Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands

'Ever your most affectionate,

To the child's mother the words are:—

'I pray God that I may have chosen aright, and that if I have acted from sudden impulse too much, from love of display, or from desire to raise some interest about myself, or from any other selfish and unholy motive, it may be mercifully forgiven.

'Now, at all events, I must pray that with a single honest desire for God's glory, I may look straight onwards towards the mark. I must forget what is behind, I must not lose time in analysing my state of mind to see how, during years past, this wish has worked itself out. I trust the wish is from God, and now I must forget myself, and think only of the work whereunto I am called. But it is hard to flesh and blood to think of the pain I am causing my dear dear Father, and the pain I am causing to others outside my own circle here. But they are all satisfied that I am doing what is right, and it would surprise you, although you know them so well, to hear the calmness with which we talk about outfits.'

A heavy grief was even now on the family. The beloved, 'Uncle Frank,' so often affectionately mentioned, had been failing for some time. He had taken a journey abroad, with one of his daughters, in hopes of refreshment and invigoration, but the fatigue and excitement were more than he could bear; he returned home, and took to his bed. He suffered no pain, and was in a heavenly state of mind indeed, a most blessed death-bed, most suggestive of comfort and peace to all who survive as a most evident proof of what the close of life may be, if only 'that life is spent faithfully in doing our duty to God'—as Patteson wrote to his old friend, Miss Neill.

'And now one word about myself, which at such a time I should not obtrude upon you, but that the visit of the Bishop of New Zealand made it necessary for me to speak.

'I am going with him to work, if all is well, at the Antipodes, believing that the growing desire for missionary work, which for years has been striving within me, ought no longer to be resisted, and trusting that I am not mistaken in supposing that this is the line of duty that God has marked out for me.

'You may be sure that all this is done with the full consent and approbation of my dear Father. He and the Bishop had a great deal of conversation about it, and I left it entirely for them to determine. That it will be a great trial to us all at Christmas when we sail, I cannot conceal from myself; it is so great a separation that I cannot expect ever to see my dear Father, perhaps not any of those I love best, again in this world. But if you all know that I am doing, or trying to do, what is right, you will all be happy about me; and what has just been taking place at the Manor House teaches us to look, on a little to a blessed meeting in a better place soon. It is from no dissatisfaction at my present position, that I am induced to take this step. I have been very happy at Alfington; and I hope to be ordained Priest, on the 24th of September, with a calm mind. I trust I am not following any sudden hasty impulse, but obeying a real call to a real work, and (in the midst of much self-seeking and other alloy) not wholly without a sincere desire to labour for the honour and glory of God.'

With this purpose full in view, Coleridge Patteson received Ordination as a Priest in the ensuing Ember Week, again at the hands of Bishop Phillpotts, in Exeter Cathedral; where a beautiful marble pulpit is to commemorate the fact.

The wrench from home and friends could not but be terrible. The sisters, indeed, were so far prepared that they had been aware from the first of his wish and his mother's reception of it, and when they told their Father, he was pleased and comforted; for truly he was upheld by the strength of willing sacrifice. Those were likewise sustained who felt the spirit of missionary enterprise and sympathy, which was at that time so strongly infused into the Church; but the shock was severe to many, and especially to the brother who had been devoted to Coley from their earliest infancy, and among his relations the grief was great.

As to the district of Alfington, the distress was extreme. The people had viewed Mr. Patteson as their exclusive property, and could not forgive the Bishop of New Zealand for, as they imagined, tempting him away. 'Ah! Sir,' was the schoolmistress's answer to some warm words from Mr. Justice Coleridge in praise of Bishop Selwyn, 'he may be—no doubt he is—a very good man. I only wish he had kept his hands off Alfington.' 'It would not be easy,' says the parishioner from whom I have already quoted, 'to describe the intense sorrow in view of separation. Mr. Patteson did all he could to assure us that it was his own will and act, consequent upon the conviction that it was God's will that he should go, and to exonerate the Bishop, but for some time he was regarded as the immediate cause of our loss; and he never knew half the hard things said of him by the same people who, when they heard he was coming, and would preach on the Sunday, did their utmost to make themselves and their children look their very best.'

Indeed, the affectionate writer seems to have shared the poor people's feeling that they had thus festally received a sort of traitor with designs upon their pastor. She goes on to tell of his ministrations to her mother, whose death-bed was the first he attended as a Priest.

It would be impossible for me to say all he was to her. Not long before her death, when he had just left the room, she said, 'I have not felt any pain or weakness whilst Mr. Patteson has been here.' I was not always present during his visits to her, and I think their closer communings were only known to Him above, but their effects were discernible in that deep confidence in him on her part, and that lasting impression on him, for you will remember, in his letter last April, he goes back in memory to that time, and calls it—'a solemn scene in my early ministry.' Solemn, indeed, it was to us all that last night of her life upon earth. He was with her from about the middle of the day on Monday until about four o'clock on Tuesday morning; when, after commending her soul to God, he closed her eyes with his own hands, and taking out his watch, told us the hour and moment of her departure. He then went home and apprised Miss Wilkins of her death in these words: 'My soul fleeth unto the LORD before the morning watch, I say before the morning watch,' and at the earliest dawn of day, the villagers were made aware that she had passed away by the tolling bell, and tolled by him. This was not the only death during his ministry among us; but it was the first occasion where he gave the Communion of the Sick, also when he read the Burial Service. Cases of rejoicing with those that rejoiced as well as of weeping with those that wept, the child and the aged seemed alike to appreciate his goodness. In him were combined those qualities which could inspire with deep reverence and entire confidence. Many, many are or will be the stars in the crown of his rejoicing, and some owe to him under God, their deeper work of grace in the heart and their quickening in the divine life.'

A remarkable testimony is this to the impression remaining after the lapse of sixteen years from a ministry extending over no more than seventeen months. 'Our Mr. Patteson' the people called him to the last.

Yet, in the face of all this grief, the parting till death, the work broken off, the life cut short midway, the profusion of needs at home for able ministers, is it to be regretted that Coleridge Patteson devoted himself to the more remote fields abroad? I think we shall find that his judgment was right. Alfington might love him dearly, but the numbers were too small to afford full scope for his powers, and he would have experienced the trials of cramped and unemployed energies had he remained there beyond his apprenticeship. Nor were his gifts, so far as can be judged, exactly those most requisite for work in large towns. He could deal with individuals better than with masses, and his metaphysical mind, coupled with the curious difficulty he had in writing to an unrealised public, either in sermons or reports, might have rendered him less effective than men of less ability. He avoided, moreover, the temptations, pain, and sting of the intellectual warfare within the bosom of the Church, and served her cause more effectually on her borders than he could in her home turmoils. His great and peculiar gifts of languages, seconded by his capacity for navigation, enabled him to be the builder up of the Melanesian Church in so remarkable a manner that one can hardly suppose but that he was marked out for it, and these endowments would have found no scope in an ordinary career. Above all, no man can safely refuse the call to obey the higher leadings of grace. If he deny them, he will probably fall below that which he was before, and lose 'even that which he seemeth to have.'

A few days later, he wrote to his cousin Arthur Coleridge an expression of his feelings regarding the step he had taken in the midst of the pain it was costing to others:—

'Feniton: November 11, 9 A.M.

'My dear Arthur,—Your letter was very acceptable because I am, I confess, in that state of mind occasionally when the assurance of my being right, coming from another, tends to strengthen my own conviction.

'I do not really doubt as I believe; and yet, knowing my want of consideration for others, and many other thoughts which naturally prevent my exercising a clear sound judgment on a matter affecting myself, I sometimes (when I have had a conversation, it throws me back upon analysing my own conduct) feel inclined to go over the whole process again, and that is somewhat trying.

'On the other hand, I am almost strangely free from excitement. I live on exactly as I did before: and even when alone with Father, talk just as I used to talk, have nothing more to tell him, not knowing how to make a better use of these last quiet evenings.

'By-and-by I shall wish I had done otherwise, perhaps, but I do not know now, that I have anything specially requiring our consideration: we talk about family matters, the movements in the theological and political world, &c., very little about ourselves.

'One of all others I delight to think of for the music's sake, and far more for the glorious thought that it conveys. "Then shall the righteous," not indeed that I dare apply it to myself (as you know), but it helps one on, teaches what we may be, what our two dear parents are, and somehow the intervening, space becomes smaller as the eye is fixed steadily on the glory beyond.

'God bless you, my dear fellow.

'Ever your affectionate

The Mission party intended to sail immediately after Christmas in the 'Southern Cross,' the schooner which was being built at Blackwall for voyages among the Melanesian isles. In expectation of this, Patteson went up to London in the beginning of December, when the admirable crayon likeness was taken by Mr. Richmond, an engraving from which is here given. He then took his last leave of his uncle, and of the cousins who had been so dear to him ever since the old days of daily meeting in childhood; and Miss Neill, then a permanent invalid, notes down: 'On December 13, I had the happiness of receiving the Holy Communion from dear Coley Patteson, and the following morning I parted from him, as I fear, for ever. God bless and prosper him, and guard him in all the dangers he will encounter!' He wrote thus soon after his return:—

'Feniton: December 22, 1854.

'My dear Miss Neill,—I began a note to you a day or two ago, but I could not go on with it, for I have had so very much to do in church and out of it, parochializing, writing sermons, &c. It makes some little difference in point of time whether I am living here or at Alfington, and so the walking about from one house to another is not so convenient for writing letters as for thinking over sermons.

'I need not tell you what a real happiness and comfort it is to me to have been with you again and to have talked so long with you, and most of all to have received the Communion with you. It is a blessed thought that no interval of space or time can interrupt that Communion of the Spirit, and that we are one in Him, though working in different corners of the Lord's field.

'I want to look you out a little book or two; and Fanny has told you that if ever my picture is photographed, I have particularly desired them to send you a copy with my love. Your cross I have now round my neck, and I shall always wear it; it will hang there with a locket containing locks of hair of my dear Father and Mother, the girls, and Jem.

'You will be glad to hear that they all seem cheerful and hearty. Fan is not well, but I do not see that she is depressed or unhappy. In fact, the terrible events of the war prove a lesson to all, and they feel, I suppose, that it might be far worse, and that so long as I am doing my duty, there is no cause for sorrow.

'Still there will be seasons of loneliness and sadness, and it seems to me as if it always was so in the case of all the people of whom we read in the Bible. Our Lord distinctly taught His disciples to expect it to be so, and even experienced this sorrow of heart Himself, filling up the full measure of His cup of bitterness. So I don't learn that I ought exactly to wish it to be otherwise, so much is said in the Bible about being made partaker of His, sufferings, only I pray that it may please God to bear me up in the midst of it. I must repeat that your example is constantly before me, as a witness to the power that God gives of enduring pain and sickness. It is indeed, and great comfort it gives me. He is not indeed keeping you still in the world without giving you a work to do, and enabling you from your bed of sickness to influence strongly a circle of friends.

'God bless you for all your kindness to me, and watchfulness over me as a child, for your daily thought of me and prayers for me, and may He grant that I may wear your precious gift not only on but in my heart.

'Always your very affectionate

'P.S.—I do not expect to sail for three weeks; this morning I had a line about the ship, and they say that she cannot be ready for a fortnight.'

On Christmas-day, he was presented with a Bible subscribed for by the whole Alfington population. Here is a sentence from his letter of acknowledgment:—

'If these poor needy souls can, from love to a fellow creature whom they have known but a few months, deny themselves their very crumb of bread to show their affection, what should be our conduct to Him from whom we have received all things, and to whom we owe our life, strength, and all that we possess?'

The farewell service was said by one of these poor old people to be like a great funeral. Sexagesima Sunday was Sir John's sixty-sixth birthday, and it was spent in expectation that it would be the last of the whole party at home, for on the Monday Sir John was obliged to go to London for a meeting of the Judicial Committee. The two notes his son wrote during his absence are, perhaps to prove good spirits, full of the delights of skating, which were afforded by the exceptionally severe frost of February 1855, which came opportunely to regale with this favourite pastime one who would never tread on solid ice again. He wrote with zest of the large merry party of cousins skating together, of the dismay of the old housekeeper when he skimmed her in a chair over the ice, sighing out, in her terror, 'My dear man, don't ye go so fast,' with all manner of endearing expressions—of the little boys to whom he threw nuts to be scrambled for, and of his own plunge through the thinner ice, when, regardless of drenched garments, he went on with the sport to the last, and came home with clothes frozen as stiff as a board.

He was not gone when his father and brother came home on the twenty-sixth, prepared to go with him to Southampton.

The note to his cousin Arthur written at this time thus ends: 'We worked together once at Dresden. Whatever we have acquired in the way of accomplishments, languages, love of art and music, everything brings us into contact with somebody, and gives us the power of influencing them for good, and all to the glory of God.'

Many were touched when, on the first Sunday in Lent, as Sir John Patteson was wont to assist in Church by reading the Lessons, it fell to him to pronounce the blessing of God upon the patriarch for his willing surrender of his son.

After all, the 'Southern Cross' was detected in leaking again, and as she was so small that the Mission party would have been most inconveniently crowded for so long a voyage, the Bishop was at length persuaded to relinquish his intention of sailing in her, and passages were taken for himself, Mrs. Selwyn, Mr. Patteson, and another clergyman, in the 'Duke of Portland,' which did not sail till the end of March, when Patteson was to meet her at Gravesend.

Thus he did not depart till the 25th. 'I leave home this morning I may say, for it has struck midnight,' he wrote to Miss Neill. 'I bear with me to the world's end your cross, and the memory of one who is bearing with great and long-tried patience the cross that God has laid upon her.'

He chose to walk to the coach that would take him to join the railway at Cullompton. The last kisses were exchanged at the door, and the sisters watched him out of sight, then saw that their father was not standing with them. They consulted for a moment, and then one of them silently looked into his sitting room, and saw him with his little Bible, and their hearts were comforted concerning him. After that family prayers were never read without a clause for Missionaries, 'especially the absent member of this family.'

He went up to his brother's chambers in London, whence a note was sent home the next day to his father:—

'I write one line to-night to tell you that I am, thank God, calm and even cheerful. I stayed a few minutes in the churchyard after I left you, picked a few primrose buds from dear mamma's grave, and then walked on.

'At intervals I felt a return of strong violent emotion, but I soon became calm; I read most of the way up, and felt surprised that I could master my own feelings so much.

'How much I owe to the cheerful calm composure which you all showed this morning! I know it must have cost you all a great effort. It spared me a great one.'

On the 27th the brothers went on board the 'Duke of Portland,' and surveyed the cabins, looking in at the wild scene of confusion sure to be presented by an emigrant ship on the last day in harbour. A long letter, with a minute description of the ship and the arrangements ends with: 'I have every blessing and comfort. Not one is wanting. I am not in any excitement, I think, certainly I do not believe myself to be in such a state as to involve a reaction of feeling. Of course if I am seedy at sea for a few days I shall feel low-spirited also most likely, and miss you all more in consequence. But that does not go below the surface. Beneath is calm tranquil peace of mind.'

On the 28th the two brothers joined the large number of friends who went down with the Mission party, among them Mr. Edward Coleridge.

Parting notes were written from on board to all the most beloved; to little Paulina, of bright hopes, to Miss Neill of her cross; to Arthur the German greeting, 'Lebe wohl, doch nicht auf Ewigkeit,'—to Mr. Justice Coleridge:—

'March 28, 1855.

'My dear Uncle,—One line more to thank you for all your love and to pray for the blessing of God upon you and yours now and for ever.

'We sail to-day. Such letters from home, full of calm, patient, cheerful resignation to his will. Wonderfully has God supported us through this trial. My kind love to Arthur. Always, my dear Uncle, Your affectionate, grateful Nephew,

Perhaps the frame of mind in which Coley left England can best be gathered from the following extract from a letter to his father from his uncle Edward:—

'While on board I had a good deal of quiet talk with him, and was fully confirmed by his manner and words, of that which I did not doubt before, that the surrender of self, which he has made, has been put into his heart by God's Holy Spirit, and that all his impulses for good are based on the firm foundation of trust in God, and a due appreciation of his mortal, as well as professional condition. I never saw a hand set on the plough stead with more firmness, yet entire modesty, or with an eye and heart less turned backwards on the world behind. I know you do not in any way repine at what you have allowed him to do; and I feel sure that ere long you will see cause to bless God not only for having given you such a son, but also for having put it into his heart so to devote himself to that particular work in the Great Vineyard.'

About 5 P.M. the 'Duke of Portland' swung round with the tide, strangers were ordered on shore, Coleridge and James Patteson said their last farewells, and while the younger brother went home by the night-train to carry the final greetings to his father and sisters, the ship weighed anchor and the voyage was begun.