THE NEW HEBRIDES CHRISTIANS.
(Rev. John G. Paton, D.D., missionary to the New Hebrides Islands, since 1858, in the Missionary Review.) THE New Hebrides Christians are a people of simple faith, who have embraced the Gospel, and try to love and serve Jesus Christ according to their knowledge of the teaching of His blessed Word. They try to observe in their every-day life and conduct all that Jesus has commanded. They begin and close every day with private and family prayer, and ask the divine blessing on all meals of food regularly, and try to train their children in the fear of God, and for His service. Their constant, every-day walk and conversation are powerful object lessons to the heathen, and to all, of the wonderful change they have undergone by the teaching and power of the Gospel, as they try to live for Jesus and eternity. They are far from being free from faults and failings common to man; nor are any of them perfect; for we all sin and come short. There are none righteous, no, not one, except our Saviour, the God and Man Jesus Christ. But according to their light and education, they would stand a favorable comparison with a similar number of Christians, say any eighteen thousand taken promiscuously from any white Christian community. . . . They highly value and carefully read and study the Scriptures, as to man they are God’s only infallible guide and rule of faith and practise. The Material from Which Christians Are Made.
When we began the Lord’s work among them, they were all painted, savage cannibals, without any clothing, and without any written language. The women had to do all the plantation work, while the men were engaged chiefly in war, or in talking about it. They lived constantly in a state of superstitious dread of the revenge of their heathen gods, and of their enemies, and of the spirits of the people they had murdered, and of evils brought on them by their sacred men, heathen priests, and wizards, whom they all exceedingly fear. As heathen they have no idea of natural death, but believe that every person who dies is killed by some one through sorcery or witchcraft, in using a piece of an orange or banana skin, or something of which the dead person has eaten a part. So, after a death, they all meet daily, and with each other talk over the case to find out who has caused the death. Then, as soon as some person will name any one with whom he is unfriendly, as having caused the death, they load a rifle, and the priest or chief walks up to some young man and presents him with a loaded rifle, saying, “You are to go and shoot this fowl or hog for us.” He generally has no alternative but to be shot or take the rifle, lay it aside, and go and paint his face, neck, breast, and arms black, and return, take up the rifle, and go and shoot the innocent person, after watching for him, concealed in the bush near his house. War often follows in revenge, and in this way many lives are lost, and sometimes a whole village or tribe is swept away. On the islands first occupied by us, infanticide was common; the aged were murdered and all widows were strangled to death when their husbands died. This was one of the most difficult savage practices to get the natives to give up, as they thought it was a great dishonor for the spirit of the husband not to have the spirit of his wife to wait upon him as a slave in the world of spirits. Notwithstanding all these dreadful savage cruelties and superstitions, even as a heathen they were an interesting, industrious people, living in villages and towns, and, like country farmers, cultivating and planting the lands around them for the support of themselves and families. Yet they have almost no buying and selling, and no money is in circulation among them. “Might is right,” and by club laws the strong oppress the weak without mercy. The Transformation Process.
The missionary first tries to acquire the language of the natives among whom he is placed; he has no help nor teacher, but tries to pick it up as spoken by them, to discover its grammatical construction, phonetically reduces it to a written form, translates some hymns into it, and teaches the people to sing them. He also translates and prepares a small book of extracts of Scripture, giving them an account of the creation, the fall, the flood, of God’s love and mercy to men in Jesus Christ. He teaches them to read and understand it, and to receive the Scriptures of God as the only infallible guide and rule of faith and practise to all men, of all colors and countries, and that in it, by the suffering and death of His only-begotten Son, Jesus, God offers salvation and eternal happiness to all men who will accept it, believe and obey it, having repented of and given up all sin. A good God of love and mercy, so loving our lost and ruined race as to send His Son into our world to die for men and give them eternal life, is that by which divine grace enlightens the mind and moves the heart of the savage to love and serve God above all else. Hence, they delight to attend school and church and prayer-meeting, in order to learn all possible about the Saviour, and their privileges and duties in Him, whom they try to love and serve as their present abiding friend and eternal reward.