THE GEDDIE MEMORIAL FUND.

Evening Star, Issue 3136, 8 March 1873, Page 2

THE GEDDIE MEMORIAL FUND.

To the Editor. Sir —lt has been suggested to me that I ought to explain the object of this fund to the Presbyterian community of Otvgo. I know that they feel a very hearty interest in the New Hebrides Mission ; and I shall be delighted if this matter, which I have in hand, commends itself to their generous sym pathy and aid. Ur Geddie was the founder of the New Hebrides Mission. For twenty-three long years he labored among those dark islands. During the most of the first live years he and his noble wife lived alone among a savage popu'ation-tho nearest Europeans being 1,500 miles away. The story of his success is well known. It may be summed up in his own words “ When I went to Aneiteum, there wasn’t a Christian there ; when I left it, there wasn’t a hj athen there.”

Though by no means an old man (he die at 56), ague and fever, and the exhausting climate, wore away his life’s strength. He came to Geelong last year, hoping to spend it in repose in the bosom of his family. But the exigencies of the Mission called him to the islands again in April, and there he received the first warning that his work was done, and that death was at hand. I never knew a more simple, humble, self-denying servant of the Cross. That act of his, in going with hn wife into the loneVness and utter human helplessness of that Mission outpost, has always seemed to me one of the most heroic deeds of modern times.

And it'is under the inpulse of that feeling that I have undertaken (with the approbation of our Mission’s committee) to raise a fund, which shall be applie l, first, in rearing a simple monument to his memory, and in the second placs in securing the advantages of a full education for his one unmarried daughter. Dr Geddie was not the Missionary of the Victorian Church any more than of the New Zealand. Yet, as the founder of that Mission in which we are all bearing a part, we felt it our duty and our privilege to do this, in honor of his name and for the comfort and assistance of his widow ; and any help which the friends of the Mission here are disposed to give us will be gratefully received. It will he seen from an advertisement elsewhere to whom contributions may be sent.— I am, &c.,

A. J. Campbell