Nation has such a Christ-centre throbbing in its midst, with the pulses of the New Life at full play. Rush not from Land to Land, from People to People, in a breathless and fruitless Mission. Kindle not your lights so far apart, amid the millions and the wastes of Heathendom, that every lamp may be extinguished without any of the others knowing, and so leave the blackness of their Night blacker than ever. The consecrated Common-sense that builds for Eternity will receive the fullest approval of God in Time.
Oh that I had my life to begin again! I would consecrate it anew to Jesus in seeking the conversion of the remaining Cannibals on the New Hebrides. But since that may not be, may He help me to use every moment and every power still left to me to carry forward to the uttermost that beloved work. Doubtless these poor degraded Savages are a part of the Redeemer’s inheritance, given to Him in the Father’s Eternal Covenant, and thousands of them are destined through us to sing His praise in the glory and the joy of the Heavenly World! And should the record of my poor and broken life lead any one to consecrate himself to Mission work at Home or Abroad that he may win souls for Jesus, or should it even deepen the Missionary spirit in those who already know and serve the Redeemer of us all—for this also, and for all through which He has led me by His loving and gracious guidance, I shall, unto the endless ages of Eternity, bless and adore my beloved Master and Saviour and Lord, to whom be glory forever and ever.
Selections from
Fleming H. Revell Company’s