Great Heart by Bertha S. Chaney

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 2, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 14.

"Great Heart"

By Bertha S. Chaney

T is one of the inevitables of mission work in frontier places that it tests and reveals character in no uncertain manner. A man may be a tower of strength, but give little evidence of it until he faces the responsibilities and crises arising in the work which meets him in a mission station. Another may be a weakling; but who suspected it until, far from all props and stays, he falls under the temptations which swarm nowhere more prolifically than in a heathen land?

One of the most sterling characters that this century of missions has produced and developed is that of the dauntless Scotchman, James Chalmers. The last twenty-four years of a long, arduous, and eventful life were spent in one of the most difficult of mission fields—along the coral-reefed shores of British New Guinea, among its degraded cannibal tribes.

Mr. Chalmers's name frequently occurs in the government reports, and always accompanied by words of unstinted appreciation. These reports are sent annually by the administrator of New Guinea to the parent government in Australia, and tell of the year's progress. They give detailed accounts of the tours of inspection made to the different parts of the country; of explorations up the great rivers and over the mountains; of the troubles with natives; of the arresting of intertribal feuds and warfare; of the work done by naturalist, scientist, and missionary.

In one which tells of a tour of inspection made by Sir William M'Gregor, eighteen years ago, along the shores of the Gulf of Papua, he describes his travels through a country where there are numbers of large native villages. These tribes were constantly warring with each other, and were savage and fierce. I quote the closing words of this report:

This year the systematic inspection of the gulf from Port Bevan to Hall Sound has been accomplished. It is pleasant to record that this last inspection has been made without accident, loss, or collision. It is only right that I should say that the likelihood of attack by, or of misunderstanding with, the natives was at many places greatly reduced by the labors of the Rev. James Chalmers. It is nearly fourteen years since he first visited the coast tribes. In recent years he has entirely devoted his life to the western tribes, and he has done more, infinitely more, for the gulf septs than all other Europeans put together. Alone and unarmed he went to their villages before any other white man had been in the country. His fearless courage soon gained him an influence. On several occasions I learned from the natives themselves for the first time that Mr. Chalmers had paid them a visit. Many of his travels have not been put on record at all; others, through becoming, but unscientific, modesty, have been very imperfectly related. His labors among these tribes have reduced warfare, diminished the numbers of murders, and have greatly promoted peaceful intercourse among the people. He has had the whole field to himself, and is really the apostle of the Gulf of Papua.

At another time the administrator had to visit the Maipua tribe in the great Purari delta on a punitive expedition. This tribe had killed some men and women of a neighboring tribe a few months before, and seemed bent on trouble. Mr. M'Gregor, in writing of them, says:

They are numerous, and with the reputation of being warlike, fierce, and haughty. The Rev. James Chalmers, whom I saw at Apiope on his way west, said frankly that he could do nothing with Maipua. The tribe that Mr. Chalmers can do nothing with requires careful handling.

Another New Guinea official, a lieutenant-governor, writes thus:

I appreciate the manly courage with which Mr. Chalmers has often faced death, which must have been very near to him when he was carrying his message of Christianity and peace among the natives in the earlier days of the mission; absolutely fearless and regardless of himself, his wonderful control of others has enabled him to extricate himself or his party from many a dangerous predicament where a man of less powerful nature might have failed.

The massacre of Mr. Chalmers and his party on the mud-flats of Goaribari Island, in the mouth of the Fly River, in 1901, caused great excitement in British New Guinea. Owing to the distance of this place from the headquarters of the government, and to the fact that it was in the center of a thickly populated district of absolutely wild, untamed savages, the real facts attending the dreadful incident could not be learned for more than three weeks. Then a strong government party visited the district, punishing and making prisoners of the natives who had been engaged in the murder. From some of the prisoners taken, it was learned that the two white men had been enticed into a dubu, or large house, and there had been struck down by stone clubs. Afterward the bodies had been cooked with sago, and eaten by the savages into whose hands they had fallen.

In reporting the punitive expedition, Mr. Le Hunt writes:

It is in surroundings such as these that the pioneer missionary, and one of the mission's latest recruits and their faithful followers, lost their lives by the hands of those they had come to befriend; the first because he knew of nothing that could stop him, and the others because where their leader went they went too. It was stated by the survivors on the Niue that Mr. Chalmers probably anticipated some danger, when he landed from the boat and went ashore, as he wished to leave Mr. Tomkins on board the Niue; but the latter would not let him go without him, and they were called away together at each other's side. I am not alone in the opinion that Mr. Chalmers has won the death he would have wished for of all others—in New Guinea and for New Guinea; and if I am right in my belief that this sacrifice will prove to be the means of putting an end to such tragedies anywhere on the coast of the possession, I know that he, or any of his brother missionaries here, would unhesitatingly welcome the opportunity for the sake of its end.

The terrible character of the people among whom he laid down his life, may be gathered from Mr. Dauncey's report of the burning of the dubus, or warriors' houses. These were burned as part of the punishment meted out to the tribes implicated in the murder. He says: 'In one of the dubus there were over seven hundred skulls, and at another four hundred. What a tale that number tells!'

Such are the words written by men in high official positions, who personally saw much of Mr. Chalmers's work, and realized as could none others the weight of his influence over the degraded coast tribes of Papua. His death was universally deplored as a distinct loss to the government in their efforts to put down the incessant tribal warfare which it was found so difficult to subdue. Some one wrote:

Great Heart is dead, they say. Great Heart is dead, they say. Nor dead, nor sleeping, he lives on. His name Shall kindle many a heart to equal flame. The fire he kindled shall burn on and on, Till all the darkness of the lands be gone, And all the kingdoms of the earth be won.

Here in the land which has been glorified by his martyr death, surrounded by the excitable, irresponsible Papuans, for love of whom that death was incurred, his life and work appeal to us as never before. Here we see the true setting of that rugged, noble life. The need of the Gospel for these people who have departed so far from the 'likeness of God' in the centuries since they knew God but glorified Him not, is as great as when James Chalmers went in and out among them with the Gospel of peace. There are hundreds of villages, clustered on the sandy beach, or standing high on poles in fever-laden swamps, or perched on rocky hillside, where the story of the Good Shepherd has never been told.

The restless heathen wait That light whose downing maketh all things new; Christ also waits, but men are slow and late. Have we done what we could? Have I? Have you?

Bisiatabu Mission Station, New Guinea.