APPENDIX B

MISSIONS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

An Address read1 before the Women's Missionary Association and members of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, at Sydney, March 18, 1893.

I SUPPOSE I am in the position of many other persons. I had conceived a great prejudice against Missions in the South Seas, and I had no sooner come there than that prejudice was at first reduced, and then at last annihilated. Those who deblaterate against missions have only one thing to do, to come and see them on the spot. They will see a great deal of good done; they will see a race being forwarded in many different directions, and I believe, if they be honest persons, they will cease to complain of mission work and its effects. At the same time, and infallibly in all sublunary matters, they will see a great deal of harm done. I am very glad to think that the new class of missionaries are by no means so radical as their predecessors. I have spoken to many missionaries, and I have the pleasure to say that the most intelligent among them are of one opinion and that the true one. They incline to think that it is best to proceed by little and little, and not by much and much. They are inclined to spare so far as it is possible native opinions and set native habits of morality; to seek rather the point of agreement than the points of difference; to proceed rather by confirmation and extension than by iconoclasm. I wish I could say how strongly I feel the importance and efficiency of this new view. People have learned one code of decency from their childhood up. They are prepared to suffer, in some cases to die, for that. There is here a vast reservoir of moral power. It is the business of the missionary not to destroy, but to utilise it. When the missionaries— the earlier missionaries broke the tabus " in the South Sea Islands, they chose the path of destruction, not of utilisation, and I am pleased

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1 Stevenson was unable to be present at the meeting, but the proofs of this article were revised by him for the Sydney Presbyterian.

to think that these days are over, that no missionary will go among a primitive people with the idea of mere revolution, that he will rather develop that which is good, or is capable of being made good, in the inherent ideas of the race, that when he finds an idea half bad and half good, he will apply himself to the good half of it, develop that, and seek to minimise and gradually obliterate the other, thus saving what I may be allowed to call the moral water-power. Because we are, one and all, in every rank of life, and in every race of mankind, the children of our fathers, we shall never do well, we shall certainly never do nobly, except upon the lines marked out for us by our fathers' footprints.

And the true art of the missionary, as it seems to me—an outsider, the most lay of laymen, and for that reason, on the old principle that the bystander sees most of the game, perhaps more than usually well able to judge is to profit by the great-I ought really to say the vast amount of moral force reservoired in every race, and to expand and to change and to fit that power to new ideas and to new possibilities of advancement.

I am saying only that which I have learned from my intercourse with the most experienced of missionaries, though it commends itself to me upon more primitive and abstract grounds. What I have still to say is perhaps more personal to myself as an observer.

We make a great blunder when we expect people to give up in a moment the whole beliefs of ages, the whole morals of the family, sanctified by the traditions of the heart, and not to lose something essential. We make a still greater - or I should say, too many missionaries make a mistake still greater-when they expect, not only from their native converts, but from white men (by no means of the highest class) shipwrecked or stranded at random on these islands, a standard of conduct which no parish minister in the world would dare to expect of his parishioners and church members.

There is here in these despised whites a second reservoir of moral power, which missionaries too often neglect and render nugatory. Many of these despised traders are in themselves fairly decent and more than fairly decent persons. They dwell, besides, permanently amidst the native population, whereas the missionary is in some cases, and perhaps too often, only there upon a flying visit. The trader is therefore, at once by experience and by influence, the superior of the

missionary. He is a person marked out to be made use of by the intelligent missionary. Sometimes a very doubtful character, sometimes a very decent old gentleman, he will almost invariably be made the better by some intelligent and kindly attention for which he is often burning; and he will almost invariably be made the worse by neglect or by insult.

And I am sorry to say that in too many cases I have found these methods to be followed by the missionary. I know very well that, in part from the misdeeds of the worst kind of traders, and in part by the harshness of otherwise excellent missionaries, this quarrel has become envenomed. Well, it is just this quarrel that has to be eliminated. By long-suffering, by kindness, by a careful distinction of personalities, the mission and the traders have to be made more or less in unison. It is doubtful if the traders will change much; it is perhaps permissible in the layman to suggest that the mission might change somewhat. The missionary is a great and a beneficent factor. He is hampered, he is restricted, his work is largely negated by the attitude of his fellowwhites, his fellow-countrymen, and his fellow-Christians in the same island. Difficult as the case may be -and all mission work is eminently difficult-the business which appears to me to be before the missions is that of making their peace; and I will say much moreof raising up a brigade of half and half, or if that cannot be, of quarter and quarter lay supporters among the whites.

If I had not been asked, I should have been the last man in the world to have interjected my lay opinions into your councils. Having been asked, I willingly lay myself open to your censures, and confidently appeal for your indulgence, while I tell you exactly how this matter has seemed to a far from uninterested layman, well acquainted with the greater part of the South Seas.

APPENDIX C

VAILIMA PRAYERS

FOR SUCCESS

LORD, behold our family here assembled. We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle. Let peace abound in our small company. Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offences. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, ifit may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ's sake.

FOR GRACE

Grant that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, and when the day comes, may die in peace. Deliver us from fear and favour, from mean hopes and from cheap pleasures. Have mercy on each in his deficiency; let him be not cast down; support the stumbler on the way, and give at last rest to the weary.

AT MORNING

The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with

laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry, let our laughter rise like a Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.

EVENING

We come before Thee, O Lord, in the end of Thy day with thanksgiving. Remember and relieve, we beseech Thee, those who are in pain, remember sick children, visit the fathers of destitute families, shine in the house of affliction. Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who are now beginning the labours of the day what time we end them, and those with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help, console and prosper them.

Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour come to rest. We resign into Thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our lovingkindness make bright this house of our habitation.

ANOTHER FOR EVENING

Lord, receive our supplications for this house, family, and country. Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the treacherous, lead us out of our tribulation into a quiet land.

Look down upon ourselves and our absent dear ones. Help us and them; prolong our days in peace and honour. Give us health, food, bright weather, and light hearts. In what we meditate of evil, frustrate our will; in what of good, further our endeavours. Cause injuries to be forgot and benefits to be remembered. Let us lie down without fear, and awake and arise with exultation. For His sake, in whose words we now conclude.

IN THE SEASON OF RAIN

We thank Thee, Lord, for the glory of the late days and the excellent face of Thy sun. We thank Thee for good news received. We thank Thee for the pleasures we have enjoyed and for those we have