UNDER AX AND MUSKET.
ABOUT this time, our Sabbath audiences at the Mission numbered forty or
so. Nowar and three or four more, and only they, seemed to love and
serve Jesus. They were, however, changeable and doubtful, though they
exerted a good influence on their villages, and were generally friendly
to us and to the Worship.
One morning at daybreak I found my house surrounded by armed men, and a
Chief intimated that they had assembled to take my life. Seeing that I
was entirely in their hands, I knelt down and gave myself away body and
soul to the Lord Jesus, for what seemed the last time on earth. Rising,
I went out to them, and began calmly talking about their unkind
treatment of me and contrasting it with all my conduct towards them. I
also plainly showed them what would be the sad consequences, if they
carried out their cruel purpose. At last some of the chiefs, who had
attended the Worship, rose and said, "Our conduct has been bad; but now
we will fight for you, and kill all those who hate you."
Grasping hold of their leader, I held him fast till he promised never to
kill any one on my account, for Jesus taught us to love our enemies and
always to return good for evil! During this scene, many of the armed
slunk away into the bush, and those who remained entered into a bond to
be friendly and to protect us. But again their Public Assembly resolved
that we should be killed, because, as they said, they hated Jehovah and
the Worship; for it made them afraid to do as they had always done. If I
would give up visiting the villages, and praying and talking with them
about Jehovah, they intimated that they would like me to stay and trade
with them, as they liked the Traders but hated the Missionaries! I told
them that the hope of being able to teach them the Worship of Jehovah
alone kept me living amongst them; that I was there, not for gain or
pleasure, but because I loved them, and pitied their estate, and sought
their good continually by leading them to know and serve the only true
God.
But my enemies seldom slackened their hateful designs against my life,
however calmed or baffled for the moment. Within a few days of the above
events, when Natives in large numbers were assembled at my house, a man
furiously rushed on me with his ax; but a Kaserumini Chief snatched a
spade with which I had been working, and dexterously defended me from
instant death. Life in such circumstances led me to cling very near to
the Lord Jesus; I knew not, for one brief hour, when or how attack might
be made; and yet, with my trembling hand clasped in the Hand once nailed
on Calvary, and now swaying the scepter of the Universe, calmness and
peace and resignation abode in my soul.
Next day, a wild Chief followed me about for four hours with his loaded
musket, and, though often directed towards me, God restrained his hand.
I spoke kindly to him, and attended to my work as if he had not been
there, fully persuaded that my God had placed me there, and would
protect me till my allotted task was finished. Looking up in unceasing
prayer to our dear Lord Jesus, I left all in His hands, and felt
immortal till my work was done. Trials and hairbreadth escapes
strengthened my faith, and seemed only to nerve me for more to follow;
and they did tread swiftly upon each other's heels. Without that abiding
consciousness of the presence and power of my dear Lord and Saviour,
nothing else in all the world could have preserved me from losing my
reason and perishing miserably. His words, "Lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world," became to me so real that it would not
have startled me to behold Him, as Stephen did, gazing down upon the
scene. I felt His supporting power, as did St. Paul, when he cried, "I
can do all things through Christ which strengthened me." It is the sober
truth, and it comes back to me sweetly after twenty years, that I had my
nearest and dearest glimpses of the face and smile of my blessed Lord in
those dread moments when musket, club, or spear was being leveled at my
life. Oh the bliss of living and enduring, as seeing "Him who is
invisible!" One evening, I awoke three times to hear a Chief and his men
trying to force the door of my house. Though armed with muskets, they
had some sense of doing wrong, and were wholesomely afraid of a little
retriever dog which had often stood betwixt me and death. God restrained
them again; and next morning the report went all round the Harbor that
those who tried to shoot me were "smitten weak with fear," and that
shooting would not do. A plan was therefore deliberately set on foot to
fire the premises, and club us if we attempted to escape. But our
Aneityumese Teacher heard of it, and God helped us to frustrate their
designs. When they knew their plots were revealed to us, they seemed to
lose faith in themselves, and cast about to circumvent us in some more
secret way, Their evil was overruled for good.