PONAPE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 12, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 45.

PONAPE.

IN 1852 Luther Halsey Gulick, a young clergyman, accompanied by his wife, entered the wide encircling barrier reef of Ponape, the largest of the islands that form the Caroline group, says a writer in the Youth's Companion. They went there to live as missionaries. Home, parents, friends, luxuries, even comforts—all that makes life pleasant—had to be given up to carry the Christian religion to those copper-colored, tattooed islanders. With all their enthusiasm, the two foreigners little knew what measures of self-denial were before them.

There has recently been published by his daughter a life of this well-known man, and from Mr. Gulick's diary we cull a few examples of suffering, examples which might be paralleled out of the unwritten biographies of hundreds of men and women who leave civilization in order to do Christian work under some impoverished but eager missionary board. The missionary's wife became ill, and his diary reads:—

"Attended to meals, to washing clothes, and to getting firewood." "So fatigued with household work that I retire early." "Washed clothes, got breakfast, and while doing it read some." "Not felt well. Made bread and pudding. Wife sick." "Hope ever. Good shall yet come out of this apparently fruitless life."

In 1853 they had no fresh meat, and often went to bed hungry. Mr. Gulick shot a few wild pigeons, but soon his gun gave out, and then he made the touching entry: "We are becoming quite needy. Will not the Lord soon provide, and relieve us?"

In 1854 a foreign sailor was set ashore to die of smallpox. The natives gleefully wore the dead man's clothes, and in a month the disease was upon the whole island in all its horror. Of course there was no vaccine matter. The missionary, seeing that the only hope of saving the nation lay in inoculating himself with the smallpox virus, took the terrible risk, and went to his own hospital expecting to die; but he lived through "the most horrible wretchedness" and "harrowing misery," and was able to save one-half of the inhabitants through his intelligent heroism.

Then his wife had to be sent away to save her life. This was harder to bear than a scourge. For thirteen months he did not hear a word from her. He thought her dead. Anxiety and nervous prostration almost killed him; but at last, a speck was seen on the horizon. It was the Morning Star, the missionary vessel which the children of the world had given to be a joy to the islands of the Pacific. It brought the wife and children just in time to give life to a worn-out man.

"If they lacked food, they had at least the comfort of hearing from their friends," you say. No. For years whalers were their only mail-carriers. Sometimes six months passed without a word from the world. Ten months even; twelve months, and still no letter. We can easily understand the famishing of the body, but who can measure mental hunger?

When Doctor Gulick sent an order for books he had to wait thirteen months, sometimes two years, for it to be answered. At one time he gave an order out of his meager salary for seventy-five dollars' worth of books which his soul craved. Two years passed. Day after day the missionary's eyes searched the cloudless horizon in vain, looking for a sail.

At last the mail arrived; but instead of books he received the incredible reply that it was thought his order overdrew his salary; and using their discretion, wiser heads had sent him what they thought he ought to have, not what he needed most. Two more years of bitter waiting before his books came! Four years for an order that any of us could have filled in almost as many hours!

Such martyr-like fidelity and patience are a marvel to most men. They do not understand the power of manliness reinforced by the self-effacement of true religious devotion. The instance we have given may be exceptional in the conditions under which practical Christianity was exhibited—but the wish and resolve to bless mankind can become a ruling passion in other minds as well as in that of the pioneer missionary. In all walks of life, there is brave work to be done, that involves the sublimest motives, and Christian self-denial can bear and do anything for its sake.—Union Gospel News.