BISHOP PATTESON.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 147, 21 June 1872, Page 2

BISHOP PATTESON.

Professor Max Mueller, of the University of Oxford, has addressed a letter to the London Times upon the proposed memorial to Bishop Patteson. We give some of the leading portions of it. The learned professor says : — " Sir — An appeal from the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has appeared in the newspapers, inviting subscriptions for a memorial to Bishop Patteson. The subscriptions were intended to supply a new ship for missionary purposes, and to build a church in the Norfolk Islands. I saw the advertisement by accident. Many of my friends never knew of it till I told them. No list of subscribers has as yet been published. I have waited from day to day and from week to week in the hope that some one better qualified than I feel myself for such a task Would speak ; but I cannot any longer repress a feeling of regret that this memorial should not from the first have assumed a broader and truly national character. Surely there are men who, with the greatest e'oquence of heart, could have told every man, and woman, and child what England has lost in the death of that true-hearted son of hers — Bishop Patteson. His death was a great national loss ; it may become an even greater national gain and blessing. As a national loss it found its place by right in the Queen's speech ; as a national gain it should be marked by a truly national thanksgiving or thank-offering .... Devoted as he was to his work in that new world he did not become estranged from the literary and scientific interests of his old home. His correspondence with me was chiefly on philological subjects. He had a genius for languages, and felt a

deep interest in the great problems connected with the science of languages. His library will be found well supplied with the best books on comparative philology. Even Sanskrit grammars he asked to have sent to him, because he felt that a knowledge of that ancient language was essential to every true scholar. Every one For remainder of news see fourth page.

of his letters deserves to be published, and I cannot resist tbe desire to give at least a few extracts. "In 1867 he writes — 'In almost all cases the natives are friendly; where they are well not disposed, it is owing to some outrage previously committed upon them by some whaling or trading vessel. We two (he and the Bishop of New Zealand) have been among large parties of them, stark naked, armed with clubs, bows and arrows, with perfect security. They t-e most docile, gentle, loveable fellows.' "In 1866 he writes— 'All that I can do is to learn many dialects of a given archipelago, present their existing varieties, and so work back to the original language. This to some extent has been done in the Banks Group, and in the eastern p_;rt of the Solomon Islands. But directly I get so far as this I am recalled to the practical necessity of using my knowledge of tbe several dialects rather to make known God's truth to the heal hen than to inform the * literati ' of the process of dialectic variation. Do not mistake me, my dear friend, or suspect me of silly sentimentalism. But you can easily understand what it is to feel. ' God has given to me, and to me only, of all Christian men, the power of speaking to this o • that nation; and, moreover, this is the work He has sent me to do.' Often, Ido not deny, I should like perhaps the other better. It is very pleasant to shirk my evening; class, and to spend the time with Sir W. Martin, discussing some point of Melanesian philology. But then, ray dear lads have lost two hours of Christian instruction, and that won't do." " No doubt, but for his death, he might have passed away as a hard-working, meritorious, but almost unknown missionary. There are many great and good men — it may be, as great and good as he was — who pass away unnoticed by the world. But that is the very reason why we«- should be ready to' recognise and honor the man who himself looked for no recognition and no honor, but who, as by a terrible flash of ligatning, was suddenly revealed to us by his death in all his grandeur and human majesty. It is well tbat we should know what stuff there may be unknown to us in the men whom we meet in common life, doing their allotted work steadily and quietly, but carrying in their breasts those lion hearts which neither ambition nor love of ease, neither danger nor death, can force one inch from the narrow path of duty. To have known such a man is one of life's greatest blessings. In his life of purity, unselfishness, devot'on to man, a faith in a higher world, those who have eyes to see may read the best, the most real Imitatio Christi. In his death, following so closely on his prayer for forgiveness for his enemies — ' for they know not what they do ' — we have witnessed once more a truly Christ-like death. As we lookback into the distant past, when there was as yet no Rome, no Athens^when Germany had not yet been discovered, when Britain was but a fabulous island, nay, when the soil of Europe had not yet been trodden by the harbingers of the Aryan race, may we not look forward, too, into the distant future, when those ' Black Islands ' of the Pacific shall have been changed into bright and happy isles, with busy harbors, villages, and towns ? In that distant future, depend upon it, the name of Patteson will live in every cottage, in every school and church of Melanesia, not as a name of a fabulous saint or martyr, but as the never-to-be-forgotten name of a good, a brave, God-fearing, and God-loving man. His bones will not work childish miracles, but his spirit will work signs and wonders by revealing even among the lowest of Melanesian savages the indelible Godlike stamp of human nature, and by upholding I pong future generations a true faith in od, founded on a true faith in man, "To have carried but one Bmall stone ' the cairn which is to commemorate this 'eat and holy life should be a satisfaction all who knew Patteson, a duty to all ho have "heard the name of the first ishop of Melanesia."