'But I may shortly state some of them, in case you may not have heard them, because I should like this step to approve itself to your mind:-
'1. Norfolk Island is 600 miles hearer to Melanesian islands than Auckland, and not only nearer in actual distance, but the 600 miles from Norfolk Island to Auckland are the cold and boisterous miles that must be passed at the extremities of the voyages with no intervening lands to call at and obtain a change for our large party on board.
'2. The difficulty usually is to get westward when sailing from New Zealand, by the North Cape of New Zealand, because the prevalent winds are from the west. So that usually the passage to Norfolk Island is a long-one.
'3. New Zealand is much to the east of Norfolk Island, and to go from the Loyalty, New Hebrides, Banks, and Santa Cruz groups to New Zealand, it is necessary to make a long stretch out to the N.E. (the trades blowing from about S.E. by E.), standing down to S. on the other tack. But Norfolk Island is almost due S. of other those groups.
'4. I cannot come back from the islands during my winter voyage to New Zealand, it is too distant; the coast is dangerous in the winter season and the cold too great for a party of scholars first coming from the tropics. But I can go backwards and forwards through the islands and Norfolk Island during the five winter months. It is not wise to sail about in the summer, hurricanes being prevalent then.
'5. As I can only make one return from the islands to New Zealand in the year, I can only have a school consisting of (say) sixty Melanesians brought in the very crowded vessel + (say) thirty left in New Zealand for the winter; and I dare not attempt to leave many, for so much care is needed in the cold season. But in Norfolk Island I can have a school of any number, because I can make separate voyages thither from the Banks and Solomon Islands, each time bringing a party of sixty, if I think fit.
'6. The productions of Norfolk Island include the yam, taro (Caladium esculentum), sweet potato, sugar-cane, banana, almond, orange, pine-apple, coffee, maize. Only cocoa-nut and bread-fruit are wanting, that natives of Melanesia care much about.
'7. There is no necessity for so violent a contrast as there must be in New Zealand between the life with us and in their homes in respect of dress, food, and houses.
'Light clothing and an improved style of native house and more cleanly way of eating their food-not of cooking it, for they are cleanly already in that-may be adopted, and more easily perpetuated in their own homes than the heavy clothing necessary here, and the different style of houses and more English food.
'This is very important, because with any abrupt change of the outer man, there is sometimes a more, very more natural abandonment of the inner thoughts and disposition and character. Just as men so often lose self-respect when they take to the bush life; or children who pray by their own little bedside alone, leave off praying in "long chamber," the outward circumstances being altered.
'I have for years thought that we seek in our Missions a great deal too much to make English Christians of our converts. We consciously and unanimously assume English Christianity (as something distinct I mean from the doctrines of the Church of England), to be necessary; much as so many people assume the relation of Church and State in England to be the typical and normal condition of the Church, which should be everywhere reproduced. Evidently the heathen man is not treated fairly if we encumber our message with unnecessary requirements.
'The ancient Church had its "selection of fundamentals"-a kind of simple and limited expansion of the Apostles' Creed for doctrine and Apostolic practice for discipline.
'Notoriously the Eastern and Western mind misunderstood one another. The speculative East and the practical West could not be made to think after the same fashion. The Church of Christ has room for both.
'Now any one can see what mistakes we have made in India. Few men think themselves into the state of the Eastern mind, feel the difficulties of the Asiatic, and divine the way in which Christianity should be presented to him.
'We seek to denationalise these races, as far as I can see; whereas we ought surely to change as little as possible-only what is clearly incompatible with the simplest form of Christian teaching and practice.
'I don't mean that we are to compromise truth, but to study the native character, and not present the truth in an unnecessarily unattractive form.
'Don't we overlay it a good deal with human traditions, and still more often take it for granted that what suits us must be necessary for them, and vice versa.
'So many of our missionaries are not accustomed, not taught to think of these things. They grow up with certain modes of thought, hereditary notions, and they seek to reproduce these, no respect being had to the utterly dissimilar character and circumstances of the heathen.
'I think much about all this. Sir William Martin and I have much talk about it; and the strong practical mind of the Primate, I hope, would keep me straight if I was disposed to theorise, which I don't think is the case.
'But Christianity is the religion for humanity at large. It takes in all shades and diversities of character, race,
'The substratum of it is, so to say, inordinate and coextensive with the substratum of humanity-all men must receive that. Each set of men must also receive many thing of secondary, yet of very great importance for them; but in this class there will be differences according to the characteristic differences of men throughout the world.
'I can't explain myself fully; but, dear Uncle, I think there is something in what I am trying to say.
'I want to see more discrimination, more sense of the due proportion, the relative importance of the various parts which make up the sum of extra teaching.
'There is so great want of order in the methods so often adopted, want of arrangement, and proper sequence, and subordination of one to another.
'The heathen man will assume some arbitrary dictate of a missionary to be of equal authority and importance with a moral command of God, unless you take care. Of course the missionary ought not to attempt to impose any arbitrary rule at all; but many missionaries do, and usually justify such conduct on the ground of their "exceptional position."
'But one must go much further. If I tell a man just beginning to listen, two or three points of Christian faith, or two or three rules of Christian life, without any orderly connection, I shall but puzzle him.
'Take, e.g., our English Sunday, I am far from wishing to change the greater part of the method of observing it in England.
'I hope the Melanesian Christians may learn to keep holy the Lord's Day. But am I to begin my teaching of a wild Solomon Islander at that end; when he has not learned the evil of breaking habitually the sixth, seventh, and eighth Commandments?
'I notice continually the tendency of the teaching of the very men who denounce "forms" to produce formation.
'It is nearest to the native mind; it generates hypocrisy and mere outward observance of certain rules, which, during the few years that the people remain docile on their first acceptance of the new teaching, they are content to submit to.
'I see the great difficulty of making out all this. It necessitates the leaving so very much to the discretion of the pioneer. Ergo the missionary must not be the man who is not good enough for ordinary work in England, but the men whom England even does not produce in large numbers with some power of dealing with these questions.