Among the needs he discovered was this:-'By the bye, good cheap Bible prints would be very useful; large, so as to be seen by a large class, illustrating just the leading ideas. Schnorr's Bible prints by Rose and Bingen are something of the kind that I mean, something quite rude will do. Twenty-four subjects, comprising nothing either conventional or symbolical, would be an endless treasure for teachers; the intervening history would be filled up and illustrated by smaller pictures, but these would be pegs on which to hang the great events these lads ought to know. Each should be at least twenty-four inches by ten.
'Try to remember, in the choice of any other picture books for them, that anything that introduces European customs is no use yet. Pictures of animals are the best things. One or two of a railway, a great bridge, a view of the Thames with steamers rushing up and down, would all do; but all our habits of social life are so strange that they don't interest them yet.
'When I next reach Auckland, I suppose my eyes will rejoice at seeing your dear old likenesses. When we build our permanent central school-house at Kohimarama, I shall try to get a little snuggery, and then furnish it with a few things comfortably; I shall then invest in a chest of drawers, as I dare say my clothes are getting tired of living in boxes since March 1855.
'I can hardly tell you how much I regret not knowing something about the treatment of simple surgical cases. If when with W-- I had studied the practical-bled, drawn teeth, mixed medicines, rolled legs perpetually, it would have been worth something. Surely I might have foreseen all this! I really don't know how to find the time or the opportunity for learning. How true it is that men require to be trained for their particular work! I am now just in a position to know what to learn were I once more in England. Spend one day with old Fry (mason), another with John Venn (carpenter), and two every week at the Exeter hospital, and not look on and see others work- there's the mischief, do it oneself. Make a chair, a table, a box; fit everything; help in every part of making and furnishing a house, that is, a cottage. Do enough of every part to be able to do the whole. Begin by felling a tree; saw it into planks, mix the lime, see the right proportion of sand, know how to choose a good lot of timber, fit handles for tools,
'Many trades need not be attempted; but every missionary ought to be a carpenter, a mason, something of a butcher, and a good deal of a cook. Suppose yourself without a servant, and nothing for dinner to- morrow but some potatoes in the barn, and a fowl running about in the yard. That's the kind of thing for a young fellow going into a new country to imagine to himself. If a little knowledge of glazing could be added, it would be a grand thing, just enough to fit in panes to window-frames, which last, of course, he ought to make himself. Much of this cannot be done for you. I can buy window- frames in Auckland, and glass; but I can't carry a man a thousand miles in my pocket to put that glass into these frames; and if it is done in New Zealand, ten to one it gets broken on the voyage; whereas, glass by itself will pack well. Besides, a pane gets broken, and then I am in a nice fix. To know how to tinker a bit is a good thing; else your only saucepan or tea-kettle may be lying by you useless for months. In fact, if I had known all this before, I should be just ten times as useful as I am now. If anyone you know thinks of emigrating or becoming a missionary, just let him remember this.'
To these humble requisites, it appears that a missionary ought on occasion to be able to add those of a prime minister and lawgiver. Angadhohua, a bright, clever lad, only too easily led, was to be instructed in the duties of a chief; Mr. Patteson scrupulously trying in vain to make him understand that he was a person of far more consideration and responsibility than his white visitor would be in his own country. The point was to bring the Christian faith into connection with life and government. 'Much talk have I had with John in order that we may try to put before them the true grounds on which they ought to embrace Christianity,' writes Mr. Patteson, when about to visit a heathen district which had shown an inclination to abandon their old customs, 'and also the consequences to which they pledge themselves by the profession of a religion requiring purity, regularity, industry, but I have little doubt that our visit now will result in the nominal profession of Christianity by many heathen. Angadhohua, John, and I go together, and Isaka, a Samoan teacher who has been a good deal among them. I shall make an arrangement for taking one of their leading men to New Zealand with me, that he may get some notion of what is meant by undertaking to become a Christian. It is in many respects a great benefit to be driven back upon the very first origin of a Christian society; one sees more than ever the necessity of what our Lord has provided, a living organised community into which the baptized convert being introduced falls into his place, as it were, naturally; sees around him everything at all times to remind him that he is a regenerate man, that all things are become new. A man in apostolic times had the lessons of the Apostles and disciples practically illustrated in the life of those with whom he associated. The church was an expression of the verbal teaching committed to its ministers. How clearly the beauty of this comes out when one is forced to feel the horrible blank occasioned by the absence of the living teacher, influencing, moulding, building up each individual professor of Christianity by a process always going on, though oftentimes unconsciously to him on whom it operates.
'But how is the social life to be fashioned here in Lifu according to the rule of Christ? There is no organised body exemplifying in daily actions the teaching of the Bible. A man goes to chapel and hears something most vague and unmeaning. He has never been taught to grasp anything distinctly-to represent any truth to his mind as a settled resting-place for his faith. Who is to teach him? What does he see around him to make him imperceptibly acquire new habits in conformity with the Bible? Is the Christian community distinguished by any habits of social order and intercourse different from non- Christians?
'True, they don't fight and eat one another now, but beyond that are they elevated as men? The same dirt, the same houses, the same idle vicious habits; in most cases no sense of decency, or but very little. Where is the expression of the Scriptural life? Is it not a most lamentable state of things? And whence has it arisen? From not connecting Christian teaching in church with the improvement in social life in the hut and village, which is the necessary corollary and complement of such teaching.
'By God's grace, I trust that some little simple books in Lifu will soon be in their houses, which may be useful. It is even a cause for thankfulness that in a few days (for the "Southern Cross" ought to be here in a week with 500 more copies) some 600 or more copies, in large type, of the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments will be in circulation; but they won't use them yet. They won't be taught to learn them by heart, and be questioned upon them; yet they may follow by and by. Hope on is the rule. Give them the Bible, is the cry; but you must give them the forms of faith and prayer which Christendom has accepted, to guide them; and oh! that we were so united that we could baptize them into a real living exemplification, and expression-an embodiment of Christian truth, walking, sleeping, eating and drinking before their eyes. Christ Himself was that on earth, and His Church ought to be now. These men saw to accept His teaching was to bind themselves to a certain course of life which was exhibited before their own eyes. Hence, multitudes approved His teaching, but would not accept it-would not profess it, because they saw what was involved in that profession. But now men don't count the cost; they forget that "If any man come to Me" is followed by "Which of you intending to build a tower," Hence the great and exceeding difficulty in these latter days when Christianity is popular!'