The founding of the Melanesian Mission was due to the vigorous bodily energy and the apostolic fervour of Bishop George Augustus Selwyn. The fact that the founder was a Bishop, and as such possessed the power and authority to insure the success of his plans and ideas, and had in addition a certain assured sum of money at his back, caused the Mission to be stamped from the outset with a definite style and imprinted upon it a traditional method of work. In considering this style and tradition, we must remember that the founder of the Mission was Bishop of New Zealand and was thus debarred from settling in Melanesia and leading the attack on its Heathenism from within. Since his home and his main interests and his more regular sphere of work lay outside Melanesia, and since also the carrying out of the work at all seemed to depend on himself, it is obvious that the only way for him to begin the evangelization of Melanesia was by taking boys from it to some place where he could have them trained with a view to their becoming the future missionaries of Melanesia.
Quite apart, however, from the fact of the foundation of the Mission by a bishop and from its receiving thereby a definite and a fixed character at the outset, and apart also from the difficulty of changing a practice once firmly established, those who know the influence which Bishop Selwyn exercised in the matter of fixing the constitution of the Church of New Zealand would naturally expect to find something of the same rigidity and fixedness in the traditional methods and style of the work of the Melanesian Mission. It must also be borne in mind, when reviewing the style and methods of work adopted in the Mission, that its policy herein has not been the result of the deliberations of the missionaries themselves and has not stood in the definite following of the teachings of the experience of the many, with alterations from time to time to suit the varying needs, but has been in effect the regular and one may say almost the mechanical following of the lines laid down by the founder. For all that, the Melanesian diocese was an offshoot of the Church of New Zealand and as such might have been expected to show the same spirit of cooperation in religious matters between clergy and chosen lay representatives consulting together, yet the Mission never had a synod (though every diocese in New Zealand has one), and the conference of whites and natives held in 1911 was the first instance of any attempt made during the whole history of the Mission to gather the workers together to take deliberative measures for the better carrying on of the work.
Until the time, about 12 years ago, when the missionaries first tended to become permanent residents in the spheres of work in the [199/200] islands, practically the only changes made in the original plan of work in the Mission were: (1) the substitution of Mota for English as the language of the central school; (2) the removal of headquarters to Norfolk Island from Auckland. The hand of the founder seemed ever to lie on the Mission which his strong and vigorous nature and powerful personality had called into being and directed along its path of life.
In the Melanesian Mission the bishop theoretically is the Mission; the clergy simply are the bishop's chaplains, and till fairly late in the episcopate of Bishop Wilson no license was issued to them, and so long as it was the tradition that they should return every summer to Norfolk Island it is evident that they could not be instituted to any cure of souls. It is quite plain, moreover, that with only a small staff and with frequent absences or departures or losses entailing a considerable moving around of the men, nothing approaching the conditions necessary for the holding of a synod of the Australasian type is likely to occur, and it does not seem that the Mission is likely to grow quickly into a church which shall be self-governing unless (in order to compensate for the fewness of the white priests) a large number of native priests are ordained.
SUPPORT. The bishop's chief intention in regard to the support of the Mission seems to have been that it should be a first charge on the Church of New Zealand, and he evidently regarded the Mission in Melanesia as part and parcel of the work of the Church of New Zealand. He also looked forward to the native Maori church as a source whence missionaries to Melanesia would be obtained. With the division of the original diocese of New Zealand into six and the consequent necessity, owing to the influx of population, of providing for its own internal needs, the Church of New Zealand rather failed for many years to fulfill its obligations to Melanesia. A resolution of General Synod was passed to the effect that the various dioceses be asked to appoint a missionary Sunday and to give their alms on that day to Melanesia. Four out of the six dioceses have now fallen into line with this resolution by appointing such a Sunday.
The Christian Maoris have not realized as yet the hope that Bishop Selwyn entertained for them, viz., that they should become missionaries to Melanesia and that the Maori church should support its own foreign missionaries; but now, with the coming of the Marsden Centenary, a definite movement has been set on foot to send Maori missionaries to the Polynesian-speaking peoples in Melanesia.
In Australia the Melanesian Mission was accepted through the Board of Missions as one of the activities of the church, yet in 1894 Australia's contribution to Melanesia was only £1,600, whereas in the same year New Zealand gave £2,750 and England £3,800. The revival of the [200/201] Australian Board of Missions' interest in Australia six years ago caused a great improvement in the local contributions to the Melanesian Mission, and in 1913 these amounted to £2,928 as against £5,122 from New Zealand.
In England, up till the time of the episcopate of Bishop Wilson, all interest in Melanesia was confined to the Eton Association and to the actual friends of the Mission--i. e., those in close touch with particular missionaries. The Rev. Prebendary Selwyn had discharged all duties connected with the raising of the English income of the Mission, but in 1899 a paid secretary was appointed and an office was taken in the Church House, Westminster. The Rev. L. P. Robin was the first secretary and he was succeeded in 1905 by the Rev. A. E. Corner, who still occupies the position and who acts in an honorary capacity. For the last twelve years the Mission has had a regular lecturer touring in England and in 1913 the English income was £8,800.
THE LOG. Up till 1995 the Mission had no way of making its needs known and of spreading the knowledge of its work, except by its annual reports or by quarterly papers published by Bishop J. R. Selwyn in England. The first number of the "Southern Cross Log" appeared in 1895, and now for twenty years the "Log" has been published monthly, and an edition is also published in England. Undoubtedly the "Log" has helped greatly in the augmentation of interest in the Mission, and the fact that the Mission has at last emerged into full view and has taken its place as one of the missions of the whole church is owing largely to services rendered by the "Log." We may now say that whereas the Melanesian Mission started its life as the creation of the apostolic zeal of one man and was practically a private mission for many years, it has become at length the possession of the whole English Church.
Before the episcopate of Bishop Wilson the leaders of the Mission contributed largely to its funds. In the building of the ships a large amount of private money was thus expended and the present Southern Cross is the only one built by public subscriptions. Bishop Wilson saw the necessity of bringing the needs of the Mission to the minds of the people of the Church at large and he greatly extended the already existing policy of apportioning native scholars to various schools and parishes; he also inaugurated the "Island" scheme, whereby a person or parish guarantees the upkeep of a mission school in a certain place; by this means he practically insured regular yearly contributions.
The head office of the Mission is in Auckland. This is owing to old-time associations and also to the presence there of Archdeacon Dudley, who was for so many years the treasurer of the Mission. Latterly the organizing secretary for New Zealand has also had his headquarters in Auckland. Bishop Wilson appointed a committee of business men in [201/202] Auckland to advise on monetary matters and to look after the Mission's interest in the matter of repairs to the ship and the ordering of stores for the islands. Doubtless much money was saved by this step.
NORFOLK ISLAND. It is in the matter of Norfolk Island that the lingai of the Mission--i. e., its adherence to tradition--has been most marked. Bishop G. A. Selwyn was forced at the outset of the work to choose a base of operations outside Melanesia itself. His policy was to keep the work of the Mission under his own eye rather than to call for workers to go and settle in the islands and develop the mission work from within. It was assumed that for the development of the Mission the base of operations must necessarily be elsewhere than in the field to be developed, and while the question of climate has always been supposed popularly to have been the main determining factor in the course which was pursued, yet in all probability the matter was settled by other considerations than those of climate. The climate of Melanesia is bad enough, but when Bishop Selwyn began his work in the islands white missionaries of the London Missionary Society and also Presbyterian missionaries were settled already in the New Hebrides, the French were in New Caledonia, and the Methodists were in New Britain. The climate of the New Hebrides is but little better, if at all, than that of the Banks Islands, where most of the early work of the Mission was done, and New Britain has almost the same climate as the Solomons, so it is evident that missionaries of the Melanesian Mission, or the Northern Mission as it was called at the outset, could have settled in their own sphere of work had the policy allowed.
The report of 1857, written probably by Mr. Patteson, puts the matter very clearly from the standpoint of that time. Speaking of the Melanesians in the school at St. John's, Auckland, he writes:
"They are delicate subjects and require careful handling, morally and physically. The strength of passion and weakness of constitution which belongs to their tropical nature require careful training. But if they can be acclimatized mentally as well as physically, and taught to unite the energy and perseverance of the inhabitants of a temperate region with their own fervor and impetuosity of character, there can be little reason to doubt but that they will prove most efficient teachers and missionaries to their own people, when once the grace of God's spirit shall have shined in their hearts. The pupil will probably, by the mere force of association, have received impressions and experienced a change of character which will prove very beneficial to him and which may induce him, on mixing once more with his own friends, to contrast their customs with ours. He will feel the sense of a want now created in him of something better than his own land supplies; he will desire to return again to New Zealand, and by degrees be borne along from one point to another till, under God's blessing, he emerges from his old dark Heathen state of mind into a state of conscious apprehension and acceptance [202/203] of that religion which has presented itself to him as modifying every part of his life and character, social, moral and spiritual.
"It is useless to suppose that the 78 islands already visited by the Bishop of New Zealand can be permanently supplied with English missionaries. It is indeed beyond the bounds of all probability to suppose that even the twenty-one islands which have already supplied scholars to the Mission can be provided with resident English teachers. While India, China and Africa are now at length opened to us, and need every help which Christian zeal and love in England may supply, we can not expect any large number of missionaries from home for the work in Melanesia. The only method now open, as we have said, is to avail ourselves of the strange curiosity which induces native men and lads to trust themselves with us, and to hope and believe that out of these some will be led to return again and again to New Zealand to receive direct Christian teaching.
"In every case the attempt would be made to raise up a staff of teachers for each island from among the inhabitants of each island, and the English missionary, or any native teacher qualified for the work who might be associated with him, would not be regarded as permanently attached to the particular island with which they were at any time brought into relation, but only until such time as the teachers trained up by them in the island during a part of the year, and in New Zealand during the remainder of it, could be taught to carry on the work under the superintendence of the Bishop making his rounds in the mission vessel. If each group of islands should be hereafter placed in charge of an English missionary, whose duty it would be in his small boat to be watching over the native clergy in each part of his district, and the Melanesian Bishop should be for six months visiting the islands, bringing back and taking away teachers and scholars, and for the remaining six superintending the missionary college in New Zealand; some five or six active working men would constitute the whole of the necessary English staff."
It was really Bishop Selwyn's strong personality and his vigor of mind and body that caused this new and hitherto untried method of evangelization to be adopted. The Bishop's method was a new one in the history of modern missions, though in a measure it might be regarded as an adaptation of the method adopted by St. Boniface in founding monasteries and in using them to educate missionaries gathered from the neighborhood. The ordinary way of starting and of carrying on the work to be done in Melanesia, viz., by residential missionaries, was difficult enough at that time owing to (1) the shortage of men, (2) the lack of regular communication other than by the Mission ship, (3) the difficulty of climate, (4) the multiplicity of languages. But it must not be forgotten that the other missions in Melanesia, by their policy of settling residential missionaries from the very inception of their work, have proved that (1) men will offer for the work and (2) climatic conditions can be overcome. Of the other two difficulties, that of communication has already been solved and the language difficulty has not been found to be insuperable.
The native teachers of the Melanesian Mission trained in a fairly cool climate at Norfolk Island and surrounded by the things of civilization, [203/204] have certainly not proved any more useful as propagandists than the native teachers of other Missionary bodies in the Pacific who were trained in or near their own homes.
It was during the episcopate of Bishop Wilson that those changes began which not only considerably altered the original plan of the Mission, but which also bid fair to change its character altogether. The Rev. H. Welchman was actually the first to make a change in the original plan of the Mission by settling with his wife at Siota, Florida. Dr. Comins bought Siota with the idea of establishing a preparatory school there for teachers, and he and Mr. Welchman had undertaken to conduct it in turn, Mr. Welchman taking the summer months and Dr. Comins returning from Norfolk Island during the southeastern trade season, when Mr. Welchman went back to his own work in Bugotu. Previous to this, however, Mr. Forrest had been living continuously at Santa Cruz all the year through, but the rest of the staff regularly spent the summer months at Norfolk Island. Bishop J. Selwyn, moreover, had long been desirous of doing something to aid the Christian life of the converts, because he recognized the necessity of building them up in their Christianity. He also wished to give them something to do in order to replace the misdirected efforts of the old Heathenism with some form of regular employment. His idea was to furnish a small vessel for trading purposes and to start a trading company, thus providing an outlet for the energies of his people, now that the old avenues of their Heathen life were closed.
FURTHER CHANGES. During Bishop Wilson's episcopate there were many new developments of work. Preparatory schools were built at Bongana in Florida, at Pamua on San Cristoval, and at Vureas in the Banks Group. The missionaries began to reside permanently among their people and mission houses were built in all the groups. Men took their wives to the islands and women workers were placed in pairs in various places. Still, so long as Norfolk Island remained the Bishop's headquarters it could not reasonably be said that these doings amounted to a radical change of front; they were only what might be expected, owing to the change of the circumstances of the islands caused by the advent of trade and by the presence of other missionary bodies in the Mission's area. These two factors, viz., trade and opposition, have worked such a change in the Mission's plan that it may be said that practically all the missionaries are residential in the islands, i. e., they no longer return to Norfolk Island during the summer.
The growing importance of the work in the islands so impressed the authorities that when Bishop Wilson resigned it was felt that his successor must be prepared to have his headquarters in the islands. Norfolk [204/205] Island, however, was to continue, but was to take in only senior boys and no girls whatever; its numbers would thus be reduced considerably and special attention could then be given to individuals and special facilities afforded for the training of ordinands. Under these conditions it is obvious that the Bishop would have to intrust the head of Norfolk Island school with considerable powers. But a precedent might have been found for this in the fact that Bishop Patteson had previously entertained the idea of locating himself in Fiji in order to conduct work among the Melanesian laborers there and of intrusting to others the care of St. Barnabas; Bishop J. R. Selwyn, also, proposed leaving Dr. Codrington in charge at St. Barnabas, so that he himself might be free to build up the lives of the Christians in the islands.
The intention at the beginning of the episcopate of Bishop Wood was to modify the original plan of work by providing that the missionaries and the Bishop look upon the islands as their main field of operations and should definitely make their home in the islands, but that the chief training-school should be away from the islands, i. e., that the original plan should still stand in part. But in the light both of the failure of the situation of the school (in a temperate climate) to affect materially the mental or spiritual vigor of the scholars as was hoped, and also having in consideration the undoubted fact that a school to serve the same purposes could easily be established in these days in the Solomons or in the New Hebrides, one can but think that the Norfolk Island school might well be closed altogether. The Presbyterians have their college on Tangoa in the New Hebrides and the Anglicans in Papua have theirs at Dogura, and both of these colleges can turn out teachers every bit as capable of doing their work as the Melanesian teachers from Norfolk Island are for doing theirs.
Possibly it was thought that to close St. Barnabas altogether would entail the running counter to a vast amount of sentiment, and even if the closing of it could be shown to be likely to effect a saving financially considerations of sentiment seemed likely to rule out the project as impossible or as unwise. One remembers that there was some talk a few years ago of making Sydney the headquarters for the ship, but inasmuch as the doing of this would have involved the changing of the business headquarters also (and these have been in Auckland from the start), it was deemed inadvisable to make any change. Sydney, however, is the metropolis for the Pacific and caters specially for the island trade, and there is no doubt that the trade requirement of the Mission would have been more easily satisfied and a saving in price would also have been effected by dealing in Sydney; but old associations carried the day. The history of the monetary contributions to the mission in New Zealand shows, however, that propinquity to and constant association with the Mission and its work are not the all-important factors in determining the amount of money likely to be subscribed in a place. The Auckland diocese used to be far ahead of all the other dioceses [205/206] in New Zealand in its support of the Melanesian Mission, but of late years Christchurch has been a considerable rival to it. Possibly even a change of the headquarters of the ship to Sydney would not have affected New Zealand contributions over much.
It can hardly be said that the Mission has any explicit or definite policy with regard to the requirements of the life of its missionaries in the islands, i. e., in the matter of food, diet, care of the body, medicine, clothing, housing, learning of the local language, treatment of natives, method of propagation of Christianity. In the old days the newcomer did certainly get impregnated with the atmosphere of the Mission by living at Norfolk Island; he learned the lingai (a Mota word meaning "use") of the Mission, but nowadays newcomers go straight to their work in the islands and have to learn the lingai of the Mission as best they can. It would seem that there never has been any definite policy with regard to these matters; a man on being put down in the old days in charge of a particular place was left there quite alone and presumably was expected to know how to live his life without warning or direction. When Bishop Wilson at the outset of his work directed attention to the need of a set of directions and instructions for managing a whaleboat the opinion which found favor among the staff was that it was best to let a man learn by experience. And the question of linguistics was treated much in the same way--every man was supposed to pick up the language spoken in his particular district. The learning of Mota was a fairly simple problem, owing to the many books that were translated into it (the Mota dictionary was not published till 1896), but it was quite a different matter when faced with an unknown tongue which one was supposed to learn, while at the same time no help or directions were provided towards enabling one to set about the study of it.
The common use of Mota tended, moreover, to cause a depreciation in the estimate of the value of the other languages of the Mission. Mota was the language and the enlightenment or the importance of a place was measured at times by the ability or otherwise of its people to speak Mota. The unquestioned usefulness and the predominance of Mota tended to put all the other languages into the background and had a prejudicial effect on the study of them. Britishers as a rule are inclined possibly to treat sets of instructions as unnecessary and grandmotherly, and the non-provision of the missionaries of the Melanesian Mission with the best wisdom of the day with regard to the needs of their life was due in the first place to this dislike of being ordered about and of having to live according to the rule and of assimilating their ideas to a set of formal conditions, and in the second place was the direct consequence of the old view that the life of the missionaries in the islands was an incidental break in the regular round of duties at Norfolk Island.